ural channel. Under these two
conditions, battles will always preserve this character.

This general idea of the modern battle will be useful to us in the
sequel in more places than one, if we want to estimate the value of the
particular co-efficients of strength, country, &c. &c. It is only for
general, great, and decisive combats, and such as come near to them that
this description stands good; inferior ones have changed their character
also in the same direction but less than great ones. The proof of this
belongs to tactics; we shall, however, have an opportunity hereafter of
making this subject plainer by giving a few particulars.

CHAPTER III. THE COMBAT IN GENERAL

THE Combat is the real warlike activity, everything else is only its
auxiliary; let us therefore take an attentive look at its nature.

Combat means fighting, and in this the destruction or conquest of the
enemy is the object, and the enemy, in the particular combat, is the
armed force which stands opposed to us.

This is the simple idea; we shall return to it, but before we can do
that we must insert a series of others.

If we suppose the State and its military force as a unit, then the most
natural idea is to imagine the War also as one great combat, and in the
simple relations of savage nations it is also not much otherwise. But
our Wars are made up of a number of great and small simultaneous or
consecutive combats, and this severance of the activity into so many
separate actions is owing to the great multiplicity of the relations out
of which War arises with us.

In point of fact, the ultimate object of our Wars, the political one, is
not always quite a simple one; and even were it so, still the action is
bound up with such a number of conditions and considerations to be taken
into account, that the object can no longer be attained by one single
great act but only through a number of greater or smaller acts which are
bound up into a whole; each of these separate acts is therefore a part
of a whole, and has consequently a special object by which it is bound
to this whole.

We have already said that every strategic act can be referred to the
idea of a combat, because it is an employment of the military force,
and at the root of that there always lies the idea of fighting. We may
therefore reduce every military activity in the province of Strategy
to the unit of single combats, and occupy ourselves with the object
of these only; we shall g