The sixteenth-century antecedents of special operations āsmall warā
Benjamin Deruelle
Institut de Recherche Historique du Septentrion, University of Lille, France
The first conceptual, theoretical treatises about small war (la petite guerre) as special operations appeared only from the middle of the seventeenth century. The term is not used in the eighteenth-century sense of āspecial operationsā in older sources. The supposed absence of any treatment of the subject is surprising considering the obsession with the āart of warā in the Renaissance, but other authors attribute it to a supposed antinomy between chivalric ideals and irregular warfare. But the absence of explicit manuals on the subject is not evidence of absence of advanced reflection on this kind of operations in the Middle Ages and in Early Modern times. We should thus look elsewhere, in other genres, for writings that contain and pass on military knowledge. Epics, romances, educational and military treatises, and memoirs in fact contain elements of a theory of special operations, even though these genres differ from our conception of rationality inherited from the Enlightenment.
The sixteenth-century roots of special operations āsmall warā
The eighteenth-century strategist Capitaine Thomas-Antoine le Roy Grandmaison in his famous treaty about āsmall warā (petite guerre) defined the objectives of āpartiesā (special units) in such operations to include intelligence, small harassment operations, and attacks on small enemy units not least to extract booty, to find food and fodder, and to exact war subsidies from the local populations.1 On the basis of other works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we might add to this any operations on the fringes of battles and sieges to assure the main armyās security by closely observing enemy movements, to provide it with food and fodder while ā if the opportunity arose ā depriving the enemy of it, to harass the enemy, and to launch small attacks on small enemy contingents.2 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, small war consisted of skirmishes and limited operations of small detachments of regulars or irregulars that were members of a garrison or a field army, who could not decide wars by themselves, but made their contribution to the final outcome of a campaign.3 This overlaps with what today one might call special operations, to distinguish it from small war (Spanish guerrilla) in the later sense of ideologically motivated popular insurgency or āpeopleās warā (in the language of the Prussians Heinrich von Brandt and Carl von Clausewitz, both writing in the 1820s4). This article deals with the question of whether āsmall warā in the modern sense of āspecial operationsā existed before the term āpetite guerreā began to be used in this seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sense.5
In the sixteenth century, troop contingents were generally smaller, even in battle. The difference between these special operations and āregular warfareā (battles, sieges) lay neither in numbers nor the specialisation of soldiers, but in missions characterised by limited aims, surprise, tricks, stratagems, initiative taken at low levels of command, and constant adaptation.
Although these kinds of operations can be traced back to Antiquity, the first theoretical or conceptual works about them appear only from the Thirty Years War.6 Yet military memoirs of the sixteenth century are replete with stories about them.7 Moreover, the early modern period is driven by the obsession of the āart of warā8 born from the influence of Antiquity and a growing tendency to conceptualise the world in mathematical terms9 that resulted in a rich harvest of theoretical works about warfare. In addition, France seems to have been the precursor in this domain with the manuals of Antoine de Ville, the Duke of Rohan, Maurice de Saxe, and Grandmaison in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.10 The late arrival of works on the āpetite guerreā is often attributed to the supposed antinomy between the āpetite guerreā and earlier ideals of chivalry.11 So was there no earlier general reflection on the conduct of these special operations? Perhaps scholars have looked in the wrong places.
This essay will turn to other genres or literature, namely epics such as Galien RhĆ©torĆ© (1500), educational treatises such as Le Jouvencel (c.1460), general military treatises such as Raimond de Fourquevauxās Instructions on the Feats of War (1548), and military memoirs such as Blaise de Montlucās in the quest for such reflections and generalisations.
Special operations in the sixteenth century
The expression āpetite guerreā was used in the sixteenth century, but we cannot find any dictionary entry for it before the second half of the seventeenth century,12 nor can we find āguerre de partisansā, āguerre de partiā, āaller en partiā, or āaller Ć la dĆ©couverteā. In the French dictionary of Robert Estienne and Jean Nicot dating from 1549 we find the term āfaire des coursesā13 to mean to go out āto the enemies, and plunder what one find on fieldsā.14 And if we find the words āparti(s)ā or āpartisan(s)ā, it is only in 1680 that we find it related to special forces (in the entry āguerreā) in the dictionary of Pierre Richelet, for whom a āpartyā is āa unit of soldiers that one sends to plunder, or to reconnoitre and ravage the enemy countryā.15 Gilles MĆ©nage seems to be the first to use term āpetite guerreā in this kind of literature in 1650.16 However, it does not appear at the item āguerreā but āpicorĆ©eā:17 āGoing to the picorĆ©e, is going to the petite guerre; to rob enemy of cattle, horses, sheep: what soldiers call a cow-runā (ācourre la vacheā).18
Definitions matching the eighteenth-century idea of the small war appear only in the second half or the last third of the seventeenth century, as in the preview published of the AcadĆ©mie franƧaise dictionary in 1687: āto go to the war. That is to go in a party against the enemiesā.19 At this time, the expression āpetite guerreā merits its own subentry under āguerreā besides others such as ājust and unjust warā, ācivil warā, and āholy warā. Antoine de FuretiĆØre lists āguerreā and āpartiā, and here we can find a definition that foreshadows Grandmaisonās:20 a detachment is a recognised āpartiā if it has a āwritten order from the commander, and if counts at least than twenty foot soldiers or fifteen horsemen, or else they are considered brigandsā.21 This reflects French government efforts to regulate āpetite guerreā by positive legislation, such as in 1675.
Its absence from dictionaries does not mean that this form of warfare was unknown in the sixteenth century. In the late seventeenth century Gilles MĆ©nage claims that Gilles Pasquier before him mentioned the expression āpetite guerreā as a neologism of his times.22 In the late nineteenth century, in efforts to trace obsolete words of the French language, FrĆ©dĆ©ric Godefroy and Edmond Huguet identify several synonyms or related terms, such as āestradiotzā, āmovantā, āpaleterā, and āargouletā.23 Before the seventeenth century, the term was frequently used in a different sense, however. Philippe de Commynes, in his Chronicle of Louis XIās Reign, denounces those who make a āpetite guerreā to ālevy moneyā, that is to say to tax people.24 By implication this means a conflict begun for little reasons, vengeance or reprisals, and for small objectives.25 In the Middle Ages, the term was used to denote private warfare, feuds between families or neighbours characterised by short, seasonal campaigns, skirmishes, and looting. These were campaigns limited in time and space, carried out by fighters who might be acting on some lawful authority, but not necessarily the central power (king or emperor). The term is used in this sense even at the end of the sixteenth century, as we can see in the translation of the Claude de Seysselās Peloponnese War in 1527, or the Political and Military Discourses of FranƧois de la Noue in 1587.26 It corresponds to the Spanish definition of the word āguerrillaā in the 1611 dictionary of SebastiĆ”n de Covarrubias.27
We also find the terms āpetite guerreā used to denote behaviour that is not only undisciplined but immoral. In his correspondence, Agrippa dāAubignĆ© uses it for the behaviour of bad sol...