who knew him as Vater Fritz, and bandied rough jokes with him. “The
Austrians are three to one of us, and stoutly entrenched,” said the
king, riding the outposts before Leuthen. “And were the devil in
front and all around them, we’ll hustle them out, only thou lead us
on!” answered a brawny grenadier. “Good-night, Fritz.” He gained such
personal love from his men that it seems to have been transmitted as a
heritage of the Hohenzollerns. He spurred his men to the most heroic
efforts, the most extraordinary feats of daring and endurance. As the
complement to this quality, he infused in his enemies a dread of his
presence. He utilized the mistakes they made and led them into still
others, less from any system than by doing the right thing at the right
moment. Strict rules aid only the minds whose conceptions are not
clear, and whose execution lacks promptness. Rules were as nothing to
Frederick. He observed them, not because they were rules, but because
they were grounded on truths which his own mind grasped without them.
He broke them when there was distinct gain in so doing. His operations
against six armies surrounding him was based on his own maxim, that
“Whoso attempts to defend everything runs danger of losing everything,”
and he turned from one to the other, risking much to gain much. This
idea of Frederick’s was a novel one in his century, whose warfare
consisted in an attempt to protect and hold everything by fortresses
and partial detachments. In working out this idea he is unapproached.
Frederick never allowed his enemies to carry out their own plans.
His movements imposed limitations upon them. He impressed his own
personality on every campaign. To carry his victuals with him enabled
him to outmanœuvre them, for his enemies relied exclusively on
magazines established beforehand. He could select his routes according
to the exigencies of the moment, while they must keep within reach of
their depots.
Tactically, Frederick stands highest of all soldiers. Strategically he
was less great. In strategic movements, his brother, Prince Henry,
did occasional work worthy to be placed beside the king’s. Tactically,
no one could approach him. His method of handling the three arms was
perfect.
Gustavus Adolphus had given new impulse to systematic, intelligent war.
But what he did was not understood. His imitators jumbled the old and
new systems. They placed too much reliance on fortresses and magazines,
and on natural and artificial obstacles; they made strained efforts
to threaten the enemy’s communications; they manœuvred for the mere
sake of doing something and apart from any general plan; they avoided
decisive movements and battles.
Frederick, by making his armies less dependent on magazines, acquired
a freer, bolder, and more rapid style. The allies aimed to parcel out
Prussia. Frederick met them with decision. Surrounded on all sides
by overwhelming numbers, he was compelled to defend himself by hard
knocks. And his individual equipment as well as the discipline of his
army enabled him to do this with unequalled brilliancy. In all history
there is no such series of tactical feats as Frederick’s.
Each captain must be weighed by the conditions under which he worked.
We cannot try Alexander by the standard of Napoleon. While Napoleon’s
battle tactics have something stupendous in their magnificence,
Frederick’s battles, in view of numbers and difficulties, are
distinctly finer. Frederick’s decisiveness aroused fresh interest in
battle. Manœuvres now sought battle as an object, while sieges became
fewer and of small moment.
All Europe was agog at Frederick’s successes, but no one understood
them. Lloyd alone saw below the surface. As Gustavus had been
misinterpreted, so now Frederick. Some imitated his minutiæ down to the
pig-tails of his grenadiers. Some saw the cure-all of war in operations
against the enemy’s flanks and rear. Some saw in detachments, some in
concentration, the trick of the king. Only Lloyd recognized that it all
lay in the magnificent personality of the king himself, that there was
no secret, no set rule, no legerdemain, but that here again was one of
the world’s great captains. The imitators of Frederick caught but the
letter. The spirit they could not catch. Until two generations more had
passed, and Lloyd and Jomini had put in printed form what Frederick and
Napoleon did, the world could not guess the riddle.
His own fortresses were of importance to Frederick because his enemy
respected them. But he paid small heed to the enemy’s. He could strike
him so much harder by battle, that he never frittered away his time
on sieges, except as a means to an end. The allies clung to their
fortified positions. Frederick despised them, and showed the world that
his gallant Prussians could take them by assault.
This period, then, is distinguished for the revival of battles, and of
operations looking towards battle. Of these Frederick was the author.
