Lefebvre Georges. Napoleon

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bring about a departure from the former practices. With the advent of mass

warfare, involving very large numbers of troops, generals were forced to

split their armies into divisions in order to render them manageable. Soon,

however, these new groupings were found inadequate, for as they grew in

number it became more difﬁ cult to co-ordinate their movements. Because

the cavalry and artillery were attached to the separate divisions, it was

impossible to concentrate their force. A higher organisation, the army corps,

had been haltingly attempted during the Directory, and in 1800 Moreau

had commanded three corps of four divisions each, but without reserves.

Napoleon derived his ideas of strategy from the teachings of Guibert

and Bourcet, as well as from the practical experience of the Revolution;

but it was at Marengo that he decided upon his ﬁ nal formula: two or three

divisions per corps, with a minimum of cavalry; most of the cavalry organ-

ised separately, and a reserve of artillery directly under the commanding

general. This organisation was applied to the whole army under the

Consulate.

The strength of these divisions and corps remained extremely variable. In

1805 the latter consisted of two to four divisions, totalling from fourteen to

forty thousand men. The divisions were made up of six to eleven battalions

ranging from 5,600 to nine thousand men; regiments comprised one to

three battalions. In the following year, the army achieved a more regular

deﬁ nition – divisions numbered six to eight thousand, and every regiment

was composed of two battalions.

Napoleon’s military genius was best revealed in his ability to combine the

movements of several army corps. The art lay in deploying and directing

them so that the entire area of operations might be encompassed, making it

impossible for the enemy to slip away. At the same time, the various army

corps had to remain close enough together to be able to mass their forces for

battle. The disposition of the corps generally took the shape of a ﬂ exible

quincunx. Marching upon the enemy, the front progressively tightened as

one or another of the corps found itself open to sudden attack. Sometimes,

as at Eylau, they massed together on the battleﬁ eld itself, the corps having

been aimed towards a distant point in such a way as to ﬂ ank and envelop the

enemy by their very advance. The arrangement of a campaign called for two

different plans of action, depending upon whether Napoleon intended to

ﬁ ght a single army or occupy a central position in the midst of several adver-

saries, as in 1796–7 around Mantua, or as in 1813. In any event, the pattern

varied according to circumstances, and was never conﬁ ned to one formula.

Napoleonic strategy was an art which, while possessing certain principles,

allowed neither tradition nor calculation ever to impoverish its inventiveness.

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napoleon’s army

Victory was contingent upon the speed and daring of Napoleon’s deci-

sions, followed by a precipitate execution of troop movements. Surprise was

an important element, and demanded the utmost secrecy. Always covered by

cavalry, the army used rivers and mountains as a natural screen for its

marches, whenever possible. But while cloaking its own movements, it was

quite as essential to discover the enemy’s: this was a function of the cavalry

cover, as well as the intelligence service, which made use of diplomats,

agents of all types (including in all probability the mysterious Countess

Kielmannsegg) and, above all, spies, who like the notorious Schulmeister

were always ready to play a double game. Once the army was under way,

Napoleon placed no great importance on lines of communication with

France, since he invariably expected a short campaign. The lines of opera-

tions, on the other hand, were a matter of grave concern, and were to be

protected at all costs. These were the roads connecting the army with the

fortress where the headquarters was located, and whose location was shifted

as the army advanced. Heavily travelled highways, dotted by postal relay

stations guarded by a few soldiers, linked the army with France. Hence,

fortiﬁ cations had their place in the Napoleonic system. They served as a base

of operations and could, by blocking rivers and passes, serve as a bridge-

head and supporting cover for the army. They did not, however, play as

important a role as in pre-revolutionary strategy. In campaigns aimed solely

at forcing a decisive encounter and destroying the enemy, fortiﬁ ed places

were never in themselves military objectives.

