Masters of the Battlefield

by Davis, Paul K.

  FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR Frederick’s defeats outnumbered his victories, and some of his losses were severe. However, he and his army managed to survive the setbacks and come out of the war with both territory and reputation intact. His contributions to warfare and his smashing victories were sufficient to earn him the “Great” sobriquet. “No one else accomplished what he was able to do with linear tactics,” Dupuy asserts. “[H]e achieved the utmost possible within the limits set by technology and by the political and social conditions of Prussia in the eighteenth century.”111 The greatest contemporary tribute to Frederick was the mass of foreign soldiers who went to Prussia to learn from the master who, as noted above, mainly grasped the trappings of power instead of the reasons behind it. Ritter asserts that “[a]fter the Seven Years War he occupied the same position among the generals of Europe that once had been Prince Eugene’s: Frederick was the universally admired, studied, and emulated preceptor of modern war.”112

  Frederick, however, declined in his advancing years as the army became a shell of its former self. “The brotherhood of endurance faded in peacetime, as discipline became an end in itself instead of a means of making war,” Showalter writes. “The fellowship of arms eroded as the King’s capriciousness broke careers without hope of redress. By the mid-1770s the army was focused on Frederick not as king, not as commander in chief, but as totem.”113

  The great tragedy of his accomplishments was that they were so good the Prussians would not change as time passed. In his glory days Frederick could see what was necessary and adapt, as he did with his cavalry and artillery, but his successors did not. Instead, they gloried in the mystique, which was ultimately shattered by Napoleon in 1806 at the battles of Jena and Auerstadt. His spirit, however, continued to motivate generations. The cavalry tactics used by Napoleon and others came from Prussian roots; the obsession with massed firepower dominated German military thinking through World War II; Moltke depended greatly on maneuver and mobility in his victory in the Franco-Prussian War a century after Frederick’s time.114 In these imitators and many others, Frederick’s success as a commander is continually reestablished.

  14

  Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)

  French Emperor

  He knows all; he understands everything; he can achieve anything.

  —Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Siéyès

  ONLY ONE OTHER TIME IN THIS WORK have two contemporaries been discussed: Hannibal and Scipio. Hannibal was the elder and long in the field before Scipio arrived, a much younger man. Scipio learned from Hannibal and adapted Carthaginian weaponry and methodology into a new style of Roman warfare. Such is not the case with Napoleon and his contemporary, Wellington. The two were of almost identical age and, while there are a number of striking similarities in the lives of the two men, it cannot be said that either adopted the other’s techniques. As in the earlier pairing, we also see the two generals moving in opposite directions, with Scipio and Wellington peaking at their abilities as Hannibal and Napoleon were past their best days.

  Napoléone Buonaparte was born on 1 August 1769 into the minor nobility, son of Carlo and Letizia Buonaparte, on the island of Corsica. The island had long been ruled by Genoa and had only recently (1761) managed to expel the Genoese rulers. It was not exactly independent, however, as Genoa proceeded to sell Corsica to Louis XV, who invaded and established a French administration in 1768. The Corsicans were not terribly pleased with this new overlord and resisted the French presence; however, they failed to gain their sovereignty. Carlo Buonaparte decided to go along with the new order and befriended the French governor, the Marquis de Marbeuf. This connection opened the way for young Napoléone to attend military school in northeast France at Brienne, in the Champagne region some fifteen miles north of Reims. He was a student there from 1779 to 1784, when he was transferred to the Ecole Militaire in Paris; in 1785, at the age of sixteen, he entered into military service with an artillery regiment in the Rhône River valley. In the summer of 1788 he entered artillery school at Auxonne, just outside Dijon in eastern France.