Battles in the Seven Years’ War were not haphazard. Each had its
purpose. Pursuit had, however, not yet been made effective so to glean
the utmost from victory. No single battle in this period had remarkable
results. Frederick’s battles were generally fought to prevent some
particular enemy from penetrating too far into the dominions of
Prussia. In this they were uniformly successful. But in the sense of
Napoleon’s battles they were not decisive. The superior decisiveness
of Napoleon’s lay in the strategic conditions and in his superiority
of forces. No battles--as battles--could be more thoroughly fought out
than Frederick’s; no victories more brilliant.
Frederick not only showed Europe what speed and decision can do in
war, but he made many minor improvements in drill, discipline, and
battle-tactics. He introduced horse-artillery. His giving scope to such
men as Seydlitz and Ziethen made the Prussian cavalry a model for all
time. He demonstrated that armies can march and operate continuously,
with little rest, and without regard to seasons. Light troops grew in
efficiency. War put on an aspect of energetic purpose, but without the
ruthless barbarity of the Thirty Years’ War.
No doubt Napoleon, at his best, was the greater soldier. But Napoleon
had Frederick’s example before him, as well as the lessons of all other
great captains by heart. Napoleon’s motive was aggressive; Frederick’s,
pure defence. Hence partly the larger method. But Frederick in trial or
disaster was unspeakably greater than Napoleon, both as soldier and man.
In the forty-six years of his reign Frederick added sixty per cent.
to the Prussian dominion, doubled its population, put seventy million
thalers in its treasury, and created two hundred thousand of the best
troops in existence. Prussia had been a small state, which the powers
of Europe united to parcel out. He left it a great state, which all
Europe respected, and planted in it the seed which has raised its kings
to be emperors of Germany. This result is in marked contrast to what
Napoleon’s wars did for France.
Whoever, under the sumptuous dome of the Invalides, has gazed down
upon the splendid sarcophagus of Napoleon, and has stepped within the
dim and narrow vault of the plain old garrison church at Potsdam,
where stand the simple metal coffins of Frederick the Great and of
his father, must have felt that in the latter shrine, rather than the
other, he has stood in the presence of the ashes of a king.
Whatever may be said of Frederick’s personal method of government, or
of the true Hohenzollern theory that Prussia belonged to him as an
heritage to make or to mar as he saw fit, it cannot be denied that he
was true to the spirit of his own verses, penned in the days of his
direst distress:--
“Pour moi, menacé du naufrage,
Je dois, en affrontant l’orage,
Penser, vivre et mourir en Roi.”
LECTURE VI.
NAPOLEON.
The career of Napoleon Bonaparte is so near to our own times and so
commonly familiar, that it is not essential to describe any of those
operations which were, within the memory of some men yet living, the
wonder and dread of Europe. In certain respects Napoleon was the
greatest of all soldiers. He had, to be sure, the history of other
great captains to profit by; he had not to invent; he had only to
improve. But he did for the military art what constitutes the greatest
advance in any art, he reduced it to its most simple, most perfect
form; and his and Frederick’s campaigns furnished the final material
from which Jomini and his followers could elucidate the science; for it
has taken more than two thousand years of the written history of war to
produce a written science of war.
I shall not touch upon Napoleon’s life as statesman or lawgiver, nor on
his services in carrying forward the results of the Revolution toward
its legitimate consequence,--the equality of all men before the law. In
these rôles no more useful man appears in the history of modern times.
I shall look at him simply as a soldier.
Napoleon’s career is a notable example of the necessity of coexistent
intellect, character, and opportunity to produce the greatest success
in war. His strength distinctly rose through half his career, and as
distinctly fell during the other half. His intellectual power never
changed. The plan of the Waterloo campaign was as brilliant as any
which he ever conceived. His opportunity here was equal to that of
1796. But his execution was marred by weakening physique, upon which
followed a decline of that decisiveness which is so indispensable to
the great captain. It will, perhaps, be interesting to trace certain
resemblances between the opening of his first independent campaign in
1796, and his last one in 1815, to show how force of character won him
the first and the lack of it lost him the last; and to connect the two
campaigns by a thread of the intervening years of growth till 1808, and
of decline from that time on.
When Napoleon was appointed to the command of the Army of Italy he
had for the moment a serious problem. In this army were able and more
experienced officers of mature powers and full of manly strength, who
looked on this all but unknown, twenty-seven years old, small, pale,
untried commander-in-chief, decidedly askance. But Napoleon was not
long in impressing his absolute superiority upon them all. They soon
recognized the master-hand.
