The Historians' History of the World 05

From such materials a statesman could not fail to be produced. Cæsar was a statesman from his earliest youth and in the deepest sense of the word, and his aim was the highest which a man may set before himself—the political, military, intellectual, and moral revival of his own deeply fallen nation and that still more deeply fallen Hellenic people which was so closely allied with his own. The hard school of thirty years’ experience had changed his views concerning the means by which this goal was to be attained; his aim remained the same in the days of hopeless depression as in the fullness of unlimited power, in the days when as a demagogue and conspirator he glided to it by obscure paths and in those in which as participant of the highest power and then as monarch, he created his works in the full sunshine before the eyes of a world. All the measures of a permanent character which originated with him at the most various times ranged themselves in their appropriate places in the great scheme. Strictly, therefore, we should not speak of solitary performances of Cæsar; he created nothing solitary.

Cæsar the orator has been justly praised for his virile eloquence, which made a mock of all the advocate’s art and like the clear flame gave light and warmth at the same time. Cæsar the writer has been justly admired for the inimitable simplicity of his composition, the singular purity and beauty of his language. The greatest masters in the military art in all periods have justly praised Cæsar the general who, emancipated as no other has been from the entanglements of routine and tradition, always managed to find that method of warfare by which in a particular case the enemy might be vanquished and which is consequently the right one in that case. With the certainty of a diviner he found the right means for every purpose, after defeat stood like William of Orange ready for battle, and ended every campaign without exception with victory. He applied in unsurpassed perfection that principle of warfare whose employment distinguishes military genius from the ability of an ordinary officer—namely, the principle of the swift movement of masses; and found security for victory not in great numbers but in swift movement, not in long preparations but in swift and even rash action even with inadequate resources.

But with Cæsar all this is only subsidiary; he was indeed a great orator, writer, and general, but he only became each of these because he was an accomplished statesman. The soldier in him, in particular, plays an entirely incidental rôle, and one of the most remarkable peculiarities which distinguishes him from Alexander, Hannibal, and Napoleon is that in him not the commander but the demagogue was the starting-point of his political activity. According to his original plan he had intended to attain his goal as Pericles and Caius Gracchus had done, without having recourse to arms; and as leader of the popular party he had moved for the space of eighteen years exclusively in the sphere of political plans and intrigues, before, unwillingly convinced of the necessity of military support, he placed himself at the head of an army at a time when he was already forty years old. It was explicable enough that at a later period he should have still remained more statesman than general; as Cromwell also transformed himself from leader of the opposition into a military chief and democratic king and, on the whole, little as the puritan prince may seem to resemble the dissolute Roman, he is of all statesmen perhaps the one who is most closely allied to Cæsar both in his development and in his aims and achievements.

Even in Cæsar’s manner of warfare his impromptu generalship is still clearly recognisable; the lieutenant of artillery who had risen to be general is not more distinctly apparent in Napoleon’s enterprises against England and Egypt than is the demagogue metamorphosed into a general in the like undertakings of Cæsar. A trained officer would hardly have laid aside the most important military considerations for political reasons of a not very imperative nature, as Cæsar frequently did, the most astonishing instance being the occasion of his landing in Epirus. Individual proceedings of his are consequently blameworthy in a military sense. But the general loses only what the statesman gains.