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It was not the battle of Borodino but the Russian retreat that devastated Napoleon’s army in 1812. The time of the Napoleonic Wars was not solely the time of decisive battles but also of new theories that considered battle a mere ‘ultimatum’ of war dynamics. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the events of 1812 were planned by the Russian officer Ludwig von Wolzogen on the grounds of a theory developed by Dietrich von Bülow. Owing to its seemingly absurd concept of avoiding battles altogether, it was applied secretly and later fell into oblivion. This article reconsiders the history of an idea of war dynamics that brought peace to Europe for this time.

Georg Heinrich von Berenhorst and Dietrich von Bülow were perhaps the most inspirational war theorists of the late eighteenth century. Following Berenhorst, Bülow developed a theory that interpreted war as a dynamic system without physical contact, prompting Carl von Clausewitz to write a crushing critique that up to the present day obfuscates Bülow’s ideas. However, Clausewitz’s critique is based on a fundamental misconception, which illustrates how this decisive swerve in war theory continues to be neglected. This article demonstrates how Berenhorst and Bülow strived for introducing Newtonian standards to human behaviour for a pacifist theory of war.