There can be no doubt that the young Bonaparte had formulated this concept before 1796, for in the second phase of the Italian Campaign of that year he employed it in a very mature form, although it failed in its ultimate intention. After the Armistice of Cherasco with Sardinia, the Army of Italy set out to trap and destroy the Austrian army of General Beaulieu, which was controlling the plain of Lombardy and the Milanese. Beaulieu had concentrated the greater part of his forces behind the rivers Agogno and Terdoppio, clearly anticipating a French attempt at a crossing to the North bank of the Po through Valenza—a Piedmontese town where the bridges had been placed at the French disposal by the terms of the armistice. Guessing that his opponent’s mind was working along these lines, Bonaparte decided to use Sérurier’s division in a feint attack against Valenza (in order to confirm Beaulieu’s impressions and pin him down). But while Austrian attention was thus diverted the rest of the army (led by a picked force of cavalry and grenadiers under Dallemagne, with La Harpe, Massena and Augereau following behind at carefully timed intervals) was rushing by forced marches to seize a bridgehead far down the Po near Piacenza (belonging to neutral Parma where the French general felt confident he could expect to find bridges and ferries intact). Thereafter, the French planned to occupy the Adda river line, seizing Lodi and other crossings, and thus sever Beaulieu’s line of retreat.
The transfer operation was carried out between four o’clock on May 7 and the early hours of the 10th, but Beaulieu realized his peril at the last possible moment, and by means of a headlong retreat (and the violation of Venetian neutrality—a leaf he stole from Bonaparte’s book and used with good effect against him) the Austrians succeeded in crossing the Adda in two columns at Lodi and Cassano respectively before the French could seize the crossings and trap them west of the river. The following victory at Lodi where Bonaparte severely mauled the Austrian rearguard was in fact only a very poor consolation prize—despite its important place in Napoleonic mythology. Nevertheless, the planning behind the strategic move forms a perfect example of what a manoeuvre sur les derrières was intended to achieve. All the necessary features of initial movement concealed by a “curtain of maneuver” (the Po), a “strategic barrage” (the Adda) and the “covering force” (Sérurier at Valenza)—as well as a convenient “center of operations” (Piacenza)—are incorporated in this attack. Success did elude the Emperor’s manoeuvre sur les derrières on several occasions in later years. To cite one example, February 3, 1807, the French failed to close the trap on the Russian army of General Bennigsen, and the enemy managed to slip out of the net in the nick of time after learning of what was afoot from a captured dispatch. On the whole, however, la manoeuvre sur les derrières proved Napoleon’s most successful stratagem—until late in 1813. Napoleon’s adversaries were slow to learn from their mistakes and it was only the hard school of a dozen major defeats over a decade that taught them the necessary counter-measures.
The secret of the manoeuvre sur les derrières lay in seizing the initiative from the outset, throwing the enemy off balance by cutting his communications, and then destroying him by a combination of physical encirclement and psychological discouragement (as in the case of the “unfortunate General Mack”). Once caught in the spider’s web, the enemy was virtually powerless to resist effectively. However, there was a counter to the system, and twice toward the end of the Napoleonic Wars the Allies used it to advantage. In the first place, given the favorable circumstances of superior numbers and a considerable amount of supplies carried with their armies, and the knowledge of what Napoleon was likely to attempt, the answer was to ignore Napoleon’s presence in the rear and push on for the Allied objective. On October 4, 1813, at Duben, the Allies called Napoleon’s bluff by refusing to be distracted by his journey up the River Mulde to cut their communications; and then again, on March 23, 1814, the Allies continued to advance on Paris despite Napoleon’s carefully executed attack against their rear which was designed to halt their forward movement.
The wheel from the Rhine to the Danube during the Campaign of 1805
The crossing of the Alps during the Marengo Campaign of 1800
The strategy of envelopment; two examples
However, as in so many other instances, Napoleon was hardly the originator of this concept of strategical envelopment by means of the “indirect approach.” As we have seen, both Frederick the Great in the “Secret Instruction” and Bourcet in the Principes de la guerre des Montagnes had advocated just such a strategy. Moreover, only a year or so previous to General Bonaparte taking over command of the Army of Italy, General Jourdan had practically demonstrated the possibilities of the idea (albeit almost unconsciously). Instead of besieging Namur as instructed, he left only a covering force to contain its garrison before moving on with a wing of the Armée de la Moselle to fall upon the rear of General Coburg in the vicinity of Charleroi. As soon as he learned what was afoot, Coburg ordered his army to fall back, which it did in haste and confusion and was consequently caught off balance in the subsequent battle of Fleurus (June 26, 1794), where he suffered considerable casualties. This was hardly a triumph in the Napoleonic tradition, but at least by destroying a fraction of the enemy army Jourdan compelled the precipitate retreat of the whole. However, it is clear that Jourdan never really understood the reasons for his good fortune, for two years later he permitted the Archduke Charles (advised by one Brigadier Nauendorff) to move 12,000 Austrian troops onto the flank of the French army. Jourdan’s consequent precipitate retreat to save his communications involved the complete ruination of the Directory’s main offensive for 1796, for the collapse of Jourdan on his left compelled Moreau to fall back to maintain a united front, and this led to the French evacuation of Bavaria and the consequent increase of Austrian pressure on Bonaparte in Italy. Once again, therefore, Napoleon had example as well as precept to ponder over when he was considering the formulation of his strategic planning. Nevertheless, he applied his genius to the ideas of others and produced the most polished and seemingly infallible maneuver system of his day.
