ABSTRACT
Guerrilla wars have been fought throughout history by small peoples against invading or occupying armies, by regular soldiers operating in the enemy’s rear, by peasants rising against big landowners, by bandits both “social” and asocial. They were infrequent in the eighteenth century, when strict rules for the conduct of warfare were generally observed. The Mexican, the Russian and the Chinese civil wars of the twentieth century saw a good deal of partisan warfare but mainly because neither side was strong enough to mobilize, train and equip a big regular army. Guerrilla techniques were exhaustively described by de Jeney, Decker and other eighteenth-and nineteenth-century authors. The experience gained during the Napoleonic wars provided more systematic and more detailed analyses and prescriptions. Attempts to explain the causes of guerrilla warfare and of guerrilla success have certainly enriched the political language, but they have not greatly contributed to a clarification of the issues involved.
