I’m currently reading The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution, by Alex Storozynski. Aside from learning quite a bit about an unhearlded hero of the American Revolution, there is a bit of deep wisdom snuck into a letter Kosciuszko wrote to Horacio Gates regarding General Louis Lebeque Duportail, chief engineer in the American forces. What both Kosciuszko and the American forces did not know was that Duportail was an untested engineer who had graduated from the French engineering academy very shortly before coming to America, and thus had no real military experience, instead going solely off of his university education. Kosciuszko, however, guessed this, as his letter to Gates notes: “I discover in Conversation that this Gentlemen … [had little experience] because he believe that it is the same thing upon the paper as upon the Ground. We must always have the works according to the Ground and Circumstance but not as the paper is level and make the works accordingly” (Storozynski, 70).
In other words, abstract notions and concrete implementations must necessarily differ, as the latter depend upon the particular circumstances of that implementation. The French engineers (Louis de la Radiere, in particular) wanted to build a vast Vauban-style fortress in New York, whereas the better idea was to use the natural land formation to create smaller fortresses right at a choke point into the Hudson. The American revolutionaries had an idea of this, but the French did not.
