The New Makers of Modern Strategy, page 45
1. Andreas Osiander, “Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth,” International Organization 55:2 (2001): 251–87; Peter H. Wilson, The Thirty Years’ War: Europe’s Tragedy (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009), 75, 106–67, 197–361, 716–78.
2. Mark L. Thompson, “Jean Bodin’s Six Books of the Commonwealth and the Early Modern Nation,” in Statehood Before and Beyond Ethnicity, Linas Eriksonas and Leos Müller, eds. (Brussels: PIE Peter Lang, 2005), 53–56.
3. Andreas Wagner, “Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili on the Legal Character of the Global Commonwealth.” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 31:3 (2011): 575–76.
4. Robert Knolles, Six Bookes of a Commonweale (London: G. Bishop, 1606), translation of Jean Bodin, Les Six Livres de la République (Paris, 1576), Book 1, 10.
5. James VI and I, The True Law of Free Monarchies (Edinburgh: Robert Waldegrave, 1598).
6. Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, trans. Louise R. Loomis, (Roslyn, NY: Walter J. Black, 1949), 269; Émeric Crucé, Le nouveau Cynée (Paris: Chez Jacques Villery, 1623).
7. Jean de Silhon, Letter à l’Evêsque de Nantes (1626), in William Farr Church, Richelieu and Reason of State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 167–71.
8. Charles Irenée Castel Abbé de St. Pierre, Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe (Utrecht: Chez Antoine Schouten, 1713).
9. Emmerich de Vattel, Le Droit des Gens (Leiden: Depens de la Compagnie, 1758).
10. The phrase and its cognates appear repeatedly in treaties of the era, including Ryswick (1697), Utrecht-Baden-Rastatt (1713), Nystadt (1721), Åbo (1743), and Aix-la-Chapelle (1748).
11. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Andrew Cooke, 1651), 60–61.
12. A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), xix.
13. Anonymous, “Political Quadrille: A Paper Handed about Paris,” South Carolina Gazette, July 27 to August 3, 1734, 2.
14. “Peace project” was supposed to have been drawn up in Vienna following the Austro-Russian victory at Kunersdorf. See, Cressener to Holdernesse, February 6, 1760, SP 81/136, The National Archives (TNA), Kew, United Kingdom.
15. Frederick II, “Testament Politique [1752],” in Die Politischen Testamente Friedrichs des Grossen, Gustav Berthold Volz, ed. (Berlin: Verlag von Reimar Hobbing, 1920), 61–63.
16. Spencer Phips, “Proclamation Against the Tribe of the Penobscot Indians,” Boston, November 3, 1755.
17. Wouter Troost, “Leopold I, Louis XIV, William III and the Origins of the War of the Spanish Succession,” History 103:357 (2018): 545–70.
18. Wout Troost, William III, the Stadholder-King: A Political Biography (London: Routledge, 2017), 174–75.
19. E.g., Holdernesse to Keith, January 7, 1755, SP 80/195, TNA.
20. Horatio Walpole to Delafaye, October 9, 1726, Fontainebleau, SP/184/114, TNA; H. Walpole to Newcastle, October 9, 1726, Fontainebleau, SP/184/115, TNA; Robinson to Delafaye, January 30, 1727 NS, Paris, SP 78/185/9, TNA; Anonymous, Analyse du Traité d’Alliance, conclu á Hanover (The Hague: chez Charles Levier), 1725. More generally, see G. C. Gibbs, “Britain and the Alliance of Hanover, Apr. 1725–Feb. 1726,” English Historical Review 73:288 (1958): 404–30.
21. Horatio Walpole to Delafaye, August 3, 1726 NS, Paris, SP 78/184/54 TNA; letter from “l’Ami,” August 25, 1726, giving details of an Austro-Russian treaty, SP 78/184/78, TNA.
22. Adriaan Goslinga, Slingelandt’s Efforts Towards European Peace (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1915), 118–23.
23. Arthur McAndless Wilson, French Foreign Policy During the Administration of Cardinal Fleury, 1726–43 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 164–214.
24. Jeremy Black, The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance, 1727–1731 (Gloucester: St. Martin’s Press, 1987).
