September 21, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
Analogy of the Revolutionary Wars 
By Hilaire Belloc 
ACIIRTOUSLY exact contrast exists between the 
effort (jf the German Empire to-day, and the 
effort of the French Republic and Empire in 
the great wars of a century ago. Such historical 
parallels are not merely academic history ; they have, 
when they are accurate, a highly practical value, for they 
enable us to judge the general nature of policies on which 
the national existence itself depends. They enable us to 
judge the trend and whole character of a war and to 
strike its curve. 
Leaving out all question of motive and considering 
only the purely military side of the affair it is astonishing 
how contrasting, and complementary one to the other 
are the two great military operations 1 have just men- 
tioned. 
The French Revolution set out single handed, and 
only after many years of war and the gradual appear- 
ance of success acquired dependents or Allies. Prussia 
in this war entered the arena at the head of an immense 
combination of the other German tribes of Magyars, and of 
dependent Slavs ; outnumbering her chief military oppo- 
nent, the French by almost exactly three to one ; and 
gravely outnumbering, for many months, all that her 
opponents action could bring into the field. 
Centralised Command 
The French Revolution began with grave military 
disorder ; gradually centralised its military government ; 
ended with a complete centralisation. Prussia entered 
this war with a command as centralised as possible. It 
is only in quite the last stages that there has appeared 
the beginning of particularism : Jealousy on the food 
question between tlie vano\is States ; dii^culty in using 
Hungarian troops on the ^^'est when Hungaiy was 
threatened ; difficulty of using Slavs against Slavs : 
difficulty of using Bulgarians and Turks as parts of the 
general scheme. 
The French Revolutionary effort began with a very 
patchy and for the most part very imperfect half amateur 
infantry ; fairly good field artillery, and very bad cavalry. 
The Prussian effort began with inferior field artillery ; 
infantry upon the whole better trained technically than 
its opponents ; Cavalry, in comparison with its oppo- 
nents, the best arm of all ; I mean for the purposes to 
which that cavalry was put, for the covering of an advance 
and the obtaining of information. 
The French I^evolution began with a voluntary system 
of recruitment, which turned into a conscript," biit \\as 
never universal and thorough for may years. The Prus-. 
sian effort began with the conscript system in full 
development. It is true that the French were opponents 
who had developed an even more complete conscript 
system ; but the Russians were not ; the Italian system 
left a very large proportion uncalled ; and the English 
system was wholly' voluntary at the beginning of the 
war. 
Again, the exaggerated or inflamed mood in which men 
misjudge opportunity and are guilty at once of heroism 
and of inhuman conduct was the 'characteristic of the 
early part of the war with the French Revolutionary 
Armies. With the Prussian system, allowing, of course, 
for another contrast about to "be mentioned, it has been 
rather the other way. Prussia hesitated to use gas, 
for instance, for something like three-quarters of a year. 
It was a little later that she proceeded to the murder of 
unarmed passengers on merchant vessels ; later still 
that she took to occasional murder of people, sometimes 
technically, always morally, innocent, who had fallen 
into her hands and, quite late in the business, that she 
took to enslaving the populations of occupied territories, 
All through the war there has been a gradual increase 
upon the Prussian side of acts opposed to the general 
conscience of Europe. On the whole we may say that 
during the Revolutionary Wars the process was the other 
way. For instance, the Royalist Emigre^ taken prisoner 
were shot in the early part of the Revolutionary Wars on 
the plea that they were technically deserters. It was 
an immoral act because they were not really anything 
of the kind. But after the victory of Fleurus in the 
second year of the war the practice was abandoned. It 
is true that the abuse of power appeared again under the 
Napoleonic regime in isolated instances. But the great 
shocks given to the European conscience during those 
wars were rather at the earlier than the later part. It is 
true that the Prussians at the very beginning of the 
war indulged in more than one orgy of cruelty, but the 
characteristic of their action has been the way in which 
acts of cruelty with less and less excuse haVe appeared 
upon their uart as the war proceeded. 
National Moral 
Lastly, and I think most important of all, you have the 
contrast between the national attitude towards certitude. 
The French began the Revolutionary Wars in terror of 
defeat combined with a very unmilitary exaltation which — 
chiefly in the mouths of civilians and not of soldiers — 
rather irrationally, or at any rate mystically, foresaw 
ultimate victory. 
With the Prussians in this war it has been just the other 
way. They entered the war humanly certain of winning 
upon a deliberate calculation. It was after the war had 
gone on for some time and when their position had be- 
come more and more imperilled, that they passed 
into that contradictory state of a rational fear of defeat, 
and an irrational exaltation, mystically foreseeing victory 
in spite of facts. And all the material changes of the 
war support such a contrast. The French resources in 
the Revolution were terribly strained at the beginning ; 
they were ample in the middle of the effort and on 
right up to the enormous blunder of the Russian War in 
. 1812. Prussian resources, in comparison with their 
enemy's, both in food and in munitionment and in men, 
were greatest at the beginning, and have failed in pro- 
gressive ratio as the war developed. 
I would not lay too much stress upon this historical 
lesson, but I think it has its value. If Prussia began 
with a contempt for national feeling while Revolutionary 
France ended with that contempt, to her own great hurt, 
it is another example of the same great thing, and we may 
perhaps conclude that the two curves will show a' corres- 
ponding contrast in the last stages of this great campaign : 
The slow rise of the French successes : Their ultimate 
enormous height — their rapid decline — make a curve 
which may be compared to a wave curve, slow in its 
increase, sharp in its escarpment and fall. It would 
not be surprising if the story of this great campaign 
showed 71 curve very nearly the complement of this. 
There was certainly an immense military effort at the 
start ; a- period where the curve was almost flat, though 
still with occasional rising curves during 1915 ; in 1016 
the beginning of a slow dechne. ' And, though probably 
the very last phases of the struggle will 'show a shor 
steep fall in this curve, it will only be after the work 
has been done and when everybody can see that the 
defeat of the enemy is inevitable and approaching. 
The end cannot be any such cataclysm as was silently 
approached in 1812, for the defeat of the enemy is al- 
ready fairly plain to-day, while the defeat of Napoleon 
was not clear after the retreat from Moscow. The best 
observers could only just discern it coming after Leipsic. 
General opinion only saw it in 1814 and even then was 
subject to a sharp revision of judgment in the Hundred 
Days. 
One might conclude by insisting upon yet another 
point in that connection. There can be no Hundred 
Days in this War. 
Messrs. Heincinann have just published a translation of 
Marc Gouvrieux's story of the " war of 1920," under the 
title With Wings Outspread (5s. net.) Obviously written 
before the outbreak of tlie present war, tliis work a'nticipated 
realities in uncannily real fashion, though, of course, none of 
the invasion of France by Germans is included. It is a good 
picture of modern war from the point of view of the aviator. 
