Carl Clausewitz - The Art of Strategy - Napoleon's Maxims of War + Clausewitz's On War

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There is no security for any sovereign, for any nation, or for any general, if officers are permitted to capitulate in the open field, and to lay down their arms in virtue of conditions favorable to the contracting party, but contrary to the interests of the army at large. To withdraw from danger, and thereby to involve their comrades in greater peril, is the height of cowardice. Such conduct should be proscribed, declared infamous, and made punishable with death. All generals, officers and soldiers, who capitulate in battle to save their own lives, should be decimated.

He who gives the order, and those who obey, are alike traitors, and deserve capital punishment.

Soldiers, who are almost always ignorant of the designs of their chief, cannot be responsible for his conduct. If he orders them to lay down their arms, they must do so; otherwise they fail in that law of discipline which is more essential to an army than thousands of men. It appears to me, therefore, under these circumstances, that the chiefs alone are responsible, and liable to the punishment due to their cowardice. We have no example of soldiers being wanting in their duty in the most desperate situations, where they are commanded by officers of approved resolution.

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There is but one honorable mode of becoming prisoner of war. That is, by being taken separately; by which is meant, by being cut off entirely, and when we can no longer make use of our arms. In this case, there can be no conditions, for honor can impose none. We yield to an irresistible necessity.

There is always time enough to surrender prisoner of war. This should be deferred, therefore, till the last extremity. And here I may be permitted to cite an example of rare obstinacy in defence, which has been related to me by ocular witnesses. The captain of grenadiers, Dubrenil, of the thirty-seventh regiment of the line, having been sent on detachment with his company, was stopped on the march by a large party of Cossacks, who surrounded him on every side. Dubrenil formed his little force into square, and endeavored to gain the skirts of a wood (within a few muskets’ shot of the spot where he had been attacked), and reached it with very little loss. But as soon as the grenadiers saw this refuge secured to them, they broke and fled, leaving their captain and a few brave men, who were resolved not to abandon him, at the mercy of the enemy. In the meantime, the fugitives, who had rallied in the depth of the wood, ashamed of having forsaken their leader, came to the resolution of rescuing him from the enemy, if a prisoner, or of carrying off his body if he had fallen. With this view, they formed once more upon the outskirts, and opening a passage with their bayonets through the cavalry, penetrated to their captain, who, notwithstanding seventeen wounds, was defending himself still. They immediately surrounded him, and regained the wood with little loss. Such examples are not rare in the wars of the Revolution, and it were desirable to see them collected by some contemporary, that soldiers might learn how much is to be achieved in war by determined energy and sustained resolution.

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The conduct of a general in a conquered country is full of difficulties. If severe, he irritates and increases the number of his enemies. If lenient, he gives birth to expectations which only render the abuses and vexations, inseparable from war, the more intolerable. A victorious general must know how to employ severity, justice and mildness by turns, if he would allay sedition or prevent it.

Among the Romans, generals were only permitted to arrive at the command of armies after having exercised the different functions of the magistracy. Thus by a previous knowledge of administration, they were prepared to govern the conquered provinces with all that discretion which a newly-acquired power, supported by arbitrary force, demands.

In the military institutions of modern times, the generals, instructed only in what concerns the operation of strategy and tactics, are obliged to intrust the civil departments of the war to inferior agents, who, without belonging to the army, render all those abuses and vexations, inseparable from its operations, still more intolerable.

This observation, which I do little more than repeat, seems to me, notwithstanding, deserving of particular attention; for if the leisure of general officers was directed in time of peace to the study of diplomacy—if they were employed in the different embassies which sovereigns send to foreign courts—they would acquire a knowledge of the laws and of the government of these countries, in which they may be called hereafter to carry on the war. They would learn also to distinguish those points of interest on which all treaties must be based, which have for their object the advantageous termination of a campaign. By the aid of this information they would obtain certain and positive results, since all the springs of action, as well as the machinery of war, would be in their hands. We have seen Prince Eugene, and Marshal Villars, each fulfilling with equal ability the duties of a general and a negotiator.

When an army which occupies a conquered province observes strict discipline, there are few examples of insurrection among the people, unless indeed resistance is provoked (as but too often happens), by the exactions of inferior agents employed in the civil administration.

It is to this point, therefore, that the general-in-chief should principally direct his attention, in order that the contributions imposed by the wants of the army may be levied with impartiality; and above all, that they may be applied to their true object, instead of serving to enrich the collectors, as is ordinarily the case.

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Nothing can excuse a general who takes advantage of the knowledge acquired in the service of his country, to deliver up her frontier and her towns to foreigners. This is a crime reprobated by every principle of religion, morality and honor.

Ambitious men who, listening only to their passions, arm natives of the same land against each other (under the deceitful pretext of the public good), are still more criminal. For however arbitrary a government, the institutions which have been consolidated by time, are always preferable to civil war, and to that anarchy which the latter is obliged to create for the justification of its crimes.

To be faithful to his sovereign, and to respect the established government, are the first principles which ought to distinguish a soldier and a man of honor.

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A general-in-chief has no right to shelter his mistakes in war under cover of his sovereign, or of a minister, when these are both distant from the scene of operation, and must consequently be either ill informed or wholly ignorant of the actual state of things.

Hence, it follows, that every general is culpable who undertakes the execution of a plan which he considers faulty. It is his duty to represent his reasons, to insist upon a change of plan, in short, to give in his resignation, rather than allow himself to be made the instrument of his army’s ruin. Every general-in-chief who fights a battle in consequence of superior orders, with the certainty of losing it, is equally blamable.

In this last-mentioned case, the general ought to refuse obedience; because a blind obedience is due only to a military command given by a superior present on the spot at the moment of action. Being in possession of the real state of things, the superior has it then in his power to afford the necessary explanations to the person who executes his orders.