“Cabinet wars” is a historiographical term to describe the transitional period from the regular, limited, aristocratic conflicts of the late-17th and 18th centuries, to the “total”, massive, people’s warfare following the French Revolution’s outbreak in 1789. The term comes from the German word Kabinettskrieg, and, generally, historians classify cabinet wars as a period of conflicts that — though they could be vast in geographic scope and in expenditure — tended to be more limited in sense of their ultimate objectives and what they were fighting for. The majority of wars between the European Great Powers of the 1650s-1790s were not fought with expansive, totalistic goals like extirpating heresy or reconverting apostate Christians; they were not fought in the name of “nationalism,” a principle which went beyond basic love of one’s country, to the level of the popular masses being involved; and, with some notable exceptions that we’ll discuss, the aims of these wars was not annihilation or complete conquest of kingdoms.
Cabinet wars involved a mix of standing armies and mercenaries, the latter especially relied upon during peacetime, with the military and officer system becoming more refined and articulated over the course of the 18th century. Ultimately, the term cabinet wars got its word “cabinet” from the small councils of ministers — cabinet members — that provided essential services like the waging of war for absolute monarchies from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia to the 1789 French Revolution.
But we must not generalize too much about warfare in Europe in this era, because it was precisely the era of the late-17th through the 18th century that witnessed the sowing of the seeds — of liberal nationalism, of citizen-soldiers, of a society and its people aligned civically and militarily — that would bear fruit in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras and beyond.
Examples of Cabinet Wars: 1648–1792
In order to discuss the topic of people’s war in an age of cabinet war, perhaps a good place to start is with wars that historians typically label cabinet wars for the period 1648 to 1792
War of Devolution (1667–1668): It saw France under King Louis XIV — “the Sun King,” now ruling in his own right, without a prime minister — fight the Spanish Empire chiefly in the Spanish Netherlands (modern Belgium) and Franche-Comté (in eastern France, now in the administrative region Bourgogne-Franche-Comté). The ostensible cause of the war was the inability of Louis XIV’s wife, Maria Theresa of Spain, to provide her contracted dowry to Louis XIV, which thus triggered the “devolution” of Spanish territories to him by right of marriage.
Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678): It was once again saw France’s Louis XIV on the offensive, nearly overrunning its former ally, the Dutch Republic, in 1672–1673. Fairly quickly a coalition of powers formed — the Dutch, the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish, Brandenburg-Prussia, and Denmark-Norway — to oppose France’s aggrandizing pretensions. As per usual in cabinet wars, the war’s settlement witnessed several exchanges of frontier territories controlled by various European powers.
Nine Years’ War (1688–1697): Often called the War of the League of Augsburg/of the Grand Alliance, by now the other European powers had recognized that Louis XIV’s various wars were part of a pattern of behavior and thus formed a tighter coalition to counter his aggression in the Rhineland and territorial demands in general. France fought against the Dutch Republic, England and Scotland, the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, and the Duchy of Savoy. France’s armies performed generally better than the Grand Alliance’s, but neither side gained a clear advantage, leading to exhaustion and the Treaty of Ryswick, which once again saw exchanges and returns of various territories.
Great Northern War (1700–1721): Moving in eastern and northern Europe, this conflict saw the Swedish Empire — at its plateau of Great Power status — under Charles XII fight against a coalition initially consisting of Russia, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Denmark-Norway, and Saxony. The coalition had formed with hopes of rolling back territorial acquisitions made by the Swedes since the mid-17th century, banking on the youth of the new king, Charles XII, undermining Sweden’s capacity to wage war. Instead, Charles XII defeated many of the coalition powers early on, before facing strategic defeat in his invasion of Russia and Sweden’s final defeat in 1721. Russia gained the most out of all the coalition powers and Sweden fell from Great Power status. This war will be discussed later.
War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1715): The last of Louis XIV’s wars, it was triggered by the death of the childless and last Habsburg king of Spain, Charles II, in November 1700. In his final will, Charles II left the Spanish throne to his relative, Philip of Anjou, the grandson of Louis XIV. The potential for a union of France and Spain — including the latter’s extensive imperial territories in and outside Europe — would clearly upset the balance of power, not to mention the passing over of another Habsburg — Archduke Charles of Austria — personally affronted the Holy Roman Empire. The Grand Alliance formed again, fighting against France and Bourbon Spain (the regions and government that supported the accession of Philip of Anjou, as opposed to Archduke Charles of Austria). Once again, mutual exhaustion eventually set in, despite spectacular military victories by the British general Marlborough, and the Treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt, and Baden, carefully handled both exchanges of territories as well as keeping France and Spain separate while the same dynasty — the Bourbons — ruled both.
