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8/18/2019 12. Military History Monthly - December 2015
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www.military-history.org
December2015 Issue 63 £4.50
NAPOLEON’S
MASTERPIECE
++
CHARTING CONFLICCurious war cartograph
PERIALUSSIA’S ARMY
rimean War to WWI
MPERIALUSSIA’S ARMY
rimean War to WWI
HAWKERHURRICANE
Forgotten ghter of WWII
HAWKERHURRICANE
Forgotten ghter of WWII
The Battle of Austerlitz, 1805
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MHM
The centenary of Waterloo has reminded us what acrude slugging match the battle was. A desperatedefence on one side. A succession of clumsy frontal
attacks on the other. A huge butcher’s bill.Our special feature this month focuses on a very
different sort of battle, ten years before. Austerlitz, fought on 2 December 1805 in the heart of Europe, was perhapsNapoleon’s greatest masterpiece.
The basic idea was simple enough: to fix t he flanksand break through in the centre. The mastery was allin the detail.
Victor y depended on a minute appreciat ion of t heground, a precise distribution of force along six miles of front, and an elaborate deception plan designed to makethe enemy do exactly as the French commander wanted.
Then, however, matters depended on the Grande Armée .But in 1805, after ten years of Revolutionary change andNapoleonic reform, this had become the finest army of itsage – a superb all-arms military machine based on mass,morale, and mobility.
Also this issue, Stephen Robert s recalls t he role of that other great British fighter of the Second World War, the Hawker Hurricane; Graham Goodlad analysesthe decline of the Tsarist Army between Borodino and
Tannenberg; and David Flintham reviews the coastaldefences of Henry VIII.
CONTRIBUTORS THIS MONTH’S EXPERTS
SUBSCRIBE NOW
DAVID FLINTHAMis a military
historian with a
particular interest
in the 17th cen-
tury, especially
fortications and
sieges. David is a fellow of the Royal
Geographical Society.
GRAHAMGOODLADhas taught and
written widely
on modern mili-
tary and political
history. His most
recent book, Thatcher , will bepub-
lished by Routledge in 2016.
IANMAYCOCKis a freelance
writer living in
Warsaw, Poland.
His main area
of interest and
expertise is 20th-century central
European history.
STEPHEN ROBERTSis an historian
and former
history teacher.
He has written
several times for
MHM in the past,
including cover stories on Edward III
and the Siege of Leningrad.
MILITARY www.military-history.orgDecember2015 Issue63 £4.50
NAPOLEON’SMASTERPIECE
++
CHARTINGCONFLICTCurious war cartography
U S
i n W
MPERIALUSSIA’SARMY
rimean War to WWI
HA HUR IC
F g t n t r W
HAWKERHURRICANE
Forgotten ghter of WWII
tThe Battle of Austerlitz, 1805
ONTHE COVER: Detail from François Gérard’spaintingof theBattle of Austerlitz.
Image: Châteaude Versailles, France/Bridgeman
Images.
Now you can have your opinions
on everything MHM heard online
as well as in print. Follow us on
Twitter @MilHistMonthly, or
take a look at our Facebook page
fordailynews, books, and article
updates at www.facebook.com/
MilitaryHistoryMonthly.
Think you have spotted an error?
Disagree with a viewpoint? Enjoying
the mag? Visit www.military-
history.org to post your comments
on a wide range of different articles.
Alternatively, send an email to
WHAT DO
YOU THINK?
ADD US NOWand have your say
Fill in the form on p.78 and SAVE UP TO 20%
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD:
Martin BrownArchaeological Advisor, DefenceEstates, Ministry of Defence
Mark Corby Military historian, lecturer, andbroadcaster
Paul Cornish Curator, Imperial War Museum
Gary Gibbs Assistant Curator, The Guards Museum
Angus Hay Former Army Offi cer, militaryhistorian, and lecturer
Nick Hewitt Historian, National Museum of theRoyal Navy, Portsmouth
Nigel Jones Historian, biographer, and journalist
Alastair MassieHead of Archives, Photos, Film, andSound, National Army Museum
Gabriel Moshenska Research Fellow, Instituteof Archaeology, UCL
Colin Pomeroy Squadron Leader, Royal Air Force(Ret.), and historian
Michael Prestwich Emeritus Professor of History,University of Durham
Nick Saunders Senior Lecturer, University of Bristol
Guy Taylor Military archivist, and archaeologist
Julian Thompson Major-General, Visiting Professor atLondon University
Dominic Tweddle Director-General, National Museumof the Royal Navy
Greg BaynePresident, American Civil War Tableof the UK
MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLYwww.military-history.org 3
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FEATURES
18
44
52
Welcome 3
Letters 7
Notes from the Frontline 8Behind the Image 10MHM looks at a photograph of UN forces landing at Red Beach,Korea, in 1950.
Conict Scientists 12Patrick Boniface assesses thework of Irish-Australian inventorLouis Brennan.
War Culture 14MHM examines quirky war cartography
from Ashley Baynton-Williams’The Curious Map Book .
INCLUDES:
Background
The commanders
The armies
The battle
Battle map
Timeline
14 Tudor WallsThe birth of artilleryfortication in England
David Flintham analyses the anti-
invasion defences of Henry VIII and
Elizabeth I, exploring the greatest
programme of coastal fortication
since the Romans.
UPFRONT
Hawker HurricaneBiography of abattle-winning ghter
Stephen Roberts tells the story
of the other great British ghter
of the Second World War.
December 2015 | ISSUE 63
MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY4 December 2015
26
AusterlitzON THE COVER
This month MHM focuses
on Napoleon’s strategic
brilliance and explains how
he defeated the leading
gures of ancien régime
Europe at Austerlitz in 1805,establishing the hegemony
of France.
For God and TsarImperial Russia’s army fromthe Crimea to World War I
Graham Goodlad describes the
decline of the Tsarist army in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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MHM C ONT E NT S
THE DEBRIEF
INTHEFIELD|MHM VISITS
Museum | 74Richard Lucas travels to Genoa in Italyto visit the Galata Maritime Museum.
Listings | 76The best military history events.
Competition | 80Win a copy of The Agincourt Companion .
Brieng Room | 82All you need to know abouttheBritish WWII OrdnanceQF25-pounder Mark II Artillery Piece.
INTELLIGENCE | MHM OFF DUTY
www.military-history.org
www.military-history.org
Tel: 020 8819 5580
EDITORIAL
Editor: Neil [email protected]
Assistant Editor: Hazel [email protected]
Books Editor: Keith [email protected]
Editor-at-large: Andrew [email protected]
Sub Editor: Simon Coppock
Art Editor: Mark [email protected]
Designer: Lauren Gamp
Managing Editor: Maria [email protected]
Managing Director: Rob Selkirk
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Printed in England by William Gibbons
Military History Monthly (ISSN 2048-4100) is
published monthly by Current Publishing Ltd,
Thames Works, Church Street, London, W4 2PD
© Current Publishing Ltd 2015All rights reserved. Text and pictures are copyright restricted and must
not be reproduced without permission of the publishers. The publishers,
editors and authors accept no responsibility in respect of any goods,
promotions or services which may be advertised or referred to in this
magazine. Every effort has been made to secure permission for copyright
material. In the event of any material being used inadvertently or where
it has been impossible to contact the copyright owner, acknowledge-
ment will be made in a future issue. All liability for loss, disappointment,
negligence or damage caused by reliance on the information contained
within this publication is hereby excluded. The opinions expressed by
contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher.
SUBSCRIBE | MHM OFFERSTurn to p.78 for subscriptions and special offers.
7460
BACK AT BASE | MHM REVIEWS
War on Film | 60Taylor Downing reviews Britishwar lm Dunkirk .
Book of the Month | 64
Nick Hewitt reviews In Nelson’s Wake:the Navy and the Napoleonic Wars by James Davey.
