Guerrilla Warfare Read online

  Reference should also be made to the Miqueletes and the Somaten (Honrados), local Catalan militias, which had existed since time immemorial. The Somaten, divided into partidas of a hundred men, were more loosely organized; the Miqueletes consisted of smaller units of mountain peasants. The Miqueletes took a prominent part in the defense of Gerona, while the Somaten were mostly employed on guard duty.66

  The subsequent fate of the guerrilla leaders was not, on the whole, a happy one. The war years had whetted their appetite for power or adventure or both. As far as they were concerned, fighting did not end in 1814. The younger Mina was executed as a rebel by Spanish forces in Mexico in 1817; his more famous uncle survived him for many years, a not very effective general in the Carlist wars. Most of his later life he spent in exile — in England, Switzerland and, longest of all, in France; the very country against which he had declared "war to the death" provided a shelter. Merino, the curate, and the Empecinado were on opposite sides in the Carlist wars, the former allying himself with the French party, the latter joining the constitutionalists. Neither distinguished himself in the fighting; it was one thing to attack foreign invaders, but another, much more difficult task to face one's own countrymen, who knew the countryside equally well. The Empecinado was made prisoner and hanged. The Marquesito was executed by the Spanish authorities in 1814. The Capuchino plotted against King Ferdinand and was hanged one year later, in December 1815.67

  While most guerrilla leaders were eager to be recognized by the central junta, and to receive military rank, their contact was mainly with the provincial juntas; and even more often with the local communes. When financial assistance failed to arrive, the guerrillas sent out their own tax collectors, much to the chagrin of the French. Mina had a yearly income of some three hundred pounds from a customs house he kept at Irun, near the French border; the French authorities, needless to say, greatly resented such impertinence, but gradually a modus vivendi nonetheless developed between the customs officers. Mina's excellent spy network throughout the Pamplona region was based on the information received from government officials who kept him informed of French troop movements. The guerrilleros expected such help from the local population. When it was not forthcoming, they were not slow in displaying their anger. On one occasion Mina had three alcades, who had not warned him of the presence of enemy units, hanged.68 Mention has been made of the fact that the major guerrilla bands had their own hospitals, workshops, ammunition factories and mobile workshops for the manufacture of clothing and saddlery. Mina maintains that he never imposed contributions on the town population (excepting only "collaborators" with the enemy), and that he took nothing from the peasants but bread, meat and wine, and barley for his horses. The rural populations nevertheless suffered from the guerrillas; the small bands often plundered indiscriminately, and the larger ones needed provisions which the peasants could ill afford to spare.69 But this, as the guerrillas argued, was inevitable in a popular war of national liberation. On the whole, they could count on the sympathy of the local inhabitants, even though they were as much feared as loved.

  Their relations with the Spanish regular army officers were not too amicable. To the professionals, Mina and the Empecinado were mere peasants, lacking military training, experience and discipline — little better than brigands. The guerrillas for their part, hardened in countless skirmishes, made short shrift of such criticism. "I was several times wounded, had four horses killed under me, still have a ball in my thigh," wrote Mina, but to the professionals "I remained a mere guerrillero. ... To be sure, we learned the art of war not in the military academy, but on the field of battle."70 The guerrillas had little respect for the personal courage of the regular army officers whose record against the French had not been impressive.

