Guibert's General Essay on Tactics (History of Warfare, 137) 9004473157, 9789004473157

Citation preview

Guibert’s General Essay on Tactics

History of Warfare Editors Kelly DeVries (Loyola University Maryland) John France (University of Wales, Swansea) Paul Johstono (The Citadel, South Carolina) Michael S. Neiberg (United States Army War College, Pennsylvania) Frederick Schneid (High Point University, North Carolina)

volume 137

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/hw

Guibert’s General Essay on Tactics Translated and Annotated by

Jonathan Abel

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustrations: Marble bust of Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, Comte de Guibert (1743-1790), by JeanAntoine Houdon (French: 1741-1828), dated 1791. ©Image courtesy of Wildenstein & Co. Inc. Background: Diagram XV, Flank march order following a front battle order taken after the inopportune circumstance of the enemy’s arriving at the head of the march. © Drawing by Jonathan Abel. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021042050

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1385-7827 ISBN 978-90-04-47315-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-49821-1 (e-book) Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgments ix List of Diagrams x List of Tables and Figures xi On the Translation and Sourcing xii Introduction xvi Jonathan Abel

book 1 Elementary Tactics

To My Patrie 3



Preliminary Discourse 4



Plan of a Work Entitled “France, Political and Military” 32



Introduction 39



Education of Troops 47

section I Infantry Tactics I

Infantry Ordinance, Its Formation; Principles That Must Determine Both 53

II

School of the Soldier, Manual of Arms, [and] Formations of Ranks and Files 56

III On the March 61 IV Fire 71 V

Evolutions 79

VI Doubling the Ranks. Ordinance and Means That Must Serve the Infantry to Fight Cavalry 81 VII Conversion Movements 86 VIII Formations in Column 88 IX Formations en bataille 97 X

Changes of Front 112

vi

Contents

section II Essay on Cavalry Tactics

Introduction to Essay on Cavalry Tactics 117

I

Advantages of Cavalry; [the] Inconveniences That Render It Too Numerous in Armies 118

II

Cavalry Armor and Equipment 120

III Speed of Movements, the First and Most Advantageous of the Properties of Cavalry 124 IV Cavalry Ordinance 126 V

School of the Cavalier 128

VI Analogy between Cavalry Movements and Those of Infantry 130 VII Formations en bataille 133 VIiI Charge Movements 135

Conclusion 138

section III Light Troops I

Origin of Light Troops; Their Too-Great Number, [a] Prejudicial Abuse 141

II

It Is Possible to Create a System of War That Renders Light Troops Little-Necessary 144

III Line Troops May Advantageously Undertake the Service, or at Least a Part of the Service, Confined to Light Troops 146 IV On the Constitution of Light Troops 147

section IV Essay on Artillery Tactics I

On the Artillery in General, Its Advantages [That Are] Too Elevated by Some and Too Abased by Others, [and] Its Real Utility 151

II

Modern Constitution of Our Artillery [and] Parallel of the Old System with the New 154

Contents

III Inconvenience of Too-Numerous Artillery 156 IV Artillery Movements 160 V

Artillery Execution 163

book 2 Grand Tactics

Avant-propos 171

I

Army Marches 172

II

Opening of Marches 177

III On the Disposition of March Orders 183 IV Disposition of Troops in March Orders 185 V

Disposition of the Artillery in March Orders 186

VI On the Disposition of Baggage in Marches 188 VII On Orders of Battle 189 VIII Parallel Order 192 IX Oblique Order 194 x

Formation of Armies; [the] Necessity of Assembling Camps Destined to Be Schools of Grand Tactics in Peacetime 198

xI Project of a Camp of Instruction; Composition and Division of the Army That One Proposes to Assemble There 202 xII Maneuvers That Must Be Executed in the Camp of Instruction 207 xIII Application of the Preceding Maneuvers to Terrain and to Circumstances 227 xIV Application of the Tactics Exposed Above to Defensive Orders of Battle. [The] Necessity of Making This Application Known to the Troops and to the General Officers 236 xV Continuation of Objectives That Must Be Put into Practice in the Camp of Instruction 238

vii

viii

Contents

xVI

Rapport between the Science of Fortifications and Tactics, and with War in General 240

xVII

Rapport between Knowledge of Terrain and Tactics 251

xVIII Rapport between the Science of Subsistence and War, and Particularly with Campaign War. Examination of the Manner by Which We Make Our Armies Subsist 256 Conclusion 271

Appendix A: The French Army in the Eighteenth Century 273 Appendix B: Glossary of Terms 286 Bibliography 289 Index 299

Acknowledgments This work began on a lark and transformed into a serious project over the course of a year. It will always be a relic of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which it was largely completed. Throughout that process, I have received the support and encouragement, both professional and personal, of a great number of people. My parents, Jack and Rosemary Abel, have been a constant source of love, support, and advice. Melanie Abel has tolerated my work, including papering a room with a detailed diagram of the French government from 1715 to 1789, with both love and suggestion. This book would not have been possible without them. My colleagues at the US Army Command and General Staff College are always supportive and helpfully critical in equal measure. The faculty and staff of the Department of Military History all contributed in some way to this book. A few deserve special consideration. Dave Cotter provided superior leadership through dynamic times. Mark Gerges proved to be both a mentor and friend, along with being a fellow Napoleonist. John Hosler assisted with medieval references and sources, and with the publication process. Greg Hospodor encouraged the writing process and helped to shape it. Bill Nance provided a sounding board for ideas, arguments, and clarifications along with being an inexhaustible source of information on US Army doctrine, practices, and publications. James Sterrett and the staff of the Simulation Education Division introduced me to the world of wargaming, which greatly expanded my view of early modern warfare. Scott Stephenson gleefully

returned serve on all my pro-French positions, historiographical and humorous. The History Hive Mind, including but not limited to Casey Baker, Nate Jarrett, Kenny Johnson, Alex Mikaberidze, and Rick Schneid, have been an invaluable resource for this book, particularly in uncovering several obscure personalities and references that Guibert makes. The staff at the US Army Heritage and Education Center at Carlisle Barracks and the Combined Arms Research Library at Fort Leavenworth provided skilled research and library assistance throughout. The Military History Center at the University of North Texas, led by Geoff Wawro and Mike Leggiere, continues to support the cause of military history and provided funding for some of the archival research used in the book. Other individuals deserve credit for their assistance and contributions. Jessica Borton and Lindsay Clark gamely entertained all grammar questions, no matter how esoteric. Alex Burns is a wellspring of knowledge on all things British and Prussian, and the details of eighteenth-century combat. Paul Golightly provided expertise on medieval weaponry. Marshall Lilly and Javier Lopez assisted with topics and sourcing in antiquity. Luke Reynolds answered all questions English/British. Caitlin Sewell untangled sections related to horses and cavalry. Josh Whittiker patiently explained several issues of money and finance. All errors and omissions are entirely my own.

Diagrams

Book 1

I II III IV V VI VII VIII

School of the march 67 Continuation of the school of the march 69 Oblique fire 76 Infantry disposition en bataille against cavalry 83 Formations in column 89 Infantry disposition in column against cavalry 94 Deployments of a battalion column 101 Example of the manner in which one must exercise the troops in the field 106–107 IX Parallel of the deployments of modern tactics with the maneuvers by which [troops] used to be formed en bataille 110 X Changes of front 113 XI Formation in column and deployment of the cavalry 131 XII Different movements of an artillery column to pass from march to battle order 161

I II III

Book 2 Opening of a front march 179 Opening of a flank march 181 Order of battle of an army in the camp of instruction 204

IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI

XII XIII XIV

XV

Front march order following a parallel battle order: its columns deploy on the left 208 Front march order following a parallel battle order, the columns deploying by the right 211 Front march order following a parallel battle order, the columns deploying on the center 212 Flank march order following a parallel battle order 214 Another flank march order following a parallel battle order 215 Front march order following an oblique battle order in continuous line 217 Front march order following an oblique battle order by echelons, the columns deploying on the center 221 Front march order following an oblique battle order, then the columns present themselves to the enemy on an alignment parallel to their front 223 March order following an oblique battle order on the center 225 March order following the formation of an oblique order adapted to the terrain 228 Oblique order combined on the first enemy disposition and then changing rapidly on another point, with a view of the changes that the enemy makes in their disposition 230 Flank march order following a front battle order taken after the inopportune circumstance of the enemy’s arriving at the head of the march 235

Tables and Figures Tables

Figures

1

A1

2

A1 A2

A3

Comparison of the weight of the new pieces of 16, 12, 8, and 4, with those of the old system of the same caliber, mounted on their carriages 155 Table estimating the distances by which one may commence counting the effects of the artillery in field affairs 163 Comparative table of Old-Regime officer ranks to modern French and USA ranks 282 Regimental manpower per Choiseul reforms of the 1760s. Most regiments of 2 battalions; battalions of 8 fusilier companies and 1 grenadier company 283 Regimental manpower per 1776 ordinance. Regiments of 2 battalions; battalions of 4 fusilier companies, 1 chasseur company, 1 grenadier company, 1 depot company 283

A2

Prototypical midcentury French field army organization 284 Generalized diagram of French strategic command and control 285

On the Translation and Sourcing Several editions of the General Essay on Tactics were published during and after Guibert’s lifetime. As the book lacked official government sanction to be published in France prior to the Revolution, the first of these were by the publishing houses that ringed France and served its underground literary market, beginning with the 1772 London and 1773 Liège editions. After Guibert’s death, his widow ceaselessly advocated for recognition and income, culminating in the publishing of a collected Œuvres militaires in 1803, with Napoleon’s fiat. Comparison between the editions reveals no substantive changes. As a result, I have relied on the 1803 edition as the definitive version of the text and the basis for this translation. For reference, I have used a variety of tools to supplement my own reading. I have relied on the various editions of the Dictionary of the Académie française (AF Dictionary). When I found an unclear term, or one that differs from modern usage, I consulted the Fourth Edition and then worked forwards if it did not occur in that edition. I have also made extensive use of the 1917 edition of Cornélis de Witt Willcox’s French-English Military Technical Dictionary for many of the more esoteric terms. To supplement this, I have used various translation tools, including Google Translate and Wordreference. Finally, I have used several technical treatises and other sources, particularly for difficult words and passages. According to Guibert’s friend and biographer FrançoisEmmanuel Toulongeon, the General Essay on Tactics was translated into many languages, from German to Persian. However, to my knowledge, only one translation into English exists. This was published in London in 1781 by “an officer.” The anonymous translator dedicates his volume to Charles Stanhope, Earl of Harrington, who commanded the 85th Regiment of Foot between 1778 and 1783. The 85th was raised for Caribbean duty and stationed in Jamaica between 1780 and 1783. The translator’s preface “present[s] this essay of my military application, but not of my genius, to your Lordship [Stanhope], not only in testimony of my respect for your patriotic conduct, but [also] from a desire of submitting those principles of the tactic[s] to your inspection, which you have so assiduously cultivated for the good discipline and regulation of the regiment you now command.” This likely indicates that the translator was an officer in Stanhope’s regiment, perhaps an educated member of the bourgeoisie looking to curry favor with his noble and less-educated commander. Several library catalogs list the translator as “Lieutenant Douglas,”

but databases available to me at the time of publication do not list such an officer on the rolls of the 85th Foot. The 11 September 1779 edition of the London Gazette provides a list of the unit’s original officers, many of whom are young noblemen like Henry Fitzgerald, Henry Phipps, and Vere Poulett. Perhaps the most likely candidate on the list for the author is Lieutenant Francis Grose, veteran of several battles in the American Independence War, and, more importantly for our purposes, son of the prolific writer and antiquarian Francis Grose. However, barring extensive research in archives and chance discoveries in family papers, the translator’s identity will likely never be known with certainty. The anonymous scholar probably made his translation while the 85th Foot drilled and trained on Jamaica in 1780. Such a work might prove useful to an officer who wished to maintain currency on European tactics but lacked proper French to read the original. The text shows signs of having been completed over time, most notably in its use of the term “hobit” in its first volume before switching to the much more common term “howitzer” in the second to refer to the same type of artillery piece. The English translation is an excellent companion to Guibert’s original text, offering suggestions on translation, particularly in his more difficult turns of phrase. However, the translator takes liberties with the language, most often when Guibert criticizes Great Britain, but also in other curious ways that defy explanation. On occasion, it is simply incorrect in its understanding of a word or phrase. Ultimately, it proves most valuable as a source of the contemporary English language. The translator often leaves words in French that are now commonly translated into English, like “deploy.” This indicates that these terms had not yet entered into the English lexicon by 1780, and an argument follows from this that Guibert and his fellow French theorists introduced these terms and others into the English language, where many remain in common use. Translating French to English is relatively easy, particularly when compared to many other languages. Phrase, clause, and sentence structure are largely identical, and the vast majority of words translate directly or nearly directly. In addition, Guibert largely avoids using idioms and the tendency of period writers like Voltaire to intend certain words and phrases to have multiple meanings that may not translate well; the latter may be considered to be the specific genius of the French language in literature. Guibert’s prose is remarkably clear and pointed except

On the Translation and Sourcing

on occasions where he wanders into philosophy; these should be readily apparent from the text, especially in the Preliminary Discourse. The modern English reader will likely notice several quirks of period French, and Guibert’s use of it, in the translation. Foremost of these is a preference for lengthy, compound-complex sentences containing several phrases and clauses. The language also lends itself to building to a dramatic conclusion by placing the key clause or phrase at the end of a sentence, which Guibert deploys to great effect throughout. He also stacks modifiers, often nesting them inside other modifying phrases and clauses, which may cause the reader to lose track of his point in a single reading of any given sentence or passage. Finally, Guibert uses some words or phrases that do not appear to have been used even in eighteenth-century French; these have provided the greatest challenge in translation and generally have footnotes explaining them. I have endeavored to make as literal a translation as possible. There are several reasons for this. First, I believe in a more literalist translation style, particularly in technical works like Guibert’s. Second, as noted above, Guibert seems to have helped to introduce many words into English, which a literal translation will reveal better than a more impressionistic one. Third, Guibert was regarded by his peers as a spirited and effective writer, including recognition of his talents via admission to the Academie française in the 1780s; altering his words necessarily robs him ex post facto of his literary agency in the work and makes the subsequent text more about the translator than the writer. Fourth, military terminology has changed a great deal in the centuries since Guibert lived, and translators have an unfortunate habit of anachronistically using modern terms in their translations of material from previous periods. For example, “état-major” is often translated as “staff” despite not conforming to the modern usage of that term in eighteenth-century French. I believe such translations confuse the reader, particularly when the term is not an exact analogy to the activity or item being described. Readers familiar with the technical aspects of military affairs, in the present or past, will likely be able to draw their own analogies without my inserting them into the text. Finally, experienced readers of military theory will know that its technical manuscripts are rarely works of literary achievement, so I did not endeavor to make this translation one, as so many translators are wont to do. Specifically, I have tried to avoid dynamic equivalence in the translation, particularly the more technical passages. Many translators of works from the period make

xiii use of dynamic equivalence, whether to produce a more literary text or to make the process easier for the reader. Unfortunately, this often obscures both the development of the military technical language and creates anachronisms, especially when modern terms are substituted for period ones. In particular, many elements of eighteenthcentury drill and petty tactics have changed drastically in the time since; using modern terms would confuse both the reader and Guibert’s intent. Despite this, I have made some alterations to Guibert’s words and phrasing. The vast majority of these are necessary for the language to function in translation. The two most prominent examples are to de-gender the language and to move modifying words, phrases, and clauses, usually adverbial adjuncts, within sentences to clarify Guibert’s points. I have also removed or changed many commas, semicolons, and colons, as usage of them was markedly different during Guibert’s time. None of these changes has altered the wording, language, or intent of his writing. On rare occasion, I have changed words outright, usually because of changes in technology and/or language. Finally, I have added clarifying words, almost all adverbs, articles, and conjunctions, as period French often did not require them when and where modern English does. I have left a few words and phrases in French. Some of these are commonly used in English today, either in general usage or in military theory, like élan and coupd’œil. Others simply do not have adequate translations, or their direct translations do not convey the meaning of the original word or term. Several are technical terms, like positions or ranks within the contemporary French army. Rather than attempting to find an analog in period or modern English, I have left them in French in order not to draw false equivalencies. On the other side of the translation, certain words do not have the same meaning in modern English that they did at the time, or do in French. For example, the words “place” and “point” both refer to defensive positions, usually fortified and often part of a fortress. As there is no easy way to translate these without lengthy digressions, I have left the words intact. To provide clarity, I have provided a glossary of terms that may be unfamiliar to the reader, in both English and French, and an appendix detailing the branches, ranks, and structure of the Old-Regime French army. Finally, Guibert included several footnotes in his translation. I have retained and translated them, leaving them where he inserted them. My own footnotes are enclosed in brackets to distinguish them from his. I have also reproduced his diagrams as faithfully as possible, including any errors or omissions that he made. I have moved them from

xiv the end of each volume to the appropriate place in the text in order for the reader to better appreciate them. The eighteenth century, and early-modern France in general, is one of the better-sourced topics in history writing. Almost every major topic, conflict, and state has several excellent works dedicated to it, both surveys and monographs. While only a portion of these is available to the Anglophone reader, its historiography remains both large and deep. As a result, sourcing for Guibert’s work is plentiful, although some curious omissions exist, as the reader will discover. I will provide an overview of relevant works in English here, particularly ones that might be useful to have read before exploring the General Essay on Tactics. I have generally tried to avoid using French-language sources, but many references to them, especially technical, are unavoidable. I have also attempted to use digital sources like websites and Google Books when possible, especially on more technical and linguistic topics. In addition to universal accessibility, this provides the Anglophone reader with the opportunity to use translation tools like Google Translate, especially for reference works. English-language sourcing on Guibert’s life is limited. My biography, Guibert: Father of Napoleon’s Grande Armée, is the only monograph on his life and work to date. Julia Osman has also written on his work and influence, particularly in “Guibert vs. Guibert.” Readers may also consult my article on Guibert on Oxford Bibliographies Online, although many of its sources are in French. Guibert expected his readers to be widely educated in history, military history, mythology, current affairs, literature, popular science, and many other areas. He draws references and makes allusions to a huge variety of topics, as the reader will discover. Most of these are either contemporary French examples, generally dating from 1650 to his own time, or to Classical Greece and Rome, and thus would be quite familiar to his readers. Others are relatively obscure, and Guibert occasionally either misquotes or misattributes his references, further complicating understanding. Finally, as befits the subject, Guibert also expected his readers to be fluent in the language and practice of military affairs, including the details of deployments, maneuvers, tactics, and battle. General surveys of the period of Guibert’s life and career are thus critical to understanding the context of his work. Roger Price’s A Concise History of France is an excellent survey of French history at large. Dorinda Outram’s The Enlightenment and Daniel Roche’s The Enlightenment

On the Translation and Sourcing

in France provide introductions to the Enlightenment and its major themes. James Collins’s The State in Early Modern France outlines the growth of French state power and the difficulties it faced, particularly as the Revolution loomed. James Wolf’s Louis XIV, while problematic, details the reign of the Sun King. Unfortunately, there are no modern, comprehensive, English-language biographies of Louis XV; Colin Jones’s The Great Nation provides an overview. William Doyle’s The Origins of the French Revolution provides context for what followed the publication of the General Essay on Tactics, particularly its analyses of the breakdown of Old-Regime France. Most of the wars in which early-modern France participated have detailed operational accounts. Peter Wilson’s The Thirty Years War is a weighty exploration of arguably the most important war of the period. John Lynn’s Wars of Louis XIV and Dennis Showalter’s The Wars of Frederick the Great survey most of the conflicts between 1660 and 1770. John Sutton’s The King’s Honor and the King’s Cardinal is the only notable work on the War of the Polish Succession in English. The War of the Austrian Succession fares better, with titular works by both M.S. Anderson and Reed Browning. Franz Szabo’s The Seven Years War in Europe is the best account of that conflict, albeit from a decidedly anti-Friedrich stance. Readers will also wish to be familiar with contemporary military affairs, particularly the basics of linear tactics. John Child’s Armies and Warfare in Europe and Christopher Duffy’s The Military Experience in the Age of Reason remain the best overviews of the topic. The relevant chapters in Azar Gat’s A History of Military Thought outline the various intellectual movements current during the period. Christy Pichichero’s The Military Enlightenment and Armstrong Starkey’s War in the Age of Enlightenment locate eighteenth-century warfare within the context of the period, particularly by creating the subfield of the Military Enlightenment, to which Guibert belonged. Brent Nosworthy’s The Anatomy of Victory and Steven Ross’s From Flintlock to Rifle describe contemporary tactics in great detail. Rafe Blaufarb’s The French Army and Robert Quimby’s The Background of Napoleonic Warfare illuminate the various theorists and reformers of the period as well as the currents of reform and the barriers to it. In areas outside of the above, I have attempted to amalgamate sources and references as much as possible. For Greek and Roman Warfare, I have relied on The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World, which is an excellent one-volume survey of the topic. Unless

On the Translation and Sourcing

otherwise noted, all biographical information is taken from Louis-Gabriel Michaud’s Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, and all Classical texts are from the Perseus Digital Library at Tufts. All references to the Encyclopedia are from the ARTFL Encyclopédie Project hosted by the University of Chicago. The Académie française maintains the official dictionary of the French language, publishing a new edition at irregular intervals. It is the official repository of the language,

xv setting its definitions, spellings, and grammar. There have been nine editions of the dictionary: the First in 1694, the Second in 1718, the Third in 1740, the Fourth in 1762, the Fifth in 1798, the Sixth in 1835, the Seventh in 1878, the Eighth in 1935, and the Ninth, which is the current edition. When consulting the AF Dictionary, I have generally used the Fourth Edition from 1762, as it was the current dictionary when Guibert wrote.

Introduction Jonathan Abel In the late seventeenth century, the French army of Louis XIV fought in relatively dense infantry formations that were difficult to move, maneuver, or integrate with the other arms. A century later, the French armies of the Revolutionary Wars fought in a variety of combined-arms formations and displayed an incredible speed, agility, and ability to overcome their many enemies. This dramatic change was the result of the Military Enlightenment, a complicated process that involved the wholesale revision of the French army’s “constitution,” or as modern military theorists would term it, its doctrine. Recognition of the need for reform after 1700 proved to be universal throughout the eighteenth-century French army, reflecting the calls for systemic reform in every area of French society and politics from the philosophes of the larger Enlightenment. The glory years of the Sun King were in the distant past, and many wondered if France could retain its position as Europe’s hegemon in the face of opposition from the Habsburgs, the British, Prussia, and other states. The Enlightenment also brought calls for more equitable systems in society and politics, which threatened to undermine the traditions that edified the French state at a crucial moment of weakness. Despite widespread acknowledgement of its necessity, the process of doctrine reform was complicated in every regard by the dysfunction of the French state during the last decades of the Old Regime. France possessed immense resources, but it often struggled to efficiently make use of them, particularly into war. The monarchs of the period, Louis XV, who reigned from 1715 to 1774, and Louis XVI, who reigned from 1774 to 1792, relied on powerful ministers to leverage their client networks to affect reform and administer the state. These ministers were always opposed by at least one major cabal at court, which usually adopted the opposite ideas of proposed reforms, if only to spite the reigning minister. Success was judged not by the efficacy of reforms but rather by the currency the minister retained at court. Especially after 1765, ministers rose and fell quickly, often within two or three years. This had the effect of bouncing French policy between opposing ideas on a regular basis, all but eliminating the possibility of the kind of long-term reform that the state required. As a result this turmoil, the French army of the eighteenth century faced an array of problems in reforming itself. The Military Enlightenment demanded officers of

both skill and education, which necessitated reforms of the appointment and promotion system; this would stir dangerous social currents among the rising bourgeois, anoblis, and noble classes. The system of maneuvers and tactics that had served France for decades no longer did so in the age of thinner formations and the growing dominance of the battlefield by fire. The challenges posed by the rise of Prussia and the failure of French arms in the mid-century wars needed answering. Finally, the financial crisis loomed over any proposed reform, both robbing it of necessary funding and requiring that it include significant cost-cutting measures. French theorists, practitioners, and bureaucrats met these challenges with a wide array of proposed solutions, usually in books that were printed and distributed throughout France and the neighboring states. As with the larger issues faced by the state and society, the need for change went unquestioned, but few agreed on the nature or direction of any specific measures. Some, led by Jean-Charles, chevalier Folard, advocated for the deep order, which had the dual benefits of relying on historical examples and appealing to the French “national character.” Others, led by Johan Ernst, baron Pirch, pushed for the French army to adopt Prussian doctrine wholesale, shifting to fire-based formations and strict discipline. Several theorists published lengthy and detailed works that they expected to become doctrine in their own right; these “makers of systems” included Folard; François-Jean de Graindorge d’Orgeville, baron de Mesnil-Durand; Pirch, and several others. Some rejected the concept of system, instead adapting their elements into existing doctrine or selecting the best elements of various systems and amalgamating them into a hybrid doctrine. Finally, a school of “military philosophes” developed that examined war beyond the level of tactics, inaugurating the operational level of war and laying the foundation for future explorations of strategy and the philosophy of war. The central work in this process was the General Essay on Tactics, written by Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de Guibert, and published in the early 1770s. It drew the best elements of the various schools and amalgamated them not into a rote system, but rather a philosophy that called for dynamic leadership, flexible tactics, and attention to all aspects of war, not just a single arm or service. The General Essay on Tactics announced Guibert as the foremost military theorist of eighteenth-century France.

Introduction

He quickly became one of the leading reformers in the army, advocating for the adoption of his doctrine. He also worked for the Ministry of War from the early 1760s until the eve of the French Revolution in 1789, allowing him the opportunity to implement elements of his system. While the process took most of the second half of the century, Guibert’s proposals eventually became the foundation of the French army doctrine that led French armies to victory in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The death of Louis XIV in 1715 ended one of the most important periods in French history, including for its military. The Sun King and his ministers had modernized the army by bureaucratizing it, greatly increasing its size and ability to draw on the state’s resources and wage war. However, this did not bring the hegemony Louis sought, as it occasioned the formation of ever-larger coalitions opposed to France. This culminated in the War of the Spanish Succession from 1701 to 1713, which succeeded in placing a Bourbon on the Spanish throne but at the cost of most of Spain’s European possessions and the ruin of the French state’s budget, army, and popular support. While Louis was later recognized as one of the great kings of France, he was remembered in the years after his death as a warmonger who nearly destroyed the state in pursuit of his goals.1 The first decades of the reign of his successor, Louis XV, were relatively peaceful. France engaged in the minor War of the Quadruple Alliance at the end of the 1710s and the larger War of the Polish Succession in the mid-1730s, but its ministers dedicated themselves to rebuilding the state and expanding its power. They undertook modernization programs across the kingdom, exemplified by the explosion in construction of canals and highways throughout the kingdom.2 1 John Wolf, Louis XIV: A Profile (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), remains the most effective single-volume study of Louis XIV and his reign. John Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV 1667–1714 (New York: Longman, 1999), examines his many conflicts, including the Spanish Succession, and Giant of the Grand Siècle (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), details his army and its practices. James Collins, The State in Early Modern France (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), provides a superb overview of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially the growth of the bureaucracy and issues with modernization during them, and Guy Rowlands, The Financial Decline of a Great Power: War, Influence, and Money in Louis XIV’s France (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), details the junctions of war and policy during the period. Finally, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, The Ancien Régime: A History of France, 1610–1774 (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998), gives a summary of the period and its monarchs. 2 See Collins, The State in Early Modern Europe, 191–290. Unfortunately, despite being the second-longest-reigning king in French history, no modern scholarly biography of Louis XV exists in English; the

xvii By 1740, France was prepared to assert its authority in continental affairs once again, but not in the manner of Louis XIV. As a result, France fought in two major wars in the mid-eighteenth century: the War of Austrian Succession, from 1740 to 1748, and the Seven Years War, from 1756 to 1763. The first brought victory and honor while the second produced only defeat and humiliation. In between, a diplomatic realignment took place, which allied France with its “hereditary enemy,” Habsburg Austria. Worse yet, the French army lost its status as the premier institution in Europe, replaced by the disciplined soldiers of Friedrich II of Prussia. Much like the Second World War, the War of the Austrian Succession took the form of two wars that occurred simultaneously and only occasionally interacted with each other. The larger conflict, which gave the war its name, took place on the accession of Archduchess Maria Theresa to the various Habsburg thrones in 1740. As she could not be crowned Holy Roman Emperor, France and Spain supported Elector Karl of Bavaria for the position, interrupting centuries of Habsburg possession of the throne. Britain and Austria, with later Russian support, fought to place Maria Theresa’s husband François on the throne in Karl’s stead. The second conflict concerned the seizure of the Habsburg province of Silesia by Friedrich II of Prussia, who was newly-enthroned himself and sought to take advantage of the succession war. Friedrich allied himself with France, although that did not stop him from twice departing the war after securing an armistice with the Habsburgs. Finally, the Bourbon kings of Spain and France continued to contest colonial spaces with Britain and the Dutch. The resulting conflict became the first general war since the Spanish Succession a generation prior. FrancoBavarian forces fought in the Low Countries, Bavaria, and on the Rhine; Franco-Spanish armies contended with Habsburg armies in Italy; Prussian troops occupied Silesia and defeated the Habsburgs in four battles; and land and naval units of all countries fought in colonial theaters from Columbia to India. By 1745, Prussia had secured its peace and left the war, and Karl VII died, ceding the Imperial throne back to the Habsburgs. Its Imperial ambitions stymied, France unleashed Maurice de Saxe, the greatest general of the period, in the Low Countries. Saxe overran Habsburg positions throughout the Austrian Netherlands, winning signal victories in each year from 1745 to 1748. He rescued the French position in the war and secured

closest is G.P. Gooch, Louis XV: The Monarchy in Decline (New York: Longmans, 1956).

xviii the Treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle, which ended the conflict favorably for France and Spain.3 The interwar years proved to be a period of intense upheaval many European courts. Despite his victory over the Habsburgs in the war, Louis XV opted not to take territory for France, as would have been traditional. Instead, spurred by his chief mistress and de facto first minister Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, marquise de Pompadour, Louis sought entente with the hated Habsburgs. At the same time, Protestant Prussia and Great Britain reached their own agreement. The resulting shift in alliances has become known as the Diplomatic Revolution, pitting Britain and Prussia against the superpowers France, Russia, and the Habsburgs.4 The Seven Years War was the result of these various realignments of the interwar years; it may be loosely portrayed, akin to the World Wars, as the second half of a conflict begun in 1740. Fighting raged throughout Europe and the European colonies, including the Americas, India, and various naval engagements across the world. The result would be transformative for its participants, whether positively or negatively. The conflict was a disaster for France. Initial success outside of Europe quickly turned to defeat, as British forces took Quebec and Montreal, and the British navy defeated Franco-Spanish fleets in a series of engagements. In Europe, despite overwhelming superiority, the allied forces could not defeat Prussia. French armies remained mired in Hanover, unable to overcome the second-rate army of Ferdinand of Brunswick, much less come to grips with Friedrich himself. Only once did the Prussian king face the French: in the Battle of Rossbach in late 1757, Friedrich crushed the Franco-Imperial army, inflicting over 10,000 casualties while suffering only around 1,000 of his own. Subsequent inability to defeat the Hanoverian army in several campaigns completed the humiliation of the French army. The death of Tsarina Elizaveta in early 1762 confounded the alliance, removing Russia from the war and leading the Austrians and French to seek peace after two more failed campaigns.5 3 See M.S. Anderson, The War of the Austrian Succession, 1740–1748 (New York: Longman, 1995); and Reed Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995). 4 See Daniel Baugh, The Global Seven Years War 1754–1763: Britain and France in a Great Power Contest (New York: Routledge, 2011); Mark Danley and Patrick Speelman, eds., The Seven Years War: Global Views (Leiden: Brill, 2012); and Patrice Higgonet, “The Origins of the Seven Years War,” in Journal of Modern History 40, no. 1 (1968): 57–90. 5 Franz Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 1756–1763 (New York: Routledge, 2013), is the best summary of the relevant operations, including those that happen away from Friedrich’s armies, on which

Abel

The resulting treaties laid bare the failings of France’s military and state. It lost most of its possessions in continental North America, ceding western Louisiana to Spain and all territory east of the Mississippi to Britain. The two mid-century wars plunged France into massive debt, which occasioned a financial crisis that would plague it for the remainder of the Old Regime. Failure to defeat the Hanoverians also embarrassed the French army. This catalyzed the push for reform, and each of the next three decades would see major changes within the institution as it struggled to regain its position and honor. Throughout this period of French history, the army faced a number of significant challenges. The evolution of warfare at the tactical level rendered French doctrine obsolete, but no solution seemed apparent to the technical issues that arose as a result. Foreign-policy concerns during and after the mid-century wars necessitated an army prepared to fight and win the kingdom’s wars. Social upheaval, particularly related to questions of nobility, directly affected the army, as the vast majority of its officers were nobles. The Enlightenment called many aspects of contemporary life into question, including those that girded the army’s traditions and mores. Finally, the mounting financial crisis into which France fell as a result of its wars and mismanagement threatened to rob the army of needed funding to enact any reforms. The era began with two major changes that took place in the French army around 1700, one doctrinal and one technological. The first was the culmination of the gradual thinning of infantry formations that had occurred throughout the century as more effective fire wreaked havoc on deep deployments. The second was the adoption of the fusil with socket bayonet, which eliminated the need for pikes and gave all general line infantry (fusiliers, or fantassins) the same weapon. The result of these changes was to produce an army that deployed on four or five ranks and preferred to fight using fire rather than shock. This was the army that fought the War of the Spanish Succession, with mixed results.6 most surveys focus; see Dennis Showalter, The Wars of Frederick the Great (New York: Longman, 1966), 125–320, which is often substituted for a comprehensive account of the war. See also Lee Kennett, The French Armies in the Seven Years War: A Study in Military Organization and Administration (Durham: Duke University Press, 1967). 6 Brent Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory: Battle Tactics 1689–1763 (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1990), 3–141; and Robert Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare: The Theory of Military Tactics in Eighteenth-Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), 7–25. Louis-Hippolyte Bacquet, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle. L’organisation (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1907); and Jean Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle. La tactique (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1907),

Introduction

This lack of success in the Spanish Succession illuminated the growing crisis within the French army, one that affected every level of it: by a modern standard, the French army possessed little doctrine, especially at the level above drill and the handling of arms. Individual regimental colonels were responsible for training and drilling their regiments as they saw fit, and few specific doctrinal norms existed for them to follow. Prior to 1700, armies could manage with individual regiments with differing doctrine by having each one form an attack column or columns for offense and use its pike-and-shot structure to resist enemy attacks, perhaps only loosely coordinating with neighboring units.7 As weapons technology improved and soldiers increasingly used fire over shock, this system became obsolete, both in its failure to respond to evolving tactics and in the degradation of the effectiveness of offensive actions. Fire-based formations required several regiments to act in formation with each other. This would only be possible if the regiments were trained and drilled to the same standard, which they were not. New technology and tactics required new doctrine, but none was forthcoming, and France possessed no great captain to mold such a force into an effective army over the winter like it had in the prior century. Additionally, thin lines of infantry engaging in fire could perform excellently when on the defensive, but their offensive potential essentially did not exist. Cavalry might still perform this function, but increasingly deadly fire from enemy infantry, light forces, and artillery also reduced its effectiveness. Collectively, these changes rankled both the offensive “national character” of the French, as contemporaries termed it, and the needs of commanders to have a dynamic force in order to win battles.8 The result was an army that recognized the need for change but did not possess the doctrine to undertake it.9 While it may seem obvious in hindsight that the solution was for the Department of War to begin issuing army-wide remain the best studies of the eighteenth-century French army, but both are unavailable to the Anglophone reader. Fortunately, Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, largely reproduces their arguments and analyses. 7 Ibid. Venality of captaincies was officially suppressed in the 1650s, but captains were still expected to raise, equip, and train the men in their companies, meaning they occupied a quasi-venal liminal space for much of the century. See Bacquet, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 1–19; and Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 27–72. See also Rafe Blaufarb, The French Army, 1750–1820: Careers, Talent, Merit (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 12–45. 8 Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, 3–141; and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 7–25. 9 Bacquet, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 73.

xix tactical doctrine, matters were far more complex. That doctrine had to take into account the incredible difficulties of maneuvering blocks of men within the larger construct of the field army, which could number as many as 80,000. No one in France knew how to solve all of the issues inherent in the activity. Strategic- and operationallevel problems thus could not be addressed until issues of tactics, many arcane and even pedantic, were solved. At the root of these tactical issues was the very simple question of spacing. The contemporary manual of arms required that soldiers be spaced relatively far from each other, which was diametrically opposed to the unity required to maneuver units on the operational level. As a result, units maneuvered in open formations, meaning with significant spaces between men, ranks, files, and units. Open formations all but eliminated the ability of officers to maneuver units in any way but the very basic. Evolutions (changes of formation) would usually involve many halts as officers redressed the units, returning men to their proper places. No matter how often units drilled and how much discipline they developed, they could not overcome this basic tactical deficiency.10 The results of open formations reverberated up through the echelons. Because precise maneuvers were not possible and no tactical uniformity existed, operational-level warfare was severely constrained. Separate formations existed for march and for battle, requiring complex transitions between the two in order to fight and all but eliminating the possibility of rapid maneuver. In a typical campaign, the army’s officers generally arranged the infantry battalions in loose columns for march, with cavalry, artillery, and light forces in supporting positions. To enter a battle, the officers were required to form two march columns that would become the two battle lines. This formation would slowly march onto the battlefield’s extreme right and left, execute a great wheel, march across the battlefield into position, and then wheel to face the enemy. This process took hours and included many pauses to redress faults. Within the battle itself, units moved at the same ponderous rate, severely limiting the potential for rapid offensive maneuvers. Cavalry was still capable of such blows, but increased rates of fire made even the cavalry charge a dubious proposition against formed line infantry supported by artillery and light forces.11 10 Ibid. Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 31–32, posits the interval as the greatest impediment to change before 1770. See also Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, 79–86. 11 Infantry could also deploy from the center, but this was generally avoided if possible, because it more than doubled the work and time required to deploy the army from march to battle order. See

xx As a result of this system, which was shared by most contemporary European armies, generals could not force an opponent into a battle or win one decisively in ordinary circumstances. Campaign years could pass without a battle, especially if the army encountered a fortress that required it to open a siege, as armies often did. Warfare took on an almost ritualistic rhythm, with armies maneuvering against each other with no result and at great expense. War seemed to have been robbed of both its decisiveness and, perhaps most critically for the French nobility who commanded it, its romance.12 Fire-based defensive warfare was the province of the English and Germans, whose “phlegmatic national character” lent itself to more staid practices.13 As complex as these technical issues were, they were only one element of a larger spectrum of problems, which began with the financial crisis. For generations, France had struggled with inefficient taxation, out-of-control spending, and anachronistic financial policies and measures. The result was a state heavily dependent on borrowing at increasingly onerous rates. Various ministers from the 1710s on implemented programs intended to alleviate the financial crisis, but none of them persisted for long enough to affect change. By modern definitions, France was probably bankrupt after the Seven Years War.14 The financial crisis directly impacted the French army. It was probably the single largest consumer of state revenue, particularly in wartime. Each of France’s conflicts during the period significantly increased state debt, especially the Seven Years War. These facts produced an omnipresent need among army reformers to reduce the costs of their institution, as would be evident throughout the century. This forced them to economize with their proposals

Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, 3–141, especially 65–78; and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 7–25. 12 See M.S. Anderson, War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime, 1617–1789 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988); Jeremy Black, Warfare in the Eighteenth Century (London: Cassel, 1999); and Christopher Duffy, The Military Experience in the Age of Reason (New York: Atheneum, 1988). 13 Guibert addresses national character on 42–45. 14 Numerous works on French finances during the period exist, particularly closer to 1789 as the financial crisis helped to precipitate the collapse of the state and the beginning of the Revolution. Collins, The State in Early Modern France, 239–341, provides an excellent overview. See also The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy: France from Old Regime to Revolution, ed. Julian Swann and Joël Félix (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and James Riley, The Seven Years War and the Old Regime in France: The Economic and Financial Toll (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

Abel

and reforms, robbing many of them of the resources necessary to be enacted properly.15 In addition to financial issues, foreign affairs greatly influenced the French army of the late Old Regime. For over a century, France had been the major guarantor of the Peace of Westphalia, allowing it to intervene in German affairs and contest the power of the Habsburgs. However, after the Seven Years War, many within France saw Britain as France’s true enemy. While this sentiment was present within the army, it mostly remained the province of the Marine. The army’s officers largely focused on Prussia, which they saw as both the architect of France’s defeat in the Seven Years War and a threat to its position as the hegemonic power in Europe. Any move made by either state, or any one of the dozens of others in which France had an interest, could occasion a war or mobilization, which would both threaten any ongoing reform and require an army prepared to fight on short notice.16 Unlike the financial crisis or foreign affairs, the Enlightenment was a much more diffuse influence on Old-Regime France, one that defies specificity even in modern historiography. In a very general sense, the core of the Enlightenment was the application of reason to solve problems with the goal of creating a better world. Reason was the method of application, reason that allowed philosophes to sort through vast amounts of information by categorizing it in relation to other information. This gave them a greater measure of control over it, the natural world, and human affairs.17 The Enlightenment and military affairs had a natural affinity, as militaries both desired to control their armies 15 Ibid. In 1758, Secretary of State for War Charles-Louis-Auguste Fouquet, duc de Belle-Isle, bemoaned that “I am incessantly asking for money from the contrôleur-général, who has none to give me, and we must, at least, do our part  … in diminishing, and even in cutting off, those [expenditures] that are superfluous.” Belle-Isle to Louis-Georges-Erasme, marquis de Contades, 23 July 1758, The Duke de Belleisle’s Letters to the Maréchal de Contades, Found Among the Papers of Contades after the Battle of Minden (London: Payne, 1759), 105–106. See, for example, Guibert’s argument on 6–8. 16 Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 80–105 and 199–209. Albert Latreille, L’oeuvre militaire de la révolution: l’armée et la nation à la fin de l’ancien régime; les derniers ministers de la guerre de la monarchie (Paris: Chapelot, 1914), argues that many post-1760 reforms were inspired by “German” influence, meaning Prussian. 17 The Enlightenment is one of the largest areas of early-modern historiography, and one of the most contentious. For an introduction to the Enlightenment and the field of Enlightenment Studies, see Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019); and Daniel Roche, France in the Enlightenment, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

Introduction

xxi

through doctrine based on reason and provided an excellent test subject for Enlightenment principles. Armstrong Starkey first proposed the term “Military Enlightenment” to encompass this affinity, and Christy Pichichero greatly expanded its study. The eighteenth-century writers of the Military Enlightenment crafted programs to apply Enlightenment principles to the military, seeking to both ameliorate the financial crisis and improve the efficacy of its institutions. Pichichero, borrowing contemporary terminology, groups these reformers into two categories: the “makers of systems” and the military philosophes. The former were prescriptive theorists who applied Enlightenment control measures to extremes, creating elaborate and complicated systems. Most of them focused on the details of tactics, manipulating the hours-long deployment process in subtle ways designed as much to produce geometric figures on the parade ground as to increase proficiency in battle. Almost all of them insisted that their proposals had to be rigidly implemented and followed. The leading “makers of systems” were Folard, Mesnil-Durand, and Pirch. In contrast, the military philosophes were descriptive writers, addressing issues and proposing reforms; confusingly, they often produced tactical systems of their own, but they did not insist on their being followed verbatim. This group included a wide range of writers like Pierre-Joseph Bourcet and Henry Lloyd.18 The writers of the Military Enlightenment were not engaged in idle philosophizing or speculations about the nature of their work and institution. Their publications were intended to bring about change in French doctrine, as rapidly and efficiently as possible. This reflected the wider purpose of the Enlightenment: to improve the conditions of the world and the people in it through the systematic application of reason.19 In a similar vein, another important aspect of the late Old Regime was the issue of nobility and its role in the state, society, and the army. Nobles traditionally led the French army, believing the skill of command was genetic. Some, chiefly traditionalists, eschewed education, especially technical training. Others embraced the Enlightenment and its call for rationality, often landing

them in the technical arms like the artillery and the engineers (génie). Still others, particularly among the rising anoblis, had a general education but no specialist knowledge of or training in military affairs. Further complicating matters was the fact that there were far too many officers in the army. Many units had dozens of supernumerary officers in order to provide prestigious positions for nobles, especially the recently ennobled, rather than for any military purpose. The sum of these issues was a debate over the roles of education, experience, and noble extraction in the French command structure, with camps that were not altogether easily sorted or categorized. Untangling the various groups and their positions vis-àvis these problems is nearly impossible, but the gist of the debate was over who should command France’s military, from the top to the bottom, and what qualifications they should have, if any. Some fought for the wholesale admission of nobles of any form to any position, per tradition, while others sought to provide training to future officers, including via a proposed military academy (the Ecole royale militaire) that had first been approved in the 1750s but had yet to achieve a stable structure. Another debate revolved around the Maison militaire du roi, the traditional household units that the crown maintained and that provided many supernumerary berths in the army for nobles but rarely performed on the battlefield after 1748. Reformers frequently targeted the Maison militaire du roi for reduction or elimination, including casting it as the microcosm of the French army’s and society’s ills. Nobles resisted all of these efforts, not just out of class solidarity, but because many truly believed in the innate leadership abilities of the older nobility, especially when compared to the parvenus of the anoblis that increasingly populated the officer corps. Clean lines are impossible to draw along class, education, or other boundaries. Some nobles called for education for all officers, while others railed against it. Some commoners fought for noble rights and vice-versa. Regardless of particularist interests, any effort to reform the army would necessarily intrude on noble privileges, especially the upper nobility, which made it a fraught exercise.20

18

20 David D. Bien dedicated much of his career to untangling these thorny issues, including refuting the notion of a class-based “Aristocratic Reaction” against rising commoners that was, and continues to be, advanced by historians of Marxist persuasion. See David Bien, et al., Caste, Class, and Profession in Old Regime France: The French Army and the Ségur Reform of 1781 (St. Andrews: Centre for French History and Culture, 2010); David Bien, “Military Education in 18th Century France: Technical and Non-Technical Determinants,” in Science, Technology, and Warfare: Proceedings of the Third Military History Symposium, U.S. Air Force Academy, 8–9 May 1969, ed. Monte D. Wright

Christy Pichichero, The Military Enlightenment: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); and Armstrong Starkey, War in the Age of Enlightenment, 1700–1789 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003). See also Pierre-Joseph Bourcet, Principes de la guerre de montagne (Paris: Levrault, 1802); Henry Lloyd, War, Society, and Enlightenment: The Works of General Lloyd, ed. Patrick Speelman (Leiden: Brill, 2005); and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 26–79. 19 Starkey, War in the Age of Enlightenment, 1–32, forcefully makes this argument.

xxii

Abel

The writers of the Military Enlightenment rose to meet these challenges. Whether they served in the army, worked directly for the Ministry of War, or simply published treatises, thousands of men focused their considerable intellects and energies on untangling the vexed problems facing the French army in search of solutions. The result was a gradual process of reform that evolved throughout the century, synthesizing the best elements from various proposals and systems to produce the doctrine that would ultimately guide French armies during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The first significant proposal to redress these issues came from Folard, who inaugurated a major school of French military theory called “the deep order” (l’ordre profond) in the 1720s. Folard served in Louis XIV’s wars and had significant experiences of the army’s deficiencies. He suggested that the army reach back to Classical examples, particularly the Greek phalanx, to create dense attack columns, or even a single attack column composed of many battalions. Such columns would be impervious to enemy fire, he said, as they charged home against thin enemy formations. To accomplish this, some soldiers would have to be armed with pikes alongside the fusiliers, like the old pike-and-shot formations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.21 Folard’s system was both recidivist and manifestly impossible in the age of massed fire. It would require the army to convert to it wholly, dispensing with traditions and practices, and follow it precisely. However, it won over many within the French army establishment. This was primarily because it proposed to solve the tactical issue of open formations. Folard’s columns were closed formations, which reduced the issues of maneuver by eliminating most of the space between men and units. The system also appealed to the French “national

21

and Lawrence J. Paszek (1971): 51–59; and “The Army in the French Enlightenment: Reform, Reaction, and Revolution” in Past & Present 85 (1979): 68–98. See also Blaufarb, The French Army, 12–45; William Doyle, Venality: The Sale of Offices in Eighteenth-Century France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966); Haroldo Guízar, The Ecole Royale Militaire: Noble Education, Institutional Innovation, and Royal Charity, 1750–1788 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); Guy Rowlands, “The Maison militaure du roi and the Disintegration of the Old Regime,” in The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy, 245–274; and Jay Smith, Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600–1789 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). See Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 26–40. See also Jean-Charles, chevalier Folard, Nouvelles découvertes sur la guerre, dans une dissertation sur Polybe, où l’on donne une idée plus étendue du commentaire entrepris sur cet auteur, et deux dissertations importantes détaches du corps de l’ouvrage (Paris: Jean-François Josse and Claude Labottiere, 1726).

character,” which contemporaries reckoned was based on élan and the offensive spirit. Because of this, Folard’s deep order would remain a major school in doctrinal debates that followed.22 By the next decade, another potential solution had emerged: the Prussian model. The “army with a state” provided a new paradigm of military organization, both philosophically and doctrinally, for the French to imitate. For generations, the rulers of Brandenburg/Prussia had developed systematic doctrine based on discipline, fire, and maneuver. Prussian officers dedicated themselves to learning their profession and imparting iron discipline in their men, and the result was that Prussian forces acquired a reputation for prowess in battle. As early as the 1730s, the Prussian army began to issue doctrinal publications that regularized aspects of its organization, drill, and maneuver. When Friedrich II deployed that army in 1740, the first war in which Prussia was a major belligerent, his forces quickly were both admired and imitated.23 For the French army, the Prussian army was an object of both fascination and apprehension. In the early part of the century, French theorists noted the skill of Prussian maneuver and envied its precision in drill. They also found the army-wide regulations issued by the king to be effective at crafting a uniform and highly effective army. This produced a gnawing fear that France was losing its position as the paradigm army in Europe, which it had held since at least the mid-seventeenth century. This fear was confirmed during the Seven Years War, as the Prussian army outperformed the French, most notably and disastrously at Rossbach. Therefore, in the latter half of the century, French theorists increasingly posited the Prussian army as the new paradigm: disciplined infantry ranks maneuvering quickly and firing rapid volleys from thin formations and supported by the other arms. France would either have to counter the new paradigm by developing its own or by copying elements of the Prussian, wholly or in part.24 22 23

24

Ibid; and Nosworthy, Anatomy of Victory, 147–162. See also Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 35–46. Robert Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to the Third Reich (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012); and Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947 (Cambridge: Belknap, 2006), provide an introduction to the rise of Prussia. Christopher Duffy, The Army of Frederick the Great (Warwick: Helion, 2018), surveys the Prussian army of the mid-eighteenth century and its methods. “The Prussian military  … has become the model organization,” declares a War Department study from 1766; see Service Historique  – Armée de Terre, Vincennes, France, 1M 1793 28, Militaire prussien. Several other studies of similar language and conclusions are in the archives of the period.

xxiii

Introduction

After the Austrian Succession, reform proposals exploded in number and volume, likely catalyzed by the emergence of Prussia and the wider Enlightenment market of ideas. Prior to the 1720s, few writers produced works of military theory, with the market for military literature instead flooded with memoirs and campaign accounts, both spurious and genuine. Only after 1750 did works of military theory become both widely written and popular, an archetypal example of product and market in a mutually-beneficial relationship. Midcentury writers like Guillaume le Blond and Folard wrote lengthy technical treatises that expanded both the reading market and the knowledge of military practitioners. Maurice de Saxe’s posthumous Mes rêveries also proved popular, combining the genres of military memoir and theoretical work.25 Despite these proposals, no clear direction emerged, and doctrine reform splintered into numerous overlapping and particularist interests and factions. Some theorists counseled a wholesale adoption of Prussian methods, while others stoked patriotic sentiment by calling for their complete rejection. Most theorists fell in between these two extremes, even if their critics tarred them with belonging to a radical faction. Very generally, “Prussian” theorists favored tactics that used thin lines and emphasized firepower, while “French” theorists favored tactics that used deeper formations and emphasized shock. Proponents of the latter also generally downplayed the importance of artillery in battle and wanted to revive the use of pikes. Theorists of either party could be prescriptive or descriptive, although most fell into the former category at some point in their works. In addition, like the debates on the role of the nobility, many particularist interests and hybrid schools emerged, further confusing efforts at implementing change.26 In the midst of these disagreements, France undertook its first major army reforms in 1750s, between the mid-century wars. The War Department began to issue ordinances that would now be recognized as doctrine. Secretary of State for War Marc-Pierre de Voyer de Paulmy, 25 Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 80–105. See Guillaume le Blond, The Elements of Fortification (Philadelphia: Wayne, 1801); and A Treatise of the Attack of Fortified Places (London: Cave, 1948); and Maurice de Saxe, Mes rêveries (Amsterdam: Arkstée et Merkus, 1751). See also Robert Darnton, The Business of the Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the “Encyclopédie” (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979); Azar Gat, A History of Military Thought: from the Enlightenment to the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Pichichero, The Military Enlightenment, 1–24 and 192–229; and Starkey, War in the Age of Enlightenment, 1–32. 26 Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 80–105. See also Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 1–72.

comte d’Argenson, promulgated a series of regulations in 1754 that ordained deployment on three ranks and implemented a single cadenced step across the entire army. These reforms were vital in creating institutional doctrine for the French army. They established the precedent that the Ministry of War, not individual colonels, was charged with doctrine, centralizing it, at least in theory. The cadenced step was also a critical addition, as it enabled formations to close more tightly internally and in relation to other formations in battle order. An army in which the soldiers all marched at the same pace was able to perform much more complicated and precise maneuvers than one without, and every reform after 1754 rested on that simple but vital change.27 This was the army and reform to which Guibert would dedicate his life and career. The foundation of systematic doctrine was laid in the 1750s, particularly with the introduction of the cadenced step. He came of age during this period and quickly joined the debates, writing it for the first time in his early twenties and continuing until his death. His contributions built on the preceding changes and would become the most important of any during the period. Guibert was born in the city of Montauban in southern France in 1743.28 Montauban was a smaller and relatively new provincial town north of Toulouse, famous for its staunch Protestantism during the Wars of Religion that spanned the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Despite having a population of only a few tens of 27

Ibid. See also Bacquet, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 73–111, which argues that the Choiseul reforms were the pivotal changes of the century, and Latreille, L’œuvre militaire de la révolution, 1–25, who generally agrees with Bacquet on their importance. 28 Jonathan Abel, Guibert: Father of Napoleon’s Grande Armée (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), is the only English-language biography of Guibert. Ethel Groffier, Le stratège des lumières: le comte de Guibert (1743–1790) (Paris: Editions Champion, 2005); and Matti Lauerma, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte de Guibert (1743–1790) (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1989), are the major French-language sources for his life. As with Quimby and Colin, the Anglophone work will be cited in lieu of the Francophone. Some controversy exists over Guibert’s name, which was not uncommon for the period, especially among the provincial nobility. Baptismal certificates exist for “Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte,” “François-Appolini,” and “François-Appoline.” Scholars have attempted to untangle the reason for this, including proposing a sibling who died in infancy or a name change on the part of the parents, but no resolution is likely to be found. As a result, his books can be found published under several names, including the above, and combinations of them. See Abel, Guibert, 34–35. See also Raymond Granier, “Où est né le Maréchal Guibert?” in Actes du congrès des sociétés savantes. Section d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 77 (Paris, 1952), 29–33.

xxiv thousands, it hosted an abbey, an episcopal see as a suffragan of the Archbishop of Toulouse, a customs court (cour des aides), and a provincial capital (généralité).29 If Montauban were a modern American state, it would perhaps be Missouri or Kansas: not the oldest province but not the newest, lightly populated, and site of previous national trauma. Guibert’s family had been in the city for several generations, probably having been ennobled in the previous century. His grandfather Jean, born in 1666, purchased the titles of King’s Councilor (consellier du Roi) and Guardian of the Seals (garde des sceaux) in 1707 and married into an established family in the local nobility. The marriage included the estate of Fonneuve north of town, which would be the new family home.30 Jean probably belonged to the anoblis, a diffuse group of people on the border between the bourgeoisie and the lower nobility. French society did not automatically accept noble status simply because a person held a title, estate, or noble patent. Instead, those who had been ennobled, especially those who had purchased ennobling offices or patents, were expected to slowly transition into the nobility over two or three generations; they would probably not be accepted as noble per se, but their children or grandchildren might be. Anoblis status usually indicated both wealth and social climbing. Guibert’s family seems to fit this pattern, as both he and his father’s nobility appeared not to have been questioned. Interestingly, Guibert seems to have been the first in his family to have been regularly called “count” (comte), likely owing to his being awarded the Cross of Saint-Louis in 1770.31 Regardless of the propriety of its nobility, Guibert’s family was still near the bottom of the noble classes, being of both recent extraction and hailing from the provinces. Many of Guibert’s contemporaries in the provincial nobility were poor, and some lived lives nearly indistinguishable from peasants. Indeed, Guibert would be plagued by money problems for much of his adult life, even after marrying into wealth.32 In addition, the provincial nobility rarely attended court, generally staying in their bailiwicks. However, regardless of its financial state, the provincial nobility was the bedrock of the Second Estate, and it increasingly represented a kind of idealized, 29 Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt, “Montauban,” in Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts, et des métiers (Paris: 1751–1772), X:681. 30 Abel, Guibert, 34–35. 31 Ibid. The Cross of Saint-Louis was designed exactly for people like Guibert, to elevate them from the anoblis into a secure position in the nobility. 32 Abel, Guibert, 77, 93–94.

Abel

pastoral past to many in the noble classes; its plight was a major argument in the many debates over the role of the nobility in French society.33 Guibert’s father, Charles-Benoît Guibert, was born in 1715 and spent his life in the military. While the term is anachronistic, Charles-Benoît can best be described as having been a staff officer for most of his career. He fought in the Polish and Austrian Succession Wars, advancing from lieutenant in 1732 to lieutenant-colonel by 1747, largely in planning roles. He was noted for bravery in several battles, including at Rocoux while serving under Maurice de Saxe. He also married Suzanne-Thérèse de Rivail in 1742, who gave him both a 40,000 livre dowry and five children. In the interwar years, he returned to civilian life, dedicating himself to raising his only son to follow him into the military. He sent Guibert to school for basic education and training in military-focused subjects like mathematics. Charles-Benoît Guibert also took it upon himself to tutor his son in military affairs. When the Seven Years War broke out in 1756, he resumed his rank and was present at the crushing French defeat at the Rossbach, becoming one of the many thousands of French soldiers and officers taken prisoner; he spent around eighteen months in Prussia before being released in 1759. After his release, he was promoted chef d’état-major and worked under a variety of French commanders throughout the war.34 Like his father, Guibert went to war at the traditional age of thirteen as a junior officer. That year coincided with the outbreak of the Seven Years War, which would be his inauguration to military affairs. Guibert alternated between continuing his education and serving as his father’s aide-de-camp. He managed to avoid capture after Rossbach for reasons that remain obscure; either he was not with the army at the time, or he remained with either the baggage or with the unengaged portion of the army under Claude-Louis, comte de Saint-Germain. As he aged, Guibert was given more responsibility, chiefly as a runner of messages, which was typical of teenage junior officers. He fought in the campaigns against Ferdinand in western Germany under Victor-François, duc de Broglie. This brought him his first crowning martial glory: at the Battle of Vellinghausen in 1761, he altered an order that proved out of date given the situation he saw unfolding, which won him praise for his coup-d’œil and initiative.35

33 See Bien, Caste, Class, and Profession in Old Regime France; Blaufarb, The French Army, 12–45; and Doyle, Venality. 34 Abel, Guibert, 35–37. See also 42 and especially 238–239. 35 Abel, Guibert, 37–38.

Introduction

The end of the Seven Years War brought changes for both Guiberts. Charles-Benoît entered the War Ministry, continuing his career as a planner and army bureaucrat. Guibert followed his father, assisting him formally in his work and informally finishing his education. Together, they helped to shape the next period of reforms that took place throughout the 1760s. Etienne-François, duc de Choiseul, was the author of these reforms. Choiseul became the first official First Minister in nearly two decades, uniting a portfolio that included the Marine and the War Departments. He had near-carte blanche to implement reforms in the wake of the disastrous war, especially in the army. Throughout the 1760s, he issued a flurry of ordinances that curtailed pensions, eliminated most venality, regularized the size of most army units, and ensure that non-commissioned officers and officers had the requisite knowledge and skills to command.36 These reforms angered many, and Choiseul was dismissed in 1770 following a backlash against them, along with other issues with his ministry.37 Charles-Benoît Guibert worked alongside Choiseul, becoming one of his many clients as well as attaching himself to the powerful Broglie family. After Choiseul’s fall, Charles-Benoît moved to become governor of the Invalides, which managed both invalid veterans and regiments assigned to garrison duties along the kingdom’s frontiers. He appears not to have participated in the Republic of Letters or French public society for the most part; given that he once castigated his son for his outsized public persona, the likelihood is that he was content

36

37

The Choiseul regulations dictated that most infantry battalions be composed of eight fusilier companies and one grenadier company; Broglie’s push for the inclusion of a chasseur company failed. Choiseul also decreed the elimination of the last vestiges of venality within companies, with the state’s assuming the responsibility for manning, equipment, payment, and oversight from the individual captains. See ibid, 39–45; and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 90–105. See also Bacquet, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 73–111; Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 73–134; and Latreille, L’œuvre militaire de la révolution, 1–25. Choiseul’s fall was the result of a confluence of factors, not the least of which was the rise of Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry, Louis XV’s final official mistress. Barry formed a faction opposed to Choiseul and sought to unseat him and replace him with her own minister, imitating her predecessor Pompadour. In addition, religious issues revolving around the Jesuit order and foreign affairs relating to a conflict Choiseul steered France towards that pitted Spain against Great Britain over control of the Malvinas Islands in the South Atlantic contributed to his downfall. See Abel, Guibert, 45–46; and Latreille, L’œuvre militaire de la révolution, 1–25.

xxv serving as a military bureaucrat, allowing his son to carry the family honor in the public sphere.38 Guibert thus came of age in a great public debate over the future of the French army and its doctrine, which gained a great deal of urgency after France’s defeat in the Seven Years War. He had witnessed the inefficacy of the French army himself, and he was eager to join the debate. He continued to work for his father, including collaborating on several War Department publications, culminating in the Instructions for Light Troops, issued in 1769. The gist of these documents is to eschew the large march columns of contemporary practice and instead break movement and maneuver formations into small closed columns that would move independently of each other into position from march to battle order. These became known as “Guibert columns” and were the single most important technical reform post-1760. They would become the basis for Guibert’s future writings, including in the General Essay on Tactics.39 While his work in the War Ministry was an invaluable experience, Guibert emerged from his father’s shadow during the Corsican campaign. In 1768, France purchased the island from the ailing Genoese Republic, hoping to expand its control over Levantine and Black Sea trade. France inherited a simmering rebellion led by Pasquale Paoli, who had established a de facto independent state. Choiseul determined to pacify the island, but the first efforts were defeated by Corsican guerillas. Guibert joined the follow-up expedition under the command of family friend Noël-Jourda, comte de Vaux. In bloody fighting, the French suppressed the rebellion and chased Paoli from the island.40 The Corsican rebels would remain a favorite example of Guibert’s, representing individual freedom fighters motivated by love of their homeland.41 Corsica afforded Guibert the time to think, and to write. He had likely drafted parts of the General Essay on Tactics before the campaign, perhaps with his father’s assistance. However, the period after the fighting allowed him time to complete and edit the manuscript, as clues within it indicate.42 He assumed command of the Corsican Legion, an irregular unit raised on the island destined to become a line regiment within a few years. This gave him practical experience of designing a unit from beginning to end, an invaluable lesson for the General Essay on Tactics. 38 Abel, Guibert, 77 and 152–153. 39 Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, adopts this argument as its thesis, and many works, including Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, follow it. 40 Abel, Guibert, 46–49. 41 See 33n3 and 4, 92n8. 42 See ibid., and 46n27.

xxvi However, as he notes throughout, it was intended only as a précis of a much larger work, a military history of France, which he began but never completed.43 Lacking the longer work, the General Essay on Tactics is thus Guibert’s first and most significant entry into the canon of French military reforms. It was unlike almost every other work in the Military Enlightenment. Its major theme is a call for reform of current doctrine, as almost every treatise of the period did. However, rather than proposing his own rigid system, Guibert instead epitomized the best elements of the various schools, combining them into a dynamic doctrine that did not need to be strictly implemented or followed. The work has two major sections: elementary tactics and grand tactics. These are usually broken into separate volumes, and each generally corresponds to the tactical and operational levels of war. At the tactical level, the crux of his reform is the adoption of Guibert columns, which Guibert elaborates and expands on. His system of “march-maneuvers” illustrate, in great detail, how such nimble formations could be used in exercises and battles. He also desires smaller units with fewer cavalry, light troops, and artillery and the training of infantry in both skirmishing and line combat. He requires that his officers be educated and trained in the handling of their forces as well as across branches and specialties. The result at the tactical level would be highly maneuverable forces that could adapt to circumstance without upsetting their deployment or combat ability.44 Tactical reforms lead directly to his second major theme, laying the foundations for operational-level warfare. Few theorists of the period engaged with levels above tactics. They concerned themselves instead with revising or perfecting tactical systems, making the tactical level of war an end unto itself or the sole key to victory. Guibert viewed war more holistically than most of his contemporaries. He had been part of the first experiment with the division system in Broglie’s army during the Seven Years War and was undoubtedly influenced by it.45 He recognized the need to transcend mere tactical systems, 43 See 32–38. 44 Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 119–134. 45 In 1760, Broglie organized the major French field army into operational divisions, which remained until his dismissal in late 1762. While these formations were not permanent, they undoubtedly inspired Guibert, and the evolution of operational-level organizations and warfare. See Jonathan Abel, “An Aspect of the Military Experience in the Age of Reason: The Evolution of the Combined-Arms Division in Old-Regime France,” in Essays in Honor of Christopher Duffy (working title), ed. Alex Burns; and Steven T. Ross, “The Development of the Combat Division in Eighteenth-Century French Armies,” French Historical Studies 4, no. 1 (1965): 84–94.

Abel

realizing that an army that could fight well at lower levels was of little use if it were still chained to systems that required it to ponderously march into battle and spend hours arraying itself to fight. Those systems would have to be revised, allowing units to maneuver independently of each other before and into the battle, not just in the battle itself, as Broglie had done in his campaigns. This led to Guibert’s exploration of the beginnings of operational-level warfare in the second volume of the General Essay on Tactics, on “grand tactics.” As Claus Telp notes, Guibert “call[s] for the tactical positioning of divisions on the battlefield to be the consequence of operational design.”46 This manifests itself in Guibert’s refusal to accept the bifurcation between march and battle orders that contemporary tactics required as most of his contemporaries did. Instead, he unites march and battle order, using his all-purpose Guibert column for both. This promised to dispense with the laborious process of transitioning from march to battle order, returning speed and decision to the battlefield and making possible operational-level warfare in the modern sense.47 An army following Guibert’s recommendation could divide itself into sub-units to make its march easier and give itself greater flexibility of organization and tactics when confronted with an enemy or restrictive terrain.48 Guibert also realizes that an army must have an officer corps suited to handling warfare above the tactical level. As such, he advocates for yearly training camps, where large formations would assemble to train men in large-scale maneuvers and officers in the handling of armies. He also provides guidance on how to maneuver such formations, laying the foundation of some of the earliest elements of operational-level warfare.49 In addition, Guibert addresses each of the combat arms throughout the General Essay on Tactics, devoting several chapters to infantry, cavalry, light forces, and artillery. This was relatively rare for the period, where works tended to specialize in one combat arm, usually the infantry. He also provides guidance for command 46 Claus Telp, The Evolution of Operational Art, 1740–1813: From Frederick the Great to Napoleon (New York: Frank Cass, 2005), 22–23. 47 See 183–184. 48 Bourcet, Principes de la guerre de montagne, elaborates on how an army might conduct such operational-level warfare. It was not published until late in the nineteenth century, but it was probably circulated among the officer corps of Guibert’s day, and his writing bears the influence of Bourcet’s. See 28n66 and 173n3. 49 See Jonathan Abel, “The Prophet Guibert,” in Napoleon and the Operational Art of War: Essays in Honor of Donald Horward, ed. Michael Leggiere (Leiden: Brill, 2021): 8–38. See also Telp, The Evolution of Operational Art, 1740–1813, 4–29.

Introduction

and control and for logistics, particularly in the section on grand tactics. Finally, he devotes a portion of each volume to educating the officer and forming his coup d’œil. Guibert did not invent modern operational-level warfare, as is occasionally posited. He still envisioned a unitary army fighting together in battle, even if it could march divided.50 Instead, he helped to lay the foundation for the later development of operational warfare. His approach is bottom-up, grounded in tactical reforms that would free commanders to make use of their own coup d’œil at the operational level, which differs from modern approaches that tend to view operational warfare as proceeding from strategy and are thus top-down. Finally, the Preliminary Discourse opens the work. Instead of analyzing military affairs, Guibert instead opts to provide a tableau of contemporary politics and society, moving through Europe and stopping briefly in each significant state. In identifying the deep links between politics, society, and warfare, he anticipated the arguments of Carl von Clausewitz by nearly seventy years. Guibert’s tone in this section is roundly condemnatory: no state measures up to Classical ideals, and no state has the potential to evolve into such a paragon. Perhaps because of this, the Preliminary Discourse received the most attention from his contemporaries and from later historians. David Bell and Beatrice Heuser have both commented on its seeming call for “total war” by enfranchising a state’s citizens in its war efforts.51 Ultimately, even though Guibert viewed himself as much a political commentator as a military theorist, the Preliminary Discourse does not deter him from his project, which is to provide the best possible doctrine for France, given its situation. The doctrine proposed in the General Essay on Tactics, while still containing prescriptive elements, rose above similar works due to its clarity, refusal to prescribe a specific tactical system, and its exploration of the higher 50 R.R. Palmer, “Frederick the Great, Guibert, Bülow: From Dynastic to National War,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 91–122, makes this point forcefully. 51 David Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (New York: Mariner Books, 2008), 79–82; and Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), especially 113–170; and “Guibert: Prophet of Total War?” War in an Age of Revolution, ed. Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 49–67. Abel, Guibert, especially 190–191, following Palmer, “Frederick the Great, Guibert, Bülow,” argues against this line of thought, that the ideas in the Preliminary Discourse must be separated from Guibert’s proposed reforms, particularly in light of his later writings.

xxvii levels of war. In the Guibert column, he had finally found the solution that had vexed the French army throughout the century, providing a simple method for moving forces in closed columns from march to battle order, line to column, and to meet whatever circumstance battle presented. Unlike his peers, he managed to do so without becoming a “maker of systems.” At a stroke, the General Essay on Tactics promised to eliminate the processional nature of contemporary practice and demonstrated how replace it with a superior system.52 Few books had the impact of the General Essay on Tactics, both immediately and over time. Within two years of its publication, it had spread across Europe and beyond, including a possibly apocryphal story that George Washington carried a copy in his personal baggage.53 In particular, the Preliminary Discourse, with its fiery condemnation of contemporary politics and societies, drew praise from readers. Its arguments fit seamlessly with the critiques of Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu; Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Voltaire; and many other philosophes who called for change in French politics and society.54 Readers seemed to have been attracted more to its passion and ideas than its prose per se; Guibert would be criticized throughout his life for the lesser quality of his writing. Regardless, it opened nearly every door he desired in Paris and throughout Europe, vaulting him from anonymous provincial noble to the highest ranks of popular society. The decade of the 1770s was thus a whirlwind for Guibert. The publication of his first work opened numerous doors for advancement, both professional and personal. He began to attend the leading salons in Paris, where the intellectual elite of Europe gathered to discuss politics, philosophy, and the arts. He began a relationship with leading salonnière Julie de Lespinasse, which provided his surviving correspondence and connected him to a network of leading philosophes. He became a voice for reform in the War Department, serving as a member of the Council of War that oversaw the reforms of the mid1770s. He wrote several dramatic works, one of which was produced for the queen. Finally, he participated in the great training camp that settled the tactical debate, which led to the publication of his second book, a Defense of the Modern System of War.55 52 Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 98–134. 53 Oliver Spaulding, “The Military Studies of George Washington,” in The American Historical Review 29, no. 4 (1924): 675–680, finds that the General Essay on Tactics “seems to have been one of the books obtained” by Washington’s aide. 54 See Roche, The Enlightenment in France, especially 449–640. 55 Abel, Guibert, 77–97.

xxviii By the early part of the decade, Guibert was attending the major salons in Paris. Salons were rooms opened for discussion and debate, usually on a specific day of the week. The three most important salons of the decade were those run by Marie Geoffrin, Lespinasse, and Suzanne Necker, and Guibert attended them all.56 He was said to have been charming, especially with women. His conversation won him the favor of the salonnières and most of the attendees. He also amazed with his eidetic memory; he was said to have been capable of understanding a book after simply glancing at it.57 He even achieved the ultimate imprimatur: being the subject of a satirical poem of Voltaire’s, called “La tactique.”58 The salons and the Republic of Letters allowed Guibert to form relationships with the leading members of the Enlightenment and Parisian society. He began a love affair with Lespinasse, which occupies most of their correspondence.59 He became friends with mathematician and Encyclopedist Jean la Rond d’Alembert, who lived with Lespinasse. He may have also carried on a romance with Germaine de Staël, the great writer of the period, who elegized him and noted among his friends “Voltaire, Buffon, Rousseau, Diderot, d’Alembert, and Thomas.”60 Guibert also made enemies in Parisian society. Jean-François de la Harpe, another renowned writer, became his inveterate critic and enemy, as did salonnière Marie-Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand, and those who attended her, especially Horace Walpole and Charles-Jean-François Hénault. American Gouvernor Morris said that Guibert “loves to hear himself talk [and] say a good deal to prove that he knows but little.”61 These relationships, positive and negative, indicate the august company Guibert kept. In the midst of this meteoric rise, Guibert was afforded an opportunity to travel across Europe and attend Prussian training camps in 1773. He leapt at the chance, spending 56 Literature on the salons is extensive. Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), provides an effective introduction. 57 Ibid., 58, 75; and Abel, Guibert, 77–97. 58 Abel, Guibert, 81. 59 See Julie de Lespinasse, The Love Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse to and from the Comte de Guibert, ed. Armand Villeneuve-Guibert, trans. E.H.F. Mills (London: Routledge, 1929). See also Abel, Guibert, 77–97. 60 Anna-Louise-Germaine de Staël-Holstein, “Eloge de M. de Guibert,” in Mémoires de Madame de Staël (Paris: Charpentier, 1843), 340. Staël was Necker’s daughter, allowing Guibert to maintain both social and political contacts throughout the later part of his life. See also Abel, Guibert, 81. 61 Ibid., and Gouverneur Morris, Diary and Letters, 2 Vols. (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1888), 254.

Abel

much of the year on the road. He traveled through the Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy, including visiting the Croatian borderland. He attempted to travel to Russia, but illness stymied the effort. Most importantly for him, he was able to meet his idol Friedrich II and attend the famed Potsdam exercises. The former awed him to speechlessness and produced some of Guibert’s most embarrassing prose.62 The latter confirmed one of the major themes of the General Essay on Tactics: his belief that Prussia’s doctrine was effective but flawed and could not simply be exported to France wholesale, as some of his contemporaries wished. He returned in the fall to legal troubles, as his friend Charles-François Dumouriez, of later Revolutionary infamy, had been arrested as part of a plot to overthrow the Polish-Lithuanian crown. Guibert may have been a member of the shadowy Secret du roi alongside Dumouriez, and his journey may have included espionage, but there is no proof of the allegation. Guibert avoided arrest and returned to Paris, and to his burgeoning public career.63 The next few years were the busiest of Guibert’s life. He began his relationship with Lespinasse in 1774. The following year, he married Alexandrine-Louis Boutinon des Hayes de Courcelles, a wealthy heiress from northern France. He also turned to the theatre, writing a play about the quixotic Charles III, duc de Bourbon, who abandoned France to fight for Emperor Charles V before being murdered by his troops during the 1527 Sack of Rome. Queen Marie Antoinette arranged for the production of the play, the Connêtable de Bourbon, in August and December 1775; both efforts were sharply criticized, even after re-writes between them.64 Most importantly for Guibert’s military career, the decade saw him enter into a position of great influence over French doctrine. In mid-1775, as Guibert struggled with the theatre, Secretary of State for War LouisNicolas-Victor de Félix d’Ollières, comte de Muy, died unexpectedly. He was replaced by Claude-Louis, comte de Saint-Germain, who applied for the position via a 62 The passage begins with “a sort of magic vapor seemed to me to envelop his person; it is, I believe, what one calls the halo of a saint and the glory around a great man,” and continues for several paragraphs. See Abel, Guibert, 87. See also JacquesAntoine-Hippolyte, comte de Guibert, Journal d’un voyage en Allemagne, 2 Vols. (Paris: Chez Greuttel et Würtz, 1803), I:217–220. 63 Abel, Guibert, 85–90. See also Charles-François du Périer Dumouriez, Life, 3 Vols. (London: Johnson, 1796), 1:170–189 and 308–433. 64 Abel, Guibert, 92–96. Guibert’s theatrical works are collected in Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de Guibert, Œuvres dramatiques (Paris: Persan, 1822).

Introduction

memorandum outlining his proposed reforms that was penned by Guibert. Saint-Germain rewarded Guibert by appointing him Secretary of the War Council, which the minister assembled to advise him on reform and perhaps to become a prototypical general staff.65 For the next eighteen months, Guibert and his fellow councilors, including artillerist Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval and fellow reformers Louis-François, baron Wimpffen-Bornebourg; and Louis-Pierre, comte de Jaucourt, worked to implement reform. These measures generally fell into three categories: finance, nobility, and tactics. The reforms of the 1750s and 1760s had laid the foundation for French army doctrine, but some were reversed, and the remaining measures did not settle any of the outstanding issues in the aforementioned areas. As a result, the Saint-Germain ministry issued almost onehundred ordinances in less than two years, a far higher rate than the typical ministry of the period, in an effort to address them.66 Foremost remained the financial crisis. Nearly all of the council’s documents, collated and mostly written by Guibert, present proposed reforms as cost-cutting measures. The ensemble of them is a deep concern with the state of the army’s finances, which reflected the army’s concern. In this vein, many proposals included reducing or even eliminating units of the Maison du roi, supposedly elite units that had not participated in a significant battle in decades but still employed many thousands of officers and men. Despite resistance, many of Saint-Germain’s edicts succeeded in shrinking several of its units, with the added goal of saving money in the process.67 Next came the tactical debates, which continued to rage throughout the army, fed by the huge increase in publication of works in the Military Enlightenment after 1750. Mesnil-Durand had rehabilitated the deep order, reducing Folard’s column it in size in response to criticism but still insisting on deploying large columns from the center. Others fell under the sway of the Prussian émigré Pirch, who developed a system based on the Prussian methods used during the Seven Years War. He created an elaborate geometry based on “points of view,” which 65 Abel, Guibert, 100–103. See also Latreille, L’œuvre militaire de la révolution, 66–134; and Claude-Louis, comte de Saint-Germain, Mémoires et commentaires, 2 Vols. (London: 1781), especially I:68–104. 66 Ibid., Bacquet, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 112–145; and Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 135–184. 67 Abel, Guibert, 98–117. The records of this work are held in the archives of the Service Historique  – Armée de Terre (SHAT), Vincennes, 1 M 1790–1794, which are known as the “Guibert Papers.” They are replete with efforts to economize throughout the reform process.

xxix required officers to draw imaginary lines between physical features on the battlefield and maneuver their units precisely on the grid squares created as a result. His system approached the tactical problems from the opposite direction, but it was no less complicated or processional than Folard’s and Mesnil-Durand’s columnar systems. However, like the proponents of the deep order, Pirch’s points of view gained a large and loyal following. Exercises held during the early 1770s won support for both systems, further confusing the issue. To bring clarity, the War Council issued a bevy of new regulations, including once again standardizing all unit sizes and command structures, incorporating light troops into line units, creating sixteen territorial divisions for manning, handing the artillery to Gribeauval.68 It also eliminated venality of colonelcies, assuming control over regiments as it had over companies in the prior decade. Most importantly for doctrine, the 1776 Regulations eschewed Guibert columns and instead drew heavily on Pirch and enshrined points of view in French doctrine. Finally, the council reformed punishment of soldiers, replacing corporal punishment, seen as anachronistic and cruel, with blows from the flat of an officer’s saber. With the exception of the tactical reforms, which he saw as still being too Prussian, Guibert played a significant role in most of these efforts, although he was not their leader, as a relatively junior member of the council. However, because of his role in the 1776 Regulations and the punishment decrees, he would be grouped with the “Prussian school,” much to the detriment of his later career and his proposed reforms.69 Like almost every reform of the late Old Regime, Saint-Germain’s died before they could be fully implemented. One major reason was the lack of funds; while Saint-Germain promised long-term savings, the officers 68 Throughout the century and mirroring larger disagreements, two factions disputed the proper system of artillery in the French armies. The reigning Vallière System was based on siege weaponry and equipped units with large, heavy guns. Gribeauval, the senior artillerist in the army, created his own system of smaller, lighter, and more mobile field guns to support a more mobile army. While most within the army favored the Gribeauval System, court politics meant that it could not be implemented until the Saint-Germain ministry. 69 Ibid., and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 199– 232. Bacquet, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 112–145; and Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 135–184, provide the best analysis of the details of each reform. See also Latreille, L’œuvre militaire de la révolution, 66–134. Venality continued to be an issue until the Revolution, as proprietors might refuse to implement doctrine within their units regardless of its official promulgation. See Blaufarb, The French Army, 12–45; and Smith, The Culture of Merit.

xxx whose units had been contracted would have to be paid off, requiring a large amount of money up-front, which the state simply did not have. Another was resistance from various groups, whether opposed to the cuts, disagreeing with the tactics proposed, or simply enemies of Saint-Germain and his patrons at court. The result was his dismissal in 1777 and Guibert’s departure from the Council of War.70 Despite the failure of the Saint-Germain reforms, they set the stage for the future of the French army in two important ways. The first unfolded over the next two years and settled the tactical debate, and the second provided the template for future War Ministers, culminating in the Regulations of 1791.71 At the same time, France would fight the last war of the Old Regime, opening the coffers to fund reforms and pushing the state into near-bankruptcy. Part of the fall of the Saint-Germain ministry was the burgeoning American Independence War, in which France took an increasing interest after mid-1777. The following year, the kingdom formally entered the war and began to fully fund the military again. While the majority of the fighting in the war would be on the side of the Marine, the army was significantly involved as well. In particular, Marshal Broglie was ordered to assemble an army of 40,000 on the Channel coast for an invasion of England.72 Broglie used the opportunity to test the various tactical systems, including inviting Guibert and his rival, Mesnil-Durand, to the camp at Vaussieux. Broglie favored the latter’s deep order, particularly in contrast to the new Regulations based on Pirch’s system. As the camp began maneuvers with large formations, he tested both the 70 Ibid. 71 Abel, Guibert, 114–117; and Latreille, L’œuvre militaire de la révolution, 132–134. 72 Jonathan Dull, A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); and The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), provide introductions to the French involvement in the conflict. Orville Murphy, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes: French Diplomacy in the Age of Revolution, 1719–1787 (New York: State University of New York Press, 1982), is a biography of the central figure in French politics during the war and the period, and Louis XVI and the comte de Vergennes: Correspondence, 1774–1787 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1998), provides a collection of his correspondence with Louis XVI. See also Julia Osman, Citizen Soldiers and the Key to the Bastille: War, Culture, and Society, 1750–1850 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 80–107; and “Ancient Warriors on Modern Soil: French Military Reform and American Military Images in 18th Century France,” in French History 22 (2008): 175–196; and Samuel Scott, From Yorktown to Valmy: The Transformation of the French Army in an Age of Revolution (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2003).

