MASTERS
OF THE
BATTLEFIELD
MASTERS
OF THE
BATTLEFIELD
GREAT COMMANDERS
FROM THE CLASSICAL
AGE TO THE
NAPOLEONIC ERA
PAUL K. DAVIS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Davis, Paul K., 1952–
Masters of the battlefield : great commanders from the classical age
to the Napoleonic era / Paul K. Davis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-534235-2
1. Generals—Biography. 2. Military biography.
3. Military art and science—History. I. Title.
U51.D38 2013
355.0092′2—dc23 2012039004
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Jerri and my parents,
without whose love and continued support
this would not have been possible
CONTENTS
Introduction: One Man’s Gifts
1. Epaminondas (418?–362 BC)
2. Alexander (356–323 BC)
3. Han Xin (?–196 BC)
4. Hannibal (247–182 BC)
5. Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (235–183 BC)
6. Gaius Julius Caesar (100–48 BC)
7. Belisarius (505?–568)
8. The Two-Headed General: Chinggis Khan
(1162?–1227) and Subedei (1176?–1248)
9. Jan Žižka (1360?–1424)
10. Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582)
11. Gustavus Adolphus (1594–1632)
12. John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722)
13. Frederick II (the Great) (1712–1786)
14. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)
15. Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington (1769–1852)
16. Conclusion
Glossary
Notes
Sources
Index
INTRODUCTION
One Man’s Gifts
“The gods have not given all their gifts to one man. You know how to win victory, Hannibal, you do not how to use it.”
—Maharbal, Hannibal’s cavalry leader, berating him for not
following up on the decisive victory over Rome at Cannae
TO A GREAT EXTENT THIS QUOTE, which comes from the Roman historian Livy’s History of Rome, sums up the nature of this book. Hannibal had proved himself a master tactician at Cannae, but he was failing as a strategist, at least according to his cavalry leader Maharbal, when he did not exploit that great victory and go on immediately to take Rome. There are many who believe that the implementation of strategy is the ultimate military accomplishment of a general. Battles do not stand alone but are the building blocks of campaigns and of wars. Strategy means making the battle fit into its proper place in the bigger picture.
The impetus for this book came as a suggestion from Oxford University Press to expand on my earlier work, 100 Decisive Battles. The original concept was to develop a series of books that would each cover important battles of a particular region or time. This work focuses on commanders, offering an introduction to the nature of warfare across history and geography and expanding on key military events, such as Cannae, by looking those in charge. Its premise is that the nature of the commanders matters deeply.
In this respect this work follows the argument J. F. C. Fuller made in his 1936 publication Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure. Written in the wake of World War I, Fuller’s work laments a general’s absence from the battlefield. Soldiers need to know that whoever is sending him into harm’s way understands the danger—that he realizes the gravity of the situation. As Fuller argues, the farther away from the battlefield a general stands, the more soulless he becomes. That certainly seemed to have been the case on the Western Front during World War I.
This book will focus on the great tacticians of war, those whose presence was vital to the outcome of the battle. Hannibal’s victory at Cannae was no less brilliant because it did not lead to ultimate Carthaginian victory. His accomplishment (the so-called double envelopment, as we will see) became the goal of battlefield commanders from that day forward. Cannae was not a decisive battle in the strategic or grand strategic sense, but on that one day in May 216 BC Hannibal proved himself to be a great commander, one few generals dared to face in combat. Napoleon noted that a general was the “all” (“le tout”) of an army: “The Gauls were not conquered by the Roman legions, but by Caesar. It was not before the Carthaginian soldiers that Rome was made to tremble, but before Hannibal. It was not the Macedonian phalanx which penetrated to India, but Alexander.”1
Michael Grant wrote in his foreword to Liddell Hart’s biography of Scipio: “Scipio Africanus offers the strongest possible argument against the hypothesis put forward by some Marxists alleging that individuals have not mattered very much in history and what matters is only a series of impersonal trends and tendencies.”2 Security experts Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth Pollack argued that they found troubling “the tendency of scholars to ignore the role of personalities in international relations.” They note, “The theoretical objections raised over the years do not stand up under closer examination and should not prevent us from mining this rich ore.”3 Though their article deals with statesmen, the same concept is true in the military, where idiosyncrasies and human error undeniably affect the outcomes of battles, and even of entire campaigns and wars.
