Liddell Hart - The Ghost of Napoleon

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T H E

GHOST OF NAPOLEON

BY

LIDDELL HART

LONDON

FABER & FABER LIMITED24 R U S S E L L S Q U A R E


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To

'T.E.'who trod this road before 1914


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NOTE

The main historical theme of this book was set

forth in the Lees Knowles Lectures for 1932-33delivered at Trinity College, Cambridge, under thet i t l e - 'The Movement of Military Thought fromthe Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century, and itsinfluence on European history'. The final chapterhas been added subsequently, together 'With various

interpolations in the earlier chapters.

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Contents

PROLOGUE pageI I

I GENERATION-THE MILITARY RENAISSANCEOF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 15

I . The .Sterile State 20:2. The Block System 25

3. The Man who Cleared the Way 27IT PROJECTION-THE MOVEMENT THAT CREATED

NAPOLEON 51

[. The Organizer of Dispersion 52. The Prophet of Mobility 69

I I I DISTORTION-THE SYSTEM THAT WRECKEDEUROPE 101

[ . The Pillar of 'Sound' Strategy 1052. The Mahdi of Mass !I83 The Enslavement of Reason IgO

IV REFLECTION 145

[ . The Background of Two Thousand'Years I49

2. The Law of Survival 168

3 The Liberation of Thought 177

y BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 186

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Prologue

T he influence of thought on thought is themost influential factor in history. Yet, beingintangible, it is less perceptible than the effects ofaction, and has received far less attention fromwriters of history. We recognize that it is man's

capacityfof

thought that has been responsible forall human progress. But, even yet, we do not fullyshow our recognition of this cardinal fact, either inthe treatment of contemporary affairs, or in the treat-ment of the past.

It is true that the great philosophers orpoets whoserecorded thoughts have continued life fill a largerplace in the mind of posterity in proportion to theirnumber than the host of conquerors and kings, who,while they were on the stage, attracted a muchwider acclaim. But men of thought who produced

ideas ofam ore concretenature, whose thoughtsmoredirectly influenced the course of history, have beencomparatively overlooked. And their influence onevents has not been studied with a due sense of pro-portion.

In the case of material appliances we justly re-gard the inventor as on a higher plane than themanufacturer. But historical justice is rarely done

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Prologueto those who conceive new mental appliances that

bave a wider effect on the destiny of peoples. Herethe attention of history is usually focused on themanufacturer or distributor, a commercial standardof historical values which contrasts strangely withhistory's indifference to actual men of commerce.

Yet reflection should surely awaken us to the

historical importance of those who have mouldedthe minds of the men whose actions :p.ave mouldedhistory. It is commonly argued that the latter class,the men who possess the power to act, r deserve thecredit on the score of their responsibility. Withoutdenying the force of this argument, I think that it

has been given a disproportionate value. My ownstudy of the past, as well as my observation of con-temporary history, has increasingly impressed mewith the importance of pure opportunity in thesuccess of those who wield power. Such accidentsof fortune have a much smaller significance in the

case of those men who propagate new ideas, ormethods, and inspire action. They prepare themind not only of the man who will eventually usetheir ideas, but of the men he will use.

I do not underrate the importance of responsi-bility, or of receptivity, but I urge what seems to mea truer sense of proportion in the judgment ofhistory. I f the balance has been faulty, the causemay lie in the difficulty of gauging the influence ofthought on action.

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PrologueBut there is certainly one r e ~ l mof action where

that influence, and its consequences, can be tracedwith a reasonable degree of accuracy. This is therealm of warfare. The inspiration of new ideas andthe introduction of new methods in military organization, strategy, and tactics, have played a partthat is quite as significant as the feats of executive

military genius, if farless

emphasized. In classicaland medireval warfare, unfortunately, we have fewclues to establish the chain of causation.

But i t is certainly possible to trace two movementsof thought-as well as their chief creators-whichin turn have vitally affected the course of history in

the last two centuries. For one movement was, to agreat extent, responsible for the triumphs ofRevolutionary France and for Napoleon's Empire,while the other bears a direct responsibility for theruinous cost and negative nature of the War of1914-1918. And a significant, ifless direct, responsi

bility for bringing about that war.


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C H A P T E R I

Generation

The Military Renaissance of theEighteenth Century

he years that followed the War of the

T

Spariish Succession appear to have beenstrangely barren of military thought. That war, a'European War' in its scope, had produced moregreat generals than most great wars. But they werecontent with practice, and they found no great inter

preters to develop a theory from their experience.There was no comprehensive effort to analyse thelessons of that long-lasting and many-sided war.

Some of the essence of its best leadership is certainly distilled in the pages of Feuquieres, but thebareness of the military cupboard is shown by theprominence of the Chevalier Folard, whose commentaries on Polybius (1727) became and remainedperhaps the most-discussed books on war during thefirst half of the eighteenth century. I t is still moresignificant that the parts of his teaching which

focused the attention of soldiers were his proposalsfor an attack formation in massive columns sixteento thirty-two ranks deep, a crude revival of the

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Jlilitary Renaissance of Eighteenth CenturyGreek phalanx. For this trcnd of interest helps toshow how prcdominantly the military mind of theperiod was occupied with the mechanism of formations-the details of the order of battle. But it alsoshows the strength of the classical tradition. Here isa key to the understanding of military science in thes C \ ' e ~ t e c n t l land eighteenth centuries.

The nature of armies is determined by the natureof the civilization in which they exist. ,Heredity mayappear to influence more than environment becausethey have usually offered a stout r ~ s i s t a n c etochange. But the pressure of environment is sure,although its effects may be slow to appear becauseofthc time lag that is habitual in armies.

The Renaissance did not really begin to affect the

military worId until the seventeenth century.I t

possessed the military world in the eighteenthcentury.

The greatest military pioneer of the seventeenthcentury was Gustavus Adolphus, and he lives in history as the creator of the first 'modern army'. But i fwe examine his tactical formations, which more than

any art were the secret of his success, we can tracehis adaptation of the Roman legion and its manreuvrable maniples. We know, too, on his ownevidence how much he prized the teaching ofXenophon, than whom no man has had more influenceon the history of the world; i f nfluence on the mindsof the makers of history be the gauge. The Cyro-

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itfilitary Renaissance of Eighteenth Centurypredia was for Gustavus his military bible as it had

been for the greatest captains of the ancient world,and as it would be for some who followed. I t wasWoIfe at Louisburg who, when one of his officers remarked that the 'way he was using his Light Infantryrecalled the tactics of the KUpOOVX01, candidlyreplied: ' I had i t from Xenophon, but our friends

here are astonished at what I have done becausethey have read nothing.'The Classical influence reached its peak in the

eighteenth c.-:ntury. I t was beneficial in so far as itled soldiers to imbibe the bottled wisdom of theGreek and Roman masters. But it too often pro

duced an intoxication. Folard's endeavour to revive the phalanx ignored not only the historical factofCynoscephalre, but the modern fact of the bullet.Yet a generation later his folly was revived and raiseda storey higher by Mesnil-Durand, who proposeda massive and unarticulated battalion column,

thirty-two ranks deep with a front of only twentyfour men. His arguments made many converts, andeven attracted so intelligent a soldier as the Duc deBroglie.

The issue became confused, because some of thebest tacticians favoured the column in a more flex-

ible form, for manceuvre, while seeing its defects forshock. Their views ultimately prevailed, and in amodified form the column was incorporated in thedrill book of 1791, which remained the tactical

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~ l 1 i l i t a r yRenaissance of Eighteenth Centuryregulations of the French Army for over {orty years

-throughout the Wars of the Revolution and theEmpire. "'Whence, as catchwords become fixed inmilitary minds that are cast in the mould of conven-tion, we may, with some justice, trace back throughFolard to antiquity the source of French defeats inthe Peninsula at the hands of the 'thin red line'. If

so, as Englishmen, we have additional cause forremembering our 'debt to Greece'. More palpablestill as evidence that Folard had not preached invain is the famous example of Macdonald's massedcolurrL."1 of I 3 ,000 men at Wagram, which shrivelledto a handful by the time its advance petered out.

But the debt to Greece, and the influence ofclassical military ideas upon the history of theeighteenth century, is most manifest of all inFrcdcrick's celebrated 'oblique order' - t h a t flankapproach by which he concentrated his strengthagainst one of the enemy's wings while withholding,or in military language, 'refusing' one of his own.In copying this manceuvre from the classics,Frederick scarcely did justice to his masters. AtKaHn his oblique march had an obviousness thatbrought upon it w e l l ~ d e s e r v e ddisaster. And ifLeuthen may be adjudged superior to Leuctra,where Epaminondas produced the original modelin 371 B.a., it was lacking in the preparatory art thatEpaminondas had displayed in his second attempt,at ~ f a n t i n e i a .Still less did i t equal the consummate

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ivfilitmy Renaissance qf Eighteenth Centurysubtlety ofScipio's compound oblique manreuvre at

Hipa.The significance of Frederick's classical revivallies not in the science, but in the art of war. For thesuccess of his generalship he owed more to his coupd' ceil than to his conceptions. But the militaryworld of his time, dazzled by his successes, sought

their secret in his tactical forms rather than in histactical eye. and because his forms had so markeda pattern they made the deeper imprint.

