Every day’s march and maneuver was, of course, designed with one single ultimate end in view—the procurement of a favorable battle situation at the earliest possible moment. Before the decisive action was engaged, however, certain requirements had to be satisfied, and these “principles” of Napoleonic warfare can be conveniently summarized under the double heading of “assembly and concentration.” It was, of course, axiomatic for Napoleon to mass the greatest possible number of bayonets and sabers for employment in battle, but the achievement of that concentration was not simply a matter of collecting a vast number of units at a given point. For dispersal before action was as important as concentration in action. On the eve of battle, it was more important that the troops should be “assembled” rather than “concentrated.” By “assembly,” Napoleon meant the placing of his major units within marching distance of the intended place of battle, though not necessarily their physical presence in contact with the enemy or one another. For although it was important to have every possible man available for the morrow’s “bloody decision,” it was equally vital that the troops should be sufficiently dispersed on the eve of battle to make possible the provision of an outflanking force on whichever wing the Emperor might designate in his final battle orders, without involving any major realignment of formations. Furthermore, as any battle situation was prone to uncertainty, the corps had to be flexibly disposed so as to be able to meet any sudden or unexpected development with a minimum of disorganization and reorientation. Lastly, in the interests of field security and the concealment of the Emperor’s intentions from the enemy, it was in the French interest to give as few indications as possible of the coming storm’s direction. It might appear impossible to balance these conflicting requirements of concentration and dispersal, but this is the miracle that Napoleon managed to perform time after time.
The secret of his success in this matter lay in the creation of a web of carefully positioned formations. At the outset of the campaign, this strategic net would often be very widely spread indeed; it would often resemble a cordon. In early April 1796, the Army of Italy was drawn up along a front of 120 kilometers; in mid-September 1805, the Grande Armée covered a 200-kilometer front between Strasbourg and Würzburg; a similar distance was involved in October 1806; and in early June 1812 the half-million men of the Grande Armée de la Russie formed up along a start line behind the Vistula that was more than 400 kilometers in length. The advantages bestowed by these wide fronts were threefold. In the first place, the extent of the initial French dispositions would delude the enemy concerning the point of the main impending blow; secondly, the operational flexibility afforded by the widely placed location of the French corps would enable Napoleon to trap the enemy wherever he chose to mass—in other words, Napoleon was not committed to any one course of action by his initial dispositions, but could adjust his master plan to any particular circumstances; thirdly, the enemy would be tempted to spread out his own forces in an attempt to cover all sectors of the French front, and this could only facilitate his piecemeal destruction once the strategic trap snapped shut about him.
Then, as the campaign gathered momentum, the strategical positioning of the corps would radically alter. As a general rule, as the French army approached its prey the front would progressively narrow. Thus, by the time the Grande Armée reached the Danube in 1805, its front had shrunk from 200 to 90 kilometers. But according to the requirements of the particular situation, the extent of the front would be continually expanding and contracting in a fashion which could only prove puzzling and confusing to an enemy. Thus, in 1806, Napoleon closed down his army’s frontage from 200 to 45 kilometers for the passage of the difficult Thüringerwald Forest, and then re-expanded it to 60 kilometers for the advance toward Leipzig before ordering the crash concentration of all elements towards Weimar once he discovered the location of the Prussian forces behind the River Saale. This strategic flexibility and mobility (made feasible by the corps d’armée system and the simplified methods of logistical support) was the bane of the Empire’s opponents and one great secret of Napoleon’s success. Incidentally, the size of the initial front bore no relation to the size of the French forces engaged: the Emperor was insistent that every sector of the theater should be held (though not necessarily “occupied,” be it noted) however small his army. But this “broad base” of his strategy in no way contradicted his principle of “concentration” for battle, for the two phases of the campaign developed logically into a single sequence of operations. The clue to this basic element in Napoleonic strategy is contained in his maxim that “The army must be kept assembled [réuni] and the greatest possible force concentrated [concentré] on the field of battle.”34
Strategical formation for the advance; four variations
In other words, initial dispersion gave way to carefully phased concentration as the time of battle approached. The Grande Armée steadily converged on its victim, and when at last the net was drawn tight, the enemy was hopelessly entangled in the enveloping toils. Napoleon often achieved his final concentration by employing a last-minute “pounce” on his adversary. After deluding his opponent into a sense of false security by holding back most of his corps at a distance of two days’ march from the planned point of impact, the Emperor “stole a march” by ordering a rapid movement under cover of darkness (as before Lodi, 1796, or Jena, 1806), thus gaining a day’s march; next morning he would present his stunned enemy with no option but to accept battle a full 24 hours ahead of the time he had expected, like as not before all elements of his force could appear on the field.
