On the whole then, when men speak of the Napoleonic system they seem to include two groups of ideas—­one which comprises the conception of war made with the whole force of the nation; the other, a group which includes the Cromwellian idea of persistent effort, Frederick’s preference for the offensive at almost any risk, and finally the idea of the enemy’s armed forces as the main objective, which was also Cromwell’s.

It is the combination of these by no means original or very distinct ideas that we are told has brought about so entire a change in the conduct of war that it has become altogether a different thing.  It is unnecessary for our purpose to consider how far the facts seem to support such a conclusion, for in the inherent nature of things it must be radically unsound.  Neither war nor anything else can change in its essentials.  If it appears to do so, it is because we are still mistaking accidents for essentials, and this is exactly how it struck the acutest thinkers of Napoleonic times.

For a while it is true they were bewildered, but so soon as they had had time to clear their heads from the din of the struggle in which they had taken part, they began to see that the new phenomena were but accidents after all.  They perceived that Napoleon’s methods, which had taken the world by storm, had met with success in wars of a certain nature only, and that when he tried to extend those methods to other natures of war he had met with failure and even disaster.  How was this to be explained?  What theory, for instance, would cover Napoleon’s successes in Germany and Italy, as well as his failures in Spain and Russia?  If the whole conception of war had changed, how could you account for the success of England, who had not changed her methods?  To us the answer to these questions is of living and infinite importance.  Our standpoint remains still unchanged.  Is there anything inherent in the conception of war that justifies that attitude in our case?  Are we entitled to expect from it again the same success it met with in the past?

The first man to enunciate a theory which would explain the phenomena of the Napoleonic era and co-ordinate them with previous history was General Carl von Clausewitz, a man whose arduous service on the Staff and the actual work of higher instruction had taught the necessity of systematising the study of his profession.  He was no mere professor, but a soldier bred in the severest school of war.  The pupil and friend of Sharnhorst and Gneisenau, he had served on the Staff of Bluecher in 1813, he had been Chief of the Staff to Wallmoden in his campaign against Davoust on the Lower Elbe, and also to the Third Prussian Army Corps in the campaign of 1815.  Thereafter for more than ten years he was Director of the General Academy of War at Berlin, and died in 1831 as Chief of the Staff to Marshal Gneisenau.  For the fifty years that followed his death his theories and system were, as he expected they would be, attacked from all sides.  Yet to-day his work is more firmly established than ever as the necessary basis of all strategical thought, and above all in the “blood and iron” school of Germany.