Landsturm

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The Landsturm (German: Country Storm) were irregular military forces in Prussia which were created on 21 April 1813 by a royal edict issued by king Frederick William III of Prussia. 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 invasion. As a model and as 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. the introduction, §8, §52).

According to this edict all Prussian citizens were obliged to oppose the invasion by the enemy using any weapons available like axes, pitchforks, scythes or shotguns (§43). All Prussians should also not obey orders by the enemy but make themselves a nuisance to the Napoleonic troops however possible. This was a clear departure from ordinary jus in bello (Latin: Law of War), which commanded the civilian 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 but simply as criminal activity. The Landsturm edict explicitely 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. Legitime defense "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 relatively to the laws of war. The war then took place according to the standard rules of conventional warfare. Carl Schmitt qualified it as the "Magna Carta of the partisan". Despite its not being put to practice, fascist 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." ^[1]