War in the Nineteenth Century E-Book

Jeremy Black

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: War and Conflict Through the Ages
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 509

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

This book provides an accessible and up-to-date account of the rich military history of the nineteenth century. It takes a fresh approach, making novel links with conflict and coercion, and moving away from teleological emphases. Naval developments and warfare are included, as are social and cultural dimensions of military activity. Leading military historian Jeremy Black offers the reader a twenty-first century approach to this period, particularly through his focus on the dynamic drive provided by different forms of military goals, or "tasking". This allows echoes with modern warfare to come to the fore and provides a fuller understanding of a period sometimes considered solely as background to the total war of 1914-45. Alongside state-to-state warfare and the move toward "total war", Black's emphasis on different military goals gives due weight to trans-oceanic conflict at the expense of non-Europeans. Irregular, internal and asymmetric war are all considered, ranging from local insurgencies to imperial expeditions, and provide a deliberate shift from Western-centricity. At the very cutting edge of its field, this book is a must read for all students and scholars of military history and its related disciplines.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Preface

1 Introduction: Framing the Problems

2 Napoleonic Background

3 1815–1849

Ideas

Latin American Wars of Independence

Rebellions

1816–1829

1830–1832

1832–1847

Mexican–American War, 1846–1848

1848: The Year of Revolutions

Novelty?

Conclusions

4 The 1850s

The Crimean War

The Franco-Austrian War

5 Naval Power and Warfare

Napoleonic Wars

1815–1850

Steam Power

The 1850s

The 1860s

1870s–1880s

Towards the Dreadnought

6 Outside Europe, 1815–1860

7 1860–1871

American Civil War, 1861–1865

Latin America

Italy

Poland and Spain

Prussia

8 1872–1902

9 The Victory of the West, 1860–1913

10 Towards the First World War, 1903–1914

11 War and Society

Loyalty and the Scale of Warfare

Nationalism

A Culture of Conflict

Force and Internal Goals

The Military and Politics

The Condition of the Soldiers

12 Conclusions

Further Reading

Index

Copyright © Jeremy Black 2009

The right of Jeremy Black to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2009 by Polity Press

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Cover Illustration:

Alphonse de Neuville

The Defence of Rorke’s Drift, 1879, 1880

Oil on convas, 180.9 × 301.4 cm

Purchased 1882

Collection: Art Gallery of New South Wales

Photograph: Jenni Carter

For Texas Friends

Preface

The purpose of this book is to provide an accessible and up-to-date account of the military history of the period under study. The emphasis will be on a non-linear account. This will be in contrast to the usual focus on Napoleon to the First World War and its consequent teleology, which predominate in the literature. Furthermore, in place of a technology-driven account, in which the emphasis is on how new weapons systems led to new forms of warfare, the present account will concentrate on the dynamic drive provided by different forms of tasking or military goals.1 Alongside state-to-state warfare and the move toward ‘total war’ discussed in so much of the literature, this emphasis on different goals will give due weight to trans-oceanic conflict at the expense of non-Europeans, and will also lead to a stress being put on internal conflict and on the use of the military to maintain the cohesion of states and the nature of social systems. In 1820, Richard Rush, the hostile American envoy in London, claimed:

[T]his [Britain] is essentially a military government. The regular army is too strong for the unarmed millions, who would otherwise not allow the government to stand for six months; and while the government has the direction of the army, the latter will continue to be paid, and the former supported by the bayonets in its authority.2

The situation in Britain was more complex than Rush allowed, but the use of force to suppress or dissuade oppression was a factor there, as it was even more in much of the European continent, including, in the 1820s, as discussed in Chapter 3, Spain and the Italian principalities. This role of the military provides a novel way to look at the ‘war and society’ dimension of military history, linking it to conflict and coercion more closely than is generally the case.

The use of tasking will also enable modern echoes to be seen: in short, this will be a twenty-first century approach to the nineteenth century. The latter will not be treated as the background to the total war of 1914–45, but rather as a term of comparison for the modern variety of tasking. The book also covers naval capability and warfare.

In any book of this length, the writer struggles with questions of what to include. These questions relate to the balance between the geographical areas covered, and also to the vexed questions of the scope (and role) of military history. Some academic historians prefer a ‘war and society’ approach, but that tends to neglect the operational dimension as well as the more recent theoretical interest in the culture of war. I take the approach that the operational dimension is a vital one. There are good books on ‘war and society’, but, all too often, they fail to address the questions that are the focus of this study: why does one side win, and why and how do military systems change? As far as conflict is concerned, the focus is not only on symmetrical conflict but also on irregular, internal and asymmetric war, ranging from local insurgencies to imperial expeditions, which is a deliberate shift from the standard West-centricity of works on the subject. The inclusion of such ‘out of area’ conflicts as the War of the Pacific (1879–83, see Chapter 8, pp. 139–40) also adds a valuable perspective.

Aside from issues of coverage, there are also problems posed by the accuracy of contemporary accounts, problems noted by the historian Hans Delbrück when he served in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1:

I cannot agree with Peter’s conclusions on the objectivity of the war reports. We have had the same stories of bravery in our regiment, but it seems to me that some men go forward fine, whereas others have very little courage: only discipline and organisation moves the mass of men forward. I myself have seen how badly our newspapers lie, and I no longer believe them’.3

Much of my research and writing is teaching-driven, a characteristic that I consider vital to the success of all three. In preparing this book, I benefited from teaching the ‘War 1775–2008’ undergraduate course and the ‘War 1450–2008’ MA course at Exeter in 2007–8. An opportunity to speak to the Dutch Commission on Military History at The Hague enabled me to clarify some of my ideas. I also benefited from the comments of Stephen Manning, Thomas Otte, Rick Schneid, Dennis Showalter, Geoffrey Wawro, Peter Wilson and an anonymous reader on an earlier draft, and of those of Jay Buckley, Howard Fuller, Richard Hall, Richard Harding, Andrew Lambert, Annika Mombauer, Roger Morriss, Mike Neiberg, Kenneth Noe, Nicholas Rodger, Matthew Seligmann, Larry Sondhaus and Sam Willis on sections of an earlier draft; from advice from Will Fowler, Beatrice Heuser, Patrick Kelly and Dave Stone; and from discussing the subject with Roger Burt. It is a great pleasure to dedicate this book to those who offered friendship and hospitality during my lectue trip to Texas in 2008, including Guy Chet, Michael Leggiere and Geoffrey Wawro at Denton; Quincy Adams, Jim Bradford, Brian Linn and Jim Rosenheim at College Station; and Brian Davies and Kolleen Guy at San Antonio.

