Managing Armies in the
2nd Coalition: 1799-1800
Austrian and French Approaches
by Roland Kessinger, Germany
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Whilst the organisation of the Revolutionary French army during the Wars of the First and Second Coalitions (1792-1797 and 1799-1801 - or Revolutionary
Wars) has been the subject of many detailed discussions and historical research, that of its main opponent, the Imperial Austrian army, during this period is relatively less well-known.
The main English language work on the subject, Gunther E. Rothenberg’s “Napoleon’s Great Adversary. Archduke Charles and the Austrian Army 1792-1814” describes the Austrian army in 1792 on the outbreak of the Revolutionary Wars: “The tactical counterpart to the cordon system was the linear order of battle perfected by Frederick the Great of Prussia and widely imitated throughout Europe. The Austrian battle formation consisted of two parallel lines of battalions with each unit assigned a permanent place according to seniority. Each battleline, called a Treffen, was subdivided into a right, centre, and left. Command of the right wing was held by the most senior general, command on the left by a junior. Almost invariably infantry, supported by the line guns, was deployed in the middle to
produce massed fire, while cavalry was placed at the wings with the primary mission to counter the enemy’s horse. A third line of battalions, the Corps de Reserve, usually smaller than the first two Treffen, was stationed several hundred paced to the rear.”
A few pages later, when discussing the results of the War of the First Coalition (1792-1797), Rothenberg notes that Radetzky, writing more than 40 years later, speculated about the causes of the Austrian defeats and concluded: “As causes for Austria’s defeat he listed continued reliance on linear tactics ...”
In the chapters about the 1790s Wars, Rothenberg doesn’t mention any change in Austrian doctrine, so it might be thought that in 1800, the Army still operated according to the tactical doctrine of linear tactics. However, while researching many battles in southern Germany that were fought between 1796 and 1800 (First Biberach, 2nd October 1796; Ostrach, 21st March 1799; Stockach, 25th March 1799; Engen, 3rd May 1800; Messkirch, 5th May 1800), I have not come across an organisation of the Austrian army as Rothenberg describes it. The 1790s were a time, when the Austrians were planning a considerable overhaul of their army, starting the reform commission under Nostitz-Rieneck, which commenced work in 1792 and was continued under Unterberger from 1795 until 1799. Although this
focuses on equipment and supply, there was also considerable debate within the army about organisation, (notably Bellegarde’s 1798 proposal for the establishment of 13 permanent Legions in 1798), and military tactics.
The problem Austria was faced was dealing with French armies far larger than the traditional professional European army. The response becomes clearer during the Second Coalition when the Austrian armies began using a more flexible formation, different from the previous linear tactics.
A Different Starting Point
Another excellent recent English book about the Revolutionary Wars is Paddy Griffith’s “The Art of War of Revolutionary France 1789-1802”. On p. 159, he writes: “The fact is that most army commanders of the early 1790s, of any nationality, already routinely used a concept which approximated to a Divisional organisation for combat purposes, even if the particular arrangements were often quirky, ad hoc, or temporary.”
This is the key, which points us to a better description, not just of the French, but also of the Austrian army’s battlefield organisation. Griffith has pointed out the concept of dividing an army into subunits (to divide the army therefore divisions!) was already existing in most European armies at the beginning of the Revolutionary Wars. Armies were no longer seen as single blocks that had to be centrally commanded, but as all armies were now becoming considerably larger, they all had to develop a new solution to directing them, with different degrees of flexibility and adaptability. All armies thus turned to a Divisional organisation, as each army was now “divided” into smaller formations, which could be led by senior commanders under the Commander-in-Chief.
From the beginning of the Revolutionary Wars the French were faced with the problem to organise mass armies, especially after they had introduced the levée en masse in 1793, which produced an impressive 1 million men under arms by the following year. From the first major pitched battle at Jemappes in 1792, nearly all French victories in the early Revolutionary Wars were won by a large numerical superiority on the battlefield and were not the result of any tactical superiority. Nevertheless, the numerical superiority had to be properly organised.
With their country on a permanent war footing and the forces already divided into Carnot’s “13 Armies”, the French solution was the creation of permanent divisions, which combined elements of the three arms into higher formations. This formation was permanent in itself with a staff attached, rather than a formation built around an individual commander and his own team of staff officers. The formation were thus kept together and could be trained together, irrespective of who held command (especially when commanders were regularly executed!) and the commander was allocated to the division, these being the main features of the French army structure. This system thus made it possible to handle many regiments together and relieved the Commander-in-Chief of a considerable amount of work,
which was now directed by the divisional commanders with their staffs.
The organisation was rigid at the higher levels of army management, but introduced flexibility at the lower level as the divisions could be handled as semi-independent formations.
The Austrian Model
Facing the same problems as their French opponents, the Austrians chose another way to introduce flexibility within a Divisional organisation. In addition, they now found themselves fighting larger battles across extended areas cut up by rivers, forests and broken ground in the Austrian Netherlands (today Belgium) and southern Germany, which made it impossible to line up the army on the battlefield according to the old mid-18th century organisation in two long Treffen and a reserve.
