To say that strategy is war on the map is no figure of speech. Napoleon always planned and conducted his campaigns on maps of the country spread out for him by his staff, and into these maps he stuck colored pins to indicate where his divisions were to move. Having thus wrought out his plan, he issued orders accordingly. To the general, the map is a chessboard, and upon this he moves his troops as you or I move queen and knight. [Illustration: PARALLEL ORDER] Previous to Cyrus, about 550 B.C., we have a record of nothing useful to the modern soldier. Nimrod, Semiramis, Sesostris were no doubt distinguished conquerors. But they have left nothing for us to profit by. War was a physical, not an intellectual art, for many centuries. Armies marched out to meet each other, and, if an ambush was not practicable, drew up in parallel order, and fought till one gave way. The greater force could form the longer line and overlap and turn the other’s flanks. And then, as to-day, a flank attack was fatal; for men cannot fight unless they face the foe; and a line miles in length needs time to change its front. [Illustration: BATTLE OF THYMBRA B.C. 545] Cyrus is to the soldier the first historical verity. In the battle of Thymbra, according to Xenophon, where Crœsus outnumbered him more than two to one and overlapped his flanks, he disposed his troops in so deep a tactical order of five lines, and so well protected his flanks, that when Crœsus’ wings wheeled in to encompass him, his reserves in the fifth line could fall on the flanks of these very wheeling wings. And as the wheel was extensive and difficult of execution, it produced a gap between wing and centre,--as Cyrus had expected,--and into this he poured with a chosen body, took Crœsus’ centre in reverse, and utterly overthrew him and his kingdom. Cyrus overran in his conquests almost as great a territory as Alexander. It is of advantage to see what had been done before Alexander’s time,--to understand how much Alexander knew of war from others. For Alexander found war in a crude state and conducted it with the very highest art. That his successors did not do so is due to the fact that they did not understand, or were not capable of imitating him. Cyrus’ successor, Darius I. (B.C. 513), undertook a campaign against the Scythians north of the Danube, with, it is said, seven hundred thousand men. The Greek Mandrocles bridged for this army both the Bosphorus and the Danube, no mean engineering feat to-day.