Fundamentally every night attack is only a more vehement form of
surprise. Now at the first look of the thing such an attack appears
quite pre-eminently advantageous, for we suppose the enemy to be taken
by surprise, the assailant naturally to be prepared for everything which
can happen. What an inequality! Imagination paints to itself a picture
of the most complete confusion on the one side, and on the other side
the assailant only occupied in reaping the fruits of his advantage.
Hence the constant creation of schemes for night attacks by those who
have not to lead them, and have no responsibility, whilst these attacks
seldom take place in reality.

These ideal schemes are all based on the hypothesis that the assailant
knows the arrangements of the defender because they have been made
and announced beforehand, and could not escape notice in his
reconnaissances, and inquiries; that on the other hand, the measures of
the assailant, being only taken at the moment of execution, cannot be
known to the enemy. But the last of these is not always quite the case,
and still less is the first. If we are not so near the enemy as to have
him completely under our eye, as the Austrians had Frederick the Great
before the battle of Hochkirch (1758), then all that we know of his
position must always be imperfect, as it is obtained by reconnaissances,
patrols, information from prisoners, and spies, sources on which no firm
reliance can be placed because intelligence thus obtained is always
more or less of an old date, and the position of the enemy may have
been altered in the meantime. Moreover, with the tactics and mode of
encampment of former times it was much easier than it is now to examine
the position of the enemy. A line of tents is much easier to distinguish
than a line of huts or a bivouac; and an encampment on a line of front,
fully and regularly drawn out, also easier than one of Divisions formed
in columns, the mode often used at present. We may have the ground on
which a Division bivouacs in that manner completely under our eye, and
yet not be able to arrive at any accurate idea.

But the position again is not all that we want to know the measures
which the defender may take in the course of the combat are just as
important, and do not by any means consist in mere random shots. These
measures also make night attacks more difficult in modern Wars than
formerly, because they have in these campaigns an advantage over those
already taken. In our combats the position of the defender is more
temporary than definitive, and on that account the defender is better
able to surprise his adversary with unexpected blows, than he could
formerly.(*)

(*) All these difficulties obviously become increased as the
power of the weapons in use tends to keep the combatants
further apart.--EDITOR.

Therefore what the assailant knows of the defensive previous to a night
attack, is seldom or never sufficient to supply the want of direct
observation.

But the defender has on his side another small advantage as well, which
is that he is more at home than the assailant, on the ground which forms
his position, and therefore, like the inhabitant of a room, will find
his way about it in the dark with more ease than a stranger. He knows
better where to find each part of his force, and therefore can more
readily get at it than is the case with his adversary.

From this it follows, that the assailant in a combat at night feels the
want of his eyes just as much as the defender, and that therefore, only
particular reasons can make a night attack advisable.

Now these reasons arise mostly in connection with subordinate parts of
an Army, rarely with the Army itself; it follows that a night attack
also as a rule can only take place with secondary combats, and seldom
with great battles.

We may attack a portion of the enemy's Army with a very superior force,
consequently enveloping it with a view either to take the whole, or to
inflict very severe loss on it by an unequal combat, provided that other
circumstances are in our favour. But such a scheme can never succeed
except by a great surprise, because no fractional part of the enemy's
Army would engage in such an unequal combat, but would retire instead.
But a surprise on an important scale except in rare instances in a very
close country, can only be effected at night. If therefore we wish to
gain such an advantage as this from the faulty disposition of a portion
of the enemy's Army, then we must make use of the night, at all events,
to finish the preliminary part even if the combat itself should not open
till towards daybreak. This is therefore what takes place in all the
little enterprises by night against outposts, and other small bodies,
the main point being invariably through superior numbers, and
getting round his position, to entangle him unexpectedly in such a
disadvantageous combat, that he cannot disengage himself without great
loss.

The larger the body attacked the more difficult the undertaking, because
a strong force has greater resources within itself to maintain the fight
long enough for help to arrive.

On that account the whole of the enemy's Army can never in ordinary
cases be the object of such an attack for although it has no assistance
to expect from any quarter outside itself, still, it contains within
itself sufficient means of repelling attacks from several sides
particularly in our day, when every one from the commencement is
prepared for this very usual form of attack. Whether the enemy can
attack us on several sides with success depends generally on conditions
quite different from that of its being done unexpectedly; without
entering here into the nature of these conditions, we confine ourselves
to observing, that with turning an enemy, great results, as well as
great dangers are connected; that therefore, if we set aside special
circumstances, nothing justifies it but a great superiority, just such
as we should use against a fractional part of the enemy's Army.

But the turning and surrounding a small fraction of the enemy, and
particularly in the darkness of night, is also more practicable for this
reason, that whatever we stake upon it, and however superior the force
used may be, still probably it constitutes only a limited portion of our
Army, and we can sooner stake that than the whole on the risk of a great
venture. Besides, the greater part or perhaps the whole serves as a
support and rallying-point for the portion risked, which again very much
diminishes the danger of the enterprise.

Not only the risk, but the difficulty of execution as well confines
night enterprises to small bodies. As surprise is the real essence of
them so also stealthy approach is the chief condition of execution: but
this is more easily done with small bodies than with large, and for
the columns of a whole Army is seldom practicable. For this reason such
enterprises are in general only directed against single outposts,
and can only be feasible against greater bodies if they are without
sufficient outposts, like Frederick the Great at Hochkirch.(*) This will
happen seldomer in future to Armies themselves than to minor divisions.

(*) October 14, 1758.

In recent times, when War has been carried on with so much more rapidity
and vigour, it has in consequence often happened that Armies have
encamped very close to each other, without having a very strong system
of outposts, because those circumstances have generally occurred just at
the crisis which precedes a great decision.

But then at such times the readiness for battle on both sides is also
more perfect; on the other hand, in former Wars it was a frequent
practice for 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.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

As for the rest, most night combats are so conducted as to end with
daylight, so that only the approach and the first attack are made under
cover of darkness, because the assailant in that manner can better
profit by the consequences of the state of confusion into which he
throws his adversary; and combats of this description which do not
commence until daybreak, in which the night therefore is only made use
of to approach, are not to be counted as night combats.