Abel

Regulations and Mesnil-Durand’s large columns deployed on the center, first in a vacuum, then against opposition. Broglie desired that Mesnil-Durand’s system be better than the Regulations both for reasons of patriotism and because he genuinely believed that the column was the solution to the problem of deployment and maneuvering. However, he grew increasingly frustrated as his army could not maneuver as effectively as the armies set against him commanded by Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, which used a system more like the doctrine adopted in the 1760s. In repeated exercises, Rochambeau used his more maneuverable forces to defeat Broglie’s central columns.73 To observers, Vaussieux settled the most significant tactical debate since the publication of Folard’s first book. The large column deployed on the center simply did not function in circumstances that resembled war. While Mesnil-Durand would continue to write and defend his system, the deep order effectively ceased to exist after 1778. However, the final word on tactics was yet to be written, as many officers expressed frustration with the formalism and complicated nature of the 1776 Regulations.74 The War Department had pushed doctrine away from the deep order but too far in the other direction; a middle ground still waited to be discovered. The decade after Vaussieux was largely a disappointment to Guibert. He wrote his second book, the Defense of the Modern System of War, detailing the camp and its outcomes and, as Julia Osman has argued, distancing himself from the more incendiary political and social stances in the General Essay on Tactics.75 He would not fight in America, as he had wished, and ended up spending the war in France working for his father as inspector of the kingdom’s garrison units. Lespinasse also died during the period, which seemed to occasion a reduction in his busy social schedule. Nevertheless, he won election to the 73 Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 233–248, provides the best overview of the exercises. The camp’s official records are in SHAT 1 M 1812, including Broglie’s reports. See also Abel, Guibert, 125–132; and Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 213–245, which argues that Vaussieux convinced Broglie of the utility of Guibert columns. 74 Ibid. 75 Julia Osman, “Guibert vs. Guibert: Competing Notions in the Essay général de tactique and the Défense du système de guerre moderne,” in Journal of Military History 83, no. 1 (2019): 43–66. Osman contends that this marks the latter work as the more important of the two, despite the attention the former received, and receives. See also Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de Guibert, Défense du système de guerre moderne, ou réfutation complète du système de M[esnil-]D[urand], in Œuvres militaires, Vols. 3–4.

xxxi

Introduction

Académie française in 1785, which gave him great joy. He also attended Necker’s salon, where he met her daughter Germaine, as mentioned. He continued to write, travel, and spend time on his marital estate in Courcelles.76 This situation reversed itself on the eve of the Revolution, returning Guibert to power with virtual carte blanche to reform the army in 1787. Due to a series of events that became entangled with the coming Revolution, an inexperienced Secretary of State for War took office that year.77 Guibert again ended up on the War Council, but this time as its driving force. The subsequent period would lay the final pieces of foundation for the 1791 Regulations to follow. The two most significant changes that took place under Guibert were reform of the infantry regulations and the creation of true divisions. The former occurred in stages, including provisional regulations issued in 1788. These were never implemented, but they contained the germ of Guibert’s ideas, dating back to his work with his father in the 1760s. They abandoned much of the formalism of the 1776 Regulations in favor of smaller, dynamic units that resembled Guibert columns. In addition, the War Council of Guibert was the first to address the operational level of war in French history. In early 1788, the War Council issued a decree that established twenty-one divisions. However, unlike the fourteen territorial divisions that remained from the 1770s, these units had permanent commanders, 76 Abel, Guibert, 132–155. 77 This period has become known as the “Prerevolution” and is now seen as part of the Revolution proper, largely due to Jean Egret, The French Pre-Revolution 1787–1789, trans. Wesley Camp (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); John Hardman, Overture to Revolution: The 1787 Assembly of Notables and the Crisis of France’s Old Regime (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), further details the events of the year and their significance. The failure of the state to cope with the many crises of the period and a resurgent nobility maneuvered the weak Louis XVI into calling an Assembly of Notables in early 1787. This would be a collection of various ministers, high nobles, and clerics who would take control of the state and ideally place it on the proper path to reform. Like many of the events of the Revolution, several factions hoped to leverage the Assembly to further their own agendas and power, foremost the conservative nobility. Vergennes’ death in February robbed Louis of his first minister and the only man able to exert power over the state, leading to an inauspicious opening for the Assembly. It quickly became intransigent, led by Bishop Etienne-Charles de Loménie de Brienne, who refused to cooperate with the king’s economic policies. By May, Louis folded and made Brienne de facto first minister; Brienne saw his brother, the inexperienced Louis-Marie-Athanase de Loménie, comte de Brienne, named Secretary of State for War that September. See also John Hardman, French Politics 1774–1789: From the Accession of Louis XVI to the Fall of the Bastille (New York: Longman, 1995); and Swann and Félix, The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy.

staffs, inspectors, and units attached to them, and almost all of them were combined-arms. They were the first true combined-arms combat divisions in French history, albeit never used in battle.78 Guibert’s work on the War Council laid the foundation for the French army of the future, but he would not live to see it. As the Revolution approached, the War Council dissolved in 1789, leaving Guibert at loose ends. Being a man of the Enlightenment, he was eager to join the Revolution, and he attempted to stand for election to the Estates-General in Berry, where his estate was located. However, he was denied access to the race by locals, who were angered both by his reform efforts and by his status as a relative newcomer to the area. Stymied, he turned to writing, producing several documents in the last year of his life proposing changes in the government, society, and the military. Early the following year, he died of an illness in Paris, supposedly saying “I will be known; I will have justice!” as his dying words.79 It would be difficult to predict how Guibert would have weathered the storm of the Revolution had he survived. His early work could easily have pushed him into the more radical camp, perhaps even as a Jacobin. However, he had supported the Ségur Decree and efforts to retain noble dominance over the military, which may have drawn him to the conservative groups on the right. In all likelihood, he would not have emigrated with ultramontanes like Charles-Philippe, comte d’Artois, the future Charles X, but also would not have become a leftist. He might have remained as a functionary within the Ministry of War like Lazare Carnot, or he may have leveraged a command like his old friend Dumouriez. Ultimately, his outspoken and contentious nature would have led him to speak out, which would likely have resulted in his running afoul of the Reign of Terror in 1793 or 1794.80 Regardless, his early death unfortunately deprived posterity of a meeting with 78

Abel, “An Aspect of the Military Experience in the Age of Reason: The Evolution of the Combined-Arms Division in Old-Regime France;” Guibert, 159–166; and “The Prophet Guibert,” 24–26; Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 269–290; and Telp, The Evolution of Operational Art, 4–29. See also Bacquet, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 149–165; Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 146–176; and Latreille, L’oeuvre militaire de la révolution, 236–288. 79 Abel, Guibert, 167–174. 80 French Revolutionary historiography is as voluminous as it is contentious. William Doyle, The Origins of the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); and The Oxford History of the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); and François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), provide an overview of the period and analyses of it.

xxxii

Abel

Napoleon, who authorized the publication of Guibert’s work in 1803 by his widow. Guibert’s influence proved immensely important over the next several decades. The foundations that he laid, first in his writing and then in his work in the Ministry of War, were incorporated into the official Regulations of 1791. These were the French army’s doctrine until the 1830s, including the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon. They closely resembled the philosophy of the General Essay on Tactics: small, nimble units using whatever formations suited circumstance and commanded by skilled and dynamic leaders.81 This doctrine was the product of a century of change, reform, and debate. The adoption of the fusil with socket bayonet around 1700 regularized infantry technology, allowing military theorists and practitioners to largely focus on doctrine for the remainder of the period. They faced the challenge of crafting it to account for the changes in tactics, particularly the problem of open formations and the length of time required to maneuver and use them in battle. Different schools and solutions emerged, which produced a bevy of prescriptive systems promising to solve all problems. However, these “makers of systems” failed to grasp the proper role of doctrine. Only after the Napoleonic Wars did François Roguet, a veteran of the conflicts, best encapsulate it in modern warfare. He argued that “[doctrine is] perhaps only the grammar of those who must then make combinations dictated to them by the terrain and the enemy, but it is only in the reality of the action, under the sudden and fecund inspirations of the battlefield, and with the troops that one has in hand, that such applications

seem possible.”82 The “makers of systems” wanted to dictate both the grammar and the usage of doctrine. Guibert, virtually alone among his peers in the Military Enlightenment, understood this. He did not craft a prescriptive system and insist that his readers follow it rigidly. Nor did he simply philosophize about war and its meaning without producing any useful doctrine. Instead, he created doctrine and insisted that commanders use it as a foundation rather than a rigid system, especially on the nascent operational level. He placed much importance in the formation of coup d’œil, the officer’s instinct and adaptability to circumstance. Guibert intended his work, and doctrine in general, to be the beginning of military art and science, not their end. In doing so, he illustrated the bankruptcy of highly prescriptive doctrines, especially at higher levels of war. The General Essay on Tactics is thus a bridge between the Old Regime and modern warfare. It epitomizes most of the best elements of warfare in the Old Regime and the Military Enlightenment. It provided the basis of French practice during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Guibert’s military thought was at least a generation ahead of time, particularly on the operational level of war. As a result, he has been described as the prophet of the mass armies of the Revolution, of Napoleon and his Grande Armée, and of modern warfare in general.83 The General Essay on Tactics made possible the work of future writers like Antoine-Henri, baron Jomini, and Clausewitz, who drew their inspiration from those conflicts and, consequently, from Guibert. It is the work that links the era of Louis XIV, Condé and Turenne, and Maurice de Saxe to that of Napoleon, and beyond.

81 Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 300–344; Paddy Griffith, The Art of War of Revolutionary France, 1789– 1802 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1998); and Jordan Hayworth, “The French Way of War” in Napoleon and the Operational Art of War, 40–87. See also Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 246–276.

82 François Roguet, “Etude sur l’ordre perpendiculaire,” Le spectateur militaire XVIII (Paris: Noirot and Anselin, 1834), 523. 83 See Colin, L’education militaire du Napoléon (Paris: Chapelot, 1901); Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy; Lucien Poirier, Les voix de la stratégie (Paris: Fayard, 1985); and Palmer, “Frederick the Great, Guibert, Bülow: From Dynastic to National War.”

book 1 Elementary Tactics

∵

To My Patrie To dedicate my work to my patrie is to consecrate it altogether to the king who is its father, to the ministers who are its administrators, to all the orders of the state that are its members, [and] to all the French who are its children. Eh! may we one day render to this holy name of patrie all of its significance and energy [and] make the cry of the nation the rallying of all that composes the state! May both the master and the subjects, the grands and the little [people], honor themselves with the title of citizens, uniting, supporting, and loving themselves by it! This confederation of all hearts and all strengths will render France as prosperous as I desire it to be. I undertake to trace the political and military tableau of Europe. I will attach myself most particularly to the examination of the states that interest my nation; I will then stop on my own; I will consider the double point of view of its constitution, its means, its genius, [and] the situation of its military, which will be my principal subject. I will dare to speak of its administration [and] reveal its abuses in search of remedies; finally, [I will] raise the edifice of a constitution, both political and military; of a national discipline; [and] of a complete tactic[al doctrine]; for this, I will make use of all the materials that exist, searching through the debris of all the centuries and in the current knowledge of all peoples. The truth will guide my pen. Without truth, what are men? It is to the moral universe what the sun is to the physical universe. It fertilizes it and illuminates it. Without it, genius only throws an uncertain and deceptive flame.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_002

Without it, kings, ministers, [and] writers are only illustriously blind. I will devote my work to it. I will speak with the liberty that it inspires, and, if I am sometimes forced to impose silence on it, at least I protest to say nothing voluntarily that would wound it. Far from us this prejudice that accuses philosophy of extinguishing patriotism. It ennobles it. It prevents it from degenerating into pride. Enlightened by it, the citizen attaches himself to the nation without fanaticism, and he has no hate or contempt for other peoples. He desires the prosperity of his country, and he would groan to see it elevated on the slavery and misfortune of his neighboring countries. He cherishes all men as his equals, and if he carries to his compatriots a sentiment of predilection, it is that which one brother has for his brothers. Love of la patrie: that is what you make my heart sense! I can thus be useful to my fellow citizens and not displeasing to foreigners. I can write for France and be read in the rest of Europe. I am not frightened by the immensity of my project, my age, [or] the feebleness of my talents. Thus Christopher Columbus, departing to discover a new world, did not at all rage upon seeing the ocean and the frail vessel that must carry him. I have his hardiness, although perhaps not his success. But if I should lose myself, if I sometimes embrace the chimera of the impossible best, pity me and pardon me. The delirium of a citizen who dreams of the joy of his patrie has a respectable thing.

Preliminary Discourse 1

First Part

Tableau of Current Politics; Their Parallel with Those of the Ancients; Their Vices; [and] Obstacles That They Bring to the Prosperity and to the Grandeur of Peoples If one hears by “politics” the art of negotiating, or rather of intriguing, that of secretly fomenting some revolution; of reading or of breaking, in the obscurity of cabinets, some treaties of alliance, of peace, of marriage, or of commerce; we are, in this regard, doubtlessly superior to the ancients; we bring more finesse and more esprit to it than they did. But, if politics is the vast and sublime science of ruling a state, internally and externally; of directing particularist interests towards the general interest; [and] of rendering the people prosperous and of attaching them to their government, then let us agree that this is totally unknown to our modern administrations; that our Richelieu, our Colbert, our Ossat, our Estrades, cannot compare to Lycurgus, to Pericles, [or] to Numa, to the great statesmen of Greece and Rome.1 Let us agree that the Roman Senate, 1.1

1 [Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, was First Minister under Louis XIII, from 1624 to 1642. He wielded a great deal of power in the name of the king, guiding France out of the destruction of the Wars of Religion in the late sixteenth century and into the Thirty Years War. Richelieu was highly regarded as a man of state during the eighteenth century, as Guibert indicates, and is the prototype of the statesman of the Grand Siècle as well as the origin of the “grey eminence.” Later depictions, particularly in literature, have been more negative, portraying Richelieu as a stock bête-noir character who usurps royal power; this image appears most prominently in the works of Alexandre Dumas like The Three Musketeers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Jean-Baptiste Colbert was First Minister under Louis XIV, from 1661 to 1683. Like Richelieu, he was a towering figure and statesman during his career, transitioning much of the French economy from a medieval state to an early-modern model, expanding the French empire, expanding the French navy, and founding the Académie des sciences. He was a long-time rival to his fellow Councilor of State François-Michel le Tellier, marquis de Louvois, whom Guibert will reference frequently. Arnaud Cardinal d’Ossat was a French cleric who conducted diplomacy between the Papacy and the court of Henri IV in the late sixteenth century. He helped to navigate the treacherous period at the end of the French Wars of Religion and settle France’s role in international affairs, particularly by parrying the influence of the Spanish and Habsburgs in the Vatican. He was also a patron of letters, including helping to spread humanism to France. Godefroi, comte d’Estrades, was a military commander and diplomat for much of the seventeenth century. Serving both Louis XIII and Louis XIV, he commanded armies in the Thirty Years War, the Franco-Spanish War, and the Dutch War and was named marshal

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_003

in the time of its splendor, reminds us of the fabled Atlas who supported the burden of the world, while our governments are no more than frail and complicated machines that fortune and circumstances give irregular movements, uncertain and transitory like themselves.2 in 1675. His diplomatic efforts secured several agreements with the powers of the Low Countries, especially the Dutch. Lycurgus was the semi-mythical lawgiver of the Spartan state. He is supposed to have lived around 750 BCE and created the foundation for the mixed constitution of Sparta, dividing it into monarchic, legislative, and executive branches. Polybius later lauded this constitution as the inspiration for the Roman Republic, which Guibert and others if his time saw as an ideal form of government; see Polybius, Histories, VI. Pericles was a leading Athenian politician during the mid-fifth century BCE. He led Athenian troops in the early campaigns of the Peloponnesian War, as told by Thucydides. Pericles delivered a renowned funeral oration that is still considered to be a superb distillation of democratic values and sacrifice to the state; see The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, Robert Strassler, ed., (New York: Free Press, 2008), 87–156. Numa Pompilius was the probably-mythical second king of Rome, successor to its supposed founder Romulus. Numa is credited with creating many institutions of the Roman state, particularly with regard to religion, like the Vestal Virgins, the office of Pontifex Maximus, and the calendar. Guibert likely includes him as a paragon of virtue and civic religion. In referencing these individuals, Guibert illustrates his political philosophy, and its inherent contradictions. The French statesmen he cites all served absolutist kings, and Numa was a king, while Pericles is often seen as the embodiment of democratic values, and Lycurgus created what amounted to a constitutional monarchy. Like many of the philosophers of the eighteenth century, Guibert is drawing the elements he prefers from the men and their careers, even if those ideas seem to contradict each other.] 2 [The Roman Senate was the senior governing body of the Roman state, both the Republic and the Empire. It was composed of older men with experience in governance, usually having traversed the semi-formal path through the Roman bureaucracy called the cursus honorum. For most of that period, it had no formal powers, but few government actions could take place without the approval of the Senate (the senatus consultum). Even when emperors wielded nearabsolute power, they still consulted the Senate, if only in form. Its purpose was to ensure that the state did not veer from its traditions or purpose. See J.E. Lendon, Empire of Honor: The Art of Government in the Roman World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 176– 236; and Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Atlas was a mythical Greek Titan who fought against Zeus and the Olympians in Greek mythology. His punishment was to be forced to hold the world on his shoulders. He was thought by the Greeks to live in the far west, giving his name to the Atlas Mountains in Northern Africa. See “Atlas,” in Jennifer March, Dictionary of Classical Mythology (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014), 91–92. As Guibert indicates, allusions to Atlas generally intend the image of a person carrying a great burden.]

Preliminary Discourse

I am not at all a blind admirer of the ancients. I know that a long series of centuries, the shadows of ignorance, the prestige of history, [and] the bias of our spirits make them seem colossal and marvelous. I know that, in the same way as stars near the horizon appear much larger to our eyes, when compared to us, [history] elevate[s] above us heroes [and] events that we perceive in the distance of antiquity that acquire, to our regards, a grandeur that contemporary subjects do not. Fortified against this illusion, I hardly ever judge the things that history presents to me. I do not at all paint men above humanity. I abase heroes to the measure of perfection it is possible for the human heart to have. I seek to unravel, in events, the influence that chance may have had over them [and] the energies, and sometimes the imperceptible threads, that have been their causes. Thus I do not at all have an enthusiastic veneration for the government of Ancient Rome.3 I do not pretend that it was perfect. It was not, because it had its perturbations, its decadence, and its end. It could not be, because it was the work of men. But, if this government imprinted, during five-hundred years, a character of vigor and majesty on the people that lived under it; if it germinated more citizens and heroes than the rest of the earth has borne since; if, even in the time of its corruption, the vices of this people sometimes had a grandeur and an energy that forces astonishment; [and] finally, if this people became the master of the world, I must therefore attribute such great and sustained effects to powerful and constant causes. I may, without being wrong, assure that this government was quite vigorous [and] that its politics were more vast [and] more profound than all of the states that offer themselves to me. I therefore admire the politics of the Romans in their good years, when I see them founded on a fixed plan; when this plan had patriotism and virtue for its base; when I see nascent Rome, no more than a feeble colony and without support, rapidly become a city; aggrandizing itself without cessation, vanquishing all the neighbors that had been its enemies, making them either citizens or allies; [and] fortifying itself in this way, like a river that grows by the waters it receives in its course. I admire this politics when I see 3 [As Guibert will make clear, he refers to the Roman Republic and not the Empire, except in specific cases. This analysis was omnipresent in early-modern neo-Classicism, contrasting the “virtuous” Republic with the “craven” and “tyrannical” Empire. Pichichero, The Military Enlightenment, 151–191 summarizes Enlightenment neoClassicism. See also David Parrott, The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 15–20; and Julian Swann, Exile, Imprisonment, or Death: The Politics of Disgrace in Bourbon France, 1610–1789 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 119.]

5 Rome never having more than one war at a time, never laying down arms [if] the honor of the name “Roman” was not satisfied, not blinded by its success, not allowing itself to be defeated by reverses, [and] becoming the prey of the Gauls and the flames and being reborn from their ashes.4 Finally, I admire Rome when I examine its military constitution, bound to its political constitution; the laws of its military; the education of its youth; its great men, passing indifferently through all of the offices of state, because they were proper to fill them all; [and] its citizens, proud of the name of their patrie and believing themselves superior to the kings that they were accustomed to conquering. I say that there was perhaps, in some corner of the universe, an obscure and peaceful nation whose members were happier, but there was certainly never a people who had as much grandeur, as much glory, and as much merit by their courage and by their virtues. Now what tableau does European politics offer, in opposition, to the philosophy that we contemplate? Tyrannical, ignorant, or feeble administrations; the strength of nations smothered under their vices; particularist interests prevailing over the public good; morals, this supplement to laws that is often more effective than they are, neglected or corrupted; the oppression of the people reduced to a system; the expenses of the administrations much greater than their revenues; taxes exceeding the faculties of the taxpayers; the population less-numerous and sparse; the premier arts neglected for the frivolous arts; luxury secretly undermining all states; [and] finally, governments indifferent to the fate of the people, and the people, by way of reprisal, indifferent to the success of governments. Fatigued by so many evils, if the philosophe finds [himself] resting his view on more consoling subjects, that is, on some small states that are only [minor] points in Europe; that is, on some political and moral truths that, lengthily filtered through errors, develop little by little, [and] perhaps someday, principal men of nations will sit on thrones and render posterity more prosperous. This is particularly the state of people’s malaise and anxiety under most governments, with which they live 4 [Around 390 BCE, the Senones, a Gallic tribe, defeated the Roman Republic and sacked the city of Rome. The event traumatized Rome for generations, required a comprehensive restructuring of the state and society, and remained a metaphor for destruction and rebirth for centuries after, as Guibert uses it. Guibert also begins his battle with history here, as Rome clearly engaged in multiple wars at the same time throughout much of its history, including in sources Guibert had access to and read, particularly Polybius and Livy. This battle will continue throughout the work, as will become evident. See Michael Sage, “The Rise of Rome,” in The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 216–235.]

6 with distaste and mechanistically; if they had the strength to break the chains that attach them to them [such governments], they would give themselves other laws and other administrators. We would then see half of Germany chase off the small princes under which it groans; Castile, Aragon, [and] Ireland recalling their kings; Tuscany, its dukes;5 Flanders, its counts; [and] so many other states, their old sovereigns who live in the midst of them without luxury and on the revenue of their domains.6 We would see almost all provinces separate from their metropoles, [and] nearly all governments dissolve themselves or change their form. But what am I saying? This at the same time as the feebleness of the people, who, discontented, murmur and remain in the same situation. They are chained by habit and by their vices. This impotent fermentation is one of the great proofs of the poor constitution of our governments. For, on one hand, the people suffer and cry out, while on the other hand, they lose all agency. Each lives for himself, seeking to shelter himself from public ills, to profit by or to grow stupid from them. Amidst this general feebleness, governments are feeble themselves but become fecund by this in small ways, extending their authority and becoming more burdensome. They seem to be waging a secret war with their subjects. They corrupt one part to dominate another. They fear that enlightenment will spread, because they know that it will enlighten the people as to their rights and 5 Since this was written, they have found themselves with a young sovereign who rules over them. He is occupied in revivifying [Tuscany], in rendering it happy. We seize this sweet and rare occasion to pay homage to a prince who senses the value of happiness and the love of men. 6 [With the exception of Germany, the states to which Guibert refers were all once independent but did not rule themselves at the time he wrote. Castile and Aragon were possessions of the Spanish crown; Ireland was ruled by the British monarch (and would later become part of the United Kingdom), and Flanders largely belonged to the Habsburgs as part of the Austrian Netherlands. Tuscany was a relatively new state, having only been created in 1569 by amalgamating several smaller Italian states; Guibert’s inclusion of it with other subsumed states is curious, as it was at least nominally independent during his lifetime. He likely references the possession of Tuscany by a branch of the Habsburgs, which occurred in 1737 at the end of the War of the Polish Succession. The specific Tuscan ruler is Peter-Leopold-Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard, Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 and later Holy Roman Emperor from 1790 until his death in 1792. Leopold ruled under a regency for the first five years in Tuscany before taking personal control in 1770, to which Guibert alludes. Leopold was seen as a figure of the Enlightenment, attempting to rule by its principles for the betterment of his state and people; thus Guibert sees him as a paragon. Germany is different from the other mentioned states, as Guibert indicates. Rather than having been subsumed by another state, Germany was a large region divided into many states, most of which were loosely bound together in the Holy Roman Empire.]

Preliminary Discourse

the faults of those who govern them. They foment luxury, because they know that luxury enervates courage. As they have their hands on almost all of the states’ wealth, they make wealth the great motivation of the administration; they make it individuals’ consideration and advancement, the reward of the vice that they augment, the recompense of the virtue that they depreciate, [and] the object of cupidity of all citizens. Then, by fiscal operations, they increase this wealth that their prodigality has scattered: a destructive circulation, and thus its effect is to ruin part of the nations while chaining the rest. Finally, this is the unfortunate art of dividing, of enfeebling, of degrading to better dominate, [and] of oppressing without revolt what is called “the science of government” in most courts. Will the philosophe be more satisfied when he will his eyes on military Europe? He will see all of the constitutions servilely copied one from the other; the people of the South having the same discipline as those of the North; the genius of nations in contradiction with the laws of their militaries; the profession of soldier abandoned to the class of the most vile and the most miserable of citizens; the soldier, under his flags, continuing to be unfortunate and despised; [and] armies too-numerous in proportion to the nations that maintain them, onerous to these nations during peacetime, [and] not sufficient to insure them in times of war, because the rest of the people are no more than a timid and soft multitude. He will remark, in passing, that some progress has been made in tactics and in the other branches of the military art; he will admire some morsels of detail in our constitutions, the genius of the King of Prussia, [and] the momentous rise which he has given to his nation, but he will demand of him: where is a military constituted on solid principles? Where is a warrior people, enemy of luxury, friend of work, and carried to glory by laws?7 In fact, we attribute the impossibility of nations’ extending themselves by conquest only in part to the contemporary vigilance of all people [over] the approaches of their neighbors, to the correspondence between all courts, [and] to the system of equilibrium established in Europe. It proceeds more from no nation’s being decisively 7 [Throughout the work, Guibert refers to Friedrich II, King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, simply as the “King of Prussia.” Friedrich triumphed in the War of the Austrian Succession and Seven Years War, securing the province of Silesia for Prussia and earning himself the commonly-applied sobriquet “The Great.” Guibert clearly sees Friedrich as the embodiment of the soldier-king, admiring his battlefield genius and Enlightenment values. At the same time, Guibert was also incensed by France’s defeat at the hands of Prussia, creating a dynamic relationship with Prussia and its king, as will be apparent throughout the work.]

Preliminary Discourse

superior to any other, in its morals and its constitution, [and] from [the fact that] they are all contained within their sphere by feebleness and the symmetry of their governments. What can be the result of our wars today? States have neither treasures nor excesses of population. Their peacetime expenses are always higher than their revenues. Yet they declare war. They enter the field with armies that can neither be recruited nor paid. Vanquisher and vanquished are equally exhausted. The mass of national debt accrues. Credit falls. Money fails. Fleets do not have sailors, and armies do not have soldiers. Ministers on both sides sense that it is time to negotiate. Peace is made. Some colonies or provinces change masters. Often, the source of these quarrels is not solved, and each [country] rests on its debris, occupied in paying its debts and honing its arms. But supposed that in Europe rose a vigorous people, of genius, of means, and of [good] government; a people that joined austere virtues and a national military to a fixed plan of aggrandizement that never lost its view of the system, [and] that, knowing how to make war cheaply and subsisting on its victories, was not reduced to laying down its arms by calculations of finance. This people would subjugate its neighbors and reverse our feeble constitutions like the north wind bending the reeds.8 This people will not rise, because there is in Europe no nation that is both powerful and new. They are assimilated and completely corrupted, step by step. They all have governments destructive to all sentiment of patriotism and virtue. When corruption has made such progress, when it has attacked the principles of administrations, administrators, sovereigns’ courts, [and] the cradles of 8 [The two preceding paragraphs are the most famous and oftquoted of Guibert’s work; contemporaries likely heard and read them numerous times, while they generally neglected the rest of the work, especially its more technical portions. These passages are usually cited in favor of Guibert’s status as prophet of the Revolution, as much of what he suggested actually happened, if not for several decades or centuries; see especially David Bell, The First Total War, 79–82; and Heuser, “Guibert: Prophet of Total War?” R.R. Palmer, “Frederick the Great, Guibert, Bülow: From Dynastic to National War,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 91–122, argues that Guibert was more lucky than accurate in his prophecies, marking Palmer as one of the few historians to minimize Guibert’s importance in military theory. See also Abel, Guibert, 55–76. Guibert uses the term “aquilon” for the north wind; Aquilo was a god in Roman mythology who embodied the cold northeasterly wind in Rome. Guibert is likely drawing from Marcus Vitruvius Pollio’s Ten Books of Architecture, I, which details the effects of the eight winds, including Aquilo. If Guibert had not read Vitruvius himself, Jean-Baptiste la Rond d’Alembert’s entry for “Aquilon” in the Encyclopédie mentions the Roman author.]

7 their infants, it is nearly impossible to hope for a regeneration. The places from which it could come are the homes of evil. A single people was, at the commencement of this century, in position to become redoubtable. Their sovereign, who was a great man, but one a little too-much admired, did not profit from this. A false politics formed the base of his system. He hastened too quickly to polish his nation. He introduced all the arts of Europe to his states, and, with the arts, he introduced vices. He located Russia in Ingria, in Livonia, and thus, in gathering all of his means into the extremities of his states, he threw the rest of his empire into languor. He wanted to enjoy his life. He neglected the fruits for the flowers. If he had been less pressed to take part in the politics of Europe; if, in attracting to his country the useful arts, he would have rejected those of luxury and weakness; if, in lieu of building cities, he would have cleared the countryside; if, by too-frequent meetings with foreigners, he would have not made his subjects lose the savage acidity with which they did great things; if he would have only spread in his nation the enlightenment necessary to augment its force and habitually discarded that which could make it feeble; if, with a similar plan, he had lived longer and seen his successors conduct themselves by the same principles, Russia would today be the most menacing and most redoubtable [country] in Europe. From this vast empire may have risen, by our times, enduring and invincible tribes that would have changed the face of our countries, just as the reservoirs of the North, similarly stocked with fleets of barbarians, inundated the Roman Empire. These tribes would have appeared with a language, dress, arms, morals, [and] a manner of making war that, in one way or another, would not have been ours, and this new appearance would have, without doubt, contributed to its victories.9 9 [Guibert references Pyotr Alexseevich, Tsar of Russia from 1682 to 1725. Pyotr spent much of his reign expanding Russian power, particularly at the expense of the Swedish, and importing scholars from Western Europe to modernize his state, as embodied in his new capital of Saint Petersburg. As Guibert indicates, this made him a paragon to many in the eighteenth century, and Pyotr, like Friedrich, is often given the sobriquet “the Great.” In a more general sense, Guibert’s writing here reveals several of the major themes of the Enlightenment and the eighteenth century. Like the “barbarians” of the Late Roman Empire, Russia is a Janus-faced analogy for Guibert. It represents the noble savage, the people uncorrupted by Western decadence, but it also contains a significant threat to that same West, particularly as its armies began to participate in general European wars after 1740. As a result, Russophilia and Russophobia color the politics of the period, even as far west as France. Guibert will make the same arguments, albeit less directly, about the Ottoman Empire throughout the work, illustrating the theme of othering, both negatively and positively, that was present throughout the Enlightenment. See

8

Preliminary Discourse

[Even] if Europe no longer fears these devastating torrents that once covered it in blood and darkness; [even] if the vices that undermine all governments seem to place a sort of equilibrium between them, the nations of all parts of the world, quite feeble [and] totally corrupted as they are, do not enjoy more tranquility. Because national hatreds, illusory commercial interests, [and] ambition is miserable politics, they are divided without cessation; even though treaties pacify them, the germs of discussions rest between them that, after a periodic truce, arm them anew against each other; if their phantom politics do not furnish them occasions of rupture, the fantasies of the ministers, vain etiquette, [and] the little intrigues of which negotiations consist today will surely give birth to pretexts [for war]. Finally, this is the genre of war adopted by all nations, which consumes their forces and does not decide their quarrels; which, vanquisher or vanquished each, at the peace, returns to its old boundaries; which then makes war less frightening to governments and [thus] more frequent. They are timid athletes, covered with wounds and always armed, who exhaust themselves in observing and fearing each other; who attack from time to time to impose themselves on each other, rendering battles feeble, like themselves; [and] who suspend [conflict] when their blood flows and conceive of a truce to cleanse their wounds. Among these peoples whose feebleness eternalizes their quarrels, there could one day be more decisive wars that that would shake empires. Corruption, spread across the surface of Europe, does not make equal progress everywhere. The differences that exist between governments are why it develops more slowly in some areas and more rapidly in others. Evil becomes more or less dangerous in proportion to the qualities of the men who govern. Here, good institutions, an enlightened sovereign, [or] a vigorous ministry serve as a dam against corruption, winding the springs of government and making the state turn to the height of the wheel.10 There, government, sovereign, [and] ministers: all is feeble or corrupted; consequently, all relax and are softened, and the state, with a velocity that its mass multiplies, descends rapidly into ruin. Suppose two states are neighbors: the first has at its head a series of great men, and the second has two or three feeble sovereigns successively whose reigns, as unfortunate as

10

Robert Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World (New York: Random House, 1981); and Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 62–74.] [Guibert uses two of the major meanings of the word “wheel” here, both as a machine part and as the more abstract idea of the turning of the wheel of fate.]

that of Charles VI, were as long as that of Augustus;11 this latter state, tottering, debased, dismembered by its neighbor, waits only for a storm to determine its fate; finally, by a consequence of the supposition established above, in the general decadence where luxury and political errors place all nations that will rapidly trace the line of their declension, those that stop or often reverse this destructive march will have over the others the ascendancy of vigor that youth has over maturity, maturity over old age, [and] old age over decrepitude, for to become enfeebled in their turn, decline, and have their places taken by betterconstituted states; or because some revolution will have regenerated them; or because they will be less advanced in their career; or finally because they are formed recently from the debris of some destroyed state, they have for their base the courage and the virtues that are prosperous for new empires. In this situation, what must be the goal of the politics of the people? That of fortifying internally rather than searching for expansion externally; of even shrinking if they have possessions that are too extended; and of making, as it were, in exchange, conquests over themselves, in lifting all parts of their administration to the highest point of perfection; that of augmenting the public power by the virtues of individuals, of working on their laws, on their morals, on their opinions: in a word, that of changing or relenting from their destructive course that leads them to their ruin. If there is one nation above all that would benefit from wise policy and that must hasten to embrace it, it is mine, which is fortunately situated in the middle of Europe, 11

[Charles VI was king of France from 1380 until 1422, one of the longer medieval reigns in European history. Unfortunately for France, Charles VI was mentally ill and unable to rule the state, and his long reign took place at the height of the Hundred Years War. Because of his incapacity, France fragmented into what amounted to a civil war, which allowed the English and Burgundians to take advantage, culminating in the 1420 Treaty of Troyes that named King Henry V of England’s son as heir to both England and France. The fact that the French did not depose Charles indicates the degree to which the body and power of the king were sacred in French monarchic history. Augustus was the first Roman emperor, ruling from around 20 BCE until his death in 14 CE. Like Charles, Augustus lived and reigned for a long period, and like Charles, Augustus’s realm degenerated into internecine conflict. With Augustus, unlike Charles, that took place largely within the imperial family, as its various members jockeyed for power and a place in the succession, resulting in the deaths of numerous heirs. Writers like Suetonius, in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, portray this period of Augustus’s reign as debauched and blame him for having lived too long. This argument often appears in the abstract in arguments against monarchy, especially hereditary monarchy, of which Guibert provides an example.]

9

Preliminary Discourse

having the best climate [and] on the most generally fertile soil; ringed, nearly completely, by the limits that nature has imposed, which are perhaps powerful enough to fear nothing and to desire nothing.12 It is mine [that would most benefit] because, if I dare to say, it is [the country] that now declines with the greatest rapidity. Its government cannot support it, and the widespread vices that did not spread by imitation but rather were born here are most inveterate and destructive and must be devoured first. As the plan of this regeneration is the goal of my work, I will return to it with all of the attention that it merits. Let us finish painting all that [of the ways in which] modern politics has erred and is contrary to the prosperity of peoples. All of the parts of the government have between them immediate and necessary rapport. They are branches of the same trunk. It is thus quite necessary that they be consequently conducted. In nearly all of the states of Europe, the different branches of administration are led by particularist ministers whose views and interests intersect and disrupt each other. Each of them is occupied exclusively with his interests. One must imagine that the other departments belonged to a foreign nation. Fortunate are the states whose ministers, jealous of each other, do not act as enemies. From the limited relations that thus exist between the different departments of an administration follow the projects [that are] advantageous on their surface and disadvantageous underneath, the encouragements of commerce that discourage agriculture, the financial edicts that fill the treasury for some years and ruin the people for a century, the divided systems; the political edifices that have only a façade and no foundation, the half-measures, [and] the palliatives with which each minister plasters over the evils that he perceives in his department without

12

[Guibert speaks of the “natural frontiers” of France: the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Rhine. For centuries, French monarchs strove to secure the state by conquering these borders, as made explicit in Armand Cardinal Jean du Plessis, duc de Fronsac et de Richelieu, Political Testament (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020). By Guibert’s period, the Pyrenees and Alps had largely been secured; other than during the Napoleonic period, France would never reach most of the Rhine. Many analyses of French foreign policy, contemporary and current, use the theme, although it may be taken to the extreme by being made deterministic. Jordan Hayworth, Revolutionary France’s War of Conquest in the Rhineland: Conquering the Natural Frontier, 1792–1797 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), provides an excellent summary of the natural-frontiers argument and its impact on military affairs through a context of the Revolutionary Wars.]

calculating if these remedies will not be destructive to the other branches. Let us cast our eyes on Europe and observe these destructive effects in greater detail. The Spanish ministers hunted the Moors. They forgot that they were men, and that, without a numerous population, a state cannot prosper. They invaded the New World where they opened mines, and they did not perceive that Spain lay fallow. They tyrannized the Low Countries, and they did not foresee that they would revolt, that they would not be able to put them back under the yoke. For want of calculating that, beyond certain limits, the grandeur of a state is only weakness; for want of wisely knowing to limit oneself to that which can be invigorated and defended, they wanted to embrace everything: the Low Countries, the Franche-Comté, Roussillon, Italy, [and] Portugal, and everything that escaped them.13 Let us come closer to our own time. They [ministers] are not any wiser. Richelieu wanted to extend the power of his master, or rather his own. He wanted to abase the grands and destroy their prerogatives, which would make them vassals rather than subjects of the kings. That he used vigorous means to serve this purpose, that he openly attacked the pretentions of the nobility to be able to place shackles on the strength and the goodwill of the monarchy, [and] that he extended authority for authority’s sake I admire; I bless his genius. But, in order to better destroy this nobility, he corrupted it, he degraded it, [and] he forced it to leave its chateaus, because he sensed 13

[Guibert illustrates another contemporary theme: Spain as a cautionary tale. After completing the Reconquista in 1492 by seizing control of Iberia from Muslim rulers, the Christian monarchs of Spain conducted periodic campaigns of terror against Spanish Muslims (“Moors”), including forced conversions to Christianity, violence, and expulsion, which lasted well into the eighteenth century. During the same period, the Spanish began their colonization of the New World, which brought huge amounts of specie back to Spain, fueling its economy for much of the early modern period. As Guibert indicates, the depopulation of Iberia and the reliance of the Spanish economy on imported specie had devastating impacts on the Spanish economy, resulting in several state bankruptcies in the late sixteenth century and ongoing issues during his time. The Spanish also gained control of the Low Countries via Habsburg marriage alliances, half of which they lost during the Dutch Revolt/Eighty Years War. Finally, the Spanish Habsburgs once controlled all of the low Countries, Burgundy (including what the French call the Franche-Comté), Roussillon, much of Italy, and Portugal, but Spain had lost control of almost all of those territories by the mid-eighteenth century. See Reed Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession (New York: Longman, 1995); John Elliot, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1964); and I.A.A. Thompson, War and Government in Habsburg Spain 1560–1620 (London: University of London Press, 1976).]

10 that poverty and simplicity supported its vigor; he lured it into the court where he foresaw that it would be ruined by luxury and that it would then depend on the sovereign, by the graces that would reduce it to begging. This destructive system was followed by Louis XIV and his ministers. The morals of the nation changed. The degradation of the nobility led to the slavery of the people. The burden of this bribed and corrupted nobility falls on the groaning people who should have been supported by it. There no longer remains any national esprit, energy, or virtues, and it is this Richelieu whose mausoleum decorates our temples [and] whose deceitful elegy the school of our eloquence repeats ceaselessly; history, which must be the asylum of the truth, must prove that statues and panegyrics are almost always monuments of prejudice or of adulation; history eternalizes this unjust reputation; it calls sublime the politics of this ambition that enervates its nation, believed to strengthen the government, as if a good government, instead of abasing its nation and pressing on it, must not, on the contrary, seek to elevate it by elevating it with the same movement that it raises itself alongside and above it.14

14

[The reign of Louis XIII, with Richelieu as First Minister for most of it, saw a fundamental shift in the relationship between the nobility and the state, as Guibert indicates. French nobles traditionally viewed themselves as separate from the crown, including the “right of rebellion” whereby they had the right to rebel against the crown for redress of grievances. Louis ended this practice spectacularly with the execution of Henri II Montmorency in 1632 for rebelling against the crown. Louis and Richelieu also destroyed many of the castles in the interior of France that the nobility, along with religious groups, had used to resist royal power. Further, Louis and Richelieu accelerated the process begun by their predecessors of sidelining the nobility in government in favor of elevating skilled and loyal commoners to positions of importance in the bureaucracy. Louis XIV extended and expanded this system by removing the court to Versailles and requiring the nobility to attend him there, trapping them in a gilded prison of fêtes and requiring them to conform to a strict system of gradations that dispensed the pensions they needed to continue residing at court. The sum of these measures was to create a far more powerful royal government and state, but a state that rested less on tradition and precedence than on favors of the king. See James Collins, The State in Early Modern France (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1–99; Swann, Exile, Imprisonment, or Death; and Victor-Lucien Tapié, France in the Age of Louis XIII and Richelieu, trans. D. McN Lockie (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). The resentment of the loss of tradition and privilege forms one of the major themes of Dumas’s later fiction, especially the D’Artagnan Romances. See Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).]

Preliminary Discourse

Colbert, with genius, departed from the true interests of France. He created a mercantilist state; he saw Holland rise from the breast of its swamps and play a role in Europe.15 He said “wealth and commerce are the movers of public prosperity. I am Minister of Finances; it is for me to enrich the state.” Soon, our granaries were changed into manufactories and our laborers into artisans. A branch of the administration revived and flourished, while the body of the tree languished and desiccated.16 15

[Guibert uses the term “Holland” to refer to a country that often escapes the ability of modern writers and readers to understand. The United Provinces, or more colloquially, the Dutch Republic, was the name for the various states of the northern Low Countries that formed a very loose confederation, not unlike contemporary Switzerland. They achieved their independence from both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire de facto around 1580 and de jure in 1648. Each of the United Provinces functioned a virtually independent state in quotidian affairs, with each having an elected assembly and executive known as a Stadtholder. During times of crisis, especially wartime, the various states would generally elect the same person, often the current Prince of Orange, as Stadtholder and Captain-General of the armed forces, to provide “national” guidance and leadership. They would also generally amalgamate their land and naval forces to form the “Dutch” army and navy, but not all states always participated, even in the most serious crises. The position of Stadtholder was made hereditary to the House of Orange in the early eighteenth century, but not all of the states agreed, and several rebelled against the concept. Because of this unique governmental system, many names were used for the state, including the United Provinces, the Dutch Republic, Holland, or even the Low Countries, on occasion. See Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Its Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).] 16 [Colbert was one of the many French bureaucrats who held to mercantilist policies, which called for the enrichment of the state via control of manufacturing and especially trade, including high tariffs, colonial ventures, and investment in infrastructure. The Dutch had built a state and society around mercantilist principles, allowing them to become a powerful and wealthy people with a widespread colonial empire. The “Dutch model,” as Guibert indicates, inspired many around Europe to emulation, including the colonial efforts of the English in North America and Colbert’s policies. The argument Guibert presents is in line with a major economic philosophy of the period espoused by the physiocrats (“economists” in contemporary parlance), who argued that true wealth was only represented by agriculture. They called for liberalization of the grain trade and of other trade markets, a return to traditional, pastoral lifestyles over urban and commercial ones. France vacillated between these two poles for much of the eighteenth century, especially as various ministers and kings sought to ameliorate the financial crisis. The period between 1770 and 1787 saw a near-constant exchange of finance ministers, alternating between pro-mercantilist and pro-physiocratic, as the Revolution neared. These arguments spread to the young United States, where they were very loosely adopted by the Federalist and Democratic-Republican groups, respectively, during the early national period. See Charles Cole, Colbert and

11

Preliminary Discourse

Louvois wanted war, because Colbert wanted peace, because the interest of the Minister of War was to embarrass the Minister of Finances. He stoked the ambition of his master; he said to him that France only needed armies, that they would bring Europe under his laws. Soon the Marine was neglected, the ports closed, [and] all the other parts of the administration sacrificed to the splendor of a single department.17 Louis XIV wanted to add some provinces to France. He believed that if his kingdom augmented its territory, it would gain power. He took as signs of abundance the products of his manufactories and the wealth of his merchants. He rose to a luxury of power greater than his means, believing that, like a new Cadmus, his reinforcement ordinances would grow fully-armed men from the ground; [he] sent all of his people on campaign; [he] exhausted France in the time of its victories; [he] placed it two fingers from [on the brink of] its misfortune; [and he] died and left debts and misery behind, [along] with a genre of war [that was] less decisive and more ruinous.18 a Century of French Mercantilism, 2 Vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939); and Collins, The State in Early Modern Europe, 100–238.] 17 [Colbert and Louvois were in constant conflict as ministers under Louis XIV in their roles as Secretary of State for the Marine and Contrôleur-Général (finance minister), and Secretary of State for War, respectively. While Colbert was nominal First Minister, Louvois won his fair share of conflicts between them, especially as most of the period between 1672 and 1714 saw France involved in land wars, often against large coalitions of major European powers.] 18 [Louis XIV fought increasingly larger wars as his reign continued, and against increasingly larger coalitions. By the time of the War of the League of Augsburg and the War of the Spanish Succession, France was fighting virtually alone against most of the rest of Europe. This brought territorial gain (Roussilon, Franche-Comté, Alsace, Artois, and a few smaller areas for France; the placement of a Bourbon prince on the Spanish throne in 1701) but cost the state enormously in blood and money. By the time of his death in 1715, Louis XIV was seen as a warmonger and even a tyrant, long debased from the heights of his rule as the Sun King in the 1660s. Like his prior reference to Augustus, Guibert intends the analogy to be of a good and even great king who reigned for too long and was swayed by ill-intentioned people and policies, resulting in the ruin of his state. Guibert likely borrows this argument from writers like Saint-Simon and Voltaire, who were widely read during the eighteenth century. See John Lynn, The War of the Spanish Succession. See also Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, Historical Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon, 3 vols., trans. Lucy Norton (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1967–1972); and especially Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV, trans. Martyn Pollack (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1961). The myth of Cadmus tells the story of a man who killed monsters, culminating with the slaying of a dragon, with the assistance of Athena. Athena then tells Cadmus to plant the dragon’s

We see, in the epoch of this prince and those who followed his example, all of the governments of Europe forcing their means, increasing their armies, raising their taxes, extending their possessions in envy of each other, [and] denouncing the countryside in the cities, the provinces in the capitals, [and] the capitals in courts, mistaking grandiloquence for power, luxury for riches, [and] éclat for glory; finally, making their people groan for the sake of reaching a destructive aggrandizement: unfortunate politics that recalls the rack on which Busiris stretched his victims and broke their limbs.19 The maritime powers were given to an epidemic of commerce that is no less destructive. They wanted to embrace the two poles, navigate all the seas, [and] plant their flag on all coasts. Between them, they elevated a system of politics unknown until their time and worthy of a barbarous century. They reciprocally closed their ports or only opened them to certain goods or under certain regulations. They forgot that the human species is only a vast family, subdivided into several groups named French, English, Dutch, Spanish, etc., none of which can be happy and powerful without a free and full correspondence of exchange, aid, benefits, and enlightenment. This would be a quite-interesting and quite-instructive tableau, that of all of the faults that have been made for some centuries, against the principles of healthy politics. By thus being accustomed to examining the influence that these faults have on events and the new faults that events have created in their turn, [and] in learning how to untangle the web of this fatal chaining, one finds the solution for most of these faults, so badly explained by the vague words of hazard and fortune that are too prodigious in our histories. A cause that, in most governments, also contributes to rendering politics less than perfect is the continual movement of ministers. Eh! How could enlightened politicians

19

teeth, which produces a crop of soldiers. These soldiers immediately start killing each other until five remain; Cadmus takes the five and later founds the city of Thebes, “his new Boeotian empire.” See Publius Ovidius Naso, Metamorphosis, 2 Vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1872), I:78–83. See also “Cadmus,” in March, Dictionary of Classical Mythology, 104–105.] [The legend of Busiris occurs in several places in Greek writing, usually in stories about Herakles. Busiris was an Egyptian king who sacrificed strangers to Zeus; he captured Herakles and intended to sacrifice him before he broke free and killed Busiris. Apollodorus, Library, II:5 outlines the story; Herodotus, Histories, II; and Isocrates, Busiris, both doubt its veracity. See “Busiris,” in March, Dictionary of Classical Mythology, 102–103. Guibert clearly intends the metaphor to be an archetypal rejection of tradition (the welcoming of strangers) for personal gain (profit from sacrifice to Zeus).]

12

Preliminary Discourse

perpetuate and extend themselves? Intrigue is the risk of placing and displacing ministers. Elevated to their posts, they think more about keeping them than they do filling them. Fatigued by cabal and envy, they have neither the strength nor the time to correct the vices of the administration. The system of their predecessor is never their own. Suppose some of these ministers have genius. They are men; they must form subordinates, principles, a plan. Thus, we calculate so many faults by their errors, so many by their passions, [and] so many by the errors and passions of their employees. Are they without genius? They find nothing that instructs them or supports them. The state does not at all have a system, [and] they do not know how to make up for that. They govern as they live, from day to day. In lieu of mastering events, they are themselves mastered by them. Details absorb them. They take in their hands some strings of the administration and let the great parts go.20 History shows us kings who govern their states themselves, or ministers who governed their masters, procuring some ephemeral success [for] their nations. Richelieu did great things. Louis XIV had his share of good fortune. Alberoni appeared for a moment to reanimate Spain.21 Prussia, elevated above its sphere by the talents of its king, today surprises Europe. But we remark: never has a nation had real and durable prosperity except when, by the nature of its government, it had a permanent corps entrusted with gathering enlightenment, reducing the interests of a state to a system, taking counsel of past experience, and of being able to, in a word, take the tiller of the state as the pilot does at the stern of the ship, observing the compass, the clouds, the winds, [and] the sails, and choosing a route in consequence. It is with this corps that the depositors of executive power, [whether] kings, ministers, dictators, consuls, [or] generals, must be in accord, consulting the general system of the state and 20

21

[Guibert indicates one of the most pernicious aspects of governing eighteenth-century France: the frequent shifts of direction occasioned by the fall of ministers. After 1740, most ministries and high government offices changed hands frequently, usually as a result of court cabals and quarrels between powerful patrons. This all but prevented the kind of medium- to longterm planning required to place the French state on a stable basis during a time of crisis, particularly in finance.] [Giulio Cardinal Alberoni was an adviser to Felipe V, the first Bourbon king of Spain, in the early eighteenth century. He instituted a number of centralizing and mercantilist reforms in the country, partially reviving its economy. He was also a cautionary tale, being exiled for his participation in the Cellamare Conspiracy to make Felipe V Regent of France and his support of Spain’s belligerent policy that led to the disastrous War of the Quadruple Alliance from 1718 to 1720.]

taking their deliberations. Thus was Ancient Rome constituted. Thus is England in some ways constituted by its Parliament: a quite-imperfect image of the majesty and the virtues of the Roman Senate.22 This will lead me to examine what the most proper form of government is for executing a plan of grand and healthy politics, but this is a question that I do not wish to delve into. My readers will sufficiently judge, in the exposé that I will make below, what politics must be if a plan that must embrace all the parts of the administration, the public glory and particularist felicity, the wellbeing of the present generation and that of future generations [and] that must be conducted in the end without relaxation and traversing the events of several centuries, may be reasonably confined to a government that is entirely in the hands of one person, and consequently whose principles must vary, not only by changes of reign, but also by changes of minister; to all the revolutions that are made in the characters, passions, esprit, age, [and] health of sovereigns and their ministers; [and] to a government that, consequently, is in turn vigorous, feeble, enlightened, [and] ignorant [and] that must, from time to time, be elevated, abased, inclining, declining, and finally, in all its convulsive and irregular perturbations, by losing its last energy, breaks and destroys itself. Politics, as it is offered in my ideas, is the art of governing people and, envisaged under this vast point of view, is the most interesting science that exists. It must have for its goal to render a nation more prosperous internally and more respected externally. Thus, it is naturally divided into two parts: INTERIOR POLITICS and EXTERIOR POLITICS. The former serves as the base of the latter. All that prepares the wellbeing and power of a society is of its resources: laws, morals, customs, prejudices, national esprit, justice, police, population, agriculture, commerce, national revenues, government expenses, taxes, [and] the applications of their product; all of these subjects must be viewed with genius and reflection; they must rise above themselves to see the general rapport and influence that ties one to the other; they must then approach closer to observe and follow the details; they cannot be occupied with one to the exclusion of the others, because in politics, that which makes one branch flower too much or too early often drains the neighboring branch and allows it, or another distant branch, to languish. In a word, they 22

[Guibert again apes an argument of Montesquieu and Voltaire, that England was a much-flawed version of the ideal government. See Charles-Louis Secondat, baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).]

Preliminary Discourse

must be conducted by all the parts of the administration, and, to this end, they must form a general system; it must constantly be before them, with their eyes on it in turn, to determine which operations it requires [and] on the product of these operations, to see if they concur with the execution of the general plan. While interior politics prepare and perfect all the internal means, exterior politics examine how the results from these means may give the state strength and consideration in external affairs, and this determines what its system will be. It is to them to know the rapport between all [elements] that tie their nation to other peoples, how to untangle illusory and transparent interests from real interests, [and] the alliances that may only be temporary and unfruitful from those useful and permanent liaisons that dictate topographic position or the respective advantages of the contract partners. It is to them to calculate the military forces that the state needs to impose on its neighbors, to give weight to these negotiations. It is to them to constitute their military forces relative to the genius and the means of the nation [and] to build them in a manner that is not above these means, because this drains the state and gives it a power that is only fractious and ruinous. It is to them to introduce there [the military forces] the best esprit, the greatest courage, [and] the wisest discipline so that they may be reduced in number, and this reduction in number is a relief for the people. Finally, it seems to me that I hear interior politics, when they have prepared the state from within, saying to exterior politics, “I remit to you a happy and powerful nation; its countryside is fertile; its food supply is more than sufficient for its needs; the population is numerous and encouraged; its laws are respected [and] its morals are pure; vice is hidden; [and] virtue is present and only waits to be employed. Finish my work: make an external consideration of these people whom I have rendered prosperous internally. Profit from this patriotism that I have given birth to in all hearts, these warrior virtues whose seeds I have sown; form defenders for those harvests, that their products, which are not at all absorbed by my taxes, are also not devoured by foreign armies; call foreigners into our ports. Open trade routes to commerce. Render your alliance precious. Make [the country] renowned for its arms and never for its ambition.” Interior politics having thus prepared a nation, what faculties can exterior politics find to determine the system of its interests vis-à-vis the foreigner, other than to form a redoubtable military! How easy it is to have invincible armies in a state where the subjects are citizens, where they cherish the government, where they like glory, [and] where they are not at all afraid of work! How a nation becomes powerful by its interior resources, which must be

13 considered externally! How its negotiations then diminish complications and acquire weight! How its manner of conduct may become frank and open! This is the feebleness of our governments that make so much obliquity and bad faith in their negotiations. This is what foments division between peoples, that task that reciprocally corrupts members of administrations. This is what makes all nations spy on each other [and] bribe each other; this is what makes them buy peace; this is what mutually sows troubles and embarrassments. This is what dictates their rivalries of every genre, base and harmful; this perpetual encroachment of commerce of one nation on the commerce of another; these prohibitive laws; these rights that exclude the foreigner; these treaties that favor one nation to the prejudice of the others; these chimerical calculations of the balance of export and import: miserable and complicated means that, at the end of a century, have added no power to the government that has most-adroitly employed them. In a word, this is the feebleness of our governments: to fear the prosperity of the other nations; they want to make them all feeble, or corrupt them all: a similar politics by which they enfeeble or corrupt their own subjects, [and] politics quite different from those of a good government that, without seeking to work contrary to the prosperity and power of its neighbors, works to rise above them by its vigor and by its virtues. This is the same feebleness of our governments that renders our military constitutions so imperfect and so ruinous. This is what, not being able to make citizen armies, makes them so numerous. This is what, not being able to recompense them by honor, pays them with gold. This is what, not being able to count on the courage and fidelity of people because the people are enervated and discontented, makes them buy external stipendiary militias. This is what fortifies the frontier at places. Finally, this is what is occupied in extinguishing the warrior virtues of the nations, as they do not even develop their troops, because they fear that they [warrior virtues] will spread among the citizens and they will arm themselves against the abuses that oppress them. Now, I will return to that which concerns military constitutions, this part of politics [that is] so important and so neglected. We conclude by stating that which prevents our governments from conducting themselves after the principles of the vast and interesting science that I have just defined. This science, envisaged from the point of view that I have just presented, has never been treated in any work. It is not the subject of any principal man, nor is it even in the research of a specific person. Therefore, all the men that fortune carries to the head of administrations are not statesmen. They have all only studied some parts of the

14

Preliminary Discourse

administration; the others are unknown to them. They direct them haphazardly and according to established routine. The study that they make of some parts of the administration becomes as destructive to the other parts, because those who know are the only important people, the only privileged people in their eyes. They occupy themselves, to the exclusion of all who do not know, and these are abandoned to the sub-orders. It may be objected that it is impossible for the esprit of a single man to embrace all of the parts of such a vast science. Then how did the Romans pass successively through all the offices of the Republic? How did these men in turn become aediles, quaestors, censors, tribunes, pontifices, consuls, [and] generals?23 Let us have governments that wish to [have], that render necessary, and consequently that direct, public education; we will have the superior and universal spirits that are the glory and the destiny of empires. Then should one man conduct all the details of the administration of the people? Several contribute to 23

[Guibert names most of the important offices in the Roman bureaucracy. Quaestors were financial officials who also worked in provincial governments. Aediles were both executive and judicial officials charged with overseeing religious ceremonies, trade, and infrastructure. Censors maintained the census, the count of population that determined the makeup of each government body, including the Senate. There were two kinds of tribune in the Roman Republic: tribunes of the plebs were elected from the common classes and held an absolute veto over any government official, including other tribunes, and military tribunes, which Guibert probably intends, who were younger men assigned to assist in commanding a legionary army. Pontifices were priests of the College of Pontiffs, the most important of the various groups of priests in Rome; its chief was the Pontifex Maximus. Consuls were the chief magistrates of Rome, with two elected for one year and exercising executive power and commanding consular armies. Rome had no rank of “general” in the sense Guibert uses it; he likely means the conferring of imperium on an army commander, which granted him absolute power outside the sacred boundary of the city of Rome, the pomerium. The cursus honorum, the ordered progression through the magistracy, would have a man move through the offices of aedile, quaestor, praetor, and consul before entering the Senate; each office had an age and experience requirement, creating a self-renewing bureaucracy that served the Republic for centuries. The other offices are ancillary to the cursus honorum and would have been occupied by men denied its offices, with the exception of censor, which often went to consuls leaving office. The government could also create prorogued offices, which often went to men leaving the permanent offices, usually for a provincial posting. Given the order in which Guibert lists the offices, he perhaps refers to the career of Gaius Julius Caesar, who was a military tribune, quaestor, pontifex maximus, praetor, propraetor, and consul before becoming governor of Gaul and then dictator. See Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic; and H.H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome 133 BC to AD 68 (London: Routledge, 2011).]

this important work. Each attaches himself to the details of one part. He intensifies it; he perfects it. From the confluence of this knowledge, spread over each branch, forms, little by little, that mass of light that enlightens the entire administration. From within this group of men, it suffices that one should elevate himself, and he cannot fail to elevate some vast genius. This man, if I may say so, knowing everything, creates or perfects the political system, placing himself atop the machine and prescribing its movement. To command the ensemble of the administration, it is not necessary that he has delved into the details of all of its parts. It suffices that he knows the principal parts, the results of the others, [and] the relation that each must have to the whole. It suffices that, when he has need of descending to the level of the details of one part to enlighten the sub-orders that are charged with it, or to bring them into accord with the general system, he has the subtle and precious tact that sees and judges. For example, in the vast subject of mathematics, each [mathematician] attaches himself to a goal and pursues the truth by different routes. Newton, Leibniz, [and] d’Alembert elevated themselves to the pinnacle of the science [and] tower over it, reserving for themselves the study of the most difficult parts, but on this route, they make progress in other branches, [and] they fix their opinions, spreading their method and their genius across the entire science.24 For example, to serve me as another, more vast comparison, and that corresponds to the importance of the science of government, in the hierarchy of the intelligences that the mythology of some peoples spreads over the universe, there are inferior geniuses who are charged with each element, while the great Being, the universal genius, dominates them and directs them. It must be observed that politics, in becoming more perfect, will become less difficult. The imperfection of a science almost always adds to its difficulty. The shadows of ignorance [and] the sophisms of prejudice so envelop its principles. They complicate them, [and] they multiply them. It is believed that this compensates for their insufficiency. The base of all the operations being false, [and] 24

[Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz were the premier mathematicians of the early modern period, each developing calculus independently of the other. Both developed cult followings among intellectuals, with the Anglophone world tending to prefer Newton and Continental Europe Leibniz. D’Alembert was not the equal of Newton or Leibniz in his importance to mathematics, but he made significant contributions to the field nonetheless, in addition to being one of the key figures in the French Enlightenment and a primary creator of and contributor to the Encyclopedia. Finally, d’Alembert was French, unlike Newton and Leibniz, and Guibert’s friend, perhaps explaining his inclusion in the list.]

15

Preliminary Discourse

erroneous consequences growing each day, they intertwine. Soon, a theory of errors elevates itself, making it a thousand times more complicated and more difficult to grasp than what the chain of truths that forms the science would be. It is certain in politics that such deviations have rapid and destructive results. When this science will be redressed, when it will carry sure and immutable principles like justice and virtue, it will become simple and luminous. It will reject all the means of detail, the supplements, the palliatives, by which feebleness overloads and corrupts all the parts of the administration. In proportion to how better-constituted a state will be, the more real power it will have, [and] the easier it will be to govern. Feeble and ill-constituted states are always played by circumstances and fortune. They fear agitation from within and attack from without. Chained by the politics of their neighbors, they are almost always obligated to move themselves in a sense that is contrary to their true interests. It is only by a force of tyranny, of skill, of small means, of obli­ quity, [or] of poor faith that they conserve a precarious and languishing existence. They resemble feeble boats hazarding the vast heart of the seas. Ceaselessly obliged to tack, to change maneuvers, to take a route opposite their goal, to respect all the vessels that they encounter, to seek their company, to follow in their wake: a cloud alarms them, a wave may cover them, a reef may break them. This will not be the case with a well-constituted and really powerful state; I say really, because it welldistinguishes the true power, founded on the good proportion and constitution of a state, from the appearance of the power founded on a too-great extension of possessions, on momentary triumphs, [or] on the talents of a great man: in a word, on all that does not last; such a state would be easy to govern, its exterior politics uniform and stable. It will fear nothing from its neighbors; it will enter into no enterprise against them. Externally, it will have the consideration that inspires moderation and force. Over its frontiers will watch a redoubtable citizenmilitia. Internally will prosper an abundant and virtuous people. Of what importance will be the intrigues of the other powers, the passions of the men who govern them, [or] the wars that tear them apart? It will not be jealous of their riches. It will not be [jealous] of their conquests. It will not trouble them in their distant possessions. It knows that to be overextended is to weaken oneself; that distant colonies, if they are furnished with a commerce of luxury, maintain vices in the metropole; [and] that, if they are happier, they may draw away from its breast, fortifying and detaching themselves, sooner or later, from this unjust metropole that wants too much to subjugate them. It will not impose itself on their commerce. It will

have no need of regulations, treaties, or pretend calculations of balance. It knows that commodities attract trade; that, provided they have access to trade routes, they operate themselves and have no need of encouragement. At the entry of its ports, at the barriers of its frontiers, will be inscribed the words that form the entire code of its commerce: “LIBERTY, SURETY, PROTECTION.” These avenues will always be open, closed only against luxury and vices; it will not be afraid that these destructive poisons will introduce themselves by fraud. Smuggling only exists when there are buyers, when objects are prohibited by the tyranny of the government or by the avarice of the treasury; when the government, inconsequential and feeble, thunders against it and tolerates it or favors it in secret. But here interior politics will be vigilant and firm; they will have proscribed luxury and vice in the public opinion. The unanimous consent of the nation will regard them as the scourge of their prosperity. Where will they hide themselves in that land where they are foreign? Denounced by all the citizens, pursued by the government, they will find no place of asylum. This state will rarely negotiate with its neighbors. Almost all of the interests of the other nations will be indifferent to it. It will give itself to the art of rendering its prosperity independently of them. It may not even have need of ambassadors. In their place, it will send enligh­ tened men, not to observe means of harming their neighbors, to find the plans of their coasts and places, to spy on their approaches [or] the secrets of their courts, [or] to corrupt the members of their government, but for openly studying the men, the sciences, the morals, the abuses, the good and the bad; to give everyone an advantageous view of the nation; to be simple, instructive, [and] virtuous; to then report to the patrie the product of their reconnaissance, like the ingenious bees report the nectar of flowers to their hive.25 In its turn, it will welcome foreigners and receive them without jealousy [or] suspicion. It will not fear their visiting its arsenals, its ports, its places, [or] its troops. It is only feebleness or ambition that hide these means. A powerful and moderate government lets them 25

[Guibert could simply be referencing beekeeping here, but he perhaps intends an analogy to Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: Or Private Vices, Publick Benefits (New York: Penguin, 1989), an epic poem about a beehive designed as a critique of contemporary systems of morality and commerce. Mandeville posits that perfectly moral individuals would cause the collapse of society, using the example of a beehive where all the workers abandoned their work in order to better themselves morally. His theories were much-debated in Europe, especially the Anglophone world, but they were read in France as well, both in translation and via Anglophiles like Voltaire. See Outram, The Enlightenment, 51–60.]

16 see its breast, without distrust and without ostentation. It also lets them see its routes, its cities, its countryside, [and] its people, sure that the spectacle of its resources would make them desire its friendship and fear its arms. The state of which I speak would have its possessions so united, so proportioned to its means of defense, that it would never fear the enmity of its neighbors. In such a state, the center would not be able to be distinguished from the extremities; all the parts will be equally flourishing and vigorous. Communication will be so easy between all of them, a rapport so great in interests that, were there a danger, all of its forces would assemble there. It will have a ready military, superior to that of its neighbors, of prosperous citizens, invested in the defense of their prosperity. Who would attack such men with stipendiaries, with the troops constituted as they are today in all of Europe? What a difference motives and prejudices make in the courage of the two parties! If finally, in spite its moderation, it is offended in its subjects, in its territory, in its wellbeing, it will go to war. But when it will do so, it must be with all the efforts of its power; it must be with the firm resolution not to lay down its arms before it has been given a reparation proportionate to the offense. This genre of war will not be like that of any of the states have adopted today. It will not wish to conquer [or] to guard its conquests. It will make expeditions rather than establishments. Terrible in its anger, it will carry flame and iron to its enemy. By its vengeance, it will terrify all the people who may be tempted to trouble its repose. And no one will call these reprisals, founded on the laws of nature, barbarous [or] violations of the pretend laws of war. [For example, some] one has come to insult this happy and pacific people. They raise themselves up; they quit their homes. They will perish to the last man if they must, but if they obtain satisfaction, they will be avenged, they will be assured, by the éclat of their vengeance, of their future repose. Thus, moderate justice, attentive to the prevention of crime, knows when it has been committed, renders itself inexorable, pursues the guilty, lays on him the glaive of the law, and, by this example, removes from wicked beginners the temptation of becoming criminals. This state, vigilant in punishing its injuries, will not be, by its politics, the ally of any people, but it will be the friend of all. It will unceasingly carry to them words of peace. It will be, if it can, the mediator of their quarrels, not because of its own interests, nor to profit from its mediation, nor to adjust the balance of power by chimerical calculations. I have already described how all the combinations of modern politics would be indifferent to those. It will offer its arbitration because peace is a good,

Preliminary Discourse

and it knows its price, [and] because war interrupts the communication that must exist between peoples and, in this regard, is harmful to neighboring states. In the same way, earthquakes send aftershocks far beyond their place of origin. It will say to its neighbors, “O peoples! o my brothers! why do you tear yourself apart? What false politics has led you astray? Nations were not born enemies. They are the branches of the same family. Come profit by the spectacle of my prosperity. Come and gather my enlightenment; bring me yours. I do not at all fear my neighbors’ becoming fortunate and powerful. The more that they become so, the more attached they will be to their repose. This is the public felicity that births universal peace.” Finally, the state that I paint will have an administration that is simple, solid, [and] easy to govern. It will resemble the vast machines that produce great effects via uncomplicated parts: the strength of this state will be born from its strength, its prosperity from its prosperity. The time that destroys all things will augment its power. It will bely that vulgar prejudice that imagines that empires are submitted to an imperious law of decadence and ruin. If we cast our eyes on history, this law seems to exist. It is written on the debris of so many thrones [and] on the tombs of so many peoples, but it is not at all irresistible. It is not at all part of that fatalism that ceaselessly destroys and reproduces the universe. If a good government forms the base of an empire, if it knows to maintain its principles, the state will elevate itself to where it will have attained the point of its ascendancy, where it has the greatest strength. If this government is skillful enough to unravel that point at which its elevation will only enfeeble it, if it knows when to stop, [and] if it always knows how to sustain itself there, the state fixed on this summit of power and steadfastly firm on the stormy sea of destiny may see events and centuries break at its feet. O my patrie! this tableau will not always be a fantastical dream. You can realize it; you can become this fortunate state. Perhaps one day, escaping from the vices of his century and placed in more favorable circumstances, a prince will be elevated onto your throne who can affect this great revolution. From the writings of some of my fellow citizens, from mine perhaps, he will draw the desire and the means. He will change our morals; he will reinvigorate our souls; he will give energy back to the government; he will carry the torch of truth to all the parts of the administration; he will exchange our narrow and complicated politics for the vast and sublime science that I have tried to paint. Then these false lights that mislead us, these small talents that we honor with the name of genius, [and] these prejudices that we name “principles” will vanish.

17

Preliminary Discourse

Then the monstrous and complicated system of our laws, of our finances, of our military will collapse. Then the reputations of these sovereigns that we have lauded, of the ministers who we have believed to be statesmen, will be destroyed before this superior man. He will render the nation what it can become. Finally, having made the most of its prosperity, unable to add more to it because it has been rendered durable, he will himself change the form of government. He will call around the throne his peoples who have become his children. He will say to them, “I wish to render you prosperous, as I am. I give you too-extended rights, which I have not abused and that I do not wish my successors to abuse. I have called you here to take part with me [in] the government. I reserve to myself the honors of the crown; the right to propose wise laws to you; [and] the power of executing absolute authority, the dictatorship, in all the crises that menace the state, when you have ratified it. Here are the statutes of this new government; here are its laws: I will reign only according to them and by them. My family, who will swear with me, will succeed me on these conditions. Receive our oaths as we receive yours. If one side or the other makes infractions, the laws will be their judges.”26 What politics, that which would dictate this magnanimous resolution to an all-powerful king! Eh! could we believe that this king and his successors would be less happy in having less authority? This first creator of a new people will be adored for his work. His successors, as long as they be virtuous, would reign by the memory of their ancestry, by the evidence of their goodwill, [and] by the despotism of the laws: the only thing that affirms thrones [and] does not degrade people; the only thing that will be made for the days of enlightenment and philosophy that have begun to rise above our heads.

2

Tableau of the Art of War from the Beginning of the World. [The] Current Situation of This Science in Europe. Its Parallel with Those of Other Places. [The] Necessity of the Rapport of Military Constitutions with Political Constitutions. [The] Vices of All Our Modern Governments on This Subject It is sad to imagine that the premier art that was invented by men was the one of harming himself, and that, from the beginning of the centuries, many more means for destroying humanity have been invented than for rendering it better. This is a truth well-proven by history. Passions were born with the world. They gave birth to war. This produced the desire to vanquish, and, with more success, the military art was born. At first feeble at its birth, it was no more than man against man, the talent of taking advantage of his skill and strength. It confined itself, in the first families, to wrestling, to boxing, or to fencing with some crude weapons. Soon it extended itself to societies; it gained means and strength; [and] it assembled a greater quantity of men. It was then more or less what it is today among the Asiatic peoples: a mass of knowledge without form that cannot be honored with the name of science. Ambitious [men] rose on the earth, and this art, perfected by them, became the instrument of their glory. It made, in their hands, the destiny of nations. It destroyed or preserved empires; finally, for all peoples, it preceded the arts and the sciences, and it perished in proportion to their expansion. Let us follow the military art through its revolutions. We see it successively pass [through] different parts of the globe, carrying glory and superiority in turn to the peoples that cultivate it, fleeing rich and enlightened nations, [and] stopping by preference in rural and poor nations, because their souls have more courage and energy. We will remark particularly on five or six great epochs that are, properly speaking, the ages and the times where it made great changes in its principles.27 2.1

27

26

[Guibert’s imagined king speaks of the concept of constitutional government, which lay at the heart of the Enlightenment. Many philosophes, chief among them Voltaire and Montesquieu, argued for the creation of a written constitution to replace France’s absolutist system; Guibert’s notion is lifted almost wholesale from the latter author’s The Spirit of the Laws, which he will continue to reference.]

Second Part

[Guibert again displays his affinity for Enlightenment noble savagery. In addition, Guibert gives the first of his many allusions to Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus’s Epitoma rei militaris, the only surviving, comprehensive Roman tactical manual. Vegetius was ubiquitous in eighteenth-century readership, and his ideas were “absorbed so completely by the Age of Reason that he became effectively an eighteenth-century author,” according to Christopher Duffy, The Military Experience in the Age of Reason (New York: Atheneum, 1988), 53. The thesis of his work, composed near the end of the Western Roman Empire, was that Rome needed to return to the virtues of its early days, setting aside “enervation” of wealth and urban life for simple and

18 It was with the peoples of Asia, specifically with the Persians, that the art of war began to take some consistency. The Egyptians, friends of science and peace, always made little progress in it. Excepting the reign of Sesostris, they were never conquerors.28 After the death of Cyrus, luxury made it quit Persia and pass to the Greeks. This ingenious and brave people perfected it and reduced it to principles.29 Alexander came, extended it again, and conquered Asia, which had been its cradle. In this epoch, it appeared to be at the highest point of its splendor, and the phalanx was esteemed as the first ordinance of the universe.30 disciplined rural living; this would produce an army similar to the ones that won the Empire. Guibert adopts Vegetius’s themes and arguments throughout the work, as will be seen. Finally, Guibert presents a summary of the canon of Western military thought, moving from the ancient period through his own and highlighting great captains and theorists in several periods, notably excepting the medieval. The canon had been firmly established in Guibert’s day, and it is still presented in more or less the same manner in many Western histories and schools. See Azar Gat, A History of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), especially 3–6 and 35–54; and Pichichero, The Military Enlightenment, 37–38.] 28 [Sesostris is a character from Herodotus’s Histories, presented as a militant king of Egypt who conquered south to Ethiopia, the Red Sea region, and the Levant. Herodotus, in Histories 2:103–116, claims to have seen the king’s stele in the Levant. Other Greek and Roman writers reference Sesostris, including Aristotle, Pausanias, Josephus, and Sallust; all likely drew their inspiration from Herodotus, and no king of Egypt has definitively been identified with the character. Regardless, Guibert is either willfully ignorant of or misinformed about Egyptian history. While Egypt was a relatively pacific state for much of its early existence, several of its kings were noted conquerors, including Senusret III, Rameses II, and Thutmose III, among others. See Erik Hornung, History of Ancient Egypt (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999).] 29 [Cyrus II was the founder and Emperor of the Achaemenid Persian state in the sixth century BCE. His massive and diverse empire lasted for nearly two centuries, spanning from India to Egypt and Europe. He also likely allowed the exiled Jews to begin returning to the Levant, which has much contributed to a positive image of him in the West, including the application of the sobriquet “the Great.” However, his successors did not lapse into luxury and enervation as Guibert suggests; they continued Cyrus’s conquests, including of Egypt and parts of Greece, and the Achaemenid Empire remained strong despite its defeat by the Greeks in the Greco-Persian Wars between 490 and 479 until its fall at the hands of Alexander III in the late fourth century. See Matthew Waters, Ancient Persia: A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire, 550–330 BCE (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).] 30 [Alexander III of Macedon, also commonly called “the great.” He conquered the Achaemenid Persian Empire and replaced it with his own before dying at a young age. The Greek phalanx, and its Macedonian successor, was a key element in his conquests.

Preliminary Discourse

During this time, some Trojans, fugitives and wanderers, established themselves on the coasts of Latium. They carried with them the tactical principles rescued from the ruins of Troy and those who had learned from the destructive success of the Greeks. The inhabitants of the country, repulsed by their arms, ended by uniting with them. Adventurers, descendants of this colony, built a hamlet some leagues from it. Brigands joined with them, and this hamlet one day became the capital of the universe.31 In thinking of the shadows spread over the origin of Rome, of its foreign founders, of its great destinies, one recalls the rivers that are no more than ignored streams at their sources. Tullus Hostilius, one of the sovereigns of this newborn nation, created for it laws, a military, [and] tactics, and thus, while the Greeks believed themselves to be the premier military people in the world, a new nation rose two-hundred leagues from them, [with] an ordinance totally opposed to theirs, which must finally vanquish them and render them forgotten.32

31

32

Greek armies formed dense blocks of heavily-armored infantry armed with shields and long spears; these phalanxes would slowly maneuver into contact with enemy forces and fight until the battle was decided. The Macedonian kings Philip II and Alexander III lengthened the spear to around twenty feet, and added supporting units, particularly cavalry. As most states east of Greece relied on lightly-armed infantry and cavalry, Greek armies with phalanx cores were able to defeat them, even when greatly outnumbered. See Hans van Wees, Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities (London: Bloomsbury, 2016); and Ian Worthington, By the Spear: Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).] [Guibert recounts the myth presented in Virgil’s Aeneid, which tells the story of Aeneas, a refugee from the fall of Troy who settled in Latium, now Lazio, in Italy, conquering the local people and founding what is now Rome. This gave Rome a heroic and ancient lineage like the Greeks and Egyptians, and its citizens seem to have seen no conflict with their other founding myth, that of Rome’s founding by its namesake Romulus. See Publius Vergilius Maro, The Aeneid (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). See also “Aeneas” in March, Dictionary of Classical Mythology, 21–25.] [Tullus Hostilius was the mythical third king of Rome, heir to Numa. According to the legend, his major accomplishment was the conquest of neighboring Alba Longa, perhaps in a combat of champions. Guibert’s characterization of him as the origin of Roman discipline is likely lifted from Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, An Universal History from the Beginning of the World to the Empire of Charlemagne, trans. James Elphinston (Dublin: Marchbank, 1785), 29: “under Tullus Hostilius, [Rome] began to learn that excellent discipline which rendered it master of the world afterwards.” Bossuet was a towering figure in French letters, responsible for elaborating the concept of divine right of kings and writing numerous works on a variety of subjects, including religion and politics.]

Preliminary Discourse

The Romans, ambitious and warlike by their constitution, profiting from the enlightenment and the faults of all centuries, soon took ascendancy over all known peoples. Divided Italy bent under the yoke. Carthage struggled for some time, but the talents of Hannibal could not defend against the vices of his government and the superiority of that of his rival. It was a rich and commercial nation. It was vanquished. The Greeks were the same and resisted even less. Enervated by luxury and riches, they extended their hands into the Romans’ chains. Content provided they were allowed to write, paint, and sculpt, they consoled themselves basely by reigning in the arts over a people who robbed them of their empire of arms.33 In the last age of the Republic, Rome became master of the world. In the known universe, there was only one power, only one [system of] tactics. All the military institutions were destroyed or folded into those of the Romans. The art of war thus appeared to be, for a second time, at the highest point of its splendor. But this moment could not last. For a science, and this one in particular, to sustain and expand, several nations must attach themselves to it and cultivate it. They must be excited by ambition and necessity. The Greeks became warriors by their internal divisions, by the ambitions of their governments, [and] by the need to oppose the Persian invasions with courage and principles.34 The Romans were formed the same way: by defending their homes [and] by attacking their neighbors; some neighbors, like the Samnites, [were] poor and redoubtable, [but they formed themselves] chiefly in fighting great men [like] Hannibal and Pyrrhus, who instructed them by force of conquering them.35 But, when Rome reigned peacefully over the universe, when it had 33

[Guibert sketches the general course of Roman expansion under the Republic, first conquering the Italian peninsula, then Carthage in stages during the Punic Wars, and finally Greece, which had fallen prey to the Vegetian trap, according to Guibert.] 34 [Guibert’s thesis about the militaristic nature of the Greeks draws from ancient sources and remains the prevalent one in modern historiography. See John Lee, “The Classical Greek Experience” in The Oxford Handbook of Classical Warfare, 143–161.] 35 [The Samnites were a group of tribes that lived south of Rome who occasionally allied with the city but more often opposed it, especially in the Samian Wars of 343–290 BCE. Despite being defeated, they supported enemies of Rome whenever possible, including Pyrrhus of Epirus and Hannibal Barca in their wars against Rome, and joining the Italians in the Social War in the early first century BCE. Pyrrhus was King of Epirus in the early third century BCE. Born of the generation after Alexander III, he was a military adventurer who fought wars across the central Mediterranean. His most famous conflict, the Pyrrhic Wars, saw his intervention on behalf of the southern Italian state of Tarentum against Rome. He won the Battles of Heraclea and Asculum but lost

19 no enemies other than its riches and its vices, discipline degenerated; the military art was no more than a study of theory and speculation, abandoned to some obscure and unfortune legionaries. The Parthians, the Gauls, [and] the Germans attacked all the parts of the frontiers of the Empire. The legions, invincible until [then], were often vanquished. But these distant wars did not yet alarm Italy. The Emperors, drowsy on their throne, were at pains to turn their regard to the extremities of the Empire. They did not see the bastardization of their military and the precipice that grew under their grandeur.36 a large portion of his army in each, giving birth to the term “Pyrrhic victory.” Hannibal Barca was a Carthaginian commander in the Second Punic War. He led the famous invasion of Rome from Spain that culminated in the crushing victories of the Battles of the Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae. Following Cannae, he spent several years in Italy, detaching Roman allies from the city. He finally departed for Africa in 202 to contest the Roman invasion of Carthage, which culminated in his defeat at the Battle of Zama and the loss of the Carthaginian empire. Despite his defeat, Hannibal remained in the canon of great captains and a figure of emulation, particularly for military commanders and theorists.] 36 [The Roman army was constructed around the legion, a unit of around 5,000 heavy infantry and 300 cavalry, with supporting light troops and auxiliaries that could outnumber the legion proper. Unlike the Greek phalanx, the Roman legion could operate in broken terrain and use a variety of tactics, which led to its eventual victory over Greek and Greek-modeled states. The Parthians controlled the heartland of the former Achaemenid Persian Empire, from Mesopotamia east to India, between around 250 BCE and 220 CE. They were Rome’s only true enemy for much of the late Republic and Empire periods, although several Roman expeditions took the capital Ctesiphon with relative ease. The Parthians avoided conquest in large part by refusing to face Rome on a traditional battlefield, preferring instead to withdraw from Roman expeditions and attrit them until they departed. Most famously, a Parthian army virtually annihilated the Roman army of Marcus Licinius Crassus at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE. “Gauls” and “Germans” were general terms used roughly to refer to Celtic and Germanic peoples during the Roman period. Beginning around 150 CE, and increasingly after 250, various tribes migrated into Roman provinces, pushed from the east by other tribes arriving from Asia like the Huns. Rome managed to settle and integrate many of these groups, but its ability to do so gradually eroded, culminating in the gradual destruction of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. This is popularly referred to as the “barbarian invasions,” and Guibert again uses Vegetian language to describe the failure of Rome to adapt to the situation. Guibert’s main source for this thesis is probably Charles Le Beau, Histoire du Bas-Empire en commençant à Constantin le Grand, 27 Vols. (1757–1811); the term “Bas-Empire” is best translated as “Low Empire.” Le Beau’s arguments, which epitomized those of his era, became those of Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 3 Vols. (New York:

20

Preliminary Discourse

Vespasian, Titus, Trajan, and some other princes passingly remedied these evils: they reestablished discipline in the troops, they made war themselves, and they did so with success.37 But feeble princes or tyrants succeeded these great men. The springs of government loosened again, [and] the political wounds became deeper and more incurable. The legions sold the Empire in lieu of defending it. Rome could not survive this sort of corruption. Swarms of Goths, Huns, [and] Vandals attacked the Empire: they came with numbers and courage, and no one could oppose them, neither the courage that sometimes substitutes for discipline nor the discipline that can substitute for courage. In a century and a half, the Empire was nothing more than a languishing and abased colossus whose remains each tore at; it is remarkable that these Romans called “barbarians” the peoples who subjugated them: [the] strange blindness of a nation that had only conserved the vanity of its ancestors and that made grandeur consist only of luxury and its theaters!38 Soon nothing remained in the universe except the memory of this power that had chained it. The Popes placed themselves on the throne of Rome [and] the Turks on that of Constantinople. The military art, already ignored in the decadence of the Late Empire, was entirely lost under its ruins and did not reappear for three or four centuries. During this entire interval, and during the centuries that preceded it, Europe was without tactics,

37

38

Penguin, 2005). Its veracity has increasingly been called into question by scholars of late Rome, who point out the successful integration of various tribal populations even well after the traditional fall of Rome, and the continuation of Roman rule in the East for another millennium. See Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity: From Marcus Aurelius to Muhammad (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993) and The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); and Stephen Mitchell, A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284–641 (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015). See also Patricia Southern, Ancient Rome: The Empire, 30 BC–AD 476 (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley, 2011); and Patricia Southern and Karen Dixon, The Late Roman Army (London: Routledge, 2014).] [Vespasian, Titus, and Trajan were Roman emperors in the late first and early second centuries CE. All three were accomplished military commanders. Vespasian won the title of emperor for himself after defeating a series of rivals in the Year of the Four Emperors in 69; Titus was his son and concluded the Jewish Revolt before assuming the imperial throne. Trajan was the most successful of the three, conquering Dacia and campaigning into Parthia; at the time of his death in 117, the Roman Empire reached its largest territorial extent.] [The Goths, Huns, and Vandals were three of the largest and most coherent of the tribes that migrated into Roman territory during the Late Empire period. While the Hunnic Empire proved ephemeral, both the Goths and Vandals managed to create successor states to Rome, in Western Europe and North Africa, respectively.]

without discipline, and almost without regulated troops. The anarchy of governments, the tyranny of feudal lords, general ignorance, [and] the spiritual opposition that exercised the clergy prevented the arts from being reborn. All the books of the ancients were in the hands of the priests, and these priests were invested in keeping Europe in shadows. They made their grandeur.39 What does the history of the first centuries of our monarchy and all its contemporary states offer to our eyes? The migrations of Goths, beaten by Clovis or by Merovech, who went to meet them with laborers assembled for fifteen days only; the Germans and Saxons subjugated by Charlemagne because he was more brave and more powerful than they were; the incursions of the Normans, heirs of the courage and indiscipline of the Vandals, their ancestors; everywhere armies without order and without science; battles won by chance or by valor, and never by discipline; [and] conquests as rapid as floods, and as devastating.40 A prince, had he appeared then with genius and good troops, would have subjugated Europe. One need only see what Gustav Adolf did with 25,000 Swedish 39

[Guibert proffers another popular concept, that of the “Dark Ages.” Traditional histories portray the period between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of early modern Europe as a period of little learning or education, a concept originating in the thinkers of the early Renaissance. This view has largely been debunked in academic histories, but it remains prevalent in popular conceptions and histories. See The New Cambridge Medieval History, 7 Vols. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).] 40 [Guibert gives a rough account of France’s post-Roman history. Merovech was a semi-legendary leader of the Franks who migrated into what is now France in the fifth century CE. Clovis was King of the Franks in the late fifth and early sixth centuries; he conquered much of the Rhine region, founded the Frankish Empire with Paris as his capital, and converted the Franks to Christianity. Charlemagne was the Carolingian King of the Franks who expanded the Frankish Empire to include much of Western Europe, including into Spain, Italy, Germany, and the lands of the Saxons, which are now modern north-central Germany. He founded the Holy Roman Empire in 800, which persisted until 1806. The Normans descended from Viking raiders who were granted the land at the mouth of the Seine by Frankish King Charles the Simple around 900. They made further conquests of Naples and Sicily, portions of Syria, and the famed conquest of England by the Norman William the Bastard in 1066. The Normans were not descended from the Vandals, as Guibert suggests, but contemporary histories draw some connection between them, although not decisively. See Pierre Guyot-Desfontaines, Histoire des ducs de Bretagne et des différentes révolutions arrives dans cette province, 6 Vols. (Paris: Clousier, 1739), V:196–197. See also Roger Price, A Concise History of France (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1–53.]

