These, then, were the basic factors, or ingredients, that between them went into the making of Napoleonic warfare. Apart from his insistence on the importance of the strategical battle as an integral part and the only possible outcome for a successful plan of campaign, Napoleon contributed little new; generals have always tried, to the limit of their abilities, to achieve speed, surprise, concentration and the rest. Moreover, Napoleon’s system of war drew most of its feasibility from three inheritances handed down by the Ancien Régime and the Revolution.
First, there was the idea of subdividing armies into permanent, self-contained contained divisions. This concept had first been actively practiced by Marshal Broglie during the Seven Years’ War, and he in his turn was applying the ideas of one Count Mortaigne.* In his “Instruction of 1761,” Broglie enunciated the principles on which the Napoleonic divisional and corps systems operated: “The two infantry lines† of the army will be divided into four divisions during the campaign,” the marshal ordered. “Each division will be composed of a quarter of the brigades of the first and second lines. Each division will be commanded by a lieutenant general, appointed for the whole campaign; he will have other generals under him. The lieutenant general will be responsible for all details of his division—discipline, marches, police, commissariat and guards. He will brigade a battalion of grenadiers and one of chasseurs. He will always attach a cannon to this force…. He will also have an artillery division called ‘the Column Advance Guard,’ consisting of ten 12-pounders and ten 8-pounders, with all necessary ammunition for these guns and the regimental artillery….”47 If we substitute the title “marshal” for “lieutenant general,” change the phrase “Column Advance Guard” into “Corps Artillery Reserve” and disregard the outdated system of dividing the army into “lines,” this passage might almost serve as a description of Davout’s or Massena’s corps d’armée of fifty years later.
This, then, was the first of Napoleon’s important practical inheritances, and although the system had been discontinued after Broglie’s death, the concept had formed an integral part of Guibert’s teachings, and in February 1793 the system of permanent divisions (each consisting of four demi-brigades) had been permanently adopted on the advice of Dubois-Crancé for the Revolutionary Armies. As usual, therefore, Napoleon received ready-made an army organization from his predecessors, and proceeded to perfect and add to it until he had produced the perfect formation—the corps-d’armée—with which to put into practice his ideals of mobile, far-flung, total war.
In the second place, Napoleon inherited from the Revolution the idea of “living off the countryside.” From the earliest times armies had always relied to a greater or lesser extent on supplies seized, requisitioned or (very occasionally) bought locally for their subsistence, but in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries the practice had grown up of relying on long, slow-moving convoys of wagons, operating from pre-stocked depots and arsenals, as the primary source of supply. This was for two reasons: firstly, in the “Age of Reason” there had been a reaction against the totality and horrors of war as demonstrated by the Wars of Religion, and opinion had set its face against indiscriminate looting; in the second place, most armies were made up of very unwilling material—pressed peasants, freed convicts and the like—who could not be trusted to go out and forage for themselves for fear of widespread desertion. In the early Revolutionary Wars, however, the. whole attitude of the French Government and populace toward warfare had undergone a great change. Huge armies (at one point as many as 600,000) were raised of volunteers (and later conscripts), and it proved impossible to provide them with “conventional” logistical support. Hence, de rigueur rather than as a matter of policy, the French armies resorted to almost complete dependence on local supplies; what convoys existed were reserved for munitions. This act of desperation, however, proved workable. Because of the intelligence and revolutionary fervor of the new-type popular soldier, the threat of mass desertions proved illusory. At first every Frenchman was imbued with a sense of defending la Patrie et la Revolution against foreign reactionary forces; later, the proselytizing mission of the Revolution—the need to spread the new gospel of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité to other submerged peoples and “liberate” them from their chains, provided a new incentive. As a result, it proved possible to operate whole armies on a shoestring, administratively speaking, and Napoleon inherited the system—or rather the lack of a system—of supplying forces in the field. Again, typically, he improved and regularized an already existing practice. Although by 1805 the First Empire could have provided as much food for its troops as was needed, Napoleon deliberately adopted the old, desperate methods; the army that marched to the Danube carried merely eight days’ rations with it—and these were issued only when the enemy was close at hand and it was consequently impractical to send the men out to forage for themselves. Only in 1812, faced by the immense wastes of plain and forest in Holy Russia, did Napoleon attempt to resort to the old convoy system (and without conspicuous success, be it noted). At all other times he made the fullest use of the improved mobility afforded by dispensing with cumbrous convoys, associating the divisional and corps system with this policy of “living off the countryside”; to facilitate foraging, the French army could move in widely spaced, self-contained formations, each with its allotted foraging area, and then concentrate rapidly for battle. This was the essence of Napoleonic blitzkrieg and it proved fatally baffling to the reactionary governments of Europe.
