Taught by triumphs and disasters, the causes of success and failure, her generals and statesmen directed their attention to the perfection of all the branches of military institution; the management of weapons, the array of troops, the plans of marches, the supply of armies, the passage of rivers, and the simplification of every species of duty. Colleges were instituted, the sciences were enlisted in the military service, and it was difficult to tell in which class of citizens the greatest military enthusiasm prevailed....the nobles who alone could aspire to command, or the privates who composed the rank and file of armies. It is to these institutions, through which the path to honor and renown lay, that France owes her present preeminence. Under several heads of this Dictionary will be found the facts upon which this opinion is sustained; other nations rather _aped_ than _emulated_ her institutions; while France pursued the spirit of the Romans who adopted every weapon which they found powerful in the hands of their enemies; France adopted the prolonged line of the Austrians, or abandoned it to pursue the concentric movements of Prussia; those echellons which under another name were among the manœuvres of Scipio and Gustavus Adolphus, and which so many have affected to laugh at as novelties, because they know neither their history nor their use; were recommended by _Guibert_ in 1763, as the _column_ had been before recommended by _Folard_; and each of whom had been calumniated and their tactics reprobated, by the enemies of innovation, or rather by the blockheads of their day, _a class of beings of which some are to be found every where_. The rapid principles of Frederic, and the evolutions of the echellon and column adapted to the concentric method of movement, upon oblique as well as direct lines; and all executed with a combined precision before unusual, constitute the great features of the modern tactics. Simplicity of method in instruction is the key to it. It must be evident to the humblest understanding, that a great part of the success of armies in war must depend as much upon the knowlege of the enemies’ mode of movement and action, as well as in the perfection, precision, and promptitude of execution in their own. Voltaire, whose history of Europe is alike admirable for its conciseness and authenticity, since all his information on military affairs was drawn from the _military depot_ established at Versailles, speaking of the battle of Rosbach, attributes the defeat of the French under Soubise to their ignorance of the new methods of movement which had been introduced by Frederic II. The soldiers saw that the old method of battle was changed; they did not comprehend the motions of the Prussians, which were not merely novel, but as exact as the movements on a parade; they believed they saw their masters in the art of war, they were dismayed and fled.