On the battleﬁ eld, Napoleon sought to compel the foe to exhaust his

reserves by engaging him along the entire front. This was to be accom-

plished with a minimum of strength, so as to keep intact a concentrated

striking force. Next, he would break the enemy’s spirit with infantry and

artillery ﬁ re, sustained by threats along his ﬂ ank and line of retreat. Finally,

when Napoleon felt that the enemy was sufﬁ ciently weakened, he would

hurl forward his fresh troops, break all resistance and pursue the beaten foe

without mercy. This pursuit, which Frederick II with his small army never

dared to order, was the most original feature of Napoleonic warfare. The

battle plan, carried out with unparalleled precision, did not alter tactics at

the unit level, a subject which Napoleon rarely touched upon. As a rule, the

units adhered to the drill manual of 1791: the division was drawn up into

brigades on two lines, one regiment deployed to the front, the other massed

in columns. But, in fact, the methods of the revolutionary armies persisted:

the infantry sent ahead a swarm of skirmishers, all picked men, who

advanced under cover of the terrain. The ﬁ rst line of infantry gradually

followed, often deployed in the same way. It was this kind of mobile

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196

shooting at will which so unsettled the enemy, who was accustomed to

facing linear formations where soldiers, ranged elbow to elbow in three

rows (the last two rows standing), offered perfect targets. At the signal to

attack, the second line of infantry advanced in deep columns. They rarely

had to use the bayonet; by this time the adversary was usually in ﬂ ight.

Still, tactics underwent certain changes. Brimming with conﬁ dence, the

French tended to replace much of the preliminary skirmishing by massed

charges with naked weapons; ofﬁ cers became more partial to the use of

columns as the number of untried recruits increased. But once the English,

and even the Germans, adjusted to these new methods, the results were

disastrous. Perhaps one of the weaknesses of Napoleonic warfare was the

lack of attention to unit-level tactics and the failure to revise them in view

of the improvements and advantages of the Coalition armies.

Owing to ﬁ nancial limitations, Napoleonic wars tended to be brief. This

ensured the emperor enormous prestige. The overpowering vigour of the

campaigns, and the faultless dexterity with which they were brought to a

swift ﬁ nish, evoke our romantic admiration to this day. Their speed and

daring bore the unmistakable imprint of Napoleon’s ﬁ ery temperament. As

in the case of provisioning the army, his ideas about the conduct of war

were conceived in terms of the arena where he fought his ﬁ rst campaigns.

The valley of the Po, hemmed in by a ring of mountains, allowed the enemy

no chance of escape. It was small enough in area to be easily controlled by

the army, cleverly deployed so that it might overrun the territory without

taxing its strength. It was fertile enough to provide ample means of recovery.

Already in South Germany the distances became greater and the army

suffered accordingly. Yet this land, parcelled as it was, could still ﬁ t the orig-

inal strategy. But once the army broached the limitless plains of North

Germany, Poland and Russia, things went differently. The enemy could now

make his escape, vast distances required exhausting marches, and victualling

became an insoluble problem. Soldiers were dropped off to act as occupa-

tion forces all along the way, and the army dissolved before it had even

begun to ﬁ ght. The economy failed to provide the required means of trans-

port, and the organisation of the military being what it was, reserves were

lacking. Napoleon’s strategy, which by its origin was totally Mediterranean,

did not anticipate these new geographic conditions, and so never fully

succeeded in adapting itself to them.

THE FORMATION OF THE GRAND

EMPIRE (1805–1807)

The campaign of 1805, undertaken within a year of Napoleon’s coronation

and in the midst of a grave ﬁ nancial crisis, exposed the emperor to mortal

danger. Saved by the victory at Austerlitz, he took control of Germany and

began to organise the Grand Empire. This in turn provoked the formation of

a new Coalition, whose defeat placed all of Central Europe in his hands and,

by the Treaties of Tilsit, cemented the ‘Continental System’.