The army lay strung out along the coast from Loano to Savona, in a
worse than bad position. The English fleet held the sea in its rear,
and could make descents on any part of this long and ill-held line. Its
communications lay in prolongation of the left flank, over a single
bad road, subject not only to interruption by the English, but the
enemy, by forcing the Col di Tenda, could absolutely cut it off from
France. The troops were in woful condition. They had neither clothing
nor rations. They were literally “heroes in rags.” On the further side
of the Maritime Alps lay the Austrian general, Beaulieu, commanding a
superior army equally strung out from Mount Blanc to Genoa. His right
wing consisted of the Piedmontese army under Colli at Ceva; his centre
was at Sassello; with his left he was reaching out to join hands with
the English at Genoa. Kellerman faced, in the passes of the Alps, a
force of twenty-five thousand Sardinians, but for the moment was out of
the business.
[Illustration: 1796.]
Napoleon spent but few days in providing for his troops, and then
began to concentrate on his right flank at Savona. He knew that his
own position was weak, but he also divined from the reports brought in
from the outposts that the enemy’s was worse. From the very start he
enunciated in his strategic plan the maxim he obeyed through life: Move
upon your enemy in one mass on one line so that when brought to battle
you shall outnumber him, and from such a direction that you shall
compromise him. This is, so to speak, the motto of Napoleon’s success.
All perfect art is simple, and after much complication or absence of
theoretical canons from ancient times to his, Napoleon reduced strategy
down to this beautifully simple, rational rule.
Nothing in war seems at first blush so full of risk as to move into the
very midst of your enemy’s several detachments. No act in truth is so
safe, if his total outnumbers yours and if you outnumber each of his
detachments. For, as always seemed to be more clear to Napoleon and
Frederick than to any of the other great captains, you can first throw
yourself upon any one of them, beat him and then turn upon the next.
But to do this requires audacity, skill, and, above all, tireless legs.
And success is predicated in all cases on the assumption that God is on
the side of the heaviest battalions.
So Napoleon, who was very familiar with the topography of Italy, at
once determined to strike Beaulieu’s centre, and by breaking through
it, to separate the twenty-five thousand Piedmontese in the right wing
from the thirty-five thousand Austrians in the left wing, so that he
might beat each separately with his own thirty-seven thousand men.
Beaulieu’s reaching out toward Genoa facilitated Napoleon’s manœuvre,
for the Austrian would have a range of mountains between him and his
centre under Argenteau, whom he had at the same time ordered forward
on Savona via Montenotte. Napoleon’s manœuvre was strategically a
rupture of Beaulieu’s centre. Tactically it first led to an attack
on the right of Argenteau’s column. The details of the manœuvre it
would consume hours to follow. Suffice it to say that by a restless
activity which, barring Frederick, had not been seen in war since the
days of Cæsar, Napoleon struck blow after blow, first upon Argenteau,
throwing him back easterly, then on Colli, throwing him back westerly,
absolutely cut the allies in two, fought half a dozen battles in scarce
a greater number of days, and in a short fortnight had beaten the enemy
at all points, had captured fifteen thousand prisoners, fifty guns, and
twenty-one flags.
Still the problem was serious. Beaulieu, if active, could shortly
concentrate one hundred thousand men. Napoleon must allow him not a
moment of breathing spell. He issued a proclamation to his troops
which sounds like the blare of a trumpet. It set ablaze the hearts of
his men; it carried dread to his enemies, and Napoleon followed it up
by a march straight on Turin. Alarmed and disconcerted, the King of
Sardinia sued for peace. Napoleon concluded an armistice with him, and
thus saw himself dis-embarrassed of the enemy’s right wing and free to
turn on the left under Beaulieu. His columns were at once launched on
Alexandria, and by his skilful manœuvres and unparalleled alertness he
soon got the better of the Austrians. He had at a stroke made himself
the most noted general of Europe. The rest of the campaign was equally
brilliant and successful.
