First Total War

Introduction

Total war is a war that gains full support from its country and every individual has a duty t help in the war effort. Both military and civilian resources require gaining full victory. Total wars include wars such as World War I and II.  The first total war happened between 1792 and 1815 i.e. the Napoleonic wars and the French Revolutionary Wars that drained Western Europe. The fight was between France, Russia, Austria, Prussia and Portugal. The result of the wars witnessed the rise and end of Napoleon Bonaparte. France was the country that initiated war in April 1792 and in September 1792; French forces invaded the Prussian-Austrian force which resulted in the occupation of Belgium by the French.

Discussion

The previous quality of the total war has been totally captured by today’s historians. David Bell’s merit in his book “David Bell’s The First Total War” was to restore ferocity to its appropriate place at the center of what was happening in Europe during the 19th century. The author firmly maintains that present behaviors toward total war were brought about during the Napoleonic era. He indicates the characteristics of total war shown i.e. compulsion, unconditional surrender, mobilization of civilians, disregard of war rules and the guerrilla warfare. In contradiction to Wint and alvocoressi, David Bell gives out a compelling and clear account in his introduction including the various meanings that have gathered around the concept of total war.

Bell does a remarkably admirable job in the book by bringing in a connection between history and the present. He also includes the relationship between civilian and soldiers. In Bell’s opinion, total war came up from the view that war should be entirely eradicated. Eradicating war through the total welfare and a new beginning would set in free from war. The principal features brought along by the Napoleonic and Revolutionary wars in the presence of contemporaries were their ferocity and scale. In the 18th century it was believed that making war was a normal thing just like making love. War everywhere was a day to day activity. To be promoted to the chancy rank, war has to assemble a nation’s resources, make use of industrial products and ascertain the enemy as a criminal who is only worth to “extermination” (Danton’s word).

When war worsened, generals took out their professionals for fear of losing their costly services. Civilians could be spared as they received decent treatment and religious conflicts were rare. Bell brings us back to the revolution and its clarion faith in humanity; civilians were separated from the military and as a result it was thought that a super-size disagreement could even bring the war to an end. Bell considers the revolution’s adoption of perpetual warfare to cultural causes in a certain degree than geopolitical account. It accuses few philosophers.

Voltaire regarded warfare as million assassins in uniform while the Enlightment regarded the warfare as fundamental irrational. Bell tells on how Immanuel Kant did not agree with the moral laws in consideration to the inevitability of history.

In the 2nd half of the book it is a dedication to Napoleon, a story that is more familiar to historians. Millions lost their lives as an absolute consequence of this inhuman little genius. Bells depicts that his career ended up to be set in motion by the total war but he in turn got encouraged and magnified to extra ordinary proportions, had its self damnable logic. In response, the bruised German powers were changing the concept of warfare into a superb act of rebirth that remained the same. In the book Bell gives out a brilliant definition of the 1812 withdrawal from Moscow.  (David Bell, 2007)

David Bell argument that the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars that followed should be considered the first total war rather than those that came after is convincing in that the war laid economic, social, Cultural and political problems for many years which is and indication of total war. The war was so violent that it overthrew of the oce-strong and proud monarchy, which was an alarming and shattering blow to European monarchies.

According to David Bell (2007), they took control of larger military forces and it became easy to generate weapons thus equipping a larger percentage of forces. The UK portrayed as one of the biggest single manufacturer of firearms during the period, distributing most of the firearms used by the Coalition powers during the entire conflict. France was the second nation in the produce of firearms, providing for its own immense forces also distributing to the Rhine Confederation. The French also distributed the armaments to other allies. Bell considered this war as the first total war because it occurred in full and at a gruesome extent. The wars should be considered the first total wars as they involved invasion of ideas, nationalist propaganda and war of ideas.

Conclusion

Above all, in the time of Napoleonic and French Revolutionary wars, propaganda was a fundamental aspect to victory. The twentieth century is being seen as the century of total war, but David Bell as a historian argues that the incident had begun earlier during the era of sailing ships, muskets and cannons.  Bell holds campaigns in Spanish cities battlefields and other European battlefields where many people died within a single day. This is the same time which Bell argues that present behavior concerning war being born. This dazzling analytical history depicts war as being conclusive and fought without mercy and limitation.

References

Bell, David Avrom. 2007. The first total war: Napoleon's Europe and the birth of warfare as we know it. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Bell, David Avrom. 2007. The first total war: Napoleon's Europe and the birth of modern warfare. London: Bloomsbury.

Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. 2006. The encyclopedia of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: a political, social, and military history. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO.