WEBVTT NOTE 3. Guerrilla or Conventional War 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Volume 4, Chapter 3, Guerrilla or Conventional War 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:17.000 After their humiliating defeat at Concord, many leading British officers acknowledged their error in being contemptuous of American military prowess. 3 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:24.000 But others accused the Americans of not fighting fairly, according to the rules of conventional warfare. 4 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:25.000 Warfare 5 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:31.300 Instead of marching out on the open field in an extended line to fire volleys at a similarly 6 00:00:31.300 --> 00:00:39.500 aligned enemy, the cowardly rascals persisted in hiding inside and behind houses, trees 7 00:00:39.500 --> 00:00:46.820 and stone walls, picking off English soldiers with accurate individual rifle fire. 8 00:00:46.820 --> 00:00:53.820 To the European military mind of the day, such actions were sheer murder and therefore 9 00:00:53.820 --> 00:01:01.660 Dishonorable. Behind the almost blatant idiocy of such an attitude, there lay the hard core 10 00:01:01.660 --> 00:01:09.980 of an extremely important problem. For certainly, here had been warfare that upset all the rules 11 00:01:09.980 --> 00:01:16.700 of organized European warfare, in which the armies of the various states were sent out 12 00:01:16.700 --> 00:01:23.660 to kill each other in formal mass array. The tactics employed by the Americans at Concord 13 00:01:23.660 --> 00:01:30.740 reflected a new type of war, revolutionary war by a people in arms, a war that would 14 00:01:30.740 --> 00:01:37.780 naturally take the course unless deflected by conscious purpose of guerrilla warfare, 15 00:01:37.780 --> 00:01:44.420 in which individuals among the masses familiar with the terrain employed their advantage 16 00:01:44.420 --> 00:01:52.340 of knowledge and mass support to achieve mobility and surprise against an army possessed of 17 00:01:52.340 --> 00:01:55.340 of Superior, Firepower. 18 00:01:55.340 --> 00:02:01.340 The Americans at the very outset were therefore faced with a choice of extreme importance 19 00:02:01.340 --> 00:02:04.380 in conducting their revolution. 20 00:02:04.380 --> 00:02:10.540 Unfortunately, they saw their alternatives but dimly, although here and their leaders 21 00:02:10.540 --> 00:02:14.540 could see the vital issues with piercing clarity. 22 00:02:14.540 --> 00:02:20.780 Their choice not only determined the outcome and duration of the war, it also determined 23 00:02:20.780 --> 00:02:27.780 the permanent complexion and structure of any independent America that might emerge. 24 00:02:28.460 --> 00:02:35.460 The colonists might choose either alternative or various admixtures of both. On the one 25 00:02:35.740 --> 00:02:41.380 hand they could fight the war in European fashion, gathering together a standard European 26 00:02:41.380 --> 00:02:48.380 army, organizing it according to European style totalitarian discipline, conscripting 27 00:02:48.380 --> 00:02:54.100 Inventing men and vast supplies to feed and equip the army and then meeting the British 28 00:02:54.100 --> 00:02:57.640 in formal open combat. 29 00:02:57.640 --> 00:03:03.940 On the other hand, they could run a new style of war, a radical people's war of national 30 00:03:03.940 --> 00:03:13.300 liberation, a guerrilla war resting on individual responsibility, mobility and surprise. 31 00:03:13.300 --> 00:03:18.980 A guerrilla war would be enormously less expensive than an orthodox one. 32 00:03:18.980 --> 00:03:23.700 For one thing, the guerrillas would not be full-time soldiers, torn away from productive 33 00:03:23.700 --> 00:03:31.180 labor to require parasitic feeding from an already harassed and burdened population. 34 00:03:31.180 --> 00:03:35.660 They would not be hauled from place to place, region to region. 35 00:03:35.660 --> 00:03:42.260 Instead, they would be part-time soldiers, remaining in production, not requiring taxes 36 00:04:12.260 --> 00:04:19.420 Bureaucracy to direct and supply the armies while draining the production of society. 37 00:04:19.420 --> 00:04:27.660 A guerrilla war could be run individualistically, relying on the zeal of the individual guerrilla 38 00:04:27.660 --> 00:04:34.380 and would entail virtually no central bureaucracy or centralized confiscation of property to 39 00:04:34.380 --> 00:04:36.680 finance the war. 40 00:04:36.680 --> 00:04:42.500 In brief, a guerrilla war would be the libertarian way to fight a war fully consistent with the 41 00:04:42.500 --> 00:04:49.460 American revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality of rights, and therefore the only 42 00:04:49.460 --> 00:04:53.840 way to achieve the libertarian goals of the revolution. 43 00:04:53.840 --> 00:05:00.840 A European-style, orthodox war would be heavily statist and would inevitably lead to the 44 00:05:00.840 --> 00:05:06.840 the resumption of the very statism, the taxes, the restrictions, the bureaucracy which the 45 00:05:06.840 --> 00:05:14.080 colonists were waging the revolution to escape. What is more, guerrilla war would be enormously 46 00:05:14.080 --> 00:05:22.000 more effective, for that is the way any subjugated people, not only libertarians, can best fight 47 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:28.220 against a better armed but hated foe. The efficiency of guerrilla fighting as against 48 00:05:28.220 --> 00:05:35.660 Most European warfare had not only been demonstrated in the unbroken victories of Ethan Allen and 49 00:05:35.660 --> 00:05:42.460 the Green Mountain Boys in the Vermont Revolution, but also in the victory at Concord, a guerrilla 50 00:05:42.460 --> 00:05:49.900 engagement so individualistic as to be almost completely leaderless. 51 00:05:49.900 --> 00:05:56.300 In contrast stood the slaughter at Lexington, where the Americans had fought in fixed ranks 52 00:05:56.300 --> 00:06:03.660 in the Open. Both moral principle and utility therefore required the choice of a guerrilla 53 00:06:03.660 --> 00:06:10.300 war, but various factors, certainly including the novelty of the dilemma, dictated a different 54 00:06:10.300 --> 00:06:10.940 and Choice.