From “total war” to “total defence”: tracing the origins of civilian involvement in armed conflict

When states adapt “total defence” strategies that mobilize entire populations in preparation for armed conflict, the line between civilian and combatant can become dangerously blurred. This raises pressing legal, ethical, and humanitarian questions about the risks to civilians in warfare.

In this post, Ruben Stewart, ICRC Adviser on Technology in Warfare, traces the roots of “total defence” to the Napoleonic Wars, when conscription, guerrilla resistance, economic blockades, and propaganda drew civilians into the machinery of war. Through this historical lens, he shows how involving civilians in defence efforts – then and now – can expose them to harm, complicate their legal protection, and increase the burden on states to safeguard those not taking direct part in hostilities.

ICRC Humanitarian Law & Policy Blog · From “total war” to “total defence”: tracing the origins of civilian involvement in armed conflict

The notion that only uniformed soldiers are involved in war is a relatively modern and increasingly outmoded idea. In reality, civilians have long played crucial roles in conflict, whether by choice or coercion. Today’s concept of “total defence,” in which large portions of societies are mobilized to prepare for and respond to crises or conflict, has deep historical roots. Long before the 20th century’s industrialized “total wars” or today’s digital battlefields, civilians had an active role and were affected in widespread and unprecedented ways during the Napoleonic era.

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) represent one of the first large-scale conflicts in which the line between soldier and civilian, battlefield and home front, was redrawn at scale. As historian David A. Bell argues, the Napoleonic Wars marked the emergence of “the first total war” in the modern sense, with mass conscription, guerrilla resistance and the militarization of civilian infrastructure, information and economies. This period offers an early and important case study in how civilian harm can arise from “total war” and “total defence”.[1]

“Total war” signalled a profound shift from war as a contest between rulers and armies to war as a struggle between peoples, economies, and ideologies. Today’s “total defence” approach with its “whole of society” framing echoes many of these dynamics, and an examination of the Napoleonic Wars offers specific and pertinent lessons about what happens when civilians, civilian objects and civilian functions are mobilized and militarized.[2]

This post traces five key aspects of the Napoleonic Wars: the mobilization of society, how civilians sustained military logistics, how they suffered under blockades, how they resisted, and how their participation was shaped through narrative and propaganda. These aspects show how the blurring of lines between what is military and what is civilian increases civilian exposure to harm and challenges the application of international humanitarian law (IHL), enduring questions that still confront us today.

**The levée en masse and the mobilization of society**

At the heart of this transformation was the French Republic’s proclamation of the levée en masse in 1793, declaring “From this moment until all enemies have been driven from the soil of the Republic, all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the army.”[3]

This decree was later codified in the Jourdan Law of 1798, which stated that “Every Frenchman is a soldier and owes himself to the defence of the nation”, effectively dissolving the distinction between civilian and soldier within France.[4] The entire male population became a reservoir of military labour, while the rest of society was tasked with producing supplies, caring for the wounded, and sustaining morale.[5]

This mass mobilization came at great cost. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, France had conscripted around 2.5 million men into military service, of which an estimated 900,000 died.[6] Families lost breadwinners, agricultural output declined, and rural communities were depopulated. Entire regions – especially in southern and western France – resisted conscription violently, resulting in internal repression, including mass arrests and executions.[7]

This large-scale mobilization of society devastated France’s social fabric, often in very unintended ways, and “total defence” planning that considers mobilizing civilians must consider the potential costs. Efforts to protect the state should be designed in parallel with, and not at the expense of, the protection of its population.

