For soldiers, from ordinary soldiers to commanders, courage is the most precious character, it is like real steel, making weapons emit sharp light.
We must also admit that the position of courage in war is extraordinary. Therefore, in wars, not only must time, space, and quantity be considered, but also the role of courage must be considered. When one party's courage exceeds the other, his courage will play a unique role because of the cowardice of the other party. So guts is a real creative force. In philosophy, it is easy to prove this point. Whenever a courageous person meets a timid and cowardly person, he must be able to win. The reason is that cowardice often deprives a person of composure. Unless you encounter a thoughtful and cautious person, guts will be at a disadvantage, because prudence has every reason to be regarded as another kind of guts, which can be compared with guts. However, this phenomenon is often rare. Because the vast majority of people who are cautious are also cowardly people.
In the army, cultivating courage will not hinder the exertion of other forces, because the reason why the army must obey a higher will, and the will of a higher level is completely transferred, the root is that it is placed in the battle formation and the rules of service Within constraints. Here, guts are like compressing a spring to be sent.
The higher the position of the commander, the more it is necessary to measure the guts through intelligence and deliberate strategies, so that the guts will not fall into the situation of aimless and blind emotional impulse, because the higher the status, the self is involved. The fewer issues of sacrifice, the more issues that involve the survival of other people, and even the whole life and death. If it is said that the control of soldiers is the second nature of the rules of duty, then the commander must be controlled by his thoughtfulness and self-control. Commanders with guts are often prone to errors in operations. However, this kind of error is excusable, so it should be treated differently from other errors. Relatively speaking, those who dare to show courage are still good; it is like whether the soil is fertile can be proved by the luxuriant weeds. Even if it is purposeless courage, like bravery, it cannot be underestimated. In essence, it is the same emotional force as courage, but it lacks the control and control of intelligence. When will guts become a hazard? Only when the courage violates the principle and ignores the clear will of the superior, can it be regarded as a kind of harm. However, we do not regard it as a hazard because of courage itself. The fundamental reason lies in the refusal to obey, because obedience is paramount in war.
In the war, when the commanders agree, there are many more cases of failure due to caution than failure due to boldness. Readers will certainly agree with our view.
It stands to reason that courage often stems from a reasonable purpose, so it will weaken the value of courage itself, but in fact the opposite is true.
When there is a clear strategy for combat, or when intelligence takes the upper hand, all the volatilization of passion will lose its original power. Therefore, the higher the position of the commander, the smaller the courage will become, because although the intelligence and reason have not been improved due to the rise of the position, they will still be affected by external factors, such as objective things, situations, and frequent thoughts. Under heavy pressure, the less their personal opinions are, the heavier the pressure will be. There is a French proverb: "You shine when you are in second place, and you will be overshadowed when you rise to the first place." In war, the life experience revealed by this sentence is also applicable. This is the basic reason. In history, those commanders who were considered inaction and indecision were almost invariably known for their bravery and decisiveness in their lower positions.
Here we must point out that necessity induces bold action. The degree of necessity varies. If it is a very urgent necessity, the party concerned weighs the pros and cons and takes risks, then only his decisiveness is worthy of our praise, and decisiveness has its own value. In order to show the ability of the rider, the young man jumped over the deep ditch. That can be called courage. If he is chased by a group of Turkish soldiers and jumped over the deep ditch, it is just decisive. On the contrary, the necessity of action is not urgent, so there will be many situations that must be considered, and the role of courage will not be affected by necessity. In 1756, Frederick the Great knew that war was unavoidable, and the only way to avoid extinction was to preemptively strike, so the necessity prompted him to start war, but at the same time he had the courage, because only he could do so boldly in such an environment. The decision is unimaginable for ordinary people.
Although only the commander-in-chief or the top commander considers strategic issues, the courage of personnel at all levels is as important as military ethics in terms of strategy. If an army comes from a brave nation and at the same time pays attention to cultivating a courageous spirit, what they can do is difficult for an army that lacks military ethics. Therefore, we are involved in the issue of the courage of the army. We originally wanted to talk about the courage of the commander, but now we have nothing to say, because we have tried our best to clarify the characteristics of courage.