25. The Natural Probability of a Lasting Peace in Europe (London: J. Peele, 1732).
26. John R. Sutton, The King’s Honor and the King’s Cardinal: The War of the Polish Succession (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1980), Chapter 1.
27. Richard Lodge, “English Neutrality in the War of the Polish Succession,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 14 (1931): 141–13; Jeremy Black, “British Neutrality in the War of the Polish Succession, 1733–1735,” International History Review 8:3 (1986): 345–66.
28. The incident enters the British diplomatic record in Tyrawly to Newcastle, March 19, 1735 NS, SP 89/38/4, TNA. For the most complete history, see Visconde de Borges de Castro and Julio Firmino Judice Biker, Collecçao dos Tratados, Convenções, Conttratos e Actos Publicos Celebrados entre Corôa de Portugal e as Mais Potencias desde 1640, Volume X (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1873), 365–426.
29. Fleury to Robert Walpole, March 14, 1735 NS, SP 78/207/37, TNA. See also Jeremy Black, “French Foreign Policy in the Age of Fleury Reassessed,” English Historical Review 103:407 (1988): 359–84.
30. Karl Roider, The Reluctant Ally: Austria’s Policy in the Austro-Turkish War, 1737–1739 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1972).
31. Wilson, French Foreign Policy, 64–68, 71–76.
CHAPTER 13
Napoleon and the Strategy of the Single Point
Michael V. Leggiere
Napoleon ruled France as an enlightened despot from November 1799 to May 1804, and then as emperor until April 1814, followed by the inglorious Hundred Days of 1815. However, any discussion of his strategy must begin with an outline of the nearly quarter-century of conflict that commenced in 1792.
That year, Revolutionary France started the first of seven coalition wars that pitted the French against various combinations of great powers and secondary states. Including the Anglo-French War (1793–1802, 1803–14), the war in Iberia (1807–14), and Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia, these seven coalition wars constitute the “French Wars.” Within this period are two separate epochs: the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802)—the wars started by France’s revolutionary governments—and the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), that is, the wars caused by Napoleon.
This chapter will discuss the Napoleonic Wars in the context of Napoleon’s crucial innovation—his pursuit of the Vernichtungsschlacht (battle of annihilation) through the strategy of the single point. This strategy emphasized the advance along a single axis to engage the enemy decisively, at a single point and time. It worked wonders for a time. A combination of Napoleon’s operational mastery, a qualitatively superior army, and his opponents’ adherence to outmoded approaches produced overwhelming success against the Third (1805) and Fourth (1806–7) Coalitions. Yet the deteriorating capabilities of Napoleon’s army, along with the tactical and strategic improvements of his enemies, led to failure against the Fifth (1809) and Sixth (1813–14) Coalitions.
These defeats, in turn, marked not simply Napoleon’s downfall but also the end of the Napoleonic era in warfare. If the political and military changes wrought by the French Revolution had enabled Napoleon’s conquests, the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution would render the strategy of the single point defunct.