Foreign armies hastened to imitate them, thePrussian preserved them as a sacred trust. And thusit came about that the burden of Frederick's debt

to Greece fell upon the generations that followed.The British Army paid in several instalments, fromwhich the Americans were the first to draw theinterest. But the Prussians, i f they were later inpaying, paid more heavily-from Valmy to Jena.And it was France which drew the profit, first in

preserving the Republic and then in the enlarge-ment of the Empire.

Thus it would be possible to record these results,so fateful for history, as a debit due to the borrowingof classical forms. In the balance sheet of history,however, credit must be given to the new military

thought which developed in France during thesecond half of the eighteenth century.

The military triumphs of the Revolution, and themilitary revolution, vvere due not merely to the

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~ U i l i t a r yRenaissance of Eighteenth Centurystatic traditionalism that acted as a brake on the

opposing armies, but to a positive movement ofmilitary thought that eventually found its vehicle innew conditions of mobility. I f the Revolution assembled the motor, from parts of earlier manufacture, military thought was the petrol. And thiscame from pre-Revolutionary wells.

I . The Sterile State

To understand the development of this thoughtwe must picture the conditions of waIfare at thetime. The features of the eighteenth century thatfirst strike the historical observer are the rareness ofbattles and the indecisiveness of campaigns. Butthe cause was misunderstood by military students ofthe nineteenth century. They viewed preNapoleonic practice through the glasses of a postNapoleonic theory that was itself to produce in

decisiveness through ignoring the actual conditionsof warfare. But in the days of their study the hourof disillusioning experience was yet to come.

Thus, nourished on the theory of Clausewitz,they ascribed the relative ineffectiveness of eighteenth-century generalship to a wrong mental atti

tude. They derided i t for fencing instead of fighting. And they found a convenient explanation inthe difference between the modern war of nationsand the old war of princes--contending for dynasticaims on a limited-liability basis, and employing an

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The Sterile State

expensive professional army instead of a conscript

levy.I f there is some truth in the charge, and somealso in the explanation, this view exaggerated theunwillingness of pre-Napoleonic generals to riskbattle. I t was not true of the few great leaders, whostood out from the ruck of noble-born mediocrity.

No general could have set his mind on a decisivebattle more eagerly than Gonde in 1645, or shownmore disappointment when he conquered a province without winning a victory. In six campaignshe fought only four battles. Turenne anticipatedNapoleon in his maxim that a victory in the field

was worth more than any number of captured for-tresses. Turenne's great opponent, Montecuculli,forestalled Glausewitz-and Foch-when he declared: ' I t is a paradox to hope for victory withoutfighting. The goal of the man who makes war is tofight in the open field to win a victory.' Yet thesetwo men, pitted against each other, consumed twocampaigns without bringing off a battle.

I t is true that the great pre-Napoleonic leadersdid not believe in fighting a battle without the advantage, without a reasonable assurance of victory.Here, perhaps, they differed from the generals ofthis last half-century, intoxicated with the bloodred wine of Glausewitzian growth. But the hindrance to a battle did not disappear when successwas assured even without the need of securing a

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ilIilitary Renaissance of Eighteenth Centurypreliminary advantage. This happy state was

Marlborough's after Ramillies,as

Trevelyan vividlybrings out. And Marlborough's thirst for battlewould have earned the admiration even of a Foch,had he ever studied him. In practice, moreover,~ f a r 1 b o r o u g hpressed the idea of 'absolute War'beyond the theory of a Clausewitz, giving the world

an unheeded object-lesson in what Trevelyan aptlycalls 'concentration of purpose on an impossibleobject' - tha t of compelling Louis XIV to concedethe one rejected demand out of the forty presentedto him.

Yet even Marlborough only managed to fightfour battles in ten years of warfare. The fears andjealousies of his Dutch allies are not a sufficientexplanation of a condition that was common togenerals who served such a single master as Richelieu or Louis XIV, as well as to generals who, likeFrederick, were their own master.

The cause of the condition must be sought in themilitary conditions of warfare. Battle impliesmobility, strategic and tactical. The army whichseeks to fight another must be able to move quicklyagainst it. On the battlefield the troops must beable to move forward in face of the enemy's fire.Once the issue is decided, the army must be able tofollow up the beaten enemy, and complete the victory. Battle also implies the immobili,eation of theenemy-the paralysis of his powers of movement so

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The Sterile State

that, in the first place, he may not be able to slip

away, and second, that he may not be able tocounter your strokes.These conditions of success were limited, i f not

lacking, in eighteenth-century warfare. Roads werelittle better than tracks, if wider than what we nowterm a track-often as wide as the modern arterial

road, so that, instead of marching in threes or fours,the troops m ~ r c h e dten or twelve abreast. Rapidmovement along such trackways was difficult, andall the m o r ~so because of the cumbrous formationsof the time.

But a still greater handicap was the difficulty of

feeding the army while in movement. I tis proverbialthat an army marches on its stomach. The normaleighteenth-century army could only wriggle on itsstomach-because it was fettered by a chain ofmagazines. Supplies were accumulated in thesemagazines before a campaign opened, but transport

from them to the field army was so awkward andslow that only a short radius of movement waspossible, at least until the chain had been extendedby creating and filling a new magazine. An increased humanity in the conduct of war also helpedto increase the dependence of armies upon maga

zines. The locust hordes of the Thirty Years Warwere a grim legend, and the practice of living onthe country was contrary to the custom of a morecivilized age. But in any case there were few tracts

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J1ilitary Renaissance of Eighteenth Centuryof country capable of supporting a large army,

closely concentrated, unless it passed quickly onwards. And this was difficult-not only because ofbad roads, but because of strong fortresses.

The strength of fortresses at this period owedmuch to the progress made in the science of fortification. But it owed as much to the natural diffi.

culties of movement. Each of these checks reactedupon the others, increasing the obstruction. Aslm\'-moving army was inevitably dependent uponmagazines, and a magazine-chained army couldnot easily avoid the fortresses which grew up at allimportant road-centres or other strategic 'defiles'.

:Morcover, the attack upon fortresses became moredifficult with the improvement of fire-weapons.

Here was yet another brake upon decisive battle.When v"ithin sight of each other, the threat of firewas already tending to keep armies apart more thanin the old days, when shock weapons predominated.

In the approach to a battlefield, fortresses oftenblocked the way, and because of the lengtheningrange of their armament they not only made theattack more hazardous, but compelled a largerforce to be used in forming this circle of investment,so reducing the strength of any army that tried to

pass on and seek victory in the field. Anothervicious circle.

Fortresses likewise, together with bad roads, cumbrous formations, and magazine-chained armies l

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The Sterile State

hindered the exploitation of a victory and the

reaping ofits fruits.These compound checks on mobility gave to thedefensive in the eighteenth century a supremacythat was restored to it in the twentieth century bythe machine-gun and the cumbrous size of armies.The difference, however, was that, in the eigh

teenth the brake on strategic mobility was greaterthan on tactical, whereas in the v,llentieth thereverse has been true.

But an even greater hindrance to battle in theeighteenth century was the incapacity of armies toparalyse their enemy's mobility. They lacked

means of making him stand and fight. Ifhe dislikedthe prospect or deemed the situation unfavourable,he could too easily slip away-and retire behind afortified barrier. Thus battles, usually, were bymutual consent. They could rarely be broughtabout unless both sides were willing, and this im

plied such equality that neither side was likely torisk battle.

2 . The Block System

The incapacity of armies to force battle upon anunwilling foe was due, above all, to their own orderof battle. The idea that an army should be drawnup in a rigid line of battle, normally with the infantry massed in the centre and the cavalry on thewings, had become fixed by the custom of centuries.

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Renaissance of Eighteenth CenturyI n the days when shock weapons predominated, this

rigid formation had the virtue of solidity. But like; : : 1 ~ ) S tmilitary practices i t persisted long after itsi'aluc had declined and its handicaps had increased.So long as it persisted it meant that an army was alimbless body, or, at best, a trunk with shortstumps. This state restricted an army's power of

mano::unc and distraction.The strategic handicap suffered b pre-Napole

onic armies was even greater than the tactical.Custom ordained that they should move, as theyfought, in a solid block. That custom had itsfoundation in a common-sense appreciation of the

\'aluc of concentration, Detachments not onlyweakened the main body, but were themselves inever-present danger of being overwhelmed whileisolated. In the days of shock weapons the clash offorces was abrupt, and a small detachment couldonly offer a brief resistance, unless i t found shelterbehind a wan or other obstacle. And because oftheir defencelessness in the open, detachmentstended to become static. Instead of actively contributing to the purpose of the main body, they wereapt to become l o c k e d ~ u pcapital. I t was only asfire power developed and weapons lengthened inrange that such detachments extended their time ofresistance-and acquired the power of pinningdown a stronger force by attack.

