There was no violation of military principles in Brown's occupation of Harper's Ferry, or in the dispositions which he made of his men, nor in his tenacious defense of his position. The military principles which he violated are not referred to in the charges and specifications preferred against him by this recent biographer. These violations were fatal to his enterprise, but they all antedate the night of October 16, 1859. If the hundreds of slaves whom Brown secretly armed with the Collinsville spears, with which to assassinate their masters and their masters' families, had done their bloody work as they had promised to do; then the fifteen hundred men that Brown believed would report to him for duty by 12 o'clock on the 17th,[415] and the 5,000 men whom Cook, at 4 o'clock, thought had already reported and were in action, would have arrived, and the story of Harper's Ferry would have been different. There would have been no violations of military principles then in Brown's tactics and strategy, to criticise by any authority whatever. "Another general, with the same purpose in view," and with the same forces at his disposal, would not have improved very much upon Brown's plans. The hint at a hill-top fastness, where another general would have established his camp before he "swooped" down upon the town, is a modification of Mr. Redpath's invention of an "inaccessible fastness." It is a delusion none the less, a delusion that was shot to pieces within two years after Mr. Redpath framed it. Such a position has no existence, except it be in authors' imaginations. There is not now, and there never was a position upon either Maryland Heights or Loudoun Heights that cannot be "stormed at with shot and shell."