Clausewitz: ’Half against my will, I have become a Professor’

Clausewitz’s lectures on the “Little War” during the Prussian reform era have been interpreted as preparations for military and popular insurrection. But they barely mention irregular warfare. Instead they discuss the methods the little war employs to protect close formations and increase their effectiveness. The lectures have the further purpose of supporting a main concern of the Prussian reform program, the replacement of the old linear system of infantry combat with a combination of close and open tactics. Although the lectures are one of Clausewitz’s few specifically didactic works, they are based on an effort to understand war as such, and include concepts and formulations that reappear in his major theoretical work. They are historically significant as a document of the Prussian reform program, as well as for their place in the development of Clausewitz’s theories.