The sheer number of soldiers, strict military discipline and technically new and therefore superior weaponry do not simply win wars or pacify a population, as the war and occupation of Afghanistan have proven during the first two decades of the twenty-first century and as the present war in Gaza will very likely confirm. Asymmetrical forms of warfare in particular demonstrate the limits of military strategies and tactics as pursued by Western powers since the eighteenth century, whether within or without Europe and North America.

Asymmetrical warfare comprises various forms of military engagements, such as partisan fighting, guerrilla tactics and war on terrorism. It was termed Small War (or Petite Guerre resp. Kleiner Krieg) in the eighteenth century when it resurfaced as irregular warfare in the context of the regular warfare of the linear battle order of the ancien regime armies. A central feature of this warfare were irregular, small units of light soldiers equipped with short rifles and hardly any baggage. Light troops were meant to find food and fodder outside of one’s country, in other words: to plunder and loot in the enemy’s territory.

James McIntyre’s latest book on “Light Troops in the Seven Years War” highlights several forms of irregular warfare as they emerged in central Europe and the North American subcontinent from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards. The book is organised in nine chapters dealing with the re-emergence of partisan warfare in Europe in the first half of the eighteenth century, the raising of the light infantry units, their mission during the Seven Years War, the warfare in North America, and the emergence of British light infantry in the ‘American Army’. McIntyre, currently serving as Fleet Professor at the College of Distance Education for the United States Naval War College, is not the first military historian dealing with the Small War as a means of warfare in the eighteenth century. Before him, Johannes Kunisch and Martin Rink worked extensively on the phenomenon.1 However, both studies concentrate on the European theatres of war, claiming that the Small War was the necessary outcome of what might be called the Big War, that is the linear strategy based on drilled soldiers disciplined to fire volley after volley.

However, even contemporary officers raised doubt about the efficiency of such warfare as it lacked mobility at least on the battlefield and left no room for tactical changes. Instead, light troops were much more flexible units and became the dynamic element of the eighteenth-century armies. In a separate chapter, McIntyre deals with military authors Armand François De La Croix, Thomas Le Roy de Grandmaison and Louis Michel de Jeney, who outline the principles and effects of the Small War, namely surprising attacks, ambushing, interruption of communication, destroying of the enemy’s supplies (grain and powder magazines as well as the baggage train), pillage and safeguarding the army.2

During the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748) it was the so-called Grenzer (frontier-men) like Croats and Pandours, but also Cossacks, who acted in small often mounted units, disturbing the main armies of Frederick II of Prussia. During the Seven Years War (1756–1763) it was the Grenzer-units of Maria Theresia’s multi-ethnic Hapsburg army which taught the much-acclaimed grand master of linear warfare several lessons. Light Troops in the Seven Years War nicely demonstrate the planning, implementation and outcome of Small War strategies and tactics. A separate chapter deals with the Austrian attack on the Prussian baggage train near Domstadtl, which was supposed to supply Frederick II's army laying siege to Olmütz in Moravia in 1758. When the hardly safeguarded Prussian supply train of 800 waggons and an overall length of 32 km was brought to a halt, looted and the remains destroyed, Frederick II had to abandon the siege and retreat into Silesia.

Another chapter deals with the implementation of Small War tactics in North America, the Fort Bull Raid in 1756. As with the Domstadtl attack, the Red Bull Raid constitutes a prime example of tactical action with strategic outcome. This is McIntyre’s main argument: In contrast to the British, the French, by far less in number than their British enemy, utilized the local Iroquois’s experience of warfare and their knowledge of the country to approach the wooden fort and capture it by surprise. Hence, French soldiers and Iroquois worked in tandem. Finally, the French broke the fort’s gate, massacring almost all of its 63 inhabitants. After they had taken away food like salt, biscuits, butter, chocolate and spirits, clothes for 600 men, and 1.000 blankets they set the rest on fire with the gunpowder found on the spot. For the British, it became clear that future successful warfare in North America would depend on a closer cooperation with the local population.

McIntyre draws heavily on published primary and secondary literature to work out his idea of the re-emergence of irregular warfare in Europe in the first half of the eighteenth century and its consequent adaption by the French in the North American theatre of war. Irregular warfare, as McIntyre demonstrates, is not a strategy and tactical manoeuvring of inferior soldiers and hence simply a weapon of the weak but a tactical option to outmanoeuvre hostile forces. At Domstadtl, the number of troops involved in the assault was almost the same. The French and Iroquois forces numbered roughly 250 men, against 60 British military and civilian persons, however, the attackers were meant to storm a fort which was only successful because of the close cooperation and the effect of the sudden attack.

It is this innovative widening of the idea of the Kleine Krieg as a means of successful warfare against otherwise highly disciplined forces and strong fortresses to the North American subcontinent which makes the book definitely a worthwhile reading. It also hints at the fact that the tactics of the Small War can also be seen as a means to fight otherwise numerically and/or technically superior forces. This can be demonstrated by the widening of the Small War-context to the South Asian subcontinent where Haidar Ali of Maisur (1720–1782) not only raided the hinterland of the British settlement at Madras in 1767–1769 and again in 1780–1782 to cut off their troops from food and fodder but followed British troops attacking them by surprise from an ambush, bringing their baggage trains to a halt thus making their military operations almost impossible. Being accused of cowardice by the British commanding officer, Haidar replied:

“Give me the same sort of troops that you command and your wishes shall be granted […] Shall I risk my cavalry, which cost a thousand rupees [about £125] each horse, against your cannon balls which cost two pice [half a penny]? No. I shall march your troops until their feet shall meet their bodies. You shall not have a blade of grass, nor a drop of water. I will hear of you every time your drum beats, but you shall not know where I am once a month. I will give you battle, but it must be when I please, and not when you choose.”3

Seen against this background it would, indeed, be worthwhile to expand the concept of the Small War as a form of asymmetrical warfare to the analyses of other parts of the globe. As can be seen, in the second half of the eighteenth century, Small War tactics emerged independently from European influence for they were an outcome of local military necessity and strategy.

Notes:
1 Johannes Kunisch, Der Kleine Krieg. Studien zum Heerwesen des Absolutismus, Wiesbaden 1973; Martin Rink, Vom „Partheygänger“ zum Partisanen. Die Konzeption des kleinen Krieges in Preußen 1740–1813, Frankfurt am Main 1999.
2 François De La Croix, Traité de la petite guerre pour les compagnies Franches […], Paris 1759; Louis Michel de Jeney, The Partisan. Or the Art of Making War in Detachments, London 1760; Thomas Auguste le Roy de Grandmaison, La petite querre, ou traité du service des troupes legeres en campagne, n.p. 1756. Transl. into English by Lewis Nicola and published in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) in 1777.
3 James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs. Selected from a Series of Familiar Letters written during Seventeen Years Residence in India. 4 vols. London 1813, vol. 3, p. 287. James Forbes (1749–1819) travelled to India in 1765 as a writer for the English East India Company and was resident there until 1784. The quote refers to the second Anglo-Maisur War (1780–1784).