LECTURE VI.NAPOLEON.

Thecareer of Napoleon Bonaparte is so near to our own times and so commonly familiar, that it is not essential to describe any of those operations which were, within the memory of some men yet living, the wonder and dread of Europe. In certain respects Napoleon was the greatest of all soldiers. He had, to be sure, the history of other great captains to profit by; he had not to invent; he had only to improve. But he did for the military art what constitutes the greatest advance in any art, he reduced it to its most simple, most perfect form; and his and Frederick’s campaigns furnished the final material from which Jomini and his followers could elucidate the science; for it has taken more than two thousand years of the written history of war to produce a written science of war.

I shall not touch upon Napoleon’s life as statesman or lawgiver, nor on his services in carrying forward the results of the Revolution toward its legitimate consequence,—the equality of all men before the law. In these rôles no more useful man appears in the history of modern times. I shall look at him simply as a soldier.

Napoleon’s career is a notable example of the necessity of coexistent intellect, character, and opportunity to produce the greatest success in war. His strength distinctly rose through half his career, and as distinctly fell during the other half. His intellectual power never changed. The plan of the Waterloo campaign was as brilliant as any which he ever conceived. His opportunity here was equal to that of 1796. But his execution was marred by weakening physique, upon which followed a decline of that decisiveness which is so indispensable to the great captain. It will, perhaps, be interesting to trace certain resemblances between the opening of his first independent campaign in 1796, and his last one in 1815, to show how force of character won him the first and the lack of it lost him the last; and to connect the two campaigns by a thread of the intervening years of growth till 1808, and of decline from that time on.

When Napoleon was appointed to the command of the Army of Italy he had for the moment a serious problem. In this army were able and more experienced officers of mature powers and full of manly strength, who looked on this all but unknown, twenty-seven years old, small, pale, untried commander-in-chief, decidedly askance. But Napoleon was not long in impressing his absolute superiority upon them all. They soon recognized the master-hand.

The army lay strung out along the coast from Loano to Savona, in a worse than bad position. The English fleet held the sea in its rear, and could make descents on any part of this long and ill-held line. Its communications lay in prolongation of the left flank, over a single bad road,subject not only to interruption by the English, but the enemy, by forcing the Col di Tenda, could absolutely cut it off from France. The troops were in woful condition. They had neither clothing nor rations. They were literally “heroes in rags.” On the further side of the Maritime Alps lay the Austrian general, Beaulieu, commanding a superior army equally strung out from Mount Blanc to Genoa. His right wing consisted of the Piedmontese army under Colli at Ceva; his centre was at Sassello; with his left he was reaching out to join hands with the English at Genoa. Kellerman faced, in the passes of the Alps, a force of twenty-five thousand Sardinians, but for the moment was out of the business.

1796.

Napoleon spent but few days in providing for his troops, and then began to concentrate on his right flank at Savona. He knew that his own position was weak, but he also divined from the reports brought in from the outpoststhat the enemy’s was worse. From the very start he enunciated in his strategic plan the maxim he obeyed through life: Move upon your enemy in one mass on one line so that when brought to battle you shall outnumber him, and from such a direction that you shall compromise him. This is, so to speak, the motto of Napoleon’s success. All perfect art is simple, and after much complication or absence of theoretical canons from ancient times to his, Napoleon reduced strategy down to this beautifully simple, rational rule.

Nothing in war seems at first blush so full of risk as to move into the very midst of your enemy’s several detachments. No act in truth is so safe, if his total outnumbers yours and if you outnumber each of his detachments. For, as always seemed to be more clear to Napoleon and Frederick than to any of the other great captains, you can first throw yourself upon any one of them, beat him and then turn upon the next. But to do this requires audacity, skill, and, above all, tireless legs. And success is predicated in all cases on the assumption that God is on the side of the heaviest battalions.

So Napoleon, who was very familiar with the topography of Italy, at once determined to strike Beaulieu’s centre, and by breaking through it, to separate the twenty-five thousand Piedmontese in the right wing from the thirty-five thousand Austrians in the left wing, so that he might beat each separately with his own thirty-seven thousand men.

Beaulieu’s reaching out toward Genoa facilitated Napoleon’s manœuvre, for the Austrian would have a range of mountains between him and his centre under Argenteau,whom he had at the same time ordered forward on Savona via Montenotte. Napoleon’s manœuvre was strategically a rupture of Beaulieu’s centre. Tactically it first led to an attack on the right of Argenteau’s column. The details of the manœuvre it would consume hours to follow. Suffice it to say that by a restless activity which, barring Frederick, had not been seen in war since the days of Cæsar, Napoleon struck blow after blow, first upon Argenteau, throwing him back easterly, then on Colli, throwing him back westerly, absolutely cut the allies in two, fought half a dozen battles in scarce a greater number of days, and in a short fortnight had beaten the enemy at all points, had captured fifteen thousand prisoners, fifty guns, and twenty-one flags.

