At no later period of the war did either commander have under his immediate control so large a nominal force as then. During but one year of the succeeding struggle did the entire British army, from Halifax to the West Indies inclusive (including foreign and provincial auxiliaries), exceed, by more than seven thousand men, the force which occupied both sides of the New York Narrows in 1776. The British Army at that time, without its foreign contingent, would have been as inferior to the force which had been ordered by Congress (and should have been available) as the depleted American army of 1781 would have been inferior to the British without the French contingent. The largest continental force under arms, in any one year of the war, did not greatly exceed forty thousand men, and the largest British force, as late as 1781, including all arrivals, numbered, all told, but forty-two thousand and seventy-five men. The annual British average, including provincials, ranged from thirty-three to thirty-eight thousand men. The physical agencies which Great Britain employed were;, therefore, far beneath the prestige of her accredited position among the nations; and the disparity between the contending forces was mainly in discipline and equipment, with the advantage to Great Britain in naval strength, until that was supplanted by that of France. To free the question from a popular fallacy which treats oldtime operations as insignificant, in view of large modern armies and campaigns, it is pertinent to state, just here, that the issues of the battle-field for all time, up to the latest hour, have not been determined by the size of armies, or by improvements in weapons of war, except relatively, in proportion as civilized peoples fought those of less civilization; or where some precocity of race or invention more quickly matured the operations of the winning side. If the maxims of Napoleon are but a terse restatement of those of Caesar, and the skill of Hannibal at Cannae still holds place as a model for the concave formation of a battle-line, so have all the decisive battles of history taken shape from the timely handling of men, in the exercise of that sound judgment which adapts means to ends, in every work of life. Thus it is that equally great battles, those in the highest sense great, have become memorial, although numbers did not impart value to the struggle; but they were the expression of that skill and wisdom which would have ensured success, if the opposing armies had been greater or less. If a timely fog did aid the retreat of Washington from Brooklyn, in 1776, so did a petty stream, filled to the brim by a midnight shower, make altogether desperate, if it did not, alone, change, the fortunes of Napoleon at Waterloo.