3d.  All great depots should be placed on navigable rivers, canals, railways, or practical roads, communicating with the line of operations, so that they may be transported with ease and rapidity, as the army advances on this line.

4th.  An army should never be without a supply for ten or fifteen days, otherwise the best chances of war may be lost, and the army exposed to great inconveniences.  Templehoff says that the great Frederick, in the campaign of 1757, always carried in the Prussian provision-train bread for six, and flour for nine days, and was therefore never at a loss for means to subsist his forces, in undertaking any sudden and decisive operation.  The Roman soldier usually carried with him provisions for fifteen days.  Napoleon says, “Experience has proved that an army ought to carry with it a month’s provisions, ten days’ food being carried by the men and baggage-horses and a supply for twenty days by the train of wagons; so that at least four hundred and eighty wagons would be required for an army of forty thousand men; two hundred and forty being regularly organized, and two hundred and forty being obtained by requisition.  For this purpose there would be a battalion of three companies for the military stores of each division, each company having its establishment for forty wagons, twenty being furnished by the commissariat, and twenty obtained by requisition.  This gives for each division one hundred and twenty wagons, and for each army, four hundred and eighty.  Each battalion for a provision-train should have two hundred and ten men.”

5th.  An army, while actually in motion, can find temporary resources, unless in a sterile country, or one already ravaged by war, or at the season of the year when the old crops are nearly exhausted and the new ones not ready for harvest; but, even supposing the army may in this way be partially or wholly supplied, while in motion, it nevertheless frequently happens that it may remain for some days in position, (as the French at Austerlitz and Ulm;) a supply of hard bread for some ten days will therefore be important to subsist the army till a regular commissariat can be established.

6th.  “Supplies of bread and biscuit,” says Napoleon, “are no more essential to modern armies than to the Romans; flour, rice, and pulse, may be substituted in marches without the troops suffering any harm.  It is an error to suppose that the generals of antiquity did not pay great attention to their magazines; it may be seen in Caesar’s Commentaries, how much he was occupied with this care in his several campaigns.  The ancients knew how to avoid being slaves to any system of supplies, or to being obliged to depend on the purveyors; but all the great captains well understood the art of subsistence.”

Forage is a military term applied to food of any kind for horses or cattle,—­as grass, hay, corn, oats, &c.; and also to the operation of collecting such food.  Forage is of two kinds, green and dry; the former being collected directly from the meadows and harvest-fields, and the latter from the barns and granaries of the farmers, or the storehouses of the dealers.