Books | 67 John B Winterburn reviews Yanks andLimeys: alliance warfare in the Second WorldWar by Niall Barr; Andre van Loon reviewsThe ‘Russian’ Civil Wars, 1916-1926: ten
years that shook the world by Jonathan DSmele; and Francesca Trowse reviews TheCooler King: the true story of William Ash– Spitre pilot, POW, and WWII’s greatest
escaper by Patrick Bishop.
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A BRIDGE TOO FAR
May I congratulate the editor of Military History
Monthly and its contributors for an excellent maga-
zine, featuring the Battle of Agincourt (MHM 61).
Contrary to the claim in the caption supporting
the picture of Jack Griffiths wearing a Glider PilotRegiment cap badge and a Parachute Regiment tie
(page 16), no bridges were destroyed on the River
Orne on D-Day, only those over the River Dives.
The River Orne and the Caen Canal, running in
parallel from Caen to the sea, formed the base of
the 6th Airborne Division bridgehead, which was
held for two months. The only bridges over these
two waterways of strategic importance were those
on the Canal at Bénouville – later named Pegasus
Bridge – and one over the Orne in the commune
of Ranville – later named Horsa Bridge. Both of
these bridges were captured in the f irst minutes of
D-Day, as the first objectives of the Allied invasion
of Normandy.
Neville Jackson
Australia
STICKING POINT
I understand that
the English archers
at Agincourt fought
stripped to the waist,
and that most were
suffering from dysentery.So were they stripped up
or down? And could this
explain their ‘up stick s’
and move forward?
Have you heard anything
of the theory that Joan of
Arc survived the war, and
her burning was later French propaganda?
Pat McDonnell
Crosshaven
Your thoughts on issues raised
in Military History Monthly
GAS ATTACKI read with interest the article on the use of poison gas
at Loos ( MHM 61). In July, I visited the First World War
battleelds of north-east Italy, including Caporetto (now
Kobarid in Slovenia).
Two or three miles behind what had been the
Italian front-line is a sunken lane which, in 1917, was
being used by the Italians as a reserve area.
When the Germans launched their assault on
24 October, they shelled this lane with substantial
amounts of chlorine gas. The Italian gas masks proved quite unequal to the task and, as a result, there
were substantial casualties. There is now this rather sad memorial to the disaster.
Incidentally, the area, almost forgotten, is well worth a visit. There are a number of museums of varying
size and quality, and well-maintained British, Italian, and Austrian military cemeteries and trench lines.
Richard Rathbone
Kidderminster
LE T T ER OF THE MONTH
TWITTER@MilHistMonthly
FACEBOOKwww.facebook.com/ MilitaryHistoryMonthly
12 Oct 2015
British nurse EdithCavell was executed by
German firing squad
#OnThisDay in 1915 for
helping Allied prisoners
escape from occupied
Belgium. #WWI
14 Oct 2015The Battle
of Hastings
was fought
#OnThisDay in
1066. But did Harold die
from an arrow to his eye?
19 Oct 2015The Battle of Leipzig ended
#OnThisDay in 1813. It was
the largest battle in Europe
prior to WWI and saw one
of Napoleon’s greatest
defeats. Here, it features
in our list of the five
bloodiest battles in history:
www.military-history.org/
articles/5-bloodiest-battles-
in-history.htm
020 8819 5580
@MilHistMonthly MilitaryHistoryMonthly
WHAT DO YOU THINK?Let us know!
Military History Monthly , ThamesWorks, Church Street, London, W4 2PD
@MilHistMonthly
1 Oct 2015 Alexander the Great
defeated Darius III of
Persia #OnThisDay in 331
BC. But how great was he?
tinyurl.com/prbgdrz
@MilHistMonthly
14 Oct 2015 Just back from a sneak
peek at the Lee Miller
exhibition @I_W_M
LDN. What a fantastic
photographer. Opens
tomorrow. Highly
recommended!
@MilHistMonthly
16 Oct 2015Marie Antoinette was
guillotined #OnThisDay
in 1793, during the
French Revolution.
MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLYwww.military-history.org 7
Please note: letters may be edited for length; views expressed here are those of our readers,
and do not necessarily reect those of the magazine.
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A weeklong excavation to
unearth a Mark I Spitfire,
which crashed at Holme Lode in
the Great Fen on 22 November
1940, has uncovered the plane’s
engine, propeller, and oxygen
tank among other finds.
RAF Spitf ire X4593, of the
266 Rhodesian Squadron, nose-
dived into the peaty fenland on
a routine training flight, killing
Pilot Officer Harold Edwin
Penketh, aged 20.
Investigations into the crash
concluded that a failure of
the oxygen system or another
physical failure had occurred.
Eye-witness John Bliss said,
‘I went down there with my
father and the policeman.
There was an enormous crater,
which was slowly filling up with
water wh ile we were t here.
At Holme Fen the w ater table
is very high, and if you dig a
hole it’s not very long before
it fills up. There was quite a
lot of steam coming out of the
hull, as obviously the engine
was very hot .’
The excavation coincided
with t he 75th ann iversar y of
the Battle of Britain, and of the
crash itself, but most impor-
tantly the timing permitted
archaeologists to recover and
record material from the site,
before restoration of the area to
wetlands made this impossible.
Stephen Macaulay, Project
Director for Oxford Archaeology
East, said, ‘We hoped that,
because the Spitfire crashed
in peat soil, the artefacts would
be well preserved, but the
condition of many of the finds,
including the headrest, oxygen
tank, a nd pilot’s helmet, was
beyond our expectations.’
Our round-up o this month’s military history news
D-DAY LANDING CRAFT TO BE CONSERVEDdimension, Operation Neptune, was
the largest amphibious operation in
history, with more than 7,000 ships
and craf o all sizes landing over
160,000 soldiers on the beaches
o Normandy.
Proessor Dominic Tweddle, Director
General o the National Museum o
the Royal Navy, which raised the
vessel, said, ‘LCT 7074 is one o the
last o these vital workhorses
nown to have participated in D-Day.
rdinary vessels, they perormed
an extraordinary task, carrying
up to ten Sherman tanks, and
transporting almost all the heavy
artillery and armoured vehicles that
landed in Normandy. This allowed
the amphibious orce to win major
engagements and remain equipped to
ght or months without a riendly port.’
It was an emotional visit or
veteran John Jenkins, 96, who, sitting
by the hull o the vessel, reminisced
about his ‘girl in the window’: a
woman he rst noticed in the window
o a ladies’ hat shop in 1938, to whom
he would be married or 74 years.
Separated rom his wie during
the war, he landed on Gold Beach, in
Normandy, shortly afer D-Day, and
now volunteers at Portsmouth’s
D-Day Museum, where it is hope
the vessel, once restored, will be put
on public display.
LCT 7074 was raised rom Liverpool
Docks last year. Despite her rust y
exterior, she is in remarkably good
condition, having been submerged in
brackish water, which has less salinity
than seawater. Conservators hope
work will be completed by the 75th
anniversary o D-Day in 2019.
MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY8 December 2015
A small group o D-Day veterans met
in a shipbuilding shed in Portsmouth
Naval Base to visit the recently raised
Second World War Landing Craf Tank
LCT 7074, prior to her conservation.
The vessel is the only one o her kind
lef in Britain.
More than 800 LCTs took par t in
the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944 as
part o Operation Overlord. Its naval
I m a g e : A v i v a G r o u p
A r c h i v e s
I m a g e : L a u r e n
S t o n e b r i d g e
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The Royal Museums Greenwich has
acquired a collection of 17 drawings by
extraordinary WWII artist and Voluntary
Aid Detachment nurse Rosemary Rutherford
(1912-1972). The works have not been on
public display before.
Trained at the Slade School of Art,Rutherford became a Red Cross nurse in
1940, and experienced
first-hand the casualties,
suffering, and disorienta-
tion of war.
After obta ining permis -
sion from the War Artists
Advi sory Committee,
she began recording her
experiences of W WII
through haunting and
evocative drawings of
nurses, hospital staff, and
recovering sailors.Not only do these works
give an insight to women’s
roles during the war, they
lso highlight Rutherford’s
Christian faith: her drawings
ften focus on themes of
ebirth and Christ-like
esurrection.