THE FINANCIAL CRISIS OF 1805

Having set the Grande Armée on the road to Germany, Napoleon returned

to Paris to improvise his campaign. He found businessmen greatly perturbed,

the public panic-stricken at the doors of the Bank of France and the treasury

in utter ruin. The royalists were ﬁ lled with hope. For a long time the minister

of the treasury, Barbé-Marbois, had been desperately hard-pressed, and the

Bank was rapidly succumbing to inﬂ ation. Besides the twenty-seven million

francs in rescriptions which the Bank had already directly discounted for the

treasury, Desprez, one of the directors, had added twenty million more –

these from the Company of United Merchants, who had received them

from the treasury. This is not to mention paper accepted by the Bank repre-

senting other delegations of taxes. But the evil reached unparalleled propor-

tions as the result of Ouvrard’s ﬁ nancial operations in Spain, the most

grandiose speculative adventure of that time.

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Charles IV’s ﬁ nances were in a pitiable state. Spain had been suffering

from a serious shortage of food since 1804, and the ﬂ ow of piastres from

her treasury in Mexico had stopped. The annual subsidy promised to

Napoleon was in arrears by thirty-two million francs as early as June 1804.

Ouvrard advanced this sum to the French treasury, which handed over to

him new obligations of the tax collectors as security. Having previously

provisioned the Spanish ﬂ eet, Ouvrard held drafts on the Mexico treasury to

the amount of four million piastres; his brother, who had founded a ﬁ rm in

Philadelphia, had personally veriﬁ ed that seventy-one million piastres lay in

the vaults of the Mexico treasury and were only waiting to be shipped to

Spain at the ﬁ rst available opportunity. Ouvrard now came forward with the

assurance that he would ﬁ nd the means to have this treasure transferred to

Europe for his own and France’s beneﬁ t. Napoleon was naturally delighted

with this prospect, and Ouvrard departed for Spain with the emperor’s

approval in September 1804.

Arriving in Madrid, he proceeded to dazzle the court with his ostenta-

tion, eloquence and presents. Godoy eagerly agreed to pay the arrears of the

Spanish subsidy to Ouvrard, and accepted his bid to supply Spain with two

million quintals of grain at twenty-six francs. Owing to a surplus of grain in

France, particularly in the west, the cost to Ouvrard was eighteen francs.

Napoleon, who was always anxious to please the peasants and to divert the

ﬂ ow of specie into France, willingly granted export licences on condition

that the French government receive half the gross proﬁ t. Ouvrard’s next

venture involved the Caja de Consolidación, a fund whose task it was to

keep the rate of the vales reales from falling. He granted the Caja an immediate

loan and arranged for additional credits over a period of ﬁ ve months. In

return, he secured claims on the contemplated future sale of Church prop-

erties, for which the pope would have to grant his permission. In addition,

Ouvrard was made the sole supplier of the government’s tobacco monopoly

and given the concession of the mercury mines, both of which had been in

the hands of the Caja. When Spain declared war on England, Ouvrard provi-

sioned the French and Spanish vessels harboured in the peninsular ports; to

cover the cost, he negotiated a loan of ten million ﬂ orins from his friend

P. C. Labouchère of the House of Hope in Amsterdam.

Having rendered so many services, Ouvrard was in a good position to

tackle the problem of transferring the Mexican silver. To accomplish this, he

exerted every effort to obtain a safe passage for the treasure from Pitt, who

needed silver for commercial operations in India. On 18 December 1804

Ouvrard received from the Spanish government drafts on the Mexico treasury

to the amount of 52½ million piastres; some of these he sent to Barbé-

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Marbois, who helplessly turned over to him more of the tax collectors’ obli-

gations. Charles IV, who had been completely won over, formed a partnership

with Ouvrard covering all future shipments of specie from America. But

Ouvrard was doing too well to stop there: he also secured the exclusive right

to handle all of the trade for Spanish America and to undertake all shipments

which the king might require, in return for which he was to receive a

commission and the right to a third of the freight space on each ship while

Charles would assume all the expenses and all the risks. Ouvrard obtained

open licences in which the destinations of the ships were left blank; these he

planned to sell to Americans. He then left for Amsterdam with the object of

gaining the collaboration of the House of Hope. Labouchère was at ﬁ rst

stupeﬁ ed, but at last consented, on 6 May 1805, to undertake the transfer of

the Mexican treasure and to take over the trafﬁ c in the licences. Ouvrard,

however, was forced to agree to give the House of Hope complete discretion,

whatever the outcome, in the ﬁ nal settlement of accounts.