Notes to the Preface

1 On which see J. Black, Rethinking Military History (Abingdon, 2004), pp. 128–39.

2 Rush to James Madison, former American President, 30 Aug. 1820, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Historical Society, Am 13520.

3 Delbrück to his mother, 11 Sept. 1870, in A. Bucholz (ed.), Delbrück’s Modern Military History (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1997), p. 49. See also R. Muir, Salamanca (New Haven, Connecticut, 2001), and the first four articles in Civil War History, 53, 3 (2007).

1

Introduction: Framing the Problems

Immunity to American bullets. That was what the ‘prophets’ stirring up Creek opposition to the USA reported that they could provide in 1813–14, according to Benjamin Hawkins, the American government’s agent to the Creeks, who were the native American inhabitants of much of modern day Alabama and Mississippi. Moreover, their magic, the prophets claimed, could make native American villages impregnable, turn hills over the settlements of opponents, and bring down lightning on American forts or take them ‘with bows and arrows’.1 The subsequent conflict, in which the Creeks were to be severely defeated in 1814 especially, with heavy casualties, by Andrew Jackson (the future president) at Horseshoe Bend, cruelly exposed the folly of these remarks. Moreover, as an indicator of the range of American power, in October 1813 a party of sailors and marines from the frigate Essex defeated a group of ‘mountain savages’ on the island of Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Islands of the Pacific. A midshipman, William Feltus, recorded that the inhabitants were armed with ‘a sling spear and stone which they send an astonishing distance’. The Americans, however, used muskets.2 The captain of the Essex claimed possession of the island, although the American government did not recognise this annexation.

Claims about immunity to western arms were to be made over the following century, for example by the Sioux in North America and during the unsuccessful Zulu rebellion against British rule in South Africa in 1906, as non-European peoples struggled to resist Western expansion and also, as seriously, to repel the psychological threat that Western power posed. The depth and urgency of the contrast between Western pressure and the magic means to be deployed against it, reflected the fundamental nature of the western challenge. As Chapters 6 and 9 will show, this pressure, in fact, depended frequently on non-Western co-operation, not least in the shape of alliances and large-scale service in the armies of Western powers. Nevertheless, there was also a strong and successful element of Western coercion.

Why did the West do so well? This is one of the key questions that has to be addressed in this book. Western pressure after all was scarcely a novelty. Indeed, there had been large-scale conflict with the Ottomans (Turks) from the fourteenth century, and European pressure on North and West Africa from the fifteenth. Yet there had also been a significant contrast between European success in the sixteenth century in much of what became Latin America and far more limited success in the Old World – especially in Africa, both North and sub-Saharan, in the Islamic world and in the orient. Again, there is a contrast between North Asia, where much of lightly populated Siberia was brought under Russian control between the 1580s and the 1640s, and the far more populous lands of West, South and East Asia. There the European military penetration on the mainland (as opposed to penetration on some offshore islands such as Luzon in the Philippines, Java and Sri Lanka) had only limited impact. If, in 1801, British map-purchasers could enjoy seeing the recent triumph over the French of their forces in Egypt being celebrated in a detailed map, the British military presence there prior to the successful invasion of 1882 was very short term.

By 1914, however, the situation was totally different. Although the European powers had lost control of much of the New World, it was, with the exception of formerly French-ruled Haiti, lost to peoples of European descent, while European companies were often dominant economically there. Most of Africa was under European rule, as was much of Asia – especially North, Central, South and South-East Asia. If large parts of Asia were not under this rule, nevertheless in China and Japan, in Thailand and the Ottoman Empire there had been attempts to westernise the military and much else, in order to remain competitive. This drive also reflected anxieties about retaining independence from Western rule.

The reasons for this shift towards Western control, or at least influence, are a key theme of this book. These reasons relate to greater Western capability and success, and to the response of non-western powers. These topics are considered in Chapters 6 and 9, but, more generally, they are also a theme running throughout the study. Nevertheless, it is often difficult to test the explanations offered for Western success, not least because warfare with non-Western powers was episodic, or, as with mid-nineteenth-century China, which faced the large-scale Taiping Rebellion, secondary to internal conflict. Moreover, despite American naval intimidation in 1853, there was no war between a Western power and Japan in the nineteenth century. Indeed, discussion of the situation in East Asia underlines the questionable nature of the argument that Western powers simply failed against non-Western peoples and states when their commitment of resources was minimal, but that, in contrast, if the political will was such that the defeat and conquest were of the utmost importance, the dedication of sufficient resources to these endeavours was uniformly successful. However plausible, such a thesis has to be set in a multi-factored explanatory model, and one that takes note of the importance of Asian military developments.3 As far as South Asia was concerned, Britain did not face united opposition within India; instead, it was able to benefit greatly from its ability to exploit Indian conflicts and to win the support of locals, who served both as part of Britain’s own forces and as allies. Successes, therefore, were not for the West, but for Anglo-Indian alliances, whether formal or informal. In short, in this, as in many other cases, it was not just (or not so much) a question of dedicating sufficient resources (a concept which is itself somewhat nebulous in practice), as it was one of exploiting the possibilities of winning local support.

The second key question in this book is how best to account for, and discuss, military change. There are a number of possible models, but the dominant one in the public mind is that of technological improvement, which was indeed important not simply because of developments in weapons capability – for instance the breech-loading rifle, steel artillery and the machine-gun – but also as a result of the impact of non-military technology. Thus logistics, transport and military operations were transformed by innovations such as tin cans, refrigerated shipholds, steamships, the railway, the telegraph, and major improvements in sanitation and in the understanding, prevention and treatment of tropical diseases. Organisational developments, range and capability also indicated the extent to which technology has to be understood as part of a greater whole – which is one of the themes of this book. In this sense, ‘war and society’ – the theme of Chapter 11 – is a matter not only of the impact of warfare on society, but also of the impact of social developments and assumptions on military capability.