Napoleon had shown his army that he commanded not by the mere
commission of the Directory, but by the divine right of genius. He had
not only taken advantage of every error of his opponents, but had so
acted as to make them commit errors, and those very errors of which
he had need. His army had been far from good. But “I believe,” says
Jomini, “that if Napoleon had commanded the most excellent troops he
would not have accomplished more, even as Frederick in the reversed
case would not have accomplished less.”
We recognize in this first independent campaign of Napoleon the heroic
zeal of Alexander, the intellectual subtlety of Hannibal, the reckless
self-confidence of Cæsar, the broad method of Gustavus, the heart of
oak of Frederick. But one fault is discoverable, and this, at the time,
was rather a virtue,--Napoleon underrated his adversary. By and by this
error grew in the wrong direction, and became a strong factor in his
failures.
Through the rest of this campaign, which numbered the victories of
Lodi, Castiglione, Bassano, Arcole, the most noteworthy thing except
his own personal diligence is the speed with which Napoleon manœuvred
his troops. To state an instance: from September 5 to September 11,
six days, Napoleon’s men fought one pitched battle and two important
combats and marched, Masséna eighty-eight miles, Augereau ninety-six
miles, and the other corps less distances. He was far from being
uniformly lucky. He had many days of serious backsets. But whenever
luck ran in his favor, he seized it and made it useful; when against
him, he gamely strove to stem its tide. If Fortune frowned, he wooed
her unceasingly till she smiled again.
The campaign which began in April, 1796, really lasted till April,
1797. Napoleon pushed the Austrians out of Italy and well back towards
Vienna. His triumphs culminated in the brilliant victory of Rivoli,
and his success at the truce of Leoben. At Rivoli, with thirty
thousand men, Napoleon defeated the enemy and captured twenty thousand
prisoners. The men who had left Verona and fought at San Michele on
the 13th of January, marched all night to Rivoli, there conquered on
the 14th, and again marching to Mantua, some thirty miles, compelled
Provera to lay down his arms on the 15th. Napoleon could rightfully
boast to have equalled Cæsar in speed of foot.
The men of the Revolution had cut loose from eighteenth century methods
of warfare by rising en masse and putting the personal element into the
scale. But it was reserved for Napoleon to substitute a new method for
the old. From Nice to Leoben he showed the world what modern war can
do. He made himself independent of magazines, as Frederick had done
but rarely. With a smaller army he always had more men at the point
of contact. This was Napoleon’s strongest point. He divined what his
enemy would do, not from his tent but from the saddle, seeing with his
own eyes and weighing all he saw and heard. He was every day and all
day long in motion; he rode unheard-of distances. He relied on no one
but himself, as, with his comparatively small army, he could well do;
and correctly seeing and therefore correctly gauging circumstances, he
had the courage to act upon his facts. He sought battle as the result
of every manœuvre. The weight of his intellect and his character were
equally thrown into all he did. And his abnormal ambition drove him
to abnormal energy. In this his first campaign and in one year, with
moderate forces, he had advanced from Nice to within eighty miles of
Vienna, and had wrung a peace from astonished Austria.
Napoleon next undertook the Egyptian campaign. His ambition had grown
with success. But matters in France were not in a condition of which
he could personally avail, and he believed he could increase his
reputation and power by conquests in the East. His imagination was
boundless. Perhaps no great soldier can be free from imagination, or
its complement, enthusiasm. Napoleon had it to excess, and in many
respects it helped him in his hazardous undertakings. At this time he
dreamed himself another Alexander conquering the Eastern world, thence
to return, as Alexander did not, with hordes of soldiers disciplined
by himself and fanatically attached to his person, to subjugate all
Europe to his will. The narration of this campaign of sixteen months
may be made to sound brilliant; its result was miscarriage. It is full
of splendid achievements and marred but by one mishap,--the siege of
Acre. But the total result of the campaign was failure to France,
though gain to Napoleon, who won renown, and, abandoning his army when
the campaign closed, returned to Paris at a season more suited to his
advancement. Napoleon’s military conduct in this campaign shows the
same marvellous energy, the same power of adapting means to end, of
keeping all his extraordinary measures secret, the better to impose on
the enemy by their sudden development, the same power over men. But the
discipline of the army was disgraceful. The plundering which always
accompanied Napoleon’s movements--for, unlike Gustavus and Frederick,
he believed in allowing the soldier freedom beyond bounds if only he
would march and fight--was excessive. The health of the army was bad;
its deprivations so great that suicide was common to avoid suffering
which was worse. And yet Napoleon, by his unequalled management, kept
this army available as a tool, and an excellent one.
