EDUCATION: NOBLES AND TECHNICIANS. Education for officership was incompatible both with the primitive state of military science and with the aristocratic belief that the only requirements for command were the inborn talents of courage and honor. The former made military education impractical; the latter made it unnecessary. The military schools which did exist were extremely rudimentary. They may be divided into two general types.
The first were the schools for the preliminary training of officers of noble or gentle birth. Into this category fall Louis XV’s Ecole Militaire established in 1751, Frederick the Great’s Ritter Akademie founded in 1765, and the English naval school set up in 1729. The quality of the students and the level of instruction in these schools were uniformly poor. The Ecole Militaire was specifically designed as a means of subsidizing the country nobility rather than of improving the army. Military subjects played a small role in its curriculum. It was, as Tuetey said, “une fondation d’intérêt philanthropique plus encore que d’intérêt militaire . . .”5 Frederick’s academy was designed to train nobles for the diplomatic service as well as the army and offered a most incomplete and imperfect education. The sons of nobles entered the Prussian Army at the age of twelve or fourteen and received only the scantiest training before assuming their commands. The English naval academy was of similarly poor caliber, and the English Army possessed no general institution of preliminary training at all.
The second type of pre-1800 military school was designed to train technically competent officers for the artillery and engineers. In the absence of any real military science of general concern to all officers, these were the only branches which offered real food for intellectual exercise. Since these arms were largely staffed by bourgeois officers, military schools to impart this technical knowledge did not conflict with the theory that the aristocratic officer commanded by virtue of inherited qualities. An engineering school was established in Prussia in 1706. The Royal Military Academy at Woolwich for artillery and engineering officers dates from 1741. The French began artillery instruction at Douai in 1679 and established an engineering school at Mézières in 1749. The educational level and character of these schools varied considerably. Woolwich, for instance, offered elements of both a military and a general education, but until a qualifying examination was introduced in 1774 many students were admitted without any real preparation and some without even the ability to read and write. The technical schools and the noble academies were as close as the eighteenth century came to military education. Schools for the advanced training of officers for higher command and staff positions were nonexistent.
STAFFS: ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. The military staff is essentially a professional institution which collects technical knowledge and applies it practically to the management of violence. The forerunner of the modern military staff appeared in the armies of Gustavus Adolphus and Cromwell. From the middle of the seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth century, however, the absence of progress in staff organization paralleled the static character of military science. The systems existing in 1790 in general more closely resembled those of one hundred and fifty years earlier than those of fifty years later.
Staff organization, rudimentary as it was, had its origin in the supply activities necessary for the permanent national armies. The key figure in the early staffs was the Quartermaster General. Just as the artillery and engineers were the only branches of the service which required technical training, the logistical activities were the only functions which required expert planning and control. Consequently the staffs had little to do with military operations. Strategy and tactics remained the province of the commanding general assisted by a few aides-de-camp. If the general was of poor caliber he saw no need for organized staff work. If he was an able general — such as Frederick or Saxe — he had little need for it. Staff work was unnecessary until war itself became as complex as its supporting activities.
France possessed the most highly developed staff system in the eighteenth century. But only for five years, 1766–1771, and again after 1783, did France have a true general staff in the modern professional sense. This French staff as organized by Bourcet required examinations and probationary work for admission. Such a scientific institution, however, was isolated and out of place in the aristocratically run French Army. In Prussia the embryo of a general staff existed in the Quartermaster General and his assistants. Their functions were limited, however, to supplies and fortifications, and their influence and significance remained slight until the end of the eighteenth century. In Great Britain virtually no permanent improvements in staff functioning were made over the arrangements which existed in Cromwell’s army.6
COMPETENCE AND ESPRIT. The eighteenth-century officer corps subordinated the military values of expertise, discipline, and responsibility to the aristocratic values of luxury, courage, and individualism. The aristocrat was an amateur at officership; it was not for him a vocation with ends and standards of its own, but an incidental attribute of his station in society. Along with leisure, hunting, and good living, fighting was part of his ideal — a pastime valued for the opportunities it furnished for sport and adventure. Some of these amateurs turned out to be competent soldiers, but they were the exceptions to the system, not its products. In the French Army the only officers skilled in the practical aspects of their vocation were the soldiers of fortune, who, however, were only a minority of the corps and who were restricted to the lowest ranks. The general level of competence of the French officers drew cries of dismay from their commanders. Conditions were little better in the English and Prussian services. The senility, corruption, and ineptness of the Prussian officer corps increased during the eighteenth century as the higher ranks filled up with aging generals and the lower ranks with the least able sons of the nobility. The deterioration of the officer corps, the product of the entire Frederickan system of selection and organization, culminated in the disaster of Jena and the capitulation of the Prussian fortresses to Napoleon.
