The Campaigns of Napoleon
Page 48
If the inner working of Napoleon’s greatest campaigns is to be fully appreciated, the internal organization of the three main branches of Imperial Headquarters merits attention.
The Maison was the true nerve center of the French war effort; its composition and tasks varied enormously at different times, but it is feasible to distinguish between Napoleon’s personal assistants and his personal staff, although even here there are few hard and fast distinctions, and certain key individuals were confusingly included in both sections. First we will list the types of personal assistants who looked after the Emperor’s staffwork and outline their functions.
Three men held key positions, whether at Court or in the field, and may be regarded as Napoleon’s right-hand men. Berthier, “small, stout, ever laughing, very full of business,”34 combined in his person the posts of Vice-Constable, Master of the Hounds, Minister of War and Chief of Staff ofla Grande Armée. The Prince of Neuchâtel was Napoleon’s closest subordinate, and his duties were multifarious, although in fact he rarely served as more than a glorified chief clerk. Secondly there was Duroc, Due de Frioul, Grand Marshal of the Palace—the irreplaceable administrator—in charge of the Emperor’s “family” and servants, holding the power of the purse, supervising the organization of the household, serving as the channel of approach to the Emperor’s person for those seeking interviews, and carrying out the slightly less official role of procureur of females for the satisfaction of his master’s appetites. He was humorous and efficient, and Napoleon missed him sorely after his death at the battle of Bautzen in 1813. Thirdly, there was the Master of the Horse, Caulaincourt, Duc de Vicenza, responsible for everything connected with the stables, pages, messenger services and imperial escorts. He aided the Emperor to mount, invariably accompanied him personally, and was expected to carry a map of the area attached to a button of his coat, ready for instant perusal. “The Duke of Vicenza, five feet eight inches tall, has a severe and noble air,” recorded the usually acid Castellane; “Frank and loyal, he is loved and esteemed by all…. he is an excellent general officer, very military in character.”35 Perhaps Caulaincourt was Napoleon’s most trustworthy servant, although at St. Helena his former master chose to depict him as “mindless” and “merely an excellent Chief of the Stables.” Nevertheless, Caulaincourt’s Memoirs form a vitally important source for the period 1812-14 and reveal an intelligence and loyalty of no common order.
Beneath these three dignitaries a cluster of lesser lights operated. A handful of unattached generals was always held available in a cadre for special missions. There were also the official aides-de-camp (almost all of them full generals of the greatest distinction), headed by Mouton, Rapp and Savary; these key personnel were expected to be equally capable of leading a charge, negotiating a treaty or cooking a chicken—in other words to perform any conceivable duty. Each had his own staff of aides and attendants. Additionally, there were a considerable number of orderly officers (12 in 1806) who performed routine messenger duties; these were generally young officers of important family connections (often returned émigrés).
The personnel responsible for the Emperor’s personal well-being under the supervision of Duroc were headed by four valets (the most important being Constant) and his personal bodyguard, the Mameluke Roustam, who helped his master on with his boots every morning and slept across the door of the imperial bedchamber each night. Then there were the prefect of the palace (Duroc’s deputy), the secretaries to the cabinet, a chamberlain, two equerries, four physicians, five surgeons, a paymaster, four pages (well-born youths destined for cavalry commissions when old enough), two lieutenant quartermasters of the palace and a considerable understaff of butlers, servants and grooms.
The really significant part of the Maison was, however, Napoleon’s “Cabinet”—“the sanctuary of genius,” as Colonel Vachée has accurately described it.36 The “Secretary of the Cabinet” (for a considerable time General Clarke) was the formal link between the Emperor’s private and planning staffs, belonging to both institutions. Two of these officials were attached to the Household by a decree dated October 22, 1804, but their duties were little more than secretarial; they were expected to write to the Emperor’s rapid dictation and find out various pieces of information at his request. Far more intimately concerned with the daily routine of Napoleon’s official life were the three private secretaries, sometimes called “masters of requests,” who were expected to be within call day and night. Their principal role was again the taking down of dictated orders, but they were also of importance as forming the main channel of direct communication between the Emperor and his ministers. Bourienne was the chief private secretary from 1796 to 1802, but in the end he was dismissed from the Household for peculation and larceny. “He was a thief to the extent of taking a box of diamonds from a mantlepiece,”37 recalled the Emperor at St. Helena, and while Napoleon was generally tolerant of personal peccadillos as long as a man served him well, in the end he was forced to take notice of the irregularities of his Brienne schoolfellow and remove him from his personal staff. Thereafter, the chief position was taken over by Meneval, assisted by Fain (from 1808).