The present study pays due attention to this impact; but it also looks at the interaction of military capability (and of the resulting warfare) with society in terms of ‘tasking’: that is, in terms of the goals set for the military. Such an approach reflects the extent to which warfare changed and developed because of these goals, which, themselves, were a reflection of the kinds of use for which force was seen as appropriate and to which it was put.4 In part, these uses were affected, in turn, by transformations in military technology, but these transformations were also understood by contemporaries in terms of assumptions about what could, and should, be sought and done. Furthermore, the issue of what should be sought and done was far from constant. This paragraph may sound complex, but it is necessary to explain the variety of causal links in the changes of a key context for warfare.

In detail, the relevant changes in ‘tasking’ were a response to particular political situations, but there was also a more fundamental shift in the context: one towards a different style of politics and type of society. This style was more urban, populist and demotic than the political cultures of the courts and cabinets of the eighteenth century. The latter world remained significant, indeed crucial, as was seen in the run-up to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914,5 but the public sphere was now more important than it had been.

‘Tasking’, in part, reflected this shift, not least in the context within which armies were deployed on their long-standing task of maintaining order,6 especially in opposition to radical popular movements (this will be a major theme in Chapter 3). These movements owed something to the impact of the Napoleonic years, which also constituted the period during which Britain’s dominance of the extra-European West was established; and therefore it is to this period that we turn.

Notes

The Abbreviations ‘BL Add.’ refers to the British Library, London, Additional Manuscripts.

1 Eg Hawkins to David Mitchell, 7 July 1813; Hawkins to John Floyd, 30 Sept. 1813; Alexander Cornells, interpreter, to Hawkins, 22 June 1813: Auburn, University Archives, Frank Owsley Donation, accession number 82–08.

2 Feltus journal, 27–30 Oct. 1813, in W.S. Dudley (ed.), The Naval War of 1812. A Documentary History II, 1813 (Washington, 1992), p. 704.

3 P. Lorge, The Asian Military Revolution. From Gunpowder to the Bomb (Cambridge, 2008).

4 J. Black, Rethinking Military History (London, 2004).

5 R. F. Hamilton and H. H. Herwig (eds), The Origins of World War I (Cambridge, 2003).

6 M. Howard, ‘Military history and the history of war’, in Contemporary Essays. Strategic and Combat Studies Institute. Occasional Paper 47 (2004), p. 48.

2

Napoleonic Background

‘Waterloos’ was the name given to sets of false teeth in early nineteenth-century Britain: these sets were made from the real teeth of the many soldiers who had died in the battle against Napoleon on 18 June 1815. Their young teeth proved a welcome replacement to the rotten counterparts of all too many of their seniors. Planning for the last war is the proverbial occupation of generals, but it is far fairer to say that most people tend to live under the shadow, or in this case using the teeth, of the previous major period of conflict, and this is particularly so after a sustained period of such conflict. This conflict frames the experience of war of both combatants and non-combatants: it directly affects those who fought, or who were related to those who fought, and it remains a powerful and living memory for the many who followed the war from a distance and framed in some fashion or other what was, in the twentieth century, to be called the home-front. Moreover, those who were too young to take on such roles of combatants or non-combatants during wars nevertheless grew up in a mental world framed by the experience of conflict. Literary works gave shape and lent force to this mental force, whether they had the grandeur of Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace (1865–9), with its epic account of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, or they followed the mundane fate of a much-revered paternal boot which had served at Waterloo, as in Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Cranford (1851–3). Tolstoy, who had commanded an artillery battery during the 1854–5 siege of Sevastopol in the Crimean War, also wrote about that siege. This mental world of the shadow of war pervaded the nineteenth century, although its configuration varied greatly. For example, in the USA the experience of conflict was felt most strongly after the bitter civil war of 1861–5.

In the West – that is, the part of the world dominated by European power or by European-settler societies such as in the USA and Argentina – the early decades of the nineteenth century were overshadowed by the protracted period of conflict which can be summed up by the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, although other conflicts were also waged during this period. For individual states, the years of engagement in formal hostilities varied considerably, but for most of the period between 1792 and 1815 France was at war. By contrast, Prussia – the kingdom which was to form the basis of Germany – was at war only in 1792–5, 1806–7, and, with intervals, 1812–15. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were not world wars in the sense of the Second World War, and China and Japan were among the many powers not involved in the conflict, while America’s limited war with Britain from 1812 to 1815 – the so-called War of 1812 – was only indirectly related to the conflict. Nevertheless, the range of the European empires was such that hostilities spanned the world, as with the British attacks on Cape Town, Buenos Aires, and Batavia (Djakarta) in 1806, 1807 and 1811 respectively: the first and the last were Dutch bases, the second Spanish. Furthermore, non-Western powers played a role in the conflict, either participating in the major sequence of wars, as the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire did, or making attempts to bring them into the web of alliances, as was the case with Persia and many of the Indian principalities.

Despite these wider roles and resonances, the dominance of French Revolutionary and Napoleonic warfare, nevertheless, was of concern mainly to the West (including North and Latin America), where the conflict in Europe was followed with great interest. This dominance owed much to the dramatic events of the period; to the abrupt shifts in relative power they brought about; to the extent to which these events were presented as dramatic; to the earlier peace which had affected Western and Central Europe for most of the period since 1763; to the lack of any similarly ‘great’ warfare subsequently for over a century, at least in terms of scale; and to the role of the period in setting, or appearing to set, much of the political agenda for subsequent decades. The last factor was particularly true of the impact of the French Revolution, which broke out in 1789, in encouraging a sense of the potential of populism and, in military terms, of the people under arms. Moreover, the far from distinct and frequently overlapping groups (and indeed categories) of nationalists, liberals and conservatives looked for inspiration, cause, legacy and example to the period 1789–1815. They did so not only in France, but also across Europe and in Latin America. The legacies of the French Revolution and of Napoleon, a leading Revolutionary general who seized power by a coup in France on 9 November 1799, were thus imprinted, or could have been imprinted, on the history of the subsequent century.

