chyron8472 said:
Finished War and Peace.
[Tolstoy] went on at length about how guerilla warfare screws up the “bigger army = more success in battle” equation, and tries to explain some formulaic method of calculating out the variables guerilla tactics creates.
Book 14, Chapter 2:
"That rule says that an attacker should concentrate his forces in order to be stronger than his opponent at the moment of conflict. Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly infringes that rule. This contradiction arises from the fact that military science assumes the strength of an army to be identical with its numbers. Military science says that the more troops the greater the strength. Les gros bataillons ont toujours raison. Large battalions are always victorious.
"For military science to say this is like defining momentum in mechanics by reference to the mass only: stating that momenta are equal or unequal to each other simply because the masses involved are equal or unequal.
"Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity. In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its mass and some unknown x. The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass gives the resulting force. To define and express the significance of this unknown factor—the spirit of an army—is a problem for science.
[…]
“This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to substitute for the unknown x itself the conditions under which that force becomes apparent—such as the commands of the general, the equipment employed, and so on—mistaking these for the real significance of the factor, and if we recognize this unknown quantity in its entirety as being the greater or lesser desire to fight and to face danger. Only then, expressing known historic facts by equations and comparing the relative significance of this factor, can we hope to define the unknown…”