The acquisition of
hese works complements
the Museum’s existingcollection of war art. The
rawings will be conserved
and digitised.
Thewreck o a 600-year-old warship, thought
to be the Holigost o Henry V, has been
discovered, buried in the mud o the River
Hamble, near Southampton.
The nd was made by Dr Ian Friel, historian and
an expert adviser to Historic England. Friel rst
spotted the wreck site in an aerial photograph o
the Bursledon stretch o the Hamble.
He made a connection with documentary
evidence that the Holigost had been laid up
there in 1426, and subsequent probing o the
site revealed a solid object under the mud.
TheHoligost was a major parto Henry Vs war
machine. It joined the royal eet on 17 November
1415, and took part in operations between 1416
and 1420, playing a key role in two o the most
signicant naval battles o the Hundred Years
War, which enabled Henry to conquer much o
France in the early 15th century.
The ship had a crew o 200 sailors in 1416,
but also carried large numbers o soldiers to
war, and as many as 240 in one patrol.
It carried seven cannon, but also bows and
arrows, poleaxes and spears, along with 102
‘gads’ — earsome iron spears thrown rom
the topcastle (a small, railed platorm at the
masthead). These could easily penetrate the
body armour o the period.
Historic England will undertake urther study,
and assess the site or protection.
MHM
F R ONT L I NE
NEWS IN BRIEF The George Cross
that was posthu-
mously awarded
to Second World
War secret agent Violette Szabó hasbeen
put on permanent display in theLordAshcrofGallery at the Imperial War Museum, London.
During the war, Violette was recruited to the
Special Operations Executive, joining the French
‘F’ section, whose agents were sent undercover
to occupied France.
On the night o 7 June 1944, the day afer
D-Day, Violette parachuted intoFrance to set up
a network with local resistance groups.
Captured three days later by German soldiers,
she was brutally interrogated in prison beore be-
ing deported to Germany. Violette was executed
in Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1945.
Her daughter, Tania Szabó, commented, ‘Her
legacy will live on andit is my hope that anyone
who visits the Imperial War Museum maybe
inspired by her story.’
Over 350 Army Headquarters war
diaries have been published onlineto
mark the centenary o theBattle o
Loos, therst major British offensive
o the First World War. The battle
began on 25 September1915.
The diaries contain condential
accounts o the battle, revealing tactics and
the high-level decisions taken by HQ commanding
officers. They also uncover strategies, such as acarrier-pigeon messenger service or communicat-
ing the direction o artillery re during the battle.
To view the diaries, visit www.nationalarchives.
gov.uk/rst-world-war
The UK Government and
the National Museum
o the Royal Navy have
each announced plans to
commemorate the Battle o
Jutland, ought in the North
Sea during WWI.
Between 31 May and 1 June ,Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet, under Admiral Sir John
Jellicoe, ought the Imperial German Navy’s High
Seas Fleet, under Admiral Reinhard Scheer.
Head o Heritage Development at the NMRN
Nick Hewitt said, ‘The Battle o Jutland is the
Royal Navy’s dening moment in the Great War,
and perhaps the largest sea battle in history.’
Commemorative events will start in 2016, and
plans include an exhibition titled ‘36 Hours: Jutland
1916, thebattle that won thewar’; theopeningo
theHMS Caroline , thelast survivor o thebattle;
anda service at St MagnusCathedral,Orkney.GOT A STORY?Letusknow! [email protected]
Military History Monthly , Thames Works,Church Street, London, W4 2PD
020 8819 5580
MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLYwww.military-history.org 9
DISCOVERY OF
HENRY V’SHOLIGOST
I m a g e : © B
r i t i s h L i b r a r y B o a r d , H a r l e y M S 3
2 6 , f . 2
9 v
I m a g e : ©
J a m e
s O
D a v i e s /
H i s t o
r i c E n g l a n d
I m a g e : I W
M
I m a g e : C r o w n C o p y r i g h t – c o u r t e s y
o f t h e N a t i o n a l A r c h i v e s
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MHM
BEHI NDTHEI MA GE
INCHON LANDINGS,
KOREA,1950On 15 September 1950, American-dominated
UN orces carried out the biggest amphibious
operation since WWII, landing deep behind
enemy lines at Inchon in Korea.
This photograph, taken by American reporter
and war correspondent Marguerite Higgins,
shows the second assault-wave landing on
the northern side o Red Beach.
Wooden scaling-ladders are being used to
disembark the LCVP landing craf that brought
the men to shore. First Lieutenant Baldomero
Lopez, rom Tampa Florida, leads 3rd Platoon,
A Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines over the
seawall. Lopez carries an M-1 Carbine, while
the other Marines carry M-1 Ries.
The North Korean invasion o South Korea
had pushed most o the ghting to the Pusan
Perimeter in the south-east corner o the
peninsula. US Army commander Douglas
MacArthur had campaigned or a surprise
attack on the west coast at Inchon – thought
to be a risky operation.
The attack, code-named Operation Chromite,
managed to catch the North Koreans off guard,
breaking their supply-lines, and paving the way
or UN orces to push inland and recapture the
capital at Seoul.
Just a ew minute s afe r thi s pho tograph
was taken, Lieutenant Lopez was killed.
Exposing himsel to enemy re, he was
preparing to throw a grenade into a North
Korean bunker when he was shot in the right
shoulder and chest, alling backwards and
dropping the grenade.
He went to retrieve the weapon and,
when not able to grasp it rmly enough
to throw it, cradled it under his body to
absorb the impact o the explosion and save
his ellow soldiers. He was posthumously
awarded the Medal o Honor. .
SURPRISEATTACK
T e x t : P o l l y H e ff e r
I m a g e : U . S .
N a t i o n a l A r c h i v e s a n d R e c o r d s A d m i n i s t r a t i o n
11MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY
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Louis Brennan was born in
Ireland, but her verdant green
hills were barely home to this
man’s brilliant mind. Shortly
afer his ninth birthday, his amily
made thedecisionto transplant to
Melbourne in Australia.
The young Louis was educated
at the local technical college and
attended evening classes in engi-
neering at Collingwood Artisan’s
School o Design. Such was his
aptitude or devising engineering
solutions that, as a 21-year-old
man, he put on a spellbinding
display at the Juvenile Industries
Exhibition, held at Victoria in 1873,
with designs or a bill iard marker,
a mincing machine, and a window
saety latch.
Such brilliance rarely goes
undiscovered, and Brennan
came to the attention o wealthy
industrialist Alexander Kennedy
Smith, who ostered the young
man’s creativity.
BREAKNECK SPEED
One aternoon, Louis Brennan was
toying with a cotton reel. The expe-
rience led directly to thecreation o
the world’s irst successul guided
It is not only yourtorpedo we want to buy.
We want to buy yourbrains as well.
Edward Stanhope
missile. The simple process o
pulling the thread on the reel rom
underneath saw the reel move
away. The aster Brennan tugged at
the line, the aster the reel moved.
While this process ascinated the
young inventor, he had to wait
weeks beore he could think o
a practical use or it.
His Eureka moment came when
he was introduced to the Victoria
Patrick Boniface considers the inuence o science on warare
MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY12 December 2015
“
LOUISBRENNAN
BELOWTheBrennan Torpedo was
driven by counter-rotating propellers
connectedto tworeelsofwire inside
thebodyof theweapon.
BIOGRAPHY
Born: 28 January 1852, Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland
Married: Anna Quinn in September 1892
Died: 17 January 1932, Montreux, Switzerland
Famous for: Brennan Torpedo
Volunteer Artillery Regiment,
whose sister-unit was the Victoria
Torpedo Corps. He knew he had
ound a practical application
or his cotton-reel observation:
an anti-ship torpedo that was
directed to its target by the use
o a strong line.
