Introduction
Our paper will be presented in multiple parts. The second part, From the Revolution's Division to the Empire's Army Corps will be published next issue.
The subject that we cover is extensive. Therefore, we will present only the "40,000 foot view" of the organizational evolution that took place in the French army between the Seven Years War and the Empire, which, as we shall see, changed the face of warfare through the introduction of the Division and ultimately the Army Corps.
Our presentation is the result of many years of research, some of which has been published during the last 18 years in EE&L. The main sources we have used are mostly French, with some exceptions. These sources have been carefully corroborated and most, like Belhomme's Histoire de l'infanterie en France, use data from the French archives at Vincennes and the Archives Nationales. We consider them extremely reliable.
Part I
The Seven Years War was not particularly successful or glorious for the French Army. In fact, it suffered a series of disgraceful defeats. Yet, it was one of the most fertile periods for drastic organizational and tactical changes concerning the conduct of warfare.
During the Seven Years War, the three-rank line remained the basic combat formation of all the European armies of the period. On the battlefield, armies were usually deployed in two lines each consisting of two deployed lines of infantry with the cavalry covering both flanks.
[1] The system was plagued with problems among which was the lengthy deployment of an army from several columns.
The Prussian Army, under the brilliant leadership of Frederick the Great, had reached ultimate perfection in the traditional method of warfare. [2] Through incessant, repeated meticulous drill, Frederick's army had attained such rapidity and precision that it could deploy from several columns by simultaneous wheels in a relatively short time. [3] That precision and speed of movement had allowed Frederick to use his famous oblique order [4] at Prague, Leuthen and Rossbach where he spectacularly defeated and routed a combined army composed of French and the contingents of various small German states. [5]
The Development of the Divisional System
The French, like the other Europeans, were far from attaining anything like equality in the matter of deployment, and thus were at a serious disadvantage when facing the Prussians. To compensate for this handicap, the French began to multiply the number of troop columns entering the battlefield in order to reduce the time and distance for their deployment.
Earlier in the middle of the 18th century, Marshal de Saxe had already created permanently organized legions capable of independent operations. [6] During the Seven Years War, the famous Bourcet organized the French army for an invasion along several parallel axis. [7] The successful operation led to the full development of the Divisional system, the first attempt at organizing an army into Divisions of all arms, which was introduced in the French Army in 1759.
The system was first set up by the famous instructions given by Marshal de Broglie before the Campaign of 1760. [8] In these instructions, de Broglie stipulated that the army will be divided into 4 Divisions during the campaign. Each Division would be composed of a quarter of the brigades. Each Division would be commanded by a lieutenant-general appointed for the complete campaign who will have other generals under him. De Broglie was a strong partisan of the ordre profond but despite that, his army continued to fight in the classical way using the ordre mince. In addition, the cavalry protecting each wing was also formed into a Division9. Each Division was subdivided into at least 2 brigades each formed of 2 regiments.
Thus, the army now marched in 6 columns (1 per Division) instead of the previous 2 or 3 columns of the old system. It resulted in a much faster deployment and the system was retained throughout the campaign. We should not forget that the Divisional system was an attempt to compensate for the mediocrity and slowness of the French in deployment. [10]
De Broglie correctly placed great emphasis on the importance of the speed of deployment and accustoming the troops to it. Furthermore, to avoid any interference during deployment, the generals assigned to the command of the new Divisions were ordered to take great care to maintain the distances between the columns so as to have room to deploy. [11]
The importance of the above presentation of the chain of events is that it led to the creation of the Divisional system, one of the greatest innovations in the history of warfare. Contrary to some assertions, its initial intent was primarily tactical. Furthermore, the main improvement was that the new Division, instead of being only an organizational unit, became a separate body of men that marched on its own prior to the start of the battle. The next logical development was a separate body of men that acted tactically on its own during the battle. That, of course, provided far greater tactical flexibility to the line of battle which was previously so rigid.
Further Developments of the Divisional System after the Seven Years War
The Divisional system had been so successful an improvement during the Seven Years War that it was further developed and became the basic permanent organization of the French army after that war. Marshal de Broglie became its chief advocate.
The Divisional system was officially sanctioned by the Ordinance of March 25, 1775, spelling out its organization. Belhomme analyzed it in great detail:
"All the troops were formed in permanent Divisions, each one commanded by a "lieutenant-general" and several "marechaux de camps". The lieutenant-general was expected to be with his Division in April and May and again in September and October. [12] He had to review his troops in September. The marechaux de camps [13] served by semester, half from January 1 to June 30 and half from July 1 to December 31; they had to review their commands twice during their semester.
