- The original division of the force which makes such a method of action necessary, unless we incur a great loss of time.
- A great moral and physical superiority, which justifies the adoption of a decisive method.
- The want of impulsive force in the enemy as soon as he has arrived at the culminating point of his career.
When Frederick the Great invaded Bohemia, 1757, on converging lines, he had not in view to combine an attack in front with one on the strategic rear, at all events, this was by no means his principal object, as we shall more fully explain elsewhere, but in any case it is evident that there never could have been any question of a concentration of forces in Silesia or Saxony before the invasion, as he would thereby have sacrificed all the advantages of a surprise.
When the allies formed their plan for the second part of the campaign of 1813, looking to their great superiority in numbers, they might very well at that time entertain the idea of attacking Buonaparte’s right on the Elbe with their main force, and of thus shifting the theatre of war from the Oder to the Elbe. Their ill-success at Dresden is to be ascribed not to this general plan but to their faulty dispositions both strategic and tactical. They could have concentrated 220,000 men at Dresden against Buonaparte’s 130,000, a proportion of numbers eminently favourable (at Leipsic, at least, the proportion was as 285 : 157). It is true that Buonaparte had distributed his forces too evenly for the particular system of a defence upon one line (in Silesia 70,000 against 90,000, in the Mark—Brandenburg—70,000 against 110,000), but at all events it would have been difficult for him, without completely abandoning Silesia, to assemble on the Elbe a force which could have contended with the principal army of the allies in a decisive battle. The allies could also have easily called up the army of Wrede to the Maine, and employed it to try to cut Buonaparte off from the road to Mayence.