PREFACE

WAR IS THREE DIMENSIONAL

This book has a very simple premise: European warfare from 1793 to 1815 lends itself particularly well to an operational-level analysis. Modern war is three-dimensional, divided by modern doctrine into three “levels of war.”¹ At the lowest end of the spectrum is the tactical level, the level of the engagement or the battle. Combat. At the high end are strategy and grand strategy, how the military forces are used with other forms of national power to achieve political ends. In between these two is the operational level, the level of the campaign, or a series of engagements, fought to achieve a particular military purpose, but which might or might not lead to a situation resulting in final military victory or a suspension of hostilities.

It has only been in modern times that the term operational level of war has come to encompass its own distinct niche in discussions of military art and science.² However, giving a phenomenon or concept a name does not presuppose the nonexistence of that phenomenon prior to introduction of its particular usage. Such is the case with the operational level of war. This term is of recent vintage and identifying when it came into common use depends on which professional military and its doctrine one is examining. I learned of it in my teenage years, until then being unaware of anything beyond battles and tactics at one end and war and strategy at the other.³ Most military historians treated the topic similarly (and some still do). War, it seemed, was naturally two-dimensional—tactics and strategy. War is certainly not two-dimensional, nor is it linear. Of the three levels of war—strategic, operational, and tactical—the one that is least understood and written about resides in that always uncomfortable middle ground, the operational level.

The size, scope, and complexity of operations during the Napoleonic era increased exponentially along with the profound political events shaking and shaping the societies of Europe. Huge armies, then army groups, and finally entire armed societies “went at it” in a series of complex and interlinking campaigns on a scale not seen in Europe since Roman times. Carl von Clausewitz, arguably among the first of the modern operational analysts, famously wrote: “but in 1793, a force appeared that beggared all imagination. Suddenly war again became the business of the people—a people of thirty millions, all of whom considered themselves to be citizens.”⁴ He wrote about France and the force of armed nationalism that the French Revolution unleashed upon Europe. Armed nationalism is not a thing of the past and neither is revolution. In the past we find the stuff of the present, patterns that, if examined, can help us navigate the troubled waters of our own day.

Clausewitz’s judgment captures one of more profound truths about the military revolution that occurred during the wars that took place after the French Revolution began.⁵ This force that “beggared all imagination” was also a force of exceptional complexity—as complex as the nation itself. And we must remember that France was at the forefront of the other nations of Europe in terms of social complexity. New systems, methods, tactics, doctrines, and organizations were needed to enable this juggernaut to operate. There was a revolution in the complexity of war. New leadership was needed, and it was in this environment that “new men” from the minor nobility and middle classes like Napoleon Bonaparte and Gerhard von Scharnhorst prospered. Additionally, enlightened leaders from the status quo regimes such as the Austrian archduke Charles, Sir Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington), and Marshal A. A. Suvorov emerged as innovators from the more traditional militaries of the monarchical enemies of France. They came to grips with the complexity they faced and began to wage war in a new way that matched the complexity of operations demanded by the challenge from France and its armed nationalism empowered by the ideology of the “Rights of Man.”⁶

Given the complexity of warfare during the period 1792–1815, it lends itself naturally to an operational-level investigation. Accordingly, the character of this book will reflect two operational frameworks of analysis. The first is that developed by the first generation of Soviet military thinkers between 1918 and 1941. The Germans had pioneered the usage and vocabulary for an operational level of war. However, as with most new concepts, it was not the discoverers who established the mature framework for a coherent approach to an operational approach to practicing war at this level. The Soviets reaped where the Germans had sown.⁷ The second approach is that of James Schneider, formerly of the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Schneider uses the language of fluid dynamics and physics to describe the components of operational art.⁸

Most of the sources used for this book are secondary and may appear dated with respect to their interpretations. They are used to get the basic facts, which at the operational level of war are largely established—for example, it is clear that the Napoleon was victorious in the Austerlitz campaign while he was not in the 1812 Russian campaign. Some of the conclusions presented here are not startlingly new as far as the facts are concerned; research using new or little-used primary resources is necessary for a scholar to make such a claim. This book instead proposes a new line of analysis for the Napoleonic Wars along principally operational lines. I also realize that using 20th-century military theory to explain 18th and 19th century events has some inherent analytical flaws, superimposing concepts that were not part of the framework that Napoleonic leaders and generals worked from in making military decisions. However, it can be argued (and will be later in this book) that at the very least Napoleon and his talented subordinate Baron Antoine de Jomini understood the basic principles of operational war and, at least in Jomini’s case, had codified the first cut. The Prusso-Germans, too, seemed to understand the profound implications of the emergence of a new level of war, and Clausewitz even referred to them as “operative elements” in On War in referencing his book that deals with military “strategy” at the campaign level.⁹

The book will focus primarily at the campaign level and Napoleonic tactics will not be explored in detail and only come up in discussion as they directly relate to the operational level—such as the use of cannon by brigades and regiments of the period to give them more firepower and thus operational durability. For the reader who wants more on tactical developments of the period, David Chandler’s fine discussion entitled “Napoleon’s Art of War” in The Campaigns of Napoleon has some excellent discussions of tactical evolutions during the period, especially on the issues of skirmishing and various tactical formations such as the column, line, and mixed order. For even more detail, Brent Nosworthy’s With Musket, Cannon and Sword synthesizes all the elements of the battlefield to give one an accurate view inside the “black box” of the tactics as they were actually executed on the battlefields of the period.¹⁰

In summary, this book aims for something of an impressionistic result that suggests the operational-level approach adopted here illustrates effectively the more esoteric concept of operational art—how military genius, as best defined by Clausewitz, operated in space and time in the uncertain environment at the operational level during the era of a veritable “God of War.”¹¹