bat. If
tactics has fought the battle, if the result is over, let it be victory
or defeat, Strategy makes such use of it as can be made in accordance
with the great object of the War. This object is naturally often a very
distant one, seldom does it lie quite close at hand. A series of other
objects subordinate themselves to it as means. These objects, which
are at the same time means to a higher purpose, may be practically of
various kinds; even the ultimate aim of the whole War may be a different
one in every case. We shall make ourselves acquainted with these things
according as we come to know the separate objects which they come, in
contact with; and it is not our intention here to embrace the whole
subject by a complete enumeration of them, even if that were possible.
We therefore let the employment of the battle stand over for the
present.

Even those things through which Strategy has an influence on the issue
of the combat, inasmuch as it establishes the same, to a certain extent
decrees them, are not so simple that they can be embraced in one single
view. For as Strategy appoints time, place and force, it can do so in
practice in many ways, each of which influences in a different manner
the result of the combat as well as its consequences. Therefore we shall
only get acquainted with this also by degrees, that is, through the
subjects which more closely determine the application.

If we strip the combat of all modifications which it may undergo
according to its immediate purpose and the circumstances from which it
proceeds, lastly if we set aside the valour of the troops, because that
is a given quantity, then there remains only the bare conception of the
combat, that is a combat without form, in which we distinguish nothing
but the number of the combatants.

This number will therefore determine victory. Now from the number
of things above deducted to get to this point, it is shown that the
superiority in numbers in a battle is only one of the factors
employed to produce victory that therefore so far from having with the
superiority in number obtained all, or even only the principal thing, we
have perhaps got very little by it, according as the other circumstances
which co-operate happen to vary.

But this superiority has degrees, it may be imagined as twofold,
threefold or fourfold, and every one sees, that by increasing in this
way, it must (at last) overpower everything else.

In such an aspect we grant