Brennan developed the system
urther, patenting the Brennan
Torpedo on 1 February 1878. He
showed o his design in public
or the irst time in the spring o
1879, on the shores o Melbourne’s
Hobson Bay.
The weapon was described as
looking ‘ like a ch ild’s coffi n’, atter
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MHM
C ONFLI CT S CI E
NTI ST S
QUOTES
ABOUTBRENNAN
IN CONTEXT: BRENNAN
Revolutionary designsIn the late Victorian era, military strategy and technology werechanging and expanding in ways that had not been conceived
of just a few years earlier. Into this maelstrom of development
emerged an unlikely genius from County Mayo in Ireland, bythe name of Louis Brennan.Brennan would be credited with inventing the world’s first
guided-missile system, but his contribution extends muchfurther, from locomotives to motorcycles and helicopters.Indeed, it was his designs for a gyroscopic monorail that ledSir Winston Churchill to exclaim, ‘Sir, your invention promisesto revolutionise the railway systems of the world.’
Louis Brennan, however, will always be remembered as theman who devised the Brennan Torpedo, the world’s first steer-able guided-weapon system. It made him famous and, for a short while, rich. Fu rther more, such was the advanced nature of h is
work that some deta ils of hi s torpedo designs are st ill , over 100 years later, cla ssified.
MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLYwww.military-history.org 13
in the middle, with tapering ends
to the ront and rear. Inside were
two reels o wire, each 3km long,
attached to two propellers. The
torpedo was attached to a steam-
driven machine, which pulled the
wire at ‘breakneck speed’. It was
steered towards its intended target
by a gunner, who judged distance
and speed by sight. The demon-
stration ended with the torpedo
successully striking a target-boat,
moored 400m away. The military
were impressed, and the Royal
Navy in London inormed.
As a result, Brennan was invited
to London to show o his invention
to the Royal Navy. Four years would
elapse beore the Navy expressed
any urther interest: they had been
reluctant to buy the torpedo since
it was, in its early stages, cumber-
some to transport, weighing close
to three tonnes.
Brennan, however, was not one
to be deterred. He ound a riend
and advocate in Sir Andrew Clarke,
who campaigned on his behal. The
ABOVEA full-size version of
Brennan’s gyroscopic monorail,
carrying passengers.
our years also allowed Brennan
to enhance his design, so that by
1885 it could be guided all the way
to the target, run at 40 knots, and
had a range o 3km.
Once the Royal Navy accepted
this new weapon, they built a
series o ortications around the
British coast between 1884 and
1894, as well as at Malta and at
Fort Camden, near Crosshaven,
County Cork. The Brennan torpedo
would, or the next two decades,
be a crucial part o Great Britain’s
coastal deence strategy, until
superseded by artillery.
Brennan was paid handsomely
or his work, and was honoured by
Queen Victoria with a Companion
o the Order o Bath in May 1892.
His wealth brought him a large
house or his amily. Even though
he had made his money rom the
torpedo, his inventive air never
lef him, and he went on to create a
gyroscopically balanced monorail
system, an 800m track version
o which illed a large part o his
garden. Sadly, the monorail also
sapped his personal wealth, and
Brennan paid his workorce rom
his own pocket when unds ran dry.
Having lost his ortune, which
orced him to sell his beloved home,
Brennan worked during WWI at
the Royal Aircrat Establishment
in Farnborough, in the munitions
inventions department. In 1919,
One of themost importantand far-reachingsteps yet madein the history or
aeronautics.”New York Times ,
1922
Sir, yourinventionpromises torevolutionisethe railwaysystems of
the world.”WinstonChurchill
A cold, small,and anonymousresting place fora man who madesuch a mark onthe world.”
Taoiseach
Enda Kenny
he convinced the Air Ministry to
allow him to develop the world’s
irst working helicopter. In 1922,
the device actually ew a ew eet
off the ground. Ultimately, it would
be unsuccessul; our years later
the project was cancelled.
On 26 December 1931, Louis
Brennan was struck by a car in
Montreux in Switzerland. He died
o his injuries on 17 January 1932.
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14/84MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY14 December 2015
Today, maps are considered instruments o navigational
precision, though they have ofen been used as channels
or cultural sel-denition. Designed to depict both local
and global arrangements o diverse lands, they have
long been used as vehicles to convey political and
propagandistic messages.
The art o map-making stretches across 14,000 years o
human history. The earliest maps were engravings, which
recorded basic geographical eatures on stone tablets. Over
time, however, depictions o the physical world grew ever
more intricate, and were relied on by armies, merchants, and
travellers to ensure sae passage rom one place to another.But map-makers also used their artistic skills to create
maps or pleasure and entertainment. Drawing on cultural
stereotypes and allegories, some produced satirical
geographies o the world, especially in times o war.
Others sought to distract their users rom the harsh
realities o conict by ashioning game maps based on
militarised landscapes.
The degree o accuracy reected in these maps could
vary widely. William Nicholson’s ‘The Evil Genius o Europe’,
or example, uses the natural lay o the land to its advantage,
capitalising wittily on the shape o the Italian peninsula.
Kisaburo Ohara’s ‘A Humorous Diplomatic Atlas o Europe
and Asia’, on the other hand, is less restricted by topography
in personiying Eurasia’s constituent countries.
In a new book published by the British Library, Ashley
Baynton-Williams has collected and analysed 100 entertainingand imaginative maps, produced between 1493 and 2008.
The book includes high-quality reproductions o a variety
o cartographic curiosities. Here, MHM eatures six creative
maps born o war.
1
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1. ‘A HUMOROUS DIPLOMATIC ATLAS OFEUROPE AND ASIA’1904. Kisaburo Ohara, Tokyo. Chromolithograph
Russia was often depicted as an octopus inEuropean allegorical cartography, to emphasiseher sprawling evil. This map depicts Eurasia
during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905).
2. ‘MAP OF EUROPE, 1859.ILLUSTRATIVE WAR SCENE’1859. Jacobus Johannes van Brederode,Haarlem. Lithograph
Here, King Victor Emmanuel II clings to the legof Emperor Napoleon III. During the SecondItalian War of Independence (1859), the Kingdomof Sardinia sought aid from France.
3. ‘THE EVIL GENIUS OF EUROPE’1859. William Nicholson, London. Lithograph
Napoleon III’s cunning in the Second Italian War
of Independence is represented by his slippingon the ‘boot’ of the Italian peninsula.
4. ‘A NEW MAP OF ENGLAND & FRANCE’1793. James Gillray, London. Copper etching
After the French Revolution, Britain foughtFrance in the War of the First Coalition (1792-1797). The French threat prompted this amusing,scatological portrayal of the Channel.
MHM
WAR C ULT URE
MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLYwww.military-history.org 15
2
3 4
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TheCuriousMapBook
byAshleyBaynton-Williams
British Library, £25.00
ISBN 978-0712356190
GO FURTHER
MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY16 December 2015
5. ‘HARK! HARK! THE DOGS DO BARK!’1914. Johnson Riddle & Co., London. Chromolithograph
This light-hearted take on the early part of the First World War usescanine comparisons to play on national stereotypes. Baynton-Williamsspeculates that this map was intended for use by children, designed toanimate and simplify the complexities of war.
6. ‘THE SILVER BULLET OR THE ROAD TO BERLIN’ (GAME)1914. R Farmer & Son, London. Card and paper in wooden frame,with glass and metal ball-bearing
One of many cartographic games, this map is the least geographicallyaccurate of our selection. It features German towns that must betravelled through on the way to Berlin. The player was instructed todirect a metal ball-bearing down ‘the road to Berlin’, avoiding a varietyof wartime dangers.
5
6 I m a g e s : ©
B r i t i s h L i b r a r y
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IMPERIAL RUSSIA’S ARMY FROMTHE CRIMEA TO WORLD WAR I
God Tsar
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A l l i m a g
e s : W I P L
Historian Graham Goodlad
asks why Russia’s army failed
to meet the challenges of
war in the declining years
of Tsarist autocracy.