There were, however, many occasions when the French were faced not by one but by two or a whole series of enemy armies within supporting distance of one another. Faced with such a difficult situation, Napoleon often adopted a second system of maneuver—the “strategy of the central position.” Very often under these circumstances the French found themselves operating at a numerical disadvantage against the combined strength of their opponents, but could procure superior numbers against any one part of their adversaries’ forces. It was this second factor that the system was designed to exploit to the full. “The art of generalship consists in, when actually inferior in numbers to the enemy (overall), being superior to him on the battlefield.”49 In brief, Napoleon set himself the task of isolating one part of the enemy armament, concentrating a stronger force to ensure its defeat and if possible its destruction, and then turning with his full strength to attack the second enemy army; that is to say, instead of a single decisive blow, he planned a series of smaller blows against scattered adversaries and set out to destroy them in detail.
How could this be done? Once again, the sequence of the Napoleonic attack reveals the formula. First of all the Emperor would accumulate as much information about the forces facing him from captured newspapers, deserters and most especially from the indications brought in by his probing cavalry patrols. From the data thus provided, he would carefully plot the known dispositions of his foes on the map, and then select the place where their respective army boundaries converged. This was the “hinge” or “joint” of the enemy’s strategic dispositions, and as such was vulnerable to attack. This point would be selected by Napoleon for his initial blitzkrieg attack, carried out as often as not in full strength. Shielded by the cavalry screen, the French army would perform a crash concentration and fall like a thunderbolt on the handful of troops defending this central point. Invariably this initial onslaught would be successful. Immediately Napoleon had massed his army at
this newly captured point, he was master of the “central position”—that is to say, he had successfully interposed his concentrated army between the forces of his enemies who, ideally, would have staggered back under the impact of the surprise blow in such a way as to increase the distance between their respective armies. This would inevitably mean that the foe would have to operate on “exterior lines” (i.e., have greater distances to march from one flank to the other) while the better-positioned French would have a shorter distance to travel to reach either enemy.
Next the problem arose of effecting the destruction of the respective parts of the hostile forces. Naturally, if the French were incautious and turned with their whole power against a single adversary, they were courting the risk of the disengaged enemy army being able to maneuver against their exposed flank and rear in support of its attacked neighbor. This critical possibility Napoleon was generally able to avert. From the very beginning of the attack, the French Army would have been divided into three parts: a left wing, a right wing and a central reserve, each consisting of two or three corps d’armée under a designated army commander. The Emperor, in supreme command, would usually accompany the reserve, which invariably included the Imperial Guard, the bulk of the Reserve Cavalry and Artillery, and possibly one or two additional corps. As soon as the central position was safely occupied, Napoleon would turn a nearby town into his centre d’opérations and begin the second part of his strategy: the isolation of his first intended victim and the prevention of any outside interference in the operation.
Once the immediate target had been firmly selected (normally the enemy force that was physically closest to the French Army), the nearest wing of the Grande Armée would at once march to make contact and begin a spoiling or “pinning” battle. Simultaneously, the reserve would move up in its support and attempt to undertake a tactical outflanking movement or simply reinforce the front according to the particular circumstances.* Meanwhile the remaining wing would be marching off to serve as a corps d’observation to ensure that the neighboring enemy army would be unable to intervene in the battle already taking place. This last was not a purely defensive role; the Emperor was insistent that “to halt him is not enough,” and the commander of the observation wing would be expected to move to attack the second enemy and do everything in his power to pin him down ready for the third stage of the offensive. Moreover, if the enemy on the secondary sector of the front proved weak in numbers or determination, the local French commander might be expected to detach up to half his strength (as was meant to happen to d’Erlon’s corps of Ney’s command at Quatre Bras on June 16, 1815) and send it to assist the envelopment of the foe on the main sector. However, the basic function of this force was to provide a protective flank for the main operation.
After the defeat of the first selected adversary, Napoleon would detach a portion of his victorious force to pursue the remnants from the field and then immediately set out with the remainder to repeat the same formula of attack against the second enemy force. All being well, after two or three days of constant fighting and maneuver the various parts of the enemy forces would have been soundly drubbed in turn, and the general strategical situation would undoubtedly swing to the French advantage.