But to recognize the past necessity of being phy~ 6


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The Block S),stemsically concentrated should not blind us to the way

this 'block system' handicapped the commander.Each army was a single piece on the chessboard ofwar. And the comparison ivith chess may help usto realize the difficulty of cornering an opponentwhen only two pieces exist on the board. I f he prolonged manceuvres of eighteenth-century warfare

appear artificial, more like a match at chess thanthe 'impassioned drama' of nineteenth-century warfare, the conditions rather than the players were toblame.

I t is in the light of these conditions that we shouldobserve the movement of military thought-which

was a vital factor in preparing the change of conditions that the French Revolution completed. Because the change originated in France we must,above all, examine French military thought, which,vas also the most active of all.

3. The Man who Cleared the WayAt the beginning of the century Feuquieres had

proclaimed the sovereign efficacy of battle with anemphasis to which its impassioned advocates in thenext century could add little. The difference between him and them lies mainly in the cool discrimination with which he points out the conditionsfor a profitable offensive, and the cases where thepursuit of battle is unwise. But he declared that 'abattle at the outset of a war, delivered with purpose,

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111ilitary Renaissance of Eighteenth Centuryalmost always decides the issue'. And again that,

even where the enemy's strength compels a defensive or waiting attitude, a general 'should be continually on the alert to procure the superiority bysmall gains, so that he will ultimately arrive at hisgoal, which is the ruin of the enemy army'.

The man who wrote this might equally well have

written any modern Field Service Regulations. Andin the pages of Bosroger, a successor,., we catch the"cry keynote of the 1914 apostles of the offensive aoutrance-'offensive war requires a vigorous openingto astonish the enemy and to spread alarm amonghis troops and in his country; one is half-way to

victory when one has succeeded in inspiring terrorin him. He must be given no chance to recoverfrom it.'

Yet, in actual practice, we find that these precepts were rarely translated into fact. Contact withthe conditions of war sterilized them, as in 1914,with only the difference that the generals of anearlier age did not pursue a fallacy so f a r - i n vainexpenditure of life.

The reaction of experience is to be seen both inthe practice and in the theory of Marshal Saxe-ascontained in his Reveries, published in 1757. Saxenot only typified the mind of eighteenth-centurygeneralship for nineteenth-century students, butdeserves to be considered first in the chain ofthought that culminated in Napoleon. This com-

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The i11an who Cleared the Tllayment would have seemed a paradox to Foch, to

whom the two wereas

the poles apart. For Foch, inhis condemnation of the old 'fencing' and 'antiquated methods' of pre-Napoleonic war, singledout for ridicule Saxe's saying, 'I am not in favour ofgiving battle, especially at the outset of a war. I ameven convinced that an able general can wage war

his whole life without being compelled to do so.' Inshining contrait, Foch pointed to Napoleon's remark, at the outset of the Jena eampaign-'Thereis nothing I'desire so much as a great battle.' Inbiting comment upon the comparison, Foch wrote'The one wants to avoid battle his whole life; the

other demands it at the first opportunity.'But here F oeh seized upon a vivid phrase, divorced

from its context and even misquoted. He failedto understand that Saxe was arguing that a goodgeneral should not be cornered, and forced to fightat a disadvantage; He ignored Saxe's contentionthat instead of risking a ranged battle, where equality of strength gave uncertainty to the issue, goodgeneralship should first weaken and upset theenemy 'by frequent encounters'. I t is a very important omission, for here Saxe suggested as a campaign method what Napoleon fulfilled in a newform of battle that corresponded to the old campaign, if more concentrated in time and space.

Foch also ignored Saxe's express qualification:'1 would not be understood to say that an oppor-

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Jfilitary Renaissance of Eighteenth Centurytunity of bringing on a general action, in which youhave all imaginable reason to expect the victory,ought to be neglected; but only to insinuate that i tis possible to make war "without trusting anything toaccident-which is the highest point of skill and perfection within the power of a general.' Saxe was asupreme artist of war, hampered by difficult conditions. Yet his own record exhibits several greatbattles, all victories. The true Ineasure of histhought, and his lesson for posterity, was containedin this ma..xim-'Decline the attack altogether unlessyou can make it with advantage.' We knoW' that i twas not heeded by the generals who were bred inthe nineteenth-century French school of war. Weknow also that they did not understand the real conditions under which Saxe had fought, nor foreseethose under which they themselves were to fight.

I f there was a difference between Saxe's outlookand Napoleon's, with results that can be seen inhistory, there was no such contrast as Foch implied,and the difference was largely due to a difference ofmilitary conditions-if also to the intoxication ofsuccess to which Napoleon gradually succumbed.But Foch's delusion was due to the intoxication ofhero-worship. Foch and his fellows would be theculmination of a swing of the pendulum from anextreme that Saxe had never reached to an extremethat Napoleon had never contemplated. In singlingout Saxe's theory as the reverse of Napoleon's

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}vfilitary Renaissance of Eighteenth Centurytunity of bringing on a general action, in which you

have all imaginable reason to expect the victory,ought to be neglected; but only to insinuate that itis possible to make war without trusting anything toaccident-which is the highest point of skill and perfection within the power of a general.' Saxe was asupreme artist of war, hampered by difficult conditions. Yet his own record exhibits several greatbattles, all victories. The true neasure of histhought, and his lesson for posterity, was containedin this maxim-'Dec1ine the attack altogether unlessyou can make it with advantage.' We know that i t,vas not heeded by the generals who were bred inthe nineteenth-century French school of war. Weknow also that they did not understand the real conditions under which Saxe had fought, nor foreseethose under which they themselves were to fight.

I f here was a difference between Saxe's outlookand Napoleon's, with results that can be seen inhistory, there was no such contrast as Foch implied,and the difference was largely due to a difference ofmilitary conditions-if also to the intoxication ofsuccess to which Napoleon gradually succumbed.But Foch's delusion was due to the intoxication ofhero-worship. Foch and his fellows would be theculmination of a swing of the pendulum from anextreme that Saxe had never reache'd to an extremethat Napoleon had never contemplated. In singlingout Saxe's theory as the reverse of Napoleon's

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The Man who Cleared the Wa)practice Foch betrayed the shallowness of his o" ... n

historical knowledge.Sa..xe was rather the pioneer of he Napoleonic v,ray.And certainly never more so than in breaking withcustom in his teaching upon pursuit- 'The maximthat it is most prudent to suffer a defeated army tomake its retreat is very religiously observed; but is

nevertheless founded upon a false principle. Foryou ought, on the contrary, to prosecute your victory and to pursue the enemy to the utmost of yourpower; his lOetreat, which before perhaps was regular and well conducted, "will presently be convertedinto a complete rout.'

But it was in opening the way to a decision thatSaxe best showed his practical originality. Heclearly perceived that the distraction of the enemywas an essential prelude to any decision. In war, asin wrestling, the attempt to throw an opponentwithout loosening his foothold and balance tends to

self-exhaustion-and stalemate. Saxe turned hismind to the problem of upsetting the opponents'mental and physical balance-of dislocating theirplan and the organization of their forces. In an ageof regularity he introduced irregularity as a lever.In an age of immobility he laid the foundations ofmobility. In an age of convention he showed morefreedom from convention-and more of the scientific spirit of enquiry-than any of the generals of theRevolution, who enjoyed the freedom that it gave.

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Jlilitary Renaissance of Eighteenth CenturyThey profited; he prophesied.

He was perhaps fortunate to be not only Mauriceof Sa:'(ony, but the most successful in action of allthe marshals of the century. He was perhaps dis-creet in withholding pUblication of his Reveries untilafter his death. Because his manner of criticism,however justified, can hardly have been welcome

to his contemporaries.For in his Preface he remarked: 'war is a science

so obscure and imperfect' that 'cusfom and preju-dice, confirmed by ignorance, are its sole foundationand support. All other sciences are established uponfixed principles . . . while this alone remains desti-tute; and so far from meeting with anything funda-mental amongst the celebrated captains Who have'written upon this subject, we find their works notonly altogether deficient in this respect, but also soinvolved and undigested that i t requires very greatgifts, as well as application, to be able to understandthem; nor is it possible to base any judgment uponhistory, where everything on this subject is utterlythe product of caprice and imagination.'

