VOL. V

THE

~COOURY

SHANGHAI, AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 19.3

THE SMALLER BATTALIONS

By KLAUS MEHNERT

In tIimo oj tM long .mu oj AUi~ deJeau IlUJJered. in Norway, rwrthun Franu,Greeu, Ma14ya, tM Philippinu, and Burrrw, the political olueroer 1uu had to rukMrMelJ again and again what hope could have ind'uced the Anglo.America"" to con­tinue the war. The la8t Jew month. hatle .upplied the an6WlIT to thi, quution: it is tMJwp. Jor mperiorUy i'n ,~umlHlro9--number. oj 11WI a,ld material. Since the autumnoj 1942. the Alliu have erniwoored. to fight boUlu only in p14cu wlure tJa~ have hado-oenchelming 1I1tmlHlr. oj troop6 and umlamenu 011 Uieir lick, ai, Jor i1l6tarlCe, illNorth AJrica, Guadalcanar. Attll, and Sicily.

lfe do not interni to examine hMe whether the Anglo.America"" actually po6'u,a urfJOler cmnamml capacity or more able-bodiul men than the AN. IN/tead, we.hall rai.e Uie quution: Dou a fWeponduance in men and weapoM oJJer anyjU6tijicolion whatwer Jor the hope oj final victory, dou t/~ god oj war nallll Ja1lOTthe 14rger baualiorwf

No. 2/3

NEXT to George Washington, Abra­ham Lincoln is the best-knownfigure in the history of the United

States, For the Roosevelt era before theoutbreak of the present war it can perhapseven be said that Lincoln held first placein the esteem of the American people.His sayings were often quoted, for in­stance his famous words "government ofthe people. by the people, for the people"(quoted the more often. the less America,nreality corresponded to this ideal), or hispronouncement:

"I agree with you in Providence; butI believe in the providence of the mostmen, the largest purse, and the largestcannon."

This pun, with its linking of Providencewith numbers of men, wealth, and arma­ments. could really stand as a motto forthe America of 1943.

But let us be just and admit thatLincoln was not the first to put his trustin large numbers into words. "I havealways noticed that God is on the sideof the heavy battalions," declared aFrench statesman, Marquis de Ill. Ferte-

Imbault, to Queen Anne of France. In1677 the Count de Bussy wrote in aletter: "God is generally for the bigsquadrons against the little ones." Andabout a hundred years Jater, Voltaireformulated the same idea with the words:"They say that God is always on theside of the heavy battalions."

To be sure, there have been manycases in history where the greater bat­talions defeated the smaller ones. Themost important example, still fresh inall our memories, was the strangulationof Germany in the Great War, whenalmost the entire world had unitedagainst her and she herself was weak­ened from within by the influence ofmaterialistic ideas. But there have alsobeen countless cases in which the oppositewas true. ~tory has seen decisive warsand battles which were won by the smallerbattalions.

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE

PERSIAN EMPmE

Up to the sixth century B.C., thewestern part of Eurasia had been ruledby three great empires: Egypt, A88yria,

82 THE X.Xtb OENTURY

and Babylon. Suddenly, within a periodof twenty-one years (546 to 525 B.C.),these states were swept off the map oft,he world and replaced by the Persian­Median Empire. The Persians and t,heMedes, two Indo-European tribes hardlyknown in history till then and overshad­owed by the splendor of the empires inthe valley of the Nile and in Mesopotamia,established under Cyrus the Great and hisson one of the largest empires of all time,reaching hom the Danube to bevond thelndus. w

Only at the outermost rim of theirdominion did a small state-no, evenworse, It little conglomeration of tinycity-stutes-dare to oppose and provokethe mighty Persian Empire by wnntonincursions, until the "King of Kings"decided to subject it once and for all.In 490 B.C. he sent out a grcat armyagainst Greece which crossed the AegeanSelt. in many ships. Part of this armylanded 011 the coastal plain of Marathon.Even if all of Greece had moved againstt.he Persians, she still would only haveb&d the resources of a single one of thetwenty satrapies into which the PersianEmpire was divided. However, the Greekarmy that opposed the Persians at Mara­thon did not even represent all of Greecehut only two of the city-states, AthensRnd Plat-aea. Yet it gained a gloriousvictory and threw the Persian landingeorps back int,o the :;ea.

The subsequent encounters betweenUreek~ and Persians wcre fought in the,.:pirit of Marathon. At the pass ofThermopylae, Leonidas fought with athousa.ncl men against the whole Persianarmy, consisting of tens of thousands ofmen, and at Salamis the Greeks defeateda Persian fleet at least twice as strong astheir own.

How are these victories of the smallerbattalions to be explained, this strangeparadox-first the conquest of a hugeempire by two young tribes, and thent,he defeat of this empire's forces by thearmy of two small Greek cities? We shallattempt an explanation later on in thisarticle.

ALEXANDER AND TIIE ROMANS

With these victories against the vastPersian Empire, the Greeks had not onlymaintained their own national freedor~:they had brought about a decision affect­ing the entire history of the world. Tothe west of Greece there was at that timenothing that could have resisted an ex­pansion of the Persian Empire. A vic­tory over the Greeks would have turnedthe Mediterranean into a Persian lakeand given the development of thc Oc­cident a different turn.

This defensi\7e victory of t,he Greekminority was even surpassed by theachievements contained in the aggressivevictory of Alexander the Great againstthe Persian Empire a century and a halflater. In the spring of 3:34 B.C. thebarely twenty-year-old king crossed theHellespont with 32,000 men on foot nUll5,000 horsemen to invade the PersianEmpire, which commanded hundreds ofthousands of warriors. With his smallhost Alexander won the decisive victoriesof 1880s (333) and Gaugamela (331 B.C.).At Gaugamela he was faced by an armyperhaps twenty times the size of his ownwhich, moreover, was equipped with suchunusual weapons as scythed war chariot",and Indian elephants. The superioritywas so great that Alexander's amI\',although he had drawn it out as far itspossible, extended with its right wing nofurther than the center of the Persian host.

A few years after Alexander hadbroken into the Persian Empire, he wa~

the ullcontested master of au empi rethat was larger even than the old Persia I I

one. How was this possible! We shallreturn to this question later.

While the Alexandrian Empire arosewithin a few years through the genim: ofone man, the Roman Empire was theproduct of centuries of stea,dy growth andof the genius of a whole people. But inone point the early history of bothempires \Va,g similar: both were formed inthe fa,ce of vastly superior enemies.Starting as a small, w1important settle­ment whose territory was less fertile thanthat of other places of the same region'

THE SMALLER BATl'.ALIO~S 83

Rome step by step gained hegemonyfirst over Latium, then over the ApenninePeninsula, then over the western andlater eastern Mediterranean, and finallyover the entire Occident.

PHARSALOS A....~D ACTIm\I

The long list of battles fought by theH,oman armies on the hard road to powercontains hardly auything that is equal inbrilliance to the campaiglls of Alexanderthe Ureat. Besides victories there werealso LUnny defeats. It is only due to a~tubbornness and single-mindednessunique in history tha.t this road ledfinally to the supremacy of Rome overthe western world.

Even while the Roman Empire wastill being formed, grave conflicts arose

within the empire over the question ofleaden~hip. The two decisive battles inthis struggle were both won by thesmaller batta,lions. At Pharsalos (48 B.C.)PomJX'y had about twice a.s many foott;oldier~ 11' Caesar and seven times asmallV horsemen. But Caesar won thebattie and became the sale ruler of the

mpire. Phar alos meant the end of theRoman Republic and the beginning ofthe monarohv and thus represents oneof the decisive events in the history ofthe Occident. Under Caesar's successor,Octavian, the struggle for sole dominationwas resumed. With a. fleet inferior innumbers as well as in the size of its units,Octavian vanquished the power of An­tony and Cleopatra. at Actium (31 B.C.).This victory enabled him, who was soonto be known as Augustus, to establish atype of monarchy in Rome which wasto survive for centuries.

