armies to take up camps in sight of each other, when they had no other object but that of mutually holding each other in check, consequently for a longer period. How often Frederick the Great stood for weeks so near to the Austrians, that the two might have exchanged cannon shots with each other.
But these practices, certainly more favourable to night attacks, have been discontinued in later days; and armies being now no longer in regard to subsistence and requirements for encampment, such independent bodies complete in themselves, find it necessary to keep usually a day’s march between themselves and the enemy. If we now keep in view especially the night attack of an army, it follows that sufficient motives for it can seldom occur, and that they fall under one or other of the following classes.
- An unusual degree of carelessness or audacity which very rarely occurs, and when it does is compensated for by a great superiority in moral force.
- A panic in the enemy’s army, or generally such a degree of superiority in moral force on our side, that this is sufficient to supply the place of guidance in action.
- Cutting through an enemy’s army of superior force, which keeps us enveloped, because in this all depends on surprise, and the object of merely making a passage by force, allows a much greater concentration of forces.
- Finally, in desperate cases, when our forces have such a disproportion to the enemy’s, that we see no possibility of success, except through extraordinary daring.
But in all these cases there is still the condition that the enemy’s army is under our eyes, and protected by no advance-guard.