Nearly two centuries have passed since Saxewrote thus and, although the study of war has im-mensely deVeloped, war still waits to be studied as ascience. Staff Colleges have been founded, wherethe history of wars is taught as a supplement to themain purpose-the training of staff officers; but thestudy of military history remains superficial, and is

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The Man who Cleared the Wayrarely conducted in a scientific spirit, detached from

traditional loyaltiesand

prejudices. To breathefreely, that spirit needs the atmosphere of a university, where superior rank and uniformity of doctrinedo not exist to check the expansion and expressionof thought.

A.n i l l reception would certainly befall the modern

soldier-student who dared to suggest that the officialdoctrine of an.army was still formulated in the traditional way that Saxe derided when declaring that i tarose from "having blindly adopted maxims, without any examination of the principles on whichthey were founded; . . . our present practice is

nothing more than a passive compliance with received customs, to the grounds of which we areabsolute strangers.'

In seeking to rescue his successors from the bondage of convention he saw that the conditions whichproduced immobility must first be remedied. Andhe saw most, i f not all, of the ways in which toremedy them, although not all his remedies Wereapplied even in the Wars of the Revolution. Someof them waited until far on in the War of I9I4-1918,and others are only now receiving consideration.

Saxe understood, like Napoleon later, that rapidity of movement, security of movement, ease ofmanreuvre, and efficient supply are the primaryconditions required for mobility. And to theseobjects his proposals were directed. In his dictum

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J1ilitary Renaissance of Eighteenth Centurythat 'the whole secret of manreuvres and of com-

bats lies in the legs', he forestalled Napoleon's morefamiliar saying that his victories were Won by thelegs of his soldiers. I t is by no means the onlyepigram that Napoleon appears to have borrowedfrom the writers he studied.

Saxe also saw, like Sherman a century later, but

in contrast to Napoleon and the Napoleonic school,that there is a limit, determined ~ y mobility, towhat one may call the economic size of an army. Andthat the effective strength of an army 'teases to in-crease when its numbers cause a decline in mobility.Sa.xe's ideal army-in view of the conditions of his

day-was one of ust under fifty thousand men, andhe declared that 'a general of parts and experiencecommanding such an army will be able to makeheadway against one of a hundred thousand, formultitudes serve only to perplex and embarrass'.

The same idea of economic size is manifest in his

objection to the practice of fortifying towns, and hispreference for utilizing the 'works of nature, whichI look upon as iniinitely stronger'. Moreover, forti-fied towns, he points out, require an excessivelylarge garrison and mean too many useless mouths tofeed. The inflow of refugees, always an incalculable

quantity, causes their capitulation to hunger longbefore their military resistance power is broken.Saxe advocates that natural barriers should be forti-fied instead. 'Yet I am conscious there is hardly a

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The lvIan who Cleared the H'aysingle person who will concur Vv1.th me, so prevailing

andso

absoluteis

custom.'In dealing with fortifications, their construction,attack and defence, Saxc was distinguished equallyby his mastery of the subject and by his grasp of itsrestricted purpose-his mind transcended the i m i t a ~tions of that earlier age of i e g e ~ w a r f a r e .And his

inventive powers enabled him to produce schemesso ingenious and yet so reasonable that, as he justlyclaims, they would 'diminish that rage for siegeswhich p r e v ~ i l sat present'.

For him, fortification 'was only a means to advan-tageous battle, a sponge to absorb the enemy's force

""ri.th small diversion of his own. With this idea hegave particular attention to field fortification. Hisuse of redoubts, situated to break up the enemy'sattack and embarrass them in pushing forward re-serves, bears a striking likeness to the 'pillboxes' andstrong points that hampered the British advance at

Passchendaele in I917. Equally prophetic was thedisposition of his protected batteries to fire obliquelyto a flank instead of to their front-for these inter-secting rays of enfilade fire formed one of the mostnotable developments of the World War. His re-doubts and his oblique fire were not merely a mat

ter of theory, for at Fontenoy and Lauffeld theBritish troops suffered a foretaste of these moderndevices.

In seeking means to free himselffrom the p r e v a i l ~

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Jlilitmy Renaissance of Eighteenth Centurying immobility Saxe sa'w, first of all, the need for an

instrument of mobility. Art alone couldnot

suffice,unless the artist \vas possessed of a suitable tool withwhich to carve his design. Hence he made the reorganization of the army the basis of his new developments in tactics and strategy. Here he stands outfrom almost all the masters of the ar t of war, who

have been content to use the tools that came totheir hand and have shown an astonJ-shing neglectto make changes that would have doubled theirown effectiveness.

In none is this neglect so marked as in Napoleon,who, despite the vital advantage he drew from

changes that took place just before his rise to power,did practically nothing towards extending thosereforms. He was content to continue with the tactical mechanism-the formations and evolutionsthat he inherited. He was content to leave undeveloped the opportunity ofintroducing new arma

ment and equipment, that might have compensatedthe shrinking quality and quantity of his humanmaterial.

He even disbanded in 1799 the French BalloonCorps formed five years earlier, which in earliestinfancy had rendered invaluable service in theoperations subsequent to the battle of Fleurus,(specially around Gosselies. I f Napoleon had notstifled the babe, there is every likelihood that on itsnventy-first birthday in 1815 i t might have saved

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The jl;[an who Cleared the Wqyhim on that very spot.

I tis

reasonable to suggest that air reconnaissancemight have disclosed to Ney the weakness of PrinceBernard's detachment at Quatre Bras on June15th, and prompted him to seize this key point,gaining an important initial advantage for Napoleon. Even if Ney had missed this opportunity,

he would hardly have wasted so many hours on the16th in passh.i.ty while Wellington's reinforcementswere marching thither. And i f he had capturedQuatre B r ~ sduring the morning, when its capturewas so easy, he would have had no reason in theafternoon to call back d'Erlon from his march to

Ligny. In that case d'Erlon would have been ableto fulfil his mission, of giving the death-blow toBlucher on the field of Ligny, instead of oscillatingineffectively betw"een the two battlefields. But i f heimprobable had come to pass yet a third time, andBlucher had been allowed to make good his retreat

from Ligny, it is more than probable that on themorning of the 17th balloon observation wouldhave shown that he was retreating northwards, noteastwards. Ifso, Grouchy, instead of wandering off'into the blue', would have had every chance ofpreventing Blucher from moving to Wellington's helpat Waterloo, and Wellington could have beencrushed at leisure. Perhaps he might never havereached Waterloo, for he was only able to fightthere on the 18th because he was allowed to slip

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lvfilitary Renaissance of Eighteenth Centuryaway from Quatre Bras on the 17th behind a screen

of cavalry.The mistakes due to an obscure situation, thatruined Napoleon in the Waterloo campaign, formperhaps history's supreme revenge on a man forlack of vision. No man has ever more surely, ormore literally, closed his own eyes. This fatal ex

ample of conservatism was, however, characteristicof Napoleon's general attitude to tl].e question ofarmy organization, and is the more remarkable in"iew of his unrivalled chances of makitig changes.Its particular significance for our present study isthat, by implication, it strengthens any evidence

that Napoleon was indebted to his forerunners forthe ne'\\' ideas that are linked with his name-thathe took, but did not create.

Saxe, in contrast, produced more than the military system could assimilate. The experience of thetwentieth century was needed before the full significance of his proposals appeared. He was typical of histime in seeking guidance from the classics, but hewent to them for inspiration, not merely for imitation. Impressed with the wonderful adaptability andmanreuvrability of the Roman organization underScipio-like tempered steel in its strength and flexibility-Saxe based his system upon it. His infantrywere to be formed in legions, each off our regiments;and each regiment of four 'centuries' with a halfcentury oflight infantry and a half-century of horse.

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The .Man who Cleared the rvcryFor the latter he invented 'a suit of armour, COll

sisting of thin iron plates fixed upon a strong buffskin, the entire weight of which does not exceedthirty pounds'. And he claimed that this was atleast proof against bullets that were not fired pointblank or were not well rammed down. 'By armingyour cavalry in this manner they .vill rush upon the

enemy with irresistible impetuosity. . .

from a con-sciousness of their own security . .. and how canthose whose bodies are quite unguarded be able todefend themselves against others who are, in a manner, invulnerable?' By his argument even more thanby his invention Saxe has claims to a place among

the forefathers of the World War tank. His fullreasons for the revival of armour could hardly beimproved upon, and only the petrol motor waswanted to crown them. He even forestalled theobjection that in these days is raised against the demand for mechanization-'To say that the enemy

will adopt the same measures is to admit the goodness of them; nevertheless they will probably persist in their errors for some time, and submit to berepeatedly defeated, before they will be reconciledto such a change-so reluctant are all nations torelinquish old customs.' Saxe, certainly, possessed a

clear historical sense.Saxe's infantry were 'to be furnished with buck

lers of leather, prepared in vinegar', with which'they may form a kind of parapet in an instant . . .

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J1ilitary Renaissance of Eighteenth Centurytwo of them, the one upon other, being musket

proof'.In

a form suited to the weaponsof

his day,Sa.xe here conceived the type of mobile breastworkwhich the troops of Sherman and Lee became soadept in raising during the American Civil War.