The whole affair consequently took on international proportions since

Ouvrard counted on Labouchère – who was the son-in-law of Baring, the

most inﬂ uential London banker and a close friend of Pitt – to secure Great

Britain’s collaboration. Pitt, in fact, granted his approval, and even sent four

English frigates to embark the initial cargo of silver, the value of which was

then paid by the Bank of England to Labouchère. But in order to transfer the

rest of the treasure and to take advantage of the valuable trade licences,

Labouchère despatched David Parish (a son of the famous Hamburg banking

house) to Philadelphia, as well as two more agents, one to New Orleans and

the other to Vera Cruz. They arranged for the Mexican piastres to be brought

on American vessels to the United States, where they were advanced to

merchants in exchange for bills drawn upon their European factors. Also,

the trade licences were sold to American ﬁ rms for a percentage of their net

proﬁ t. This trafﬁ c could not get under way until 1806, and it was suspended

by Jefferson’s embargo in 1807. The entire transaction would have brought

the House of Hope and Labouchère £900,000 or 225 million French francs;

Ouvrard’s share would have been only twenty-four million francs. In the

meantime, Labouchère had to come to terms with Napoleon. Consequently,

those who would defend Ouvrard’s far-reaching plans have grounds to

argue that they could have brought results; but they forget that the emperor

could hardly approve a scheme that enriched a foreign and, in fact, hostile

banking house. Above all, they fail to recognise that it was France that was

paying the bill.

It would take a long time for the transfer of the silver piastres and the

trade in licences to bear fruit. Meanwhile, money was needed to pay for the

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grain which had been shipped to Spain and to provide the Caja with the

credits and funds which it had been promised. The Bank of France now

advanced the money by discounting some of the notes which had been

issued by the Caja and the tax collectors’ obligations which Barbé-Marbois

had pledged, but only as security. Thus while Napoleon was congratulating

himself on having concluded a good stroke of business, he was in effect

ﬁ nancing the entire operation. Now Barbé-Marbois, for his part, had the

Bank discount the Spanish bills which represented the silver reserves he had

received from Ouvrard. To crown it all, Desprez and Vanlerberghe had not

been paid by the treasury for their purveying services and, being short of

funds, they resorted to the expedient of accepting accommodation bills

enabling them to raise money and obtain additional credit. All of the

members of the Company of United Merchants began drawing bills on each

other, or even on themselves using ﬁ ctitious entities, and the whole ‘pack’

converged on the Bank, which honoured all these bills without batting an

eyelash. By September 1805 the Bank’s note issue reached the staggering

sum of ninety-two million francs. Such a pyramiding would have been

inconceivable had Desprez not been a director of the Bank, and had Roger,

Barbé-Marbois’s secretary, not been bribed with over a million francs.

Ouvrard remained unshaken, believing that Spain would fulﬁ l her obliga-

tions and that the credit situation in France would remain normal. In reality,

Spain was very slow in paying for the grain shipments, and the Caja failed

to honour any of its obligations since it was unable to carry through the sale

of ecclesiastical properties in so short a time. In the summer of 1805 Barbé-

Marbois demanded the money which Ouvrard had promised. To pacify him,

Ouvrard began buying piastres with what little in the way of vales reales he

was receiving; shortly thereafter, the vales reales lost ﬁ fty-eight per cent of

their face value, and Ouvrard stopped sending the money, considering the

transfer impossible: his Spanish credits were frozen. On top of that, the

bears on the Paris stock exchange were making money from the circum-

stance that war was imminent, and the public began a run on the Bank.

