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. Instead of two crowds opposing each other, the men disperse, attack singly, run away when stronger forces appear, and attack again 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 guerrilla warfare and assume that by so naming it they have explained its meaning. But such a war does not fit under any rule and is directly opposed to a well-known tactic accepted as infallible: 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.
The contradiction arises because military science assumes the strength of an army to be identical with its numbers. Les gros bataillons ont toujours raison. To say this is like defining momentum in mechanics by mass alone. Momentum 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. Science, seeing innumerable instances of small detachments defeating larger ones, obscurely admits the factor and tries to find it now in geometric formation, now in equipment, now, most usually, in the genius of commanders. Those substitutions do not accord with the facts. Abandon the false view, adopted to gratify heroes, of the efficacy of commanders' directions, and the unknown quantity appears: the spirit of the army, the greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the men composing it, independently of whether they fight under 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.
To define that factor is a problem for science, solvable only if we cease substituting the general's commands or the equipment for the desire itself, and if we recognise the unknown in its entirety as the wish to fight. Then historic units can be compared as equations. Ten men conquer fifteen and lose four, so 4x equals 15y. The equation does not give the value of x, but a ratio between unknowns. A series of such numbers might reveal laws. The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when attacking, and in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms that strength depends on spirit: to lead men forward under fire more discipline is needed than to resist. The rule leaves spirit out and continually proves incorrect when spirit rises or falls, as in all national wars. The French retreating in 1812, though tactics said they should separate, congregated into a mass because only the mass held them together. The Russians, who ought according to tactics to have attacked in mass, split into small units, because their spirit had so risen that separate individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the French without needing compulsion to face hardship and danger.
Coming Up in Chapter 301
The so-called partisan war begins when the French enter Smolensk. Before the government recognises it, Cossacks and peasants kill stragglers, marauders, and foragers as dogs worry a stray mad dog. Denis Davydov takes the first step towards regularising this method of warfare.