TWO mSTORIC DECISIONS

In the days of Augustus, Rome was a.tthe peak of her power. She knew norivals in the Occident, and her battle­scarred, excellently armed legions ex­tended the borders of the empire fromdecade to decade ever further into formerlyunknown regions. Yet a battle tookplace in those years by which a people~tanding at the very beginning of itsdevelopment and split up into many

tribes dealt a heavy blow to the onr­whelming power of Rome. In 9 A.D. thearmy of Quintilius Va,rus was annihilatedin the Tcutoburg Forest by Germanicwarriors under Arminius the CheruscaJl.This event prevented the Romanizationof the territories on the right bank ofthe Rhine. In contrast to the Gauls.who had quickly become Roman after thocampaigns of Caesar, the Gennanic tribeswere thus able to develop on their ownand to assemble the forces \vhioh wereone day to lend to the fall of the RomanEmpire.

During the migration of peoples theHuns invaded Europe with hugo armiesand roamed throughout its lands withoutencountering much resistance. Only whenthey advanced further to the west, deepinto France, were Attila's hundreds ofthousands of men opposed by an annycomposed of Visigoths and Romans (451A.D.). The battle, whioh has been namedafter the Catalaunia.n Fields, was foughtwith suoh terrible fierceness that, accord­ing to legend, even the fallen warrior~

continued to fight on as Rpi.rit~. Thewave of Hun supremaoy ,vas /Jot onl.vstopped but even forced to reoede, and thevict<>ry ngainst AtWa contributed de­cisively toward saving Europe from thefate later suffered by Central Asia. andRussia nnder the Mongols.

ORESCENT AND OROSS

Barely two hundred years later, one ofthe most amazing developments in historytook place: the asoent of Islam. In 1\11

unequaled maroh of victory the armie.'lof the sparse, uncivilized population ofthe ~Iilabian desert established a vastempire which ha.s left its stamp on manyregions to this very day. The founda­tions of the Mohammedan em pim werelaid within the ten years after the deathof the Prophet in numerous battles inwhich the Arabs were always in theminority. In an incredibly short timethe banner of the Prophet was carriedacross the whole of the Near East farinto Central Asia" and later to the Pyr­enees as well as the East Jndilln archi­pelago.

84 THE XXth CENTURY

The counterblow against the rise ofIslam came with the Crusades. In a pre­vious article (July 1942) we related howthe Ch.ristian expewtionary armies, mov­ing against huge odds and thousands ofkilometers away from home, invaded therichly populated, strong Mohammedanempire and, even after grave privations,were victorious against fresh and farsuperior armies, as, for example, in theBattle of the Holy Lance at the gates ofAntioch in 1098, which opened the roadinto the Holy Land for the first Crusaders.

Gfu....GHIS KHAN A..o.....D JOAN OF ARC

The next world power arose one cen­tury later from very modest beginnings,when the conqueror who was later to beknown as Genghis Khan united severalsmall Mongol tribes under himself. TheMongol storm broke when Genghis Khanled his warriors against the Chin Empirein 1211. In spite of the fact that thisempire was far superior to his hordes inevery respect-its civilization, its numberof people, and the size of its walledcities-he weakened it to such a degreethat he could take up his unique vic­torious campaign against the West. Herethe Mongols were in the minority in mostof the battles they fought. Among theirenemies were many warlike tribes, suchas the Turks of Central Asia, who weresuperior to them in numbers. And yetthe Mongols were victorious again andagain. Their horses carried them farinto Russia and the Near East. And theresult of these battles was the greatestempire that ever existed in Eurasia.

Among the longest and most bitterlyfought wars in the history of Europewere the meclieval conflicts between theFrench and the English. As a result ofdynastic heritage, the English kings hadat that time large possessions on Frenchsoil. This fact led to an almost endlessseries of wars which culminated in whatis known as the Hundred Years' War(1337 to 1453). For a long time theEnglish were victorious, and at the begin­ning of the fifteenth century France layprostrate, almost defenseless. In 1422an English king was proclaimed King of

France, while the French dauphin wasa weakling. Large parts of France wereoccupied by the English. The Englishruled in Paris. They laid siege to Orleans,the gateway to southern France, and thecity was preparing to surrender. Thensuddenly a peasant girl, called Joan,declared that she had been sent byHeaven to save France. She fought herway into besieged Orleans. Out of un­patriotic cowards she created an armywith. a fanatic will for victory, an armyinstilled with ten times its ordinarypower and courage. Against Englishsuperiority she led this small Frencharmy from victory to victory. Andalthough she was later taken prisoner andburned at the stake by the English, herspirit continued to animate the Frencharmy. The English were driven fromthe European Continent, only Calais re­maining in their hands for some time.A development of historic importancehad been concluded.

CONQUERING THE WORLD

During the next few decades the worldexperienced a wealth of important eventswhen, in an explosive expansion, thePortuguese and the Spanish created enor­mous empires with the smallest battal­ions in history. Accustomed to the ideaof armies of millions, we can scarcelyconceive today how tiny in numbers theforces were with which those momentousdecisions were brought about. With buta few ships, the Portuguese gained thevictories of Diu (1509) and Malacca (1511)against vastly superior forces and seizedcontrol over the Inwan Ocean, thusopening the gates to the riches of theEast Inwan archipelago. Thousands ofmiles from home-which at that timecould only be reached by the immensedetour around Africa-they sailed fromvictory to victory and turned the oceanfrom Morocco to the Moluccas into aPortuguese lake.

A few years later the Spaniards suc­ceeded in similar achievements in theAmericas. In August 1519, HernandoCortes, leading a small force of 400 menon foot, 15 horsemen, and 7 small cannODS,

THE SMALLER BATfALIONS 8li

started out from the coast of the Gulf ofMexico to conquer the Aztec Empire, thenone of the most advanced states of theworld, which had a population of perhapsfive million inhabitants. In order fullyto appreciate the boldness of this venture,one must bear in mind that Cortes beganhis campaign with no knowledge whateverof the country, its inhabitants, and theirlanguages. On the way to Mexico hefirst defeated the state of Tlaxcala. withits haU a million inhabitants and tens ofthousands of warriors. Then he con­quered Mexico.

One might object that he succeeded inthis more by cwming and brutality thanby military achievements. However, hehad enough opportunity also to provethe military ability of his small force.In July 1520 he was forced to retreatfrom the city of Mexico and to give battleat Otumba. Here his few hundredSpaniards, assisted by some native allies,fought a.ga.inst the combined armies ofthe Aztec Empire, which numbered tensof thousands. In this battle Cortes nolonger had any cannons, not even muskets;many of his men were sick and exhaustedby fatigue and hardship. Yet the victory

was his, and soon afterwards he was theundisputed ruler of the empire.

Just as fantastic were the a<h-enturesof Pizarro who, in 1531, set alit with ane\'en ~maUer band-I02 men on foot and62 horsemen-to conquer Peru, theninhabited by six to eight million people.Here, too, the first successes were moreof a political than a military nature.But here, too, the conquerors wcre notspared from battle. In 1535 almost theentire country rose against them. Forfive months a band of at most 200Spll.niards fought in Cuzco against themobilized power of the Inca Empire.In writing of 200,000 Inca soldiers, theSpanish chroniclers were probably exag­gerating. But, even if there were only20,000, this meant that there were 100enemies to every Spaniard. In spite ofthis, the Spaniards won, and transformedthe empire of the Incas into a Spanishoolony.

ONE AGAINST EUROPE

One of the most important develop­ments in the modern history of Europe wasthe rise of Prussia, under whose leadershipthe German Empire was later to be

~ P.., t Of S.t.'\. "tdto.~ Or"".,,, ti l,.,-

~",) ¥'ll '>-< S·.•,.", ""or.<l} C~.:.\ lJl'~d tl) Pr- ..Hld·n 17~t.

e (04''/ .011 19"."~t Pr-vS\lO' ~.., 171)6

e NNtrdl (Ountr••\

Central Europe in th6 days of Fred6rick the Great

8. THE XXtb CENTURY

formcd frolll the combineu German states.:Pruf;sil~ is largely the work of the Houseof Hohenzollern, and it represented thecro""niu of many wars /Lud of centuriesof effort ou the part of this dynastywhen little Brandenburg became Pru sm.One igniticant stage on this road wasthe victot,y gained b.v the Great Electorof BmmlenlllU'g in 1U75 at Fehrbellinwhen, with 6,000 l~rus ians and 12 can­nOIlS, he defeated l~,OOO Swedes with 38cannons. By means of thi victory over~wedon. which till then had been regardeda the foremost military nation of Europe,Prustlia. l1(lvanced from an indifferent littlestatc to a largerstate worth reckoning with.