The militarization of civilian populations

As Napoleon’s vast armies of conscripts swept across Europe, they institutionalized and scaled the practice of “living off the land” – an approach not new in itself, but one Napoleon employed systematically to support rapid manoeuvre and reduce dependence on fixed supply lines.[8] Cities, towns, and farms across the continent were effectively transformed into extensions of the military logistics system. In practice, this local foraging and requisitioning mainly consisted of the looting and pillaging of food, livestock, supplies including clothes and shoes, and housing directly from the civilian populations at the point of a sword. Those who resisted looting and pillaging were treated harshly.[9]

During the 1805 Ulm campaign in Bavaria, Austrian and German civilians were required to provide horses, carts, and grain under threat of punishment, leading to what was described as a “winter of hunger and hardship.”[10] In Poland and Prussia, requisitions and forced labour during the 1806–1807 campaigns caused widespread rural displacement, when thousands of peasant homes were emptied to house soldiers.[11] Contemporary accounts from Germany describe rural populations driven to starvation as their food stocks were seized.[12]

This had three effects: first, it deprived entire communities of items essential for their survival; secondly, it meant that such civilian objects were viewed as military objectives by the opposing force and subject to attack; and thirdly, it fuelled widespread resentment that often erupted into open resistance. Whether by compulsion or circumstance, civilians were enmeshed in the functioning of the war effort, and often paid the price through displacement, deprivation or violence.

The modern parallel of this is the dependence of militaries on civilian goods and their supply chains including methods of transport and logistics infrastructure such as roads, bridges, ports and airports. The categories of civilian goods and objects used by military forces has significantly expanded since Napoleonic times and now also includes fuel, electricity, and information and communication technologies. In a “total defence” posture, these systems are integrated for the purposes of resilience, but history reminds us that once when war breaks out, they may be destroyed as military objectives or consumed by militaries, both of which deny them to the civilian population.

From Spain to Russia: civilian resistance across Europe

As the French presence began to generate resentment on foreign soil, the erosion of the civilian-military divide took a different form. In Spain, the term guerrilla – or “little war” – was born, as civilians resisted Napoleon’s occupation using irregular tactics from ambushes, sabotage, and intelligence gathering to brutal urban warfare.[13] French officers often remarked on the difficulty of distinguishing between civilians and combatants, noting that local populations might also be armed adversaries, and that entire villages – or seemingly benign locations – could serve as ambush sites from which attacks were launched.[14]

What made this resistance especially potent was its support relationship with Britain, which provided arms, money, and coordination to the guerillas. This early example of a foreign power backing civilian-led resistance movement is strikingly modern in character and directly anticipates how contemporary proxy warfare and resistance operations may occur.[15]

In Prussia, the 1813–1815 Wars of Liberation featured widespread civilian mobilization through the Landwehr (territorial militia) and Freikorps (volunteer forces), who were embedded within local communities and supplemented regular armies.[16] Their existence reflected that national defence was no longer just the responsibility of the professional military, but a patriotic duty shared by society.[17]

The fusion of state military and citizens was also seen in Russia, where Napoleon’s 1812 invasion triggered one of the most dramatic scorched-earth retreats in history. In an act of collective resistance, retreating Russian soldiers and civilians abandoned and destroyed their own towns, crops, and infrastructure to deny the French food and shelter.[18]

The Tyrolean Rebellion of 1809 offers yet another powerful example. In the alpine regions of Austria, local peasants rose against Bavarian and French forces, using their intimate knowledge of terrain and community networks to stage ambushes and sieges.[19] Though ultimately crushed, the rebellion showed how decentralized civilian resistance could threaten organized military occupation.[20]

These examples remind us that resistance in its various forms, alongside a foreign or domestic military partner, or as an independent action, comes with a price. The response was almost always through brutal retaliation, including reprisals, summary executions, and the burning of villages. After the 1808 Madrid uprising, French troops executed thousands of civilians in an act of collective punishment, now immortalized in Goya’s The Third of May 1808.[21] In Zaragoza alone, more than 50,000 civilians died during two sieges in 1808–1809, many from hunger and disease exacerbated by the conditions of a prolonged siege and urban warfare.[22] The winter of 1812–1813 saw tens of thousands of Russian civilians die from exposure and hunger during the evacuation and destruction of their villages.[23] In Tyrol, French and Bavarian reprisals after Hofer’s uprising included mass executions and punitive razing of entire communities.[24]

Today, many countries actively prepare for or encourage civilian resistance in the event of invasion or occupation. Civilians who participate in hostilities, whether by joining a resistance movement, a militia or volunteer corps, or a levée en masse, must be made aware of the risks they assume and their responsibilities under IHL. Both governments and their populations must recognise that blurring the lines between civilians, combatants, and civilians directly participating in hostilities can increase the risk not only to those participating but also to the wider population who remain uninvolved.