Kimberly Kagan argues for writing military history from the “eye of command” approach in her book of the same name. She notes that the contemporary “face of battle” coverage is not the proper venue for learning command lessons, as the forest is lost for the trees. The eye-of-command approach “does not prejudge at what level of the military hierarchy critical events occur. It recognizes that the morale and psychology of the soldiers on the battlefield, their physical well-being, and the weapons that they use and face all influence the course of battle and may at times be critical or decisi
ve to its outcome. Similarly, it recognizes the potential importance of the commander’s decisions and actions.”4
This book examines those generals who made a difference in the outcome of combat—by grasping the way an enemy would think or move and acting or reacting in such a way as not only to defeat him but, in many instances, to do so in the face of forces outnumbering his own. As Kagan notes, morale and psychology matter—a sentiment echoing Napoleon’s famous dictum that in war the moral is to the physical as three is to one. It is the general who provides the morale. In many cases, as we will see, a general’s previous victories can be a boost to morale, but even a winning record does not qualify someone as a great tactician. Although many leading historians rank Ulysses Grant higher on the generalship scale than they do Robert E. Lee, most soldiers would have rather served under Lee than under Grant. Grant’s strength as a general was his determination, not his tactical abilities. He is one of the key examples of a successful strategist who was not also a successful tactician. Given equal resources, Lee would have defeated Grant, just as he did so many other Union generals. In the end, Grant’s superior firepower and manpower overwhelmed Napoleon’s three-to-one ratio, but Lee’s victories over superior numbers in battle after battle prove him to be the superior tactician. Grant had a habit of throwing his men into frontal attacks against defensive positions in battle after battle (as in the Wilderness campaign of 1864).
Distinctions between different levels of warfare are critical. David Chandler, in his book on the Duke of Marlborough, sets out four distinct levels:
At the apex comes “Grand Strategy,” the formulation of national policy and war aims, the creation and preservation of alliances. Next comes “Strategy,” the planning of campaigns and series of operations with the intention of carrying out the Grand Strategic objectives. Third are “Grand Tactics”—the devising of battle plans and the outlines of operations to profit from the situations the strategy has made possible or encouraged to develop. Fourth are “minor Tactics”—the actual fighting methods employed at the unit level to gain a local success, which, together with a dozen or more similar engagements, go to make up a victory.5
The “grand tactics” in modern terminology are often called the “operational” level, and most of what I cover in this book explores that level.
In each of the studies to follow, I give a brief biography of the commander, with an eye toward exploring to what degree, if any, his background shaped his leadership, and so, too, the nature of armies and warfare he had to work with. From this general overview of period warfare, I examine the course of the war in which the general fought, providing background to those particular battles that, in my view, best illustrate his ability to win. Each battle is considered both in terms of its strategic nature and actions. In the final portion of each chapter, I endeavor to show the nature of a commander’s tactical skills and principles. My conclusions are based on my own views, of course, as well as those of the generals’ contemporaries (if available), the works of modern biographers, and the U.S. Army Field Manual 100-5, Operations, which spells out the principles of war that have been adopted over the years. These principles are:
1. Objective—Direct every military operation toward a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective.
2. Offensive—Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative.
3. Mass—Mass the effects of overwhelming combat power at the decisive place and time.
4. Economy of Force—Employ all combat power available in the most effective way possible; allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts.
5. Maneuver—Place the enemy in a position of disadvantage through the flexible application of combat power.
6. Unity of Command—For every objective, seek unity of command and unity of effort.
7. Security—Never permit the enemy to acquire unexpected advantage.
8. Surprise—Strike the enemy at a time or place or in a manner for which he is unprepared.
9. Simplicity—Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and concise orders to ensure thorough understanding.
To these I have added another principle, one from the British Army’s manual:
10. Morale—A positive state of mind derived from inspired leadership, a shared sense of purpose and values, well-being, perceptions of worth, and group cohesion.
THE COMMANDERS I HAVE CHOSEN reflect the nature of warfare through history. They dominated their era, or were the first to use—or best at using—the weaponry of their era. They stood out among their contemporaries in two main respects: their ability to deploy forces and their ability to motivate those forces in combat. In some cases, they revolutionized the nature of warfare with the introduction of new weapons. Though not usually ranked highly in military history, for example, the Bohemian general and Hussite leader Jan Zizka was the first effective proponent of handheld firearms on the battlefield. They also tended to be pioneers in their ways of employing the forces at their disposal, as Epaminondas did in his victories over the Spartans.
