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Thoughts on tactics and military organization
Thoughts on tactics and military organization Author:John Mitchell 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: ON TACTICS. PART II. "Der sehr iangsame Eingang, welchen Newton's Lehre in den Kiipfen seiner Zeit fand, kann uns zum Maastabe dienen, wie viel Zeit eforde... more »rlish sey, dem Menschen irgend eine Idee begrieflish zu machen."—Welt tmd Zeit, vol. iii. " The time that elapsed before Newton's theory met with belief, serves to show how long it takes to impress any new idea on the minds of men." COMBAT OF CAVALRY AGAINST INFANTRY. The history of every science proves how unwilling men are to abandon long-cherished opinions. Vanity, and that impatience of labour in the search of truth, already noticed by the great historian quoted at the head of this volume, often continue to uphold, at the expense of suffering humanity, mistaken doctrines, the defence of which had long been abandoned by reason and reflection. The science of war, the most complicated of all sciences, and giving, from its very nature,—from having only general principles and no rules,—the greatest opening to the sway of mere belief, has, more than any other, been forced to struggle against the power of antiquated opinion, which, like ivy, not only hides, but hallows the ruin which it covers and adorns : so that entire volumes might be filled with accounts of evils resulting from a faulty adherence to long-cherished military errors. Even our own age has seen dynasties established and empires overthrown by the event of battles, gained in consequence of the successful resistance made against cavalry by squares of tactical infantry, after opinion had extended to those feeble formations the protection of its mystic shield, the Gorgon power of which was destined to arrest, in mid career, the steeds of the brave, and to paralyze the uplifted arms of the strong. The cause of this ruling belief must be sought for, le...« less