Letting Slip the Dogs of War

A historian argues that the French Revolution began an age of combat without pity.

In France and Germany, the subtitle of this caricature linking Napoleon and the Devil parodied biblical style: "Here is my beloved son who gave me so many satisfactions." (Courtesy Of Cornell University, Division Of Rare And Manuscript Collections)

THE FIRST TOTAL WAR

Napoleon's Europe and the Birth Of Warfare as We Know It

By David A. Bell

Houghton Mifflin. 420 pp. $27

Once upon a time, there was a boy called Karl von Clausewitz, who was a cadet in the Prussian army. In 1792, at the ripe age of 13, he saw action against the French at the Battle of Valmy. Naturally, he was much impressed. Forever after, he remained convinced that Valmy and the following campaigns, lasting until 1815, were the greatest the world had ever seen. Clausewitz saw the Napoleonic wars as qualitatively different from their predecessors -- so different, indeed, that he described them as "absolute war."

Most of those who followed Clausewitz agreed with him, including such prominent military thinkers as an American named Nickerson Hoffman (1888-1965) and an Englishman named John Frederick Charles Fuller (1878-1966). Fuller in particular argued that the French Revolution had completely changed the face of war. It had grown much larger, more intensive and more fierce, foreshadowing the age of "total war" (1914-45) that he lived through.

In his well-written and very interesting volume, David A. Bell of Johns Hopkins University repeats Clausewitz's and Fuller's argument. There was a time, in the 18th century, when war was a pleasant game played by kings and other aristocrats. While they did fight each other, being fundamentally nice people, they did not seek to completely destroy each other. Their armies opened fire only after saluting each other first. Supposedly, those armies also treated the civilians they met quite well, rarely murdering or abusing them.

This could not last. The French Revolution brought an entirely new and ferocious attitude to war. Fed by general conscription, the Revolution's huge armies campaigned from Madrid to Moscow, leaving behind an unprecedented trail of mayhem and blood. Though this particular series of wars ended in 1815, the idea of "total" war survived. In 1914, it broke out again, and from then until at least 1945, it dominated the scene.

There is the thesis as Bell and his predecessors explain it, but is it true? First, let's note that the 18th century does not the whole of history form. Even if we accept that war at that time was relatively restrained, one cannot use this period to argue that total war was new and unprecedented. War, after all, goes back thousands of years before Napoleon. Very often it was waged as ferociously and with as much intent to kill and destroy as it was between 1793 and 1815.

For example, the Bible lists Canaanite cities whose inhabitants were slaughtered to the last man, woman, child and even head of cattle. Hannibal in 218-202 B.C. waged such a total war in Italy that its environmental and economic consequences are said to affect the countryside to the present day. Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane cut vast swaths of destruction through the countries they conquered, often not leaving a soul alive. Nor were Europeans better than anyone else. When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099, they committed such slaughter that the horses waded up to their ankles in blood. In terms of horror, the Albigensian Crusade, the Hundred Years War and, of course, the Thirty Years War left nothing to be desired.

Nor was the "civilized" 19th century a period of sweetness and light. In Beijing in 1900, some European troops behaved like Attila the Hun. In just seven months, the Franco-Prussian War left some 160,000 dead. The U.S. Civil War killed some 600,000 people, which in proportion to the population was eight times as many Americans as were killed in World War II. The concept of "unconditional surrender," which Bell sees as one key characteristic of modern total war, was not invented by the French Revolution and Napoleon. It was coined by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant during the siege of Vicksburg in 1863.

I am among those who believe that major war among major countries is on the wane -- not because mankind has changed but because of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. That, however, does not mean that other wars as ferocious, as destructive, as bloody and, to use Bell's terminology, as total as any in history will become extinct. Let others debate whether or not 18th- and 19th-century wars were less total than those of 1793-1815 and 1914-45. As far as we can see, many future wars are likely to be every bit as vicious as the worst ones of the past. ·

Martin van Creveld is a military historian who teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His latest book is "The Changing Face of War."