ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth century “small war,” partisan and guerrilla warfare fell into disregard in Europe’s more developed countries. When irregular warfare was rediscovered towards the middle of the twentieth century its antecedents had been forgotten. It was generally assumed that the history of guerrilla warfare began with the Spanish insurrection against Napoleon — as if there had been no wars of liberation and wars of opinion throughout history. Major Ewald Clausewitz became a professor at the Prussian war academy in 1810 and, on 15 October of that year, gave the first of 156 lectures, which were spread over nine months, on the subject “small war”. The Spanish experience inspired Scharnhorsts and Gneisenau’s drafts and memoranda proposing the establishment of a national militia in Prussia. The study of small warfare led a modest existence throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and up to the First World War.
