Edicts of Ares

Book excerpt: Of the successful military leaders over the past recorded millenia, there are a few nuggets of military wisdom that are consistently repeated by the most successful military leaders in history, truisms that have been successfully demonstrated time and again. When one sees highly successful military leaders utilize the identical same principles, though separated by continents, culture, and millennia, it would appear that one who proposes to take up the art of war as a vocation would give these basic concepts significant weight. For those who would follow these edicts of war, not a single battle, campaign, nor war has been lost since 1479 BC. Yet even the greatest commanders, including Hannibal Barca, Napolean, and Lee lost when they uncomprehendingly abandoned these absolute rules. Thus, these inviolable edicts determine battlefield success. Not the General.