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Updated: May 16, 2025
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.
Clausewitz, who is always quoted in the war schools dealing with the question, says, "Philanthropists may think it possible that the disarmament or subjection of the enemy can be effected by some artificial means without causing too many wounds and that this is the true aim of military science.
We have now to consider its application to modern imperial conditions, and above all where the maritime element forcibly asserts itself. We shall then see how small that advance has been compared with its far-reaching effects for a maritime and above all an insular Power. It is clear that Clausewitz himself never apprehended the full significance of his brilliant theory.
It raises in fact the whole question as to whether it is not sometimes legitimate and even correct to aim directly at the ulterior object of the war. An impression appears to prevail in spite of all that Clausewitz and Jomini had to say on the point that the question admits of only one answer.
Against this view he successfully marshals Napoleon himself, Wellington by the mouth of Lord Ellesmere, and the great German strategist Clausewitz. It will suffice to quote Napoleon: The Emperor's intention was that his advance should occupy Fleurus, the mass concealed behind this town; he took good care ... above all things not to occupy Sombreffe.
That the higher form like the offensive is the more drastic is certain, if conditions are suitable for its use, but Clausewitz, it must be remembered, distinctly lays it down that such conditions presuppose in the belligerent employing the higher form a great physical or moral superiority or a great spirit of enterprise an innate propensity for extreme hazards.
We find, then, if we take a wider view than was open to Clausewitz and submit his latest ideas to the test of present imperial conditions, so far from failing to cover the ground they gain a fuller meaning and a firmer basis. Apply them to maritime warfare and it becomes clear that his distinction between limited and unlimited war does not rest alone on the moral factor.
Before leaving the general consideration of limited war, we have still to deal with a form of it that has not yet been mentioned. Clausewitz gave it provisionally the name of "War limited by contingent," and could find no place for it in his system. It appeared to him to differ essentially from war limited by its political object, or as Jomini put it, war with a territorial object.
The Prussian writer, General Clausewitz, is there cited as "expressing a positive opinion, in which every military critic but a Frenchman must concur, that, even had the whole of Grouchy's force been at Napoleon's disposal, the Duke had nothing to fear pending Blucher's arrival. "The Duke is often talked of as having exhausted his reserves in the action.
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.
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