Furthermore, the events of the period could be shaped by contemporary and later commentators into developments and trends. This shaping was especially significant for those seeking to understand how best to win wars or at least avoid the traumatic defeats which had been seen in the recent conflicts. Such an understanding was a particular issue in Europe, where, alongside a desire not to repeat the experience of the wars – not least because of the continuing burden of having to pay for the debts to which they had given rise – aspects of the military agenda seemed to change little in the decades after 1815. The same places were fought over, notably Belgium, Poland and northern Italy, while figures connected with these wars such as Radetsky (Austria), Soult (France) and Wellington (Britain) remained prominent in their countries’ military establishments; for instance Soult (1769–1851), a Napoleonic marshal, was minister of war in 1814–15, 1830–4 and 1840–5. A similar process could be seen happening in the USA with the legacy of the so-called War of 1812 – the conflict with Britain from 1812 to 1815. In addition to commanders from the wars of 1792–1815 who continued to be prominent – like the American Winfield Scott, the key figure in the Mexican–American War of 1846–8 – much of the establishment of post-war militaries consisted of those who had fought in more junior capacities in recent wars.

For related – but also different – reasons, military historians were (and have continued to be) very interested in the conflicts of the period 1792 to 1815, or at least – and this is a significant distinction – in a particular strand of these conflicts, namely the ones characterised by large-scale campaigning and battle. While central to contemporaries and important in hindsight, this strand, however, does not exhaust the definition and practice of war. More specifically, the conflicts of 1792–1815 have been seen as representing and making normative a new type of warfare and, as such, as introducing the practice, example, lexicon and doctrine of modern warfare. This indeed is an oft-repeated theme,1 and one linked to the idea that these wars transformed the West. So for example David Bell, in his First Total War. Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (Boston, 2007), has located Napoleonic warfare in a linear, progressive and teleological account both of warfare and of the relationship between war and society. Focusing on changes in intellectual life and political culture in late eighteenth-century France, Bell claimed that

the intellectual transformations of the Enlightenment, followed by the political fermentation of 1789–92, produced new understandings of war that made possible the cataclysmic intensification of the fighting over the next twenty-three years. Ever since, the same developments have shaped the way the Western societies have seen and engaged in military conflict.2

Bell suggested that Napoleon’s cult of heroism, which was important to his self-image, as well as the reception of it, grew directly out of new understandings of the human self which were emerging in the late-Enlightenment and Revolutionary period. The argument for novelty and modernity in warfare seemed necessary to Bell and others who shared his view because, greatly underplaying the extent to which there was in fact continuity in Europe with ancien régime conflict between 1660 and 1792, they felt they had to explain something new: namely a warfare which, to them, was at once total and modern – indeed a major intensification of the conflict of the ancien régime. Thus Bell saw emerging, from 1792 on, a ‘political dynamic that drove the participants relentlessly toward [his italics] a condition of total engagement and the abandonment of restraints’.3 Unsurprisingly, therefore, there was much in his book on the brutal suppression of the royalist rising in the Vendée in western France by the revolutionaries in the 1790s and on the harsh treatment of captives in Spain, where French occupation in 1808 led to bitter opposition.

This approach, however, is seriously flawed. For example, revisions in the understanding of ancien régime warfare stress the extent to which the latter was far from indecisive or limited – either operationally or in casualty rates – and the often brutal treatment of civilians.4 Moreover, much of the popular violence of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic period did not have its roots in the ideology of those years, as Bell suggested, but rather in other factors: in the case of the Serbian opposition to Turkish rule, for example, it represented a continuation of earlier patterns.

Unfortunately, those who argue for revolutionary vigour from the 1790s on need to appeal to the misleading theme of the earlier, eighteenth-century age of ‘military restraint’5 in order to provide a counterpoint to their own subject and thus to bring in a dramatic contrast which may require analysis. In practice, continuity proved to be the case.6 Similarly, the social politics of revolution assaulted established military interests and systems which had favoured nobility as a way of insuring military professionalism, most obviously in the appointment of officers.7 Yet in the event professionalism proved to be the more enduring element and thus the nobility remained important to the armies of post-Napoleonic Europe.

More significantly, the description of modern warfare in terms of large-scale conflict instigated by ideologically committed forces is a seriously flawed one. Moving forward from 1815, this description fails to capture for example many of the conflicts of the 1820s and 1830s, which should undermine any sense that Napoleonic conflict had transformed warfare and brought forward modernity. More profoundly, the linear model is mistaken because a key characteristic of modern warfare is its variety – not least in scale, goal and intensity – rather than its conformity to an (or any) essential set of characteristics. However valuable to model-building analysts, the idea of such essentialism is a fiction.

Moreover, defining war in terms of distinct stages is problematic. Modern warfare is not necessarily total (no matter how this is defined), and total warfare is not necessarily modern. Indeed, one definition of ‘total warfare’ is: war whose goal is unconditional victory and the use of means which result in apocalyptic violence. This type of warfare, however, scarcely had to wait for modern times, as a reading of thirteenth-century Mongol warfare, or of that of the Uzbeck Timur later called Tamerlaine (1336–1405) would indicate. Total war can therefore be separated from any developmental model of conflict. Even if a linear model is adopted and total warfare is defined in terms of a capacity stemming from the industrial character and mass society ascribed by some to modern warfare, it is far from clear that these had come into being in the Napoleonic period. In that period the situation was significantly different in these respects from what it was to be a century later, when industrialisation was far further advanced and consistently applied to the militaries of major states.8 By these later standards, the Napoleonic period cannot be called industrial in any significant way.

Furthermore, as far as naval or overseas European warfare was concerned, Revolutionary and Napoleonic France was not a key model for military change. This state of affairs suggests that we need to move away from emphasising land warfare in Europe as if that provided a paradigm for all warfare, because this was not the case even for Western warfare as a whole. At the global scale, it is indeed those powers which took a prominent part in the conflict between the West and the non-West and in related military mobilisation that deserve more attention. In contrast, warfare between Western powers is generally overplayed. A different military history therefore means devoting more space to Britain, Russia and the United States – each of which, with very different militaries,9 achieved crucial victories over non-Western forces in this period – and less space to that long-standing ménage à trois between Austria, France and Prussia (Germany) – the states which dominate conventional accounts of continental European military history from 1660 to 1941.