Even more important was the reign ofFrederick the Great and his Seven Years'War (175G-1763). The Austria of theHapsburgs, which observed the rise ofPrussia with deadly jealousy, organizeda powerful coalit,ioll againRt Prussia withthc express aim of the "tot.al destructiollof Prussia." The greater part of Europehad combined in this coalition, andamong it. members were Austria, Uu ia,Fran e, weden, :saxony, Bavaria, 'Yiirt­temherg and a number of smaller states.l'rusRiu., Oil the other hand, with itshaTc!y ~t million inlul.bitants, stood alone.HUlIl)vcr, which had at first allied itselfto l'russia, withdrew again early in thewar; llnd England supported Pru i~

I)nly with money. Year after year Freder­ick fought against these overwhelmingodos. He gained a number of great vic­tories, especially at Rossbach with 20,000Illen against 50,000 Frenchmen and atLeuthcn with 33,000 men against 60,000.-\ustrians; and he a1 a ufJered many ahitter defeat. In the end, however, h~ e·mergeu vietorious from this unequal strug­gle. Prussia had become a. European power.

RECE.NT EXAMPLES

.\ few years after the death of Frederickthe Great., this same Prussia failed miser­ably. In the struggle against the FrenchRevolution, Prussia, England, Holland,:-;paiu, and several smaller states hadunited in 1792 in a coalition of anti­revolutionary powcrs. This coalition ,'msva.stly superior to Francc, not only be-

cause all Elu'opean powers except Rus!'i<1.belonged to it, but also because Fram'eherself was torn by civil war and hardlypossessed any army at all after thousandof her aristocratic officers had left thecountry and joined the coalition. Themob which represented the rC"olutionaryarmy was at first so useless that it rllliaway in panic from every clash with thecoalition troops, even when it was supe­rior in numbers, as at Tournay, where4,000 Frenchmen fled from a smallAustrian detachment. The }?rench for­tresses of Longwy and Verdun capitulated,almost without tighting, to the coalitionarmy. But then came a sudden turn.After the Cannonade of Valmy in Sep·tember 1792 the situation was reyersed:the re\'olutionary armies not unly drovethe armies of the coalition out of Fmnccbut even followed them deep into theirown territory.

To give a finll,1 example of most recenttimes, we need only think of the R\ll"~()'

Japanese War of 1904·1905. Toclny weare accustomed to regard Japan as aleading power. At that time, however,she was still in the early stages of hermodem development. .At the outbreak

. of the Russo-Japanese \Yal', only fiftyyears had passed sinee the opening ofJapan; only forty years since an English/American/Dutch/French fleet had bom­barded Japan, alma t without resistance,and had even been paid an indemnity forthat; only thirty-three yea.rs !'lince thefeudal system had been abolished. Andthis Japan, that seemed hardl.v to haveoutgrown the :Middle Ages, took lip thestruggle nga.in t one of the large. t powersof that time, against a countr.,· thatpossessed almost inexhaustible reservesof man power and resow'ces as well as agreat military tl'l1dition. After a seriesof gloriou victories, Japan q uickl'yforced the empire of the Tsars to makepeace.

IT TAKES LF_o\DERS

How were all these victories of thesma.ll battnlions against the large onespossible? The answer cnnnot he formu­lated in one sentence. It consists of

THE S~IALLER BATTALTOXS Si

many reasons, of which we shall presentit few. They are to be sought partly inthe nature of the leadership and pa,rtlyin the nature of t,he peoples and armies'0 led.