...
The troops were organized into 16 Divisions each consisting of infantry regiments, cavalry and dragoons. That organization was very good since it provided direct contact between the generals and their troops." [14]
Note that the organization in permanent Divisions, with the exception of the regimental artillery, did not include the regular artillery which was still organized in 7 artillery regiments. More on that will follow later.
The Effects of the War of the American Revolution
With the increasing French support for the American Colonists, it became obvious that a new war with England was inevitable. A new Reglement was introduced in the French army on June 1st, 1776 [15] which embraced the ideas of Guibert. It was the doing of the new War Minister, the Comte de St. Germain, [16] who like Guibert was a partisan of the ordre mince. The new Reglement introduced many of Guibert's ideas including the close column (colonne serree) as the only formation to maneuver.
During the Seven Years War, the great debate between the partisans of the ordre mince (thin linear order) led by Guibert and the ordre profond (columns) led by Mesnil-Durand and supported by de Broglie, intensified. Tactical trials were to take place but were interrupted by the beginning of the war. After the war, Mesnil-Durand and his partisans were quick to attribute the numerous defeats suffered by the French army to the ordre mince and the dependence on firepower. They claimed that with the ordre profond these defeats would not have taken place. The number of ordre profond partisans increased after the introduction of the so-called Prussian order in the preceding Reglements. Of course, that opinion was not shared by Guibert [17] and his followers.
However, the War Ministry of St.Germain was of short duration. He resigned on September 27, 1777 and was replaced by the Prince of Montbarey. The supporters of Mesnil-Durand who could not obtain anything from St.Germain were more successful with Montbarey. A large experiment of the system was to be made at the Camp de Vaussieux. [18]
The trials of Mesnil-Durand's system took place at the Camps de Vaussieux in Normandy between Bayeux and Courcelles-sur-Mer following the entry of France into the American Revolutionary War early in 1778. An army had been assembled there not only to defend the province but also to threaten an invasion of Great Britain if the Franco-Spanish fleets proved successful. Some 44 battalions of infantry organized in 11 brigades, 6 regiments of dragoons in 4 brigades, and a large train of artillery were assembled there under the command of Marshal de Broglie. [19] The troops were drilled according to the Mesnil-Durand System.
The inherent deployment problems of Mesnil-Durand's system quickly became apparent in the series of trials conducted at Vaussieux and the system lost the support of most officers. There, after all the details had been taken care of, de Broglie had divided the troops into 2 commands that maneuvered against each other. De Broglie's command executed the maneuvers as per Mesnil-Durand's drill and the command under Lieutenant-General de Luckner executed its maneuvers as per the Reglement of 1776 (i.e. that of Guibert). Luckner's command always had the advantage. At Vaussieux, both Mesnil-Durand and Guibert were present at the maneuvers which led to the rejection of Mesnil-Durand's system by general agreement with the notable exception of de Broglie. [20]
However, Mesnil-Durand's column of attack, i.e. the column on the middle, which had been neglected by Guibert, was added the Reglement of 1776.
The result of the Vaussieux trials was the triumph of Guibert's ideas. Thus, the argument between the supporters of the ordre profond and the ordre mince was temporarily settled but the controversy did not stop there. [21]
Further development of the permanent Division system.
Marshal de Segur became Minister of War in 1781 and should be credited with the creation of the organized Light Infantry. [22] De Segur found the French army poorly trained and began a methodic reorganization. He gave Gribeauval a free hand to modernize further the artillery's equipment. De Segur should also be credited with the creation of the first peace time staff corps. At the close of the War of the American Revolution, the War Minister feared that the dissolution of the army would lead to the loss of many experienced staff officers.
To avoid that loss, he offered peacetime employment to 68 officers, among whom was Berthier who had served with Rochambeau's army in America. These officers studied military subjects. The Revolution recognized the potential of the Staff Corps [23] and drew from its members in an attempt to provide each field army with a trained chief of staff (chef d'etat-major). De Segur left the War Ministry on August 27, 1787 and was replaced on September 24, 1787 by Lieutenant-General de Brienne.
