tactical and technical abilities. The strategy emanated from the kings and emper-
ors advised by their courts. And it was often they who took to the field with their
armies to put the strategy into effect. It was they who provided the linkage
between their strategy and the tactics of their armies in the face of the opponent
in the field. Even when a field commander was appointed, the choice of who to
send was more often than not political rather than military. There were two
reasons for this: the army represented the power of the ruler; he would only give
such power to someone he trusted; and the field commander had to understand
the strategic context of his actions to ensure their linkage. In short, the exercise of
the operational art lay with the source of strategic direction or someone ap-
pointed by that source.
The legions of the Roman Republic and Empire give a good example. Their
professionalism, discipline, and tactical skill gave rise to Flavius Josephus’s descrip-
tion: ‘Their drills were like bloodless battles, and their battles like bloody drills’.
This professionalism, the standard of training, the tactical skill, and the
techniques were in the hands of the centurions. Senior to the centurions and
providing all but the most senior officers were tribunes, the most senior of whom
were political appointments. In command of the legion was a legate, appointed by
the Senate, and only those of the senatorial class were eligible. The legates were
responsible for linking the tactical excellence of their commands to the strategic
purpose of their deployment—the exercise of the operational art.
These developments in man’s progress gave rise to another way of understand-
ing the practice of operational art. The Romans give us an example of this
practice, but it would have existed for at least as long as there were large kingdoms
and empires. Such was the size of the Roman Empire, legates more often than not
conducted campaigns. They were allocated a force, an objective, and a space in
which to achieve it; sometimes they were set a time in which to achieve the
objective. In today’s terms, the commander conducted a campaign in a theatre of
operations to achieve an objective that maintained or altered the strategic situa-
tion to the advantage of the Empire as a whole. But his operational theatre was
unique by virtue of its geography, the people in it, the local politics, and his
objective. What was appropriate and successful in Palestine was not necessarily
applicable in Britain. Just as he would have approved the adaptation of basic
tactics and organization of forces by his subordinate leaders so as to defeat the
particular enemy. So the particular circumstances of his theatre would have
dictated a unique expression of the operational art, the campaign, to link those
tactical acts to the achievement of the strategic goal.
It was found that conducting a campaign, particularly when distant from the
strategic source, required skills that were not just those of the tactician. Nowa-
days, for example, we call these administrative, engineering, supply, and logistical
skills. One might also add intelligence as a separate discipline. Frequently, alli-
ances were made with local forces, requiring diplomatic and economic skills.
The expression of the operational art was more often than not in terms of the
excellence of these skills rather than in flair and imagination. What won the
campaigns were the high standards of design, put into effect efficiently and with
228 The Evolution of Operational Art