Preliminary Discourse

at a time when he had already seen the twilight of the renaissance of the arts.41 The discovery of gunpowder did not perfect the military art. It only furnished new means of destruction and delivered the last blow to chivalry, [an] institution that our centuries of enlightenment must envy in these times of ignorance! Firearms truly retarded the progress of tactics, because armies approached each other less, and they produced more chance and fewer combinations in battle. Gustav and Maurits of Nassau finally appeared. The one fought for the liberty of his country, the other for love of glory. Both studied antiquity. Each found for himself, in the debris of the centuries, the scattered vestiges of tactics and discipline. Perhaps, admiring the ancients too much, did they too-servilely apply the principles to the time in which they flourished and arms then in use. Perhaps they retarded our progress, because their authority was decisive for a long time, for the century following, because it sustained the prejudice for pikes and the deep order for a long time. But what is at least certain is that under them, the military art was reborn, and that Europe cried, astonished, “miracle,” when it saw the troops, the camps, and the success of Gustav.42 41

42

[Gustav II Adolf was King of Sweden from 1611 to 1632 and a prominent military reformer. He developed charge cavalry and mobile field artillery units and deployed some of the earliest combined-arms units in early-modern armies. With them, he expanded Sweden around the Baltic at the expense of Russia, Denmark, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, making it a great power in Northern Europe. He also entered the Thirty Years War on the Protestant side in 1630, supported by a French subsidy negotiated by Richelieu. He won a significant victory at the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631 and another at the Battle of Lützen the following year, although he was killed in the latter. His military career was characterized by the rapid maneuver of his armies through contested areas, avoiding concentrations of enemies until he could engage them on superior terms with his combined-arms forces. His legacy was to become the founder of the Swedish Empire and one of the great captains of the period and of military history, and his reforms spread to armies throughout Europe. Rather than being named “the Great” like other commanders, Gustav’s name is often rendered in Latin, as “Gustavus Adolphus.” Guibert will frequently refer to Gustav throughout his work. See Michael Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus (London: Routledge, 2016) and Sweden as a Great Power, 1611– 1697: Government, Society, Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1968).] [Maurits of Nassau was a Dutch commander in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He inherited the Dutch Revolt against Spanish overlordship from his father, Willem the Silent, Prince of Orange. Along with Willem Lodewijk, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg, Maurits systematically reformed the protoDutch army, implementing drill and ordered formations of pike and shot based on Roman examples, likely including Vegetius. Rather than directly engaging the much more powerful Spanish, Maurits instead used his newly professionalized army to lay

21 After his [Gustav’s] death, Banér, Gassion, Saxe-Weimar, Turenne, [and] Montecuccoli fought after his principles.43 siege to key fortresses, taking nearly all of them by 1620, when the Dutch war was subsumed into the wider Thirty Years War. He died in 1625, almost twenty-five years before his country achieved independence, but his legacy remained. Maurits, as Guibert indicates, was seen as the founder of modern military professionalism. Gustav took Maurits’s examples and used them to great effect in his wars, tying the two together in the ranks of great captains and co-founders of modern European armies. This period has been known as the “Military Revolution,” particularly in the mid-twentieth century works of Michael Roberts. Roberts posited a direct line from the armies of Maurits and Gustav to modern Europe, which remained the primary approach in military historiography for much of the remainder of the century. This thesis has increasingly been debunked in the years since. Studies illustrating the professional nature of contemporary armies like the Spanish and Swiss have eroded the notion that Maurits’s army was the sole repository of drill and professionalism. Others that examine contemporary Ottoman and Commonwealth armies show that Gustav was far from the first or only commander to use a combined-arms approach, or to skillfully maneuver armies. Geoffrey Parker contends that the true change was not in drill or army formation, but rather in the construction of fortresses. Yet others have objected to the notion of a “revolution” that lasted several centuries. The sum of these arguments is to debunk the Roberts-style monocausal phenomenon in favor of a diverse and simultaneous development of the elements of modern warfare across Europe and the world during the period. See The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, ed. Clifford Rogers (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995). The “deep order” refers to tactical formations that emphasized depth, usually dense pike and shot formations designed to protect the men armed with gunpowder weapons from enemy cavalry. Almost all contemporary armies used a version of this formation in their battles, most notably the famed Spanish tercio.] 43 [Guibert continues the canon of great captains through the end of the seventeenth century. Johan Banér was a lieutenant of Gustav Adolf’s in the Thirty Years War who continued the dead king’s campaign before his own death in 1641. Jean de Gassion, born Jean de Hontas, was a bureaucrat and military commander during the Thirty Years War. He fought with Gustaf Adolf in Germany during the latter’s campaigns, distinguishing himself by his bravery and competence, winning him a position in the French army. He served under Louis II de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, including participating in the Battle of Rocroi in 1643 and Gassion’s death in the Battle of Lens in 1647. Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar was one of the many great military adventurers of the Thirty Years War. He fought under Gustav Adolf and assumed command of the army after the king’s death at Lützen. He continued to fight for the Protestant side before entering French service in 1635. He won a series of sieges in Germany before his death in 1639. Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, was arguably the greatest military commander of the late seventeenth century. He came of age during the Thirty Years War as a contemporary of Condé and fought in most major battles of that

22 The military art made new progress on some few new points. This was the time when great generals commanded small armies and did great things. But tactics rested in its infancy. It seemed that they did not dare to lose sight of the first instructions. They feared losing by departing from the ordinance of the ancients. They preserved pikes. They continued to believe that the force of the infantry consisted of the density of its order and in its impulsion.44 They always cited the ancients, and no one perceived that there are 2,000 years between the ancients and us [or] that other principles were needed, because the arms, the constitutions, and most of all, the moral fiber of souls, was not the same as was it was then. war and its continuation, the Franco-Spanish War. During the latter, a series of civil wars called the Fronde broke out in France; Turenne briefly joined the rebels before reconciling with the government of the young Louis XIV and commanding royal armies, defeating Condé at the Battle of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine in 1652, ending the Fronde. Turenne’s reward was to be named Marshal-General of the Armies, the highest position in the French military, which has only been awarded six times in French history. He continued his service to Louis XIV, commanding forces in the brief War of Devolution in 1667 and 1668 before achieving his apotheosis in the Dutch War of 1672–1678. Turenne commanded the French forces that overran the Dutch lands in 1672, a disaster for the Dutch known as the Rampjaar. Turenne then transferred to the Rhine frontier with a small army. There, he conducted a masterpiece campaign of maneuver against the Habsburg commander Montecuccoli, including a rare winter campaign. Turenne also devastated the Palatinate before his death at the Battle of Salzbach. Turenne’s willingness to discard accepted methods of tactics and operations, including by conducting rapid maneuvers, winter marches and battles, and driving into Germany away from supply lines, marked him as one of the most important and innovative captains of the period as well as a paradigm commander. He remains a legend among the French, both of Guibert’s day and in the present; his body is buried near Napoleon’s in the Invalides. Raimondo Montecuccoli was, in many ways, the Habsburg Turenne. He came of age during the Thirty Years War and fought in that conflict before participating in conflicts in Italy and Eastern Europe. He matched Turenne’s campaign on the Rhine as his opponent, demonstrating equal brilliance and skill. Like Turenne in France, Montecuccoli remained a point of national pride in Italy. See Carl Eckberg, The Failure of Louis XIV’s Dutch War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); and Gunther Rothenberg, “Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus Adolphus, Raimondo Montecuccoli, and the ‘Military Revolution’ of the Seventeenth Century” in Makers of Modern Strategy, 32–61.] 44 [Despite the rapid maneuver campaigns of several of the above generals, Guibert justly characterizes the warfare of the first half of the seventeenth century. The deep order remained, as did pikes, but tactical formations began to thin and spread themselves as gunpowder weapons improved in quality and range. See Parrott, The Business of War, 139–195; and Richelieu’s Army: War, Government, and Society in France, 1624–1642 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).]

Preliminary Discourse

The seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth enlightened Europe more and more on some branches of war, but in others, they left it or threw it further into shadow. Coehoorn and Vauban perfected the attack on places.45 We were creators in this genre and, whatever may be said, far superior to the ancients. The art of the defense has not made the same progress, either because courage has been abased, and it is courage that is the true rampart of places; or because we did not reflect enough on what a good defense is, only that which is offensive, and that which multiplies the obstacles in the path of besiegers. Chamilly defended Grave according to this principle, and he had few imitators.46 At the same time, in other regards, changes took place [that were] more misunderstood [and] more destructive to humanity and the perfection of the military science. For example, armies became quite numerous, [and] the artillery multiplied prodigiously. Louis XIV, to give an example, gained nothing. He only engaged Europe in imitating him. Armies, less easy to move and sustain, became more difficult to command. Condé, Luxembourg, Eugene, Catinat, Vendôme, [and] Villars, by the ascendency of their genius, were able to move these masses, but Villeroy, Marsin, Cumberland, and so many others were smashed under them.47 Eh! how would they have conducted them? 45

46

47

[Menno van Coehoorn and Sébastien le Prestre, seigneur de Vauban, were the foremost military engineers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Coehoorn served the United Provinces, while Vauban remained in French service. They dedicated much of their work to building modern fortresses along their respective frontiers, creating places defended by multiple fields of fire, overlapping works, and a variety of other modern techniques. Vauban’s designs largely became the standard of the period, particularly the star-shaped bastion that still bears his name. He constructed several lines of them along France’s northeastern frontier that became known as the ne plus ultra lines. Both men also designed military equipment, most notably Vauban, who is credited with the invention of the socket bayonet around 1700. While Vauban is popularly credited with being the father of modern military engineering, Coehoorn deserves an equal share in that title. See Christopher Duffy, Fire & Stone: The Science of Fortress Warfare 1660–1860 (Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 2006); and Henry Guerlac, “Vauban: The Impact of Science on War” in Makers of Modern Strategy, 64–90.] [Noël Bouton, marquis de Chamilly, was a French military adventurer who spent his early career in Portugal before entering Louis XIV’s service in the late seventeenth century. His notable military achievement was the defense of the city of Grave, which the French had taken early in the Dutch War, in 1675. As Guibert suggests, Chamilly’s defense cost the attacking army, commanded by Willem, Prince of Orange, four months and in excess of 15,000 men. Chamilly’s conduct won him Louis’s favor and the marshal’s baton.] [The next entry in the canon of great captains. Louis II de Bourbon, prince de Condé, was a contemporary of Turenne’s

Preliminary Discourse and generally considered to be his equal. Condé, as his name suggests, was a Prince of the Blood, a member of the royal family, which granted him command at a young age. He fought in all of the wars of the period, both as a rebel in the Fronde and as one of Louis’s premier generals. His crowning achievement was the Battle of Rocroi in 1643; his army faced a Spanish army composed of tercios. Condé defeated them by driving away their cavalry screen and then bombarding them with artillery until only two tercios remained intact; he allowed them to surrender under siege terms. Rocroi is seen as a great turning point in military history, the end of the tercio and the ascendancy of fire-based warfare, with Condé as its author. Later in his life, after being publicly rehabilitated for his rebellion, Condé assumed command after Turenne’s death and outmaneuvered Montecuccoli on the Rhine before retiring. Because of his exalted status and accomplishments, Condé is known as The Great Condé, or simply The Condé, and is ranked as one of the best of the generals of the period. His death, along with that of Turenne, was seen as the end of an era, especially as they were succeeded by a series of lesser generals in the subsequent wars. François-Henri de Montmorency-Bouteville, duc de PineyLuxembourg, was born in 1627, six months after his father was executed for dueling. Tied to Condé through marriage, Luxembourg was his companion on his campaigns and won promotion from the queen-regent for bravery in the Franco-Spanish War. He followed Condé into the Fronde, fighting with him against Turenne. He continued in French service during the Dutch War, assuming command of French forces in the Low Countries after Turenne’s departure and winning his baton after the great general’s death; like Turenne in the Palatinate, Luxembourg perpetrated massacres in the Low Countries before his retreat. Luxembourg won his greatest laurels in the War of the League of Augsburg, winning the Battles of Fleurus, Leuze, and Neerwinden between 1690 and 1693; his friend and Prince of the Blood François-Louis de Bourbon, prince de Conti, called him “the upholsterer of Notre Dame” for all the standards taken in the last victory. Luxembourg died soon after, depriving France of its greatest commander mid-war. Prince Eugene of Savoy was one of the greatest military commanders of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He came of age commanding armies in the great Habsburg triumph in the Great Turkish War, fought from 1683 to 1699. During the War of Spanish Succession, he commanded one of the two major Habsburg field armies, winning victories over the French in Italy at the Battle of Turin in 1706 and in the Low Countries at the Battles of Blenheim, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet between 1704 and 1709. He was the triumphant commander in the Austro-Turkish war that followed, culminating in his negotiation of the Treaty of Passarowitz. His final service was to command Habsburg forces in the War of the Polish Succession from 1733 until his death in 1736. Nicolas Catinat rose through the ranks of the Maison du roi to command armies in the War of the League of Augsburg and War of Spanish Succession, largely in Italy. He performed well in the former conflict and less well in the latter, being superseded by higher-ranking commanders before his retirement and death in 1712. Not long after this work, Guibert submitted an Elegy of Catinat for the annual essay contest run by the Academie française; it was published in 1775. See Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de Guibert, Eloge du maréchal de Catinat (Edinburg: 1775).

23 Louis-Joseph de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme, was a Prince of the Blood and contemporary of Catinat. He served under Condé at the end of the Dutch War and under Catinat in Italy in the early years of the War of the League of Augsburg before being given his own command in Spain, seizing Barcelona in 1697 near the end of the conflict. In the Spanish Succession, he fought with mixed success in Italy and the Low Countries, including defeating Eugene at the Battle of Cassano and being defeated by him in turn at the Battle of Oudenarde, before again finding victory in Spain at the behest of Felipe V. Like Catinat, he died in 1712, near the war’s end. Claude-Louis-Hector, prince de Martigues, duc de Villars, was considered the heir to Condé and Turenne, both in skill and rank. Like his contemporaries, he came of age fighting in the Dutch War. He won his fame as a commander in the War of Spanish Succession, winning the Battles of Friedlingen and First Höchstadt in 1702 and 1703 before being partially sidelined in favor of other generals. After the disasters of Blenheim, Ramillies, and Oudenarde, Villars assumed command of the French army in the Low Countries and fought John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and Eugene to a bloody draw at Malplaquet in 1709, despite being wounded. Malplaquet occasioned Churchill’s recall and was the turning point in the war. Villars resumed the offensive and won a significant victory over Eugene at the Battle of Denain in 1712, likely saving the French a humiliating exit from the conflict. He continued his campaign into Germany before negotiating the Treaty of Rastatt with Eugene. On the outbreak of the War of the Polish Succession in 1733, the elderly Villars was named Marshal-General of France and commanded French forces in Italy from a cart. He died in 1734 as one of the great captains of France. François de Neufville, duc de Villeroy, was the childhood companion of Louis XIV and thus the recipient of his constant favor. Villeroy was a skilled courtier but ill-suited to the battlefield; he was castigated for bombarding the civilian population of Brussels in 1695 and being defeated and taken captive early in the War of Spanish Succession in Italy. His crowning humiliation was his defeat in the Battle of Ramillies in 1706, which finally led Louis to retire him. Villeroy spent the remainder of his life involved in court intrigues, including against the Regent Philippe II, duc d’Orléans, in the 1720s. As Guibert indicates by having him head the list, Villeroy was the paradigm of the poor commander. Ferdinand, comte de Marsin, was a general and diplomat during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He fought in several notable battles in his career before receiving command of Villars’s army in 1704. He was defeated at the Battle of Blenheim and was dispatched to Italy, where he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Turin in 1706. Unlike the others Guibert names, Marsin never held outright command of an army in a significant battle; instead, Guibert appears to use him as a prototype of the commanders of lesser skill who appeared in the wake of the deaths of Turenne and Condé. Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, was an English general in the eighteenth century. His most famous success was defeating the Jacobite army at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, but the remained of his military career was disastrous. He lost the Battles of Fontenoy and Lauffeld in 1745 and 1747 to Hermann-Maurice, comte de Saxe, which allowed the French to seize control of the Low Countries and triumph in the War of

24 The great men of whom I have just spoken introduced into the armies neither organization nor tactics. They left no principles to follow. Perhaps even, I dare to say, they acted more out of instinct than by premeditation. As such, they could not form generals under themselves; as such, when the genius of these privileged men did not march at the head of armies, they fell into the night of ignorance. Fortune, nature, [and] the decadence of the century were accused in turn for the rarity of good generals. These chimerical causes had to be attacked. The science of command was regarded entirely as an inner gift, as a present of heaven. Education and study were barely imagined to be necessary. The science of war was not developed in any work, in any enlightened manner. Tactics were a narrow and confined routine. Marshal Puységur posed a few principles amidst many errors, but he was soon halted or lost in his theory.48 The invention of the art of dividing an army, of simplifying marches, of deploying troops, of handling 100,000 men as easily as 10,000 was reserved for the King of Prussia.49 There was thus a great schism in the opinion of militaires. Must the discovery of firearms change tactics? Must the ordinance of the ancients be rejected because of its depth and the effect of artillery? All of Europe was divided by and floating between these opinions. Much was written back and forth, and discussions clarified nothing. Folard proposed columns; he made them his fundamental rule and almost exclusive to the infantry. And such was the ignorance that he had many partisans.50 the Austrian Succession. In the Seven Years War, he was again defeated by French forces at the Battle of Hastenbeck in 1757, followed by his signing of the Convention of Klosterzeven that temporarily removed Hanover from the war and nearly lost it for the Prusso-British alliance. With this list, Guibert has nearly completed the canon of early modern great captains, along with a few of their lesssuccessful contemporaries, that persists to the present.] 48 [Jacques-François de Chastenet, marquis de Puységur, was a long-serving officer in the French army, entering the service in the 1670s and dying in 1743. He worked as a staff officer for most of his career, which was of little note beyond reaching the marshalate in 1734 during the War of the Polish Succession. He achieved prominence after his death with the publication of Art de la guerre par principes et par règles, 2 Vols. (Paris: 1748), by his son, Louis-Pierre de Chastenet, comte de Puységur. Puységur argued for a return to the deep order and the use of the pike, as Guibert indicates.] 49 [Friedrich II of Prussia. Guibert begins the first of many characterizations of Friedrich as the only living commander capable of properly handling an army in maneuver warfare.] 50 [Jean-Charles, chevalier Folard, was the foremost French military theorist in the first half of the eighteenth century and arguably the founder of modern French military theory. Like Puységur, he lived a long life, from 1669 to 1752, and served in

Preliminary Discourse

One saw the moment when the entire infantry would take up the pike and form in phalanxes again. The War of the Spanish Succession and the War of the Polish Succession were fought with this uncertainty; battalions sometimes fought on four [ranks], sometimes on [six]; the old officers always demanded the pikes that Vauban had made them quit; French cavalry had only its valor and point of order, while foreign countries’ had order and lightness; our fighting was in disorder, while other countries fought en masse, uncertain if the force would be shock or speed, having believed for some time that they must be served by fire action.51 The generals, more indecisive themselves

51

the various wars of the period. He was a prolific writer of military theory, producing several volumes before his death that were published during his lifetime and after. His major theory was to return warfare to the formations employed by the Greeks and Romans, namely the deep order. He inspired imitators like Puységur, who took up the torch of his theory in the mid-century debates, and more generally inspired the great flowering of military theory in eighteenth-century France. He also proved influential on Maurice de Saxe, who made him his military tutor.] [The War of the Spanish Succession took place between 1701 and 1713 and was the culmination of the Wars of Louis XIV. Carlos II, the last Spanish Habsburg, died without issue in 1700, leaving the throne vacant. The closest heir was Louis, Dauphin of France, son of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain. Louis’s marriage to her ended the Franco-Spanish War and secured the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659, but the marriage contract explicitly excluded all her descendants from inheriting the Spanish throne, for fear of uniting it to the French crown. Thus, the Dauphin and his children were excluded from inheritance in 1700, but Louis XIV argued that, because the dowry for Maria Theresa had never been paid, the contract was void, which did accord with legal practices at the time; he put forth his grandson Philippe, son of the Dauphin, as King of Spain. The other option was to place another Habsburg on the Spanish throne, which threatened to revive the Habsburg Empire of Charles V. The result was a succession war between France and the portions of Spain loyal to Felipe V and the Habsburg coalition, which included England, the Dutch Republic, and Savoy. Both sides feared the imposition of universal monarchy, whether Bourbon or Habsburg. The war began poorly for France, as armies under John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and Eugene of Savoy defeated French armies in several battles and even threatened to break through the ne plus ultra lines and invade the interior for the first time in generations. Churchill was recalled to England in 1710, allowing for a French resurgence led by Villars. The war concluded with several treaties, notably the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt in 1713 and 1714. Felipe V remained King of Spain, but almost all Spanish territories in Europe were taken from him, including most of his Italian lands and the Spanish Netherlands, which became the Austrian Netherlands. With a Bourbon prince on the Spanish Throne, Spain and France became allies for most of the next century, what is often termed the “Family Compact.” France was exhausted by the war and would take most of a generation to recover; Louis’s reputation also suffered, and he died in 1715 largely reviled by a European commentariat that decreed that he had lived too long and waged war too freely. See John Lynn, The

25

Preliminary Discourse

because they had reflected less on their discussions than those that they regarded as odious and subaltern, established principles on nothing. Tactics did not occupy them. It seemed as if they regarded success in war with indifference, and this vice was not perceived because no one in Europe was at all enlightened. However, we touched the moment of leaving these shadows. For a second time, the North offered the phenomenon of a warlike and disciplined army. Karl XII fought at the head of the Swedish, again animated by the spirit of Gustav. His infantry was nearly as indefatigable [and] as disciplined as the Roman legions; they charged like them, sword in hand, having excellent general officers and some knowledge of modern deployments. Perhaps finally Karl XII had perfected the military art, just as his ancestor had rehabilitated it; perhaps he would have become the Friedrich [II of Prussia] of his time. But his life was too short. Did he have enough knowledge, and did he have enough extent in his genius? His first successes were rapid, as will always be those of a disciplined army over an ignorant multitude. He began like Alexander, conducting himself afterwards like an adventurer, and finished like Gustav.52 After his death, Sweden degenerated, and the Russians, who had conquered them without equaling them, did not become more enlightened. It was always the destiny of the North to make military revolutions in Europe, as it is for the South to make those of learned Europe. A kingdom had just risen on the Oder and on the Spree.53 Its new sovereigns, not being able to

52

53

Wars of Louis XIV 1667–1714 (New York: Longman, 1999), 266– 361. Guibert rightly notes that tactics were generally without oversight during the period. Although pikes had formally been replaced by socket bayonets around 1700, some units retained them, and there was little doctrinal guidance from the government beyond details of drill and petty tactics, nor would there be any until the 1750s.] [Karl XII was King of Sweden from 1697 to 1718. Like his ancestor Gustav Adolf, Karl spent nearly his entire reign in war, fighting against all of his northern neighbors. He managed to defeat most of them, but he could not overcome the Russian armies of Pyotr I, which defeated him at the Battle of Poltava in 1709. Karl lived in exile in the Ottoman Empire for several years before returning home to fight the Russians again, where he died in battle in 1718. Guibert, like many of his time, equates Karl with Gustav Adolf, noting that both died in battle and placing them in the ranks of great captains.] [Prussia; the Spree River runs through Berlin, and the Oder River flows through Silesia. The Kingdom of Prussia was created by Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I for Friedrich III, Elector of Brandenburg, in exchange for his participation in the War of Spanish Succession. No king other than the Emperor could exist with the Empire, but Friedrich found a unique loophole: he was Duke of Prussia, which was a territory under the sovereignty of the King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,

have either commerce or a navy, attached themselves to forming an army, and soon they placed their weight on the general balance by their pretentions and their soldiers. Friedrich II rose to the throne, and he achieved what had been drafted by his fathers. A prince of skill and full of the study of the ancients, he deployed the vastest genius. He doubled his troops in number, and even more in their discipline; created almost-new tactics; formed his generals; was himself the most skillful of all of them; conquered a province better than his kingdom; wrestled against as many enemies as Louis XIV with fewer means and more glory; and finally, with little revenue, a small population, [and] few faculties in his subjects, he created the most military and most surprising power in Europe.54 The reign of this prince will be one of the most remarkable ages in the science of war, like that of Augustus and that of Louis XIV were the principal ages in the history of letters. Such is the empire of habit and prejudice that the King of Prussia formed his troops and created tactics without any other nation thinking of placing itself on the same rank. Thus he defeated the Austrians several times in the War of Austrian Succession. He took Silesia from them.55

54

55

placing it outside the Empire. Thus, Friedrich was created “King in Prussia,” the formal title his successors bore, although both contemporary and modern writers tend to use the more usual term “King of Prussia.”] [Guibert continues his paean to Friedrich II. He notes the efforts of Friedrich I and Friedrich Wilhelm I, Friedrich II’s predecessors, in building the professional and disciplined core of the Prussian army. Contemporaries referred to Prussia as “the army with a state” as a result. The province he refers to is Silesia, which Friedrich seized in 1740, precipitating the War of the Austrian Succession, and secured via treaty by 1763; it alone accounted for over twenty-five percent of Habsburg revenues prior to its seizure by Prussia and thus greatly expanded the Prussian economy. See Christopher Duffy, The Army of Frederick the Great (Warwick: Helion, 2018).] [The War of the Austrian Succession took place from 1740–1748 and was the middle of the three mid-century wars. The Austrian Succession was two separate conflicts that only occasionally united. The first, as the conflict’s name indicates, was the dispute over the succession to Karl VI as Holy Roman Emperor. Karl, having only female children, spent much of his reign attempting to secure the European powers’ assent to the Pragmatic Sanction, which would allow his daughter Maria-Theresa to succeed to his hereditary titles and her husband, François-Etienne, duc de Lorraine, to be elected Emperor. All the major powers signed the Pragmatic Sanction, but on Karl’s death in 1740, several abrogated the treaty, led by France, which hoped to win election for Karl, Elector of Bavaria, as Emperor. In the same year, Friedrich II ascended to the Prussian throne and launched an undeclared invasion of Austrian Silesia, hoping to capitalize on the distraction of the succession question. These two conflicts merged to form the war, even though there was rarely coordination between them. Fighting took place throughout Germany, Silesia, Italy, and the Low Countries. Friedrich,

26

Preliminary Discourse

This success was the fruit of his work. During the peace that followed this war, he formed camps at Spandau and Magdeburg. There, he perfected that which experience had made him find to be vicious in his tactics; there, he introduced wise and advantageous deployments [as well as] the incredible and decisive celerity that has become so necessary on account of the number of our armies and their great fronts.56 But no one around him reflected on this. The Austrians rested drowsily in their routine. France believed that, because it had once vanquished with its constitution, it must vanquish again. The victories in Flanders entrenched this unfortunate security.57 All the rest of Europe, less military than France and Austria because it had less interest in being so, was in the same numbness. This was the situation that began the Seven Years War.58 Since the War of the Spanish Succession, so many armies have not been seen in the field, and united against a single prince.59 His science and their faults were the

56

57 58

59

although nominally an ally of France, engaged in little strategic planning with it, and France did not formally enter the war for several years, preferring instead to act in support of the Bavarian claim. Friedrich left the war and returned as Austrian fortunes waxed and waned, formally exiting the war in 1745. That same year, Karl VII died, ending the possibility of dethroning the Habsburgs, and French forces under Maurice de Saxe invaded the Low Countries; they conquered virtually all of them by the war’s end in 1748 with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle. Louis XV pursued a policy of “peace without victory,” not taking any territory despite his crushing victory, which did not prove popular in France. Many authors, including Guibert, credit Friedrich with success in the war, but his triumph would not have been possible without the titanic efforts France made against Austria in the war. See M.S. Anderson, The War of the Austrian Succession 1740–1748 (New York: Longman, 1995); Reed Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995); and Dennis Showalter, The Wars of Frederick the Great (New York: Longman, 1996), 38–89.] [Friedrich held a series of peacetime exercises, which contemporaries referred to as “camps,” to drill his troops in large-formation maneuvers and train his commanders in operational-level warfare. Guibert would later have the opportunity to attend these camps in 1773; see Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de Guibert, Journal d’un voyage en allemagne, 2 Vols. (Paris: Treuttel et Würtz, 1803), II:127–229.] [The “victories in Flanders” are those of Maurice de Saxe between 1745 and 1748 in the War of the Austrian Succession that brought the war to a successful conclusion for France.] [Guibert exaggerates here, perhaps for effect. The interwar period between the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War was a profitable one for many military institutions across Europe, with reform measures tested and implemented by many, including in France.] [While Guibert castigates eighteenth-century European armies for not being led by “a single prince,” the tradition of kings leading armies had largely ended decades, or even centuries, before.

counterpoints of so many forces. Never was war more instructive and fecund in events. There were actions worthy of the greatest captains and faults that even Marsin would have blushed to have taken. Sometimes, genius was seen engaged with genius, but more often with ignorance. Everywhere the King of Prussia could maneuver, he was successful. Almost always when he was reduced to fighting, he was beaten: events that prove how his troops were superior in tactics, if not in valor. Daun consequently conducted himself with him. He avoided plains [and] received battles in posts, only giving [battle] when he could surprise or when he was not obliged to maneuver. Finally, he reestablished the affairs of Austria as Fabius reestablished those of Rome vis-à-vis Hannibal. The Austrians speak of him as the Romans spoke of Fabius, that he was circumspect and timid, but how else was he to compromise to maneuver with inexperienced armies without tactics against armies that were trained and maneuverable[?]60 In this war, the quantity of artillery was seen to increase to an immensity. The Russians brought as many as sixhundred pieces with them. The King of Prussia and the Austrians [brought] as many as three- or four-hundred, but at the same time, the prejudice that attached the same honor to taking a cannon as taking a flag was seen to fall. One saw a great lesson for generals: the armies of the King of Prussia, not weighed down by this equipment, made forced marches, lost battles with the greater part of their cannon, and stopped two leagues from where they lost. The number of light troops has also prodigiously increased. It must in that armies so numerous, carrying so much food and artillery equipment, in positions so extended, having so frequent convoys, in so-hazardous A French king had not led forces personally into battle since Henri IV; Friedrich II was relatively rare for his personal leadership of armies.] 60 [Leopold Joseph Maria, Reichsgraf von und zu Daun, was one of the most prominent Austrian commanders of the eighteenth century, and one of the few to comprehensively defeat Friedrich II in a battle. Known for his caution, as Guibert intimates, Daun forced Friedrich into a battle in a poor position in 1757 at Kolin, dealing him his first major defeat. Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator was one of the most celebrated generals of the Roman Republic. During the Second Punic War, he was named dictator in 217 BCE after the defeat at the Battle of Lake Trasimene. Instead of confronting Hannibal, he opted to delay and harass Hannibal’s supply lines. Many in Rome decried this, and he was removed in favor of more active commanders, which led to the disaster of Cannae. While Fabius did not regain power, his strategy became the standard employed against Hannibal, and it prevented the fall of Rome. Fabius was a popular military paragon during the period, and his “Fabian strategy” became an important part of military theory, as Guibert indicates.]

27

Preliminary Discourse

positions, [and with lines of] communications so long, these species of troops [that are] destined to attack and to cover them are augmented again and again by all sides. From these two changes, which all the belligerent powers have adopted in servilely calculating the one on the other, and which I think a general, a man of genius, could take advantage of by avoiding, it follows that, in the ideal war, the armies will be more expensive, more devastating, [and] more weighty, [and] that the accessories will become more numerous than the principal. I intend by this that the line troops are those that win battles. It follows that wars will be yet less decisive and nevertheless more destructive to the population and to people, because it is always on this unfortunate and groaning humanity that fall harmful inventions and all false military or political calculations. Finally, this is the military art of Europe today; in comparing it to that of centuries past, in more-enlightened times of antiquity, it has become much more vast and difficult. The ancients knew neither the science of artillery nor that of mines, sciences founded on abstract and profound speculations; the theory of their ballistics, the entrenchment of the Bessi and the Dacians61 was, in comparison, an unformed and crude art. The ancients’ science of fortifications, that of their sieges, certainly cannot at all be placed in parallel with the knowledge of Vauban and Coehoorn.62 The latter was founded on the thoughtful reflection on almost all the branches of mathematics. The others, deprived of geometry, were miserable routines. The ancients did not have the prodigious trains of artillery equipment [or] food [that was] so difficult to move and sustain. They did not have armies as numerous. They knew little of the chicaneries of the petite guerre. They did not embarrass themselves much with the choice of positions. No details of topography are seen in the writings of the ancient military historians. Armies had very small fronts, their arms occasioned neither smoke nor tumult, [and] battles were much easier to engage and conduct. 61

62

These peoples were the best miners in the time of the Romans, and they were often employed in sieges. Polybius and other others speak of them and explain the manner in which they conducted their work. [Polybius speaks on sieges throughout the Histories, but the citation Guibert makes does not seem to appear. The word translated as “Bessi,” beces, also does not appear to be used in contemporary French. Several possibilities suggest themselves. Guibert may have confused or conflated citations, the editions and/or translations he may have had access to could have mislead him, or he could have confused the French word for beak, bec, for a people like the Dacians. See E. Teytelbaum, “Polybius’s Views on Sieges and Siege Craft: Human and Technical Factors.” Rosetta 24 (2019): 21–37.]

I compare the wars of the Greeks, and most of the wars of the ancients, to those of our colonies on the other continent [America]. I see there five- or six-thousand men set against each other on a battlefield so small that the eye of the general can embrace all, command all, [and] repair all.63 A good major from today might conduct the maneuvers of Leuctra and Mantinea as well as Epaminondas did.64 I say that the science of modern war, compared to that of the ancients, is much more vast and difficult. However, it is not more perfect and more enlightened on all points. It has made progress in some regards; in others, it is extended and complicated at the expense of its perfection. Our firearms are superior to the missile weapons of the ancients. The science of artillery prevails over their ballistics [and] our fortifications over theirs. Places now encircle and defend themselves with more art: here is modern progress, here is the effect of mathematical enlightenment 63

64

[Guibert’s historical analysis is of mixed veracity. While Greek and Roman armies did not often build large fortified places and engage in wars to control them like early modern European states did, especially France, such conflicts did occur; the first year of the Peloponnesian War largely revolved around Spartan efforts to breech the walls of Athens, to give just one example. Greek and Roman armies could also be large; the Greeks assembled at least 60,000 men for the Battle of Plataea in 479, and Roman armies of over 75,000 are well attested throughout the Republican and Imperial periods. Guibert also falls prey to the hyperbole of his sources, which tend to focus on the actions of Greek phalanxes and Roman legions at the expense of auxiliary troops, which may have outnumbered regular forces in contemporary armies. Classical armies were not the tiny forces Guibert would have them be, although allowance must always be made in his writing for both hyperbole and polemic. See Phyllis Culham, “Imperial Rome at War;” Lee, “The Classical Greek Experience;” and Sage, “The Rise of Rome” in The Oxford Handbook of Classical Warfare, 236–260, 143–161, and 216–235.] [Epaminondas was a Theban born late in the Peloponnesian War. During the Spartan Hegemony following the conflict, Spartan soldiers installed a pro-Spartan government in Thebes, which caused a rebellion. Epaminondas rose to command and created an elite unit called the Sacred Band to counter Spartan battlefield prowess. At the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BCE, Epaminondas’s Theban army decisively defeated the Spartan army by heavily weighting its own left. A decade later, Epaminondas faced a Spartan-Athenian army at the Battle of Mantinea and again won the battle by shifting forces to his left, although he died shortly after the battle. Epaminondas’s victories, especially Leuctra, were significant, both at the time and in later military theory. He was the first general to decisively defeat a Spartan army, which proved to the other Greek states that it could be done. His formation in both battles, drawing forces from the rest of his line to reinforce his left, is the origin of the “oblique order,” which Vegetius adopted as a prototypical tactical formation and which Guibert will discuss in great detail in Volume 2. See Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science, 93–119.]

28 spreading into the science of war. But armies have become too numerous; artillery and light troops too multiplied; [and] the frontiers of states too malapportioned relative to their places, on two or three lines; places are unnecessarily overloaded with fortifications; the systems of engineers are, for the most part, too exclusive, too methodical, [and] too little combined with tactics; armies become immense, as much as by the augmentation of combatants as by the equipment and confusion that they trail behind them that is so difficult to move; the details of their subsistence forms a science that ancient armies, less numerous, more sober, and better constituted, did not at all have an idea of: here are the errors and the abuses that complicate the modern science, that multiply the knowledge that compose it, [and] that render great generals quite rare. A man whose esprit would have embraced all the parts of the military art of the ancients [and] who could have commanded 15,000 or 20,000 Greeks or Romans, a man who could have been a Xanthippus [or] a Camillus, would not have half the knowledge that composes the modern science today.65 He is absorbed by its details, blinded by its immensity, [and] dizzied by its multitude. He must regulate the movements of 100,000 men [and] provide for their subsistence; all the obstacles produced by our poor constitutions; 100,000 enemies oppose him; a campaign plan of many branches;66 [and] combinations without 65

[Xanthippus was a Spartiate “trained in the Spartan discipline and of large experience in war” who joined the Carthaginians against the Romans in the First Punic War and instructed them in Greek-style discipline and tactics, resulting in the defeat of the Romans at the Battle of Tunis in 255 BCE. Guibert likely draws the story from Polybius, Histories I:32–35; see also Appian, Punic Wars I; and Diodorus Siculus, Library of History XXIII:14, http:// penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Sicu lus/23*.html. Marcus Furius Camillus was one of the most prominent men in the early years of the Roman Republic. He played a key role in the restoration of the city and its power after the Gallic Sack of the 390s, earning him the title “a Second Founder of Rome.” See Plutarch, Camillus.] 66 [Guibert here quotes a famous line from Pierre-Joseph Bourcet, Principes de la guerre de montagne (Paris, 1888). While the book was not published until over a century later, historians have long suspected that it circulated among officers in France, as its influence appears in passages like this. Bourcet argued that armies would have to be divided into smaller sections to maneuver through narrow mountain passes and only assemble on the plains below, which would require “a plan of many branches.” His work forms one of the pillars of the development of operational-level warfare, despite Bourcet’s insistence that it would only apply in mountainous terrain. Guibert’s tone here could be to mock Bourcet, implying that his theory overcomplicated warfare. See Napoleon and the Operational Art of War: Essays in Honor of Donald D. Horward, ed. Michael Leggiere (Leiden: Brill, 2016); and Claus Telp, The Evolution of Operational

Preliminary Discourse

number that result in the multiplicity of objectives: such attentions unite to form a burden above his strength. He remains fatigued and stricken under it, or at best he moves with great pain and with only a part of his faculties. Ultimately, he would be a general of no more than the second or third order. The science of modern war, in perfecting itself [and] in approaching true principles, would thus become more simple and less difficult. Therefore, armies betterconstituted and more maneuverable would be less numerous. The arms would be divided in wise proportion relative to the nature of the country and the species of war that they wish to make. They would have tactics [that are] simple, analogous, [and] susceptible to making all the movements. As such, an officer of one arm would know how command the other arm. We would then not see general officers who are ignorant of the details of the corps in which they have not served, belying the title that they carry: this title that, in giving them the power to command all the arms, supposes that they carry the universality of knowledge of commanding them. Armies thus formed would be easier to move and to command. We would quit the narrow and routine manner that hinders and shortens operations. We would make great expeditions. We would make forced marches. We would know how to engage and win battles by maneuvers. We would be less often on the defensive. We would pay less attention to what are called “positions.” Topographical details would no longer have the same importance; they would not burden military science to the same degree. Confusion being diminished, sobriety would take the place of luxury [and] the details of subsistence would become less complicated and less of a nuisance for operations. The science of supply would consist of carrying the least amount of equipment possible and attempting to live off the land.67 Artillery [and] fortifications would clarify themselves more and more.

67

Art, 1740–1813: From Frederick the Great to Napoleon (New York: Frank Cass, 2005).] [Logistics underwent a significant change in the seventeenth century. During much of the early part of the century, including the Thirty Years War, armies ravaged the land, taking food via requisition or outright pillage. Later in the century, both as a reaction against the earlier period and as a measure to manage large armies in the field, the French under Louvois developed a logistics system that used magazines, prior purchase, and requisitions. Most other European states copied the system, and armies became much more reliant on fixed logistical systems, as Guibert indicates. See John Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610–1715 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Parrott, The Business of War, and Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 5–39.]

29

Preliminary Discourse

They would follow, in each century, the progress of mathematics that serve as their base. But neither one would be elevated to exclusive and dominant pretentions [or] to systems that multiply expenses and embarrassments. They would only hold the rank that they must have in armies and in military combinations; they would be, in the hands of generals, only useful accessories employed in fortifying and supporting the troops. Finally, all the branches of the military science form a beam of rays, and this union of light, reunited in the esprit of a single man, would constitute him “General,” that is to say, capable of commanding armies.68 It would be interesting to see the military science perfect itself in simplifying itself [and] in becoming less difficult. I have said above how the same revolution may be made in politics. It would be much the same in almost all the sciences, if their theories would be stripped of the errors that burden them [and] the false methods that complicate them. Then men would arrive more promptly and in greater numbers at the pinnacle of these sciences; they would be able to extend their boundaries; then the brevity of their lives would not hinder them from embracing several at a time, nor from extending one via the others. Then the encyclopedia of human knowledge, becoming an assemblage of truths, would elevate itself and affirm itself in the midst of the centuries, like a vigorous tree that has no useless or nuisance branch, and that, extending itself and appearing to fortify its base in proportion to its aging, spreads shade and fruits over its fortunate cultivators. But to achieve the parallel of the ancients’ military art with that of our days, there are quite-important subjects that are to the military art as foundations are to an edifice, and on this, the Greeks and Romans were much superior than we. These are the continual means their governments used to form citizens, soldiers, [and] generals. This was the health of their military, the vigor of their discipline, the warrior education of their youth, [and] the species of their punishment and reward: this is the important rapport that bound their military constitution to their political constitution. None of these subjects seems to interest modern governments. There is not one that has calculated the number and constitution of its troops, the population of its states, [As many of his contemporary theorists were wont, Guibert peppers his work with references to contemporary physics, particularly optics and mechanics. A “beam of rays” is the union of several rays of light into a large ray, particularly when focused through a lens or another mechanism. See “Optics,” Encyclopedia 11:519–520. The metaphor also recalls the Roman fasces, a bundle of sticks around an axe that represented the power of the state.]

politics, [or] national genius. There is not one where the profession of soldier is honored, where youth receive a warrior education, [or] where the laws inspire courage and wither softness; in a word, where the nation is prepared by its morals and its prejudices to form a vigorous military. In this same state [Prussia] that we have named “military” because its king is a skillful warrior, in this state that is aggrandized by its arms [and] that only exists and only flatters itself to preserve its conquests by them, the troops are no more vigorously constituted than in other countries; they are not at all citizens, and more than any other country’s, they are an assemblage of stipendiaries, vagabonds, [and] foreigners that inconsistency or necessity drew to the flag and that discipline retains. This discipline, firm and vigilant on some points, is relaxed and contemptable on many others. In comparison to the Romans’, it is no more than chaining them to things of form, to half-means, to correctives, [and] to vicious supplements; these ill-constituted troops have had fortunate wars, but they owe their success to the ignorance of their enemies, to the skill of their king, [and] to a completely new science of movement that he had created. If, after the death of this prince, whose genius alone sustains the imperfect edifice of its constitution, he were succeeded by a weak and talentless king, we would see the Prussian military would degenerate and diminish in a few years; we would see this ephemeral power return to the sphere that its real means assigned to it, and perhaps it would pay dearly for its years of glory.69 If this is the military constitution of a state where the sovereign is the greatest man of war of his century, who instructs and commands the armies himself; [and] where the armies, so to speak, form all the pomp and the court, what must become of those states where the sovereign is not military; where he never sees the troops;70 where he seems to disdain or ignore everything that they do; where the court, which always follows the impression of the sovereign, is consequently not at all military; where almost all the great rewards are surprises of intrigue; where the majority of them become hereditary apanages; where merit languishes when it is without support; where credit 69

68

70

[This passage is one of Guibert’s “lucky guesses,” following Palmer, “Frederick the Great, Guibert, Bülow.” Friedrich II died in 1786, and his heirs were neither assertive nor militaristic. The Prussians fought ineffectually in the War of the First Coalition before withdrawing in 1795. In 1806, Prussia went to war against Napoleon, who nearly destroyed the Prussian army at the Battles of Jena and Auerstëdt and the subsequent pursuit.] We have seen how the presence of the king in the armies and in the peacetime camps has excited the courage and the emulation of French troops.

30

Preliminary Discourse

may advance without talent; where fortune does not signify acquiring reputation, but rather amassing riches; [and] where one may, in a word, be covered at the same time in dignities and infamy, in grades and ignorance, illserving the state and possessing the first positions, [and] being sullied with public blame and playing the favorite of the sovereign? But, without speaking of the particular vices that the character of sovereigns and the corruption of their courts can imprint on the military constitutions of their states, how can the abuses without number that result from the default of rapport between the military administration and the other branches of government be calculated? From them result exclusively merchant or military states, because the momentary system of their administrators unfortunately focuses all the public force either on riches or on arms.71 From them result war departments that have never seen armies and nevertheless regulate the fate of armies; military ordinances made by men of letters; [and] ministers who, not being generals, always contradict the demands and the operations of the generals who, not being ministers, ignore the influence that operations of war have on politics and what it costs interior states to sustain war. From them result ill-calculated military constitutions, randomly imitating each other without meditation; a number of troops disproportionate to the means of their states; [and] troops, sometimes neglected and regarded as an almost-useless burden, sometimes augmented by reasonable bounds and attracting, at the expense of the other branches, the entire attention of the government. From them result troops that are so strangely constituted and employed by the government that they ruin the state that they should have brought prosperity and strength to; that remove the best species of men from the population; that [are] men who soften their morals and their arms to such an extent that, when they quit this profession, they are only capable of urban72 and sedentary work; that, during peacetime, only occupies them in exercises that are puerile and foreign to war; [and] that are cooped up in places as if the enemy was at the gates of the kingdom; that is to say, consequently, on the frontiers, in the country where food is the most dear and where they have 71 72

[Guibert dedicated his last major work, De la force publique, considérée dans tous ses rapports (Paris: 1790), to this topic.] [“Citadin,” the word Guibert uses here that I have translated as “urban,” carries a strong negative connotation that has no equivalent in English. It refers to a cramped, poverty-stricken life of mindless toil in a large city as part of the artisan class, or worse. “Townie” is perhaps the closest fit, but it does not convey the meaning, especially its classist overtones. “Proletarian” might work, but it carries the taint of Marxism.]

the most outlets, where the inhabitants have the most resources and industry, in lieu of dispersing them in the interior provinces that lack liveliness and cash, where there is more produce than consumers, [or] in those provinces that are uncultivated and that the soldier may cultivate that lack roads on which the soldier might work.73 In the course of my work, I will prove, in detail, that these abuses exist, and how they may be remedied. To paint a tableau of abuses without furnishing at the same time both proofs and remedies is to erect oneself as a declaimer. This resembles the barbarous physicians who announce evils that they can neither explain nor cure. It remains to me to explain how the history of the universe always shows the military art declining amongst peoples in proportion to the progress made by the other arts. I have already made the observation at the commencement of this chapter, but it is to neither the arts nor the sciences alone that this revolution must be attributed. It is to the clumsiness of governments. These effects have been contemporaneous until now, without having necessarily been tied together and dependent. Enlightenment does not cause harm. Let us leave this destructive prejudice to the apologists of ignorance. Enlightenment hunts errors, fixes principles, [and] brings truth. The enlightened centuries cannot be times of misfortune for humanity unless they have made no more than half-progress; unless they have, like those of the ancients, carried more to the arts than the sciences [and] on frivolous knowledge more than useful knowledge; unless, like then, they have only enlightened a part of the globe and cast the rest into shadows; unless, like today, being shared by only a small number of men and rejected by governments, they do not confront prejudices with truth, ignorance with philosophy, [or] despotism with the laws of nature. They still must be consoled for the passing misfortunes that may result from the shock of light and darkness. The twilight of the morning removes the night; it creates hope for the day. When the propagation of knowledge will be become general, when it will have spread to all great and small things, to thrones and to peoples; [and] when governments will be both educated and vigorous; when enlightenment reaches us as the starlight falls on our heads, the earth will be prosperous; it will bless governments like those beneficial stars that fertilize and illuminate it. 73

[Guibert sketches the economic geography of France, in which the border regions, especially to the east, contained much of the industry and prosperity, while the middle provinces (the Midi) were the agricultural centers. Most of France’s important cities also lay on the periphery. Although highways and mass transit have somewhat ameliorated the divide, France is still largely as Guibert described it.]

31

Preliminary Discourse

I return to my subject. It was not the arts and the sciences that that deprived the peoples of antiquity of the military art; it is not the arts and sciences today that prevent it from making progress. On the contrary, general enlightenment must perfect this art along with all the others. It must render tactics simpler and wiser, the troops better-educated, [and] the generals better. It must put method in the place of routine [and] combinations in the place of chance. If, while all the other sciences perfect themselves, that of war rests in its infancy, it is the fault of governments that do not attach any importance to it, that do not make of it an object of public education, that do not raise men of genius to this profession, that lets them see more glory and advantage in the frivolous or less-useful sciences, [and] that renders the career of arms a thankless career in which talents are outstripped by intrigues and prizes [offices] distributed by fortune. Finally, if a people softens, becomes corrupt, [and] disdains the profession of arms, losing all the habits of work that prepares them for it; if a nation is degraded to this point, the name of PATRIE is no more than a meaningless word; [and] if its defenders are no more than mercenaries, debased, miserable, poorly constituted, [and] indifferent to success or to defeat (it is by these moral and constitutional vices that all the ancient militaries fell and all our modern militaries sin), it is still the fault of the government, because the government must watch over morals, over opinions, over prejudices, [and] over courage. With virtue, example, honor, [and discipline], it might be more powerful than luxury, than abuses, than vices, than passions, [and] than the most inveterate corruption. The same enlightenment that is believed to be the source of the decadence of empires enlightens the nation on the precipice from where it throws itself; placed at its head, it will draw away from it, [and] it will follow it with all the more submission; better instructed, it will better sense the good that is prepared for it, the evil from which it is drawn, and the prosperity towards which it is being led. In general, the governments of great peoples are far from doing and knowing all of which they might be capable. They do not sense the extent of their resources; they allow themselves to be discouraged by the number and the age of abuses, [and] they dare carry neither brands nor remedies to the wounds that devour them; they agitate without success, like the dying in convulsions of agony.

Therefore, let us not tire of repeating to them that, if their vices be without number, their means are immense; that they only have to perfect their constitution [and] become just, enlightened, [and] energetic, and they will soon reelevate states; [and] that, if vices corrupt rapidly, virtues can regenerate just the same. Let us unceasingly place, on the frightening tableau of their ills, the encouraging possibility of their cure. Perhaps there will arise at the head of nations men who will not despair of their salvation, who desire good, [and] who love glory, and to whom these two sentiments render everything easy. Genius and virtue can be born on thrones. I have offered nothing more here than an imperfect sketch of the revolutions of the military art. This tableau merits to be the subject of a complete history. How interesting it would be to follow the progress of this art across the course of centuries, to follow it particularly through the histories of great peoples, to observe what it was in the different progressive epochs of their elevation in the decadence of their ruin and at the same time in the contemporaneous nations that rose at their expense or on their debris! This instructive research would not be limited simply to the history of the [military] art; it would extend, in the same epochs, to the constitutions of the militaries of the different peoples [and] the rapport that they had between their political constitutions and their morals. Because the military success of nations depends more than is thought on their politics [and] especially on their morals, it is this linkage that is never demonstrated to us enough, either by militaires or philosophes, much less both at the same time. It is worthy of our century to produce this interesting work. I have encouraged one of my friends, who has meditated on it and prepared it for some time, in this. I report here his name, his plan, [and] his talents.74 I wish him to make a contract with his fellow citizens, an engagement that he is in a state to fulfill and the execution of which will be for his particular glory and at the same time for public instruction.75 74 75

Chevalier d’Aguesseau, Lieutenant-Colonel in the Couronne Regiment. [Probably Charles-Albert-Xavier, chevalier d’Aguesseau de Luce, one of Guibert’s contemporaries. See André Corvisier, Les contrôles de troupes de l’ancien régime, 2 Vols. (Paris, 1970), I:401–402.]

Plan of a Work Entitled “France, Political and Military” The objective of the preceding discourse is to serve as an introduction to this work. I believed, for the betterment of this plan, to commence by giving my readers an idea of the manner in which I envisage politics and the military art. In great enterprises of every species, plans are almost always too neglected. One is not full enough of one’s subject. One does not meditate enough on all its facets; one engages with a project only half-conceived. One counts on achieving it in executing it. One promises oneself that ideas are born of ideas. One works by bits. As such, so many works never accomplish the goal that they announce in their titles. Our most profound writers have fallen into this inconsistency. When one opens The Spirit of the Laws, one expects to find the development of the principles that serve as the base of legislation, ancient and modern. One hopes that this examination will be followed by a system of creation and of reform in the current laws of Europe, or at least those of the nation. But, dare I say it? for want of a plan, this hope is not fulfilled. Whether the immortal Montesquieu, completely occupied in the creation of his materials, disdained in the heat of his creation to assemble and polish them; or, in writing to the height of his genius, he left at his feet all the intermediate ideas that we demand of his ashes; or that he proposed to descend one day to the details, to elevate us to him by 1 What I have said of The Spirit of the Laws can be applied to how many other celebrated works? The Spirit of Helvétius, a book full of genius, a book written in the strongest and most lyrical style: what does its title announce? What is its plan? What system, what complete chain of ideas does its reading give to the imagination? Finally, the Encyclopedia, the work that will be immortal: if its execution corresponded with its goal, could it not have been drafted with a vaster and more illuminating plan? It subjects itself to the form of a dictionary, a classical form that, uniquely made for languages or sciences of nomenclature, is not at all proper for presenting the development of all of human knowledge; the whole effect of the order that it follows is to produce confusion, to break each word into ideas, [and] to destroy any species of interest. What would one say of a cabinet of natural history where the pieces of each kingdom, pell-mell and confounded, were arranged in alphabetical order? The Encyclopedia would have been more interesting and more instructive if the sciences had been treated by classification, and in such a way that they must, by the progress of our spirits, intertwine one into the other; if they had followed for their exposition the divine tableau that is at the end of the preface, it would have been both the school and the archive of all the sciences of man. Were all the other books in the universe destroyed, it would have sufficed to conserve our enlightenment. In a word, posterity would have respectfully called our century “the century of the Encyclopedia,” the epoch of the most important and most glorious events for humanity.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_004

them, to write, in a word, for the rest of men after having written for himself, his work has remained an unformed monument. One finds in it sublime thoughts, scattered and half-revealed truths, [and] the draft or the germ of nearly all political principles, but one senses that all these materials are in need of being accorded with each other and formed into an edifice. Finally, one experiences in the reading of this work the mélange of pleasure and regret that is inspired by paintings in which one admires the details but, for want of order, produce no effect.1,2 This observation must render me timid, but the skilled pilot who reconnoiters a reef on his route, who sees it covered in the debris of a great wreck, does not enter the port. He redoubles his vigilance; he works to avoid the reef where others have been broken. My objective is first to examine the political and military constitution of France, and, before arriving at that examination, to cast eyes on those of all the other states of Europe. By covering all the nations that have relations, whether near or far, with my own, I will prepare myself to found, with the most perfection, the plan of its politics. I will gather from them the enlightenment of all governments; I will halt myself particularly on the useful things that it may imitate and on the errors in which it partakes. This indirect manner of criticizing and counseling, not preventing me from being heard, will give to me more liberty and not indispose the government about which I write. Thus are the instructors who praise in others that 2 [Guibert touches on one of the major themes of the Enlightenment: classification as a method of control. The volume of information entering Europe during the period, particularly from colonies, escaped the ability of anyone to grasp wholly, as they might have aspired to in prior periods. Instead, philosophes sought to classify data into genres that would allow them to better control it and render it useful. The godfather of this form of analysis was Karl Linnaeus, whose taxonomies remain the foundation of biology. The Enlightenment experienced a mania for taxonomy, as Guibert indicates. Common people paid to see cabinets of natural curiosities, real and falsified, and philosophes applied taxonomies to almost every area of thought. Montesquieu famously did so to the peoples of the world, which contributed greatly to the modern concepts of race and ethnicity. See Pichichero, The Military Enlightenment; Outram, The Enlightenment, especially 62–74 and 108–122; and Roche, France in the Enlightenment, 41–74. Claude Hélvetius was one of the most important of the Enlightenment philosophers. He ranked only behind the likes of Montesquieu and Voltaire in impact and became one of the former’s staunchest critics. Like his contemporary Paul-Henri Thiry, baron Holbach, he criticized the religious and philosophical underpinnings of French society, particularly in his most famous work, Essays on the Mind (London: Jones, 1807).]

Plan of a Work Entitled “ France, Political and Military ”

which they want their students to adopt and who blame without restraint the vices that they wish to remove from them. I will cover Europe, but, like a traveler who, from a high point, orients himself and determines the route that he must follow, let us first regard Europe and trace our itinerary. An irresistible sentiment draws me to Italy. It was once so celebrated! It is such a striking example of human vicissitudes! I will commence there. I will successively examine the Two Sicilies; the Papal States; Lucca and San Marino, which are no more than cities; Tuscany; Genoa; and Corsica,3 which escapes from it.4 From there, leaving Savoy to my left to return to at another time, I will enter Lombardy; I will then see the possessions of the Imperial house; the Duchy of Modena that will be added to them one day; [and] Parma, which flourishes next to it. I will next give an accounting of the Republic of Venice. Its establishments extending along the Adriatic Gulf lead me to Ragusa, to the Archipelago, and to Malta. The inhabitants of this island are born and perpetual enemies of the Barbary States. I will then cover Tunis, Tripoli, Algeria, and Morocco. These countries, although African, are part of Europe. They are under the protection of a great lord, [which] will take me to Constantinople. I will examine this colossal power that despotism engorges. I will pass to Poland, which anarchy devours, [and] to Russia, its redoubtable neighbor. The provinces that the latter has conquered from the Swedish will take me to Sweden [and then] to Denmark. From there, I will enter into Germany. I will detail the two states that dominate it today: the one by the genius of its king [and] the other by its real power: Prussia and Austria. I will speak of the Empire, the body that is so complicated by the number of its members and by the diversity of their interests. I will pay particular attention to the states that hold a principal rank like Saxony, Bavaria, etc. I will see the others 3 [Corsica was nominally a possession of the Republic of Genoa for most of the eighteenth century, but it had been a de facto independent republic under Pasquale Paoli since the mid-1750s. Paoli was lionized across Europe as a progressive and enlightened leader supported by a citizen populace in building his model republic, most notably by James Boswell. Genoa desired to keep Corsica, as it controlled a great deal of trade flowing from the Levant and Black Sea to southwestern Europe, but Paoli’s rebellion stymied its efforts. Genoa sold the island to France in 1768, and French troops fought a bloody war against Paoli over the next two years. Guibert served in the army on Corsica and remained there until early in the next decade. He likely drafted this book while serving there. See James Boswell, Lord of Auchinleck, Account of Corsica, the Journal of a Tour to that Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli (London: Dilly, 1768); and Hall, France and the Eighteenth-Century Corsican Question.] 4 This was written two years ago, [when] the Corsicans were fighting with the Genoese for their liberty.

33

en masse and speak only of the power that their interests are attached to. Arriving on the Rhine, I touch France: I have only to describe the states that border it, which is how I have expressly limited myself. I will begin with the Dutch Republic. I will examine the current situation in the Austrian Netherlands. I will see, in passing, the countries that border the Meuse and the Rhine. I will re-cross that river to go to Switzerland. Savoy and its dependents will find its place here. From Sardinia, I will pass to Spain; from Spain, to Portugal; [and] from Portugal, to England: a longstanding rival of France and whose tableau I wished to place next to its own, for this reason. In giving an accounting of the political and military constitutions of all of these states, I do not at all propose to explore all of their extended details equally. I will paint most of these subjects in broad strokes and hovering over them. I will work to imitate those celebrated writers who, elevated above their century, narrate in a philosophical and rapid style that which they see around the people or the heroes about whom they write their histories. It is for France that I write. It is relative to it that I examine the other nations. Thus, those that have no relations that link them to it will have little right to my attention. I will content myself with making known the result of their power and what weight and interest they carry to the political balance of Europe in relation to the other states that border them and that might interest us. The nations that have relations of any sort that bind them or may bind them to mine will arrest my regard more closely and more lengthily. I will weigh their interests, their virtues, their vices, their means, their resources, [and] finally, all that that may determine the politics of my country towards them, especially to clarify its administration. In a word, in the vast tableau that I will sketch, France will be the dominant subject; the states that interest it will be secondary figures, developed with more or less care according to the degree of rapport that they have with the principal subject. The other states will be, if I may express myself thus, accessory and distant figures in the tableau. An important thing in the execution of such a tableau is its good organization, its not being overloaded with details, [and] its being disposed in a manner that does not at all confuse the progress of its organization nor chill interest in it. In order to achieve this, when I speak of the treaties that unite one nation to another, of their finances, of their commerce, [and] of their military, all that will form proofs or details too lengthy to be blended into the body of the work, will be placed in appendices. By this means, the tableau of each state will be, in some way, divided into two parts: one historical and philosophical, exposing the facts and results, [and] the other justifying

34

Plan of a Work Entitled “ France, Political and Military ”

and in the form of notes, containing details and indicating sources where one can find them in greater detail. Arriving at France, I will make it a subject of profound examination. Eh! how, when one has a heart, can one not be involuntarily stopped on the situation of one’s patrie, on the means of remedying its ills and re-elevating it to glory? I will examine its politics from the same point of view that I examined this science in my preliminary discourse. First, I will trace all that is linked to its interior politics. I will examine, in a specific chapter, the situation of each subject of administration, the abuses that hurt it, [and] the remedies that may be applied to it. Next, I will treat its exterior politics, its interests in regard to other peoples, [and] its system of conduct towards them; there, making France the center of all combinations, I will unite, if I am permitted to express myself thus, the rays from all of the points on the circumference of its interests; that is to say that I will successively examine all the branches that link it or may link it to other peoples. My political plan, if France be regenerated, would without doubt make me suppress many of the relations believed necessary by the false opinion that a great power like it must have distant colonies [and] a considerable commerce, [and] that it must never suffer that anything take place in Europe in which it does not take part. But, as this regeneration is almost impossible to hope for, one must examine these relations, as chimerical as they are. It is unfortunate in a work like mine to have two sorts of plans: one of creation and of perfection, in which it is necessary to reverse the majority of received ideas and in which it must expect to see fiction, [and] the other of reparations and circumstances, in which it must bend to the feebleness of our governments, to train itself in the routine of their prejudices, and propose to them only soft and palatable remedies. Like an architect proceeding by very different means when, amidst an abundance of good materials and on a solidly-fixed foundation, he raises an edifice for which he had formed a plan, or, when obliged to repair an old building, needs to spare the foundations, follow the old [plans], [and] advance with caution and by ceaselessly supporting it. The external political interests of the nation being determined, I will pass to that which brings them respect, to that which sustains them: to the military constitution. The means of forming it to be nationalistic and vigorous having already been prepared by interior politics, it will no longer be a question of founding it relative to these means. I will levy the troops, [and] I will constitute them; I will determine their number, whether on a peacetime or wartime footing; their dress; their armament; their

pay; the manner of recruiting them; their assembly; their maintenance; their discipline; their education, [and] their stationing during peacetime. I will say how general officers must be constituted and employed. I will search for the best form to give to the administration of the War Department. It is quite strange that, while the esprit of the troops depends on general officers and the ministry, there has never been made mention in any work on these foundations of the military constitution. It seems that a false respect, that a fear of attacking too-inveterate and too-powerful abuses, has prevented them from casting their eyes on it. At the end of the plan of the military constitution, I will give a complete course in tactics. [This will be] a very important work, if I am successful in including in it all that has been written of utility on this science, all that the King of Prussia has put into practice, and that which study may add to it: a work worthy of exciting my attention as a militaire and a philosophe, since war, the scourge that political passions renders inevitable, becomes less destructive and less ruinous for humanity in proportion to the progress and perfection that the military art makes. The division of the work that I give hereafter will serve to develop this plan more perfectly. If it is important for an author to found his project well, if the manner that he accomplishes it may almost always be judged from the exposition that he makes, it is not less interesting for readers to be able to embrace in a coup d’œil the design of the ensemble of the work that it presents to them. Prepared by this first coup d’œil, they must follow the path of execution with more interest and facility. Thus, to better-judge the construction of an edifice, the relief should first be studied. 1

Division of the Work

First Part Political and Military Constitutions of the Different States of Europe Chapter I. Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily [Two Sicilies] II. Papal States III. Grand Duchy of Tuscany IV. Republics of Lucca and San Marino V. Republic of Genoa VI. Island of Corsica VII. Duchy of Parma VIII. Duchy of Modena IX. Duchy of Milan X. Republic of Venice 1.1

Plan of a Work Entitled “ France, Political and Military ”

XI. Istria, Dalmatia, Republic of Ragusa, Venetian Archipelago, Island of Malta XII. Algeria, Tunisia, Tripoli, Morocco XIII. Balance of the Levant, Turkey XIV. Poland and Courland XV. Russia XVI. Sweden XVII. Denmark XVIII. Empire of Germany XIX. States of the Empress-Queen [Maria Theresa] XX. Kingdom of Prussia XXI. States of the House of Saxony XXII. States of the House of Bavaria XXIII. States of the House of Hesse XXIV. States of Hanover and Brunswick XXV. Duchy of Luxemburg XXVI. Bishops, Princes, and Ecclesial States XXVII. Princes, Imperial Free and Hanseatic Cities, or Other German States XXVIII. The Dutch Republic XXIX. Austrian Netherlands, Duchy of Luxemburg, and other countries bordering France on the Meuse and on the Rhine XXX. Helvetic Cantons [Switzerland] XXXI. Savoy, Piedmont, and Sardinia XXXII. Spain XXXIII. Portugal XXXIV. England5 Second Part Political Constitution of France 1.2.1 § I. Interior Politics Chapter I. Government II. Genius, Morals, Character III. Population IV. Agriculture V. Interior Commerce VI. Exterior Commerce, Colonies VII. Finances 1.2

1.2.2 § II. Exterior Politics Chapter I. General Interests of France II. Its Particular Interests with England III. With Spain IV. With Portugal V. With the States of Savoy, Piedmont, and Sardinia 5 [Despite the Acts of Union in 1707 that formally created Great Britain, contemporary French writers continued to use the terms “England” and “English.”]

35

VI. With Switzerland VII. With the Dutch Republic VIII. With the Empire IX. With the House of Habsburg-Lorraine X. With Prussia XI. With Denmark XII. With Sweden XIII. With Russia XIV. With Poland XV. With Turkey XVI. With the Barbary States XVII. With Venice XVIII. With Genoa, Parma, [and] Tuscany XIX. With the Pope XX. With the Kingdom of Naples Third Part Military Constitution of France Chapter I. Examination of the current constitution of the land forces Chapter II. Current situation of the French Marine. Rapport of this branch of the military constitution with the land forces. What it must be relative to the means of the kingdom and to its interests. Chapter III. General plan of a new constitution of the land forces. Military profession remade with consideration and vigor. Administration of affairs of war, how to give them a firm foundation, how to render them simpler, less costly to the state, and capable of following the proposed plan with consistency. Chapter IV. The number of troops, calculated according to the population and the politics of the kingdom. Division of these troops into different arms. Levying the troops. The means of recruiting them. Remounting the cavalry. How to augment them in times of war. Chapter V. Dress and armament of the different species of troops. Chapter VI. Troops’ pay; must be augmented in wartime; must become greater, in all grades, in proportion to services and injuries. Established and assured prospects, both for the officers and for the soldiers; there are three species: prospects of advancement, prospects of recompense, [and] prospects of leave. The Hôtel des Invalides, an ill-conceived monument to pride, suppressed. How to replace it. Chapter VII. Distribution of the troops in the kingdom in peacetime. Inconvenience that one sees today of piling them into places and on the frontiers. Distributed throughout the interior, they live better: they enrich the provinces and are no less disciplined. 1.3

36

Plan of a Work Entitled “ France, Political and Military ”

Chapter VIII. Celibacy introduced to nearly all the troops in Europe, and most especially in France: a destructive wound to the population. Marriages of soldiers must be encouraged. Male children may result from these marriages, classified by birth; elevated by the government and thus forming, in some way, a military nation in the middle of the nation. Chapter IX. Discipline of the troops. Its definition. Its objective. The false idea that we have the true principles. It might be rendered national. It must have for its foundation honor and patriotism. Legislation of the new constitution on this important subject. Chapter X. Education of the troops. It must embrace three objectives: the first [is] opinions, prejudices, morals, [and] courage. The second [is] work, bodily exercise, frugality, [and] patience. The third [is] military exercises. Chapter XI. Military exercises. They first contain all that is relative to the military tactics of the different arms. They must next be divided into two large parts: “field exercise” and “siege exercise.” The former will take place in camps that assemble every year for three months, [and] the latter in the great places of the kingdom, where all the troops will pass successively. The details of these exercises will be developed in the course of tactics. Chapter XII. Artillery. What it costs today. Its too-great quantity. A harmful abuse. Its true rapport with the other arms. A new constitution given to it. In the specific tactics of this arm, the establishment of what concerns it will be achieved. Chapter XIII. Subsistence of the troops. How to furnish it in peacetime [and] in wartime. Permanent and military plan of regulating provisions. Parallels between the current system of subsistence and that which is proposed. These parallels will be further clarified in the course of tactics, when it will be a question of the movement of armies. Chapter XIV. Rapport of places of war with the other branches of the military constitution. Examination of the places of the kingdom relative to their situation and to the objective for which they were intended. The majority of them are useless or poorly emplaced. Establishment of a general system of construction. Repair or maintenance of places, in accordance with the nature of the frontiers of the kingdom, its politics, its new military constitution, and the changes that must follow in the genre of war. Chapter XV. General Officers. How to employ them. How to pay them. How to return them to proper esteem. Chapter XVII. Parallels between the proposed new constitution and that which exists. Comparative tableau of their expenses.

Fourth Part Complete Course of Tactics 1.4.1 Elementary Tactics § I. Infantry Tactics II. Cavalry Tactics III. Instructions for Dragoons and Light Troops IV. Artillery Tactics6 1.4

1.4.2 Grand Tactics Chapter I. Marches of Armies II. Opening of marches III. On the disposition of march orders IV. Disposition of the troops in march orders V. Disposition of equipment in march orders VI. On orders of battle VII. Parallel Order VIII. Oblique Order IX. The necessity of forming, in peacetime, camps destined to be the schools of grand tactics X. Project for one of these camps of instruction. Composition and division of an army corps that will assemble there7 XI. Maneuvers that must be executed in these camps of instruction XII. Application of preceding maneuvers according to terrain and circumstance XIII. Application of the tactics exposed above to defensive orders of battle. The necessity of making known this application to the troops and to the general officers XIV. Suite of subjects that will occupy in camps of instruction XV. The necessity of teaching tactics in public schools. Plan of these schools. Project for a Military Academy. Encouragements to be given to the competition between and work of officers. The means for achieving this. The vigilance that the government must have over the progress that neighboring nations have in the different branches of the science of war. Advantages that would be gained from the establishment of a commission of officers chosen for studying this progress, examining the memoirs and projects of each, the work that appears, and thus collecting enlightenment for the profit of the government

6 The different tactics announced described above will be divided into several chapters whose indication I have dispensed with here. 7 [Guibert uses the term corps d’armée here as a general term, which was relatively unusual for the period. Today, the term is usually used to denote the Napoleonic unit; there is no indication that Guibert coined the term or that it inspired the later usage.]

Plan of a Work Entitled “ France, Political and Military ”

1.4.3 Suite of Grand Tactics Chapter I. Formation of armies in times of war. The proportion that must be observed between the different arms relative to the nature of different terrain. Organization of these armies. Their division. General Officers. Etatsmajors-généraux. A new form to give to the latter. Equipment of the troops. Artillery. Provisions. Proposed changes in these different subjects. II. Form of service to be introduced in the armies. The analogy that this service must have with tactics. III. Castrametation of the armies. The rapport that it must have with tactics. IV. Rapport that knowledge of the terrain has with tactics. The science of choosing positions. The science of coup d’œil. The necessity of forming, in peacetime, schools for the états-majors of the armies. The plan of these schools. V. Examination of the manner in which generals operate in field wars. Essay on the manner in which they might operate. 1.5 Conclusion Hypothetical campaign between an army that is constituted and that maneuvers according to the principles established in this work, and an army of the same strength, or even a little stronger, constituted and acting according to the old principles. The theater of this campaign is between the Seine and the Loire, in the same country where Marshal Puységur hypothesized his own.8 This country is chosen because the second army will follow the operations of this same Marshal; the modern army will conduct itself according to the same details and be in the same positions; by different combinations, the resulting parallel will be most instructive that can possibly be presented between old and new tactics.9 Here is the immense plan that I have dared conceive and on which I have worked for several years, but such is the inconvenience attached to great enterprises in any 8 [See Puységur, Art de la guerre, II.] 9 [Another prediction of Guibert’s that was borne out, although he played a significant role in it. In 1778, the Ministry of War assembled a large exercise in Normandy near Vaussieux, and over several days, it was conducted largely as Guibert depicts. He wrote his second major work to elaborate on its lessons; see Défense du système de guerre moderne, ou refutation complete du système de M. de M…. D … … in Œuvres militaires de Guibert, III–IV (Paris: Chez Magimel, 1803).]

37

science that, if they are unfortunately not pushed without relaxation, if any event suspends or delays their execution, the face of things changes; new discoveries replace the knowledge that exists; [and] information, amassed at great expense, becomes obsolete without being used; the author encounters these ideas, freezes, [and] grows tired, and the work is abandoned. It is the same with those vast buildings whose construction is contradicted by economical views or by some newer project, whose materials are scattered and half-consumed by time, which is uselessly scaffolded, [and] whose edifice is broken into pieces without plan and is destroyed as soon as it is raised, that attest to the fragility and inconsistence of human efforts. This inconvenience was more particularly attached to my work than to any other. Think of how much material must be amassed for its execution, and then think of how rapidly it would be necessary to place these materials in the work. To perfectly paint the momentary situation in Europe, it would be necessary to stop time and the changes it brings; lacking this miracle, it is necessary to seize this situation and make the vast tableau in a year. Without this activity, the mobility of events, circumstances, abuses, [and] enlightenment would ceaselessly drive the commenced work. I already have a portion of these materials; I am gathering the others; I project that I will verify the most interesting by voyages; [and] I desire next a year of calm and solitude to digest them, but how many circumstances have already worked against me, and without doubt, how many more will work against me yet[?] Yet the years pass; I see in my country a military constitution that is new and poorly established; unmoored and indecisive opinions; troops fatigued by [new] systems and innovations; [and] no assured notions, no dogmatic work that can instruct them; I see precious peacetime lost in dangerous minutiae [and] general officers who circumscribe themselves more and more with details; I think that a war might surprise us in this unhappy state; I therefore hasten to present to my nation the fruits of my research on the military part; I prefer to hazard them detached from my great plan, distanced from the perfection that I hope to bring to them, than to wait for some more years to give a work that at least, by the boldness of its project, might support them and make them valorous. I will give this research only the title of “Essay,” because it is no more, in effect, than rapidly drafted observations and which I have, more or less, reassembled in my portfolio in anticipation of giving them place and form in my work. There, reunited one day, developed with the greatest detail, having a plan of a constitution, presented with the linkages that must unite the truths of one with those

38

Plan of a Work Entitled “ France, Political and Military ”

of the other, I will dare to call it “A Complete Course of Tactics” and hope that the public will call it the same. It may perhaps be said that I had to bound myself to give this Essay on Tactics; that there is pride in pompously displaying a plan that has not been fulfilled and that is not being fulfilled. I give this plan so that the public may judge, so that they may encourage or stop me, [and] so that enlightened men, who consequently must have interest in the progress of enlightenment, communicate theirs to me and use me to spread them. Finally, in giving this plan, I imitate students of the arts: it is a grand “study” that I present and that I submit to my judges. May there be elevated a man more capable than me to whom this plan

inspires the conception of a better one or who brings to my execution the element of genius!10 10

[Guibert did begin this project, as his papers indicate. They are stored in the French military archives; see Service Historique – Armée de Terre 1 M 1791, especially 20, “Historique de la constitution militaire de France depuis la fondation de la monarchie jusqu’à nos jours.” Guibert also proffers another lucky guess. His work, along with that of his contemporaries, was amalgamated into the Regulations of 1791, which provided the doctrine used by the armies of the French Revolution and Napoleon. See Robert Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare: The Theory of Military Tactics in Eighteenth-Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), especially 300–344.]

Introduction § I

[The] Rarity of Good Military Works [and the] Obstacles that Have Occasioned This until Now

Of all the sciences that exercise the imagination of men, the one on which perhaps the most has been written and in which exist the fewest works that can be read fruitfully is indisputably the military science, and particularly the tactics that form one of its principal branches. Almost all the sciences have certain elements that are as old as they are and whose consequences the subsequent centuries have only extended and developed; instead, tactics today are uncertain, dependent on time, armaments, morals, [and] all the physical and moral qualities of peoples, having to necessarily vary ceaselessly, and, after a century, leave behind only principles that are disavowed and destroyed by the century that succeeds them. Suppose that the first mathematical truths were learned by peoples that inhabited the two extremities of the earth and could not communicate with each other; these people would arrive, perhaps some years apart but certainly one day, at the same result, but are there demonstrated truths in tactics? Has someone determined the fundamental principles of this science? Has one century been in accord on this point with the century that preceded it? Greek tactics were not the same in Thebes as they were in Sparta, nor the same in Sparta as they were in Athens; they changed ceaselessly; at the epoch of the institution of the phalanx, they were carried to their perfection, but soon the Roman ordinance prevailed over the phalanx; the legions themselves changed their arms and ordinance twenty times; the barbarians followed the decadence of the legions; [tactics] fell into indiscipline; [people] returned to the deep order, to numerous cavalry. The sixteenth century tamed the chaos a little, but what it established was destroyed in its turn by the seventeenth. Today, when all European troops have the same arms and the same ordinance, one would be tempted to imagine that that the principles of tactics are determined; they are not. This uniformity is a consequence of the esprit of imitation that is widespread among all people rather than conviction operated by the enlightened. Militaires, and certainly military authors, are not in accord on almost any point. Some believe that the invention of gunpowder [heralded] the epoch of the perfection of the military art; others regard it as an invention that has harmed the progress of the art. One calls for pikes, another for a deep ordinance, [but] the current order is not the same depth;

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_005

finally, no authoritative work has appeared in the midst of all these diverse opinions.1 Why has there not been an authoritative work that fixes its principles? It is because, for a long time, militaires did not know, analyze, or write what they thought. In all the arts, there are men who have written with success on their art, [but] in ours, almost all of the great men have not written at all, or if they have written, they have not provided dogmatic works. Almost all the painful commentators, makers of systems,2 men without genius,3 have multiplied [the number of] works without expanding knowledge; hence the opinion, which is so trivial and so false when it is absolute, that military writings are useless; that the science is not to be learned from books, etc., [and] hence the ridicule that is found covering the militaires who write and especially those who dare to publish their research: [a]  prejudice that can only shrink talents and sustain ignorance.4 1 [Guibert refers to Folard and Puységur, who were the leading theorists advocating neo-Classical formations and weaponry.] 2 [By “system,” Guibert does not intend a systematic doctrine, which would be a “constitution.” Instead, he refers to a rigid and usually anachronistic set of dictates, like those current during the period that required exacting precision. The “makers of systems” were theorists like Folard who shilled such systems. Pichichero, The Military Enlightenment, 37–38, divides contemporary military theorists into “makers of systems” and “military philosophes,” placing Guibert in the latter category.] 3 I am far from including in this class some respectable authors who have written on different parts of war, foreigners to tactics, like Vauban, Santa-Cruz, etc. I certainly do not include several esteemed and lively authors whose works have developed my knowledge and [earned] my emulation, like comte Turpin [de Crissé], Maïzeroy, Mesnil-Durand, etc. I speak of the infinite number of writers who have spread shadows, complication, [and] ennui over the science that they might render interesting, simple, [and] enlightened. 4 [Alvaro de Navia-Osorio y Vigil de la Rúa, marqués de Santa Cruz de Marcenado, vizconde del Puerto, was a Spanish officer who lived in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He was a prolific author on military affairs and was one of the founders of systematic military theory. See Réflexions militaires et politiques, 12 Vols. (Various, 1724–1730). Lancelot Turpin, comte de Crissé et de Sanzay, was a French officer who served in the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War. He is best known for his works of military theory, which were dedicated to bridging the gap in theory between ancient and contemporary theory. By the end of the century, he was seen as one of the foremost tacticians in Europe. Essai sur l’art de la guerre, 2 Vols. (Paris: 1754), was published before Guibert began his manuscript; Commentaires sur les Mémoires de Montecuccoli, 3 Vols. (Paris: 1769); Commentaire sur les institutions de Végèce, 3 Vols.

40 What tactics books might serve as instruction today? Will it be Puységur, whose principles are either false or totally destroyed by current tactics? Will it be Folard, whose reputation is sustained by prejudice?5 Guichard, more instructive than Folard on the facts of antiquity but teaching nothing on modern tactics? Will it be the dissertations on the deep order? The systems that are destroyed and renewed, one after the other? Will it be all the polemical controversies that clarify nothing? Useful ideas, views, [and] erudition may be found in these works, but with genius, with enlightenment, how can one not be repelled by their aridity, their length, [and] their style? Without genius, without enlightenment, how can the small number of truths be untangled from the abyss of errors in which they are lost[?]6 (Montargis: 1779); and Commentaires de César, 3 Vols. (Montargis, 1785), all appeared after. Paul-Gédéon Joly de Maïzeroy was a contemporary of Crissé and also produced many works on military theory. Like Folard and Puységur, he believed that most military principles were immutable and thus best learned from antiquity. He was one of the most prolific military writers of the period; Guibert probably drew most from Cours de tactique théorique, pratique, et historique, 2 Vols. (Paris: 1766). François-Jean de Graindorge d’Orgeville, baron de MesnilDurand, was Guibert’s near-contemporary and greatest rival in military circles. Mesnil-Durand became the leading disciple of Folard and Puységur, producing many works touting the efficacy of the deep order and neo-Classical principles. His most important work was Project d’un ordre français en tactique, ou la phalange coupée et double soutenue par le mélange des arms (Paris: Boudet, 1755). Most of Guibert’s second major work, the Defense of the Modern System of War, is an aggressive refutation of Mesnil-Durand’s system. See Gat, A History of Military Thought, 27–55; and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, which provide an overview of all of the above.] 5 I find myself hardy enough to speak in this way about the nation’s two premier military writers. But must one betray one’s opinion to flatter the dead? Must one habitually continue to regard works whose principles are, for the most part, false or useless, as good, dogmatic books? In refuting these works, in rejecting them, I do not respect their authors less. They have spread some illumination in a time of ignorance. Eh! let us guard against imagining that men who enlighten their centuries, if they were returned to life, would be partisans of their fanatical admirers. They would cast their eyes on the state of the science that they cultivated, and with the enlightenment that surrounded them on their return, they would make new discoveries. When these men wrote, did they not dare to attack the errors of their time and the works that authors of other centuries had honored? 6 [Karl Gottleib Guichard was an officer in the Prussian army in the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War. He became an intimate of Friedrich II, who nicknamed him Quintus Icilius after Guichard corrected the king on the name of a centurion at the Battle of Pharsalus. Like many of his contemporaries, Guichard wrote a work of military theory analyzing classical militaries; see Mémoires militaires sur les Grecs et les Romains, 2 Vols. (The Hague: Hondt, 1758).]

Introduction

This lack of didactic works does not exist in the same way for works of maxims. Caesar, Rohan, Montecuccoli, Turenne, Saxe, [and] the King of Prussia will offer them whenever they can to whoever will listen to them, but it must be remarked that these books may not pass into the hands of the whole world; they may only be properly entertained by formed generals or by officers capable of becoming them.7 The manner in which these great men write is neither detailed enough nor clear enough; they write to render account of themselves rather than to instruct. Thus it is that the genius writes only when he has not formed a good plan for what he has decided to teach. He treats subjects as he saw them, that is to say, rapidly and from on high. He does not descend into the details. He suppresses all the intermediary ideas by which the average man leads himself, with effort, from one truth to the other. Another genre of military works that we possess in great number is contemporary memoirs, the histories of wars. But how few men are in a state of unraveling all the facts, consequences, [and] causes? How few men know how to read them fruitfully? Regardless, how few of these works are instructive? How few are made by people of war? In the majority of these histories, in their facts of military events, I do not see anything certain except the names of generals and the epoch of battles. They are the gazettes of the times, more or less eloquently recounted. I advance that, in the didactic genre, there are almost no useful works on war [and] that there are surely none at all that are useful and interesting at the same time. Daring then to publish one, to suspect me of pride, should perhaps work against me. But to say that no one has written with genius on the military science or bent his genius to

7 [Gaius Julius Caesar was one of the most important men in Roman history. Born to an old but impoverished family in the late second century BCE, he rose through Roman politics during the collapse of the Republic, largely as a champion of populist positions and legislation. By 60, he had gained enough power to form the First Triumvirate with Gaius Pompeius (Pompey) and Marcus Licinius Crassus. For much of the following decade, he conducted his famous campaign to conquer Gaul, which produced one of the most-read military memoirs in Western history. In the late 50s and early 40s, he campaigned against Pompey, culminating in the latter’s defeat at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48. Caesar then continued his campaign against Pompey’s supporters and became dictator for life before his assassination in 44. Henri, duc de Rohan, was a leader of the French Protestants (Huguenots) in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He fought in most of the wars of the period, dying in the Thirty Years War. He was best known as the author of Le parfait capitaine (Paris: 1639), one of the earliest French military treatises. Guibert will use this as his handbook, particularly for citations of Roman military affairs and Caesar’s campaigns.]

Introduction

write with utility is not to assure the public that I will succeed in my enterprise; it is only to warn it that I understand its importance and difficultly. § II

Definition of Tactics, Their Division, [and] Their Current State

Even if history did not teach us that the Greeks were the first to reduce the art of ordering troops to dogmas and principles, we would be forced to conclude so, seeing that the name of this art draws its origin from a Greek word; therefore, military Europe would disavow in vain that the arms and documents of France have given to it for almost a century almost all of the technical terms of the art of war, drawn from our language [and] disposed towards it.8 To the eyes of most militaires, tactics is no more than a branch of war, [but] to mine, it is the base of that science, it is the science itself, because it teaches how to constitute the troops, how to order them, how to move them, [and] how to make them fight; it is the resource for small armies and numerous armies; because it alone can supplement the number and handle the multitude; finally, it embraces the knowledge of men, of armies, of terrain, [and] of circumstances, because it is the union of all of the knowledge that must determine their movements. Tactics must be divided into two parts, one elementary and limited, the other complex and sublime. The first contains all of the details of formation, instruction, and exercise of a battalion, a squadron, [and] a regiment. It is on this that all the ordinances of sovereigns, all the subaltern systems, [and] all the contradictions of opinion exist. It is this that now agitates our spirits and that has agitated them for a long time, because the details are within the grasp of all spirits; because of the national inconsistency, when it is not content, varying on principles like fashions; and finally, because innovating, or attaching to innovators, has become a means of [gaining] reputation and fortune. The second part is, properly speaking, the science of generals. It embraces all the great parts of war like the movements of armies, march orders, [and] battle orders; it holds this and identifies itself as the science of the choice of positions and of understanding the countryside, since these two parts have only for their goal to determine most surely the disposition of troops; it holds the 8 [The First Edition of the Académie française’s Dictionary (AF Dictionary) defines tactics as “the art of ranging troops in battle,” to which is added “and making military evolutions” in the Fourth Edition. The word migrated to French from Greek.]

41 science of fortifications, since works must be constructed for the troops and relative to them; it holds the artillery, because its movements and execution must be combined with the position and the movement of the troops, [and] finally, because this last is no more than an accessory destined to second and sustain them. In a word, it is everything, because it is the art of making the troops act, and all the other parts are no more than secondary things that, without it, would have no objective or produce only embarrassment. It is this second part, embracing this vast aspect, that does not at all exist in dogmatic writings. Some authors have treated one or two of the branches that compose it, but they perceived neither the other branches nor the indispensable liaison that they all have between each other. As such, [the appearance of] these so-false definitions of tactics, when it was believed to be only the mechanism of the movement of troops. As such, the art of tacticians is debased and often ridiculed in the opinion of the ignorant. As such, each species of arms is seen as the premier and most important; the infantry is thought to be the entire army; the cavalry says, in its turn, that it alone decides battles; the artillery imagines that in it resides the force and the great means of destruction; the engineers see all the subtlety of war in their angles and in their works; the état-major sees it in the reconnaissance of the terrain and in local speculations. As such, light troops have become so numerous today and believe themselves to be the only active and warlike corps, pretentions founded only on [the fact that] each sees only the utility of what is in its sphere; [these are] totally false pretentions, when they are exclusive; all proofs of ignorance and the rarity of great views; [and] pretentions that recall the parable in which the arms, the eye, [and] the head say “it is I that is the body, [and] in me resides all the movements and utility.”9 Returning to the second part, neglected when the good days of Rome finished, entirely lost under the ruins of the Western Empire, [and] unknown for several centuries after, it was raised momentarily by Maurits of Nassau, by Gustav Adolf, and by the great men they formed, but after them, it made no progress. Armies became more numerous and more overloaded with embarrassments. Great innovations are made in arms and ordinance. Established principles no longer suit them; they are abandoned, and no new ones are substituted for them. Since the end of the last century, hazard and routine have mostly moved 9 [Guibert references the analogy in 1 Corinthians 12, where the author uses parts of the body to illustrate the unity of the Christian Church.]

