How have the theories of Carl Von Clausewitz and/or Henri Jomini influenced the birth of combined arms warfare? In your conclusion, suggest the significance to today’s military professional.

Napoleon’s Generalship Reconsidered, or Did Napoleon Really Blunder to Glory?

by Jack A. Meyer

In 1987 a certain iconoclastic professor by the name of Owen Connelly published a book called Blundering to Glory: Napoleon's Military Campaigns. As might be expected, the title alone caused outbreaks of apoplexy among the many people who worship at the shrine of Napoleon’s military genius. In his book Connelly dared to suggest that Napoleon, while a military genius, was also a blunderer who made mistakes in every campaign he fought and who was saved to a large degree by his ability to improvise or, as Professor Connelly puts it, “to scramble.” By daring to question the infallibility of Napoleon’s military genius Connelly set the stage for a further discussion of the question; Just what was it that made Napoleon a successful military commander?

As I see it, there are two possible lines of examination. The first, and most obvious, is that Napoleon was indeed a military genius who towered far above any other military figure in history. The second is that Napoleon was the beneficiary of situations which brought him success in addition to, or in spite of, his military talents or deficiencies. Let us examine the genius factor first.

Few, except for the occasional lonely masochist, would deny that Napoleon possessed military genius. While one would not expect Napoleon’s perennial adversaries, the British, to acknowledge his genius, even that most British of military historians, David Chandler, subtitles his monumental work The Campaigns of Napoleon: The Mind and Method of History’s Greatest Soldier. Certainly Professor Connelly, in the introduction to his book, states that “Napoleon was a military genius” whose ability to triumph over adversity can be attributed to “superior intelligence” and “his awesome energy; his ability to scramble, to make his men follow him, to hit again and again; and his inability to accept defeat.”1 But, having said that, Professor Connelly then goes on to his main thesis, that much of Napoleon’s success can be attributed to other factors.

If genius may be defined by success then certainly Napoleon was a genius, for he was supremely successful in nearly twenty years of campaigning against most of Europe. Indeed, Napoleon was so successful that military scholars such as Jomini and Clausewitz, to name only the best known, spent years trying to discover his methods for the instruction of lesser commanders.

There is, however, a small problem with the “genius” scenario. Geniuses are not supposed to commit “blunders,” such as getting stuck in the swamps at Arcola, totally misplacing Mack’s army in October of 1805, or placing the Archduke Charles at Landshut in the Wagram campaign when he was actually at Eggmühl. Then, of course, there are the greatest blunders of all, Spain and Russia. It can certainly be argued that Napoleon’s ability to get himself out of such situations as Arcola or Ulm is in itself a mark of genius. The conduct of war, after all, is not a precise science. It is a military axiom that the plans for a battle do not

1

survive the first contact and the genius of the commander lies in how he, or she, reacts to the highly fluid and unpredictable nature of combat. What Professor Connelly calls “scrambling” then is indeed a mark of Napoleon’s genius. Certainly there is evidence that Napoleon was well aware of this. One of his favorite maxims was On s’engage, et alors on voit. But this cannot explain Spain and Russia. Perhaps it is time to examine the second possibility.

The idea that Napoleon was the beneficiary of “the ineptitude of his enemies,” just plain luck and the ability of his subordinates is, of course, the central theme of Professor Connelly’s book.2 Napoleon’s campaigns are replete with examples of these factors. From the very first, luck entered into Napoleon’s military career, perhaps with a bit of shrewd Corsican intrigue thrown in for good measure.

Without a doubt it was the opportunity to display his talents at Toulon in 1793 which started Napoleon’s rise to glory. Prior to that time he had floundered around in Corsica, managed to get himself elected lieutenant-colonel of the Ajaccio battalion of the Corsican National Guard and failed miserably in an attempt to capture Sardinia in 1792. This was hardly the sort of record which would impress the government of the Convention. On unattached duty with the Army of Italy in 1793, Napoleon just happened to be available when the commander of artillery at the siege of Toulon was wounded and, just by chance, the representative on mission at General Jean-Francois Carteaux’s headquarters was Antoine-Christophe Saliceti, an old family friend. The story of Napoleon’s performance at Toulon is well known but without that “lucky” wound suffered by General Auguste de Dommartin, the commander of artillery, Napoleon would have had no chance to display his talent.

