On Everything
of which he rode during the manoeuvres of five years ago. It is sandy in places, interspersed with damp, clayey hits; much of it is undulating, and no small part of it rocky. Trees are scattered throughout the expanse of the now historic battlefield; their trunks afford excellent cover. The River Tusco, as our readers will have observed, is the dominating feature of the quadrilateral, which it cuts en échelon. The Patagonians boasted that though our army was acknowledgedly superior to their own, their commercial position would enable them to weary us out in the field. Yes, I don't think!"
VII
Extract from a Lecture delivered by a Professor of Military History one hundred years later, in the University of Lima.
"Among the minor factors of this complicated situation was the permanent quarrel between Patagonia and Utopia, and though it has been much neglected by historians, and is, indeed, but a detail upon the flank of the great struggle of the coalition, a few moments must be given to the abortive operations in the Tusco Valley. They appear to have been conducted without any grasp of the main rules of strategy, each party advancing in a more or less complete ignorance of the position of the other, their communications parallel, their rate of advance
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