Feeding Mars: Logistics In Western Warfare From The Middle Ages To The Present [1 ed.] 0367007622, 9780367007621

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HISTORY AND WARFARE Arther Ferrill, Series Editor FEEDING MARS: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present John Lynn, editor THE SEVEN MILITARY CLASSICS OF ANCIENT CHINA Ralph D. Sawyer, translator FORTHCOMING

THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR FOR MOROCCO: Gunpowder and the Military Revolution in the Early Modem Muslim World Weston F. Cook, Jr. THE CHIWAYA WAR: Malawians in World War I Melvin E. Page HIPPEIS: THE CAVALRY OF ANCIENT GREECE Leslie J. Worley THE HALT IN THE MUD: French Strategic Planning from Waterloo to Sedan Gary P. Cox ON WATERLOO The Campaign of 1815 in France by Carl von Clausewitz Memorandum on the Battle of Waterloo by the Duke of Wellington Christopher Bassford, translator THE ANATOMY OF A LITTLE WAR: A Diplomatic and Military History of the Gundovald Affair, 567-585 Bernard S. Bachrach WARFARE AND CIVILIZATION IN THE ISLAMIC MIDDLE EAST William J. Hamblin ORDERING SOCIETY: A World History of Military Institutions Barton C. Hacker

Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present EDITED BY

John A. Lynn

~ ~ ~~o~;~~n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 1993 by Westview Press, Inc. Published 2018 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0Xl4 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 1993 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Feeding Mars : logistics in western warfare from the Middle Ages to the present I edited by John A. Lynn. p. em.- (History and warfare) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8133-1716-9- ISBN 0-8133-1865-3 (if published as a paperback) Logistics-History. I. Lynn, John A. (John Albert), 1943- . II. Series. Ul68.F44 1993 355.4'11 '09-dc20 ISBN 13: 978-0-367-00762-1 (hbk)

92-27652 CIP

Contents Preface Acknowledgments

vii xi

PART ONE The Historiography of Logistics

1 2

Logistics and the Aristocratic Idea of War

Edward N. Luttwak

The History of Logistics and Supplying War

John A. Lynn

3 9

PART TWO Medieval Logistics, 4()()-1500

Medieval Introduction

31

3

Byzantine Logistics: Problems and Perspectives, Walter E. Kaegi

39

4

Logistics in Pre-Crusade Europe,

5

Naval Logistics in the Late Middle Ages: The Example of the Hundred Years' War,

BernardS. Bachrach

Timothy f. Runyan

57

79

PART THREE Early Modem Logistics, 1500-1815

6

Early Modem Introduction

103

The Logistics of Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century: The Spanish Perspective, John F. Guilmartin, Jr.

109

v

vi

7

8

Contents

Food, Funds, and Fortresses: Resource Mobilization and Positional Warfare in the Campaigns of Louis XIV, John A. Lynn

137

Logistical Crisis and the American Revolution: A Hypothesis, John Shy

161

PART FOUR Modern Logistics, 1815-1991 Modem Introduction 9

The Misfire of Civil War R&D,

Robert V. Bruce

183 191

10 Forging the Trident: British Naval Industrial Logistics, 1914-1918,Jon Tetsuro Sumida

217

"Deuce and a Half": Selecting U.S. Army Trucks, 1920-1945, Daniel R. Beaver

251

11

12 War Plans and Politics: Origins of the American Base of Supply in Vietnam, Joel D. Meyerson Bibliography of Logistics from the Ancient Greeks to the 1980s,

271

George Satterfield

289

About the Book About the Contributors Index

309 311 313

Mars must be fed. Today his tools of war demand huge quantities of fuel and ammunition. The soldiers and sailors who practice his craft need food, clothing, and equipment. All these must be produced, transported, and distributed to contending forces if they are to begin or continue the contest. No one can doubt the importance of feeding Mars in modern warfare, and it takes no great effort to recognize that it has always been a major aspect of large-scale armed struggle. Yet despite its undeniable importance, surprisingly little has been written about it. The literature of warfare is full of the triumphs and tragedies of common soldiers or the brilliance and blundering of generals, but the tedious tasks of supply attract few readers. They have little to do with those aspects of military history that have made stories of warfare a popular genre ever since tribesmen huddled about the fire boasting of their feats in battle. Logistics lacks the drama of combat. It can be expressed on balance sheets no more exciting than shopping lists; movement is not measured by the dashing gallop of charging cavalry but by the steady plod of draft horses. The fact that military historians have not given logistics its due may be explained by the fact that their audiences have not wished to be bothered by such details; Edward Luttwak advances this argument in Part One of this volume, that devoted to the history of logistics. At this time, there is really only one cross-national study with a broad time perspective. That is, of course, Martin van Creveld's Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton, published in 1977. In selecting this topic, van Creveld displayed keen judgment. And by getting to the question first, van Creveld earned the conqueror's right to set the terms of the debate. Consequently, the essays inthisvolumecanhardlyavoidbeingpartofadialoguewithSuppiyingWar. For this reason, Part One will also deal directly with van Creveld's important work, presenting and commenting upon his hypotheses and methods. This volume is meant not to replace or invalidate van Creveld or other important works, such as James A. Huston's study of U.S. logistics, The Sinews of War: Army Logistics, 1775-1953. A collection of essays such as this cannot offer a complete and consistent reinterpretation of the history of logistics. Such was never our goal. Instead, by supplementing, qualifying, vii