We should not limit our attention to Europe. Viewed in a global context, developments in Europe do not appear so clearly exceptional. Napoleon may be compared, for example, to non-Western eighteenth-century war leaders such as Nader Shah, who dominated Persia in the 1730s and 1740s. Like Napoleon, he campaigned incessantly and won great success, but did not create a system that lasted after his fall; in Nader Shah’s case this was due to his assassination by disloyal officers in 1747. Like Napoleon, Nader Shah was a bold practitioner of warfare, putting an emphasis on mobility and making the areas in which he campaigned support his forces and provide recruits; but, again as in Napoleon’s case, continual wars and heavy taxation placed a terrible burden on his subjects. Nader Shah’s seizure of the Peacock throne in Delhi after his victory over the Mughals at Karnal in 1739 prefigured Napoleon’s looting of Europe – including his taking of the Quadriga, the Goddess of Victory, from atop the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in 1806. (The piece was only returned when Paris was occupied by the victorious Allies in 1814.)

Some contemporary warriors who have been compared to Napoleon actually exceeded him in the longevity of their achievement. Kamehameha I, the ‘Napoleon of Hawaii’, united the Hawaiian archipelago over the period 1791–1810: this was a considerable feat of amphibious warfare and it founded a state which lasted until American annexation in 1898. The Merina rulers, Adrianampoinimerina (r. c.1783–c.1810) and Radama I (1810–28), created a state which controlled most of Madagascar until the French conquests of the mid-1890s: this was an area the size of France, Belgium and the Netherlands taken together, although admittedly with a much smaller population. Ideology – in the shape of marshaling some spiritual drives in order to ensure group coherence – played a key role in the success of the Merina rulers.10 A distant parallel can be drawn with Napoleon’s fusion of revolutionary sentiment with French nationalism. Moreover, looking to Napoleon in a comparative context, as an indicator of how reputations can be transformed, that of the Zulu ruler Shaka, allegedly ‘the black Napoleon’ of southern Africa, has been much criticised since 1989.11

Furthermore, in terms of modernity (understood as institutional sophistication and effectiveness), the efficiency of the Chinese in overcoming the long-standing threat to its west from the Dsungars of Xinjiang in the 1750s12 was far greater than that of Napoleon, not least in that they managed to avoid in their campaigns any logistical failure akin to that of his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. More generally, the fact that Europe, or rather the West, dominated the world in 1900 and, even more, in 1919 does not mean that a mode of analysis based on this dominance should be applied to a period one century earlier; nor does it mean that Napoleonic warfare provides a clue to the achievement of this domination by 1900.

My introduction, with its stress on the variety of circumstances and on the complexity of change, undercuts the conventional treatment of Napoleon and his legacy. It suggests that, taken globally, Napoleon was less important for the warfare of his lifetime than is usually argued; and also that successive generations of reading his example and legacy as crucial have been flawed. The reasons for both errors are instructive, as they are indicative of the widespread need to believe in a central narrative of military history. For example, Napoleon was seen as defining French warfare during his period of power, and this warfare was presented as accounting for the warfare of the Western powers in the Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic periods. Napoleonic warfare also appeared to make the earlier warfare of the French Revolution understandable, as well as controllable in terms of established military hierarchies and dynastic states. Moreover, the idea that there are lessons in each generation – in this case, those represented by Napoleonic generalship – that can be learned in order to achieve capability and to obtain victory is a potent one.

If, however, this approach is challenged and the narrative re-centred, then the question arises how best to treat both Napoleon and the warfare of his period. If these are not explanatory of each other, then what is the lesson? Napoleon was certainly an adept user and manager of the potential of conventional land warfare in Europe at the outset of the nineteenth century. Taking forward the innovative ideas about military methods – tactical, operational and organisational – developed in France after the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), as well as the experience of conflict during the French Revolutionary wars which had begun in 1792, Napoleon thought through what could be achieved. In particular, he developed combined arms formations, and especially the corps, in order to provide a new direction and dynamism to the long-standing problem of linking firepower with mobility. Combined arms formations worked at tactical and operational levels, and the latter contributed to strategic effectiveness.

At the tactical level, the French proved successful at combining different means of attack – skirmishing light infantry, columns of massed infantry, cavalry charges and concentrations of artillery. Each brought important advantages, and the possibility of combining them in a sequence of assaults, or simultaneously, proved very valuable. At the operational level, the corps – generally 20–30,000 men strong – provided an all-arms combat force which was sufficiently strong and self-contained to be able to operate independently and still to sustain conflict. This independent operation lessened the logistical burden which arose from concentrating forces, and also increased the width of advance, which made it easier to outmanoeuvre opponents. The corps system allowed for the more flexible command and control which was the key to the sinuous strength of the Napoleonic military organisation – a strength that was instrumental to efficacy in campaigning.

Thus the capability of the Napoleonic military was not so much due to new weapons, although the standardisation and improvement of the French artillery (which had begun in the 1760s) were important. Instead, organisational and command issues were crucial: not least the development of all-purpose infantry, the massing of firepower at the tactical level, and the use of mixed-armed units. The superiority of the latter over unitary structures was clearly demonstrated in the Napoleonic wars, while (more generally) the mass warfare of that period had important repercussions on contemporary and subsequent debate over the organisation of armed forces.13

Far more than potency on the battlefield was at stake. Napoleon also made advances in operational art by developing the rapid and decisive manoeuvre of autonomous forces, not least between a series of engagements and so as to ensure that these formed a series, with the opponents being fixed, outmanoeuvred and defeated. In part this was a matter of drive, in part of staff-work, and in part of transforming the logistic ruthlessness of the 1790s (when Napoleon had received his apprenticeship as a French Revolutionary commander, especially of the army of Italy in 1796–7) by adding a considerable degree of administrative structure and support. This last factor enabled Napoleon’s troops to make rapid advances and to campaign for long periods in the field, without the consideration of links to supply chains having to determine their operations. Instead, operations were shaped by Napoleon’s zeal for battle and his determination to end wars rapidly – and to do it by framing a campaign which forced a major battle on an opponent, and then ensuring that both battle and follow-through had a decisive consequence. Such campaigning required not only the alacrity in execution that Napoleon strove to achieve, but also a capacity to out-think opponents even when they took the initiative – as was the case with the Austrians in 1805 and 1809. As a consequence, Napoleon, ‘a master of improvisation’14 as well as an effective applier of operational art,15 a man with a good grasp of ‘situational awareness’, got inside his opponents’ decision-making ‘loop’ (to employ modern terminology again) and forced battle on them when and where he was confident of success – not least because he had gained a promising position and a local superiority in numbers. This system was displayed in his major victory over the Austrians at Ulm in 1805.