  This proved perhaps the most important move in Napoléone’s life up to that point, for the school was run by Baron Jean-Pierre du Teil, who along with his brother was probably the premiere artillery expert in the world. Du Teil took a fancy to the young man, seeing signs of a sharp intelligence.1 Like many of the generals studied in this work, Napoléone became a voracious reader, primarily of history and military works but also of mathematics. Du Teil also gave the young man special exercises to hone his skills. Napoléone became a master at reading terrain and effectively employing cannons. No general in this work appreciated big guns like he did. He grasped an unrivaled knowledge of ballistics and also developed his talents as an architect and draftsman. He learned from du Teil’s brother Jean the importance of massing artillery at key instants in battle.2

  A year into Napoléone’s artillery training, the French Revolution broke out in July 1789. Since his father had died in 1785 and had been a minor noble, Napoléone was not a target of any backlash against aristocrats. Not until 1791 did the Royal Artillery School come under political fire, with du Teil forced to emigrate along with many of the high-born officer candidates. Napoléone, however, embraced the revolutionary cause as the Royal Army was collapsing. He took leave from his regiment in October and went home to Corsica, where he became lieutenant colonel of the Ajaccio Volunteers, part of the National Guard established by the revolutionary government. He achieved this rank by election, which meant lying, cheating, stealing, and stabbing in the back, described by one biographer as “a contest violent and corrupt even by eighteenth-century small-town Corsican standards.”3 The election was confirmed after he made a trip to Paris in August 1792, and Napoléone spent the following several months suppressing Corsican independence movements. Such actions and attitudes resulted in threats by local patriots that were sufficient to convince him and his family to abandon the island for France; he never returned to his homeland. From that point forward, his name was Napoleon Bonaparte and he was French to the core.

  Facing some royalist movements around the country, the Revolutionary Committee decided in January 1793 to execute King Louis XVI along with his family, friends, and supporters. This would make enthroning a new monarch much more difficult. The resulting Reign of Terror hardened some of the counterrevolutionary groups. On the south coast, the city of Toulon declared itself in favor of a return to royal rule, expelled revolutionaries, and invited the British and Spanish to occupy and defend the city. In early August the revolutionary army arrived to begin a siege, but it faced extremely stout defensive works as well as English warships; the early part of the siege proved less than successful. On his way to Nice in mid-September to deliver some gunpowder, Napoleon stopped at Toulon to pay his respects to a fellow former Corsican and, owing to the wounding of the artillery officer in charge, found himself assuming that position. He also found himself in the middle of mass chaos. The army commander at Toulon, General Jean-François Carteaux, had no talent. Napoleon had some connections with the political officers on hand who were reporting back to Paris, and with their support he assumed not only command of the four cannons and two mortars available, but also began organizing every aspect of the force that had any connection to artillery. He imported sacks of earth from Marseilles in order to build ramparts. He created an arsenal at the nearby village of Ollioules and had blacksmiths and carpenters working to repair muskets, cast musket balls and cannon balls, and build the necessary transport vehicles. He imported skilled workers from Marseilles to create case shot for his cannons and shells for his mortars. He reorganized the artillery company, obtained more gunpowder, and scrounged more cannons from the surrounding region. He soon had a complement of almost a hundred artillery pieces.4

  The challenge for the besiegers was not just the city’s fortifications but the English fleet in the harbor, which had grown immensely by capturing dozens of French ships based there and had greatly exp
anded the defenders’ firepower. Here Napoleon first showed his coup d’oeil. He grasped that the key to taking the city was not in overcoming its walls and gun positions; instead, the center of gravity was the allied fleet. Remove that and the city could not survive; leave it in place and supplies could be brought indefinitely. His first batteries, Forts de la Montagne and des Sans Culottes, were constructed to bombard the western end of the inner harbor (La Petite Rade), and although their initial cannonade produced little in the way of damage, it did convince the British commander in Toulon, Admiral Lord Alexander Hood, to pull his ships closer to the Toulon docks. The western end of the harbor was too shallow to bring in his warships for counterbattery fire.

