Napoleon and Mass

Grand Tactics

by Charles L. Steenrod, USA

1807 is usually cited by historians as the height of the Napoleonic Empire. Thereafter a certain decline sets in. And perhaps with a belief in the fe-licity of uniform explanation this decline is usually characterized as due to an “increase in mass.” Starting with Napoleon, he is softened by court life and gets fat setting the groundwork for his future physical problems said to undermine his performance on and off the battlefield. Surrounded by a bloated entourage of sycophants, Napoleon has his dreams of conquest encouraged to the point of delusion. The very Empire itself is seen as too large, ungovernable, polyglot, and multi-lingual. Chandler even finds the “…ballooning expansion of the Empire’s physical boundaries” a sign of …advanced megalomania.” (Campaigns of Napoleon. P. xl). (One wonders if Chandler has the same clinical diagnosis when the “boundaries” of the British Empire are “ballooning”?) Similarly on the battlefield tactical for-mations go from handy supple battalion for-mations to “massive,” “clumsy” multi battalion “monstrosities.” The cause usually given for these “massive” formations is a large influx of untrained raw recruits and, through attrition, the lack of experienced officers to train them. Rounded up are the two usual suspects of MacDonald’s “massive square” at Wagram and Erlon’s huge divisional columns at Waterloo, though both these examples appear to be unique. More common on the later battlefields are the formation of “stacked” individual battalion attack columns (or as at Waterloo: squares) into single multi-battalion columns. The two most recent books on Napoleonic tactics are in agreement about them. Muir, in Tactics and the Experience of Combat in the Age of Napoleon says of these columns that “There is little to recommend them” (p. 71), though he does point out that not all of Napoleon’s units were subject to this decline, many of the Peninsula units performed well tactically: Marmont’s at Salamanca for example, so that Wellington didn’t beat some tactically second rate opponent. Nosworthy, in his With Musket, Cannon and Sword, is more critical, suggesting that these formations are due to both a “tactical naiveté” and moral laziness: “…commanders began to succumb to the temptation of throwing what appeared to be an irresistible force against a critical enemy position.” (p.172) The peak of tactical efficiency for the Grande Armee is usually represented by its performance at Austerlitz and Jena-Auerstadt. The tactical versatility of Vandamme’s and St. Hilaire’s divisions on the Pratzen at Austerlitz, and Davout’s use of special “task forces” and Morand’s smooth evolution through the tactical repertoire at Auerstadt are all approvingly cited. One common feature of Austerlitz and Jena is that, at both, Napoleon had an “excess of riches” in that at the end of battle he had large numbers of unused troops. At Austerlitz, Napoleon had the infantry of the Guard in reserve along with Oudinot’s Grenadiers and a good part of Bernadotte’s corps. At Jena, the infantry of the Guard also was not engaged, famously prompting—as memorialized in Vernet’s painting—a member of the Young Guard to give Napoleon his “en avant” advice. Also unused at Jena were large numbers of several corps that were arriving throughout the battle. And the reason for this excess is that at both Austerlitz and Jena Napoleon’s opponents prior to combat, obligingly did to themselves what in later battles Napoleon would expend a considerable number of troops to accomplish. At Austerlitz, the allies created their own gap in the center of their line and it was only due to slowness and poor staff work on their part, that the gap wasn’t even more gaping when Soult’s divisions appeared rising up out of the morning mist onto the Pratzen heights. At Jena-Auerstadt, the Prussians had already conveniently sub-divided themselves into semi-independent commands and then successfully had chosen the worst course of action for each of them. These battles may have demonstrated the tactical prowess of the Grande Armee, but they showed only an abbreviated form of Napoleon’s grand tactical capabilities. Napoleron's Ideal Battle Hubert Camon, an early twentieth century French military historian, believed he had developed a theoretical model of Napoleon’s ideal battle. It consists of three phases. The first is a preparatory phase involving an initial pin, a combat d’usure— a “wearing away” of the enemy, with an outflanking or turning movement to absorb the enemy’s reserves and create a weakened section or hinge in his line. Second, the principal attack of previously concealed massed troops: artillery, cavalry and infantry, a “masse de rupture” (for Camon “masse” here is a positive term) onto this hinge or section, to break through it and into the “heart” of the enemy’s position, disrupting his whole line. The third and final phase consists of an exploitation of this break. “This is the role of the detachments of the penetrating mass that have not yet been employed in the principal attack.” (Napoleon’s System of War, p.38 Nafziger trans.). This attack is accompanied by a general renewed attack along the whole line against the disrupted opponent, followed by an all-out pursuit. This description of the attack by the “masse de rupture” certainly sounds as though a multi-battalion column is being employed. The battalions behind the lead battalion once having penetrated to the “heart” of the position deploy, wheel etc. as the situation requires and continue the attack on the flanks and/or rear of the presumably disrupted enemy. The purpose of these accompanying