1780-1831 · Prussian general and military theorist, author of On War
Posthumous or imagined likeness of Carl von Clausewitz. Source · Public domain
About Carl von Clausewitz
Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) entered the Prussian army at twelve and saw action against revolutionary France in 1793. He studied under Gerhard von Scharnhorst at the Berlin war school. He was captured after the Prussian defeat of 1806, resigned in 1812 rather than serve Napoleon, fought with the Russians at Borodino, and helped arrange the Convention of Tauroggen. In 1815 he was a corps chief of staff in the Waterloo campaign. As director of the General War School from 1818 he drafted his treatise. He died of cholera at Breslau in November 1831, and his widow, Marie von Brühl, published the unfinished work.
“War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means”
On War (Vom Kriege) is an unfinished philosophical inquiry into the nature of war, written by a Prussian staff officer who had lived through the Napoleonic transformation of warfare. It is organised in eight books, but Clausewitz left a note in 1827 saying that only the first chapter of Book I satisfied him, and he was revising the whole when he died.