Thirdly, the Revolution provided Napoleon with a promotion system open to talent. The importance of this legacy cannot be overestimated; it was the caliber of the truly “natural” leaders who emerged from the ranks of the Revolutionary Armies to command battalions, demi-brigades, divisions, corps and armies, that made Napoleon’s achievements possible. He himself was of course the greatest product of this aspect of the Revolution. Without distinction of birth or influential connections, it is doubtful whether Napoleon would ever have been permitted to rise to high position outside his own arm of the service; it is absolutely certain that he would never have risen so fast—nor ever have attained a position from which he could coordinate and control every aspect of France’s war effort. Similarly, he could have achieved little without the able aid of soldiers like Lannes, Davout, Massena or Murat, his righthand men. If Napoleon provided the inspiration, the brains and the will power, his subordinates provided the brawn, muscle and courage—and, to a lesser extent, the intelligence as well—that transformed theory into fact. As we shall see at a later stage, Napoleon eventually misused this system of promotion by merit by discouraging even his ablest generals from indulging in original thought, but to the end of his meteoric career the way to promotion for every soldier in the French Army lay through proven courage and ability. The proverbial bâton was in “every soldier’s knapsack.” This aspect of his genius was fully recognized by the great Victorian historian, Thomas Carlyle, when he wrote: “To the very last he had a kind of idea; that, namely, of la carrière ouverte aux talents, the tools to him that can handle them.”48 But as before, the creation of this concept was not the work of that “sheep-worrier of Europe.” From first to last, he was the perfecter and applier rather than the creator.
Writing to Eugène Beauharnais, June 7, 1809, Napoleon repeated his belief in the advantages conferred by the corps d’armée system:
Here is the general principle of war—a corps of 25,000-30,000 men can be left on its own. Well handled, it can fight or alternatively avoid action, and maneuver according to circumstances without any harm coming to it, because an opponent cannot force it to accept an engagement but if it chooses to do so it can fight alone for a long time.
A division of 9,000-17,000 men can be left for an hour on its own without inconvenience; it will contain a foe several times more numerous than itself, and will win time for the arrival of the army (Correspondance, Vol. XIX, No. 15310).
See p. 102.
See Ch. 25, p. 268.
T
he great Marshal de Saxe had also experimented with moderately sized formations containing a balanced proportion of infantry, cavalry, guns, services and staff.
In the eighteenth century, armies were habitually divided into two lines, this being the standard formation adopted in battle.
15
STRATEGIC CONCEPTS
Passing on to describe the ways in which Napoleon employed these “principles” or “ingredients” for the prosecution of war, it must from the outset be understood that his strategical and tactical systems followed no closely ruled pattern. Every operation was unique; no two were ever quite the same. However, underlying every campaign and battle were certain fundamental ideas which were applied according to circumstances. These basic plans are worthy of close study by any person wishing to reach an accurate assessment of Napoleon’s ability as a general.
“Strategy is the art of making use of time and space,” wrote the Emperor. It comprises the planning and execution of the moves from the outset of a war or campaign until its culmination. As we have seen, Napoleon was insistent that the battle was an integral part of the strategical planning. Every successful campaign, in his mind, could be broken down into three parts: the move into contact, the battle, and, lastly, the pursuit and general exploitation phase. Of course these were not self-contained phases—all three merged into one another—for a military campaign is essentially a whole, a single theme passing through a sequence of stages.