Towards the end of September the Bank’s cash reserves fell to a mere 1½

million francs. At ﬁ rst the Bank tried to play for time by resorting to various

subterfuges, but it was ﬁ nally forced to announce a partial suspension of

payments. The panic quietened down a little after Ulm, but it resumed after

Trafalgar and with the prospects of a prolonged war. In November several

private banks failed – the Banque Récamier and the Banque d’Hervas among

others.

Ever since the end of August, the condition of the French treasury was

causing Napoleon serious worry. The paymaster of the Pas-de-Calais dépar-

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tement had been unable to meet the pay, and in Strasbourg it was necessary

to borrow twelve million francs for which special guarantees had to be

given. It is hardly surprising that a great many soldiers crossed the Rhine

with only a single pair of shoes. They were the ones who ultimately paid,

with their sufferings and even with their lives, the price of their master’s

improvisations and of the ﬁ nanciers’ schemes. Before long, Vanlerberghe

found himself unable to continue supplying the marching army and the

garrisons with the necessary provisions; on 23 September he had to appeal

for advances from the treasury, which was itself forced to turn to the Bank.

To make matters worse, Vanlerberghe was given authorisation to take directly

from the tax collectors’ tills by issuing a simple receipt, whatever cash he

might ﬁ nd; consequently, as the tax collectors’ obligations fell due, the Bank

got back the receipts only. On 1 January 1806 Vanlerberghe was 147 million

francs in the red and had to terminate his contract. Under the circumstances,

one can well understand Napoleon’s summary judgement of Barbé-Marbois:

‘Had I been beaten, he would have been the best ally of the Coalition.’ But

the minister’s only sin had been his incapacity. The emperor was making

an allusion to a plot, supposedly hatched with Pitt’s concurrence, whose

purpose it was to place the former émigré Talon at the head of the Bank of

France: unfortunately, we do not know any more about it. But in any event,

we do have an indication of the fearful danger which the victory at Austerlitz

averted.

If the crisis of 1805 was essentially a ﬁ nancial and banking one, it must

not be forgotten that the whole economy suffered during this year of

Austerlitz, in the agricultural as well as in the industrial sector. In the dépar-

tement of Meurthe, more or less the same old causes contributed to the

crisis, but above all it harked back to the cyclical decline in agricultural

prices which, as always in the past, adversely affected the purchasing power

of the majority of the people. This resulted in a tightening of credit and in

the growing importance of money lending. As usual, the most signiﬁ cant

social consequence of all this was a corresponding increase in human

misery.

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1805

Fortunately for Napoleon, Austria was not ready for war. The reforms which

had been introduced by Archduke Charles had hardly begun to take root. In

1802 he had substituted long-term military enrolment for life service, but

this was not scheduled to take effect until 1805. Although he drew up rules

governing exemptions, the annual contingent of recruits was still only

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eighty-three thousand out of a population of twenty-ﬁ ve million. The

Hungarian Diet had refused in 1802 to adopt compulsory service and

conscription; it agreed to supply a mere six thousand men yearly, plus twelve

thousand (granted only once) in case of war. Technically speaking, the

Austrians were unable to create more than one regiment of Tyrolean chasseurs .

When Mack took over the direction of the army, he enacted new regulations

to increase the number of infantry and light cavalry and he instituted

changes in the training manual, but he only succeeded in spreading confu-

sion. Besides, the condition of Austrian ﬁ nances reduced all of these efforts

to naught. The peacetime establishment was short by eighty-three thousand

men, ninety-seven thousand were on leave, and thirty-seven thousand

cavalry and the entire artillery were without horses. The degree of improvi-

sation was even greater than in France, and so the Austrian army marched

to battle in a state of unpreparedness which was worse than that of its

adversary.

Mack, moreover, was badly misled by the Russian general Winzingerode.

Kutuzov, who was in command of the First Russian Army, brought with him

a force of only thirty-eight thousand men instead of the promised ﬁ fty

thousand; Buxhöwden, who was to have followed hard by, did not arrive

until November. Lastly, as in 1799, Austria’s primary concern lay with Italy,

and it was there that she sent her main concentration, Archduke Charles

with a force of sixty-ﬁ ve thousand men, not counting the twenty-ﬁ ve

thousand in the Tyrol under the command of Archduke John. Archduke

Ferdinand, who was rapidly subordinated to General Mack, was positioned

in Germany with a force of only sixty thousand men, plus eleven thousand

in the Vorarlberg, on the understanding that he would be reinforced by the

advancing Russians. Ferdinand wanted to await them behind the River Lech,

but Mack assured the emperor Francis that Napoleon could not possibly

cross the Rhine with more than seventy thousand men. Having decided to

push forward to the edge of the Black Forest, Mack crossed the Inn on

11 September and occupied Bavaria, whose army retreated behind the Main.

It was in Germany that the campaign would be decided after all.

Napoleon’s strategy consisted in moving his forces from Boulogne to

Germany in such a way as to defeat the Coalition armies separately. On the

Adige, Masséna kept to a holding action with only forty-two thousand men,

for Italy was becoming restless and insurrections had broken out around

Piacenza and in Piedmont. Napoleon had originally decided to mass the

Grande Armée in Alsace: 176,000 men divided into six army corps, a cavalry

reserve and the Imperial Guard; a seventh corps, coming from Brest, did not

arrive until the end of October. Then, on 24–8 August, he decided that this

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plan would cause the advancing columns to lose time and that it would

make it difﬁ cult for them to effect a juncture with Marmont and Bernadotte

who were rushing in from Holland and Hanover. He therefore ordered

them to veer towards the Palatinate where they crossed the Rhine on and

after 25 September. The corps, covered by Murat’s cavalry, then headed

south-east towards various points on the Danube, downstream from Ulm.

Having learned that the enemy was concentrated at Ulm, Napoleon ordered

his men on 7 October to begin crossing the Danube near Donauwörth. He

then lost contact with the enemy, and fearful lest Mack escape south into the

Tyrol, he ordered his corps to deploy in fan order, sending Bernadotte

towards Munich to cover the Russians, keeping Davout in the centre, and

commanding the main body of his army to march on Ulm and the Iller.

Actually, Mack, taken by surprise, was having great difﬁ culty massing his

troops, and two of his corps were badly beaten near Wertingen and Günzburg

on 8 and 9 October. Mack then decided to strike northward in the hope of

cutting the French communications. Ney, who had been sent to cover that

side and whose main force was closing in on Ulm along the southern

courses of the Danube, ordered only one division, commanded by Dupont,

to cross the river. Dupont’s division was severely tried at Haslach on the

eleventh, and Werneck’s Austrian corps, together with Archduke Ferdinand,

managed to escape along the northern road. But Mack learned on the four-

teenth that the French were marching westward towards the Iller, and

thinking that they were beating a retreat to the Rhine, he returned to Ulm

to intercept them. Napoleon rushed to envelop the enemy and ordered Ney

to force a crossing of the Danube at Elchingen. The Austrian army, surrounded

on all sides, capitulated on the ﬁ fteenth. Werneck’s corps, pursued by Murat,

surrendered on the eighteenth, Archduke Ferdinand ﬂ eeing into Bohemia

with only a handful of cavalry. A total of forty-nine thousand Austrians fell

prisoner to the French; Kienmayer’s corps alone escaped. Nevertheless, the

campaign did not come off as smoothly as some have maintained, and the

army experienced more than one tactical reverse. The incessant rains and

snows made the advance terribly difﬁ cult. ‘At no other time, save in the

Russian campaign,’ wrote Fezensac, ‘have I suffered as much, or seen

the army in such a state of disorder.’

Ney now entered the Tyrol in pursuit of Archduke John, and reached the

valley of the River Drava; meanwhile, Augereau occupied the Vorarlberg. In

Italy, Masséna fought an indecisive battle with Archduke Charles at Caldiero,

and Charles then withdrew his army in the direction of Laibach [Ljubljana].

Napoleon, wasting no time, drove straight for the Russian army, sending

Kutuzov, who had reached the Inn, on a head-long retreat. The pursuit was