De Brienne continued de Segur's reform of the army. One of his first ordinances, that of October 9, 1787, created a permanent organization for the administration of war known under the name of conseil de la guerre (War Council hereafter). The War Council was formed of 8 generals and 1 Colonel-Secretary. [24] The duty of the Council was to originate all reforms, ordinances and reorganizations of the army. It was to be in session every year from November 1st to May 1st so that members could actively serve in the army during the summer months.
Among the work of the War Council was the Ordinance of March 17, 1787 which officially created the Light Infantry by definitely separating the 6 battalions of Chasseurs … Pieds (foot chasseurs) from the regiments of Chasseurs … Cheval and increasing their number from 6 to 12 battalions by using the soldiers from 3 disbanded infantry regiments (Royal-Italian, Royal Corse and Montreal). Prior to that ordinance, the foot chasseurs could not be incorporated in the permanent Divisions since they did not exist indepedently from and were brigaded with the Chasseurs … Cheval.
In addition, the War Council reduced the enormously swollen commissioned ranks which included some 36,000 officers, of whom only 13,000 were actually on duty, to 9,578 with the active military units.
A further achievement of the War Council was to expand the Divisional System by the Ordinance of March 17, 1788. France was divided into 17 Divisional districts corresponding to the number of permanent Divisions. All the infantry regiments were incorporated in brigades, each of 2 regiments, commanded by a marechal de camps to be present with his brigade from August 1st to October 15. The Guards, the artillery and the chasseur battalions were not incorporated in the 52 brigades of infantry. [25]
The first 40 brigades were organized with the French regiments and the remaining 12 with the foreign regiments.
Basically, a Division included two or more infantry brigades, each of which had 2 infantry regiments each of 2 battalions. The grenadier and chasseur companies were stripped from the battalions and formed into a converged battalion. [26] Consequently an infantry brigade included 5 battalions plus the regimental artillery of 8 4-pdrs (2 per battalion).
In theory, the Divisions were permanent. However, in practice, this organization was not absolutely rigid since the composition of the brigades was modified from time to time by the movement of regiments from one garrison to another.
The main object of the reorganization of the permanent Divisions was to place the French army on a permanent war footing. For that reason, the Ordinance of March 17, 1787 organized the French provinces into 17 commands-in-chief (commandments en chef) 27] or Divisional districts. The first three commands located in critical border areas were considered as the most important and for that reason each was commanded by a Marshal of France. The others were commanded by a lieutenant-general. [28]
According to the ordinance, these measures had been taken so "that the troops will be always ready to take the field and that in order to do so, they'll be organized, equipped and provided with all the equipment of campaign required by war, in such a way that peace be for them a constant school of discipline and instruction and for the generals a school of command." [29]
Capitaine Latreille [30] in l'armee et la nation … la fin de l'ancien regime, (p. 322-323) evaluates the achievement of the War Council and following is a translation of what he said: The work, published by the Historical Section, is extremely reliable and based on French military archive primary sources.)
"In organizing the Divisions during peacetime and brigading together the horse troops, the War Council had achieved a very significant improvement. If one looks at the following map, where the location of each Divisions is shown as of 1789, one is stricken by the heavy concentration of the troops near the borders which are the most vulnerable, that of the North and East borders. Of the 20 Divisions stationed in continental France, [31] 7 were on the first line between Dunkirk and Bitches, [32] 2 others, the ones of Artois and Picardy make up a second line behind the ones of Flanders, Hainaut and Champagne, entrusted with the defense of the border with the low countries. On the eastern front (Alsace and Franche-Comte), where the border is covered by the Rhine and by Switzerland, a power that many centuries of friendship tied up with France, 3 Divisions are deployed between the North and the South. The total amount of the forces deployed between the North Sea and the lake of Geneva was 94 battalions and 134 squadrons in the first line and a grand total of 118 battalions and 158 squadrons, if the second line Divisions are included. That is one half of the infantry and three-quarters of the Cavalry. [33]
The camps of Vaussieux in 1778 had been very successful. Hence, the practice was brought back to life and 2 camps of instructions were formed from September 1st to 24th. The first one took place at St. Omer and was under the command of the Prince de Cond‚ and included 37 battalions and 32 squadrons; the second at Montigny near Metz, commanded by the Marshal de Broglie, concentrated 25 battalions and 64 squadrons. The troops were exercised to maneuver by brigades and by Divisions.