The results of Napoleonic method were very impressive in military terms, although the opportunistic improvisations of his foreign policy, while keeping his opponents divided, were far less successful in defining shared interests with the other major powers and in winning long-term support from them. Seizing power in France in 1799 as the result of a coup, Napoleon benefited from unity of command, promoting himself ‘First Consul’ (December 1799), then ‘Consul for Life’ (1802) and finally ‘Emperor’ (1804). Napoleon forced a defeated Austria to accept increasingly worse terms in 1801, 1805 and 1809 respectively; he heavily defeated Prussia in 1806 and obliged it – and, even more significantly, Russia in 1807 – to accept his hegemony over Central Europe. In 1808, by the Treaty of Paris, the Prussians had to put up with limitations on the size of their army. The major French victories were to provide the staples of Western military discussion of warfare for decades, just as French naval defeats at the hands of Britain, particularly the one at Trafalgar in 1805, did the same in the twentieth century in spite of very different circumstances for naval warfare.

The victories which attracted most attention were the key ones in the War of the Third Coalition: Ulm and Austerlitz in 1805 and Jena in 1806, over Austrian, Russo-Austrian and Prussian armies respectively. These victories were even more impressive because they displayed different skills. All three showed the operational and fighting effectiveness of the French forces, but at Ulm there was also a skilful outmanoeuvring of the Austrians in a campaign based on an enveloping manoeuvre sur la derrière, executed across southern Germany; although this was a matter of desperate improvisation as much as of planning. At Austerlitz, the key manoeuvre was a fighting one, and it was carried out on the battlefield leading to the breaking through of the Allies’ centre; and at Jena the poorly commanded Prussians were out-generalled by the French, who proved able to respond to the unexpected nature of the Prussian deployments.

At the same time, other battles indicated the extent to which fighting quality and tactical proficiency were not restricted to the French and the resulting problems this posed for Napoleon. At Marengo (1800) the victory over the Austrians was long in the balance; at Eylau (1807) the Russians inflicted heavy casualties in fighting Napoleon to a draw; and at Aspern-Essling (1809) he was defeated by the Austrians. Napoleon went on to defeat them six weeks later at Wagram, but it was a narrow victory and there was no stunning pursuit thereafter.16

Each of these battles suggests that the customary analysis of Napoleon’s career – success leading to failure, whether the latter is understood in terms of poor political and military leadership from Napoleon or of his opponents’ learning to match his advantages – is overly simplistic. Instead, French limitations were apparent to all from the outset and were overcome only by skilful leadership, both political and military. However, the combination of heavy French casualties, especially in 1807 and 1809, and reliance on the new conscripts led to a deterioration in French fighting quality, because the army had to employ less sophisticated tactics. A less flexible Napoleon increasingly responded to military and international problems with bludgeoning methods such as frontal attacks, which, no matter how successful in the short term, proved increasingly inappropriate both in attitude and in method.

By 1811 Napoleon nevertheless dominated much of Europe; France had been greatly extended (Rome, for example, was annexed in May 1809 and Hamburg in December 1810); and large parts of Europe were under French satellites and allies such as Bavaria and Saxony, which ensured an extension of the area from which conscripts could be raised for Napoleon’s forces. Many islands off the mainland were outside Napoleon’s control, with the British Isles being covered by the victorious British fleet, as was Sicily; while there was also considerable British-backed resistance in Iberia (Portugal and Spain), the French forces being bogged down in the intractable Peninsular War on behalf of Napoleon’s brother Joseph (whom Napoleon had made king of Spain in 1808). Opportunistic banditry played a role in the Spanish resistance, but the efforts of Spanish troops were more significant.17 However, by late 1810, helped by improvements in counter-intersurgency operations, the French had conquered much of Spain,18 while elsewhere to the west of Russia there was an unprecedented concentration of control in their hands. Popular risings directed against France and France’s allies, for instance that in the Tyrol in 1809 against Bavarian rule, had been defeated.19 In France’s most profitable colony, St Domingue (Haiti) in the West Indies, however, opposition to re-enslavement helped to produce in 1803 a violent determination on the part of the rebels that contributed to a breakdown in the morale of French forces and to their failure.20

A major result, in this case in the shape of the scale of control wielded by Napoleon in Europe, generally leads to the search for a major and by its nature distinctive cause, a cause moreover which can then prove to be a building block in the general analysis of military history. This, however, is a suspect process, as significant events do not have to have new, let alone exceptional, causes. There is a parallel indeed between the Napoleonic and the German successes in the initial stages of the Second World War. The latter indicated German strengths, but also owed much to the weaknesses (or simply mistakes) of opponents as well as to the extent to which the Germans were able to fight sequentially rather than against all their opponents at once.21 As soon as they faced united opposition – as France did from mid-1813 on and Germany from December 1941 on – their inherent weaknesses became more apparent. Considering Napoleon on these same terms, his apparent skill at being able to focus on sequential conflict can be attributed in part to politics or grand strategy, although in operational terms identifying the vulnerabilities of his opponents’ centre of gravity was crucial. Far from being new, this grand strategy is reminiscent of that of Frederick the Great of Prussia (r. 1740–86) during the stages of his wars when he did not have to face an opposing coalition, for example in his attack on Austria in 1740–1; and the same also holds for Louis XIV of France (r. 1643–1715) in the wars against Spain in 1667, against the Dutch in 1672 and against Spain again in 1683–4. Thus Napoleon, who controlled diplomacy as well as the military, can be seen as the successful exponent of an established form of warfare; but one who ultimately failed, like Louis XIV – and Napoleon’s personality was crucial in this22 – because he could neither accept the idea of limits nor define limits he would then stick to. Similarities with earlier generals can also be found at the tactical level. The withholding of a large reserve which is released at a crucial moment in order to achieve a breakthrough had also been employed successfully by the British General John, first duke of Marlborough, against Louis XIV’s forces, as at Blenheim (1704). Marlborough, like Napoleon, also placed an emphasis on artillery.