Waging war on the civilian economy

Another dimension of “total war” during the Napoleonic period was the weaponization of trade and economic systems. Napoleon’s Continental System, launched in 1806, was a Europe-wide embargo against British goods seeking to destroy Britain’s economy and morale without direct military confrontation.[25] In turn, Britain imposed its own naval blockade of continental Europe. These measures were not surgical, and they aimed to weaken the enemy by starving civilian economies of imports and exports, collapsing trade, and reducing morale. [26]

For millions of civilians on both sides, these blockades meant shortages of food, raw materials, and manufactured goods. Livelihoods were lost, prices soared, suffering intensified and in some cases famine-like conditions.[27] In many ways, these were among the first large-scale examples of economic warfare showing that civilians could be both participants in state strategy and its primary victims.

It also presaged modern debates about the proportionality of strategies that aim to degrade an enemy’s will by targeting civilian welfare. Today’s equivalents would include not just trade and economics but also other transnational activities in the cyber and informational domains. Those undertaking such activities need to anticipate the effects of such strategies and consider the morality and legality of such actions.

Harmful information

The Napoleonic period also saw the emergence of civilian mobilization through information and ideology. Across Europe, governments and resistance movements used pamphlets, sermons, songs, and early newspapers to rally support and shape perceptions of legitimacy. Nationalism became a tool for drawing civilians into the war effort – not just as workers or fighters, but as ideological adherents.[28]

This information warfare had tangible effects. In Prussia, propaganda campaigns led to widespread enlistment in the Landwehr and Freikorps militias.[29] In France, censorship, patriotic theatre, and state education reinforced the identity of citizens as soldiers.[30] But the cost was again borne by civilians: civilians who refused to participate in or support the war were vilified or punished, press freedoms were curtailed, and populations divided by propaganda-fuelled suspicion.[31] The civilian population became not just the audience of war, but one of its most important battlegrounds.

Modern “total defence” strategies often include strategic communications and information operations but should be implemented carefully.[32] Over-militarizing national narratives risks marginalizing critics, deepening divisions and leading to the internal targeting of “unpatriotic” citizens. At scale they might achieve the opposite of the intended effect by fostering disunity, raising fear and undermining resilience.

Conclusion

The history of “total defence”, a strategy better known for its use during the Cold War, actually has its origins in the fields, towns, and cities of Napoleonic Europe. The Napoleonic Wars introduced the logic of “total war”, where the distinction between front and rear, soldier and civilian, was eroded. Civilians became not only supporters of war efforts, but also participants, enablers, targets, and victims. They were conscripted, compelled to provide logistics and intelligence, used in propaganda campaigns, and swept into the violence of occupation and resistance, often without choice.

This experience laid the intellectual and practical foundations for today’s “total defence” models, which integrate society-wide resilience, preparedness and resistance.[33] The Napoleonic Wars demonstrate that the more deeply civilians are involved in conflict, the greater their vulnerability and suffering – and therefore the greater and deeper the consequences and problems that states and military then also have to manage. Civilians and civilian objects may enhance national defence, but such involvement blurs their status and increases their exposure to harm.

These realities make the application of IHL even more critical. Where civilians are embedded in defence efforts, it is essential to reaffirm the core IHL principles of distinction and proportionality. As “total defence” strategies expand, states must understand the risks they assume and ensure that civilians understand not only their responsibilities but also the risks that come with it, and the protections they are entitled to. A clear-eyed appreciation of both the potential and the peril of civilian involvement is vital to protecting civilian life in future conflict.

From “total war” to “total defence”: tracing the origins of civilian involvement in armed conflict

**The levée en masse and the mobilization of society**

The militarization of civilian populations

From Spain to Russia: civilian resistance across Europe

Waging war on the civilian economy

Harmful information

Conclusion

See also

The imperative to protect water and water systems during armed conflict

Addressing landmine pollution: how the ‘polluter pays’ principle can help

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