As always, this scheme and sequence of operations was capable of infinite variation of detail. Thus in the short Waterloo campaign, Napoleon set out originally to strike Wellington first, but changed his target to Blücher when his scouts revealed that the Prussian army had dangerously exposed itself by marching to concentrate in a forward position around Sombreffe and Ligny while there was still little sign of the British army. A single order from the Emperor was sufficient to adjust the scheme to exploit the new opportunity, and the centrally placed reserve moved northeastward from Charleroi against Blücher instead of northwestward against Wellington. However, the advantages and disadvantages of this maneuver based on the “central position” and “interior lines” practically cancelled one another out. On the one hand, the enemy could be expected to react with a certain amount of dismay to the initial French incursion; he might further be induced to fight in two or more disconnected parts with, as often as not, inferior numbers and not on ground of his own choosing. On the other hand, it proved extremely difficult for Napoleon to coordinate and control both wings of his army with precision—for obviously he could only be physically present at one sector at a time. Far more damaging from Napoleon’s point of view, the need to turn from one defeated enemy to mass against a second immediately afterward ruled out the possibility of an all-out pursuit ending in the completion of the first enemy’s destruction. In other words, this system tended to rob Napoleon of his decisive success; he might well win a series of small “butting” battles, but there was little possibility of an Austerlitz or a Jena-Auerstadt. Baron Jomini asserts that this type of maneuver was Napoleon’s favorite, but the fact that it was unlikely to lead to a definite, rapid and clean decision can hardly have recommended it to Napoleon, the proponent of the single knockout blow. Consequently he used it only when he was forced to do so; therefore it can be termed his “inferiority strategy.”
Nevertheless, this system of maneuver was used on many occasions. During the third phase of the First Italian Campaign it was put continually into use, as General Bonaparte struggled to keep large Austrian armies from uniting in their repeated attempts to raise the siege of Mantua. Indeed, the situation in November 1796 provides the perfect example of Napoleon operating this system. Faced by the converging armies of Davidovitch (from Trent) and d’Alvintzi (from Bassano), he left Vaubois with an attenuated division to slow down the former’s advance (from the Alps) while he rushed with Massena and Augereau to confront the latter. Repulsed at Caldiero in a frontal battle against d’Alvintzi, he retired through his centre d’operations at Verona, resupplying in the process, and then at once carried out the famous tactical envelopment movement down the Adige to Arcola. This did not fully come off, for the local Austrian forces fought unexpectedly stubbornly for the bridge at Arcola. Moreover Napoleon was unable to make the most of his local advantages on account of the precarious situation of Vaubois, who was apprehensively awaiting attack by overwhelming numbers on the banks of Lake Garda. Consequently, on the first two nights of the three-day battle (November 15-17), the French commander in chief felt bound to relinquish his hardwon territorial gains and retire to the south bank of the Adige ready for an emergency march to aid Vaubois. This proved unnecessary, and on the third day Napoleon converted stalemate into victory over an exhausted and broken d’Alvintzi, and still found time to transfer the bulk of his two divisions northward ready to meet Davidovitch’s blow. This never materialized, and the Austrian second army was fortunate to escape Bonaparte’s onslaught (see Chapter 9, p. 112).
The strategy of the central position (phases); schematic
This is a nearly perfect example of the advantages conferred by interior lines and a central position. But it should be noted that neither of Napoleon’s successes cited above were complete, and the only tangible results of his brilliant handling of the Army of Italy was the earning of a brief respite for his hard-pressed formations and the continuation of the third siege of Mantua without interruption.
If the Arcola episode is one of the best examples of this kind of operational system, there are plenty of others. The same Italian Campaign of 1796-97 saw the exploitation of Austro-Sardinian over-extension of force at the very outset, followed in due course by the Castiglione-Lonato operation; and, after the Arcola affair, there was the defeat of the final Austrian attempt to relieve Marshal Würmser—the equally celebrated Rivoli-Mantua episode of January 1797. There are fewer instances of Napoleon using this “central position” strategy in the years of the First Empire’s heyday, for as a general rule the French enjoyed superiority of overall force and consequently had no need to resort to this “defensive” stratagem. But in 1813, 1814, and of course 1815, when Napoleon was operating at an overall disadvantage, he repeatedly fell back on this ty
pe of maneuver in his desperate bid to stave off disaster.
It is during this latter period, of course, that the failures of the system occur. For example, in June 1815, a brilliant strategic opening to the Waterloo Campaign leads only to ruin; after surprising the Allies and driving a wedge between them (15th), defeating Blücher at Ligny and holding Wellington at Quatre Bras (16th), Napoleon fails to order either a prompt pursuit of the Prussians by Grouchy or an immediate march to assist Ney against Wellington. In consequence of these oversights, the Prussians retire undetected toward Wavre to the northward (instead of eastward toward Liège as intended by the Emperor), Wellington avoids having to accept battle on the 17th, and finally, on the 18th, Wellington is able to hold a position of his own choosing against Napoleon until Blücher and his Prussians can materialize to outflank Napoleon’s position and thus convert a tactical check into full-scale disaster for the French.
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 25
