2

The Ambitious Student of War (1795–1805)

        Critical analysis is not just an evaluation of the means actually employed, but of all possible means—which first have to be formulated, that is, invented. One can, after all, not condemn a method without being able to suggest a better alternative.

Carl von Clausewitz was driven to succeed as a child, and this only intensified once he reached adulthood. He was blunt regarding his own abundance of “that vanity which we call ambition.” This, he later told Marie, was one of only two active elements of his youthful inner life. The other began in the spring of 1795 when his regiment marched out of the Rhineland into Westphalia and into cantonment near Osnabrück in the county of Tecklenburg, there to await the peace. Here, he lived for three or four months, billeted upon a peasant family. “All of a sudden,” Clausewitz wrote later, “removed from the scene of the war, put in the quiet of a country life in all its significance, for the first time my gaze turned inward.” Proximity to Onasbrück meant books, and Clausewitz began to read. “Accidentally, some Illuminati writings and other books on the perfectibility of man fell into my hands. Here suddenly the vanity of the little soldier became intense philosophical ambition and then I found myself at the time as close to rapture as the nature of a mind that has no propensity toward this. Were this ember, however, better preserved and used by me, I would perhaps have become a good deal better than I am.” Clausewitz had discovered the Enlightenment, and more importantly, his own intellect—but would have to wait for the chance to feed it to his liking.¹

Figure 2.1. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821).

LC-DIG-npcc-19687. National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

    In the summer of 1795, sixteen-year-old Sekonde-lieutenant Clausewitz (he had been promoted on March 5) returned with his regiment to their garrison in Neuruppin. Clausewitz didn’t like being, as he put it, “squeezed” into a small and isolated garrison and surrounded by those whom he considered quite ordinary. The only distinction he felt was his inclination toward thought and literature, and his burning military ambition. This appeared to him the last spark of an old fire, one that “seemed more of a hindrance than beneficial in my inner development, as long as there seemed no means to satisfy it.” In reality, Neuruppin was not as physically and intellectually isolated as Clausewitz later insisted. It had been the home of Frederick the Great when he was Crown Prince and was only forty miles from Berlin. A Prussian officer would have far preferred a posting to Neuruppin than one in the newly acquired Polish lands. Clausewitz wrote these comments in 1807 as a prisoner of war in France, a desperately unhappy time for him, of which we will soon learn more.²

    Clausewitz soon settled into the routines of a junior officer of his day. He took his turn commanding the camp guards, and spent four to five hours daily drilling his men in core tactical routines such as practicing loading and reloading their smoothbore, muzzle-loading muskets to develop the ability to produce quick, uniform volleys of fire. Unusually, Clausewitz took the time to train his men in skirmish tactics, an innovation then on the rise, and a loose-order break with the severe linearism of the then current practice. Clausewitz also participated in the regular army maneuvers. Later, reflecting upon this time, especially in light of his combat experience in 1806, he pronounced Prussia’s peacetime training unrealistic. “How then would it have been possible, with a little reflection, not to realize that the autumn maneuvers in Potsdam and Berlin were totally unlike the war we had fought?” These mock battles—a waste of time—were “carried out by the most distinguished men of the army...with an all-absorbing seriousness and intensity that bordered on weakness.” He had, however, he maintained, begun to feel the “spirit of independent judgment” awaken in him.³

    Clausewitz took leave for six weeks in the summer of 1797 to journey to Poland with his step-uncle, Major-General Johann Christian von Hundt. Here he saw Poles and Polish society for the first time, developing a prejudice against both that never left him. But in other respects, his intellectual development continued under the guidance of his superiors. Colonel Friedrich Wilhelm Alexander von Tschammer und Osten, the commander of Clausewitz’s regiment, firmly believed in education for all under his care, even the sons and daughters of this regiment’s men, for whom he set up a garrison industrial school to provide technical job training in skills such as spinning. Tschammer saw education as more than accumulating facts. In his view, a soldier lacking judgment was little better than a beast. In 1799 he established a course of instruction for his lance-corporals and ensigns; Clausewitz, though a lieutenant, attended some of these. The school was run by an educated officer named Major von Sydow, who, in a not-unusual discussion of his day, “distinguished between raw and educated courage.” Clausewitz’s discussion of military genius in On War has some similarities. His time in Neuruppin was also possibly Clausewitz’s first introduction to the value of theory to the soldier, something critical in many of his works. Theory “is meant to educate the mind of the future commander,” he later wrote, and he came to see the bond between the pair: “A critic should never use the results of theory as laws and standards, but only—as the soldier does—as aids to judgment.”⁴

