Briggs: Russia did not play by the book. The success of guerrilla warfare.
Pevear and Volokhonsky: Thoughts on Partisan warfare.
Translation:
II.
By one of the most tactile and profitable deviations from the so called rules of war is the action of scattered people against people huddled in lots. Such a family of action always manifests in war hosted in a folk character. This action takes place in that, instead of kneeling crowd against crowd, people go away and apart, attacking once and immediately again running, when they are attacked by large forces, but then again attacking, when there is a present case. This was done by the guerillas in Spain; this was done by the mountaineers in the Caucasus; this was done by the Russians in the 1812th year.
War of such a family is called partisan and it is imposed that it is called so, explaining its matters. Between that, such a family of war not only does not approach under rules, but all the opposite famously and is recognized for being infallible, and tactically correct. This rule speaks that the attacking should concentrate their troops so that to be in a moment’s battle stronger than the adversary.
Partisan war (always successful as shows history) is all the opposite to this being correct.
This contradiction is going on from how military science accepts the force of troops identical with their number. Military science speaks that the more the troops, by that the more the forces. Large combat forces always overcome.968
This said, military science is similar to those mechanics, which, founded in considering moving bodies only by the relation to their mass, would say that their forces wounds or does not wound between itself because of how their masses wounds or is not wound.
Power (the number of movements) is the composition of the masses in speed.
In the military case the power of the troops is also the composition of the masses in some other, in some unknown х.
Military science, seeing in history a countless number of examples of how the mass of troops does not match with forces, that a small detachment conquers a large one, vaguely recognizes the existence of this unknown multiplier and try to find it in that geometric build, in the arms, then, most ordinarily, — in the genius of generals. Yet in the substitution of all these values the multiplier does not deliver results agreeing with the historical facts.
But between that it is worth only to renounce from the established, in pleasing a hero, false sight to the reality of the orders of higher rulers in the time of war and we find this unknown х.
This X is the spirit of the troops, i.e. more or less the wish to fight and expose oneself to the dangers of all people; the component of the army, completely against whether people fight under the commander of a force of genius or not genius, in three or in two lines, cudgels or guns, shooting 30 times in a moment. The people, having the greatest wish to fight, always place themselves in beneficial conditions for fights.
The spirit of the troops — is the multiplier in the mass, giving the composition of forces. To determine and express the matters of the spirit of the troops, this is the unknown multiplier that is the task of science.
This task is possible only when we stop arbitrarily substituting, instead of the meanings of only the unknown X, those conditions in which manifests itself power, as: the orders of the commander, the armament and etc., taking them for the matters of the multiplier, but know this is unknown throughout its wholeness, i.e. how more or less the wish to fight and expose oneself to dangers. Only then, expressed in the equations of famous historical facts, can from the comparisons of the relative meanings of this unknown, one hope to the definition of the itself unknown.
Nine people, battalions or divisions, fighting with fifteen people, battalions or divisions, conquered fifteen, i.e. killed and took away in captivity all without the remainder and themselves have lost four; it has become that with one party destroyed four, with another parties fifteen. Therefore, four were the wounds of the fifteen, and therefore, 4x = 15y. Therefore хy: = 15: 4. This equation does not give meanings to the unknown, but it gives the attitude between two unknowns. And from the summing up of such equations the historically differently taken units (battles, campaigns, periods of wars) receive ranks of numbers which must exist and may be open to laws.
The tactical rule about how it is needed to act in masses in an offensive and scatter in a retreat, unconsciously confirms only that truth that the power of the troops depends on its spirit. So that to lead people under shots is needed more discipline, achievable only in the movement of masses, than so to struggle from hitters. Yet this rule, which misses the view of the spirit of the troops, incessantly turns out to be incorrect and in particular amazingly contradicts reality where there is a strong lifting or decline in the spirit of troops — in all people's wars.
The French, stepping back in the 1812th year, although it would defend separately by tactics, shrugged in a lot because of how the spirit of the troops fell so that only a mass was holding back the army together. The Russians, the opposite, by tactics would have been an assailing mass, in the same case fragmented because of how the spirit lifted so that the separate faces beat without orders the French and did not need force so that to expose themselves works and dangers.
968 Les gros bataillons ont toujours raison. (The large battalions are always right.)
Locations: Russian
Mentioned: Spain, Caucasus, French
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: In which Tolstoy endorses guerrilla warfare. It is the anti-science way to fight a war and thus, it is the most effective. Tolstoy uses algebraic examples to show that we do not know and it is impossible to predict the unknown x that determines the value of an army.
Characters (characters who do not appear, but are mentioned are placed in italics. First appearances are in Bold. First mentions are underlined. Final appearance denoted by *):
(the Guerillas in Spain, the mountaineers in the Caucasus, and the Russians in 1812. Armies are spoken about in general and as theoretical concepts, especially the French and Russian ones.)
Abridged Versions: No break in Bell.
Gibian: end of chapter 1.
Fuller: Entire chapter is cut.
Komroff: Entire chapter is cut.
Kropotkin: Start of Part Fourteenth (1812, as is Part Thirteenth): "The Russian winter is on. The grande armee, retreating, is attacked by Russia's armies and harassed by guerrillas. In France the morale is poor, internal forces opposing Napoleon are strengthened. Under these circumstances the only hope is to get the army out of Russia intact." A little bit of the discussion of military science's view on things is removed, as well as some of the discussing about "the equation". No break.
Simmons: only the section about the spirit of the army remains. End of chapter 1.
Additional Notes: "Tolstoy fought against the Caucasian mountain tribes during his army service of 1851-3."
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