This sense of Napoleon being a successful exponent of an established form of warfare can be taken further through a consideration of the weaponry available to Napoleon. Although there were new, or new – to Europe, weapons on the Napoleonic battlefield (including balloons, rockets and semaphores), none made a substantial difference, not least because of serious constraints on their specifications; for example the dependence of balloons (used by the French for reconnaissance and artillery spotting) on hot-air, or the lack of a guidance system for the rockets (in effect giant fireworks) which the British introduced on the Indian model. Nor could these rockets serve as a model for modern rocket-propelled grenades. Moreover, neither side had a monopoly on new technologies.

Most soldiers continued to be armed with slow-firing, muzzle-loaded, smooth-bore muskets which had limited accuracy and range and put an emphasis on standing in close-packed ranks and shooting in volleys, in order to compensate for the limited accuracy of individual weapons by increasing the volume of fire. Such tactics put a premium on the fortitude required to do repetitive tasks such as loading and firing drills while being exposed to great danger. Soldiers, both in infantry and in cavalry, also employed stabbing and cutting weapons, principally the bayonets attached to muskets and the swords wielded by cavalrymen. Cannon, too, were smoothbore and muzzle-loaded. They had developed greatly as battlefield tools during the eighteenth century and were deadly against dense formations of troops. Yet their usefulness was diminished by their limited range and accuracy as well as by their limited manoeuvrability: horses and men had to be used to transport them, to move them into position and to cope with their recoil.

Putting aside the almost mystical readings of his generalship, Napoleon was good at working within the constraints imposed by the weaponry and forces available in his time. He also proved adept at relaxing these constraints, for instance by taking pains to understand the theorists of the previous generation, by developing appropriate tactics to maximise potential (especially the firepower of massed artillery), by making a major effort to train his troops and by developing a staff able to increase operational potential. Training played a significant role in his successes in 1805–7 because Napoleon had put a major emphasis on training his troops during the years 1802–4, when they had not been engaged in hostilities on land in Europe. Instead, many had been prepared for an invasion of England which never happened. Training was an aspect of the professionalism of the French army, especially of the Grande Armée, which was important to Napoleon’s success. This professionalism also reflected experience, materialised in the formation of an effective officer corps which was at once professional and determined. Moreover, the frequency of combat ensured that these forces lived the war.

The emphasis on massed artillery was also significant. Napoleon increased the ratio of cannon to troops – an increase which required a formidable organisation to sustain it. He both distributed cannon among units and established reserves able to deliver massed firepower on the battlefield. This practice became increasingly important from 1807 on, taking its toll, for example, on the tight Russian formations in the battle of Borodino in 1812 and on the exposed Prussian columns at Ligny in 1815.23

To describe Napoleon like someone who worked successfully to realise what was possible is – rather than criticising him for failing to invent the atom bomb – to emphasise that this realisable potential had not changed radically during his period in so far as the methods of waging war were concerned. This approach turns the focus back to the idea of the people-under-arms: in this construct, revolutionary enthusiasm, ideology and enforced organisational modernisation made possible an effective conscription,24 unlocked the resources of society and jump-started a short-lived French primacy and a longer-lived state of modern warfare.

Placing emphasis on the people-under-arms idea, however, is a problematical approach. As I have already indicated, there were other (although not necessarily mutually exclusive) reasons for the French success – not least the willingness of states to ally themselves with France (as Spain did from 1796 to 1807) or to avoid conflict with it (as Prussia did from 1795 to 1806 and from 1807 to 1813). Furthermore, French Revolutionary armies could be defeated and frequently were by the Austrians. As the Austrians showed at Marengo in 1800, it was also possible, in what turned out to be a Napoleonic victory, to put Napoleon himself under great pressure; and at Aspern-Essling in 1809 his attack was repelled by the Austrians and he was pushed back.

Moreover, albeit in a contrasting socio-political context, the idea of ‘people under arms’ was seen to tally with conscription systems already established in states such as Prussia, Russia and Sweden. In terms of the social politics of compulsory mobilisation, the French Revolutionaries can be portrayed as different, not least because of their degree of revolutionary enthusiasm; but the extent to which they were different in practice, at the level of the individual peasant, was probably insignificant. The same point can be made about Napoleon, who relied upon conscription: this had been systematised through the Jourdan Law of 1799. Conscription provided Napoleon with a steady flow of new troops, and also with an ability to respond to particular crises such as those arising from the heavy losses suffered against Russia in 1807 and 1812.

In addition, Napoleon depended for manpower on allies and satellites, some of whom employed long-established means of raising and commanding forces, although others turned to new methods. Austria, Prussia and other German states such as Bavaria contributed greatly to Napoleon’s unsuccessful invasion of Russia in 1812, as did the Italians and the Poles – just as his German allies had provided large numbers of troops in the 1809 war with Austria (especially in the early stages). To fulfil Napoleon’s requirements, his satellites and allies increasingly relied on conscription.25 The Kingdom of Italy regularly provided 65,000 troops. The troops he could raise drove up the numbers which could be deployed on campaign and on the battlefield, putting pressure on his opponents – which serves as a reminder that command skill was not the sole factor in Napoleon’s success.

Turning to Napoleon’s opponents, one approach to their eventual victory over him (which brought the total of French casualties in his wars to somewhere in the region of one million) argues that Napoleon’s defeat was only possible because other states had copied key aspects of his way of waging war; hence the modernisation of European warfare in the early nineteenth century was part of his legacy. In short, Napoleon’s very defeat was an aspect of his legacy. Such an interpretation is attractive from the perspective of the paradigm and diffusion approach, which takes as its premise the argument that at any one time there is a paradigm or key power which defines military capability and that the ‘best practice’ it represents is understood as a model and copied accordingly.26 This approach would make France central. However, there is the important conceptual point that the variety of tasks facing the militaries and the variety of issues confronting states is such that the idea of a paradigm and of clear best practice is highly questionable. In addition, more immediately for 1792–1815, it is the case that not all the states felt that they had to copy French methods. In particular, neither Britain nor Russia can be seen as altering their established systems accordingly, and yet these states played a key role in France’s defeat. Although the British introduced changes, for example to their light infantry, these reflected developments in the British army prior to 1792, and their military system did not alter in essentials.

Moreover, rather than focusing on the diffusion of Napoleonic methods, one could find an alternative or additional explanation. The alliance and co-operation between Austria, Prussia and Russia can be seen as crucial to Napoleon’s military failure from 1813 on: in short, war followed politics. Once the alliance was created Napoleon was rapidly defeated, although his own inappropriate and indifferently executed strategy that year, in which vengeance against Prussia played a role,27 contributed greatly to the defeat. Napoleon’s imperial hegemony depended on continuing success and, when this success ceased, his system swiftly collapsed.

It is appropriate to focus on Britain and Russia because the tactical and operational proficiency of their forces (in the British case in particular, that of the navy, which was the most powerful and successful one in the world), which they shared with France, was matched by a strategic advantage stemming from these countries’ ability to deploy considerable resources and from a base which it was difficult to conquer. The extent of these resources was important, because the scale of warfare and the simultaneity of commitments and operations on many fronts (a result of ‘tasking’) were such that war posed formidable demands on the countries and states involved. A response to these demands required not simply resources in aggregate, but also organisational developments and co-operation between governments and political élites. Again, this was not new; it could be traced back to the previous centuries. But the greater scale of warfare was notable by comparison with that of the major conflicts in 1756–63 and 1775–83.

The problem of mobilising resources, however, was lessened by the widespread increase in the European population from the 1740s onwards, a development which helped to make Napoleonic warfare sustainable. Indeed, population increase was a key factor in aggregate Western military capability during the period covered in the present book, because this increase continued throughout the period. Numbers helped states to accommodate heavy casualties and yet continue fighting. Russia suffered possibly 660,000 military casualties between 1789 and 1814, many of them due to disease and poor diet, while its army may have received as many as two million recruits between 1802 and 1812.28 Despite suffering terrible losses in Russia in 1812 while also fighting an intractable and now unsuccessful war in Spain, Napoleon was able to raise fresh forces the following year, albeit at the cost of weakening his regime. For the Napoleonic system, raising this manpower created an instance of war weakening the state – a frequent occurrence, and one which contradicts the general portrayal of war as strengthening the state which fights it.

Britain and Russia were extensive economic systems. Britain drew not only on its own resources, which had been considerably enhanced by population growth and agricultural, industrial and transport improvements,29 but also on the global trading system, which it was best placed to direct and exploit thanks to its naval strength and maritime resources. Russia similarly benefited from scale and resources – not least in grain production and in its metallurgical industry – although administrative sophistication, entrepreneurial initiative and fiscal capability and efficiency were far less in evidence than in Britain. Moreover, geopolitically, each state was able to repel Napoleon, as the British demonstrated in an affirmation of their naval mastery which culminated in the victory at Trafalgar in 1805 and the Russians in their unbroken and ultimately successful resistance to the invasion of Napoleon and his allies in 1812. Against a very weak resistance from the demoralised Swedes, the Russians, while being Napoleon’s allies, had also speedily conquered Finland from Sweden in 1808 and annexed it the following year.

Political relations were often uneasy and sometimes hostile, but Anglo-Russian co-operation indicated the prospect of a new geopolitics of power, although distance and operational factors lessened this possibility. Russian troops joined the British in an unsuccessful operation against the French in the Netherlands in 1799; Russian warships joined the British fleet in 1812; and, that same year, Russian commanders suggested that, having beaten the Turks, their forces in the Balkans should co-operate with the British in the Adriatic or Italy. The following year, the idea of a Russian contribution to the war against the French in Spain was raised.30 In the event, the Russians focused on operations in Central Europe, where they could more readily pursue their interests and use their forces.

The success of Britain and Russia was to define the post-war world. Britain remained the leading maritime and imperial power until it was succeeded by the USA in the 1940s, with Russia being the dominant state on the Eurasian landmass for the remainder of the nineteenth century and until the crises of 1905–20, although the events of 1870–1 had lessened its relative power. The British and Russian armies had an ability to engage not simply in conflict with other Western states, but also with non-Western powers. As a result, Britain and Russia made major territorial gains in the quarter-century beginning in 1790 and also afterwards, which set the basis for their future competition in the ‘Great Game’ for dominance in South Asia and in the neighbouring regions.

The French, in contrast, had a far more mixed success against non-Western powers. Napoleon was spectacularly (though temporarily), successful in Egypt as commander of the Army of the Orient, winning dramatic victories, with his defensive firepower, over larger forces of attacking Mamelukes at Shubra Khit (13 July) and at Embabeh in the battle of the Pyramids (21 July); but he was unable to realise his hopes either politically or strategically.31 In Egypt the French faced insurrection, and when Napoleon invaded Palestine in 1799 he was repulsed, when he besieged Acre, by a Turkish garrison supported by the British navy.32 Napoleon had hoped to advance to India or at least to undermine the British in southern India in concert with Tipu Sultan of Mysore, the leading ruler there; but these hopes were wrecked. British successes in 1798–9 over the French navy and over Tipu at the battles of the Nile and Seringapatam respectively, followed by the defeat of the French army in Egypt in 1801, made it clear that this pivot and line of advance outside Europe was closed.

The means by which the British concentrated their forces on Egypt were most impressive. Napoleon receives credit for concentrating his forces as they advanced separately against opponents in Europe; but in Egypt the British did this by drawing on resources from Britain to India. This use of Indian forces began a process which was to become a key aspect of British power – a process seen for example in the confrontation with Russia in 1878, with Turkey in the First World War and with Italy and Germany in the Second World War. In 1801, the French in Egypt surrendered and were repatriated. The French therefore were unable to provide substance to the alliance they negotiated with Persia in 1807. British commanders such as Commodore Sir Home Popham might worry that Napoleon would ‘threaten India through Persia’ or invade Ireland from Lisbon,33