  The attitude of the British commanders toward the guerrilla was ambiguous. Wellington hardly ever mentioned them in his dispatches, Napier wrote that these "undisciplined bands" had been as dangerous to their own country as to the enemy, while Sir William Vane asserted that the rural population was more afraid of them than of the French because they plundered everyone who fell into their hands. In reality the guerrillas helped Wellington's army in more ways than one. The French had a four-to-one superiority in regular soldiers on the Peninsula and it was the guerrillas' diversions that prevented a mass concentration of these forces against Wellington, with what well might have been fatal results.71 They intercepted many messages between the French commanders and delivered them to Wellington's headquarters. Dispatches of political interest were sent to the free Spanish press in Cadiz for publication, providing grist for the mills of psychological warfare. At the time of the Battle of Salamanca the French armies were situated a mere fifty miles from each other, but, owing to the activities of the guerrillas, they failed to realize it and did not unite against the enemy. By attacking the forces of Soult and Suchet in Andalusia and Valencia in the spring campaign of 1812, the guerrillas prevented them from sending reinforcements to Marmont for his battle against Wellington. The following year, Wellington, by coordinating his actions with those of the guerrillas, kept two French armies apart in central Spain, defeated one and forced the other to retreat to France. Britain supplied Spain with millions of pounds and tens of thousands of rifles, guns, powder and uniforms; much of this went to regular Spanish units, but a substantial part was either allocated to or fell into the hands of the guerrillas.

  In purely military terms the importance of guerrilla warfare has been overestimated both by the guerrilla leaders and by some other writers. Mina may have insisted that he was never surprised and the Empecinado that he never lost a battle. ("When the French pressure gets too hard, I retreat. . . . The French pursue me and get tired, they leave people behind and on these I jump. If a man remains one step behind the rearguard he is not seen again.")72 But in the event, the guerrillas were beaten by the French forces time and time again. Toreno claims that by 1810 the French needed some 108,000 men to keep their lines of communication clear.73 The figure is, of course, exaggerated; furthermore, these were in the main not French units but inferior troops from other parts of Europe. It is also true that most attempts to coordinate the struggle of the guerrilla bands, let alone to integrate them, failed completely. But what matters in the last resort is that the guerrillas had a considerable nuisance value; even the most determined attempt to stamp them out in early 1812 came to nothing. Oman describes the situation at this critical turning point in the Peninsular War:

  Large forces have been put into motion; toilsome marches have been executed over many mountain roads in the worst season of the year; all the bands of the insurgents had been more than once defeated and dispersed. But the countryside was not conquered: the isolated garrisons were still cut off from each other by the enemy, wherever the heavy marching columns had passed on. The communications were no more safe and free than they had been in December. The loss of men by sickness and in the innumerable petty combats and disasters had been immense. The game had yet to be finished, and the spare time in which it could be conducted was drawing to an end.

  The guerrillas achieved no brilliant or major victories, but this was never their intention. Their purpose was to weaken the French army by incessant unpredictable harassments. At the start a small detachment was enough to protect a French courier, later a company or even a batallion were not sufficient. A Prussian officer serving with the French recorded in his diary an observation that reflects what successive generations of regular soldiers were to discover from their own bitter experience of fighting guerrillas: "Wherever we arrived, they disappeared, whenever we left, they arrived — they were everywhere and nowhere, they had no tangible center which could be attacked."74 The French always had to be prepared for an attack; the mood is perhaps best depicted in a picture by Colonel (later General) Lejeune who, for a time, was one of the guerrilla's prisoners. His canvas, Attaque d'un convoi par une guerrilla, was exhibited in the 1819 salon.

  The guerrillas could have been destroyed by t
he French had the area to be controlled been smaller, the mountains more accessible. In the plains of southern Spain there were no guerrillas in this campaign, nor in earlier nor subsequent wars. Without Wellington's army and Napoleon's defeat in Russia, Spain would not have been liberated. The real achievement of the Spanish guerrillas was political and psychological, the fact that popular resistance continued and that it constituted a serious problem for the occupiers. The French image of invincibility suffered as they proved incapable of imposing their will on the Spanish nation. Thus the little skirmishes and ambushes of Mina and the Empecinado ultimately had repercussions far beyond Spain. They provided comfort and inspiration to the enemies of Napoleon throughout the length and breadth of Europe.75