Still the problem was serious. Beaulieu, if active, could shortly concentrate one hundred thousand men. Napoleon must allow him not a moment of breathing spell. He issued a proclamation to his troops which sounds like the blare of a trumpet. It set ablaze the hearts of his men; it carried dread to his enemies, and Napoleon followed it up by a march straight on Turin. Alarmed and disconcerted, the King of Sardinia sued for peace. Napoleon concluded an armistice with him, and thus saw himself dis-embarrassed of the enemy’s right wing and free to turn on the left under Beaulieu. His columns were at once launched on Alexandria, and by his skilful manœuvres and unparalleled alertness he soon got the better of the Austrians. He had at a stroke made himself the most noted general of Europe. The rest of the campaign was equally brilliant and successful.

Napoleon had shown his army that he commanded notby the mere commission of the Directory, but by the divine right of genius. He had not only taken advantage of every error of his opponents, but had so acted as to make them commit errors, and those very errors of which he had need. His army had been far from good. But “I believe,” says Jomini, “that if Napoleon had commanded the most excellent troops he would not have accomplished more, even as Frederick in the reversed case would not have accomplished less.”

We recognize in this first independent campaign of Napoleon the heroic zeal of Alexander, the intellectual subtlety of Hannibal, the reckless self-confidence of Cæsar, the broad method of Gustavus, the heart of oak of Frederick. But one fault is discoverable, and this, at the time, was rather a virtue,—Napoleon underrated his adversary. By and by this error grew in the wrong direction, and became a strong factor in his failures.

Through the rest of this campaign, which numbered the victories of Lodi, Castiglione, Bassano, Arcole, the most noteworthy thing except his own personal diligence is the speed with which Napoleon manœuvred his troops. To state an instance: from September 5 to September 11, six days, Napoleon’s men fought one pitched battle and two important combats and marched, Masséna eighty-eight miles, Augereau ninety-six miles, and the other corps less distances. He was far from being uniformly lucky. He had many days of serious backsets. But whenever luck ran in his favor, he seized it and made it useful; when against him, he gamely strove to stem its tide. If Fortunefrowned, he wooed her unceasingly till she smiled again.

The campaign which began in April, 1796, really lasted till April, 1797. Napoleon pushed the Austrians out of Italy and well back towards Vienna. His triumphs culminated in the brilliant victory of Rivoli, and his success at the truce of Leoben. At Rivoli, with thirty thousand men, Napoleon defeated the enemy and captured twenty thousand prisoners. The men who had left Verona and fought at San Michele on the 13th of January, marched all night to Rivoli, there conquered on the 14th, and again marching to Mantua, some thirty miles, compelled Provera to lay down his arms on the 15th. Napoleon could rightfully boast to have equalled Cæsar in speed of foot.

The men of the Revolution had cut loose from eighteenth century methods of warfare by rising en masse and putting the personal element into the scale. But it was reserved for Napoleon to substitute a new method for the old. From Nice to Leoben he showed the world what modern war can do. He made himself independent of magazines, as Frederick had done but rarely. With a smaller army he always had more men at the point of contact. This was Napoleon’s strongest point. He divined what his enemy would do, not from his tent but from the saddle, seeing with his own eyes and weighing all he saw and heard. He was every day and all day long in motion; he rode unheard-of distances. He relied on no one but himself, as, with his comparatively small army, hecould well do; and correctly seeing and therefore correctly gauging circumstances, he had the courage to act upon his facts. He sought battle as the result of every manœuvre. The weight of his intellect and his character were equally thrown into all he did. And his abnormal ambition drove him to abnormal energy. In this his first campaign and in one year, with moderate forces, he had advanced from Nice to within eighty miles of Vienna, and had wrung a peace from astonished Austria.

Napoleon next undertook the Egyptian campaign. His ambition had grown with success. But matters in France were not in a condition of which he could personally avail, and he believed he could increase his reputation and power by conquests in the East. His imagination was boundless. Perhaps no great soldier can be free from imagination, or its complement, enthusiasm. Napoleon had it to excess, and in many respects it helped him in his hazardous undertakings. At this time he dreamed himself another Alexander conquering the Eastern world, thence to return, as Alexander did not, with hordes of soldiers disciplined by himself and fanatically attached to his person, to subjugate all Europe to his will. The narration of this campaign of sixteen months may be made to sound brilliant; its result was miscarriage. It is full of splendid achievements and marred but by one mishap,—the siege of Acre. But the total result of the campaign was failure to France, though gain to Napoleon, who won renown, and, abandoning his army when the campaign closed, returned to Paris at a season more suited to his advancement. Napoleon’s militaryconduct in this campaign shows the same marvellous energy, the same power of adapting means to end, of keeping all his extraordinary measures secret, the better to impose on the enemy by their sudden development, the same power over men. But the discipline of the army was disgraceful. The plundering which always accompanied Napoleon’s movements—for, unlike Gustavus and Frederick, he believed in allowing the soldier freedom beyond bounds if only he would march and fight—was excessive. The health of the army was bad; its deprivations so great that suicide was common to avoid suffering which was worse. And yet Napoleon, by his unequalled management, kept this army available as a tool, and an excellent one.

