ers, once more restored the
situation. In March, 1918, during the most critical period of the
German thrust at Amiens, a battalion commander of the Border Regiment
again and again, on horseback and on foot, personally restored the
situation.

{76}

DEFENSIVE ACTION

"The soul of the Defence is the Counter-Attack."--MARSHAL FOCH.

Defensive action may be initiated by a commander in the field, or it
may be imposed upon him by the enemy, and a commander may rely upon
fortification to assist him in defeating the enemy, or he may employ
manoeuvre to effect or to postpone a decision.

A commander may desire to pin the enemy to an attack upon a fortified
position, garrisoned by a portion only of his force, while he detaches
another (and probably greater) portion to attack the enemy from an
unexpected quarter. An outstanding example of this form of action is
exhibited in the _Battle of Chancellorsville_ (May 2-3, 1863), where
Lee kept at bay Hooker's army of 90,000 with one-third of his force and
detached Stonewall Jackson with 30,000 men to attack the Federal rear.
Action of this kind is peculiarly effective, but it requires a secrecy
which modern aircraft would almost certainly unveil, and if the
manoeuvre failed to escape observation it would probably result in
disaster both to the retaining force and to the detached troops.

A different form of the combination of defence with manoeuvre is the
Defensive-Offensive battle, with examples of which the history of
Warfare is amply supplied--Marengo, Austerlitz, and Waterloo being
typical battles of this nature. In this form of defensive action a
commander invites the enemy to attack a well-chosen position, and after
exhausting the enemy's strength and holding up the assault, the
commander passes from the guard to the thrust and overwhelms {77} the
exhausted foe by an irresistible and sustained counter-attack with all
the means at his disposal.

A position is sometimes occupied as a matter of necessity, sometimes
merely as a matter of tactical prudence. At _Nachod_ (June 27, 1866)
the Prussian Advanced Guard hurriedly established a defensive position
and kept at bay the whole Austrian Army, while the Prussian Army
emerged in security from a defile and manoeuvred into battle array.
The _Pass of Thermopylae_ was occupied in B.C. 480 by 1,400 Greeks
under Leonidas, King of Sparta, to withstand the Persian hosts of
Xerxes, and although the Greek force was destroyed