Infinite Wisdom

"To speak of war means not only two armies but two nations coming face to face and fighting against one another with all their being and all their resources, involving both material and spiritual resources."

La Triviata

• During the seventeenth century, the French Army rose from a peacetime strength of 10,000-20,000 troops, with wartime peaks of 50,000-80,000, to a peace footing of 130,000-150,000 and wartime strengths of as much as 400,000.
• Among proposals entertained for the employment of American forces against the Central Powers in 1917 were plans to commit strong forces to operations in the Middle East or the Balkans, because they could be transported via the Pacific, thus avoiding the German submarine threat in the Atlantic.
• Tiberius Julius Alexander, a Jewish nobleman from Egypt, who had long served in the Roman Army, was for a time the chief-of-staff to the future Emperor Titus during the Great Jewish Rebellion (A.D. 66-70).
• Counting only deaths in “stand up” battles, during the Vietnam War an average of five Viet Cong troops were killed for every American serviceman lost, but the overall death rate, including casualties from mines, booby traps, ambushes, and hit-and-run attacks was about 1.5 VC for every American slain.
• Prince Frederick Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the Austrian commander during the campaign that expelled the French from the Netherlands in 1793-1794, was so corrupt that he was once described as having "not a finger, but a fist, in the pie."
•  Found trapping birds in a forest by a delegation of notables seeking to inform him that the late King Conrad of the Germans had designated him heir to the throne, Heinrich I (r. 919-936) has forever after been known as “Heinrich der Vogler – Henry the Fowler.”
• In the Summer of 1943, although allied with Germany, the Government of Finland quietly informed the United States that if American forces "after landing in Norway, extended their operations into Finland," they would not be opposed by Finnish troops.
•  During Napoleon's first six years in power, from 1799 to 1805, some 250,000 men managed to evade draft. 

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