Alexander : a history of the origin and growth of the art of war from ...

VIII.BRASIDAS. B. C. 424-422.The Peloponnesian was not a great war.It was a war of exhaustion and ofsmall operations. There were but half a dozen battles in twenty-seven years.But it shows instances of far-seeing strategy- Such was the seizure of Pylos,whence the threat of incursions on Sparta's rear obliged her to relax her hold onthe throat of Athens. The siege of Plataea is peculiarly interesting as affordingus the first detailed glimpse into ancient siege-methods ; and it was one ofthe earliest instances of a complete, though crude wall of contravallation andcircumvallation, and of something like systematic operations. This war bredsome good generals. At the battle of Olpae Demosthenes cleverly made use ofan ambuscade to win an otherwise lost battle.Brasidas was the man who camenearest to showing the moral and intellectual combination of the great soldier.His speech to his troops when confronted by untold numbers of barbarians is amodel. It has the true ring of the captain. His marches through Thessalyand Illyria and his defeat of Cleon at Amphipolis were admirable. He it waswho first marched in a hollow square with baggage in the centre, and showedwhat fighting in retreat should be. In this he was the prototype of Xenophon.The siege of Syracuse, too, among its long and intricate details, furnishes uswith two of the best known and wisest maxims of war.In thecentury succeeding Marathon there can be traceda constant if not rapid growth of the military art. This isshown not so much in the rise of distinguished captains asin the ability of thelesser lights to govern themselves by thesuccess or failure of their predecessors, and thus gradually aidin shaping warfare into a system. In the far-seeing wisdomof Themistocles preceding the battle of Salamis (b. c. 480),we recognize the broad and self-poised reasoning of which isbred the soundest strategy. In the operations of the severalcampaigns of the Peloponnesian war, although the Greeksthen practiced ahnost exclusively a defensive system, there