He was, again, long in advance of his time incondemning the 'method of firing by word of com

mand, as it detains the soldier in a constrained position, and prevents his aiming with a!1y exactness'.I t is equally notable that all Saxe's infantry, notmerely his light infantry, were to be a ~ m e dwithbreech-loaders. A century passed before the military ''1"orld was brought to his views. The signifi

cance of that delay is suggested in the verdict of theConfederate General, E. P. Alexander, that 'hadthe Federal infantry been armed from the first witheven the breech-loaders available in r861 the warwould have been terminated within a year' .

The light infantry in Saxe's organization were to

be armed with a breech-loading fowling-piece, andthis equipme'nt was to be as light as possible. They'were to be exercised continuously in jumping, run-ning and 'firing at a mark at three hundred pacesdistance', and competition was to be introduced asa stimulus to their training. In fact, what Saxe pro-

posed was similar to those 'reforms' in the trainingand equipment of nfantry which have been initiatedin the British Army during the past year! So, inprinciple, are his dress-reform proposals.

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The Man who Cleared the WqyAs regards the organization of the infantry regi

ment Saxe foreshadowed the four-company system-which was only adopted in the British Army onthe eve of 19141 Similarly, his line of centuries,with an irregular frontage and intervals betweenthem to facilitate manceuvre, seems to have beeninspired by the same idea that gave birth to the in

filtration tactics of 1918. I t has certainly moreconnection with the most modern formation in achain of combat groups than with the rigid lines ofhis time, so e::tsily disordered, or even the continuous'waves' of 1916.

In the attack, the light infantry were to form an

advanced and dispersed line along the front of theregiment, opening fire when the enemy were somethree hundred paces distant, and at the last momentfalling back into the intervals between the centuries,which would be advancing to the charge. Thisshock, Saxe calculated, would practically coincide

with the cessation of the skirmishers' fire upon thehostile ranks, and thus would allow the enemy notime to repair the inevitable disorder.

If in some of his previous proposals Saxe has appeared the prophet of a distant future, he here becomes unmistakably the parent of the near futureof the tactics that the Armies of the Revolutionemployed. His skirmishers, like theirs, were to fulfilthe role of preparing the attack. They were tobe the agents of that disorganization which must

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Jlilitary Renaissance of Eighteenth Centurybe created before a decision can be obtained.

In the War of the Austrian Succession (1739-48),the Austrians had enlisted bands of wild Croats andPandours, which proved a thorn in the side of theenemy's stiff-ranked regulars, if scarcely less in theirown side-because oftheir undisciplined ways. Thequick perception of Marshal Saxe had grasped the

military value that their unmilitary habits concealed. It led him to add corps oflight troops to hisown army in Flanders; at Fontenoy and at Lauffeldthey rendered valuable service. And tn subsequentreflection on the lessons of this war he evolved thesystem set forth in his Reveries, by which highly

trained skirmishers were to produce the fire thatopened the way for the assaulting troops. Thesewould form eight deep for the charge, to providemomentum and continuity of effort as well as themoral momentum that comes from the feeling ofbeing closely supported. To this extent, purely for

the charge-the charge through, rather than thecharge against-Saxe made a modified use ofFolard's column theory.

Frederick the Great was also led, in the SevenYears War that followed, to raise light troops because of the trouble caused him by the Croats and

Pandours. But he seems to have used them merelyto neutralize the enemy's light troops, and did notutilize their potential value in preparing the assault--although he waged this war after Saxe was dead

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The Man who Cleared the Wtryand the Reveries had been published. He continued

to rely on the fire of his infantry line, ifsupplementedincreasingly by a massing of artillery, and by thisreliance paved the way for the disasters that befeHthe stiff Prussian lines two generations later.

In France, however, Saxe's system survived, although temporarily submerged by a wave of Prus

sian imitation after 1763. Its emergence was helpedby the enthusia,sm for light infantry acquired byofficers who had taken part in the American War ofIndependence and had seen the success of colonialguerillas against the drill-deadened British regulars,then suffering from tactical 'Prussianism' at its most

acute stage. The recovery oflight infantry was alsohelped, somewhat ironically, by the popular interest caused from 1774 onwards by Mesnil-Durand'stheories; for his immensely deep battalion columns,if themselves clumsy and unarticulated, were to belinked together by thick chains of skirmishers. Andwhile Guibert opposed such columns as a fallacioustheory, he fully accepted the value of trainedskirmishers.

But it was the French Revolution that completedthe process, and so suddenly, that i t was carriedtoo far. The eager but ill-disciplined troops of theRevolutionary armies tended to break loose fromtheir formations as soon as the advance began, andto merge with the skirmishing line, so that the wholebecame a dense swarm. Density and impetuosity

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.Military Renaissance i f Eighteenth Centurymarred the effect of these swarm tactics, for they

made impossible the cool deliberation thatis

theessence of skirmishing tactics. After 1796 there wasan improvement, and for a time the skirmisherswere effectively used to pave the way for the as-saulting columns which delivered 'the cheque forpayment'. But as the toll of the Napoleonic Wars

drained the resources of France , the supply of skilledskirmishers dwindled, and the repla,cements were nolonger adequately trained.

Henceforth the role of preparationpassed to thefield artillery. That this new method was the fruitof necessity rather than of Napoleon's perceptiveness is suggested by the fact that it did not reallyripen untill8og,althoughNapoleon was an artilleryman. In adopting it Napoleon was influenced bythe example of Frederick, as well as by the teachingofGuibert and du Teil, but it is possible that he alsoremembered the proposals of Saxe.

For besides advocating lighter gunS-I 6-poundersinstead of 24-pounders-Saxe had invented an infantry-accompanying weapon intended to reinforcethe fire of skirmishers in preparing the assault.'Every century is to be furnished with a piece ofordnance of my own invention, called an amusette,which carries over four thousand paces with extremevelocity . . . is drawn and worked with ease by twoor three men, carries a half-pound ball, and is madewith a convenience to hold a thousand.' 'Before an

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The kfan who Cleared the f{lqyengagement these amusettes are to be advanced in

front along with the light infantry.' They mightalso 'on occasion' be massed for fire from any commanding feature. Whatever the connection of thisidea with the Napoleonic practice, i t claims a dueplace in the evolution of the artillery preparation,and is still more clearly the prototype of modern

light machine-gun tactics.The significan.ce of Saxe's legion itself, however,

is greater than that of its parts. For here in embryo,'I,'e see the 'divisional system'-the organization ofthe army into permanently organized divisionscapable of moving and acting independently. I t

meant that an army grew limbs, limbs which it coulduse to grip the enemy at one point while it struckhim elsewhere. Through this, above all, strategywas to be revolutionized in the Wars of the Revolution and the Empire.

At the end of the seventeenth century Luxem

bourg had begun the practice of detaching a strongvanguard to seize and hold river crossings ahead ofhis main body. Marlborough used such a vanguard before Oudenarde. In the same War of theSpanish Succession, Villars in Flanders and Berwickin the Alps carried the practice a stage further-by

distributing their armies, when on the defence, inthree closely linked groups that could quickly concentrate if anyone of them V-las attacked.

But Saxe went much further in the War of the

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,Military Renaissance i f Eighteenth CenturyAustrian Succession. He covered his communica

tions and his flanks by 'divisions' detached fromAntwerp to Liege and along the Meuse. Two infantry brigades, \',ith artillery, were organized as adivision throughout a season's campaign, while twoof these divisions with one of cavalry formed anarmy corps; and he developed the art of combining

the action of these separate formations. His legionwas undoubtedly intended to perpetuate this system,for he remarks that ' i f the commander-in-chief ofan army wants to seize some post; t6 obstruct theenemy in their project', or similar enterprise, 'hehas only to detach some particular legion on it'Vl


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The Man who Cleared the Wqyinvariable yet ever-varied opening move to upset

the enemy commander's mental balance and dislocate his dispositions by some subtle surprise, basedon a skilful use of the ground. And this is always aprelude to a swift concentration of strength againstweakness, to crush some fraction of the enemy'sarmy which he has temporarily isolated by his dis

tracting moves. In some cases he would bait a trapfor the enemy on one flank and follow i t with a decisive manceuvre against their other flank, or, betterstill, against their rear. In other cases, especiallywhere he can use a river or stream for his ownsecurity, he would threaten the enemy on a wide

front by separate divisions to pave the way for asuddenly unveiled concentration against a weaklink in their front.

