From the soldier's point of view, Napoleon had likewise such an easy triumph as has fallen to the lot of few commanders. His opponents were so conservative that their ideas were antiquated, his own strategy was so new and revolutionary that it dumfounded them. A favorite method of detraction is illustrated by the familiar story of Columbus's egg. What is once done, anybody can do. The strategic reputation of Frederick the Great is in our day first attacked by the so-called comparative method--that is, by comparing it with the achievements and system, not of his contemporaries, but of Napoleon, his successor; and then the strategic reputation of Napoleon is diminished by sneering at that of Frederick, with whose antiquated method the new one came into comparison and contact, to the complete disaster of the former. This vicious circle may be dismissed with contempt. Napoleon's strategic genius was, unlike any other talent he possessed, constructive and original. No doubt he studied Caesar; no doubt he studied Maillebois; no doubt he studied the work of Turenne and of the great Frederick; no doubt he was a pupil of the giant soldiers who inaugurated and carried on the wars of the Revolution; but while others had pursued the same studies, it remained for him to devise and put into operation a strategy based upon past experience, but subversive of accepted dogmas, new, adapted to its ends, and founded on theories which, though modified in practice by the discoveries of an intervening century, have, when properly understood, never, not even to-day, been shaken in principle. His triumphs as a soldier, therefore, are his own; and it was not until all Europe had learned the lessons which he taught her generals by a series of object demonstrations lasting twenty years, that the teacher began to diminish in success and splendor. The persistent critics of Frederick have been asking and reiterating questions such as these: Why did not the king begin early in July, 1756? Why did he not storm the camp of Pirna? Why did he not continue the war in October? Why did he not renew hostilities the following year until forced to it? And so on, and so on. By this method they have shrunk the horizon to their own dimensions, and have imprisoned their victim within the pale of his faults; but a wider view and the historic background display his strategy in large outline, as illuminated by the light of his age; and thus the defeats of Kolin and Kunersdorf, as well as the victories of Leuthen, Rossbach, Zorndorf, and Torgau, exhibit the Prussian general as the great genius which he was. It was not until Napoleon had taught his rivals what fighting ought to be that men could also pick and nag at him by asking why Waterloo did not begin four hours earlier, why more explicit directions were not given to Grouchy, why in 1814 the desperate man chose to cut off the line of his enemies' communications rather than withdraw into Paris and call the nation to arms; and so on