    During his time in Neuruppin, Clausewitz’s superiors developed high opinions of the youthful subaltern. His evaluation for 1799 deemed him “an excellent young man, useful and eager in service, [who] has intelligence, and seeks to gain knowledge of all kinds.” The next year’s noted that “his conduct is good, in every consideration [he] is a very good officer, has intelligence, and seeks to acquire knowledge.” The one for 1801, though he had departed for Berlin, was similar: “His conduct is very good; he is a good officer who seeks to acquire knowledge.”⁵

    Between the time of Clausewitz’s arrival in the Vosges in 1793 and his departure for Berlin in late 1801, the political and military landscape of Europe was irrevocably altered. A young French general of Corsican descent named Napoleon Bonaparte waged a stunning campaign in Italy in 1796–97. The War of the First Coalition ended in 1797, but the War of the Second Coalition against France (1798–1801)—one Prussia sat out—immediately followed. Despite an abortive campaign in Egypt beginning in 1798, Napoleon’s previous military successes had raised him to the precipice of power. In 1799 he launched a coup against France’s unpopular rulers, the Directory.

    Napoleon immediately began consolidating his political position at home, but understood that his rule depended upon what happened on the battlefield. Harnessing the passion of the French citizen unleashed by the Revolution, his own political determination and drive to dominate, the efficient, innovative, and well-led tool that became known as le Grande Armée, and a little of his own military genius, Napoleon made France the dominant power in Europe, and himself emperor.

    In 1800 Napoleon led the French army across the Alps and into Italy in a campaign that culminated in the defeat of the Austrians at Marengo in June. Afterward, in 1801 and 1802, Napoleon negotiated a pair of treaties that brought peace, but this was short lived. France next fought the War of the Third Coalition against Britain, Russia, and Austria. Napoleon conducted what is known as the Ulm campaign in the fall of 1805, which climaxed in his decisive victory over the Austro-Russian army at Austerlitz on December 2 of that year. The reordering of Italy and Germany followed, a political transformation that shifted the balance of power on the continent in France’s favor. Austerlitz also ensured that Napoleon would always be remembered as one of history’s greatest generals.

Figure 2.2. Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755–1813).

LC-USZ62-58870. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

    The new century also brought with it a fresh opportunity for Clausewitz, and a bigger field for his own driving ambition: In the fall of 1801 he went to Berlin to attend the General Military College. Here he found his intellectual light: Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst. “He is,” Clausewitz wrote, “the father and friend of my spirit.”⁶

    Scharnhorst, like many of those in Prussian service, was not Prussian by birth. He was born on March 12, 1755, in Bordenau, Hanover, the second child of a peasant farmer who had served as a Hanoverian supply sergeant during the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748). Scharnhorst received no formal education until his entry in August 1773 into the military academy of Count Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst zu Schaumburg-Lippe-Bückeberg, in Wilhemstein. The count, born in England, was fluent in six languages and a veteran combat soldier. He was also very forward thinking. A writer on military affairs, he argued that the best way for small states to protect themselves was through universal conscription and alliances, particularly with states similarly small—revolutionary ideas in an age of absolutist rulers, but ones he applied to his own state of Schaumburg-Lippe, as a volunteer militia supplemented the army. His ideas suggest what was to come. He also taught Scharnhorst and his other students to think broadly about the profession of arms. The count’s approach, Scharnhorst insisted, stayed with him throughout his life.⁷

