ABSTRACT
The wars waged by small irregular groups against regular military forces or even big armies, of the “classical” type, have been known since Antiquity. But the term “guerrilla war” entered the military vocabulary with the Napoleonic invasion to Spain, at the beginning of the 19th century, when the Spanish irregular forces played an important part in Napoleon’s defeat. The term “guerrilla” means “small war” or “irregular war” waged by unprofessional civil-soldiers, who transform into fighters when their country is invaded by a foreign power.2 Therefore, if a war is carried on with regular armies, it is considered to be the “great” (classical) war, while guerrilla warfare is the “small war,” the unconventional one, a “harassing war,” which brings together “functions and practices of fight, where the cunning, the cheating, the surprise and the secret intercross and support each other.”3
