What is the battle of encounter? I have collected all the allusions I can find to this battle, in the hope of supplying an intelligible definition, but have to admit failure. On page 102 it is distinguished from an "arranged affair," a distinction which in peace suggests those carefully-planned "knightly combats" on level pieces of ground, but which in war does not carry us very far. On page 147, however, the special case of a battle of encounter where "an opponent is unexpectedly met with," receives separate consideration. On page 142 it seems to denote the case "where the enemy is also pressing forward," again a somewhat nebulous description, for it is the common way of enemies to press forward. On page 143 one thinks for a moment that it is to be confined to "lesser bodies of Cavalry, unaccompanied by other arms"; but one speedily finds allusion to "larger bodies of Cavalry, accompanied by a proportion of other arms," and the co-operation of other arms becomes the predominant feature of the whole discussion. Yet on page 194, in discussing the action of the army Cavalry on the flank of a great battle, the author speaks of a battle of encounter between the rival Cavalry masses, as though this type of fight were confined to Cavalry. Again, on page 154 it is held to include the passage of defiles, though the defence of defiles, a function which is the necessary counterpart of the passage of defiles, is, as we have seen, regarded as belonging to a separate type of combat. We have noted also the distinction between the battles of encounter and "attacks of localities," and between these latter and the defence of localities (as though there were any antithesis between an encounter on the one hand and an attack or defence on the other!). But what is a "locality," an attack on which is distinguished from a battle of encounter? Here is a fresh mystery. A "locality," on page 174, is distinguished from a "prepared position," which Cavalry, he says here, are never to attack or defend,[4] and it appears, in fact, to be simply a place on which troops are (a "place within the meaning of the Act," we cannot help exclaiming). In the first words of the section on "Attack of Localities" this attack is explained as one upon "an enemy who takes up a defensive attitude." If, therefore, in a battle of encounter, when both sides are "pressing forward," one side or the other halts temporarily (without preparing or entrenching a position), the other side is in the position of attacking a locality; and if the former party repulses the attack and resumes its advance, then the position is reversed. Or if there is a temporary equilibrium in the fight, when neither party can make headway, then both are attacking and both are defending localities. But some such phenomena as these are common to all combats. Where, then, is the battle of encounter?