Landsturm

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Landsturm

The Landsturm (German

German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
for "National Storm") were irregular military

Irregular military

Irregular military refers to any non-standard military. Being defined by exclusion, there is a lot of variance in what comes under the term. It can refer to the type of military organization, or to the type of tactics used....
forces in Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was, most recently, a historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. This state had for centuries substantial influence on Germany and European history....
which were created on 21 April 1813 by a royal edict

Edict

An edict is an announcement of a law, often associated with monarchy. The Pope and various micronational leaders are currently the only persons who still issue edicts....
issued by king Frederick William III of Prussia

Frederick William III of Prussia

Frederick William III was king of Kingdom of Prussia from 1797 to 1840....
. As such the decree was published in the preussische Gesetzesammlung (German: Prussian Code of Law) (pp.79-89). The 1813 edict called for resistance "by any means" against the Napoleonic

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts involving Napoleon I of France First French Empire and changing sets of European allies and opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815....
invasion. As a model and an explicit example, it took the Spanish Reglamento de Partidas y Cuadrillas of 28 December 1808 and the decree of 17 April 1809, known as Corso Terrestre, during the Peninsula War against Napoleonic troops (ref.

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Encyclopedia

The Landsturm (German

German language

Irregular military

Prussia

Edict

Frederick William III of Prussia

Napoleonic Wars

Axe

The axe, or ax, is an implement that has been used for Millennium to shape, split and cut wood, harvest Lumber, as a weapon and a ceremony or Heraldry symbol....
s, pitchfork

Pitchfork

A pitchfork is an agricultural tool with a long handle and long, thin, widely separated pointed tines used to lift and pitch loose material, such as hay, leaf, grapes, dung or other agricultural materials....
s, scythe

Scythe

A scythe is an agriculture hand tool for mowing grass or reaping agriculture. It was largely replaced by horse-drawn and then tractor machinery, but is still used in some areas of Europe and Asia....
s or shotgun

Shotgun

A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called lead shot, or a solid projectile called a shotgun slug....
s (§43). All Prussians were further encouraged to not obey orders by the enemy, but rather to make themselves a nuisance to the Napoleonic troops however possible. This was a clear departure from ordinary jus in bello (Latin for Law of War), which commanded the civilian

Civilian

A civilian under international humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces. The term is also often used colloquially to refer to people who are not members of a particular profession or occupation, especially by law enforcement agency, which often use rank structures similar to those of military units...
population to obey the orders of the occupying power, and the police forces to assist the occupying power in crushing any uprising. It did not qualify as an insurgency

Insurgency

An insurgency is a rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognised as belligerents. Not all rebellions are insurgencies, because a state of belligerency may exist between one or more sovereign states and rebel forces....
, but simply as criminal activity. The Landsturm edict explicitly stated that it was preferable to risk the danger brought about by the furies of an armed population rather than to let the enemy have control over the situation. Légitime défense "justified the use of all means" (§7), including chaos.

The edict was modified less than three months later on 17 July 1813 and was purified of its subversive content relative to the laws of war

Laws of war

The law of war is law concerning acceptable practices relating to war. In cases other than civil wars, it is considered an aspect of public international law ....
. The war then took place according to the standard rules of conventional warfare

Conventional warfare

Conventional warfare is a form of warfare conducted byusing conventional military weapons and battlefield tactics between two or more states in open confrontation....
. Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt was a Germany jurist, political theorist, and professor of law.Schmitt published several essays, influential in the 20th century and beyond, on the mentalities that surround the effective wielding of political power....
qualified it as the "Magna Carta

Magna Carta

Magna Carta , also called Magna Carta Libertatum , is an Kingdom of England legal charter, originally issued in the year 1215. It was written in Latin....
of the partisan

Partisan (military)

A partisan is a member of an irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation. The term can apply to the field element of resistance movements that opposed Nazi Germany rule in several countries during World War II, or those who after the war fought the Soviet Union in the Eastern blo...
". Despite its not being put to practice, fascist

Fascism

Fascism is a Political radicalism, Authoritarianism Nationalism ideology that aims to create a single-party state with a government led by a dictator who seeks national unity and development by requiring individuals to subordinate self-interest to the collective interest of the nation or Race ....
jurists considered it in a 1962 lecture in Francoist Spain to be the "official document of the legitimation of the partisan of national defense" and as the "philosophical discovery of the partisan."

Landsturm

See also