In almost every case, the commanders in this book inspired intense devotion from their soldiers. In absolutely every case, they saw what no one else saw and outthought their opponent, which in the end is the real key to success. This talent is best described as coup d’oeil, the ability to see and grasp in the blink of an eye the nature of the terrain and enemy deployment as well as how to exploit the enemy’s weakness. These generals had the ability to see the limits of contemporary methods of warfare and to develop new tactics, tactics that altered the nature of warfare itself. They were great commanders.
One other thing affected the scope of this work. I selected commanders who directly commanded all or the bulk of national armies, and who controlled the battle from a central location on the battlefield, where they could see directly what was happening and react to it. After the Napoleonic wars this ability became less and less possible. While this description applies to many of the battlefields of the Civil War, the generals of that conflict who understood the nature of that style of warfare, and worked to think and act in original ways to overcome the negative aspects of that style of warfare, were subordinate generals. Had I included that war, I would have discussed Nathan Bedford Forrest, who realized the nature of warfare had changed due to the rifled musket and, rather than using the long-standing linear tactics most generals still employed, began developing an early form of fire-and-movement tactics.
MASTERS
OF THE
BATTLEFIELD
1
Epaminondas (418?–362 BC)
Beotarch of Thebes
Everybody must praise Epaminondas for being the most famous Greek general, or at least consider him second to none other.
—Pausanias
EPAMINONDAS WAS BORN to no great wealth or status. His father, Polymnis, was of a noble but poor family. Still, through one means or another Palymnis made sure his son received a more than ordinary education, since he “was so well educated that no Theban was more so,” reports the first-century Roman biographer Cornelius Nepos.1 Most important was the instruction he received in philosophy from the well-known student of Pythagoras, Lysis of Tarentum. Epaminondas became so devoted to this teacher that it is said he shunned the company of those his own age in order to learn more from the master. He also studied mathematics and music (both very important in Pythagorean thought) as well as dancing, and as he grew older, Epaminondas engaged in gymnastics, where he preferred speed to strength. Most of his physical training was in the ways of the warrior.
All ancient biographers mention his personality, molded by Pythagorean teachings. These included living simply, sharing possessions communally, treating all persons equally, speaking the truth in all situations, and engaging in contemplation. Pythagoras taught that there were three kinds of men: those who love gain, honor, or wisdom. He was also one of the originators of the concept of transmigration of souls. All of this is reflected in Nepos’s description of Epaminondas as “modest, prudent,
grave, wisely availing himself of opportunities, skilled in war, brave in action, and of remarkable courage. He was so great a lover of truth that he would not tell a falsehood, even in jest; he was also a master of his passions, gentle in disposition, submitting to wrong not merely from the Theban people, but from his own friends. … He bore poverty so easily that he received nothing from his state save glory.”2
Warfare of the Time
GREEK WARFARE IN THE FOURTH CENTURY BC was based on the phalanx formation, made up primarily of heavy infantry known as hoplites (from hoplon, the weapons and accoutrements of war). The nature of warfare went back to early Hellenic times, when communities and later poleis (singular polis, city-state) were primarily agriculturally based and not in close proximity to one another. The male citizens were true militia: farmers first and soldiers when necessary. The soldier’s role depended on what weaponry and armor he could afford. Most owned a bronze helmet, breastplate, and greaves along with a round, concave wooden shield with brass or iron around the rim, which is usually described as no more than a meter in diameter. The standard weapons were a spear (some two to three meters in length) and a short sword.
Those who could not afford such array acted as peltasts, light infantry carrying the small shield called a pelte, whose weapons were slings or javelins and whose role was mainly skirmishing and support. John Lynn argues that the peltasts got little respect from the hoplites because they fought from a distance. The hoplite viewed such warfare as unmanly. Real soldiers fought their enemy face to face.3 There was also probably some class and economic discrimination involved. Still, the peltasts were becoming a more integral part of Greek forces and at times showed themselves to be important to a battle’s outcome. In 426 Athenian phalanxes at Aegitium took a severe beating from a force of Aetolian peltasts, and the Athenian general Iphi-crates nearly wiped out a phalanx of Spartans near Corinth in 390. In spite of these successes, the peltasts remained a minor arm of the Greek military.
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