patrols, and that little heed was paid to the physical wants of man and beast.  As a tactician Pope was incapable.  As a strategist he lacked imagination, except in his dispatches.  His horizon was limited, and he measured the capacity of his adversaries by his own.  He was familiar with the campaign in the Valley, with the operations in the Peninsula, and Cedar Run should have enlightened him as to Jackson’s daring.  But he had no conception that his adversaries would cheerfully accept great risks to achieve great ends; he had never dreamt of a general who would deliberately divide his army, or of one who would make fifty-six miles in two marches.

Lee, with his extraordinary insight into character, had played on Pope as he had played on McClellan, and his strategy was justified by success.  In the space of three weeks he had carried the war from the James to the Potomac.  With an army that at no time exceeded 55,000 men he had driven 80,000 into the fortifications of Washington.* (* Sumner and Franklin had become involved in Pope’s retreat.) He had captured 30 guns, 7000 prisoners, 20,000 rifles, and many stand of colours; he had killed or wounded 13,500 Federals, destroyed supplies and material of enormous value; and all this with a loss to the Confederates of 10,000 officers and men.

So much had he done for the South; for his own reputation he had done more.  If, as Moltke avers, the junction of two armies on the field of battle is the highest achievement of military genius,* (* Tried by this test alone Lee stands out as one of the greatest soldiers of all times.  Not only against Pope, but against McClellan at Gaines’ Mill, against Burnside at Fredericksburg, and against Hooker at Chancellorsville, he succeeded in carrying out the operations of which Moltke speaks; and in each case with the same result of surprising his adversary.  None knew better how to apply that great principle of strategy, “to march divided but to fight concentrated.”) the campaign against Pope has seldom been surpassed; and the great counterstroke at Manassas is sufficient in itself to make Lee’s reputation as a tactician.  Salamanca was perhaps a more brilliant example of the same manoeuvre, for at Salamanca Wellington had no reason to anticipate that Marmont would blunder, and the mighty stroke which beat 40,000 French in forty minutes was conceived in a few moments.  Nor does Manassas equal Austerlitz.  No such subtle manoeuvres were employed as those by which Napoleon induced the Allies to lay bare their centre, and drew them blindly to their doom.  It was not due to the skill of Lee that Pope weakened his left at the crisis of the battle.* (* It may be noticed, however, that the care with which Longstreet’s troops were kept concealed for more than four-and-twenty hours had much to do with Pope’s false manoeuvres.) But in the rapidity with which the opportunity was seized, in the combination of the three arms, and in the vigour of the blow, Manassas is in no way inferior to Austerlitz or Salamanca.  That the result was less decisive was due to the greater difficulties of the battle-field, to the stubborn resistance of the enemy, to the obstacles in the way of rapid and connected movement, and to the inexperience of the troops.  Manassas was not, like Austerlitz and Salamanca, won by veteran soldiers, commanded by trained officers, perfect in drill and inured to discipline.