The eventual attribution of the artillery had been already covered in details by the Ordinance of October 3, 1774:
"During a campaign, each infantry brigade was to be provided with a definite amount of artillery. Each brigade was to have 8 guns (2 per battalion) manned by a company of gunners; the guns of the artillery park were organized in divisions of 8 guns each (of the same caliber) to be manned by a company of gunners. In addition, 2 companies of each artillery brigade were assigned to serve 2 infantry Divisions and the 2 remaining companies were assigned to serve as 2 Reserve Divisions. The companies of sappers were to be placed with or near the artillery. The companies of bombardiers were assigned to the howitzer and mortar batteries, the siege park used in the fortresses.
In addition, the Ordinance of 1774 also assigned the reserve troops from the so-called Provincial units to the Reserve Divisions and artillery, and in each army, some Provincial battalions were assigned to the artillery their companies being distributed among the Reserve Divisions and the artillery, the grand park, and the bridging corps (‚quipage de pontons). In the Reserve Divisions, each company of gunners manning a 12-pdr section was to receive 56 soldiers and that serving a 8-pdr received 32 soldiers. The bridges were to be built by the companies of workers with the help of the companies on Miners part of the parc. [35]
The reforms made by the War Council were extensive and much too numerous to cover here, but they basically set up the organization of the Divisions, the artillery, the cavalry, and the miners that we find in the Wars of the Revolution and of the Empire.
Another significant contribution of the War Council was the publishing of the provisional infantry Reglement of 1788. Two members of the War Council, the Comte de Puys‚gur and the Duc de Guines were given the task of drawing a new ordinance for the infantry. Both were partisans of the ordre profond. Then regiments were assigned to them, in order to allow them to experiment with the proposed maneuvers as they were being formulated. The complete instruction was issued on May 20, 1788. The way in which it was organized shows that it was primarily designed with the training of the troops in mind. It was divided into schools and into lessons with specific instructions on how to do it. The pattern was followed by the Reglement of 1791. [36]
The new Reglement incorporated all the changes and improvements since the Seven Years War. The new Reglement went back for inspiration to that of 1769 for Light Troops, drawn by Guibert's father. A great innovation was the possible passage from three lines to two. Guibert was no more the editor of that Reglement than he was of the preceding ones. However, his influence was very strong and his tactics were adopted and became official with that ordinance.
The Early Events of 1789-1791, the two Reglements of 1791
The new Reglement of 1788 was never really implemented for the events of 1789 put an end to the proceedings. In addition, Marshal de Broglie became the Minister of War on July 12, 1789. [37] He had become an enemy of Guibert and of the War Council. He immediately disbanded the War Council, the Divisions and the brigades, all the monumental work that had been achieved in a few short years. The new Reglement fell into oblivion. There was hardly any attention given to tactics during the next two years, and only the threat of invasion in 1791 turned attention back to it.
The Estates General summoned in 1789 by Louis XVIIIth transformed themselves into a Constituent Assembly (Assembly hereafter) which, backed by a huge citizen militia, forced the reluctant king to accept the Constitution of 1791 that drastically reduced the royal power. Effectively, a ministry now responsible to the Assembly - and not the king - ruled Paris.
During that troubled period which was more or less a period of disorganization in the French army, one would think that little changes would take place. Nothing is further from that. When the National Guard was raised in 1789, it was not drilled according to the Reglement of 1788. Instead the Reglement of 1776 was reedited but soon it became apparent that it was too complicated and could not satisfy the needs of an improvised militia. The new Military Committee [38] took over the task of preparing many reforms. Two new Reglements were to take effect in 1791 and both were a step in the direction of the ordre profond, yet recognizing the importance of the ordre mince. The Vicomte de Noailles, head of the Military Committee was charged with drawing up a simpler instructions for the National Guard. Most of the Committee members were partisans of the ordre profond but displayed in spite of the introduction to the Reglement of January 1st, 1791 [39] a remarkable restraint and applied Guibert's method of movements and some of his principles. In fact, the new Reglement was a compromise between the ordre profond and the ordre mince.
Although the authors of the new Reglement for the National Guard were formally partisans of the attack of the ordre profond, they kept Guibert's methods of evolution and covered extensively evolutions in line, certainly because of the miserable failure of Mesnil-Durand's columns called pl‚sions at the Camps of Vaussieux. They added to the new Reglement the column of attack on the center formed with only 1 battalion, which was almost identical to that of the Reglement of 1766.
