series of successful operations in the Maritime Alps. In 1796, as
commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy, he astonished Europe by the
most brilliant campaign on record. For these achievements he had
prepared himself by assiduous study. As a young officer of artillery he
received the best professional training then to be had in Europe, while
at the same time, by wide and careful reading, he gave himself a general
education. At some period before 1796, probably before 1794, he had read
and thoroughly digested the remarkable treatise on the principles of
mountain war which had been left in manuscript by General Bourcet, an
officer who during the campaigns of half a century had assisted as
Quartermaster-General a number of the best Generals of France.
Napoleon's phenomenal power of concentration had enabled him to
assimilate Bourcet's doctrine, which in his clear and vigorous mind took
new and more perfect shape, so that from the beginning his operations
are conducted on a system which may be described as that of Bourcet
raised to a higher power.

The "Nelson touch" was acquired by the Admiral through years of effort
to think out, to its last conclusion, a problem the nature of which had
never been adequately grasped by his professional predecessors and
comrades, though it seems probable that he owed to Clerk the hint which
led him to the solution which he found. Napoleon was more fortunate in
inheriting a strategical doctrine which he had but to appreciate to
expand and to apply. The success of both men is due to the habit of mind
which clings tenaciously to the subject under investigation until it is
completely cleared up. Each of them became, as a result of his thinking,
the embodiment of a theory or system of the employment of force, the one
on sea and the other on land; and such an embodiment is absolutely
necessary for a nation in pursuit of victory.