The German Genius

were needed, that the age of absolutism was well and truly over, and that the reforms needed to be related to the people.
    His early career was amazing from a modern standpoint. Clausewitz came from a military family and was a soldier at the age of twelve, remaining one until his death in 1831. He saw combat before his thirteenth birthday and had fought in five campaigns against France by the age of thirty-five. 47
    His capacity for reflection did not go unnoticed, and he was taken under the wing of Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755–1813), co-opted into the exclusive Military Society that Scharnhorst founded, of which Prince August, nephew of Friedrich Wilhelm III, was another member and where the arts of war were discussed. Clausewitz fought at the Battle of Jena in 1806 where he did well but was taken prisoner. 48 When he was released, he clamored for reform and began publishing articles advocating change, at first anonymously.
    After those five campaigns, and despite military service with the tsar, because the Prussian king had sided with the hated French against the Russians, Clausewitz was eventually reinstated, promoted to colonel, and nominated as superintendent of the War College in Berlin. 49 Now he started work on a lengthy study of war that he had first conceived in 1816. By 1827, says Hugh Smith, in his study of Clausewitz, a draft of the first six books of On War was in existence—about 1,000 pages of manuscript. 50 The book was never completed. Clausewitz succumbed to cholera after putting down an insurrection in Poland in 1830. It fell to Clausewitz’s widow, Marie, to complete the mammoth task of preparing her husband’s manuscripts for publication.
    A N EW , M ORE B RUTAL K IND OF A RMY
     
    On War should be read against several significant changes in warfare that took place during Clausewitz’s lifetime. 51 In his first engagement in 1793, for example, when he was just twelve, eighteenth-century strategy was still being used as armies maneuvered for limited objectives and preferred tactical skirmishes over full-fledged battles. As was often the case then, neither side emerged victorious. By the time of his second campaign, however, the battles of Jena and Auerstedt in 1806, Napoleon had changed all the rules of engagement. 52
    Battles of the Napoleonic era had a higher ratio of casualties than those of the eighteenth century because the nature of armies had changed. In the eighteenth century, armies were, in effect, a royal possession, their officers drawn from the aristocracy with a personal allegiance to the monarch. Most wars, therefore, did not involve the general population as combatants hardly at all. Troops were professional soldiers, mercenaries, and foreigners. Desertion was high.
    Then came the French Revolution and Napoleon. After 1789, for France, war became “the business of the people—a people of thirty millions, all of whom considered themselves to be citizens.” Because Frenchmen now identified with the nation, they allowed themselves to be called to arms in far greater numbers. “Before 1789 an army in the field rarely exceeded 50,000 men. Within a decade or so conscription and militia systems were able to raise forces of over 100,000, and in 1812 France could assemble 600,000 men for its Russian adventure.” 53 With such a supply of troops, major battles could be risked more often. “Between 1790 and 1820 Europe saw 713 battles, an average of twenty-three a year compared with eight or nine a year over the previous three centuries.” 54
    In line with this, and following the humiliating peace at the end of the Seven Years’ War, the French army began to change its structure. Traditionally, the battalion or regiment, roughly 1,000 men, was the basic unit, but now a distinctly larger formation, the division, was conceived. This consisted of 10,000–12,000 men under independent command, comprising infantry, cavalry, and artillery, with engineering, medical, and communications support. Napoleon also put divisions together to create “corps” of up to 30,000 soldiers and then put corps together to create armies. The importance of sheer size was shown in the fact that a corps of 20,000–30,000 men, it was said, “could not be eliminated in an afternoon, being able to resist long enough for relief to arrive.” 55 Sheer size meant that commanders could more easily pursue an opponent and force him to fight. Traveling was safer because the larger numbers could be spread over