THE

MILITARY MENTOR:

BEING A

SERIES OF LETTERS

RECENTLY WRITTEN BY

A GENERAL OFFICER

ΤΟ

HIS SON,

ON HIS ENTERING THE ARMY:

COMPRISING A COURSE OF ELEGANT INSTRUCTION,
CALCULATED TO UNITE THE CHARACTERS AND
ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF

THE GENTLEMAN AND THE SOLDIER.

FIFTH EDITION.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR RICHARD PHILLIPS,

BRIDGE STREET, BLACKFRIARS;

BY B. MCMILLAN, BOW STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

1809.

[Price 12s. in Boards.]

U

776648-190

LETTERS

FROM A

GENERAL OFFICER

ΤΟ

HIS SON.

LETTER XX.

ON THE SCIENCE OF WAR IN GENERAL.

F it be true that the sciences are noble in

IF

proportion as they are useful, what advan-
tage may not that of War be said to possess
above almost every other! War is undoubtedly
an evil; but it is inevitable, and often necessary.
If the first man that reduced to a regular system
the art of destroying his fellow-creatures, had no
other end in view than to gratify the ambition
of sovereigns, he was a monster of whom it
may be said that it would have been happy for

the world if he had been strangled at his birth; but if he did it only for the defence of persecuted virtue or for the punishment of insolent and overbearing atrocity, to put a curb on ambition or to restrain the unjust pretensions of violence, humanity ought to raise monuments to his ho

nour.

THERE are five different kinds of war, each of which is to be conducted differently from the others: the offensive; the defensive; that between equal powers; the auxiliary, which is carried on out of our own territories to succour a prince or ally, or to assist a weaker whom a more powerful has attacked; and civil war.

OFFENSIVE war must be long meditated, before it be openly entered upon: when the success will depend upon two essential points; that the plan be justly formed, and the enterprise conducted with order. It should be well and maturely considered and digested; and with the greatest secrecy, lest, however able the prince or his council may be, some of the precautions necessary to be taken may be discovered. These precautions are infinite in number, as well as in their degrees of importance, both at home and abroad.

DEFENSIVE war may be divided into three

kinds. It is either a war sustained by a state which is suddenly attacked by another, superior in troops and in means; or a prince makes this sort of war by choice on one side of his frontiers, while he carries on offensive war elsewhere; or it is a war become defensive by the loss of a battle.

A defensive war sustained by a state attacked by a superior enemy, depends entirely on the capacity of the general. His particular object should be, to choose advantageous camps to stop the enemy, without however being obliged to fight him; to multiply small advantages; to harass and perplex the enemy in his foraging parties, and thus oblige him to require great escorts; to attack his convoys; to render the passages of rivers or defiles as difficult to him as possible; to compel him to keep his forces together; if he wants to attack a town, to throw in succours before it is invested: in short, in the beginning the chief aim should be, to acquire the enemy's respect by vigilance and activity, and, by forcing him to be circumspect in his marches and manner of encampment, to gain time, and make the enemy lose it. An able general, carefully pursuing these maxims, will inspire courage into his soldiers, and the inhabitants of the