One prereqnisite for the yictory of the:;maLler battalions is the genius of theirleaders. A true leader needs fur morethan just the knowledge of militarytheories and pra,ctice; he has the courageto rely upon himself and to take theresponsibility for his own decisions.JIiltiades risked. the battle of Marathonwithout wa.iting for the arrival of the'partan army nnd without sha.ring with

other lea.ders the responsibility for thedecision to fight. A leader is so Ull-

hakeably convinced of his own supe­riority and that of his Illen that, even inthe face of vast odds and the ab ence ofany aid, he does not he itate to strike atthe enemy as Cortes and Pizarro did orI'rederick the Great at the beginuing ofthe even Years' War. This feeling ofuperi rity grow from the leader's fa.ith

in hi mis ion from his belief that herepre ent, the "wave of the future." It<lUdow him with forces that, as in thecase of Joan of Are, border on the super­natural. It is these forces which inapparently hopele 'itnations do notallow him to lose courage, while hisopponents, who do not possess suchfaith, are inclined to lose their head ,Like Pompey who, although an experi­en'ced and viotorious commander, turnedto Hight even before the battle was ended,or like Cleopatra and Antony who,thinking mainly of themselves, abandonedthe main body of their forces in the midstof battle to eek safety in flight.

'Ihis faith in his mission often alsoraises the leader morally over his enemies.In Actium the nobler man defeated theinferior one; and Joan of Arc fought notonly against the English army but alsoagainst the lack of morals among her owntroops by proclaiming her struggle to hea pure and holy wa·l'. The true leadersets an example to his troops. He con­vinces his soldiers that their le-ader andthey belong together. Alexander t,he

reat was the first soldier of his army

who 'hared with it all the danger~ ofbattle and hardships of lIlarching, whilehis opponent Darius had chiefly himselfto blame for his defeats, as he was alwaysthe first to turn his chariot iu flight._-\nd how close Frederiok the Great wasto the hearts of his soldiers is proved bythe countless anecdotes about his pcr­sOLlnl feats in victory and defeat.

SO:\JE UF THEm QUALITIES

One requirement of a successful leaueris the faculty to discern every possibilityoffering it.<3elf and immediately to exploitit to his OW11 <Ldvantage. ~iiltiades Illudethe most skillful use of the topogmphy ofthe coastal plain of Marathon in plan­ning his battle. On the battlefield ofCaugamcla, Alexnnder perceived that agap had formed between the center alldthe left wing of the Persian army, andby quickly throwing a spearhead of hi.troops into this gap he !'plit up theenemv's front and thus brought abouthis own victory. At the beginlling of t.hebattle of Phursalos. Caesar noticed tha 1.Pompey was massing hi!' ~uperior ca.,'nl!',."at the left wing in order to execute hiS

decisive thrust with it. Thi:-; gan Cnc:::ara chance to prepare countermeasurewhich frustrated Pompey's plan andturned it into a defeat. When the smallSpanish band at Otumba, bleeding frommany wounds, could hardly defend itselfany longer against the hundredfold supe­riority of its enemies, Cortes suddclllyrecognized the commander ill chief of theAztec army some distance a,\\'a~·. Corte,.;,accompanied by a few trust~1 men. fuught.his wa,y through to the Aztec chief andkilled him, thereby gi\-ing the battk lL

new turn.In order to bc able to bea t his oppo­

nent, the leader l'nllst be ahle to guessthe thoughts of hi foe, )liltiades, whuhad previously participa.ted in a Persiallcampaign in the Ba.lkans, knew that thestrength of the Persian army was thedeadly hail of arrows released by itsarchers. In order to reduce the timeduring which the Grceks could ue shotat from a distance with Persian arrow:;,)liltiades made the bold decision to leadhi.. excellently trained men, in spite of

88 THE XXth CENTURY

their heavy armor, to the enemy ranksat a run. Arminius the Cheruscau hadalso served in the army of his enemiesand was acquainted with the Romanlegions' style of fighting. He could nothope to defeat the Romans with his in­experienced troops in an open battle.Consequently, he laid his plans in such away that the battle took place in a forestarea full of ravines that was unfavorableto the Romans.