Napoleon now became First Consul. The campaign of 1800 was initiated
by the celebrated crossing of the Alps. This feat, of itself, can no
more be compared, as it has been, to Hannibal’s great achievement,
nor indeed to Alexander’s crossing the Paropamisus, than a Pullman
excursion to Salt Lake City can be likened to Albert Sidney Johnston’s
terrible march across the Plains in 1857. Napoleon’s crossing was
merely an incident deftly woven into a splendid plan of campaign. From
Switzerland, a geographical salient held by them, the French could
debouch at will into Italy or Germany. Mélas, the Austrian general
in Italy, had his eyes fixed upon Masséna in Genoa. A large reserve
army was collected by Napoleon in France, while Moreau pushed toward
the Danube. Mélas naturally expected that the French would issue from
Provence, and kept his outlook towards that point. When Napoleon
actually descended from the Great St. Bernard upon his rear, he was
as badly startled as compromised. This splendid piece of strategy was
followed up with Napoleon’s usual restless push, and culminated in the
battle of Marengo. This was at first a distinct Austrian victory, but
good countenance, Mélas’ neglect to pursue his gain, and Napoleon’s
ability to rally and hold his troops until absent Dessaix could rejoin
him, turned it into an overwhelming Austrian defeat. And Napoleon, by
the direction given to his mass, had so placed Mélas that defeat meant
ruin. He was glad to accept an armistice on Napoleon’s own terms.
[Illustration: MARENGO CAMPAIGN]
This superb campaign had lasted but a month, and had been characterized
by the utmost dash and clearness of perception. Again Napoleon’s one
mass projected on one properly chosen line had accomplished wonders.
Napoleon once said to Jomini, “The secret of war lies in the secret
of communications. Keep your own and attack your enemy’s in such a
way that a lost battle may not harm you, a battle won may ruin your
adversary. Seize your enemy’s communications and then march to battle.”
Napoleon’s success came from study of the situation. His art was
founded on an intimate knowledge of all the facts, coupled with such
reasoning power as enabled him to gauge correctly what his enemy was
apt to do. Without the art the study would be useless. But the art
could not exist apart from study.
After Marengo there were five years of peace. These and the four years
between Wagram and the Russian campaign were the only two periods of
rest from war in Napoleon’s career. Succeeding this came the memorable
Austerlitz campaign. Napoleon had had for some months three of his best
officers in Germany studying up topography, roads, bridges, towns, in
the Black Forest region and toward the Tyrol and Bohemia. To thus make
himself familiar with the status was his uniform habit.
[Illustration: ULM-AUSTERLITZ CAMPAIGN]
Napoleon, now Emperor, was at Boulogne, threatening and perhaps at
times half purposing an invasion of England. He commanded the best
army he ever had. The Austrians, not supposing him ready, inundated
Bavaria with troops, without waiting for their allies, the Russians,
and marched up the Danube to the Iller, under Field-Marshal Mack.
Napoleon put an embargo on the mails, broke up from Boulogne at
twenty-four hours’ notice, and reached the vicinity of the enemy with
an overwhelming force before Mack was aware of his having left the
sea. His line of march was about Mack’s right flank, because this was
the nearest to Boulogne and gave him a safe base on the confederate
German provinces. So well planned was the manœuvre, so elastic in its
design for change of circumstances, that it fully succeeded, step
for step, until Mack was surrounded at Ulm and surrendered with his
thirty thousand men. Here again we find the Napoleonic rule fairly
overwhelming Mack with superior numbers. Except in 1796 and 1814,
Napoleon always had more men than the enemy on the field at the proper
time. “They ascribe more talent to me than to others,” he observed,
“and yet to give battle to an enemy I am in the habit of beating, I
never think I have enough men; I call to my aid all that I can unite.”
The chart herewith given of the grand manœuvre of Ulm is so simple
as to suggest no difficulties of execution. But there is probably
nothing in human experience which taxes strength, intellect, judgment,
and character to so great a degree as the strategy and logistics of
such a movement, unless it be the tactics of the ensuing battle. The
difficulties are, in reality, gigantic.