It was luck again which placed Napoleon in Paris in October 1795. Languishing there as a staff officer in the Topographic Bureau, Napoleon was available when the Paris mobs threatened to overthrow the yet to be installed government of the Directory. Paul Barras, one of the new Directors, was appointed to defend the Tuileries. He picked Napoleon to be his second-in-command or, to put it more bluntly, to do the dirty work of putting down the mob. Thus, Napoleon got the chance to win command of the Army of Italy through the famous “whiff of grapeshot” [actually a torrent of canister but I despair of ever correcting that erroneous term] and a bit of judicious courting of Josephine de Beauharnais, sometime mistress of Barras. The first Italian Campaign was Napoleon’s opportunity to display the military talents which would eventually win him eternal glory. But, that is also the campaign which most clearly demonstrates those factors to which Professor Connelly is referring.

If a general was looking for opponents who would assist in their own destruction, he could find no better than those Austrian generals who were sent to oppose Napoleon in 1796. General Baron Johann Beaulieu allowed himself to be fooled into dividing his forces and was soundly defeated at Montenotte [12 April 1796] by Masséna’s division. His replacement, Field Marshal Count Dagobert von Würmser, divided his army for his advance against the French besieging Mantua. Part of the army, under General Quasdanovich, was sent along the western shore of Lake Garda while Würmser led the rest, less significant detachments he had sent to Peschiera and toward Mantua by way of Verona, along the eastern shore. The Austrians were defeated in detail at Lonato [3 August 1796] and Castiglione [5 August 1796]. Würmser, it seems, did not learn from his defeats and, after dividing his forces yet again, was driven into Mantua, where he remained until the city surrendered in February 1797.

Würmser was replaced by General Baron Jozsef Alvincy von Borberek, a veteran Hungarian officer from Transylvania. He was perhaps the most effective of the Austrians but here again Napoleon’s luck held. At Caldiero [12 November 1796] Alvincy defeated Napoleon’s army but failed to destroy the French because he had divided his forces and could not bring sufficient men onto the battlefield to prevent Napoleon’s retreat to Verona. Napoleon’s next move was daring but courted disaster. He planned to attack Alvincy’s army at Villanuova by maneuvering through the swampy area at Ronco-Arcola to hit its rear. For three days Napoleon’s army blundered around in the swamp, exposed to an attack by the Austrians, but

2

Alvincy did not attack either Napoleon or the weak French force at Verona. Napoleon’s luck held and on 17 November he finally got it right and forced the Austrians to retreat. Alvincy again divided his forces in January 1797 and was defeated at Rivoli [13 January 1797]. Shortly thereafter the Austrians sued for peace.

I have dwelt extensively on the first Italian Campaign because it most clearly demonstrates the idea that Napoleon was fortunate in his opposition. The Austrian commanders almost compulsively divided their forces and allowed Napoleon and his division commanders to defeat them in detail. In several instances, especially at Caldiero and Rivoli, the Austrians very likely would have crushed the French if all of their forces had been present, but they weren’t and Napoleon not only avoided disaster but ended up winning the campaign. Arcola also highlights Napoleon’s good fortune in his opposition. A determined opponent would have ended Napoleon’s career in the swamps at Arcola but Alvincy failed to take advantage of his opportunity.

The first Italian Campaign is also one of the better opportunities, but not the only one, for pointing out another area in which Napoleon profited from the actions of others. Many of the battles which are credited to the skill of Napoleon were actually the result of fine performances by his subordinates. At Montenotte it was Masséna who won the battle. Napoleon was five miles away, at Carcare, at the time. In the campaigning around Lake Garda, at Lonato and Castiglione, it was Masséna and Augereau who secured the victories.

Perhaps the most blatant example of Napoleon receiving credit for the work of others is the Battle of Marengo [14 June 1800] in the second Italian Campaign. Napoleon, badly outnumbered by the Austrians under Field Marshal Michael Friedrich Melas, refused to believe that the Austrians were daring to attack until he was fully engaged. During the course of the battle the French were forced back nearly five miles and Melas was so sure of victory that he left the battlefield. The only thing which saved Napoleon from defeat was the arrival of Louis Desaix’s division, which had marched to the sound of the guns. As Desaix quite accurately stated, the battle was lost but there was still time to win another. Aided by Desaix’s fresh troops and the laxness of the Austrian commanders Napoleon won “the second Battle of Marengo” but Desaix was killed. The rewriting of the account of the battle, which was done twice during Napoleon’s reign [1803 and 1805], clearly demonstrates Napoleon’s unease about this “victory.”

The other general who saved the day for Napoleon on more than one occasion was Louis-Nicolas Davout. Davout was possibly the best general in Napoleon’s service. Certainly he ranks at the top, along with Masséna, as one of the best independent commanders of the French army. Davout’s performance was always exemplary but never more clearly demonstrated than at Austerlitz and Auerstädt. At Austerlitz [2 December 1805], it was Davout’s tenacious stand on the banks of the Goldbach which gave Napoleon time to develop his main attack on the Pratzen Heights. At Auerstädt [14 October 1806] Davout, with a single corps (twenty-six thousand men) defeated the Prussian main army of sixty-four thousand men while Napoleon, with the bulk of the Grand Armée easily handled a smaller Prussian army at Jena. We can only speculate what the results of the Waterloo campaign might have been had Davout been the field commander instead of Michel Ney.