The work of the Military Committee continued with the drawing of the famous Reglement of August 1st, 1791, which, although contested by many, was one of the most important of 18th century infantry regulations. [40]
It remained in force throughout the Wars of the French Revolution and of the Empire not being replaced until 1831. Contrary to some erroneous opinions, it was not the work of the partisans of the ordre mince or that of Guibert.
Colin [41] challenges this point of view as erroneous and quotes the following as typical:
"The Reglement of 1791 was hardly more than a reproduction of the Reglement of 1776, elaborated after the Seven Years War under the influence of some Prussians methods; it was accordingly the continuation of Prussian tactics in all its form." [42]
Colin claimed that nothing was further from the truth claimed Colin. He attacked this and similar views since the Reglement of 1776 conformed to the principles of Pirch which were introduced in the French army at a time where these principles were abandoned by the Prussian army. Furthermore in his discussion Colin reduced these arguments to almost nothing. The Reglement of August 1791 was in fact the culmination of all the intellectual debates that took place in France during the XVIIIth century. Colin42 continues by saying
"the Reglement of 1791 presented the greatest analogy with the Reglements of 1788 and January 1789 for the National Guard, while differing profoundly from that of 1776." [43]
One should not conclude from the extensive debates that took place in France during the XVIIIth century between the partisans of the ordre profond and of the ordre mince were meaningless. One must not forget that the Reglement did not provide exclusively a source of tactics to the generals of the French Revolution and of the Empire. As we'll see in a future article, these generals also applied some of the methods of Folard and Mesnil-Durand.
We have somewhat digressed away from the main subject at the end by covering the two infantry Reglements of 1791, the first one for the National Guard and the second for the regular army, but we feel that it was necessary to better understand what took place during the Wars of the Revolution and of the Empire. In our next issue we'll cover the evolution of the French army through the Revolution and how, in spite of the turmoil that army went through in which almost everything was contested, the permanent Divisonal system was never rejected.
[1] See Quimby The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, Columbia University Press, New York, 1957.
After having indicated the attack in column as the most favorable for the battalions of National Guards, we do not, nevertheless, exclude the deployed order; we have sought only to simplify it. Colin, L'infanterie au XVIIIe siecle, pp. 262-3.
Belhomme, Lieutenant-colonel, Histoire de l'infanterie en France, Paris, 1893-1902.
More Evolution
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), debate had already arisen in France led by Folard, a partisan of the ordre profond, who had proposed to change the system. The partisans of the ordre profond were supporters of deep columnar formations, while the other side supported l'ordre mince, i.e. classical linear tactics. The debate ended at the beginning of the Seven Years War. But the humiliating French defeat unleashed a flood of books and pamphlets on what reform should be instituted in the French army and the debate between the partisans of the ordre mince and the ordre profond resumed. The baron of Mesnil-Durand, the strongest partisan of the ordre profond, advocated the column and nothing but the column. Mesnil-Durand was supported by a general of great prestige, the Marshal de Broglie.
The artillery regiments were not part of the brigades, but 6 of the 7 of these regiments were located at short distances from the North-East border, at Douai, La Fere, Strasbourg, Metz, Auxonne and Besanton; the corps of the Miners (Mineurs) was garrisoned in Verdun. A series of fortresses [34] of primary importance - the iron belt (ceinture de fer) of Vauban, as quoted by Carnot - such as Lille, Metz and Strasbourg complete that defensive system. If war suddenly took place, the King had at his immediate disposal over 100,000 men, which would allow him to concentrate without too much apparent difficulties, the elements of 2 armies of 60,000 to 80,000 each, one facing the Low Countries and the other behind the line of the Rhine."
Conclusion on Part I
Footnotes
[2] See The Anatomy of Victory.
[3] Ibid., see also Quimby.
[4] See E&EL #11
[5] At Rossbach (November 5, 1757), the French/Allied army numbered 42,000 of which the German contingents, officially known as Reichs-Truppen and numbering about 10,900, were under the command of Hildburghausen.
[6] Marshal de Saxe, Mes Reverie, 2 volumes, Amsterdam, 1757, available in an English language reprint as Reveries on the art of War, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, pp. 36-37.
[7] That operation was successful and because of it, Bourcet can be considered as the initiator of the Divisional System.
[8] Instructions pour l'armee du Roy commandee par M. le marechal de Broglie, 1760., Archives Nationales, Guerre A1 3550.