    Scharnhorst entered the Hanoverian army as an ensign in July 1778. He was lucky to serve under a commander who believed in education as well as practical experience and who almost immediately appointed the youthful Scharnhorst a teacher at the regimental school. In less than a year Scharnhorst headed instruction and went on to build a reputation as a military writer and intellectual, publishing journals as well as books on military affairs. Scharnhorst stressed the study of history, believing one can learn from past military experience, but also believed in practical, realistic military training and experience. Classroom instruction, personal study, realistic training, experience: to Scharnhorst, these made the soldier—not just the officer.⁸

    Scharnhorst, like Clausewitz, saw his first combat in the War of the First Coalition. His experience convinced him of the necessity of the people being supportive of the war, a break from the view that war was the province of princes and kings and their armies. Scharnhorst’s personal bravery in the war solidified his reputation, but his lack of noble status limited his options in Hanoverian service.⁹

    After the war he pushed for reforms of the Hanoverian army. These included competitive exams for commissions and education for both the officers and non-commissioned officers, and officer promotion by merit. He also suggested many other reforms based upon the military changes being generated by the French Revolution. His superiors weren’t interested, so Scharnhorst sought employment elsewhere. He entered Prussian service as a lieutenant-colonel of artillery on May 12, 1801. His ennoblement was part of the agreement, as only this gave him a chance to serve as an equal to other Prussian officers, as well as a possibility of pressing his ideas.¹⁰

    Soon after taking up his new position, Scharnhorst asked to be given charge of the Berlin Institute in the Military Sciences for Young Infantry Officers. There were only two permanent instructors: Professor Johann Gottfried Kiesewetter, a devotee of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and Major Ludwig Christian Müller. The institute was one of six schools founded in 1779 by Frederick the Great in the large garrisons for their related military districts. They had no degree programs; officers attended a variety of courses running from November to February on such topics as mathematics and tactics. On September 5, 1801, Frederick William III named Scharnhorst superintendent. Within a month, Scharnhorst proposed a plan to make the school Prussia’s premier military college, which Frederick William approved on October 6, 1801.¹¹

    Scharnhorst reorganized the curriculum so that the three-year course ran from October to April. The school included practical courses on mathematics and artillery, including live-fire exercises, as well as instruction in the tactical and strategic ideas and theories of the day and logic. Scharnhorst determined to shape the practical and philosophical sides of his students. He would teach them not only what to do as soldiers on the battlefield, but more importantly, how to reason, think, analyze.¹² It is too great a stretch to say that without Scharnhorst there would be no Clausewitz, but Clausewitz might not have gone as far as he did in his thinking without the influence of his mentor.

    When Clausewitz began the fall 1801 course at the Berlin Institute for Young Officers, he was twenty-one and “described at the time as being of medium height, thin and erect...with full brown hair, to which, until 1806, he was obliged to tie in a short tail when on duty.” Some of his fellow students apparently regarded him as rough and too earnest, as he strove to better himself through shaking off the dust of the provinces. The cost of living in Berlin was much greater than in his small garrison town, something over which he fretted. Young officers generally received allowances from their families to supplement their meager pay, but his father’s poverty meant that he and his brothers never had any hope of financial help. Clausewitz resorted to earning extra money by pulling guard duty for other officers.¹³

    The curriculum challenged Clausewitz. Initially, Marie later noted, Clausewitz had a difficult time following the lectures because he lacked the necessary fundamental knowledge. She credited Scharnhorst, especially his “goodness and gentleness,” for looking out for him and nourishing, as she put it “all the seeds of his mental abilities.” When the third and final year of the program ended, Clausewitz graduated first in his class. “The reward was inexpressibly sweet to me,” he told Marie. Clausewitz considered this one of the two events in his life that brought him the most joy; the other was winning Marie’s love. He had also earned Scharnhorst’s lasting, fatherly affection (Scharnhorst was twenty-five years his senior), feelings strengthened by the death of Clausewitz’s father in 1802. Their bond lasted until Scharnhorst’s death.¹⁴

