disposing of Frederick Charles. To have advanced by the road leading to Olmütz or Bömisch Trübau, the Crown Prince would have been compelled to mask the passes with at least as many troops as garrisoned the camps at their outlets, or his own communications would have been at the mercy of the Austrians. This would have left him only two corps; and an invasion of Moravia with this small force, every step of the advance carrying him farther away from Frederick Charles, would have been an act of suicidal madness, which he would not have seriously contemplated for a moment. When Osman Pasha, eleven years later, paralyzed the advance of 110,000 Russians, by placing 40,000 Turks in a hastily entrenched position on their right, at Plevna, he showed plainly how Von Benedek might have baulked the Second Army with entrenched positions at the Silesian passes. Leaving, then, two corps to take care of the Crown Prince, the Austrian commander would have had (including the Saxons) six corps, and nearly all of the reserve cavalry and artillery, to use against Frederick Charles. Count Clam-Gallas, instead of undertaking the task of holding the line of the Iser, should have destroyed the bridges; and opposing the Prussians with a strong rear-guard at the different crossings, obstructing the roads, offering just enough resistance to compel his adversary to deploy and thus lose time, but avoiding anything like a serious action, he should have fallen back _via_ Gitschin to form a junction with Von Benedek. He could thus have gained sufficient time for his chief to arrive at Gitschin as soon as Frederick Charles; and the army of the latter, numbering not more than 130,000 men,[8] would have been opposed by an army of fully 200,000 Austrians. What the result would have been we can best judge from the course of the battle of Königgrätz before the Crown Prince arrived upon the field. Hozier, Adams, Derrécagaix and (above all) the Prussian Official History of the Campaign of 1866, claim that the best move of Von Benedek would have been against the Crown Prince. If we consider the successful passage of the defiles by the Second Army as a thing to be taken for granted in Von Benedek’s plan of campaign, there can be no doubt that the Austrian commander should have turned his attention to the Crown Prince, and that he should have attacked him with six corps, as soon as the Prussians debouched from the defiles of Trautenau and Nachod. The line of action here suggested as one that would probably have resulted in Austrian success, is based entirely on the condition that the Second Army should be contained at the defiles, by a force strongly entrenched after the American manner of 1864-5; a condition not considered by the eminent authorities mentioned above. After the Crown Prince had safely passed the defiles, Von Benedek had either to attack him or fall back. The time for a successful move against Frederick Charles had passed.