Attaque à outrance (French: Attack to excess) was the expression of a military philosophy common to many armies in the period before and during the earlier parts of World War I. This philosophy was a response to the increasing weight of defensive firepower that accrued to armies in the nineteenth century, as a result of several technological innovations, notably breech-loading rifled guns, machine guns, and light field artillery firing high-explosive shells. It held that the victor would be the side with the strongest will, courage, and dash (élan), and that every attack must therefore be pushed to the limit. The lethality of artillery, combined with the lack of mobility of infantry, as well as the subsequent development of trench warfare, rendered this tactic extremely costly and usually