The story behind the words

A Parting Gift for a Prince

Portrait of Carl von Clausewitz, Prussian general and military theorist

Carl von Clausewitz — portrait by Wilhelm Wach, 1830 · Public domain

Prussia, 1812. A military officer and theorist named Carl von Clausewitz has spent two years tutoring the sixteen-year-old Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm — the future King of Prussia. Now Clausewitz is leaving. He is about to cross into Russia to join the fight against Napoleon, and he will not be back soon. Before he goes, he sits down and writes out everything he knows about war — distilled, compressed, made usable for a young man who will one day have to lead. Near the end of the section on strategy, he tells the prince that two principles, combined, yield the single maxim that above all others determines victory in modern warfare. He writes it down. Then he leaves for the front.

"Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination." — Carl von Clausewitz · The Principles of War (1812)

The line was written by a soldier for a soldier — and it carries the bluntness of military counsel. Clausewitz is arguing against the natural temptation to divide one's attention and resources across many objectives at once, hoping to make progress on all of them. He had seen what happened on real battlefields when commanders did this. The army that scattered its strength was beaten by the one that concentrated. A person trying to advance ten priorities at once tends to advance none of them very far; the same hours and energy, focused on one well-chosen aim and pressed forward with conviction, will move it visibly.

The quote is not an argument against rest, balance, or a full life. It is an argument that when the time comes to push, one should push at a single decisive point. "Force and determination" are the two halves of the instruction: force means committing real resources — time, energy, attention — not gesturing at the goal from a safe distance. Determination means not stopping when the first resistance appears. Both are required. Either alone is insufficient.

Clausewitz (1780–1831) entered the Prussian army at twelve, fought his first battle at thirteen, and was captured after Prussia's catastrophic 1806 defeat at Jena-Auerstedt. He went on to fight through Napoleon's Russian campaign and the Wars of Liberation, and spent his last years writing On War — one of the most influential books on strategy ever written, still read at military academies and in boardrooms today. He died of cholera at fifty-one with the manuscript unfinished. His widow edited and published it the following year. The essay he wrote for the young prince predates it by twenty years — and in some ways says it more simply.

What is your one great decisive aim right now — and are you pursuing it with force and determination, or spreading yourself across ten?