GURRILLA WARFARE 1861 1914

GUERRILLA WARFARE 1861 1914

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 1861-1865

1861 Captain Radford CSA offered to raise partisans with the objective to harass the invading USA troops

Colonel J Early wrote If the Federal troops march is made to swarm with guerrillas , who will pick off every man that dares to leave the main body , the very success of invasion will prove his ruin , for they will tempt them further into the interior and involve them more and more in guerrilla warfare

The number of guerrilla units raised by the CSA were 14 Arkansas , 1 Georgia ,2 Kentucky , 62 Missouri and 13 Tennesee

While partisans were a nuisance to the USA troops they did nothing to prolong the survival of the CSA

After Appomattox Lee ordered the disbanding of the units Individuals became outlaws eg Jesse James

COLONEL MOSBY & CAPTAIN QUANTRILL OF THE CSA

MOSBY

A Virginian , Mosby had been lawyer

Given authority to raise partisans in North Virginia

Wreaked havoc behind Union lines eg disrupts supplies & couriers

1863 with 29 men he raided Fairfax and woke the Union commander General Stoughton from bed with a slap on the face

1864 he almost captured US Commander Grant on a passenger train

Custer (USA) once executed 6 of Mosbys men. Immediately 6 of Custers men were taken and executed. A note was attached to the bodies stating Mosby would do the same again

1865 Mosby & his men disbanded , he was pardoned 1866 and went back to being a lawyer

QUANTRILL

Was a school teacher until 1861 when his raiders terrorised Kansas & Missouri (USA farming communities)

Most famous raid 21st August 1863 when he pillaged the town of Lawrence Kansas. Quantrill left 150 dead civilians

Quantrill also destroyed Baxter Springs in Kansas , killing 100 Union troops

Quantrill was killed 1865 many appalled by his tactics.

His raiders included Jesse and Frank James who later used the same tactics a wild west outlaws.

FRANCO PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 1871

French guerrillas were known as francs-tireurs

Franc-tireurs made a better resistance than the French conventional army

Napoleon III & the army surrendered at Sedan 2 September 1870

On 4th September the Third Republic was proclaimed and so began the peoples war

Paris was put under siege 19th September , the insurgents held out until 28th January 1871

Prussian statistics are revealing , there had been 17 major battles but there had been over 156 significant engagements with guerrillas.

Moltke ordered collective executions , fines and expulsions for those guilty of resistance

The image of the guerrilla lingered in the German army memory and re-emerged in 1914 through the belief that Belgian civilians were resisting the Schlieffen Plan.

GREAT WAR 1914

On 4th August 1914 the German invaded Belgium

German troops anticipated civilian resistance and considered this against proper military conduct.

The Kaiser condemned Belgian civilians on 9th August of the crime of Volkskreig (Peoples War)

The military theorist Julius Hartmann posited that where the peoples war breaks out , reprisal becomes a necessity and General Bernhardi said the Freischaren (freeshooters) must be confronted

Belgian authorities denied any peoples war had taken place.

Namur surrendered on 23rd August with German troops entering the city using 100 human shields including two priests.

There was a mass reprisal 26th August at Louvain were 248 civilians were shot and a sixth of the city destroyed.

1500 Louvain citizens(including 100 women & children) were held at Munster army camp until January 1915

By February 1915 a total of 31 camps across Germany held 14,000 Belgian civilians on charges of civilian resistance.

Army command calculated that 101 engagements with civilians had occurred resulting in 4,421 Belgian civilian deaths

George Lefebvre (1932) coined the term autosuggestion that a delusional event was thought to be actually manifesting he applied this to the German fear of guerrillas in 1914

Just because the peoples war was a delusion does not mean that no civilians resisted there was uncoordinated acts of opposition

What the Germans August October 1914 justified as legitimate reprisals against Belgian guerrillas the British turned into German atrocity stories a campaign of terror by the brutal Hun ! violated women and severed hands.

Atrocity stories were grounded in the reality of reprisals that did not have to be invented

1915 the German White Report robustly defended reprisals against guerrillas its thesis in peoples war encountered international disbelief.

The White Report seemed to prove all atrocity charges by failing to repudiate accusations of reprisals against civilians

The Great War is not usually thought of as one marked by guerrilla war because after 1914 the war stagnated into trench warfare which restricted the direct involvement of civilian areas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

* With my face to the enemy R Cowley

* German Atrocities 1914 J Horne

* Franco-Prussian War M Howard