ON MILITARY HORSE-POWER. 195 



On Militaey Horse-Power. 



As the momentum or force of a shot is said to be its 

 weight multiplied by its velocity, so the strength of an 

 army may not unjustly be estimated by multiplying its 

 physical powers by the rate at which (if necessary) it can 

 be made to travel : in short, activity is to an army what 

 velocity is to a shot, or what the rigging of a vessel is 

 to its hull. But, although we refuse to increase the 

 weight of a shot unless we can proportionately preserve 

 our power to propel it, yet, in European warfare, this 

 principle, as regards the " materiel " of an army, has not 

 always been kept in mind. Inventions have very easily 

 been admitted, which afterwards have not been so easy 

 to carry. It is true, they have added to the powers of 

 the army, but they have so diminished its speed, that, 

 encumbered by its implements and accoutrements, a 

 European, like an East Indian army, has often felt that 

 it requires less science to fight than to march ; and thus, 

 when Bonaparte, in his retreat from Moscow, was sur- 

 rounded by Cossacks, which his troops were unable to 

 crush only because they could not get at them, his well- 

 known confession proves that when the field is vast, and 

 its resources feeble, the distance between regular and 

 irregular warfare "is but a step," — the reason being, 



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