Napoleon Bonaparte was born on the island of Corsica in 1769, the same year the Republic of Genoa ceded Corsica to France. Like Jomini, the Bonaparte family hailed from distant Italian roots, and Napoleon’s parents supported the resistance movement against the French government. However, at some point they gave in to the new order as in 1777 his father was named the Corsican representative to the French court of Louis XVI.
This move to France at the age of 9 meant Napoleon, who already spoke Corsican and Italian, was forced to learn French as well. He entered the military academy at Brienne-le-Château, where he was reportedly an outspoken advocate for Corsican independence. Although he eventually attained fluency in the new language, he would always retain his Corsican accent, and apparently never quite mastered French spelling. I think we all can sympathize.
Bullied for his inability to communicate freely in the French language, Napoleon was a quiet child, though he excelled at mathematics and history. In 1784 he entered the Ecole Militaire in Paris where he trained to be an artillery officer, completing his two-year course of studies in one year when his father’s untimely demise meant the loss of financial support. Napoleon was the first Corsican to ever graduate from the prestigious military academy.
Napoleon held a number of junior officer positions before returning to Corsica with renowned patriot Pasquale Paoli. The latter, however, considered the Bonaparte family traitors for having given up on the quest for independence. Just as well, for the spirit of the revolution had stirred something within Napoleon and his views in support of the new government in France put him at odds with Paoli, the Corsican hero. This led to the Bonaparte family fleeing their native land for France in 1793.
Ingratiating himself with the infamous Robespierre, Napoleon was placed in command of Republican artillery at the siege of Toulon in 1793. A wound received during this battle made him a bit of a hero in the eyes of the Committee of Public Safety. Napoleon was promoted to Brigadier General at the age of 24 and placed in command of the artillery in France’s Army of Italy. After fulfilling a series of administrative and diplomatic posts, Napoleon was ordered to put down a royalist uprising in Paris, which he accomplished with cannon brought there by Jaochim Murat, a cavalry officer whose destiny would become intertwined with that of Bonaparte.
Putting a violent end to the uprising with a “whiff of grape” as the saying went, earned Napoleon the full support of the National Convention—France’s government that week—which gave him command of the Army in Italy. This command, and the manner in which Napoleon so roughly handled a much larger Austrian Army, launched his career, making him the preeminent military officer in France. It also saw Napoleon become increasingly involved in French politics, the result of which was a coup d'état and subsequent inauguration as “First Consul” in 1799. All this despite a failed 1798 campaign in Egypt he did his best to pretend never happened.
Napoleon would, for the next sixteen years, fight wars from Portugal and Spain in the west to Moscow in the east. He’d defeat the Prussians, the Russians, every German state that dared offer resistance, and, of course, beat the Austrians with a frequency and ease that makes one think of a training exercise rather than actual war. Napoleon’s military exploits constituted such an astounding and unprecedented record of success that theorists like Clausewitz and Jomini would literally devote their lives attempting to explain the phenomenon.
Unlike the two theorists, Napoleon never really felt the need to explain warfare or strategy for posterity. He was a practitioner of war, not a teacher, and so left little behind in his own hand to explain why he did things the way he did. This has led to an overall impression of Napoleon not so much as an innovator as one of those rare people who can see change happening in mid-stride, and immediately understand how to capitalize upon it.
Reformers like Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval and Jean du Teil had improved French artillery, standardizing calibers and making carriages both stronger and yet easier to transport. Napoleon’s artillery would always be better than his opponents, a significant advantage that nicely augmented the levee en masse, or national conscription. A revolutionary change in the way armies were built in the previous period of limited warfare, it allowed the French to assemble huge national forces by the standard of the day and launch them at successive coalition armies which faced the Republic.
The presence of these larger armies in turn led to a concept of logistics support that required French troops moving through an area to essentially support themselves through acquisition from the locals, turning any French army on the move into a virtual swarm of locusts. Napoleon’s opponents were tied to older concepts of supply depots and long logistical trains that slowed down the movement of combat elements and offered significant vulnerabilities to an enterprising and innovative enemy commander.
Napoleon also adopted a system of corps command, operating loosely under the control of an army commander, which differed greatly from the separate armies—and lack of unified command associated with it—usually employed by his enemies. Napoleon’s various corps would march on separate routes, facilitating supply through local acquisition, then converge when contact was made with the enemy. His most important rule, “march divided, fight combined” was made possible by the most critical guidance to his corps commanders to always “march to the sound of the guns.” The flexibility, and tactical options, created by this type of command structure would serve him well in the years and wars to come. Both these innovations, however, are directly attributable to the 1775 writings of Jean de Bourcet.
Finally, Napoleon’s infantry brigades would often fight in a unique formation called the ordre mixte, devised in 1772 by the Comte de Guibert, which sought to combine the firepower of the line formation with the depth and melee strength inherent to the column. This formation combined battalions in line with battalions in column, generally on the flanks, providing a potent and self-contained force on the battlefield that greatly increased French infantry lethality.
All of this, then, provides a sense of Napoleon as an integrator of good ideas, and not necessarily someone who invented the elements that made him so successful. Napoleon seemed to inherently grasp the value in revolutionary concepts and sought ways to make them work within his army. But is this genius? Of the type often implied when the name Napoleon is uttered in hushed, respectful tones?
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Yet there is no ambiguity in defining his genius when viewing Napoleon’s fusion of military with the political and diplomatic goals of the nation. Sure, the aligning of political and military objectives is always easier when one holds position at the top of both those ladders. Yet Napoleon wasn’t simply a dictator making grand pronouncements based on a whim. His wars, each of them, were launched with a clear political endstate in mind. His status, then, as commander of the army virtually ensured that the military wouldn’t stray from those clearly-conceived national goals. When trying to understand Clausewitz’s obsession with defining war in political terms, one need look no further than the man who wielded both diplomacy and warfare like a matched pair of swords, the one always complementing the other.
Thus it is we see Napoleon as a truly gifted practitioner of warfare. A leader who saw the value in changes to technology and organization long before his contemporaries, and wasn’t afraid to put those new ways of doing things into practice. Napoleon’s willingness to challenge and then change the established order no doubt sprang from the revolution that launched his meteoric career. Yet the manner in which he applied those new tactics and risky maneuvers on the battlefield have earned him the place he holds as one of the world’s most renowned military leaders.
Napoleon’s experience, and the explanations of the revolution in military affairs offered by Clausewitz and Jomini, offer a lot to the modern day military leader or strategist. The desire to constantly challenge established practices, evaluating what works and what does not, and both the courage and persistence to see change through to real effect, sets the good apart from the great in military matters.
With modern conflict facing encroachment by new domains such as space, cyber, and electronic warfare, we’re potentially looking at another revolution in military affairs. The same characteristics that made Napoleon great, that willingness to objectively look at warfare, at changes in technology and society, and understand how it all can be molded into military and strategic success, are required of our leaders today. Do we have the mental flexibility to make that leap? Are we training leaders who simply execute doctrine, or those who bend the rules to meet the ever-shifting challenges of the modern battlefield? Are we raising Napoleons or any number of Austrian, Prussian, and Russian generals whose names we remember only as punchlines while conveying the exploits of the great Bonaparte?
Ultimately, only time will tell.
M. G. Haynes