Chapter II.

I.

The history of the Italian war of 1859 offers singular proof of the correctness of conclusions such as are to be found in the memoir of 1858, of which this is the sequel, as to the probabilities of grand combinations of military and naval means, and the nature of such combinations in future warfare. I deem then that the naval military campaigns of the Crimea and of the Baltic were not of a nature anomalous with the true principles of modern war, nor phenomena which resulted from circumstances of time and place alone. The repetition, in 1859, of a similar combination of naval and land forces by France, on even a greater scale than in 1854, and against a state of purely military importance, (for Austria's navy and commerce might be annihilated without sensibly affecting her power or prosperity,) and the immense gain in power, celerity of action, and strategical advantages that were consequent upon it, are indications that such combinations will hereafter be resorted to in every war in which either belligerent possesses a navy of respectable proportions. The events of 1854 and 1856 in the Black and Baltic seas demonstrated more especially the material or immediate, and those of the Italian war the more derivative or implicit, advantages that can be derived from the sea by the belligerent who has the mastery upon it, as a line of communication, and from a fleet by making it subserve the united functions of base of operations and means of communications and transportation. By the sea, an army which has gained a foothold on foreign soil is reinforced and supplied with men and material cheaply, with extraordinary rapidity, without fatigue to the troops, and without the possibility of the convoys or reinforcements being attacked or intercepted by the enemy. By the fleet, the land forces of a State may be set down with extraordinary and novel strategical advantages, on frontiers hitherto deemed, if not inaccessible, at least beyond the reach of decisive projects of invasion. The fleet constitutes a fortress, under whose guns a shelter awaits the army it nourishes; and in this regard its mobility multiples manyfold its influence on a campaign, for any point of the coast which the expeditionary forces may effect their retreat to, becomes a new base of operations or a secure communication with the mother country the moment the fleet arrives within cannon range of the shore. The method of invasion by combinations of land and floating forces enables a state to exert the full strength of both its arms, so to speak, on an adversary who is deficient or inferior in that of a navy. Even the commercial marine may be made to conduce materially to the success of a war so conducted. By assuming the labors of carrier for the army, as it may with profit to itself, it relieves the navy of a burden, and enables it to devote its energies to the active hostilities and other already alluded to duties of actual warfare that more properly belong to it. A striking consequence of the new style of aggressive cam-

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