The Art of War (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER HI. STRATEGY. DEFINITION OF STRATEGY AND THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF WAR. The art of war, independently of its political and moral relations, consists of five principal parts, viz.: Strategy, Grand Tactics, Logistics, Tactics of the different arms, and the Art of the Engineer. We will treat of the first three branches, and begin by defining them. In order to do this, we will follow the order of procedure of a general when war is first declared, who commences with the points of the highest importance, as a plan of campaign, and afterward descends to the necessary details. Tactics, on the contrary, begins with details, and ascends to combinations and generalization necessary for the formation and handling of a great army. We will suppose an army taking the field: the first care of its commander should be to agree with the head of the state upon the character of the war: then he must carefully study the theater of war, and select the most suitable base of operations, taking into consideration the frontiers of the state and those of its allies. The selection of this base and the proposed aim will determine the zone of operations. The general will take a first objective point: he will select the line of operations leading to this point, either as a temporary or permanent line, giving it the most advantageous direction; namely, that which promises the greatest number of favorable opportunities with the least danger. An army marching on this line of operations will have a front of operations and a strategic front. The temporary positions which the corps d'armee will occupyupon this front of operations, or upon the line of defense, will be strategic positions. When near its first objective point, and when it begins to meet resistance, the army will either a...