THE STUDY OE MILITARY HISTORY. 
407 
military history to heart and, when they launch their squadrons, re¬ 
member what happened to both Lord Anglesey and Yon Bredow, and 
profit by such experiences ? 
That an attack by infantry should be duly prepared by a concen¬ 
trated and fierce cannonade on the point of assault is again a principle 
which Frederick the Great learned by bitter experience at Kuuersdorf. 
Read that story and note how the power of artillery even at that com¬ 
paratively primitive stage of its development was able to assert itself 
and how the neglect of that salutary principle of tactics which I just 
quoted brought sure ruin in its train. 
A German writer has truly said that had the precepts of the great 
king been regarded in 1870 many a German soldier's life would have 
been saved. Here, at any rate, we have one lesson from real life which 
should have been laid to heart and, had Kunersdorf not been forgotten, 
the smooth glacis of St. Privat would not have been strewn with dead. 
But St. Privat and Kunersdorf, and many another lesson too, were all lost 
sight of by the Russians at Plevna, and the neglect of what the lessons 
of military history have taught us, led once more to confusion and 
disaster. At Lovtcha we see, on the other hand, the teachings of 
military history were paid attention to, and the best results were 
achieved. 
Is it not right then that we should endeavour to fix such names and 
the experiences they bring with them in the minds of our officers,, so 
that in the hour of need they may be present to their minds and that 
they may remember Kunersdorf and Vionville and St. Privat and 
Lovtcha and profit by the mistakes of those gone before ? But it is 
not only to furnish precedents, or as an aide-memoire , that the study 
of military history is valuable. 
There is surely a moral benefit to be derived from it, which we should 
not neglect in educating a younger generation, and we should not 
reduce everything in our instruction to its exact commercial value as 
quoted in the morning's papers. Even city men recognise that there 
are some investments valuable as a u lock-up." 
Military history is surely the mother of esprit-de-corps and patriotism 
and self-respect, and without these the best equipped army in the 
world will crumble under the stress of privations or disaster. We may 
not find many valuable tactical or strategical lessons in the history of 
the Crimean war, but is that any reason why the story ought not to be 
familiar to every man who wears the Queen's uniform ? Is there not a 
lesson and a worthy example in the tale of how the mud and frost 
and snow and wind were patiently endured by men ill-clad and only half- 
fed, and of how they bore themselves through it all till success came to 
them at length ? Or did our men to no purpose brave the scorching heat 
of the ridge at Delhi even though that siege does not furnish ff a text¬ 
book example" to be studied for the next examination ? I say that tale 
and many another from every climate and every quarter of the globe 
should be read and read again, even as Napoleon advised his son to 
study the deeds of “ the great captains," and it is from the foundation 
of the enthusiasm and resolve engendered by the memory of what our 
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