  David Chandler, the premier Napoleonic military historian, writes, “The young officer soon made his presence firmly (and unpopularly) felt at every council of war meeting. From the first he appreciated that the key to the defences of Toulon lay in capturing Fort l’Eguilette. Sited on a high promontory overlooking the narrow passage between the greater and lesser anchorages, the latter could be rendered untenable for Hood’s fleet if cannon shot was fired against it from the fort.”5 The first attempt against the post was too weak and failed; the British responded quickly to strengthen their hold on the area. At the end of September they landed more than 500 British and Spanish troops. The British engineers quickly built a large and imposing position known as Fort Mulgrave—nicknamed “le petit Gibraltar” by the French—on the heights overlooking the point, and manned it with twenty heavy cannon and four mortars.6 This stymied the French effort for a time, while allied reinforcements arrived by ship from Naples and Sardinia, bringing the defense forces up to almost 9,000 against the 15,000 French besiegers, who held significantly less favorable ground. Still, the superior numbers allowed the French to regularly harass the outlying allied posts, keeping them on edge and short of supplies. The French, meanwhile, had little problem delivering sufficient provisions from Marseilles. There were political moves among the force commanders but Napoleon spent his time building up new batteries, earning the respect of all. Through October both sides received reinforcements, with the Spanish holding the majority among the defenders in both men and ships.

  In mid-November a professional soldier took charge of the siege: General Jacques Dugommier. Along with him came Baron du Teil, Napoleon’s old mentor from artillery school. He gave the young artillerist both freedom and approval for his emplacements. Although du Teil was greatly senior in rank and experience, he generally deferred to Napoleon’s decisions since they generally mirrored his own. Between 14 and 30 November, Napoleon built eight more batteries. By month’s end, his thirteen batteries with a total of thirty-seven cannon and twenty-six mortars presented a considerable threat to both Fort Mulgrave and the western side of the harbor.7 The increased firepower kept allied ships even further at bay, leaving Fort Mulgrave dangerously isolated.

  On 30 November the allies launched an attack out of Fort Malbousquet (on the north shore of the inner harbor) against the batteries just to the north. Early allied success, however, turned to failure when overpursuit led to disorganization, which counterattacking French forces were able to exploit. At the end of the day many French guns were disabled, though neither side gained or lost any significant position. However, the allies had suffered a significant number of casualties, including the mission commander, General Charles O’Hara, who was wounded and captured. Napoleon was among the leaders of the counterattack. This, and his constant exposure to fire during the construction of his batteries, did much to endear him to his men.

  The successful counterattack was followed almost immediately by a council of war to discuss what would be the key battle of the siege. Napoleon was involved in the planning—although he was certainly not its primary architect, as later memoirs would claim. The council resulted in attacks on three points around Toulon, to keep the allies from knowing where the main effort would be focused. This eventually came at Fort Mulgrave, which, after two weeks of constant pounding from Napoleon’s guns, fell to French assault after fierce fighting. With that stronghold out of the way, Napoleon led the final assault to seize the position at Fort l’Eguilette. Napoleon urged on his troops until his horse was shot out from under him; he then led on foot, receiving an enemy bayonet at the fort’s parapet and suffering a bad thigh wound. The assault was so quick that the allies did not have the time to spike their cannons before the Frenchmen seized them.8

  By the following day Napoleon had ten cannons in position and began firing on the British ships. Admiral Lord Hood saw the handwriting on the wall and ordered not just the harbor but the city to be abandoned. The ships, crowded with wounded as well as royalist civilians, sailed away in the night. At 9:00 a.m. on 19 December Toulon became the property of the French Republic. Napoleon, according to British officer William Sidney-Smith, rounded up anyone who appeared to be a collaborator, massed them in the city square, and mowed them down with artillery. By Napoleon’s own account, however, trials were held and a few hundred executed. In his book on the siege of Toulon, Bernard Ireland writes, “The anger of the Committee of Public Safety at what it viewed as the prolonged betrayal of Toulon could be assuaged only through terrible vengeance. Its original intention was to raze the town totally but, as this made no practical sense, penalty was exacted from its unfortunate remaining inhabitants.”9 Napoleon, owing to the severity of his leg wound, probably had nothing to do with the ensuing deaths of as many as 6,000 civilians.

