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One of the most obvious and advantageous departures from the
so-called laws of war is the action of scattered groups against
men pressed together in a mass. Such action always occurs in wars
that take on a national character. In such actions, instead of
two crowds opposing each other, the men disperse, attack singly,
run away when attacked by stronger forces, but again attack when
opportunity offers. This was done by the guerrillas in Spain,
by the mountain tribes in the Caucasus, and by the Russians in
1812.
People have called this kind of war "guerrilla warfare"
and assume that by so calling it they have explained its meaning.
But such a war does not fit in under any rule and is directly
opposed to a well-known rule of tactics which is accepted as infallible.
That rule says that an attacker should concentrate his forces
in order to be stronger than his opponent at the moment of conflict.
Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly
infringes that rule.
This contradiction arises from the fact that military science
assumes the strength of an army to be identical with its numbers.
Military science says that the more troops the greater the strength.
Les gros bataillons ont toujours raison.*
*Large battalions are always victorious.
For military science to say this is like defining momentum
in mechanics by reference to the mass only: stating that momenta
are equal or unequal to each other simply because the masses involved
are equal or unequal.
Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity.
In military affairs the strength of an army is the product
of its mass and some unknown x.
Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances
of the fact that the size of any army does not coincide with its
strength and that small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely
admits the existence of this unknown factor and tries to discover
it- now in a geometric formation, now in the equipment employed,
now, and most usually, in the genius of the commanders. But the
assignment of these various meanings to the factor does not yield
results which accord with the historic facts.
Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted
to gratify the "heroes") of the efficacy of the directions
issued in wartime by commanders, in order to find this unknown
quantity.
That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to
say, the greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger
felt by all the men composing an army, quite independently of
whether they are, or are not, fighting under the command of a
genius, in two- or three-line formation, with cudgels or with
rifles that repeat thirty times a minute. Men who want to fight
will always put themselves in the most advantageous conditions
for fighting.
The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the
mass gives the resulting force. To define and express the significance
of this unknown factor- the spirit of an army- is a problem for
science.
This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to substitute
for the unknown x itself the conditions under which that force
becomes apparent- such as the commands of the general, the equipment
employed, and so on- mistaking these for the real significance
of the factor, and if we recognize this unknown quantity in its
entirety as being the greater or lesser desire to fight and to
face danger. Only then, expressing known historic facts by equations
and comparing the relative significance of this factor, can we
hope to define the unknown.
Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions,
or divisions, conquer- that is, kill or take captive- all the
others, while themselves losing four, so that on the one side
four and on the other fifteen were lost. Consequently the four
were equal to the fifteen, and therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently
x/y = 15/4. This equation does not give us the value of the unknown
factor but gives us a ratio between two unknowns. And by bringing
variously selected historic units (battles, campaigns, periods
of war) into such equations, a series of numbers could be obtained
in which certain laws should exist and might be discovered.
The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when attacking,
and in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms the truth
that the strength of an army depends on its spirit. To lead men
forward under fire more discipline (obtainable only by movement
in masses) is needed than is needed to resist attacks. But this
rule which leaves out of account the spirit of the army continually
proves incorrect and is in particularly striking contrast to the
facts when some strong rise or fall in the spirit of the troops
occurs, as in all national wars.
The French, retreating in 1812- though according to tactics
they should have separated into detachments to defend themselves-
congregated into a mass because the spirit of the army had so
fallen that only the mass held the army together. The Russians,
on the contrary, ought according to tactics to have attacked in
mass, but in fact they split up into small units, because their
spirit had so risen that separate individuals, without orders,
dealt blows at the French without needing any compulsion to induce
them to expose themselves to hardships and dangers.
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