Napoleon laid down five principles for opening a campaign, and they are worth bearing in mind when studying his theory of war or any of his operations. First: an army must have only a single line of operations; that is to say, the target must be clearly defined and every possible formation directed toward it. This does not imply that all troops should use a single road; in the interests of security, logistics and speed, as we have seen, the army should move by various routes. But the ultimate objective must be clear from the start, and men must not be wasted on unnecessary secondary operations. Second: the main enemy army should always be the objective; only by destroying an opponent’s field forces could he be induced to give up the struggle. There were times when Napoleon slightly diverged from his own principle, usually through force of circumstances or for some other very good reason. In 1800, he attacked Melas in the secondary theater (North Italy) when the road to ultimate victory lay up the Danube toward Vienna; conversely, in 1805, he selected Mack’s army at Ulm as his initial objective, although technically the Archduke Charles was commanding the main Austrian army in North Italy—and there were other instances. Generally speaking, however, he does aim his blitzkrieg blow at the enemy’s main army. Third: the French Army must move in such a way as to place itself on the enemy’s flank and rear, for psychological as well as strategical reasons; this aspect of Napoleonic strategy will be examined in greater detail below. Fourth: the French Army must always strive to turn the enemy’s most exposed flank—that is to say, cut him off from his depots, neighboring friendly forces, or his capital. Fifth and last: the Emperor stressed the need to keep the French Army’s own lines of communication both safe and open. The ways in which this was achieved will also be mentioned in the following pages.
Broadly speaking, Napoleon employed three different types of strategical maneuver to achieve his military aim—the creation of a favorable battle situation capable of producing decisive results. They can be described as follows: the advance of envelopment (la manoeuvre sur les derrières) which can also be called, in Liddell-Hart’s terminology, “the indirect approach”; secondly his strategy of the “central position”; and thirdly that of “strategical penetration.” Each of these will now be described in turn.
La manoeuvre sur les derrières was employed no less than thirty times between 1796 and 1815* and was designed to crush a single enemy army which had strayed out of close supporting distance of its allies’ or supporting forces. Its aim was to achieve a favorable battle situation on Napoleon’s own terms. The Emperor, while he was quite prepared “to break eggs to make omelettes,” as von Clausewitz puts it, was always eager to gain total victory for a minimum expenditure of manpower and effort. Consequently he disliked having to force a full-scale, fully arrayed frontal battle—that is to say, marching directly against the enemy to fight him on ground of his (the adversary’s) choosing, for such battles were inevitably expensive and rarely conclusive (Borodino in 1812 is a case in point). Instead, whenever possible, after pinning the foe frontally by a feint attack, he marched his main army by the quickest possible “safe” route, hidden by the cavalry screen and natural obstacles, to place himself on the rear or flank of his opponent. Once this move had been successfully achieved, he occupied a natural barrier or “strategical curtain” (usually a river line or mountain range), ordered the blocking of all crossings, and thus isolated his intended victim from his rear depots and reduced his chances of reinforcement. Thereafter, Napoleon advanced relentlessly toward the foe’s army, offering him only two alternatives—to fight for survival on ground not of his own choosing, or to surrender.
The advantages afforded by such a strategy are obvious. The enemy army would be both taken by surprise and almost certainly demoralized by the sudden apparition of the enemy army in its rear, cutting its communications. The opposing general could attempt one of three things to try and remedy the situation: if he was bold enough, he could continue his advance against the “pinning” force; or, second, he could try to place himself across the main French lines of communication—which would necessarily be extensive; or, third, he could order an immediate retreat toward the main French army in the hope of forcing a way through to reopen his communications—in other words, accepting a battle.
