obstacles which a general and his brave troops may encounter in the
occupation or conquest of a country whose people are all in arms. What
efforts of patience, courage, and resignation did it not cost the troops
of Napoleon, Massena, Soult, Ney, and Suchet to sustain themselves for
six years against three or four hundred thousand armed Spaniards and
Portuguese supported by the regular armies of Wellington, Beresford,
Blake, La Romana, Cuesta, Castaños, Reding, and Ballasteros!

If success be possible in such a war, the following general course will
be most likely to insure it,--viz.: make a display of a mass of troops
proportioned to the obstacles and resistance likely to be encountered,
calm the popular passions in every possible way, exhaust them by time
and patience, display courtesy, gentleness, and severity united, and,
particularly, deal justly. The examples of Henry IV. in the wars of the
League, of Marshal Berwick in Catalonia, of Suchet in Aragon and
Valencia, of Hoche in La Vendée, are models of their kind, which may be
employed according to circumstances with equal success. The admirable
order and discipline of the armies of Diebitsch and Paskevitch in the
late war were also models, and were not a little conducive to the
success of their enterprises.

The immense obstacles encountered by an invading force in these wars
have led some speculative persons to hope that there should never be any
other kind, since then wars would become more rare, and, conquest being
also more difficult, would be less a temptation to ambitious leaders.
This reasoning is rather plausible than solid; for, to admit all its
consequences, it would be necessary always to be able to induce the
people to take up arms, and it would also be necessary for us to be
convinced that there would be in the future no wars but those of
conquest, and that all legitimate though secondary wars, which are only