Some confusion has been caused by the Austrians continuing to use the language of the old linear tactics, even in the 1799-1801 War, to identify the component parts of their army. There are Austrian OBs from the Second Coalition War in the Vienna Kriegsarchiv (War Archive), where the Army of Germany was divided into an advance guard, two Treffen and a Corps de Reserve. This would suggest that
Rothenberg’s observations about the Austrians and linear tactics are correct. However, closer examination reveals something different: Within these very formal OBs, the divisions and brigades are made up solely of line infantry or cavalry within the main army Treffen. The Grenadiers are concentrated in brigades in the Corps de Reserve, (which had begun in 1796), and the advance-guard is composed of light infantry and light cavalry organised in brigades.
Then, comparison with the after action reports stored in the same archive, demonstrates that this is not the organisation employed by the Austrians in a battle, where line infantry and cavalry usually
formed mixed divisions for the battle after real-location of the units concerned.
So, what do these documents stored in Vienna represent in terms of the organisation of the Austrian army on the battlefield or on the march? The first set of OBs based on the Treffen are best described as a scheme for a formal standard organisation of the army or “administrative OB”. In use for several days and weeks, this administrative structure laid out the many administrative responsibilities of each
commander.
Typically, there were Generalmajors (GM) and Feldmarschalleutnants (FML), who held the formal command over infantry brigades and divisions; other GMs and FMLs had the administrative responsibility for pure cavalry brigades and divisions. The Reserve was usually under the direction of a single General under the direction of the Army Staff. So, for example, reports about losses had to be
sent to the Commander-in-Chief through the designated lines of administration from the regiment up through the “administrative” brigade and division and then on to headquarters, as laid out in this administrative OB. Although Austrian regiments were allocated to Divisions as they left their bases for war, once in the field the Treffen organisation of the administrative OB was relatively permanent and approximated to the French divisional model. The commanders of the larger formations, either divisions or the larger “corps” (a sub-Army formation larger than a division or separate from the main army), were supported by a group of staff officers allocated from the Army staff at the outset of the campaign, but there was no equivalent to the French permanent divisional staff system.
Within this Treffen organisation, the Austrians had also taken up the concept of breaking up the army into more manageable subunits, as divisions and brigades, as did all the main European armies of the 1790s. However, these divisions were formed on an ad hoc basis, allocating these formations to a commander, rather than assigning a commander to the formation, especially as the opposing sides closed
for battle or it became necessary to allocate forces to specific missions away from the main army.
So, the Austrian army of 1799-1800 on the battlefield was not a combination of permanent higher formations, but a collection of commands led by generals to which units were assigned as was thought appropriate by the Commander-in-Chief. Therefore, the structure of the Austrian army was very personalised. To arrange his army for battle or on the march, the Commander-in-Chief started with the formal administrative OB. Then, different units such as regiments, companies, or squadrons, and even whole brigades and divisions were shifted between the available commanders. In the contemporary Austrian documents dealing with the formation of ad hoc divisions, the word angewiesen – assigned - is often used, demonstrating that Generals were temporarily allocated additional units to reinforce their
original “administrative” brigade or division. Others lost their units and were sometimes even left without any unit for the day of battle.
This created a different army organisation, which is effectively the “tactical OB” for the battle. The main characteristic of these “tactical OBs” is that infantry and cavalry units were now mixed within brigades and divisions. The advance-guard was often also augmented with additional line infantry and Reserve artillery. Nevertheless, the administrative and the tactical OBs continued to exist side by side – the after-action reports concerned those units, which a commander was actually directing under the tactical OB. At the same time, losses had to be reported up the chain of the administrative OB. So there were several occasions where an Austrian general had to write an after action report about some regiments (his “tactical” brigade or division) while he had to send in the losses of a nearly completely different set of units (his “administrative” brigade or division).
Characteristics of the Austrian System
The Austrian way of organising an army on the battlefield in 1799-1800 was characterised by the ad hoc formation of brigades and divisions, clearly demonstrating that they had abandoned the linear tactics doctrine of central direction of a single block. The ad hoc brigades and divisions were built from more permanent structures that were kept together for a longer time mainly for administrative purposes.
Unlike the French, who viewed the army as a combination of permanent higher formations, the Austrian concept was a combination of commands, whose strengths (as ad hoc brigades and divisions) had to be adjusted according to the circumstances. This gave the Austrians much flexibility regarding the regulation of the strength of the different higher formations, such that even in battle, units were shifted between the commands. The downside was that this flexibility could cause some loss of command and control, as individuals were not wholly familiar with their immediate subordinates or superiors.
Nevertheless, there does not seem to be any evidence that during the 1799-1801 period, the Austrian system of ad hoc divisions had any severe disadvantage against the French system of permanent divisions. It was only later, from the Camp of Boulogne, that with the introduction of permanent Corps, (which represented the French moving the Divisional organisation up a level), to manage even larger armies that the advantages in command and control of large formations under the French system became apparent, despite Napoleon continuing to direct his armies from the centre.
In contrast, the Austrians under Archduke Charles, initially set out a design for a Korps system on 1st March 1809, which was then developed by mid-April into a Korps system of various sized orps, but which lacked the command advantages of peacetime permanence.
I would like to thank Dave Hollins, Geert van Uythoven, and Robert Goetz for many fruitful discussions about this topic that helped to clarify the outlined ideas.
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