T sarist Russia’s final century was
punctuated by a series of serious
military reverses. Defeat in the
Crimean War of 1853-1856 was
followed by further disaster in
the Russo-Japanese War 50 years later, and the
army’s poor performance in the First World
War was a critical factor in the collapse of the
autocracy in the February 1917 revolution.
Yet these disasters befell a country whose
military strength had played a major role in
the downfall of Napoleon in the early 19th
century. In the legendary campaign of 1812,
when France invaded its homeland, Russia’s
defensive strategy was of devastating effect.
The French were drawn into the country’s
bleak interior, where a combination of harass-
ment by cavalry, deteriorating weather, and
hunger and disease put paid to the French
emperor’s dream of conquest. Russian troops
then helped to push Napoleon back into
France, forcing his abdication in 1814.
Just over 40 years later, Russia was to be
beaten by a hostile alliance whose troops
invaded its territory and established a bridge-
head on the shores of the Black Sea. The
Crimean War saw Russia lose heavily to the
combined but by no means militarily impressive
forces of Britain, France, Sardinia, and Turkey.
In the wake of this catastrophe, the empire’s
autocratic leadership overhauled its military
system, and then managed to defeat Turkey in
a short war in 1877-1878.
A generation later, however, to widespread
surprise, the rising power of Japan inflicted a
major defeat on Russia in the Far East. In the
Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, fought in
Manchuria (today’s North Korea and north-
east China), the Tsarist forces lost every battle.
This was a curtain-raiser for the Great War,
which broke out ten years later. Although it
achieved some temporary successes against its
German and Austro-Hungarian opponents on
the Eastern Front, the Russian army ultimately
proved unequal to the challenges it faced.
Why did the Russian military lose so
many contests in the twilight years of
imperial rule?
PEASANTS IN UNIFORM
One reason for Russia’s difficulties was the
sheer scale of the task facing its fighting forces.
Although able to mobilise the largest army in
Europe in the mid 19th century – counting
reservists, it totalled more than
two million men – it could not
deploy more than 320,000 in
the Crimea at any one time.
This was partly because of the need to defend
the rest of its very extensive borders – notably
in Poland and on the Baltic coast – and partly
because the country’s primitive internal commu-
nications made it impossible to supply a larger
deployment on the Black Sea.
In 1914, Russia was able to mobilise just
over five million men, while Germany put
approximately four and a half million men in
the field, and these were supported by three
million Austro-Hungarians.
OPPOSITE PAGE The Battle of Borodino,
7 September 1812. The Tsar’s army played a
central role in the downfall of Napoleon between
1812 and 1814. Thereafter the Russian military
tradition went into steep decline. What went wrong?
BELOW Russian soldiers kneel before the Tsar
and a holy icon during the First World War – an
image of loyalty, piety, and tradition. But it was the
calm before the storm: revolution was imminent.
The year-longdefence ofSevastopol began
with a religiousprocession,and icons andlamps adornedthe defences.
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TSARIST ARMY
Although contemporaries spoke fearfully of
he mighty ‘Russian steamroller’, the Tsar was
unable to wage war on the Eastern Front with-
out Western allies. By now, however, Russia
had formed an alliance with France, whose
army of four million evened up the odds.
Numbers in relation to territory – or mass
n relation to space – was only one part of
Russia’s problem. Throughout the period, the
Russian Army was composed overwhelmingly
of conscripted peasants. Until 1861, when Tsar
Alexander II belatedly decreed their emancipa-
ion, these were agricultural serfs, selected by
heir village elders, who served for 20-year terms.
Russian practice differed sharply from that
of most Western countries, which tended by
he mid 19th century to favour short service
and the build-up of a trained reserve. Taken
from their homes for what was effectively a life
entence under arms, Russian soldiers tried
o recreate the sense of community they had
known in their rural communes.
On the whole, the quality of Tsarist troops
n the Crimea was poor. Commune leaders
ried to keep back the best men for agricul-
ural work, so that a disproportionate number
of draftees were those judged to be ‘trouble-
makers’. Most soldiers were illiterate.
A dogged sense of loyalty to the Tsar, rein-
orced by the rituals of the Orthodox Church,
helped to bind them together. The year-long
defence of Sevastopol in the Crimean War, for
December 2015
‘We have no army: we have a horde ofslaves cowed by discipline, ordered aboutby thieves and slave traders.’
Leo Tolstoy
ABOVEThe Battle of Inkerman, 5 November 1854.The Russians suffered three successive battlefield
defeats in the Crimea – at the Alma, Balaclava, and
Inkerman – and then lost the great naval base atSevastopol. The need for military reform was obvious.
BELOW The Siege of Plevna, 1877. This was the
central action of the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878).The Russians were eventually victorious – but only
in a local war against the ‘Sick Man of Europe’.
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example, began with a religious procession,
and icons and lamps adorned the defences of
the beleaguered fortress. Many soldiers main-tained a naïve belief that they would be granted
liberation from serfdom as a reward for service.
BRUTALITY AND STUPIDITY
The troops displayed remarkable courage and
endurance under fire, reinforced by brutal
physical punishment. In a minor concession
introduced after the Crimean War, the maxi-
mum number of lashes permitted was reduced
from 6,000 to a still incredible 1,500 strokes.
The savagery of military life led the writer Leo
Tolstoy, who witnessed the war at first hand as an
artillery officer, to write that ‘we have no army:
we have a horde of slaves cowed by discipline,ordered about by thieves and slave traders.’
Officers showed little concern for their
men’s welfare, and training laid great emphasis
on the detail of drill rather than the develop-
ment of tactics. Karl Marx wrote scornfully that
those who secured promotion were usually
‘martinets, whose principal merit consists of
stolid obedience and ready servility added to
accuracy of eyesight in detecting a fault in the
buttons and buttonholes of the uniform’.
This obsession with regulation and disci-
pline, dubbed ‘paradomania’ by some observ-
ers, was in part a response to the inefficiency
of the firearms issued to the infantry. The
standard weapon was still the smoothbore per-
cussion musket, which was wholly outclassed
by the Minié rifled musket that had been
issued to the British Army.
As a result, Russian soldiers were forced to
rely more on cold steel than accurate fire – a
principle embodied in the much-quoted words
of the Napoleonic-era general Suvorov that
‘the bullet is a fool, the bayonet a fine fellow’.
Throughout the period, regulations insisted
that the bayonet should be permanently fixed
when soldiers were in the zone of combat.
BACKWARDS INTO THE FUTURE
Defeat in the Crimea forced the Tsarist regime
to undertake a partial modernisation of the
country’s military and social system. The eman-
cipation of the serfs was now unavoidable if the
empire was to go down the path of managed
change rather than undergo outright revolution.
The indebted gentry were obliged to give
up ownership of their peasants, in return for
redemption payments levied on the land now
transferred to the freed serfs – in effect, the
latter had to pay for their own liberation.
In 1874, a reforming War Minister, Dmitry
Miliutin, introduced universal conscription,
organised through a territorial system of mili-
tary districts, which made service compulsoryfor all males over the age of 20. Soldiers now
spent a total of five years on active service,
with a further nine in the reserve; these
figures were changed to three and 15 years
respectively by the time of the First World War.
Although numerous exemptions persisted,
Russia had started to come into line with the
rest of Europe in having a mass conscript army.
There were also some modest improvements
in the quality of troops, with elementary edu-
cation made compulsory for recruits.
In the wake of the Crimean defeat, the
Russian Army made some uneven advances in
its adoption of new weaponry and equipment.
Progress in artillery was slow, with the charac-
teristic weapon of the 1870s being a bronze
breech-loader that was far behind the rifled
steel guns then being introduced into the
German Army.
www.military-history.org 21MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY
MODERN ARTILLERY
AND SMALL-ARMS
By the end of the century, however, Russia
had come to terms with the artillery revolution
caused by the invention of smokeless powder
and the appearance of workable recoil mecha-
nisms. The army that confronted Japan in
1904 was armed with an effective quick-firing
76mm field-gun, which was to remain the stan-
dard light field-piece well into the Soviet era.