[9] We use Division with a capital "D" to distinguish it from the smaller division used in battalion drill to describe the tactical combination of 2 companies or platoons.
[10] The subject is well covered in Anatomy of Victory.
[11] Colin La tactique et la discipline.
[12] One of the objectives of the ordinance was to force the Division commanders, and other general officers, to spend a minimum amount of time with their command. That may sound strange but it was a new rule, which motivated the indignation of these officers more interested in their social life than in their military commands. In the past, most commanders only joined their command when going to war, a practice that was one of the great weaknesses of the French army prior to that ordinance.
[13] Each brigade was under the command of a marechal de camps (marechaux de camps is the plural of marechal de camps.
[14] The intent of the Reglement was good, but it was undermined in the way that it was implemented. Latreille, p. 102-103, mentions that during an attempt to train all the generals likely to serve as Division commanders, a quick rotation of these officers took place. Soon, some generals chosen to command the Divisions were found to be very inferior in the fulfillment of their duties. Slowly, the competent Division commanders were replaced by some who were incapable or ignorant. Soon, the latter became the laughing stock of the officers and soldiers. That seriously damaged discipline and the troops lost their confidence in their chiefs.
[15] The Reglement was to remain in effect until it was replaced by the Reglement of 1791. It replaced the provisional regulations of 1774 and 1775, but was disliked by many because it introduced into the French army many ideas of Pirch and more or less was considered as a Prussian system.
[16] The Comte de St.Germain became War Minister at the end of October 1774, replacing Marshal de Muy who was a supporter of the ordre profond.
[17] Colonel Guibert was the defendant of the ordre mince, consisting of 2 deployed lines with cavalry on the wings, maneuvers by lines or fractions of lines, recognition of the importance of firepower, and acceptance of all the improvements that had become necessary. He exposed his ideas in Essai de Tactique that was printed in London in 1772.
[18] A small experiment to test Mesnil-Durand's system had been made at Verdun in 1775 when Marshal de Muy was War Minister. It was found that the system was plagued with problems, which Mesnil-Durand promised to correct.
[19] Beside being the father of the permanent Division, Marshal de Broglie was a strong advocate of the ordre profond. Another partisan of the ordre profond, the Marquis de Lambert, was the Quartermaster-General, and at Vaussieux, was assisted by Mesnil-Durand.
[20] As a consequence of the maneuvers at Vaussieux, Guibert published his second major work, Defense du systeme de guerre moderne in 1779.
[21] Mesnil-Durand's system was rejected by the Vaussieux maneuvers because, basically, it was unnecessarily complicated. However, some of the principles of Mesnil-Durand had some merit and were not forgotten. Some of these principles were applied by some of the generals of the Empire. In fact, Mesnil-Durand was the first to recommend the use of skirmishers to harass and keep the enemy at bay, the fractionation of the lines into brigades and Divisions capable of maneuvering with a certain independence and, according to the ground they encountered, the formation of a reserve. Finally, he recommended the formation of the columns of attack to contact the enemy with the bayonet. It was the exclusive use of these cumbersome columns of attack that were the reason for the failure of the Mesnil-Durand system at Vaussieux.
[22] The Ordinance of August 1784 attached a 4-company battalion of Chasseurs … Pieds to each regiment of Chasseurs … Cheval.
[23] The Staff Corps was renamed several times but its function remained the same and many generals such as Desaix, Kl‚ber, Soult, Ney, and Gouvion St.Cyr were to pass through its ranks.
[24] The members of the War Council were de Gribeauval, de Puys‚gur, de Guines, de Vancourt, de Fourcroy, d'Esterhazy, d'Antichamps and Lambert. The Colonel-Secretary was Guibert.
[25] Each brigade was named after the regimental "chef de brigade" (the most senior regiment). For example:
1st brigade: 1st regiment, Colonel-general; 46th, La Couronne.
2nd brigade: 2nd regiment, Picardie; 76th, Monsieur.
3rd brigade: 3rd regiment, Pi‚mont; 94th, Enghien.
[26] We have here the origin of the elite battalion formed in each brigade, a practice that was retained by the armies of the Revolution as well as the early Empire at least until the Campaign of 1806.