The innermost nerve center of “the sanctuary of genius” was formed by the personnel of the Emperor’s Topographical Office. This department was preeminently the realm of Bacler d’Albe, who served Napoleon with hardly a break from 1796 to 1813, “a little dark man, handsome, pleasant, well-educated, talented and a good draughtsman.” He was probably the most indispensable of all Napoleon’s aides. He was responsible for performing all the staff duties connected with Napoleon’s planning sessions. He was entrusted with the task of amending maps and the maintenance of a large daily situation chart, on which every formation was marked by pins of different colors. This order of battle was always placed on a large table in the center of Napoleon’s office, and Bacler d’Albe was charged with ensuring that everything needful was ready at hand: the dispatch boxes, the field desk, the pair of compasses preset to prick an average day’s marching distance, and the indispensable field library of carnets (Napoleon’s notebooks which contained details of every French unit and enemy formation)* and other works of reference. Bacler d’Albe undoubtedly helped the Emperor in his planning to a very real degree. Together they would crawl over the surface of the map, pressing in more pins, and cursing or grunting when their heads or hindquarters came into collision. Bacler would also be entrusted with important calculations of time and distance. He led a dog’s life; the Emperor’s first and last command on every day spent on campaign was invariably “send for d’Albe.” Eventually he was permitted two assistants to help him in his work, but Bacler remained the key man and eventually attained the rank of general.
Whenever he rode out to visit units or command in battle, Napoleon was accompanied by his “little” (or battle) headquarters of hand-picked personnel. This invariably comprised the Chief of Staff, the Master of the Horse, the Marshal-of-the-Day on duty, two aides-de-camp, two orderly officers, an equerry, one page (carrying Napoleon’s telescope), a soldier of the escort (bearing a portfolio containing maps and a pair of compasses), Roustam, a groom and an officer-interpreter. Ahead of the entourage rode two more orderly officers followed by an officer and twelve cavalrymen. About 1,000 yards to the rear came the main escort, usually formed by four squadrons of the Guard Cavalry (one each from the regiments of chasseurs, lancers, dragoons and mounted grenadiers) under the command of a general aide-de-camp. For short distances or on the battlefield the Emperor rode specially trained Arab horses (of which Marengo was the most famous) and every formation down to corps level was expected to keep at least five spare horses available for the use of the Emperor and his immediate entourage should the need arise. His style was careless and unimpressive, but he was capable of hard and fast riding when necessary. For longer journeys he usually rode in a calèche or light carriage, the Master of the Horse riding at one window, the Marshal-of-the-Day at the other.
For night journeys or really ma
jor moves he transferred to his post chaise, a specially constructed vehicle which contained a folding bed, a desk and special bookshelves and lockers, and could thus be used as a mobile headquarters as the journey proceeded. A large lantern hung at the rear of the coach, admitting a bright light into the interior through a special window, and this made continuous work even at night perfectly feasible.
Such, then, was the regular establishment and organization of the Maison. Of course, its composition varied enormously at different times; sometimes ministers of state would be in direct attendance, at others different specialist officers; but it was indubitably the source of operational planning, the very “power house” of the Grande Armée. However, there was only one master—or indispensable member—of the entire Maison: Napoleon himself, the tireless mastermind and brilliant strategist. Everybody else helped but none decided or initiated. In this rigid centralization of power into a single person lay at once the strength and the weakness of the Household, of the entire staff organization, of the French Empire itself.
Passing on to consider the army staff properly so-called, a world apart from the Maison, we find a curiously complex and disunited organization presided over by Berthier, with much overlapping of departmental duties and many notable weaknesses and omissions. The Prince of Neuchâtel’s army staff comprised three branches: the Private Staff of the Chief of Staff; the Cabinet of the Chief of Staff, and the General Staff itself. The basic duty of all three branches was identical: to transmit Napoleon’s orders to those concerned and to supervise the detailed administration of the army. There was no call for originality of thought or effort; Napoleon decided all, planned all, controlled all. The staff was merely the vehicle for the transmission of command and the provision of data—nothing more.
The Offices of the Chief of Staff (which comprised the private and Cabinet staffs) were noted for the brilliance of their personnel, the smartness of their appearance, their legendary independence from and general scorn for the members of the Emperor’s Maison. Berthier personally controlled the division of labor within the staff, all appointments, all finances (aided by M. Dufresme) and supervised the issue of all Napoleon’s orders regarding troop movements, operations, the artillery and engineers, and the treatment of prisoners. In this huge task he was assisted by M. Salamon, his veritable éminence grise. The private staff consisted of a handful of generals and colonels and between six and thirteen aides-de-camp of lesser grade. These were the outward “trappings” of Berthier’s authority, but the real work was carried out behind the scenes by his cabinet, a dozen key civilians controlled by the Muster-Master-General Le Duc, seconded by the invaluable Salamon.
