Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. FIELD-MARSHAL GENERAL MOLTKE. The instrument, then, was made to the aspiring statesman’s hand. The army created by Roon might be compared, if a somewhat imperfect and perhaps not altogether appropriate simile may be allowed to pass muster here, to a splendid set of chessmen, solidly wrought, from king to pawn, without flaw or blemish, out of the hardest, toughest, and most enduring material. But something besides was required?to wit, the genius to breathe the true spirit of life and strife into the set, and to prove its excellence against any other set on the world’s great chequer. Bismarck’s perilous game had to be played simultaneously on two distinct boards or fields?the diplomatic and the battle field; and the moves on either must necessarily be co-ordinate and mutually dependent.
Non omnes omnia is a saying equally trite as true. History records but a few doubtful instances ofthe requisite qualities of the consummate politician being united in one and the same man with those of the all-conquering war-chief. Rosni was a great minister, but he made only a very indifferent general in the field; and the great Armand Duplessis would certainly have saved France a vast expenditure of blood and treasure had he been less eager to emulate the fame of the destroyer of strong cities, Demetrius, the captor of Salamis and the besieger of Rhodus, and had he confided the siege of La Rochelle to professional hands. Bismarck is not a general, though he now holds high nominal rank in the Prussian army. He is perfectly aware of his deficiencies in that line; and even if his own strong common-sense were not proof against the temptation to which Richelieu yielded, the Prussian state and military system would never permit command in the field being intrusted to the Chief of…
