scientific engineer, or even a soldier who has been well tried in the field, would, any of them, necessarily make the best Minister of state where the sovereign does not act for himself; or in other words, we do not mean to say that this acquaintance with the nature of war is the principal qualification for a War Minister; elevation, superiority of mind, strength of character, these are the principal qualifications which he must possess; a knowledge of war may be supplied in one way or the other. France was never worse advised in its military and political affairs than by the two brothers Belleisle and the Duke of Choiseul, although all three were good soldiers.

If war is to harmonise entirely with the political views and policy, to accommodate itself to the means available for war, there is only one alternative to be recommended when the statesman and soldier are not combined in one person, which is, to make the commander-in-chief a member of the Cabinet, that he may take part in its councils and decisions on important occasions. But then again, this is only possible when the Cabinet, that is, the government itself, is near the theatre of war, so that things can be settled without a serious waste of time.
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In the last decade of the past century, when that remarkable change in the art of war in Europe took place by which the best armies found that a part of their method of war had become utterly unserviceable, and events were brought about of a magnitude far beyond what anyone had any previous conception of, it certainly appeared that a false calculation of everything was to be laid to the charge of the art of war. It was plain that while confined by habit within a narrow circle of conceptions, she had been surprised by the force of a new state of relations, lying, no doubt, outside that circle, but still not outside the nature of things.

Those observers who took the most comprehensive view ascribed the circumstance to the general influence which policy had exercised for centuries on the art of war, and undoubtedly to its very great disadvantage, and by which it had sunk into a half-measure, often into mere sham-fighting. They were right as to fact, but they were wrong in attributing it to something accidental, or which might have been avoided.

Others thought that everything was to be explained by the momentary influence of the particular policy of Austria, Prussia, England, etc., with regard to their own interests respectively.

But is it true that the real surprise by which men’s minds were seized was confined to the conduct of war, and did not rather relate to policy itself? That is: Did the ill success proceed from the influence of policy on the war, or from a wrong policy itself?

The prodigious effects of the French Revolution abroad were evidently brought about much less through new methods and views introduced by the French in the conduct of war than through the changes which it wrought in state-craft and civil administration, in the character of governments, in the condition of the people, etc. That other governments took a mistaken view of all these things; that they endeavoured, with their ordinary means, to hold their own against forces of a novel kind and overwhelming in strength -- all that was a blunder in policy.

Would it have been possible to perceive and mend this error by a scheme for the war from a purely military point of view? Impossible. For if there had been a philosophical strategist, who merely from the nature of the hostile elements had foreseen all the consequences, and prophesied remote possibilities, still it would have been practically impossible to have turned such wisdom to account.

If policy had risen to a just appreciation of the forces which had sprung up in France, and of the new relations in the political state of Europe, it might have foreseen the consequences which must follow in respect to the great features of war, and it was only in this way that it could arrive at a correct view of the extent of the means required as well as of the best use to make of those means.

We may therefore say, that the twenty years’ victories of the Revolution are chiefly to be ascribed to the erroneous policy of the governments by which it was opposed.