188 
THE STRATEGICAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 
use, but there would be a perpetual threat to the Russian line of com¬ 
munications. Suppose the Muscovite horde merely watched Germany 
in the North, and moved from the Pruth through Bulgaria and Servia on 
to the Raab towards Vienna, it would be threatened in its vital part, even 
supposing the Ottomans no longer had a place in Europe, by forces on the 
left from the Carnic and Noric Alps, and on the right from the Banat and 
Transylvania ; any reverse in the front would mean ruin. The resources 
of the Turks when they were the best soldiers in Europe, from the 14th to 
the 17th centuries, were again and again withered up in trying to get to 
Vienna ; it is true that a Russian under “the fell Suwarrow” penetrated 
from Poland into Italy and Switzerland in 1799, but then he had Austria 
for an ally, and but for this fact he would not have brought a single 
soldier back to Russia. Now let us suppose that Austria being an ally of 
Germany, the Russians passed the Oder and pressed on to Berlin and 
thence across the Elbe without taking Pryzmysl and Krakow and 
leaving Bohemia untouched, they would then have an Austrain army 
which, if France were neutral, could be reinforced by the Teutons 
South of the Maine, and also by the Italians either by way of the Inn 
or the Raab, parallel to their line of communication with their base ; 
with the consequence of such a position all students of Jomini and 
Hamley are conversant: in fact, as they went Westward they would 
drag at each remove a lengthening chain which might be cracked 
between the Bug and the Oder, and then their return to Russia would 
depend on the mercy of the Hun. Plow these mountains can be 
skilfully used as strategic screens was illustrated in Napoleon’s 
campaign of 1813. He crossed the Elbe and marched on the Oder 
leaving the Erzegeberge and the Riesengeberge on his right, but 
the Austrians massed behind these ridges, and moving towards Dresden 
West of the Elbe, caused him at once to retrace his steps in order to save 
his communications with the Maine and Rhine. Thus in the territory 
between the Baltic and the Adriatic we see how the lines of operations 
are predetermined and influenced by the forces of nature. 
To move westward :—from the fall of Feudalism till Sadowa—that is 
from the days of Bayard to Moltke, France and Austria were rivals, and 
other powers such as Savoy, Holland and the South German States 
alternately sided with one or the other and thus facilitated or retarded 
the plans of either. Prussia, now so pre-eminent, entirely through her 
military system, was not till the latter part of the 18th century a leading 
factor in European politics. Switzerland was neutral, of course, but the 
neutrality of this ancient republic was violated in the wars of the 
French Revolution by the friends of liberty. The position of Switzer¬ 
land is very similar to that of Russian Poland, only that it is a mass of 
mountains and not a plain like the latter. It is also a salient and it juts 
into Southern Germany, touches the Tyrol, which belongs to Austria, and 
is bounded on the South by that portion of Italy which so long was part 
of the patrimony of the House of Austria. Austrian armies 
were along the Rhine and in the Black Poorest from the Lake of 
Constance to Strasburg; other Austrian armies were in Northern 
Italy from the Adda to Turin, and from Genoa to the Var ; in each case 
their base was Vienna. The French had violated the neutrality of 
Switzerland and had therefore command of the south of the Rhine from 
Constance to Basle, as well as of the passes leading from the valley of 
the Rhine into Northern Italy. The eagle eye of Napoleon at once took 
in the whole of this great topographical problem. He ordered Moreau 