    In a November 29, 1803, memo Scharnhorst sent to the king, he ranked only two students among the most distinguished: Clausewitz and Tiedemann, who became one of Clausewitz’s closest friends. In his graduation assessment of his pupil, Scharnhorst noted: “The performance of Lieutenant von Clausewitz is characterized by an unusually good analysis of the whole and by a modest and agreeable style of presentation. Furthermore he possesses a thorough knowledge of mathematics and military science.”¹⁵

    We know that Clausewitz joined the Militärische Gesellschaft, or Military Society, while in Berlin, but little material survives from his time as a student. We do have a short tactical exercise, and another such 1803 document is held by the University of Münster library. We also have (beginning in 1803) the earliest examples of Clausewitz’s writing on political and military matters. They are speculative jottings, originally penned in two now-lost notebooks (one ninety-eight pages, the other forty-seven) in which he sporadically scribbled until 1809, that were never intended for publication. They give us some insight, however, into Clausewitz’s thinking at age twenty-three. He ponders whether or not the French of his time are like the ancient Romans (“yes, they are alike, as much alike as the difference in their eras allows”), muses on the relative geopolitical situations of various European states (especially the larger ones), compares Germany’s development with that of France, Spain, and England, and discusses the balance of power system.¹⁶

    He also composed an interesting piece on coalitions and warfare and already believed in 1803 that the only way to successfully oppose the strength of France was through a group of powers: “In politics there are two kinds of coalitions: one that aims expressly to defeat or coerce the enemy, and another that aims to weaken, to preoccupy, both the enemy and the state with which one is allied.” From his point of view statesmen often made the mistake of forming coalitions to take advantage of both. This was dangerous for “weak states,” and only the “self-sufficient” state can manage it, and even then when not “seriously threatened by the common enemy.”¹⁷

    Clausewitz reaches back to past wars in his evaluation of coalitions and their utility. He had thoroughly imbibed the history-based analytical method of Scharnhorst. It is clear that he had already read deeply in military history and theory, as his examples stretch from the medieval period to 1792. Among the authors into whose works he delved were Machiavelli, Montecuccoli, Maurice de Saxe, Puységur, Guibert, Lloyd, Turpin, Tempelhoff, Mauvillon, Feuqières, Santa-Cruz, Berenhorst, Prince de Ligne, Folard, Venturini, and de Silva. To these he added the memoirs of the campaigns of Condés, the Duke of Brunswick, Frederick the Great, and Turenne, as well as the histories of ancient warfare and the military art.¹⁸ He was proving adept at drawing historical lessons and ties his examples to theory, using this to evaluate coalitions, the respective political objectives sought by their members, and whether or not they achieved them. It is a supremely modern method and one that the best military staff colleges and strategic studies programs use today.

    Clausewitz’s study of the extant military theory of his day convinced him of its mediocrity. In 1804 he began his own book. Writers like Heinrich Dietrich von Bülow, author of The Spirit of the Modern System of War, were “sophists,” and Machiavelli was too preoccupied with the ancient world. The surviving draft of Clausewitz’s early foray into military writing is titled Strategie, but the work (in thirty numbered sections) deals with a variety of military issues stretching from tactics, to the defense of mountains, to operations, to strategy, to command.¹⁹ He will tread much of this same ground in On War.

    Clausewitz draws upon other theorists such as Machiavelli, whom he says had “a very keen eye in matters of war,” and in particular on his Discourses, a study of Roman war and politics. Hence we have the Roman general Fabius Cunctator (The Delayer), famous for taking up positions in traditional Roman fortified camps nearby to Hannibal but refusing to meet him in battle, preferring harassing the enemy and protracting the war in an effort to exhaust him. The Clausewitz of 1804 was not a fan of “hesitation in the spirit of Fabius,” yet his criticism fell mainly upon Fabius’s usage of fortified camps, arguing that it was far easier for a modern enemy to take fortified positions than it had been for Hannibal.²⁰

    Clausewitz also explores the utility of theory itself, perhaps not surprising since he is so critical of the other theoretical works. What theory had to teach a commander was “the evaluation of matters that are outside him. It can ensure that his faith in himself, his enterprising spirit, does not arise from ignorance.” Clausewitz was already exploring not just what advice gets offered, but why. He understood the difficulty of “turning theory into practice.” “The art of war speaks thusly” Clausewitz wrote; one must “proceed towards the greatest, most decisive object that you can reach,” and “choose the shortest path to it that you trust yourself to follow.”²¹