As Professor Connelly also quite correctly states, Napoleon was fortunate in that he did not have to fight the combined forces of his enemies until the 1813 campaign. This is not to say that he was not at war with more than one country, for he generally was. Great Britain, for example, was continually at war with France from 1793 to 1814, except for a brief period from March 1802 until May 1803. However, the British were not much of a threat to Napoleon on land, even when they sent an army to the assistance of Portugal and Spain in 1808. The less said about the British campaigns in the Low Country the better.

Prussia, Russia and Austria are a different matter. In the 1805 campaign the war plans of Austria and Russia called for combined action but the Russians were late starting, perhaps because of a

3

misunderstanding over the date (Russia still used the Julian calendar which was then twelve days behind the rest of Europe). Napoleon was thus able to defeat the Austrian army of General Mack before turning to attack the Russians. The impetuosity of the Russian Tsar, Alexander I, meant that Napoleon faced only a mostly Russian army at Austerlitz, eighty-six thousand men instead of the potential 184,000 men that could have been assembled had the tsar waited for the Austrian armies of Archduke Charles and Ferdinand as Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov advised.

Again, in the 1806 campaign, the Prussians attacked without waiting for the Russians and were defeated, leaving only the Russians to face the French armies. Given the inconclusive nature of the battle at Eylau [8 February 1807] the added weight of the Prussian armies might have turned the tide against the French. After Friedland [13 June 1807] the Russians were no longer a factor. This is perhaps the apogee of Napoleon’s empire for he seized Portugal in 1807 and invaded Spain the following year. He quickly found himself mired down in a bitter guerrilla war which would sap the energies of his empire. Following the disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, when it seemed that most of Europe sent troops to fight for France, Napoleon was opposed by all the major powers of Europe and the end was close at hand.

So far the factors I have mentioned closely parallel what Professor Connelly has said in his book. There are two other areas, only alluded to in the book, which I believe are important factors in the rise and fall of Napoleon. In order to understand these factors we must look briefly at the way war was fought in the eighteenth century. Following the excesses of the Thirty Years War, where rape and pillage were the norm, there was a gradual turning away from such wars of ideology and an acceptance of the concept of limited war. Contrary to what might be expected from that term, eighteenth century wars were not less frequent or less costly. Rather they were limited in their objectives and in the way they were fought.

Limited war was war fought for territorial gain by professional armies. Kings engaged in war to steal bits of territory from their neighbors not to convert them to some highly emotional ideology. Therefore the armies of the time did not live off the land because to do so would despoil the very territory being fought over. There was no profit in ruining the land you coveted so armies subsisted from magazines established for their support, usually in fortresses which became the prime objectives of opposing armies. Combat was not the goal of eighteenth century commanders, not the least because the linear tactics of the day could result in horrendous casualties. Maneuver was the order of the day. It was the fond hope of every commander to maneuver his opponent into a hopeless situation and force him to retreat or, perhaps, even sue for peace. Eighteenth century rulers habitually sued for peace as soon as it appeared that continuing the war would be too costly in terms of men or money.

The French Revolution changed that. Once again we had armies fighting for ideological reasons, this time not religious but political ideas. Napoleon was a product of that system and, although his political motives changed over time, his methodology was always total war. While his opponents were maneuvering for advantage in the old way Napoleon was maneuvering to destroy them. Therefore it is not surprising that the Austrians or the Prussians sued for peace after a short series of bloody battles. To their way of thinking the cost had become too high and it was time to end the war. What the Austrians, Prussians, and Russians failed to realize was that the French frequently were also close to collapse and a determined effort would have defeated them.

Three campaigns very clearly illustrate Napoleon’s vulnerability; his need for a quick victory. During the 1805 campaign time was not Napoleon’s ally. After quickly finishing off Mack at Ulm Napoleon was unable to corner the wily Kutuzov. By late November his position was serious. His army was at the end of a long logistics line vulnerable to attack. His exhausted men were hungry and morale was rapidly declining. Russian and Austrian strength was building and Prussia was mobilizing. Napoleon needed a quick victory and Alexander I gave it to him. Had the Allies waited and combined their forces Napoleon would have been trapped and overwhelmed.