LUCK

Finally, the successful leader requiresthat indefinable something that we call"luck." Had Cortes not seen the enemycommander in chief in the midst of thebattle's tumult, probably not a singleSpaniard would have left the battlefieldof Otumba alive. Luck played an espe­cially striking role in the case of Frederickthe Great. Toward the end of the SevenYears' War his cause looked very bad.Large parts of his small country wereoccupied by the enemy, who had tem­porarily even been in the capital. Hisonly support outside of Prusaia theEnglish statesman Pitt, had to ~ignfrom the cabinet; this opened the way tothe separate peace which England, con­trary to her agreement with Frederick,concluded soon after with France.~ederick could have ma.de peace undermglorious conditions. But, althoughthere was no one in Europe who stillconceded him a chance, he continued tofight, and suddenly luck came to his aid.T~arinaElizabeth, who hated him bitterly,died and was replaced on the Russianthrone by Peter III, .an ardent admirerof Frederick. Peter immediately con­cluded a separate peace with Prussia andin addition to that, declared himself andhis army to be allied to Frederick. Al­though he was murdered soon after, hehad been on the throne long enough tohave caused a complete reversal in themilitary position and to provide Frederickwith the breathing space he needed forthe victorious conclusion of the war.

THE SpmIT OF THE FOLLOWERS. • •

Lik~ the leader, so also must his peopleand his army be convinced of the neces-

sity of the struggle and of victory,determined to maintain or fight for theirfreedom. They must be prepared tomake every sacrifice needed and be filledwith glowing patriotism and the clearknowledge as to the consequences of adefeat. And finally, they must be con­vinced that they are fighting for a goodcause and that right is on their side.At Marathon, the Athenians were filledby a spirit which their great poet Aeschy­lus, who had participated in the battle,later put into the following words:

o sons of the Greeks! Fight for the freedomof. your country! Fight for the freedom of yourchildren and of your wives-for the shrines o£y.our fathers' gods, and for t.he sepulchers of yoursires. All-aU are now staked upon the strife.

In the same way, the Germanic tribesin the Teutoburg Forest and on theCatalaunian Fields, and the Japanese atPort Arthur and at Tsushima, were filledwit~ the sense that the fate not only oftherr people but of every single one ofthem depended on the outcome of thebattle. On the other hand, the Persianarmy, composed as it was of dozens ofsubjected tribes, lacked this sense. Whatdid it concern these tribes whether thePersian king won new laurels on the farshores of Greece or not? Hence the onlytroops in the Persian army who reallyfought at Marathon and on the otherGreek battlefields were the Persians, inthe narrow seUBe of this word. It wa.simpossible in the Russo-Japanese Warfor the Russian peasant to take a personalinterest in the outcome of a war to whichhe had to be transported thousands ofkilometers and in which he was supposedto fight for territories, whose names meantnothing to him, against a people he didnot even know. The same Prussianswho, under Frederick, had amazed theworld with their achievements, failed afew years later when, without a leadingidea of their own, they clashed withtroops fired with the ideas of a greatrevolution.

In some cases the determination of thesmaller battalions was born out of thecourage of their despair. The Spaniardsat Otumba and in Cuzco knew, like thePrusaians under Frederick, that there

THE SMALLER BATTALIONS 89

were only two alternatives: victory orcomplete annihilation. And when reli­gious fanaticism is added-as in the caseof the hosts of Islam or the Crusades orJoan of Arc-or a burning feeling ofrevenge, as that felt by Arminius's menagainst Varus for his infamous deeds, orby the Visigoths on the Catalaunian Fieldswhen they saw their king Theoderic fall,then even a superiority in numbers can­not save the enemy from defeat.

••.AND THEm QUALITY

Very often in history the strength ofthe small battalions was to be found inthe health and simplicity of their youth­ful power and in the softness of theiropponents. The Greek historian Herod­otus explains the victories of the Medesand Persians by many examples showingthe contrast between the tough virilityof these conquerors and the degenerationof their foes. Later the Persians them­selves fell victim to this degeneration, andin the speech addressed by Alexander tohis troops before the battle of Issos hecould justly speak of Greek strengthbeing pitted against Persian degeneration.This stern simplicity was also the secretof the astonishing superiority of theMongols over their enemies who, incultural and many other respects, weremuch further advanced. Under GenghisKhan's leadership, the Mongols lived theirwhole lives in and for battle and sub­ordinated everything to the one goal:victory.