[27] The commands-in chief were: 1st Flandres and Hainaut, 2nd the three Bishoprics (Metz, Toul and Verdun), 3rd Alsace, 4th Lorraine, 5th Franche-Comt‚, 6th Dauphin‚, 7th Provence, 8th Corsica, 9th Languedoc, 10th Roussillon, 11th Guyenne, 12th Poitou, Saintonge and Aunis, 13th Bretagne, 14th Normandy, 15th Picardie and Artois, 16th Bourgogne and 17th the interior provinces, Belhomme p.415.
[28] Each Commander-in-chief was provided with a second in command, which was either a lieutenant-general or a marechal de camp.
[29] The organization in "r‚gions militaires" is still used today by the French army.
[30] Latreille was a captain in the French army and part of the staff of section historique de l'etat-major de l'armee (Historical Section of the Army Headquarters.
[32] The 21st Division was stationed in Corsica.
[32] Bitches is a city in Alsace-Lorraine and was an important fortress built by Vauban in 1689. It withstood the Prussian invasion in 1793.
[33] The French army included 218 battalions and 206 squadrons, not including the 10 battalions of French and Swiss Guards and the 4 squadrons (Garde du Corps) of the Maison du Roi.
[34] The French army reserve was composed of the Provincial regiments, (some sort of National Guard) which in time of war provided trained replacements and the garrison of the fortresses.
[35] Belhomme, vol. III, p.325.
[36] Colin, Histoire de l'infanterie en France, p.216, Quimby, pp. 302-3.
[37] Marshal de Broglie was part of the enemies of all the reforms made by the War Council whom they called les faiseurs (or "the doers"). These enemies, like many nobles of the period, did not care about the interest or the efficient defense of France. Their own selfish interests were more important (and its partially their bad influence that had driven the King to take reactionary measures that led to the Revolution. De Broglie was soon dismissed and was one of the first nobles to emigrate. He became the commander of Army of the Prince.
[38]. The Military Committee was created on November 1789. It was nothing more than a new War Council.)
[39] The introduction to the Reglement of January 1st, 1791 for the National Guard reads in part: "The habitual formation of the National Guard will be in two ranks.... Without entering into the question which is raised between the partisans of the ordre mince and those of the ordre profond... We do not hesitate to establish that the march in column is that which the National Guard ought to prefer. They ought to pounce upon the enemy at the instance the point of attack is determined and conserve thus the incontestable advantage of the French in hand to hand combat.
[40] In spite of some vehement denunciations by some detractors of the Reglement denounced as impractical in combat, all the evolutions of the ordinance were in fact used with some variation on the battlefields of the Wars of the French Revolution and of the Empire. Quimby p. 306.
[41] L'infanterie au XVIIIe siecle, p. 264.
[42] Ibid. p.265.
[43] Perhaps the Reglement of 1791 presented some analogies with considerable improvements and simplification because of the contributions of Guibert and of the partisans of the ordre profond.
Sources
Latreille, Capitaine, L'armee et la Nation … la fin de l'ancien regime, Paris, 1914.
Colin, Capitaine Jean, La tactique et la discipline dans les armees de la Revolution, Paris, 1902.
- L'infanterie au XVIIIe siecle, la tactique, Paris, 1907.
- "The Transformation of War, Translation, London, 1912.
Quimby, R. S., On the Background of the Napoleonic Warfare, Columbia University Press, New York, 1957.
Jomini, Lieutenant-General, Histoire critique et militaire des guerres de la Revolution, Paris, 1822.
Archduke Charles, Principes de la strategie developpes par la relation de la campagne de 1796, Brussels, 1840 (translated from the German by Jomini.) This source not only gives Archduke Charles' version of the Campaign of 1796, but also includes Jourdan's version of the campaign. Jourdan was the general commanding the French forces during the campaign.
Phipps, Colonel R.W., The Armies of the First French Republic, 5 volumes, Oxford University Press, 1926-39.
Nafziger, George, A Guide to Napoleonic Warfare, privately published, 1995.
Elting, Colonel John R. Swords Around the Throne, New York, 1988.
Marmont, Marshal, The Spirit of Military Institutions or Essential Principles of the Art of War, Philadelphia, 1862.
Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, New York, 1990.
De Saxe, Marshal, Mes Reveries, 2 volumes, Amsterdam, 1757.
Van Creveld, Martin, Command in War, Cambridge, 1985.
and numerous notes from the French archives, past issues of EE&L, etc.
Part II Evolution: The Divisional System During the Revolution
Part III Evolution: The Army Corps of the Empire
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