    Strategie has sections on tactics, operations, and strategy. The tactical discussions cover a variety of subjects, from the defense of outposts to mountain warfare. Again, however, what is most interesting is Clausewitz’s definitions, an element of what became a quest for a coherent methodology. “Tactics is the science of securing a victory through the employment of military forces in battle; strategy is the science of achieving the aim of the war,” and “the science of employing the individual battles to further the aim of the war.” Battle underpinned every use of military force. Two decades later, in On War, he would express the same basic principles: “tactics teaches the use of armed forces in the engagement; strategy, the use of engagements for the object of the war.”²²

    His sense of strategy often encompasses what today we would call “operations.” He even says as much. For example, in “The Operational Plan,” the first sentence reads: “Strategic plans are a thing unique unto themselves.” Moreover, the conduct of energetic, critical operations is seen as pivotal to military success. Clausewitz advises that in war one should embark upon the operation or operations that will bring victory even if the cost is great and insists that we must conduct “the most decisive operation within the scope of our powers.” The conflation of strategy and operations was typical of the age. Jomini’s later definition of strategy likewise covers what today we call the strategic and operational realms.²³

    Arguably, the most important insight from Strategie is in “The Operational Plan,” for he provides a more cogent explanation of the two types of war than appears in the prefatory letter published with On War: “The political aim of war can be twofold. Either to annihilate the adversary entirely, to abolish the existence of his state, or impose conditions upon him in peacetime.”²⁴

    Clausewitz’s text shows the degree to which he had already broken with the practices of conventional warfare, a conclusion bolstered by his view on the utility of combat engagements. As we’ve seen, generals preferred maneuver, often believing this by itself could win a campaign. The French Revolutionaries, as we’ve also seen, had increased warfare’s pace and intensity. Clausewitz understood this evolution: “In war everything turns on the engagement, which has either actually occurred or is merely intended by one side or even feigned. Engagement is therefore to strategy what hard money is to currency exchange.”²⁵ In short, warfare meant not avoiding warfare.

    In 1805, probably before the outbreak of the War of the Third Coalition in April, Clausewitz wrote a short essay—in French—on how to wage war against France. Here he outlined a multipronged plan, with each nation operating in its own theater, arguing that this is better than a scheme encompassing all the armies. Success was more likely if the members of an alliance against the French fought from a common template, but one that allowed flexibility. Underpinning his discussion of war with France is the acknowledgment that the coalition partners will have territorial goals (in other words, political objectives) for which they are fighting. The multi-theater nature of the plan, with coalition armies hitting France from many directions at once, is something with which the anti-Napoleon forces found ultimate success. Also interesting is Clausewitz’s suggestion that one of the means of defeating France is with a great captain (in On War he calls him the man with a “Genius for War”), but he thought it would be only through chance that the coalition found such a leader.²⁶ There was likely but one Napoleon.

    Clausewitz’s first publications were probably a collection of reviews appearing in 1801 and 1802 in the journal Neue Bellona. His first significant work—published anonymously in the same journal in 1805—was a review essay on The Spirit of the Modern System of War (1799), a book on military theory by fellow Prussian Adam Heinrich Dietrich von Bülow (1757–1807). Clausewitz found little worthwhile here and wasted no time in showing it. Bülow “has given us nothing other than a new title,” he announced in his second paragraph, and deemed Bülow’s “pretension to a scientific approach laughable.”²⁷

    Clausewitz’s attacks on Bülow parallel concepts he developed in Strategie, and lend weight to the idea that it was at least partially a reaction to Bülow’s work. Importantly, Bülow’s definitions of strategy and tactics were hopelessly vague. “Strategy is the science of military movements beyond the enemy’s vision, tactics is within it,” Bülow wrote—inexplicit classifications that Clausewitz found arbitrary. Clausewitz believed that failing to define the terms of one’s argument was intellectually lazy and reminded readers that the meanings of terms change over time. In place of Bülow’s weak definitions, Clausewitz would offer, as we’ve seen, his own. This early development of his thinking is very much in line with what he would later say in On War.²⁸

