Waterloo by Hilaire Belloc

To understand the battle of Waterloo it is necessary, more perhaps than in the case of any other great decisive action, to read it strategically: that is, to regard the final struggle of Sunday the 18th of June as only the climax of certain general movements, the first phase of which was the concentration of the French Army of the North, and the second the passage of the Sambre river and the attack. This second phase covered four days in time, and in space an advance of nearly forty miles.

There is a sense, of course, in which it is true of every battle that its result is closely connected with the strategy which led up to its tactical features: how the opposing forces arrived upon the field, in what condition, and in what disposition and at what time, with what advantage or disadvantage, is always necessarily connected with the history of the campaign rather than of the individual action; but, as we saw in the case of Blenheim, and as might be exemplified from a hundred other cases, the greater part of battles can be understood by following the tactical dispositions upon the field. They are won or lost, in the main, according to those dispositions.