42

Introduction

armies. Puységur posed some principles in the midst of many errors. Saxe, whose glory and science could not be contested, knew the ignorance of his century; he said so in his work; one can sense his genius glimpsing the art that he did not have the time to create.10 That glory was reserved for the King of Prussia. He showed Europe the phenomenon of an army that was numerous and at the same time maneuverable and disciplined. He showed that the movements of 100,000 men are subject to calculations as simple [and] as certain as those of 10,000; that, once the levers that move a battalion are found, it is no more than combining a great quantity of these levers and knowing how to handle them. His victories have proven the goodness of his discoveries. We threw ourselves on his documents en masse. We imitated him haphazardly and without meditation. We copied the costume of his troops, the appearance of his discipline, and all the vices of his constitution, but his great principles were not and are not yet perceived.11 Finally, this is the situation today of spirits in France, by rapport of this revolution of principles with the greater part of the officers, [who are] attached to old prejudices and repelled by some innovations [and] perhaps too-little reflective, rejecting all and not wishing to open their eyes to examine them. The other part, and it is not known which of the two most injures the progress of enlightenment, exceeds the goal of the ministry, deceives the goodness of its intentions, wishes to innovate without having calculated how it will be replaced, fatigues the troops with ill-digested opinions, and thus prepares, by the discredit that its conduct throws on all future innovations, the grandest difficulties for truth and genius. Tactics, divided into two parts and developed as I conceive that it might be, is simple and sublime. It becomes the science of all times, of all places, and of all arms; that is to say that, if ever, by some revolution that cannot be conceived in the species of our arms, it would be wished to return to the deep order, it would not be necessary to change either maneuvers or constitution to arrive there. 10

11

[In the 1730s, Saxe wrote a series of memoires that were collected and published after his death as Mes rêveries (Amsterdam: Arkstée et Merkus, 1751). Because of Saxe’s success as a commander, they became standard reading for officers during the period.] [Following the eruption of Friedrich II’s Prussia into European warfare in 1740, Prussophilia spread across Europe, including into military establishments. This ranged from simply adopting Prussian-style uniforms to wholesale doctrinal changes in an effort to copy Prussian methods. Much of Guibert’s work is an effort to debunk this process, particularly the “haphazard” nature of it. See Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare.]

It is, in a word, the result of all that the military centuries have thought that is good before ours and what ours might add to it. It would be bold, it would be insensitive for me to speak thus, as if it were a question of a science of which I was the creator. But it is, in part, the principles of the King of Prussia that I will expose; these are the most military, enlightened, and studious ideas; it is [also] those of my father. Forty years of service and work acquired him the right to have them. They are mine, tempered by my experience. I am no more here, in some way, than redactor and commentator. The principles have been given and proven to me; I have done no more than develop and aggregate consequences. Abridging this apology will not prevent people from critiquing me; they would not be prevented [by anything]; if I exposed evident opinions, many people would refuse them. I have lived long enough to know that every author incurs blame and that truth filters through prejudice, while errors spread in a torrent. § III

[The] Influence That the Genius of Peoples [and] the Species of Their Government and of Their Arms Have on Tactics

Once, each nation had its armament, its tactics, [and] its particular constitution, because peoples, more separated from each other, had a genius, a government, and morals to themselves. These differences of armament and genius necessarily varied the ordinance of each people.12 The Greeks, armed with pikes, required a condensed order, which united them and which favored their impulsion. They were ingenious, they refined tactics, [and] they made an art of complication and calculation where each man, each file had its [own] name.13 The Romans, armed with pila, swords, and other [one-]hand[ed] weapons, were in need of more space and liberty in their ranks. Less subtle and more warlike than the Greeks, they created a more simple, more malleable, [and] more advantageous order, in that it permitted them to march more rapidly

12 13

[Guibert again employs Enlightenment classification, positing a discrete political and military practice for each “nation.”] [The classical Greek phalanx required a great deal of control, but perhaps not to the degree Guibert indicates; with the famous exception of the Spartans, almost all Greek warriors were amateurs, and they would not have been able to train in or implement systems that were overly complicated. See Lee, “The Classical Greek Experience;” and van Wees, Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities.]

43

Introduction

and to mutually support each other.14 The Numidian and Spanish cavalry, armed with lances, had to fight on only one rank and with large intervals in order to more freely carry and more easily use this weapon. So did the Thessalian cavalry, which was half-naked and armed with axes, while the Greek and Roman cavalry, larger and armed with swords, formed on several ranks.15 The Gauls, robust, ignorant, and brave, despised all species of tactics and armed themselves with swords.16 The Franks, braver still, and more impetuous, went at the enemy with great cries, and, armed only with a species of axe called a francisca that they threw at the enemy from ten paces, then began to use a short and sharp sword.17 Up to the epoch of the discovery of firearms, and the same up to the end of the last century, the genius of peoples still influenced their ordinance and their armor. As one goes through history, one will see the German cavalry, always cumbersome, carrying lances, completely armored, [and] maneuvering on three ranks, and [it] may, thus formed, send one to the charge and reserve the other two. The infantry of this nation was entirely composed of crossbowmen and arquebusiers, the premier in Europe for missile weapons and firearms [but] the weakest for attacks and for hand-to-hand combat.18 The Swiss 14

15

16

17 18

[The prototypical Roman legionary army was an improvement on the phalanx model, deploying units (first maniples, then cohorts) on three lines and in a checkerboard pattern, with auxiliary units in support. This enabled it to fight in a variety of conditions, unlike the phalanx, which required an open and flat plain. See Sage, “The Rise of Rome.”] [Numidia was the region of North Africa largely contained by modern Algeria. Thessaly was the area of Greece between Boeotia and Macedonia. Each region, along with Spain, was famed for its cavalry, as Guibert indicates. Greek and Roman armies generally employed little native cavalry, preferring to cultivate alliances or mercenaries with cavalry powers to supply the need. Guibert’s history, as usual, is deterministic; while each state may have had a preferred armament and tactics, none was strictly limited to them. See Ann Hyland, “War and the Horse,” in The Oxford Handbook of Classical Warfare, 493–526.] [Gallic cavalry became a staple of Roman armies, especially after Caesar’s campaigns there. Most “barbarian” people encountered by the Greeks and Romans fought in disordered style, but most also quickly adapted to Greek and Roman methods. Guibert likely draws this analysis from reading Caesar’s Gallic Wars, with a probable assist from Rohan’s Le parfait capitaine. See also Adrian Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War, 100 BC–AD 200 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).] [The Franks, the progenitors of the French, were probably named for the francisca, a one-handed axe that could be swung or thrown, although the weapon was far from unique to them.] [Guibert’s description of German cavalry could be applied to almost any state in Western Europe during the medieval period: knights arrayed in three lines. As he indicates, missile fire came from crossbows and then from arquebuses, one of the earliest

infantry, armed with pikes, was proper on all the orders of consistency and depth, because of its phlegm and the unalterable order that it observed in its files; it was the same in the Spanish infantry.19 There was then hardly any question in Europe of the Russians and the Prussians.20 The Danish, constituted somewhat like the peoples of northern Germany, modeled themselves on them. This was also the case with the Swedes, with the exception of the brilliant and brief epoch when they were under Gustav Adolf. The French were without order and without discipline, ill-suited to fighting with fire and on plains [but] redoubtable in all attacks on posts and with swords. They had then, as they do now, the first moment of vigor and impetuosity, a shock that one day nothing can stop and the next a light obstacle repels, this incredible mélange of courage sometimes above all and sometimes a consternation carried to the point of feebleness. Our cavalry was the first to renounce the deep formation because of the difficulty it found in observing its files. All the cavalry in Europe had conserved its defensive arms, made use of fire, [and] fought on three ranks en masse and at the trot; only ours was nude, armed with swords, formed on two ranks, and made the charge pell-mell and without order.21 The English never had any tactics at all [and] rarely great generals, but [they had] an order that held to the fiber of their souls [and] a courage little-capable of offensives but difficult to quell; they waited, said a historian speaking of the days of Verneuil, of Crécy, [and] of Agincourt, for the French ignorance and impetuosity to break against their

19

20 21

mass-produced firearms. See Kelly de Vries, Medieval Warfare 1300–1450 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); and John France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).] [Guibert names the two best-regarded militaries of the sixteenth century. The Swiss cantons developed trained, professional forces that used pike-and-shot formations and developed a reputation for prowess and implacable character. The Spanish borrowed much from the Swiss in developing the famed tercio formation, which dominated the battlefields of the century before being overtaken by the more mobile armies of Gustav Adolf and the French. See Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); and Rogers, The Military Revolution Debate.] [As noted, Prussia only came into existence in 1701, and most European states did not consider Russia to be “properly European” until around the same time.] [The French were at the forefront of the modernization of cavalry, creating “ordinance companies” of quasi-professional cavalry as early as the mid-fifteenth century. Along with Gustav Adolf, they helped to return charge cavalry to European warfare after the end of the age of the knight. See Philippe Contamine, Guerre, état, et société à la fin du moyen age (Paris: Moutin, 1972), 275–530.]

44

Introduction

sangfroid and their palisades.22 It is interesting for philosophy to remark how the character of nations was found in their militaries and by what revolution it became less sensible and less marked in current militaries. Now all the peoples of Europe being in some way mixed up and confounded by the similarity of the principles of their governments, by that of their morals, by their politics, by their voyages, [and] by their letters, the national prejudices that separated them no longer exist. With these prejudices are insensibly erased the characteristic traits that were imprinted on each one of them, these traits in which the national genius rests and that are the effect of morals and governments as much as physique and climate. Today then, all the nations of Europe are modeled after each other, but it is in the constitutions and the military methods that this imitation is the most marked and the most general. All the troops of this part of the world, if I except the Turks, [because] their prejudices and religion separates them, have the same arms and the same ordinance; the same arms, whether because the same degree of understanding and of enlightenment illuminating nearly everyone, they sensed the superiority of firearms over the missile weapons of the ancients, or because, everyone becoming soft, idle, maladroit, [and] inexpert at bodily exercise, they had to prefer a weapon that needs less courage, strength, and skill, [and] the same ordinance because, as I have observed above, it is always the species of arms that determines the ordinance of the troops. Today all the troops of Europe have, with some light differences, the same constitutions, that is to say, constitutions that are imperfect, ill-calculated according to their 22

[Guibert names three of France’s most humiliating defeats, all from the Hundred Years War. The Battle of Crécy took place on 26 August 1346, the Battle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415, and the Battle of Verneuil on 17 August 1424. In each battle, French heavy cavalry charged massed English archers and were slaughtered. All three battles virtually destroyed the participating French army and severely weakened the state’s position in the war. See Juliet Barker, Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, 1417–1450 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 72–86; and Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War, 5 Vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990–2015), I:489–534 and IV:431–467. Guibert’s characterization of the English and French nations were common at the time, with the French being seen as impetuous and the English as more rational; they also fit into the trope of Enlightenment classification and had become characteristics of the respective nations. “A historian” is probably David Hume, who characterizes the named battles in the same manner as Guibert. David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Abdication of James II, 1688, 8 Vols. (London: Cadell, 1770), II:453–460; and III:106–111 and 140.]

means, and have neither honor nor patriotism as their base. All the armies are composed of the most vile and the most miserable portion of citizens, of foreigners, of vagabonds, of men who, for the lightest motive of interest and discontent, are ready to quit their flags.23 These are the armies of governments and not those of nations. Only a part of the troops of Sweden24 [and] the militaries of Switzerland and of England can be excepted from this number, because, for the regular troops of this last nation, as republican, as free as it boasts of being, it is the Court that disposes of their employment and their recompense, [and] it has been seen to use these troops against the people and against [their] franchises.25 It must be agreed that the manner in which the ancients made war was more proper to rendering the nation brave and bellicose. A people beaten in war felt the last miseries. Often, the vanquished were killed or enslaved. The fear of this treatment made a strong impression on spirits, making it necessary for the people to occupy themselves 23

24 25

[Guibert’s belief in the poor quality of the average soldier was common during the period and persists to the present. To give just one contemporary example, Claude-Louis, comte de Saint-Germain, repeatedly referred to the “indiscipline” of “the worst infantry under the sun,” and called his fellow general officers “apostles of indiscipline.” See Saint-Germain, Correspondance particulière du comte de Saint-Germain, Ministre et Secrétaire d’Etat de la Guerre, Lieutenant-Général des Armées de France, Feld-Maréchal au service de Danemark, Chevalier de l’Ordre de l’Eléphant, avec M. Paris du Verney, Conseiller d’Etat, 2 Vols. (London, 1789), letters of November-December 1757, I:159–176. Friedrich II echoed the sentiment in the oft-quoted maxim that “soldiers should fear their officers more than all the dangers to which they are exposed;” see Jay Luvaas, Frederick the Great on the Art of War (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 78. As a result, works on the period tend to depict soldiers as the dregs of society, men little better than criminals; see Duffy, The Military Experience in the Age of Reason, 89–136. Recent scholarship has cast doubt on this characterization. Ilya Berkovich, Motivation in War: The Experience of Common Soldiers in Old-Regime Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), argues, with much supporting sourcing, that soldiers were far more disciplined and professional than contemporaries say. A class aspersion must also be considered in this argument: with rare exception, the writers of military treatises were officers and thus nobles, while soldiers were commoners.] This part is what is called in Sweden “the national regiments.” They are paid in funds from the territory in which they live. [Guibert refers to the system whereby units were raised and funded by localities rather than the central state that originated in in the Swiss cantons and was adopted by Sweden, among other contemporaries. See Roberts, Sweden as a Great Power 1611–1697. He also employs one of the favorite arguments of the later American Revolutionaries, that the British used the army as an instrument of oppression against their own people. See Tony Hayter, The Army and the Crowd in mid-Georgian England (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978).]

45

Introduction

in discipline and military exercises. They had to render war the first and the most useful of all professions. Today, all of Europe is civilized. Wars have become less cruel. At the end of combat, no more blood is spilled, prisoners are respected, cities are not destroyed, [and] the countryside is not ravaged. Vanquished peoples are exposed only to some contributions, often less severe than the taxes that they pay to their sovereign. Preserved by the conquered, their fate does not become worse. All the states of Europe govern themselves more or less by the same laws and the same principles. As such, nations necessarily take less interest in wars. The quarrel that agitates them is not their own; they regard it as only that of the government. As such, the support of this quarrel is abandoned to mercenaries, [and] the military state is regarded as an onerous order and must not be counted among the other orders of citizens; from that certainly [will follow] the extinction of patriotism and the epidemic relaxation of courage. Half of Europe is inhabited by artisans [and] rentiers, the majority single, people with nothing to attach them to the soil on which they live and who haughtily display this dangerous maxim: “Ubi bene, ibi patria.”26 “The plague is in Provence; eh bien,” say these cosmopolites; “I will go to live in Normandy. War menaces Flanders; I abandon this frontier to those who wish to defend it, and I will go to find peace in distant provinces. I carry with me my existence, my art, [and] my fortune everywhere the earth nourishes and the sun shines.” Thus, while the letters and arts have polished the nations, enlightened spirits, [and] rendered morals softer, governments have not been able to avoid the vices of men turning a part of these salutary remedies into poison. It was from the progress of knowledge itself that they must have drawn the means of rendering the people stronger and better. It was necessary to see that they carried only to useful subjects, that they did not at all attack necessary prejudices; it must sustain these prejudices by all the resources of its legislation. In vain would our vices attempt 26

[“Where there is good, there is your patrie.” Guibert quotes a common aphorism of Roman writers likely paraphrased from the poet Marcus Pacuvius by Marcus Tullius Cicero. http://www.antiqui tatem.com/en/homeland-country-fatherland-motherland/. Rentiers are the idle rich, people who primarily draw their subsistence from rents, interests, and dividends. In Guibert’s time, the term usually indicated people who drew their income from government bonds and were hereditary. It carries an implied critique, that the rentier contributes little to the progress of the state and society and is inherently lazy. It also carries a class rebuke, as rentiers were almost exclusively from the upper bourgeoisie, having none of the hardworking values of the laboring classes nor the noble values of the Second Estate. See Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt, “Rentier,” Encyclopédie XIV:121.]

to destroy national virtues; the cry of truth, amour-propre, rewards, honor, shame, pain, and foremost, the love that inspires a good government, would overpower them. Patriotism would have reprised strength; it would not be the destructive fanaticism that we admire too much in the ancients, but rather the reflective consent of recognition and tenderness that a good family has for its mother. It was necessary to prevent industry from moving towards objects of luxury. This was easy, because the frivolous arts are only the product of human enlightenment poorly employed; they are the result of a good leavening turned to corruption. Letters, which are much-declaimed against, certainly inspire neither thirst for riches, nor softness, nor a taste for the superfluities of life. But this will return me to that which I have already treated in the preliminary discourse of my work, and this is not at all my objective here. I wished to observe, relative to the influence that results in our system of war, what was the current state of our morals and our souls. It is certain that they are softened and enervated. It is certain that the fate of states has become dependent on militaries [that are] mercenary, debased, [and] ill-constituted, not being excited to courage by any motive, gaining nothing by vanquishing, [and] losing nothing by being beaten. Since these vices exist and can only be corrected in bankrupting the form of our governments, we thus look in our luminaries for all the remedies that they may procure us and work to supplement, by the perfection of the art, the decadence of our constitutions and our courage. § IV

Plan of This General Essay on Tactics

When I will give a complete course on tactics in my work, this course will be preceded by a plan of a national military constitution, that is to say, of a plan calculated by the means, the genius, and the power of their nation. This plan will be contrary in many ways to received ideas, because I confess that all the existing constitutions in Europe are quite far removed from the point of perfection, whether real or chimerical, that I dare to foresee. I shall only present here the materials of this course of tactics, and I will present them without strictly subjecting myself to the elementary and didactic order into which I propose to later arrange them. I will speak on the constitution of troops only when it offers abuses or things absolutely contrary to the execution of my principles, to my path. Let us mention only in passing that the changes that have been made since the last war in this regard have made considerable gains on an infinite number of points. Let us say at the same time that they were mistaken on

46

Introduction

many others.27 Let us next conclude that, to reform a constitution, a thing more difficult than to create it, it must be the sovereign [who reforms it], because there would be, in many regards, changes to the morals of the nation and the routine of the administration. Let us conclude that it must be the sovereign, and the sovereign [must be] a man of genius, who could carry out this important enterprise; that he must be employed for several years at it; and that he must often retrace his steps to rectify them, because it is only God who can create in a single cast and not retouch his work.28 27

28

This work was written before the changes that took place in the ministry, and I give it as it was then. Truth does not have two languages, one for favor and the other for disgrace. It judges things and disregards people. It blames without gall and praises without adulation. The new constitution has faults. One is [that], in its establishment, it is deceiving in means on several subjects. One is that, in others, it has gone beyond the goal or missed the goal. But let us give just elegies to the enterprise of the Minister who is its author, to the goodness of his views. Let us not close our eyes to the good effects that have resulted from part of his operations. Let us praise this Minister who has sensed the vices of the old constitution, the advantages of discipline, [and] the necessity of instruction. Let us praise him for having shaken the prejudices of old errors, for having searched for the good. This is having done much in a nation that is governed by routine and passionate for customs. [The “changes in the ministry” to which Guibert refers is the replacement of Etienne-François, duc de Choiseul, by LouisFrançois, marquis de Monteynard, in the office of Secretary of State for War in late 1770. Choiseul had worked assiduously to create army doctrine and regulations that would be followed by the entire army, regularizing its theoretical foundation and practice. Guibert’s father, Charles-Benoît, was a staff officer under Choiseul and helped craft some of the most important documents, including introducing what became known as “Guibert columns,” multipurpose formations that accomplished many of the tasks Guibert lays out in Volume 2. Albert Latreille ascribes these reforms to a “German,” meaning Prussian, influence; see L’œuvre militaire de la révolution: l’armée et la nation à la fin de l’ancien régime; les derniers ministres de la guerre de la monarchie (Paris: Chapelot, 1914). This note also provides a valuable clue to Guibert’s writing process and timing: he clearly drafted the manuscript during Choiseul’s ministry and edited it after his fall.]

However advantageous that it would be for the tactical ideas that I wish to expose to be adapted to the constitutional plan that I propose, they are nevertheless independent; they are applicable to all known constitutions. I will apply them to that of our troops; I could similarly apply them to those of Austria, England, etc., and this is why I dare to believe that I write with more utility than all the other tacticians, because they do no more than revolt against that which is already established and publish their views about systems of formations that do not exist, and cannot exist. I return to the work that I have announced to speak of arms, of dress, and the interior discipline of troops. All these details are carried under a constitutional plan, which profoundly deepens them, and on these last two subjects especially, everything will change! What things [do I have] to say about this bizarre and dress, permeable to all the injuries of the air, that I see covering the troops; about that manner of dress that absorbs the officer and aggrieves the soldier; [and] about our pretend discipline, which consists of little more than minutiae of form [and] that weighs too much on the subaltern grades, not existing at all in the superior grades, and especially [not] among the general officers, where it is the most important because there, the faults of subordination lose battles and cause campaigns to fail. I stop myself, and I return to my subject. I have divided tactics into two parts: “elementary tactics” and “grand tactics.” It is this division that I will follow. In the first part, I will treat all the arms that comprise an army: infantry, cavalry, artillery, [and] light troops. In the second, I will assemble these different arms, I will arrange them into an army, [and] I will give them a practical theory of all the movements that they may execute in war. At the end of this theory, and so my plan contains all that pertains to tactics, I will examine the rapport that the science of fortification and reconnaissance of the terrain have with tactics, and particularly with field war; I will speak of the manner by which an army subsists and what advantageous changes may be made in this regard.

Education of Troops It is a bizarre thing, the species of instruction that is given to troops today. It consists only of the handling of arms and some maneuvers, the majority complicated and useless in war. There is a large distance between miserable routine and a system of military education that commences with fortifying the body of the soldier and making [it] supple, that then teaches him to know his arms, to handle them, [and] to execute all of the evolutions that he must know, [and] to play games proper for maintaining strength and gaiety in the interval between these exercises and for relaxation! After having trained the soldier, he will be familiarized with simulated representations of all that he must encounter in war; he will know how to carry burdens, move the earth, make forced marches, swim across rivers, [and] work with address on all the parts of an entrenchment. Passing part of his life in the camps, he will acquire the habit of service that he must have [and] in the conduct he must have in taking an advanced post, [either] on sentry duty [or] on patrol. By the means of the great maneuvers that he will make in these camps, he will become accustomed to the order that he must observe in marches, to the spectacle of an army, to the sound of artillery, [and] to the joining of other arms with his own. In exercises of places, he will contract the mechanistic habit of working on trenches and defenses; he will learn to cut a palisade [and] how to plant it, how to dress a ladder, how to attach a petard or how to support the men who attach it, [and] how to open a loophole [and] know where to place it, etc. Accustomed in all circumstances to keeping silent, obeying signals, and to the voices of his officers; to not carrying himself beyond the point of attack; [and] finally to knowing all the situations that war may offer, the soldier will desire it ceaselessly, or rather, near danger, peacetime itself would be for him a continual war. In such a system of education, there would be an instruction [that is] progressive and relative to all the grades, because where the soldier knows the work of the soldier, the subaltern officer will know how to conduct his troop, the captain his company, the colonel his regiment, the general officer his division, [and] the general his army. I do not speak of the other part of military education that forms courage, morals, [and] prejudices, [a] part so important but so neglected, so unknown to all the generals and all the governments that I see in ancient and modern history only one man1 about whom it is said “he was 1 This is Cato, commanding the Roman armies in Spain, to whom history has made this beautiful elegy.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_006

not satisfied with his soldiers being brave; he wished that they were honest men.”2 Thus the education of the soldier must embrace three objectives: first, the exercises of the body; second, the exercises of arms and evolutions; [and] third, the representation of different situations that may be found in war; this will be the plan that I will follow in my course of tactics. The first of these objectives, taught even out of service, must enter into the education of all the youth of the kingdom. If in France, where the prince is all, where his example is legislated, [and] where his morals determine the public morals, a king wishes to return his courtiers to an active and military life, for it to be so, let him educate his children with these principles; let him assist in their exercises; [and] let his indifference towards the idle, voluptuous, [and] ignorant young men wither away, to distinguish them from the others; soon we will see softness, libertinage, obscure and ruinous debauchery, and all the petty vices that degrade the great lords disappear; soon the current generation will be succeeded by a generation proper for war and glory. The Champ de Mars that grass covers and whose edges the Seine bathes uselessly will resemble the famous field that the Tiber watered, where we will exercise to vanquish; statues of Henri IV, Condé, [and] Turenne, in decorating its boundaries, will cry to their descendants “these pedestals await you.”3 2 [Guibert refers to Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder, a Roman politician during the late third and early second centuries BCE. He began his career in the Second Punic War and helped Rome turn the tide of that conflict against Carthage. For much of the 190s, he campaigned in Spain, pacifying the region for Rome to absorb as a series of new provinces. One of his first actions was to forbid the stockpiling of supplies, stating instead that “war would nourish itself.” He was triumphed for his victories and consequent loot and seen as an effective and savvy commander. Guibert will return to this campaign and its lessons repeatedly in the rest of the text. See Titus Livius, The History of Rome XXXIV, ed. Cyrus Evans, especially 9–10.] 3 [The Champ de Mars is a large park in Paris along the banks of the Seine near the Invalides, the royal hospital for wounded soldiers and now a military museum. France’s first military academy, the Ecole royale militaire, was built there shortly before Guibert wrote and remains in service. The Champ de Mars was deliberately modelled on the Campus Martius, a similar space and Guibert’s “famous field” along the Tiber River in early Republican Rome. Male Roman citizens assembled on it for selection and military training. See Haroldo Guízar, The Ecole Royale Militaire: Noble Education, Institutional Innovation, and Royal Charity, 1750–1788 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); and Paul W. Jacobs and Diane Atnally Conlin, Campus Martius: The Field of Mars in the Life of Ancient Rome (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

48 From the court and the capital, the esprit of honor and courage will pass to the distant provinces. The nobility, returning from little pleasures of luxury and softness, will abandon the cities to return to their châteaus; there, they will find more happiness and less to confound them; they will again become warlike and gallant; the taste of arms and military exercises, returned among the nobility, will then pass to the people; the bourgeoisie will no longer regard the state of the soldier as an opprobrium, [and] the youth of the countryside will no longer fear callup to the militia; they will assemble themselves on Sundays and feast days to compete for prizes of jumping, running, and dexterity. The prizes that the government will fund in each parish will be worth a thousand times more than the sterile and costly annual assembly of the militia, because having vigorous and nimble peasants already accustomed to the sound of weapons and handling them, and having at the same time a good discipline and officers, you will soon form soldiers. Let it not be believed that the same revolution in the spirits and in morals would be destructive to the agriculture or the tranquility of the kingdom. A nation thus constituted would only be more elevated and more hardened to work. It is the laboring people who are the most warlike. Recall the Romans in their good years, like the Swiss today. The state would gain the reform of a part of the numerous armies that it maintains on foot. When an entire country is military, at the first signal, all its inhabitants are its defenders. As for public tranquility, it would be only more assured. History proves it. Where did the Fronde and the Catholic League form? In Paris, in the midst of this craven, corrupt, and greedy-for-novelties population that lives in cities.4 The inhabitant of the Henri IV reigned in the late sixteenth century before his assassination in 1610. He was a major figure in the French Wars of Religion, leading the Huguenot faction against the Catholic League of Henri, duc de Guise. He successfully outmaneuvered his enemies on the battlefield and at the court of Henri III. Most famously, he converted to Catholicism to secure his place as Henri III’s heir, perhaps uttering the famous axiom “Paris is well worth a Mass.” Following his victory, Henri spent much of his reign repairing the social and economic divisions in the kingdom, including issuing the Edict of Nantes in 1598 that decreed limited religious freedom for Huguenots. Along with Philippe II, François I, and Louis XIV, Henri IV is considered to be one of the four great kings of France, and his equestrian statue remains prominently displayed on the Pont Neuf in the heart of the city, as it was in Guibert’s period. See Collins, The State in Early Modern France, 1–35; and Vincent Pitts, Henri IV of France: His Reign and Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).] 4 [The Fronde was a series of civil conflicts that took place in the midseventeenth century. When Richelieu and Louis XIII died in quick succession in the early 1640s, they left the young child Louis XIV and his regent Jules Cardinal Mazarin to rule. Mazarin proved unpopular, France remained embroiled in the ongoing Thirty Years

Education of Troops

countryside, occupied with his culture, attached to the hope of his harvest, cherishes peace and the laws that give it. Finally, let us say that the fear of revolutions must never stop the operations of healthy and wise politics; governments only dread them when they sense their own feebleness or injustice. Perhaps I should have reserved this tableau for my great work, where the development of these subjects that have rapport would be rendered more sensible, but the truths of sentiment oppress and force speaking. Finally, if the kingdom cannot entirely become a school of work and of war, it must at least be that when soldiers are enrolled, bodily exercises comprise a considerable part of their instruction. It is strange to think that, uniquely trained to handle a fusil and to hold poses that are painful and contrary to the mechanism of the body for three hours, they have no habits of the work that are and Franco-Spanish Wars, religious tension still simmered, and many in France saw an opportunity to roll back the centralizing reforms of the prior king and his first minister. The first Fronde began with a revolt of the parlements, the regional law courts that represented the rising bourgeoisie, in 1648. It largely consisted of street-level violence in Paris, as Guibert indicates, and was quickly solved the following year. However, in 1650, the far more dangerous Fronde of the Princes erupted. Leading nobles, including the king’s uncle Gaston, duc d’Orléans, and members of the Conti and Condé families, rebelled against Mazarin. Unlike the prior Fronde, the Fronde of the Princes involved armies and became a true civil war. Turenne commanded the royal forces against Condé’s frondeurs; they met at the climactic Battle of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine on 2 July 1652, which featured Gaston’s daughter, Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier, commanding the Bastille’s cannon against Turenne. Mazarin recovered his position and outmaneuvered the frondeurs, ending the Fronde in 1653. The Fronde had a significant impact on the young Louis XIV; most famously, a mob broke into the Louvre when Louis was in residence. Historians have posited that this event was Louis’s motivation for building his great palace at Versailles, removing the court from Paris, and for his centralizing and absolutist reign. The Catholic League was a major faction in the French Wars of Religion, which devastated France from the 1560s to the 1590s. It was formed by Henri, duc de Guise, in order to ensure a Catholic France, perhaps including his own succession to the throne. It fought against the Huguenot forces of Henri of Navarre, future Henri IV, and the royal armies of Henri III. It largely dissolved with Guise’s assassination in 1588, but elements of it remained to stoke orthodox and ultramontane sentiments in France, even to the present. Both the Catholic League and the Fronde centered on Paris and received support from portions of the city’s populace, but it is perhaps too far to suggest that Paris spawned and nourished both as a kind of urban rejection of royal authority. See William Beik, Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Mack Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Orest Ranum, The Fronde: A French Revolution, 1648–1652 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993); and John Wolf, Louis XIV: A Profile (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).]

Education of Troops

required when war arrives. A march that is the slightest bit forced surprises them; a stream stops them; four days of pioneering discourages them. If I am told that our current exercises occupy them enough already, I will respond that it is because our maneuvers are too complicated, our methods of instruction ill-heard, [and] our pretention to precision and to perfection on many points minute and ridiculous. I would respond that the proof that our soldiers are not occupied enough is that it is said that their time must be filled by overloading them with disquieting and odious rules of discipline. It is because a standard of conduct has been created for them that passes three hours every day at their toilet, which makes of them wigmakers, polishers, [and] varnishers, all, in a word, except for men of war.5 And what results from this 5 It is the excesses of the “standard of conduct” that I attack and not the “standard of conduct” itself. Carried up to a certain point, it is necessary; it is a proof of discipline; it contributes to the health of the soldier; it elevates him above the people; [and] it places him in the class of well-off and fortunate citizens. It was not neglected by the Romans; it was in their carrying of their arms, but it did not prevent them from occupying themselves with hard and painful work. This last was the base and principal objective of their education. A Roman army experienced a reverse in Spain. Cato was sent to command it. He found indiscipline [and] softness spread throughout their quarters, which were overflowing with gold and shame. The soldiers were decorated like women; they took baths in perfume. Cato made them encamp, exercise, move ceaselessly, [and] work overwhelmingly. “Unworthy Romans,” he said to them, “until you know how to wash yourselves in blood, I will wash you in mud.” He made them desire fights, and it is judged that he won them over. As for the rest, this mania for standards of conduct, against which I elevate myself with force because it is distasteful to the soldier, because it makes him soft, [and] because it absorbs time that could be more usefully employed, was perhaps inevitable in a renewal of the constitution. It is nearly impossible that extreme negligence would not occasion extreme tests. We have fallen into the same inconveniences by the rapport of our methods of discipline with our exercises with fusils, our evolutions, [and] our equitation schools. Our heads are so light; they ferment with such activity! Too many rewards, ill-distributed to the officers who have shown zeal in the establishment of a new system; great fortunes made by these small means have achieved the diversion of most of the inspectors and corps chiefs from the goal. It is unfortunate that important points never occupy us. We never form general officers. We have not dreamed of grand tactics, of the organization of armies, of the great parts of war. War will arrive. We will experience misfortunes. We will blame them on the constitution. We will not forget to say that changes should not at all have been made, that it is the changes that lost all, that all was well before them, [and] we defeated our enemies. Then everywhere will rise malcontents, the envious, the makers of systems, the old officers opinionated in their routine; all will be reversed [and] will fall into relaxation, and this relaxation will be almost as great as the contrary excess would extend, because it is the misfortune nearly all administrations, and chiefly that of France, to too-often embrace exclusive systems; to neglect subjects or to occupy themselves with too many of them in

49 weak6 and painful life, from this work that is done mostly seated and in the shade? It is that a soldier who has served for ten years, having lost all his suppleness, all his aptitude for manual labor, is constrained to being an artist, a footman, or a mendicant. What arrives from the exchange of these frivolous occupations for hard and painful work? It is that the laborer will be better suited to being a soldier [and] that a soldier, quitting his work, would take up the spade and the plow without pain. But for terminating this important chapter, in vain are hardened and warlike soldiers like the ancient legionaries formed if this profession is not made honorable again, if it does not have flattering and lucrative prospects attached to it, if its pay is not augmented;7 this pay has been immobile for two-hundred years, while commodities and salaries have, for the most part, tripled and quadrupled; if they turn; [and] finally, to ceaselessly be balancing from one excess to its opposite excess. 6 [Guibert normally uses the word “feeble” to mean weak. However, here he uses the word “fainéante,” which carries a greater weight and means both lazy and powerless. “Rois fainéantes” would later be applied to ineffective kings in French history, particularly those of the late Merovingian and Carolingian periods, as well as the children of Henri II during the Wars of Religion. The phrase first appears in the Fifth Edition of the AF Dictionary, perhaps not coincidentally the first edition released after the outbreak of the French Revolution.] 7 This is the greatest of all the current vices of our constitution. The misery of our soldiers is one of the principle causes of the debasement of this profession. In the majority of garrisons in the kingdom, there is not enough to eat. It is incredible that, by this complication of petty details, of parsimonious and abusive means, the corps chiefs are obliged to supplement the low pay. It is with 6 sols 8 derniers per day that the king pays, dresses, equips, and feeds a soldier. It is with 3 sols, [the rest] being the deduction for clothing, for linen and footwear, for a pound and a half of bread [that is] often of quite mediocre quality, that is given to him that this soldier is obliged to provide for his subsistence and his daily upkeep. It is with this that he must be powdered, waxed, [and] shined, in a word, with neither hole nor blemish. It is this soldier, saddened by his state, fatigued by what is required of him, chained by discipline, [who is] overcharged in his casernes by an infinity of petty monastic rules, necessary without doubt, but his attachment to his profession alone may support him; it is this man, often exhausted by modest food, always reduced to drinking water, deprived of all forms of diversion, humiliated by the insolent apathy of the livrée, by the contempt of the lowest member of the bourgeoisie, [and] by the expense that the most impoverished artisan makes for his recreation on Sundays and feast-days: this is the soldier, having beneath him in the class of the unfortunate only the man lacking everything or the [migrant] laborer of our countryside who partakes with his family in bread soaked in sweat and tears; it is he who must defend the patrie and spill his blood for it; it is from him that is demanded honor and virtue, and our military constitutions have been in turmoil for a century without remedy for this primitive vice, without wishing to sense that, before disciplining and instructing the troops, they must be given consideration and food.

50 are not made to desire war and find reward in war; finally, if they are not assured of aid in their old age for wounds, for illness, for their woman, [or] for their children.8 All 8 [The livrée, livret today, is the account book of the unit that tracks money paid to soldiers and officers’ leave. The currency of Old-Regime France was a byzantine system that could vary greatly between time periods and locations. Generally, according to the Fourth Edition of the AF Dictionary, a livre was worth around 1/100 of an ounce of gold, a sol 1/20 of a livre, and a dernier 1/12 of a sol. Relative values are almost impossible to calculate, but an extremely rough analogy may be drawn: in July 1789, the price of a loaf of bread that would feed a family for a day rose to above 16 sols, which was around the average daily wage of a worker in Paris. The resulting bread riot stormed the Bastille and began the

Education of Troops

these great objectives are satisfied in my constitutional plan. This plan will perhaps be regarded as a dream, [as] it will be so distant from current principles. But what does it matter to me? Some of the useful truths that it contains may be adopted; some others will germinate at length, and their fruit will be harvested one day; in a word, the totality of my work, down to its errors, will be a monument to my love for goodness.

popular-violence phase of the French Revolution. In the example Guibert gives, the relative conversions are less important than his point that soldiers were paid very little.]

section I Infantry Tactics

∵

chapter i

Infantry Ordinance, Its Formation; Principles That Must Determine Both I pass over the definitions of the primary technical terms of tactics. I do not write for beginners. One day, I will reduce the course of ideas that I wish to expose here to a science, and thus I will work to present them in a didactic manner, perhaps clearer and less repellant than those that serve at present. Uniformly constituted and armed as it is today, there is only one sort of infantry, as there is only one ordinance, varying, in truth, according to terrain, but always the same in its base and its principles. Here is an advantage of simplicity that we find in our tactics over those of the ancients. They had heavy infantry and lightly-armed infantry; consequently, they were obliged to have an ordinance for each of them. Our infantry, on the contrary, unites the two forms, since the fusil armed with its bayonet is both a missile and a hand-to-hand weapon; it is proper for the fusil to be used in missile combat and for the bayonet to be used in shock combat. I cannot avoid remarking here how the fusil armed with its bayonet seems to me to be a superior weapon to all those of the ancients. However, it may be perfected even more; much greater use could especially be made of the bayonet. There would be a sort of fencing to learn in order to make use of this weapon, for crossing it with the enemies’, for preventing the gaining of a fort, etc. I will have occasion to revisit this later; let us return to the exposition of my principles. The infantry being proper for fire and shock action, an ordinance must permit the use of both these properties, and, in case the same ordinance cannot serve for the two objectives, it must, so as to determine which will be the habitual and primitive ordinance, easily and promptly pass to the accidental and momentary ordinance, which will accomplish the second objective. But which will be the primitive and habitual ordinance? The ordinance of fire, or that of shock? This is a question that merits to be discussed in some detail and examined with the most reflective attention; I ignore the art of being clear to those who do not wish to be attentive. Before being able to approach the enemy, [an army] must be placed en bataille; it must arrive [on the battlefield]; it must not be destroyed or disordered by the effect of its [enemy] fire; [and] it must be made to fear fire in its own turn; thus it is necessary that the primitive and habitual [ordinance] be the ordinance of fire, that is to say, the

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_007

thin order; I will determine below what proportion this order must have.1 The multiplicity of artillery, the science of choosing posts, [and] that of entrenching, have today rendered shock actions infinitely rare; thus, those of fire being more common is a reason that the ordinance of fire is the primitive and habitual ordinance. But the circumstances, that is to say, the nature of the terrain [or] the situation of the enemy, may require going without firing and engaging in shock action. Okay; I am more partisan than anyone for this manner of attacking; it is that of courage, it is that of the nation, it is almost always that of victory. However, I will prove that the thin order, on some occasions, is still more advantageous and more favorable for engaging in a shock action. To this end, we commence by destroying the old prejudice by which it was believed that increasing a force’s depth increased its strength. All the physical laws on the movement and the shock of corps become chimeras when they are wished to be adapted to tactics, first, because a troop cannot be compared to a mass, because it is not a compact body without interstices. Second, in a troop that approaches the enemy, it is only the men of the [first] rank who deliver the shock force; all those who are behind them being unable to close with them and to unite with the adherence and the pressure that exists between physical bodies, they are useless and do nothing except occasion disorder and tumult. Third, even if this pretend shock did happen in a manner that all the ranks contributed to it, a sort of softness and disunion of will that necessarily slows the determination of the march and the measure of steps exists in a troop composed of individuals who, mechanically at least, calculate and sense the danger; therefore, [it requires] more whole movement, more product of mass and of speed, [and] more shock, because the shock assumes that the speed, once imprinted on the corps driven by the motivating cause, will continue until it meets the [enemy] corps. 1 [The choice in contemporary tactics was between a deployment on a wide but thin basis, which allowed for greater volume of fire, or a deployment on a narrow and deep basis, which massed for a shock attack. While fire could take place from a deep order and shock in a thin order, fire was generally synonymous with thin order and shock with deep order, as Guibert indicates throughout the work.]

54 “Thus it follows,” you might reply to me, “that in denying that the depth of an ordinance adds to its strength, you would then wish that infantry be ranged on one rank.” No, I wish that the depth of the ordinance be determined by the species of arms and by the protection that these arms may offer to the first rank. Three men, one behind the other and well exercised, may fire with facility; the bayonets of the second and third ranks may, when the ranks are closed, form a fraise and support the first. Thus, I wish to form on three [ranks] and never on four nor on six [ranks] in any case, because beyond three men deep, neither fire nor augmentation of strength can be offered to them by the ranks behind them. Finally, if it occurs that the nature of the terrain offers cover to the enemy, whether the attack of an entrenchment or some other circumstance that must be easily and promptly judged, rendering the diminution of the front necessary to reinforce on a point to attack it and to penetrate it, I say that the infantry must be formed in column, but this will not be to have the exact and chimerical pressure that some tacticians have spoken of, nor to augment the pretend shock force; this will be to procure the continual succession of movement that chains a division to the next division, being forced to arrive on the point where the effort is being made; this will be especially because this order gives confidence to the soldier and intimidates the enemy, because the majority of men, not having just ideas and seeing only with the eyes of the corps, attribute success to the troop that seems to them to be the thickest and that assembles the most men on the same point. Here is the résumé of my discussion: “the primitive, fundamental, and habitual ordinance of the infantry will be on three ranks of depth; the momentary and accidental ordinance will be in column.” It is now for me to find the means of passing the one to the other in these ordinances by the most simple and rapid movements. But finally, what remains to say to the enemies of the current order on how to march so thin and wavering a line? On how to maneuver a battalion that has a front so extended at the expense of its depth? Here it is: it is in dividing a numerous troop into several parts that can be moved with facility. These are the divisions, known for all time in tactics, that are called “regiment, battalion, squadron, company, division,” etc. Let us seek to establish what their properties must be. It is essential that a battalion formed on three ranks have at the same time a proportion of extension so well combined that it may march together in a uniform, continuous, and unwavering step during its march. The most just and reasonable proportions to form a battalion, it seems to me, must be the smallest front

chapter i

possible of one-hundred forty files, which makes a battalion of four-hundred twenty men and the largest front of one-hundred eighty; this makes a battalion of fivehundred forty men. All that is above this last proportion is too extended and too wavering; all that is under the first is too weak to sustain some losses and to maneuver with advantage. Thus I approve of neither the formation of our battalions that truly carry eight-hundred men to war nor of any battalion in Europe, because no constitution knows how to form its own according to this principle, or, if it had formed them, it was by chance and without reflection. It must be added here that, in wishing that the battalions be increased to one-hundred forty files, I demand that they be always complete and formed not of young men, malingers, [or] recruits, but of combatants, trained soldiers, [who are] proper for fatigues and replaced on campaign by means of depots kept near the army and themselves recruited by the other principal depots [that are] placed on the nearest frontiers. Here are two determined points: the ordinance and the strength of battalions. As to their interior division and their assembly into regiments, I am not yet of the opinion of our current constitutions. Odd numbers are at the base of all my formations: three divisions are naturally called the divisions of right, left, and center, and each subdivided into three companies, including one elite, will form my battalion; three battalions, my regiment; [and] three great divisions, the infantry of an army. I prefer odd numbers, and particularly three, because it naturally divides a troop into three parts: right, left, and center, and this division is favorable to combinations of tactics. In the number four that is the base of our current formation, there is always a fourth part that is opposed to this division and that embarrasses. The Greeks, and, after their example, Gustav Adolf [and] Karl XII, adopted the number three for the principle of their formation. It is not that they attributed some virtue to this trinitarian and marvelous number; it is that they reflected that it carried more utility and simplicity than any other in tactical calculations. In my constitutional plan, all these changes will be supported by the greatest details; here, as I have already said, I will conform to the current constitution. I believed it to be essential to have commence by posing some principles on the ordinance and formation of the infantry. So much has been written on these two subjects without determining anything! One wishes for legions, another columns; this one plésions, that one cohorts; they all attack and destroy each other to elevate from their debris systems that are so trite, so complicated,

Infantry Ordinance, Its Formation; Principles That Must Determine Both

[and] so distant from the possibility of circumstances, from modern constitutions and arms, that they can no longer be read.2 Quite differently from them, I wish to 2 [Guibert jabs at several of his contemporaries, including Saxe, who called for combined-arms “legions,” and Mesnil-Durand, who reinvented Folard’s columns as “plésions.” See Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 26–79.]

55

destroy nothing; I wish to take advantage of what exists; I assert that, with some light changes, our battalions are the most advantageous formations. I work to prove that, through the means of the tactics that I am developing, our battalions will unite the properties of fire, shock, simplicity, lightness, solidity, and even, when they wish, that of depth.

chapter ii

School of the Soldier, Manual of Arms, [and] Formations of Ranks and Files I will only enter as little as I can into the didactic details of these different subjects. I wish to hasten to arrive at the evolutions, at the interesting part of tactics, because it is lacking enlightenment and principles. It is not at all important in and of itself that the soldier be trained by any particular method, because although there are several means of proceeding, there is one without contradiction, one that is that the shortest, the simplest, and the best-conformed to the mechanism of the body. It is even less important that this method be determined by the ordinances of the sovereign in a manner so precise, so clear, [and] so detailed that no one can change or innovate it. From the arbitrary toleration of this follows the perpetual fluctuations of principles, its details being carried to all sprits, [and] the distaste of the troops and the loss of precious time that is better employed in other parts of instruction.1 The first objective that must be approached when training a soldier is to give him a military air and gait. He will soon acquire both if the bodily exercises, performed in the honor and the costume of the nation, have already occupied the Sundays and feast-days of his village, and if, arriving with the troops, they continue to be the objective of games and emulation. What is the effect of exercises of strength and skill? It is to make the body supple, to place all the limbs into equilibrium, [and] to give to each all the actions to which they are susceptible. What else is there to add to that which gives the warlike air to a man other than suppleness and formation? It is the carrying of the head, the assurance of the step, [and] the pride of maintenance. He will soon take to them, if the state of the soldier is honorable and if, in elevating his soul, he is accustomed to esteeming his profession and to believing that it ennobles him. It is next to give to the soldier the position of combat, that is to say, the position that he must have in the rank 1 [Most of Guibert’s contemporaries, beginning with Folard, insisted that their systems be adopted fully and precisely rather than providing the kind of guidelines Guibert intends. In addition, dressing and exercising soldiers had taken on a ritualistic air dating back at least to the latter half of the seventeenth century, striving for precision across the formation, even at the expense of practicality. This was especially true in the elite units of the Maison militaire du roi and the foreign regiments, but it occurred across the army, as Guibert indicates in the following paragraphs.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_008

and file, first without his fusil, then with it. He will take to it easily if it is neither uncomfortable nor forced, that is to say, if it is never contrary to the mechanism of the body. Ours certainly does not conform to this; it is not natural to advance the chest so much, nor to carry the belly so far back, nor to turn the head to the right or left when wishing to march straight ahead, nor to rest balanced on each foot in turn, nor finally to bring a man to this position by placing him against a wall, on a board, or all the tortures invented by our subaltern tacticians. Can it be proven that our position is neither simple nor analogous to the mechanism of our limbs? If someone entered the majority of our exercise schools, he would see all the unfortunate soldiers in constrained and forced attitudes; he would see all their muscles in contraction [and] the circulation of their blood interrupted; he would add to this the bizarre nature of our dress that oppresses them [and] that constrains all their articulations, the dull routine of the people who teach them, [and] the uncertainty and inconsistency of principles. Let us study the intention of nature in the construction of the human body, and we will find the position and the countenance that it clearly prescribes to give to the soldiers. The soldier must draw himself up straight, shoulders effaced [and] chest open, because it is only in this situation that the stomach and the diaphragm can open to properly enable digestion and respiration. The shoulders being effaced and the chest open, the weight carrying forward makes it necessary to carry the belly a little behind to serve as a counterweight. Too much in advance or too much behind, the belly and the chest will no longer be in the equilibrium that alone produces the ease and liberty of movement; the muscles of the lower belly would necessarily make some effort to take this extraordinary position, and no part of the body would be forced to act against itself, that is to say, making effort and contraction when the body is in its state of repose; the lower back muscles that support and buttress the human trunk would no longer support it squarely on the hips that are like its platform and base. The hands must be hanging at the sides without stiffness [or] affectation, abandoned to their weight in the manner, in a word, of making two balances weighted down by equal weight and that maintain the shoulders on a horizontal line.

School of the Soldier, Manual of Arms, [ and ] Formations of Ranks and Files

The head must be straight, disengaged from the shoulders, and seated perpendicularly between them. It must be turned neither to the right not to the left, because, seeing the correspondence between the vertebrae of the neck and the scapula to which they are attached, neither of them can move circularly without lightly pulling one of the branches of the shoulder on the same side, and then, the body no longer being square, the soldier cannot march straight ahead nor serve as a point of alignment. The knees must be quite tight, the two heels on a straight line two inches apart and not exactly together, [and] the feet slightly turned to the outside. I propose to place the heels two inches apart and not exactly together as we now practice because, in this first position with the line of the body’s center of gravity falling on a morespacious point, the body is more firmly and more solidly established. The soldier thus placed, he must remain immobile and silent and, despite this, appear not as an automaton, but as a statue [that is] animated and ready to act. When the soldier is well accustomed to taking this position himself without effort and less as an exercise [than] more as the natural placement of his body, he must then be made to move his two legs in front and behind in such a manner that the movement takes place from the hip and that the upper body does not totter. Next, he places his weapon on his shoulder, that is to say, so that he can learn to carry it without disturbing the principles of the position established above. Let us again search in nature, and we will find the least-annoying way that the weapon must be carried. The soldier must be able to carry his fusil in such a manner that its weight inconveniences him the least [amount] possible and does not at all harm the precision of the order of his rank and file; neither of these objectives is satisfied by our current [method of] carrying arms. The fusil totters and is like a kind of balance, all its weight carried in the palm of the hand; the wrist being reversed, this hand is cramped and does not have a part of its strength. The elbow being elevated or carried backwards, whatever is required, this position increases the diameter of the soldier or pulls the left shoulder backwards, and consequently prevents him from being square. Finally, this [method of] carrying arms must necessarily vary according to differences of height and build, but because the hipbone that the ordinance indicates as the point against which the butt must rest is not situated in the same place on all men, the fusil must be carried by some more to the right and by others more to the left. By the same reason of inequality of build, the under-guard should be more or less tight against the body, according to whether a man

57

has more or less fleshy exterior parts of the shoulder and whether they are more or less formed to receive and contain the fusil. Some men are made in a manner that the fusil, by the smallest movement of the body, rolls and totters against it. Finally, there are few soldiers that this [method of] carrying arms does not annoy or crush; there is not one for whom it does not become a sort of torture if it is prolonged for two hours. Twenty men among a battalion that may be shown to me thus carrying the fusil with grace, with ease, and being perfectly straight, do not prove the contrary of what I advance. At the Saint-Germain Fair, I have seen minstrels easily forming towers of balance and strength; can it be said that these towers are natural?2 I would thus that the soldier, as in some of our German regiments, carry arms along the arm and voluntarily finding the most convenient point of height relative to his build; I would that the hand embrace the butt of the fusil, the butt being turned flat against the wrist and a part of the forearm.3 It is indifferent to me, provided that the fusil is firm and straight, whether the under-guard is higher than the breast or lower, if the hammers are aligned, and if the bayonets are of the same height. This position requires no apprenticeship; the forearm not being bent, the elbow will necessarily stick to the body; finally, the soldier will be looking straight ahead and thus able to sustain his fusil for an hour or two without suffering. By preferring this position, I might like it better yet that the soldier carry his weapon in the right arm, as officers and non-commissioned officers do today. This [method of] carrying arms has the same advantages and is more natural and less fatiguing; I have interrogated soldiers, hunters, and myself about it. Here is a quite-long discussion on the first position of the soldier and on carrying arms. So many vary on these two points that they have fatigued the soldier and his patience, [but] they are so essential to the base of the elementary [tactics] school that I believed it necessary to dive deeply into them and to reduce them to principles.

2 [The Saint-Germain Fair was one of several street fairs held in Paris that dated from the medieval period, which were collectively known as The Theatre of the Fair. As its name indicated, it was held in the Saint-Germain-de-Prés region on the Left Bank to benefit its namesake abbey, and it ran for most of the late winter and early spring. See Isabelle Martin, Le théâtre de la foire: des treteaux aux boulevards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).] 3 [France maintained several foreign regiments, chiefly Swiss and German, throughout the eighteenth century. They comprised up to twenty percent of the army and often served as testbeds of innovation and entrepôts for foreign ideas. Pierre-Victor, baron Besenval, Mémoires (Paris: 1821), provides a contemporary account of life in a Swiss regiment in French service.]

58

chapter ii

As to the manual of arms, it is an exercise that is so puerile, so indifferent in and of itself, that I will abbreviate that which concerns it. There must be one, because it is convenient that all the movements of the soldier under arms be made with uniformity; they must be the simplest, shortest, and the most natural possible, because this would diminish instruction as much. Finally, it must never be performed except in schools and by company. I permit only some movements that are made by battalion and never [any] by regiment, like: “Present arms:” [A] parade movement that is good for a battalion to know how to do with the appearance of ensemble and dexterity. “Rest arms:” In the course of a maneuver, this movement often presents itself to be executed. “Load arm:” This movement must always be executed as quickly as possible; the man on the wing, or the man on the right of each company or each division, marks only the last beat to serve for dressing and indicating the cessation of movement. It is this that we approximate by the command of “flat arms,” the utterance of which is, parenthetically, quite ridiculous. “Ready arms, present, fire:” These three movements, each at a time, are necessary for fire and to accustom the soldier not to fire until [he hears] the signal or the voice of his officer. Finally, I would add to this the exercise of the bayonet, consisting of putting it on the end of the barrel, replacing it in the sheath, and presenting it. I would not that, as is the fashion, the troops should appear in exercises, parades, [or] reviews with the bayonet; I would that it only be placed at the moment of combat or the simulated movements that represent it. The soldier is too familiarized with the bayonet and unnecessarily armed [with it]. As such, he is accustomed to regarding it as a weapon without use. He used to estimate it as his last resource; a soldier, and a French soldier especially, said “I no longer have ammunition, but my bayonet remains with me.” The appearance of bayonets, reserved for decisive occasions, would be something imposing and terrible; it would be like the red flag of the ancients, a signal of death and carnage.4 It is from the German infantry that we have taken the custom of always carrying the bayonet, and, a

singular thing it is that, since they have begun to always carry it, they have never used it.5 Another reason that must determine to not fix the fusil with its bayonet is that, at the moment of combat, it places a weight that is inconvenient and fatiguing for the soldier on the end of the fusil, especially given our carrying arms quite high. It also becomes more annoying if the soldier, being on free march, wishes, for his ease, to carry the fusil on his shoulder. Finally, I would that our bayonet be eighteen inches in length, flat, and double-edged, with a stop in the middle of the blade and a mechanism in its socket to firmly fix it to the barrel. It would thus make our fusil an offensive and defensive weapon, more redoubtable than the pilum of the legionaries, more easily used, [and] susceptible especially to a species of the art of fencing that would teach its method with dexterity and vigor. It will later be seen how, with the aid of this weapon and of some other means, I will place the infantry in a state of sustaining the shock of the cavalry. I ought to perhaps have commenced by speaking of the formation of ranks and files, since it is by it that a troop is ranged en bataille, and on it depends the precision of all its movements. The ancients gave this formation much more attention than we do. For the Greeks, each file [and] each soldier of a file had a particular name; the nomenclature of their tactics was immense. For the Romans, a soldier always occupied the same place in the same file; he was designated by a numeral, and this numeral was inscribed on his shield; the officers of each century and each cohort had plumes of different colors on their helmets. Their ensigns were also more richly draped and remarkable than our flags; these several precautions were important for deep ordinances that were only capable of action and movement by the inalterable order of ranks and files. Today, this is a greatly neglected point amongst our troops, and [one] on which I think that we have many false principles. Would it not be possible to respect, in the formation of our ranks, not just the height of the soldier, but also his veterancy and his quality? The formation by rank by size leads only to a vain parade; it humiliates the old soldier whom it often places in the second rank and at

4 [This is likely a reference to the Oriflamme, the medieval battle standard of the Abbey of Saint-Denis, the French royal church. Its appearance on a battlefield signaled no quarter, as Guibert indicates. The Oriflamme lost much of its luster after being captured by the English during the Hundred Years War at Crécy and again at Poitiers. See “Oriflamme,” Encyclopédie XI:645. See also Kelly de Vries, Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century: Discipline, Tactics, and Technology (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2000).]

5 [Belief in the frequency of bayonet attacks remains one of the most pernicious myths in early modern warfare. As Guibert argues and Duffy, The Military Experience in the Age of Reason, 204–206, notes, bayonet attacks, and hand-to-hand fighting in general, were rare throughout the period, especially in field battles. However, the attack of cold steel retained its romantic association with the past and “proper” warfare, especially by proponents of the “French school” of the deep order.]

School of the Soldier, Manual of Arms, [ and ] Formations of Ranks and Files

the end, while it places the recruits at the front and on the wings; finally, it is contrary to all species of reason, since, if there were a real advantage to taking form this formation, it would not be in placing the tallest man at the head of the file, the less tall at the end, and the shortest at the center, but to the contrary, in placing the shortest in the first rank, the less tall in the second, and the tallest in the third in a such manner that this gradation facilitates the placement of fusils in fire action. This is not the most important consideration; the essential is forming a troop in such a manner as to be susceptible to the greatest firmness possible in combat. I would thus that the first and the third rank be composed of the oldest and surest soldiers and that the second be made of the newest and most doubtful soldiers. The same principle leads me to place the elite troops on the wings and at the center of the battalion, requiring also that the most warlike and bravest men be always placed on the wings of the ranks of each company. As to the files, it will be expedient, as long as it does not contradict the dispositions recommended above, that in regard to their formation, to the squareness of their shoulders, that is to say that the three soldiers of the same file be, as much as possible, the same squareness, in such a manner that they each exactly cover the same diameter. What will arrive from the little attention focused on this? It is that the soldier of the first rank occupies, I suppose, two feet of space, and that of the second rank a foot and a half, while the neighboring file is the inverse; the files can never be aligned and separated by equal intervals between them; as such, at the first small movement of the battalion, inevitable disorder [results] in the second and third rank, disorder in the march, one file impeding another, embarrassments for the direction of fire, etc. This is a useful observation despite seeming minute, which I only made by handling soldiers and searching for the causes of the defects that were offered to my view. I think next that all the soldiers must wear, on their helmets, a crest whose base would be the color of their company striped with another color that designates the first, the second, and the third rank. The officers would have more markings, as would the non-commissioned officers and the elites placed on the wings. By this, soldiers who deserve to be distinguished would be, and the order of ranks and files would be facilitated. A single flag placed at the center of the battalion would serve as the rallying and signaling point, but this flag would be richer than ours are today: it would have the color of its regiment and that of its battalion. By law, there would be infamous and sometimes painful punishment inflicted on the company of the battalion, and on the battalion itself, that loses its flag, because as much as it seems to me to be ridiculous to

59

attach a point of honor to the conservation of the artillery because there are a thousand occasions where it could be lost without dishonor, and where it must be known how to be lost, it seems to me to be necessary to augment the prejudice that is attached to the prize of flags, because the loss of a flag supposes the disorder of the battalion from which it was taken. Finally, I would augment the number of officers and non-commissioned officers of the file-closer. I would, in some way, make a fourth rank proper for encouraging the soldier, containing him, keeping him determined in advancing, and in making a barrier against deserters in case of disorder. They would be more usefully placed in this manner than fixed in the ranks, where smoke and tumult prevent them from seeing and where they are constrained by the mass without being able to direct its movements. There would still be many more means of maintaining order in the ranks and the files, of attaching to the soldier the honor of his flag [and] that of his company, but as these means are drawn from the form of levies, from the laws of discipline that I propose to establish, and from the part of education that must form prejudices and courage, I will not speak of them here. We now resume in a few words the principles of distance that must be observed in the formation of ranks and files. I will use, to this end, the fixed and known measurement of the step of two feet6 for determining the spaces occupied and to be occupied by the troops in all of their movements and in all situations. It must be calculated that each soldier, when he is under arms, occupies two feet at his greatest diameter, that is to say, from elbow to elbow, and around a foot at his greatest breadth, taken from the chest to the shoulders, to which must be added a foot of real interval between he and the man who follows him; this gives two feet in every sense for the soldier and indicates that an infantry troop en bataille occupies, whether in its front or in its depth, as many feet as it has files. However, this calculation is not absolutely exact, because it depends on the species of men, and it is in fact rare that a soldier in the rank occupies more than eighteen, twenty, or at most twenty-two inches in diameter [of space], but tactics require only approximate calculations, and even then the calculation of two feet per soldier gives him sufficient space to move and handle his weapon with liberty, and the necessary place for the small number of 6 However, I propose in this essay on tactics to reduce the measure of the infantry step to less than two feet. The reasons that I have determined for this change will be seen in the chapter “On the March.”

60 officers and sergeants who must enter into the front of the battalion will be found in the totality of these multiple spaces. Once the files are formed in the manner that the soldiers have the ease of their weapons and of their movements, they will never open or close themselves. As to the ranks, they will never open themselves more than three feet of distance, whether on parade, in school exercise, or on route march. When they are en bataille, they always conserve a foot of real interval between them,

chapter ii

except in some movements of fire action where they may close a little more to facilitate the placement of weapons. They may also close themselves in the last movement of the charge action or in the movement of sustaining the cavalry shock, but it must be remarked that, in these last two cases, the movement not being ordered, it will happen [anyway]; the mechanical instinct does no more than to see the soldiers gather and press together, as if to seek protection and support.

chapter iii

On the March Here is the essential and fundamental part of the instruction of the soldier, because it is only by the means of the march that a troop is susceptible to maneuver and action. The ancients’ march principles are lost with respect to all the interior details of their tactical schools.1 It is only without doubt that it was liable to a uniform and cadenced measure. The Greeks, the people so ingenious, so methodical, so musical, [and] so necessarily attached, by their ordinance, to the exact observation of ranks and files, almost always knew the cadenced measure of step. Homer, the heroic and fabled singer of Greece, taught us that it was this that rendered their march so imposing and so majestic, while that of the Trojans and other Asiatic peoples was noisy [and] unequal, similar, he said, to the waves of the angry sea. It seems, on the contrary, he adds, in speaking of the Greeks, that [Zeus] regulated their steps and would have removed the usage of speech.2 The Romans adopted the usage of this cadenced march: “veloce, sed æquo pede,” said Livy, in speaking of the legions making the charge.3 But what was the mechanism, the measure, and the speed of their steps? we are ignorant of this. It is the same as in many of the arts that we cannot doubt that the ancients knew [but] whose principles perished for want of aid from the printing press. It is in our times that the usage of cadenced marches was re-established in Europe; it might be said to have been discovered, given how many centuries over which it was forgotten. Marshal Saxe regarded it as a most-interesting thing, which became an epoch for the perfection of tactics. This great man seems to have divined the revolutions that were going to be made in the principles of this 1 [As noted, only Vegetius contains such details, and his work depicts an idealized rather than literal army.] 2 [The riddle of combat in The Iliad has vexed readers and historians for millennia, including in Ancient Greece. Homer seems to blend weapons, tactics, and mores from different time periods in Greek history in his depiction of the Trojan War, which may not have taken place at all. J.E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), especially 20–38, provides an excellent analysis.] 3 [Guibert again appears to be sloppy in his citations; no such quote, or similar quote, appears to exist in Livy. The History of Rome, VIII:8, contains Livy’s description of the manipular legion, one of the most complete surviving such records. Alternatively, Guibert may be paraphrasing Polybius, Histories, X:20, which describes the training regimen employed by Publius Cornelius Scipio during the Punic Wars.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_009

science. In the same way, he foresaw the revolution carried to marches and to the formation of orders of battle when he wrote4 “all the secret of tactics is in the legs.”5 The march must be considered from two points of view: that of maneuver and that of the route. I will treat each of these subjects successively. The first sort of march, demanding precision and ensemble, should be methodically taught; it obliges different sorts of steps that are subject to a uniformity of mechanism, extent, skill, and speed. The second, rendering the man to his liberty, has no need of these rules. I will again divide the maneuver march in two parts: the one having for its objective to move troops en bataille [and] the other for moving the troops to arrive at the execution of all sorts of evolutions. I have said that the maneuver march demands that the soldier be taught different sorts of step. In effect, the movements of troops may be made with any precision and speed; it is only by the different sorts of step that they may be achieved. The essential [point] is that all of these steps, different in measure and speed, all have the same mechanism. I thus divide the step into ordinary step, double-step, [and] triple-step or running. I will indicate below the differences and the objective of each of these steps. The three sorts of step must have a uniform and common mechanism. I name “mechanism” the principles of the movement of the legs that are the springs of the march. This is the torment of troops, because each tactician has searched for the rules of this mechanism, and none has yet given any that are sufficient to draw the others to his opinion. Here are mine. The measure of all species of step, whether ordinary, double, or triple, will be eighteen to twenty inches. At two feet, it is too great, too-little conformed to the small size of our soldiers, and too subject as a result to disordering and opening the battalion.6

4 In his Rêveries. 5 [Guibert abridges the quote from the original, which reads “it is in the legs that is all the secret of maneuvers and fights;” see Saxe, Mes rêveries, I:27.] 6 [During Guibert’s time, the median military-aged male would have been approximately five feet four inches tall and weighed perhaps one-hundred twenty pounds. See John Komlos, Michael Hau, and Nicolas Bourguinat, “An Anthropometric History of Early-Modern

62 As to speed, I would that that the ordinary [step] be eighty paces per minute. I find that at sixty, as we practice, the march is too slow, too grave, [and] too painful to sustain.7 That of the double would consequently be onehundred and sixty, and that of the triple-step, which is, properly speaking, a running step, will be between twohundred and two-hundred and fifty, based on the distance to the goal at which one wishes to arrive and the acceleration that is necessary to be carried to the movements.8 In regard to the mechanism or the principles on which the form of step is determined, I think that they should be the following. The soldier being stationary and in the position of carrying arms, that is to say, straight ahead and wellestablished in his verticality and in the habit of carrying the leg forwards and backwards without the body tottering, he then begins forming the usage of the ordinary step, and to affect this, this step will be divided in the first lessons into two species of time that will be quite distinctly marked. The first time, when the execution takes place at the command “march,” the soldier will move the left leg forward in a lively manner but without tremor, the thigh turned a little outwards, the foot advancing flat and parallel to the ground at two inches of elevation and stopping when the heel will be at the height of the point of the right foot. This movement must be from the hip, the back of the knee being without stiffness and gently bending, and the body resting quite perpendicular to the left leg. The second time, which will be determined by the command “two,” the soldier will advance the left leg, the body always remaining straight following the movement of the leg. When, by this second time, the left foot will have advanced to twelve inches, it will land on the ground; the body, having been transported forward, will find itself almost entirely resting on the left foot, the right foot will be resting lightly on its toe, and the heel will be elevated and ready to commence the second step. The second step will be made as soon as the body is firmly on the left leg. The right heel having been lifted to make the second instance of the first step, the soldier will France,” in European Review of Economic History 7, no. 2, (2003): 159–189.] 7 It has just been set at seventy by a letter of the minister, and this measure is still too slow. 8 [French cadence was set at sixty paces per minute in the 1750s, the first time an official cadence was set in doctrine. Guibert refers to a document that is not an official Regulation and would today be called a policy memorandum. See Jean Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle. La tactique (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1907), 1–98; Latreille, L’oeuvre militaire de la révolution, 1–25, and Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory.]

chapter iii

carry the right leg forward in such a way that he brings his heel to the height of the left foot and consequently to around six inches of alignment between the heels, and, at the second instance of this second step, the right foot will advance twelve inches further, the body quite straight and always accompanying the leg; the step of eighteen inches will be finished, and the left heel will be lifted to make the third step, and thus the others. It must be observed that the transport of the body in accompanying the leg the second time is never too precipitous, but that the body moves and follows the leg without launching itself like a spring. It must also be observed that the leg moves with facility without making the lower muscles of the foot act, and this foot be, as I have already said, flat and parallel to the ground. Once the soldier well-understands the nature of the step, and when he executes it with firmness and accuracy, he will no longer mark time; consequently, the transportation of the body becoming more unified, the bust will always be straight and well placed on the hips, from where the movement begins, and it only remains for this movement to give the little necessary spring for the gravity and the tone of the march. Someone may say to me: “is this form of step natural for a man? Why not abandon the soldier to his free step, to the step that he uses outside of school?” I will respond that it is a question of a measured [and] cadenced step whose form and speed are absolutely common to all the legs of a battalion, [and] that, for this purpose, principles, a method, [and] a species of spring step by which it may be said with certainty that a troop will traverse so much land in so many minutes. Furthermore, do men have a of invariable and uniform step? I have observed this with attention: each class of men, each nation walks with its physiognomy. If one sees a Basque or a German, a Dutch or Provençal person, a man raised in the cities or an inhabitant of the countryside, a laborer or an artist walking, one will recognize the differences; one will even perceive them in the walk of two brothers, born in the same climate and elevated in the same trade: one will lower the toe of the foot [and] the other will walk on the heel; the one will walk heavily and slowly [and] the other with lightness and speed: infallible effects of the difference in their constitutions, in their character, and in the mechanical bending and particularly the movement that their legs made when they contracted in infancy. There is only a single point on which the mechanism of march operates similarly in all men. Everyone accompanies the transport of the leg with the body; everyone alternates the weight of the body on the leg that is on the ground and lifts the foot opposite, at the same time he has this leg on the ground, to form

63

On the March

the second step. In this, the principles of my school step are just and conform to nature. Is proof wanted? It is only to suddenly stop a man abandoned to his free and natural walk in the street [or] on a route; his suspended movement will bring him to the position of the second time of my march, his body finding itself carried by the leg that is posed and the heel of the other foot elevated and ready to commence the next step. I was obliged to subject the soldier for the maneuver march to a uniform form of step [which is] in some regards artificial, because this march must be together and precise. In the route march, I will give him the liberty of marching as he wills so that he may make his route in the manner that will be the easiest and least painful for him. We now conclude that which concerns the principles of the maneuver march.9 The soldier having perfectly acquired the habit of the ordinary step, he must pass to the double-step and then to the triple-step or the running step, observing to be instructed first alone, then two by two, four by four, and thus successively multiplying the number of students and forming them at the commencement on one rank, then on one file, on two, [and] on many, the three ranks open and alternatively passing the soldiers from one rank to the other. One must be particularly attached to establishing in the soldiers the habit of equality of step, either by rapport of its extent or by rapport of its speed, and to this end, one must tie two parallel cords separated by the extent of the front of the troop that is desired for the march.10 Small markers of red or black fabric will be attached to these cords at the twenty-inch mark. In this manner, the soldiers will be accustomed to taking steps of the required size, to marching with uniformity, and to preserving the distance between their ranks, the wings of each rank being obliged to arrive at the extremity of the cords by a number of steps equal to the corresponding marks of the cords. One of these same cords, lengthened and garnished with small fabric markers at eighty paces, serves to exercise the troop at the step-speed, and, watch in hand, it will be marched along the cord for several minutes at the ordinary step, at the double-step, [and] at the running step, in such a manner that the distance that it will have traveled will be found to be in accord with established principles. The flank-step, or the march by file, being the base of all deployments, will be served in the same way, in the

school of principles, using parallel ladders to accustom the soldier to it. These ladders will be composed of three cords stretched parallel, sometimes on straight lines [and] sometimes with curves, separated from each other by two feet (the space that each soldier occupies in the rank that has become a file) and marked as the cords were above, every eighteen inches with small fabric markers. The solders then march at the double-step and at the triplestep11 along these cords, learning to always cover themselves with the leader of their file, to extend the step to the distance ordained, to replicate the pace of the preceding man as exactly as possible, [and], in a word, to march the flank-step without tumult and without confusion. In proportion to the affirmation of the soldier in the equality of extension and the speed of the step, the use of cords will be gradually suppressed, then being content to place sergeants at a distance to serve as a point of direction and to measure the terrain covered to judge if it was timed according to principles. Finally, the parade ground and even ground will be abandoned to go to exercise the march in open fields, in furrows, [and] in stubble. There, it will no longer be a question of cords nor of sergeants placed for points of direction. The major and the troop commander will use a tree, a bush, or some other object that signals itself to them in the countryside for points of direction and distance. The companies thus having been dressed for the march on their own, one will then successively unite two, three, four, the battalion, then two battalions, and finally the entire regiment. But before leaving this, we treat two important points: alignment and the direction of the march. It is without doubt that a troupe that marches en bataille is aligned, but what is the objective of this alignment? To what point of perfection must it be carried? What are the means by which this is reached? This is what I am going to examine. In the time when all infantry combats were terminated by the arme blanche and by shock, it was important that a troop going to the charge arrive at the enemy front with all the parts of its own front simultaneously; thus, alignment was essential. So too are the Greek and Roman infantry seen to be much occupied with this. The narrowlyextended front of their ordinance rendered it quite easy for them.12

9

12

10

[This passage, and those that follow, indicate the vital importance of the cadenced step as the foundation of all maneuvers.] This should never be more than a demi-company or a company; it is only here a question of the school.

11

The flank-step being only for deployments, it must only ever be doubled or tripled. [Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War, 191–227, describes both Greek and Roman warfare. He notes, against Guibert, that “unlike a battle between Greek phalanxes, there was not a single clash between the entire infantry of both sides;” the prototypical

64

chapter iii

Today, whether by custom or by decadence of courage, infantry corps make little use of the arme blanche, or if they march to make the charge, it is rare, or better yet, it never happens, that they close to the point of meeting and crossing bayonets; the too-symmetrical and too-minute alignment of the infantry marching en bataille becomes a useless point of perfection to attain. It even becomes impossible if the line of infantry is considerable. Therefore, I will require in my plan of instruction that a battalion reuniting and making a movement en bataille march well aligned, because this ensemble is necessary, imposing, possible to do, and must necessarily result from the unity of movement that I have already given to the soldiers in schools in teaching them to make their step with the same leg, to the same extent, and at the same speed. But when I will form a line of several battalions, and even more so with several regiments, it will suffice that these battalions march at the same height and with the greatest unity possible between them, and I will regard neither if it is with the same leg nor if one is some steps ahead of or behind the others, each of them being occupied uniquely and individually with its own movement without ever lengthening or shortening its step, because at the end of the movement, it is the affair of each regimental commander to see to it that their aide-major halts their battalions, or that he doubles or triples the step to bring them to the height of the point of the line on which they have already been ordered to be. Finally, I will regard alignment only as a unity of movement from the perfection that I will approach according how much to the extent of my front and the difficulty of the terrain renders it possible, but it will never engage me in slackening or shortening the step, because the first objective of the march is to advance, and every march that does not accomplish this objective is puerile and ridiculous. Indifferent to pretend perfection of alignment, I will instead attach myself to [ensuring] that the infantry knows how to advance, quite straight and quite perpendicular to the extremity of its wings, in such a manner so as to arrive with exactitude on a given parallel to its front. It will follow from this that a battalion [will] not become disordered, not open at all, [and] throw itself on its intervals; that when a line of infantry has been ordered to go to a point, whether to attack the enemy, to close with it, [or] to turn it because one outflanks it, this line will arrive right at the objective indicated; and that, for example, the officer who will command a wing of this line, taking a march Roman legionary army would contact an enemy force with a volley of pila and then a charge.]

direction perpendicular to the enemy flank, will give to the parts of his front that outflank this enemy another offensive direction on the flank. I will explain this last and important principle later. I must now develop that which I wish to establish for assuring the alignment and march direction; to this end, we return to the school field. [With] many soldiers being united on a rank to exercise for the march, I will very much guard against their carrying their heads to the right or to the left to align them, as, independently of [the fact] that this turning of the head necessarily leads one shoulder forward [and] causes the other to be effaced, consequently diverting the direction of the march from the perpendicular that it must follow, I cannot admit a principle that, evidently contrary to the instinct of the soldier and to nature, cannot take place in war and before the enemy.13 In effect, I first demand: “who is the man who, abandoned to his will [and] wishing to march straight ahead, would turn his head to the right or to the left and not look in the direction that he will have taken?” I next demand: “who is the soldier who, however trained he is supposed to be in turning his head while marching, contacting the enemy, would not involuntarily return to looking straight ahead, if not out of fear, then at least by the mechanical instinct that carries all men to occupy themselves with the danger they approach?” That posed, I would that in the schools, as in the battalion, the soldier always carry his head straight ahead and that he turn it neither to the right nor to the left, except in conversion movements. Carrying the head forward, he nevertheless may look with the right or left eye at the three men who are next to him to see if he is aligned on the right or on the left. It even suffices that he be able to see the chest of the second man, as that of the first serves as the intermediary point, and, if I may say so, the point of demarcation. I would give him for [his] second principle to always equally sense the elbows of his two neighbors; these are the two points of contact that must be his rule of alignment. If he senses too much resistance from one of the elbows? he is throwing himself. One of the elbows escapes him? he is not marching straight and squarely. He loses both of them? he must place himself in accord with them, because then he is certainly too far ahead or behind. But finally, so that the soldier is not uncertain in knowing which side to favor, all the times that a battalion will be on the march, the major will command him to keep to the right or to the left according to the side against which he will particularly not wish to gain any ground. Thus when he will command that the battalion keep to the left, that 13

[This sentence is an excellent encapsulation of Guibert’s intent in writing the General Essay on Tactics.]

On the March

is to say, that the battalion is particularly occupied in not gaining ground on the right, then the soldier will quite sensibly favor the left elbow over the right of the man who is to his left and almost completely abandon the left elbow of the man who is to his right, and thus vice-versa when the battalion must keep to the right. Finally, it is my officers, particularly sure in their step and their coup d’œil, who regulate the direction of the march and the alignment of my battalion. On these last two subjects, I propose a particular school for the officers. There, independently of the theory and the practice of the march in which I will take care to strengthen them even more than the soldiers, they will learn how to [draw] a perpendicular from the eye; to choose a direction parallel to another direction; to appreciate distances [and] the time required to cover them at a particular step; to judge the strength of a troop presented at different distances, on different terrain, and in different orders; to march with them, whether in the troop or at the head of the troop; [and] to imperturbably observe the distances of a division, the height of heads of two columns, [and] the intervals that these columns must keep between them, etc. The colonels and the superior officers of the regiments being at the head of these schools, they will instruct them themselves [and] they will form the coup d’œil more and more. This genre of exercise, of which it is possible to make an amusement, will develop the intelligence of the officers. The officers thus trained and instructed, here is how I would employ them to assure the alignment and the march direction of the troops. When a demi-company, a company, or some troop of soldiers must exercise marching, an officer placed four paces in front of them will command them and be responsible for their direction and alignment as well as their extent and the speed of their step. All the soldiers, looking straight ahead, will perceive this officer and regulate themselves according to him. The three center files, with him positioned in front of the second, will follow him immediately, always leaving four paces of distance between themselves and him. Halt should be frequently called, and whoever will preside over the exercise will examine if the officer has directed his troop perpendicularly to the baseline from which it departed, if the center files are exactly following, [and] if the troop, being on any alignment from the moment where it began its march, did not stop on an alignment in false square when compared to the first. In case there is some defect in the alignment, the three center files will align themselves brusquely and squarely on themselves, and thus successively each file by the right and by the left,

65 the soldier briefly glancing at the two men who are on his right or on his left, according to the side from which the alignment originates without turning his head, and advancing or retreating by small, short, and quick steps until he is aligned. When the companies are united in the battalion, independently of the officer who will be at the center, there will be one [officer] in front of each wing, each placed four paces ahead. These three officers will be responsible for the direction of the march and the alignment of the battalion; to this end, each of them will be followed by the three center files of the division ahead of which he marches, and those of the two of the wings will align on that of the center, glancing consequently at him from time to time. When the line will be composed of several battalions, it will on be the center battalion that it will regulate its movements and its alignment, but next to the center officer of each battalion should also advance the flag-bearer and a sergeant in such a manner that all the flags of the line regulate themselves as much as possible by each other, indicating the alignment to the battalions that follow them. The colonels and majors will particularly occupy themselves with the individual alignment of their battalions and regiments and will hold them together with the line with the greatest measure that is possible, the essential [thing] being only that the general direction of alignment does not deviate too considerably, and certainly that the line will arrive on the parallel it is wished for it to take. When I come to grand tactics, I will treat the movements of the army in line; I will speak to what their objective is, how they must do it, and how little they must occupy themselves with alignment. We continue with this concern of the march of a regiment. Once the battalions are established in the march on a smooth surface, they must take to open fields, then to the plains, and finally to uneven and furrowed terrain, in the same way as I have prescribed for the companies. There, the exercises will become truly useful and analogous to war [and] the eye of the officers accustomed to the immensity and the choice of points of view. The march will necessarily lose a little of its perfection [and] unity of movement that it has on the parade ground, but it will become more military [and] more decisive; the superior officers will learn to know how the inequality and the more-or-less strong undulation of the terrain influences the aspect of the countryside, the ability to eyeball, the possibility of alignment, [and] the unity and speed of the march. There, the battalions will be particularly exercised to go up to three- or four-hundred toises at the double-step

66

chapter iii

without stopping, a sort of march too-much neglected in our current exercises.14 There, if a hedge, fosse, [or] ravine offers itself to them, one would see which of the battalions, presented with this obstacle, would pass it with the greatest promptitude, order, and silence; there, if a height offers itself to them that is militarily important to occupy, a battalion could be detached at the running step to take its crown; to activate emulation and to give more realism to the exercise, a battalion could be sent to a point equidistant, tasked with preventing this. All of these maneuvers will be no more than games for my soldiers, exercised by my education plan in jumping, running, [and] all that might augment their agility and strength. But how many other local and sensible demonstrations of this kind could form the intelligence and the coup d’œil of officers! Suppose that on ground A (Diagram I), three battalions exercise the march. I would never direct the march of these battalions other than by taking points of view from the countryside. For example, I will say to myself that the trees B [and] C are the summits of the two perpendiculars at the extremities of my wings. Consequently, I will give these points of view to the officers who command my battalions. Arriving there, I will see if these perpendiculars, abased to these two points B [and] C, between which my new front will be contained, will fall exactly on the points D [and] E, upon which my old front rested. Wishing to make my next march from my second position to go five- or six-hundred paces and occupy another that will be parallel and whose extremities will be perpendicular to the points that rest on it, I will say to the three officers who are at the center of my battalions to take the points of view in order to march straight ahead perpendicularly and squarely; I will have each of them show the points of view that they have chosen. I suppose that these points will be f for the first battalion, g for the second, [and] h for the third, and I will have a sergeant or a soldier stay on the places that they occupied on the alignment of the old front. When the battalions have thus been directed in the march for two minutes, I will command a halt, and then I will see 1st if my officers are on the direction of their points of view, [and] 2nd if these points of view are on the perpendicular of the old base occupied by the sergeants or soldiers that I left behind, and consequently if my new front is exactly parallel to the old one. I will find all these objectives accomplished if my regiment finds itself stopped in the position I, K. If, on the contrary, it has stopped in L, M, its alignment would be in false square in relation to the old one; this could not 14

A toise was a common measure in the Old Regime of around two meters; it was the land equivalent of the nautical fathom.

come from anywhere but from the officers charged with directing the battalions not having marched at the same [pace]. I will then know with whom the fault lies by knowing the number of minutes that the line has marched and the number of toises that each officer has covered; thus, suppose they had marched two minutes at the doublestep, which must render three-hundred twenty paces or eighty toises and carry the battalion on the alignment L, R. However, the battalions find themselves on L, M, the officer of the first battalion having been off by six toises, the officer of the second by twelve, and the officer of the third by eighteen. I will judge in the same manner the fault of each officer if the battalions find themselves find themselves on false, separated squares, as, for example, at N, O, P: here is alignment. As to the perpendicular direction of the march, if the battalions, in lieu of arriving at the position K, I, find themselves halted on another point like Q, R, it will be either because the officers did not make their march in the direction of their point of view f, g, h, or because they did not choose f, g, h, for their points of view, but [instead] s, l, n, from where the abased lines do not fall perpendicularly on the old position from which they departed. Finally, if the three battalions find themselves at X, Y, Z, the officer of the first battalion has chosen his point of view well, but the officers of the second and third, having chosen theirs poorly, have ill-directed their battalions and opened their intervals by some toises on the left. Finally, to demonstrate via example how the principles exposed above are neither minute nor superfluous, suppose that the enemy is en bataille, its right resting on the ravine A (Diagram II), and its left at B. To do the most sensible thing, I would detach a battalion to occupy this position. Suppose next that I must attack the enemy thus positioned with my two battalions, and consequently, here is my reasoning and my disposition. I am much stronger than the enemy, I outflank them, and they can only be turned by their left; thus, the officer of the wing of the battalion of my left must direct himself on the extremity of the right wing of the enemy; the officer at the center of my first battalion must take the extremity of the left flank of the enemy for [his] point of view; and the demibattalion by which I outflank the enemy, marching by a separate direction, envelops and takes the flank. All these orders being properly followed, here is the result. A battalion and a half advances, supported by the ravine that covers the left wing of the enemy, and attacks all along its front, while the demi-battalion on the right gains its flank in tripling its step. If, on the contrary, I had not made my points of view, or my officers had not directed their march on them, my second battalion, in throwing itself on the left, would stumble onto the ravine and be obliged to pass

On the March

diagram i

School of the march

67

68 it and be broken up by it or to double-up and arrive in disorder, and my first battalion, in throwing itself on the left, would lose the advantage that it had in outflanking the enemy, and shortly perhaps risk being flanked itself. Finally, if my battalions had not marched at the same pace, instead of presenting themselves parallel to the enemy, they would have arrived, as in C, D, approaching only along part of the [enemy] front, and consequently would not have had the same concert to their attack. But of course all these details [and] this theory of principles will take place in the exercises of the regiments only two or three times, and uniquely to enlighten the intelligence of the officers and to put conviction next to precept. The schools proper for forming coup d’œil, being particularly relative to these last, will ordinarily take place without battalions, so they will neither fatigue the soldier with the faults of the officer nor humiliate the officer by instructing and [correcting] him in front of the soldier. In the rapid and tight exposition that I have given on my march principles, I have forgotten to say many things that I will return to; my work not being didactic, I make use of my rights. I write my ideas just as they present themselves to me. I do not at all allow the usage of the petite step, because I believe that the ordinary step and the double-step, being two degrees of speed different, suffice for the execution of all possible maneuvers; besides, in suppressing the petite step, it will only be a question of teaching the soldiers a step of the same measure and that differs only by speed. I would that, in the schools, soldiers be taught to march backwards, but only for fifteen or twenty steps, and by company only; this species of march is good only for aligning the troops and forming them at the same height without being obliged to have them make half-turns to the right. Finally, to achieve the establishment of my opinion on the usage of the different measures of step and the circumstances in which they must be employed, I regard the ordinary step as the principle and parade step; the double-step as that of maneuvering and charging [and] as the truly military step; and the triple-step, or what I have called the running step because it cannot be affixed to any degree of speed, and this degree must be augmented in proportion to the importance of anticipating the enemy, the distances to cover, and the nature of the object that will be filled after having covered it, I regard it as the step to be employed in all circumstances where it will be necessary to have a great acceleration of movement. Thus, for anticipating the enemy on an essential point, for gaining a flank, for deploying en bataille before it, and for being in a state of charging before it has been formed, etc., this step

chapter iii

must be carried to the last degree of speed, but then the soldier must not be expected to maintain equality of pace, unity of movement, or symmetrical order of files. It must suffice that the march is conducted in silence; that the files are not confounded; that they do not advance beyond the officers; and that, at the command “halt” or “front,” the soldiers close, stop, and place themselves. This is the place to speak of the usage that must be made of military instruments to sustain the march of the troops. Today, it seems that we have them only for form’s sake; in truth, it is proper that they be banished from the schools [and] that the soldier become accustomed to the unity of the step by himself and without help, but all the times when battalions are united, all the times that they exercise in free and open terrain, drums and music must accompany their march and their movements; for an even stronger reason, [this] must be [the case] before the enemy, where the soul of the soldier has need of being excited and sustained. I desire that our instruments be more sonorous [and] more resounding [and] that the rhythm of our music be livelier, tighter, [and] betteradapted to differences of circumstance and movement; for example, that there be airs consecrated to combat, played in wartime and during combat only, airs whose modulations would be at the highest degree of heat and vehemence. Have our organs changed? Has music degenerated? Or must we treat the fable as history as reported by Timotheus, that the Phrygian air forced the people of Greece to run to their arms?15 It remains to me to speak of the route march. As it has no other object than to make a route for a troop in the least painful and easiest manner possible, the soldier must take it at his free and natural step, of course provided that this step is not the same speed as that of a man marching alone, because the soldier is carrying his weapons and his baggage, forms part of a numerous column, and is consequently subjected to a certain order. It will thus be to the officer who commands the column to regulate the speed of step that it will march relative to the nature of the route, to its length, to the objectives that the infantry must accomplish when it arrives, to the species of man in this infantry, to the weight that he carries, [and] to the depth of the column. By this, one can see how it is necessary that the superior officers be habituated to commanding infantry columns, marching with them on foot at their head, 15

[Guibert likely references John Dryden, Alexander’s Feast, or The Power of Musique (London: Tonson, 1697), which tells a story of the musician Timotheus, whose music moved Alexander to various strong emotions, including martial feelings. While the myth occurs throughout the early modern period, it appears to be a creation of that time; it does not occur in classical works.]