    Clausewitz defined himself in opposition to Bülow and other “sophists” and “charlatans” who built geometrical systems for victory, he later wrote, to which they “ultimately gave a veneer of mathematical elegance.” Fixation on mathematical solutions and angles of attack were useless. To Clausewitz, war was never a chalkboard exercise. Earlier he had expressed some sympathy for geometrical attempts to measure strategic elements, but his experience as a soldier had convinced him that mathematical elegance did not reflect the messy reality of the battlefield.²⁹

    Clausewitz’s attack on Bülow was heavy-handed; he ends his review by calling the book “the children’s military companion.” But the essay contains some nuggets: “There is a fairly prevalent but fundamentally false idea: That the art of war ought always begin with the development of the means, and where the means at hand would be inadequate, there remains nothing for the art of war to do but to advise peace.... This is an art of war for speculators, not for the general.”³⁰

    Despite his harsh critique, Clausewitz also learned from Bülow. Clausewitz’s view of war’s inherent political nature was influenced by Bülow’s writings, which are one source for Clausewitz’s most celebrated line: “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” Even at twenty-five, Clausewitz had moved beyond geometrical approaches and begun to think in far larger terms than Bülow or others.³¹

    Clausewitz also wrote a number of histories during this period, all probably completed before 1806. The most substantial and analytical is a study of Gustavus Adolphus’s campaigns of 1632–1634 during the Thirty Years War. The other works include a look at the Dutch War of Independence, 1568–1606; an examination of Turenne, the seventeenth-century French marshal during Louis XIV’s regn; a study of the campaigns in Flanders from 1690–1694 of another of Louis XIV’s marshals, François-Henri de Montmorency, Duke of Luxembourg (this is a more organized and systematic work); and a look at the War of Spanish Succession, 1701–1714. Overall, these primarily narrative, often blow-by-blow chronological accounts lack the deep analysis and the intense psychological portraits of his later works, though we do see the beginnings of such thought. They are, however, exceptionally remarkable for a twenty-five-year-old who had received little formal education before coming to Berlin as a student.³² We also observe some patterns in Clausewitz’s writing, particularly those related to theory: a belief in the necessity of defined terms for building a clear, philosophical underpinning for debate. As seen, this comes through particularly in his striving to define tactics and strategy. There is also an interest in the applicability of ancient warfare (especially its tactical elements) to the art of war in his era.

    Clausewitz’s experience mirrors what often happens in today’s professional armies. After his education he began his service with practical training in the ranks, then graduated to the tasks and duties of a junior officer before continuing on to education designed to shape the manner of one’s thought. The combination—when properly done—prepares the soldier not only for the rigors of the field, but for increasing responsibility. Moreover, like many officers today, Clausewitz, while attending the General War School, also had another assignment, one which proved particularly beneficial for his career.

Figure 2.3. Marie von Brühl (1779–1836).

From Karl Schwartz, Leben des Generals Carl von Clausewitz und der Frau Marie von Clausewitz, geb. Gräfin von Brühl: Mit Briefen, Aufsätzen, Tagebüchern und anderen Schriftstücken (Berlin: Ferd. Dümmlers Verlags-Buchhandlung, 1878). Courtesywww.clausewitz.com.

    Because of Scharnhorst’s recommendation, in the spring of 1803 Clausewitz became the adjutant to Prince August von Preußen. Prince August was the twenty-four-year-old son of the head of Clausewitz’s regiment, and a cousin to the king. With this appointment, which became official on August 8, Clausewitz moved into Prussian high society. August commanded a grenadier battalion in the infantry and Clausewitz received quarters in Berlin’s Wilhelmsplatz Palace. In June 1804 his salary was raised to 360 talers a year, and on February 11, 1805, he was given a brevet promotion to captain. This change in position introduced him to the leaders of Prussia, providing him with valuable contacts. It also gave him the opportunity to meet Marie von Brühl.³³