Up to this point every thing relates to a first plan of operations; but no plan can provide with certainty for that which is uncertain always,--the character and the issue of the first conflict. If your lines of operations have been skillfully chosen and your movements well concealed, and if on the other hand your enemy makes false movements which permit you to fall on fractions of his army, you maybe successful in your campaign, without fighting general battles, by the simple use of your strategic advantages. But if the two parties seem about equally matched at the time of conflict, there will result one of those stupendous tragedies like Borodino, Wagram, Waterloo, Bautzen, and Dresden, where the precepts of grand tactics, as indicated in the chapter on that subject, must have a powerful influence. If a few prejudiced military men, after reading this book and carefully studying the detailed and correct history of the campaigns of the great masters of the art of war, still contend that it has neither principles nor rules, I can only pity them, and reply, in the famous words of Frederick, that "a mule which had made twenty campaigns under Prince Eugene would not be a better tactician than at the beginning." Correct theories, founded upon right principles, sustained by actual events of wars, and added to accurate military history, will form a true school of instruction for generals. If these means do not produce great men, they will at least produce generals of sufficient skill to take rank next after the natural masters of the art of war. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 51: The well-known Spanish proverb, _He was brave on such a day_, may be applied to nations as to individuals. The French at Rossbach were not the same people as at Jena, nor the Prussians at Prentzlow as at Dennewitz.] [Footnote 52: The unskillful conduct of a subordinate who is incapable of understanding the merit of a maneuver which has been ordered, and who will commit grave faults in its execution, may produce the same result of causing the failure of the plans of an excellent commander.] SUPPLEMENT TO THE SUMMARY OF THE ART OF WAR. My Summary of the Art of War, published in 1836, to assist in the military instruction of the Hereditary Grand Duke of Russia, contained a concluding article that was never printed. I deem it expedient to give it now in the form of a supplement, and add a special article upon the means of acquiring a certain and ready strategic _coup-d'oeil_. It is essential for the reader of my Summary to understand clearly that in the military science, as in every other, the study of details is easy for the man who has learned how to seize the fundamental features to which all others are secondary. I am about to attempt a development of these elements of the art; and my readers should endeavor to apprehend them clearly and to apply them properly.