The higher the position of the commander, the more intelligence, understanding, and knowledge play a leading role in his activities, and the emotional power of courage becomes less important. Therefore, it is rare to see those who hold the highest positions and have the courage. Because of this, the courage is more commendable in these people. The hallmark of a hero is the courage to guide with extraordinary intelligence. Of course, what this courage shows is not to violate the nature and laws of things, but to make accurate judgments of genius, that is, to make quick and natural decisions when making decisions. High affirmation and strong support. The more the intelligence and knowledge are inspired by the courage, the greater the role it can play, the more it can broaden its horizons, and make the conclusion more correct. However, please remember that the greater the purpose, the greater the danger. An ordinary person, let's leave aside the timid and indecisive, without danger and without responsibility, can draw correct conclusions by thinking about certain things. However, when danger and responsibility came from all directions, he could not calmly observe the problem in a comprehensive manner. The most troublesome thing was that he would lose the ability to make decisions, because no one could help in this regard.
Therefore, we can draw the conclusion that only by combining the courage and ability of a person can one be an outstanding commander; that is to say, the emotional power of courage is a prerequisite for becoming an outstanding commander. Perhaps, as a person’s position is promoted, this emotional power formed through long-term practice will decrease, but there are always some people who will preserve this emotional power intact, so there will be greater The spirit of adventurous pursuit will be higher. Whether this spiritual power comes from necessity or honor, and whether it is Frederick's actions or Alexander's actions, it is almost the same from a critical examination. If Alexander's actions were to stimulate people's imagination because of boldness, then Frederick's actions were more due to inherent necessity and thus more satisfying people's reason.
Next we talk about bold spirit.
If this nation has a bold spirit, then the army of this nation must also have a bold spirit; if an army does not have a bold spirit, if there can be a courageous commander, under his command, through more This bold spirit can be cultivated in the second victory of the war.
In today's society, to cultivate the bold spirit of a nation, it is only through war, and it must be a war that relies on courage. Only in this way can the nation overcome its cowardice and covetous tendencies of ease and prosper forever.
For a nation to become self-reliant on the international political arena, it must continuously promote its nationality and war training.
Perseverance
Perhaps the reader will be surprised that we did not mention some questions about angles and lines here. What we see here are ordinary people we meet on the street every day, not citizens of the scientific world; nevertheless, we Still do not intend to add any mathematical element beyond the scope of the research topic.
Many things that appear in the war are very different from people's imagination, and they can also make a big difference when viewed from a distance or from a close distance. At this point, nothing else is as complicated as it is. When the architect watched the building gradually built according to his design drawings, his mentality was calm; compared with the architect, although the doctor will encounter more unexpected results or occasional findings, he knows himself very well. The role and usage of the means used. However, in a war, the situation is quite different. There are often various emergencies that impact the commander-in-chief, such as the true or false of intelligence, errors caused by fear, carelessness, and impatience, and some right or wrong. Opinions, malice, true and false sense of responsibility, disobedience caused by laziness or fatigue, and some unexpected incidents, etc. All in all, he is in a variety of feelings, most of which are worrying except for a few that are encouraging. Long-term experience in warfare has given him the ability to quickly make judgments on specific phenomena and come up with countermeasures. Courageous disposition and tenacious will will make him resist these feelings with strong perseverance. Once you make a concession, your previous efforts will be lost. Therefore, in the process of realizing one's own intention, one must find ways to realize this intention, and resist these feelings with perseverance. As we all know, in a war, one must endure countless fatigue, hardships and hardships in order to achieve great achievements. Since the body and spirit are the weakest and tend to make people succumb, only by possessing and demonstrating the great willpower of perseverance praised by generations can he reach the other side of success.
Quantitative advantage
Whether it is tactically or strategically, quantitative advantage is the most common winning factor. Now, let's first study its universality, and here we will make the following elaboration.
The time, location, and strength of the battle are determined by strategy, which has a great influence on the course of the battle. Once the tactics are put into battle, whether the result is victory or defeat, you can use strategy and tactics according to the purpose of the war. Of course, the relationship between the outcome of the battle and the goal of the war is indirect; and there are other goals between them that are subordinate to the goal of the war as a means. These goals are actually diverse, even including the ultimate goal, and their performance in each battle is different. Regarding these issues, we do not intend to discuss them one by one here. We will discuss further with the study of related issues. We will not discuss the issue of combat at this time.