But the Russians proved slower than the
Japanese in adopting techniques of indirect
fire from concealed positions, where observers
used telephones to coordinate attacks on targets
not visible to the gun crews.
Another weakness was in the provision of
heavy artillery. In the run-up to the First World
War, the Russian high command tended
to concentrate its largest weapons in East
European border fortresses rather than issu-
ing them to field armies. In the strongholds
RIGHT & BELOW RIGHT The Russo-Japanese War(1904-1905) stunned the world. A rising Asiatic
power defeated one of Europe’s traditional great
states. Inside Russia, the disaster triggered thefirst (abortive) revolution.
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.30 calibre Mosin, a clip-loaded magazine rifle
with a range of more than 2,000 yards, which
was still holding its own against the models
favoured by the country’s opponents in the
First World War.
Russia’s War Ministry also recognised theimportance of the machine-gun, purchasing
the reliable Vickers-Maxim, which, with a rate of
fire of 250 rounds per minute, equalled the fire-
power of 50 infantrymen in a defensive position.
Like all European armies prior to 1914,
the Russian military assumed that frontal
assault by waves of infantry was the way to
capture enemy positions. In 1900, it was
decided that the distance over which troops
would charge with the bayonet should be
reduced from 1,000 paces to 300. Yet, with
Russian troops still organised in close forma-
tions, this was incapable of reducing signifi-
cantly the losses caused to attacking troopsby massed artillery- and rifle-fire.
At the same time, attention was given to
defensive tactics. The key features of trench
warfare were present a full decade before the
outbreak of the First World War, notably in the
six-month-long defence of Port Arthur against
the forces of Japan.
This was still an army that functioned on
the basis of detailed instructions, and in which
little importance was attached to initiative.
It was the reverse of the ‘mission-oriented’
approach that had been part of German mili-
tary practice for a generation, whereby junior
TSARIST ARMY
22
officers were required to think for themselves,
within an overall framework laid down by the
commander. Russian soldiers had not moved
beyond the volley-firing, on the orders of an
officer, that had typified 19th-century battles.
Sheer numbers, combined with the stolidendurance of adversity of the Russian peasant
conscript, was expected to deliver victory.
ON THE MOVE
Russia’s gradual transition to the modern
world was achieved at the cost of severe
pressure on its military budget. Slowly
industrialising as the new century dawned, the
Tsar’s empire lacked the advanced economic
infrastructure which favoured its principal
opponent in Europe, the German Reich.
Of course, given its huge size, Russia was
never likely to be able to mobilise its armies
as swiftly as its opponents. Tsar Alexander II’sgovernment began to address this problem
after the Crimean War, recognising that the
empire’s lack of railways had been a key weak-
ness. Its opponents had managed to resupply
their forces more rapidly by steamship, from
bases much further afield, than Russia had
been able to do overland.
Transport was a major weakness, too, in
the Russo-Japanese War. The critical link
was provided by the Trans-Siberian Railway,
a single-track link extending over 5,500
miles from European Russia to the Far East.
Long distances, combined with the line’s low
December 2015MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY
It could stilltake between30 and 50 days tomake the journeyfrom Moscow toManchuria.
ABOVEThe Imperial Russian Army in 1914. From left
to right: an infantryman of the line, an artilleryman,
a cavalryman of the guard, a dragoon, and a Cossack.
they captured in 1915, the Germans found
some two million shells stockpiled to equipalmost 6,000 heavy guns. Russia’s Great War
field artillery, on the other hand, was allocated
a shell reserve per gun that was half that of the
French and a third that of the Germans.
Efforts were also made to improve the
weaponry available to the infantry. By the
time of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878,
troops had been issued either with a converted
muzzle-loading rifle, the Krenk, or with a
single-shot, bolt-action rifle, the Berdanka.
From 1891, the Army adopted the superior
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carrying-capacity, meant that munitions and
weapons failed to reach the theatre of war
quickly enough in the required quantities.
Transit speeds improved from October 1904,
with the completion of the rail line around
Lake Baikal. This meant that troops and
equipment no longer had to be moved across
the 35-mile-wide strip of water by ship and,
in winter, over the frozen ice. Nonetheless, itcould still take between 30 and 50 days to make
the journey from Moscow to Manchuria.
Shortages of rolling stock, conflicts between
railway managers and the mili tary, and the
tendency of senior officers to use the line
for their own private purposes, all prevented
the Trans-Siberian Railway from operating
at full capacity.
RAILWAY WARS
The situation was more favourable for the
empire in the European theatre ten years
later. On the outbreak of the First World War,
Russia proved able to move more quicklyagainst Germany than had been expected.
Railway construction in the preceding decade
had been boosted by French investment, and
in any case two-fifths of the Russian Army was
already stationed in the Polish borderlands.
Russian forces entered East Prussia in August
1914, less than two weeks after the declaration
of war, initially causing panic among the defend-
ing forces. The invaders’ further progress was
slowed, however, by a technical difficulty.
Russia had traditionally favoured a wider
gauge than that employed by most European
railway systems. This meant that on reaching
the frontier, soldiers had to continue on footor commandeer one of the few captured
German standard-gauge trains.
The Germans then made use of their rail
network to effect a rapid redeployment under
the bold leadership of Generals Hindenburg
and Ludendorff. They successfully concen-
trated their troops against the main invading
force under General Samsonov, while a
smaller force held the less formidable army
of General Rennenkampf further north. The
result was the decisive German victory of
Tannenberg at the end of August.
Technological deficiencies of another kind
played a part in this great defeat. The limitedavailability of wireless sets, and the tendency of
operators to send unencrypted messages, was
a serious weakness, given the increasing size
of battlefields in the early 20th century. The
more prevalent telephone communications
suffered from their dependence on the laying
of lines, the vulnerability of these, and the
limited reach of most systems.
Cavalry, who still conceived of their role
primarily as one of assault rather than recon-
naissance, were unable and unwilling to
provide the continuous flow of intelligence
that commanders required.
The First World War caught Russia’s Army
in the middle of an incomplete process of
modernisation. Ironically, the year that itshigh command had set for the completion
of its ‘grand programme’, aimed at making
Russia Europe’s greatest military power, was
1917. This was to be the year in which, under
the pressure of global conflict and industri-
alised war, the Tsarist system fell victim to
internal revolution. In the end, ancien régime
Russia ran out of time.
FAILURE AT THE TOP
In spite of successive attempts at reform, criti-
cal deficiencies at the level of command and
control persisted. Seniority rather than ability
was the main criterion for promotion, and theofficer corps was divided by faction-fighting
and professional jealousies. In the August
1914 campaign in East Prussia, the fact that
www.military-history.org 23MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY
In this battle, which took place soon afer British
and French troops had landed on the Crimean
peninsula, the invaders encountered Russian
orces drawn up on high ground on the oppositeside o the River Alma, blocking the way to the
key ortress town o Sevastopol.
Although the Russians occupied a strong
deensive position, they aced an adversary armed
with a new and much more accurate weapon: the
Minié rie. Rather than a smooth ball, it red a
conical bullet with a hollow base, which expanded
to t the grooves inside the barrel. The Minié was
lethal rom well beyond the range o the Russian
inantry’s weapons.
As the Russian engineer Eduard Totleben recalled
‘our inantry with their muskets could not reachthe enemy at greater than 300 paces, while
they red on us at 1,200. The enemy, perectly
convinced o the superiority o his small-arms,
avoided close combat; every time our battalions
charged, he retired or some distance, and began
a murderous usillade.’
Russian casualties exceeded 5,000 men, while
total allied losses were in the region o 3,600.
The siege o Port Arthur, a key Russian naval base
on the Liaotung peninsula in Manchuria, was the
longest action o the Russo-Japanese War.Although the garrison was signicantly outnum-
bered by the attacking Japanese orces, the city
possessed ormidable deences in the orm o
a series o heavily ortied hills. Many o Port
Arthur’s deensive eatures were to become
amiliar in the battles o the First World War,
with overlapping elds o re, machine-gun
emplacements protected by barbed-wire
entanglements, mineelds, searchlights, and
artillery batteries connected by telephone to
eld headquarters.