I
To better understand Napoleon’s strategy, it is useful to take a glimpse at his foes. Until 1809, the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian armies that Napoleon faced dutifully respected the cult of Frederick the Great. After Frederick’s death in 1786, military observers concluded that the Prussian king employed Ermattungsstrategie (strategy of exhaustion) in a Stellungskrieg (war of position). Lacking the resources to overwhelm and render a large state completely defenseless, Frederick limited his actions and objectives—hence the name: limited war. To obtain limited objectives that could be won just as easily at the peace table as on the battlefield, the Ermattungsstrategie employed battle, maneuver, position, and attrition—all of which he considered equally effective means of attaining the political ends of the war.1 Frederick’s strategy sought to exhaust the enemy by maneuvering his own army into an advantageous position. Examples of this include threatening the enemy’s line of communications, besieging a critical fortress, occupying a rich province, destroying crops and commerce, and holding key road junctions or bridges. Like in chess, the Frederician general sought to force his opponent into checkmate while conserving as many pawns as possible, because he lacked the resources to replace them.2
Consequently, military theory experienced minimal change in Austria, Prussia, and Russia. In fact, many of the same officers who had served Frederick or fought against him held commands or senior advisory positions in their respective armies. Across Europe, a handful of them, as well as younger, enlightened officers such as Gerhard von Scharnhorst of Prussia, urged change. Moreover, their monarchs were not ignorant of the power unleashed by the French Revolution. Yet, in the absolutist framework of Old Regime Europe, army reform on par with the French remained out of the question; only drastic political and social change could affect the social composition of the army.3
A rigid system of discipline based on fear bound the armies of the eighteenth century. As obedience was based on fear, desertion plagued Frederician armies. Consequently, every aspect of a Frederician army—tactics, marching, logistics—was designed to prevent the individual from deserting.4 Tactically, the armies employed a linear system that emphasized thin, rigid, close-order lines in order to maximize firepower through a closely supervised, cohesive infantry attack. The need to supervise the men, combined with the requirements of linear cohesion, limited the options and flexibility of Frederician generals. Night marches had to be avoided except when absolutely necessary.5 Frederick had also advised against camping near forests and suggested that the men be led to bathe and supervised by an officer. Besides possibly enabling desertion, woods and hills undermined the effectiveness of the volleys, broke linear cohesion, and limited the tactical control of the commanding general.6 Bound to Frederick’s system of sophisticated maneuvers and tight formations, generals preferred to move their units slowly and methodically over open terrain. Unlike Napoleon, they held precision above speed and flexibility.
Linear tactics required the planning of the entire operation. Overwhelming the enemy through a single crushing blow served as the fundamental tactical concept. Orders of battle typically grouped the infantry in deep, massive waves with cavalry protecting the flanks and rear; artillery normally remained stationary throughout the course of the battle. As linear formations were highly susceptible to flanking attacks, Frederician generals often preferred flank security over a strong center. The entire army advanced as a unitary organism toward the enemy in a completely uniform manner. All rearward waves followed the movements of the first wave in a parallel direction. Firefights featured long thin lines of three-deep infantry exchanging mass, unaimed volleys with the enemy. Panic in the front lines easily spread rearward so that, if the frontline units broke and ran, they usually dragged the unbroken units with them.
As for provisions, supplies came via a system of food and fodder magazines. This forced the army to advance with large quantities of victuals in huge supply trains. Soldiers could not be trusted to forage in small groups; many would simply never return. Desertion also occurred if the army did not provide the soldier “with a tolerable standard of living, since to make a living, not to fight or die for a cause, was the chief aim of the professional soldier.”7 Dependence on magazines and depots further added to the army’s inflexibility. Because aristocratic officers traveled in style, and the morale of soldiers who lacked political passion would suffer without a steady supply of food, enormous baggage trains followed a slow moving, inflexible force.8
II
General Bonaparte toppled the French government in the Coup of 18–19 Brumaire (November 9–10, 1799). In so doing, he inherited an army that had been undergoing extensive evolutionary reform since the 1760s as well as revolutionary reform for the past decade. By producing new political and social systems, the French Revolution unlocked a new age of war.
Thanks to the levée en masse of 1793, France became the first “nation in arms,” where the people, the army, and the government formed a triad to wage war, thus inaugurating the transition from limited war to total war. By sequestering the human and economic resources of the entire nation, France no longer had to wage limited war to attain limited objectives. The French nation in arms possessed the power to undertake an offensive with such force that victory could take the form of the complete destruction of the enemy army and the capture of its capital.9
As the Revolution changed France’s social fabric, the social composition of the army likewise changed, resulting in nationalism underpinning its social cohesion rather than discipline enforcing it from above. From the chaos and bloodshed of the Revolution emerged a self-disciplined, independent citizen-soldier who served in a people’s army that fought for the nation rather than the king.10 Unlike the reluctant peasants and capricious mercenaries who filled the ranks of their enemies, French soldiers enjoyed the benefits of a constitution that provided them with civil rights and a society based on merit.11 With a vested interest in defending this new society, the French soldier became the representative of national independence. In addition, troops no longer accepted officers whose only claim to leadership was a noble title.12 Moreover, the mass exodus of nobility during the Revolution purged the army’s officer corps, opening it to “natural-born” leaders such as General Bonaparte, who received command of the French Army of Italy in April 1796 at the age of twenty-seven.
