TROOPS AND SUPPLIES
In the earlier controversies as to the use of railways in war, attention
was almost entirely concentrated on questions relating to the movement
of large masses of troops, the saving of time to be effected, and the
strategic advantages to be gained. These considerations quickly passed
from the theoretical to the practical, and when the results attained
were put against such facts as, for instance, the one that in 1805
Napoleon's Grand Army of 200,000 men took forty-two days to march the
700 kilometres (435 miles) between Ulm on the Danube and the French camp
at Boulogne, there was no longer any possibility of doubt as to the
services that railways might render from these particular points of view.
_Quicker transport_ was, however, only one consideration. There was the
further important detail that the movement of troops by rail would bring
them to their point of concentration, not only sooner, but in _more
complete numbers_, than if they had to endure the fatigues of prolonged
marches by road.
According to German authorities, the falling-out of infantry and cavalry
when marching along good roads under conditions of well-maintained
discipline and adequate food supplies averages three per cent. in cool
and dry weather, and six per cent. in hot or wet weather; while in
unfavourable conditions as regards roads, weather and supplies, the
diminution may be enormous. When, in the autumn of 1799, Suvóroff made
his famous march over the St. Gothard, he lost, in eleven days, no
fewer than 10,000 men owing to the hardships of the journey. In his
invasion of Russia, in 1812, Napoleon's losses in men who succumbed to
the fatigues and trials they experienced on the road were out of all
proportion to the casualties due to actual fighting. It was, too, a
saying of Blücher's that "he feared night marches worse than the enemy."
An English authority, Lieut.-Col. R. Home, C.B., R.E., wrote in a
paper on "The Organisation of the Communications, including Railways,"
published in Vol XIX. of the Journal of the Royal United Service
Institution (1875):--
If an army of moderate size, say 50,000 men, simply marches
one hundred miles without firing one shot or seeing an enemy the
number of sick to be got rid of is very great.
Experience has shown that in a good climate, with abundant
food, easy marches, and fair weather, the waste from ordinary
causes in a ten days' march of such a force would be between
2,000 and 2,500 men, while the number of galled, footsore
or worn-out horses would also be very large. A few wet days
or a sharp engagement would raise the number of both very
considerably. An inefficient man or horse at the front is a
positive disadvantage.
Another equally important detail relates to the _provision of supplies_
for the troops and animals thus transported by rail both more quickly
and with less fatigue.
In all ages the feeding of his troops in an enemy's country has been
one of the gravest problems a military commander has had to solve;
and though, in some instances, vast armies have succeeded in drawing
sufficient support from the land they have invaded, there have been
others in which an army intending to "live upon the country" has failed
to get the food it needed, and has had its numbers depleted to the
extent of thousands as the result of sheer starvation. This was the
experience of Darius, King of Persia, who, in 513 B.C., crossed the
Bosporus, on a bridge of boats, with an army of 700,000, followed the
retreating Scythians, and lost 80,000 of his men in wild steppes where
no means existed for feeding them. When, also, Alexander the Great was
withdrawing from India, in 325 B.C., two-thirds of his force died on
the desert plains of Beluchistan from thirst or hunger. Lack of the
supplies from which he found himself entirely cut off was, again, a main
cause of the disaster that overtook Napoleon in his Russian campaign.
Even fertile or comparatively fertile lands, satisfying the needs of
their inhabitants in time of peace, may fail to afford provisions for
an invading army, either because of the great number of the latter or
because the retreating population have destroyed the food supplies
they could not take with them into the interior whether for their own
sustenance or with a view to starving the invaders.
Should the invading army succeed in "living on the country," the effect
of leaving the troops to their own resources, in the way of collecting
food, may still be not only subversive of discipline but of strategic
disadvantage through their being scattered on marauding expeditions at a
time when, possibly, it would be preferable to keep them concentrated.
General Friron, chief of the staff of Marshal Masséna, wrote concerning
Napoleon's campaign in Portugal:--
The day the soldier became convinced that, for the future,
he would have to depend on himself, discipline disappeared
from the ranks of the army. The officer became powerless in
the presence of want; he was no longer disposed to reprimand
the soldier who brought him the nourishment essential to his
existence, and who shared with him, in brotherly goodwill, a
prey which may have cost him incalculable dangers and fatigues.
The extent to which a combination of physical fatigue and shortness of
supplies in an inhospitable country may interfere with the efficiency of
an army is well shown by Thiers ("Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire")
in regard to the conditions at the very outset of Napoleon's Russian
campaign. The French troops arriving on the Niemen--at which point they
were merely on the frontiers of Russia--were already overcome by the
long marches they had made. They had no bread, no salt, and no spirits;
their craving for food could no longer be satisfied by meat without salt
and meal mixed with water. The horses, too, were out of condition for
want of proper food. Behind the army a great number of soldiers dropped
out of the ranks and had lost their way, while the few people they met
in a scantily-populated district could speak nothing but Polish, which
the wearied and famished men were unable to understand. Yet, under the
conditions of former days, it was by troops thus exhausted by marches of
hundreds of miles, done on, possibly, a starvation diet, that battles
involving the severest strain on human energy were fought.
When "living on the country" is no longer practicable, the only
alternative for an army is, of course, that of sending supplies after it
for the feeding of the troops; but when, or where, this has had to be
done by means of ordinary road services, it has involved--together with
the transport of artillery, ammunition and stores--(1) the employment
of an enormous number of vehicles and animals, greatly complicating
the movements of the army; and (2) a limitation of the distance within
which a campaign can be waged by an army depending entirely on its own
resources.
The latter of these conditions was the direct consequence of the former;
and the reason for this was shown by General W. T. Sherman in an article
contributed by him to the _Century Magazine_ for February, 1888 (pp.
595-6), in the course of which he says:--
According to the Duke of Wellington, an army moves upon its
belly, not upon its legs; and no army dependent on wagons can
operate more than a hundred miles from its base because the
teams going and returning consume the contents of their wagons,
leaving little or nothing for the maintenance of men and animals
at the front who are fully employed in fighting.
There was, again, the risk when food supplies followed the army by road
either of perishables going bad _en route_, owing to the time taken in
their transport by wagon, or of their suffering deterioration as the
result of exposure to weather, the consequence in either case being a
diminution in the amount of provisions available for feeding the army.
All these various conditions have been changed by the railway, the use
of which for the purposes of war has, in regard to the forwarding of
supplies, introduced innovations which are quite as important as those
relating to the movement of troops--if, indeed, the former advantages
are not of even greater importance than the latter.
Thanks to the railway, an army can now draw its supplies from the
whole of the interior of the home country--provided that the lines of
communication can be kept open; and, with the help not only of regular
rail services but of stores and magazines _en route_ those supplies can
be forwarded to railhead in just such quantities as they may be wanted.
Under these conditions the feeding of an army in the field should
be assured regardless alike of the possible scanty resources of the
country in which it is engaged and of its own distance from the base of
supplies.