Infinite Wisdom

"Fortresses without a fine army have no value."

--	Niccolo Machiavelli

La Triviata

• In the course of the nineteenth century France engaged in 43 wars that spanned 32 years, for an average of only 0.7 years per war.


• Annoyed by the indiscipline and unreliability of his nation’s traditional tribal cavalry, in 1506 the Songhai ruler Askia Mohammed (1492-1529), committed it so recklessly during a battle against Borgu that it was essentially annihilated, after which he remarked, “we brought them to this place so that they might perish here and we should be rid of them.”


• In 1879 the Bolivian Army had about 2000 enlisted men, who were commanded by some 6 generals, 21 colonels and lieutenant colonels, 215 majors, 100 captains, and 256 lieutenants, or about three officers for every ten men.


• During the Campaign of 1914 a quarter of all the horses in the French Army died, 90-percent of them from disease or fatigue rather than combat.


• A descendant of two presidents, Charles Francis Adams, who served as Secretary of the Navy, 1929-1931, was a dedicated yachtsman and had skippered the 12-meter Resolute to victory in the 1920 America's Cup race.


• The Prussian army was the first to issue soldiers field dressings on a routine basis, during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871)


• In 1695, concerned that his ally Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, was becoming too powerful, Duke Victor Amadeus of Savoy arranged for their mutual enemy Louis XIV of France, to surrender a besieged fortress-city to a neutral third party.


• In December of 1941, several Indian nations, including the Iroquois, Ponca, and Chippewa, joined the U.S. in declaring war against the Third Reich, a measure the Sioux did not have to take, since they had never ended the state of war they had declared against the Second Reich in 1917.

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