When the strategy determines the battle, as for the things that have an impact on the battle, we cannot ignore them, and we are not easy to grasp them. There are many methods that can be used when deciding the time, location, and strength of the strategy. These methods have different effects on the beginning and the final outcome of the battle. Therefore, only through specific research on them can we further understand them.
If we don’t talk about the quality of the army, the meaning of fighting, and all the changes caused by the conditions that produce fighting, then we can only talk about the concept of fighting, that is, the abstract struggle. In an abstract struggle, there is nothing else to distinguish apart from the difference in the number of sides in the war.
In this way, the number of both sides in combat is very important, and it is the first factor that determines the outcome of both sides. In order to further confirm this conclusion, we can only put aside a series of questions. It can be seen that: in battle, the numerical advantage is only one of the winning factors, and the numerical advantage is far from enough. It is not. The most important factor for victory; and because of the influence of other conditions that work at the same time, the probability of victory is very small.
However, the advantage is not the same in terms of its degree. It can be doubled, doubled or tripled. Therefore, each of us knows that if the number continues to increase, then the quantitative advantage will inevitably work.
In this case, we have to admit that absolute superiority in numbers is very important for the final result of the battle. Among all the favorable factors, the quantitative advantage is particularly important. Therefore, as many troops as possible must be put into battle.
Regardless of whether the army put into the battle is sufficient, all the means we take in this regard must conform to the principles of strategy. As mentioned earlier, this principle has universal significance. It applies not only to the French and Germans, but also to the Greeks and Persians, as well as the British and Marathis. However, in order to make this issue more clear, we might as well make a further investigation of the military situation in Europe.
The armies of European countries are very similar to each other in terms of weapons and equipment, organization, and skills, but there are still some differences in the military ethics of the military and the commanding ability of the commander. It is impossible to find a marathon-like example in modern European war history.
In Leden Frederick the Great defeated the 80,000 Austrian army with about 30,000 people, and in Rothbach with 25,000 people defeated more than 50,000 coalition forces. This is unique, with twice or more than himself. An example of victory in battle with superior strength. We cannot yet cite the case of Charles XII at the Battle of Narva, because the Russians could hardly be regarded as Europeans at the time, and most people did not know this case. In Dresden, Napoleon used 120,000 to fight against 220,000. At that time, the enemy invested less than twice the strength of Napoleon’s. In Colin, Frederick the Great used 30,000 to fight against 50,000 Austria People, the result failed; Napoleon used 160,000 people to fight more than 280,000 people during the desperate Battle of Leipzig, and also failed.
Therefore, in Europe, even a commander with extraordinary talents can hardly defeat an enemy that has twice as much force as himself. If we see on the scale that the force with double advantage is heavier than that of the greatest commander, then we should not doubt that all kinds of battles under ordinary conditions, we put aside other conditions. As long as the number of troops has an absolute advantage, and does not even need to exceed twice the amount, it is generally sufficient to win. Of course, in some passes, even if you use ten times more force than the enemy, you can't win, but in this case, it's not a real battle at all.
Therefore, having a decisive military advantage was very important in Europe at the time. Even in general, this is undoubtedly a very important condition. How many troops can be concentrated on a decisive place depends on the absolute number of the army and the art of the army.
Our first rule should be to put as many troops as possible on the battlefield. Although this is a cliché, it is necessary.
For a long time, the number of troops has not been the most important condition for victory in everyone's eyes. Now we will cite the following examples to prove this point. In the history of warfare in the eighteenth century, the issue of the number of troops was not mentioned at all. It was just a piggyback, and it was not discussed in detail. The first writer to talk about this issue was Tempehof, although he also talked about it again and again in the history of the Seven Years' War, but he talked very superficially.
As for Massenbach, he talked about the wars fought by the Prussian army in the Vosges in 1793 and 1794 in many articles, but he described a lot of mountains, valleys, roads and trails, but he only talked about the strength of both sides. The word was not mentioned.