Napoleon on the Art of War
Chapter One
Generalship and the Art of Command
"It is essential that a general should dissemble while appearing to be
occupied, working with the mind and working with the body, ceaselessly
suspicious while affecting tranquillity, saving of his soldiers and not
squandering them except for the most important interests, informed of
everything, always on the lookout to deceive the enemy and careful not
to be deceived himself. In a word he should be more than an industrious,
active, and indefatigable man, but one who does not forget one thing to
execute another, and above all who does not despise those little details
which pertain to great projects."
Frederick the Great,
Instructions to His Generals, 1747
In war men are nothing; one man is everything. The presence of the general
is indispensable. He is the head, the whole of an army. It was not the
Roman army that subdued Gaul, but Caesar; not the Carthaginian army that
caused the republic to tremble at the gates of Rome, but Hannibal; not the
Macedonian army that reached the Indus, but Alexander; ... read full excerpt from Napoleon on the Art of War ebook