The Japanese eventually overwhelmed the base
by mining under the ortications and deploying
huge 280mm howitzers.Both sides showed a willingness to accept heavy
casualties. In one part o the action alone, the battle
or 203 Metre Hill, the Russians suffered almost 5,000
killed and wounded, the Japanese close to 12,000.
The accounts o oreign military observers testied
to the horrors o the intense hand-to-hand ghting,
as men encountered each other across mounds o
mangled, unburied corpses. In the words o Britain’s
General Ian Hamilton, ‘Here the corpses do not so
much appear to be escaping rom the ground as to
be the ground itsel’.
CASE STUDY: THE BATTLE OF THE ALMA, SEPTEMBER 1854
CASE STUDY: THE DEFENCE OF PORT ARTHURJULY 1904 TO JANUARY 1905
‘Here the corpsesdo not so muchappear to beescaping from theground as to be
the ground itself.’Ian Hamilton
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Rennenkampf and Samsonov belonged to
rival factions was a major problem.
Russia’s chances of success were further
underminedby problems higher up the chain
of command. At the start of the war, Tsar
Nicholas II appointed his cousin, Grand Duke
Nicholas, as supreme commander of his coun-
try’s forces. The latter not only lacked experi-
ence of strategic planning, but his effectiveness
was also limited by his inability to work with the
War Minister, Vladimir Sukhomlinov.
Friction was reduced by the Tsar’s decision
to replace his cousin in August 1915, but this
was insufficient to overcome the wider problems
of the military establishment.
No less seriously, Russia lacked an efficient
general staff of the kind developed by
Germany. The staff was subordinate to the
War Ministry, and its personnel lacked the
standing to assert themselves over the aristo-
cratic officers – mainly in the guards and the
cavalry – who still dominated the Army.
Hidebound deference to social superiors
reduced the worth of military exercises. Thus it
was obligatory for the side commanded by the
Tsar on manoeuvres to emerge as the winner.
TSARIST ARMY
24
There were insufficient staff officers
to work out plans, and the opening cam-
paigns of the First World War revealed an
inability to communicate effectively with
the battlefront.
It was little wonder that the Russian Army
struggled against Germany’s more efficient
war machine. The empire’s troops were let
down by their leaders. The fruits of this were
military failure, progressive demoralisation,
and the erosion of discipline, which, by early
1917, had doomed the Tsarist regime. .
Graham Goodlad teaches History and Politics
at St John’s College, Southsea.
December 2015MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY
Richard Connaughton, Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear: Russia’s War with Japan (Phoenix, 2004).
Orlando Figes, Crimea: the Last Crusade (Penguin, 2011).
Bruce Menning, Bayonets before Bullets: the Russian Imperial Army, 1861-1914(IndianaUniversity Press, 1992).
FURTHER READING
It was obligatoryfor the sidecommanded by theTsar on manoeuvresto emerge asthe winner.
ABOVEThe Tsar tries on a variety of uniforms –
from left to right, those of the Cuirassiers of theGuard, His Majesty’s Hussars, the Grodno Hussars,
the Preobrazhensky Regiment, and the Cossacks.
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ABOVENapoleon commissioned French
artist François Gérard (1770-1837) to
commemorate his victory at Austerlitz.The painting depicts a romantic, highly
idealised scene in which General JeanRapp (1771-1821) presents the
defeated Prince Repnin to Napoleon.
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Introduction
A
A usterlitz was not one of world history’s most
decisive battles. Eight years later, on the battlefield
of Leipzig, its outcome would be reversed.
But, at the time, it was a political earthquake:
the upstart emperor, the soldier of revolution,
the man from nowhere now stood on a par with the scions of ancient
royal dynasties. Indeed, he had surpassed them. They still looked moreresplendent in their plumes, sashes, and gold braid, but it was the little
man in the cocked hat and plain grey coat who was the victor.
Austerlitz broke the resistance of Habsburg Austria, chased
Romanov Russia back inside its eastern homeland, and destroyed
the diplomatic edifice painstakingly constructed by Hanoverian
Britain. In short, it established the European hegemony of
Napoleonic France.
Despite Leipzig and Waterloo, the world was never the same after
1805. Austerlitz sounded the death-knell of ancien régime Europe,
for the conservative social orders and creaking military traditions of
the other Great Powers had been exposed as anachronisms by the
dynamism of revolutionary France.
Napoleon’s brilliance was a concentrated expression of the potential
of a new way of war based on the mass, morale, and mobility of a ‘nation
in arms’. In the French Army, each man was a citizen with rights as well as
obligations; each officer had been promoted on merit rather than birth;
and each regulation could be justified by effectiveness, not tradition.
After ten years of defeat, France’s enemies were adapting: but too
slowly to catch up. French armies marched faster, manoeuvred better,and fought with greater aggression, élan, and system.
The new way of war had been forged in the fires of revolution and war,
despite the chaos of insurrections and coups, of divisions and defections,
in a decade of internal upheaval that had frequently imperilled the
survival of the nation.
But in 1804 Napoleon had made himself Emperor of the French, and
the following year he dubbed the new army he had assembled on the
Channel coast La Grande Armée . There was now a single, unified, central-
ised state; a sole autocrat who was both head of state and commander-in-
chief; and one great national army.
The leader’s supremacy was unchallenged. The instrument of conquest
had been forged. The time had come for a lightning war to dazzle the world.
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TheThreeEmperors
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ABOVENapoleonBonaparte (1769-1821).
The Commanders
The French Emperor The coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte
(1769-1821) in 1804 deflated Royalist hopes
of restoring the Bourbons. The Emperor
hoped to legitimise an hereditary Bonapartist
dynasty, and in time produce a successor.
This move, however, challenged the status
of Francis of Austria (1768-1835) as Holy
Roman Emperor, fuel being added to the
diplomatic fire when Bonaparte declared
himself King of Italy, extending the French
sphere of influence into a region traditionally
dominated by Austria.
Although Napoleon’s new Code Civil
of 1804 – a condensed single volume of
law based on that of the Ancien Régime
and the Revolution – proclaimed equality
before the law, it also enabled the state
to intervene in the private affairs of the
citizen. Accordingly, by the end of 1800,
all newspapers except nine had been
closed down, and those that remained
were heavily censored; private correspon-
dence was routinely opened; spy networks
flourished; and imprisonment without trial
was commonplace.
The Concordat of 1802 effectively
reconciled the Church to the Bonapartist
regime, defusing pro-Royalist feeling while
attempting to make political agents out of
village priests. Moreover, it signalled an
end to Republicanism and the beginning
of Bonaparte’s autocratic rule.
Thus, in the years between his seizure
of power in 1799 and the campaign of
1805, Napoleon had transformed France
and established an extraordinary personal
ascendancy. France was united, streamlined,
centralised as never before.
Napoleon attempted to placate public
opinion through spectacular battlefield
victories and lucrative conquest (France was
to gain an estimated 50 million francs from
Austerlitz). He sought to equate personal
success and national triumph. To maintain
a grip on his empire, Napoleon relied on
members of his extended family, many of
whom simply enriched themselves at the
expense of their master and the people
over whom they ruled.
The regime appeared precarious. Astute
Frenchmen of dubious loyalty like foreign
minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand
(1754-1838) and police chief Joseph Fouché
(1759-1820), guessing that Napoleon’s hold
on power would be brief, conducted private
negotiations with Third Coalition diplomats
prior to Austerlitz.
Ian Maycock considers the opposing commanders at the Battle of Austerlitz.
He sought toequate personalsuccess andnational triumph.
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A failed bomb plot left Napoleon believing
France was riddled with British and Royalist
agents. He ordered that prominent Bourbon
émigré the Duc d’Enghien (1772-1804),
who was living in Baden near the French
border, be kidnapped and bought back
to France.
