career, and reflect on the importance of different historical personages. But our concurring in our catalogues is of little moment, provided we learn to look on these great historical events in the spirit which Hallam's observations indicate. Those remarks should teach us to watch how the interests of many states are often involved in the collisions between a few; and how the effect of those collisions is not limited to a single age, but may give an impulse which will sway the fortunes of successive generations of mankind. Most valuable, also, is the mental discipline which is thus acquired, and by which we are trained not only to observe what has been and what is, but also to ponder on what might have been.[1]
We thus learn not to judge of the wisdom of measures too exclusively by the results. We learn to apply the juster standard of seeing what the circumstances and the probabilities wete that surrounded a statesman or a general at the time when he decided on his plan: we value him, not by his fortune, but by his προαίρεσις, to adopt the expressive word of Polybius,[2] for which our language gives no equivalent.
The reasons why each of the following fifteen battles has been selected will, I trust, appear when it is described. But it may be well to premise a few remarks on the negative tests which have led me to reject others, which at first sight may appear equal in magnitude and importance to the chosen fifteen.
I need hardly remark that it is not the number of killed and wounded in a battle that determines its general historical importance.[3] It is not because only a few hundreds fell in the battle by which Joan of Arc captured the Tourelles and raised the siege of Orleans, that the effect of that crisis is to be judged; nor would a full belief in
