[Måns]

In theory your reasoning sounds correct, I must admit and I have nothing to say about that caution could be as dangerous as rashness. Though one can apply this into most situations, one has to look at each event specificly. An example of good "rashness" is Alexander the Great at Granicos, he dared to take a great risk and won the battle. Another man that always gambled was Adolf Hitler, the IMO "worst" human being ever, he was always gambling in the thirties, breaking the Versailles treaty and invading Czechoslovakia, invading France and, the last and most fatal great gamble, invading the Soviet Union. That's an example of bad risk taking. The last raids in Ithilen is of neither type, Hitler could ahev gained very much from destroying the Red army and the Soviet union, and Alexander won much by his fast assault across the river but waht could Faramir have gained? He destroyed a few regiments of Haradrim, which is all he could have counted on doing. This is not worth the risk he took and I think that many people's instinctive reaction against the very word caution is because of the chances people have ahd through history without taking them, for example Gallipoli and it's almost identical replica, the western allied futile landing to the north of Rome in Round No. 2 in the European struggle for power. One ahs got to remember that the Soviet Union won that war not through it's daring attacks like the 1942 spring offensive by Timoshenko or pressing into the Ukraine after Stalingrad, both ended in major defeats, they were too risky. They won the second world war for the rest of us by carefully planned attacks like operation Uranus agaisnt the Sixth army were Zhukow refused to go on an offensive with the named German army still in Stalingrad and Hoth's Panzers in the Caucasus, he stubbornly refused even though what looked like fantastic chances appeared. In the end he was right and the German army group B was oblitterated and A was terribly mauled. He was a genious and he was cautious. The perfect commander si a mix between the two abilities, can you imagine what risk he took when starving the defenders of Stalingrad of troops and ammunition, holding back all his troops for the counter offensive in the winter of 1941? He risked total collapse because he knew that he could achieve something that was worth it, which Faramir could not.

Maybe these examples of warfare are not very medieval, but the basis is still the same, throughout all the history of warfare.

Indeed, a good commander should be lucky,but what is greater is having the ability when it is time to be rash and not.

Måns

[ July 15, 2003: Message edited by: Måns ]