(Fig.

8.) Such a plan of operations enabled Napoleon, in the Italian campaigns of 1796 and 1797, to pierce and destroy, with a small force, the large and successive armies which Austria sent against him.

In 1805 his operations were both interior and central: in 1808 they were most eminently central: in 1809, by the central operations in the vicinity of Ratisbonne, he defeated the large and almost victorious army of the Archduke Charles: in 1814, from his central position between the Marne and Seine, with only seventy thousand men against a force of more than two hundred thousand, he gained numerous victories, and barely failed of complete success.

Again in 1815, with an army of only one hundred and twenty thousand men against an allied force of two hundred and twenty thousand, by his central advance on Charleroi and Ligny, he gained a most decided advantage over the enemy--an advantage lost by the eccentric movement of Grouchy: and even in 1813, his central position at Dresden would have secured him most decisive advantages, had not the faults of his lieutenants lost these advantages in the disasters of Kulm and the Katzbach.
For the same frontier it is objectionable to form more than one army; grand detachments and corps of observation may frequently be used with advantage, but double or multiple lines of operation are far less favorable than one simple line.

It may however sometimes occur that the position of the enemy's forces will be such as to make this operation the preferable one.