HOW BATTLES ARE FOUGHT
A PREFATORY EXPLANATION FOR THE BENEFIT
OF THOSE WHO KNOW NOTHING
ABOUT THE MATTER
When squads or scouting parties meet each other, they either fight in an irregular fashion or they run away.
With a systematic battle it is different.
Before a systematic battle, one army selects some place at which to resist the advance of the other.
The advancing army usually cannot leave the other aside and go on by another route to the capital city which it wants to reach, because, if it did, the army left aside would quickly destroy what is called the advancing army’s “communications.”
To destroy these communications would be to cut off supplies of food, ammunition, and everything else necessary to an army.
The army which takes the defensive selects some point that can be most easily defended,—some point where a river or a creek, or a line of hills, or something else, serves to give it the advantage in a fight.
The enemy must either attack that army there, and drive it out of its position, or it must “flank” it out, if it is itself to go forward.
To “flank” an army out of position is not merely to pass it by, which, as explained above, might be dangerous, but to seize upon some point or some road, the possession of which will compel that army to retire.