  Although detractors link him to the slaughter, French contemporaries saw Napoleon as one of the major heroes of the battle. Chandler observes, “Although technically he was never more than artillery adviser to a succession of commanders in chief, Major Buonaparte was generally recognized as being the mastermind behind the success. … [He] had hit upon the secret of success by appreciating the military problem correctly. … And so at last Napoleon Buonaparte had emerged onto the scene of European History.”10

  Warfare of the Time

  IN THE WAKE OF THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR, the French government became determined to overcome its military’s extremely poor showing.11 Embarrassing defeats like Rossbach motivated the French high command to improve the nation’s army. Napoleon actually developed almost no new methods of fighting; he inherited a newly developed system from three main theorists and reformers of the prerevolutionary era, Guibert, Bourcet, and Gribeauval. Their work, undertaken during the last decades of the monarchy, would lay the basis for Napoleon’s success.12

  Jacques Antoine Hypolite, Comte de Guibert, who wrote his General Essay on Tactics (Essai général de Tactique) in 1772, was a critic of the entire European political system and the means of warfare it employed. What, he asked, were the results of the wars of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? Nations with shattered economies that could neither afford war in the first place nor succeed in their stated goals at its conclusion. What was needed, according to Guibert, was something of a throwback to the days of the wars of religion, when masses of manpower fought for ideals. The new ideal, however, would not be Catholicism or Protestantism, but national pride and glory. Mobilize the nation, create a national army, and follow a charismatic and visionary leader: this was a virtual blueprint for Napoleon’s career. Although he never foresaw nor advocated anything like the French Revolution, Guibert did desire a national will. Military historian Russell Weigley writes, “The Age of Enlightenment and Reason had already brought forward the idea that all institutions of government ought to be in harmony with the spirit and desires of the people. From this idea, Guibert drew the concept of a citizen’s army. If the armies of France could embody the vigor of the French nation at large, then indeed France could resume its former glorious place in the European military constellation.”13

  In Guibert’s conception, the army itself would be handled differently than before. Speed was of the essence, and therefore large baggage trains were anathema. So, too, was the concept of the army moving as a single mass. The army instead woul
d be divided into divisions or corps and move along parallel routes toward a single objective, at which place they would reunite for battle. Each division, moving along its own route, would carry minimal supplies and acquire most of its provision from the countryside. This idea would result in a much more mobile style of warfare than had been seen previously in Europe. Breaking armies into divisions promoted maneuverability and speed of both march and deployment for battle. This, too, became a hallmark of Napoleonic warfare.14 Once the divisions came together for battle, their individuality remained a positive aspect, as marching by division allowed variations in the terrain to be exploited more easily.15 When the French army adopted a new training manual in 1791, it was based heavily on Guibert’s theories.

  Pierre de Bourcet published Principles of Mountain Warfare (Principes de la guerre des montagnes) in 1771, after working on it for seven years. He had served as chief of staff for a number of senior generals, and his expertise was well known. He was appointed to direct the newly established French staff college in the wake of the Seven Years’ War, and his text was available at first only to his students. It was later published by France’s War Department, but with limited distribution to officers, and not outside the army. Thus, Napoleon was first exposed to Bourcet’s Principles during his training at Auxonne. Bourcet’s ideas reflected those of Guibert, arguing the need for speed as well as deception. Thus, his army divisions were larger (corps sized) and moved over a greater front, making it difficult for an enemy to anticipate which was the main column and what would be its target.16 Bourcet was more strategically minded, however, while Guibert’s theories were more at the operational or grand tactical level. Bourcet saw army divisions marching directly into battle from a number of directions, rather than marching to a battlefield and forming up opposite the enemy in parallel lines. This called for excellent communication between the divisions. For Napoleon, moving his army across a massively wide front became a trademark.