On the March

diagram ii

Continuation of the school of the march

69

70 and regulating the speed of their march. This habit alone can teach them how long a troop must be employed in taking various routes, in various countryside, [and] with varying speed. A great number of operations of war are missing, because the time, the distance, [and] the nature of the route have not been combined with precision. These marches, frequently repeated on all sorts of routes, at different times, and in different seasons, [and] the soldiers carrying all that they must carry on campaign, would be one of the most useful exercises for the troops; it might cost a little more in shoes and clothes, [and] their

chapter iii

conduct would be less brilliant and less noticeable, but we would have armies that the fatigues of war would neither surprise nor destroy. Finally, I will cite the example of the Romans, as whenever it is a question of a lively and solid military, it is from them that institutions must be drawn. I have only considered here the route march relative to the species of step that it is required to followed. It remains to be said what the most convenient order in which this march must be made is and what movements a troop en bataille must take [to form in] this order. I will speak of this when treating evolutions.

chapter iv

Fire Of all the branches of tactics, perhaps it is in this that we have exercises that are the most complicated, the least thoughtful, and the least relative to that which happens in war. When I say “we,” I speak of all the troops of Europe, [and] I speak of the German troops who have so much credited the system based on fire and who regard the superiority of musketry as so decisive in battles.1 We have been attached to perfecting the loading of the fusil [and] to firing a great number of rounds per minute, that is to say, to augmenting noise and smoke; we have not worked to simplify the order in which this fire must be made, nor to determine the soldier’s best posture for better aiming, nor to augmenting his skill on this point, nor to making known to the troops the difference between ranges and shooting, nor finally to teaching them the point up to which they can rely on or not rely on fire [or] how it must be employed and handled relative to the terrain, to circumstance, [and] to the species of weapon opposite; when, in a word, it must ceased to be used [in order] to charge the enemy with the bayonet. But before entering into the details of this subject, we say a word about our firearms. It is not doubtful, I believe, that our missile weapons, considering our fusils as such, are infinitely superior to those of the ancients, both in range and in accuracy. What a difference in effect from those heavy [and] embarrassing bolts that each soldier could carry only a small quantity of [and] that were thrown only by the arm or by the action of a cord; feeble engines, uncertain, subject to inconvenience and aberration [compared] to these small metal globes that the soldier can carry in great number and that are forced to travel in a nearly certain direction2 by the form of the cylindrical tubes in which they are compressed and by the force of the flammable and elastic fluid that the removal of a part animates and puts into action with an incredible speed. If one wishes to prove the superiority of our fusils over all missile weapons like catapults, bows, hand-thrown javelins, etc., it is the eagerness with which all the savages 1 [Specifically, Prussia, which valued fire more than most contemporary armies, as the rest of the chapter reveals. See Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, 183–198 and 281–328.] 2 I say almost certain by comparison and relative to the weapons of the ancients, because, in fact, an infinity of causes, some known, some hidden, contribute to throw the firing of our fusils into incertitude and anomaly.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_010

of the New World have quit these last to adopt our fusils despite the inconvenience of noise, which is a reality for the men who make hunting their source of food and occupation.3 To determine the range of a firearm, know 1st the line of sight, that is to say, the straight line to the object at which the ball is to be fired. 2nd The line of firing, another straight line that represents weapon’s axis. 3rd The trajectory of the line that describes the globe that is thrown by the powder outside the weapon’s muzzle towards the target that one proposes to strike. The line of firing and the line of sight are never parallel, and they form between them, beginning from the mouth of the barrel, a more- or less-noticeable angle according to the thickness that the barrel has at is breech and at its opposite extreme. It is along the line of sight that the eye seeks to aim, and consequently, to the exterior and the summit of the weapon’s barrel; however, it is the interior and along the line of fire that the projectile is shot; thus, the line of fire and the line of sight are secant. We now examine how far apart they are and the direction of the trajectory is. At its emergence from the barrel, the cannonball or the ball describes a curve. There is a law that the attraction of gravity imposes on all obliquely-thrown bodies. This curved line that the projectile describes intersects the line of sight a short distance from the barrel, then rises above it; from there, always drawn towards the earth by gravity, to which all projectiles are subjected, it re-approaches this line, intersects it for the second time, and finishes describing its parabola until the end of its fall. It is this second point of intersection that is called the range of the weapon [or] “the point-blank” and that is more or less distant from the extremity of the barrel in proportion to the opening of the angle that forms between the line of sight and the line of firing, as well as the force that fires the projectile, the volume of the projectile, its density, the medium that

3 [Despite popular mythologies, both contemporary and modern, of the people of the American First Nations as noble savages, the various tribes of the northern continent eagerly adopted the use of firearms. Contemporaries reckoned them to be among the best fighters in the world, largely because of their hunting abilities and experience, as Guibert indicates. See William Smith, Historical Account of Bouquet’s Expedition against the Ohio Indians in 1764 (Cincinnati: Clarke, 1868), 95–100.]

72 it traverses, and the length of the muzzle proportionate to its diameter. What I have just said is certain and common to all firearms, but what is unfortunately still a problem (whether no exact experiments have been made in this regard, or an infinity of strange reasons relative to the effects of the powder, to the action of the air, to the quality of projectiles, and to that of the means that fires them, they are rendered extremely difficult and uncertain) is the length of the curves that these projectiles may describe, the exact determination of the speed with which they traverse it, and their successive decline towards the ground. In the midst of these uncertainties that discoveries and more-fortunate experiences may rectify one day, some approximate truths still exist that I am collecting that must make the base of the theory of infantry fire exercises. Suppose a munition fusil like those with which our troops are armed fires a caliber ball with the customary quantity of powder. It is more or less constant that the ball, following its trajectory, will find itself a foot and a half or two above the line of sight at around sixty toises; that this is the point where it will be the most elevated above this line; and that it then continues to describe its parabola and fall towards the line of sight by the attraction of gravity, re-intersects this line around one hundred or one-hundred twenty toises, and finishes in following its trajectory until it hits the ground or some other obstacle that diminishes or eliminates the force that moves it.4 I say that up to the distance of around sixty toises, the ball rises above the line of sight. This is why it is commonly said that the shot rises. However, the ball in fact never rises; it follows, from the moment it leaves the barrel, a rectilinear direction, or to speak more justly, a direction that is always curved more and more by the law of gravity. To be convinced, suppose that the barrel of the fusil is four lines thick at the breech and one line thick at its mouth [and] that it is four feet long and of a caliber of six lines; the lines of firing and sight, being secant by their direction, meet at five feet four inches from the mouth of the fusil, and they will form an angle of seventeen and a

4 What I have said here is the result of trials that were conducted in our artillery schools, but they could be made much more precise: for example, those that would determine the initial speed of the projectile by means of a pendulum suspended at different distances at which several successive balls would be fired, in order to judge by the strength and the duration of the vibration that each of these shots communicates to the pendulum, the speed at which the ball traversed its trajectory, and consequently what is the nature of the curve.

chapter iv

half minutes.5 There, the ball, always following its direction, climbs above the line of sight, forming with it an angle equal and opposite to the preceding, and continuing, via this divergence, to climb above it, to a height of around a foot and a half or two feet, which is the greatest point of elevation. From this, for a fusil-ball to hit the target one wishes, the sight must not always be aimed precisely at the target, and it must be higher or lower than it according to whether the target is more or less distant. So with a target six feet high and divided into three sections of two feet each, there is no distance at which it is necessary to aim two feet lower than the horizontal on which the target is planted, as then the most fortunate [shot] would hit the base. If it is fifty or sixty toises away, one must aim at the middle section to hit the highest section or at the lowest section to hit the middle section; if it is one-hundred toises away, one must aim at the top of the lowest section to hit the middle section or at the top of the middle section to hit the highest section. Finally, if the target is more than one-hundred toises away, one must aim above them to hit the lower sections, and becoming higher as the target is more distant. This principle of never aiming precisely at the target that one wishes to hit is confirmed by the experience of hunters. Those who kill with every shot never fire with the game perfectly placed on the line of sight of their fusil; not only do they fire at the spot where the game will be when their shot arrives, but they also aim lower or higher depending on the distance to the target that they wish to hit. We may conclude that the troops’ musketry may perhaps be reduced to a theory; however, far from being the case, it is executed haphazardly and mechanically. This is because there are perhaps not ten infantry officers who understand the construction of the fusil and who have reflected on the throwing of projectiles that it might launch. Also, no one has given the soldier any principles on the manner of aiming; he shoots as he wishes, regardless of the distance and the situation of targets. It is particularly in target-shooting, already much too rare, that this ignorance and this default of principles is apparent. I will have occasion to return to this soon. With regard to the range of the fusil, all the experiments that have been made to observe its length have never determined it precisely. Often in these experiments, two balls fired from two fusils of the same caliber, at the same angle of projection and with equal charges, carry to different distances, whether because of greater or lesser 5 [A “line” is one-twelfth of an inch.]

Fire

73

air density or to the combination of the quality of the powder, its degree of moisture, its disposition within the barrel, the promptitude of its expansion, etc. All that can be said with certainty is that the range of the fusils with which our infantry is armed is that it is around one-hundred eighty toises on a nearly horizontal direction; this is why, in the construction of places of war, the line of defense is determined between one-hundred twenty and one-hundred forty toises from the flank up to the flanking angle, the rest of the range having to pass the fosse and hitting the covered way. I do not speak of the ranges from much-elevated angles, because in war, they are almost never taken, and they are also incalculable and uncertain; the balls will commonly strike up to five- or six-hundred toises, and sometimes at even greater distances. What is certain is that a ball fired with an ordinary charge from a fusil and following a line parallel to the horizon will hardly decline more than a foot and a half or two feet before reaching two-hundred toises, while a bolt discharged from an arbalest, which of all the missile weapons throws a body the straightest and with the most speed, drops by three feet before arriving at a target only fifty toises away.6 Though the horizontal range of a fusil may be estimated at one-hundred eighty toises, it is hardly until eighty toises that the infantry fire commences to have a great effect. I speak of infantry ranged en bataille in the tumult of combat. Beyond this distance, the shots become uncertain, because the soldier loads and aims poorly, quickly, and with trouble. The Prussian battalions, which have been believed, and some people still believe, to have fire that is so redoubtable, are those whose fire is the least deadly. Their first discharge has range and effect because the first round, loaded out of combat, is made with exactitude, but next, and in the tumult of the action, they load in haste and without tamping. It is said to them that the greatest perfection of the fire exercise being the greatest number of rounds per minute, they do not aim at all. A mechanical manner of movement, and like a spring, places their weapon against their shoulder instead of sustaining the fusil in the horizontal direction, which requires it to be carried with strength in the left hand, almost like the old musketeers found their support on the fork; they find it easier to not fatigue themselves and the fusil falls extremely low; thus, the round goes without the eye having directed

it, and the ball dies in the dust at a quarter of its range.7 All the troops of Europe, seduced by the beauty of the Prussian fire exercises, by the celerity of their loading, by the unity and correspondence of their volleys, have tried to imitate them. Our German regiments, whose policy is to introduce to us foreign practices and to abandon them as soon as we have adopted them to give themselves the merit of some other new invention, introduced the mania for these fire exercises, and soon the speed of loading was not a question in our schools. Busied with this celerity at the expense of the manner of aiming, no one introduced any idea of a true theory of firing; commonplace things are given as principles, void of sense and reflection. “Fire quickly,” the soldiers are told, as if noise kills; “aim for the middle of the body,” as if this principle could be general [regardless of] distances and targets; as if it were not necessary to aim more or less high relative to the differences of distance and situation and to the curve the projectile describes. “Aim low,” it is said at other times; “the ball will always rise,” as if the balls could rise above the line of firing, as if there were no law of tendency and of gravity that subjected all bodies in motion to fall towards the ground. Must we be surprised, after this, if our musketry fire is so contemptible, if in a battle there are 500,000 rounds fired without leaving [even] 2,000 dead on the battlefield? How much better for humanity, it may be said, if battles are less bloody and [still] decide the quarrels of nations! To this I respond that if fire were better, there would not be more bloodshed; firing would be less lengthy and more impatient to arrive at the arme blanche, the only genre of combat favorable to courage and skill. Thus we need give no more to the perfection of the art, which its degradation; let us learn to make use of current weapons; let us study the theory of their effects and not search to imagine new ones if they only consume more ammunition, if they could not fire straighter and over a longer range, [and] if they were not more simple, more solid, [or] more sure, because these useless inventions adopted in the second campaign by all the armies of Europe will add nothing to the perfection of tactics, nor to the success of the nation that has discovered them. I believed it necessary to pose these first principles on the effect and the range of our arms in order to support some changes that I will propose below in the theory of our exercises. The soldier having already acquired, by the handling of arms, the perfect habit of loading and firing, both with

6 [An arbalest is a large crossbow, essentially the final form of the weapon system before the advent of gunpowder weapons.]

7 [Many of the early gunpowder weapons, particularly the arquebus, were propped up on a fork, either freely or via attachment.]

74 without and with powder, first alone, then in a file, in three different places in this file, in several files, and finally by demi-company and by company, he then must pass to the [same] exercise with a [musket] ball, conducted by the same gradations. But before going further, let us speak of the position that the soldiers must take in the fire exercise and some other rules that will be observed in the schools. First, I do not at all allow the position of the first rank kneeling on the ground. I see nothing so ridiculous and less military than this genuflection. In addition, on the approach of the enemy, it is a posture that soldiers cannot often be made to quit. At Parma and at Guastalla, nearly all our infantry and that of the Austrians fought thus.8 I take this fact from several trustworthy officers. The soldiers of my first rank should thus begin in their habitual position in such a manner as to aim in front of them without moving their bodies. The soldiers of the second rank, in conserving their attitude, will close on their file-leader by briskly [taking a step] about a foot to their right, placing themselves in position to aim over the right shoulder of the man who is in front of them. The soldiers of the third rank will close in the same way behind their file-leader and briskly step to the left so that they can aim over the left shoulder of the man in the first rank. I have seen this fire practiced in several of our regiments; I have seen it executed without accident and without inconvenience in a quite-lively combat and under enemy fire.9 2nd, to take aim, the solder will energetically place the butt of the fusil against the crease of the right shoulder; his fusil will be supported by the left hand at the height of the muzzle band; the barrel will be parallel to the terrain that we suppose to be horizontal; the soldier will lower [his] head as much as it will be necessary to see carefully 8 [Both battles were fought in 1734 in the Italian theater of the War of the Polish Succession. The Battle of Parma, Crocetta, or San Pietro took place in June. French and Sardinian forces attacked Austrian defensive positions and forced their withdrawal, leaving high casualties, which was normal for the Italian theater during the period. The battle is most notable for the death of Claudius Florimund, graf Mercy, one of the better Habsburg commanders of the early eighteenth century. The Battle of Guastalla, or Luzzara, occurred in September and once again saw a Franco-Sardinian army defeat an Austrian force with high casualties on both sides. See Sutton, The King’s Honor and the King’s Cardinal, 162–189. As Guibert indicates, he likely knew several participants in the battles; the French commander in both was Marshal François-Marie, duc de Broglie, to whose family both Guibert and his father were attached for much of their respective careers.] 9 At the Battle of Vellinghausen by the Nassau and Royal Deux-Ponts Regiments.

chapter iv

then will energetically pull the trigger with three fingers that he places on it and not with the index [finger] only, like we practice, because this finger, often too feeble to pull the trigger, is obliged to struggle with it and [thus] the end of the fusil necessarily lifts.10 The soldier will especially become accustomed to firing without moving his head, body, or especially the fusil that the smallest movement diverts from the horizontal aim, and, to this end, in the schools of principles, the soldier must remain, after having fired, on the “take aim” [position] to see, the round having gone, what direction the fusil [takes]. I say that, in the position of taking aim, the barrel of the fusil must be parallel to the terrain where the soldier is positioned. This must be the habitual position when it is a question of exercising the soldiers in fire and without firing at determined targets. But it must be otherwise when a goal is assigned for their fire like targets or a canvas extended to the height of a man, because then, one must make the application of the theory that I have made above. One must recommend to the soldiers to aim at some part of the target that they wish to hit according to the situation of this target and the distance at which it is placed. In this regard, there are proportions that must be regarded as axioms and that can be taught to soldiers without their needing to know the theory upon which they are founded. For example, there is a six-foot-high target. The soldier will aim at it relative to that which I have said above and in proportion to the distance that it is from him. Finally, there is an enemy battalion in front of him. It may be recommended to him to aim three feet above the battalion if it is at three-hundred toises, around a foot and a half if it is at two-hundred, at its hats if it is at one-hundred and fifty, at the middle of the body if it is at one hundred, [and] at the knees or a little lower if it is at fifty or sixty, but never lower. It remains next to explain to the soldiers that they must always aim at the target regardless of the nature of the terrain that separates them from it, and thus they must raise, keep horizontal, or lower their weapons relative to 10

[The Battle of Vellinghausen took place in July 1761 towards the end of the Seven Years War. After the disastrous Battle of Rossbach in 1757, the French spent much of the rest of the war fighting against the allied army of Ferdinand, prinz von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, in western Germany with little success. Vellinghausen was one of several defeats inflicted on the French by Ferdinand, leading to increasing despair of victory in the war. Guibert fought in the Battle of Vellinghausen and was decorated for valor in it, which probably contributes to its being one of his favorite examples. See Franz Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 1756–1763 (New York: Routledge, 2013), 352–354.]

Fire

whether the target at which they aim is situated higher, horizontally, or lower than their position. This is an attention that is never paid by soldiers. Whether for want of reflection or of sangfroid, they fire mechanically and without seeing where the enemy is; as such, nearly every round is lost above them or hits the ground. It is especially with quite-multiplied exercises with targets and canvasses that the application of this theory will be made. There, as it is necessary for the soldier to have palpable and simple demonstrations, instead of having an abstract target raised on a stake, a man of natural size and wearing the uniform of foreign troops will be painted on a cut board. One will have patience, when the soldier’s round will pass over this target or hit the ground, in showing him that it originated either from his not having used established principles or that, in having pulled the trigger to fire, he did not hold the fusil firmly when he aimed it. One will make him fire another round in order to set the example next to the precept. One will often change the distance and emplacement of the target, establishing it sometimes on sloping terrain, sometimes on an elevation, [and] sometimes on horizontal terrain; finally, the emulation and skill of the soldier will be excited by some prizes. The soldiers being habituated to firing alone, by file, by division, and by company, they will be gathered in battalion[s] and fire at painted canvases that represent an enemy troop, whether foot or horse, these canvasses being stretched in the same way at different distances on different points of view and at different heights. Thus each battalion must have a canvas of an extent equal to its front; one would see, after having fired at it for a quarter or half of an hour, who damaged it most, giving the prize not to the battalion that had consumed the greatest quantity of ammunition, but to that which had delivered the most balls to the canvas that represents an enemy battalion. I have spoken of the accuracy of firing; it remains for me to consider the direction of fire; it is not less important to exercise the infantry on this last subject. I have already observed that it fired mechanically [and] that it has never exercised the oblique and crossing fire. It even seems that it was not believed to be possible for a troop deployed in a straight line to make these sorts of fire. Only by placing the infantry behind fortification flanks or in forming bastioned orders, etc., did one imagine to procure fires crossing on a point. However, a troop in straight line can fire thus, because a soldier in a company, like a whole battalion, can fire obliquely; I say a battalion only, because beyond a battalion frontage, fire becomes too oblique for the soldier to aim with facility. Certainly a soldier or a file of soldiers being at A (Diagram III) I will command to fire at B or at C the same

75 as at D, which is direct fire. If he fires to the left to aim more easily, the soldier will only slightly advance the right shoulder. With a company being deployed at E, I would have them fire at F the same as at G, which is the direct target. With a battalion being formed at H, I would cross the first and second division’s fire over that of the third, which is at the center and fires straight ahead. Finally, three battalions being on the same line, I would unite the fire of the first and second with that of the third, which will be my curtain [wall]. I will thus exercise the infantry relative to these views. The ordinary and habitual fire will be direct fire. I will also command, when I wish, a division of my battalion or a battalion of my regiment to make “oblique fire to the right” or “oblique fire to the left.” If I wish to give more obliquity to my flanking fire and have it converge on a distance nearer to my front, I will slightly separate the alignment of the divisions or battalions that give me this fire, and I will position them at I, K, or L, according to my views of direction. We now examine in what circumstances and up to what point of obliquity and convergence fire can be advantageous to determine the occasions where it must serve: 1st. the enemy coming against me in column or on a front inferior to mine, they will give me their flanks. 2nd. If they only attack a part of my front, such that the parts that have not attacked may take a reverse on it or at least cross their fires with those of the part attacked. 3rd. Finally, I may make use of oblique fire in the same way when the enemy comes against me on an equal front to my own, because my fire being unified and convergent, it will be more deadly, since there will be no part of my front that is traversed and beaten by it [the enemy]. It must always be observed that, unless, by position of terrain, troops are positioned on the flanking points in advance of the line, it is necessary that firing become oblique only when the enemy is around sixty or eighty toises [away], so that the protection of the oblique and crossing fire can give to an attacked front its full effect, and it is never more than one battalion at most that crosses its fire with or ahead of the neighboring battalion. It is this theory of fire that it is quite important for officers to meditate on and reduce to a practice. I believe that on it may depend the success of the greater part of actions in war, whether defending a post or attacking one, because uniting the greatest amount of fire possible on the point that one wishes to attack or defend; occupying the salients that flank or enfilade; multiplying the fire of these salients and subjecting the enemy to them, if one defends them; avoiding or extinguishing them, if one is attacking them: all this is the mechanism of tactics as much as it is the science of

76

diagram iii Oblique fire

chapter iv

Fire

fortifications; all this may be the same as on campaign and in battalions without entrenchment as behind ramparts or trenches, but to this end the officers must know the different directions of fire [and] the effects that result from them, and that the soldiers be consequently exercised. It remains to me to speak of the different sorts of fire, that is to say, the different manners of making infantry fire. I will be short on this subject, because only the simplest fire possible must [be made] in war, and the soldiers must know how to execute from the first day they are assembled in battalion[s]. I dare to first advance that there is only one species of fire suitable for regulated infantry: standing fire. This assertion will appear quite bold when it will be thought that the King of Prussia has introduced, and appears to be making a case for, what is called “charging fire” among his troops, when he himself said that infantry should not be led against the enemy without firing; here is what I base my opinion on. Either insurmountable obstacles separate [us] from the enemy, or it is possible to attack it. In the former case, the action is necessarily reduced to a combat of musketry in standing fire. In the latter, I think that it must be marching without stopping and without firing. Firing on the march, or stopping to fire, would slow the movement [and] would receive more fire from the enemy than they would receive, and a quite-deadlier fire, because that of the enemy that I suppose to be positioned or halted is livelier and betteraimed; finally, it loses the decisive advantage that the assurance of a prompt and audacious movement imprints on the troop against which it is made; when the enemy sees it arriving in spite of its fire, they are astonished and shaken. Whoever knows the French nation, who has seen it in war, will find this latter reason without [possible] rebuttal. On what other occasion would one wish to fire on the march? Would it be in following an enemy that retires or is in disorder? Would it be in retiring oneself? I do not believe in either of these cases that one must stop to fire. If the enemy retires and is not in disorder, they must be rapidly marched against to charge them, because if one only makes slow steps and accompanies them with volleys, in a minute they will be out of range, and all hope of contacting them will be lost. If they retire in disorder, it is even less amusing to follow them with fire from line to augment their disorder. Scattered troops must be detached to harass them by a continual fire, to separate them [and] take prisoners, and these tirailleurs [must be] sustained by battalions in good order, at good step, [and] disposed to charging if they [the enemy] stop and attempt to rally. If one retires before the enemy, all fire action will

77 be more displaced, because it would not stop them, it would lose time and lengthen the objective of getting out of range and gaining a position where one could rally and recommence the battle. In a word, and what I make a general maxim: “fire only when you cannot march,” because whether one attacks, retires, [or] pursues a fleeing enemy, advancing is the first objective, and the only one that may procure some advantage. It may be observed that I never call “marching fire” the movement that a too-closed battalion will make on the retreat, whether caused by tirailleurs, foot, or horse, to turn and fire a volley that keeps them away. I [also] do not give the name to the volley that some officers believe will be appropriate to make at forty paces from the enemy, and after having received theirs, to throw a general disorder into their battalions and then run to the charge. What I call “marching fire,” and that all men who reflect will find inadmissible like me, is the fire that I have seen practiced in some troops [where] the soldiers of two ranks fire without ceasing their march, but marching, it might be believed with the step of a tortoise; this is what the Prussian troops call “charging fire” and consists of volleys combined and alternating by platoons, by divisions, by demi-battalions, or by battalion, the parts of the line that have fired marching at the double-step and those that have not fired at the petite step. Aside from the fact that one cannot advance in this [form of] fire, it is contrary to all military views; if the fire that one makes can reach the enemy, their fire can reach back in its turn, and what man of war will not sense that his line, broken into this combination of [checker]boards, intervals, different steps, [and] perpetual commands, is not practical for war; that the enemy fire will kill the senior officers, suspend the alternating order of fire, [and] mechanically throw the troops into their intervals; and that, once the intervals are confounded and altered, the line would be no more than a disordered mass[?] This principle posed, that there is no other fire than standing fire that is practical for war, I think that I again must reject our manner of firing by platoons, by divisions, and by quarter-ranks, the fire beginning either by the center or by the wings and continuing next with harmony and precision in such a manner that the platoon of one wing having fired, the corresponding platoon of the other wing responds, and thus the others, an impossible thing in the midst of losses and the tumult of combat. Thus, I would that, in all the firing fraction of the battalion, there be no other rule than this: the two parts coupled and neighboring, whether formed of the platoon, the division, or the battalion, will fire as if they are separate and independent of the battalion, the demi-platoon, the

78 demi-division, or the demi-battalion of the right commencing the fire, I suppose, then the part of the left, and thus in each fraction, each part observing only not to fire until the other has finished loading, such that the fire be equal and continuous across all parts of the front, as much as is possible. Other than this fire, I will next exercise the battalions to fire at the command of the officer by one, by two, and by three ranks. I will also accustom them to executing fire at will, also known as the billebaude; this fire appears in each company by the files of the wings, and once begun, continues without the soldier’s being subject to rules other than keeping silent, not confounding the files, and ceasing fire at the drum signal to carry his weapon and to be ready to execute when he is ordered. It is time to speak of the usage that one must make of the different [types of] fire and the circumstances in which each of them is proper. Fire by platoons or by divisions is where the officer is the greatest master of his troop, but it is only suitable for infantry that is positioned and wishing to push back and contain irregular and less-lively attacks. It is yet more particularly proper for infantry positioned in entrenchments where they are harassed and wish to conserve their ammunition. Also, all troops detached from their battalion must be accompanied by the officer who commands them, in two, three, or four divisions, according to their strength. I believe that the fire by one or several ranks is the only proper one against cavalry and for the defense of an abatis or for a position that the enemy attacks decisively with the bayonet and the butt of the fusil, because it is the only one that gives, if I may express myself thus, a mass of fire capable of halting and reversing great efforts, but as I have

chapter iv

said, it must only be employed when the enemy is shaken by an attack of lively strength, and sparing the conduct of this fire in such a manner that two last ranks can make their final volley when they are at twenty-five paces and the first rank preserves its own for contact. I will propose elsewhere the means that must be added to fire to protect infantry from being vanquished by cavalry, because if the latter manages to join to a good order the greatest possible impetuosity and velocity of movement, [and] the infantry for its part does not change its system of defense, there will be no fire, no matter how well directed, that can protect it from the violence of its shock. Finally, the billebaude is the only one that must be used in a battle of musketry; by the time two volleys are given and received, there is no effort of discipline that could hinder a complicated and regulated fire from degenerating into voluntary fire. This fire is the liveliest and deadliest of all; it excites the head of the soldier, it inures him to danger, [and] it particularly corresponds to the French vivacity and skill; the essential [task] is only to accustom the soldier to stopping at the signal and to maintaining silence. This was once regarded as impossible; today, it will be easily achieved. In a battle in the Seven Years War, I have seen a regiment execute this fire under that of the enemy, beginning and ending at the drum signal. This regiment,11 despite being levied only four years prior, always fought with the same discipline and the same valor; it is true that everything depends on the officers and on the documents by which a troop is formed.

11

Royal Deux-Ponts. It was at Vellinghausen that I saw executed what I have cited above.

chapter v

Evolutions There are militaires who say that there is no point to evolutions and that all evolutions are impractical before the enemy. There are tacticians whom practice has not enlightened who wish to multiply evolutions to infinity, who continually fatigue the troops with them, insisting that all the evolutions are good, [as] they at least have the useful objective of making the soldier agile and relaxing him. We search for a just midpoint between these extremes and make it the base of our principles. Evolutions are necessary, because without evolutions, a troop will be no more than a mass without movement, reduced to the primitive order in which it was placed and incapable of acting on the first change of terrain or circumstances. Evolutions are thus the movements by which a troop must change its order and situation relative to circumstances and terrain.1 They must be simple, easy, of small number, and relative to war; they must always be prompt, because the movement that a troop makes to pass from one order to another necessarily throws it into a state of disunion and feebleness from which it is important that it emerge as soon as possible. All evolutions that do not have all of these properties must be rejected as vicious, superfluous, and dangerous, because in a profession where there are many necessary things to learn, it is only at their expense that one is occupied with those that are useless. The best evolutions, the most analogous to weapons, to the constitution of troops, [and] to the national genius, being determined, must be executed by the same principles; they must be invariable or at least only vary by the orders of the government.2 It is for enlightened men to examine the changes that the troops of other powers have made in their tactics, the works that appear, [and] proposed projects; to order experiments and to know which 1 [This is another passage that could represent Guibert’s thesis. Contemporary doctrine largely prescribed fixed evolutions and maneuvers regardless of circumstance, terrain, or enemy positioning. Guibert’s insistence on building his system relative to context marks him apart from most of his contemporaries, especially at the level of tactics.] 2 [As noted, the concept of army-wide doctrine beyond drill and the manual of arms was relatively new in Europe, especially outside of Prussia. Likely inspired by that kingdom, France began steps towards this in the 1750s, issuing edicts regularizing formations, cadence, uniforms, and many other details. However, tactical doctrine lagged behind, likely due to the debates over the proper course that raged throughout the French military during the century.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_011

are appropriate to adopt or to reject, guarding equally against the mania for innovation that imitates everything without reflection and against the blindness of habit that refuses all change. What I have said on evolutions may be applied to all the branches of the military constitution. In this regard, we imitate the Romans: they knew to enrich themselves with the knowledge and discoveries of all peoples but without ceasing to esteem themselves and believe themselves to be superior to them. The multiplicity of evolutions and experiments that are relative to them is destructive in that it fatigues the troops, overloads their understanding, and diverts them from other work in their education.3 An old axiom is prevalent among the troops: “never maneuver before the enemy.” I will analyze this and search to see if it contains errors and truths. Every evolution under fire, and under a lively enemy fire, is impossible to make with troops who are not at all warlike, and delicate with the troops who are, especially if the enemy is within range to advance on them before the end of their movement. No evolution of any kind is impossible or imprudent in the presence of the enemy if it can be executed before they can traverse [the distance] and if, having good troops, a great number are formed to resist their first efforts and cover the end of the movement. It is on the species of troops that almost always depends the possibility or the impossibility of a movement. Are they bad, by fault of nerve or discipline? Only a more-or-less soft fight, standing or in posts, must be expected of them. Are they brave and maneuverable? Much can be done, because then the manner that they know how to move can be calculated, as can the result of their movements. The enemy being en bataille at six-hundred paces from me, I will dare to deploy and execute before them whatever evolution that I wish when I have already speculated that this evolution will be finished and that I will be in a state to receive them; stirring in the first instant of my movement to profit by it, they must not be able to cover 3 [One of the many negative elements of the French army’s experimentation with various doctrines and tactical systems was that few within the institution knew exactly which they were supposed to be executing at any given time, especially were war to break out, as Guibert indicates.]

80 the six-hundred paces that separate us. I will dare to deploy before them if, having formed myself en bataille on two lines, I speculate that my first line will be formed and in a state of fighting when they will arrive on it and that by this means, it will [be] give[n] time for my second [line] to arrive and form to aid it. Thus, there is no evolution that is properly dangerous in and of itself. Everything depends on the circumstance in which it is applied, and this properly consists of the mostprecise and surest combination that will be employed to make one’s movement with that which will be employed by the enemy to come trouble it, [a] combination that can only be perfectly affirmed by the habit of moving the troops of the two arms in all sorts of terrains, and mostly

chapter v

in war, which produces many more circumstances than peacetime exercises [do]. From what I have said above, that there is no evolution that is dangerous in and of itself, it does not follow that it is indifferent to employing an evolution combined in any manner. One must recall what I posed as [a] principle, that simplicity and celerity are the distinctive characteristics of the health of an evolution. In my opinion, all the evolutions necessary for the infantry are reduced to knowing how to double the ranks, make conversion movements, form in column, and deploy en bataille. I will treat each of these evolutions in order and show how they are simple and easy.

chapter vi

Doubling the Ranks. Ordinance and Means That Must Serve the Infantry to Fight Cavalry One has seen what I have previously said relative to the depth of the habitual infantry ordinance. The only case where I think that this depth must be augmented is when infantry en bataille on a plain fears being charged by cavalry without having a point d’appui on its wings; thus I would form on six [ranks] of depth, and I would make this evolution neither by file nor by the insertion of ranks, because these are complicated movements, but rather by the two following methods. All the demi-companies of the right or the left of a battalion, according to the side by which I will wish to make my movement, will march three double-paces forward, while the other demi-companies make a right or a left and double behind them. The companies thus being doubled, the battalion will close the intervals formed by the doubling, the company of the right or the left not budging. The grenadier and chasseur companies will double on six like the rest of the battalion. If the enemy cavalry being within close range of me, I have less time to make my disposition, then my doubling will be quite simple: the demi-battalion of the right or the left will take three steps forward, while the other will make a right or a left to double behind them at the triplestep. The grenadier and chasseur companies will make their doubling particularly in such a manner as to always occupy the two wings of the battalion. If I take this order on six, it is not contrary to the refutation I made of the augmentation of depth in treating the shock force, as I take it 1st because, fighting against cavalry, I have no fire to receive; 2nd because, in diminishing my front, I give less of it to the efforts of the cavalry, if it is numerous; 3rd because I suppose that my infantry is on a plain with no point d’appui on its wings, and this cavalry consequently seeking to envelop me if it maneuvers well, it is necessary that I have an ordinance that can make a front on two sides; [and] 4th because the augmentation of depth gives more consistency and solidity to my battalion; it at least imprints this prejudice on the soldier who takes part in it as well as on the cavalier who makes the charge, and it is much in war to act on the opinion of the enemy and on that of the troops that one commands. But since I am at this doubling of the ranks that, according to my principles, should never be an evolution that is executed when the infantry must receive the cavalry

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_012

shock, we immediately treat what concerns this action: the means that are suitable to be employed to fortify the infantry, the manner in which it must fight against cavalry, and the exercises by which it would be appropriate to form it. There is neither fire nor ordinance on six that can prevent our nude and bad army, as it is today, from being overthrown by cavalry if the latter knows how to make combined and successive efforts on it; if it knows how to harass it, fatigue it, give it changes in its fire, [and] menace its front and fall rapidly on its flanks; [and] if especially it knows to charge with the impetuosity of the ensemble and the speed that is beginning to be found to be procured in modern exercises. Therefore, I count in my constitutional plan on covering the head and shoulders of the soldier, and to this end the wearing of a helmet to guard against saber-blows and the garnishing of his shoulders with three iron chains attached to leather and covered by a wool epaulette of the regiment’s color. Many militaires have proposed this idea before me because they have all sensed that it would be nonsensical to wish to lead against cavalry infantrymen who, having nude heads and shoulders, think more of evading the blows than killing those who deliver them. But whether this idea was proposed many times, whether [it] fell into discredit by its antiquity, [or] whether governments do not like adopting the things written everywhere, three-quarters of the infantry of Europe is now dressed with useless and bizarre hats. Some troops wear helmets, but these helmets, uniquely adopted for parade view, are not defensive, and the soft soldier murmurs against their weight. The infantry having its heads and shoulders covered, one will sense how it will have been augmented in assurance and hardiness. These body parts are the most menaced by the saber; they are those for whom the man has the greatest fear. When one guarantees the soldier’s head, he will believe his entire body is covered; we see this sort of illusory instinct existing in the majority of animals. But as it is the shock and not the weapon of the cavalry that overthrows, it is the former that I must oppose with an obstacle. Therefore, each company will carry two five-foot-long stakes, sharpened and tipped with iron, with a ring and

82 two tightly-woven cords as long as the front, gummed and garnished at each end with an iron hook that can easily be adapted to the stakes’ rings.1 The battalion being at the moment of receiving the cavalry charge, three soldiers of the right wing of each company will go ten paces in front of and behind the front, plant their stakes, and attach the cords, leaving the latter semi-tight. This portable and mobile barrier will be placed in an instant, because the soldiers will be trained in sinking and raising its stakes promptly. Whatever movement the battalion makes, whether advancing, retreating, or marching by its flank, the soldiers who carry the stakes and cords, marching at the head of the wings of their company, will stop at the command of “halt” and make their entrenchment. How might enemy cavalry take to surmounting this obstacle? Would they detach from themselves some elite cavaliers to cut the cords? 1st A cord of the species that I have proposed, elevated to four feet above the ground and stretched semi-tightly, will be difficult to cut with saberblows. 2nd I will attach five or six of the best shots from the soldiers for this forlorn hope; thus, it is apparent that they would never arrive at it. What if the cavalry charges this line? Its approach would be broken by this obstacle, as would its speed, then its unity of movement, then consequently its shock. This quite-simple entrenchment, much more portable than the chevaux de frise and all other species of obstacles imagined until now, will not be less useful in the case where one will be attacked by superior numbers of infantry. It does not interfere with the movements of the troop that it covers. If it desires to make a charging movement? The hooks are undone, the cords fall, and it passes between the stakes. The soldiers left behind then raise the entrenchment and rejoin the battalion. Here are the advantages not had by chevaux de frise, as they must be assembled and disassembled; nor by turning barriers, heavy and complicated machines proposed by some authors; nor by the stakes that so-usefully served the English infantry at the Battles of Crécy and Agincourt.2 1 Perhaps there is a means of instantly making a quite-solid palisade with the fusils of a rank inclined and armed with the bayonet. It would only be for this to place in the butt a point of iron that ejects from it by means of a spring like those found in canes and that would sink into the ground when it is wished to prepare the battalion for cavalry. This point would not complicate the weapon nor add much to its weight. With the fusils of two ranks, when formed on six or in column, there would be a manner of interlacing them to find what renders this entrenchment quite solid and quite redoubtable. 2 [Charles-Antoine Jombert, Dictionnaire portatif de l’ingénieur et de l’artilleur (Paris: Jombert, 1768), 53, gives the following definition for turning barriers: “in sieges, one closes the lines of circumvallation with barriers that turn on a post, supported on their extremities by

chapter vi

We [now] achieve the explanation of the order in which I wish that the infantry receive the cavalry shock. My battalion will be six of depth, covered in front and behind by a solid and mobile entrenchment; the grenadier and chasseur companies, or two elite companies, however they are called, that occupy the wings of the battalion, will quickly make a demi-quarter-conversion to the rear to form on the flanks of the battalion two species of oblique hooks such that their extremities, covered by the battalion, will be rounded; the said companies will of course be also contained in and covered by the entrenchment. If I have cannon, I will place them on each angle of the hook in such a manner as to serve to augment the entrenchment of this weakest part of the disposition and such that they could cross their fire on the front of the battalion or directly defend the angle if the enemy comes against it. Figure I of Diagram IV represents battalion A disposed in this manner. That is not all; independently of this, by means of oblique fire, I will know how to cross my fire on the front of the battalion, [and] sometimes, to assure myself of these directions, I will know how to curve the alignment of my battalion to place its center a little behind, as in B; another time, having one of my wings supported by a natural obstacle, as ravine C, which will prevent my left flank from being turned, and not being able to be attacked from behind this flank, I will post the elite company that is on the wing D in such a manner as to flank my entire front: thus, the two elite companies of the wings are like two mobile flanks with which I could protect the two fronts of my disposition in turn, which I regard as my parapets. Making application of these principles to a great number of troops, for example, if I must receive a cavalry charge with four battalions, I will form them on six of depth, then I will unite them and dispose of them as in figure 2 (Diagram IV), each battalion being ten paces behind the one on its right and supported by the extremity of the flank formed by the company on its left, in such a manner that my line forms a species of crémaillère; when it is attacked, each battalion will find itself flanked by the two other posts planted to the right and left of the opening made in the lines. When these barriers are open, they leave a passage of nine to ten feet.” Guibert’s list of “some authors” likely begins with Guillaume le Blond, foremost author of engineering treatises and works of military theory in mid-century France. He authored many of the Encyclopedia’s articles on military affairs, particularly the more technical entries. See Guillaume le Blond, A Treatise of the Attack of Fortified Places (London Cave, 1748), 49–56; see also The Elements of Fortification (Philadelphia: Wayne, 1801). Prior to the Battles of Crécy and Agincourt, English archers sharpened stakes to use against French heavy cavalry. See Sumption, The Hundred Years War, IV:431–467.]

Infantry disposition en bataille against cavalry

83

diagram iv

Doubling the Ranks. Ordinance and Means That Must Serve the Infantry to Fight Cavalry

84 elite company of the neighboring battalion to its left.3 If my battalions formed on six do not have time to unite, I will dispose of them as in figure 3 (Diagram IV) without fearing that the enemy will pass between the intervals, which will be filled by the crossing fire of my flanks and my cannon. In either case, I will finally profit by all the resources that the terrain will furnish me: if I have one of my wings supported by an obstacle that covers it, I will form the battalion of that wing obliquely to flank the entire front of my line. If I have a ravine or a fosse on my flanks or behind me, I will throw some fusiliers into it; these separated and unattackable troops will deliver a reverse to the enemy and throw his squadrons that are supposed to be occupied in maneuvering on my wings and behind me into disorder. There is nothing difficult or complicated in the dispositions that I have elaborated; it is only a question of folding the battalions into oblique hooks on the wings, or some curvature of the alignment, or of moving the battalions back a few steps; these dispositions are made in a moment; officers instructed in the theory of fire would make them themselves and by habit. Excepting doubling the ranks, which will only serve me against cavalry, I will be able to again employ all the dispositions against an infantry that is more numerous than my own and against which it will be imprudent to march sword in hand, because all the times that I will be reduced to fire combat, I will regard it as an essential point to create flanks and deliver a reverse to the enemy. To achieve that which concerns my disposition against cavalry, if it only attacks me from the front, my six ranks will be faced opposing it, the three first ranks making a continual fire by rank, as I explained in the chapter on fire, and the three rear ranks loading the fusils and passing them to the three front ranks. If the cavalry attack is enveloping, then three ranks will face out and three in; in both cases, the fire will cross on the attacked parties, the first rank withholding its volley until the cavalry arrives at the stakes, the cannon then firing with cartridge, then solid shot according to the distance it is from the enemy and observing to fire obliquely on the faces of the battalions. The first rank, having fired its first volley, will present the bayonet to receive the cavaliers who have been carried beyond the entrenchment by the impetuosity of their 3 [The word crémaillère had several meanings during the period according to the Fourth Edition of the AF Dictionary, including a hook to suspend a cauldron over a fire, a lever for raising or lowering the seat of a piece of furniture, iron bars slotted into large doors to allow portions of them to be opened at a time, and as a catch-all term for a notch or peg in a machine.]

chapter vi

horses, and the other ranks will continue their fire, but at will and each soldier choosing his man. It is relative to all these principles that I would exercise the infantry, taking care at the same time to speak to the soldier, making him understand the strength of and the reasons for my dispositions, the immense advantages that the infantry thus disposed has against cavalry, the number of bayonets and fusil-blows that it will give to each cavalier; the prodigious effect of its fire, if it is well-directed; the little effect of the weapon of the cavalier, who, not being able to wound the head or shoulders, has almost no hold on him; [and] finally, the danger that courts the infantry if it is frightened and separated and its invincible force if it remains intrepid and closed. In general, the soldier is not reasoned with enough, especially the French soldier, whose intelligence places him within range of understanding many things. Thus, the firmness of a troop will be augmented in proportion to [the degree to which] each individual would be more persuaded of the goodness of the ordinance and the disposition into which he is ranged. Finally, I would accustom the infantry to maneuvering around cavalry; to marching before it, whether en bataille or in column; to stopping when it will be menaced with being charged; to thus preparing the mobile entrenchment of which I spoke above; to not being alarmed at seeing itself surrounded by the impetuous shaking of a line of cavalry, by its increase of speed, [or] by its imposing tumult; [and] to firing appropriately and at the right range. Without these exercises, the infantry officer, inexpert in cavalry movements, in its degree of speed, [and] in the time that it needs to cross this or that distance, will not know how to judge when he must stop, when he must resume marching, on what point the cavalry wishes to make an effort, or how it must be repulsed. “But,” say the cavalry officers, “these simultaneous exercises between the two arms cannot happen; they would succeed only in forming the infantry at the expense of the cavalry, because if we are led against entrenched and ordered infantry as above, it will only show us the impossibility of driving into them, of making us receive its fire, and making us make a half-turn to the right before arriving at them; the infantry alone would be refined by this exercise; on the contrary, our horses are accustomed to never approaching bayonets, our cavaliers would not abandon themselves to the abasement of hand-to-hand combat, and the result of these exercises being for us to always retire without driving into the infantry, the prejudice of the superiority will reset entirely in favor of the latter.” I respond to this that the important object is to form the infantry, until now left too far behind in means of in defense against cavalry. It is only from the decadence

Doubling the Ranks. Ordinance and Means That Must Serve the Infantry to Fight Cavalry

of the military discipline that cavalry charges infantry with success, and this infantry being regenerated and ordained as I propose, the cavalry must abstain from attacking it as it would abstain from attacking a covered way or an entrenchment. Each of the arms will re-enter its sphere and its rights: the infantry, [a] solid and heavy body, redoubtable by its fire, by the resources of art and the terrain, will only be able to be attacked by infantry. Cavalry will attack cavalry, it will be the mistress of the plains, [and] it will make detachments and rapid incursions; it will cover the flanks of the infantry because, by its velocity, it can better embrace and envelop it; it will sustain the infantry, because, by means of the same advantage it has, it may, in the blink of an eye, fall on the enemy, whose victory or defeat it will throw into disorder; finally, it will be able to attack all the infantry that has not had the time or the prudence to take my disposition and all the

85

infantry that, as it is today, will be nude, feeble, ignorant, maladroit, and poorly ordained. I am not at all, as some militaires are, exclusively a partisan of the corps in which I have served.4 I believe that the two arms are necessary for each other. I have sought to render to the infantry all the force that it can have; when I will speak of the cavalry, I will seek the same for all that can augment the celerity and the simplicity of its movements; I will prove that the most has not been made of it [and] that it must decide half of battles and complete nearly all victories.

4 [As Guibert indicates, few contemporary works of theory addressed multiple arms in a manner that was not perfunctory. The ones that did tended to subordinate the other arms to the author’s preferred, particularly by tying the cavalry and artillery to the infantry.]

chapter vii

Conversion Movements Conversion movements are of two manners: “by man” or “by troop.” “By man:” these are the movements called “half-right,” “half-left,” “right,” “left,” and “half-turn right;” by these means a soldier is successively placed on all the principal radii of the individual circle of which he is the center. The first movements, always in usage, must be taught in school exercises and then executed in the troop, because it is necessary that a battalion know how to make them together and with uniformity. “By troop:” these are the movements called “demiquarter-conversion,” “quarter-conversion,” “demiconversion,” and “complete conversion;” by these means, a troop is placed on all the radii of its circumference, one of its wings being moved and describing the arcs of the circle, while the other, supposed to be the center of the travelled circle, is the pivot of the movement. This was formerly the accredited evolution, and to make use of an expression of some tacticians, “the universal instrument of all the evolutions.” By it, the troops took all their orders of march and battle in the direction it [dictated]. The masterpiece of instruction of a battalion or a regiment was to describe, at the ordinary step and in perfect alignment, many consecutive conversion movements. When I was entering the service [in the mid-1750s], this puerile exercise was still in use, but spirits have begun to be enlightened, because twenty years prior, one maneuvered in open ranks; one passed the time in making countermarches by file and by rank [and] in placing the fusil on the ground and lifting it without bending the knee; [and] one formed battalions into circles, triangles, squares, [and] bastions. Chevert recounted that when he was the aide-major of the Beauce Regiment, he was much admired, because at the end of an exercise that he made before the inspector, he drew the words “Vive le Roi” with the regiment and made a joyful fire with this living alphabet.1

1 [François de Chevert was a heroic figure of the mid-century. He entered military service at the age of nine after impressing a colonel with the precision of his drill form and fought in several major engagements in the War of Austrian Succession and Seven Years War. Most notably, he displayed great courage in leading his grenadiers during the 1742 Siege of Prague, which won him fame. The story Guibert relates does not appear to be in Chevert’s only extant print work, Journal en vers de ce qui s’est passé au camp de Richemont, commandé par Chevert (Paris: Lambert, 1755).]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_013

Today, the abuses and the backwardness of the conversion movements are recognized; whether by forming columns in advance or by placing these columns en bataille, one imagined simpler and shorter proceedings. The abuse of changes of front by conversion movements has similarly been recognized. The same mechanism that deploys the columns can change the front of one and of several battalions.2 All of this theory will be exposed in the following chapters. Conversion movements can thus only serve to break up a battalion on all its parts on the length of the line that it occupies, either to place it in march order in column along the length of the line that it occupies or to defile on parade and to reform it again by contrary movements. This is what all my instruction for conversion movements will be reduced to: the battalion or the regiment being en bataille, I will make it break up to the right or to the left by company, by platoon, or by division; being thus in column, I will place it in march order at the ordinary step, at the double-step, at the triple-step, or at the route step, and I will assure myself that the officers will imperturbably conserve the distances that must be between each company, platoon, or division during this march. To this end, I will successively break and reform the battalion several times in a row; I will habituate most of the infantry to marching thus in column at the double-step and at the route step, because it is often the case in war that troops are carried by this movement from one point in order of battle to another, and it is essential that they arrive there lightly and without alteration in their distances. I will still sometimes exercise at most one or two battalions together in the movements of the demi-quarteror the quarter-conversion. This evolution may be useful in war for taking the flank of an enemy that one has outflanked or for giving them a reverse; made at the doublestep and without disordering the battalion, it is practical in some proximity to the enemy, because it is possible to stop and fight in the middle of the movement. I say two battalions at most because, being in range of the enemy, it is only ever with the points of the wings that this movement can be made. If one desires to turn the enemy with a great quantity of troops, it is then by the direction of the 2 [As simple and obvious as this might be to a modern reader, this concept was the core of the reforms that Guibert espoused throughout his life and career.]

Conversion Movements

march and by the development of columns that one must carry on their flank. With regard to almost-insensible conversion movements and forming with the front line that is used in narrow angles, as they can be formed only by giving obliquity to the line or by redressing the alignment, the platoon or battalion must simply be established in the new direction on which one wishes to align, and thus all the other platoons or battalions of the line align on it. I cannot terminate this concern with conversion movements without speaking of a principle discovered some years ago and that well-proves the routine blindness that used to preside over all the evolutions. When a column, formed by platoons or divisions and placed in march order at the regulated step, wanted to change direction, the platoons or divisions were obliged, in arriving at the point of the change of direction, to make successive conversion movements, like, I suppose, quarter-conversions. It was given as a rule that each division or rank (if the march was made with open ranks, the principle was the same) must only begin its movement when it was formed at a right angle with the one that had finished its own, or, to speak in the ignorant language of our exercise schools, the movement was only commenced when the backs of all the men of the rank of the preceding division were seen perfectly and in a straight line. What results from the observation of this rule? The distances between the ranks or between the divisions were altered [and] the column elongated; no one conceived this alteration of distances; it was believed that this was the fault of some divisions that went too quickly or too slowly, some ran while others’ pace was slowed, the soldier was tormented, and care was taken to reject any fault of the square that was believed to be the good principle. An officer who had a head for geometry3 reflected on this defect, and he found a solution [that is] so evident and so sensible.4

3 This officer is in the service of the King of Sardinia and author of a work entitled Essay on the tactics of the infantry, printed at Freiburg some years ago: a work in which, amidst the errors of old tactics, one finds many accurate and useful views. 4 [There is no extant work by the name printed in Freiburg; Guibert probably references Gabriel Pictet, Essai sur la tactique de l’infanterie: ouvrage méthodique où l’on trouve en detail et par ordre, 2 Vols. (Amsterdam/Geneva, 1761), which uses Puységur’s work as a foil for detailed and geometrical tactical studies.]

87 Let there be a battalion in column by divisions, [with] each division having a front of forty paces, and consequently the [same] distance between them: the moving wings of these divisions must cover sixty-three [paces] to complete their quarter-conversion and to carry them forward in the new direction, because the measure of the arc of the circle must be estimated to be equal to about one and a half times that of the radius; thus the division that follows will arrive at the pivot point before the other has cleared it and will be obliged to wait for the twenty-three paces that remain to be covered before it can commence its movement, because the pivot point remains occupied by the wing of the preceding division; as such, the division having made its quarter-conversion [will be] obliged to relent in its pace or the following [division] to press its own to reestablish the distance. If the quarter-conversions multiply themselves by new changes of direction, this repetition of fumbling and defects will necessarily augment the uncertainty of distances and the lengthening of the column. The vice found, it is clear that, if the pivoting wing of each division would clear the terrain of the pivot in progressively advancing around four paces in the new direction, the following division could begin its conversion movement without losing time, while the other would achieve the twenty steps that it remained for it to cover, and thus the moving wings would always have an equal distance of forty paces between them, and consequently the quarter-conversions of a column would be able to be made without any alteration of distances and without changing step. I have entered into this detail to show how it is necessary that the premier notions of geometry guide and rectify the ideas of officers, because, in its foundation, the infantry no longer being placed forward en bataille by quarter-conversions in modern tactics, this principle of clearing the pivot can only serve it in the case where the column forms to defile on parade, making a change of direction. When it will be on route march, and when it will turn to the right or to the left by contours of the route, it is not a question of quarter-conversions made according to regulations; the soldiers turn on the march and elongate their pace naturally to avoid falling behind. This must be frequently exercised with troops in exercises, because a column on free march must be a sort of flexible and serpentine corps, following the directions that are given to the division that forms its head.

chapter viii

Formations in Column §I The infantry forms in column to attack the enemy in this order or to quite-promptly and comfortably cover a long extent of terrain, whether at the regulated step or the route step. In either case, the formation of the column must be operated by the same mechanism. A battalion being en bataille only being able to move parallel or perpendicular to the front that it occupies, all the diagonal directions always return to one of these two principal directions, depending on whether they are greater or lesser; thus, there are only two species of column formations: one by the flank, that is to say, by the lengthening of the line that the battalion occupies, [and] the other by the front, that is to say, in front of and behind the aforementioned line; this is the direction that the column must follow when it is formed to determine which of the two species it must employ. The formation of the column by the flank, which I will call “dividing a battalion into column” because of the figure of its movement, in effect consists of dividing the battalion by platoon or by division according to the front that one wishes to give to the column. It is executed by the right or by the left, by means of quarter-conversions; I have already mentioned this in the preceding chapter, and it is incidentally well-known that it is useless to speak of it at greater length. The formation of the column by the front, I will call “ploying the battalion in column” because of the figure of its movement, [which] requires that I enter into greater detail, because no work of tactics has yet made mention of it. It may be executed in three manners: by the right, by the left, and by the center, or to the front, to the rear, and to the front and rear simultaneously. Each of these manners will be made according to the circumstances and the situation of the route that the battalion must traverse.1

1 I must repeat that I apply all the following maneuvers to the current formation of our infantry; thus, it is a question here of battalions divided into eight platoons and four divisions, having a company of grenadiers on one wing and a company of chasseurs on the other. But it will soon be found that all these maneuvers will apply with the same facility to any formation; this makes them worthy.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_014

First Example Diagram V, Figure 2 Battalion forming in column on the right When a battalion, being of the right or the left of a regiment, must form in column by platoon on the right in such a manner that the right of the battalion will be its head, the major will command:2 1. “On the right, form the column” This command will serve as the warning. 2. “To the right” At this command, the first platoon does not budge; all the others will make a right. 3. “March, march” At this command, the grenadier company moves quickly by the flank step ahead of the first platoon by taking the head of the column. In the battalions that are formed by the left, it will be the chasseur company that will make the movement.3 All the platoons4 that have made a right form themselves in march order by the double-step to go to place themselves behind the first platoon, the one behind the other and in the same order that they observed en bataille. As all the platoons form by moving at the same time, their dislocation is easy to imagine; it is executed by each soldier, as soon as he has performed his right and without waiting for a command, throwing himself briskly outside of the side where the battalion must march in such a manner as to break the head of the three ranks into files about three paces apart; the second, third, and fourth man, and 2 All of these commands are made almost without interval. This must be a general rule for all maneuver commands when their execution does not require it. 3 The grenadier and chasseur companies will be assumed, in all the column’s ployments and deployments, to be part of the division or platoon that they support, and they will consequently follow all the movements of these divisions; that is to say, in the ployments of the column, they will place themselves at the head or at the end of the aforementioned columns, and, in deployments, they will range themselves to the right or to the left of the battalion in the same way they will be formed without having been given specific commands to, in either case. 4 Each platoon or division will always be designated by a numeral any time that it will be given a particular command. This precaution, which will be a general rule in all maneuvers, is important, to remove all uncertainty from the soldier and to make up for his inattention. Thus, I have numbered all of the divisions or platoons of the battalion, which can be seen in Diagram V Figure 1.

Formations in Column

diagram v

89

Formations in column

so on to the other wing, should make somewhat less of a movement, dislocate a little less, being sufficient that this movement forms the platoon in a way so as to more easily follow a diagonal direction. The platoons will then march forward and describe lines more or less diagonal relative to the depth of rank that they take in the column. It is to each platoon commander to regulate his point of view and direct his march by it. At the moment that the first file of the right of the second platoon will arrive behind the first file of the right of the first [platoon], the officer who

commands it will cry, “halt front;” then, the commander of the third platoon will cry the same, and thus successively each platoon commander when the first file will arrive at the height of the first file of the platoon that precedes it. The column thus formed will serve for the march, for the attack, or for the retreat; it only remains to set it into motion, whether at the double-step or the route step and with some distances between the platoons and the ranks that will be judged necessary relatively to the objective that it must accomplish.

90 Second Example Diagram V, Figure 3 Battalion formed in column on the left When a battalion of the right or the left of a regiment must form in column on the left in such a manner that its right will be its head, the major will command: 1. “On the left, form the column” This command will serve as the warning. 2. “To the left” At this command, the eighth platoon does not budge; all the others will make a left. 3. “March, march” All the platoons that made a left will form in march order at the redoubled step and post themselves ahead of the eighth platoon in the same order as they were en bataille. At the moment that the first file of the left of the seventh platoon will arrive ahead of the first file of the eighth, the officer who commands it will command “halt front,” and thus successively all the other platoon commanders.5 Third Example Diagram V, Figure 4 Battalion formed in column on the center When a column will wish to form in column on the center, it will form itself in front of and behind at the same time. This movement is no more than one composed of the two preceding maneuvers and executed in the following manner: 1. “On the center, form the column” This command will serve as the warning. 2. “To the right and the left” At this command, the fifth platoon will not budge, but the four platoons that are found at the right will make a left, and the three of the left, a right. 3. “March, march” At this command, all the platoons that made a right and a left will form themselves in march order and will go to place themselves, being aware of those that made a left in front of the fifth platoon in the same order that they marched and maintaining two paces’ distance between them, and those that made a right will go to place themselves behind the same platoon in the same order and with the same distances.6 Of the three column formations, the last is the promptest, and consequently must be preferred, provided that 5 For a greater detail, see what is explicated in the preceding maneuver. 6 For the maneuver, see the preceding examples.

chapter viii

it is not prevented by circumstances or the nature of the terrain. It is clear that all the different column formations explicated above will be executed with the same facility by divisions as by platoons. It would only be a question of making relative changes in the commands and the maneuvers; this is so simple that we do not need to stop. It is also clear that these columns may be formed by the triple-step as by the double-step, and with more battalions than just one. The column being formed, it can serve for attacking the enemy, for maneuvering, or for taking a route. We successively examine the manner of employing it for each of these three objects. § II

Column Formed with the Design of Attacking the Enemy

In what case might it be necessary and advantageous to attack the enemy in column? It is when the enemy is behind an entrenchment or in some other post whose natural or artificial flanks necessarily reduce to attacking salients and not their front; it is when, not being able to debouch on the enemy by a route, one is forced to assemble the troops on this debouche and arrive by a single passage; finally, it is when, in an entrenchment or a firm post, one wishes to make a sortie against an attacking enemy that is already thrown into disorder by the failure of their attack. What is the advantage of the column order in these circumstances? It is not at all, as many people believe, the shock force produced by the exact pressure of the ranks and the files, because I have already proven in my discussion on the deep order that this exact pressure does not take place between active and thinking individuals to the point of forming a corps without interstices and capable of acquiring the combined force of the product of its mass and movement. However, whether someone flatters himself to approach this chimerical pressure or allows himself to be guided to it by routine, like so many other things, here is how all attacks in column are formed. One stirs; one approaches the enemy; one cries “close, close” to the soldiers. The mechanical and sheep-like instinct that carries every man to throw himself on his neighbors, because he believes by this to place himself out of danger, only carries the execution of this command too far; the soldiers thus press together, the ranks confounding themselves; soon, with the exception of the front rank and the exterior files on the wings that preserve their liberty of movement, the column forms nothing more than a tumultuous mass, incapable of maneuvering. Should the head and flanks of

Formations in Column

this column be battered by a lively fire, should the first effort not surmount the obstacles that it encounters, the officers will no longer be able to make themselves heard; there are no more distances between the divisions; the dazed soldier fires into the air; the mass swirls, disperses itself, and will not be able to be rallied for a quite-long distance. However, some of these attacks succeed, because the enemy defends weakly; because it is frightened by this mass of men that comes against it; [or] because the heads of the columns, being always composed of elite troops, penetrate and clear the route, but, carrying the entrenchment, the mass, surprised by its success, can no longer maintain order, and it is no longer in a state to deploy and extend itself. What if the enemy brings fresh troops into range? They march against it [and] rout it, and it recommences with new freshness. I demand of all the old officers if this is not the tableau of the majority of attacks that they have seen made in column. Read the details of the Battle of Neerwinden in Feuquières; he recounts the effects of this disorder whose causes I have demonstrated, but this disorder need not arrive if one wishes to reflect on it and found the conduct of these sorts of attacks on principles.7 I repeat that the advantages of the order in column consist not in the exact pressure of the ranks and files but [rather] in the continual succession of efforts of the divisions ranged the one behind the others and succeeding rapidly on a point of attack; thus, covered by the divisions that precede them, they neither see obstacles nor hardly take fire. This consists of [the fact that] the column, having a small front, may be carried against salients without having to expose its fronts. Compare the direction that a 7 [This passage is Guibert’s most damning indictment of the deep order and of attack columns in general, an attack that would be sustained over the next decade as they fell out of favor. It also describes the French infantry attack at Rossbach; see Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 94–112. Antoine de Pas, marquis de Feuquières, was an officer in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He served in the wars of Louis XIV, most notably in the War of the League of Augsburg, where he assisted in the French victory at the Battle of Neerwinden in 1693. He died in 1711, leaving manuscripts for a work of military theory. Those were collected in a bewildering array of publications that first began to appear in 1730; the closest to an early definitive edition is Mémoires contenants ses maximes sur la guerre et l’application des exemples aux maximes, 4 Vols. (London: Dunoyer, 1736). The passage of which Guibert speaks may be found in Memoirs Historical and Military, Containing a Distinct View of all the Considerable States of Europe, 2 Vols. (London: Woodward, 1736), I:166–172. The battle should not be confused with the more famous Battle of Neerwinden fought in 1793 during the Wars of the French Revolution.]

91 supposed battalion in column forms to attack the angle of an entrenchment to that of a battalion ranged en bataille for this attack: the one would advance on the capital of the angle and be exposed only to some indirect and longrange fire; the other would be battered by a great quantity of fire that, even admitting that it have enough courage to advance to within a foot of the entrenchment, it would arrive there too diminished and too thinned to make an effort. Finally, the advantages of this order consist of giving confidence to the assailant and intimidating the attacked, [as] soldiers do not reason because they only see through the eyes of the machine, and, following this illusory organ, they attribute gain to the cause of the troop that appears to be the densest and unites the most men on the same point. This posed, the good proportion of an attack column must be no more than a division[’s] frontage and two battalions deep. A greater frontage would be useless, because it does not add to the effort, because fire is not needed in an attack of lively force, [and] because it is an act of walking under as much cover as possible on the extension of the capital of the salient, and that to extend further would be to mistakenly offer a greater target to the fire of the neighboring flanks. A greater depth would be just as prejudicial, because it would uselessly accumulate troops one behind the other, and, if the successive efforts of two battalions did not succeed, ten more battalions sent to support them would not be more fortunate and would only uselessly expose them to the fire of the flanks that, only imperfectly beating against the very small frontage of two battalions, would easily cross on points further behind on a deeper column. Thus, instead of forming attack columns of more than two battalions, as I have just illustrated, I would prefer to multiply them by attaching one to each salient and throwing scattered companies of chasseurs into the interval [between them] to occupy the entrenchment’s faces, diminishing the fire that they could use to protect the angle of attack and hazarding to penetrate via the parapets, if they are lightly defended. In the case where it would not be an entrenchment that I would attack, the elite tirailleurs would be equally occupied in the object of drawing the enemy’s fire, disrupting it, and linking the columns’ attack. These last will march to the attack at the double-step, to around two-hundred paces from the enemy; then they would form at the moderate triple-step so that they can then, at thirty paces from the entrenchment, run and carry it. The divisions never become a mêlée, and to this end, they must always maintain three paces of distance

92 between them and each have officers at their head and other officers along their flanks, the first to regulate movement, preventing the divisions from confounding themselves and to make those that precede advance, and the second to encourage and contain the soldier, because in a column, it is always by the wings that the fluctuation and swirling begins, symptoms of the subsequent flight. When the columns have beaten the enemy and carried the entrenchment, they will deploy right away to be in a state of pressing their advantage and to present a front to the [counter]attacks that the enemy may make. The chasseur companies will throw themselves ahead of them to cover this deployment and promptly seize all advantageous points like fosses, ravines, hedges, or houses that will give them protection, because, I do not believe I can repeat enough, it is the occupation of points that can give flanks or reverses to the enemy, on which depends almost all affairs of posts. If the mission given to the columns does not carry them beyond the maintaining of the post taken from the enemy, and if it is dangerous to carry beyond it, they must remain inside the entrenchment, placing it between themselves and the enemy, and promptly, if there is time, creating flanks ahead of the aforementioned entrenchment by means of some timbers or abatis, or simply some obstacles in the form of redans. The cords on stakes that I proposed to give to the infantry will be of excellent usage in these sorts of occasions; in a moment, one will be able to form a mobile defense while waiting for the shovel and the pickaxe to make it more solid. If one fears being vigorously and successfully attacked by the enemy, one must not neglect to promptly destroy the redans, hooks, hedges, or abatis that serve as the flanks of the entrenchment and to form behind them if one cannot destroy them, or, if it will be possible and more advantageous, to employ their debris to create flanks against them. Some of these principles are written in many military works [and] some are not; I owe the latter to the counsel of a European general officer who perhaps best understood the usage that must be made of infantry in sieges and in affairs of posts,8 because no one has seen more and with more sangfroid and reflection.9 All appeared essential to 8 Noël-Jourda, comte de Vaux. Two traits of his military career will suffice for the elegy of a man of war, and they are only sketched here: he commanded in Göttingen during the winter of 1760–1761, and he has just made Corsica submit. 9 [Vaux was a generation older than Guibert, having fought in the War of the Austrian Succession and Seven Years War. The latter conflict provides the example Guibert cites. Göttingen was an important forward position for the French army in Germany during the Seven Years War. French lines of supply and communication

chapter viii

me to place under the eyes of my readers to establish a theory of the manner of employing attack columns. This theory is more necessary for the French than any other nation. They excel by their impetuosity in attacks of lively strength, but too often their indiscipline and their ignorance snatch victory from their valor. § III

Column Formed for Maneuvering within Range of the Enemy

It is advantageous in many cases to form in column to execute a movement with the greatest convenience, speed, or surety. 1st If one is obliged to retire before a cavalry corps, then the column forms in march order at the double-step, leaving three paces of interval between each of its divisions, having the tirailleurs behind and on the flanks to divert harassers and protect its march. If the enemy cavalry approaches to charge the column, it stops, closes its divisions, makes front on four sides, recalls its tirailleurs to rejoin the head or the tail, sets up its cords, and when it has repulsed the charge, resumes in march order by the previous order. In this case, I will allow only one division to form the front of my column, because my objective must be to rapidly march, and in all sorts of countryside, without changing order. If I have more than four battalions, I will form them into several columns that I will always march in the form of organ pipes, that is to say, the head of each column being at the same height as the tail of the neighboring column, whether by the right or by the left. In case where I would be menaced to be charged by cavalry, I will obliquely place the entire mass by a demiquarter-conversion, and I will dispose their heads in a manner such that each of them would be flanked, both travelled north from Frankfurt through Kassel and Göttingen, when it was in French possession. The campaign of which Guibert speaks took place at the close of the 1760 campaign, which saw French forces under Castries fend off an advance by Ferdinand of Brunswick. Vaux, commanding Göttingen, successfully defended the city against Ferdinand’s army with only 5,000 men, preventing disaster at the end of the campaign. See Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 306–308. Following the war, Choiseul placed Vaux in command of the French forces in Corsica, overseeing the pacification campaign. Guibert likely spent a great deal of time with him on the island while he was forming the Corsican Legion and drafting the General Essay on Tactics. Vaux was later in consideration for Secretary of State for War in the mid-1770s; see Guibert to Lespinasse, 18 October 1775, in The Love Letters of Mlle de Lespinasse to and from the Comte de Guibert, 396–401. Guibert apparently had angered Vaux: “is it not clever of me to have quarreled with him?” After being passed over for Saint-Germain, Vaux continued his career, dying just before the outbreak of the Revolution.]

Formations in Column

in front and behind, by the face of the neighboring column. The cords that I have proposed will be set up around these columns, supposing at most four battalions each, and the cannon placed at the angles, firing solid shot or cartridge according to the attack disposition that the enemy will make.10 This defense is seen in Diagram VI. The enemy being repulsed, I will reform my columns in march order in the same order that they were in, and, if the countryside becomes of a nature to prevent me from marching in several columns, then those that will not be able to find debouches will join with and abut the column that is ahead of them, to then renew their distances when the countryside opens and in fear of some new effort of the enemy cavalry. With this disposition of columns, mutually protected and flanked by their fire, there is no plain that I would not dare to cross before cavalry, no matter how numerous it was. It confirms what I have already advanced, that the battalions, whether in column or en bataille, must be considered as pieces of living fortification relative to the action of musketry, and consequently, all the intelligence of their defensive order consists of knowing how to dispose them in a manner that augments and assures the effect of their fire by simple and rapid movements. We continue to examine the circumstances in which it is necessary that a troop maneuver in column, which will be 2nd when, in the preparatory dispositions that lead to the formation of an order of battle, it will be necessary to carry onto the terrain of the deployment [by] refusing or reinforcing some part, menacing the enemy on a point, [or] attacking them on another. It will be 3rd when, the order of battle being taken, it will be necessary to carry the troops to a point or to one wing or the other and make some considerable changes in their aforementioned order. In the tactics that all the troops of Europe had thirty years ago and that a part of these troops still have today, the movements that formed an army in column or en bataille, being so lengthy and so complicated, required entire hours to make a general disposition; it required taking their order of battle quite far from the enemy, [and] once this order was formed, one did not dare to hazard changes in it for fear of overwhelming it. At present, or to put it better, from now on, if the tactics that I expose are adopted, the movements that form the troops in column or en battaille being simple, rapid, 10

[The exercise Guibert describes resembles what would later be called the infantry square. Although it did not formally exist yet, many contemporary armies used similar formations, especially when a battle required it. See Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory.]

93 [and] applicable to all terrain, the order of battle can be formed as late and as close to the enemy as is possible, because columns are much easier to move than lines and because dispositions not needing to be unmasked until the moment of the attack, the enemy will not have time to parry them; finally, the order of battle being formed, one will know how to execute interior maneuvers, make changes, and make unproven dispositions succeed alongside the primitive disposition, and, if I may dare to express myself thus, “counter-maneuvers:” I call by this name movement occasioned by a movement of the enemy and supporting the goal of balancing them or preventing their effect. I will dive more deeply, in treating the movements of armies, into this grand revolution that must take place in modern tactics. In all the circumstances of maneuver indicated above, my columns will be formed by division and of any number of battalions that one will judge appropriate; however, I will observe in regard to this number that there is a proportion it must follow, as the columns, too-multiplied and too-feeble, may be put in a position of embarrassment by debouches and thrown into too much complication in their movements: too strong, and they will become less maneuverable and too slow to form en bataille. All the times that maneuver columns will be moving, they will march at the double-step, and sometimes at the running step. If they march with the intention of forming en bataille by the front, that is to say, on the alignment of one of the divisions that compose them, they will only leave a pace’s distance between the divisions, [in order] to be deployed sooner. If they march by the flank and with the project of forming en bataille on the parallel along which they range, the divisions that compose them will observe distances equal to their front between them, so that when they arrive on their ground, the column being spread along it, the divisions will have no more than quarter-conversions to make to form en bataille. The maneuver columns must perfectly know how to march at the same height; to observe their determined distances between them; to direct their heads to the indicated points and to take in totality the direction of their heads; [and] to follow perpendicular directions and diagonal directions at different degrees of obliquity. The first division having broken off one of its wings by a light conversion movement, all the others must know, in continuing to march, how to form themselves as promptly as possible on the files of this new direction; if the conversion movement is considerable, and the column must describe more than a demi-quarter of a circle, then it will halt, close its divisions, and do it in totality. The battalions

diagram vi

Infantry disposition in column against cavalry

94 chapter viii

Formations in Column

and regiments consequently exercise by what I have said above, and I will then show the advantages that one will draw from the extreme aptitude of mobility and flexibility that the columns will have acquired. § IV

Column in March Order

The march is the objective for which one forms troops in column most often. I said at the commencement of this chapter that the formation of a column may only be made on the front or on the flank; in the same way, the march of a column may only be in one of these two directions, and consequently, marches must always be distinguished into “front marches” and “flank marches.” When the march must be [a] front [march], the troops must ploy into column. When the march must be [a] flank [march], the troops must be broken into column. I have explained the difference between these two formations above. In either case, columns must be formed by platoons, if it is possible. All the march debouches in armies must be opened relative to this frontage proportion. A smaller front will elongate the column too much; a larger front will make the march openings too difficult, obligating them to double frequently and certainly fatiguing the soldier; thus, while on route march, one may allow some liberty of pace, it is still subject to a certain order that requires attention on one’s part, and this attention must increase in proportion to the extent of the front. The column being formed, it will form in march order by a free and natural step at the command “route step;” the ranks will observe two paces of distance between them to give the soldiers necessary ease and liberty. If the march is [a] front [march], the platoons will observe only three paces of distance between them, because, the object being to deploy on the right or the left of the column, and most often on the head, it is necessary that, to make this movement quite rapid, the column have the least depth possible. On the contrary, if the march is [a] flank [march], the platoons will observe distances equal to two-thirds of their front between them, which, with the paces left between the ranks, will be their entire distances. They will observe these distances because, having to form en bataille by quarter-conversions and on the length of the direction that follows the column, the depth of the aforementioned column must be equal to the terrain that it must occupy en bataille. There are many circumstances where the terrain may force the troops to form in march order in another manner.

95 1st If a battalion, a regiment, or a line of infantry en bataille and having to execute a front march cannot ploy into columns, whether by the nature of the terrain it will find in front of and behind its front, or by rapport of the situation with the route or the time that the movement must cost, then the battalion, the regiment, or the line will break into column by quarter-conversions to carry itself vis-à-vis its march debouches and to enter them by new, successive quarter-conversions. This case may commonly present itself to the army, the troops being formed en bataille at the head of their camp. 2nd If the nature of the countryside renders the routes so narrow that one cannot march through them by platoon, one will form them in column by section, by demisection, and similarly if necessary by three files or by doubled file, according to the most constant width of the route that one must cover. This sort of march by three and by six, which an army must practice only when it is forced to, is perhaps particularly accommodated to an advanced guard or a small corps of troops marching in a country where there is not an open route. It may also usefully serve to pass a defile or a narrow bridge at the head of which it is necessary to form; the column thus formed by three or six, having only then, [in order] to form en bataille on exiting the defile, to turn to the right or the left following the side on which it wishes to form, extending itself along the new line of the front, doubling its ranks and march if it is on six, and making front. Finally, it is of little importance that the troops form themselves in march order by [a specific] manner provided that they reunite, by the shortest and the easiest road, at the entrance of their debouche, or on the debouche, in an order proportionate to its most constant width, and that they then march with the distances prescribed above relative to the respective differences of the “front march” and the “flank march.” All of this chapter should be read with reflection; it serves as an introduction to the theory of formations en bataille that will be the subject of the next chapter, and consequently to grand tactics, which is the science of an army’s march and battle orders. I have reduced all the columns, whether march, attack, or maneuver, to only one, which is applicable to all objectives. I have simplified the formation of this column so much that there is no militaire for whom the advantages of this change will not become incontestable evidence. Today, our troops have five or six manners of forming in march order, all lengthy and processional. They have a particular formation [for a column for the attack and

96

chapter viii

another]11 for a column for the retreat. These last two are so strangely complicated that it is agreed that they are impractical in war.12 Finally, I have posed principles on the 11 12

[This portion of the sentence is missing from 1804 edition but present in the 1772 edition.] [Many contemporary theoretical works, particularly those of the mid-century, spent many hundreds of pages discussing

proprieties of the column order, on the circumstances in which it must be used, and on the means of employing it. No other military work has done this, despite how much has been written about the column ordinance. the minutiae Guibert describes, especially those by Folard and Mesnil-Durand. See Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 26–79, for an effective summary.]

chapter ix

Formations en bataille In the preceding chapter, I distinguished two manners of forming the battalion in column relative to the two directions that it might take on its march. The movements contrary to those by which the column will be formed will give here two manners of reforming en bataille relative to the points where they must make front. The first, which I will call “reforming the column en bataille,” will consist of reforming the battalion en bataille by quarter-conversions, by platoon or by division, according to the front on which it will be broken, in such a manner that, when it will be formed, it will find itself making face along one or the other flank of its march and on the length that it occupied in column. The second manner, which I will name “deploying the column,” will consist of deploying by the same mechanism that it will be ployed in such a manner as to form en bataille by a single side of the column or by the two sides at the same time and to a height of whichever division of the column that will be advantageous to choose for [the] point of alignment. In whatever manner that the column has formed, it may form en bataille by either movement according to circumstances. In the preliminary preparation of the first, there must only be the necessary distances between the platoons or divisions of the battalion to form en bataille by quarter-conversions, and, in the second, on the contrary, the divisions must be closed and do not preserve more than the distance of a pace between them so that the column thus united and occupying little depth will be more facile and more prompt to deploy. This will be clarified by the following details. § I

Re-Formation of the Column en bataille

This movement is so clear [and] so [well-]known that I need not extend myself concerning it. It will take place at the end of the flank march or at the end of the front march, if unforeseen circumstances oblige the battalion to make face on the flanks of its march; in the latter case, the platoons or divisions will be given distances equal to their front so that they are formed in a state of executing their movements. It is indifferent for the execution of this movement that the column finds itself formed by sections, by platoons, or by divisions, the fractional parts of the battalion only

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_015

needing to make quarter-conversions to form on the line of the front, in the same way as open [turning] barriers are only turned on their pivot to close spaces equal to their length. § II

Deployment of the Column

Here are all the wisest, the most susceptible, and yet the simplest combinations, whether to be conceived or executed; we owe them to the King of Prussia; they are spread from his armies to all the troops of Europe; they are all practiced today, but his alone know how to draw the greatest and truest part of them. Why is this? It is [because] this prince commands them himself, and he knows how to handle them. Put a lever and a counterweight into the hands of mediocre mechanics, [and] they will laboriously combine a little static effort; the same means handled by Archimedes will produce miracles.1 The preceding chapter has shown how the battalion is ployed into column. The same mechanism deploys it, but we first pose some preliminary principles, without knowledge of which one cannot have the intelligence of deployments. 1. Any battalion that must be formed en battalion by the front, being in column, will execute this movement by means of deployment. 2. The deployment will be executed [via] the column being formed by divisions, the divisions being closed to a distance of a pace and deployed by the flank in the same manner as they were ployed in column. When this maneuver was brought to France, it was called “the order of the drawer,” because the effect of the divisions was like that of drawers that open and close. 3. The deployment will be executed on the right or on the left of the column, or on the right and on the left at the same time; that is to say that the column might be formed en bataille to the same height of either flank of any of the divisions of which it is composed. 4. I have said that any battalion that must deploy will form by division and at closed distance. To achieve this, 1 [Archimedes was a citizen of Syracuse during the third century BCE. He was responsible for many important discoveries in science, including buoyancy, and engineering advances, including in military science.]

98 if it is in march column and consequently by platoons, the platoons will double on each other, and the divisions will then close, leaving only one pace of distance between themselves. This will be the preparatory and preliminary movement of the deployment. A front of one division must be given to the front of the column, because by this, the column is formed on a quite-small depth, and at the same time, the divisions have no fronts so extended as to be susceptible to disorder and slowness in their deployment. In effect, although it appears at first that, in forming the column by demibattalion, some time will be gained in the execution of the deployment, the column will then occupy less than half the depth; one will acknowledge, if one reflects on it, that the demi-battalions, having too great a front, will become too heavy and too slow in their deployment. This is how, in the calculations of the evolutions, reflection must fall on objects and examine them on all facets. 5. I said that the column can deploy to the height of either of the flanks of any of the divisions of which it is composed; I will [now] render this possibility sensible. When the column must deploy, the officer who commands it will throw a coup d’œil on the terrain and will consider the circumstance in which he finds himself to see to what height each division, and on which side of this division, it is necessary and advantageous for him to deploy the column, whether in relation to the countenance and disposition of the terrain or in relation to the object of the maneuver. He will designate which division of his command that he will choose. This division will serve as [the] point of alignment; that is to say, the other divisions must align themselves on it as they deploy, and his choice of this division will indicate to the column if it must deploy by the right or by the left, or by the right and the left at the same time. For example, when circumstances will require that a column formed of a battalion deploy entirely on the right and to the height of the first division, the first division will be designated to be the division of alignment; it will also be so when the column must deploy entirely on the left and to the same height. The second division will be named the division of alignment when two divisions of the battalion must form en bataille on the right and one on the left; it will be the same [but] vice-versa when two divisions must form en bataille on the left and one on the right. The third division will be the division of alignment when two divisions must form en bataille on the right and one to the left or when two divisions must form en bataille to the left and one to the right.

chapter ix

Finally, the fourth division will be the division of alignment when three divisions must form en bataille to its height on the right or on the left. In all cases, it is indifferent that the battalion be placed in column by the right or by the left. 6. I believe I observe that by “first, second, third, and fourth division,” I do not always mean the divisions that are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, in order of battle, counting from the right and following the order in which they will be ranged, because it is possible that circumstance have constrained [them] to form in column by the left and consequently place the 4th division at the head and the 1st division at the tail. What I call in a column “first, second, third, and fourth division” are in effect the first, second, third, and fourth counting from the head of the column and according to the rank that they take in it. In the same way, when I will designate the first, second, third, fourth, or tenth battalion of a column, I will simply mean the first, second, third, or fourth, counting from the head of the column. This leads me to propose a grand and durable change in our tactics: the reversal of the prejudice [against] inversion, [a] prejudice accredited by several centuries and by the current practice of all of the troops of Europe; [a] prejudice reckoned puerile and harmful by all thinking militaires, but no militaire has yet dared to undermine it because of its antiquity and the false point of honor that augments its strength.2 Here are my reasons; it seems to me that they leave nothing for the partisans of this old error to respond to. All the fusilier companies of a battalion have the same constitution. The battalion has one elite company on each of its wings, but to ameliorate the vices of their constitution that admit only one, it is evident that generals, at the commencement of the war, do not fail to create another that they call the “chasseur company” or some other name 2 [“Inversion” in the Fourth Edition of the AF Dictionary means a grammatical “transposition, changing the order in which words are ordinarily ranged in discourse.” Not until the Sixth Edition does it receive a military definition: the “formation en bataille by principles contrary to the general principles.” Guibert speaks of the contemporary practice of deployments that required the most prestigious unit to be on the formation’s right, with each unit deploying next to it in descending order of rank. In the works of the “makers of systems,” this “prejudice” evolved into a system of numbering units and retaining their position when they deployed from march to battle order, which required a series of convoluted maneuvers to achieve. When Guibert speaks of dispensing with the prejudice against inversion, he is speaking of allowing units to deploy anywhere in the battle order regardless of rank, prestige, system, or position in the march order. As obvious as this change might be to a modern reader, it was one of the major barriers that the eighteenth-century French army had to overcome to enact reform.]

