Carl Von Clausewitz - Life and Military Career

Life and Military Career

Clausewitz was born on June 1, 1780 in Burg bei Magdeburg, Kingdom of Prussia, the fourth and youngest son of a middle-class family. His grandfather, the son of a Lutheran pastor, had been a professor of theology. Clausewitz's father was once a lieutenant in the Prussian army and held a minor post in the Prussian internal revenue service. Clausewitz entered the Prussian military service at the age of twelve as a Lance-Corporal, eventually attaining the rank of Major-General. Clausewitz's family claimed descent from the Barons of Clausewitz in Upper Silesia, which was eventually confirmed, but now is doubted by scholars.

Clausewitz served in the Rhine Campaigns (1793–1794) including the Siege of Mainz, when the Prussian army invaded France during the French Revolution, and served in the Napoleonic Wars from 1806 to 1815. He entered the Kriegsakademie (also cited as "The German War School," the "Military Academy in Berlin," and the "Prussian Military Academy") in Berlin in 1801 (age 21), studied the writings of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and won the regard of General Gerhard von Scharnhorst, the future first chief of staff of the new Prussian Army (appointed 1809). Clausewitz, Hermann von Boyen (1771–1848) and Karl von Grolman (1777–1843) were Scharnhorst's primary allies in his efforts to reform the Prussian army between 1807 and 1814.

Clausewitz served during the Jena Campaign as aide-de-camp to Prince August. At the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt on October 14, 1806 – when Napoleon invaded Prussia and defeated the massed Prussian-Saxon army commanded by Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick – he was captured, one of the 25,000 prisoners captured that day as the Prussian army disintegrated. He was 26. Clausewitz was held prisoner in France from 1807 to 1808. Returning to Prussia, he assisted in the reform of the Prussian army and state.

On December 10, 1810 he married the socially prominent Countess Marie von Brühl and socialized with Berlin's literary and intellectual elite. She was a member of the noble German von Brühl family originating in Thuringia. They first met in 1803.

Opposed to Prussia's enforced alliance with Napoleon I, he left the Prussian army and served in the Russian army from 1812 to 1813 during the Russian Campaign, including the Battle of Borodino. Like many Prussian officers serving in Russia, he joined the Russian-German Legion in 1813. In the service of the Russian Empire, Clausewitz helped negotiate the Convention of Tauroggen (1812), which prepared the way for the coalition of Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom that ultimately defeated Napoleon and his allies.

In 1815, the Russo-German Legion was integrated into the Prussian Army and Clausewitz re-entered Prussian service. He was soon appointed chief of staff of Johann von Thielmann's III Corps. In that capacity, he served at the Battle of Ligny and the Battle of Wavre during the Waterloo Campaign in 1815. The Prussians were defeated at Ligny (south of Mont-Saint-Jean and the village of Waterloo) by an army led personally by Napoleon, but Napoleon's failure to destroy the Prussian forces led to his defeat a few days later at the Battle of Waterloo, when the Prussian forces unexpectedly arrived on his right flank late in the afternoon to support the Anglo-Dutch forces pressing his front.

Clausewitz was promoted to Major-General in 1818 and appointed director of the Kriegsakademie, where he served until 1830. In that year the outbreak of several revolutions around Europe and a crisis in Poland appeared to presage another major European war. Clausewitz was appointed chief of staff of the only army Prussia was able to mobilize, which was sent to the Polish border. He died after commanding the Prussian army's efforts to construct a cordon sanitaire to contain the great cholera outbreak in 1831 (the first time cholera had appeared in Europe, causing a continent-wide panic).

His widow published his magnum opus on the philosophy of war in 1832, on which he had started working in 1816, but had not completed. She wrote the preface for On War and by 1834 had published several of his books. She died two years later.