War is a terrible thing, but a human activity that goes back to the origins of society. The first warriors disputed territory and resources with clubs and thrown stones. Those remote ancestors didn't love war, but they recognized that their personal survival depended upon victory when challenged. Clubs and thrown stones killed as effectively as modern munitions, and the grief was just as great.
Ancient history is replete with genocide and massacres, enslavement and torture. Defeat in those days often meant the extinction of cities, nations, and peoples. There were no rules of warfare, nothing to mitigate the suffering of war beyond the capacity of individual soldiers for mercy. Over time there grew up a number of concepts that to some extent to limit the more extreme practices of war. However, the notion that there should be a set of international laws governing how war is waged, and a code of conduct for soldiers engaged in the practice of war came rather late in our history.
Grotius, in the early 17th century is often cited as the father of international laws governing war and peace. That was a time when Europe was embroiled in the religious wars of the Reformation. Massacres and torture of prisoners were not uncommon. Many of the ancient conventions were flouted as armed groups sought to impose its will on their declared enemies. Grotius, and his successors, made progress and by the mid-18th century armies were much more professional, and they generally recognized the utility of mitigating the evil effects of war by adhering to international laws of war and peace. The American War for Independence was largely conducted within the existing rules of that time. In the Southern Theater of Operations, the American Revolution was much more a civil war fought between Loyalist and Patriotic factions, and there virtually neither side observed many rules. It was very brutal, as civil wars usually are.
The first world war was the Napoleonic Wars, which grew out of the French Revolution and continued until Nappy retired to St. Helena. There were very strict and formalized rules of conduct that soldiers were expected to observe. However, there were two notable exceptions that occurred. First in Spain, the Spanish and English adopted Guerrilla tactics as the best means of resisting the "professional" French military. The French reacted, in accordance with the practices of the times, by shooting any combatant who was out of uniform in front of the nearest wall. Goya's famous painting of such an execution is an early piece of propaganda. The second notable use of irregular war was found in Russia. Napoleon was outraged that irregular forces (many of whom were criminals released from prison to do the deed) on the orders of Alexander's generals burned Moscow. Those responsible for the burning of Moscow were hung without trial wherever they were apprehended. Though irregular forces, peasants armed with pitchforks in some cases, harried the French retreat, the loss of the Grande Armee was more attributable to the cold, poor logistics, and the regular Russian military. At Vienna, a new order for Europe was established and the use of irregular warfare was condemned.
We need to recognize that the rules of war as they existed in from the mid-18th through the end of the 19th century, were almost regarded as reciprocal and hence only seldom applied to the prosecution of war against non-European foes. AmerInds, Africans, and Asians were expected to violate the laws of war, and that set armies of colonization somewhat free to ignore the rules that bound them when engaging other European-style armies. If the enemy tortured and killed prisoners, then many argued that freed the European-style army to reciprocate in perfidy and cruelty. Many of those acts today are regarded with shame.
At the end of the 19th century great efforts were being made to adopt international laws for war and peace to mitigate the horrors of war. The rules/laws adopted in 1899 formed the basis for what we live with today. Those rules/laws were further elaborated in the Hague Convention of 1907. The following link will take the reader to that portion of the Hague Convention that generally governs civilized armies of today:
Hague Convention (IV) Linkage
I hope that many of you will take the time to read the rules of war, because the strategy currently adopted by Iraq, and radical Islamic terrorists certainly seem to have repudiated those laws. This raises the question of how should an army bound to those laws, rules and conventions, best counter the challenge. We will not reply in kind, but will continue to observe the constraints intended to mitigate the worst evils of war.
