CHAP. XVIII.
Nothing is more honourable in a General, than to foresee the Designs of his Enemy.
IT was the saying of Epaminondas the Theban, that no one quality was more useful and necessary in a General, than to be able to know the resolutions and designs of his Enemy, and discover that by conjecture, which he could not do by any certain intelligence. Nor is it difficult only to understand his designs, but his actions; and of those actions not only such as are perform'd privately, or at a distance, but such as are done (as it were) before his Face. For it many times falls out, that when a Battel continues till night, he who has the better, believes he has the worst; and who has lost all, supposes he has the Victory. Which mistakes has put the Generals many times upon pernicious counsels, as it hapned betwixt Brutus and Cassius; for Brutus having defeated the Enemy with his Wing. Cassius suppo∣sing he had been lost, and his whole Body dispers'd, killed himself in despair. In our times, at the Battel of S. Cilicia in Lombardy, Francis King of France coming to an engagement with the Swizzers, the Fight continued till night: a body of the Swizzers remaining en∣tire, and hearing nothing of the defeat and execution of their Comrades, concluded the Victory was theirs, which error was the occasion that they marched not off as they might have done, but kept their ground till the next morning, at which time they were charged again, and overthrown.
The same error had almost ruined the Armies of the Pope and King of Spain, who upon a false alarm of the Victory of the Swizzers, passed the Po, and advanced so far, that ere they were aware they had like to have fallen into the mouths of the victorious French. The like fell out of old in the Camps of the Romans and Aequi; Sempronius the Consul being commanded out with an Army against the enemy, and forcing him to a Battel, it continued till night without any visible advantage on either side. Night coming on, and both Armies sufficiently spent, neither of them retir'd to their Camps, but betook them∣selves to the neighbouring hills, where they believed they should be more safe. The Ro∣man Army divided into two parts, one went with the Consul, and the other with Tempa∣nius the Centurion, by whose courage the Roman Army was preserved that day. The next morning the Consul hearing no more of the enemy, retreated towards Rome; the Aequi with their Army did the same, for both of them though they had been beaten, and marched away without regarding the loss or plunder of their Camps▪ it hapned that Tem∣panius being behind with his squadron, and marching off as the rest, he took certain of the wounded Aequi prisoners, who inform'd him that their Generals were gone out of the field, and had quitted their Camps. Upon enquiry finding it to be true, he entred into the Roman, and secured it, but the enemies Camp was given in prey to the Souldier, after which he returned with Victory to Rome, which Victory consisted only in having the first intelligence of the enemies disorder: from whence it is observable that two Armies en∣gaged, may be each of them in the same distress and despair, and that that Army goes away with the Victory which has first notice of the necessities of the other, and of this I shall give a pregnant example of late days, and at home. In the year 1498 the Florentines had a great Army in the Country of Pisa, and had besieged that City very close. The Vene∣tian having undertaken its protection, and seeing no other way to relieve it; to divert the enemy, and remove the war, they resolved to invade the Territory of the Florentine; to which purpose they raised a strong Army, marched into their Country by the Val di Lamo∣na, possessed themselves of the Town of Marradi, and besieged the Castle of Castiglione which stands above upon an hill. The Florentines upon the alarm resolved to relieve Mar∣adi, and yet not weaken their Army before Pisa, whereupon they raised a new Army both Horse and Foot, and sent them thither under the Command of Iacopo Quarto Appiano (Lord of Piombino) and the Count Rinuccio da Marciano. The Florentine Army being conducted to the hills, the Venetian raised his siege before Castiglione, and retreated into the