mnemonicon was not yet lost, is Alexander the Great. He, Alexander, leaves Europe and traverses Asia and Egypt almost in one breath, crushing under his feet all and everything—mountains, forests, rivers, and nations; and what is the talisman of this extraordinary commander-in-chief? Certainly, not the superiority of his numbers, which never equalled one-fourth of his opponents: neither is it the peculiar destructiveness of his war-engines; we have no trace of it. What then? This This talisman talisman is nothing else but his tactical and strategical skill.
This military skill of a commander-in-chief and of his staff, at the head of such a gigantic expedition, consists mainly in the topographical and statistical knowledge they have of the theatre of war before them. In modern times, a number of individuals are trained for such an arduous task, and provided with ample means of familiarizing themselves, after a long series of years of study, with the languages and resources of countries even the most distant; and thus there are sets of men ready for every emergency: still the superiority in skill of one staff over another consists in the greater quickness with which they gather and familiarize their memory with the numerous new details that spring up daily, the knowledge of which is indispensable to the directing of the strategical and tactical movements of an army. But we cannot suppose that Alexander had such plans, maps, statistical tables, &c., of countries but very little known; and if he had them, he would not have had sufficient time to familiarize himself with them. His father, Philip, is chosen to lead the Greeks into Asia, is stabbed, and Alexander unexpectedly becomes commander-in-chief: we find him a commander-in-chief in reality, and far from being the puppet of his generals. He relies upon the resources