battalions is not to add weight, “mass” to the initial assault, though indeed there may be some psychological impetus to the lead battalion’s troops knowing what is behind them but the main purpose of the following battalions is to exploit the presumed success of the lead battalion. If things go wrong and the lead battalion doesn’t find a “weakened hinge” in the enemy line, then indeed, as many British historians have commented, the additional ranks give no real added benefit. There was no push of pike with some rugby scrum type of shoving match involved. This has long been a source of misunderstanding by some (predominantly British) historians that the French believed in the moral physics of this shock showdown of a hurtling column against a firm unshaken line. Napoleon himself said that battles were won by fire and not shock. For Clauswitz also, it was fire that “prepared” the line for the success of the shock for the “decisive” attack (his “masse de rupture”). The French certainly could be wrong about how “prepared” the line was by fire before they attacked. Frequently in the Peninsula, they didn’t know exactly where the line was or mistook the unusually thick British skirmish line for the main line. But even if correctly timed, this decisive attack by its nature had to be a mobile columnar formation that could get rapidly through the weakened portion of the enemy line before it could rally or be reinforced. The speed of movement required was not something that stately advancing steady lines could perform. At Salamanca, at the “decisive moment” when speed was important, Pakenham’s division in classic Frederican oblique style moved in three parallel open brigade columns across Marmont’s front, caught up with and passed his overextended and still overextending wing until, outflanking it, the columns wheeled into three parallel lines and attacked. If the French had been unusually clever and, unseen by Wellington, had positioned a force beyond their flank in line across the front of the “outflankers” and it had attacked and beaten them, would this have been another example of “massive clumsy columns” defeated by a line? This misunderstanding of the grand tactical role of some of the multi-battalion columns may be due to the emphasis by these historians on the war in the Peninsula. There, the various French commanders may not have understood Napoleon’s system of battle or been capable of implementing it. Also with the relatively small numbers involved (the sum of all Wellington’s armies in all of his major battles in the Peninsula, is less than Napoleon’s opponents at Leipzig on the first day), the use of the multi-battalion column as a “masse de rupture” may not have occurred or even if the occasion had arisen, been necessary. No single Napoleonic battle fulfills all of Camon’s ideal conditions but all have some of the components. While Napoleon’s writing and bulletins contain discussions of battles having a dramaturgical structure—a beginning middle and end, and how at the “decisive moment” he orders the Guard into action etc.—there is, as with his rewriting of the “official” account of Marengo, always the suspicion that he is engaged in self promotion with the benefit of hindsight. Candid Account from Napoleon If though, the sincerity of St. Cyr can be trusted, then on at least one occasion after the battle of Bautzen, St. Cyr was able to obtain a candid account from Napoleon about his methods of doing battle. Napoleon talked about engaging the enemy with a minimum of force, not yielding too easily to the demands for reinforcements and then “…only towards the end of the day, when he perceived that the enemy was worn out, …that he united what he had been able to keep in reserve, in order to launch on the field of battle a strong mass of infantry, cavalry and artillery; that the enemy not having foreseen this, he made what he called an “evenement” and by this means he had almost always obtained a victory.” (Quoted in Petre p.141, Napoleon’s Last Campaign in Germany). Napoleon also does not use “mass” as a negative term. Austerlitz and Jena clearly do not fit Camon’s model with no “masse de rupture” in either battle. At Austerlitz, the success of the initial attack on the nearly vacant Pratzen rendered any subsequent attack unnecessary. Similarly at Jena, the French success at enveloping the flanks of the initial and each of the subsequent Prussian positions made any concentrated frontal attack to break up the line unnecessary. Camon’s influence with current historians is not uniform. Chandler places him at the center of his discussion of Napoleon’s grand tactical thinking. Elting, in Swords around the Throne, lists Camon in his bibliography and in the chapter Strategy and Tactics he gives a Camon-like account of Napoleon’s battle plan, but mysteriously leaves out (unintentionally deleted?) infantry as part of the masse de rupture: “…the massed guns were pushed forward into practically point-blank range of the enemy line, which they literally blew apart. Through the gap thus created poured the Cavalry Re-serve…” (p.536) Muir, in Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon, doesn’t list Camon in his bibliography but does present a brief Camon-like account of Napoleon’s form of battle, but confuses “maneuver sur le derriere,” a strategic maneuver, with “attaque debordante,” its tactical equivalent. (But the book is misleadingly titled; it should be Tactics and the British Experience of Battle in the Age of Wellington. And this is not just due to the relative paucity, as he mentions, of first-hand Continental European accounts of battle compared to British; even in his chapter