Often it was new methods of war ornew weapons which gave victory to thesmaller battalions. The archers of thePersian army contributed much towardthe establishment of the great PersianEmpire by employing their weapons insuch a novel and skillful manner that theenemy had no chance to get close tothem. It was only the armored Greekathletes in their close and deeply rankedphalanxes, which they drove like spearsinto the ranks of their foes, who put anend to tllis superiority. The muskets,cannons, and horses of the Spaniards pro­vided them with weapons unequaled byanything the natives of America could

produce. And while the Spaniards haddeveloped the art of war into a science-which, for instance, stipulated that atall times only part of the soldiers shouldshoot while the rest should use thistime to reload their guns so that nopause should occur-their enemies foughtwithout any plan or system whatever,simply trying to crush Lhe Spaniards withtheir masses. The importance of qualityand battle experience in every singleman was revealed by Caesar's veteransat Pharsalos, when they fought againstopponents superior in numbers but in­ferior in quality.

Discipline has always been an essentialfactor on the side of victorious armies.The lack of discipline on the part of thePersian troops, who looted Alexander'scamp during the battle of Gaugamela,contributed toward their defeat. On theother hand, the armies of the Mongolshad been trained by Genghis Khan toiron obedience. In their battles we rarelyhear of outstanding individual deeds butalways of the excellent achievements ofthe army as a whole. Disoipline increasesin effectiveness the more it originatesfrom the voluntary willingness of eachman to subordinate himself to the whole,while it loses its value the more it is aproduct of mere drill or fear of punish­ment. This was shown by the wars ofthe French Revolution, in which undis­ciplined troops who were filled with faithin their cause were victorious over thedisciplined but personally uninterestedtroops of the reactionary powers.

THE ENEMY'S WEAKNESS

The inner strength of the smallerbattalions very often corresponded to theinner weakness of the larger ones. Howoften has it not happened in history thata state that was already ripe for declinewas defeated by a young, determinedopponent inferior in numbers1 The tinyband of Spanish adventurers which, withCortes, invaded the empire of the Aztecs,would, in spite of all superiority of theindividual, have easily been destroyed ifthat emp;re had been sound and vital.But this dtate was populated, beside a.

90 THE XXth CENTURY

Syria against the population enslavedthere for centuries could also be nsedagainst the free Germanic tribes. Hefa.iled to see that he was thus digging hisown grave, and he was so blind that hedid not recognize the transparent rusewith which Arminius lured him and hislegions into the Teutoburg Forest.

In the case of Montezuma it was a.blindness born of bigotry which con­tributed toward his downfall. He suc­cumbed to So religious legend according towhich the benevolent god Quetzatcoat.lhad once left Mexico in the d.irection ofthe rising sun with the promise to returnone day. As this god was, according toMexican tradition, of tall stature with awhite skin and a heavy beard, Montezumawas inclined to see the returning god inCortes, and this superstition robbed himof his power of decision and clarity ofaction.

campa,ratively small llwnber of rulingAztecs, by a large majority of subjectedpeoples who, at the very time whenCortes a,ppeared on the horizon, showedtL growing restlessness toward the Aztecs.One of the main rea~ons for this restless­ness was that the bloody human sacrificesdemanded by the Aztec religion wereassuming larger and larger proportionsand swallowing up tens of thousands oflives cvery year. The Aztec ruler Monte­Zluna, who had commenced his reign asa wise prince, lost himself more and morein luxury and bigotry. The necessa,ryfunds and human sacrifices had to beprovided by the surrounding peoples.

At the time of the wa,r against Japan,the Russian state, too, had become in­wardly rotten. 'l'his was shown by therevolution of 1905, the curtain raiser tothe gory collapse of the centuries-oldempire of the Tsars twelve years later.

BLINDED BY THE GODS* *

"

The saying that the gods strike thosewith blindness whom they wish to de­stroy can frequently be applied to therulers of states doomed to decline. Thestupid mistakes which Darius constantlyrepeated in his war against Alexanderthe Great, and his habit of followingincapable counsellors and shutting hiscars to the capable ones, played into thehands of the Macedonian conqueror.Varus believed in his arrogance that themethods he had used as the governor of

So we see that the victories of thesmaller battalions were not coincidencesor freaks of history. They always occurwhen certain conditions, some of whichwe discussed here, are present. A studyof history shows that, in the great con­flicts between peoples, it is not wealthor numbers which are the deciding factorbut the spirit animating the peoples; forthe god of war does not count the men,he weighs their hearts.