The best course to be pursued is to place the bridges near a city which will afford a strong defensive point for their protection, to infuse all possible vigor and activity into the first operations after the passage, to fall upon the subdivisions of the enemy's army in succession, and to beat them in such a way that they will have no further desire of touching the bridges. In some cases eccentric lines of operations may be used. If the enemy has divided his one hundred thousand men into several corps, occupying posts of observation, a passage may be effected with one hundred thousand men at a single point near the center of the line of posts, the isolated defensive corps at this position may be overwhelmed, and two masses of fifty thousand men each may then be formed, which, by taking diverging lines of operations, can certainly drive off the successive portions of the opposing army, prevent them from reuniting, and remove them farther and farther from the bridges. But if, on the contrary, the passage be effected at one extremity of the enemy's strategic front, by moving rapidly along this front the enemy may be beaten throughout its whole extent,--in the same manner that Frederick tactically beat the Austrian line at Leuthen throughout its length,--the bridges will be secure in rear of the army, and remain protected during all the forward movements. It was in this manner that Jourdan, having passed the Rhine at Dusseldorf in 1795, on the extreme right of the Austrians, could have advanced in perfect safety toward the Main. He was driven away because the French, having a double and exterior line of operations, left one hundred and twenty thousand men inactive between Mayence and Basel, while Clairfayt repulsed Jourdan upon the Lahn. But this cannot diminish the importance of the advantages gained by passing a river upon one extremity of the enemy's strategic front. A commander-in-chief should either adopt this method, or that previously explained, of a central mass at the moment of passage, and the use of eccentric lines afterward, according to the circumstances of the case, the situation of the frontiers and bases of operations, as well as the positions of the enemy. The mention of these combinations, of which something has already been said in the article on lines of operations, does not appear out of place here, since their connection with the location of bridges has been the chief point under discussion.