Formations en bataille

and that will in effect be a second grenadier company; thus it should be indifferent to him that the actual left of the battalion en bataille becomes the head of the column if circumstances require, and similarly, if it is necessary, it becomes by deployment the right of the battalion in its new order of battle. I admit that, for the primitive and fundamental order, the grenadier company will occupy the right of the battalion; not that I regard the right as more honorable than the left, although for some years it has had possession of this prerogative, but because it must begin from a fixed point, and, because our eyes are accustomed to seeing it at the right, I would like for it to remain there. I consent that the company with the oldest captain should then be placed on the right of the battalion, then the one with the second-[oldest] on the left, and thus successively the third and the fourth, alternating to the right and to the left in such a manner that the least-old is at the center. But in admitting this current order such that this alternative position of even and odd numbers does not bring disorder to a place that should have only simplicity, I divide my battalion into eight platoons or four divisions, not counting the grenadier and chasseur companies; I call the platoon or division of the right “first platoon” or “first division,” and thus following up to the fraction of the left of the battalion that I call “eighth platoon” or “fourth division.” How would I form the battalion in column? I would give the head to the right or to the left indifferently and according to what circumstances require, thus naming the platoon or the division that is at the head of this column “first platoon” or “first division,” and thus the others according to their rank. How might I re-form it en bataille? I would re-form without embarrassing myself by my old right’s becoming my left and my left my right. How might I deploy it? I would deploy to the right or to the left by whichever division of my column it is, and it would be the same to me if this movement places to my right the division at the head or the tail of my column. “But,” one may say to me, “you have destroyed your primitive order; you confuse the ideas of the soldier; you make it such that, when he must form or rally, he will not know anymore where to place himself.” Here is my response. 1st When the battalion must form at the head of its camp or rally, being totally broken, it has its primitive order that serves it as a rule to which it habitually takes, and which, [although] derogating from it sometimes when circumstances require, I have not destroyed. 2nd When my battalion will be what we like to call inverted, that is to say, when that which is to the right in the primitive order becomes the left, would the soldiers, the ranks,

99 [and] the files have changed places? Would each soldier not always have next to him, in front of him, and behind him, the same men? Are the companies themselves not always in the same order, the first next to the third, the third next to the fifth, etc.? It will only arrive that they will be to the right or to the left of each other according to the maneuver that formed the battalion. 3rd This reasoning would subject me, because I have formed my battalion in a primitive order by the right, to always maneuver in this order, [and] to not move to my right, thus rendering my movements longer [and] more fatiguing and carrying me to ground where I do not wish to be. What could be said of the voluntary maladroitness of a man who makes use of only one arm by chaining the other? The prejudice [against] inversion thus destroyed in battalion maneuvers, I will now attack it with yet more advantage in a regiment and in an army, because it is in proportion to the augmentation of mass and the complication of the machines that the defects of simplicity and intelligence in the parts hinder and slow the mechanism. I wish to abridge this discussion and give here only that which concerns the movements of battalions, but a connection so close [and] so tight binds all these principles that I cannot show one link without making the entire chain visible. The regiment, composed of two, three, or four battalions, will form itself in its primitive order, the first battalion to the right, then the second, then the third and the fourth, in such a manner that the last will be on the left, but this does not prevent, when circumstances require it, placing the battalion of my left at the head of my column and giving after that the right of the line to the first battalion in forming myself en bataille, or else, my column being formed by the right, deploying it in its entirety in advance on the right in such a manner that the battalion of the tail is on the right wing. With regard to armies, I will preserve the usage of placing the oldest regiments on the right and left of lines and the youngest at the center in the primitive order of battle or encamping. It is good that the prerogative of seniority of regiments subsists; it would mostly be of a great utility if it were measured by merit and actions rather than by the date of the creation of the corps; it would exercise emulation; it would nurture the spirit of courage and invincibility that animated the Roman legions. Finally, it is reasonable that this prejudice, which signifies nothing between companies and battalions of the same corps, exists relative to the regiments that are corps separated and susceptible to being encouraged between themselves by all the industry of the legislation. It is good that it had

100 made the wings of the order of battle the place of honor, [as] they are the most active and most exposed parts of it. But I would that they not be subject to this order when it is contrary to or slows the movement of the troops; I would that, in column formations, all the times that the route will be nearer to the battalion of the left than to that of the right, that the former will have the head of the march. I would even more so in the formations in order of battle before the enemy that, if one can outflank the enemy, occupy convenient terrain, or finally procure some advantage in placing to the right of the regiment that which occupies the left in the primitive order, one does not hesitate to make this inversion. Who could have conceived the slowness, the countermarches, the useless fatigues, the missed opportunities, the false positions taken, [and] the painful and puerile combinations that produced the prejudice against inversion? Is he crazy? All the false and complicated theory of Marshal Puységur makes way for a simple and facile theory.3 Rapid and decisive movements will be the fruit of this simplicity; finally, it can be said with truth in seeing the untangling of the chaos of the old tactics: rerum novus incipit ordo [the new order begins]. This long and important digression has delayed me from the exposition of the principles of deployments. I invite my readers to return to them and resume that lesson. 7. The division of alignment already being in the place that it must occupy in the battalion when it will be en bataille, it will make no movement to the right or to the left during the deployment. If the deployment is made on a fixed pivot, it will halt until the deployment is finished and the battalion ordered to march forward. If the deployment is made by marching forward, the division of alignment will remain marching at the ordinary step while the others will deploy at the double- or triple-step; they will continue it until they are aligned on the division of alignment, after which they will return to the same step as it. In the second case, the division of alignment will observe to march straight ahead and not to lose terrain on its right or left; it will also observe that neither of its wings will outpace the other, nor fall behind. 8. Deployment will be on a fixed pivot or in marching forward according to the circumstances and the object of the maneuver; thus, for example, if the column deploys on the last division with a view towards occupying a position

3 [See Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 16–26.]

chapter ix

to the rear, it is clear that the last division, which will be the division of alignment, will not march forward. The marching deployment has the advantage of the terrain it gains in forming itself, but that of the fixed pivot is more facile, more favorable to alignment, and thus more applicable to great maneuvers, where it is essential not to gain some steps forward, but [it is] to make sure that all the columns will deploy in concert and [to be sure] that the line finds itself aligned after its deployment. 9. At the moment that the column will deploy, the battalion’s aide-major should go to the division that must commence the deployment to command the mass on the line of alignment, preventing the division that find itself on the wing from taking its point of view in front of or behind the point that it must occupy and remedying the irregularities that the defects of the coup-d’œil or the intelligence of the commanders of the divisions may occasion. If the column deploys both by the right and by the left, the sous-aide-major will go at the same time to the other flank to direct the movement of the other part of the battalion. 10. The deployment must always form the division en bataille in the same rank that they occupied in column; that is to say, the first division must always find itself to the right or the left of the second, and thus the others, according to the side by which they made their deployment. The principles of deployment thus being conceived, one will see how the execution of this maneuver is simple and rapid. It only requires educated officers and a surety of coup-d’œil on the part of those who command it. 2.1 Preliminary Disposition If the column is in route march, the officier-major will sound a drum roll; at this signal, the soldiers will carry arms, the ranks will close, and the entire column will quit the route step and form itself at the ordinary step. The officier-major will next form the divisions. The divisions being formed, he will command “close the column.” This command will serve as the warning. Next, “march, march;” then all the divisions will close at the double-step, one on the other, leaving between them only a pace of distance. The first division will not budge, or to better say, it will be the grenadier or chasseur company that will be at the head of the column, and the first division of fusiliers that follows it will close on it, to the distance prescribed above. When each division will be closed, it will halt and align itself. The column being thus disposed for the deployment, the battalion commander will determine and command the maneuver relative to the following examples.

Formations en bataille

diagram vii Deployments of a battalion column

101

102 First Example Diagram VII, Figure 6 Battalion deployed forward and by the left on its first division Here is supposed a column of a battalion formed either by the right or by the left and obliged to deploy entirely on the left; by consequence of this necessity and of the principles exposed above, the commander will make the following maneuver: 1. “Deployment on a fixed pivot”4 This command will serve as the warning. 2. “Deploy forward on the first division of the left” At this command, the first division will halt, but the other divisions will make a left. The division commander will immediately place himself in advance of the first left file of his division so as to command it in its deployment. General rule: as soon as the commander will have indicated from which side the deployment must be made, the division commanders will place themselves outside of the first file of their division on the side from which it must deploy. 3. “March, march” At this command, all the divisions that made a left will form in march order at the double- or triple-step according to circumstances that will prescribe an acceleration in deployment speed. When the head of the second division will arrive on the left of the terrain that it must occupy alongside the division of alignment, the officer who commands it will command “halt” and then “front.” At this command, the second division will make a right and align itself promptly on the first, and if this division marches forwards, it will form at the same step as it. If the deployment is made on a fixed pivot, the second division will align itself parallel to the first by short and lively steps,5 the soldier observing to not advance his head past his shoulders and to keep quite square in his rank; all the other divisions will successively make the same maneuver according to the terrain that must contain them [and] alongside the division that they must support. The following rule will develop the interior details of the conduct of this deployment.

4 If the deployment must be made on the march, the officier-major will command “deployment on the march” as the warning, and thus at the third command, the division of alignment will form in march order at the ordinary step. See what was said in principle 7. 5 [Guibert’s phrasing, “courts et vifs,” echoes Friedrich’s usage of the same concept. See Robert Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to the Third Reich (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 34–103.]

chapter ix

General rule common to all deployments: the divisions will observe in deploying to march on a slight bias, knowing that those that will deploy to the right will gain terrain on their left and those that will deploy to the left will gain terrain on their right in such a manner that all the divisions, marching thus by the flank, will observe between them one pace of distance and always sensibly supporting the division that approaches their terrain, the directions that they follow being more or less diagonal according to the point that they will occupy on the line of alignment. The officer commanding each division will pay attention to not passing this line and to not taking more terrain than is necessary to contain his division; to being stopped and closed by the command “second division halt,” two paces before arriving on the alignment; [and] to positioning himself immediately on the alignment, aligning himself on the officer of the neighboring division; then, being immobile and squarely formed before it, crying “front” to his division and then making them align quickly along the wing of the already-formed division. He will then observe to not abandon his place and his perfect immobility [in order] to return to the post that he might be in [if,] in the case of going to retake it to the right or to the left of his division, the division that succeeds him and goes to form next to him is not fully formed, because he must serve as [its] point of view, and, if I may express myself thus, the ranging pole of alignment to the commander of the next division, and thus the others.6 I have said that the column commander will determine the deployment’s degree of speed: it will ordinarily be at the double-step, but when it will be judged appropriate, it will be at the triple-step, and thus accelerated relative to the depth of the column and consequently to the terrain that the troops will occupy, relative to circumstances, to the proximity of the enemy, to the more-or-less urgent necessity of being formed, and to what the troops must do when they are en bataille. Theory does not need to give rules to intelligence, and if it wishes to give ignorance to them, ignorance will make false applications of it. It must only be observed that the more the step speed is augmented in these deployments, the less order and precision can be required in the march, and that in the same way, divisions marching at the double-step in their deployments do not need to cadence their steps, to lift 6 [Guibert’s writing is somewhat tortured, but the essence of the passage is that the current practice is for the officer to move to the right or left of his unit in order to dress it, but this practice should cease, as the officer must act as the ranging pole for the unit. The word he uses for ranging pole, jalon, denotes a piece of surveying equipment.]

103

Formations en bataille

their legs at the same time, or to exactly place their feet in the footstep of the preceding man. It must be a march that advances, that has some togetherness, and that does not confound the files. Finally, little import [is attached] to when the files open themselves and to when the division elongates a little, provided that the officer who commands it prevents the head from passing the goal where it must stop and that the tail, at the command “halt,” brusquely closes the necessary distance to make front and find itself en bataille. Here are some details that are neither minutiae nor indifferent; I have practiced them with reflection, and it is on them that depends the perfect and sure execution of the most interesting of all the tactical movements. Second Example Diagram VII, Figure 2 Battalion column deployed forward and by the right, on the first division Here suppose that a battalion column, formed by the right or by the left, is obliged by the nature of the terrain to deploy entirely on the right and to the height of the first division. One will command: 1. “Deployment on a fixed pivot (or marching)” 2. “Deploy forward on the first division to the right” 3. “March, march”7 Third Example Diagram VII, Figure 3 Battalion deploying by the left on the second division. Suppose the column is obliged to deploy two divisions to the left of the second division and one to the right; in this circumstance, one will thus command the maneuver: 1. “Deployment on a fixed pivot (or marching)” Warning 2. “On the second division, deploy first division to the right [and] all the others to the left” At this command, the second division will not budge; the first makes a right [and] the others a left. 3. “March, march” At this command, the divisions that made a right and a left form in march order, and when they will have arrived at their place to the right or to the left of the division of alignment, they make front, observing for the execution of these movements that which was said in the first example. 7 See the preceding example for the execution of these deployment commands, not having any difference between them other than that the movement is made by the right instead of being made by the left.

Fourth Example Diagram VII, Figure 4 Battalion deploying by the right on the second division Suppose the column is obliged to deploy two divisions to the right of the second and one to the left. In this circumstance, one will command: 1. “Deployment on a fixed pivot (or marching)” 2. “Deploy on the second division, first division to the left [and] the others to the right” 3. “March, march”8 These different examples suffice to make known how a battalion column would deploy equally on its third or fourth division. Figures 5 and 6 of Diagram VII indicate these movements. I have already also said enough above for one to know how to make the necessary changes in the commands and execution. One must sense the advantages that result from the facility of thus deploying a column in all ways and to the height of all the divisions that compose it. With this facility, more circumstances, more terrains that can embarrass: all will be subordinated to tactics, in the same way that tactics was once subordinated to everything. If doubts remain about what I advance, the following will clarify them. § III

Observations on Some Other Manners of Forming a Battalion en bataille

It is the mania of the exclusive that loses all the makers of systems [and] that misleads Folard and all his sectarians. Once formed in their opinion, they do not wish to learn of any other. Whatever the place, the case, [or] the weapons, they say, “use the order that I propose; it is proper for everything, it is the unique good, the absolute good, the good par excellence.” This reminds me of Regnard’s doctor, prescribing his pills for all ills.9 I seek to avoid this pitfall. The formations en bataille that I have exposed above may be applied to an infinity of local circumstances, or others 8 See the execution of these commands in the preceding example, which are the absolute inverse of them. 9 [Jean-François Regnard was one of the most eminent men of letters of Louis XIV’s reign, producing comic operas between the 1690s and around 1710. In 1730, his travelogue Le voyage en Laponie was published and became popular, feeding the Enlightenment-era obsession with travel literature. Guibert likely references the apothecary Clistorel from Regnard’s most famous play, Le légataire universel, who is employed by the elderly Geronte in lieu of a physician and prescribes cures (Guibert’s “pills”) for every ailment. See Jean-François Regnard, Œuvres complètes, 6 Vols. (Paris: Brière, 1823), IV:1–136.]

104 that present themselves in war, in great number. There may also be some where they may not serve; it is proper to search out these circumstances and to indicate the movements that they will require. For example, a march column is obliged to form en bataille unexpectedly at the mouth of a defile without being able to entirely debouche; it will execute its movement in the following manner. Each division, platoon, or section, following the front by which the defile will permit the column to march, will make on leaving it a right or a left following the side of the defile that it wishes to occupy; then, arriving at the right or the left of the chosen position, it will make front, and all the others will make the same, coming to support it. If it must occupy the two sides at the head of the defile, when the quarter-battalion or demi-battalion, following the nature of the terrain, has made, I suppose, its movement to the right to occupy the part of the position situated to the right of the debouche, the other divisions or platoons of the column will successively make a left to occupy the left part. In the case where the aforementioned column may be able to debouche completely from the defile, it would come out of it, reassemble itself by divisions and at closed distances, [and] then execute its deployment relative to the circumstances of the terrain and to the position that it would wish to take. Finally, if it would act to pass a bridge or a defile in front of which it would wish to find itself en bataille, it is clear that the movement can have only one object, from which no circumstance can [divert] it: this is to pass the bridge or the defile by continuing the march or to form en bataille after having passed it; thus it will be by the size of the defile or bridge, the nature of the terrain that will be found at its debouche, [and] the situation of the position that must be taken in advance of it that must determine the manner by which the movement must be executed. If the defile or bridge is large enough to pass a division, a platoon, or a section frontage, the battalion will form in column by division, platoon, or by section according to the requirements of the terrain, and when the bridge or defile is passed, it forms en bataille, or the march is continued according to the object that is to be accomplished. If the bridge or defile is narrow and can be passed only by a frontage of three, the battalion will march by the flank and re-form en bataille on one or the other side, or on both sides, of the debouche, extended along the position that it must occupy according to what I have said above, and then making front. Let us suppose that, after having passed the defile, the march must be continued and that the countryside is open; [the battalion] will be formed by

chapter ix

platoon or demi-platoon following the size of the subsequent route and will continue the march. Finally, what if the bridge or defile will permit a frontage of six? Is it necessary in debouching to present the troops to the enemy, and, favoring a musket fire made at the head of the debouche, to extend by the right or by the left, or to occupy a position [or] an entrenchment situated immediately at the head of the bridge? Then the two demi-battalions will be broken forward by the center and by three files in such a manner that the six files, without confounding each other, pass the bridge or defile, and then, at the head of the bridge or defile, the two divisions of the head of the column thus form themselves en bataille by extending along their terrain and by making front, and thus successively the other divisions separate themselves to the right and to the left at the head of the debouche and go to form en bataille alongside them. The Prussian troops often make use of movements by files, whether to pass a defile and form en bataille on the other side of the defile or to make changes in the disposition of an order of battle. It is in fact in some of these circumstances where the movements by files are convenient; it must thus be known how to execute them. A movement that may only be of service one time during a campaign? The troops must be instructed in it. Contrast, with care, all the maneuvers in their school that are useless in war, all “synonymous” maneuvers: I would express by this epithet all movement where the object might be accomplished by another already-learned maneuver [that is] more rapid, simpler, and applicable to more circumstances. § IV

Means That One May Employ to Deceive the Enemy as to the Strength of a Column and the Objective That It Must Accomplish

This will demonstrate how the tactics that I expose are not exclusive [and] how they know how to conform to the terrain [and] to circumstances, and depart, on some occasions, from established rules. I have said that a battalion broken into column, in wishing to form en bataille, will be obliged to observe, between its fractions, distances equal to their front and that, on the contrary, a battalion ployed in column will be placed en masse before the deployment, that is to say, without distances between its divisions; this is the fundamental and habitual principle. I will now explain how, to deceive the enemy, the inverse of this disposition must sometimes be taken. For example, in the front deployment, there is a column that I have interest in making appear [to have more

105

Formations en bataille

men than it really does] to the enemy; I would observe half-distance, whole distance, and even double-distance between its divisions; then, when my ruse will have produced its effect on the disposition of the enemy, or when I will judge it appropriate to deploy my column, I will close the distances, whether on the head of the column or the tail, and I will execute the deployment. Another time, a column must form en bataille on the parallel of its length, and it may be to my advantage to hide the true strength of this column from the enemy, in order, for example, to outflank them without their taking precautions against my design; I will close its distances, as if it must deploy; then, when its tail will have arrived, I suppose, to the left of the position that I wish to occupy, my last division will stop there, allowing the mass to advance until it has given up the necessary interval for its front, and then immediately form en bataille by a quarterconversion, the others doing so successively, the column depositing, if I may express myself thus, each division on the terrain that it must occupy and always continuing to close its march, either at the double- or triple-step, along the length of the position until all the divisions will be en bataille. This manner of reforming the column en bataille also has the advantages of it not being necessary for it to arrive on the terrain that it must occupy in forming en bataille and of not having to hold the two extremities of the position; the movement to form en bataille can commence at the moment that the tail of the column, becoming less deep because it has not kept any distance between divisions, has arrived on the point of one of the wings of the position. § V

General Principles to Observe for the Formation of Columns of Several Battalions en bataille

The movements that have formed a column of one battalion en bataille may, with the same facility, form one, several, or many battalions. If [the task] is to form en bataille by quarter-conversions, this maneuver will be executed [with] the column being of several battalions as [if it] were of one, and I have nothing to add to this other than what has been recommended above. If [the task] is to deploy, one may execute it to the height, and on one or the other flank of the division, of such battalion of the column that the commander of said column will judge appropriate to choose for the division of alignment, relative to the terrain and to other

circumstances. I must only repeat that, on this occasion, it would be of little embarrassment to carry the battalions of the head of the column to the left and those of the tail to the right if this inversion of the primitive order procures the advantage of outflanking the enemy or gains, in the maneuver, some precious instants. If several columns, marching at the same height, must deploy by a combined movement, the officer who commands each column must know the distance that he must have between his own column and those to his right and left. This distance will be calculated by the strength of the column and will be equal to the front that the troops who compose it must occupy after its deployment, and, if his column must form on more than one line, this distance must then be equal to the terrain that the troops destined to form the first line must occupy. If there is artillery of small caliber attached to the battalions,10 it will march in their intervals, and, at the moment of the preliminary dispositions for the formation en bataille, it will position itself on the flank of the column at the height of the head of each of the battalions to which it is attached. If the column forms en bataille by quarter-conversions, this artillery will find itself, by means of this, quite-naturally disposed in advance of the battalion intervals. If the column deploys, the pieces precede or follow the movement of the mass of their battalion in such a manner as to arrive at the same time as they [do] on the terrain of the line and then to position themselves in the intervals or in advance of them, according to what will be judged necessary. Often also, and this particularly happens in armies, because they often have large artillery attached to the columns, one will march all the pieces of the regiment in a column behind the troops of said column, as much to elongate and accumulate embarrassments as because these pieces of a lighter caliber are rarely useful at the commencement of the action to protect the formation of the order of battle. Each battalion must, in forming en bataille, conserve twelve paces of interval between itself and the neighboring battalion, as much for the facility of its march, if it is obliged to make movements en bataille, as for the regimental cannon, if there are any, to be able to maneuver in this interval. To this end, if the column must form en bataille by quarter-conversions, this interval will be 10

[Contemporary practice often attached small-caliber guns to infantry battalions, hence the term “battalion guns.” The concept was to grant infantry battalions greater firepower, but as Guibert details, such guns were often too small to be of much use, and they slowed the battalion significantly. See Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 88–90.]

106

chapter ix

diagram viii Example of the manner in which one must exercise the troops in the field

observed in advance in the column [and] between each battalion, but if it must deploy, each battalion will only take it when deploying and spreading along the terrain of the line, because the divisions must always be closed in advance of the deployment so that the column does not augment its depth. The supposition where one wishes, by distances, to make an illusion of the strength of the columns to the enemy will change this disposition, because then the object will be to present the front column as quite deep and the flank column as quite short. If several columns must deploy in concert, [this] will require that there are agreed-upon signals to indicate to them the moment when they must prepare for the deployment and for when they must execute it. These signals must be of one or several drumrolls if the columns are not composed of a single regiment, and of cannon shots, fusil shots, lit powder, or some other signal that it will not be possible to confuse if they are formed of a large corps of troops. I will elsewhere expand on all

that concerns the usage of signals, [an] important and too-neglected usage, because it is only by it that all the parts of an army, whether in march order or en bataille, can move in concert and take part in a general maneuver. What in all of these new tactics must singularly strike the reflective man is the intimate connection they have with the study of the terrain; it is a necessity imposed on officers to occupy themselves in this study, to form their coup-d’œil, and to never maneuver mechanistically.11 Diagram VIII renders this quite-sensible truth: it represents a randomly-drawn countryside, in the middle of which a regiment of four battalions maneuvers relative to the terrain and following all the gifts that may result, 11

[In French usage, particularly during the eighteenth century, coup d’œil usually referred to the specific ability of the commander to read the terrain and thus know where to position his forces. Guibert makes the physical aspect explicit here. It would later come to its modern English-language usage, referring to a more generalized sense of the art of war.]

107

Formations en bataille

whether from circumstances or from the principles that are exposed above. First Example Diagram VIII Figure 1 A regiment is in march order and formed on one column whose first battalion, at the head, is obliged to form en bataille, having to its right a dense wood and to its left open terrain; the commander of the regiment then takes the following disposition. “The first division of the first battalion will serve as [the unit of] alignment, and all the other divisions of the column will deploy by their left.” If the dense wood is to the left, “the first division will serve in the same way as the division of alignment, and the column will deploy by the right.” Second Example Diagram VIII Figure 2

The regiment re-forms in march order and is obliged to newly form en bataille between the marsh B and the wood C. The commander throws his eyes on the terrain; he sees that there is a place to his right for a battalion and to his left for three; consequently, he commands, “the first division of the second battalion will serve as [the unit of] alignment; deploy [the] head of the column to the right [and the] tail of the column to the left.” If instead, for example, the column were to find itself at D, he would see that he had room to his right for three battalions and [room for] one to his left, and he would command, “first division of the fourth battalion, division of alignment; deploy [the] head of the column to the right [and the] tail of the column to the left.” Third Example Diagram VIII Figure 3 Suppose that the regiment is to be reformed in march order and is obliged to form en bataille towards the enemy

108 that arrives at E with superior forces. The commander of the regiment throws his eyes on the terrain, where he finds a stream to his left, a flat and uncovered countryside to the head of the column, [and] a chain of heights extending from his tail, which may furnish an advantageous position. Immediately, he makes the following disposition. “The fourth division of the fourth battalion, division of alignment; deploy to the right and to the rear.” If the chain of heights is found to be at his head instead of his tail, he will deploy to the right forward; finally, if this chain of heights does not exist, and if he has to his right the house F G and the ravine H (Diagram VIII Figure 4), he would lightly break the first division of his column to take advantage of these two points and command, “First division, division of alignment; deploy to the right and forward.” Then the line would find itself supported on one side by the stream and on the other by the ravine. The houses where he would immediately throw some fusiliers would find themselves in advance of his right wing and would give him a flank on the curtain of his position, and by a small, oblique hook forward that he would make with the demi-battalion of the left, he would procure himself a flank on this other wing. Fourth Example Diagram VIII Figure 5 The regiment is formed in maneuver column, [and] some enemy battalions are en bataille at H, I, and form, I suppose, the point of its wing; the regiment is charged with attacking by this flank while the other troops contain or menace the front. The regimental commander throws his eyes on the terrain, seeing that he can deployer obliquely on the enemy and outflank them; he immediately directs his column on the tree K, arrives at this tree, breaks his first division of the head of his column at L M, and deploys to the right on this first division that will become the [unit of] alignment: this deployment will thus carry his fourth battalion to his right, but of what import is this? Should he, for the sake of leaving the right to his first [battalion], lose the advantage of outflanking the enemy, or make his deployment to the rear? This is what one would done in the old tactics; one compares and judges them. Fifth Example Diagram VIII Figure 6 The regiment, being broken into column by its flank, arrives at N O and there reforms en bataille by quarterconversions.

chapter ix

Sixth Example Diagram VIII Figure 7 The regiment, newly broken in column by its flank, wishes to outflank the enemy that is en bataille at P. Consequently, it directs itself on point Q, closes its first battalion en masse, leaves the three others at open distances, arrives at the point where it is perpendicular to the extremity of the enemy’s right wing, forms en bataille, pushes the head of its mass to successively deposit the divisions that compose it on their terrain, and finds itself, by this means, outflanking the enemy with one battalion. Seventh Example Diagram VIII Figure 8 The regiment wishes to attack the enemy by making an illusion of its strength and of the point where it wishes to make its attack. It forms itself on two columns, one of three battalions and the other of one. The first directs itself on R and the second on S; the one that is only one battalion observes whole distances between its platoons[, and] the one of three battalions forms itself by divisions and en masse. The latter deploys, outflanks the enemy, [and] attacks them while the other stops at the coach-house T, folds its head on its tail, and forms itself en bataille. Eighth Example Diagram VIII Figure 9 An extremely difficult countryside presents itself in front of the regiment; it must traverse it and take its position behind it; it forms in march order on three files, traverses the wood V, [and] arrives at the edge of the wood; there, if its position is to the right, it extends itself to that side until the head of the column has arrived at the point of the right; each division or platoon then successively makes front, and the edge of the wood is occupied. What if the position is to the left of the debouche? The column makes the above movement by the left. What if the debouche is at the center of the position? When the two battalions of the head [of the column] have taken the ground of the right or of the left, the two others fill [the empty side] on the left or on the right. If the position is found in advance of the wood and the countryside is open, [the regiment] is formed successively by platoons and by divisions, and, when the column is entirely formed, it closes its distances to deploy on the front, or it conserves its distances to form en bataille on the flank.

109

Formations en bataille

These different examples suffice to make known the necessity and the manner of exercising troops relative to the terrain. With the habit of directing similar exercises, how can the regiments’ superior officers not acquire intelligence and true military talents? They may, with their regiment, execute the same combinations as a general officer with a corps of troops, the maneuvers of a [large] column or several columns only being the multiplication and the concert of the movements of a battalion. These exercises will become as interesting for particular officers as they are for the soldier. There is in all men a sure and reflexive instinct that gives them a taste for useful things, and what fortunate effect would not result among the troops from the confidence that they will contract from the art that makes them move? Perceiving the object of their work, they would cease complaining; knowing that their leaders are educated and that they have a good disposition to take in all places and in all cases, they would see all, [and] they would go everywhere with this security, [the] guarantee of victory. § VI Conclusion Those who propose without proof are no more than charlatans or enthusiasts; I am neither one nor the other. There may, there must be people who have doubts. I wish to dissipate them entirely. Therefore, to terminate this chapter, I will present a reasoned parallel of the maneuver of two battalions in column, where one forms en bataille on the front, following the old methods, and the other, by the flank step, following the principles that I have established. Two battalions A and B (Diagram IX Figure 1 and 2) are in march column. Column A, which I have supposed must form en bataille following the old tactics, will occupy twohundred paces of depth, which is the supposed front of battalion en bataille, while battalion B, which must deploy by the flank step, being formed in column by platoons following established principles, will only occupy seventyfour paces of depth:12 [the] first difference [is] between seventy-four and two-hundred paces, where one may conclude the prodigious elongation of an army column in the old principles. The two columns then disposing of themselves to form en bataille, column A, regardless of the strength of its fractions, is always obliged to preserve the same depth, 12

Each platoon, including the two paces of interval between each rank, occupies a little more than five paces in march order, [giving] ten platoons that occupy fifty paces, including the grenadiers and chasseurs; in addition, eight intervals of three paces each, [totaling] twenty-four paces. Total: seventy-four.

since these fractions must have the distances necessary to make their quarter-conversions on the flank, and on the contrary, column B, forming by division and closing its distances, following modern principles, will not occupy more than twenty-eight paces of depth:13 [the] second difference [is] between one-hundred seventy-seven and twenty-eight paces at the moment of deployment; one cannot help but see how this difference will operate in an army column. Now, either the battalion forms en bataille by quarterconversions, as Puységur taught in his memoirs and as was practiced thirty years ago,14 that is to say, in commencing to form en bataille on the flank, an indispensable preliminary movement; then, in forming en bataille on the front by a complete quarter-conversion in which the extremity of its moving wing will be around three-hundred and forty paces, because the arc of the circle described by the moving wing must be estimated to be equal to around oneand-a-half times the extent of the front of the battalion, and here the front of the battalion is supposed to be twohundred paces, or the battalion forms en bataille perpendicularly, that is to say, by following the perpendicular A until it arrives to the right or to the left of its position, its divisions stretching along the second perpendicular B by successive quarter-conversions and forming en bataille on it.15 One sees (Figure 1) the default of this movement, either by comparing the length of the terrain covered or because of the quarter-conversions that each division must make. But I would that the battalion, better-instructed and knowing the usage of diagonals or the oblique step, form en bataille by the oblique step or by demi-quarterconversions, in both cases the divisions being open only a half-distance. One thinks, in the former case, of the difficulty and the slowness of this oblique step; it is so well 13

14 15

Six divisions of three ranks each make eighteen ranks. Including the intervals between them, each rank occupies one pace, [giving] eighteen ranks on eighteen paces; in addition, five intervals of two paces [make] ten paces. Total: twenty-eight paces. [See Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, 147–162; and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 7–79, especially 16–26.] One may find here, and in other places in my work, that I may improperly use the words “perpendicular” and “parallel,” because it is only a question of isolated lines, and that they are not relative to other lines, but I warn my readers that I employ them to be better understood and to not fall ceaselessly into [using] the words “line” or “direction,” which are vague and subject to equivocation; I thus hazard to say that a column of troops is spread along a perpendicular because I suppose that the line of the front of the last division of this column may represent the base line. In the same way, I say that any battalion or troop en bataille is spread along a parallel because I suppose other imaginary and eventual lines in advance of the front, permitting me to name the line occupied by the battalion a “parallel.”

diagram ix

Parallel of the deployments of modern tactics with the maneuvers by which [troops] used to be formed en bataille

110 chapter ix

Formations en bataille

known that, to remedy it, demi-quarter-conversions and movements by diagonals have been imagined, but are these easier and more rapid? See Diagram IX Figure 2, representing a battalion formed en bataille by means of these movements; now suppose eight or ten battalions behind it, executing the same maneuver; reflect on the immense extent of the diagonals of the last divisions of this column [and] on the excessive fatigue of the troops that cover it; finally, tell me where terrain might be found that is so open [and] so free of obstacles so all the divisions of this column may move by such a path; if it encounters the least hedge, the smallest ravine, and it is quite rare that it would not in a terrain vast enough to be traversed by these lines, then that is the end of the movement, or at least of its order and its speed. I apply the reasoning that I have made here to the formation of columns by demi-quarter-conversions and diagonals, regarding them as vicious [and] inferior in surety, in rapidity, and in simplicity to the ployment of columns by the flank step, and consequently to be rejected in tactics, in which I admit only ployments or quarter-conversions for the column formation. Returning to the parallel of the two columns of a battalion forming en bataille, the one following the old principles [and] the other following modern principles: the latter, to deploy on its first or on its last division, knowing which will have the greater route to cover, will only need to cover terrain necessary to contain two divisions in order to arrive at the point where it must form; thus, one is at pains to count what will be added to it by the difference between the diagonal on which it moves and the line on which it must make front, because the column formed en masse occupies no more than twenty-eight paces of depth; if the column deploys on its second or third division, then, the movement being made by the two sides at the same time, it becomes a quarter- or half-again more rapid. Let us now calculate the advantage of this rapidity

111 when the column will be of twelve or twenty battalions and the even greater advantage of deploying the column on all the points and relative to all circumstances. “But,” some officers have said to me in seeing this column formed en masse for the deployment and imagining to have found a quite-victorious argument against it, “will cannon permit you to deploy this mass? Will it not throw it easily into disorder?” Here I respond to this objection. By whatever movement a column forms en bataille, one must avoid it when under a too-lively and too-deadly cannon fire. Thus, it must deploy at a great-enough distance from the enemy artillery that its shots are uncertain, under the protection of such superior artillery that it can soon silence their fire, or finally by the favor of some screen that masks the view of the deployment. In all these cases, a mass occupying four or eight times less depth than a column formed at half- or whole-distance is much easier to maneuver [and] to shelter; the smallest height, the least undulation of the terrain covers it. It offers less of a frontage to the enemy, since it occupies much less [space]. But it is not at all to serve as the target for cannon that I form en masse; it is for deploying, [f]or in the execution of this movement, I have all the advantages of the old maneuvers: I am formed en bataille four, five, or six times quicker by these movements than by any other movement; thus, if I am attacked by cannon, I am struck four, five, or six fewer times. Finally, let us demand of the artillery which one it would better like to attack: column A, which only offers a frontage from C to D before the deployment and in the deployment from D to E or H, and again less than half if it deploys both sides at the same time, which would add only a half-minute or a minute more, or column B that will process on the two lines H [and] I, or which, in forming en bataille by demi-quarter-conversions, will present to it the entire terrain L or M covered with its movements for four or five minutes. See Diagram IX, Figures 1, 2, and 3.

chapter x

Changes of Front I have demurred until now from treating changes of front because it is by means of deployments that I propose to almost always execute them. It is not an indifferent thing to tactics to apply an already-necessary maneuver to several subjects and to thus diminish the number of them that the troops must learn. A battalion en bataille changes front by making face to the enemy in another direction; thus, the movements of changes of front must form en bataille on the right; on the left; to a height of its right, of its left, or of its center; perpendicularly; or obliquely to its old position, because it may find such terrain or such case relative to each of these differences. If I have only a small troop, consisting of only one or two battalions, and the enemy is able to fire musketry at me, then the movement becomes necessary to attack advantageously or to oppose their attack more advantageously, as in the case where I may take them in the flank or when I have need of covering my own; I will make the change of front by conversion movements. Suppose I have a battalion at A, B (Diagram X Figure 1). I will make my movement from A to E if I wish to form en bataille to the height of and in advance of the same flank; I will go from B to D if it is necessary that I form to the height of and behind my left flank; from B to F in making [a] half-turn to the right if I must form to the height of and behind the same flank; I will form by a conversion movement on the center if it is necessary for me to form on either side on the terrain H, G; finally, I will stop in all these movements in the eighth and sixteenth conversions at the moment that I will wish and in such a manner that is more or less oblique to my old position, following my will, the terrain, or the movements that the enemy obliges me to make. I say that, in these circumstances, I will make my change of front by conversion movements of the totality of the battalion because I never disunite the battalion [and] because, by this means, I hold it in my hand and am able to stop it at any point of its movement that I wish to oppose myself to the enemy. I say that this sort of change of front would only serve with no more than one or two battalions because with more troops, it would be too slow and too difficult. Let us place an example beside these precepts. I march on the enemy at B (Diagram X Figure 2). Some of their troops appear at C D, or else they have occupied the houses and the hedges F G, where they inconvenience my flank; I will dare to make a quarter-conversion with

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_016

battalion A to carry it against them and attack or contain them. I would not dare it by means of any other movement, which would disunify and break my battalion, than our current changes of front, because experience proves that a disunited troop has difficulty executing its movement[s] under enemy fire, that the disunion of its parts brings disorder, and that from disorder to flight is only a pace. If it is a line, or a part of a line, that I wish to make change front, even if only one or two battalions and out of range of enemy fire, here are some movements by which I would have them execute this change of disposition: “to the right or to the left (following the side towards which I must make them make face) by divisions, break the battalion, the regiment, or the line.” While this will be executed, I will examine at the height of which division I must and may form; next, I will command “on this or that division, close the column,” then I will execute my deployment. Compare this practical manner of changing front for several battalions, for an entire line, with our changes of front by demi-quarter-conversions and by these diagonal lines that I have so evidently demonstrated the disadvantages and the difficulties of. It is with regret that I always see reason moving away from the tactical procedures introduced to our troops. We have so much destroyed the usage of quarter-conversions by battalion that we can no longer imagine that a case will present itself in war where they will be useful. I think differently, and I will re-establish them on an occasion where it is by them alone that one may move. We have adopted the movements by demi-quarter-conversions, and we have indifferently applied them to everything. I do not believe them good for anything except to maneuver agreeably to the eye. Reflective militaires, who, in order to judge, will wish to transport themselves into open countryside and into war, will decide between our tactics and me. I will terminate here my ideas on infantry tactics. I have less pretended to cover all the circumstances in which a regiment might wish to move than to demonstrate the simplest and most rapid mechanism by which it may move in all cases. There is, I believe, nothing left to add to the perfection of an art when its instruments are created, when one has taught the artist how to handle them, when one has developed his genius, [and] finally, when he cannot be surprised by any circumstance without having in his hand a means that is applicable to them.

diagram x

Changes of front

Changes of Front

113

section II Essay on Cavalry Tactics

∵

Introduction to Essay on Cavalry Tactics I do not at all wish to engage in making as extensive a work for the cavalry as I made for the infantry. Accustomed to handling the details of the latter, I could speak on it with assurance. Those of cavalry are more foreign to me; thus, I will not [speak of] them in as-great depth; I will limit myself to some general results after my specific studies and that which I have spoken to experienced officers about. After having established the principles and the goal of the tactics of this arm, I will endeavor to prove that it must be analogous to that of the infantry, and consequently that all officers who have the genius of war must know how to command and know the maneuvers of the two arms. When I say that the tactics of the two corps are only one, I do not pretend that there are not considerable

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_017

differences in the interior details of their schools and in their principles of instruction. It is quite certain that these differences exist, because the individuals and the weapons are not the same. But once the battalion and the squadron are dressed, the details cease; their movements must arrive at the same results; they must be attached to combining together [and] to rendering themselves so intimately analogous to each other that the infantry is not at all foreign to the cavalry, nor the cavalry to the infantry; and finally, all officers who are reflective and have exercised their coup-d’œil relative to the two arms may skillfully maneuver both. This view may doubtlessly appear to be a paradox; I expect [and] I will support this. I demand only that I am listened to without bias.

chapter i

Advantages of Cavalry; [the] Inconveniences That Render It Too Numerous in Armies I will commence with some preliminary observations on the usage that one must make with the cavalry. In logic, as in trigonometry, the first operation must commence by establishing its foundation. In nations without discipline and without enlightenment, the cavalry is the premier arm of the armies; in those where discipline and enlightenment have made progress, it becomes the second, but the second regarded as necessary, important, and often decisive, and consequently as requiring to be carried to the greatest perfection possible. It is only the second because the perfection of the art opens a much more vast career to infantry operations, because the infantry is proper for work, for sieges, for combat, for all the natures of the countryside, [and] is always the principle moving body and may defend itself if necessary, unlike the cavalry, which is almost always only useful for one action on one terrain [and] cannot commonly pass from the protection of the infantry. In only considering the cavalry as the second arm, I say that it necessarily enters into the composition of a well-ordered army and that its benefits may greatly influence the fate of war. In effect, it is the cavalry that often decides battles and that often completes the success; it protects dispersed and beaten infantry; it makes pursuits, advanced guards, [and] rapid expeditions; [and] it holds the countryside; all these operations are necessarily the purview of the cavalry because of the celerity of its movements. Thus, the two arms should cease their jealousy; they should regard each other as intimately bound, as necessary for each other. Infantry may act and fight without cavalry, but it will advance only at a torturous pace; it will be ceaselessly harassed, ceaselessly exposed to want of subsistence, [and] it will do nothing rapidly. Cavalry without infantry will do nothing decisive [nor] be able to establish itself anywhere; the least post, the least obstacle will stop it; at night, it will tremble for its surety. There must be cavalry in a military constitution, but it must be very good instead of being very numerous. One will sense the truth of this maxim in proportion to the progress that tactics will make; the inverse has always been, and will always be, a proof of the decadence of the military art. When infantry will be brave [and] wellarmed, when it will know how to defend itself, when it will not believe itself beaten when it is not supported by

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_018

cavalry, one will only have cavalry in a healthy and reasonable proportion to the objects that it must accomplish, and one will have it good and well-dressed. On the contrary, when the infantry will be opposed to what I have said, when tactics will be in their infancy, when they will not have furnished it resources for infantry against cavalry or cavalry against superior cavalry, the cavalry will need to be immense, because then it must cover the wings to always support the infantry and also to be superior to the enemy cavalry. Thus, in all our constitution’s false modern combinations, it is always the enemy that gives the law. If two-hundred squadrons are in the field, one assumes defeat if they are not opposed by at least two-hundred. What then arrives from this quantity of cavalry, accrued as folly and by imitation beyond reasonable boundaries? It is that it is onerous for the state, if it [the state] wishes to maintain it [the cavalry] during the peace; it is that if, finding the burden too heavy, it [the state] only augments it [the cavalry] during war: here are new regiments, or new companies, or sudden incorporations of young cavaliers and young horses. It must enter the field completely, without finding itself either assembled or amalgamated. Peacetime work becomes useless; it is not the same with cavalry as it is with infantry; a battalion may receive some recruits without absolutely destroying and disarranging the instruction of the battalion, but when one places undressed cavaliers or horses in the best-instructed squadron, the false movement of one of these individuals suffices to carry away the squadron and make it fail its maneuvers. What also arrives from cavalry so prodigiously accrued in armies? It is that there is rarely an occasion when it can be employed in totality; it is that, in the majority of locales, it is embarrassing to move and to feed; hence enormous magazines, continual convoys, [and] immense communications to move a small distance; hence the great views of war subordinated to the calculations of subsistence and armies overloaded, whereas the true goal of a reasonably numerous cavalry must be to alleviate and to facilitate the movements of armies. But a change in the routine of our opinions in this regard can only be the work of time and of a great number of circumstances. Infantry tactics must first have been perfected and then those of the cavalry brought to the

Advantages of Cavalry; [ the ] Inconveniences That Render It Too Numerous in Armies

same height; a general, [a] man of genius, must be struck by the resources that more-rapid and more-refined movements would offer; that as such, he dares to go on campaign with an excellent and less-numerous cavalry; that his cavalry, at once combined in his views and with the strength of his infantry, would see the enemy augmenting its own, and not only would he not be tempted to imitate

119

them, but he would also be persuaded that the superiority that his enemy will believe to have given themselves will only serve to weaken them, because beyond certain proportions, the number produces only embarrassment and slowness. What I will say after this will perhaps [pose] the fundamentals of this important revolution, and this hope must encourage me.

chapter ii

Cavalry Armor and Equipment The definition of the properties of the cavalry will lead me to determining its ordinance and constitution in a more precise manner. Cavalry has only one manner of fighting, that is by the charge or by shock. All fire action en troupe is improper for it: one has only to see how useless and little-deadly the fire of light horse troops is, even though they are scattered and may fire with liberty and sangfroid. If one wishes to give firearms to the cavalry, it is therefore not for them to serve on horseback; it is to make use of them when, for want of infantry, they are obliged to form dismounted, to guard the head of a defile or to occupy a post; I would that they would be armed with a carbine and a single pistol to this end. If the charge or shock is the only action proper for cavalry, this shock must be sought to be rendered redoubtable; how can it be done? By augmenting its speed. Here are the reasons. The principle and decisive advantage of cavalry is the velocity of its movements, 1st because it adds the physical action to the force of the shock, which I will soon demonstrate, [and] 2nd because, outside of the shock action, it transports itself with rapidity from one point to another in a combat disposition, making changes in the face of circumstances and of fortune. One must understand that “the cavalry’s greatest possible speed” [does not mean] the greatest possible speed of a single cavalier abandoned to his velocity, but the greatest possible speed of a troop, always conserving its order and proportioning its speed to the distance between the [place] from where it departs and the goal where it carries itself and the objective that it must accomplish when it arrives there. It was falsely believed in France that speed was incompatible with order. As such, the cavalry did not know how to maneuver at the gallop; as such, it adopted a manner of charging the enemy that was called “charger en fourrageurs,” because truly this cavalry was a stampede, resembling a troop of loose foragers and dispersing within the enclosure of the chain [a rough line of cavalry].1 It is 1 [Guibert uses a complicated series of phrases here that do not translate very well, either from French or from the terminology of the period. “Fourrageurs” literally means foragers or foraging, but the connotation is negative, more like pillagers or marauders. The “enclosure of the chain (l’enceinte de la chaîne)” means the loose organization of the men into a line or chain, with “enclosure

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_019

truly amusing that this was the image and the etymology of the only combat maneuver that the French cavalry knew how to execute. With this [said,] I still hear some old officers demanding this way of charging. “It was the nation’s,” they said, “thus our fathers defeated the enemy at Fleurus, at Leuze, etc.”2 In effect, this is what doubtlessly contributed to retarding the progress of enlightenment in our country; our valor has from time to time created some epochs of glory in the midst of our ignorance. “But,” one may respond to these old officers, “we have been beaten on a thousand other occasions: Crécy, Poitiers, Agincourt, Ramillies, Blenheim; we blush again.”3 In how many other battles has our “chivalrous” ignorance been destructive? I would that it be redoubtable in its first effort; it is incapable of a second: repulsed, it cannot rally at all; victorious, it cannot profit from its victory. Do you want proof of this? No nation has lost battles as shameful [and] as decisive as our own; none has gained so few decisive and complete ones. But let us finish this foray on an error on which we commenced to escape and retake the thread of my principles. So that the cavalry has the most advantageous velocity of movement when order is joined, it must not be weighed down either by its arms or by the ordinance by which it is ranged. It was thus contrary to all species of principles that the ancients formed their cavalry turmæ on a front of eight and a depth of eight, or in lozenges, trapezoids, [and] wedges.4 It was by a continuation of this (enceinte)” being a term that occurs most often in fortification. He means that they spread out in a vaguely linear formation without much cohesion.] 2 [The Battle of Fleurus was fought early in the War of the League of Augsburg, on 1 July 1690. Luxembourg divided his army on the flanks of the Allied army and then opened with cavalry charges on both flanks. The Battle of Leuze was a cavalry action fought the year after Fleurus. See Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 207–209 and 219. Fleurus should not be confused with the two battles of the same name that occurred during the Revolutionary Wars.] 3 [The battles Guibert cites were all disasters for the French armies engaged in them, and all involved significant cavalry actions on the part of the French. See 44n22 and 242n5; see also Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 266–360; and Sumption, The Hundred Years War, II:195–249.] 4 [A turma, plural turmæ, was a unit of Roman cavalry equivalent to a squadron. The exact use of ancient cavalry remains obscure, as sources are contradictory and unclear. Guibert is likely drawing from a variety of sources for his analysis, including Arrian’s Array

Cavalry Armor and Equipment

ignorance that, in more modern times, cavalry fought on four or six [ranks] of depth. It was by an also-destructive ignorance that it was armed from head to toe and covered with defensive arms. One cannot at all see in history, without pity for the blindness of the times, the men-at-arms, banded with iron, making the charge at the walk and at the trot, not being able to move if rain had made the ground wet and thus dying in their useless armor and under the fire of archers or of lighter cavalry. Some centuries before this, the Roman cavalry, armed in the same way, experienced the same disasters.5 These unfortunate examples finally occasioned the renunciation of the deep order and heavy armor, but this revolution is made slowly. It is thus with all the errors that the prejudices of many centuries have accredited. Lances, cuirasses, breastplates, postilion boots, [and] the ordinance on four and three ranks were conserved for a long time;6 finally today, some old officers find themselves “too nude, too disarmed, [and] too light,” they say, as if the cavalry could never acquire too much of the propriety in which consists of all of its advantage and all of its utility. It follows from what I have said, 1st that, if one wishes to pay attention to the study of antiquity, one will see the best cavalry, the Thessalian, the Numidian, [and] the Against the Alans and Techne Taktike, Caesar’s On the African War, https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Caesar/ African_War/home.html; and Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science, 98–99 and 110–112. Specifically, Arrian, Array Against the Alans, speaks of Late Roman cavalry deployed on eight ranks, as Guibert indicates; http://s_van_dorst.tripod.com/Ancient_Warfare/Rome/ Sources/ektaxis.html#translation. See also Randall S. Howarth, “War and Warfare in Ancient Rome,” Ann Hyland, “War and the Horse,” Louis Rawlings, “War and Warfare in Ancient Greece,” and Michael Sage, “The Rise of Rome” The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World, 29–45, 493– 526, 3–28, and 216–235; and Adrian Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War, 100 BC–AD 200 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 171–247.] 5 [Contemporary terminology is somewhat loose in historical terms. According to the Fourth Edition of the AF Dictionary, “men at arms” refers to the ordinance companies of Charles VII, forerunners to modern cavalry and professional army units. The same term, gendarmerie, was also used to refer to its modern meaning, of militarized police. Guibert clearly intends the term to refer to the medieval man-at-arms. He continues to reference infamous defeats like those of the French at Crécy, Poitiers, Agincourt, where English archers decimated mounted warriors, and perhaps also the Battle of Adrianople in 378, a Gothic victory over the Western Roman Empire often ascribed to the success of the cavalry. See Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum, XXXI.] 6 [Postilion boots (bottes fortes) were worn by postilions, drivers and riders of coach, mail, and pack horses. They were either worn separately or built into the horse’s harness and were constructed either of thick leather or metal, or a combination of the two, and were thus both heavy and inflexible.]

121 Spanish, being half-nude on horses that are also almostnude and armed either with axes or cutting swords, and that it was only by aligning their institutions with them and making theirs lighter that the Greek and Roman cavalry managed to occasionally fight them equally.7 2nd That the term “heavy cavalry” must be abolished forever, because this epithet is heterogenous to the cavalry institution; all the difference that may exist between the different cavalry corps must consist only of men and horses that are more or less tall, and therefore what we call “cavalry,” being destined to always fight in squadron[s] and in line, must be composed of men who are the tallest and most robust, whereas the dragoons and hussars, destined to move more rapidly, to disperse, to make war in detail without being ignorant of how to make it en masse, must be composed of the smallest horses and proportionate men. 3rd That everyone called “fighter on horseback” must renounce all that weighs down and overloads him like cuirasses, breastplates, and other defensive armor that is proof against the fusil shot; here are my reasons. Disordered cavalry must be out of range of musket fire; cavalry must never attack infantry unless it is broken or poorly-countenanced of courage or disposition, because then the fire that it receives is hardly redoubtable, and its success is almost certain. It must never attack infantry if the infantry is constituted, exercised, and prepared to receive it following what I have proposed for it [the infantry]. When cavalry charges infantry, it is neither some cavaliers saved by their defensive arms nor killed because they were uncovered who will decide the success of the charge; if the squadron does not pierce the infantry, it will not be because of the cavaliers who were lost en route; it will be because of the fright imparted to those who survive. Finally, some cavaliers, killed or wounded in a war action by blows to the chest or other parts of the body that would have been covered by defensive arms, would not compensate for the disadvantage that this species of arms would give to the charge; the embarrassment of carrying them, perhaps uselessly, throughout a campaign; the fatigue of the man [and] that of the horse; the lameness that results; the maladroitness and slowness that squadrons thus armed are subject to: in a word, the loss of an action caused by this slowness or this maladroitness.

7 [Guibert’s analysis here is accurate; Greek and Roman armies generally eschewed developing their own cavalry in favor of building relationships with or simply hiring armies that relied on cavalry, like some of the listed. See Hyland, “War and the Horse.”]

122 4th that, for the strongest reason, the cavalry must renounce its armor that pretends to defend against fire, and in fact is useless against it, like breastplates, demibreastplates, [and] among others, the sheet-metal cuirasses that I see one of our regiments retaining, because it is called the “King’s Cuirassiers,” and it seems to attach to the preservation of cuirasses its esprit de corps, [when it is] much more realistically nurtured by speaking of the memories of Lutterberg and ten other battles where it covered itself in glory.8 5th that, while I disapprove of every species of defensive armor against fire, I will on the contrary approve some precautions to defend the cavalier against the arme blanche, provided these precautions are neither heavy nor embarrassing. I would, for example, that the head of the cavalier be covered by a helmet to protect against saber blows, and his shoulders with three rows of chain-mail attached to a cloth epaulette. The head and shoulders are always the most exposed to enemy blows, chiefly when the enemy makes use of the saber. These iron epaulettes would not weigh a pound, and substituting a helmet for the hat will replace the most bizarre and useless coiffure with one that is military and useful. 6th that the lance and all other long weapons must be rejected for the cavalry because they are cumbersome to carry outside of action and embarrassing to maneuver during the combat; they require that one fight in open files and nearly one-on-one in order to be able to take the field to handle them, [and] because, in the midst of this, there cannot [be] order, maneuver, or unanimity of shock. Only the Polish cavalry remains armed with lances today in Europe, and while it is composed of robust and brave men and excellent horses, there is no cavalry that is less redoubtable.9 8 [The Cuirassiers du roi was formed in the Thirty Years War by Saxe-Weimar and continued service, with occasional interruption, as a heavy cavalry or armored unit until 1999. See Histoire du 1er régiment de cuirassiers (Angers: Lachèse & Dolbeau, 1889). The Battle of Lutterberg took place in October 1758 as a French army pushed into Hanover to avenge the prior year’s defeat at Rossbach. In the battle, French cavalry, including the Cuirassiers du roi, defeated a heavily outnumbered Hanoverian force. See Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 186–187. Guibert would be proven wrong on this point, as cuirassiers played a significant role in future conflicts, particularly the Napoleonic Wars.] 9 [The cavalry of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had long been the fear of Eastern Europe, particularly the elite Winged Hussar units. In particular, Polish cavalry, supporting the Imperial and allied army, helped to defeat the Ottomans at the Siege of Vienna in 1683, precipitating the great retreat of the Ottomans from Central Europe. As Guibert notes, only the Polish cavalry remained armed with lances by the 1770s, but he argues that only the Poles could and should fight in such fashion. See Robert Frost, The

chapter ii

7th that, after a reflective examination, it appears that there is no better weapon for cavalry than the cutting sword; the less lengthy they are, the more effective and deadly they will be. The weapon of the brave, the weapon of a man who will join his enemy and attack them with success, must be short, solid, and good in his hand. The two peoples in the world who, to judge by their weapons, must have been the bravest [were] the Thessalians and our ancestors the Franks, who used arming axes and double-edged swords; they were at once weapons for both cutting and thrusting. Alongside these arming axes, one recalls the Roman legionary sword [and] the extremely short saber of the first Saracens.10 When the valor of a people [is] abased, its weapons elongate, it takes up missile weapons, [and] it seeks to place as large an interval as it can between itself and the enemy. Finally, in advising the double-edged sword for our cavalry, I would recommend, as an important point, exercising with the point more than with the edge. This former manner of fighting, infinitely more deadly than the latter, is favorable to skill and valor. For using the point, one must discover and choose the place where one wishes to strike. The natural movement of cavaliers, who are accustomed to only making use of the edge, is, on the contrary, to form in parade order, to cover against the enemy, and from time to time to randomly and gauchely let their sabers fall on the man who presents himself to them: [a] soft [and] inactive genre of Northern Wars: War, State, and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721 (New York: Longman, 2000); and Stewart Oakley, War and Peace in the Baltic, 1560–1790 (New York: Routledge, 1992). Polish lancers would later be favorite cavalry units of Napoleon, who would use them to great effect in his wars.] 10 [When discussing melee weapons, Guibert tends to use fencing terminology, as may be apparent from the translation. This language does not always accurately describe how the weapons were used, particularly when departing from his own time. He also confuses his terminology and history in places. What he calls an “arming axe,” a large, two-handed axe, would now be called a Danish axe. Many people in the early medieval period made use of it, including the Franks, but they were most famous for the francisca, a one-handed axe, as Guibert notes earlier. The Romans also used a variety of weapons, but most famously, the gladius or Spanish sword, a short thrusting weapon used during the height of legionary warfare in the Republic and Empire periods. “Saracens” refers to Arabs, Berbers, and/or Muslims, particularly during the Reconquista and the Crusades. Like the other cited examples, they made use of a variety of weapons but are most often depicted with a scimitar, a curved sword that resembled the cavalry saber of the early modern period. As with previous passages, Guibert falls into the contemporary trope of rigidly categorizing people and their fighting methods. See Duncan Campbell, “Arming Romans for Battle” in The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World, 419–437; and Ewart Oakeshott, The Archaeology of Weapons: Arms and Armour from Prehistory to the Age of Chivalry (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2019).]

Cavalry Armor and Equipment

defense where all the blows would die on the helmets and epaulettes of my cavaliers, and were they directed elsewhere, would ordinarily inflict only light wounds. 8th that, after having lightened the cavalier in his armor and dress, after having searched for the simplest, easiest, and lightest possible form of harness for his horse in the

123 same manner, the squadron must be given a constitution and an ordinance [that will] most properly favor speed and order in its movements without being a nuisance to the force of its shock; this is what the next chapter will take for its object to determine.

chapter iii

Speed of Movements, the First and Most Advantageous of the Properties of Cavalry When charging, cavalry doubtlessly has a shock force, but this shock force is only the product of the quantity of speed with which it moves and the quantity of mass of the first rank alone. Thus, the quantity of mass of the following ranks adds nothing to that of the first, because the horses cannot have between them pressure or adherence without interstices by which the corps range one behind the other to compress and to augment the strength of the corps that they push. Thus, for procuring the cavalry a greater quantity of movements or a more-decisive shock force, it is not at all the depth of its ordinance that must be augmented; it is the quantity of its speed. So that this quantity of speed produces all the effect that one must expect, it must be in proportion to the distance to the goal where one wishes to strike: if there are six-hundred paces to cover [and] one starts with the same speed as if one only had to cover two-hundred, the horses will become winded and the movement will slacken until the end of the charge, while on the contrary, it must increase in acceleration. This quantity of speed must be gradual and progressive; that is to say, for example, that if a corps of cavalry goes to the charge with six-hundred paces to cover, it must begin at the slow trot, making thus two-hundred paces, and then two-hundred at the fast trot; this measure of movement will not fail to accelerate almost by itself in proportion to how the horses warm up and gain their wind; finally, the two-hundred remaining paces will be made at the gallop, the cavaliers lowering [the reins] and abandoning their horses to the last fifty in such a manner that the greatest possible quantity of speed exists on arriving at the troop at which one charged and such that this impetuosity, rendered decisive by the acceleration of its movement, inures the cavalier to danger and draws the fearful as if they are brave, and the semi-willing as if they are entirely willing, onto the enemy. I must observe that that there exists in this regard a remarkable difference between the shock action of an infantry troop and that of a cavalry troop. The former, as I have already said, is often slackened in its movement by the mechanistic instinct that makes a soldier hesitate to approach danger. On the contrary, a cavalry troop, which is best given to quite-perfect analogy with physical bodies, being once determined, the horses would be animated to

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_020

a point by their acceleration and by the ensemble of their movement such that they would harness the will of the cavalier and carry him up to the enemy without his driving force experiencing much relenting or alteration. Here is, with some differences that circumstances might indicate, the general principle on which cavalry must exercise its charging movement. It is the movement that the King of Prussia calls the “galloping charge,”1 which he executes with a line, an entire wing of cavalry, without a squadron breaking or becoming carried away. I saw it attempted last year for the first time by 1,200 French cavalry horses on a single line, and this test had the greatest success: the line traversed arenas of four- or five-hundred paces several times. Six years before that, we hardly had some squadrons in a state to move themselves in an orderly way at the walk and at the trot. Also, this spectacle was an [epiphany] for many officers who denied the possibility of the velocity of movement without disorder and who, seeing it, were forced to accept the advantages that must result from it. In effect, who could not conceive of the degree of impetuosity, the decisive élan, [and] the unanimity of effort that a cavalry thus conducting the charge must acquire? Who can disagree that, with an unequal quantity of combatants, and even often courageous, it must reverse a line coming on it in order and with slowness, like the old German cavalry,2 or in disorder and at top speed, like the French cavalry does[?] Above all, what infantry could 1 [“Charge en carrière,” which is a phrase with several meanings. Carrière refer to an equitation school or to the equitation arena itself, or more specifically, to the course that a horse being trained or exercised follows, or finally to the distance a horse can travel without becoming blown. It also may mean “career,” as in the English, of which the French is the source, both the noun “profession” and the verb “move at high speed and with little control.” Idiomatically, carrière or en carrière may mean to move at speed, in control or out of it; to live or undertake an activity in a lively way, again either in control or out of it; or any of the more specific equitation-related meanings, among others. Guibert, and Friedrich before him, probably intend the phrase to have a sense of all of them. See Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, 163–182, which describes the Prussian origins of much of Guibert’s cavalry doctrine. See also Alexis Brialmont, Précis d’art militaire (Brussels, 1850), 408–409.] 2 [Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, 121–142 and 163–182. The various states of Germany tended to prefer orderly cavalry formations and combats over charges, including using firearms from horseback.]

Speed of Movements, the First and Most Advantageous of the Properties of Cavalry

expect to resist a similar impulsion if it remains, as it is today, nude and without a defensive ordinance, susceptible to being promptly taken by cavalry attack[?] One has just seen the velocity of movement applied to the charge action; it must likewise have a place in

125

all maneuvers, because the principle that I have posed in treating the infantry evolutions, “that almost every maneuver being a moment of crisis and feebleness for a troop because it disunites it, it must be made in the shortest time possible,” is common to the two arms.

chapter iv

Cavalry Ordinance The habitual cavalry ordinance must be on two ranks. This is not for its second to augment its shock force, for, as I have already said, where it does not have exact pressure, the quantity of mass is not increased, but it is for the second rank to be in range to replace the lost and [fill the] spaces of the first; it is because, arriving on the enemy and being engaged in the mêlée with them, this second rank augments the number of combatants. “But,” say some cavalry officers, “there will be an infinite advantage to having an entire third rank, or at least on the wings of the squadron;1 often in making the charge, the squadrons open and disunite; often one has need of extending the front, either to outflank the enemy or to not be outflanked by them; the third rank serves well to achieve this object.” A skillful cavalry officer with whom I have shared this opinion proposed to me one that appeared to me to be better and more thoughtful: it is to have, in lieu of this third rank, a small elite troop mounted on much-lighter horses than those of the squadron, formed on two ranks and placed twenty paces to the rear or to the side of the interval. This troop, under the orders of a chosen officer, will have for its object to close the interval when it will be judged necessary and when this interval opens more than the ordained distance. It will be exercised to gain at top speed, by this interval, the enemy flank when it approaches it; sometimes, to render its movement more unexpected and more decisive, this elite troop will be placed behind one of the wings of the squadron, thus concealing it from enemy eyes; it would not appear until the moment of the charge. If one has need of tirailleurs in advance [of the main body], it [the elite cavalry unit] would furnish them; if the enemy is beaten, it will be it who will pursue them; finally, it will act in the combat for the greatest success of the squadron, following the intelligence of the officer who commands it and always being the reserve, the auxiliary corps, and the defensive corps of the squadron. What is certain is that today, all European cavalry has abandoned the formation on three ranks. The King of Prussia and the Austrians wished momentarily to return to its usage; the latter had enumerated a project to add the third rank to the Transylvanian horse, as they were lighter and more suitable for it, but, whether [from] inconsistence 1 [This means either a full third rank or one divided into supporting positions on each wing of the formation (“squadron”).]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_021

or inconveniences found in its execution, their cavalry remains on two ranks, like all the other European cavalry.2 The squadron front must be combined on its depth: too small, the squadron has no point of consistency, and its shock will be without effect; too extended, the squadron will be too heavy, and it will not be able to approach the enemy with all of its parts at the same time. Our squadrons, which I suppose must be carrying onehundred fifty or one-hundred sixty men to war, must be constituted after this principle. I believe that the just proportion of their front must be eighty cavaliers formed on two ranks, not counting the elite troop that will be twenty men and applied to the usage that I have exposed above. I support this formation for the following reasons. Suppose that two squadrons of eighty cavaliers each are going to fight a squadron of one-hundred sixty; certainly the maneuver of the former, being divided, will be more rapid [and] more light; they will be more maneuverable [and] easier to launch.3 They will have more aptitude for gaining the flank or the rear of the enemy.4 The large squadron will have only one direction, not being able to accomplish its object; the two smaller will have two; finally, the squadron of one-hundred sixty, charged by the two squadrons of eighty, will always believe itself inferior. The cavaliers of this squadron would see two troops arriving on them; they would not count them; they would not compare their fronts; they would see each of them taking an offensive direction, and one of the two, if it is well-led, a direction menacing their flank; their heads would turn towards it, and they would be beaten. The opinion of the moment makes everything in war.5 Another reason is yet more powerful: it is that, when two squadrons collide, if they ever come to the pretend “chest-blow;”6 it is never, especially if they have a large 2 [See Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, 121–142 and 163–182.] 3 What I call “launching” in terms of cavalry maneuver is the unanimous and impetuous action by which one shakes and detaches; if I may again express myself thus, a troop from the terrain on which it is formed, to execute a movement. 4 [The word Guibert uses for rear, “croupe,” means animal’s rump, particularly a horse’s, and refers to the area behind a horse and/or rider. The resulting pun is intended, both in the usage of the word and by Guibert.] 5 [Unlike many of his contemporaries, Guibert included elements of psychology in his theory, as demonstrated by this passage.] 6 It is a great chimera that the chest-blow that one wishes to make consist of the shock force [because] 1st The constitution of the

Cavalry Ordinance

front, by the entire front of the vanquishing squadron that the vanquished squadron is overthrown; it is ordinarily carried by the center or by a wing; therefore, a part of the front that has made the charge did not act and perhaps did not even arrive on them; therefore, this part forms, I suppose, another squadron that would have maneuvered on the flank with success; therefore, finally, small squadrons are more proper to approach the enemy and make contact with all their front. As in proposing to reduce the front of a battalion to one-hundred fifty files at most, I have regarded as indispensable to always maintain the battalion on a complete footing and composed of dressed soldiers, I think for a stronger reason that the squadron must be reduced to onehundred cavaliers, always maintaining itself complete and formed only by perfectly-instructed men and horses. If it horse renders it physically impossible for them to collide thus. 2nd Were it possible, the morale of the cavaliers and the instinct of the horses formed in good order would now allow it. Commonly, one of the two squadrons making the charge will either not arrive on the enemy or will not wait for it. The one in which is found the least quantity of speed and order, and usually the lesser quantity of courage, floats, disorders itself, swirls at the wings, flees, or only renders a quite-short fight without vigor. But when the two squadrons are composed only of men and horses [who are] warlike and exercised to the same end, here is how they pass their charge: the ranks mutually insert, [and] the horses find intervals between themselves; the cavaliers join body to body; everything is blended to the point that the squadrons pass one behind the other, and in this mêlée, it is thus the most agile horses and the most adroit men who decide the fight.

127 is essential to not incorporate gauche and inexperienced soldiers into a battalion, it is of even greater advantage not to place new cavaliers or horses into a squadron, a single contretemps movement sufficing to [throw] the squadron [into] disunity and discord. The squadron’s replacement of losses and accidents, assured in wartime and on campaign as it is in peacetime by means of garrison companies and depots placed intermediately between the companies and the army, must consequently enter into the plan of the cavalry’s constitution. This returns me to speaking a word on the squadron’s interior formation and on assembling squadrons into regiment[s]. I would that an odd number form the base of this formation, as with the infantry. I would that each squadron be formed of a single company and each company of three divisions, each commanded by an officer, not counting the elite division that I will call carabiniers in the cavalry and grenadiers in the dragoons and that I will place under the command of chosen officers. Each regiment will be of nine squadrons subdivided into three brigades of three squadrons each, and each wing of the army, when it will be considerable, will be divided in the same way into three corps that would be named right, left, and center. As I have already proposed, the elite division of each squadron, composed of only twenty men, will form behind the squadron when it will be judged necessary. Finally, when it will be judged necessary, the nine elite divisions of a regiment will form three chosen squadrons that will be employed in important operations, following the example of the infantry’s grenadier battalions.

chapter v

School of the Cavalier It takes a great deal of time to form a good cavalier. What I intend by “a good cavalier” is not at all a man exercised in handling his horse with grace and skill; this is no more than a squire; it is a robust man, placed on [the] horse as he must be relative to the structure of its body and the greatest facility in governing it, governing it and directing it [according] to his will, but as much by the spur and the wrist, as much by his embrace and firm seat, as by the aids and all the finesses of equitation; it is an intrepid horseman who, less educated than brave, imagines nothing to be impossible for his horse and himself; it is in other words a man who likes his horse; who will tend to it like a fantassin must tend to his fusil;1 who knows all the daily details necessary for its upkeep; who has made several campaigns; and who, consequently, is familiarized with fights, fatigues, [and] accidents, without being surprised by anything. When, in the fabled war of the Centaurs, the Greeks spoke of the intrepid Chiron, Orion, and the others having hoary heads and indefatigable legs, it was without doubt the old Thessalian cavaliers, mounted on vigorous horses, it is cavaliers like mine, that they wished to portray.2 A part of our cavalry, beautifully appointed but without beards and without experience, can be compared only to the young students of du Guast, assembled into squadrons.3 The system after which we have been working for six years to form our cavalry seems to me to be a strange thing, and one that bears the imprint of national character. It 1 [“Fantassin” is a synonym for fusilier. The best translation would perhaps be “musketeer,” but because of the Musketeer units and the later works of fiction about them, the term is usually left in French.] 2 [In Greek mythology, the Centaurs were creatures with the bodies of horses and upper bodies of humans who acted bestially, particularly in the presence of alcohol. Chiron was a model Centaur, often participating in the education and training of Greek heroes. Orion was the giant hunter of Greek mythology, the male counterpart to the Olympian Artemis; Guibert is perhaps guilty of poor mythology by apparently making him a Centaur. Guibert believes the Centaurs to have been modelled after the Thessalians, the renowned cavaliers of ancient Greece referenced above. See “Centaurs,” “Cheiron,” and “Orion,” in March, Dictionary of Classical Mythology, 116–117, 123–125, and 357–358.] 3 [Louis de Béranger du Guast was a mignon, or favorite, of Charles IX, king from 1560 to 1574 during the Wars of Religion. Du Guast was involved in the creation of the Gardes françaises, one of the elite units of the Maison du roi, hence Guibert’s reference to units that paraded well but were largely useless in battle. See Marguerite de Valois, Memoirs, trans. Violet Fane (New York: Scribner’s, 1842).]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_022

was in ignorance and chained by the vices of its constitution; it could not take a step to get out. The Treaty of Paris of 1763 is made; the government changes this constitution and substitutes one that, if not perfect, is at least proper for the test of an instruction and to the encouragement of emulation.4 It has been said to the government, and with good reason, that the great vice of the French cavalry is its default of instruction; that it does not know how to handle its horses; [and] that before dressing the squadron, the cavalier must be dressed. The government, struck by this truth, ordains the construction of arenas, calls squires, [and] throws a favorable coup-d’œil on all those who carry the zeal and the aptitude for new instruction. Instantly, all heads ferment; the war towns [and] quarters fill themselves with riding schools; there are no better officers than the ones who can handle a horse with skill; the old cavaliers have neither the suppleness nor the grace that it requires; it is necessary to dismiss them; it is necessary to have the same regard for old officers. It is said that all the science of cavalry is learned in the dust of arenas. Yet in the midst of this effervescence, the principles of equitation are neither posed nor known; they are discussed, [and] they are changed. Two different systems divide opinions, without [even] counting the number of small particularist educations imagined by regimental commanders. Years pass, horses are ruined, cavaliers are exasperated, each regiment forms some squire-officers and ten or twelve squire-cavaliers: note that the latter are hardly [created before] they desire their leave to go to be horse-breakers in France or in a foreign country.5 In the most advanced regiments, fifty or sixty men per squadron are in a state of maneuvering; the others are formed later, but also later the time to form men is terminated; recruits succeed them in the same way that new horses replace the dressed and ruined horses, a thing that has become synonymous by the work established in the arenas. Finally, in this continual fluctuation of individuals and principles, in these outré schools of detail and precision, everything is consumed: men, horses, and what is most precious of all, peacetime, the furtive and irrevocable time that must 4 [The Choiseul reforms of the 1760s.] 5 [“Piqueurs,” the word used here for horse-breakers, originally meant the part of the hunt party that controls the dogs; it was changed in the Fourth Edition of the AF Dictionary to refer to someone who breaks horses in the riding school.]

School of the Cavalier

be employed in forming vast camps, in executing great maneuvers, and in studying their result. Eh! reason would say to all these modern instructors, if reason were named to their council, “what is your goal?” Our goal is to emerge from ignorance, because all Europe is enlightened; our goal is to render the cavalry maneuverable, and to this end, to establish schools. Sure, but before establishing schools, we search for the truth; we pose principles. You have, I think, imagined that your cavaliers are or must be, in great part, quite course, quite gross, and, consequently, quite deaf to the pursuits of a refined art. You have doubtlessly reflected that your constitution obliges you to discharge an eighth of these cavaliers every year: some die, some desert every year, [and] wartime will considerably increase these two branches of consumption; you have made the same calculation for the horses; you thus know that, for the cavaliers and for the horses, there must be an instruction that is prompt, simple, and that to forms them in a state of entering into the squadron as soon as possible. Now, messieurs the instructors, you pretend that equitation is the indispensable base of this instruction, but of what species of equitation do you speak? If it is the art that, in forcing a horse to become agreeable and supple, gains it a delicate mouth, fine aids, and trembling knees; if it is the art that, by the means of which your young men, placed in quite-good grace, does not [teach] them how to master a horse after two years, reserve these lessons for the riding schools; they are not convenient for cavaliers, their horses, or the time that is employed in their education; reserve them for the stronger reason that you have not agreed on your principles, if each of you would have the cavalier sit and lead the horse in his own manner, thus arguing that his principles are the best; therefore, I cannot believe that conduct of the horse depends entirely on the position of a hand, of a leg, placed in some fashion. You believe equitation to be quite perfected in France; you believe it founded on certain principles: I have not seen that the squires in France are hardier and more adroit; I have not seen that their horses move with more agility and less fatigue. Your pretend good grace is a matter of opinion. 4,000 years before you, horses were handled with different principles. The Scythians, the ancient Numidians, the Moors of today, [and] the current Turks, all the peoples that nature has made cavaliers from birth, are seated on their horses and handle them differently from us.6 Some of these nations 6 [“Scythians” refers to the nomadic tribes of central Eurasia during the early Classical period. They were renowned equally for their horsemanship and their ferocity. “Moors,” like “Saracens,” is a catchall term that applies to Arabs, Berbers, and/or Muslims; Guibert

129 do not know the usage of the bridle and the harness; today the cavalry of Morocco and Algeria have much shorter and lighter saddles than ours, with much larger and much shorter stirrups; they gallop with their upper body forward, their knees elevated, [and] their legs held in such a way that their heels lightly press on the horse’s flank. See the English, who have the best horses and the hardiest horse-breakers in Europe; the Spanish, who have the finest horses; [and] the Prussian cavalry that, for not being the best in Europe, is nevertheless the only one that is maneuverable; these peoples have neither your ease nor your principles. All are only in accord on one point that do not conceive of, [which] is that the stirrups must be quite shortened and the horses in a squadron must be handled more by roughness and vigor than by art and principles. Finally, messieurs, reason would conclude that you have not achieved the education of an entire regiment for six years. The majority of the cavalry in the kingdom still flees the spur and changes hands in the dust of the riding schools. Carry your lengthy method, your good grace, your refined theory elsewhere; they can be the fruit of many meditations, but they will not serve me, because I wish for cavaliers and not for squires. Then determine the method that is promptest, simplest, and best-conformed to the mechanism of the body to place a peasant on horseback and have him learn to command it; never trouble this instruction with difficulties and words of the art; in the same way, determine the best and the shortest manner of dressing a horse and of forming it in a state of entering into the squadron without accustoming it to too-nuanced aids [and] without ruining it by wanting it to be too supple: here is what reason would give to the most-able cavalry officers, giving preference to the system that accomplishes these objects with the greatest facility and promptitude, and then putting it into execution in all the schools of the kingdom. It would enter this system, and this would be one of the principle changes required of the one giving it, that, passing the first lessons on the lunge line and the seat, the schools would go to open country in all sorts of terrain, and not between the walls or the barriers of a riding school and on the surfaces that are beaten and leveled with care; then what would become of the cavaliers and horses that were dressed in enclosures and on flat ground when they found themselves transported to vast and difficult places? uses it here to refer to Arab and Berber peoples of the Maghreb and Arabia who rode horses and camels. Ottoman armies also included large cavalry contingents, including the elite sipahi units. See Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700 (London: University College London Press, 1999).]

chapter vi

Analogy between Cavalry Movements and Those of Infantry I suppose dressed cavaliers, and in a state of being assembled into squadrons, [as] the beginning of the analogy that I have announced must exist between cavalry movements and those of infantry. I now offer proof. It is not at all in the number of maneuvers that cavalry tactics are related to the infantry, because, as the cavalry is only proper for shock action, its movements are of much lesser quantity. They are reduced to knowing how to form in march order, to forming en bataille, to marching in line, and some other movements indicated by circumstances. As it is with infantry, cavalry must form in march order on the front or on the flank. When it must form in march order on the flank, it will break by two files, by four, by eight, [or] by demi-company according to the nature of the terrain where it must march. Commonly, in army marches, the opening of debouches will permit it to march by demi-company, and thus “it will break in column” by demi-company in the same way that infantry will break in column by platoon. Like infantry, if the march is by the flank, it will observe sufficient distances between any divisions by which it will be broken, so that it can, when it will be necessary, abandon the free march to form en bataille. If the march is [a] front [march], the cavalry may form in march order in breaking in advance, by the right and by the left, and by two files, or by four, by eight, and by demicompany, or else like infantry, “it will ploy in column” on the right, on the left, or on the center, giving, according to the circumstances and the position of the route that it must cover, the head of the column to the right or to the left of the line. This manner of ploying the cavalry in column will be executed the same as the infantry. To conceive of this possibility, I will give only the example of a regiment of four squadrons ploying in column on the right in such a manner that the right has the head of the column. Example Diagram XI, Figure 1 Regiment ploying in column on the right. “Ploy the column on the right to the rear by company.”1 1 One may execute the same movement by demi-company.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_023

At this command, the company of the right will travel three paces forward. All the other companies will dislocate and form so as to be able to march by their flank by retreating their right wing around four paces to effect this in such a manner that the right of the first rank finds itself behind the terrain where it was last formed, and thus the two cavaliers of the right may freely turn their horses to gallop along the flank. The officer of the company who will find himself placed at the right of the first rank will command the movement. 2. “March” 2. At this command, all the companies form in moving at the gallop, making successive rights by man to affect this, and they carry themselves such that each rank becomes [a] file and following the particular diagonal on the terrain where the column is formed, then making front by successive lefts when they will have arrived behind the company that was to their right and which must precede them in the order of forming the column. The column being formed, if it is for an order of march, it forms in march order at the route step, leaving only two paces between each rank and four between each company. If it is for maneuvering, it closes its distances at the trot, leaving only two paces of distance between the companies and a foot between each rank. One sees that, with the same facility, the regiment will ploy in column on the right, to the rear on the left and thus on the center, with the same facility, and that it needs only to have some changes made in commands and their execution in this regard. For the rest, the ployments of column that are made with the greatest rapidity and that I have seen them executed with fifteen or twenty squadrons appear to me to be less proper for the daily and habitual formation of a march column (it is quite simple, because of the ordinary embarrassments in advance of and behind a camp, to execute in breaking by files or by demi-company, whether in advance, if the march is [a] front [march], or by the flank, if the march is [a] flank [march]) than to the formation of a maneuver column. This formation may be necessary in several circumstances, like that where a line of cavalry, being en bataille, wishes to form in column on the front or by concealing its strength from the enemy, and

Analogy between Cavalry Movements and Those of Infantry

diagram xi

Formation in column and deployment of the cavalry

131

132 to complete some view of the general or to more-lightly traverse a countryside that is rendered difficult, to go to occupy, at a great distance ahead, an important position or opening:2 movements that are all executed much more rapidly by forming in column than by marching in line. One must always see more and more that I do not at all have an exclusive system. A principle common to the cavalry and infantry, and that should never be lost from view, is to consider if the march, or any other movement made in column, has for [its] object to lead to a formation en bataille on the front or on the flank; in the former case, the march must be 2 [“Trouée,” the word Guibert uses, is a technical term that refers to a gap in a terrain feature, usually in a wood or a larger feature like a valley that links regions. The Fourth Edition of the AF Dictionary specifically refers to a wood. “Opening” best fits Guibert’s intent.]

chapter vi

made with only two paces of distance between the divisions of the column, so that the column that must form by deployment has the least depth possible; in the latter case, on the contrary, it will be appropriate to march with distances combined on the front so that the depth of the column that must reform by conversion movements will be equal to the terrain that it must occupy en bataille. Another thing that I establish for the cavalry, the same as I have established for the infantry, is the reversal of the prejudice [against] inversion. One has already seen it destroyed by what I have said on the formation of columns, at the head of which I indifferently place the squadron of the right or of the left of the line, following what the circumstances require or the situation of the route that one must follow. I will similarly shake this prejudice in the formations en bataille, where it is even more embarrassing and ridiculous.

chapter vii

Formations en bataille In this maneuver, in the conduct of this maneuver, almost all of the science and instruction of the cavalry is truly contained, because cavalry only has strength and action when it is en bataille. In any other order, it is feeble and without defense. Finally, it can only have success if it is formed in the blink of an eye, concealing its strength and forming rapidly in a state of being used. It is especially in formations en bataille that the announced analogies between cavalry and infantry tactics show themselves. It is so sensible that the details into which I could enter on the principles and on the theory of cavalry formations en bataille are no more than an exact repetition of those that I have exposed in infantry tactics, with changes to terms mostly occasioned by the difference in weapons and constitutions. One senses that a regiment of four squadrons, being in march or maneuver column if I must form them en bataille on the flank, the fractions by which it will be broken need only to re-form by quarter-conversions in such a manner that they will find themselves making face on either flank of the march and on the length that they occupied in column; this is what will be called “re-forming the column en bataille.” One conceives that, if the regiment being in march or maneuver column must re-form en bataille on the front, it will deploy by the mechanism contrary to that of the deployment in such a manner that the column will form en bataille by a single side or by both sides at the same time and to a height of and by whichever of the divisions that it will be advantageous to choose for [the] point of alignment. One sees that the same reasons by which the prejudice against the inversion of infantry has been attacked must destroy it in the cavalry and that the destruction of this prejudice will be just as advantageous, just as decisive, for the perfection of the art. It is evident that the same facts; the same applications to circumstances and terrain; the same combinations, whether relative to the direction and to the movement of columns or by rapport of the formations en bataille and alignment; the same subtleties; the same illusions to make to the enemy by means of opened and closed distances; in a word, the same theory, are applicable to the two arms; there is nothing more to it than to substitute the commands and the interior details of execution, relative to the cavalry, for those that I have indicated for the

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_024

infantry. Thus, if the eye will be formed in the result of the movements of one of the two arms, and in its maneuvers on terrain, as long as it knows the difference between the individuals who compose a squadron and those who compose a battalion, discarding the diversity in their aspect or in their evolutions, the officer of either arm who will be reflective and who will have the genius of war will be in a state to command either. It remains to me only to speak of the interior mechanism of cavalry deployment. Many men regard it as an impossible maneuver; many have protested against it while seeing its possibility; nevertheless, there are several manners of executing it, and it is important to determine which is the best. The Prussian cavalry, which is the premier in executing deployments en masse and by the flank, makes them by successive rights or lefts, or else by demi-rights or demilefts. But in these two methods, the divisions are closed head to rear. The officer who finds himself on the right or the left of each division1 commands the movement of that division, directing it by diagonal lines on the point where it must form en bataille. Skillful cavalry officers, officers who, sensing the advantage of deployments by the flank for cavalry, search without prejudice for the best means to execute this maneuver, have told me that they prefer the method of [making] right and left, finding in the [other] movement, first, the demi-right or the demi-left difficult, then, the disengagement of the divisions from the column, then, the gallop tête à botte2 as the ranks become files.3 1 In Prussia, the deployment is always executed by division, which is a demi-squadron. Thus, supposing a column of twenty squadrons, it would occupy only two-hundred and eighty paces in all its depth at the moment of deployment, calculating six paces for each demisquadron and one pace of interval. In France, the constitution of squadrons being different, I suppose that the deployment will be by company, which equally makes the demi-squadron. 2 [The tête à botte, “head to boot,” is a wedge-shaped or diagonal formation where riders align on the boot of the man in front of them, hence the name. See Louis Drummond, comte de Melfort, Traité sur la cavalerie (Paris: Desprez, 1776), especially 155–159.] 3 There is yet another manner of executing this deployment, which by rights or lefts by quarter, but then the divisions cannot be closed head to rear. It is said that Louis de Brienne de Conflans, marquis d’Armentières, executed this manner with success with the 1,500 horses that had assembled at Metz this year. There is little fundamental importance by which proceeding this deployment is executed, provided that it is executed, and that the utility of

134 I submit much more willingly to the opinion of these officers, that it is by successive rights and lefts that I propose deployments in column and thus that the deployments be executed precisely by the same movements in the contrary sense. I will give here an example of a regiment of four squadrons in column by companies closed head to rear, that is to say, with only a pace of interval between them, and the circumstances require that this column deploy entirely by the left, Diagram XI Figure 2: one will thus command the maneuver: 1. “Deploy the column to the left in advance on the first division” 1. This command will serve as warning. The cavaliers slightly space themselves on the right, supporting themselves on their left heel in order to prepare them to make their left most promptly. These preparatory movements will be made vice-versa if the deployment of the column is made to the right. 2. “Deploy to the left” 2. At this command, each cavalier bends his horse to the left and forms himself tête à botte with the man who is to the left in such a manner as to be [able] to most-easily achieve his left at the following command. 3. “At the gallop”4 3. At this command, the two ranks of each division form in file, the officer who is to the left making a left and taking to the gallop to this end; each man then successively makes the same movement immediately after his neighbor has abandoned the terrain. The two ranks of each division now become two files, at the head of which will be the officer of the left of the division, who will command the files by the shortest diagonal to the point where he must form, and to the height of the first division, which is the division of alignment. Each division of the column thus carries itself to the point where it must form, galloping on independent diagonals from those of the other divisions and separated from them by the interval of one pace that they observed maneuvering the cavalry in closed column, as it is practiced in the infantry, is sensed. 4 This third command follows the second almost without interval.

chapter vii

in the column and by those that they acquire in making their left. The unique attention of the cavalier must be to not separate from his file and to close in a lively way, at the command of front, on the cavalier who is in front of him. When the officer who commands the second division of the first squadron will arrive at the height of the left of the first division, he will relent his gallop so that he can better judge the terrain necessary to contain the front of his division; then, arriving at the point that he will judge must be the left extremity of his front, he will stop, make front, [and] align on the division that is to his right; each cavalier of his division will successively do the same, and then his second rank. The third division of the column will make the same movement alongside the second, and so all the others; the commander of each division that has already deployed will observe to remain immobile in his position to serve as the ranging pole5 and distance for the officer who commands the division that arrives after him.6 This example suffices to make known how the column can, relative to all terrains and all circumstances, deploy itself with the same facility on all the divisions of which it is composed, whether on the right, on the left, or on the right and left at the same time, of the aforementioned divisions. I again refer in this regard to the explanations and the diagrams that I have given in the [sections on] infantry tactics. Finally, it must be seen, in this same part of my work, the parallel between old formations en bataille and modern formations, the proofs that support deployments, the reasons by which I suppress all movements by demiquarter-conversion, and those by which I propose to execute changes of front by quarter-conversions on some occasions, and in the greatest number by the method of deployments. All this is applicable to cavalry, and I have had it in view in my work.

