One of the most tactile and profitable digressions from the so-called rules of war is the action of disparate people against people squeezing in a pile. This kind of action is always manifested in the war, which takes a popular character. These actions consist in the fact that, instead of becoming a crowd against the crowd, people disperse, attack alone and immediately run away, when they are attacked by large forces, and then again attack when the case is presented. This was done by the guards in Spain; it was done by mountaineers in the Caucasus; it was done by Russians in 1812.
The war of this kind was called guerrilla war and it was believed that, having called it so, its meaning was explained. Meanwhile, this kind of war not only does not fit under any rules, but is directly opposite to the known and recognized for the infallible tactical rule. This rule says that the attacker must concentrate his troops in order to be stronger than the enemy at the time of battle.
The guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) is directly opposed to this rule.
The contradiction is that military science takes on the strength of the troops in the same way as their numerical strength. Military science says that the more troops, the more power. Les gros bataillons ont toujours raison 1.
To put it this way, military science is similar to the mechanics that, based on the consideration of forces only in relation to their masses, would say that forces are equal or not equal between themselves because they are equal or not equal in mass.
Strength (the amount of movement) is the product of mass by speed.
In military affairs, the force of an army is also a product of mass on something like this, on some unknown x.
Military science, seeing in history countless examples of the fact that the mass of troops does not coincide with the force, that small units win large, vaguely recognizes the existence of this unknown multiplier and tries to find it in the geometric structure, in armaments, and - most common - in the genius of the commanders. But the substitution of all these values of the multiplier does not bring results that agree with the historical facts.
And meanwhile, one has only to get away from the established, to the benefit of the heroes, false view of the reality of the orders of the highest authorities during the war in order to find this famous x.
X this is the spirit of the army, that is, a greater or lesser desire to fight and expose oneself to the dangers of all the people making up the army, regardless of whether people fight under the command of geniuses or not geniuses, in three or two lines, clubs or guns, shooting thirty times a minute. People with the greatest desire to fight will always put themselves in the most advantageous conditions for a fight.
The spirit of the army - there is a multiplier by mass, giving a product of strength. To determine and express the meaning of the spirit of the army, this unknown multiplier, is the task of science.
This task is possible only when we stop arbitrarily substituting instead of the value of the unknown X those conditions under which the force is manifested, somehow: the orders of the commander, armament, etc., taking them for the value of the multiplier, and recognize this unknown in its entirety, that is, as a greater or lesser desire to fight and endanger themselves. Then only by expressing the known historical facts with equations can one hope for the definition of the most unknown from the comparison of the relative significance of this unknown.
Ten men, battalions or divisions, fighting with fifteen men, battalions or divisions, defeated fifteen, that is, killed and taken prisoner of all without residue and lost four themselves; therefore, were destroyed on the one hand four, on the other hand fifteen. Hence, the four were fifteen, and hence four were fifteen, and hence four were fifteen. Hence, x:u =15:4. This equation does not give a value to the unknown, but it gives a relationship between the two unknowns. And from summing up the historical equations of different historical units (battles, campaigns, periods of war) we will get a series of numbers, in which the laws must exist and can be discovered.
The tactical rule that one should act in masses on the offensive and in isolation on the retreat, unconsciously confirms only the truth that the strength of the army depends on its spirit. In order to lead people under the nuclei, you need more discipline, achieved only by movement in the masses, than in order to fight off the attackers. But the rule is that if the spirit of the army is overlooked, it is constantly wrong and especially strikingly contrary to reality where there is a strong rise or fall in the spirit of the army - in all popular wars.
The French, retreating in 1812, although they should have defended themselves separately, by tactics, pressed in a pile, because the spirit of the army has fallen so that only the masses hold the army together. The Russians, on the other hand, would have to attack the masses by tactics, but in fact they are being crushed, because the spirit is raised so that individuals are beaten without orders from the French and do not need coercion in order to subject themselves to labor and danger.