In this way Napoleon fused battle with maneuver, and thus made possibly his greatest contribution to the art of war. All of his strategic plans have a decisive battle in mind, and every move made by his units is geared to a possible battle situation. Unlike his eighteenth-century forebears, who rigidly distinguished between maneuvering and giving battle, adopting different formations for each activity, Napoleon fused marching, fighting and pursuing into one continuous process.
One major clue to his success was of course the corps d’armée system;* he was aware that each self-contained, all-arm corps was capable of engaging or holding off several times its own number for several hours, during which time the neighboring formations could move up to its support or to outflank the enemy. This basic fact made it possible for the army to move in widely separated parts for convenience of feeding and speed of movement and in order to deceive the foe. However, this dispersal was carefully controlled, and the appearance of disunity was stronger than the reality, for the entire army was in fact kept carefully “assembled” along a single line of operations in one or other of a number of carefully devised formations, of which the most famous was the batallion carré(see diagram), ready for a rapid “concentration” within the space of one or two days once the desired battle situation came within the realms of possible attainment.
Yet again, much of Napoleon’s philosophy of meaningful dispersal of force was inspired by the precepts of earlier writers: Bourcet was emphatic about the value of calculated dispersal as a means of inducing a foe to disperse his army in turn, thus laying himself open to a rapid French re-concentration against a selected part of the enemy’s scattered forces. Similarly Guibert’s words had a deep significance for the young Bonaparte: “The art is to extend one’s forces without exposing them, to embrace the enemy without becoming disunited, to link up the moves or the attack to take the enemy in flank without exposing one’s own flank.”35 By reconciling the advantages and disadvantages of mass and dispersal in this way, and fusing these two contradictory elements into a single operation of war, Napoleon revealed his true genius as a military master-mind.
By using the principles of offensive action, speed, security, assembly and concentration, Napoleon as often as not succeeded in surprising his opponent; and a surprised enemy was often a demoralized one. Napoleon was always aware of the vital importance of morale in warfare, and another of his best-known maxims declared that
in war, the moral is to the physical as three is to one.36 Again at St. Helena, he restated his conviction that “Moral force, rather than numbers, decides victory.”37 For Napoleon, the military principles of morale and leadership were carefully fostered and, if necessary, artificially created. Here again he was fortunate in his time and the nation of his adoption, for the basic enthusiasm and general intelligence of the Revolutionary citizen-armies provided a sound basis and newly forged tradition which could inspire the conscript armies of the Consulate and Empire—the terrors of Europe.
In order to obtain the unquestioning obedience of his rank and file, Napoleon unhesitatingly set out to gain their affection as well as their respect. He wished to develop two main qualities in his officers and men: “If courage is the first characteristic of the soldier, perseverance is the second.”38 Bravery was needed in the field and at the moment of crisis; perseverance and endurance at all other times. Napoleon was aware that “Bravery cannot be bought with money”39 and deliberately aimed to create the illusion of La Gloire by playing on the vanity and underlying credulity of his men. “A man does not have himself killed for a few half-pence a day or for a petty distinction,” he once declared; “You must speak to the soul in order to electrify the man.”40 A carefully graded system of military awards—ranging from the coveted Cross of the Légion d’Honneur, swords of honor, monetary grants and nomination to a vacancy in the Imperial Guard for the rank and file, to the award of duchies, princedoms and even thrones to the elect among the leaders—was one aspect of this policy; the rewarding of talent and proven ability by accelerated military promotion another; the creation of an air of general bonhommie with the ordinary soldiers, yet a third.
Napoleon knew his men and what appealed to them, their virtues and their vices, their hopes and fears. On the credit side were their intelligence, reckless bravery and sense of humor; on the debit side was their tendency to unruliness, resentment of discipline and discouragement in defeat. He carefully assessed the needful balance between praising them and censuring them. On the one hand he would wander round their campfires, using his encyclopedic memory for faces to pick out here and there a veteran. “You were with me in Egypt. How many campaigns? How many wounds?” The men loved him for his apparent interest in their records and care for their well-being: the ultimate accolade was to have the Emperor seize the lobe of an ear between forefinger and thumb and give it a good tweak. He listened seriously to complaints—and usually made sure that they were looked into. He was often prepared to overlook even the most flagrant acts of indiscipline—providing they did not compromise his plans.
