On War

by Carl von Clausewitz

But what war gained on the one side in force and consistency was lost again on the other side.

Armies were supported out of the treasury, which the sovereign regarded partly as his private purse, or at least as a resource belonging to the government, and not to the people. Relations with other states, except with respect to a few commercial subjects, mostly concerned only the interests of the treasury or of the government, not those of the people; at least ideas tended everywhere in that way. The cabinets, therefore, looked upon themselves as the owners and administrators of large estates, which they were continually seeking to increase without the tenants on these estates being particularly interested in this improvement. The people, therefore, who in the Tartar invasions were everything in war, who, in the old republics, and in the Middle Ages, (if we restrict the idea to those possessing the rights of citizens,) were of great consequence, were in the eighteenth century, absolutely nothing directly, having only still an indirect influence on the war through their virtues and faults.

In this manner, in proportion as the government separated itself from the people, and regarded itself as the state, war became more exclusively a business of the government, which it carried on by means of the money in its coffers and the idle vagabonds it could pick up in its own and neighbouring countries. The consequence of this was, that the means which the government could command had tolerably well defined limits, which could be mutually estimated, both as to their extent and duration; this robbed war of its most dangerous feature: namely the effort towards the extreme, and the hidden series of possibilities connected therewith.

The financial means, the contents of the treasury, the state of credit of the enemy, were approximately known as well as the size of his army. Any large increase of these at the outbreak of a war was impossible. Inasmuch as the limits of the enemy’s power could thus be judged of, a State felt tolerably secure from complete subjugation, and as the State was conscious at the same time of the limits of its own means, it saw itself restricted to a moderate aim. Protected from an extreme, there was no necessity to venture on an extreme. Necessity no longer giving an impulse in that direction, that impulse could only now be given by courage and ambition. But these found a powerful counterpoise in the political relations. Even kings in command were obliged to use the instrument of war with caution. If the army was dispersed, no new one could be got, and except the army there was nothing. This imposed as a necessity great prudence in all undertakings. It was only when a decided advantage seemed to present itself that they made use of the costly instrument; to bring about such an opportunity was a general’s art; but until it was brought about they floated to a certain degree in an absolute vacuum, there was no ground of action, and all forces, that is all designs, seemed to rest. The original motive of the aggressor faded away in prudence and circumspection.

Thus war, in reality, became a regular game, in which Time and Chance shuffled the cards; but in its signification it was only diplomacy somewhat intensified, a more vigorous way of negotiating, in which battles and sieges were substituted for diplomatic notes. To obtain some moderate advantage in order to make use of it in negotiations for peace, was the aim even of the most ambitious.

This restricted, shrivelled-up form of war proceeded, as we have said, from the narrow basis on which it was supported. But that excellent generals and kings, like Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XII., and Frederick the Great, at the head of armies just as excellent, could not gain more prominence in the general mass of phenomena that even these men were obliged to be contented to remain at the ordinary level of moderate results, is to be attributed to the balance of power in Europe. Now that States had become greater, and their centres further apart from each other, what had formerly been done through direct perfectly natural interests, proximity, contact, family connections, personal friendship, to prevent any one single State among the number from becoming suddenly great was effected by a higher cultivation of the art of diplomacy. Political interests, attractions and repulsions developed into a very refined system, so that a cannon shot could not be fired in Europe without all the cabinets having some interest in the occurrence.

A new Alexander must therefore try the use of a good pen as well as his good sword; and yet he never went very far with his conquests.

But although Louis XIV. had in view to overthrow the balance of power in Europe, and at the end of the seventeenth century had already got to such a point as to trouble himself little about the general feeling of animosity, he carried on war just as it had heretofore been conducted; for while his army was certainly that of the greatest and richest monarch in Europe, in its nature it was just like others.

Plundering and devastating the enemy’s country, which play such an important part with Tartars, with ancient nations, and even in the Middle Ages, were no longer in accordance with the spirit of the age. They were justly looked upon as unnecessary barbarity, which might easily be retaliated, and which did more injury to the enemy’s subjects than the enemy’s government, therefore, produced no effect beyond throwing the nation back many stages in all that relates to peaceful arts and civilisation. War, therefore, confined itself more and more both as regards means and end, to the army itself. The army with its fortresses, and some prepared positions, constituted a State in a State, within which the element of war slowly consumed itself. All Europe rejoiced at its taking this direction, and held it to be the necessary consequence of the spirit of progress. Although there lay in this an error, inasmuch as the progress of the human mind can never lead to what is absurd, can never make five out of twice two, as we have already said, and must again repeat, still upon the whole this change had a beneficial effect for the people; only it is not to be denied that it had a tendency to make war still more an affair of the State, and to separate it still more from the interests of the people. The plan of a war on the part of the state assuming the offensive in those times consisted generally in the conquest of one or other of the enemy’s provinces; the plan of the defender was to prevent this; the particular plan of campaign was to take one or other of the enemy’s fortresses, or to prevent one of our own from being taken; it was only when a battle became unavoidable for this purpose that it was sought for and fought. Whoever fought a battle without this unavoidable necessity, from mere innate desire of gaining a victory, was reckoned a general with too much daring. Generally the campaign passed over with one siege, or if it was a very active one, with two sieges, and winter quarters, which were regarded as a necessity, and during which, the faulty arrangements of the one could never be taken advantage of by the other, and in which the mutual relations of the two parties almost entirely ceased, formed a distinct limit to the activity which was considered to belong to one campaign.

If the forces opposed were too much on an equality, or if the aggressor was decidedly the weaker of the two, then neither battle nor siege took place, and the whole of the operations of the campaign pivoted on the maintenance of certain positions and magazines, and the regular exhaustion of particular districts of country.