Dague, Everett. Henri Clarke, the Ministry of War, and the Evolution of Military Administration During the French First Empire, 1800-1814. Unpublished Dissertation (http://wwwlib.umi.com). Florida State Univ., 2000. 247 p. Napoleonic scholar Harold Parker has pointed out that, except for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, none of the Napoleonic ministries have been studied in depth. Historians have tended to focus on the overwhelming figure of Napoleon. Isser Woloch's book, Napoleon and His Collaborators, was a refreshing look at those around Napoleon, emphasizing how the "precocious solidity and efficacy of the regime...depended on the commitment and skills of his leading supporters." Samuel F. Scott in his article on military administration in the Historical Dictionary of Napoleonic France states that "Napoleon was his own war minister." The study of administrative science, bureaucratic history and sociometrics is of relatively recent origin. Historians have tended to look at the results of administrative decisions, rather than the process by which that decision has been carried out. Everett Dague's doctoral thesis attempts to look at the administrative evolution of the Ministry of War during the Napoleonic regime. The idea that Napoleon issued an order and that that order suddenly became a reality is a commonplace in Napoleonic histories. The idea of "war feeding war" becomes a kind of historical shorthand. But between the issuing of the order and its execution existed an efficient bureaucratic organization to bring those orders to fruition. When Napoleon ordered a regiment to move, the ministry of war had to see to it that there was shelter, food, fodder, medical care, veterinary services, firewood, and a "myriad [of] other details that determined how far and how fast such an order could be carried out, or even whether it could be carried out at all." Napoleon inherited a robust system that had evolved under "extreme political and wartime conditions." When it worked, "and for the most part Napoleonic military administration worked very effectively," the system is largely invisible to us today. Only when the system broke down, as it did during the Russian campaign, does it become visible in its failure. Dague begins his study with a quick survey of management theory as it applies to bureaucratic history. He then turns to an overview of previous histories of Napoleon's administration. The earliest writers on Napoleon's administration were officers who had served in the system and produced technical treatises for use by later regimes. The technical writers were followed by a new school of authors who saw the successes and failures of Napoleon's system simply in terms of the Emperor himself. Following Clausewitz, Jomini and Yorck von Wartenburg, these authors tended to focus on strategy and tactics rather than administration. Napoleon, the "Great Captain," was at the center of these works and his administration was seldom, if ever, mentioned. Col. Jean-Baptiste Vachée's Napoleon at Work describes Napoleon's staff work in the Jena-Aüerstadt campaign, yet the work of Jean-François Dejean, the Minister of War Administration, is mentioned only in passing. Historians have continued to ignore the behind-the-scenes administrative work, often confusing elements of command with elements of management. Napoleon is presented as "using almost pre-made armies with little attention paid to the massive problem of how one creates or maintains such a military establishment, its social costs, or the special problems of administering a state for the purposes of war." For a discipline dominated by military historians it has been enough to "know that Napoleon could muster 620,000 troops in 1812 without having to go into the myriad complexities of how they were raised, quartered and made loyal to the Emperor." Even non-military historians have largely ignored the functions of the ministerial bureaucracies of Napoleonic France. Harold Parker's studies on the Bureau of Commerce stand out as in-depth looks at the inner workings of an administrative agency during the period. Howard Brown's War, Revolution and the Bureaucratic State describes the growth and change in the War Ministry without address the precise functioning of the administration. [Ed sez: There is actually a wealth of information on this subject, mostly in French. To mention only those cited in the "Struggle of Nations" bibliography, (besides Vachée's "Napoleon at Work") there is Fortescue, J, "The early History of Transport and Supply," Nanteuil, H. de, "Daru et l'Administration militaire sous la Revolution et l'Empire," P.A. Odier, "Cours d'Etudes sur l'administration militaire," Tulard, "La Depot de la Guerre et la preparation de la Campagne en Russie,"van Creveld, Martin, "Supplying War."] Back to OSG News April 2003 Table of Contents Back to OSG News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2003 by Operational Studies Group 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