History of guerrilla warfare
[2][3] Communist leaders like Mao Zedong and North Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh both implemented guerrilla warfare in the style of Sun Tzu,[2] which served as a model for similar strategies elsewhere, such as the Cuban "foco" theory and the anti-Soviet Mujahadeen in Afghanistan.
[6] Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, widely regarded as the "father of guerrilla warfare" of his time, devised the Fabian strategy which was used to great effect against Hannibal's army during the Second Punic War.
[8] Another example of an enemy using guerrilla was Tacfarinas, chief of Numidian rebels, who forced the Roman Empire into allying with neighboring natives in order to finally defeat him.
In the Classic Ancient world, this kind of warfare was indirectly mentioned by the Greeks in Homeric stories, but usually as hit and run acts of foraging for booty in enemy territory, pretty much as later Vikings piracy.
The tactics focus on tracking invaders, limiting the damage that they can do through careful surveillance and counter-raids, and then attacking them in mountain passes when they are laden with pillage and prisoners.
Throughout the four French and Indian Wars, starting in the late 17th century Canadiens, the Wabanaki Confederacy, and some Acadians brought La Petite Guerre to the New England Colonies and the Ohio Valley.
A generation later, in Nova Scotia, Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre led the Mi'kmaq and the Acadians in a petite guerre behind Anglo-American lines in the lead up to the last French and Indian War.
British military leaders like Jeffery Amherst, John Forbes, and Henry Bouquet understood they needed to learn and adopt the techniques and tactics of the little war or be consumed, like Braddock.
These attacks led Governor Philip Gidley King to issue an order in 1801 which authorized settlers to shoot Indigenous Australians on sight in Parramatta, Georges River and Prospect areas.
For a great army, and even several great armies, cannot accomplish this by marching about the country, unbroken, but each must split itself into many portions, and the several detachments become weak accordingly, not merely as they are small in size, but because the soldiery, acting thus, necessarily relinquish much of that part of their superiority, which lies in what may be called the engineer of war; and far more, because they lose, in proportion as they are broken, the power of profiting by the military skill of the Commanders, or by their own military habits.
In 1810, for example, when Massena invaded Portugal, the Imperial forces in the Peninsula totaled a massive 325,000 men, but only about one quarter of these could be spared for the offensive – the rest were required to contain the Spanish insurgents and regulars.
[33] The three commanders of the Regiment of Riflemen were fairly competent in some limited unconventional types of warfare against the British Empire such as Benjamin Forsyth, Daniel Appling, and Ludowick Morgan.
Other Americans that used hit and run raids plus surprise incursions were Duncan MacArthur, Alexander Smyth, Andrew Holmes, Daniel Bissell, John B. Campbell, and George McGlassin.
[34] This history book mentions how General Alexander Macomb had the American militia fire at the British from behind trees, rocks, and bushes while retreating or maneuvering around them in the woods during the Battle of Plattsburgh.
In general, this type of irregular warfare was conducted in the hinterland of the Border States (Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and northwestern Virginia), and was marked by a vicious neighbor-against-neighbor conflict.
John Singleton Mosby formed a partisan unit which was very effective in tying down Federal forces behind Union lines in northern Virginia in the last two years of the war.
Another regiment known as the "Thomas Legion", consisting of white and anti-Union Cherokee Indians, morphed into a guerrilla force and continued fighting in the remote mountain back-country of western North Carolina for a month after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
At the start of the Philippine–American War, even with the recommendation of the able General Antonio Luna, guerrilla warfare strategy was viewed by the Philippine side only as a tactical option of final recourse.
Although Zapata's Liberation Army of the South met considerable success, his strategy backfired as government troops, unable to distinguish his soldiers from the civilian population, waged a broad and brutal campaign against the latter.
Following their failure to hold fixed positions against an Irish Free State offensive in the summer of 1922, the IRA re-formed "flying columns" and attempted to use the same tactics they had successfully used against the British.
Even though he was cut off from Germany and had few Germans under his command (most of his fighters were African askaris), he won multiple victories during the East Africa Campaign and managed to exhaust and trouble the Allies; he was undefeated up until his acceptance of a cease-fire in Northern Rhodesia three days after the end of the war in Europe.
After the initial phases of the war, when large swaths of the North China Plain rapidly fell to the Japanese, underground resistance, supported by either Communist sympathizers or composed of disguised National Revolutionary Army soldiers, would soon rise up to combat the garrison forces.
In March 1940, a partisan unit of the first guerrilla commanders in the Second World War in Europe under Major Henryk Dobrzański "Hubal" completely destroyed a battalion of German infantry in a skirmish near the village of Huciska.
[citation needed] Contrary to popular belief, in the Western and Southern Europe the resistance groups were only able to seriously counter the German in areas that offered the protection of rugged terrain.
Jewish groups such as the Lehi and the Irgun – many of whom had experience in the Warsaw Ghetto battles against the Nazis, fought British soldiers whenever they could, including the bombing of the King David Hotel.
[citation needed] The National Liberation Front (NLF), drawing its ranks from the South Vietnamese peasantry and working class, used guerrilla tactics in the early phases of the war.
[citation needed] The NVA regiments organized along traditional military lines, were supplied via the Ho Chi Minh trail rather than living off the land, and had access to weapons such as tanks and artillery which are not normally used by guerrilla forces.
Furthermore, parts of North Vietnam were "off-limits" by American bombardment for political reasons, giving the NVA personnel and their material a haven that does not usually exist for a guerrilla army.
Located about 60 km northwest of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), the Viet Cong (NLF) used the complex system tunnels to hide and live during the day and come up to fight at night.
[64] Sunni insurgents not only established a de facto government in the Al Anbar province they were able to gain huge footholds in Mosul, Tel Afar, Samarra, Northern Baghdad, etc.