4

The 1812 campaign in Russia again illustrates the flaw in Napoleon’s system. All of his efforts were directed at obtaining that “decisive Victory” which would bring the Tsar to the bargaining table. But Borodino [7 September 1812] and the capture of Moscow a week later failed to produce the desired result. Faced with the onset of winter and no prospect of being able to feed his army in Moscow Napoleon had to retreat. The retreat cost him an army [400,000 to 570,000 casualties out of an army of 611,000]. Only a pitiful 60,000 or so men from the main army straggled into Posen in mid-January 1813.3 By that time Napoleon had left for Paris to deal with the Malet conspiracy, “Napoleon is dead in Russia,” and to look for a new army.

By 1813 the Allies had learned and, encouraged by Napoleon’s huge losses and demonstrated vulnerability during the Russian campaign and by the news of Wellington’s victory at Vitoria in Spain [21 June 1813], they determined to keep their armies in the field until Napoleon was defeated. With huge armies they were able to wear him down and, in spite of losing battles such as Lützen [2 May 1813] and Bautzen [20–21 May 1813] they persevered. Even so old habits died hard. In spite of their resolve to finish Napoleon the Allies offered him quite reasonable terms in July and again in November 1813 but he refused and in the end was defeated and forced to abdicate.

During the “Glorious Irrelevance” of the Waterloo campaign in 1815 Napoleon again desperately needed a quick victory. The notables in Paris were lukewarm in their support and Napoleon knew that he only had time for a short war before that support would vanish. The allies, however, called him an outlaw and vowed to crush him no matter what it took. Had Napoleon won at Waterloo, certainly within the realm of possibility, there would have been no peace, only another battle. In 1804 a victory at Waterloo would have meant a peace settlement and the end of the war. In 1815 only Napoleon believed a victory would lead to peace. The allies had learned from his example.

During the 1813–14 campaign the allies also learned to harness for their own advantage another factor which had given Napoleon and the French the advantage from 1793 on; nationalism. Nationalism was born of the French Revolution and the levée en masse. La patrie was in danger and it was the duty of all good Frenchmen, and women, to rally to her defense. Forces were unleashed which gave France a stunning advantage. While French armies were fighting for the Revolution and France, their opponents were fighting for money and a ruler they did not know. Morale became a potent weapon for the French.

The other European rulers were slow to adopt the concept of nationalism to oppose Napoleon. There were, after all, inherent dangers to their own positions built into the concept. A guerrilla war in Prussia on the order of the one which broke out in Spain in 1808 was not what the Prussian king, Frederick William III, wanted, even if it would have rid him of the French. There was always the danger that once the French were gone his people would decide they did not need him either. By 1813, however, nationalism became the rallying cry in Prussia and huge numbers of Prussians joined Landwehr battalions to swell the mass armies opposing Napoleon. The genie was let out of the bottle and Napoleon was defeated. Nationalism was used against him just as total war was used against him. It should be pointed out, however, that the fears of the European rulers were well founded, as the revolutions of 1820, 1830 and 1848 surely demonstrate.

The French Revolution and Napoleonic era, for good or for ill, altered the course of European history. Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, played a defining role in that alteration. Despite his many achievements in the political and cultural spheres it remains his military career which fascinates us. So, was Napoleon a military genius? The answer, like so much in life, is ambiguous. Yes, he was a military genius, but.

Perhaps the greatest problem in defining genius is the concomitant tendency on the part of most people to equate genius with infallibility. Therefore, we have difficulty accepting that “our hero” could possibly have made the mistake of misplacing an entire army, such as Mack’s army in 1805. But yet that is the nature of genius; the ability to “scramble” out of a bad situation where others fail. In this regard Napoleon was

5

indeed a genius and, in reality that is what Professor Connelly has demonstrated in his book. Napoleon may have “blundered” but he generally recovered.

Other aspects of Napoleon’s career, however, forces beyond his control, also shaped his destiny. Luck certainly was a factor. Without fortuitous opportunities at the beginning of his career no one would ever have heard of the obscure Corsican working in the Topographic Bureau in Paris. Without the energies released by Lazare Carnot’s appeal to “all Frenchmen” to save the Revolution, Napoleon would not have had the tools to prosecute his wars and the advantage over his “eighteenth century, limited war” opponents. It was his fate, however, to push too far and in the end he was defeated in spite of his genius.

Notes

1 Owen Connelly, Blundering to Glory: Napoleon’s Military Campaigns (Wilmington, Del., 1987), 1. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., 181. The numbers vary somewhat from author to author but George Nafziger’s are typical. He states that out of 680,500 men in all of the armies only ninety-three thousand remained at the end of the campaign. Of the remainder, 370,000 died, and two hundred thousand were captured, half of whom died in captivity. The rest just disappeared. George Nafziger, Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia (Novato, Calif., 1988), 333.

6