This article examines warfare as a problem of knowledge in the military theory, realist literature, and cartography of the nineteenth century. Against the background of the Napoleonic Wars, Carl von Clausewitz, Stendhal, and Charles Joseph Minard in different ways conceived of warfare as a profoundly contingent phenomenon that required a shift of metaphors and the development of new forms of representation. In each instance, meteorological phenomena serve as key figures for the understanding of the epistemology of large-scale warfare.Carl von clausewitz, Cartography, Charles joseph minard, Contingency, Literature, Stendhal, War