Defeat in detail
Defeat in detail, or divide and conquer, is a military tactic of bringing a large portion of one's own force to bear on small enemy units in sequence, rather than engaging the bulk of the enemy force all at once. This exposes one's own units to many small risks but allows for the eventual destruction of an entire enemy force.[1]
Dug-in units that are spread out over so wide a distance that the maximum effective range of their weapons is significantly shorter than the distance between units, which prevents those units from supporting the flanks of neighboring units.
Defending units on opposite sides of physical barriers such as hills, forests or rivers (but see the "", now rendered obsolete by crewed and uncrewed aircraft, for a historically attested deliberate tactic).
reverse slope defence
Defending units whose artillery support is too far to the rear and so cannot effectively engage attackers.
Defending units that have no effective communications with their command structure and so cannot request assistance.
1796–1797: 's first campaign in Italy during the French Revolution, in which the French army of 37,000 men defeated 52,000 Piedmontese and Habsburg troops by rapid advances, which prevented the two nations' armies from combining.[2]
Napoleon Bonaparte
10–15 February 1814: the was a final series of victories by the forces of Napoleon, as the Sixth Coalition armies closed in on Paris.[3]
Six Days' Campaign
1862: 's Shenandoah Valley campaign, in which Jackson defeated three Union commands (a total of 60,000 men) with his own command (of 17,000 men), by fighting each of the enemy columns in turn while the Union commands were separated from each other by impassable terrain or a significant distance.
Stonewall Jackson
1914: The and the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes, with the Germans exploiting the geography of the Masurian Lakes and the personal antipathy between the Russian commanders to defeat the Russian Second Army and later the Russian First Army.[5]
Battle of Tannenberg
1941: , when the British defeated an Italian force more than four times larger in North Africa by exploiting the fact that the Italian defenses could not support each other.
Operation Compass
Horatii
Big Wing
Strategy of the central position
Battle of annihilation
Swarming (military)
Lanchester's laws
Battle of Cold Harbor
Bay, Austin (December 31, 2002). . StrategyPage.