Guerrilla Warfare Read online

  The subsequent fate of some of the leading partisan commanders is not without interest. Mosby tried his luck in politics, made his peace with the North, and was helped by President Grant, much to the disgust of his fellow Southerners. He became consul general in Hong Kong and eventually acted as an attorney for railroad companies. Duke became a congressman and published a number of books about his experiences in the war. Forrest, who had been a millionaire before the war and lost his property, became a planter and apparently also the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. "Flying Joe Wheeler'" also became a congressman, and a general in the U.S. Army who was to see action in the Philippines against another partisan, Aguinaldo, three decades later. General Adam R. Johnson outlived them all; blinded in battle, he settled in a new town which he had founded on the shores of the Colorado River in Texas; he died in 1922.

  The question of the effectiveness of partisans and rangers in this war has remained, as noted initially, a matter of dispute to this day. That the guerrillas were a "hornet's nest" and that they caused damage to the North is beyond doubt. But Union retaliation could be telling; if the rangers attacked their supply lines, they would live off the land, much to the detriment of the South. The rangers were at their most potent when operating among a friendly population, their deep-penetration raids frequently taking them into hostile territory where they could not count on the valuable goodwill of the civilians. Some of the large-scale raids involving thousands of men were quite successful, but they were also far more risky and liable to end in disaster. The smaller units, such as Mosby's, were more elusive and therefore, for that very reason perhaps, on balance more effective.

  Partisans in the Franco-Prussian War

  The war between France and Prussia began in mid-July 1870; two months later the French armies were beaten, the emperor had abdicated, Paris was under siege and Moltke, the German commander in chief, was reasonably certain that he would be back on his farm in Silesia in October in time for the hunting season. But outside Paris a government of national defense had taken over with the ringing slogan, guerre à l'outrance, and a huge new army was mobilized by Gambetta and his military deputy, Freycinet. The underlying concept was that this new army should act as a vast guerrilla force, harassing the enemy rather than engaging in frontal attack. Memories of the Vendee and of Spain were conjured up; some of the partisan units were commanded by officers who were descendants of leading Vendee rebels such as La Rochejacquelin. The guerrilla concept did not lack plausibility; the Germans had an efficiently organized fighting machine, but they might well find themselves hard pressed to adjust to an unfamiliar type of war. It was thought, furthermore, that guerrilla warfare would give the French soldier a chance to exhibit his real prowess. In the first phase of the war the soldiers had fought well, whereas the higher command had failed. Guerrilla warfare, however, demanded no staff experience and planning; it could be carried on by zealous citizens even if they had no profound knowledge of strategic theory or its practice.

  The new government nevertheless decided on 29 September 1870 to put the franc tireur units under the general command of the army. In all, some fifty-seven thousand officers and men enlisted in the free corps (corps francs); some small units of perhaps two to three thousand men had been in existence even before then.64 But the original enthusiasm for a vast chouannerie did not last, for several reasons. Above all, Gambetta realized that it would take time to organize a people's war, longer time than was available to lessen the pressure on the besieged capital. Hence, priority had of necessity to be given to the establishing of a new regular army which could be readied more quickly to help relieve Paris. Secondly, there was passive resistance on the part both of army officers and the civil administration. There were reports that the franc tireurs were misbehaving, scandalizing the population by their brigandage, and that they were none too eager to engage the enemy.65 New measures were proclaimed to intensify control over the free corps; each such unit was to be directly responsible to the local military command, every officer had to report twice weekly on the activities of his unit. On 14 January 1871 it was announced that no new free corps would be established.

  The opposition to franc tireur operations stemmed partly from the innate conservatism of unimaginative army officers who feared that with the spread of partisan units the line between soldier and civilian would be blurred.66 But their aversion was not entirely unjustified, for the franc tireurs indeed lacked discipline, they were incapable of carrying out sustained military operations, joining or absenting themselves from their units as it suited them. Lastly, patriotic enthusiasm was strongest in the towns and weakest in the countryside. The peasants did not receive the Germans with open arms, and more often than not they refused to collaborate, but neither was there any great willingness on their part to leave home and farm to join the franc tireurs. There was a general feeling of apathy, and since the Chouans lacked enthusiasm, there could be no chouannerie.

  The jranc tireurs were badly equipped, their leadership was indifferent and they missed countless opportunities. Even their two most spectacular operations were of no military significance. By the time they mined the viaduct of Fontenoy (22 January 1871), the railway line was no longer of vital importance for the Ger-mans.67 And the capture of the village of Le Bourget, north of Paris (the site long since of a famous airport), by Parisian franc tireurs on 27 October 1870 provided a psychological boost but little more; the Germans took it back four days later.

