It is not necessary to introduce special examples from experience in order to prove that this is the way in which the strategic preponderance exhausts itself in the strategic attack; it is rather the multitude of instances which has forced us to investigate the causes of it. It is only since the appearance of Buonaparte that we have known campaigns between civilized nations, in which the preponderance has led, without interruption, to the fall of the enemy; before his time, every campaign ended with the victorious army seeking to win a point where it could simply maintain itself in a state of equilibrium. At this point, the movement of victory stopped, even if a retreat did not become necessary. Now, this culminating point of victory will also appear in the future, in all wars in which the overthrow of the enemy is not the military object of the war; and the generality of wars will still be of this kind. The natural aim of all single plans of campaigns is the point at which the offensive changes into the defensive.
But now, to overstep this point, is more than simply a useless expenditure of power, yielding no further result, it is a destructive step which causes reaction; and this re-action is, according to all general experience, productive of most disproportionate effects. This last fact is so common, and appears so natural and easy to understand that we need not enter circumstantially into the causes. Want of organisation in the conquered land, and the very opposite effect which a serious loss instead of the looked-for fresh victory makes on the feelings, are the chief causes in every case. The moral forces, courage on the one side rising often to audacity, and extreme depression on the other, now begin generally their active play. The losses on the retreat are increased thereby, and the hitherto successful party now generally thanks providence if he can escape with only the surrender of all his gains, without losing some of his own territory.
We must now clear up an apparent contradiction.