On occasion, however, Napoleon could turn into a martinet whom even the bravest grenadier would quail to confront. His large grey eyes would harden and seem to spit fire. “Have it inscribed on their colors,” he declaimed once in Italy while reviewing a recalcitrant demi-brigade, “that they no longer belong to the Army of Italy.”* Few among even the marshalate dared stand up to him when he was in a rage; he would swear profanely at the object of his wrath, make liberal use of the riding crop he habitually carried on his victim’s head and shoulders, and was even, on occasion, known to have kicked his victims in the stomach. And although he undoubtedly cared for his men in a peculiar way, he was also capable of sending large numbers of them to certain death without a twinge of emotion and was quite prepared to abandon whole armies (as in Egypt, 1799, or West Russia, 1812) when they had failed his purposes or been hopelessly compromised. First and foremost he was a hard realist and a ruthless opportunist, but occasionally the man broke through the hardened shell of the general and emperor. “The sight of a battlefield, after the fight, is enough to inspire princes with a love of peace and a horror of war,” runs one of Napoleon’s maxims. After Eylau in 1807 he wrote to Josephine: “The countryside is covered with dead and wounded. This is not the pleasant part of war. One suffers, and the soul is oppressed to see so many sufferers.”41 And when his torn legions were commencing the long trek home from Moscow, Napoleon enjoined Mortier to “Pay every attention to the sick and wounded. Sacrifice your baggage, everything for them. Let the wagons be devoted to their use, and if necessary your own saddles….”4 And yet it was the same man that could cold-bloodedly order mass executions in disaffected areas, butcher the Turks at Jaffa or remark to the Austrian diplomat Metternich that “a man like me troubles himself little about the lives of a million men.”43
Clearly Napoleon’s attitude toward his men—like so much else—was an enigma, but there is no doubt at all that he had the power to inspire men and bind them to his service. “If I want a man I am prepared to kiss his a—,” was the way he once described it. If this attitude was a coldly deliberate act of policy, it was no less effective. As Wellington remarked: “I used to say of him that his presence on the field made a difference of 40,000 men.”44 The reception he received when passing a unit on the battlefield—even in the later days when the number of veterans was low and the ranks were filled with les Marie-Louise, mere boys of sixteen years—is incontrovertible evidence of his power over men and his ability to inspire a high state of morale.
If he appreciated the importance of maintaining high morale among his own troops, the Emperor also paid a great deal of attention in making his plans to disrupting the esprit de corps of his opponents. He fought a war of the mind as much as a war of cannon and bayonets, and the psychological impact of Napoleon’s bold schemes could be disastrous for the chances of an opponent. The methods he employed to achieve this were speed, surprise, offensive action—and the actual ways he applied these factors will be looked into at greater length below. Perhaps the best example of this destruction of an enemy’s confidence and morale occurred in 1805, when the Grande Armée swept into the unfortunate General Mack’s rear, and by its sheer speed of movement kept the Austrian army around Ulm mesmerized and almost inactive until it was too late, by which time the only course open to the Austrian commander was surrender. Clearly, a close study of the character of his opponent underlay this aspect of Napoleon’s strategy, and very often he deliberately tailored his plan to make the most of the known rashness or timidity of an opponent. “Know thine enemy” was an ancient adage taken very much to heart by the Emperor Napoleon, and on the whole he played his adversaries with consummate skill and adroitness.
It would be possible to continue almost indefinitely describing and analyzing different features of Napoleon’s military philosophy, but there is room here only to mention one further principle, perhaps the most important of all, namely that of unity of command. The Emperor was convinced from an early stage in his military career that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” A split command was anathema to him from as early as 1796. When the Directory wished to divide his Italian command and make him share it with General Kellermann, Bonaparte threatened to resign: “Better one bad general than two good ones” was the theme of his reply to Paris. Again and again, French offensives foundered or produced only disappointing results on account of poor coordination of armies: in 1796, it was Jourdan’s collapse that compromised Moreau’s operations on the Danube and increased the peril to the Army of Italy; in the Spring of 1800, it was Moreau’s intransigence and slowness on the Rhine front that almost ruined the First Consul’s plan of operations for the year, and only a major change of plan saved the situation.* As soon as he was in a position to really impose his authority, Napoleon did away with the Revolutionary system of operating a whole series of semiautonomous armies, and centralized all formations into one single army under a single head—himself. Thus, in 1805, Massena’s troops in Italy or St. Cyr’s in Naples were as much part of the Grande Armée as the corps moving on the Danube. As the years passed, Napoleon would experience the greatest difficulty in keeping in close touch with his far-flung detachments, but in general terms his desire for a basic simplicity of the higher command framework was impeccable. Unity of command, Napoleon stated with conviction, was “the first necessity in war”;45 “the commander in chief is the hea
d; he is everything for the army; it was not the Roman army which conquered Gaul but Caesar…. It was not the Prussian Army which defended Prussia for seven years against the three most powerful states of Europe, but Frederick.”46
This centralization of military authority was, however, to prove a twoedged weapon, and besides forming an important factor in Napoleon’s greatest successes, it was also destined to be a primary cause of his later disasters; in the days before the wireless telegraph, it proved virtually impossible to maintain effective control over a widely deployed army or series of armies. There lay the rub; the genius of the Emperor could not transcend the physical problems of distance.
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 23