In France the intrusion of social considerations into the army made the maintenance of discipline based upon rank virtually impossible. Except when actually drilling troops, officers of higher rank but inferior social position yielded precedence to subordinates of more distinguished family. In the field as well as at court an officer was expected to maintain a household befitting his social status. Influence at court enabled officers to abandon their military responsibilities when they felt so inclined. In Prussia the poverty of the country prevented the excesses of luxury which characterized the French forces. Prussian officers, however, had no greater sense of responsibility and integrity than their French counterparts and regularly seized opportunities to enrich themselves at the expense of the royal treasury. The aristocratic code of the officer undermined military discipline: dueling between junior and senior officers was, for instance, a common phenomenon. In Great Britain the persistent interference of Parliament and Crown in military affairs made discipline impossible. Members of Parliament intervened with the authorities on behalf of mutineers and deserters who were relatives and friends, and officers felt free to quit their regiments when they were ordered to undesirable stations.7
SUMMARY. The eighteenth-century officer corps was designed for the needs of the aristocracy rather than for the efficient performance of the military function. Wealth, birth, personal and political influence dictated the appointment and advancement of officers. Children and incompetents frequently held high military rank. No body of professional knowledge existed. Consequently, no institutions, except for a few technical schools, were available to impart military knowledge, and there was no system for applying that knowledge in practice. Officers behaved and believed like aristocrats rather than like officers. The backward state of the military vocation may be contrasted with the condition of the legal, medical, and clerical professions at that time. The rudimentary independent existence of each of these made unthinkable the sort of prostitution to which the military vocation was subject. I
n brief, the military profession was simply nonexistent.
PREPROFESSIONAL IDEALS: THE MILITARY CRAFT AND THE NATURAL GENIUS
The eighteenth century saw a tremendous outpouring of military literature which marked the culmination of one epoch in military thinking and the faint beginnings of a modern outlook. A few writers produced noteworthy works on specialized topics; and two eighteenth-century authors — Guibert and Lloyd — anticipated nineteenth-century developments and approached a comprehensive scientific view of war.8 But these were exceptions. The bulk of the writing was rooted in the past and drew its lessons from the military practices of the Greeks and Romans. It lacked any real comprehension of the substance and limits of its subject matter. In place of a scientific conception of war, writers offered practical advice on a wide variety of disconnected subjects. With respect to military institutions, they substituted glorification of the natural genius for a conception of professional officership. Eighteenth-century military thinking was characteristically preprofessional; it had no unity, no focus, no theory, and no system. It accurately reflected the primitive state of military technique and the absence of professional institutions.
The most striking deficiency in military thinking prior to 1800 was the absence of any conception of military science as a distinct branch of knowledge, unified and complete in itself, susceptible of logical analysis into its component elements, and yet possessing a definite relationship to other branches of knowledge. In fact, military writers generally denied the possibility of ever developing such a science or any fixed principles of war. “War,” said Marshal Saxe, “is a science replete with shadows in whose obscurity one cannot move with an assured step . . . All sciences have principles and rules. War has none.”9 This lack of a science of war might be deplored by Guibert and Lloyd; but it was accepted as necessary by most military thinkers. They also failed to recognize the possibility of logically analyzing war into its subcomponents. Only rarely were theoretical distinctions drawn among strategy, tactics, and the other branches of military science. As a result, works on war discussed a miscellaneous hodgepodge of topics bearing little or no logical relation to one another. To the extent that they possessed any scheme of organization at all beyond an alphabetical arrangement, it was chronological in nature. This approach was virtually identical with that of Vegetius who wrote in the fourth century and whose work was in many respects as applicable in the seventeenth century as when it was written. This chronological development is, of course, just the reverse of a logical theoretical approach which would begin with the nature of war and battle and then deduce the desirable type of equipment, training, organization, and recruitment from the purposes which the military forces were designed to achieve. The typical eighteenth-century military work, however, was a catalog rather than a treatise.
The writer whose work stands out in marked contrast is Henry Lloyd. Lloyd made an effort to grasp the essence of war — “War is a state of action” — and to deduce from this the nature of an army. The latter he defined as “the instrument with which every species of military action is performed.” He then proceeded to analyze the army as a machine, considering the various parts and their interrelations. Unlike Saxe, Lloyd held that the art of war “like all others, is founded on certain and fixed principles, which are by their nature invariable, the application of them only can be varied: but they are in themselves constant.” A contemporary of Bentham, he insisted upon a rigorous military utilitarianism. Reversing the chronological approach, he argued that the type of campaign to be fought and the plan of operations must always determine the number and species of troops and the quantity and quality of magazines.10 Aside from this English historian, however, there were few efforts at a sophisticated understanding and definition of war.