The complimentary aspects of conscription and nationalism filled the ranks of Napoleon’s armies. Between 1800 and 1811, 1.3 million men answered the summons to serve. In the wake of the disastrous Russian and German campaigns of 1812 and 1813, respectively, Napoleon drafted a further one million men. Although the army had transitioned back to a professional force by the end of the Revolution, Napoleon leveraged the intrinsic benefits of the French Revolution that had produced a highly motivated and ultra-patriotic citizenry. His comment that a marshal’s baton could be found inside the knapsack of every soldier adequately describes the real possibility of promotion based on merit rather than a noble title. To further motivate his men, Napoleon awarded generous incentives such as medals, decorations, monetary grants, titles, and promotion to the Imperial Guard. Yet, despite his attempts to reinforce the nation-in-arms concept, war weariness and the revulsion over the butcher’s bill led to high rates of draft dodging and desertion in 1813 and 1814.
Although conscription and troops from vassals and allies provided Napoleon with armies of unprecedented size, he needed to find solutions to the interrelated problems of distance, space, and time. For example, the distance from Paris to Berlin remained the same for an army of 50,000 men or 250,000.13 Space on a single axis of advance from Paris to Berlin remained finite: only so many men, horses, cannon, and wagons could be found at any time at any single point on the march route. Napoleon solved both problems through speed and distributed maneuver. While the distance between Paris and Berlin did not change, the amount of time needed to cover this distance could. To increase speed, Napoleon’s troops marched between twenty and thirty miles per day compared to the enemy, who typically covered seven to ten miles. French troops marched at night, traversed thick forests, navigated rugged terrain, and operated in small units. They also used a simple logistical system that dispensed with the traditional magazine and supply trains of the eighteenth century. In particular, French armies supplemented their meager supplies by foraging and requisitioning. This increased the flexibility, mobility, and speed of French armies. The soldiers knew that defeat brought misery, rags, and hunger but victory meant full bellies and the sating of their material and sexual needs. While this system worked well in the bountiful regions of Germany and Italy, French soldiers suffered horribly from privations in the barren regions of Eastern Europe and Iberia.
Napoleon overcame the problem of space by further developing the concept of dividing the army into smaller, combined-arms units that functioned as self-contained “mini-armies.” The mini-army began as an ad hoc division that contained infantry and artillery, totaling between 5,000 and 7,000 men. As a combined-arms division, it could rapidly and independently deploy either to counter or to pose a threat. Napoleon distributed these mini-armies along a broad front but always within supporting distance of each other. By marching on parallel roads, the combined-arms divisions extended the range of the army’s operations, facilitated envelopment maneuvers, and eased foraging by expanding the army’s area of operations. While speed remained a primary objective, a combined-arms division could hold its ground against a typical eighteenth-century army. By attacking, the division could fix the enemy until other friendly divisions arrived along different routes to converge on the enemy. Equally if not more important, if one corps was destroyed, the army could survive and possibly even win the battle.
Napoleon first implemented ad hoc combined-arms divisions during his 1800 Italian campaign. During the period of continental peace between 1801 and 1805, he expanded the concept by adding cavalry to create the preeminent tool of Napoleonic warfare: the army corps. He based the army corps on the same idea as the combined-arms division: a mini-army consisting of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, but on a much larger scale. Truly a mini-army, a corps ranged in size from 15,000 to 40,000 men or even more—in 1813, Marshal Michel Ney’s III Corps numbered 60,000 men. A French army corps contained all of the necessary elements to hold its ground against a conventional eighteenth-century army for twenty-four hours. A typical corps consisted of three infantry divisions with organic artillery, one cavalry brigade, one reserve battery of heavy artillery, and its own support personnel of staff, engineers, and liaison officers. Attaching the cavalry and reserve artillery to the corps allowed its commander to respond to the fluidity of the battlefield in real time. Thus, the corps system enabled the army to move with lightning speed, display extraordinary flexibility, and operate on a broad front. More so, it allowed Napoleon to strike with overwhelming force.
