a disciplined army is vastly more humane in its operations than a band
of brigands. Swift and condign punishments by the law-martial, for even
trifling offences, is the best means of discipline yet devised.

To bring to utmost perfection the machinery already in existence,
to encourage invention, to ponder the past with a practical application
to the present, to court fatigue, to scorn pleasure, to concentrate the
energies on the work in hand, to cultivate quickness of eye and calmness
of nerve in the midst of danger, to accelerate movements, to economise
blood even at the expense of time, to strive after ubiquity and
omniscience in the details of person and place, these were the
characteristics of Maurice, and they have been the prominent traits of
all commanders who have stamped themselves upon their age. Although his
method of war-making differed as far as possible from that quality in
common, of the Bearnese, yet the two had one personal insensibility to
fear. But in the case of Henry, to confront danger for its own sake
was in itself a pleasure, while the calmer spirit of Maurice did not
so much seek the joys of the combat as refuse to desist from scientific
combinations in the interests of his personal safety. Very frequently,
in the course of his early campaigns, the prince was formally and
urgently requested by the States-General not to expose his life so
recklessly, and before he had passed his twenty-fifth year he had
received wounds which, but for fortunate circumstances, would have proved
mortal, because he was unwilling to leave special operations on which
much was depending to other eyes than his own. The details of his
campaigns are, of necessity, the less interesting to a general reader
from their very completeness. Desultory or semi-civilised warfare, where
the play of the human passions is distinctly visible, where individual
man, whether in buff jerkin or Milan coat of proof, meets his fellow man
in close mortal combat, where men starve by thousands or are massacred by