Turenne was the first, and, in his day, the greatest general in this new and scientific system of war. He first applied to the military art the resources of prudent foresight, deep thought, and profound combination; and the results of his successes completely justified the discernment which had prompted Louis XIV. to place him at the head of his armies. His methodical and far-seeing campaigns in Flanders, Franche Comté, Alsace, and Lorraine, in the early part of the reign of that monarch, added these valuable provinces to France, which have never since been lost. They have proved more durable than the conquests of Napoleon, which all perished in the lifetime of their author. Napoleon's legions passed like a desolating whirlwind over Europe, but they gave only fleeting celebrity, and entailed lasting wounds on France. Turenne's slow, or more methodical and more cautious conquests, have proved lasting acquisitions to the monarchy. Nancy still owns the French allegiance; Besançon and Strasbourg are two of its frontier fortresses; Lille yet is a leading stronghold in its iron barrier. Napoleon, it is well known, had the highest possible opinion of that great commander. He was disposed to place him at the head of modern generals; and his very interesting analysis of his campaigns is not the least important part of his invaluable memoirs. Condé, though living in the same age, and alternately the enemy and comrade of Turenne, belonged to a totally different class of generals, and, indeed, seemed to belong to another age of the world. He was warmed in his heart by the spirit of chivalry; he bore its terrors on his sword's point. Heart and soul he was heroic. Like Clive or Alexander, he was consumed by that thirst for fame, that ardent passion for glorious achievements, which is the invariable characteristic of elevated, and the most inconceivable quality to ordinary, minds. In the prosecution of this object, no difficulties could deter, no dangers daunt him. Though his spirit was chivalrous--though cavalry was the arm which suited his genius, and in which he chiefly delighted, he brought to the military art the power of genius and the resources of art; and no man could make better use of the power which the expiring spirit of feudality bequeathed to its scientific successors. He destroyed the Spanish infantry at Rocroy and Lens, not by mere desultory charges of the French cavalry, but by efforts of that gallant body as skilfully directed as those by which Hannibal overthrew the Roman legions at Thrasymene and Cannæ. His genius was animated by the spirit of the fourteenth, but it was guided by the knowledge of the seventeenth, century.