  The Tyrol

  The year that guerrilla warfare broke out in Spain witnessed a rebellion similar in character, though less successful, in central Europe. Austria had been defeated by Napoleon, but Andreas Hofer and the peasants of the Tyrol continued to resist the invaders. By the terms of the peace treaty, their land had ceased to be part of Austria and become Bavarian territory. The uprising of the Tyroleans has been attributed not very convincingly to a reaction against the malpractices of the Bavarian administration. The Tyrolean peasants were royalists and deeply religious and, like the Vendeans, put Church above state. Their leaders called on them to attack the infidels in the name of the Holy Trinity, a somewhat inappropriate rallying cry considering that the French and the Bavarians were also good Catholics; a shared faith in no way diminished the Tyroleans' hatred of them. It was, in essence, a struggle of the natives against foreigners, for tradition against the imposition of new, alien rulers.

  The Tyrol rising lasted from April to November 1809. The first battle took place at the Isel Mountain south of Innsbruck, which was also the scene of much of the ensuing fighting.76 Andreas Hofer and his lieutenants made good use of the difficult mountain terrain; the peasants always tried to command the heights and they invariably attacked enemy forces in narrow mountain passes. In the battles for Mount Isel, some seventeen thousand Tyroleans faced about the same number of Bavarians, with the one advantage to the peasants lying in their superior strategic position. They had no artillery other than some wooden cannon, but the Bavarians had to storm uphill and once they approached the insurgents' lines they met with deadly fire. The peasants were organized in companies of a hundred and fifty to two hundred men all hailing from the same valley; each company had some ten to twelve subsections (Schrannen).

  Like northern Spain, the Tyrol was ideal guerrilla territory, but it was much smaller and could more easily be controlled by the invader. It would have been difficult for partisans to hide anywhere for any length of time. Besides, the Tyrolean peasants were not geared for extended guerrilla warfare; they wanted to liberate their country at one stroke. In some other respects the similarities with Spain were striking: the revolt took place after the regular Austrian armies under Chastelet and Hormayr had been defeated. It was only in the month of May that Hofer, originally the commander of a partisan unit in a little valley, became the military leader of all Tyrol.77 Relations between the Tyroleans and the regular Austrian army and civil authorities were strained. The professional soldiers, most of them aristocrats, considered war an occupation for gentlemen and looked with contempt on the amateurish, crude and often savage warfare waged by the peasants. Atrocities were committed by both sides; the peasants threw Bavarian soldiers alive into burning houses, the Bavarians cut off the tongues and noses of captive Tyroleans. The priests told their flock that no Tyrolean above the age of twelve would go to heaven unless he (or she) killed at least three Bavarians.78 After the first liberation of Innsbruck there were scenes of drunkenness and widespread plundering; in the evening there was a pogrom against the local Jewish community.

  Patriotic historians later contended that the peasants showed moderation and magnanimity and that there were no excesses, but this is not borne out by contemporary documents.79 Not that the peasants acted without provocation. Napoleon had sent two divisions to the Tyrol not so much to occupy the country as to spread terror and to discourage local resistance. Villages were plundered, houses burnt, and the attitude to the local population was anything but friendly. It is interesting to note, however, that the main resistance originated in the southern region of the Tyrol which had not borne the main brunt of invasion. The Austrian authorities gave Hofer some money, and regular army units took part in the initial fight for the Isel Mountain, only to leave before the second Isel battle (4-15 August), which Hofer and his men had to fight alone. On 12 July, after the Battle of Wagram, the Austrians agreed to a ceasefire which called for the Tyrol to be evacuated by their forces. In the circumstances, fighting without cavalry and artillery, Hofer did astonishingly well in the August battles, first against Napoleon's German troops (many of them Saxons), and subsequently against Marshal Lefebvre. This led to the retreat of the French and the third liberation of Innsbruck. Hofer became regent of the Tyrol and his peasant armies were jubilant, but for the French this was, of course, only a temporary setback. It was merely a question of time before the insurgents were to be crushed by overwhelming military forces. In October the Austrian emperor signed the treaty according to which the Tyrol was no longer part of Austria; Hofer and his men were advised not to prolong the resistance but to make their peace with Napoleon. But Hofer fought on, was captured, betrayed by one of his own men, and eventually executed in Mantua.

  It is possible that the Tyrolean resistance would have lasted longer had it refrained from open battles with the French and their German satellites. The final result, however, would not have been different, for the Tyrol was surrounded by enemy forces and, once it could no longer turn to the Austrian authorities for help, the fate of the rising was sealed. The unwillingness of the Tyrolean peasants to engage in a protracted guerrilla campaign has already been remarked; after each battle they could not get home fast enough. Hofer had to implore them time and again not to leave his army at a critical moment.80 In the strict sense, there was not one but three risings in the Tyrol in 1809; between times the peasants made for home to work in the fields or to participate in religious pilgrimages. They had, in short, no intention of becoming full-time guerrillas. This has been a phenomenon peculiar to guerrilla warfare the world over, but nowhere was it more pronounced.

  Andreas Hofer was forty-two when the insurrection broke out, an old man by the standards of those days. His education was only of the most elementary, but he was widely traveled and a man of considerable native cunning; an innkeeper by trade, he engaged alongside in a modest import-export business and had connections well beyond his native valley. He was the main driving force in the preparation of the rising, but left its execution to others; Joseph Speckbacher was the major military talent among the insurgents, and Haspinger, a Capucine priest, who went into battle bearing a large crucifix, also took a more active part than Hofer in the actual fighting. His contemporaries hold that Hofer had no burning ambition to be the leader but was carried to the top by the popular will, almost against his own desire.

  His units consisted of peasants, excellent sharpshooters and accomplished scouts, but quite innocent of any military training; their patriotism could not compensate for the lack of even rudimentary discipline. The townspeople sympathized with the rebel commander but did not join him. A unit composed of professors and students of Innsbruck University was set up in May 1809, but it saw no action and was disbanded after only a few days. Andreas Hofer has nonetheless long since been enshrined as one of Austria's great national heroes, for all that the uprising of the Tyrolean peasants was a mere symbol of resistance, no more than a minor episode of the long Napoleonic wars.

  The Russian Partisans: 1812

  Partisan warfare in Russia was of short duration; it started in earnest after the Battle of Borodino (7 September 1812) and it came to an end by late October, when the Russian army went on the offensive and retook the area west of Moscow in which the partisans had been
active. It was carried out by relatively small regular units of the Russian army operating in the rear of the enemy.81 Although the Battle of Borodino ended with a Russian retreat, the French victory had been very costly. The general mood in Russian military circles was gloomy; Kutuzov's Fabian tactics were not widely appreciated. Five days before this battle, Lieutenant Colonel Denis Davydov had an interview with General Bagration, whose aide-de-camp he had been for several years. Davydov was deeply pessimistic; maybe the Russian army could not escape destruction, but it should at least make a stand on its native soil rather than become Napoleon's satellite to be used as a tool for the conquest of India. He submitted a plan for operations in the French rear by mounted units and asked for a thousand men to implement it. Bagration transmitted the project to Kutuzov but the generalissimo was by no means convinced of its merits. Davydov was given a mere eighty Cossacks and fifty Hussars. Bagration, who conveyed the message with regret, said that he would have given Davydov three thousand men ("I do not like to fumble things"), but the ultimate decision was, of course, with the commander in chief.

  Denis Vasilevich Davydov, who was "the first to realize the significance of this terrible weapon" (Tolstoy), was a friend of Pushkin, and himself a minor poet. In his early verse he described and glorified the attraction of Hussar life. His father had also been a military man but was compelled to resign from the army and the family was impoverished. Denis Davydov's extracurricular activities were followed by the court with suspicion though he was anything but a wild revolutionary. He had to quit the army temporarily in 1804 but participated in all important campaigns from 1806 onward.