Vom "Partheygänger" zum Partisanen: Die Konzeption des kleinen Krieges in Preußen 1740-1813

The social and political system of absolutism was reflected in eighteenth century militaries, a standard from which "light troops"—hussars, cossacks and militia from the Balkan region—deviated. Their appearance contradicted all military principles, all the intellectual and organizational tendencies of the time. In the struggle of these troops, the "little war," horrors in the style of the Thirty Years' War still occurred in the Age of Enlightenment. The aim of the work is the investigation of the specific rationality of the small war. The small war seemed identical with "revolutionary" warfare. In addition to the "revolutionary" planning of a people's war in French-occupied Prussia, however, there was a pragmatic approach to protection, after which the tactics were "merely" reformed. The fact of Major Schill's desertion with a whole regiment of Hussars for his own struggle against Napoleon could not conceal the fact that a "revolutionary" little war, like the guerrilla in Prussia, never took place. However, a national myth emerged from failed attempts at insurrection, whose martyr and symbolism shaped the world of thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The concept of the small war resulted in the emergence of the "partisan" of the modern era.