GUERRILLA PARTY (Span. guerra, war ; guerrilla, a little war).
In Military Law. Self-constituted sets of armed men, in times of war, who form no integrant part of the organized army, do not stand on the regular pay-roll of the army, or are not paid at all, take up arms and lay them down at intervals, and carry on petty war, chiefly by raids, extortion, destruction, and massacre. Lieber, Guerr. Part. 18. See Halleck, Int. Law, 386 ; Woolsey, Int. Law, 299.
Partisan, free-corps, and guerrilla are terms re sembling each other considerably in signification; and, indeed, partisan and guerrilla are frequently used in the same sense. See Halleek, Int. Law, 386.
Partisan corps and free-corps both denote bodies detached from the main army; but the former term refers to the action of the troop, the latter to the composition. The partisan leader commands a corps whose object is to injure the enemy by action separate from that of his own main army; the par tisan acts chiefly upon the enemy's lines of connec tion and communication, and outside of or beyond the lines of operation of his own army, in the rear and on the flanks of the enemy. But he is part and
parcel of the army, and, as such, considered en titled to the privileges of the law of war so long as he does not transgress it. Free-corps, on the other hand, are troops not belonging to the regular army, consisting of volunteers generally raised by indivi duals authorized to do se by the government, used for petty war, and not incorporated with the ordre de bataille. The men composing these corps are entitled to the benefit of the laws of war, under the same limitations as the partisan corps.
Guerrilla-men, when captured in fair fight and open warfare, should be treated as the regular partisan is, until special crimes, such as murder, or the killing of prisoners, or the sacking of places, are proved upon them.
The law of war, however, would not extend a similar favor to small bodies of armed coun trypeople near the lines, whose very small ness shows that they must resort to occasional fighting and the occasional assuming of peaceful habits and brigandage. Lieber, Guerr. Part. 20.