  And yet, uncoordinated and badly executed as partisan warfare was, it produced some startling results. As the war progressed — and as it emerged once it was over — the Germans had to deploy some hundred and twenty thousand men, a quarter of their total force, to protect their lines of communication, mainly the railways. The people's war between the Seine and Loire caught the Germans altogether unprepared, both politically and militarily. Politically, because Bismarck feared that the longer the war lasted, the more likely the diplomatic intervention of the other European powers, which would deprive the Germans of at least some of the fruits of victory. On that count alone, Bismarck had every incentive to bring the war to a speedy end. Militarily, the Prussians were superbly prepared to fight against a regular army, but an elusive enemy was not that easy to destroy. France is a big country, the German armies combined numbered fewer than half a million soldiers and the farther they advanced, the more thinned out they became, for garrisons had to be left behind in every town and strongpoint that was occupied; not too small garrisons either since an attack or an insurrection could never be ruled out. Altogether the Germans lost more than a thousand men in franc tireur warfare, a not insubstantial figure in terms of casualties in general. Of more import was the pervasive atmosphere of insecurity generated by franc tireur operations, and German commentators freely admitted after the war that the irregulars had caused them serious problems.68 A people's war conjured up the specter of a revolution. The Germans would have greatly preferred to make peace with the emperor; instead, they had to deal with a republican government, and there was the danger of further radicalization.

  The war was conducted cruelly on both sides; the franc tireurs committed acts of individual terror, the Germans retaliated by executing hostages and burning villages. French publicists, including Victor Hugo, called blatantly for total war, the extermination of every last German; Frau Bismarck was not alone in suggesting to her husband that all Frenchmen should be shot and stabbed to death down to the smallest infant. But Bismarck and the old emperor, despite occasional expressions of violent anger, were sober and farsighted enough to reject such advice. They rightly feared the incalculable consequences for the future relations between France and Germany if these atrocities should spread and become common practice.

  The franc tireur war consisted of innumerable small actions such as destroying railway lines and bridges; the French irregulars also tried to blow up tunnels but lacked the know-how and sufficient quantities of explosives. On several occasions they succeeded in freeing transp
orts of French prisoners of war. Thus, on the road from Soissons to Chateau Thierry, between three to four hundred prisoners escaped during a franc tireur attack.69 Telegraph lines were cut and supply columns attacked. The scope of franc tireurs activities would have been wider but for the lack of cavalry which restricted their movements on the whole to forests and other inaccessible regions. They engaged in night attacks on small German garrisons, as at Chatillon in November 1870.70 In this instance the Germans lost 192 officers and men. Many of these were taken prisoner and the French threatened that they would be executed unless the Germans treated captured irregulars as prisoners of war. Auxon, near Troyes, had to be evacuated temporarily under franc tireur pressure, and a first German attempt to enter the city of St. Quentin and to arrest the local prefect was beaten back. The Bavarians and the troops of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg ran into difficulties near Orléans, on the road to Chartres and in the Dijon area, and almost invariably in hilly or wooded country.

  The franc tireur units, hastily established, were a mixed bag and it is almost impossible to generalize about their composition, political orientation and military efficiency. Some bands had only a handful of members, others several hundred. Most were set up on a local basis, with the men fighting in the vicinity of their homes, but there were also partisan units from Bretagne, from Nice and from North Africa, not to mention Garibaldi's irregulars. They wore every kind of fantasy uniform, and some wore no uniform at all. Some were radical left wing in inspiration, a number had a conservative and monarchist bias. Some were relatively well organized and disciplined and operated to all intents and purposes as small military units would have done. Others, wandering aimlessly from village to village, showed greater proclivity for marauding than fighting the German enemy.71

  After all the initial enthusiasm for a people's war, French resistance collapsed during the early months of 1871. France was not the Vendée or Spain; the great majority of Frenchmen, much as they hated the Germans, lacked the fanaticism and the stamina for the guerre à l'outrance which had been so loudly proclaimed at the start. The psychological shock of the defeat had been immense; for two centuries, if not longer, Frenchmen had believed their country to be militarily superior to all other European powers, and the surrender of their armies had destroyed their self-confidence — it was not just a crisis but a national disaster, the collapse of a whole world. To prolong resistance now, was the despondent attitude, would be but to devastate their towns and villages further, to no conceivably different end. It is idle to speculate what might have happened if resistance had continued for six more months or even a year. Moltke and the war party were only too eager to carry on the campaign, but domestic pressure on them to end it was growing. It was not only Bismarck's apprehensions about diplomatic intervention, but the war was becoming increasingly expensive, and daily more unpopular at home. Even the front-line troops were weary and the war minister, Roon, wrote that it might take years to occupy the whole of France. But the years were not called upon: French resistance faded and died away first. Guerrilla warfare, as the average Frenchman saw it, would never bring about the liberation of his country, whereas peace would perhaps open new perspectives and possibilities for a national recovery. Which all points up the more strongly that the operations of the franc tireurs neither could nor did change anything insofar as the military results of the war or — even less — the conditions of the peace treaty were concerned. German demands certainly did not become more moderate as the people's war continued. It was political considerations at the last, however, quite unconnected with events on the battlefield, that fairly narrowly circumscribed the terms that Germany could finally impose on her defeated neighbor.

