We talked of Malta; and I said that Malta was the only great fortification which I had seen totally unprovided with earth-works.

‘The stone,’ said Chrzanowski, ‘is soft and will not splinter.’

‘I was struck,’ I said, ’with the lightness of the armament; the largest guns that I saw, except some recently placed in Fort St. Elmo, were twenty-four pounders.’

‘For land defence,’ he answered, ’twenty-four pounders are serviceable guns.  They are manageable and act with great effect within the short distance within which they are generally used.  It is against ships that large guns are wanted.  A very large ball or shell is wasted on the trenches, but may sink a ship.  The great strength of the land defences of Malta arises from the nature of the ground on which Valetta and Floriana are built, indeed of which the whole island consists.  It is a rock generally bare or covered with only a few inches of earth.  Approaches could not be dug in it.  It would be necessary to bring earth or sand in ships, and to make the trenches with sand-bags or gabions.’

I asked him if he had read Louis Napoleon’s orders to Canrobert, published in Bazancourt’s book?

‘I have,’ he answered.  ’They show a depth of ignorance and a depth of conceit, compared to which even Thiers is modest and skilful.  Canrobert is not a great general, but he is not a man to whom a civilian, who never saw a shot fired, ought to give lectures on what he calls “the great principles” or “the absolute principles of war.”  He seems to have taken the correspondence between Napoleon and Joseph for his model, forgetting that Canrobert is to him what Napoleon was to Joseph.  Then he applies his principles as absurdly as he enunciates them.  Thus he orders Canrobert to send a fleet carrying 25,000 men to the breach at Aboutcha, to land 3,000 of them, to send them three leagues up the country, and not to land any more, until those first sent have established themselves beyond the defile of Agen.  Of course those 3,000 men would be useless if the enemy were not in force, or destroyed if they were in force.  To send on a small body and not to support them is the grossest of faults.  It is the fault which you committed at the Redan, when the men who had got on to the works were left by you for an hour unsupported, instead of reinforcements being poured in after them as quickly as they could be sent.

‘In fact,’ he continued, ’the horrible and mutual blunders of that campaign arose from its being managed by the two Emperors from Paris and from St. Petersburg, Nicholas and Alexander were our best friends.  Louis Napoleon was our worst enemy.

’There is nothing which ought to be so much left to the discretion of those on the spot as war.  Even a commander-in-chief actually present in a field of battle can do little after the action, if it be really a great one, has once begun.

’If we suppose 80,000 men to be engaged on each side, each line will extend at least three miles.  Supposing the general to be in the centre, it will take an aide-de-camp ten minutes to gallop to him from one of the wings, and ten minutes to gallop back.  But in twenty minutes all may be altered.’