And now, since Italy and Austria have locked horns above the clouds, among the glaciers and snow-faced slopes of the Alps, even the old text-books on mountain warfare have lost their significance. In the Trentino and along the Isonzo we see the consummation of a new style of mountain fighting, which grew out of the old methods in the struggle for the Carpathian passes during the first winter and spring of the war.
In the old days, during a campaign in a mountain region, most of the battles were fought on the level—in the literal, not the colloquial sense of the word. There was a deal of marching and scouting among crags and precipices, but all with the object of obtaining the best position in an open valley or upland plain where the real fighting must take place. Now the smooth floors of the valleys are comparatively deserted, while whole armies are spread out over great peaks and dizzy snow-fields thousands of feet above sea-level, chopping trenches in the ice and sparring for some vantage-point on a crag that in peace times might tax the strength and skill of the amateur mountain-climber.
Bourcet's "Principles of Mountain Warfare."
Some time between 1764 and 1770, Pierre de Bourcet wrote a treatise entitled "The Principles of Mountain Warfare." This may seem to be going a long way back, but Bourcet's volume and that of the young Comte de Guilbert on general tactics have historical interest and importance because, according to Spenser Wilkinson, they show where some of Napoleon's strategic "miracles" were born. Bourcet's observations are as vital as if they had been written in 1910, but, as will be seen, many of them are somewhat musty in 1916.
Passes and defiles once the strong positions.
Bourcet, without the slightest idea of a battle-line extending from frontier to sea, lays down as the first principle of mountain warfare that when the enemy holds a strong position, the assailant should force him to leave it by turning it. These strong positions in the mountains were, until this war, the passes and defiles.
"These contracted places," he explains, "as they generally constitute the principal objects of the defense, must compel the general who is taking the offensive to seek every possible means of turning them, or of misleading the enemy by diversions which will weaken him and facilitate access to them.
"Suppose, for example, that the general on the defensive should be entrenched at all points surrounding his position in such a way as to be able to resist any direct attack that might be attempted against him, it would be necessary to attempt to turn him by some more distant point, choosing positions that would facilitate the scheme, and which, by suggesting some different object, could not raise the suspicion that the troops there collected were destined for the purpose really in view.
Unlike modern warfare.
"It often happens in the mountains that the only passages favorable to our plans are interrupted by narrow defiles. In such cases we must avoid letting the enemy know our real purpose, and must undertake diversions, dividing our forces into small bodies. This method, which would be dangerous in any other sort of country, is indispensable in the mountains, and is the whole science of this kind of warfare, provided that the general who uses it always has the means to reconcentrate his forces when necessary."