The regular General Staff had its personnel divided into two categories: those officers who could be entrusted with carrying top-level messages, and those simply designated as “officers of the general staff,” the inferior grade. At the head of this organization were three assistant chiefs of staff. The senior of these directed staff work as a whole, kept in close touch with the corps’ chiefs of staff, and organized the rear areas and lines of communication. The second assistant was responsible for all matters pertaining to camps, marches and quartering. The third was in charge of the Army Topographical Department, which drew up daily location maps, directed the carrying out of patrols and reconnaissances, and conducted surveys. Each of these officers had his own quota of aides and assistants of varying ranks, and these personal staffs comprised the officers who could be entrusted with carrying messages. The remaining officers of the general staff were (in 1813) three adjutant majors, one major, seven captains, three commandants and six topographical engineers, assisted by numerous clerks, couriers, servants, etc.
For normal purposes, the General Staff was split into three divisions, although the allocation of function was not permanently maintained and considerable interdepartmental fluidity was a consistent feature of its operation. Nevertheless, we can say that the first division was generally responsible for supervision of work, the preparation of daily orders, the issue of passwords, the sending of messages, letters and movement orders, the maintenance of muster rolls, all records and general correspondence. The second division was responsible for finding accommodation for the chief headquarters, all matters relating to military security, the provision of food (in conjunction with the Grand Commissary of Army Stores), and the establishment of hospitals. The third was concerned with the handling of prisoners of war and deserters, the control of conscripts and all aspects of military justice. The Topographical Department was always kept separate from these three main divisions and in fact constituted a fourth branch although this was never officially recognized.
As a whole, the staff of the Grande Armée was not really a very impressive organization save only for size. Its organization was defective and unnecessarily complex; there was excessive duplication of function leading to inevitable mistakes, oversights and omissions; above all it was relegated to a minor administrative role compared to modern staffs, and its personnel were permitted no initiative. The Emperor once snapped “The General Staff is organized in such a manner that nothing is foreseen,” but he was responsible for its creation. One sometimes gets the impression that at a pinch Napoleon could have managed very well without such an extensive and complex staff. At best it only relieved him of mechanical duties; at worst it misrepresented his orders and caused ruinous blunders. All in all French staff work comprised a weak link in the French military machine, and no small part of Napoleon’s cataclysm can be laid at its door.
What was the Emperor’s routine? He was a hard taskmaster, but drove nobody harder than himself. He was wont to work an eighteen-hour day for long consecutive periods, and was capable of packing an immense amount of labor into the available time. He habitually rose shortly after midnight to read the latest reports sent in by the corps commanders the previous evening, dictated the necessary replies, issued any changes of orders, and then retired shortly before dawn for an hour’s further sleep. By six in the morning he would have dressed and breakfasted, and the main work of the day would begin. First he would summon Bacler d’Albe to consider future movements; next he often granted interviews to important personages desirous of seeing him personally. These matters completed, he entered his office, and went to his desk. There, stacks of carefully sorted documents would be awaiting his attention. Routine business would soon be completed, the Emperor scrawling brief minutes in the margins of reports, dictating a quick letter to one of his secretaries, or simply flinging papers onto the floor if he deemed them unworthy of his attention. More dictation and interviews followed, and by 10:00
A.M. the new letters and dispatches would be back on his desk awaiting signature. A hasty glance through their contents and a scrawled “N” at the foot of each missive would be sufficient to send most on their way, but when a matter of grave importance was involved, Napoleon would place the document on one side with the remark: “Until tomorrow; night brings counsel.”38
The routine business of the day completed for the time being, the Emperor would call for his horse and set off accompanied by his “little headquarters” to inspect some unit or visit a corps headquarters. He was firmly convinced of the importance of a commander in chief seeing and being seen. His incessant inspections, reviews and parades gave him the opportunity of gauging the morale of his men and assessing their mettle. These occasions also enabled him to dispense a little more of the hypnotic attraction he could wield at will over almost all his men. The easy familiarity which he permitted the rank and file made him genuinely beloved; the passing word for a “grumbler,” the rough joke with a sergeant, the summoning of the bravest man in the unit to receive an unexpected award—these were the means by which he bound the troops to his service and inspired them to suffer ceaseless hardship and to meet the prospect of disfiguring wounds and death with at least a measure of acceptance. Many of his methods were theatrical, and deliberately so, but they had the desired effect. Every visit would terminate with resounding cries o
f “Vive l’Empereur!” and his habit of apparently taking the men into his confidence, explaining what he was trying to do and the role he was entrusting to them in the execution of his schemes, served to raise morale and increased the likelihood of success. In battle he habitually left command to his subordinates and rarely interfered, but when some particularly crucial attack was about to be launched he would often ride over to the formation concerned, and speed it on its way with some such phrase as “Thirty-Eighth—I know you! Take me that village—at the charge!” His lightest word of praise was regarded as an accolade by the recipient; similarly, the least expression of his displeasure would reduce a hardened grenadier to tears. Napoleon had few equals in the sphere of man-management.