Preface

viii

and criticizing existing views, these contributions will add to our understanding of logistics in war. In the process, the chapters presented here will establish the importance of certain issues not touched upon before and throw some existing conclusions into question; rather than establish a new orthodoxy, they will, if successful, encourage the historical study of supply in warfare. Focus and Organization Since this volume is a collection of essays by many authors with diverse interests and approaches, the contributions cannot be easily forced into a common pattern with a single, tightly defined focus. True, this collection concentrates on aspects of the way in which fighting forces acquired the wherewithal to fight, from food to ammunition. However, even such an emphasis is not a simple matter, since it involves questions of production, administration, and transportation. There are aspects of supply that the authors have not discussed, in particular the mobilization of a society's resources by civil authorities through taxation and credit. Books on state finance could fill libraries, whereas studies of logistics across time are rare. To deal once again with the field of war finance would have dissipated the efforts of the contributors. It would have distracted them from little-discussed questions of supply and burdened them with the need to discuss material that has already received a great deal of attention. The focus of this volume in time, place, and subject matter resulted from both the design of the editor and the expertise of the contributors. It is exclusively western, which we take not as ethnocentrism but as a comment on the state of knowledge in western and non-western military history. After Part One on the history of logistics, the volume proceeds with three additiQnal parts, each defined by time period-medieval, 400-1500; early modem, 1500-1815; and modem, 1815-1975. The medieval part is most concerned with the capacity of medieval states and technology to maintain forces in the field or at sea. The early-modem part emphasizes the procurement and shipment of supplies. And the modem part deals with questions raised by the Industrial Revolution: research and development, organization of war production, creation of modem transport, and the organization of a modem logistic administration. Each of the three parts begins with a short introduction, not intended to provide a complete mini-history of logistics but rather to set the stage for each era by discussing some basic theme or themes of historical logistics relevant to the time period. These introductions are intended to help readers change gears as they move through the volume and to introduce each of the contributions.

Preface

ix

The Roles of Logistics

While logistic needs have changed over the centuries, logistics have always exerted tremendous influence on strategy and operations, even if this influence has not always been obvious to those who would restrict the study of war to the chess game of planning or the bloody contest of battle. Rommel agreed when he stated, "In fact, the battle is fought and decided by the quartermasters before the shooting begins."1 Obviously, the modern military's appetite for supply precludes any major operations without proper logistic support, but the dependence on logistics is not simply a present-day phenomenon. Naval operations have relied on ships carrying their own supplies with them since the first warfleets went to sea, and these supplies have often been drawn from central depots and arsenals. Such is the nature of naval warfare. True, armies could and did take many of their provisions from campaign areas; however, this necessity also determined the actions of armies. They might have to stay on the move to feed themselves and their horses off local resources, or they might have to occupy territory not for its strategic value but only in order to sustain the war effort by exploiting its resources. When armies developed extensive logistic infrastructures during the seventeenth century, this did not liberate strategy from logistics but tied them even closer together. In any case, then and now, campaigns that cannot be supplied because the resources are either not available or cannot be transported to the navies or armies that need them are doomed to delay and defeat. Less apparent than the strategic significance of logistics are its links to questions of political development. The mobilization of resources for war hasbeenamajorfactorinshap ingthemodernstate. Ofcourse,thisisamuch broader phenomenon than logistics alone. It includes the need for states to tap financial resources through taxation and credit and the need to organize the production of war materiel. Logistics has been part of this formula, particularly when the ability to draw upon resources in remote campaign areas eased the strain on governments at home or, on the other side of the coin, such demands imposed especially onerous burdens on local areas. Brian Downing has argued that early modern European states that fought their wars without oppressively burdening subjects with taxes and other levies preserved their old representative institutions and consequently developed liberal governments. Those states that were compelled to draw heavily from their own peoples and had to impose their demands by force turned to more authoritarian forms of government. 2 William McNeill also explains the rise of command economies in the modern world as a byproduct of war pressures.3 The ways in which mankind has chosen to feed Mars have had consequences of profound importance. As such they should be of concern to historians who study either the conduct of war itself or war's impact on

Preface

X

government and society. We, the authors of these essays, present them to our readers in the hope that these contributions will lead to a greater understanding of the role played by logistics in history. John A. Lynn University of illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Notes 1. Rommel in Martin van Creveld, Supplying War (Cambridge: 1977), p. 200. 2. Brian Downing, The Military Revolution and Political Change in Early Modern Europe (Princeton: 1991 ). See as well Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and the European States, AD 900-1900 (Oxford: 1990), and David Kaiser, Politics and War: European Conflict from Phillip II to Hitler (Cambridge, MA: 1990). 3. William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power (Oxford: 1982).

