ON WAR AND PEACE: GERMAN CONCEPTIONS OF CONFLICT, 1792–1815

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article re-examines some of the principal portrayals of military conflict in academic treatises and works of art, arguing that the changing visions of war and peace which they presented were indicative of a wider acceptance within critical sections of the various public spheres of the German lands. The majority of recent studies, which have sought to debunk the myth of national ‘wars of liberation’, have tended to overlook the reasons for and ramifications of such shifts. This study shows how contemporary commentators, faced with an unending series of revolutionary and Napoleonic campaigns, gave up any hope of a perpetual peace and accepted, however reluctantly, the necessity of military conflict. Writers', artists', academics', and other publicists' failure to acknowledge the actual conditions of revolutionary and Napoleonic warfare, despite evidence that the nature of combat had altered, meant that conflicts could be viewed as patriotic, heroic, and defensive struggles, which served to simplify the divided loyalties and complicated diplomacy of the Napoleonic era.