in the destruction or disorganisation of the enemy’s forces without concerning yourself with geographical points of any kind.”  It is under the first category of his first main classification “Of offensive wars to assert rights,” that he deals with what Clausewitz would call “Limited Wars.”  Citing as an example Frederick the Great’s war for the conquest of Silesia, he says, “In such a war ... the offensive operations ought to be proportional to the end in view.  The first move is naturally to occupy the provinces claimed” (not, be it noted, to direct your blow at the enemy’s main force).  “Afterwards,” he proceeds, “you can push the offensive according to circumstances and your relative strength in order to obtain the desired cession by menacing the enemy at home.”  Here we have Clausewitz’s whole doctrine of “Limited War”; firstly, the primary or territorial stage, in which you endeavour to occupy the geographical object, and then the secondary or coercive stage, in which you seek by exerting general pressure upon your enemy to force him to accept the adverse situation you have set up.

Such a method of making war obviously differs in a fundamental manner from that which Napoleon habitually adopted, and yet we have it presented by Jomini and Clausewitz, the two apostles of the Napoleonic method.  The explanation is, of course, that both of them had seen too much not to know that Napoleon’s method was only applicable when you could command a real physical or moral preponderance.  Given such a preponderance, both were staunch for the use of extreme means in Napoleon’s manner.  It is not as something better than the higher road that they commend the lower one, but being veteran staff-officers and not mere theorists, they knew well that a belligerent must sometimes find the higher road beyond his strength, or beyond the effort which the spirit of the nation is prepared to make for the end in view, and like the practical men they were, they set themselves to study the potentialities of the lower road should hard necessity force them to travel it.  They found that these potentialities in certain circumstances were great.  As an example of a case where the lower form was more appropriate Jomini cites Napoleon’s campaign against Russia in 1812.  In his opinion it would have been better if Napoleon had been satisfied to begin on the lower method with a limited territorial object, and he attributes his failure to the abuse of a method which, however well suited to his wars in Germany, was incapable of achieving success in the conditions presented by a war with Russia.

Seeing how high was Napoleon’s opinion of Jomini as a master of the science of war, it is curious how his views on the two natures of wars have been ignored in the present day.  It is even more curious in the case of Clausewitz, since we know that in the plenitude of his powers he came to regard this classification as the master-key of the subject.  The explanation is that the distinction is not very clearly formulated