  Commando

  In May 1900 there was every reason to assume that the end of the Boer War was in sight. Cronje had surrendered, the siege of Mafe-king had been raised, Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State, had been taken and in early June the British troops entered Pretoria. Field Marshal Roberts, commanding the British forces, predicted the impending collapse of Boer resistance; the Burghers had become, in the words of one of their commanders, a "disorderly crowd of terrified men fleeing before the enemy. He let his men go home, for "I cannot catch a hare with unwilling dogs."72 When President Kruger announced that the war would begin only now, the British generals were inclined to dismiss this as idle talk on the part of an old man, a civilian who lacked understanding of military realities.

  At the start of the war, in October 1899, the Boers had at first beaten the British. But as massive reinforcements streamed into South Africa, the tide began to turn despite poor generalship on the British side. The Boers were excellent horsemen and crack shots. They knew the terrain and used it very well in their operations. Above all, they were fighting for their homes and national independence. According to Boer common law, every Burgher between sixteen and sixty had to be prepared to fight for his country at any moment; he had to have a riding horse, saddle, bridle, a rifle, thirty cartridges and food for eight days. They went to war in their working clothes. But they lacked military experience and discipline and were unaccustomed to receive and carry out orders. It was truly a citizens' army; on more than one occasion their elected generals were outvoted by the corporals and the privates. Their forces were subdivided into commandos of between three hundred and three thousand men. Joubert and Cronje, who led them in the early phase of the war, were old and overcautious men; having scored a victory, they failed to press it home and make it complete. They lacked any overall strategic concept; they were capable of carrying out daring raids and surprise attacks, but there was little coordination between the commandos, and no general plan. This is not to say that they could have won the war with better leadership and a well-trained regular army; the contest was too unequal. Thus they would score some remarkable victories, such as Magersfontein, Colenso and Spionkop, but in the end the British would get fresh reinforcements, whereas all the Boers got were messages of sympathy from various parts of the world.

  The British were at first exceedingly bad at reconnoitenng and in general at adjusting themselves to local conditions. But as the war continued, they improved; they had guns in plenty, while the Boers had only a few and did not make good use of their artillery. It was during the second phase of the war, which lasted from, roughly, March 1901 to May 1902, that guerrilla tactics were more and more often adopted.73 In the beginning it had been the "last of the Gentleman's Wars"; the Boers usually released their prisoners after a day or a week, if only because they had no facilities for keeping them, and the British, too, acted with restraint. But in the guerrilla phase of the war the British began to burn farms on a massive scale; the women and children who had lived on these farms were evacuated to refugee camps, known also as concentration camps. Similar practices had been employed by General Weyler in Cuba. These camps had nothing but the name in common with the concentration camps of the Nazi era, but by the standards of a more civilized period these measures were considered barbarous in the extreme; there was an outcry in Britain, the Boer resistance became even stiffer. Patriotic feeling, however, was running high in Britain, and for all the sense of outrage at this inhumanity toward civilians, not everyone by any means was happy with the relatively lenient treatment meted out to members of the Boer commandos who were exiled to St. Helena or Bermuda. Maguire, the guerrilla theoretician, wrote that if it became generally known that guerillas or irregulars would be treated like the guerrillas or irregulars in South Africa were treated, "there will be plenty of guerrillas and irregulars in every future war. It will be the most prosperous career possible."

  The second guerrilla phase of the Boer War was highlighted by the commando raids of de Wet, Smuts, de la Rey, Botha and Viljoen. At the beginning of the war, the British garrison consisted of a mere 12,000 men, by the end of December 1901 there were 388,000, and when the war ended 448,000. About 46,000 of them were killed or wounded during the war, or died of disease. There had been some 60,000 soldiers in the Boer
army at the beginning of the war, but their number shrank to fewer than 20,000 in the guerrilla stage.

  Despite the numerical superiority, the British commanders faced the

  silent disability of a regular army in contest with a horde of guerrillas manoeuvring about their own country. Seldom in the course of the whole campaign in South Africa was it possible for the British Commander-in-Chief or any of his lieutenants, to select their own sites for battle or ground for manoeuvre. Well-nigh invariably these spots were dictated by the enemy, insignificant numbers of whom led great armies whither they would.74

  Boer tactics were not, of course, decisive, but it was "exceedingly humiliating to be thus bandied about at the will of handfuls of evasive freebooters."75 Even by early 1902 full control had not been reestablished in the Orange River Colony:

  There was not a convoy whose safe arrival could be counted on, not a garrison that did not stand continually to arms, not a column which even whilst it marched against the enemy had not to move with the strictest precautions of the defensive.76

  Hardly a day elapsed, according to another well-known chronicler of the Boer War, that the railway line was not cut at some point.77

  With the beginning of the guerrilla phase a rough division of labor was decided upon by the Boer leaders; de Wet and Hertzog transferred their activities to the Free State, Botha to eastern Transvaal and on to Natal, de la Rey and Smuts to western Transvaal. Operations in the Free State became very difficult indeed, because the territory had been laid waste by the British. Smuts's raid into Cape Colony, in the course of which he covered two thousand miles, was one of the most successful operations of the whole war. He set out with three hundred and sixty men; evenutally his force swelled to almost four thousand. He did not succeed in stirring up a general rising in Cape Colony as he had hoped, but he kept tens of thousands of British soldiers busy for a long time.78