Napoleon now became First Consul. The campaign of 1800 was initiated by the celebrated crossing of the Alps. This feat, of itself, can no more be compared, as it has been, to Hannibal’s great achievement, nor indeed to Alexander’s crossing the Paropamisus, than a Pullman excursion to Salt Lake City can be likened to Albert Sidney Johnston’s terrible march across the Plains in 1857. Napoleon’s crossing was merely an incident deftly woven into a splendid plan of campaign. From Switzerland, a geographical salient held by them, the French could debouch at will into Italy or Germany. Mélas, the Austrian general in Italy, had his eyes fixed upon Masséna in Genoa. A large reserve army was collected by Napoleon in France, while Moreau pushed toward the Danube. Mélas naturally expected that the French would issue from Provence, and kept his outlooktowards that point. When Napoleon actually descended from the Great St. Bernard upon his rear, he was as badly startled as compromised. This splendid piece of strategy was followed up with Napoleon’s usual restless push, and culminated in the battle of Marengo. This was at first a distinct Austrian victory, but good countenance, Mélas’ neglect to pursue his gain, and Napoleon’s ability to rally and hold his troops until absent Dessaix could rejoin him, turned it into an overwhelming Austrian defeat. And Napoleon, by the direction given to his mass, had so placed Mélas that defeat meant ruin. He was glad to accept an armistice on Napoleon’s own terms.

MARENGO CAMPAIGN

This superb campaign had lasted but a month, and had been characterized by the utmost dash and clearnessof perception. Again Napoleon’s one mass projected on one properly chosen line had accomplished wonders.

Napoleon once said to Jomini, “The secret of war lies in the secret of communications. Keep your own and attack your enemy’s in such a way that a lost battle may not harm you, a battle won may ruin your adversary. Seize your enemy’s communications and then march to battle.” Napoleon’s success came from study of the situation. His art was founded on an intimate knowledge of all the facts, coupled with such reasoning power as enabled him to gauge correctly what his enemy was apt to do. Without the art the study would be useless. But the art could not exist apart from study.

After Marengo there were five years of peace. These and the four years between Wagram and the Russian campaign were the only two periods of rest from war in Napoleon’s career. Succeeding this came the memorable Austerlitz campaign. Napoleon had had for some months three of his best officers in Germany studying up topography, roads, bridges, towns, in the Black Forest region and toward the Tyrol and Bohemia. To thus make himself familiar with the status was his uniform habit.

Ulm-Austerlitz Campaign

Napoleon, now Emperor, was at Boulogne, threatening and perhaps at times half purposing an invasion of England. He commanded the best army he ever had. The Austrians, not supposing him ready, inundated Bavaria with troops, without waiting for their allies, the Russians, and marched up the Danube to the Iller,under Field-Marshal Mack. Napoleon put an embargo on the mails, broke up from Boulogne at twenty-four hours’ notice, and reached the vicinity of the enemy with an overwhelming force before Mack was aware of his having left the sea. His line of march was about Mack’s right flank, because this was the nearest to Boulogne and gave him a safe base on the confederate German provinces. So well planned was the manœuvre, so elastic in its design for change of circumstances, that it fully succeeded, step for step, until Mack was surrounded at Ulm and surrendered with his thirty thousand men. Here again we find the Napoleonic rule fairly overwhelming Mack with superior numbers. Except in 1796 and 1814, Napoleon always had more men than the enemy on the field at the proper time. “They ascribe more talent to me than to others,” he observed,“and yet to give battle to an enemy I am in the habit of beating, I never think I have enough men; I call to my aid all that I can unite.”

The chart herewith given of the grand manœuvre of Ulm is so simple as to suggest no difficulties of execution. But there is probably nothing in human experience which taxes strength, intellect, judgment, and character to so great a degree as the strategy and logistics of such a movement, unless it be the tactics of the ensuing battle. The difficulties are, in reality, gigantic.