War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718–1720): This war, unlike so many previous European wars, was not a coalition arrayed against France, but a coalition fighting Spain’s attempts to recover territories lost in the settlements ending the prior War of the Spanish Succession. This time around, France was part of the coalition — Great Britain, Austria, Savoy, and the Dutch Republic — intent on maintaining the European balance of power. Spain lost and territories in Italy changed hands.
War of the Polish Succession (1733–1735): Another major war triggered by a succession crisis, this conflict witnessed a coalition of France, Spain, Savoy-Sardinia, and the Duchy of Parma supporting the succession of Stanislaus I, fight against another coalition of Russia, the Habsburgs, Saxony, and Prussia supporting the succession of Augustus III. Ultimately, Augustus III succeeded to the throne but with several concessions made to the “losing” side, namely Bourbon France.
War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748): Triggered by the death of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI — who was Archduke Charles of Austria fighting to succeed the Spanish throne in the War of the Spanish Succession — who had issued a Pragmatic Sanction, confirmed by the majority of European powers, to recognize his daughter Maria Theresa as successor to the Habsburg monarchy. Despite this, France, Prussia, and Bavaria saw it as an opportunity to challenge Habsburg power, while Maria Theresa was backed by Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Hanover, collectively known as the Pragmatic Allies. As the conflict widened, it drew in other participants, among them Spain, Sardinia, Saxony, Sweden, and Russia. The war ended with exchanges of territory, recognition of Maria Theresa as Habsburg monarch, but critically, the confirmation of Prussia’s conquest of Silesia, a valuable Austrian territory whose loss cut deeply and made another war between Prussia and Austria seem inevitable.
Seven Years’ War (1756–1763): This war involved several conflicts, such as the French and Indian War in North America (beginning in 1754), the Carnatic Wars in India, and the actual war in continental Europe. After the so-called Diplomatic Revolution, in which former bitter enemies Austria and France became allies, and Prussia and Britain did the same, two coalitions formed around these two poles and fought this geographically extensive conflict for seven long years. Prussia, fighting courageously but increasingly desperately under Frederick the Great, was brought to the brink of defeat before Tsarina Elizabeth of Russia died, and her successor, Peter III, immediately ended hostilities and even signed an alliance with Frederick the Great. In the end, Prussia survived and retained Silesia, while France lost all of her North American colonies to Britain while retaining her more lucrative Caribbean territories like Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti), among others.
People’s Wars vs. Cabinet Wars
Writing in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, amid the era of the Bourbon Restoration and Concert of Europe system, Clausewitz observed cabinet wars as being characterized by limited objectives and strictly professional armies, bound by intricate rules of engagement and diplomacy, driven largely by the strategic calculations of the ruling elites or “cabinets”. These wars were typically waged with limited resources and troops, maintaining a clear demarcation between combatants and non-combatants, and sought to preserve the existing social and political order.
The latter point above was a big reason why European armies of the Early Modern Period were composed of the “dregs of society” led by iron discipline of their noble officers, firing in long lines fairly close to the enemy lines, in a manner that seems stupidly suicidal to us unschooled moderns. However, all this makes sense when you consider the objective of preserving the existing social and political order in the era of cabinet wars. If countries had, for instance, filled their rank and file with people chosen by a modern-style draft, this would’ve created a variegated and volatile army, consisting of soldiers running the gamut from rural peasants to urban wage-earners, from middle-class artisans and guildsmen to bourgeois lawyers and professionals, from the illiterate to the better-educated, from the politically unaware to the politically disruptive.
By having their rank and file composed of long-service men, recruited from the lower strata of society — such as criminals, transients, the unemployed, persecuted minorities, men without land or property1 — European states kept their armed forces in a predictable, constrained, highly stratified organization that was also isolated, almost hermetically-sealed, from the civilian world. This was critical to maintaining the status quo social and political order. For example, Early Modern European armies might mutiny — whether because they were owed money or because conditions on a ship or in a particular unit were unduly harsh — but they’d never turn against their officers due to political motivations; and that’s because the royal government and military officers made sure to avoid recruiting the strata of the civilian population that did or might have views on politics, e.g. a well-off bourgeois lawyer and writer in Paris or a merchant in a port city like Bordeaux who has potentially both economic reasons and provincial reasons to oppose the central, royal government’s army.