Many individuals and organizations contributed to the creation of Feeding Mars, and I would like to formally thank them. Bernard Bachrach and Geoffrey

Parker first proposed the idea to me of a series of essays devoted to the history of logistics. That idea became the third conference of the Midwest Consortium on Military History, held at the University of illinois at Urbana-Ol.ampaign in October 1990. At this scholarly meeting, the chapters in our volume first saw the light of day as papers. During the conference, Dan Beaver devised the organization of the volume as it now stands, and even the name of our volume became an item of discussion. Ed Luttwak finally christened it Feeding Mars. Those who participated in our conference but whose names do not appear on the list of authors added much by their comments. William Maltby, Richard Mitchell, Williamson Murray, Robert Johannsen, Peter Maslowski, and Edward Coffman all helped to sharpen our arguments and hold the authors to their tasks. Of course nothing would have happened without generous financial support from a number of sources. The lion's share came from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of lllinois at Urbana-Champaign. Other lllinois units that contributed include International Programs and Studies and the Department of History. In addition, we received funds from theMershonCenterattheOhioStateUniversity. Infact,thisbooktakesitsplace in the Mershon series on International Security and Foreign Policy. Both the original conference and the process of turning the papers delivered at it into chapters required a great deal of organization and effort. Luckily, I received invaluable help from the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security at the University of lllinois. In particular, Merrily Shaw, assistant to the director, and Mary Anderson, administrative secretary, took over many of the necessary tasks. It is hard to conceive of how I could possibly have undertaken this project without their help. The people at Westview Press have also given me the kind of enthusiastic backing and professionalassistanceeveryauthorwants. I would like especially to thank Peter Kracht and Michelle Asakawa. For her contributions as conference host and personal editor, as well as for her all-round support, I woulf supply lines. His regiments now marched across the map of Europe as no forces had before, winning decisive victories as much bymovementas by battle. None other than the great Oausewitz stressed this transformation. Finally, the Industrial Revolution brought about a revolution in logistics during the nineteenth century which brought a return to supply from the rear. The major European land powers, most notably Prussia, harnessed the railroad to haul men, equipment, and supplies over distances and at speeds never before possible. What was possible became necessary, and armies soon

The History of Logistics and Supplying War

11

depended on regular supply from the rear. In the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War, railroads became lifelines. World War I simply intensified thisdependenceondepotsand mechanical means of transportation. While it debuted in World War I, it was during World War II that the truck revolutionized logistics by providing a new and highly mobile link between the railhead and the army in the field. In contrast to the orthodoxy, Martin van Creveld argues that the continuity of methods of supply, 1625-1914, overshadowed what change there was. BeginningwiththeThirtyYears'War,hedescribeshowthearmie sofWallenstein and Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden (1611-1632) both lived off the country. He then asserts that the subsequent armies of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were also not really bound by any "umbilical cord" of supply and instead relied on the campaign area to furnish a great deal of their supply. This was made possible by the balance of supplies needed. Ammunition use was so modest that, except in the case of a siege, a field army could pack all the ammunition it would require in its wagons. Fodder and food were the real issue. Horse-drawn armies consumed great quantities of fodder, but this could be cut in the fields as the army passed. Food too could be found in local farms and warehouses. Only when an army stopped long enough to devour local resources did it require supply from the rear. Thus, it was nothing but the contemporary predilection for siege warfare that made magazines and convoys necessary for an army's survival. Napoleon regained mobility not byrevolutionizingsupply but by abandoningsterile siege warfare. Van Creveldimplies thatthearmiesoftheseventeenth and eighteenth centuries could also have engaged in Napoleonic maneuvers had military leaders at the time possessed the imagination to transcend the artificial rules of siege warfare and thrust for the enemy's vitals rather than just beat him about the arms and shoulders. As for the greatNapoleon, van Creveld sees him functioning as much like Wallenstein. The French capacity to achieve rapid mobility by foraging for supplies was simply a higher form of what was already done before. By the mid-nineteenth century, European railroads may have revolutionized mobilization for war, but they did not fundamentally alter supply on campaign. They proved to be excellent at transporting troops and supplies to jump-off points in the first stages of campaigns. Rail transport allowed the Prussians to assemble far largerforcesalongtheirfrontiersinless timethanever before in 1866 and 1870. However, once those armies began to advance, horse drawn wagons connected them to the railheads, which could be relocated forward only slowly and with difficulty. Fast marching armies still drew the lion's share of their supplies from the land over which they advanced in a manner essentially similar to that employed in the Thirty Years' War. Van Creveld's chapter on the Schlieffen Plan in 1914 maintains that even the opening offensive of World War I required German soldiers to get their