Napoleon headed direct for Vienna, and on the way absolutely lived on the country. “In the movements and wars of invasion conducted by the Emperor, there are no magazines; it is a matter for the commanding generals of the corps to collect the means of victualling in the countries through which they march,” writes Berthier to Marmont. Napoleon took Vienna and marched out towards Brünn, where the Austrians and Russians had concentrated. Here he was far from secure, if equal talent had been opposed to him; but he took up a position near Austerlitz, from which he could retreat through Bohemia, if necessary, and, calmly watching the enemy and allowing several chances of winning an ordinary victory to pass, he waited, with an audacity which almost ran into braggadocio, for the enemy to commit some error from which he could wrest a decisive one. And this the allies did, as Napoleon divined they would do. They tried to turn his right flank and cut him off from Vienna. Napoleon massed his forces on their centre and right, broke these in pieces, and won the victory of which he was always most proud. Napoleon’sconduct here showed distinctly a glint of what he himself so aptly calls the divine part of the art.

There is always a corresponding danger in every plan which is of the kind to compass decisive results. In this case Napoleon risked his right wing. But to judge how much it is wise to risk and to guess just how much the enemy is capable of undertaking is a manifestation of genius.

The era of the great battles of modern war dates from Austerlitz. Marengo was rather two combats than one great battle. Frederick’s battles were wonders of tactics and courage, but they differ from the Napoleonic system. In Frederick’s battles the whole army was set in motion for one manœuvre at one time to be executed under the management of the chief. If the manœuvre was interrupted by unforeseen events, the battle might be lost. In Napoleon’s system, the centre might be broken and the wings still achieve victory; one wing might be crushed while the other destroyed the enemy. A bait was offered the enemy by the exhibition of a weak spot to attract his eye, while Napoleon fell on the key-point with overwhelming odds. But in this system the control passed from the hand of the leader. All he could do was to project a corps in a given direction at a given time. Once set in motion, these could not readily be arrested. Such a system required reserves much more than the old method. “Battles are only won by strengthening the line at a critical moment,” says Napoleon. Once in, Napoleon’s corps worked out their own salvation. He could but aid them with his reserves.

There is a magnificence of uncertainty and risk, andcorresponding genius in the management of the battles of Napoleon; but for purely artistic tactics they do not appeal to us as do Frederick’s. Themotifof Alexander’s battles is more akin to Napoleon’s; that of Hannibal’s, to Frederick’s.

It has been said that Napoleon never considered what he should do in case of failure. The reverse is more exact. Before delivering a battle, Napoleon busied himself little with what he would do in case of success. That was easy to decide. He busied himself markedly with what could be done in case of reverse.

Like all great captains, Napoleon preferred lieutenants who obeyed instead of initiating. He chafed at independent action. This was the chief’s prerogative. But as his armies grew in size he gave his marshals charge of detail under general instructions from himself. Dependence on Napoleon gradually sapped the self-reliance of more than one of his lieutenants, and though there are instances of noble ability at a distance from control, most of his marshals were able tacticians, rather than great generals. Napoleon grew impatient of contradiction or explanation; and he sometimes did not learn or was not told of things he ought to know. He was no longer so active. Campaigning was a hardship. His belief in his destiny became so strong that he began to take greater risks. Such a thing as failure did not exist for him. His armies were increasing in size, and railroads and telegraphs at that day did not hasten transportation and news. The difficulties he had to contend with were growing fast.

These things had the effect of making Napoleon’s militaryplans more magnificent, more far-reaching. But all the less could he pay heed to detail, and from now on one can, with some brilliant exceptions, perceive more errors of execution. In the general conception he was greater than ever, and this balanced the scale. His ability to put all his skill into the work immediately in hand was marvellous. But with a vast whole in view, the parts were, perhaps of necessity, lost sight of.

The campaigns of 1806 and 1807 were in sequence. To move on the Prussians, who, under the superannuated Duke of Brunswick, were concentrated in Thuringia, Napoleon massed on his own right, disgarnishing his left, turned their left,—in this case their strategic flank, because the manœuvre cut them off from Berlin and their allies, the Russians,—and with overwhelming vigor fell on the dawdling enemy at Jena and Auerstädt. The Prussians had remained stationary in the art of war where they had been left by Frederick, and had lost his burning genius.

It was at the outset of this campaign that Jomini handed in to Marshal Ney, his chief, a paper showing what Napoleon must necessarily do if he would beat the Prussians and cut them off from their approaching allies. He alone had divined the strategic secrets of the Emperor.

In this campaign we plainly see the growth of risk commensurate within the magnitude of plan, but we also recognize the greater perfection of general intuitions, the larger plan and method. Details had to be overlooked, but the whole army was held in the Emperor’s hand like a battalion in that of a good field officer. In forty-eight hourshis two hundred thousand men could be concentrated at any one point. And the very essence of the art of war is to knowwhenyou may divide, to impose on the enemy, subsist, pursue, deceive, and to knowhowto divide so that you may concentrate before battle can occur.

