Campaign

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Having finished his share of Dana’s first request for articles beginning with B and the essay “Artillery”, Engels began writing articles beginning with C, the first of which is “Campaign”. Dana’s C list has not come down to us. From Engels’ letter to Marx of January 28, 1858 one can see that this list did not satisfy Engels, who asked his friend to send Dana the C list he himself had drawn up (see present edition, Vol. 40). By that time Engels had already written several articles beginning with C and begun collecting material for others, “Cavalry” in particular. On January 7, 1858 he sent Marx, in London, the three articles “Campaign”, “Cannonade” and “Captain”, which, according to Marx’s entry in his notebook, were dispatched to New York on January 8, together with the article “Bolivar”. A fortnight later, Engels sent some more articles beginning with C to Marx, who forwarded them to the United Sates on January 22. Meanwhile a new request for articles beginning with B had arrived from Dana and as it was urgent Engels had to put off his articles beginning with C.

In writing the article “Campaign” Engels made use of Clausewitz’s Vom Kriege, which he told Marx he was studying in his letter of January 7, 1858

This term is very often used to denote the military operations which are carried on during a war within a single year; but if these operations take place on 2 or more independent seats of war, it would be scarcely logical to comprise the whole of them under the head of one campaign. Thus what may be loosely called the campaign of 1800 comprises 2 distinct campaigns, conducted each quite independently of the other: the campaign of Italy (Marengo), and the campaign of Germany (Hohenlinden). On the other hand, since the almost total disuse of winter quarters, the end of the year does not always mark the boundary between the close of one distinct series of warlike operations and the commencement of another. There are nowadays many other military and political considerations far more important in war than the change of the seasons. Thus each of the campaigns of 1800 consists of 2 distinct portions: a general armistice extending over the time from July to September divides them, and although the campaign of Germany is brought to a close in Dec. 1800, yet that of Italy continues during the first half of Jan. 1801. Clausewitz justly observes that the campaign of 1812 does evidently not end with Dec. 31 of that year, when the French were still on the Niémen, and in full retreat, but with their arrival behind the Elbe in Feb. 1813, where they again collected their forces, the impetus which drove them homeward having ceased. Still, winter remaining always a season during which fatigue and exposure will, in our latitudes, reduce active armies at an excessive rate, a mutual suspension of operations and recruiting of strength very often coincide with that time of the year; and although a campaign, in the strict sense of the word, means a series of warlike operations closely connected together by one strategical plan and directed toward one strategetical object, campaigns may still in most cases very conveniently be named by the year in which their decisive actions are fought.