The accepted eighteenth-century theory of generalship centered about the concept of the natural genius. Military command was an art like music or sculpture which required inherent talent. Military competence could not be transmitted or learned: it was a product of purely subjective factors existing within men rather than the result of anything derived from their environment. This idea is fundamentally romantic and antiprofessional. In effect, it was the application upon the individual level of the aristocratic theory that certain men were born to command and others to obey. The nobility held that only men born to their station were capable of being officers. The military writers of the Enlightenment held that only a man born with superior native ability could be a successful commander. Both theories denied the possibility of producing officers or generals through objective social institutions. The theory of the natural genius was shared by even the advanced thinkers of the period. Saxe argued that a basic similarity existed between war and the other arts. Guibert glorified the “born general.” Lloyd held that war was divisible into two parts: a lower, mechanical part which might be taught by rule and precept, and a higher part which could be mastered only through the natural, intuitive knowledge of the genius: “No rule, no study, or application, however assiduous, no experience, however long, can teach this part; it is the effect of genius alone.”11
THE ORIGINS OF PROFESSIONALISM
THE PRIMACY OF PRUSSIA. If it were necessary to give a precise date to the origin of the military profession, August 6, 1808 would have to be chosen. On that day the Prussian government issued its decree on the appointment of officers which set forth the basic standard of professionalism with uncompromising clarity:
The only title to an officer’s commission shall be, in time of peace, education and professional knowledge; in time of war, distinguished valor and perception. From the entire nation, therefore, all individuals who possess these qualities are eligible for the highest military posts. All previously existing class preference in the military establishment is abolished, and every man, without regard to his origins, has equal duties and equal rights.12
The great reforms of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Grolmann, and the Prussian Military Commission mark the true beginning of the military profession in the West. The work of these leaders reflected an undercurrent of thought, discussion, and writing which appeared in the Prussian Army in the last decade of the previous century and which burst forth after Jena. This movement made a sharp break with the eighteenth century. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, not Frederick the Great and his father, were the true founders of the modern German Army. They established the institutions and ideals which dominated the Prussian forces for the rest of the century and furnished the model upon which virtually all other officer corps were ultimately patterned. Each nation has made its unique contributions to the culture of western society. To Prussia goes the distinction of originating the professional officer.
Military professionalization was concentrated in two periods in the nineteenth century. During and immediately after the Napoleonic Wars most nations established institutions of initial military education and relaxed the entry bars to the officer corps. In the third quarter of the century, the processes of selection and promotion were overhauled, general staffs organized, and advanced military educational institutions established. In both periods Prussia led the way. While all the nations of Europe by 1875 had acquired the basic elements of military professionalism, in Prussia alone were these elements developed into a rounded and complete system. Requirements of general and special education for entry; examinations; institutions for higher military education; advancement by merit and achievement; an elaborate and efficient staff system; a sense of corporate unity and responsibility; a recognition of the limits of professional competence: these Prussia possessed to an extraordinary degree. In addition, it was a Prussian, Clausewitz, who contributed the theoretical rationale for the new profession. Why was it that this particular country took the lead in such a manner? The answer is to be found in the general causes responsible for the emergence of professionalism in Europe and in the peculiar extent to which they were present in Prussia. These factors were technological specialization, competitive nationalism, the conflict between democracy and ar
istocracy, and the presence of stable legitimate authority.
THE CONDITIONS OF PROFESSIONALISM. The growth of population in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the development of technology, the beginnings of industrialism, and the rise of urbanism — all contributed to increased functional specialization and division of labor. War, like everything else, was no longer a simple, uncomplicated affair. Armies were larger, and, more important, were composed of increasingly diverse elements. Once, all the men in a military force had performed the same function: engaging the enemy with spears or swords as the case might be. Now armies and navies became complex organisms, embodying hundreds of different specialties, creating the need for still another type of specialist: the specialist in coordinating and directing these diverse parts to their assigned goal. No longer was it possible to master this skill while still remaining competent in many other fields. Most particularly, it became impossible to be an expert in the management of violence for external defense and at the same time to be skilled in either politics and statecraft or the use of force for the maintenance of internal order. The functions of the officer became distinct from those of the politician and policeman. Technological specialization was more or less equally present throughout the West. Professionalism had to arise. The explanation of its especial manifestation in Prussia is found in social and political conditions.
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