However, so great was the subtlety and flexibility of Napoleon’s basic scheme that none of these courses of action need unduly disturb his plans or the eventual outcome of the campaign. In the first place, the Emperor was careful to ensure that the “pinning” or covering force was strong enough to defy the enemy for a definite period of time. In April 1800, Massena besieged in Genoa was the pin holding Melas’ attention; in 1805, Murat’s cavalry and Ney’s corps (initially) carried out the same function amid the defiles of the Black Forest against General Mack; in 1806, it was Louis, King of Holland, who performed this duty by holding the fortresses of the Rhine and making diversionary attacks onto the right bank. Napoleon was also careful to provide his secondary attack with a safe refuge whenever this was feasible—a series of fortresses or large river line—within or behind which it could find safety in the event of heavy enemy pressure. But the real beauty of the plan lay in the fact that even if the enemy was successful against his immediate opponent (the pinning force) and made ground, he was only pushing himself ever deeper into the toils of the French strategic net by placing an ever greater distance between himself and his original bases and by committing himself to operating on hostile territory, with Napoleon sweeping up against his rear.
If, on the other hand, the enemy struck against the French communications, Napoleon was equally unperturbed. To carry out such an operation the foe would necessarily be compelled to split his force—part to watch the “pinning” force, part to cover his rear against Napoleon’s approach, the rest for the actual operation: and this dispersal of enemy force could ultimately only act to Napoleon’s advantage. Moreover, the French army, thanks to its doctrine of deliberately “living off the countryside” was far less vulnerable as regards its communications than its magazine-minded opponent. As the campaign unfolded Napoleon deliberately kept his immediate communications short and manageable by having resort to a series of “principal places” or centres des opérations placed in the immediate rear of his main army, where the hospitals, munition convoys and main field parks could congregate in support of his operations. Whenever the main force moved more than six days’ march from its current centre d’opérations, Napoleon almost invariably chose a new location, and all his support organizations immediately moved forward. By this means Napoleon kept his
“tail” both short and close to the front. Of course, he still relied on his main line of communications stretching back to, say, the Rhine for reinforcements, munitions and above all news from Paris, but he was quite prepared to accept a temporary break in these services if it meant that the enemy army—growing progressively weaker through making detachments—would be placed at a definite, ultimate disadvantage.
Lastly, if the enemy general adopted the third course and marched to offer battle against Napoleon, he was conforming exactly to the Emperor’s wishes—by accepting action on unfamiliar ground, with his morale shaken and in all probability his formations scattered by the chaos and muddle of a precipitate withdrawal.
The strategy of envelopment (or la manoeuvre sur les derrières); schematic
Every eventuality—except active intervention by a neighboring enemy army or strong reinforcements—had now been taken care of by Napoleon’s flexible scheme of operations. Even this, the ultimate complication, could often be discounted and its effect minimized; by detaching “corps of observation,” designated in advance, to occupy and hold strategic barrages blocking probable enemy lines of approach, Napoleon could delay the new enemy intervention until he had completed the destruction of his first adversary. The campaign of 1805 shows this type of plan in operation: after crossing the Danube, Napoleon detached two corps—those of Bernadotte and Davout—to hold the Issar, Ammer and Ilm River lines and ward off the possibility of Russian intervention from the east. At the same time a third (Marshal Soult) was marching on Memmingen to cut General Mack’s secondary line of retreat (or reinforcement) running down the Iller to the Tyrol where the Archduke John’s army was situated, while the remainder of the army, Murat, Ney, Lannes and Marmont, were converging on the real target—Mack’s Austrian army isolated around Ulm. By Napoleon’s original plan, Soult would next have advanced up the Iller toward Ulm so as to envelop Mack’s strategic flank as well as to sever his links with the Tyrol. All the while Marshal Augereau’s reserve corps (the VIIth) was moving up from the Rhine to protect the main French lines of communication running over the Danube toward Nördlingen and (ultimately) Strasbourg, while the conveniently accessible and centrally placed city of Augsburg on the River Lech served as the “center of operations” for all the formations of the Grande Armée to the-south of the Danube. It should be noted, however, that all these detachments were combined into a closely spun spider’s web, and all sectors could be reinforced rapidly. General Mack was so demoralized by these French moves that he capitulated without offering serious resistance on October 21 and Napoleon achieved the perfect “bloodless” victory. Immediately thereafter, he turned all his attentions eastward and set off to destroy the Russians in their turn—an aim eventually achieved at Austerlitz on December 2.
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 24