One finds here the basic ideas that governed N apoIeon's combinations, mingled with a Hannibalicguile. IfSaxe, hampered by the organic limitations

of his time, fails to forecast the application of thesesurprise concentrations and sudden reshuffiings offorce to the wider scaie of space-the theatre of warscale-in which Napoleon employed them, thetransition was a relatively simple step when the conditions made it feasible. I f Napoleon executed these

manreuvres with a speed that Saxe can hardly haveimagined, Saxe did not fail to think out practicalmeans to give his legions a strategic mobility equalto their tactical. In his day the rate of march was

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Military Renaissance of Eighteenth Centuryhampered not only by cumbrous formations and a

complicated drill, but by the fact that troops didnot keep step in time. Saxe found an unusual yetpertinent derivation of the word 'tactics', and, suggesting that his contemporaries 'were absurd toimagine that martial music was invented by theGreeks and Romans for no other purpose than to

confound their senses', argued that 'the way to obviate the inconveniences of the march' was 'to marchin cadence'. He gave point to the proposal by reminding them that people could 'dance together duringa 'whole night, even with pleasure; yet deprive themof music and the most indefatigable will not be able

to bear i t for two hours' .To remove the greater hindrance to mobility

caused by the magazine-system of supply, Saxe proposed a system of company transport and messingwhich accords with modern practice. He also proposed that on long-range marches cattle should be

driven along with the army and that biscuit shouldbe used instead of bread-many promising plans ofcampaign were consumed in the ovens to which, asto stakes, the eighteenth-century armies werechained. As for Saxe's measures, they were exploited a century later by Sherman's army on itsmarch through Georgia and the Carolinas-thegreatest march ever made in modern times throughan enemy country.

The conclusion ofSaxe's Reveries is worthy of this

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The l11an wlw Cleared the JtVaymost original man, for in it he turns from )'lars to

Venus, and offers a prophetic proposal for companionate marriage. I t is ,vorthy of a man \",hosefather had three hundred and fifty-four illegitimatechildren, and 'who himself contributed notably tothe propagation of the species as 'well as to itsdestruction.

But, unlike his father, Maunce of Saxony oweshis fame to his propagation of hought. His influencehas been obscured, and was undoubtedly diminished, by t ~ e spectacular successes that Fredenckachieved so soon after his death-victories that forall their brilliance brought Frederick to the verge of

ruin and cast the shadow of bankruptcy over astrategy that, in its pursuit of decisive battle, lostsight of the goal of war. Great as an artist of war, iftoo inclined towards 'art for art's sake', Frederickwas not comparable to Saxe as a creative militarythinker. Nor can his influence on military evolutioncompare with Sa..'Ce's. I t is an irony of history thathis reputation should have overshadowed Saxe 'sand also a tragedy for nations.

But in France at least, Sa..'Ce's influence is clearlytraceable in the events of half a century later. Notmerely that of his ideas, but of his spiri t-of scientific inquiry. By his explosive criticism, detonatedfrom so powerful a source, he cracked the casing ofprofessional convention, making it possible for morehumble students to express their thoughts and de-

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Jlilitary Renaissance of Eighteenth Century"clop a critical examination of the methods of war-

fare. Thus to him may be traced the outpouring ofthought which followed in the next generation andbecame more clearly the source of Napoleon'sprofit.

Sa:'l:e cleared the way for those great changes towhich, as we shall see, men like Bourcet and

Guibert paved the way.

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C H A P T E R II

Prrijection

The 1l1ol,1ementthat created .Napoleon.

T'iNO names stand out in the history Ofmilita,ry

thought during the second half of the eigh-teenth century-Bourcet and Guibert. They standin the direct line of Napoleon's military heredity,and their influence on the evolution of the Napoleonic system of war is unmistakable.

Their own heredity, as well as the conditions oftheir time, hampered them in translating theirideas into action at the time. But as they bothpossessed the gift of expressing those ideas on paputhey were able to can:e a channel that carried theirthought far beyond the limits of their own militarycareers. Those careers, nevertheless, had been farfrom insignificant, especiallyBourcet's,even thoughfate compelled him to control campaigns under thecloak of another's authority.

I

The Organizer of DispersionPierre de Bourcet has just claims to be consideredthe greatest of chiefs of staff. He was certainly the

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The lYfOl)L?ment that created Napoleonmost universal military adviser. There was scarcely

a commander of his timc, in want ofa plan of cam-paign, who did not scek Bourcet's guidance. AsSpenscr \rilkinson remarks- 'on every occasionwhen an important decision had to be made Bour-cet would write a memorandum in which he ana-lysed the situation and set forth in detail, with full

explanations and reasons, the course which seemedto him best. In very many cases his svggestions wereadopted and 'were usually justified by success, andwhen they were rejected the results were seldomfortunate.

Bourcet was born on March 1st, 1700, the son of

an officer who had distinguished himself as captainof a free company during earlier Alpine campaigns.His own birthplace was in the Alps, at Usseaux,and in the Alps he carved not only his fortune buthis memorial legacy. Destined for the Law, hethrew up his studies against his father's ,"\'ish and

went to the wars. Mter serving in the Pyrenees as avolunteer he became an officer when twenty, andafter eight years in the infantry transferred to theengineers. Stationed at B r i a n ~ o n ,near his home,he had a prolonged opportunity to study local geo-graphy in the Italian campaigns of 1734 and1735. His failure to be born in the high nobilitybarred his way to actual command, but his in-herited and acquired knowledge of the High Alpsopened a discreet path to his talents.

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The Organizer of DispersionIn 1742 Don Philip's Spanish army, which had

passed through France to attempt a passage intoItaly, besought the aid of a French army. TheFrench could not spare any troops, but they lentDon Philip a brain instead. Bourcet, then servingas Chief Engineer to Maillebois' army in the German theatre, although in rank only a seconded cap

tain, was despatched secretly as adviser to the actualSpanish comm.ander, de Glimes-'who proved a refractory and nerveless pupil. His ineptitude led tohis supersession by La Mina, who, in the followingyear, not only adopted Bourcet's line of ad,"ance,but made him his quartermaster-general, or chief

staff officer.Bourcet thereupon drew up a plan by which the

army was to advance in three columns, t"wo on Chianale by converging passes, while the third loosenedthe resistance by a detour and descent on to theenemy's rear. But La 11ina discarded the third

column both to save time and because he feared therisk of dispersing his force. His consequent repulse,after successfully crossing the mountains, before theenemy entrenchments that barred the valley, and hisenforced retirement again into France, formed a lesson not merely that 'more haste means less speed',but that calculated dispersion is often the only wayto effective concentration. For obvious concentration of force simplifies the task of an opponent inconcentrating to stop you.

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The lvfovement that created NapoleonThe mountains, which offered a defender such

liberal scope to block the way, had taught Bourcetthis vital truth. And by freeing his mind from theconventions of his age, they had led him to perceivethe true theory of concentration that was his legacyto Napoleon. In the plains, where most campaignstook place, armies still by custom moved and fought

as undivided wholes. In the mountains separationwas enforced as the condition of success . .In 1744 a combined move along h ~Riviera route

was arranged by the Spanish and French, whosearmy was placed under the Prince of Conti. Bourcet was attached to him, nominally as assistant

quartermaster-general, and, advising against theRiviera route, drew up a plan for the invasion ofPiedmont, which was adopted. Mter the openingmove upon Nice, which he saw would serve as adistraction, the forces were to be switched backnorth to Mont Dauphin, which would serve as an

ideal jumping-off point for three alternative routes.We may infer that Bourcet was the author of a

most significant memorandum which Conti sentback to Paris. Mter pointing out the key importance of Cuneo, it remarked that this point alsooffered Charles Emanuel, with the Piedmontese, acentral position from which he could strike in anydirection. 'Accordingly the first thing is to inducehim to move his army away from Cuneo. The planfor effecting that is to threaten him at all other

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The Organizer if Dispersionpoints of his position . . . especially the Dora

Riparia, whichis

the farthest away.This will

makehim dizJide his forces and then we can take advantage of hegeographical conditions to reunite our own at the criticalpoint before he can unite his.'

I emphasize the last sentence. For here we havethe essence of the Napoleonic method, even to the

very word 'reunite' which he used to express hisform of concentration, which followed a preliminarydispersion to induce the enemy to disperse theirconcentration.

Bourcet was careful to devise measures to meetthe possibility that the enemy, like\\i.se, 'could play

the shuttle'. He himself arranged the' moves bywhich the army was brought back from Nice to theDurance, seventy-five miles of the march being overnarrow mule tracks-a masterly piece of staff work.

Then in a letter he outlined the next move- ' I t isimpossible that the King of Sardinia can be in force

everywhere; one of our corps is bound to getthrough, in which case they can all be united at thesame point in a short time and take advantage of thegap made by the corps which will have penetratedhis line.' We might be reading an exposition of theinfiltration method 'introduced' by the Germans towards the end of the World War-certainly nobetter one could be composed-with only the difference that in I744 mountain ridges took the place ofm a c h i n e ~ g u nnests in I918.

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The Movement that created NapoleonThe boldness of Bourcet's conceptions is seen in

the fact that a combined army of 35,000, organizedin nine divisions, fanned out along a seventy-milefront for the opening moves.