on Generals, Wellington is mentioned/discussed more that twice as often as Napoleon, whose “Age” Muir is presumably discussing.) Nosworthy, in his With Musket, Cannon and Sword, neither lists Camon in his bibliography nor provides any Camon-like grand tactical model for Napoleon’s battles. He does present a quote from Maude (a British contemporary of Camon) which is a Camon-like description of the attack by the “masse de rupture” on the “weakened hinge”: massed guns, massed cavalry charges followed by infantry columns etc. but Maude seems to mistakenly think this was the overall form of combat for the entire battle. Nosworthy states that while Maude “paints this picture in relatively attractive terms” for him, Nosworthy, “...this model represents the ossification of French military thought.” (P.183) Instead, for Nosworthy, the true concept of victory in battle for Napoleon seems to be distinctly non-Camon-like and non-grand tactical. Victory in battle seems to result from a sort of “percolating up” effect from the tactical level by the performance of the nifty little battalion columns et al that he is so enamored of. “A key concept to all grand tactics generally… is the concept of applying at the appropriate moment an irresistible force at the critical point on the battlefield. Prior to1807, this irresistible force, rather than being a single body or formation was often the product of several forces working together to achieve the desired effect. As we have seen, Austerlitz, Jena and Auerstadt all provide excellent examples of the French infantry exhibiting this type of tactical finesse. So many times during these middle campaigns as soon as a forward French force encountered and engaged the enemy, the reserves were sent in as needed and gradually exploited weak points as these were revealed. This required a sophisticated orchestration of all available tactical elements…” (P. 171) These “weak points” are “revealed” rather than planned on grand tactically and there are no grand strokes against them, they are only “gradually exploited.” After Ligny, Soult wrote Davout that the result of the Guard attack was like “un effect du theatre.” And indeed at the battles Nosworthy concentrates on (Austerlitz etc.), there were no culminating grand strokes as there were in the later battles but this was due to the initial incompetence of the opposing commanders. Using Camon’s model the opponents were already defeated after the combat d’usure. There was no need for any “masse de rupture”; the opponents had already herniated themselves. The point is that at Austerlitz etc., if the opposing commanders had not committed their egregious prior errors and the battle had progressed beyond the combat d’usure then Napoleon might well have had recourse to a multi-battalion column, so roundly condemned by Nosworthy and little recommended by Muir, as a “masse de rupture” to break up the opposing line. This was his method in later battles and it cannot be due to any influx of raw recruits, lack of trained officers, or some “ossification of French military thought,” since this was his method (in “embryonic form” as Chandler puts it) at Castiglione working with his seasoned Army of Italy before the Camp of Boulogne and well before any buildup of mental calcium that Nosworthy is concerned with, could have occurred. Siborne, a widely read, frequently discounted (now seen as rather quaint) historian, famous for his correspondence, and presumably some direct conversations with Waterloo veterans, in his account of the battle of Waterloo states, after Napoleon has turned down Ney’s request for troops after the fall of La Haye Sainte: “There can be but little doubt that at the time he (Ney) made his urgent demand upon the Emperor for a fresh supply of infantry, he had projected an assault upon the Anglo-allied right wing in accordance with the prominent feature in the tactics of the empire, the column of attack in mass of battalions…” (P.309) For Siborne, the column of attack in mass of battalions was not some naïve degenerate half-measure but a “prominent feature in the tactics of the empire.” It is true that poorly trained conscripts on entering combat could be kept in large masses. On the second day at Aspern-Essling, Lannes’ advancing conscripts were left in column formation because it was feared they couldn’t deploy under fire successfully without falling into confusion and possibly routing. During the 1813 campaign French commanders (Marmont at Lutzen for example) had recourse to multi-battalion squares with the hope that these larger squares would give a moral boost to the troops facing a greatly superior allied cavalry. But in none of these instances are these formations due to any naiveté on behalf of the commander. If anything, it was their expertise that led them to realize the limitations of raw recruits and their relatively new junior officers. Multi-battalion columns, though, were used as the desired formation in the grand tactical role as the “masse de rupture.” And most of the troops who formed these multi-battalion columns were not raw untrained recruits needing a morale boost. It is simply not credible that the multi battalion attack columns of the Guard at Lutzen, Montmirail, Craonne, Ligny and Waterloo were created and/or led by tactically naïve commanders who were trying to give the Guard “…some relatively small psychological advantage…” (Nos. p.174). Guard morale was taken for granted. Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire # 80 Back to First Empire List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by First Empire. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com