In military action, the force of an army is also a product of mass times something, some unknown x. Military science, seeing from a countless number of examples in history that the mass of an army does not coincide with its force, that small detachments defeat large ones, vaguely recognizes the existence of this unknown multiplier and tries to find it either in geometric disposition, or in armaments, or—most commonly—in the genius of the commander. But the substitution of all these values for the multiplier does not produce results that agree with the historical facts.
