1805),
_Lehrsaetze des Neueren Kriegs_ (Berlin, 1805), _Geschichte des Prinzen
Heinrich von Preussen_ (Berlin, 1805), _Neue Taktik der Neuern wie sie sein
sollte_ (Leipzig, 1805), and _Der Feldzug 1805_ (Leipzig, 1806). He also
edited, with G.H. von Behrenhorst (1733-1814) and others, _Annalen des
Krieges_ (Berlin, 1806). These brilliant but unorthodox works,
distinguished by an open contempt of the Prussian system, cosmopolitanism
hardly to be distinguished from high treason, and the mordant sarcasm of a
disappointed man, brought upon Buelow the enmity of the official classes and
of the government. He was arrested as insane, but medical examination
proved him sane and he was then lodged as a prisoner in Colberg, where he
was harshly treated, though Gneisenau obtained some mitigation of his
condition. Thence he passed into Russian hands and died in prison at Riga
in 1807, probably as a result of ill-treatment.

In Buelow's writings there is evident a distinct contrast between the spirit
of his strategical and that of his tactical ideas. As a strategist (he
claimed to be the first of strategists) he reduces to mathematical rules
the practice of the great generals of the 18th century, ignoring
"friction," and manoeuvring his armies _in vacuo_. At the same time he
professes that his system provides working rules for the armies of his own
day, which in point of fact were "armed nations," infinitely more affected
by "friction" than the small dynastic and professional armies of the
preceding age. Buelow may therefore be considered as anything but a reformer
in the domain of strategy. With more justice he has been styled the "father
of modern tactics." He was the first to recognize that the conditions of
swift and decisive war brought about by the French Revolution involved
wholly new tactics, and much of his teaching had a profound influence on
European warfare of the 19th century. His early training had shown him
merely the pedantic _minutiae_ of Frederick's methods, and, in the absence
of any troops capable of illustrating the real linear tactics, he became an
enthusiastic supporter of the methods, which (more of necessity than from
judgment) the French revolutionary generals had adopted, of fighting in
small columns covered by skirmishers. Battles, he maintained, were won by
skirmishers. "We must organize disorder," he said; indeed, every argument
of writers of the modern "extended order" school is to be found _mutatis
mut