5 [See 102n6.] 6 See, for many other details and observations that have rapport with deployment, what I have already said in speaking of the infantry, the greatest part of the principles that I have given them being common to the two arms.

chapter viii

Charge Movements Here is the combat action of the cavalry, and consequently, its important and decisive movement. One cannot figure it too often in exercises, as much to accustom the horses and cavaliers to it as to form the coup-d’œil of the officers who command it and to habituate them to knowing this that is so precious; almost all cavalry battles depend on the knowledge and the employment of it. I believe [that I have] demonstrated the principles and the theory of shock action in a sensible manner [and] in a manner to procure the greatest possible quantity of speed without renouncing the ensemble of movement. I also believe [that I have] sensibly demonstrated the necessity of this ensemble of movement: it is what produces the unanimity of effort; it is what contributes, with speed, to augmenting the shock force; [and] finally, it is what imposes on the enemy, what reverses them, [and] what makes gaps in them, because cavalry wins more often by frightening, by dispersing that which opposes it, than by shedding blood, and, in this sense, it was a man who, in my opinion, well knew the propriety of cavalry, who was an officer [and] who said to me one day that he counted more on the quantity of speed and order of his squadron that the drenching of his weapons for the success of a charge. All the cavalry charge movements must be made en bataille. There may be one or two occasions where it is advantageous to charge in column; for example, in the case where it must attack a surrounded infantry [unit], especially if they maladroitly present a flank or angles ungarnished with fire and on the capital of which it is possible to arrive mostly covered. But what then must these columns be? They are not troops closed and pressed one behind the other; they are demi-squadrons or squadrons following each other with thirty, forty, or fifty paces of interval between them, thus advancing on the infantry by a continual succession of effort and being able to maneuver if they need to, by means of their intervals, whether to change the direction of their attack or to not be reversed by the ill-success of the preceding squadrons. These sorts of columns must not be composed of many squadrons, because it would be better to multiply them and to attach them to all the angles at the same time than to form them [so] considerably that, by their depth, they would only be given more to the enemy’s fire without augmenting the effect of the charge; thus, supposing that the first squadron or demi-squadron of this column were beaten,

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_025

the second, third, fourth, and perhaps even the fifth and sixth, could renew decisive efforts, but these four or five first squadrons being again repulsed [would only create] for the attacked infantry an entrenchment of fallen men and horses, without even counting their rampart of augmented confidence, in such a manner that a hundred squadrons arriving successively on the same point would only fail. Columns disposed as I have proposed will leave themselves to the resources of genius and coup-d’œil of an able cavalry officer; thus, for example, seeing that the first squadrons have not penetrated, he would brusquely carry the squadrons of the rest of the column to parts collateral to the first point of attack: [an] unseen [and] audacious attack that would almost always be followed by victory. The second occasion where it may be convenient to charge in column is when, with a superior cavalry, one will wish to charge an inferior cavalry corps occupying, I suppose, a gap, and so well-supported on both wings that it would be impossible to turn them or to inconvenience them with infantry slipping on their flanks or with cavalry dismounted for this object, as in the case where it would be between two marshes. Then, in order not to lose the advantage of numbers, one would be able to reinforce one’s line with one or several formed columns, as above, by squadrons with intervals between them, so that these columns, penetrating at some point, could form immediately [and] overthrow the enemy line or carry themselves beyond the narrowed line where the charge passed, deploying and further augmenting the superiority of the victorious line. Outside of the two aforementioned occasions, all cavalry charges must be made en bataille, because the great advantage of cavalry, when it is superior, is to deploy its forces, to extend them, [and] to gain the flank or the rear of the enemy disposition; just as the great art of inferior cavalry must be to prevent itself from being overthrown [and] in knowing to this end how to support its wings or to reinforce them with hooks; by obliques; by squadrons abutted to the wings or hidden behind some height, which are oblique hooks; or reserve squadrons allowed to engage the point of the wing that the enemy advances with confidence, believing to outflank the enemy by taking them in the flank and seeing, on the contrary, at the moment of the charge, themselves taken in the flank by these corps that must fall on them rashly and without consideration for number[s].

136 It must be agreed that the manner by which our cavalry battles pass is quite inferior to the art with which the ancients knew how to occasionally conduct theirs. Superior or inferior, our lines know only how to form and show all together, not to search for how to draw advantage from the terrain, how to prepare maneuvers and countermaneuvers from the points of the wings, or how to reinforce or support themselves, if they are inferior, with the aid of the infantry. Being thus formed, the lines advance, charge, and often do not make contact with each other, one of the two fleeing before it has been approached. If it has not completely fled, it rallies, returns again to make a charge without vigor, and thus always goes to fight softly, without loss and without success, until one of the two cavalry corps has lost courage and abandons the field. An able man would engage in combat differently, I believe. In lieu of developing on one line, or on two quitesimply straight and contiguous lines; in lieu of thus exposing all his forces to the hazard of a first shock; [if] superior, he would place, in front of or behind the points of his wings, corps destined to envelop the enemy or to arrive on the enemy during the fight; [if] inferior, he would work to support his wings. If the terrain would not furnish him with any resource in this regard, he would form the hooks [and] the obliques on which I have spoken; he would place at the points of his wings corps destined to parry the offensive movements of the enemy; he would guard well against having a second line, because a second, parallel, and contiguous line would add nothing to the force of the first, could not remedy his disasters, and would ordinarily be reversed by it;1 it would be these troops of this second line that he would employ in hooks, in obliques, [and] in reserves placed behind and on the flanks of his wings; these would be the defensively-offensive corps commanded by officers of intelligence and skill and who would act according to circumstances to thwart to the enemy’s movements and would charge the victorious and disordered enemy.2 Between two parallel rivals and two 1 One may see where this tends to be: it is to improve our usage of the second line, whether one forms it en muraille or with intervals, because, in the former case, it is reversed by the disorder of the first [line], and in the latter [case], it presents no more than small corps to the enemy, [which are] incapable of reestablishing the fight. I would [that] this first line [be] such that these reserves always form not precisely en muraille, but with ten paces between each squadron, or with intervals of twenty paces, if my squadrons have an elite troop of twenty horses, such as I have proposed, placed behind their wing or their interval. 2 [Muraille refers to a wall, particularly the wall of a castle or fortress. En muraille could be translated as “as a wall,” “in wall formation,” or “in an unbroken line,” although none would convey the sense of the French phrase.]

chapter viii

cavalry corps exercised after these principles, it would be, if their numbers and the courage are not sensibly unequal, the superiority of maneuvers and the skill of the officers commanding the reserves that would decide the victory, but it would be balanced for a long time and would finally rest with the one who would have the most appropriate [and] freshest troops to act. These tactics will perhaps one day be made to work by a general who will wish to lighten his army, diminish the great number of cavalry, and have only a reasonable quantity proportionate to his infantry without being embarrassed by the superior number of squadrons that the enemy may oppose him with. One will thus see how the genius and the science of maneuvers can easily overcome the multitude; one will see this general, if the superiority of his cavalry maneuvers does not suffice to counterbalance the inferiority of his side in numbers, knowing how to reinforce it by other means: by infantry, by artillery, [or] by fortification works that will be the bastions and the counterforts of his position, while he will place his cavalry behind curtain walls so that they may gallop on the enemy that attempts to penetrate; one will see him knowing how to pass his cavalry entirely to one wing to reunite it all by quite-rapid maneuvers on a point where he will draw advantage. Thus, this is the advantage that one may draw from the tactics exposed in this work, that the man of genius, having, I suppose, only eighty squadrons in an army against one-hundred squadrons in the enemy army, will know, by the combination of his deployments and dispositions of his order of battle, how to carry sixty squadrons where the enemy has only fifty and to consequently beat these fifty squadrons before they can receive reinforcement while the twenty remaining are, whether by their distance, by the nature of the terrain where he will place them, or by support that they are furnished by the other arms, safe from fear of enemy efforts. Everything that I have said above is in great part relative to grand tactics, because it is a question of maneuvers in line and army movements. But I always find that in similar discussions, it is impossible to stop them. How can details be spoken of without throwing a coup-d’œil on their results? How can the specific action of parts be explained without perceiving the influence that they must have on the ensemble of the machine?3 We return to some important observations on the manner of exercising cavalry in combat movements. The most 3 [Guibert here begins his exploration of the operational level of war, noting the linkages between it and the tactical level and the importance of combined arms. He will continue to develop both throughout the piece.]

Charge Movements

important and the most difficult of these movements is the march en bataille. It may have two objects: first, to approach the enemy, to form to be able to charge, which is thus a preparatory movement that must be executed at the trot; the cavalry must never employ the walking gait except to align and standardize its squadrons; second, to charge the enemy, that is to say, to travel at a gallop to go to them. One has seen, in the principles that I have exposed on shock theory, that what I have called the “galloping charge” is travelling, with a progressive movement that always accelerates its speed, the space that separates from the enemy. There are two quite-important points in the latter movement, and to which one must be attached in cavalry exercises: it is 1st that the line moving from formation arrive in the most perfect alignment possible. On this alignment, which must be the result of the equality of speed and movement in all the squadrons, depends the unanimity of efforts on all the parts of the enemy front. When I say the rest, “the most perfect alignment possible,” I do not at all require the minute precision of a horse and a squadron not exceeding the other. I would only a sufficient accord between the squadrons of the line so that that all the parts of this line may strike the enemy at nearly the same time. This accord will not be difficult to attain, provided that the cavalry be exercised in it. The second important point in charge movements is that all the squadrons that compose a line know well how to march quite perpendicularly [from their starting line]; without this, squadrons float, open or close, and throw themselves on each other; the ensemble of the line will depart from the direction it must follow [and] it will find

137 itself outflanked by the enemy that it believes to have outflanked; the point that must support one of its wings will no longer support it, etc. One sees this in what I have said on the subject in infantry tactics and schools of principles that I have proposed to establish for the direction of the march. These schools will be even more essential for the cavalry, because a truth [that is] often said and toolittle meditated on is that the science of the coup-d’œil is essentially that which constitutes the good cavalry officer. The infantry moves with much more slowness; the eye has more time to measure and compare. In the cavalry, on the contrary, the movements being quite rapid, determinations must be made with the same rapidity; the points of view are more difficult to know, [and] fewer errors of coup-d’œil soon produce considerable deviations; finally, the same speed with which one makes a false movement, employed more usefully by a skillful enemy, gives him wings to profit from faults. As such, it follows that superior officers cannot be too attached to forming the coupd’œil of the officers who are under their command, to exercising them in it, [and] to fortifying them against the illusions that different [types of] terrain produce, [and] to consequently handling their regiments, sometimes on flat surfaces, sometimes in uneven and undulating terrain, sometimes in clear woods, [and sometimes] in the countryside broken by surmountable obstacles; as such, it follows that the government must often assemble large cavalry corps, make them execute grand maneuvers, and then form camps composed of all the arms, amalgamate them, accustom them one to the other, and have them study what I have named “grand tactics.”

Conclusion It is in treating grand tactics that I will demonstrate, by the advantages that one may draw from those of the cavalry, the little benefit that has been drawn from them up to the present. To perfect the particular tactics of this arm; to indicate the best manner of employing it, whether alone or combined with the other arms; [and] to prove that, beyond a certain proportion, the accretion of the number of cavalry does no more than weigh down armies and places shackles on the perfection of the military art: here are the subjects that I have in view. I have just commenced accomplishing them in searching for the principles on

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_026

which must be founded the constitution, the ordinance, and the movements of the cavalry in simplifying these maneuvers [and] in rendering them more rapid, more decisive, and almost entirely analogous to those of the infantry. I hope that this imperfect sketch engages more skillful militaires than I to rectify my ideas, or to extend them. This may, this must be. Today the blindfold is lifted; many cavalry officers apply it and enlighten it. I know some from whom I have borrowed enlightenment and who were better than me to spread it.

section III Light Troops

∵

chapter i

Origin of Light Troops; Their Too-Great Number, [a] Prejudicial Abuse For a long time, war was made without the species of troops that we call “light troops” today, because the light arms of the ancients did not resemble them at all, either by their constitution or by the usage that was made of them; they were clothed much more lightly than the other troops; they were armed differently; they were composed of a different species of men; nevertheless, they formed corps with the heavily-armed; they marched with them, fought with them, [and] in a word, formed part of the combat ordinance. On the contrary, our light troops are armed and dressed the same as our troops; they are composed of the same species of men, but they do not at all form corps with them; they have their own genre of war and function separately. [On] the day of battle, they are not at all formed in line; they are often counted as only an hors-d’œuvre in the general disposition. The Parthians, the Numidians, [and] the Thessalians: this cavalry, so light and so vaunted in history, cannot be compared to our light troops, because they were nations entirely thus constituted, habituated to this genre of war, to speed and disorder, and having no troops of any other species, as it is today with the Crimean Tartars and some peoples of the African coast.1 Then what did the ancients do to have news, to make incursions, to guard against surprises, [or] to accomplish all the objects that we have assigned to the execution of our light troops today? This question is too interesting, too proper for casting light on the greater part of war, for me to not search for a solution. The ancients had another genre of war from ours: they generally made fewer marches and maneuvers, they were entrenched in all their camps, [and] they had for their principle to always keep as close as possible to the enemy. If they were distant? As their camps were their citadels, they had less need of external posts; in these camps were all their arsenals, their magazines, [and] their workshops of every species; they had their seat near the ocean, a river, a town, or a great fortified entrepot. We see, to give us an idea of their conduct in this regard, the great campaign of Caesar in Africa: he had no more than some legions, and 1 [“Tatars” was a general term for the peoples who lived in the northern Black Sea region, many of whom would later be called “Cossacks.” The area was home to the Scythians of early antiquity, the Mongols in the medieval period, and the Cossacks of Guibert’s period and after. All of the people cited were famed for their prowess on horseback during their respective periods.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_027

he made war against a multitude of Africans [who were] much more skilled than our light troops at harassing, at worrying, [and] at cutting [off] subsistence.2 How did the ancients form themselves in march order? They detached their advanced guard, that is to say, at a quarter-league ordinarily, or some stades more in open country, what they called “runners;” these were lightly armed, drawn from the legion, and appropriate for this service.3 This sufficed, because their armies were less numerous and ranged on an ordinance of redoubled lines, passing promptly from march order to that of combat. What did they do in case of wanting to make a detachment? The detachment was composed either of men drawn from the legions or one or several legions. I speak of the Roman military in its best days, because then it degenerated; it had immense equipment, a great quantity of war machines, [and] it set aside its defensive armor, no longer entrenching, [and] it mingled with the militaries of all the provinces of the Empire, and thus it needed barbarian infantry and light cavalry to make war in advance of it, to guard its camps; the result is known: the disgrace of the Roman Eagles and the ruin of the Empire.4 When Gustav and Maurits reestablished the military art in Europe, the idea did not occur to them of creating a species of particularist troops to make war in advance of them and to watch over the surety of their armies. They conducted themselves like the ancients: they never had numerous armies, [and] they had little war baggage and equipment; consequently, [they had] fewer magazines, fewer convoys, [and] less-lengthy and less-difficult

2 [Guibert draws from Caesar’s African War. In a general sense, Guibert is incorrect about Roman warfare, although in a way that is not entirely his fault. Roman armies were supported by large numbers of auxilia, supporting forces that often performed roles analogous to light forces in Guibert’s period. However, Roman sources downplayed their role or elided it entirely, focusing instead on the prowess of the legionary forces. As a result, Guibert, as have many readers of Roman sources from antiquity to the present, saw Roman armies as being composed primarily of heavy infantry rather than as diverse organizations of all arms. See Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War, especially 12–38 and 171–247; and Howarth, “War and Warfare in Ancient Rome.”] 3 [The stade, or stadion/stadium, was a measure of distance in the Greek world of between 600 and 750 feet. See Jaucourt, “Stade,” in Encyclopédie, XV: 487.] 4 [See 19–20n36.]

142 communications.5 These principles persisted in many regards to the time of Turenne. This great man preferred to command small armies; he had the excellent maxim of keeping as close as possible within range and view of the enemy; he made few detachments; he never parceled out his army; he maneuvered it together; it would also never occur to him to imagine to create light troops. They only commenced to be seen after him.6 Then armies became prodigiously more numerous and more loaded with embarrassments; the manner of making war changed; whether to profit from this immensity of troops or to find greater facility to nourish them, a greater extent of the countryside was searched for to be embraced by military operations. Many detachments were made [and] gross reserves kept of particular corps.7 As such [resulted] long and difficult communications; magazines emplaced on several points; [the] necessity, in the midst of parceling, to be knowledgeable over a wide distance to have the time to reassemble, and to oppose, as with chess, movement to movement and piece to piece; [and] the necessity of covering these long communications and disquieting those of the enemy.8 These objects gave birth to the idea of having 5 [Guibert is correct that Maurits generally commanded small armies, but he had the great advantage of natural barriers and fortresses to protect his territory. Guibert’s analysis of Gustav Adolf suffers either from exaggeration or being misled by sources. According to Parrott, The Business of War, 139–195, army sizes in the Thirty Years War peaked in the late 1620s and early 1630s, with Gustav himself commanding as many as 150,000 men. Many examples exist of small armies outperforming larger ones in that conflict, but Gustav is not the example of that in most cases. See also Wilson, The Thirty Years War, 424–511.] 6 [Guibert is on somewhat firmer footing with Turenne, who did seem to prefer smaller armies. However, like Maurits and Gustav, he worked with the armies available to him, particularly in his most famous campaign in Alsace, which was a secondary theater and thus was only allotted a smaller army. See Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle, 513–546.] 7 [Guibert perhaps references the units of the Maison du roi. They were created to be elite units that would be used to decide the battle at a critical point, much as Napoleon would later use his Imperial Guard. However, by Guibert’s period, the Maison du roi was all but useless in battle and only suited for parade-ground maneuvers, a fact to which he alludes throughout the work. See Guy Rowlands, “The Maison militaire du roi and the Disintegration of the Old Regime” in The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy, 245–274.] 8 [This passage is arguably the greatest support for Palmer’s argument that Guibert did not understand operational-level warfare. While he speaks of tactical formations, Guibert describes how dispersed units act in concert at the operational level. The fact that he not only does not see the potential of such actions but also actively warns against them would strongly support Palmer’s assertion. On the other hand, Guibert is speaking purely of the tactical level of warfare, and it is possible to read his later sections on “grand tactics” as his operational-level doctrine, not this paragraph. See R.R. Palmer, “Friedrich the Great, Guibert, Bülow” in Makers of Modern Strategy.]

chapter i

corps of troops privately destined to rectify them. Some officers returned from the Hungarian Wars having seen irregular Turkish and Hungarian troops; they have brought with them some cavaliers from the latter nation.9 This was what gave Marshal Luxembourg the idea of raising, in 1692, the first hussar regiment that appeared in France. This regiment was named “Mortagni.” Then, Marshal Villars raised a second, and the Elector of Bavaria gave a third to the king;10 [in addition], in the preceding century, Marshal Brissac, making war in Piedmont, imagined the first dragoons.11 I cite what was done in France, because France fought against Europe, and notwithstanding its misfortunes in the War of Spanish Succession, it was the regulations and institutions of its military that were given to Europe.12 To these hussars and dragoons were soon 9

[Guibert speaks of the various Austro-Ottoman wars fought throughout the period. He likely specifically means the wars fought between the Great Turkish War of 1683–1699 and the 1710s, in which the Austrians recovered Hungary and portions of the Balkans from Ottoman control. Wars fought on this front required light cavalry that could move quickly over rough terrain, scout, skirmish, raid, and fight dismounted. While Eastern European armies had long employed such units, they were unknown in the west, as Guibert indicates. However, largely as a result of these conflicts, armies in Western Europe began to create light horse units, variously called hussars, Grenzer, jägers, carabiniers, voltigeurs, or any number of other names. See Duffy, The Military Experience in the Age of Reason, 268–280; and Gunther Rothenberg, The Military Border in Croatia, 1740–1881: A Study of an Imperial Institution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).] 10 [The genealogy Guibert provides generally conforms to the development of hussars in Old-Regime France. They were light horse armed with a short musket called a mousqueton, pistols, and a cavalry saber but distinguished from cavalry proper and dragoons. The Bavarian mentioned is Maximilian II, Elector from 1679–1726; the Bavarians tended to cultivate French alliance as a balance to Habsburg designs on their land. See Etienne Bardin, “Hussard,” in Dictionnaire de l’armée de terre (Paris: Corréard, 1849), 2833–2839; and Jean Durival, “Habillement, equipment, & armament des troupes,” in Encyclopédie, VIII:6–10.] 11 The Spanish were the first to imitate the French, and soon the other powers successively raised dragoons. The dragoons of Marshal Brissac were properly [called] mounted infantry: they preserved for some time the musket and the pike. They were given the worst horses so that their losses would be less when they were obliged to abandon them. They wore neither boots nor spurs, and when they formed on foot to fight, they attached their horses to each other two-by-two. 12 [Charles II de Cossé, duc de Brissac, was a soldier in the Wars of Religion and under Louis XIII. Guibert speaks of a tradition that ascribes to him the creation of the first dragoon unit in Europe, or at least in France. Dragoons were hybrid units recruited from and organized like infantry but listed and functioning as cavalry. They did not wear the heavy armor or boots of the cavalry proper, as Guibert indicates. They were armed with a variety of weapons, including fusils and cavalry sabers. Unlike later practice, where dragoons were essentially mounted infantry, French dragoons

Origin of Light Troops; Their Too-Great Number, [ a ] Prejudicial Abuse

joined the usage of free companies. Louis XIV maintained a great number of them. These were companies raised by Swiss officers and not admitted by the cantons that performed this sort of service, and these companies were seen in the history of the time, perhaps being more useful than our current light troop corps, making the hardiest blows.13 It would have been doubtlessly fortunate if it had stopped there; it remained so during the War of Polish Succession, but it was not the same in the War of Austrian Succession. Maria-Theresa was compelled to throw herself into the arms of the Hungarians; thus appeared in Germany the peoples of the [Hungarian] kingdom: Transylvanians, Croats, and others, irregular and undisciplined militaries that the House of Austria had never before named to its armies, whether for politics or because it sensed it was not liked by them. Maria-Theresa’s generals disciplined one part [while] they allowed the other to serve according to its genius and customs. Maria-Theresa mounted the throne of her ancestors, and she preserved it by these faithful Hungarians.14 In the subsequent war, they went for the first time to Flanders and the Rhine. The ignorant did not fail to say in France that it was this quantity of harassing militia that destroyed our armies in Bohemia and Bavaria, while in effect they were more the victims of the climate and our faults. It is said that they must be opposed with troops that are mostly similar.15 Marshal

13

14

15

were considered cavalry and expected to perform cavalry roles, including shock attacks into enemy formations. They also played a notorious role repressing civil disturbance, being largely responsible for the “dragonnades,” campaigns of terror waged by Louis XIV in the later part of the seventeenth century and usually directed at Protestants. See “Dragons,” in Encyclopédie, V:104. See also Roy McCullough, Coercion, Conversion, and Counterinsurgency in Louis XIV’s France (Leiden: Brill, 2007).] [Compagnies franches, or free companies, were organizations of troops that did not form formal regiments. Guibert indicates that they originated in Switzerland, which famously rented out regiments of Swiss troops to European militaries. France employed numerous foreign units, both formal regiments and free companies. Choiseul was intimately involved with them, as was Besenval, who chronicles his experiences in his Mémoires.] [Maria-Theresa made multiple recourse to the Hungarian Insurrection, a feudal holdover that called out the people of Hungary to serve their queen under what the French would call the arrière-ban, the feudal levy. Technically, the French militia was also a call of the arrière-ban, which was last used during the Seven Years War. In the Habsburg case, the mingling of eastern and western modes of fighting directly contributed to the profusion of light forces in European armies, particularly after 1740. See Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession, 66–68 and 94–95.] [In 1742, a French army under Marshal Broglie fought its way into the city of Prague, taking it by surprise. The Austrian army sent to retake it lay siege to it for much of the remainder of the year. Broglie escaped the city, leaving it under the command of Charles-Louis-Auguste Fouquet, duc de Belle-Isle, one of the

143

Saxe made uhlans, [and] regiments called “Light Troops” were raised.16 At the other end of Europe, the King of Prussia also augmented at the same time his hussars and dragoons, to face the arrière-bans of Hungary; thus ended the War of Austrian Succession.17 In the Seven Years War, this reciprocal augmentation of light troops went even further. Thus, in all our constitutions without principles, everything is done by imitation and infatuation. Finally, this is the situation of opinions on the subject today, that many officers dare to advance that light troops are the most important and most useful corps in the army [and] that they must multiply [and] be rendered superior in number and quality to those of the enemy. To hear them, it seems that these corps are the school of war, that it is only they who do it or must do it: [a] strange bias that can confound the practice of maneuvering some troops, of scouting a countryside, of making hardy expeditions, [and] of engaging in and conducting a small fight with the immense and almost superhuman science of moving an army, of giving a battle, [and] of creating and commanding the plan of a campaign, [a] bias whose results may train some good advanced-guard commanders, perhaps some good generals’ lieutenants, but certainly never men of the first genre like Turenne and Luxembourg. Without doubt, an army should scout, cover its communications, [and] harass the enemy. But is there not a system of war by which all these operations could be rendered less complicated? Cannot what we call the regular troops be employed in the greater part of these operations? Finally, in admitting that it is necessary to maintain these corps of troops destined to be privately filled, is the constitution that is given to these corps, and particularly the one given to them in France, the best and most advantageous? Here are three points that I will examine. most notable mid-century French commanders. He conducted a fighting retreat from the city that winter, which would become legendary among French officers of the time. However, the French left many dead and wounded in Bohemia. French armies campaigned in Bavaria during much of the rest of the war. Guibert probably intends the 1745 campaign, which saw a French army under Henri-François, comte de Ségur, defeated at Pfaffenhofen and driven from Bavaria. See Anderson, The War of the Austrian Succession, 112–113; and Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession, 101–127 and 203.] 16 [Saxe, who spent much of his youth in Central and Eastern Europe, raised a unit of hussars or uhlans that served under him in his wars. When he retired to the Château de Chambord in 1748, they went with him and terrorized the locals until Saxe’s death in 1750. See Jean-Pierre Bois, Maurice de Saxe (Paris: Fayard, 1992); and Jon Manchip White, Marshal of France: The Life and Times of Maurice, comte de Saxe, 1696–1750 (London: Hamilton, 1967), especially 248–258.] 17 [Like many of his contemporaries, Friedrich II raised light forces during the period.]

chapter ii

It Is Possible to Create a System of War That Renders Light Troops Little-Necessary If armies were less numerous, less overloaded with embarrassments, [and] more sober; if they had other methods of subsistence, certainly they would occupy lessextended positions; they would maneuver more rapidly; they would be less afraid of surprises, the deprivations of marching, [or] checks to their convoys or their magazines; [and] they would be less forced to divide into reserves and detached corps, as these are all the objects that impose the necessity of this parceling out, of this war by pieces, that, being more complicated and filling the general’s head with more details, is less decisive than the system of war of the ancients. Armies being more coherent [and] closer together, making war en masse in lieu of making it by detachment, will need fewer precautions, fewer posts to be scouted or covered, [and] thus fewer occasions to employ light troops. Today, these occasions are multiplied to infinity; everywhere there are light troops; the advanced guards are composed of them; they make up the reserves [and] detachments; they are found on [lines of] communications [and] in intermediate posts; thus light troops, expanded and forming a fifth of armies, do not at all accomplish a decisive object. The enemy advances in force? They [light forces] must be supported, or they retreat. Armies are given to combat? They do not take part; the prejudice itself seems to have dispensed with them. “But by what means,” it is said to me, “should the current constitution of armies be reformed, when this constitution is general throughout Europe? Do the consequent means to change this system exist?” I confess that the former change is impossible in the circumstances that are current in all nations. To execute it, there must be a vigorous people, superior to the others by its government [and] by its courage; a people that does not have our vices and our false enlightenment. But with our constitutions, with our armies as they are, the changing of the system of war is not impossible. What would prevent a general, a man of genius, commanding 50,000 men against an army of the same strength, from departing from the established routine, from not having in that 50,000 men 10,000 light troops, or from constituting them in a manner that they work as needed in the line service and that they take rank in the combat dispositions? I will quickly return to the details of these changes. What would prevent him on almost all occasions from not parceling out his army; from

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_028

making fewer detachments, fewer reserves, [and] fewer of the movements of detail than are done today; [and] of maneuvering with his entire mass? What would the astonished enemy make of this new genre of war? Would they parcel themselves out, separate themselves, place a pawn here and another there, seek to give jealousy, to menace, to steal a march?1 The other would remain closed [and] united, always, if it could, within range or view of them, always able to attack the bulk of their army or the parts that they have detached, always in force and safe from surprise, because it would be assembled and disposed for combat, while its adversary would consume itself in fatigues, because it will be disconnected and engaged on several points.2 I will develop these ideas in the rest [of this work] with more detail; I dare to believe that they are not chimerical, and what may give confidence in them is that, in some regards, the conduct and opinions of the King of Prussia confirm them. No other general has known how to maneuver armies that are so numerous and to make movements with them that are great and decisive; no one ever parceled out his armies less and was less partisan towards reserves and detached corps. He said so in his writings, [and] he proved it in his campaigns.3 On some occasions, he departed from this maxim, which is what attracted the disaster of Maxen and that of General Fouquet.4 Finally, the King of Prussia has fewer light 1 [“Jealousy” had an additional meaning during the period that has now been lost. According to the Fourth Edition of the AF Dictionary, it means to create fear or disquiet in an enemy in relation to their role as embodiment of the personal honor of the monarch. The connotation is that the enemy must react for fear of losing that honor.] 2 [Guibert does not speak of a wholly unitary army, as the passage may seem to indicate, but rather against the common practice of parceling an army out, particularly along a geographic frontier or before a fortress.] 3 [The most accessible collection of Friedrich’s writings remains Luvaas, Frederick the Great on the Art of War.] 4 [The Battle of Maxen took place in November 1759 and saw an Austrian army attack a detached Prussian force under Friedrich August von Finck before taking it prisoner, to the great humiliation of Friedrich. See Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 251–254. Guibert presumably refers to the 1747 Battle of Assietta, where Belle-Isle and his younger brother, Louis-Charles-Armand Fouquet, chevalier de Belle-Isle, lost a disastrous fight to entrenched

It Is Possible to Create a System of War That Renders Light Troops Little-Necessary

troops, properly speaking; in the last war, he had some free battalions composed of deserters [that were] being constantly taken and stood up, and on which he lays no foundation. He always employed grenadier battalions or line regiments in his advanced guards, in his important detachments, [and] at the heads of his attacks. He has many dragoons, but these dragoons are used in all species of service. He has eighty squadrons of hussars, but these .

Austro-Piedmontese. The brothers divided their force into several columns to attack the Sardinian positions and were routed with heavy casualties, including the death of the chevalier. See Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession, 311–313.]

145

hussars are the best troops in his army; they fight in line; they are almost always composed of [Prussian] nationals; [and] they are the ones who form advanced posts in times of war, because in this, quite different[ly] from our recruiting our light horse troops from foreigners and men who are taken at random in some cases, he thinks that the soldiers that must be chosen with the greatest of care are indisputably those who are in a state of always being very near the enemy and on whose vigilance and fidelity often depend the surety and secrecy of operations.5 5 [See Duffy, The Army of Frederick the Great, especially 54–68 and 93–109.]

chapter iii

Line Troops May Advantageously Undertake the Service, or at Least a Part of the Service, Confined to Light Troops If it is possible to create a system of war that renders the great number of light troops much less necessary, it is even more to accomplish with line troops the objectives that are particularly confined today to the former. What is the difference between the infantry of a battalion and that of a corps of light troops? Are they not men of the same species, dressed the same, armed the same, [and] subject to the same discipline? Does the infantry of the light troops only receive education relative only to its functions? Do the [men] know how to swim, to run, to resist hunger, [or] resist fatigue for longer? Are its officers given an instruction that is the least analogous to what they must accomplish? I will say as much of the cavalry attached to the light troop corps in comparison to line cavalry. Finally, not only can line troops accomplish a part of the functions assigned to light troops, but it will be advantageous that they be accomplished, not by pickets [or] by detachments, as was done in the past in France [and] as we practiced in the first campaigns of the last war, which was the source of our daily checks and of the ascendancy that the enemy took over us [and] which caused all our expeditions to fail, but as Marshal Broglie did in 1760. This general formed grenadier battalions; he had regiments serve outside of the line; he regenerated our dragoons, [a] superior troop by its composition, [a] truly-elite troop that waited only for a man who could handle it; he employed them at every turn, whether in the war of detail or the war of mass; he accustomed them to departing from the line for daily service and returning to it for the day of combat. Events justified the goodness of his method; a new spirit was born in the army; we had success, [and] we were acquitted in a campaign of 8,000 prisoners that we owed to the enemy.1 After such an example, one may be spared 1 [Victor-François, duc de Broglie, took command of the main French army in Germany in 1760 and retained it until 1762, the longest

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_029

new discussions, but we continue. So many people have their eyes closed to enlightenment! In thus employing line troops in advanced guards and for important objects, and by preference for the elite of these troops, one will give more checks to the enemy, [and] one will suffer fewer, a quite-important thing, because it is the daily superiority that gives birth to the vigor and confidence that animates an army. The corps that one carries ahead are more solid, less subject to being broken, [and] more proper to waiting for reinforcements or new dispositions. The base of the army becomes habituated to seeing the enemy, more warlike, [and] more educated. If, on the contrary, as many people wish, the light troops are particularly multiplied, if they are employed daily in the war of detail, the army no longer undertakes exterior service; it is bastardized in its camps, [and] it does not see the enemy until the days of battle. These days arrive, and thus, an inconceivable thing, quite worthy of this perpetual contradiction that one finds between reason and our principles: the light troops that have been seasoned [and] have been led to the enemy throughout the campaign retire to let the fate of the action be decided by those of the state, by the line troops, [which are] quite [inexperienced] and quite astonished by all the spectacle that is offered to them, because they have constantly been kept distant from occasions to see and to act.

single command in the war. One of his first actions was to promulgate a series of reforms, including the creation of combinedarms divisions and cavalry changes, as Guibert indicates. See Abel, “An Aspect of the Military Experience in the Age of Reason: The Evolution of the Combined-Arms Division in Old-Regime France,” in Essays in Honor of Christopher Duffy, ed. Alex Burns; Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, 329–342, and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 80–105.]

chapter iv

On the Constitution of Light Troops I have just shown by what mania of disorderly and littlereflective imitation the number of light troops is so prodigiously increased and appears to wish to grow more; I have demonstrated that they must be considerably diminished, that those of the infantry are almost completely useless, [and] that one advantageously supplements both [light infantry and cavalry] with line troops; let us now examine, in the supposition of still conserving them, the constitution that will be necessary to give them to draw useful benefit from them. This would certainly not be in forming 2,000 or 3,000 men in corps, as it has been said is wished in France, because, other than it not being easy to find commanders who are in a state of always commanding so-numerous corps, these corps thus constituted become less mobile, less active, [and] less audacious; they have the pretention of being small reserves, and we already have too many of these detached corps in our army, animated by a particularist spirit that is almost never that of the army, occupied in conserving themselves quite entirely [and] quite independently, exclusively combining for themselves and indifferent to the success and to the checks that are not their own. I thus prefer light-troop corps of only 1,000 or 1,200 men, two-thirds of whom should be cavalry. For what is a light-troop corps destined? It is to make a rapid incursion; it is to scout; it is to harass; it is to be tonight on one point and tomorrow on another; but if, as today, they are composed of a majority of infantry, they will either be obliged in making this genre of war to abandon their infantry, which would only embarrass them, or, as they do more commonly, not wishing to parcel themselves out, fearing compromising themselves, they hazard nothing and are weighed down like line troops. On the contrary, being only a third infantry, they may be completely entrepreneurial; they may, when they will need to, carry their infantry en croupe;1 relaying in turn with dismounted dragoons, there will always be infantry to guard the night, to ensure a defile [or] a bridge, [or] to throw into some houses. In case of necessity, the entire corps can become infantry, if I suppose that it will be exercised alternatively in the handling of the two arms. If it will be required to stand firm? It will be supported by line troops. If they [line troops] will be engaged in a serious fight? It [light corps] will form 1 [By having them ride double.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_030

ranks with them and fight alongside them. Exercised in the same movements, it must know how to fight en masse the same as in detail. I must add that this corps will be composed of selected and warlike soldiers, so that, in times of war, deserters or men of doubt would never be admitted. In whom should be confided the heads of the advanced guards, the patrols, scouting, [and] the [picket line], [and] who, on the eve of an interesting moment, must stop deserters and emissaries if not the bravest and most faithful in the army? The same choice will be made for the officers of this corps; command will be given to hardy [and] intelligent officers whose merit is known and whose fortune is only commencing; to men who know that such corps are destined to parcel themselves out, to compromise themselves, [and] to be sacrificed at need; [and] finally, to [men who do not] fear being beaten when they accomplish being a useful object to the army.2 I have said that these corps will be habituated to fighting in detail and en masse. One will consequently instruct them. One will exercise them in swimming, in running, [and] in everything that can augment their agility and their strength. In peacetime, one will make them make exercises simulating all the operations that they may be charged with in war. One will show officers and junior officers how to make a patrol, a reconnaissance, [and] a report; how to establish a post on foot or on horseback; how to entrench one; [and] how to ensure the other by the positioning of cavalry pickets and by patrols made on all the radii. One will show the officers how to make dispositions to surprise, take, or attack a post; how to defend or attack a village; [and] how to crenellate houses [and] attach a petard, [an] instrument with which light troops must always be provided, etc. One will teach them how to orient themselves in a countryside [and] how to form a just idea of this countryside viewed from different aspects; how they can accustom themselves to seeing it thus, so as to know it well; [and] how to judge distances, the strength of troops that [they] perceive, their dispositions, [and] their maneuvers. One will make them know how, by some illusions of art or terrain, troops appear 2 [Guibert addresses another aspect of emerging operational-warfare theory: the use of light troops in campaigns in advance of armies. He was one of the few contemporary theorists to consider light troops as a part of the army proper in this regard rather than as forces composed to fight enemy light troops or to skirmish before the battle.]

148 more or less numerous, and in fortifying the eye against these illusions, one will show them how to employ them against the enemy. In the same manner, one will form a school for stratagems and ruses, resources often employed by the ancients and so unknown today. Finally, one will accustom the officers of these corps to being truthful in their reports, to not exaggerating the number of enemy that they have seen and fought, to not uselessly consuming ammunition, and not being believed to be too-often engaged [with the enemy]; and for this, they should hear, they will well-engrave on their spirits, that all these lies, unfortunately too common today, may have the most adverse consequences; that in writing, I suppose, to the general that they have had 6,000 men come against them and that they fought [or] that they had seen some point, they have made a false combination if the enemy is less numerous or if the thing advanced is not exact; that once these lies are known on two or three occasions, the general no longer knows how to unravel the truth [or] the true attacks from those that are feigned; [and] that, in a word, these lies may bring some officers a moment of valor, [but] they are more often blemished by them, or they have no more than a passing reputation that great occasions have destroyed. I attack this abuse because it is more destructive than is believed, because it exists in all the light troops in Europe, [and] because, if there is

chapter iv

one corps in the army where it is essential to find clear sight and truth, it is in that which is the most advanced, because it is after its report that the mass moves and is commanded. The Romans punished the ignominy of sentinels and advanced posts that sent a false signal. Caesar said in his commentaries that he would never again serve with a certain “Publius,” [a] brave [and] intelligent officer, because he saw, whether out of vanity or some particularist motive, he always dictated the accounts that he rendered.3 I have written this morsel before being placed in a light troop corps. Serving in one now is not a reason to change sentiment, nor to silence it. Shamed be the writer, and especially the military writer, who sells his opinion to circumstances or fortune!4

3 [Guibert references a story in Caesar, Gallic Wars, I:21–24, where Caesar dispatches Publius Considius, “who was reputed to be very experienced in military affairs” to scout a position during the conflict with the Helvetii in 58. Publius reported that the enemy occupied a position on high ground; Caesar later discovered it to have actually been occupied by his own men and “that Considius, struck with fear, had reported to him as seen that which he had not seen.”] 4 [Guibert likely references the Royal Legion, more commonly called the Corsican Legion (Légion Corse), which he helped to raise and train.]

section IV Essay on Artillery Tactics

∵

chapter i

On the Artillery in General, Its Advantages [That Are] Too Elevated by Some and Too Abased by Others, [and] Its Real Utility The artillery is the third arm of armies, or, to speak most justly, it is a useful and important accessory to the strength of the troops that compose the armies. This distinction between “arm” and “accessory” perhaps will appear to be a little sophistic. Nevertheless, it is necessary to give a precise idea of the object of artillery; thus by the word “arm,” one can only precisely hear the infantry or cavalry, as they are the two principle and constituent movers of an army, while “accessory” perfectly corresponds to the foreign means that human imagination has found, in all the centuries, to augment the force of the combatants, means that cannot fight alone and by themselves and that vary frequently, because they have been successively elephants, chariots armed with scythes, catapults, ballistae, onagers, etc., and finally, in our times, all the gross firearms constituted under the generic name of “artillery.” The war machines of the ancients were inconvenient and of little effect. Our artillery is simpler, more ingenious, [and] easier to move; its execution is certainly more deadly. Some militaires do not have this view, but how [they] dare to compare machines that could only use the force of jacks,1 winches, pulley systems, [or] cordage to weapons that are easily maneuverable and that, by the sudden ignition of powder, shoot heavier and more destructive projectiles; machines whose mountings and arms gave openings to opposing batteries to those weapons that can be rendered almost inaccessible to enemy blows; machines whose fire was not horizontal, whose greatest extent of range was outside the medium range of ours [and] whose rectitude of range was quite imperfect; [and] machines that permitted a place to defend itself for several years and wood-framed towers of a prodigious elevation to subsist before them for several years to weapons that, when under elevated angles of projection, throw their projectiles to incredible ranges [and] that, when under less-sensible angles, shoot these projectiles horizontally, striking enormous works from point-blank range, destroy them in a few days, [and,] enfilading prolongs, 1 [The word Guibert uses here, “vervins,” occurs across various editions of his work but does not appear exist in contemporary French. In all likelihood, he meant “vérins,” which refers to jacks and first appeared in Fourth Edition of the AF Dictionary; he may have heard the word spoken, either in French or in another language, and inaccurately transcribed it.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_031

they ricochet, hindering the enemy from maintaining them; and finally, by destroying all the places that are not delivered by some external aid or by the faults of those who besiege them. One must not conclude from this that the science of artillery has arrived at the point of perfection that it may reach. [The] dimensions of pieces, construction of carriages, effects of powder, [and] launching and range of projectiles: almost everything on these different subjects is still system or error. There are few principles in this science that are not contested. Several points of the premier importance are still problems, and they will be for some time. We ignore what the effects of powder are [and] up to what point it acts on the projectiles that it throws, whether relative to its quality, its quantity, the manner in which it is employed, [or] the impressions that the air makes on it, or relative to the metal [and] to the length and thickness of pieces. We ignore the quantity of the motor force by which projectiles are thrown and the successive diminution of speed that is provided to it more or less strongly by the air. The theory of ballistics is yet more certain. We have searched in vain until now for a general equation that, in all cases, determines the curve described by the center of gravity of a spherical body projected into the air, etc.. We have only approximate tables of primitive point-blank ranges. Thus, when the pointing of the primitive point-blank does not take place,2 it must be done by estimation and by trial and error, as it was by the ancient method, with the [gun’s] sight or by means of risers and mobile sights, a new invention that is quite complicated [and] perhaps not solid enough and that requires a practical theory and precautions that one cannot expect of the soldier, [who is] often in the midst of the tumult and danger of a fight. One sees that all is far from perfection in the art. Thus, it is apparent that the time [and] the mathematical knowledge that spreads and ferments the spirits more and more each day produces new discoveries and that these discoveries bring about new principles. May only the government excite genius on this important 2 [While “point blank” has become a term to denote very close range, it has a more technical definition in ballistics. “Primitive point blank” refers to the second intersection of the line of sight with the line of the projectile; see 71–72.]

152 branch of the military, as in all the others, [while] at the same time containing the anxiety of innovations, not rejecting them without examination and not adopting them without proofs! May the proofs that it ordains not be what I have said they too-often are: assemblies whose result is known before they have [met], whether because the authority of the officers who preside over it constrains and covers all opinions or because each of them brings his prejudice rather than his judgement and the view that he wishes to preserve rather than the impartiality by which one may see before judging. This digression on the advantages of the artillery and on the progress that remains to be made in it will serve to quite-precisely fix the opinion that one must have of its utility. Persuading oneself, as some tacticians have, that artillery is an accessory more embarrassing than useful, louder than deadly, [and] consequently not speaking of artillery [nor] entering it into any tactical combinations, is an error that experience and reason condemn. Saying, with some artillery officers who have advanced it in their works, that “artillery is the soul of armies,” that “the superiority of artillery must decide victory,” is another error that is either the effect of a prejudice of the [artillery] corps or that of the love of the art that one cultivates. Such would be the extreme blindness and equal irrationality of two men, one who believes that all the projectiles thrown by cannon attain their goal [and] that the execution of artillery is certain and terrible, and the other who believes that chance alone directs these projectiles, and that consequently, the effect of cannon must not be counted for anything in the combination of a disposition. But of what import is it where the errors come from if they exist? To praise the artillery too much and to believe too much in its effects, [or] to denigrate it too much and spend too few funds on it: these are two equally-prejudicial extremes. I will search for the just midpoint between these extremes; I will mostly search for it relative to the propriety and effects of artillery, in the field war, because it is principally with those tactics that it has rapport. Artillery is to troops what flanks are to fortification works. It[s purpose] is to support them, sustain them, [and] to take reverses and prolongs on the lines that they occupy. It must, in an order of battle, occupy salients, supporting positions, [and] parts that are feeble, whether by number, by the species of troops, or by the nature of the terrain. It must keep the enemy distant, place them in check, [and] hinder debouches.3 Artillery well-employed 3 [In chess, placing an opponent in check threatens their king, which requires that the check be resolved with the next move. In a more general sense, “place in check” means to discomfit an opponent,

chapter i

relative to these different objects is a useful accessory and one more means for the man of genius; thus, artillery tactics must be analogous to those of troops; thus, the commanders of troops must at least know the result that may be expected of the different dispositions or executions of guns so as to combine this result in their general disposition. Machines, gunnery crews, powder, projectiles, milieu, [and] circumstances: everything, in a word, contributes to making the range of guns quite uncertain, whether in accuracy or in distance. Aim a piece at an isolated object that presents a small surface and from point-blank range: it must perhaps be ten, perhaps one-hundred, shots before it touches this object. I suppose it achieves it; the following shot, fired on the same projection angle, by the same cannoneers, with the same charge [and] the same quantity of powder, will depart more-or-less sensibly from the target. What can be concluded from this uncertainty? That the cannon, considered in its individual effect and aimed at an isolated object presenting a small surface, is a machine that is little redoubtable, if at all. But this is not at all how they are employed in fights. It is not a question of a unique point; it is lines [and] masses of troops; [thus], if one understands the usage of artillery, one forms gross batteries; one fires, not at determined points, but at spaces, at debouches; one makes use of ricochets [and] one takes prolongs; one is uniquely attached to carrying one’s projectiles in the vertical plan of the enemy ordinance; one accomplishes, not the small object of demonstrating a cannon or of killing some men, but the great object, the decisive object, that must be to cover, to traverse with fire, the field that enemy occupies, and that by which the enemy wishes to advance. Artillery thus placed, thus executed, produces many more ills and much more fright. Here are the advantageous effects that one may promise oneself from artillery: it will become less decisive and less redoubtable in proportion to the troops’ being more warlike, less ordered, and more maneuverable. More warlike, they will be less exaggerated by the ravages that enemy artillery may cause; they will not take the quantity of noise for the quantity of danger; they will know that, for [every] ten lines of direction that direct balls against them, there are a hundred of aberration where they cannot be harmed; they will know, the necessity of suffering enemy fire posed, that, if one is disordered or fights on a firm footing, fright is not guaranteed, [and] that, if one marches to attack, the means of ceasing, or at least of force an opponent to act, or, to use another analogy, to wrong-foot an opponent.]

On the Artillery in General

diminishing, the danger is to arrive on the enemy, because then the enemy is surprised, falters, and aims with less accuracy. Well-ordered and skillfully maneuvering in front of cannon, they will remain in a thin ordinance, which offers to its blows the smallest target possible. If they are in columns, they will know to promptly quit this deep order to form en bataille by simple [and] rapid movements that occasion neither disorder nor confusion. They will know, by means of discipline and habit of maneuvers, that they will have contracted, forming to take shelter from artillery fire by all the means that the terrain will offer; there, if they are disordered, placing before them a small height, covering themselves with a ravine, assembling themselves in column behind a ridge, [or] placing themselves behind a soft and marshy terrain where ricochets can have no effect; here, broken into column by division or by demibattalion, presenting thus to the enemy, in lieu of a continuous line, small divisions with large intervals, viewed by the flank and offering only three files to the enemy’s aim. Other times, they may form themselves prone, having in advance of them some intelligent men to alert them to what passes; these precautions will not be regarded as dishonorable, as they have been in a century of prejudices and ignorance, because the first law of war is to not expose

153 the soldier when it is not necessary [and] then to expose him without restraint when necessity requires. Finally, if they must march on the enemy, they will know how to profit from all the resources of the terrain, debouching in column by the points that are not in view of enemy artillery if these points conduct them well within range of it, or, if there are no such debouches, marching rapidly on the enemy, throwing dispersed, skirmishing chasseur companies in front of them to draw their [enemy] attention, harass their shots, and principally acting against battery cannoneers. I recall, on all of this, principles that are perhaps already known but certainly little put into practice. I have needed to repeat these principles so as to present both the advantages that the troops may draw from the artillery attached to them and the art by which they may diminish the efforts of that which is opposed to them. It was just as important to examine in what manner and up to what point artillery may be useful and redoubtable [and] to balance, in this regard, the opinion of outraged artillery partisans with those of people who blindly declaim against it. I believe that I have accomplished this object by the dissertation that I have made.

chapter ii

Modern Constitution of Our Artillery [and] Parallel of the Old System with the New My project is not at all to enter here into a discussion of sentiments that today divide the artillerists on the interior details of their art like proportion of guns, construction of carriages, theory of fire, etc. I am not at all educated enough on these materials to have an opinion of my own, and of what use are discussions when they do not throw light on the subjects that one discusses? If, until now, there have been revolutions in artillery systems; if, in our time, sentiments are still divided on an infinity of objects, it is [because], in a corps where there is necessarily study and habitual work, spirits must ferment and work; eh! we guard ourselves against desiring, as long as an art is not perfected, that its ideas be stable and uniform. This would be a vexing presage of numbness and ignorance. The revolution that was made at the Treaty of Paris 1763 has shaken the artillery more than any other part of our military constitution. This shakeup has produced good and bad; it is the sort common in human operations. But which has prevailed? It is this that I will examine in summarizing the results, without entering into its details.1 1 [Guibert speaks of another debate in military affairs during the period, relating to artillery. Jean-Florent de Vallière was an artillerist of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He became France’s foremost siege theorist after Vauban’s death, being named Director-General of Artillery in 1720. He supervised many of the technical studies that Guibert references, including on the effects of powder. Befitting his background in siege mechanics, he created a new system of field artillery that emphasized heavy, static guns. His son, Joseph-Florent, marquis de Vallière, inherited his father’s system on his death in 1759 and was its fierce protector. Jean-Baptiste Vacquette de Gribeauval was the greatest artillerist of the period. While he came up through the génie like Vallière, Gribeauval developed radically different notions of the use of field artillery. Instead of the heavy guns based on siege cannon, Gribeauval began to advocate for lighter, more mobile guns that could be maneuvered on the battlefield at need. He also worked to develop superior materials and casting methods, and he may have introduced interchangeable parts to France. As was the case with nearly every element of military affairs in mid-century France, a rancorous debate broke out between the Vallière and Gribeauval systems, with supporters being dubbed “Reds” and “Blues.” For much of the period, Vallière’s Reds prevailed, if only because they had the weight of past practice behind them. By Guibert’s time, opinion had begun to change, particularly after the efficacious use of mobile artillery in the Seven Years War by Friedrich. The debate was finally settled in the 1770s. The War Ministry under Saint-Germain issued edicts making the

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_032

The proportion of pieces and construction of carriages was changed. A new system of field and siege artillery was elevated from the debris of the old. Its adversaries pretend that these great changes will cost enormous sums. I know for sure that they have not been: I have seen the details. Eh! even they did, if the new system is better, if it renders the French artillery superior to that of the enemy, if by this it influences the winning of a battle, the expense is more than compensated for. In politics, it is only errors that cost; useful expenses are economy. In changing the proportions and carriages of field artillery, they were considerably lightened. I add here a comparison table that will make this difference known. The partisans of the new system pretend that the pieces have lost nothing in their extent or the rectitude of their range; they say that, with the artillery that will be taken on campaign, they will have ranges proportionate to the objectives and the targets of the field war. The partisans of the old system object to them [by arguing] that, in shortening and attenuating the pieces to make them lighter, the length and accuracy of the range has been lost [and] that the inconveniences of recoil have prodigiously increased; they rue the long pieces and the less-ingenious and less-complicated solidity of the old carriages; they pretend that the field carriages need not be different from the siege carriages [and] that this is a complication of means and expense that will deprive [the artillery] of the facility of reversing both the artillery of armies for [that of] places and that of places [for] armies. Tests could have revealed the truth in some of these subjects, for example, on the length and accuracy of ranges, but, as I have already observed, the majority of tests that are made in the artillery schools decide nothing, and their result always conforms to the dominant opinion. Finally, the artillery officers who are of neither party, who like truth and goodness, whatever it yields, agree that, the old field artillery being too heavy [and] the tactical movements Gribeauval System the standard, and Vallière died in 1776. The resulting system would lay the foundation for the use of mobile artillery to devastating effect in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. See Bruce McConnachy, “The Roots of Artillery Doctrine: Napoleonic Artillery Tactics Reconsidered,” in The Journal of Military History 65, no. 3 (2001): 614–640; and Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 291–299.]

155

Modern Constitution of Our Artillery [ and ] Parallel of the Old System with the New Table 1

Comparison of the weight of the new pieces of 16, 12, 8, and 4, with those of the old system of the same caliber, mounted on their carriagesa

With their limber

Without limber

Calibers

New pieces

Old pieces

Difference

Calibers

New pieces

Old pieces

Difference

16 12 8 4

6,330 3,814 2,927 1,819

6,589 4,966 3,579 2,380

259 1,152 652 561

16 12 8 4

5,789 3,208 2,321 1,317

6,289 4,613 3,216 2,017

500 1,395 895 700

a [Weight conversions are difficult in the extreme, so Guibert’s original figures have been retained. The importance lies in the “difference” column, which demonstrates the efficacy of the Gribeauval System.]

of troops becoming too rapid and well-known, the artillery must conform to them; that the pieces consequently must be lightened; [and] that their shortening did occasion them to lose some of their range, but that, beyond what remains, shots were so uncertain that this loss, more [imaginary] than real, must not leave regrets. They say that they have perhaps lost their accuracy but that this difference is so little sensible that it does not give disadvantage, because in the field war, it is used to strike large spaces and not points, and that, if by chance one wishes to attack points like entrenchments or other obstacles that it is proper for destroying, one pushes the artillery to distances that do not permit the aberration of projectiles to be sensible; they say that the old siege carriages have need of being changed; that they are too difficult to maneuver, to conceal from enemy fire, and to repair in the midst of the embarrassments of a siege. Up to this, all would be well in the changes that have taken place, but they blame the enormous and maladroit masses substituted for these carriages, [and] they rue that the pieces of 16 appear to have been renounced for the field war. They demand, “what will be used to attack houses, abatis, [or] entrenchments, however thin, and that the hand of men could raise in open country in four days;” they complain of the too-great quantity of pieces of 4 that are proposed to be attached to either the regiments or to the park; they propose a great number and a more-frequent use of howitzers; [and] they

disapprove of the complication of having two species of ball cartridges, the ingenious and complicated invention of mobile sights, aiming screws, and some other details, whether in the carriages or in the maneuvering of the pieces, that would be too long to report here. In a word, they approve of more than they disapprove, and they all agree that the genius who is the author of this new system2 is worthy of his fortune.3

2 Gribeauval. He is the same who was honored for his defense of Schweidnitz, being then in the service of Maria-Theresa. A[n account of] the siege published by him would be a quite-interesting and quite-instructive history. One would find in it all the obstinacy and all the skill that once appeared [with] Chamilly at Grave, and even more genius in the means of the defense beyond the sensible difference that Chamilly commanded his nation, while Gribeauval was in the middle of a foreign nation; that he did not command the place; and that had to acquire authority and preponderance little by little by his conduct and his enlightenment. 3 [Gribeauval was loaned to Austria at the beginning of the Seven Years War; he was named head of the Austrian génie and artillery, and he founded the Austrian sappers. As Guibert indicates, Gribeauval led the defense of Schweidnitz in 1762 against Friedrich’s attacks, including defeating several attempts to circumvallate the city and to undermine it. The city finally capitulated after a Prussian mine detonated its powder stores. Guibert had several occasions to work with Gribeauval in the Ministry of War, including two stints on the Council of War in the mid-1770s and from 1787 to 1789. See Abel, Guibert, 98–117 and 156–174.]

chapter iii

Inconvenience of Too-Numerous Artillery It is not me who has spoken until now. I have only exposed established opinions. Now, do I dare to elevate myself against an epidemic abuse that comes from Northern Europe and is adopted in the new system, doubtlessly because we believed that we could not dispense with imitating [the] three great powers who have given us the example on this point? I wish to speak of the immense quantity of artillery, [an] abuse that we have taken from Russia, Prussia, and Austria. How the histories of all centuries resemble each other! and how surprising it is that the similarity of events does not instruct men! In high antiquity, only a few chariots armed for war were [used] at first, to guarantee the wings and to begin the fight. The usage of these chariots grew prodigiously, little by little. Cyrus found as many as 20,000 in the army of Astyages, his father-in-law. This army was both without discipline and without courage. He decided to reduce this quantity of armed chariots to five-hundred, exercised the troops, hardened them, put science in the place of embarrassment, and defeated the enemy army that, trained in the use of an immense amount of war materiel, had only embarrassment without science. It was the same for the missile machines that succeeded the usage of armed chariots.1 The warlike and disciplined Romans, to say it all in a word, the Romans of the Republic, had none in their legions. Little by little, they took on some to attack entrenchments [and] to occupy principal points in orders of battle. This small quantity, relative to and sufficient for the proposed object, may be regarded as a progress of the military art. But the number successively grew, tactics declined, [and] courage degenerated; thus, infantry could no longer resist cavalry. Gross missile machines were built to support it; as many as thirty trailed behind a legion; they covered the front of armies; fights were begun by them; [and] often, they finished without coming to [hand-to-hand combat]. These times were those of dishonor and the ruin of the Empire.2

1 [Astyages was the last King of the Medes, defeated by Cyrus II. Herodotus, Histories, I, has Astyages as Cyrus’s grandfather, not father-in-law, and describes Cyrus’s defeat of the Median king. Most other accounts are likely drawn from Herodotus’s.] 2 [Guibert is correct that Roman armies gradually accumulated more heavy weapons, and thus more baggage, as the centuries ran. However, the armies of the Republic were frequently defeated, while those of the Empire tended to be more resilient and defeat

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_033

We follow the history of our centuries [and] we see there that nations place their confidence in the quantity of their artillery because of a diminution of courage and ignorance of the true principles of war. The Swiss, who humiliated the House of Burgundy [and] over whose alliance François I and Charles V disputed, disdained cannon: they believed themselves dishonored by its service. This was a strange prejudice, [an] effect of their ignorance; it caused their defeat at Marignan.3 And yet this excess is better than what has been given since. It supposes courage, but that into which we have fallen gives honor neither to our courage nor to our enlightenment. Where did the use of enormous artillery trains commence? It was in Turkey [and] in Russia. Tsars Ivan and Vasily led threehundred pieces into their war against the Tatars. The entrenchments at Narva, which Karl XII attacked with 8,000 Swedes, were garnished with one-hundred fifty guns. Pyotr the Great disciplined his nation and diminished this quantity of artillery. After him, it reappeared in the Russian armies. They were seen conducting their last war their enemies in greater detail. See Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War.] 3 [The Swiss, as noted, fielded some of the first pike-and-shot formations in Europe and became axiomatic for highly disciplined and professional armies. The House of Burgundy refers to the Dukes of Burgundy, who ruled a diverse and disconnected state that stretched from the Low Countries down the Rhine to Switzerland in the late medieval period. The family came to an abrupt end when Charles the Bold, duc de Bourgogne, who was killed fighting a Swiss army at the Battle of Nancy in 1477; his state was divided between the Holy Roman Empire and France. François I and Charles V were the major leaders in the HabsburgValois Wars, fought between 1515 and 1559, part of the larger Italian Wars. Charles’s Habsburg holdings included the Empire, the Low Countries, Spain, and Milan, threatening to encircle France, which occasioned François to fight against him for most of his reign. As Guibert indicates, they competed with each other to employ the services of the Swiss. The 1515 Battle of Marignan was the final battle of the War of the League of Cambrai, one of the many conflicts that composed the Italian Wars of 1494–1559. The disciplined Swiss faced an allied army composed of French cavalry and artillery, which defeated them decisively. The battle is notable as the last in which Switzerland participated as an independent and willing state. See Michael Mallett and Christine Shaw, The Italian Wars, 1494–1559: War, State, and Society in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2014); and Tom Scott, The Swiss and their Neighbours, 1460–1560: Between Accommodation and Aggression (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).]

Inconvenience of Too-Numerous Artillery

with up to six-hundred cannon, and certainly the Russian army was not the wisest and the most maneuverable of all those in Europe that fought in it. Its movements felt its weight. It received battles without knowing how to give them; it won without being able to profit, always obliged to abandon its success to fall back on its magazines.4 The Austrians had, in the manner of the Russians, a numerous and formidable artillery. They made war relative to this quantity. They worked to reduce all their combats to affairs of posts. Their side saw no great movements, forced marches, or superiority of maneuver.5 Is it not said that the King of Prussia also had an immense artillery? Without doubt, but besides the fact that he had less than the Austrians, it was emplaced either 4 [Several Russian leaders fought against the Tatars in the early modern period, particularly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as the Russian states strove to free themselves from Mongol control. Guibert probably references Ivan III and his son Vasily III, who fought several campaigns against their southern and eastern neighbors in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. He could also be referring to Vasily’s son Ivan IV, known as Ivan the Terrible, who did the same. While Russian armies were always known for the number of cannon they brought to battles in the early modern period, three-hundred guns is probably an exaggeration. The First Battle of Narva took place in 1700 at the beginning of the Great Northern War. A Russian force lay siege to the Swedish fortress of Narva, placing it in position for Karl XII to attack it with a small relief force of around 10,000. The Russians had at least one-hundred and fifty guns at the battle, and perhaps as many as two-hundred. Guibert’s criticisms of Russia are accurate but disingenuous. Russian armies of the time did move ponderously, weighed down with much artillery and supplies, but they often operated far from their bases of supply and at the end of lengthy lines of communication and supply that traversed infrastructure-poor regions. The fact that Russian armies functioned at all when they were hundreds of miles from their homes was a testament to the Russian’s prowess mid-century, not a point of criticism. Guibert engages in more than a little Orientalizing by using Russia as his foil, which was a theme of writing during the period, especially in Western Europe. See Brian Davies, Warfare, State, and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500–1700 (New York: Routledge, 2007); Christopher Duffy, Russia’s Military Way to the West: Origins and Nature of Russian Military Power, 1700–1800 (Boston: Routledge, 1981); Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); Andrei Pavlov and Maureen Perrie, Ivan the Terrible (London: Routledge, 2003); and Carol Stevens, Russia’s Wars of Emergence, 1460–1730 (New York: Pearson Longman, 2007).] 5 [While Guibert characterizes Austrian warfare for much of the century, he is again painting with too broad a brush. Austria was reckoned to have had the best artillery during the period, a reputation it kept through the Napoleonic Wars. Its commanders did tend to be cautious and demurring from rapid and bold maneuver, but that characterization applied to many states throughout Europe, including France for much of the period. See Christopher Duffy, The Army of Maria Theresa: The Armed Forces of Imperial Austria, 1740–1780 (New York: Hippocrene, 1977), especially 105–117.]

157 in the reserve or in fortress cities rather than in his armies. It was from these that he drew it to repair his disasters. It was from these that he made reinforcements arrive on his defensive positions. His tactics diminished the embarrassment. He knew how to lose it and replace it. Did he bring a great deal when he flew from Saxony to Silesia [and] from Silesia to the Oder? He found it in the places that he had on these different points, or else he knew how to fight with the little that he did bring. At Rossbach, he had no more than twelve pieces in his battery, and he had no more than forty in his park. At Leuthen, it was not his artillery that beat the Austrians.6 General rule: when one turns one’s enemy, when one attacks by maneuvers, when one engages the strongest part against the weakest part, it is not at all with the artillery that one decides the success, because beginning with an artillery combat gives the enemy time to reconnoiter [and] reinforce, consequently losing all the fruit of the maneuver that one has made. Let us speak of ourselves: at the epoch of the Treaty of Paris 1763, the prodigious quantity of artillery introduced in the armies of the other powers [and] the influence that it supposedly had over combats led us to judge it necessary to entirely change the constitution of our artillery. We were especially reproached for our field pieces’ being too heavy [and] too difficult to maneuver. I have summarized the measures that we took to lighten them, but this object accomplished, why would we want to go to war with a 6 [Throughout the Seven Years War, Friedrich moved very quickly between his various armies, taking control of them for culminating battles. Guibert specifically refers to late 1757, when Friedrich fought the Battles of Rossbach and Leuthen in Saxony and Silesia, respectively, within a month of each other; he would move from Germany to the east, along the Oder, to combat the Russians in subsequent years. The Battle of Rossbach took place in November 1757 as a Franco-Imperial army sought to liberate Saxony from its Prussian occupation. Friedrich, engaged with the Austrians, flew north and took command of the small Prussian force along the Saale River. The French and Imperials formed attack columns and charged into massed Prussian artillery and infantry fire, as Guibert indicates. The battle was an abject humiliation for the French, as they lost upwards of 10,000 casualties, including Guibert’s father taken prisoner, to a total cost of around 1,000 total Prussian casualties. The Battle of Leuthen took place only a month later. Friedrich rapidly travelled south to face the Austrians on his southern flank. The Austrians attempted to maneuver around Friedrich’s rear, but they had not properly scouted the position. Friedrich was able to shift forces out of Austrian sight and fall on ill-prepared Austrian forces. The two battles reversed Prussia’s position in the war and likely saved the kingdom. Leuthen in particular was seen as Friedrich’s masterpiece, both by contemporaries and by future commentators. See Citino, The German Way of War, 63–103; and Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 89–147.]

158 great number of guns? Is this not losing the advantage that we have acquired and exchanging the embarrassment of the species of artillery for that of quantity? I do not see the dispositions of our new system of artillery, relative to the formation of the field baggage of an army, without shuddering. It is [a] rule that each battalion will have two pieces of 4, and that, independently of this, the artillery park will be composed by a proportion of two pieces per battalion; thus, an army of one-hundred battalions will trail four-hundred pieces. These four-hundred pieces will require 2,000 wagons to transport munitions, gear, spare parts, pontoons, and other necessary equipment. Here are 2,400 yokes requiring at least 9,600 horses; here are 2,000 and more carters, drivers, artillery guards, convoy captains, etc. Note that, seeing the poor state of our stud farms, our horses are almost all bought in Switzerland or in Germany, [and] that the carters are all robust [and] vigorous peasants removed from agriculture and the population. There must be, for the service of these four-hundred pieces [and] at a proportion of twelve cannoneers or servants, one carrying the other per piece, around 4,000 soldiers, not counting officers. One must have several standing armies, as circumstances only too often require; they must have artillery attached to these armies in the same proportion; [and] they must garnish menaced places, the coasts, the ports, [and] vessels: see the enormous quantity of cannon, wagons, [and] embarrassments; see the ruinous upkeep of all the equipment. Thus, if the artillery is augmented so prodigiously in the armies, it will increase the same everywhere; everywhere, a unique confidence will be placed in it; places will only be attacked or defended by cannon; no longer will coasts be believed to be secure unless they are covered in batteries. It will the same on the ocean as it is on land: vessels will not [fight] anymore; they will fight only by their artillery. How will the 8,000 artillerymen that the king employs today accomplish all these objects? Their number must be doubled, or, as is proposed in the new system, they must be supplemented by militia battalions that would be attached to this service.7 Can one then be 7 [Guibert touches on one of his most significant irritants in this section. The French militia was designed to serve only for defense of the state and not in foreign wars, but it inevitably became a ready reserve in the lengthy wars fought by the Bourbons. Several edicts from the Ministry of War during the period were designed to reform the militia, but little came of the effort. Guibert and his contemporaries considered this to be a significant violation of France’s “constitution,” the use of the state’s resources for the aggrandizement of the monarch. It would form one of the main themes of Guibert’s last major work, De la force publique. See Kennett, The French Armies in the Seven Years War, 87–86; and Latreille, L’oeuvre militaire de la révolution. See also Beik, Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century

chapter iii

flattered that the same instruction and enlightenment can occur in a corps so numerous? Can one hope that that the greater part of these guns would not be maneuvered by inexpert and maladroit gun crews? Could one see, without bemoaning the misunderstanding of these men, the same quantity of soldiers who, in the times of Turenne and Gustav, composed an army, today serving only to maneuver the war machines of one of our armies[?] What fruit will one draw from this enormous quantity of artillery? If the enemy has the same proportion, there are two armies [that are] difficult to maneuver and feed; thus are all the actions of war reduced to artillery affairs of posts, marches to some heavy and rare from one position to another little-distant position, [and] all the subordinate operations to calculations of subsistence. Then [there will be] nothing big, no more military science. If the enemy, more skillful, dares to depart from received opinion and have only one-hundred fifty pieces with an army of one-hundred battalions, all the advantages will be on their side. They will consequently combine the formation and the nature of this artillery equipment. They will not at all have what we call regimental guns, because they will calculate that these pieces do not have long- and decisive-enough ranges; that, dispersed to form small batteries, they do not accomplish any great object; [and] that, commanded by infantry officers,8 who for the most part have no knowledge of the execution of artillery, they [the guns] are ordinarily poorly placed and uselessly consume much ammunition. For the same reason that the small calibers are of little utility, they would have fewer long [4-pounders]9 in the park; they would have, I suppose, only fifty, the others all being of a caliber of 8, 12, and 16. They will have among this number at least twenty howitzers, a species of gun whose good effects we perhaps do not know well enough. Then, to compensate more and more for its inferiority of artillery that I suppose to be 150:400, they will have divisions in reserve, in different depots and in places within the army’s range; they will know to draw from them to replace their losses or to France, which discusses the role of the militia in internal peacekeeping in the prior century.] 8 In the new system, it is proposed to attach companies of the Corps-Royal [d’Artillerie et Génie] to the service of regimental pieces, but the officers of the Corps-Royal who command these companies will nevertheless be under the orders of the brigades or the regiments, and they will be obliged to conform to what they determine for the emplacement and the execution of their pieces. 9 [This refers to an experiment during the period to shorten the length of the barrels while keeping the caliber the same; see Nouveau dictionnaire pour servir de supplement aux dictionnaires des sciences, des arts, et des métiers, 4 Vols. (Paris/Amsterdam: Various, 1776), I:615.]

159

Inconvenience of Too-Numerous Artillery

reinforce themselves in defensive dispositions if they find themselves reduced to taking them. They will reinforce all the artillery carriages destined to follow the army with a great number of light horses and give themselves, by this, greater means to carry their artillery from one point to the other and to strengthen or weaken them [the points] rapidly. But this is not all; having less artillery than the enemy, they will be served by more-adroit and expert cannoneers; they will not run the risk of confiding divisions to officers without [experience] and enlightenment, [and] their artillery will thus become much-superior in execution. They will search in the same way to render thus to the rapidity of [their] movements. They will enter with more intelligence into the combination of their march and combat dispositions. They will maneuver as the troops do, and in concert with them. Finally, they will create tactics of deployments and ruses for it, by which they will know how to oppose [with] equality and superiority the parts of their order of battle that must be attacking or attacked in the time that they will refuse, and place out of the enemy’s range the parts of this order that they will strip of artillery.10 Field operations will be calculated after the constitution of their army in this regard, and after that of the enemy. They will make a war of movement against them; they will desolate them by forced marches, which the enemy will be constrained to oppose by countermarches that are slow [and] destructive for the prodigious and economically-harnessed equipment that they 10

[This passage uses confused and complicated phrasing to relate that a good commander will shift his artillery to the places where it will be needed and withdraw the parts of his battle order that are then lacking it.]

will trail behind them, or else they will be obliged to leave the greater part of these embarrassments behind; thus, they will be equal armies, and they will have over them the perfection and the superiority of their maneuvers. Finally, being obliged to attack the enemy or to receive their attack, they would not believe themselves beaten because they had fewer cannon to oppose them. Their batteries better disposed, better emplaced, [and] better executed; their pieces of a more-decisive caliber; [and] their prolongs more-skillfully taken, will give them more advantage. What battles have been lost because the vanquished army wanted for artillery? I see everywhere that few pieces act and that many rest in inaction, whether by fault of emplacement, being able to reach the objective, or knowing how to rapidly move to the point of attack.11 I close, [and] I press my ideas: this is thus how doubts must be presented. If they contain truths, enough is said to perceive them; if they do not contain any, the reader is spared the ennui of a heavily-detailed error. This is, in a few words, the résumé of what I have advanced above: “diminish the quantity of artillery and make the perfection of the art consist of drawing a great advantage from a lesser number of pieces [and] of forming the best artillery possible rather than procuring the most numerous [one].” I will now speak on artillery tactics, because there exist [tactics] for the artillery, as for the troops, that are drawn from that of the troops, which must be calculated on them and which, in many regards, can be rendered analogous to theirs. These tactics are naturally divided into two parts: movement [and] execution. 11

[Guibert again touches on the lower levels of operational warfare.]

chapter iv

Artillery Movements The science of artillery movements embraces all the dispositions by which artillery may, in a march order, march with the troops, and thus, in an order of battle, form in position to support the troops by its fire. Troop movements must absolutely regulate those of the artillery. I have worked to give to the former the simplicity and rapidity to which they are susceptible. Artillery must conform to them as much as the difference of its means permits. First, let us examine how it must dispose itself for a march order. An artillery division, whether parked or emplaced to enter into action, may be considered as a battalion and each piece or equipment wagon that composes it as one of the fractions that is a part of it. Consequently, it may, like a battalion, form in march order in two manners: by its flank or by front, whether in advance or to the rear. In the former case, each piece or wagon only makes a successive quarter-conversion to form itself in file; this is what I will call “forming the artillery in march order by front.” These artillery formations in file or columns are relative to a march; they may similarly be executed by two, by three, or by four pieces in such a manner that the column has two, three, or four pieces of front, and thus it has less depth. Here is how artillery forms in march order at the head or at the tail of troop columns by movements analogous to theirs. The differences that I have established in the tactics of troops on the occasion of front and flank marches must be common to the artillery, because, if the march is by front, it is advantageous that the artillery column have the least depth possible, to be able to form en bataille sooner. To this end, as soon as it approaches the terrain where it must form, it must double or more on a frontage of at least two pieces so as to diminish its depth, just as the troops double by divisions and close their distances. If the march is of flank, as it must form on the prolongation of the march, it is thus less important that the column diminish in depth, and the pieces or wagons must form successively by quarter-conversions. I cannot terminate the article on the movements that must form the artillery in march column without giving evidence of my surprise that, on the highways of Flanders, in marches through a countryside without obstacles, when all the columns are open [to] at least a frontage

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_034

of a troop division, the artillery does not then march on two files. I have sometimes also remarked, relative to the equipment of the same army, that, by routine, it is always left to march on one single file, no matter how open the march is, while in the majority of marches, the spare horses may take the route on a frontage of two, three, or four.1 Yet the prodigious elongation of our columns augments the troops’ fatigue, the length of their marches, the difficulty of forced marches or redoubling them the next day and consequently causes the poor success of many military operations. The artillery movements to pass from march order to battle order have no less-great rapport with those of troops. If the march is of flank (as in Diagram XII Figure 1), the artillery will successively form by quarter-conversions on the points designated for its emplacement. On the contrary, if the march is of front (as in Figure 2), the artillery column will double its files to form on a frontage of two pieces. This preliminary movement will be made at the moment when it will approach the terrain where it must form and at the same time as the troops make their preparatory movements for deployment. In the last war, I saw artillery columns needing to form by front not knowing how to diminish their depth, resting patiently on one file, and then forming en batterie by the processional movements marked in Figure 3; it is true that the same weight, the same default of intelligence, was then in the tactics of all the arms. The artillery column, being formed on two files, will deploy at the signal that will be made by the two pieces at the head, one piece deploying to the right and the other to the left, or two to the right and two to the left. See Figures 4 and 5. The officer commanding the artillery will similarly take, relative to the points where he wishes to emplace these pieces and to the terrain that he will have on his flanks, if I may express myself thus, some fraction of the column that he will judge appropriate to be the point of alignment and deploy the others on it; I call “fraction” the two coupled pieces on both sides. The 1 [The term Guibert uses, chevaux de charge, is ambiguous. The Sixth Edition of the AF Dictionary, the first to contain the term, defines it as a spare horse beyond the remount. It could also mean “baggage horse,” which should be chevaux d’attelage, or “charger,” which would be more of a medieval usage of a large horse ridden by a knight. “Spare horse” seems to best fit the intent of the passage.]

diagram xii Different movements of an artillery column to pass from march to battle order

Artillery Movements

161

162 troops’ tactics, which I wish to be read before these, will explain the goal and the effect of this deployment. I suppose that, in march maneuvers or formation en bataille, the equipment and munition wagons are not at all mixed with the cannon and that they even should be separated from them in some circumstances. Thus, the ordinary and habitual order of marches will be to form all the cannon in one division together, then all of the division’s equipment and munitions wagons. When one will wish to have a great quantity of cannon ready to enter into action at the first instant, one will form several divisions of cannon together, [with] their equipment trailing behind. When one will wish to have artillery at the head of the troops to protect their deployment, as it is at the same time [important] that the troops arrive and form as soon as possible in support of the artillery, the latter will be freed of all its equipment and munitions wagons, which will then form at the tail of the troop column. I will treat these circumstances with greater detail later; they belong to grand tactics, as they are relative to the movements of armies and to the combination of artillery with the other arms. It is also in these grand tactics that, after having spoken of the division of the troops of an army into several parts and the means of making these different parts move, I will treat the separation of the artillery of an army into several divisions [and] the means of making these divisions move and making them successfully cooperate with troops. Then, I will show by what mechanism of movement, analogous to that of troops, artillery may rapidly change its primitive disposition; decamp from one point to reinforce another; render itself numerous when it is necessary that it be; not be where it may be embarrassing; place calibers of some range, according to the objective that it must accomplish; [and] finally, oppose intelligence and maneuver to quantity and weight. I must confine myself

chapter iv

here to the individual movements by which the artillery must exercise itself by pieces or by division in the same way that the elementary tactics of troops are restrained to the movements of a battalion and a regiment. It remains to me to say a word on the system that I have adopted since 1763 of only maneuvering our pieces, once they have entered action or are ready to enter it, by hand. This system, which follows from the lightening of our artillery, has certain great advantages. The maneuvers are less confused than when they were embarrassed with carters and by horses. When they will be made before the enemy, they offer less of a prize and are less slowed by accidents. It should not be imagined that this manner of maneuvering pieces may be employed everywhere. 1st All the tests that have been conducted in our schools in this regard have taken place on surfaces that are flat, solid, and on which cannon can be rolled by hand without effort. But war will often offer difficult terrain, escarped [and] made soggy by rain, where maneuver will become too slow and too painful for the cannoneers, who, after having placed the pieces en batterie, then have need of strength and skill to execute them. 2nd I admit the maneuver by hand for all short movements, but there is an infinity of others where it must be moved rapidly or cover considerable distances, like carrying artillery in reinforcement from one column or from one point to another, seizing an advantageous plateau at top speed, withdrawing artillery from a point where it is under attack, etc. Then, it will necessarily be served by horses. Thus, we do not at all embrace an exclusive method on this subject; we do not always maneuver our pieces with horses, as used to be done; we do not also pretend to always maneuver by hand, as it is wished today; we employ these agents each in turn and according to circumstances; they carry no difference to the nature of the movements by which artillery must be exercised.

chapter v

Artillery Execution I have wished to propose my particular ideas on the part that I have just treated. The artillery maneuvers are drawn from those of the troops, [and] they must be derived from them; thus, working to perfect the troop movements, I am necessarily led to speaking of those of the artillery: they are not the same with the execution of guns; they are properly the responsibility of artillery officers. Consequently, it is they who must give lessons on this subject, it is they who gave them to me, and it is almost always after them that I will speak on what I will say on this branch of the science of artillery. What I call “artillery execution” is not only the art of using guns and calculating their effects, but also it is that of emplacing them and directing their blows in such a manner that the result of combined attentions be, in making the greatest-possible ill for the enemy, to give the greatest-possible protection to the troops for whom they act. The troops and the artillery being united together by a reciprocal protection, to draw the most useful benefit of the machines that are under his command, the artillery officer must know the tactics of troops, if not the interior details of their tactics, at least the result of principal movements, the changes that they bring in the ordinance of troops, [and] the misfortune or support that the troops, on some occasion, may receive from artillery executed or emplaced in some manner. For similar and much stronger reasons, the infantry and cavalry officers who command the arms must necessarily command the artillery that is only an accessory of the arms; [as] I said, this officer must know, if not the interior details of construction, equipment, and execution of the artillery, at least the result of all these details; the ranges of different guns, emplaced or executed in some manner; [and] the misfortune or the aid that the troops may receive from them. For want of this knowledge, either he will not know how to employ artillery with intelligence in the general disposition, or he will be obliged to blindly rely on, for all the maneuvers of this artillery, an officer of this corps who, in his own turn, for want of having carried his knowledge beyond the mechanical conduct of his cannon, will not dispose it in such a manner as to accomplish the general object, or finally, he will contradict the dispositions of this artillery officer out of ignorance, when he might have done good. I hope that the artillery may, by its reading my work, make a clear and precise idea of the tactics of troops. Let us make known to the troops the effects of artillery,

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_035

following the different manners that they may be disposed and executed. I will commence by giving here a table estimating the distances by which one may commence counting the effects of the artillery in field affairs. Table 2

Table estimating the distances by which one may commence counting the effects of the artillery in field affairs

Caliber of Distances for Distances for pieces loaded Pieces pieces loaded with with a cartridge a ball in toises Large balls, small balls Of 16

500–550

Of 12 Of 8 Of 4

450–500 400–450 450–400

The species of cartridge that will serve for pieces of this caliber in the ideal war has not yet been determined. 350–250 250 300–200 200 250–150 150

Observations on this table The blows still being so-little assured at the different distances designated in the table for pieces loaded with a ball, firing must be done slowly to be able to aim with attention and progressively augment the vivacity of fire in proportion to the diminution of distances. One may certainly make use of cannon at considerable ranges, because a piece of 16 aimed at fifteen degrees will range to 1,200 toises, and a piece of 12 of the new model will range to eight-hundred eighty toises at an angle of six degrees, but beyond limits indicated in the second column of the table, one may not count on a decisive effect except by substituting a great number of pieces for the irregularities of great ranges. It is similarly impossible to give approximations of the ranges of pieces fired on the ricochet, as the effects may sometimes be quite useful in field affairs; [there] must be a different approximation for each particular case. In many circumstances of the artillery service, it is necessary to determine a definitive [range] only

164

chapter v

after a few test shots, but the number is never too considerable when the theory and the practice have formed the coup d’œil of an artillery officer. The same reasons have hindered speaking on the range of 6-pound howitzers. This weapon, which is used too rarely and in too-little quantity in field affairs, carries its bomb or its shell to 600 toises, pointed at an angle of twenty-two degrees, but then it does not at all ricochet and consequently loses the cause of its greatest effects; thus, it still must have recourse to some test shots to fix the projection angle according to the circumstances of the terrain.1 Cartridges of wrought-iron balls have been constructed for the howitzers, but they should only be made use of within one-hundred fifty to twohundred toises of the enemy. This table, particularly relative to our current pieces and those that are proposed to be employed in the ideal war, may serve to similarly highlight the effects of foreign pieces, as the field calibers only differ from ours because they are in odd-numbered proportions like 19, 13, 9, 7, and 3. As for the dimensions of foreign pieces, they are different in almost all the nations, but, these differences only influencing beyond reasonable and certain ranges, any comparison in this regard will be meticulous and useless. I say only that, in general, nearly all the artillery of other nations, seeking to lighten itself and at the same time to augment itself, has diminished the length and the weight of its pieces. In the Seven Years War, only we and the English made use of small calibers of long proportion. I will not add to this table the calculations on the relationship of charges to ranges, that is to say, on the quantity of powder that charges need to be composed of relative to the caliber of projectiles, to their species, and to the distance that one wishes them to cover. I will say nothing 1 [As Guibert indicates, howitzers were rarely used during the period, particularly outside of sieges. Howitzers evolved from mortars, essentially being scaled-down versions of the siege gun. While they could produce indirect fire, they saw little use on battlefields; contemporaries believed them useful only for panicking enemy horses. Later experiments during the Napoleonic Wars with indirect-fire methods, including howitzers and rockets, increased their frequency, but direct fire remained the artillery standard until the development of high-strength steel, high-explosive and smokeless powder, and siting and observation technologies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See Brian Bond, War and Society in Europe, 1870–1970 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998); McConnachy, “The Roots of Artillery Doctrine,” Nosworthy, The Anatomy of Victory, 67–68 and 80–84; and Dennis Showalter, Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology, and the Unification of Germany (Warwick: Helion, 2013).]

on some angles of projection the pieces must be pointed at to achieve some effect. This knowledge belongs exclusively to the artillery officer. It is he who is charged with the execution of cannon, and it suffices that the officer commanding [all] the arms knows that he may, in some position, demand that the artillery officer procure fire for him that accomplishes some object. But one thing to this end: the officer commanding [all] the arms must have the intelligence, like the artillery officer, [that] is the art of choosing emplacements, disposing the pieces, directing fire, [and] managing them. I will work to present here the principles of this art in as clear and concise a manner as possible. The most advantageous disposition of the artillery considered, whether on the side of emplacement or on the side of execution, is without doubt that which renders its effects the most deadly and the most harmful to the enemy. The deadliest blows being indubitably those that cover the greatest length of the terrain occupied by enemy troops, it is certain that their effect will be augmented in proportion to the troops that will be ranged on a great depth, because then the ball will thus not cease to destroy until it loses its force, and even if it did not touch the first ranks, it will have its effect of diving or ricocheting on the last [ranks]. To obviate this prodigious and deadly effect of artillery, all the troops of Europe have abandoned the deep ordinance to reasonably take a thinner order, which makes of them less of a target for cannon fire. The troops being thus ranged with infantry on three [ranks] and cavalry on two [ranks] of depth, if the artillery fires only at point-blank range and right before them, its fire will be less redoubtable, because the most fortunate ball cannot kill, or place hors-de-combat, more than two or three men. In order to have the projectiles travel along a trajectory on which they may encounter more enemies, [the] only manner of remedying the irregularity and the hazard of range, the artillery must thus search for prolongs, reverses, and ricochets on the troop that it wishes to attack. To procure these advantages, it must place its batteries in such a manner as to tear into the enemy line, observing that these batteries form, with this line, an angle that is more and more acute in proportion to its approach, and finally an angle [that is] nearly null when it is quite near; that is to say that the batteries must almost entirely establish themselves on the flank. The same principle must apply to the batteries destined to attack a column; thus, they must be placed in such a manner so as to tear into it on an angle that is equally

Artillery Execution

quite large when they will be more distant, and then placed opposite it when they are quite near, this position thus producing the same effect as if it were taken on the flank of a line of troops and being proper to give the most efficacious-possible prolongation. General rule: all the times when it will be practicable, these batteries must not be placed opposite the points that one wishes to attack unless, in the case where one would not be able to approach near enough to them, the obliquity was not too-much lost over the length of the range, and, if one must attack several points at the same time, as ordinarily arrives when one disposes batteries opposite a line of troops, they must be placed in such a manner that the blows of one must strike [in the same place as] another: these batteries, which are called “crossed,” protect and defend themselves reciprocally.2 Independently of the mutual protection that batteries must work to give themselves, they must be made strong. Thus, they procure decisive effects, make gaps, [and] prepare the victory. On the contrary, the same quantity of pieces dispersed is more proper to irritating the enemy than to destroying them; finally, the object of artillery must never be to kill men on the totality of the enemy front; it must be to overturn [and] to destroy parts of the front, whether the points [from] where it may attack the most advantageously or where it may be attacked with the greatest advantage. It does not follow from the maxim posed above that artillery must be united in a single battery; this would fall into another inconvenience, that of giving too-great a prize to the enemy. It is only suitable for the union of several batteries [that are] little-distant from each other on the same objective, and attention must be drawn, if the terrain permits, to not placing these batteries on the same line such that, if the enemy can manage [to direct] prolongations on them, these prolongations will not traverse all the batteries at the same time. The pieces of each battery must preserve a considerable space between them to maneuver with ease and present only a small target. Ten paces appears to be the distance that they must preserve. This principle is important because, as in an action, pieces are not aimed at each other in particular, but against the entire opposing battery, whether empty or full; it is evident that it will be the

2 [Guibert speaks of overlapping fields of fire, a core concept in siege warfare, particularly on the defensive. The concept had not yet become doctrine in field artillery, as Guibert indicates, but it would over the next decades, and it would remain so throughout the era of direct fire.]

