This term is very often used to denote the military operations 
which are carried on during a war within a single year; but if 
these operations take place on 2 or more independent seats of 
war, it would be scarcely logical to comprise the whole of them 
under the head of one campaign. Thus what may be loosely called 
the campaign of 1800 comprises 2 distinct campaigns, conducted 
each quite independently of the other: the campaign of Italy 
(Marengo), and the campaign of Germany (Hohenlinden).** On 
the other hand, since the almost total disuse of winter quarters, 
the end of the year does not always mark the boundary between 
the close of one distinct series of warlike operations and the 
commencement of another. There are nowadays many other 
military and political considerations far more important in war 
than the change of the seasons. Thus each of the campaigns of 
1800 consists of 2 distinct portions: a general armistice extending 
over the time from July to September divides them, and although 
the campaign of Germany is brought to a close in Dec. 1800, yet 
that of Italy continues during the first half of Jan. 1801. 
Clausewitz justly observes that the campaign of 1812 does 
evidently not end with Dec. 31 of that year, when the French were 
still on the Niemen, and in full retreat, but with their arrival 
behind the Elbe in Feb. 1813, where they again collected their 
forces, the impetus which drove them homeward having ceased.” 
Sull, winter remaining always a season during which fatigue and 
exposure will, in our latitudes, reduce active armies at an excessive 
rate, a mutual suspension of operations and recruiting of strength 


a C. Clausewitz, Vom Kriege (Hinterlassene Werke, Bd. 2, 1833, S. 6).— Ed. 


Campaign 235 


very often coincide with that time of the year; and although a 
campaign, in the strict sense of the word, means a series of warlike 
operations closely connected together by one strategical plan and 
directed toward one strategetical object, campaigns may still in 
most cases very conveniently be named by the year in which their 
decisive actions are fought.