12

John A. Lynn

sustenance from the campaign zone. Only the static trench lines and massive bombardments on the western front finally tied armies permanently to supply depots. It took the massive use of trucks to liberate armies from these bonds. Thus, only in World War II could supplies keep pace with advancing armies, which became totally dependent on supplies carted up from the rear in long cavalcades of trucks. Thebalanceofsuppliesrequiredbythenewmobilearmieshad also changed. No longer were fodder and food the primary items. As horses disappeared, so did the need for fodder. Modem forces became entirely dependent upon timely resupply of ammunition and fuel, since modem weapons consumed huge quantities of these items. Compared to ammunition and fuel, food sank to relative insignificance as a percentage of total supply needs. Interestingly enough, as the supply bases for armies expanded in the twentieth century, the relationship between movement and supply reversed itself. Earlier armies could supply themselves more easily on the move than when they stopped, particularly since fodder was easiest to harvest in fresh pastures. In contrast, during the twentieth century, armies became more easy to supply in base areas and more difficult to supply on the move, since nearly everything had to come up from the rear. Van Creveld' s emphasis on an army's capacity to fend for itself in the field ties in with another of his hypotheses. He criticizes the value of detailed military planning. Napoleon's march to the Danube in 1805 was improvised and successful; his advance onMoscowwas planned with great care and failed miserably. VonMoltketheElderwonin 1870-71 becausethePrussiansadapted and fended for themselves; von Moltke the Younger's version of the Schlieffen Plan failed in 1914 despite mountains of staff work. The supply effort in Normandy kept men fed and tanks fueled in 1944 not because the planning worked, but because improvised exertions and effort overcame the shambles on the beaches. Later, as Patton surged forward, he was frustrated by logistics planners who posited consumption rates far higher than they really were and, on the basis of this error, argued that he lacked the supply and transportation to continue his aggressive attack. The conclusions stressed by van Creveld are not all his own, nor does he claim that they are. The emphasis on living off the country by early modem armies as opposed to supply from the rear and the fact that the need to forage for fodder in the field determined the areas and months of the year that could support campaigns are well known enough.3 His near complete denial of the "umbilical cord" of 18th century supply and his interpretation of Napoleon seems to be more original with him. His argument that the railroad was of limited logistic use during the Prussian campaigns of the mid-19th century had already been developed previously by DennisShowalterinRailrMdsand Rifles.4 And he was certainly not the first to criticize the Schlieffen Plan on the basis of its logistic shortcomings.

The History of Logistics and Supplying War

13

There is much thatislaudable in van Creveld' s scheme, some that is not, and some methodology that must be considered questionable. His exclusion of naval warfare and American experience is at least idiosyncratic and probably warps some of his conclusions. His emphasis on the fact that armies lived off thecountryforcertaincategoriesofsupply,primarilyfodder,ringstrue,butthe related assertion that field armies placed little reliance upon supply from the rear before the twentieth century is highly questionable. And his use of sources and statistics leaves an informed reader knashing his or her teeth from time to time. Fundamentals of Transportation at Sea In excluding naval warfare from his definition of logistics, van Creveld accepts an archaicidea. Jomini also limited logistics to armies, butin twentiethcenturymilitaryterminology, and particularly since World War II, logistics has encompassed war at sea. Granted, in taking on such a major topic over the courseofmorethanthreecenturies,vanCreveldhastobeselectiveinhischoice of experience. But the responsibility is his if his selection biases his conclusions, and the exclusion of naval logistics does. Had he examined naval logistics, he certainly would have had to at least modify his statements concerning the shortcomings of war planning. The character of naval logistics differs distinctly from that of land warfare. For one thing, the physics of ships contrasts sharply with that of wheeled vehicles. While the question of transportation is not the sole issue at stake in studying logistics, it is basic, and sea transport enjoys tremendous advantages. Water literally carries the cargo itself. At sea, vessels maintain their momentum because of greatly reduced friction and because water's level surface means that vessels need not fight the force of gravity. These factors, plus the fact that the size of ships need not be scaled to the width of a roadbed, allow vessels to be of a size and weight far, far in excess of land vehicles. Naval warfare hasalwaysoperated by different logistic parameters. Hmany of the complications and concerns of logistics on land have been irrelevant at sea,suchastheneedforfodder,armieshavealsoenjoyedwaysoflivingoffthe country that have been unavailable to navies. For much of history, an army could be dispatched with the expectation that it would fend for itself, but a fleet had to be supplied from the outset oritscrews would suffer and its mission fail. Allfood,ship'sstores,ammunition,andfreshwater,asupplythatarmiescould find on the spot, had to be collected, inventoried, and shipped aboard, with the only chance of resupply being rare stops at ports of call. Granted, in the age of sail, the energy to drive a ship did not have to be stored or found. But with the arrival of steam power, vessels had to lay in stocks of coal as well. This was made possible by the large carrying capacity of the ships, increased by the adoption of iron and steel hulls. The need to carry all requirements from the

