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mander. A striking instance of the extreme difficulty of com- 
bining the operations of separate corps or armies in the same 
theatre of war, without the aid of the telegraph, is afforded by 
the history of the campaign of 1796, in Germany, when Moreau 
and Jourdain were “ acting in concert ” against the Austrians. 
The Archduke Charles left a weak retarding force in front of 
Moreau, while he directed all his available strength against 
Jourdan ; and the former general was actually advancing in 
triumph through Southern Germany, under the full conviction 
that his colleague had obtained a like success to the northward, 
while the latter had actually been defeated at Amberg, Wurtz- 
burg, and Aschaffenburg, and driven back upon the Rhine, and 
Moreau only heard of his disaster in time to save his army from 
destruction by a hurried retreat through the defiles of the Black 
Forest. As a contrast to this, let us take the campaign of 1866, 
when the two Prussian armies advanced from separate bases 
into Bohemia, laying down the lines of the field telegraph as 
they moved forward, which, being connected by the permanent 
telegraphic system of Saxony, kept each army in constant com- 
munication with the other, and thus enabled them to combine 
their operations, and at length unite with decisive effect on the 
battlefield of Sadowa. 
It is just twenty years since, for the first time, the electric 
telegraph was used in the field, and to our own army belongs 
the honour of having led the way in its adoption. The 
trenches and batteries before Sebastopol were traversed and 
connected by lines of telegraph, and the French soon followed 
our example, and constructed a similar system in their own 
lines ; while later on a cable laid across the Black Sea put 
the armies in the field in direct communication with Paris and 
London. 
Since that time a regular telegraph corps has been organised 
in every European army. And the field telegraph was used by 
the French in Italy in 1859, and in their campaigns against 
the Kabyles in Algeria ; and in America both the Federals and 
Confederates made free use of permanent and temporary lines 
during the War of Secession, the Southern cavalry in parti- 
cular displaying great daring and enterprise in riding round 
the flanks of the Federal armies, seizing their telegraph lines, 
sending false messages to the northern generals, and then 
cutting the line and retiring as rapidly and secretly as they 
came. It was, however, in the Prussian army, and in the great 
campaigns of 1864, 1866, and 1870-71 that military telegraphy 
attained its greatest development ; and after the experience of 
these three wars, the Prussian telegraph corps is probably the 
most efficient in Europe. We have already seen how well it 