His chieffcar was that the Spanish might mar theplan by some foolish action. I t was too well justified.By pushing forward his advanced guards prema

turely towards Cuneo, La Mina gave away thedesign. I t was now too late to attempt the DoraRiparia distraction in the far north.

But Bourcct's cardinal principle-one ofhis mostvaluable contributions to the theory of war-wasthat ca plan ought to have several branches'. 'One

should study the possible courses in the light of theobstacles that have to be overcome, of the inconveniences or advantages that will result from thesuccess of each branch, and, after taking account ofthe more likely objections, decide on the part whichcan lead to the greatest advantages, while employing

diversions and all else that one can do to misleadthe enemy and make him imagine that the maineffort is coming at some other part. And in case allthese diversions, counter-marches or other rusesfail of their purpose-to hide the real aim-onemust be ready to profit by a second or third

branch of the plan without giving one's enemy timeto consider it.' His own plan here had providedfor such a contingency, and the two northerlydivisions were switched back immediately to develop

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The Organizer of Dispersiona new line of advance nearer the centre of the arc.

Masterly staffwork, for which Bourcet was responsible, brought the rune divisions over the passeswithout a hitch. They were distributed in fourgroups, over a twenty-mile stretch. The northerngroup 'INas to descend and demonstrate in VaraitaValley, while its neighbour pushed down the Maira

Valley and cut the enemy's communications. Thethird group (of three divisions) was to push eastdown the Stura Valley, while a concealed fourthgroup coming from the south was to cross by unlikely passes and descend in rear of the Barricades,a precipitous defile impregnable by frontal attack.

The move was triumphantly successful, and theonly serious loss was due to the folly of the northerncolumn commander who insisted on converting hisfeint into a frontal attack on the ridge of Pietralunga. The feat of his troops in capturing it, withthe aid of mist, attracted far more applause inFrance than the skill with which the enemy's line asa whole had been inexpensively forced.

One may note that in 1794 Napoleon, then onthe staff of the 'Anny ofItaly', prepared a plan forthe capture of the Barricades which was similar toBourcet's, but with the addition of an extra moveon to the enemy's rear by a route not available toBourcet.

I have given the outlines of this 1744 campaignbecause in it Bourcet provided a practical example

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The A10vement that created Napoleonof those principles which he expounded in later

yearsas

a teacher of war. He showed in thatr a c ~

tice not only the value of a 'plan with branches', andhow opposition could be paralysed by distraction,but also how wide distribution could be reconciledwith security. For he took care to choose lines ofadvance that would give his divisions lateral lines of

concentration, fulfillinghis

own precept that suchdistribution in 'small parcels' is 'safo. provided thatthe general who adopts it makes such arrangementsthat he can reunite his forces the moment it becomesnecessary' .

Moreover, spreading wide his columns at the u t ~

set, he drew in the netas

he drew nearer the enemy,with the aim of closing i t round an isolated part ofthem. Here again we see the future method thatbrought Napoleon such sweeping results.

But in I744 Bourcet, in a subordinate position,had to watch the completion of his move being

ruined byi n t e r ~ a 1 l i e d

dissensions, and the fruits ofthe brilliant initial success slipping away.The following year Marshal de Maillebois was

sent to replace Conti in charge of the combinedarmy. Bourcet remained. This time the Rivieraroute was chosen, helped by a northerly diversion

down the Dora Riparia. Maillebois' plan was tostrike north into Piedmont from the Genoese R i v i ~era, separate the Piedmontese from the Austrians,and roll the former back n o r t h ~ w e s ton to Turin)

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The Organizer of Dispersionforcing them to capitulate. He would then open

shorter communications by the Dora Riparia andturn against the Austrians, with the aim of drivingthem out of the Milanese, back into the Tyrol.

Based on an acute exploitation of the psychologyof allies and the nature of the country, this plan isalmost identical in design, and underlying idea,

with Napoleon's first campaign of 1796-10ng r e ~garded as his Illost brilliant conception. And weknow that he had studied Pezay's documented history ofMaillebois' campaign; indeed, his first act onhearing of his appointment to command the 'ArmyofItaly' 'was to write to Paris asking for a copy to be

scnt off to him. He was thus able not only to reproduce it half a century later, but to avoid such slipsas Maillebois had made in executing the original.And, in particular, the promptness with whichNapoleon opened a new line of communications bythe Dora Riparia suggests his debt to Bourcet, ",,ho

in his theory laid stress on this idea of changing theline of communications) which Napoleon immortalized as his own.

In 1745 Bourcet's staff work once more smoothedthe difficulties of the opening movement, and theFranco-Spanish army arrived safely on the coastbetween Albenga and Savona. Thence it struck inland on a wide front through the hills towards Carcare and Dego, and pressed on beyond to Acqui.But Franco-Spanish friction spoilt the chance of

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The J.l1ovement that created Napoleonsevering the opposing allied combination, and

.\Iaillcbois was unwi.llingly led to advance on Alessandria without first taking the entrenched camp ofCcva on his western flank.

Nevertheless, the opportunity was redeemed, andthe danger temporarily removed by a masterpieceof grand tactics. A sudden move east, as if to invade

the 1\-filanese, drew off the Austrians and, by arapid turn-about, Maillebois re-Qoncentrated hisforces against the now isolated Piedmontese army.This was strongly posted behind the Tanaro. ButBourcet, reconnoitring, discovered the fords by aclever ruse. And next morning at dawn a wide

fronted attack in five columns took the Piedmonteseby surprise, broke through their left centre, andturned their flank at Bassignana, while their rightwas immobilized. The thrust was ably designed toseparate them completely from their returning allies,but the Franco-Spanish columns failed to push onas Bourcet intended, and the allies were allowedto reunite.

Thenceforward the campaign flagged, and in theautumn, although the conquest of Piedmont was uncompleted, the Spanish despite Maillebois' protestsmarched off to seize Milan. And Maillebois' appealsto Paris for fresh troops fell on deaf ears, all reinforcements being sent to Flanders. Thus in I 746 hewas too weak to compel the Piedmontese to theseparate peace that had been in sight. To make

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The Organizer of Dispersionmatters worse Louis XV, as a gesture of concilia

tion, placed Maillebois under the orders of DonPhilip, and thus made him the tool of he Spaniards'hazardous political designs. After a disastrouslymuddled battle at Piacenza the combined army wastrapped between the Austrians and the Piedmontese,who placed themselves across its communications.

From this peril it was extricated by Bourcet's insight in attemnting the most audacious, and soleast expected, way out. As the jaws of the trap wereclosing on the Franco-Spanish army, it made anight march south to the Po, where the advancedguard was ferried across to block the approaches on

both flanks while the rest of the army was beingbrought across a bridge of boats. The skilfullyjudged destruction of roads and bridges, as well ascareful piqueting of the heights, helped to ward offdanger during the long retreat, by stages, to theGenoese Riviera and then to Nice. There Maillebois proposed to stand and Bourcet prepared a planof active defence, using a central position for suddenstrokes at the superior enemy forces on the rim. Butthe Spaniards were as resolute in retirement as theyhad been irresolute in the advance, and the armywent back into Provence.

As a sop to the Spaniards, Maillebois was sacrificedand replaced by Marshal Belle-Isle, who had soonto meet a powerful enemy invasion of Provence. Hethrew it back by a counter-offensive in which we

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The J.v[ovement that created Napoleoncan recognize the guiding hand of Bourcet-by the

way that, while a detachment moved towards Cannesas a frontal threat, three widely separated forcesclosed in upon the enemy's flank and rear nearGrasse, so that by the time they were within reach ofthe enemy they were within supporting distance ofeach other.

The next step of the reinforced armies was amove to the relief of Genoa. La. Mina, again incommand of the Spanish, wished the whole to pushdirect along the coast. Bourcet was strongly againstit, and B e l l e ~ I s l eaccepted his arguments as well ashis alternative proposal for a wide indirect approach- b y a move 170 Iniles north to Brian


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The Organizer of Dispersionbut made a frontal attack on the Assietta position

which ended in a disastrous repulse. The news ofitparalysed the main army on the Riviera, and gaveCharles Emanuel time to reunite with the Austrians.They then invested Ventimiglia and establishedthemselves in an almost impregnable position.

But Bourcet once more brought his brain to the

rescue and devised a plan, based on his past study ofthe ground, by which a weak spot was found thatopened the way to their rear, and thus relievedVentimiglia. In his despatch to Louis, Belle-Islebegged that Bourcet might be made a brigadiergeneral in reward, saying- 'Re has been the soul of

all that we have accomplished.' Re might haveadded-since 1744.

This feat closed the campaign of 174- 7, and earlythe next year peace was made. Bourcet, however,received his promotion and was soon afterwardsmade director-general offortifications in Dauphine,

where he threw himselfinto the task of mapping thefrontier.