JENA CAMPAIGN

Again Napoleon had carried out his principle of moving on one line in one mass on the enemy, and a few great soldiers began to see that there was a theory in this. Jomini first grasped its full meaning and showed that only battle crowns the work. Without it a general is merely uncovering his own communications. Victory is essential to the success of such a plan. Napoleon pushed restlessly in on the enemy. “While others are in council, the French army is on the march,” quoth he.

In the Austerlitz and Jena campaigns, Napoleon’s manœuvre was so admirably conceived that he kept open two lines of retreat, which he could adapt to the enemy’s evolutions,—at Austerlitz via Vienna and Bohemia, at Jena still more secure lines on the Rhine and on the Main or Danube. This is a distinct mark of the perfection of the plans.

The succeeding Friedland campaign has several items of interest. At his first contact with the Russians, Napoleon, instead of sticking to his uniform plan of one mass on one line, tried to surround his enemy before he knew where the tactical decision of the campaign would come. Result, a thrust in the air by one corps, another did not reach the appointed place, a third met unexpected and superior forces, and the enemy broke through the net. Napoleon seemed to be experimenting. The captain of 1796, Ulm, Jena, is for the moment unrecognizable.

The Russians attacked Napoleon in his winter-quarters, and the bloody and indecisive battle of Eylau resulted, where for the first time Napoleon met that astonishing doggedness of the Russian soldier, on which Frederick had shattered his battalions at Kunersdorf. Later came the victory of Friedland. Napoleon’s order for this day is a model for study. Every important instruction for the battle is embraced in the order; details are left to his lieutenants. Only the time of launching the first attack is reserved to the chief. But the strategy of the Friedland campaign was not so crisp. The true manœuvre was to turn the Russian left, their strategic flank, and throw them back on the sea. Napoleon turned their right to cut them off from Königsberg. It was mere good luck that Friedlandended the campaign. Even after defeat the enemy could have escaped.

In the Spanish campaign of the winter of 1807–8, Napoleon reverted to his 1796 manœuvre of breaking the enemy’s centre. But Napoleon had undertaken what could not be accomplished,—the subjugation of Spain. His own strategy and the tactics of his marshals were both brilliant and successful; he could have compelled a peace, had such been the object. But to subdue a people fanatically fighting for their homes, in a mountainous country, is practically impossible by any means short of extermination. It was in the political, not the military, task that Napoleon failed.

While Napoleon was struggling in Spain, Austria deemed the occasion good again to assert herself. This gave Napoleon an opportunity of leaving to his lieutenants a game he already saw he could not win, but in which he had achieved some brilliant openings, and hurry to fields on which he felt a positive superiority. His army and allies were already on the scene.

Berthier was in charge, and to him Napoleon had given full and explicit instructions. But Berthier, though a good chief of staff, had no power to grasp a strategic situation. By not obeying orders, he had, by the time Napoleon arrived, muddled the problem, and instead of concentrating behind the Lech, had got Davout’s corps pushed out to Ratisbon, where it was liable to be cut off. Napoleon was in perilous case. But by a beautiful and rapid series of manœuvres, in which he cut the enemy in two, he wrought victory out of threatening defeat. He was justly proud ofthis. “The greatest military manœuvres that I have ever made, and on which I most flatter myself, took place at Eckmühl, and were immensely superior to those of Marengo or other actions which preceded or followed them.” It is the rapidity and suddenness of these manœuvres which distinguished them from 1805. There was a regular plan. Here a constant series of surprises and changes.

In making his plans, Napoleon never began by “What can the enemy do?” but he first sought to place his army in the best position, and then asked, “What now can the enemy do?” This gave him the initiative. But his plan was always elastic enough to bend to what the enemy might do. He never made plans colored by the enemy’s possibilities. He chose his own plan intelligently, according to the geography, topography, and existing conditions, and made it elastic enough to be equal to the enemy’s. “The mind of a general should be like the glass of a telescope in sharpness and clearness, and never conjure up pictures.” The elasticity of Napoleon’s Eckmühl plan is well shown by his ability to turn threatening disaster into brilliant success.

During all these days, Napoleon was tremendously active. He was personally at the important points. He hardly ate or slept. His body was governed entirely by his will. The soldier of 1796 was again afoot. But he was well and hearty. The lapse he now made is all the more singular. The Archduke Charles had been beaten at Eckmühl and was retiring into Ratisbon to cross the Danube; Napoleon neglected to pursue. They say he was persuaded by his marshals that the troops were too tired. For the first timein his life he succumbed to an obstacle. “Genius consists in carrying out a plan despite obstacles, and in finding few or no obstacles,” he once said.

Failure to pursue may come from the difficulty of leaving one’s magazines, as in Frederick’s era, or because the captain is exhausted, as well as the troops. But if the captain wants to pursue, the troops can always do so. If the enemy can fly, the victor can follow. Some part of the army is always in condition to march.

Jomini says that if Napoleon had here pursued like the Prussians after Waterloo, it would have greatly modified the campaign. As it was, the Archduke made good his escape. Napoleon had broken in between the two wings of the Austrian army, but he had not crippled the one before turning against the other. So that when he reached Vienna on the heels of the left, he found ready to meet him the right wing, which he ought to have crushed beyond so quick recovery at Ratisbon. This failure to pursue is the first symptom of a habit which from now on is more observably of not utilizing every advantage.

Then followed the crossing of the Danube at Lobau and the battles around Aspern and Essling, which terminated with defeat and great loss. The Archduke was on hand, received in overwhelming numbers that part of the French army which crossed; the bridges were broken behind the French; and a disastrous retreat to Lobau followed.

Napoleon’s difficulties were growing apace with the size of his armies, and he was now opposed by abler men. But it also seems as if occasional fits of apathy or impatience of exertion were growing on him. His splendid energy atEckmühl did not continue. Details received less personal attention. He was more rarely at the front. He began to rely on the eyes of others more than, with his ancient vigor, he would have done—despite his dictum that “a general who sees through the eyes of others will never be in condition to command an army as it should be commanded.” Until battle actually opened, he lacked his old enthusiasm. After the first gun he was himself again. But his method of conducting war was no longer so crisp as of yore. He was more daring than careful; he relied on his luck, and strove to cover errors of omission by stupendous blows. He was suffering from not having about him a well-educated, properly selected staff, each member drilled in his specific duties. Till now Napoleon had been his own staff; but with lessening activity, he had no one on whose eyes and judgment he could rely. “The general staff is so organized that one cannot see ahead at all by its means,” said he in the next campaign. Still it must constantly be borne in mind that one hundred and fifty thousand men cannot be commanded as readily as forty thousand. And Napoleon’s breadth of view, his power of grasping thetout ensemble, were still present in greater measure; and when he chose he could summon up all his old spirit.

Succeeding this defeat were the skilful preparations for a new crossing and battle, the putting over from Lobau of one hundred and fifty thousand men and four hundred guns in one night, and the victory of Wagram. Truly a marvellous performance! The strength of mind and constancy displayed by Napoleon on Lobau recalls the elasticcourage of Alexander when, cut off from his communications, he turned upon the Persians at Issus. But after Wagram the Austrians retired in good order and Napoleon did not pursue. It was no doubt a difficult task, but with the inspiration of his earlier days he would certainly have pushed the Archduke home,—or lost the game. He forgot the principles which had made him what he was, in not following up the retreat. To other and even great generals this criticism could not apply, but Napoleon has created a measure by which himself must be tried and which fits but a limited group. In 1805 he said, “One has but a certain time for war. I shall be good for it but six years more; then even I shall have to stop.” Was Napoleon’s best term drawing to a close? Or was it that the Archduke Charles was not a Würmser or a Mack?

In Napoleon’s battles, tactical details are made to yield to strategic needs. Frederick generally chose his point of attack from a strictly tactical standpoint. Napoleon did not appear to consider that there were such things as tactical difficulties. He always moved on the enemy as seemed to him strategically desirable, and with his great masses he could readily do so. The result of Napoleon’s battles was so wonderful, just because he always struck from such a strategic direction as to leave a beaten enemy no kind of loophole. But Napoleon would have been more than human if his extraordinary successes had not finally damaged his character. It is but the story of Alexander with a variation. In the beginning he was, after securing strategic value, strenuous to preserve his tactical values. By and by he began to pay less heed tothese; stupendous successes bred disbelief in failure; carelessness resulted, then indecision. Those historians who maintain that Napoleon succumbed solely to the gigantic opposition his status in Europe had evoked, can show good reasons for their belief, for Napoleon’s task was indeed immense. But was he overtaxed more than Hannibal, Cæsar, or Frederick?

In the Russian campaign (1812) Napoleon’s original idea was to turn the Russian right, but finding the Russian position further north than he expected, he resorted to breaking the Russian centre. It here first became a question whether the rule of one mass on one line, distinctly sound with smaller armies, will hold good with the enormous armies of 1812 or of modern days; whether the mere manœuvre may not become so difficult of execution as to open the way to the destruction of the entire plan by a single accident. Certainly its logistics grow to a serious problem with a force beyond two hundred thousand men, and it seems probable that when armies much exceed this figure, the question of feeding, transportation, and command, even with railroads and telegraph, make concentric operations more available. And the fact that even Napoleon could not, in the absence of a thoroughly educated staff and perfectly drilled army, obtain good results from the handling of such enormous forces, gives prominence to the value of the Prussian idea of placing greater reliance on an army drawn from the personal service of the people and made perfect in all its details from the ranks up, than on the genius of a single general.

The entire plan of the Russian campaign was consistentand good. The Bonaparte of 1796 would probably have carried it through, despite its unprecedented difficulties. But its execution was seriously marred by the absence of Napoleon at the front, and the want of his ancient decisiveness. To be sure he had nearly half a million men to command and feed; but he was no longer the slim, nervously active, omnipresent man. He was corpulent, liked his ease, and shunned bad weather. This want appears in his long stay in Wilna, his failure to put his own individuality into the details of the advance; his now relying on his lieutenants, whom he had never trained, and some of whom were unable, to rely on themselves. Napoleon began to draw his conclusions, not from personal observation, but from assumed premises. He had from the beginning the habit of underrating the enemy’s forces. It now grew to be a rule with him to take one-third off from what the enemy really had and double his own forces, in order to encourage his subordinates. This exaggerated reckoning could not but lead to evil. There is none of Frederick’s straightforward dependence on his own brain and his army’s courage. The king’s frankness stands out in high relief against Napoleon’s simulation.

But we must constantly bear in mind that Napoleon led an army of unprecedented size, made up of different nationalities, in a limitless territory, and that his difficulties were enormous. It should be noted that Alexander’s largest army in the field numbered one hundred and thirty-five thousand men; Hannibal’s less than sixty thousand; Cæsar’s about eighty thousand; Gustavus’ never reached eighty thousand men; Frederick had to parcel out hisforces so that of his one hundred and fifty thousand men he rarely could personally dispose of more than fifty thousand in one body. Napoleon carried three hundred and sixty thousand men into Russia. This is not a final measure of the task, but it stakes out its size.

Some of Napoleon’s Russian manœuvres are fully up to the old ones. The manner of the attempt to turn the Russian left at Smolensk and seize their communications so as to fight them at a disadvantage, is a magnificent exhibition of genius. But at the last moment he failed. Thespiritof his plan was to seize the communications of his opponent and force him to fight; theletterwas to seize Smolensk. When he reached Smolensk, the Russians had retired to the east of the city. Napoleon apparently overlooked thespiritof his plan, and though he could easily have done so, he did not cut the Russians off by a tactical turning movement. He was not personally where he needed to be,—on the right,—but remained at his headquarters. It may be claimed that the commander of so huge an army must necessarily remain at central headquarters. It is rather true that his administrative aide should be there, and he at the point of greatest importance. At Smolensk, theoretically and practically, this was the right, and operations at this point were intrusted to by no means the best of his subordinates. Napoleon’s intellect was still as clear as ever. It was his physique and his power of decision which were weakening. Even allowing the utmost to all the difficulties of the situation, if tried by the rule of 1796 or 1805, this seems to be indisputable.

When Napoleon did not bring on a battle at Smolensk, the Russian campaign had become a certain failure. For it was there settled that he could not reach Moscow with a force sufficient to hold himself. He had crossed the Niemen with three hundred and sixty-three thousand men. At Moscow he could have no more than one hundred thousand. Arrived at Smolensk he was called on to face retreat, which was failure; or an advance to Moscow, which was but worse failure deferred,—almost sure annihilation. This seems clear enough from the military standpoint. But Napoleon advanced to Moscow relying largely on the hope that the Russians would sue for a peace. For this dubious hope of the statesman, Napoleon committed an undoubted blunder as a captain. It is hard to divorce the statesman from the soldier. All great captains have relied on state-craft, and properly so. But such was the purely military syllogism.

Much has been written about Napoleon’s failure to put the guard in at Borodino. Under parallel conditions at an earlier day, he would certainly have done so. That he did not is but one link more in the growing chain of indecisiveness. But had he done so, and won a more complete victory, would it have made any eventual difference? Smolensk was his last point of military safety. Even had he been able to winter in Russia, it is not plain how spring would have bettered his case, in view of the logistic difficulties and of the temper of the Russian emperor and people. Time in this campaign was of the essence.

Once or twice on the terrible retreat, Napoleon’s old fire and decision came to the fore, but during the bulk of it hewas apparently careless of what was happening. He habitually left to his generals all but the crude direction of the outlying corps. The contrast between Napoleon in this disaster and Napoleon after raising the siege of Acre, or after the defeat at Aspern and Essling, is marked. He did not oppose his old countenance to misfortune.

After this campaign, in which the grand army of half a million men was practically annihilated, Napoleon showed extraordinary energy in raising new troops, and actually put into the field, the succeeding spring, no less than three hundred and fifty thousand men. They were not the old army, but they were so many men. Napoleon understood this: “We must act with caution, not to bring bad troops into danger, and be so foolish as to think that a man is a soldier.” He had thirteen hundred guns. “Poor soldiers need much artillery.” The lack of good officers was the painful feature. The few old ones who were left were ruined by bad discipline. The new ones were utterly inexperienced.

In the campaign of 1813, Napoleon showed all his old power of conception. The intellectual force of this man never seemed overtaxed. But the lack of resolution became still more marked. He began by winning two battles,—Lützen and Bautzen,—in which he freely exposed himself and worked with all his old energy, to lend his young troops confidence. He was then weak enough to enter into an armistice with the allies. This was a singularly un-Napoleonic thing to do. He had turned the enemy’s right and was strategically well placed. It was just the time to push home. If the reasons he alleged—wantof cavalry and fear of the dubious position of Austria—were really the prevailing ones, Napoleon was no longer himself, for his wonderful successes hitherto had come from bold disregard of just such things.

Napoleon here shows us how often fortune is of a man’s own making. So long as he would not allow circumstances to dictate to him, fortune was constant. When he began to heed adverse facts, we see first indecisive victories, then half successes, and by and by we shall see failure and destruction.

The operations about and succeeding Dresden show a vacillation which contrasts with the intellectual vigor. For the first time Napoleon conducted a defensive campaign. He studied his chances of an offensive, and cast them aside for reasons which would not have weighed a moment with him in 1805. And yet the defensive against his concentrically advancing enemies was no doubt the best policy. It shows Napoleon’s judgment to have been better than ever. After this brilliant victory Napoleon ordered a pursuit—which he ought to have made effective—across the Erzgebirge, but without issuing definite instructions. Sickness forbade the personal supervision he had expected to give; troops intended to sustain the advanced corps were diverted from this duty by a sudden change of purpose. Here was, as Jomini says, “without contradiction, one of Napoleon’s gravest faults.” But Napoleon had got used to seeing things turn in his favor, until he deemed constant personal effort unnecessary. Decreasing strength had limited his activity; great exertion was irksome. The immediate result of this ill-ordered operation was the destructionof a corps; the secondary result, the re-encouragement of the allies, whosemoralehad been badly shaken by three defeats, and whose main army he should have followed into Bohemia and broken up. The grand result was loss of time, which to Napoleon was a dead loss, a new advance of the allies, and the battle of Leipsic. During all this time, while Napoleon’s execution was weak compared to his old habit, his utterances and orders showed the clearest, broadest conception of what was essential. But he was no longer the man who used to gallop forty to sixty miles a day to use his eyes. Even at Leipsic he exhibited at times his old power; when defeat was certain he lapsed into the same indifference he had shown on the Russian retreat.

Nothing now, in a military sense, could save Napoleon, except to concentrate all his forces into one body and manœuvre against the allies with his old vigor. But the Emperor Napoleon could not bear to give up Italy, Belgium, Spain, as General Bonaparte had given up Mantua to beat the enemy at Castiglione; and he committed the grievous mistake of not concentrating all his forces for the defence of France. The campaign around Paris is a marvel of audacious activity, though indeed it did not bring up any of the larger intellectual problems of Marengo, Ulm, or Jena. If Napoleon had done half as good work with the larger army he might have had, there is scarce a doubt but that he would have gone far towards peace with honor. As it was, he was crushed by numbers. But no words can too highly phrase his military conduct, within its limits, in this brief campaign. There is but one mistake,—theunderrating of his enemy, the misinterpretation of manifest facts.

The Waterloo campaign (1815), as already said, bears marked resemblance to that of 1796. The details of Waterloo are so well known that only the reasons will be noted which appear to make Napoleon’s first so great a success and his last so great a failure.

At the beginning of June, Napoleon had available for Belgium, where he proposed to strike the allied forces, one hundred and ten thousand foot, and thirteen thousand five hundred horse. In Belgium were Wellington, covering Brussels with ninety-five thousand men, and Blucher lying from Charleroi to Namur with one hundred and twenty-four thousand. Napoleon was superior to either; inferior to both together. He chose against these allied armies the same offensive manœuvre he had employed against Beaulieu and Colli,—a strategic breaking of their centre, so as to separate them and attack each one separately. The controlling reasons were the same. The allies were of different nationalities, and each had a different base, as well as varying interests. If cut in two they no doubt would retire eccentrically, of which Napoleon could take immediate advantage. The key to the whole problem was the exhibition by him of foresight, boldness, and rapid action. The plan could not be better.

He concentrated on Charleroi. From here led two pikes, one to Brussels, which was Wellington’s line of advance and retreat, one to Liège, which was Blucher’s. Wellington and Blucher were connected by the Namur-Nivelles road, which cut the other pikes at Quatre-Brasand near Ligny. In order to push in between the allies to any effect, Napoleon must seize on both these points.

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