Having himself served in the Prussian Army, as well as the Russian, during the Napoleonic Wars, Clausewitz witnessed first-hand the new face of war that would be called people’s war, Volkskrieg. Clausewitz’s insights into people’s war delve into the transformation of warfare into a comprehensive and unbridled endeavor, involving the entire nation. For Clausewitz, people’s wars were characterized by the mobilization and active participation of the civilian populace, breaking down the traditional boundaries between soldiers and civilians. The societal and ideological stakes were higher in people’s wars, as they were fueled by nationalistic fervor and ideological convictions, making them more total and unrestrained in their objectives and conduct. Yet, even before the onset of the French Revolutionary Wars, there were murmurs, vague visions, of what a European army could look like, as reflected by what French general and military writer the Comte de Guibert wrote in his 1770 book Essai général de tactique:
The standing armies, while a burden on the people, are inadequate for the achievement of great and decisive results in war, and meanwhile the mass of the people, untrained in arms, degenerates … The hegemony over Europe will fall to that nation which … becomes possessed of manly virtues and creates a national army.
Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, Comte de Guibert (12 November 1743 – 6 May 1790)
Clausewitz, in his seminal work On War, articulated the notion of war as a continuation of politics by other means, but he observed that in people’s war, the political objectives were not confined to the ruling elites but were instead intertwined with the aspirations and passions of the populace. This made people’s wars potentially more fervent, unpredictable, and expansive, given the enhanced stakes and the infusion of popular emotion and ideology into the calculus of warfare. Clausewitz posited that the nature of such wars made them inherently resistant to the conventional strategies and tactics employed in cabinet wars, necessitating innovations in military thought and practice to comprehend and navigate the altered landscape of conflict. In essence, Clausewitz’s ideas illuminate the transition from the ordered, limited, and elitist warfare of the cabinet wars to the dynamic, expansive, and populist warfare symbolized by people’s war.
Mao Zedong had his own unique interpretation and strategic approach to the concept of people’s war, one that was fundamentally different from the structured understandings of Carl von Clausewitz. Mao’s thoughts were not focused on contrasting people’s war with cabinet war but were instead concentrated on formulating a revolutionary warfare strategy suited to the conditions in China.
Mao’s concept of people’s war, arising first in printed in his 1938 work On Protracted War, was inherently revolutionary, intertwined with guerrilla warfare and protracted war strategies, devised to enable poorly equipped and irregular forces to contend with more powerful, conventional armies. For Mao, people’s war was the embodiment of the revolutionary struggle of the agrarian peasantry and the broader masses against oppressive regimes, and it emphasized the role of the populace in supporting, sustaining, and participating in the revolutionary war effort.
Mao’s strategy emphasized the significance of gaining the support of the local population and establishing base areas in the countryside from which guerrilla warfare could be waged against enemy forces. This was accompanied by political indoctrination and mobilization of the masses to solidify support for the revolutionary cause, making the people’s war not just a military struggle, but a comprehensive socio-political movement aimed at transforming society.
While Clausewitz focused on analyzing warfare from a more conventional and theoretical standpoint, examining the interactions between war, politics, and society in the context of the European state system, Mao’s perspective was primarily revolutionary and practical, based on his experiences in the Chinese Civil War and the anti-Japanese resistance. Clausewitz viewed people’s war as a reflection of the broadened scope and scale of warfare in the age of nationalism and mass mobilization, whereas Mao saw it as a revolutionary strategy, a method for the weak to overcome the strong, and a means to achieve political and social transformation. Thus, while differing on precise definitions of people’s war, both Clausewitz and Mao provide valuable insights on the subject.
Examples of People’s War in the Age of Cabinet War
The historical examples listed below do not perfectly encapsulate all the varied aspects of people’s war, but they do possess features that make them qualitatively different from the cabinet wars that historians have made stereotypical of the age.
The Deluge (1648–1667)
Ever since 1569’s Union of Lublin, the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had been combined in a bi-confederal state, and reigned over by a monarch who was both the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania. This Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a massive state, especially in comparison to Western European states including larger ones like France and Spain; it covered roughly 400,000 square miles at its peak, encompassing most of the lands of modern Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, and Estonia.
- Though every so often, the armies of the pre-1789 era would get lucky and have an intelligent, adventurous, and/or entrepreneurial son of a middle-class family join the colours, and often they’d prove more than competent when it came to waging war ↩︎