Carnot, the predecessor of Napoleon, and the organising soldier of the
early revolutionary wars, owed his power to backbone.
He had not only a good solidity of brain, but an astonishing power of
using it for hours and hours on end. This he owed perhaps to the
excellent physical stock of which he came, the eldest of a very large
family born to a notable lawyer in Burgundy.
It was Carnot’s pride to hold a commission in the learned arms which
were to transform at that moment the art of war: for as Bonaparte, his
successor, was a gunner, so he was a sapper. His practice of exact
knowledge in application, and the liberal education which his career
demanded, further strengthened the strong character he had inherited.
More important still, in his democratic views he was what none of the
older officers had been, convinced and sincere. He had not come within
the influence of the very wealthy or of the very powerful. He was
young, and he knew his own mind not only in matters of political faith
but in the general domain of philosophy, and in the particular one of
military science.
It has been said of him that he invented the revolutionary method of
strategical concentration and tactical massing in the field. There is
some truth in this; but the method would not have been possible had he
not also invented, in company with Danton, and supported after Danton
left power, a universal system of conscription.
Carnot understood, as only trained soldiers can, the value of numbers,
and _he depended with great sagacity upon the national temper_; thus at
Wattignies, which was a victory directly due to his genius, though it
was novel in him to have massed troops suddenly upon the right after a
check on the extreme left of the field, yet the novelty would have been
of no effect had he not comprehended that, with his young fellow
countrymen as troopers, he could depend upon a charge delivered after
thirty-six hours of vigil.
He used not only the national but also the revolutionary temper in war.
One of the chief features, for instance, of the revolutionary armies
when they began to be successful, was the development of lines of
skirmishers who pushed out hardily before the main bodies and were the
first in the history of modern warfare to learn the use of cover. This
development was spontaneous: it was produced within and by each unit,
not by any general command. But Carnot recognised it at Hoondschoote
and used it ever after.
The stoical inflexibility of his temper is the noblest among the many
noble characters of his soul. He never admitted the empire, and he
suffered exile, seeming thereby in the eyes of the vilest and most
intelligent of his contemporaries, Fouché, to be a mere fool. He was as
hard with himself as with others, wholly military in the framework of
his mind, and the chief controller of the Terror, which he used, as it
was intended to be used, for the military salvation of the republic.