Nine years passed before the Seven Years War,an interval that allowed Bourcet to digest the lessons of his experience. But he was still eager tolearn, while his opportunities became enlarged byhis fame, if his pupils did not always prove apt.Thus in the campaign of 1757 he accompanied thedouble-headed army of the allies under the Princede Soubise and the Prince of Sa.xe-Hildburghausen,

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The l'vfovement that created Napoleonbeing given command of he artillery and engineers.

It "was on Bourcet's advice that the army took upthe ridge position near Branderode which gave it aninitial advantage and discomfited Frederick's planof attack. I t was apparently Bourcet also who, whenHildburghausen insisted on taking the offensive,suggested the next move to a position that would

have cut Frederick offfrom his source of supplies onthe Saale. It meant a flank march in face of theenemy, but the danger ofinterference was providedagainst by a flank guard. Unfortunately whenFrederick moved to head off the allied army, Hildburghausen jumped to the conclusion that he was

running a"'Nay, and by impetuously pushing in pursuit exposed himself to Frederick's decisive counterstroke.

At the end of 1758, when the French army wentinto 'winter quarters on the Main near Frankfort,Soubise ,vas replaced by Marshal de Broglie, and

for him Bourcet prepared a defensive plan similar inprinciple to those he had drawn up for Mailleboisand Belle-Isle in the Maritime Alps. The army wasquartered in groups behind a thirty-mile-widescreen, so that its fractions could be quickly concentrated in one offour possible positions) according tothe direction of the enemy's advance.

When the Anglo-Hanoverian army under PrinceFerdinand advanced in the spring, Broglie promptlymoved to the right flank position at Bergen, which

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The Organizer of Dispersionwas so skilfully sited on a ridge that Ferdinand could

only attack with part of his army, while a fraction ofthe French sufficed to check this. The remainder,held in reserve and concealed behind woods on theflank, then emerged to deliver a counterstroke thatdecided the issue.

That winter, of 1759-60, Broglie was made

commander-in-chief. And he took the opportunityto issue regulatiQns by which the army, infantry andcavalry, was organized in permanent divisions forthe campaign. Each division formed a separatecolumn on the march, and when within close reachof the enemy was itself formed into two or more

columns, so that it took less than half an hour todeploy into line of battle.

Broglie had been a former lieutenant of Saxe inFlanders, and his new organization came two yearsafter the posthumous publication of the Reveries, sothat it is impossible to say whether, in making this

epoch-making change, he was more influenced bySaxe's 'legion' or by Bourcet's mountain-warfarepractice.

The change certainly made an immediate andimmense improvement in the rate of movement, aswell as in the speed of deployment. In addition, hethrew out strong detachments like telescopic arms,at some distance, to cover his own flanks during themarch and later to turn the enemy's flanks.

In the campaign that followed, Ferdinand was re-E 65


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The Organizer of Dispersionwas so skilfully sited on a ridge that Ferdinand could

only attack with part of his army, while a fraction ofthe French sufficed to check this. The remainder,held in reserve and concealed behind woods on theflank, then emerged to deliver a counterstroke thatdecided the issue.

That \vinter, of 1759-60, BrogUe was made

commander-in-chief. And he took the opportunityto issue regulatiQns by which the army, infantry andcavalry, was organized in permanent divisions forthe campaign. Each division formed a separatecolumn on the march, and when within close reachof the enemy was itself formed into two or more

columns, so that i t took less than half an hour todeploy into line of battle.

Broglie had been a former lieutenant of Saxe inFlanders, and his new organization came two yearsafter the posthumous pUblication of the Reveries, sothat it is impossible to say whether, in making this

epoch-making change, he was more influenced bySaxe's 'legion' or by Bourcet's mountain-warfarepractice.

The change certainly made an immediate andimmense improvement in the rate of movement, aswell as in the speed of deployment. In addition, hethrew out strong detachments like telescopic arms,at some distance, to cover his own flanks during themarch and later to turn the enemy's flanks.

In the campaign that followed, Ferdinand was re-E 65


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The li10vement that created Napoleonpeatedly compelled to fall back, sometimes owing

merely to Broglie's \vide front which threatened toenvelop him, at other times by sudden nightmarches which made his position untenable. I t wasNapoleonic warfare in embryo; indeed, in all butthe decisive touch. Broglie's moves lacked the sustained impetus which would have enabled him to

crush the foe he had outmanreuvred.Partly this was because of enf


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Tlze Organizer i f Dispersionwhich, like blobs of quicksilver, would suddenlyflow

together, and coagulate on striking an obstacle.The comparison is the more apt because Napoleon's divisions had a tactical impetus that couldnot be expected of Broglie's, only just beginning tofree themselves from stiff-drilled formalism. Wemust remember, too, that when Napoleon appeared

on the scene he found the French army possessed ofmobile field aJ;tillery to support that impetus,whereas in the middle of the eighteenth century itonly existed in Saxe's prophetic imagination.

In the Alps, Bourcet had, as we have seen, createdthe system of holding the divisions riunies, of extend

ing and closing them in, according to the situation.In the Alps, half a century later, Napoleon wouldemploy the same system. And later, having learntnot only its value but its secret, he would apply it inthe plains. He was able to do this with securitythrough the mobility he infused into them. Bourcet,as his advice to Broglie shows, had realized the possibility of applying his system in the plains, but theconditions no less than the conventions of his timeprevented his full development of it there.

In 176'2 Bourcet, now promoted lieutenantgeneral, was called to Versailles by the Due deChoiseul to take charge of the correspondence withthe army then operating against Portugal under thenew Franco-Spanish compact. Bourcet had neverseen the country, but his map-sense and creative

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The Movement that created Napoleonimagination were so highly developed that the

Minister's letters of instruction drew from thePrince de Beauveau the astonished comment- 'Youhave at your side a devil or an angel who enablesyou to divine all our positions.'

After the war, in 1764, Choiseul established aschool for staff officers, at Grenoble, and appointed

Bourcet as director. In this post he remained forseven years, the only interlude beipg in 1769 whenhe acted as adviser to the Comte de Vaux, who con-quered Corsica in a brief campaign that was endedby the decisive defeat ofPaoli's forces at Pontenovo.With this fresh laurel Bourcet returned to his teach-

ing and, with the experience of over twenty cam-paigns behind him, devoted himself to preparingthe minds ofthe men of the future. For them he setforth his gospel in a book which he called Principes dela guerre de montagnes, a title which hardly does justiceto the wider sweep of his thought. Although manu-script copies were circulated, the book was notprinted, being regarded, presumably, as a con-fidential repository of wisdom to which only Frenchofficers should have access.

Owing to this, i f still more to the fact that in ap-pearance his teaching was mainly related to war onthe Alpine frontier, its theory and past practice,Bourcet was a channel of thought that flowed apartfrom the main stream-until the young NapoleonBonaparte dropped into the channel, giving i t a

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The Organizer of Dispersiontorrential force that broke down all barriers and

carried Bourcet's thought into practice over thelength and breadth of Europe. Bourcet himself diedin 1780, being then almost blind from ceaseless studyof his beloved maps.

2. The Prophet of Mobiliry

The main strel1m, given a new direction by Saxe,flowed on through Guibert. A much younger manthan Bourcet, he made a much wider channel.While Bourcet influenced the minds of generals,Guibert influenced the minds of the military world

as a whole, including generals and including foreignarmies. For his Essai general de tactique was publishedin many editions, and translated even into Persian.Indeed, his ideas carried further still, beyond themilitary world and into the salons. I t was an agewhen society not only found pleasure in intellectual

conversation, but when its members regarded waras a sufficiently serious subject to be worthy of in-telligent discussion.

Again, while Bourcet influenced thought by dis-creet memoranda, Guibert flung discretion as wellas his ideas to the winds. The shock he administered

to conventional opinion did much to open the wayfor his thought to take effect, and the thought ofothers as well. One may doubt whether the fullapplication ofBourcet's ideas would ever have been

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The lv1ol)ement that created Napoleonpossible 'without Guibert to break open the sealed

doors of the military mind.Looking back, it may seem astonishing that thetemperate common sense of his military proposalsshould havc provoked such floods of counter criti-c i ~ m ,for by subsequcnt historians his technicalviews have been well described as 'enlightened con-

servatism'. But the reaction to his broader viewsis

less surprising. For he saw that, b ~ f o r ehis militaryideas could be fulfilled with real effect, a thoroughchange of spirit was necessary in the army, and con-sequently in the society upon which it was based.This perception came the more naturally to him

because he belonged to a generation fermenting'with new social ideas.

Born in 1743, he had his outlook determined andhis life's work foreshadowed by his earliest years. Forhis father, the Comte de Guibert, was not merely aprofessional soldier, but an ardent military student.

And h

Documents

Liddell Hart - The Ghost of Napoleon