The Reality of War: A Companion to Clausewitz

by Stewart Lygon Murray

The First Pitched Battle

"The more a general takes the field in the true spirit of war, as well as of every other contest, that he must and will conquer, the more will he strive to throw every weight into the scale in the first battle, and hope and strive to win everything by it. Napoleon hardly ever entered upon a war without thinking of conquering his enemy at once in the first battle."[54]

"At the very outset of war we must direct all our efforts to gain the first battle, because an unfavourable issue is always a disadvantage to which no one would willingly expose himself, and also because the first decision, though not the only one, still will have the more influence on subsequent events the greater it is in itself."[55]

"The law of the simultaneous use of the forces in strategy lets the principal result (which need not be the final one) take place almost always at the commencement of the great act."[55] A great victory thus won at the outset will upset all the enemy's plan of campaign and allow us to carry out our own. The first pitched battle is, therefore, the crisis of the rival strategies, and towards its favourable decision all our preparations, all our forces, and all our energies should be directed. This is a point that civilians seem to find hard to grasp. Witness all our history, with inadequate forces at the beginning of every war, as even in the latest of our wars​—​that in South Africa. It is a point which our statesmen should very seriously consider.

The difficulty of concentrating superior numbers for the first battle is that the enemy will be, or should be, of the same opinion, and will be making equal efforts to win the first battle. So, then, the crisis will be all the more acute, the battle greater, and the result greater.

"We would not avoid showing at once that the bloody solution of the crisis, the effort for the destruction of the enemy's main force, is the first-born son of war."[56]

Till this is done, the first great victory gained, strategy should think of nothing else.

Then, and only then, a further combination in accordance with the altered circumstances to win the next.

"For we maintain that, with few exceptions, the victory at the decisive point will carry with it the decision on all minor points"[57] over the whole theatre of war. Therefore nothing else matters for long, and to victory in the first great battle "everything else must be sacrificed." For concentration can only be obtained by sacrifice.