Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
Extract from the correspondence of Colonel Ardant du Picq. Letters from Captain C , dated August 23, 1868. "At Magenta I was in Espinasse's division, of Marshal MacMahon's corps. This division was on the extreme left of the troops that had passed the Ticino at Turbigo and was moving on Magenta by the left bank.
General Espinasse's advance on the village, at the head of two battalions, was the finest and most imposing sight I have ever seen. Apart from that advance, the fighting was always by skirmishers and in large groups." The Battle of Solferino Extract from the correspondence of Colonel Ardant du Picq. Letters from Captain C . "The 55th infantry was part of the 3rd division of the 4th corps.
At last I perceived vast numbers of ugly beings, in gold and silver raiment, peeping out of their boxes. The last ballet, formed upon the old story of "Le Festin de Pierre," had wonderful effect, and terminated in the most striking perspective of the infernal region. Picq danced incomparably, and Signora Rossi led the Fandango, with a grace and activity that pleased me beyond idea.
In tracing a portrait so much resembling bellicose and conquering Prussia, the sharp eye of Ardant du Picq had recognized clearly the danger which immediately threatened us and which his deluded and trifling fellow citizens did not even suspect.
Carried away by the author's historical and philosophical faculties, he soars without difficulty to the plane of Ardant du Picq. In like manner, du Picq ranges easily from the most mediocre military operations to the analysis of the great functions of policy of government and the evolution of nations.
Fifty dancers dressed as pages presented to the knights twenty-five superb black horses, and twenty-five of a dazzling whiteness, all most richly caparisoned. The party led by Augustus Vestris wore the Queen's colours. Picq, balletmaster at the Russian Court, commanded the opposing band. There was running at the negro's head, tilting, and, lastly, combats 'a outrance', perfectly well imitated.
They are radically opposed to those which enchant our parliamentarians or military politicians, which are based on a fatal favoritism and which precipitate wars. Ardant du Picq is not alone a superior doctrinaire. He will be consulted with profit in practical warlike organization. No one has better depicted the character of modern armies.
Extract from the correspondence of Colonel Ardant du Picq. A letter sent from Huy, February 9, 1869, by Captain de V , a company officer in the attack division. "My company, with the 3rd, commanded by Captain D was designated to cover the battalion. "At eight or nine hundred meters from the Alma, we saw a sort of wall, crowned with white, whose use we could not understand.
After the abandonment of the law of 1872, and the repeal of the law of 1889, and before the introduction of numerous and disquieting reforms in recruitment and consequently, in the education of our regiments, would it not be opportune to study Ardant du Picq and look for the secret of force in his ideas rather than in the deceptive illusions of military automatism and materialism?
Colonel Ardant du Picq tells us somewhere that he has never had entire faith in the huge battalions which these two great men, themselves alone worth more than the largest battalions, believed in. Well, to-day, this vigorous brain believes no more in the mechanical or mathematical force which is going to abolish these great battalions.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking