"Tactician" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called in as a consulting engineer of hearts. That blonde tactician glanced over the situation with the eye of a field-marshal. This was the result of her survey. There must be no clandestine marriage, no elopement. Dorothy was in no peril; it was not a drawbridge day of moated castlewicks and donjon keeps. Damsels were no longer ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... good a tactician to go wrong in this way. He had taken the trouble to study the market before he went out to buy his goods. He knew that taste and knowledge were to be bought just as easily as chairs and tables, and he ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... not, however, as becomes a sound tactician, approach the point with undue directness. Lady Isabel had sent her daughters to school in Paris; Lady Isabel had, on a bygone occasion, been goaded by Mrs. Cotton into a declaration that her servants' religion was a matter with which she only concerned herself if they ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... pleasure. When Soult was operating in the South of France, the defection of two German regiments crippled all his combinations and gave the advantage to Wellington. Ought Wellington to have refused their aid? For our own part, if Mr. Douglas be the best tactician, the best master of political combination, we are willing to forget all past differences and serve under him cheerfully, rather than lose the battle under a general who has agreed with us all his life. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... of the Prime Minister's election pledges, the President could hardly hope to get him to abandon them in their entirety without a struggle in public; and the cry of pensions would have had an overwhelming popular appeal in all countries. Once more the Prime Minister had shown himself a political tactician of ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... and dread him. He has warmer friends and bitterer enemies than almost any man in the State. But he is true as steel. My judgment of men is rarely deceived, and I pronounce S. N. Wood a great man and a political genius. Gov. Robinson is a masterly tactician, cool, wary, cautious, decided, and brave as a lion. These two men alone would suffice to save Kansas. But when you add the other good and true men who are already pledged, and the influences which have been combined, I think ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... themselves to extend their power to the sea. The people were hardy and brave. When Epaminondas died, Philip (359-336 B.C.) was on the Macedonian throne. He had lived three years at Thebes, and had learned much from Epaminondas, the best strategist and tactician of his day. The decline of public spirit in Greece had led the states to rely very much on mercenary troops, whose trade was war. Philip had a well-drilled standing army. Every thing was favorable to the gratification of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... anger he turned to follow her, but he pulled himself up; there was very little use in that and no need for it either; he was sure she was far too skilful a tactician to imperil an affair by unwise flight; this was a blind merely—unless, of course, she thought of setting out to find these Dutch people, wherever they might be. He asked the staring servant where her master and mistress were; it took time for ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... the Boston patriots in their resistance to British oppression, as a member of the Continental Congress and in other public offices. We are shown Samuel Adams as a man without great business or professional talents but wonderful in counsel, a cool headed patriot, an adroit tactician, and above all a thorough democrat. To mingle with the common people was his delight; he was a frequenter of the Caulkers' Club, popular with blacksmiths, ship carpenters, and mechanics. He was not a great orator; but sometimes, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... Charles and of Clarendon. Before Clarendon's fall came, the triumph of Lauderdale over his rivals was assured; but before Clarendon's life ended he might have learned to what a height of self-aggrandizement, and of unscrupulous oppression, the popular wiles of that astute tactician had helped him to attain. Had Clarendon been blessed with agents wiser than Middleton and more honest than Archbishop Sharp, the Government of Scotland might have been consolidated; the bitterness, to which her religious fanaticism ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... the tactical officers of our time, Lieutenant John M. Jones was esteemed the most accomplished soldier and tactician, and the most rigid but just and impartial disciplinarian. It had been my good fortune to enjoy his instruction while I was private, corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant, and I fully shared with others in the above ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in which he found great relief. "You shall not put me in the wrong, young lady," said Mr. Stryver; "I'll do that ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... ladyship was in the garden, and he hastened down to meet her. In his own small way Walpole was a clever tactician; and he counted much on the ardour with which he should open his case, and the amount of impetuosity that would give her very ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... she considered most fortunate, for it suited her purpose to make such a hit of this engagement that the echo of it would reach as far East as Broadway. It would give her better standing with the theatre managers in New York and put a quietus for good on comment in unfriendly quarters. A clever tactician with an eye always open to the main chance, she exerted herself to the utmost to make friends and neglected no opportunity to advance her interests. She attended church regularly and made liberal donations to the local charities. When entertainments ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... follows military distinction, especially when the man who achieves it happens to wear a crown. He combined the personal prowess of a knight of old with the more modern accomplishments of a scientific tactician. He could charge the enemy in person like the most brilliant cavalry officer, and he thoroughly understood the arrangements of a campaign, the marshalling and victualling of troops, and the whole art of setting and maintaining an army in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... superior to fortune. I never saw him exhibit higher ability than in his dispositions for our last battle. He has become a magnificent tactician. But Alexander the Great himself could not fight without troops: and such was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... a good officer, an able tactician and a resolute leader. He had hardly, however, realised as yet that the movements of a brigade must be subordinated to those of the whole army, and he was wont to grumble if his troops were held back, or were not allowed to pursue some local ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... record must have been brilliant and his promotion rapid, for very few volunteer officers had so quickly mastered the details of military tactics and routine. He was a thorough disciplinarian, an able tactician, and the interests and welfare of his men were constantly upon ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... matter over with his father-in-law, whose confidence in him was now restored. Stolpe, who was an old experienced tactician, advised him not to convoke any meeting on this occasion, but to settle the matter with each man face to face, so that the Union could not be attacked. "You've got plenty of time," he said. "Go ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... very strange that this wonderful tactician can be the same man I met that day going to the Arsenal in the streetcar, and again at Camp Jackson. I am sure that history will give him a high place among the commanders of the world. Certainly none was ever more tireless than he. He never fights a battle when it can be avoided, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and Holloway noted the glow in the girl's glance which followed his stalwart figure. Holloway was a good tactician: there were reasons why he enjoyed this new role of match-maker de luxe, yet he played his hand far more subtly than ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... had received from heaven the right of uniting and disuniting. There was no need to trouble about so trifling a matter: when the two were ready to marry, the divorce would be effected. Alexander was too good a tactician to leave his daughter married to a son-in-law who was becoming useless ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... so grave a cause. He was assisted by William Wirt, already a brilliant lawyer and possessed of a dazzling elocution, but sadly lacking in the majesty of years. At the head and forefront of the defense stood Burr himself, an unerring legal tactician, deciding every move of the great game, the stake of which for him was life itself. About him were gathered the ablest members of the Richmond bar: John Wickham, witty and ingenious, Edmund Randolph, ponderous and pontifical, Benjamin Botts, learned and sarcastic, ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... have stamped him as a leader of men. In the words of a political opponent of the time, 'he constructed with consummate skill the engine which destroyed the Mackenzie Administration. From the very first he saw what a tactician would do with Protection, and in so masterly a manner did he cover his troops with that rampart, that it was impossible for the Liberals to ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... him, it is easy to believe, Confederation might have been delayed for a generation or never have come at all. His enthusiasm inspired the willing and carried the doubting. In the somewhat rare combination of courage, force, and breadth of view no one excelled him. As a political tactician he was not so successful, and to this defect may be traced the entanglements in which he was prone to land both himself and his party. His resignation from the coalition in 1865 was a mistake. It could not be explained. In leaving the ship before it reached ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... supported him under large advances of money; for his powers of convincing and persuading had not yet been, tested by anything more difficult than a chairman's speech introducing other orators, or a dialogue with a Middlemarch voter, from which he came away with a sense that he was a tactician by nature, and that it was a pity he had not gone earlier into this kind of thing. He was a little conscious of defeat, however, with Mr. Mawmsey, a chief representative in Middlemarch of that great ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... and tactician of his age," I answered. "One of Napoleon's generals. I fancy he wrote a book, don't you know—a book on war—Des Grandes Operations Militaires, or something ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... and polished satire, and Punch had caricatured the noble member for King's Lynn, and while yet his own party scarcely ventured to hope anything from his leadership, Lord George proved himself an orator and a debater, a party tactician, and an energetic, vigilant, intelligent chief of opposition. Perhaps no public man ever burst so suddenly upon the house of commons as a leading party politician. He had been well known as a member ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... quartermaster that he will be capable of the supreme command, but because he has a natural genius for war and possesses the requisite characteristics. So, also, a general from the ranks of the infantry or cavalry may be as capable of conducting a campaign as the most profound tactician. So this question does not admit of a definite answer either in the affirmative or negative, since almost all will depend upon the personal qualities of the individuals; but the following remarks will be useful in leading to ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... Luella were both sitting on the sofa, when Mr. Sealy and Stanley Ginsling came in, much to Mrs. Sealy's disgust, and she managed to separate them several times during the evening by resorting to the manoeuvres which never fail an accomplished female tactician; but as her daughter invariably returned to her seat near Barton, she was determined to make a final effort ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... was a thorough tactician. Like Napoleon, she was never more elated than after a defeat. Before consulting her husband at all, she had contemplated the subject in all its bearings, and had deliberately decided that Ivy was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... issue of the struggle, took up arms on the side of the cause he esteemed just—that to which the most respectable of the inhabitants to a man adhered—as he had taken up arms before for the party of law and order, amongst whom he was looked up to, not only as a skilled soldier and tactician, but a stalwart partisan, his very name ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... was no brilliant, victorious hero, judged by the standard of a century which had seen such military geniuses as Turenne, as the great Conde, as Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy. Villars was essentially a wily tactician, and his exploits were useful, but he lacked the dash, the verve which characterise the great commanders of that epoch. It was his system to overrun an invaded country, skilfully avoiding actual combat with the defending army, which pursued him impotently along ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... I am not asking you to do anything so crude as to make platform speeches about the man's disgraceful conduct to his wife.' Mr. Burl assumed the look of a Rhadamanthus. 'But'—and again he relaxed into the tactician—'you might take a strong social line on morals generally, and the domestic hearth, and that sort of thing.' He looked critically at Drake. 'You're one of the few chaps I know who look as if they could do that and make people believe they ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... little that the Greeks are not quite the same with them of the time of Themistocles, (they were not then very tractable, by the by,) and at the difficulty of disciplining them; but he is a 'bon homme' and a tactician, and a little like Dugald Dalgetty, who would insist upon the erection of 'a sconce on the hill of Drumsnab,' or whatever it was;—the other seems to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... it: "The skill of our admirals and the activity and spirit of our officers and seamen." The only way to obtain this is through the perpetual practice of the admirals commanding fleets. An admiral, in order to make himself a first-rate tactician, must not merely have deeply studied and pondered the subject, but must spend as much time as possible in exercising, as a whole, the fleet which he commands, in order not only by experimental manoeuvres thoroughly to satisfy himself as to the formation and mode of ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... my young friend, since it is true love you feel, I will help you. I am a great tactician, and if King Carlo Alberto had read a certain memorial I sent him on military matters he would have won the battle of Novara. He did not read my memorial, and the battle was lost, but it was a glorious ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... Muro was a tactician. The scouts stated the situation, with the impassible ravine to the north, and the attackers to the south of their position. His force was on the eastern side of the river, and moving back a sufficient distance to prevent knowledge ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... and the fighting tactician, Joe Johnston, were destined to feel how fatal was the military favoritism of Jefferson Davis. Davis threw away Vicksburg, and the Mississippi later, to please Lee. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... as representing the interests of the Swedish population in Finland. When the Russian attacks first commenced, all party divergences were sunk into oblivion, and the country provided the spectacle of a completely united nation. General Bobrikoff was too much of a tactician to be pleased with this state of affairs, and he began to play up to the Old-Finns, not without success. Among other things, he filled all public posts, vacated by their former occupants, who had either resigned on constitutional grounds or had been ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... had seen the Prussian troops only at Potsdam, I should probably have mistaken the truncheon for a talisman, like the rest of the world. But the field suffers no mystification. I had seen that the true secret of this great tactician, for such unquestionably he was, consisted in his rejecting the superfluities and retaining the substance; in reducing tactics to the ready application of force, and in simplifying the old and tardy manoeuvres of the French and Austrian battalions, to the few expeditious and essential ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... make, and in a flash of thought the great German chancellor saw that this meant war. Perhaps he had been waiting for it. At all events, he was prepared for it, as were the silent soldier, von Roon, and the gentle tactician, von Moltke. These gentlemen were away for a holiday, but they returned, and, as history tells, had merely to fill in a few dates ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... the writers appears to be to round off their letters gracefully. Having no more to say, I will now draw to a close, is the accepted formula. Private Burke, never a tactician, concludes a most ardent love-letter thus: "Well, Kate, I will now close, as I have to write ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... leaders who had attempted in vain to overcome by skill and patriotism the thousand difficulties placed in their way by successive unstable, insincere Ministers of War, General Vincente occupied an honoured place. This mild-mannered tactician enjoyed the enviable reputation of being alike unconquerable and incorruptible. His smiling presence on the battlefield was in itself worth half a dozen battalions, while at Madrid the dishonest politicians, who ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... Ruyter showed his powers not only as a tactician but as a strategist. In the words of Mahan, the Dutch "made a strategic use of their dangerous coast and shoals, upon which were based their sea operations. To this they were forced by the desperate odds under which they were fighting; but they did not use their shoals as a mere shelter,—the ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... he has forgotten his shield: the sight of a lion and the sound of a gun elicit screams of terror, and their Kaum or forays much resemble the style of tactics rendered obsolete by the Great Turenne, when the tactician's chief aim was not to fall in with his enemy. Yet they are by no means deficient in the wily valour of wild men: two or three will murder a sleeper bravely enough; and when the passions of rival tribes, between ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... will be apropos to allude to his late companion in trouble, John Slidell, who was certainly the shrewdest politician and party tactician among his friends on the north side of the chamber; he is indeed the Nestor of intriguers. From the time when, early in life, he aspired to, and in a degree succeeded in controlling the politics of the Empire City, up to this hour, when he is with snake-like subtleness attempting to poison ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... gained them all, and won the game. After he was out, he upbraided Nyren for not putting him in earlier. 'If you had let me go in an hour ago' (said he), 'I would have served them in the same way.' But the old tactician was right, for he knew Noah to be a man of such nerve and self-possession, that the thought of so much depending upon him would not have the paralysing effect that it would upon many others. He was sure of him, and Noah afterwards felt the compliment. Mann was short in stature, and, when ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... will doubt his amazing faculty for love-making and love-writing, and it must always be a puzzle how he managed to mix it so successfully with war. His guilty love-making was an occasional embarrassment to him, and though he was the greatest naval tactician of his time, his domestic methods were hopelessly clumsy and transparent. For instance, in pouring out his grievances to his mistress he refers to himself by the name of Thompson, and to Lady Nelson as Aunt. Here are a few examples:—"Thompson desires me to say he has never wrote ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... and touch on them, so that the newcomer might lead off and rejoice; but even the astute mind of the wife of Lucius was puzzled to divine the inclinations of the Roman—he was impenetrable, a perfect blank; but the truth was this: the Roman tactician had but one thought just then, and that was of Nika, and it developed so rapidly that it was undiscovered. Had it been, it were not food for conversation; so Venusta opened fire with the beauties of the city, for the weather at that season ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... his breath, "that was very cleverly managed, was it not? Don't you think I am quite a tactician? I caught sight of you the moment you appeared; then that bright fairy, Kitty McKenzie, arrived upon the scene, and I knew ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... principal citizens, and received a good education. He was also favored with the society of Pelopidas and Epaminondas, and witnessed with great interest the training of the Theban forces by these two remarkable men—one the greatest organizer, and the other the greatest tactician of the age. When transferred from Thebes to a subordinate government of a district in his brother's kingdom, he organized a military force on the principles he had learned in Thebes. The unexpected death of Perdiccas, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... cried the old prince to the architect who, busy with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: "Didn't I tell you Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of two main extensions—on the south to London and on the north to Carlisle —whereby it obtained an independent through-route between the metropolis and the north. In the railvay world Sir James Allport was known as a keen tactician and a vigorous fighter, and he should be remembered as the pioneer of cheap and comfortable railway travelling. He was the first to appreciate the importance of the third-class passenger as a source of revenue, and accordingly, in 1872, he ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and debonair in her mannish habit—the woman he had slighted, the woman who had, as he guessed, baffled his plans once, and had now come, as he might be very sure, to baffle them again. It was plain to him that he had lost the day. It needed no great tactician, no strategist, to perceive that the coming of the condottieri had turned the scale against him. They were better weaponed than his men, and when their strength was added to that of the adversaries already ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Elgin; that was abundantly proven; what he could not comfortably tolerate was the deviation of congregational funds, the very blood of the body of belief, into other than legitimate channels. He fought for his view with all his tactician's resources, putting up one office-bearer after another to endorse it but the matter was decided at the general yearly meeting of the congregation; and the occasion showed Knox Church in singular sympathy with its struggling ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Darry, if you can get up one or two more like that you'll be the greatest gridiron tactician that the ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... upon members of Congress. Even Douglas felt the spark of military genius kindling within him. His friends, too, were convinced that he possessed qualities which would make him an intrepid leader and a tactician of no mean order. The entire Illinois delegation united to urge his appointment as Brigadier Major of the Illinois volunteers. Happily for the President, his course in this instance was clearly ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... that the heights were occupied by Hardee with two divisions. It was the same Hardee, the famous tactician who had been one of the Southern generals at Shiloh. Polk was expected, but he had not yet come up. Bragg, too, would ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... engagements were fought in the neighborhood of Pesqueira, a town in the hills about one hundred miles from the seaboard. These proved that General Russo was a valiant fighter but a poor tactician—and that was all. He was opposed by a commander of little courage but singular skill in strategy. To restore the balance, Dom Corria took the field in person, and Dom Miguel Barraca hastened from Rio de Janeiro to witness the crushing of ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... most of everything he saw. His power of observation was so developed that sometimes the actual picture of some detail—such as a dirty rifle, a man without equipment, or a few sand bags laid awry—lent him a false impression of the whole. Yet his memory and rapid power of observation made him a real tactician—I use the adjective advisedly. No man who knew less, and there were few who knew more, of the front line than he did, could afford to argue with him about the position of a machine-gun, although if the matter had been presented as of theory at some headquarters rather than upon ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... as was the right upon which the claim of the Prince was founded, His Royal Highness could not assume that right till it had been formally adjudicated to him by Parliament. The principle, however, having been imprudently broached, Mr. Pitt was too expert a tactician not to avail himself of the advantage it gave him. He was thus, indeed, furnished with an opportunity, not only of gaining time by an artful protraction of the discussions, but of occupying victoriously the ground of Whiggism, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... It must not be supposed that that tactician had all this while withdrawn from mortal eye to tear his hair in silent indignation and despair. He had, in truth, merely retired up the lonesome defile between the downs to his smouldering kiln, and the ancient ramparts above it; and there, after his first hours of natural ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... political sagacity. The superintendent of one of her asylums said, "She had an insight into character that was truly marvellous; and I have never known anyone, man or woman, who bore more distinctly the mark of intellectuality." Having placed her Memorial in the hands of a skilful tactician, she retired to a room appropriated to her use by the courtesy of the House, where she spent her time writing editorials for newspapers, answering the questions of members, and holding receptions. "You cannot imagine," she writes a friend, "the labor ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... troops from point to point in attack and defense,—for all the world like two fighting dogs hunting for an opening in the fence. And all the time the grim, quiet man in blue kept contracting his lines around the wonderful tactician in gray until the whole world came to know that unless Lee could break through the gap to the southwest the end of the war was ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... their own rulers—he was as busy as a witch in a tempest. His talents shone forth with especial and peculiar lustre—for, with him, this was "the day for which all other days were made." He marshalled his retainers, and led them to "the polls"—not as an inexperienced tactician would have done, with much waste of time, in seeking every private voter, but after the manner of feudal times—by calling upon his immediate dependants, captains over tens and twenties, through whom he managed ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... my good fellow," said he, addressing an insignificant corporal just about to eat his stew, as if he were questioning an old tactician or a man skilled like Turenne or Davoust; "do you see? you hit it in this affair of day before yesterday. Give us your opinion. Are the positions occupied by Ducrot as strong as they pretend? Is it victory ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... the land, realizes the ideal of a vast plain unbroken by obstacles. On the sea, says an eminent French tactician, there is no field of battle, meaning that there is none of the natural conditions which determine, and often fetter, the movements of the general. But upon a plain, however flat and monotonous, causes, possibly slight, determine the concentration of population into towns and villages, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... attributes, and that the conductor of the future, even more than of the past, must possess not only those qualities of the artist needed by the solo performer, but must in addition be a good business manager, an organizer, a tactician, a diplomat, a task-master—in plain English, a good boss. It is primarily because of the lack of these last-mentioned qualities that most musicians fail as conductors. A writer in the Canadian Journal of Music, signing himself Varasdin, sums it ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... French commanders in Spain. Wellington afterwards said that Soult was second only to Massena among the French Marshals pitted against him. He had some defects. "He did not quite understand a field of battle: he was an excellent tactician, knew very well how to bring his troops up to the field, but not so well how to use them when he had brought them up."[313] But the fact remains that, with the exception of his Oporto failure, Soult came with credit, if not glory, out of every campaign waged against Wellington. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Department for his tactful success in settling threatened trouble over the stoning of a number of American sailors from the Baltimore by a party of Chilians at Valparaiso. Commodore Schley is a fine tactician, possesses a winning personality and his work with the Brooklyn, off Santiago, on July 3, was neither more nor less than his ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... that he was driven to great straits, and in the course of his uncomfortable wanderings he called upon Sheridan; the conversation turned upon his financial difficulties, but not upon the principal cause of them, which was Sheridan's debt; but which of course, as an able tactician, he contrived to keep out of the discussion; at last, Bob, in a sort of agony, exclaimed—"I have not a guinea left, and by heaven I don't know where to get one." Sheridan jumped up, and thrusting a piece of gold into his hand, exclaimed with tears in his eyes—"It never shall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... aristocratic party, the other to the popular. Pompey was proud, pompous, and self-sufficient. Caesar was politic, patient, and intriguing. Both had an inordinate ambition, and both were unscrupulous. Pompey had more prestige, Caesar more genius. Pompey was a greater tactician, Caesar a greater strategist. The Senate rallied around the former, the people around the latter. Cicero distrusted both, and flattered each by turns, but inclined to the side of Pompey, as belonging to the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... rendered the battle of Molwitz, the first of Frederick's fields, the last also. The ground was covered with snow. Both parties were of about equal strength, and took up their ground, as the king himself tells us, in a manner alike unskilful; but, on the part of the tactician, this very want of skill tended to gain the battle; for three battalions of the first line, not finding room to form up, were thrown back en potence on the extremity of the right wing, and, as we shall see, repulsed the Austrian ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... And again and most important, she loves them tenderly, and from love flows wisdom. Usually the mother gives her own children a love far beyond that given by anyone else, and this deeper love sharpens her intellectual faculties and makes her both a keen observer and a good tactician. Giving her children some simple lesson on Sunday afternoon, she finds a hundred opportunities to make the lesson living and vital to them during the ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... American Expeditionary Forces. Instead of being merely an assistant Colonel, he was actively in command of one of the hardest fighting battalions in the regiment. He has been pronounced a man of native ability, an able tactician and of natural ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... was not deficient in "left-handed wisdom," was proved pretty clearly by most of his actions; for instance, when routed by the downright miller from the position which he had taken up of a near kinsman by the father's side, he, like an able tactician, wheeled about and called cousins with Mrs. Deborah's mother; and as that good lady happened to have borne the very general, almost universal, name of Smith, which is next to anonymous, even John Stokes could not dislodge him from ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... Foch taught. Why he is not only the greatest strategist and tactician of all time, but the ideal ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... the gigantic guardsman;[691] And General Fireface,[692] famous in the field, A great tactician, and no less a swordsman, Who ate, last war, more Yankees than he killed. There was the waggish Welsh Judge, Jefferies Hardsman, In his grave office so completely skilled, That when a culprit came for condemnation, He had his Judge's joke ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... injurious to the public interests than a defeat at the Boyne. Or will it be said that there was greater reason for placing confidence in his military than in his diplomatic skill? Surely not. In war he showed some great moral and intellectual qualities; but, as a tactician, he did not rank high; and of his many campaigns only two were decidedly successful. In the talents of a negotiator, on the other hand, he has never been surpassed. Of the interests and the tempers of the continental courts he knew more than all his Privy Council together. Some of his ministers ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was the last of three brothers, and all of us have heard of the youngest, Sir Edward, the hero of Tel el Kebir, who, with his eldest brother, were generals in the British army. Sir Edward was a noted tactician, and it was through this he became the hero of Tel el Kebir. He was prominent in the Imperial Parliament also as a speaker. The elder brother I heard little of from him, but I know he was very ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... always possessed it, but it stopped just short of blind egotism. Perhaps therein could be found the reason for his fame and his success. He was no blundering, egobefuddled braggart riding for a fall; he was a splendid pilot, a careful tactician, fearless when fearlessness was needed and cautious when caution would bring greater reward than blind valor. In short, his fame rested securely upon ability. He was one of the idols of his countrymen, ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... this doubling on the French line, by anchoring inside, and putting two ships upon one, that gave Nelson so high a reputation as a tactician. The merit of this man[oe]uvre belongs exclusively to one of his captains. As the fleet went in, without any order, keeping as much to windward as the shoals would permit, Nelson ordered the Vanguard hove-to, to take a pilot out of a fisherman. This enabled ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... She had come to accuse, and, instead, found herself patiently listening to a recital of her indiscretions. But if Lord Chilminster was a strategist, Jeannette was a tactician. She appreciated the danger of a passive defense, and conversely, of the value of a vigorous aggression. Without a moment's hesitation she began a ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... an unrivalled political tactician was watching the situation. While {147} the fever in Nova Scotia was at its height, Sir John Macdonald had refused to say a word. Now that the fever had run its course, now that the one able leader of the repeal cause realized the ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... shews himself a general unable to cope with that great tactician. He divides his forces, and allows Belisarius to start out of Ostia and fortify himself in Rome. The Goths are furious at his rashness: but it is too late, and the war begins again, up and down the wretched land, till Belisarius is recalled by some fresh court ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... through various parts of Germany, and visited the courts of Vienna and Berlin. He became acquainted with Frederick II. the greatest royal tactician of Europe; and probably availed of the opportunity of attending his reviews, to increase his knowledge of military discipline. Soon after his return to France, we find him uniting his influence and efforts with the ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette |