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outset of a voyage meant that logistics at sea reached a high level of administrative complexity and efficiency long before this was achieved in land warfare. Therefore, naval logistics have always required a great deal of advance planning, for necessary stores that were not on board could not be created from thin air. The great fleets assembled as early as the sixteenth century, such as the Armada, demanded a logistic sophistication and completeness that would not be essential for armies until the twentieth century. Moreover, whenever armies took to the sea for transport or amphibious operations they had to accept the same parameters that operated for navies. This was no small matter, from William's invasion of England in 1066 to Gallipoli in 1915 to Inchon in 1950. Therefore, the inclusion of the logistics of warfare at sea in van Creveld' s discussion would have muddied the waters of his thesis. It would not have been so easy for van Creveld to criticize the foibles of planners and praise the logisticimprovisation5of field commanders if he had considered the successful U.S. central Pacificcampaignof1942-1945,especiallywhencontrasted with the failure of the German onslaught to defeat the Soviet Union in 1941. His condemnation of planning rings truest in the period from the midnineteenth century to World War I, when general staffs were still relatively young and had yet to comprehend fully the promises and limitations of the tools of transport that the Industrial Revolution had just fashioned. The greatestlogisticfeats 1915-1945 involvedmaritimeshippingand naval powerthe harnessing of war production in the United States and the transport of its deadly bounty across the Atlantic and the Pacific. Seventeen million measured tons of cargo and 1.6 million army troops were shipped to the United Kingdom in preparation for Overlord; they did not arrive through a fit of absence of mind.5 This could not have been accomplished without considerable planning. When van Creveld criticizes the logisticians who hampered Patton by stating that their calculations were in error, he obscures the point that these pusillanimous bureaucrats had an abundance of material in the first place precisely becauseearlierphasesofplanning had succeeded. Consequently, van Creveld's attack on planning is to my mind the least important and the least interesting of his arguments. Exclusion of American Wars and the Evaluation of Railroads Just as van Creveld's exclusion of naval logistics colored his conclusions, so his failure to discuss the American Ovil War allows him to say things he could not have said with such authority if he had considered the American experience. This is particularly important in his statements about the operational value of railroads in the nineteenth century. During·the European wars 1866-1871, railroads proved to be excellent at concentrating troops and supplies for the opening campaigns in record time.

The History of Logistics and Supplying War

15

However, as van Creveld correctly argues, once armies advanced from the railheads they outpaced ·their horse drawn transport. As late as the German attack of 1914, horse transport still linked armies to supply, and the slow pace of those wagons and the lack of fodder for German horses contributed to the failure of the Schlieffen Plan. While his argument that railroads were unable to supply moving armies until the twentieth century may ring true in a European context, it must be sharply modified if the experience of the American Civil War is taken into consideration. The Austro-Prussianand Franco-Prussian were short wars that were decided by aggressive mobile campaigns at the outset of each war. The first lasted seven weeks, and the decisive battle was fought less than four weeks into the conflict. The second lasted ten months from the declaration of war on July19,1870,yetthedecisivefieldcampaignswereoverinthefirstsevenweeks, even if Parisian resistance went on through January. In sum, the campaigns were rapid-moving and brief, too brief for generals to adapt to and exploit the full potential of steam power. In contrast, the four years of the American Civil War saw railroads and steam-driven river transport in much more key roles. To point to the fact that railroads could not adequately support the Schlieffen Plan does not erase the fact that they were essential to Sherman's 1864 advance on Atlanta fifty years earlier. While he moved forward alongthetracksfrom Chattanooga to Atlanta, trains linked him with his depots to the rear which were stocked by river and rail transport. Railroads also brought ammunition resupply right up to the UnionarmyatAntietam.duringthenightof17-18September1862. Inaddition, the Civil War employed railroads and river transport to supply fodder for horses, making the Union and Confederate armies the first that escaped the need to periodically change camps simply to find new fodder for their horses. The Complexities of Living off the Country But accepting van Creveld's exclusion of naval logistics and American experience, we still run into problems. An essential part of van Creveld' s thesis is his emphasis on self-supply by armies, on their capacity to live off the land right up into World War I. The fact that armies campaigned over areas inhabited by populations who stocked food to feed themselves and grew fodder to feed their animals made it possible for armies to sustain themselves by drawing upon these supplies. Living off the country, with both its advantages and disadvantages, was critical to operations and strategy in land warfare for the first 290 years covered in Supplying War; only the last 30 years witnessed a dependence on supply from the rear. So goes the argument. Considering how important the concept of '1iving off the country'' is to van Creveld, it is surprising that he did not explore it with much care. He employs the term primarily as a contrast to the tedious process of forwarding supply

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from magazines, depots, or army ovens. Making careful distinctions between the different practices covered by this umbrella term reveals both a variety of methods and an important development over time, a development of which van Creveld may be unaware. Actually, since most of this variety and development occurred in the early modem period, 1625-1815, van Creveld may simply have ignored the changes because they fall outside the time period that is his real interest. Van Creveld seems a bit ambivalent about the real focus of his work. The title of Supplying War announces that it deals with wgistics from Wallenstein to Patton, a period of 320 years. However, the introduction redefines his concern as the "study of logistics and its influence on strategy during the last century and a half." However, he is at his bravest, perhaps his most outrageous, in his initial two chapters, which cover the first 190 years, 1625-1815. Van Creveld might respond that it is unfair to take him to task on this "background" material; however, those pages serve not simply as background but as the foundation for his edifice, and weak foundations are apt to bring the whole building down. Even if the first chapters interest van Creveld least, they still cover the most ground and offer the most strident breaks with traditional interpretations. There is no question that early modem armies counted on exploiting the wealth and materiel of areas they occupied. But they did it in many ways, and some had nothing to do with supporting armies on the march by foraging, the primary variety of living off the country that occupies van Creveld. Because of the weight and bulk of fodder, particularly green fodder, horsedrawn armies had to gather it on campaign, at least before the advent of railroads. Forage parties in search of fodder operated with relative speed, collecting in a matter of hours food that could immediately be given to the army's horses. This is no small consideration, for if we make the not too farfetched analogy that fodder was fuel, forage being to horses what gasoline is to trucks, then a horse-powered army could readily find its fuel supply on the land as it marched. Only when an army was stalled by engaging in a siege or at the very beginning or end of a campaign would it rely on the dry fodder stored in magazines. But granting the undeniable need to live off the country in terms of fodder for animals does not dismiss the need for an army to sustain its human element with other kinds of supply laboriously brought up from the rear. The crux of variety and change in methods of supply lay not in the supply offodderasmuchasinthesupp lyoffood. Herewewitnessanevolutiona way from a crude form of foraging to a reliance on more regular supply utilizing certain other methods of "living off the country'' and finally a return to foraging, though of a rather different sort, as practiced by the armies of Napoleon. Certainly, the late Middle Ages witnessed campaigns in which armies as a whole foraged for their sustenance. The sixteenth century brought attempts at the creation of more regular supply systems; however, these all too

The History of Logistics and Supplying War

17

often broke down owing to administrative and financial inadequacy. As late as the Thirty Years' War armies still depended upon seizing much of their own food in the field. The horrors of that war precipitated a series of militaty reforms, most notably in France, which stressed regular means of supply through magazine and convoy. Thus, armies during the great wars of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries turned away from foraging for foodstuffs and relied more on other methods. One way to utilize the resources of the local area was simply to pay troops and allow them to purchase their bread from local sources. This method was employed before the nineteenth century by garrison troops and often by soldiers in winter quarters. However, reliance upon pay gave rise to serious abuses,particularlywhenitwasaquestionoftryingtopaytroopsoncampaign. Problems arose not only when pay was late or insufficient, as it often was, but when the food supply could not meet the needs of too many soldiers concentrated in too small an area, so that even if the men had coins in their pockets, there was not enough to buy. Either case left soldiers little other recourse but pillage, another, though extremely inefficient method of self-supply. For these reasons, the notionofpayingsoldiers who then purchased theirownfood gave way to direct supply of the food to the soldier by state agents or private contractors. A more regular form of extortion forced towns, cities, and entire districts to footthe bill and supply food for a passing or occupying army. This was an old system which crystallized during the Thirty Years' War as "contributions." Under the threat of force, civil authorities agreed to provide money and goods to the general of the threatening army or to officials of the ruler he served. Towns who refused to pay ran the risk of being sacked and burned. Early modem armies from Wallenstein to Napoleon depended on contributions to support their actions. However, after the Thirty Years' War, contributions often simply shifted the burden of maintaining an army from regular taxes raised at home to war taxes imposed on the populations of occupied territory. As such, contributions might not affect the day to day operations of the logistic system. To the extent that contributions were used to stock magazines which maintained the soldiers by more regular means-that is, by depots, army ovens, and convoys-the raising of contributions really does not fit the category of ''living off the country'' as van Creveld defines it. When European generals and statesmen of the period 1660-1789 spoke of making war feed war, they were primarily concerned with imposing contributions.6 The etapes system provided another method of supplying troops with food thattheyneed not drag behind them. Throughetapes, troops on the march drew their food from local markets or depots at set intervals along their route. The ·term "etapes" originated in the word for market. In the earliest form, troops on the march notified local officials in advance of the day they would arrive and the amounts of food. that would be required. These authorities then set up a

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John A. Lynn

market at which soldiers or commissaries bought what was needed. Such a system provided for the march of troops in Italy and along the Spanish Road in the sixteenth century. By the mid-seventeenth century, the French had established military routes within their own borders to move detachments of anything from a small band of recruits to several regiments. Administrative decree set stops along these routes at which local authorities or private contractors supplied the troops directly, without the soldiers having to pay for their food. Moving by etapes freed troops from carrying their own supplies; however, it required a great deal of administrative preparation. Such troops did not forage for food along their way, since they knew it would be waiting for them eacheveningattheend of their march. HistoriansmakemuchofMarlborough's quick advance from the Low Countries to the Danube in 1704 as an example of how troops could live off the country. It will be noted that his army did not depend on forage parties but on a form of etapes, organized in friendly and neutral territory and dependent on the willing or forced cooperation of local authorities. In this advance, all the British soldier needed was money to purchase the supplies brought to him, and the wonder of Marlborough'smarch is that the money was at hand. It is worth noting that rather than providing an example of what kind of mobility all armies might have had, the unique character of this advance demonstrated that such a means was really outside the possibility for other armies that lacked the ready cash, and that meant just about everyone else. Marlborough's march to the Danube in the 1704 campaign is often compared to Napoleon's advance on Ulm in 1805. On the surface they look rather similar, but in fact they depended on radically different methods of supply. Napoleon did not swing his army from the Rhine to the Danube by moving units in an etapes system. Had he tried to do so, the administrative efforts for such a large force would have probably been beyond his means and certainly would have compromised the secrecy he so much desired. Instead, Napoleon returned to foraging. Napoleon's version offoraging differed from the undisciplined pillage of earlier days; it was designed to be as controlled as such a system could be. He dispersed his corps along a broad front and advanced in such a manner as to maximize the area from which they could draw their supplies. Each day along the march, forage parties brought in what they could, feeding the soldiers catch as catch can. While individual soldiers might loot when they could, the driving motivation behind the foraging by Napoleon's troops was the commander's desire for mobility, not the individual soldier's quest for food or lust for booty. In fact, as will be shown, the Napoleonic practice of foraging made very different assumptions about the common soldier than were held before the French Revolution. Importantly, unlike marauders of the Thirty Years' War, the grand armee did not dissolve into a mob.

The History of Logistics and Supplying War

19

By increasing mobility while maintaining the integrity of the military units, Napoleon's army gained in military effectiveness from its ability to forage when on the march. ·The point of this discussion is that while "living off the country'' was always important, that phrase masks a good deal of variety and evolution. It is fair to say that while living off the country was pursued as a desirable method of supply in one of its several forms, 1625-1815, after then it became a method of supply of last resort-something one did when regular supply broke down. The return to self-supply 1866-71 by the Prussians came because the link between railhead and army broke down. Despite von Moltke the Younger's plans, the great wheeling maneuver of 1914 similarly left troops stranded. This change from self-supply as a matter of choice to a matter of necessity imposed by failure is onethatvan Creveld would have done well to bring out, but he did not. After all, as much as anything else, the failure of regular supply and the recourse to living off the country between 1866-1914 sustains his skepticism toward military planning. Some Problems with Numbers: The Need for Magazines

In trying to demonstrate that armies could and did live off the country van Creveld reveals a problem with his methodology-the way he handles numbers. He makes it a point to state that he will rely on "concrete figures and calculations, not on vague speculations," which would appear to lend authority to his conclusions? But if numbers, percentages, and mathematics were to be the crux of his argument, he should have been more careful using them.8 Herightlypointsoutthatforfieldarmiesoncampaign,thegree nfodderthat kept the horses in the field had to be harvested locally, because carting it great distances was prohibitive. Consider that a supply wagon pulled by four horses carried about 1200 pounds. Since each of its four horses consumed about 50 poundsofgreenfoddereachday,theteamate200poundsperd ay.9 Therefore, during a round trip three days up from a depot and three days back, the horses would require their entire load for themselves and have nothing to deliver. Obviously, this would simply not work. Dry fodder simplified the problem, since it weighed only about 20 pounds per horse per day; however, an army in the field had to depend on green fodder most of the time, at least until the midnineteenth century when railroads could ship in dry fodder from hundreds of miles away. Fodder could be found locally,and since it required no processing other than cutting it in the fields, it could be easily "produced" by troops on campaign. So far so good, but any attempt to evaluate supply must distinguish between food for men and fodder for animals. By lumping supplies together and simply speaking of weights and percentages of the total, van Creveld does violence to . this necessary distinction. Food was another matter from fodder, and for a

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John A. Lynn

European army on campaign, bread was the mostcriticalitem. It could not just be found, it had to be manufactured. Grain might grow in the fields, but it had to be cut, threshed, ground, and baked before it could be eaten as bread. The need to tum grain into bread meant that wheat or flour seized on campaign would not in itself be enough to feed an army on the move. Let us examine a scenario van Creveld himself presents to prove his point. An army of 60,000 requiring 90,000 bread rations per day is to march 100 miles atarateof10milesperday.10 Suchanarmywillrequire600tonsofflourtofeed itself on its ten-day march. Parties from tlie army will forage 5 miles to either side of the route of march, meaning that they can draw on 1,000 square miles. Van Creveld assumes a population of 45 per square mile and that the inhabitants have stored away 6 months' worth of flour, yielding a total of 7,000 tons available to the army. So he argues the army will have plenty of bread to eat. But this is a case of historical slight of hand. Consider the figures another way. Given that forage parties will roam five miles in each direction, they will coveranarea10milessquare,thatis100squaremiles,fromwh ichthearmycan draweachday. Nowaccordingtohiscalculationsthisareahassquirreledaway 700 tons of flour, and the army needs only 60 tons per day. So far so good, but rawflourisnottheproblem;itmust be baked into bread before it will be edible. With a population density of 45 people per square mile, there will only be4,500 inhabitants in 100 square miles; therefore, the capacity of village ovens in the area will only be sufficient to bake bread for approximately this number of consumers. Even if the ovens burned night and day to double their output, they would still only produce 10 percent of the bread required by the army. Consequently, within the parameters set by van Creveld himself, his army would not thrive but starve. He cannot rescue himself by simply changing the scenario to add that the army could bring its own ovens along. ·Portable ovens existed, but they took time to set up, two days in the case of French army ovens ca. 1700.11 The problem of setting up and breaking down the ovens meant that the only way to use them efficiently was to establish a bank of them and then supply an advancing force with convoys shuttling back and forth from the ovens. At this point we are back to the limitations imposed by regular supply from the rearexactly what van Creveld claims to have avoided in his example. In fact, to the extent that large armies required bread, they usually had to supply it via magazines and army ovens. His own example does not demonstrate van Creveld's point but the rather different one that baking capacity limited movement as much as did the availability of grain.12 Another, far more careful study of logistics by G. Perjes argues just this and concludes that seventeenth-century armies had to be supplied with bread from the rear.13 Since Supplying War is a work of synthesis, we ought not to fault him for not having mastered all the campaigns or eras of warfare from original sources. However, he is open to criticism for misusing the very sources he refers to in

The History of Logistics and Supplying War

21

order to strengthen his case. His use ofPerjes's important work is so selective thatitleadsonetoquestionwhethervanCreveldsimplychose toomitwhatdid not suit his thesis. During the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the dependence on magazines and supply convoys even on campaign was no chimera; it was very real. And it was not simply a product of siege warfare. The military correspondence of the time is filled with concerns for magazines and supply convoys. ConsidertheFrenchoffensiveof1672thatbegantheDutchWa r. LouisXIVhad accumulated enough grain for 200,000 rations a day for a full six months in seven magazines.14 Six months covered the entire campaign season. The campaign of 1672 certainly saw a dramatic French advance, but no great siege. In1697,ayearinwhichtheFrenchagainundertooknomajorsi egeinltaly,they took steps to send grain enough from Burgundy to. maintain an army of 30,000 foranentirecampaignoroneof60,000foroverthreemonths.15 Acenturylater, the maintenance of regular supply from the rear was considered necessary. In 1792, the Duke of Brunswick limited his advance because of the necessities of convoys and bread. His army did take Longwy and Verdun along the way, but each siege lasted but a day or two. It could justly be claimed that the plodding formalities of Prussian supply saved the revolution from his invading host as much as did victory at the Battle of Valmy. Some Problems with Numbers: The New Logistic Needs Anotherexarnpleof a case in which van Creveld uses figures ina misleading way concerns his discussion of the way in which supply requirements evolved over time. He correctly points out that in warfare before the Industrial Revolution, food and fodder posed the greatest problems for armies on campaign. In contrast to the very pressing need for forage, until the midnineteenth century, and perhaps until World War !,ammunition consumption waslowenough thatanarmycouldcarry a campaign' sworthofitinits wagons withoutrequiringresupply~ceptin thecaseofa siege. However,arnrnunition requirements soared in World War I, when massive artillery bom~rdrnents consumed great stocks of munitions, and machine guns spit out thousands of rounds in short order. In addition to this rise, the need for fuel rose with the use of motor transport and then armored fighting vehicles. Petroleum eventually liberated armies from horsepower; however, fossil fuels also bound navies and armies to supply bases. Van Creveld makes a good point, but then he stretches it and in doing so forgets other important logistic needs of a modem army. Consider his statement that from the advent of tre11f financial impositions paid to the French by Sp4nish Flanders dun~.~ this period, while showingthatas much as 12,227,600 livres in fOdder were taken or destroyed by the French in the same province.56 Fortresses not only guarded the routes of supply, they served as the storehouses for those supplies. Louis XIV' s fortresses sheltered his magazines, which gave the French oonsiderable advantage in the conduct of warfare, at leastthrough 1691. The amountsoffood and fodder stored in magazines could be impressive. In 1672 Turenne listed 251,000 septiers of wheat stored in Kaiserwerth, Dorstein, Liege, Charleroi, Meziere, and Ath, an Amount he estimated as enough for 100,000 rations per day for about a year, or 2()(),000 rations for the six month campaign season.57 At the same time, the Fret\~h h~cl six months' worth of grain stored in the front line magallil\\l'S at l>ignerolo, Briesach, Metz, Nancy, Thionville, Rocroi, Dunkirk. La Bassee, Courtrai, Lille, and LeQuesnoy.58 In 1675, theentireannyofSO,OOOmen was to be supported for two months solely by food. grain stored in Maestricht and Liege.59 For the 1691 siege of Mons, the French squirreled away 220,000 red-skinnl!d ~~sin the citadel of Tournai.60 Fortresses also provided a safe plat'@ to store arms; in 1697 Metz held 500 pieces of artillery plus small ·anns for 20,000 men. 61 Fortresses also served as bases from which to exploit the wealth of occupied territories through the levying of contributions or the launching of raids, known as courses. Fortresses each exerted control over the area surrounding them. ·In these zones, the garrison could exact conttibutfons for its support. :Fortresses also provided bases for raiding parties that constantly plundered regions in search of food and forage. At one time or another, Heilbron, Mannheim, and Mons, to name only a few, served as central fortresses from which French troops carried out the brutal business

Rivers and Fortresses on the Northeast French Frontier

A. B.

C. D.

Lines of Brabant, 1701 Unes, 1706/1707

Uncs of Cambrin, 1708

Ne Plus Ultra

Lin~s,

1711

Lines and Fortresses

0

50

FIGURE 7.1 TheNortheast Frontier of France in the Seventeenth Century. Saurce: Lines and Fortresses map based on themapinChristopher Duffy, TheFortressinthe Age ofVauban and Ferderick the Great, 166~1789