The subsequent mock trial and execution
of the Duc hardened the growing anti-
Bonapartist resolve around the salons of
Europe. Napoleon – the upstart monarch,
the soldier of revolution, the standard-bearer
of anti-feudal and anti-clerical reform – was
perceived as a threat to the European ancien
régime as a whole.
The Peace of Amiens (1802) therefore
turned out to be the briefest of respites. It broke
down after barely a year, and Napoleon – before
his programme of administrative and military
reforms was complete – found himself again
at war with Britain. Before his newly formed
Grande Armée , massed on the Channel coast,
could attempt an invasion, he found himself
at war with Austria and Russia as well.
Napoleon, however, was at the height of
his powers, and was now in sole, undisputed
control of the French state and its army. The
campaign of 1805 – an autumn blitzkrieg that
destroyed the Third Coalition – represented
the summit of his military achievement.
The Russian Tsar Tsar Alexander I (1777-1825) reportedly
fled the field of Austerlitz in tears. The
young monarch had effectively seized
control of the army from the veteran
general Mikhail Kutusov (1745-1813)
prior to the battle – with dire results
for Russia.
Having ascended the throne in
1801 following the assassination of
his father Paul (1754-1801), Alexander
had flattered, attempted to emulate, and
then finally squared up to Napoleon in
response to the latter’s expansion into
the eastern Mediterranean, Germany,
Italy, and the Balkans.
Russia assumed the role of defender
of the European political and social order
against the disruptive impact of Napoleonic
France – a role as the ‘gendarme of Europe’
that it would retain throughout the 19th cen-
tury. Alexander knew that he could not break
the power of the Bonapartist state alone, so
he entered into alliance with Austria, and
sought one with Prussia also.
Despite the disaster at Austerlitz, creating
and sustaining future coalitions would prove
to be Alexander’s most notable achievement.
He insisted that the rolling back of French
conquests and the toppling of ‘the ogre’
from his throne were the only way to achieve
peace and stability in Europe.
Alexander’s military competence was
another matter. He ignored the advice of
Kutusov – a socially well-connected aristocrat
rather than the wily peasant of War and Peace
– and insisted on giving battle at Austerlitz
when to do so played into Napoleon’s hands.
Kutusov – in 1805, as in 1812 – favoured a
retreat to extend the enemy’s supply-lines
to breaking point.
The Austrian Emperor The rivalry between the Archduke Charles(1771-1847), brother of Emperor Francis(1768-1835), and General Karl Mack
(1752-1828) split the Austrian high com-
mand. Charles has often been portrayed
(not least by Austrian historians) as
the ‘anti-Napoleon’.
Certainly, he advised against war in 1805,
and was to defeat Napoleon in a set-piece
battle at Aspern-Essling in 1809. However, the
fact that his proposed political and military
reforms had not been acted on prior to 1805
led to his rather half-hearted participation in
the Austerlitz campaign.
Instead of trusting Charles, Francis and his
hawkish advisers turned to the ambitious son of
a saddle-maker, General Mack, who promised
he could implement reforms and still mobilise
the army in time to meet the French.
Mack pushed for the main Austrian effort
to be made along the Danube, while Charles
had proposed Italy as the main theatre of war.
Mack was lured into the Black Forest defiles,
outflanked by the Grande Armée , and then
allowed himself to become bottled up at Ulm.
Emperor Francis, demoralised and dis-
oriented by the disaster, then became prey
to another military adventurer, Francis von
Weyrother (1755-1806). Convinced that the
French were on the back foot, Weyrother’s
aggressive and complex plan for an all-out
Coalition attack on the left at Austerlitz was
exactly what Napoleon had hoped for.
The double disaster at Ulm and Austerlitz –
coupled with the fall of his capital (Vienna) –
broke the spirit of the Austrian Emperor, who
sought an interview with Napoleon the day
after the second battle to secure an armistice,
and had signed the Peace of Pressburg within
the month. .
The Commanders
ABOVETsar Alexander I (1777-1825).
BELOWEmperor Francis II of Austria (1768-1835).
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Mustering the Troops
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The Armies
LA GRANDE ARMÉE The French Revolution created both problems
and opportunities for the new state that
emerged from it. French governments could
no longer rely on a well-drilled professional
army capable of the complex battlefield
manoeuvres that had characterised the
European killing-fields of the Seven Years
War. Instead, huge levies of enthusiastic but
untrained troops had to make up in élan and
vigour for what they lacked in textbook drill.
Unsurprisingly, the old officer corps was
looked on as a potential hotbed of counter-
revolution, since, in 1789, 85% of new offi-
cers were drawn from the nobility. This had
fallen to fewer than 3% by 1799 – a measure
of the upheavals of the Revolution, which,
on the one hand, had caused many aristo-
crats to flee and others to be purged, and,
on the other, had made of the French officer
corps ‘a career open to talent’.
In 1790 conscription was introduced, and
in 1793 the National Convention brought in
the levée en masse , whereby all French males
were conscripted into the army until an unspec-
ified ‘time of national crisis’ had elapsed.
If the state claimed to be the legitimate
voice of the people, then it s tood to reason
that the citizen was duty-bound to defend the
state. Thus ‘the nation in arms’ was born: a
military meritocracy wherein the individual’s
social standing depended on his military role.
In consequence, by the end of 1794, France
could boast an unprecedented 700,000
men under arms. This was the base metal
from which Napoleon would later forge
La Grande Armée .
THE CORPS SYSTEM
For the Austerlitz campaign, the French
deployed an army of seven corps (approxi-
mately 176,000 men in total), an arrange-
ment that gave them the operational edge
over their opponents, both in manoeuvre
and flexibility.
Napoleon had improvised a corps system
in Italy in 1800, in effect creating small,
independent, all-arms armies of 25,000-30,000
men, each capable of travelling along a
separate route of march, foraging for them-
selves, yet remaining close enough to their
neighbours for mutual support and rapid
concentration. If well handled, the corps
was capable of holding off a more numerous
opponent until help arrived.
Subdividing armies into self-contained
divisions was not, in fact, new: it had been
done during the Seven Years War. But the
French revived the practice, and Napoleon
Ian Maycock reviews the armies at the Battle of Austerlitz.
LEFTBy 1805, the French cavalry had become as
good as any in the world. Shown here is a light
cavalryman of the Chasseurs à Cheval . Napoleon’s
light cavalry played a key role in the campaign,
screening his strategic movement from the enemy,
which allowed him to carry out his manoeuvres
unobserved and achieve complete surprise.
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turned it into one of the foundation-blocks
of his strategic method – though the corps
system could go awry if wayward marshals
deviated from their strategic objectives or
route marches became disrupted.
Undaunted by unfavourable odds,
Napoleon’s main strategic aim was nearly
always to crush his opponent’s field forces.
This was best achieved by lightning marches
and manoeuvres, the French often appearing
behind or on the flank of the enemy.
BLITZKRIEG
In order to maximise speed and surprise,
the French Army was encouraged to live
off the land, dispensing with cumbersome
supply-trains. This enhanced speed but often
alienated host populations. It also meant
that once an area had been exhausted, it
was rendered useless if the army had to cross
it again (a major problem during the 1812
campaign in Russia).
In 1805, Bernadotte’s corps en route to
fighting the Austrians marched through the
Prussian territory of Ansbach while foraging
for provisions – an event that almost succeeded
in bringing Prussia into the war on the Coalition
side. Such ‘lightning’ manoeuvres could also
leave an army’s flank exposed.
Napoleon often achieved favourable
battlefield conditions by isolating enemy
armies that had strayed out of the supporting
range of their allies (Austerlitz being a case
in point). Utilising the French superiority in
manoeuvre, he would then attempt to ‘pin’
his victim against some natural barrier prior
to destroying him. Having dealt with one
enemy, he would then move onto the next,
while deploying a holding force to keep
any intervening force at bay.
In time, Napoleon’s enemies grew wise
to this method