Sketch 21.
he would be outflanked and beaten; or, in the alternative, Black might mass men against White's centre and pierce it, for Black is vastly superior to White in numbers. White, therefore, must adopt some special disposition in order to avoid immediate defeat.
Of such special dispositions one among many is the French Open Strategic Square.
This disposition is as follows:—
White arranges his twelve units into four quarters of three each, and places one quarter at each corner of a square thus:—
Sketch 22.
We will give them titles, and call them A, B, C, and D.
If, as is most generally the case in a defensive campaign at its opening, White cannot be certain from which exact direction the main blow is coming, he may yet know that it is coming from some one general direction, from one sector of the compass at least, and he arranges his square to face towards that sector.
For instance, in the above diagram, he may not know whether the blow is coming from the precise direction 1, or 2, or 3, but he knows that it is coming somewhere within the sector XY.