165 pieces [that are] too close together that will receive the most dangerous blows. It is an error to believe that cannon must be placed preferentially on heights much elevated above the objects that one wishes to attack. An elevation of fifteen or twenty feet for a distance of three-hundred toises is advantageous in that it helps to produce favorable reverses; more is disadvantageous, because the firing angle moves away from the horizon more; shots become uncertain, balls ground themselves [and] none may be given to ricochet, [and] the danger to the enemy diminishes in proportion to its approach, effects contrary to those that are procured from raking or dominating positions in the proportion indicated above, in that in the latter case, they are horizontal, permitting them to ricochet, and discovering everything in that they do not leave to the enemy terrain where they can shelter. In all the emplacements of batteries in combat, and consequently the moving batteries that are chosen, attention must be paid to avoiding those [locations] that offer obstacles to later movement, whether advancing or retreating, like hedges, fosses, ravines, swamps, [or] quiteescarped heights. One must not place batteries too soon or too-uncovered, because then the enemy opposes them with greater force that will destroy them or disposes their own in such a manner as to advantageously attack them. One must seek to cover oneself, particularly in mutual support on the flanks, even if only at a small elevation of only one or two feet. This preserves the cannoneers, covers the cannon’s maneuvers, and renders its effect more assured. Finally, one must avoid placing batteries in advance of one’s troops or on mediocre elevations behind them, if it is possible; this is offering to the enemy two objects to attack at the same time; this is drawing their fire on the troops [and] obstructing their movements, if they are in advance of them; [and] this is disquieting and exposing them to being harmed by some unfortunate blows, if they are placed behind them. In a word, when the dispositions of terrain do not permit the choosing of other emplacements, it is better to double the troops one behind the other and leave intervals for the artillery than to fall into the inconvenience of masking them by cannon or to submit them to too-little elevated batteries. If one occupies a defensive position, the pieces of large caliber must preferably be employed in principle points, in those from where one can best see the enemy and from furthest away and taken from an oblique, in reverse, and in the flank; if I may express myself thus, one must make great batteries for protection and defense, while pieces of lighter caliber, reinforced by men and horse teams and divided on several points, hold themselves ready to

166 rapidly carry reinforcements to menaced parts and take their disposition after the enemy disposition. If one attacks, pieces of large caliber must be emplaced in the parts of the order of battle that are the most feeble and furthest from the enemy, on the side of false attacks, on the heights that may prevent the enemy from making some effort against them, [and] on those that may support the flanks of the true attack and give distant reverses on the attacked point. The ranges of these pieces being longer, they will have effect there. Their movements being so cumbersome, they will act less, and in case of retreat, as they will be out of range of being made a prize, they will not fall to the enemy’s power. On the contrary the pieces of small caliber, reinforced by manpower and horses, will carry themselves in advance with the attacking troops, as [they are] more susceptible to seconding the movements of these troops, of following the enemy if they are repulsed, of protecting the retreat, and of themselves retiring if they are attacked, and because it is not necessary to have long ranges on the points where it is determined to approach and to fight. One must not, as is done too often today, keep the routine of placing all one’s cannon with the infantry and believing that they cannot be placed on a point where they are not within range of supporting it. One must also know how to support the cavalry, placing batteries either on its flank or in advance of it, if there are favorable emplacements, [and] mostly the placement of howitzers, whose effects will be terrible against enemy cavalry, whether to unsettle them before they are charged or to throw them into disorder if they come to make a charge. These cannon and howitzers attached to a cavalry wing in a combat disposition will be reinforced by horse teams and consequently placed in a state of following its movements. In a completely open country, what could better defend cannon than cavalry? What could better fortify a wing of inferior cavalry than cannon placed in its support, in its own turn? “What will become of this cannon,” one will say, “if the cavalry is beaten?” This is what will become of it: it will be taken, and it will be no more than a small ill added to the disaster of the cavalry, but more often, it will prevent this cavalry from being beaten, and, if it wins, it will render its success more decisive and complete. I will have occasion to say below how little fear there must be in placing cannon within enemy range when one may draw a useful effect from it. The first artillery disposition in a combat being made, the pieces must maneuver and change emplacement according to circumstances, whether for preserving the reverses and prolongations that they have taken against the enemy, uniting their fire on decisive points,

chapter v

[or] carrying themselves and always holding in position with the troops to which they are attached. It is relative to this science and appropriate to movements that I have advanced that the army whose artillery would know how to maneuver with the greatest intelligence and rapidity may trail in its wake less than half of the guns that the enemy would have and would still be superior, because all of its guns would be employed, and usefully employed. Here are almost all of the principles according to which one must emplace and dispose artillery. Some of them, relative to the grand tactics of armies, will be developed in the course of this work. It remains, and this is the great art, art that practice and genius alone can give, to apply these principles to the terrain and to occasions, because the attack and defense of a post, the passage of a river, the combats in some nature of countryside, [and] the orders of battle of some species require different artillery dispositions that the boundaries of this essay permit me to detail. Let us pass to the principal rules of execution, properly said. It is no less important that they be known to troop commanders than those who emplace batteries. For want of this knowledge, they do not at all know how to judge the ranges of guns, choosing positions submitted to the points that they wish to defend or that they see poorly; [they] thwart, without intelligence, the artillery officers; [they] uselessly consume ammunition; [and they] demand that cartridges be fired when balls are required, etc. I have seen, in the Seven Years War, regimental guns firing without respite while next to them, batteries of pieces of 8 from the park found the same target too distant to use their ammunition. This ineptitude, which lasted three hours and uselessly consumed a thousand cartridges, reminds me of one of our general officers becoming angry with a battery commander because he did not fire. The latter, occupied with a new disposition that he gave to his pieces for taking a reverse on the enemy, responded “that he was looking for his prolongation.” “Eh! Monsieur,” replied the general officer, who despaired and did not know what a prolongation was, “here is how the Corps Royal is; it always prolongs.”3 We return to my subject. As it is not at all noise that kills, as the uncertainty of ranges augments in proportion to the distance of the points that one wishes to strike or the little attention that one gives to the aiming of the guns, one must be attached to aiming with exactitude as much as firing with speed; above all, one must aim with much attention when ranges are elongated and augment the vivacity of one’s fire 3 [Guibert’s example illustrates that the commanders of the two arms did not understand artillery, as his officer assumed that artillery functioned the same way as the two arms.]

Artillery Execution

progressively with the diminution of distances, because in proportion to this diminution, the shots always assure advantage. This principle is not well-enough known by the troops; their great grievance against artillery is always that it does not make enough fire; the measure of their countenance in a cannonade seems to be the quantity of noise made by the batteries that support them. For want of knowledge, the superior officers themselves nurture this prejudice; they are the first to complain that the cannon do not fire without relenting, and what follows from that? It is often that the artillery officer allows himself to be chained by these clamors, losing sight of the principle exposed above, firing too quickly and at too-uncertain ranges, making little ill for the enemy, rendering them more audacious by it, uselessly consuming ammunition, and finishing by finding himself deprived [of ammunition] in the moment when his fire has need of becoming more lively. Artillery must never engage in fights with artillery unless the enemy troops, being covered from fire that one would wish to make on them, their batteries are exposed and much discomfit the troops that they protect. If, on the contrary, the positions that [the enemy] occupies are deadly for them, all artillery efforts must be carried to the troops and obstacles that cover them, to work to destroy them and not to seek to impose on the enemy cannon unless it is necessary to protect the troops that they support. This maxim is often neglected by artillery officers, whether because they [wish] to appear more brilliant by extinguishing the fire of the batteries that oppose them within sight of the troops or because they do not sense well enough that the troops are their principal object [and] that artillery becomes useless if they [the troops] are destroyed or disordered in lieu of that artillery being destroyed if they had done nothing, because the troops still remain to be vanquished. If batteries are obliged to attack enemy batteries, one must not aim piece against piece; one’s fire must embrace all of the terrain occupied by the enemy battery; in the same way, if one fires on troops, one must assemble all one’s efforts on the space that will be most covered and where, the balls missing, the troops that serve as [the] ideal goal will find other troops to reach in front of, behind, or next to them.4 Outside of occasions of false attack or stratagem, all cannonades that have for their only objective to kill some men by chance and to expend much ammunition are 4 [Guibert’s phrasing is confusing here; he means that the balls that miss will hit the troops next to the target, indicating that artillery commanders should target the densest concentrations of troops.]

167 miserable and ridiculous. However, they are quite common to be seen to be ordered. The properly-employed ricochet is no less advantageous in field actions than in sieges. It is excellent against cavalry, against redoubled lines of troops, [and] against entrenchments, and perhaps we do not make enough use of it. It is important in the execution of guns to know how to properly employ the ball and ball cartridges, and to not quit the one too early to make use of the latter, for which a prejudice exists that is too-generally advantageous, because, if it produces terrible effects when it is used on ground [that is] dry, smooth, nearly horizontal, and at ranges [that are] reasonable and [like] those that I have indicated on the table that I have given, it is far from having effects as certain and as decisive as the ball beyond these ranges or in irregular, soft, covered, diving, or plunging terrain. If the distances are too great, the pieces must be aimed under the quite-marked angles of projection, and thus the majority of the projectiles will depart from their principal direction and pass over the goal that must be reached. If the terrain is not favorable, the greater part of balls is intercepted and absorbed. In the latter circumstance, the usage of the ball must thus indubitably be preferred; the ball travels much further, departs less from its direction, ricochets, strikes the second line when it misses the first, overturns obstacles, terrifies by its sound, and presents more-frightening wounds to new soldiers. I detail the reasons for this maxim because it is contrary to received opinion in our troops. For want of reflection, for want of officers well-instructed in destroying the prejudices of routine accredited among them, I have so often heard them complain that their artillery does not use the cartridge enough and [at great-enough distances], and citing the effects of foreign artillery, which maladroitly makes a great use of it, and at excessive ranges.5 One must pay great attention to not uselessly consuming ammunition; this is often said, but the troops do not yet know its importance. Nevertheless, it is a simple calculation: one cannot carry more than two-hundred rounds per piece and sixty per man, not counting those whose cartridge boxes are full, without enormous expenses and augmentation of baggage. One cannon-shot and three 5 [Guibert speaks of the two major ammunition types of the period: solid and cartridge shot. The former was simply a solid iron ball; the latter term encompassed a variety of shot types, all containing several smaller projectiles, effectively turning the cannon into a large shotgun. As he indicates, part of the science of artillery was knowing when to use solid shot, generally over longer ranges, and when to switch to cartridge, generally when enemy infantry or cavalry was closer to the gun.]

168 fusil-shots per minute [lasts] around three hours. How many actions may endure longer? How many actions take place the next day [after a] fight? I pass [over] the soldier who ignores all of this, who does not reflect, wishing that the cannon always fire, but is it pardonable for officers to have so little knowledge of the details to join their cries to the murmurs of the soldier? One must not abandon artillery maladroitly, nor maladroitly fear it lost. This maxim is so important, so falsely spread, [and] so little put into practice, that it has need of being developed. Troops must contract the habit of not abandoning cannon too lightly and must attach a sort of point of honor to not losing them, because when the artillery has confidence in the troops that support it, it will comport itself with more vigor and believe itself in some way obliged, by gratitude, to comport itself thus. The artillery must be accustomed to maneuvering with hardiness; to hazarding itself and sustaining itself in advanced emplacements, without regarding if it is sustained, when its effects are decisive and deadly; [and] to not abandoning its pieces unless the enemy is, so to speak, in their battery, because it is the execution of its last discharges that is the most terrible; it must attach its point of honor not to conserving its machines, which are easily-replaced engines in the end, but to keeping them in play as efficiently and as long as is possible. If these pieces are taken, it is not to the artillery soldiers, who [are] only the gun crews, to defend them; it is to the troops to retake them, or on another occasion, to replace their loss. In a word, it is to the general officer who commands, to this man who must always go with sangfroid and without error, to make use

chapter v

of the prejudices of the troops, of those of the artillery, of his authority finally, for exposing the cannon, sacrificing them, or preserving them according to circumstances. It is to him to calculate on which occasion to withdraw the cannon, whether to take a better position elsewhere or so that the discouraged soldier does not take the retreat as a flight [and] on which occasion he must expose them so that they harm the enemy for longer and more efficiently; finally, on other [occasions], he must let them be taken, because it would cost too much blood or too-precious time to defend them, and because, after all, in war, there is no dishonor in doing what is impossible to avoid. Here is the end of my essay on artillery tactics. It remains to me to say from what sources I have drawn my knowledge of this subject. It is from the artillery corps; it is from excellent manuscripts of memoirs made by officers of this corps; it is from deepening the principles of their art with these.6 Everywhere my goal is the same, and it is the enlightenment of others, much more than my opinions, that I seek to spread. End of the first book

6 [Many of the important artillery manuals, including those by Jean and Jean-Pierre du Teil, were printed after 1770, but several existed to which Guibert may make reference. Guillaume le Blond, L’artillerie raisonnée (Paris: Jombert, 1761) is one example; Pierre Surirey de Saint-Remy, Mémoires d’artillerie, 6 Vols. (Paris: Rollin, 1745) was printed in several editions during the period, to give just two examples. See also Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 291–299.]

book 2 Grand Tactics

∵

Avant-propos In the preceding [book], I tried to trace the principles on which the different corps destined to compose an army must be constituted and instructed; here, the arena opens and extends. It acts to assemble these corps, to amalgamate them, [and] to make them contribute to the great maneuvers of war. It is the art of teaching this execution, of combining it, [and] of commanding it that is called “grand tactics.” It is these grand tactics that are properly the science of generals, because they are the résumé and the combination of all military knowledge, [and] because by “general” one must hear a man who possesses all, who is of all arms, [and] who knows how to conduct all of them, whether alone [or] together. What words, these of “general” and “army!” and for the little that they are meditated on, what immensity of ideas they present to the imagination! Let the pen fall from the hands of the philosophe who seeks to regulate the work of a man, to influence his prejudices, [and] to determine his opinions: this must be. He must, if he is virtuous, tremble at the consequences his work may have; he must foresee that he only places sophisms in the place of shadows and destructive truths [in place of] useful errors, but me, I write on my art, on an unfortunate art, become necessary and important to perfect; I do not at all write imagination; I do not at all make systems; I examine those that exist; I place in order that which I have meditated on; I believe I can demonstrate the principles of grand tactics as I have demonstrated those of elementary tactics. I begin to execute it. Every man has the right to publish his reflections on the art that he cultivates, and such is the advantage of the arts and all the exact sciences that their progress is birthed equally

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_036

from discussion and errors, while in morals, metaphysics, and all the sciences of opinion, writings only serve to augment doubts and ignorance. Thus, as elementary tactics have for their object to move a regiment in all the circumstances that war may offer, grand tactics have for theirs that of moving an army after all possible facts.1 This essay being only the sketch of a more complete and more didactic work, I will not at all enter into the details of principles and methods to which I will subject the latter. I demand only that, before reading this second part, one takes pains to read the preceding with care, because the latter forms the base of the [former], and I wish, as much as I can, to avoid repetitions. “Marching” or “fighting:” it is one or the other of these objects that [creates] rapport [between] all the movements of an army. I will thus commence by posing these principles on which are founded the theory of marches and orders of battle; this theory deduced, I will assemble the different arms, I will form an army from them, [and] I will execute all the possible combinations of march and combat with this army. That is to say that, after having established the great and principal rules of the theory, I will develop the practice in tracing, to this end, the plan in the form of [a] journal of a camp of instruction that will be the school of grand tactics and all the operations relative to field war. 1 [Guibert here provides an elegant definition of the difference between the tactical and the operational level of warfare, especially prior to the advent of modern articulated armies in the twentieth century.]

chapter i

Army Marches By “army marches,” one must hear all of the movements that an army may make, and, the thing envisaged under this vast point of view, it becomes one of the greatest and most important parts of the military science; it is by marches that an army acts, transports itself from one position to another, [and] invades or covers great extents of countryside; it is by marches that it surprises the enemy [and] that it preempts them on an interesting point; [and] it is marches that conduct the formation of all the orders of battle and all the offensive dispositions. As the science of war is perfected in proportion to armies being commanded by more skillful generals, marches become more important to combine and execute well, more frequent, [and] more decisive. They become more decisive in that they always have a nearby or distant objective, as in making a diversion, carrying the war to an unattended point, conducting an offensive action, or engaging the enemy in a countermovement that makes it a prize, whether wholly or in part. They become more frequent in that the man of genius must rarely rest in inaction; his spirit perceives many objects [and] embraces many combinations, and thus consequently, where the mediocre general sees only his position to guard or the impossibility of acting, it presents to the imagination of the former an advantageous movement that he executes. They become more important to combine and execute well because their success depends on their combination and their execution, as much in the ensemble as in the details, [and] because the faults of their combination or their execution, being general, being interior, may be adroitly seized by the enemy, lose success, and make a prize of the army. I will show, by examples, the truth of what I have said above, and how, to the contrary, marches are hardly operations in ignorant and ill-commanded armies. During the Roman period (because, among the peoples of antiquity, [one] must search for those whose military history is least doubtful) up to the middle of the Second Punic War, the science of marches was not known. I particularly intend the science of “march-maneuvers,” [a] term that I use because it expresses my idea. An army departed Rome to go before the enemy, marched on a single column and following the road that led it to them; the enemy did the same; the two armies met, formed in battle order, [and] attacked each other, or else camped opposite each other; there, for several days, they harassed each

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_037

other, [and] they mutually sought to draw the other onto a disadvantage battlefield between the two camps; finally, the battle occurred, [and] the victor laid siege to the capital or one of the principle cities; if there was no possibility of taking it, they ravaged the countryside and retired; the following year, the armies assembled anew to recommence hostilities of the same genre. Such were the wars Rome had with the Samnites, the Fidenates, the Volscians, and all the peoples of Latium. Such were those of all the small states of Greece, over whose military events history has spread too much marvel and celebrity.1 It was only in the Punic Wars that the Roman armies commenced making war with more method and combination. Hamilcar, father of the famous Hannibal, was particularly the first to imagine placing a certain order in his marches, dividing his army, [and] moving it in several columns so that his march would be more prompt and that his order of battle would be more rapidly formed. Hannibal added to what his father had imagined, and it was the redoubtable enemies, who, by the strength of vanquishing the Romans, taught them the science of marches, like Pyrrhus, [who], in beating them, taught them to camp, to entrench, [and] to perfect their ordinance. Why was Fabius justly called the “Buckler of the Romans?” It is because of the campaign of marches and movements that he made against Hannibal, [a] genre of war that appeared to them to be so new that, despite saving la patrie, they condemned this defensive because they did not know its sublimity.2 1 [The Samnites, Fidenates, and Volscians all inhabited Latium or the areas around it. Tribal states like Rome, they fought against Rome in the earliest years of the Republic, and some continued the struggle through the Social War of the first century BCE. Guibert describes what historians refer to as agonistic war: continual low-level conflict between neighbors that generally follows the harvest cycle. Agonistic war can often have a ritualistic element, whether deliberate or accidental to the intentions of the participants. The Greek states of the Archaic and Classical periods engaged in agonistic war for most of their conflicts. Not until the Peloponnesian War did the cycle begin to break down, but it remained in many places through the Macedonian conquests. See Howarth, “War and Warfare in Ancient Rome,” and Rawlins, “War and Warfare in Ancient Greece.”] 2 [Guibert plays both sides here. He is critical of wars that involve much movement and little combat in his own time, but he lauds Fabius for the same strategy. He also falls into his habit of reductionism; the events he describes in the Second Punic War were much more nuanced than he indicates. See Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, 143–330.]

Army Marches

We approach our centuries, and we see the same there, that it is only when the art of war is perfected that armies have begun to march with some combination. We see what I have advanced above, that generals have always made more use of marches and movements in war on account of having been more skillful and having had more-enlightened enemies before them. Until the epoch of Gustav and Nassau, who were the restorers of the military art in Europe, there were neither movements nor combined marches in armies; they met and they fought; there were perhaps more personal actions, more actions of heroism, but there were no campaign plans, views, or projects of several branches.3 When one sees all of the wars between England and France, those of Charles V and François I, the two most-powerful princes of Europe at the time, and having the best troops; when one sees the story of the Battles of Bouvines, Poitiers, Crécy, [and] Agincourt, along with those of the Crusades, one sees how armies of these times formed, how they fought, [and] what their march orders were.4 They formed themselves on a single column, the armies being divided into three corps whose head was called “the advanced guard,” center “the battle corps,” [and] tail “the rear guard.” How did they form in battle order? A day did not suffice to sort out this mass and form the combat disposition. Most often, the advanced guard, composed of draftees and enfants perdus, engaged the action, while the battle corps, composed of the men-at-arms and the nobility, advanced to sustain it; the unfortunate infantry of the communes arrive next, or perhaps did not arrive until after the fight, and ran away or pillaged.5 This is, until almost today, where the disposition 3 [Another likely Bourcet reference. Unlike the prior, Guibert seems to be wholly positive here; see 28n66.] 4 [The Battle of Bouvines, fought in 1214, was the crowning achievement of Philippe II, the first of France’s four great kings. He defeated an allied army composed of English, Flemish, and Imperial forces, leading to the abdication of Emperor Otto IV, the humiliation of King John of England, and the eventual extension of French control into Flanders. Most medieval armies were drawn up as Guibert describes, with a vanguard, main body, and rear guard. More nuanced tactics and formations required a professional force, which medieval armies largely were not. One of the most significant changes from the medieval to early modern periods in military affairs was the development of professional forces, as Guibert notes with regard to the Swiss, Dutch of Maurits, and Swedish of Gustav Adolf. See Georges Duby, The Legend of Bouvines: War, Religion, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Catherine Tihanyi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); and Colin Jones, “The Military Revolution and the Professionalization of the French Army under the Ancien Régime,” in The Military Revolution Debate, 149–168.] 5 [Enfants perdus is usually translated as “forlorn hope,” but the phrasing does not work here, as Guibert intends it to refer to people and not to a specific unit per se. “Communes” refers to a medieval institution that levied forces from French cities to form a sort of urban

173 of the Ottoman armies remains, fortunately for Europe, in the ignorance where we once were.6 Under Gustav and Maurits, we commenced to be enlightened on orders of march, [and] we sensed their consequence[s]; Gustav executed some on several columns, and we must read, in his history, what order and precautions that he recommended to his troops. [Henri,] duc de Rohan, in his Le Parfait Capitaine, counsels also to execute them on several columns, to render the movements less fatiguing and more prompt, he says. This multiplication of columns was then less necessary than it is today, as armies are more numerous, and the ordinance being thinner, their front is more extended.7 But it is not on interior details [or] the mechanism of marches that the greatest progress was made; what must be remarked and meditated on in the conduct of Gustav and the great generals of his century is the conduct of their campaigns, the hardiness of their expeditions, the profit that they knew how to draw from their small armies, the grandeur of their projects, [and] the rapidity with which they carried war from one province to the other; it is this new genre of war, more in movements and in science than in fights, of which they were the creators. Gustav, and after him his generals, sustained himself in Germany with a handful of Swiss, recalling Hannibal in the center of Italy.8 But we approach closer to our time. See Turenne, see Montecuccoli, the two last great men who commanded, and [they] preferred to command small armies. What was their genre of war? It was that of which I have spoken. How did the famous campaign that terminated the life of one and the career of the other pass? In marches and countermarches, the two armies being ceaselessly in motion, being alongside each other, ceaselessly standing ready to attack, and this in a space of countryside of ten or twelve leagues long [and] four or five wide; in a closed and broken country where mediocre generals could not fail to make a war of positions. I will have occasion to return, in the course of this work, to the very great difference militia that fought in contemporary armies. See Antoine-Gaspard Boucher d’Argis, “Commune ou Communes,” in Encyclopédie, III:725.] 6 [Guibert rightly identifies the perennial Ottoman problem during the period: falling behind the other states of Europe in techniques and technologies. However, Europeans often exaggerated the plight of the “sick man of Europe,” as Guibert does, and the Ottomans would prove resilient into the twentieth century, outlasting both the Austrian and German empires. See Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2003).] 7 [See Rohan, Le parfait capitaine, 166–169. See also Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus.] 8 [See 19–21.]

174 [between] a defensive of positions and a defensive of movements. It is marches that are the subject of my current examination.9 After Turenne’s death, there were no more small armies charged with great operations. Louis XIV’s ambition wishing to invade several countries at the same time, he had already commenced some time before, in the Dutch War, to form several army corps; this did nothing but augment [their size,] and all of Europe levied more-numerous armies in response. With the number of troops, the artillery also increased. [This] required proportionate food equipment. It was necessary that, in proportion to these enormous increases in men and embarrassments, tactics made progress, particularly on the part of marches. It did not. Mediocre generals found themselves charged with quite-large masses, and thus the genre of war changed; [they] could not, and did not know how to, move them; being mostly embarrassed in nourishing them, they made fewer marches, they renounced the war of movements, [and] they introduced that of positions. They found themselves inferior; they confined themselves in lines [and] in entrenched camps: in a word, they did nothing hardy, nothing decisive; no one made what I call “the great war.”10 In the midst of this quantity of generals who commanded the French armies during this epoch, if there were some who appeared more fortunate, it is because they approached the old principles. It was by hardy and rapid marches that Vendôme preserved the Spanish crown for Felipe V.11 It was an offensive march that saved France at Denain; it was by a campaign of marches and movements that Créquy immortalized himself on the Saar and the Moselle.12 But, to speak of Marshal Luxembourg, 9 10

[See 21n43.] [This analysis of Louis XIV’s armies remains a major thread in the historiography of the period. The thrust of the argument is that Louis’s armies became as large as his ambition, leading to ruinous general wars that accomplished little. John Lynn, “Recalculating French Army Growth during the Grand Siècle, 1610–1715,” The Military Revolution Debate, Clifford Rogers, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1995), 117–148.] 11 [Vendôme spent much of his campaigning in Spain conducting maneuver campaigns in support of the Bourbon Felipe V during the War of Spanish Succession. See Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 251–355.] 12 [The Battle of Denain was the last significant battle in the War of Spanish Succession. Marshal Villars led an army against the allied forces in 1712, finding them divided. By marching on and attacking the allied force, Villars was able to keep the enemy separated and win a signal victory that saved France from humiliation at the peace table the following year. François de Créquy de Bonne, duc de Lesdiguières, was the scion of a martial family who served in Louis XIV’s wars. He received his baton in 1668 but did not command a significant force until 1675, which ended in his surrender to Austrian forces.

chapter i

Louis XIV’s general who, commanding large armies, knew best how to maneuver them, it must be seen in his Campagnes [and] in his dispatches how he believed marches [to be] important [and] how he owed his success to them.13 It was under him that, being maréchal-général des logis of his army, Marshal Puységur threw out the plan of a part of his march combinations that he has since developed in his Traité sur l’art de la guerre. It is a quiteimperfect theory, quite-complicated, that of the marshal, but it is not without merit: it carries some illumination in the midst of shadows. It would have been fortunate if it had appeared earlier and had been meditated on; it was finally the first dogmatic work on the grand tactics of armies. The ignorant regarded it as a chef d’œuvre, [while] educated people, people of war, saw many errors alongside a small number of truths; they sensed that the marshal had not touched the goal, that our tactics were vicious, [and] that they had need of being changed, of being re-founded by a man of genius.14 Marshal Saxe, who might have made this revolution, who perhaps may have done so if he had lived, if he had joined more love for work to his great qualities for war, sensed the need. He said so often: he wrote to Argenson in 1750 that all the troops of Europe, excepting the Prussians, who have commenced to enlighten themselves, were poorly constituted and incapable of executing grand maneuvers. He repeated this in his Rêveries: one sees how he is indignant at the slowness of our marches, at our ignorance, at our maladroitness in forming an order of battle. It is on this subject that he said “all the secret of exercise, all that of a war, is in the legs.” I have already cited this obscure-appearing expression, but it seems to me to contain a quite-profound and quitejust sense.15

13

14 15

After being paroled, Créquy led several armies in the remainder of the conflict, successfully maneuvering around the mentioned region and helping to secure the Treaty of Nijmegen. See Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 133–168 and 353–354.] [Luxembourg published no specific work called Campagnes. Guibert probably references the marshal’s official reports, one of which was published as Rélation de la bataille de Neerwinde, gagnée par l’armée du Roi (Paris: 1693). In the 1750s, Jean de Beaurain published Histoire militaire du duc de Luxembourg, 6 Vols. (The Hague: Gilbert, 1756–1758), the sixth volume of which was Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du duc de Luxembourg. He also references Luxembourg’s dispatches, which would have been contained in the library and archives of the War Ministry, to which Guibert and his father were attached for much of the period between 1762 and 1789.] [Guibert refers to Puységur, Art de la guerre par principes et par règles.] [Saxe, Mes rêveries, I:27. Much of the first book details Saxe’s opinions on maneuver warfare, as Guibert indicates.]

175

Army Marches

This vice that Marshal Saxe sensed was in the constitution of our troops [and] in the theory of our marches and our orders of battle Marshal Broglie similarly sensed when he took command of the army. Consequently, he established a new order: he broke it into several divisions. In this organization, whose objective many people did not perceive, saw greater celerity in marches, less fatigue for the troops, [and] more discipline in the camps resulting, but the marshal did not have time to achieve his work; it is not while on two campaigns and in the midst of the tumult of the operations of war that the tactics of an army may be changed [or] the general officers formed; it is especially not in France that such a revolution may be made, and it is only a king-general who could execute it.16 Prussia has one of this species, and he is [the reason it was able to fight] with advantage against the league that menaced it. The truths that had been glimpsed elsewhere without having decisive steps made towards them the King of Prussia saw on his arrival on the throne, and he consequently profited from peacetime to instruct his troops; they were the best-ordered and the most maneuverable in Europe; they had a particular tactic of marches and of deployments. In his army alone were there general officers who knew how to command a column, handle troops, and complete the execution of an order of battle; the result has been seen. By his army alone have great and hardy movements been conducted. He has been seen at the head of this army flying from the Elbe to Silesia [and] from Silesia against the Russians. He has been seen at the head of this surprised and beaten army, stopping two leagues from the battlefield and presenting a new fight. He has been seen at Torgau losing the battle; perceiving, in his retreat, a false movement made by the Austrians, a height maladroitly uncovered; marching his troops there; seizing it; carrying his entire army to support it; and forcing the Austrians to retire behind the Elbe. Finally, everywhere he had to maneuver, everywhere success depended on the intelligence and rapidity of marches, success was for him. Without doubt, he would not have dared so much, he would not have been able [to], if he had had less-maneuverable troops [or] general officers less in a state of seconding him, because what action can be taken

16

[Guibert speaks of the second half of the Seven Years War, which saw Broglie commanding the French army in Hanover for most of the period between 1760 and 1762. Between his field regulations in the Seven Years War and later work within the War Ministry, Broglie is the person most responsible for the creation of the combined-arms division. See Abel, “An Aspect of the Military Experience in the Age of Reason.”]

by a machine whose parts are not susceptible to play or combination?17 Nevertheless, I dare to advance that the King of Prussia has not exhausted all the combinations of the art, and that, in grand tactics, in marches principally, much progress remains to be made. This assertion is quite hardy; I will work to support it by proofs. First, the different species of march that an army is capable of executing must be distinguished. These may be simple marches made outside of the range of the enemy, with the objective of easily carrying a point. In this species of marches, which are called “route marches” and that armies sometimes make, whether at the commencement of campaigns to approach the enemy, at the end of campaigns to mutually separate, or in the moments where the operations have distanced the armies from each other and, having respectively disordered them, they only enter into simple combinations that must be uniquely relative to the least fatigue and the greatest convenience of the troops. These may be marches outside of the enemy range but having the goal of preempting them on a point, rapidly seizing a post, carrying aid to a menaced subject, or unexpectedly changing the theater of war; in this case, the marches must be combined in such a manner as to procure all possible celerity [and] to force-march, if it is necessary, the totality of the army, or at least a corps of troops, to the support of which one may arrive in time with the rest of one’s forces. One must know to depart from ordinary principles, and, to this end, if this may render march more rapid and more convenient, to separate the army into several corps that reunite on the point or within range of the contemplated point; finally, one must calculate that, being outside of the enemy range and having for [an] objective to arrive, one must gain in speed what one loses in method and make celerity the principle and unique objective of one’s combinations. These may be “march-maneuvers,” that is to say, marches made to enemy range, and consequently, in the object to take, if it is necessary, an order of battle. This last 17

[Guibert describes Friedrich in the Seven Years War. As Prussia was surrounded by enemies, he was forced to rapidly transition between armies and theaters to fend off his enemies. The Battle of Torgau took place in late 1760 as Friedrich attacked the Austrian army in Saxony. His initial attacks failed, and Friedrich left the field, believing the battle lost. However, other Prussian forces managed to take the heights Guibert mentioned, turning the battle in favor of the Prussians. Szabo credits subordinate Prussian commanders for the victory rather than Friedrich, as Guibert does, albeit with the decided advantage of Prussian primary and archival sources at his disposal. See Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, especially 311–322.]

176 species of march, extended details of which I will enter into, is the most important and that which requires the most combinations, because it acts at once to calculate the nature of the country one traverses [and] that of the countryside where one must end; the species of arm that is superior; the quality of the army’s troops; the disposition that one wishes to take, whether one must attack or defend; the greater or lesser skill of the enemy; their position; their views; the distance to them; [and] the greater or lesser dexterity with which their troops take an order of battle. This species of marches, in a word, is the preparation for the greatest military operations that can be done, for the formation of orders of battle, [and] for the battles that follow, because the movements by which the army passes from march order to battle order are so linked to the combinations of the march order that they must be regarded as one and the same operation. I will show how this linkage exists. We will commence by establishing the

chapter i

rules of the first subject with which one must occupy oneself for forming an army in march order; I wish to [call this] the “opening of routes.” We will deduce from this the manner that the army must form in march order; this will lead us to posing the principles of movements that must form it in battle order. This theory is particularly relative to the third species of march that I spoke of above and may only be applied to the two others on some points, because they have for their goal only to conduct the army to a combat disposition.18 18

[These “march-maneuvers” detail how to use Guibert columns, providing the transition between tactical- and operational-level warfare that almost every other theoretical work of the period lacked. While it may not appear so to the modern reader used to the vast and articulated armies and army groups of twentiethcentury warfare, Guibert begins to sketch operational-level warfare in these chapters, as Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, and Telp, The Evolution of the Operational Art, describe.]

chapter ii

Opening of Marches An army ranged [by] the current ordinance, and especially an army composed, as ours are today, of many men, horses, wagons, and embarrassments, cannot move, and for an even stronger reason, [in] executing a march in line, it might find a plain vast and continuous enough to receive it, yet the extent of its front renders its movements so heavy and lengthy that it would be impractical. It cannot move on a single column because the immense lengthening of this column would slow the march, augment the fatigue of the troops, and place the army in danger of being beaten and reversed before it could form. To execute a march, the army must divide itself into several corps or columns that, each following different routes, arrive on the same direction and are able, by movements combined with each other, to take a general combat disposition. When I say “on the same direction,” I mean to say towards the same objective, because the march disposition may be one where one wishes to carry a part of the army onto the enemy flank while the rest will carry on the front, and thus, while the direction of all of the columns will not be precisely the same, all will nevertheless concur on the same objective, which is to take an order of battle and to attack the enemy.1 The marches the army being executed on several columns, each of these columns must consequently take an open or reconnoitered road, or at least a direction in which it may advance with the aid of workers who are at its head. I establish these differences because it is possible that the default of time, the enemy having not permitted the opening of the route of advance, their having permitted it to reconnoiter it only and not to open it, or finally, the route not having been able to be either reconnoitered or opened, it must advance on a projected direction and reconnoiter and prepare its debouche on the way. The last case commonly arrives when one marches to give battle to the enemy, and this enemy has detached corps and posts in advance that must be successively attacked and defeated. The number of columns on which an army must march, and consequently the debouches that it must open, must 1 [This may again be an obvious point to a modern reader, but Guibert advocates for one of the foundational elements of operational-level warfare: the articulation of an army on the march, prefiguring Napoleon’s famed (and fabulous) bataillon carré.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_038

be in proportion to the strength of this army and the number of divisions into which the general will have divided it; I will speak in the following chapter on why he must divide an army into several divisions; what is the proportion that he must observe in this regard; how, this base formed, he must, as much as circumstances permit, combine his march orders on it; form a column of each division; and keep, in thus forming all the parts of his disposition of the same strength, in proportion to being able to take such an order of battle and to reinforcing any point in this order of battle that is judged appropriate. So that an army be as little as it is possible in the [situation] of making marches without debouches being prepared, when this army arrives in a position, the maréchal-général des logis must first occupy himself with opening marches on all the directions that subsequent circumstances may oblige him to follow. This method accomplishes both preparing for the future and hiding the movement that is projected from the enemy. If, in lieu of this, one only opens marches on the direction indicated by momentary or foreseen circumstances, one discovers [only] the views that one may have, and these views having only to change, one will find oneself obliged to make an inconvenient and painful march. This principle is furthermore subject to events, because sometimes one does not stay in a position, and there is hardly enough time to open the march on the next day. Sometimes the enemy occupies, with considerable posts or detached corps, the countryside where the march must be executed, and thus it can only advance on them and fight them, if they resist. Sometimes it is advantageous to [force the enemy to change positions by] opening a march on a point towards which one does not wish to go while one secretly reconnoiters another towards which one wishes to disguise a movement. Another time, the circumstances and respective positions of the armies are such that, if they move, it may perhaps be only to go towards an indicated objective; thus, it is useless to fatigue oneself in opening marches towards other points. Another time, one is on an absolute and determined defensive in such a manner as to not be able to or to wish only to make movements to the rear of oneself; thus, it is certainly useless to open marches in advance, because this will only furnish the enemy with offensive debouches. For the clarifying of the principle that I exposed at the commencement of this article, it must finally be concluded that there may be occasions

178 where it is useless, and even impossible, to open marches on all directions, but at least it is important that all directions are reconnoitered by the officers of the état-major, or if they cannot [be], by information taken from the people of the countryside; it must be concluded that the maréchal-général des logis must make an exact tableau of these itineraries and reconnoiters in such a fashion as to never quit a position without having [scouted] the spokes by reconnoiters or by information that he will take on all surrounding directions, and reaching, by this means, the most-perfect knowledge possible of the theater of the war. Now we say how army marches must be opened, and we return to the first principles of troop marches. A battalion can only move perpendicularly or parallelly to the terrain that it occupies. It is thus with an army. March orders consequently reduce themselves to two species: “front marches” and “flank marches;” these two species require absolutely different precautions and combinations. One may see how, for want of establishing this distinction and of consequently calculating, the most vicious routine yet opens our marches and places our armies in danger of being beaten, if the opposing armies have been more savvy and more maneuverable. All the times that the army must execute a front march, whether to the front or rear, the front of this march must be equal to the extent of the terrain that the army occupies en bataille, that is to say that it must have terrain necessary for the army to be able to deploy between the column of the right and that of the left. On the contrary, all the times that the army must march by its flank, as its movement must execute itself thus, each line or each mid-line forming a column, the debouches must be opened quite near to each other in such a manner that the columns from within the march be as near as possible to the exterior column and consequently to the parallel on which the army must be obliged to form itself. In front marches, it is not necessary, and it is also impossible, unless an army march on a plain totally devoid of obstacles, that debouches be always open[ed] at a distance exactly combined on the strength of the columns that must march through them. It suffices that, on arriving on the points where the army can or must form, the columns approach this distance as much as it is possible. I will clarify this point below. All the times that it is a question of opening a march, the maréchal-général des logis must see by the position of the army, by that of the enemy, [and] by the situation of the point towards which it is wished to march, if this march is “front” or “flank” so as to consequently direct the instruction and the operation of the aides-maréchaux des logis charged with preparing the debouches. If it is a

chapter ii

front march and is made within range of an enterprising and maneuverable enemy, the maréchal-général des logis must reconnoiter the ensemble and the front of the countryside that the columns traverse, and to this end, cover it transversally from the right to the left all the times that the terrain appears to permit the columns to deploy so as to reconnoiter one or several successive positions on the front of the march where the army could form with the supposition that the enemy arrives unexpectedly on them, and to command, in consequence of these reconnoiters, the operations of the aides-maréchaux généraux de logis, who must open or trace the debouches behind them. The same precautions must be taken along the external flank of the march when the army must make a march by its wings. The principle exposed above is too important for me to not search to expand on it with all possible clarity. Thus we suppose that, in the midst of the countryside represented in Diagram I, I am charged with commanding the opening of a march to carry the army against the enemy camped at B; I throw my eyes on the circumstances of this march, [and] I see that it is a front march to be made; I see that this march is delicate in that the enemy is able to come before the army and attack it in its movement; consequently, I open it with all the precautions indicated by the preceding maxims, and to this end, here is how I proceed. The army is formed in six divisions, and it is for six columns that I wish to prepare debouches. At the head of the workers who trace and open each of these debouches I place an intelligent officer habituated to this kind of work, and I travel personally in advance of the front of the march. The army camp is first found to be a flat plain without obstacles; my debouches thus advance rapidly, leaving all six to the right or to the left of the divisions, all six proportionate, for the distance between them, to the strength of the divisions; all six finally embrace, from the right to the left, the terrain that will be necessary to form the army. At one league from the camp, the countryside changes: the plain narrows [and] obstacles confuse it; then the direction of each column must be subordinated to these obstacles, the columns moving away from or approaching each other according to the situation of the debouches that the countryside offers or those that permit the most facile opening. [In one place], two columns almost touch, [while in another], two others move far away from each other, far beyond their natural distances, and this has no [effect] on the ensemble and the surety of the march, because where the countryside becomes covered and reduces debouches, one must

Opening of Marches

diagram i

Opening of a front march

179

180 not fear to be obliged to rapidly take an order of battle, since the difficulty of the debouches equally hinders the enemy who wishes to come to attack from combining a disposition. Nevertheless, charged with the general direction of the opening of the march, I am, like I have said above, in advance of the workers to reconnoiter the front, to prevent any column from departing from the general direction, to link the columns as much as the countryside permits, to examine what may be the different intermediate positions that the army may take and the dispositions that they will make, if the enemy presents themselves to attack and to arrest it in its march. To the end of accomplishing all these objects, I do not [take] only one route [or] only one direction; I go as the crow flies and crosscountry. From the center of the general direction, which is the point where I am most within range of reconnoitering the march front, I observe my right and my left. If some obstacle blocks my view, if some height may second it and give me a more gathered and clearer view, I travel to it; finally, I advance by zig-zags and in such a manner as to always embrace the ensemble of the march. We return to the example and the plan on which I demonstrate. My columns have arrived in a difficult and countryside covered [with obstacles]; there, each of my officers finds his debouche; each of them knows the goal of the general direction; each of them is furnished with sure and intelligent guides; each of them has agreed, in advance with me, to a different signal, whether ignited powder, fusil shots, or drums; [and] each of them makes this signal and repeats it every quarter of an hour when he finds himself in a covered country and where he ceases to see, either in advance of or around himself. Myself, I have a signal that I sound when I judge it necessary and that always indicates the center of the general direction to them; by it, they can [maintain] accord between themselves and me; I can accord in my turn, [and] I can command them according to what my reconnoiters lead me to judge useful. The countryside opens and clears, [and] my columns redress and retake, in advancing, their primitive distances. If the enemy presents themselves to come to attack me, the stream that is to my left and the great wood that is to my right will furnish me a position. This same stream flows for a league in the same direction as my movement. I rest my left column on it so as to cover the march’s flank. I see at the end of this league that the stream turns and departs; I perceive on the right of my march that the terrain commences to rise and forms a chain of heights that spill out onto the plain where the army must march; I command the debouch of my right column on these heights, and I always make them follow them halfway up; I say “halfway up” because then I am master of these

chapter ii

heights as if I had taken the summit, and so the march will be less painful for the troops. [Because] of this chain of heights, the rest of my march will be achieved with surety. The enemy will certainly not come to attack me by the plain as long as I hold the heights that dominate them; if they come to attack me by the heights, I occupy them and we are deux de jeu;2 if they wish to prevent me from taking the position D E, I arrive at the same time on this position by all the debouches of the plain, and principally by my heights from the right that take them in the rear. If they remain in their camp, these same heights will carry me on their flank, and the same day, I combine an offensive movement on them. This is enough to give an idea of the manner in which the opening of a “front” march must be directed. We give, in another plan, an idea of the manner in which that of the “flank” must be opened. The army is camped at G, and the enemy is at H (Diagram II); nothing separates them, and it is a question for the former to make a march by its right flank. In consequence of the principle that I have established, I must open two or four debouches in such a manner that the army makes its movement [with] each line or half-line forming a column. I open these debouches quite close to each other so that the interior march columns have only the least amount of terrain possible to cover to approach the parallel on which they must form the exterior column, [which is] composed of half or of the totality of the first line; I make sure that the officers who conduct the route and the opening of these debouches avoid their becoming distanced or separated by obstacles that may prevent the columns from forming in battle order. If, as in C, the nature of the countryside or the little time that one has to prepare the debouches obliges that they distance [from each other], I take pains that, the obstacle passed, they should approach each other little-by-little to the distance indicated by the principles. If a great wood is presented in advance of my debouches, as in D, in lieu of traversing it or leaving it on the exterior flank of my march, as the countryside[’s] routes seem to indicate to me, I pass my columns outside of this wood; I command them thus, because then the edge of this wood offers me a position if the enemy comes to me; because, my columns skirting it, the enemy can distinguish neither my force nor the dispositions that I will oppose them with; [and] finally, because, not having this mask between them and myself, they 2 [Deux de jeu is a gaming term, especially in tennis, indicating that two points remain before victory. It may be the origin of the tennis score deuce, in which the players are tied and two consecutive points are necessary to win; the analogy would then be to a drawn position that is not yet a stalemate.]

diagram ii

Opening of a flank march

Opening of Marches

181

182 cannot conceal their movements, make an offensive disposition on me, or hinder me, if they engage, from forming and myself making an offensive disposition on them. If, two leagues further, a chain of heights presents itself on my right flank, I direct my columns to the right, and I continue my march on it, etc. Finally, by consequence of the principle that I have followed in my opening of the front march, I conduct the ensemble of the opening of the flank march in reconnoitering the countryside that is on the flank of the march and in occupying myself with successively searching for one or several intermediate positions where the army may form, if the enemy presents themselves. It remains to me to speak of the opening of the debouches of columns, considered in themselves and relative to the width that one must give to these debouches. It must often be in war, on this subject as on many others, to receive the law of the nature of the countryside, of the time, and of the means that one has. But [as a] general rule, and to which it is important to [be] subject all the times that its possible, their width must be relative to the principles of tactics after which the troops must march. Now, as in the exposition of these principles, it has been fixed and demonstrated that march columns must be habitually formed by platoons, that is to say, for speaking a more-precise language that may apply to all constitutions, by fractions of twelve or fifteen men of front, debouches must be twenty or twenty-five paces of width in such a manner that not only may the soldiers march through them with liberty but also that the officers may traverse them on horseback to the right and left of the column, or at least on one of the flanks; I will later say why they must not march in the platoon intervals. On such routes, the cavalry may march by four or by eight, the officers marching the same on the flanks of the column and never in the company intervals. The artillery and the wagons will have as much as two wagons-frontage of space to march, or at

chapter ii

least [enough] that, marching only on one, the column will not be stopped by an accident. Finally, the baggage horses or mules may march on two or on four of front. I will return with detail to this subject in treating the disposition of march orders. But, as I have said above, often the default of time and means, [or] the nature of the countryside, prevents the opening of marches in advance and with much care; sometimes the columns are obliged to open their debouches on the route and by means of the workers who are at their head; thus necessity makes law such that it is to the intelligence and activity those who command the column’s march to foresee the shortest directions, to penetrate through the least-difficult places, [and] to make haste of work. The conduct of this work requires officers who have experience and intelligence, because nothing is [too] minute in war, [and] nothing good can be done without intelligence and experience. I say this particularly to the people who denigrate the talent of a man who wellknows how to open a march column and dress its route. These people do not calculate that a more-or-less exactlydressed route [or] a more-or-less-open column depends more or less on the celerity of a march [and] more or less on the fatigue of the troops, the certainty of the execution of the movement of a column, and often the success of a grand operation. Here is a chapter in which I have entered into some details of the charge of the maréchal-général des logis of an army, immense details on which nothing is written, on which much remains to imagine, and almost all to reduce to principles.3 3 [As Guibert notes, few of his contemporaries explored the levels of warfare above that of petty tactics, so few doctrinal or systematic works explored what would now be termed the operational level. Guibert’s efforts to elaborate principles at that level mark the importance of his work for the development of operational-level warfare.]

chapter iii

On the Disposition of March Orders I have just said how the debouches of army marches must be recognized and opened; it is now to expose the different manners by which an army may be disposed in march order. We begin by explaining, as I have promised, how this army must be divided, what the object of this division is, and on what proportion it must be determined. For a great mass to be moved with the greatest facility, it must be divided, if it is possible, into several parts; thus, each of these parts is susceptible to receiving more movement and action; thus, one may act on all the parts at the same time by combined and multiplied forces; it is thus with an army. When one wishes to move it en masse, it will be maladroit, slow, [and] incapable of grand maneuvers; when one divides it into several corps, each of them will act separately with more order and celerity; all will act at the same time and concur in the execution of a general movement. I will speak later on the advantages that such a decision procures, whether relative to the simplicity of the service and discipline or in regard to the diminution of details and embarrassments that result for the general.1 With respect to the portion on which the division of an army into divisions must be founded, mechanics again furnish me a sensible demonstration. If, wishing to organize a machine, one makes moving parts that are too many and too feeble, one complicates the details of this machine, and one diminishes its strength. If one makes them too few in number and too solid, they become susceptible to too-little action, whether in strength or in speed. It is the same in an army: if, in composing divisions of too few troops, one forms a great number of divisions, one falls into complication, one loses men capable of commanding these divisions, [and] one is at pains to combine so many separate movements. If, in composing the divisions of too many troops, one forms an army of too few divisions, each of them remains too massive and too heavy, [and] the operation does not accomplish its object, which is to lighten and to form in a state of acting. A midpoint exists between these extremes that simple reason will find. Why separate an army into several divisions? It is for the same reason that a regiment is divided into several battalions. The divisions, equally composed of a certain number of regiments of the first and second line, are part 1 [Guibert provides one of the earliest examples of the principle of “march divided; fight united” that lies at the heart of operationallevel warfare.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_039

of an army like the battalion is part of a regiment; the divisions are each under the orders of a general officer who commands them, who is charged with their police [and] discipline and gives account to the general of the army. One sees thus how this formation prunes and simplifies the details. The army forms in march order? Each division forms its column. It arrives at the camp? Each division takes its place. The march order has for its goal to lead to an order of battle? As all the parts of this march order are equal, the general may, according to circumstances, combine his deployment and the interior maneuvers that he prepares in such a manner as to thin and reinforce any part of his disposition that he judges appropriate. We return to my comparison of the division of a regiment into battalions. Tactics teaches that these battalions must not be made either too strong or too feeble, because in the former case, they will be too heavy, and in the latter case, they will not have enough stability. Thus I must avoid the two inconveniences in the formation of the divisions of an army, and here is my rule to this end. The divisions have for [their] principal object to simplify march orders and to facilitate, as well as to accelerate, the movements by which the army may take an order of battle; consequently, it must be that, destined to each ordinarily form one column, they are not composed of a too-great number of troops; then they would be too heavy [and] too slow to deploy and to join the execution of the order of battle. They must also not be composed of a too-small number of troops; then the divisions would be too multiplied, and it would be painful and often impracticable to open sufficient debouches for the army to move. I perhaps repeat myself, but in an exposition of principles, this is sometimes inevitable.2 The true portion of dividing an army, combined on the movements of deployment and on the views of grand tactics, is three and at most four infantry divisions, independently of the cavalry wings that each one forms. As to the strength of the divisions, it must be at most twentyfour battalions, half of the first and half of the second line, and never below twelve. Each wing of cavalry must form a division, to which there are no precise boundaries to 2 [While the articulation of armies at echelons above the regiment is a hallmark of modern warfare, such organization did not exist in Guibert’s period. His elaboration of its necessity is another element in laying the foundations of operational-level warfare.]

184 assign. In the course of this work, I will give an example of an army divided after these principles and executing all the march and battle orders possible. Let us now explain, with necessary detail, why the divisions must be equal [and] why the divisions of the march order must be immutable, as much as possible. It is the divisions[’ being] of the same strength; it is, by means of them, the dispositions of the march order[’s being] equal; [and] it is this march order[’s being], as much as circumstances permit, always the same that gives the general the facility to combine, in the moment and in the view of the enemy, any order of battle that he judges appropriate. I have said on all of this “as much as circumstances permit” because sometimes it arrives that the nature of the countryside does not comport with the opening of the necessary number of debouches, [and] one is obliged to form columns of more than one division. Sometimes an offensive movement must be made in an absolutely open countryside, and thus the goal is to rapidly take a combat disposition; then there is no inconvenience in multiplying the columns [or] in forming two of the same division, because this may conduct a more-prompt deployment. Sometimes the march must be executed in traversing a countryside where it must, for the surety of the movement, necessarily form the infantry into wing columns and thus depart from the habitual order. Other times, it must conduct to a position where the entire center is on a plain, and the wings are in a covered countryside; then, if one has no fear of being attacked on the march, one then departs from the habitual order, [and] one forms infantry columns on the wings and cavalry columns in the center. Finally, sometimes it is a question of going to attack the enemy in a known position and where they may not make unforeseen changes in their disposition; thus the march order may be combined in advance with the battle order that one projects; thus consequently, the habitual disposition may be departed from; the columns may be of unequal strength and differently combined according to how one proposes to attack with one part and to refuse the others, to form whichever species of arm wherever, in whatever proportion. Here are, as one sees, several exceptions to ordinary principle, exceptions that, far from destroying it, serve to clarify it in announcing the circumstances where it must be departed from.

chapter iii

The fundamental and habitual principle, I repeat, must thus be to form as many columns as there are divisions, so that from this equality of all the parts of the march order, the result may be the possibility of quickly executing an order of battle reinforced or weakened on all the points that circumstances indicate. I will demonstrate, in treating orders of battle, how it is [an] immense advantage to only make dispositions within sight of the terrain where one must fight and the enemy dispositions. I will demonstrate how battles have been lost, whether for want of having these principles or, when they were had, for want of tactics of deployments and a habit of maneuvers that permits their execution. We [now] terminate that which concerns march orders. It follows from the theory, and particularly from the principle that I have exposed, that the dispositions of march order must almost always be the same and that it is for the genius to draw from these dispositions an order of battle combined on the nature of the terrain and circumstances. This is certainly not in the theory of Puységur, nor in the current routine of all our armies, because march orders are always combined on the battle order that one wishes to take.3 One forms the project of attacking the enemy on some point of their disposition, one consequently adjusts the march order, [and] one reinforces [the appropriate] column. Arriving in front of the enemy, one forms en bataille according to the dictate of the march order. I will tell, in the chapter on orders of battle, of the errors and the ill-success that result from this. It remains to me to examine what the interior dispositions of march orders must be, relative to the nature of the march that one executes and to the different moving parts that compose the columns; these moving parts are the troops, the artillery, [and] the baggage. I will thus speak successively on what the disposition of the troops, the artillery, and the baggage in march columns must be. 3 [Guibert speaks of the most difficult aspect of both deployments and reform during the period: the linking of march order to battle order. As he indicates, commanders planned their march and battle orders in relation to each other, which did not allow them to depart from them, once established. This all but eliminated any flexibility in march or deployment, required several hours to transition between the two, and lent battles a processional air that more resembled the parade ground than reality.]

chapter iv

Disposition of Troops in March Orders I will return, for all that concerns the formation of troops in march columns and the movements by which they must pass from march order to battle order, to that what I have said on the subject of infantry tactics in the chapter on formations in column and formations en bataille, and in the essay on cavalry tactics; there, I established the differences [between] front march and flank march, the different manners that the troops of the two arms must have in forming in column relative to these differences, the order in which they must march, the preliminary movements by which they must prepare to form en bataille, and finally, those by which they must form and concur in the execution of a combined maneuver. All being said and extended on these subjects, one sees how the troops that compose an army must form march columns. They form en bataille in front of their camp and immediately form in columns towards the directions that they must follow, observing to form at the free and natural step at the instant that they are formed and not defiling on parade until they are out of the camp terrain, as I have seen sometimes practiced, a ridiculous custom that serves only to fatigue the soldier and that must be suppressed

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_040

both in leaving camps and entering them. If the column is formed only of the troops that are next to each other and within range of following without interruption, the column must wait, extended along its direction, for it to be joined by all the troops that must compose it so that they all depart at the route step. On this depends the commodity of the march, the less fatigue of the troops, and the surety of having the column assemble on the space that it must occupy in its march. As to the manner by which the columns must be ordered relative to each other, it is a simple thing: the habitual principle must be to march as one camp and each division form its column. When some circumstance will oblige them to derogate, it will be said and combined in the march order. This disposition, which regards the maréchal-général des logis, is a facile work for which it suffices that he have the habit; a work that will become more facile yet by means of the new methods of deployment and the destruction of prejudice [against] inversion, which must require, in a word, all the jumble of calculations and minutiae that Marshal Puységur has complicated it with.

chapter v

Disposition of the Artillery in March Orders It has been seen, in the first part of this work in the chapter on artillery, how this accessory must maneuver to form in march column and form en batterie. I have demonstrated that these movements may be absolutely analogous to those of troops. It remains to me to say here how the quantity of artillery that armies trail behind them today must be disposed so as to not embarrass marches and to concur with the formation of an order of battle. The same reasons that [lead me to] support the system of dividing the army into several divisions require that the artillery be divided in the same proportion. If the infantry of the army forms three or four divisions, the artillery will form the same three or four divisions of equal strength such that each will be attached to an infantry division for encamping, marching, and fighting with it. Independently of this, there will be another division, called the “reserve division,” composed of large calibers and howitzers. From this, which will march at the head of the park, will be drawn the reinforcements that one will wish to carry to a point, the detachments that will be necessary, [and] the artillery that, following my opinion, one will sometimes need to employ to support cavalry, and for this, marches with them. Finally, there will be another small division composed of two, four, or at most six pieces of large caliber; this division will be named the “division of the advanced guard,” will camp in advance of the army, and will march with the advanced guard. I form it of the pieces of large caliber because it is the advanced guard that must make the signals that regulate the movements of the army and because, if this advanced guard finds some entrenched post in its route, it needs the large caliber to attack and carry it. I speak here only of the artillery in the park because, for regimental [guns], if one continues to give them to them [the regiments], they camp and march with them; thus it is all naturally divided.1 This great artillery division is independent of the interior subdivisions that one must form in such a manner, for example, that each subdivision be composed of six pieces

1 [Guibert marks himself out as one of the few contemporary theorists who advocated for combined-arms formations by attaching artillery to infantry, not as regimental or battalion guns, but rather at higher echelons, as he indicates. This innovation was another crucial step in developing the all-arms divisions and corps that would form the foundation of operational-level warfare in the following decades.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_041

of the same caliber and that each division be of an equal number of subdivisions composed of different calibers. I will give, in the formation of the army that I will assemble for the execution of the principles that I develop here, an example of a field artillery [organization] divided according to what I have said above and in which one sees the simplicity of movements that are its result. It is the nature and the object of the march that must determine the order in which the artillery must march. Thus, the distinctions that I posed between “route marches” and “marches-maneuvers,” [and] “front marches” and “flank marches” must be remembered on this subject, because the artillery must observe a different order relative to each of these sorts of marches. If it is a route march, as its unique goal is the greatest commodity of the troops or the greatest celerity possible, as it is not at all a question of arriving at an order of battle, and consequently of having the artillery in range to protect it, the artillery will march quite simply at the tail of the troops so as to not retard and not block the routes; that is to say that, if the species of debouches permits, each division will march at the tail of the infantry division to which it is attached, and that, if it does not permit, one will form the artillery in the column where one will judge it appropriate. In both cases, the reserve division and the large park will march with the column whose debouche will be the best and the most facile. If it is a march-maneuver, and consequently a march made within range of the enemy and with the goal of taking an order of battle, the artillery must be disposed in such a manner as to not block the troops and to slow the march as little as possible and at the same time to be able to enter into the combination of the order of battle to protect its execution. After this, one must see if the march is of “front” or of “flank” and consequently make its dispositions. If the march is of front, here is how the artillery divisions will march. At the head of each column and preceded only by a grenadier battalion will be placed one or two subdivisions of large caliber, freed of all their baggage wagons and having twenty rounds per piece to commence the combat. The rest of each artillery division will follow the infantry division to which it is attached in such a manner that the cannon will be immediately at the tail of the troops and that all the baggage and munition wagons will be behind them. By means of this disposition, one will have at the

Disposition of the Artillery in March Orders

head of the columns the artillery necessary to protect the deployment; the troops, not at all being embarrassed, will rapidly form en bataille, and one will next dispose the rest of the artillery as one will wish, whether in making it arrive to support that which is already posted, in making it take emplacements collateral to the troops’ disposition, or finally in leaving it behind the lines, if one wishes to immediately enter into decisive action, so that it will not embarrass the front. The reserve artillery will march behind the center columns; it will always be reinforced with [transport animal] teams so that it may carry itself at top-speed to the points of the order of battle where it will be judged necessary. Here is the “front march-maneuvers” that will be the habitual disposition, but circumstances may occasion different changes. Sometimes, for example, the points of attack being known in advance, one will know which column must take a village or an entrenchment[, so] it will be necessary to attack beforehand with a great artillery fire; then, one will form a great number of subdivisions and all the large calibers at the head of the column. Sometimes, one will wish to support and sustain a wing of cavalry; consequently, one will join to the column that must form one or several subdivisions of guns and particularly howitzers; this artillery, provided with twenty rounds per piece, will march at the head of the column covered by some squadrons, and its munition wagons will march behind it. I have spoken, in the essay on artillery tactics, on the services this little-known, or better said, unknown, point may render in employing artillery with cavalry. It now remains [to see] all the interior dispositions that will be appropriate to make in artillery divisions when, marching to attack the enemy, one will have knowledge of the parts of the order of battle with one wishes to make effort and those that one wishes to refuse. These

187 dispositions will have for [their] goal to reinforce the artillery teams of the columns destined to act, to form more pieces of smaller caliber in the artillery divisions of these columns, and to attach the [larger] calibers to the columns that must form the parts of the disposition that are the most distant from the enemy, and where consequently the longest ranges will be the most necessary, etc. The principles posed in this regard must be read in artillery tactics. As to regimental guns, they will march with their battalions and follow them in their movements, but I cannot help but repeat that, by their [nature] and multiplied to the point where they are, they give more embarrassment than they render service. I must now speak of “flank marches.” If they are not made in circumstances that occasion fear of the enemy, following a parallel to the direction of the army’s movement [and] not searching to attack during its march, the artillery may march at the tail of the troops of each column or by a separate column on the interior flank of the march order. If there is fear of being attacked by the enemy, each artillery division will march at the head and the tail of each division of troops, each artillery division only having with it the munition caissons necessary for the first moment, and all the rest marching, as it is said above, by a separate column within the march order. I leave to the people of war to judge if this theory of artillery dispositions in marches is not superior to the routine that has been followed to the present. I leave to judge if, having artillery divided and maneuvered thus, one may not have a greatly-reduced quantity of artillery than one has today, a quite less-numerous [amount] than that of the ignorant army that is opposed to it, and with which [one] would never want for artillery and would procure a superior fire to theirs on the necessary points.

chapter vi

On the Disposition of Baggage in Marches There are few things to say on this subject. One must never mix the baggage with the troops; one must make it march at the tail of the columns in the same rank as the troops that it sustains, the soldiers’ mules or encampment carts always having the head. If one fears for the flanks of the march, one never places them in the exterior columns of the march, and one takes precautions to cover them. If it is a question of a “march-maneuver” or a forced march, one takes the decision to leave the baggage behind, choosing, to this end, a place that is sure and that, in any event, may be covered by the army. All these rules are known. But what is in the most ill-extended routine is the individual order of the baggage. I have seen on the levees of Flanders, in the most open countries, [and] on the same debouches where the troops marched by platoons, the mules or baggage horses march on a single file, as if they were in the defiles of the Alps; it must certainly be possible that, in lieu of this, they march on two or three files. I will say as much for the wagons, which often may march on two of front. Finally, a rule of proportion must be had by which the maréchal-général des logis will say, “the

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_042

troops of this column may march on this front, by consequence of which the baggage of this column will march in this manner.” But what will all the possible intelligence serve in the disposition of marches if we do not search to diminish this enormous quantity of baggage, equipment, [and] valets, so well named “impedimentia” by the ancients, if for this we do not become more sober, less loving of our ease, [and] more hardened to work? I will not extend myself on this anymore, because such a revolution can only operate by changing the current spirit and morals. Changing the spirit and morals of a nation cannot be the work of a writer whatsoever. It can only be that of the sovereign or of a man of genius in whose hands the great misfortunes and the public cry, stronger than cabals, take the shaft of the machine for several years in a row.1 1 [The word Guibert uses, “timon” refers to the shaft of a chariot or carriage that the horses are hitched to and through which they control it. The metaphor is essentially the land version of taking the tiller of a ship to steer it.]

chapter vii

On Orders of Battle “Battle order” in modern tactics may be defined in two manners. First, it signifies the primitive and fundamental order in which an army disposes itself for encamping and fighting, being taken apart from circumstances of maneuver and terrain; next, it must signify all dispositions derived from this primitive order, with all the differences occasioned by these circumstances. I will clarify this double definition. This will illuminate the theory that will follow. Considered as [a] primitive and fundamental disposition, the battle order of an army is the tableau that one forms at the commencement of the campaign to regulate the emplacement and the disposition of the different corps that compose the army. It is after it that the troops are disposed on two lines, the infantry at the center and the cavalry on the wings. This first arrangement is reasonable when it is only the preparatory disposition, and, if I may express myself thus, the disposition of waiting and organization, but it becomes abuse and error when it degenerates into routine, when one indifferently takes it in all circumstances and all terrains, [and] especially when one takes one’s combat disposition.1 I say that this arrangement is reasonable when it is only the disposition of encamping and organization; in effect, when one assembles an army, a primitive and habitual order must be established, an order that is the base from which one may depart and to which one may return when the circumstances that [caused] the departure no longer exist. I say that this arrangement becomes abuse and error when one does not know how to depart from it according to circumstances, when one blindly makes one’s combat disposition.2 In effect, it is easy to sense that incidents, circumstances, and views without number, must oblige making changes to the primitive order; it is easy to sense, for example, that, by following this order, the army must be formed on two lines, the infantry being at the center, the cavalry on the wings, and all the corps that compose each line being contiguous, the circumstances of war may require that the cavalry be placed at the center and 1 [Guibert describes the typical arrangement of the elements of an army, linking march order to battle order. Until this link was severed, as his methods propose to do, operational-level warfare could not develop.] 2 [Another candidate for Guibert’s thesis statement. He argues that doctrine must not be a recipe followed by rote but rather the foundation on which skilled commanders build.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_043

the infantry on the wings; here fighting on one line, then forming in three, then separating the army in several corps to make them each act on different points; however, all these derogations from the primitive order do not at all prevent the totality of the disposition from being an order of battle, because it has for its goal to fight. As such, we thus conclude, as posterity will deceive itself if it imagines, in seeing the tableau of our current orders of battle, that this was the disposition on which our armies have always fought, so we would doubtlessly deceive ourselves strangely when, in finding in history the disposition of a Greek or Consular army, we believe that they had always fought in this order. Yet truly this order was only a fundamental and primitive order on which changes are made following the requirements of the nature of the terrain and the movements of the enemy.3 We return to my subject, which is to clarify the definition that I have advanced. Considered as a disposition dictated by terrain and circumstances, an army’s order of battle is any order in which it ranges itself for combat; that is to say that it is never and must almost never be the order of method, because rarely does an army find itself in plains formed on straight and continuous lines, [and] also rarely in the countryside where one must completely compose the entire center of infantry and the wings of cavalry. Often, one weakens and one places out of range a part of one’s disposition to reinforce another with which one wishes to fight. In these different circumstances, one conducts oneself by what I have said above, one departs from the order of method, and one takes a disposition that is sometimes little-related to it. There is even more: the more that a general is skillful, the more that his army [will be] maneuvering and the more that he [will] depart from the established routine in order to carry to his enemy unexpected and decisive blows. I will have occasion to develop this in the course of this theory. I believe I have said enough to [make known] 3 [Guibert acknowledges a significant issue in the study of ancient and Classical warfare, which remains to the present: archaeologists, art historians, and historians alike are often forced to deduce practices from idealized examples, which tends to blur the lines between the two and mistake the latter for the former. Determining how Greek and Roman armies actually fought is difficult in the extreme as a result. The analysis is also ironic, considering how reductionist Guibert is throughout the work, especially when referring to Greek and Roman warfare. See Simon James, “The Archaeology of War,” in The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World, 91–127.]

190 the difference that there is between the disposition of method and the disposition of circumstance, which may both be called “battle order,” with the difference that the former only takes place in camps and in the dreams of tacticians, while the [latter] is that in which one gives battles and mostly by which they are won. It is this latter that one could facilely reach the execution of by means of the tactics exposed in this work and that one could not execute with the old principles and the movements practiced until the present in our armies, because, other than having no idea of grand tactics, [and] other than armies not being divided or constituted in a fashion to be able to be maneuvered, the different corps that composed it only moved themselves individually by methods [that were] slow, lengthy, and of which they did not have the habit. The general officers were not at all accustomed to handling the troops. From this ignorance and general maladroitness, both on the part of gun crews and conductors, it resulted that it took several hours to form an army en bataille; that, once this army was en bataille, one did not dare, for fear of confounding [and] losing everything, to make the least change in this disposition. The result was that the march order was always combined on the disposition that one wished to take; thus, for example, one formed en marche with the object of attacking the enemy on some point; consequently, one reinforced some columns. One arrived in the presence of the enemy, the order of battle being dictated by the march order, and it was consequently taken. What arrived then? It is that often this order of battle was found to be vicious, whether because one had false knowledge of the terrain and the position of the enemy or because the enemy had made changes in their disposition; how may this be remedied? What means of changing its primitive disposition [exist] in armies without tactics? When the general would have sensed the genius of the undertaking, how would he dare to be tempted with troops and general officers incapable of any great maneuver? It was a so-difficult [and] so-slow operation to form an army en bataille! What would arrive next? it is that, the army employing an infinite time to pass from march order to battle order, the enemy could at leisure judge the strength of the columns, the point towards which they were directed, [and] the object that they had in view, and consequently make their dispositions. If examples are needed to support what I have advanced, I could cite them in multitudes, and the last war furnished me with many.4 4 [Guibert provides further explanation for how limiting contemporary march practices were and how they inhibited operational warfare.]

chapter vii

In the tactics that I expose, one arrives in a completely different manner at the formation of orders of battle. How may one, for example, attack the enemy? As one may not precisely know the position that they occupy, [and] even when one knows it, one may not be sure that, instructed on the movement that one makes on them, they will not make changes in their position or in the disposition by which they count on defending themselves, one forms the army in march order in the habitual order, the columns being all equal and each formed of a division; thus disposed, the army advances, the general being in front of it at the head of the advanced guard. One arrives within enemy range and then the general determines his order of battle consequent to the nature of the terrain, the position occupied by the enemy, and the disposition that they have taken. He reinforces or weakens some column that he judges appropriate to this end, advances one, leaves another in the rear, directs one against a point, another against another, [and] gives the signal to take order of battle. In an instant, all his troops, who are accustomed to the execution of great maneuvers [and] who have rapid deployment methods, form en bataille, and the attack commences before the enemy has the time to unravel where it wishes to strike them, or, if they had unraveled it, he would have had the leisure to change his disposition to parry it. But what can the general not do, having behind him all of his columns, that is to say, in his hand, and ready to take dispositions that he indicates to them! Arriving in view of the enemy and not finding them to be in a disadvantageous posture, he maneuvers against them; he searches to give them the change; he employs all the resources of terrain and tactics that give the illusion as to his project; he feigns an offensive movement on their left to form his real attack on their right; in one place, he presents columns with open distances, [and] in another, he presents them with closed distances; he does so much that, in a word, if this enemy is not also as skillful as he, they make the change, abandon or occupy a post that makes a prize of them, or so weaken themselves on a point, whether leaving too few troops there, leaving too few of the proper arm there to defend it, or leaving the least-good troops of their army there, and thus, this fault is seized, the skillful and maneuvering general immediately carries his efforts on this feeble part. However, if the enemy does not make of themselves a prize, either by their position or by their disposition, then the general finds nothing to engage; he retires, takes a position, and waits for a more favorable occasion. Here is the true science of the formation of orders of battle. Here is how the King of Prussia won the Battles of Leuthen, Hohenfriedberg, and many others; here is the science whose principles I will

On Orders of Battle

develop by showing the great combinations and the interior mechanism that must pass an army from its march order to a combat disposition.5 There can be only two manners of giving battle to the enemy: the first, in engaging or in forming in range to engage the combat on all the parts of one’s front at the 5 [The Battle of Hohenfriedberg took place in 1745 as the culmination of the Prussian portion of the War of Austrian Succession. Friedrich conducted ruses and maneuvered with his smaller army to find a position of advantage over his Austrian enemies before attacking and defeating them. As Guibert indicates, it was seen as his masterpiece, especially when paired with Leuthen. He also concludes the summary of his thesis by providing his own theory for how march and battle should be conducted, not as a rote procession, but rather according to circumstance and the ability of the commander. See Anderson, The War of the Austrian Succession, 145; Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession, 213–218; and Showalter, The Wars of Frederick the Great, 79–84.]

191 same time; the second, in attacking only on one or on several points. Following from that, I believe that the seven orders that Vegetius spoke of, and which all the tacticians speak of after him, can be reduced to two: “the parallel” and “the oblique.”6 In treating each of these orders separately, I will define them, assign their principles [and] their objects, and demonstrate how all dispositions take after these two principal dispositions and are only their consequences and modifications.

6 [Vegetius’s seven orders are rectangular, oblique with left wing refused, oblique with right wing refused, double envelopment, double envelopment preceded by skirmishers, oblique with left wing refused and right wing supported by cavalry, and formations using terrain-based force multipliers. Milner posits that these were drawn from Cato’s writings, which have not survived. See Vegetius, The Epitome of Military Science, 93–119.]

chapter viii

Parallel Order A battle disposition must thus be named when the front develops parallel to that of the enemy [and] may enter into action with all the parts that compose it at the same time. When I say “parallel,” one must not hear this word with geometric precision, as there are few [battlefields] that may permit two armies to extend on fronts exactly parallel to each other. The name “parallel order” thus belongs to all dispositions that place all the corps of the two armies opposite each other, able and within range to fight. [This] is certainly how armies must have disposed themselves in the first ages of the military science. They were then less numerous than today, they formed themselves on a less-extended ordinance, [and] they were armed in a manner so as to have need of approaching each other to inflict damage. The finesses of tactics were not at all known; in proportion to that on which they were less enlightened, they were perhaps more courageous. Each wished to fight, [and] each wished to have [a] part in the danger and the glory; as such, their battles [were] so terrible and so bloody that our current combats, which are only games [compared to] theirs, make us almost regard them as fabulous. If today we were still to see two savage nations violently animated against each other, and not knowing the usage of firearms, their brave would assemble, march against each other, join [battle], and there, their disposition would be extended so that everyone could fight, and each searching for his man. Thus fight, in North America, all the nations that the Europeans have not formed and armed; also their wars sometimes finish themselves with the entire destruction of the vanquished people. Thus fought all the first races of men that inhabited Europe, until chance, ambition, and reason gave birth to some enlightened people among them. One sees that the parallel order, being the most natural and the most simple, must be the most ancient disposition known. It is not words that make things, and, although the savages perhaps do not know the word “order,” nor certainly the term “parallel,” it is this informal and instinctual disposition that they take to approach the enemy all at the same time and to fight; it is it, perfected little by little, and the words nascent with the ideas, that became and was named “parallel order.” In proportion to the enlightenment of men, the armies [that were] superior in number had to search [for ways to] draw advantage from their superiority, and to this

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_044

end, to envelop the enemy and embrace their flanks. As such, this disposition in the form of a crescent still subsists today in the Turkish and Asiatic armies. On the other hand, skillful generals, finding themselves at the head of inferior armies, had to search for the means to compensate for this inferiority via the perfection of tactics: they had to sense that, in presenting themselves parallel to an enemy superior in number, they exposed themselves to being enveloped and beaten; [and] that there was another sort of disposition [and] science of movement by means of which they could carry the elite of their forces to one of the points on the order of battle, engaging the combat only on the point and forming all the other parts of their disposition out of [range of] becoming a prize; as such, the oblique order, and all the other derogations of the parallel order[, formed]. Finally, between the generals who both a little enlightened, the parallel order ceased to take place in battles, because, superior or inferior in number, they calculated, with reason, that there were other, moreadvantageous positions. What proves that this must have been, in antiquity, the origin of the different orders of battle is that we have seen the same progression reborn. With the Roman Empire, the military science declined and annihilated itself; it was succeeded by centuries of shadows; men returned nearly to being as ignorant as they had been in their first ages. This ignorance extended over all; it extended particularly over the manner of making war, because it must be observed in passing that, much more so than today, it was all the coarsest and the most ignorant of the nations that devoted themselves to arms; the inhabitants of the cities were not at all warlike, and the small number of men who gave themselves to study studied for the altar, for scholasticism, or for some art that escaped from the general barbarity.1 When the military science commenced to be reborn, the same reasoning that ancients had [followed] was made, and the parallel order was consequently departed from. Maneuver was sought, [as was] turning an enemy’s flanks, [and] almost no battles were engaged on the totality of the front; there were even fewer still when armies 1 [As he has done before, Guibert presents a classic Dark Ages argument, although he includes the entire Roman Empire in that period, while most date it from the fall of the Western Empire. See 20n39.]

Parallel Order

became more numerous and ranged on a thinner order. In effect, on so-extended fronts, there was never not some obstacle that prevented them from meeting! Thus, a new genre of war was adopted, founded on to the nature of the terrain and on the choice of positions. Inferior armies began, whether by entrenchments or natural obstacles of the countryside, to be sheltered from all attack, or to reduce the possibility of the attack to some points. All fights became affairs of posts; there were no more general battles, and consequently, no parallel order. Since the end of the last century, no action can be cited where the armies engaged the combat on all their front.2 What contributes now to the general rejection of the parallel order is, other than the immense front of armies and the difficulty of having them meet, the necessity by which all the states do not commit by chance the armies that are all their forces and their destinies to a general army action. Today, when no nation is warlike by its morals or by its constitution; today, when peoples have only a certain number of troops for their defense, [and] other than these troops, all the rest of the citizens are no more than a craven multitude without any idea of war and discipline, ready, consequently, to subject themselves to the yoke of the vanquisher, the respective politics of governments would that the general leave nothing to chance. We have seen how the result of the parallel orders, put into 2 [This point could be debated in favor of either position. While there were battles after 1700 where armies engaged along most of their fronts, there are very few battles in military history where the forces engaged with their entire front, as Guibert says. It is best read as an exaggeration for effect.]

193 execution on the day of battle, being rendered a general action, became more terrible, more decisive, [and] more bloody, [and] how they may have led to the total destruction of the vanquished. One would paint the distress of one of our nations’ pretend policies if one said to it, as the Romans did after the day of Cannae, “The enemy arrives; the army that covered the capital engaged in a general battle, and this army is no more.”3 The parallel order, taken in the sense that I have already given it at the commencement of this chapter, is today no longer put into execution in battles, but its name may rest in the primitive and habitual disposition of organization and encampment of an army, because all the parts of this disposition find themselves of equal strength and ready (the obstacles of terrain excepted) to enter into action with the enemy if it is attacked all along its front at the same time. I will demonstrate in the next chapter what species of battle order replaced the parallel order and the most advantageous changes that may again be made in this regard. Nevertheless, I must say before quitting this article that there may be occasions where an army superior in courage and sure of not being taken by its flanks may serve itself with the parallel order. It is at least certain that the battles that an army would win in this disposition would ruin the army that opposed it, while modern battles between two skilled generals can never have great results.

3 [The Battle of Cannae annihilated the last field army Rome possessed, leaving the city open to Carthaginian attack, as Guibert indicates. See Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, 197–216.]

chapter ix

Oblique Order One has already seen how the military science has substituted the oblique order for the parallel order and rendered battles wiser and less bloody. It is a game of calculation and combination that succeeded a game of chance and ruin. It is fortunate that the military science, which is the science of destruction, renders war less destructive in perfecting it. It is fortunate that it may be the skill of generals that decides the fate of battles rather than the quantity of blood spilled. Finally, in a century where all the arts have made progress, it is honorable, [and] it is encouraging for militaires, that that of war feels [the] general propagation of enlightenment. The oblique order is the most-used order of battle, the wisest, the most susceptible to combinations, [and] the order that must always serve inferior armies commanded by good generals; it is this order [that was] so famous among the ancients, but none of their tacticians made the interior mechanism known to us. The King of Prussia is the first modern who executed it by principles and who adapted it to modern tactics.1 For an order of battle to be oblique, it is not necessary that the front of this order exactly draw an oblique line in rapport with the enemy front, because rarely do the terrain and the circumstances permit that such a regularity could take place. I thus name “oblique” every disposition in which one carries a part and elite of these forces against the enemy and one keeps the rest out of range of them; all dispositions, in a word, where one attacks with advantage one or several points of the enemy order of battle while one gives change to the other points and one forms them outside of being able to attacked by them. The thing thus understood, almost all battles that have been fought over the last century were in the oblique order, because they are all reduced to points of attack. But this order was taken by chance and dictated by circumstances or by the nature of the terrain. Its advantages were not at all perceived; its finesses were not understood; [and] the manner of rapidly taking an indicated point by the circumstances of the moment and not provided for in the march order was ignored; thus, in an art that is in its infancy, it happens that an instrument is mechanically used without knowing either its properties or its usage. 1 [See Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science, 104–105; see also Palmer, “Frederick the Great, Guibert, Bülow.”]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_045

To perfectly develop the theory of the oblique order, one must enter into the details that have conceived, little by little, its principles, their object, and their application. I am, more than anyone, [an] enemy of length, but, in dogmatic works, one must convince, and to convince, one must sometimes know how to be weighty. I first distinguish two different species of oblique order: the one is the oblique order of principle, the oblique proper, that is to say the order in which the army is disposed truly obliquely to the enemy’s front; the other is the oblique order of circumstance, that is to say the order in which the army, though not being disposed obliquely to the enemy’s front, nevertheless finds itself, whether by the nature of the terrain or the skill of its movements, in the case of attacking on one or several points and itself being outside of [enemy range] on the others. I will speak successively on both of these two species and make sensed their differences. The oblique order, properly said, may be executed in two manners, “by line” or “by echelons.” By line, that is to say the disposition forming an oblique front and in demiquarter conversion, all the battalions and squadrons being contiguous and on the same alignment, in this fashion:

“By echelons,” that is to say each battalion and squadron letting itself be overtaken on the side against which one wishes to attack by the battalion or squadron that is next to it by a certain number of more-or-less considerable paces according to the number of troops that compose each column and the degree of obliquity that one wishes to give to the order of battle. All the part[s] that must attack thus forming a species of hammer in advance, and, being ranged in the ordinary disposition, in this form:

Oblique Order

195 enemy or to make illusion to them by brigades or by large corps. One may reach these different oblique dispositions by several manners. 1. In giving the degree of obliquity that the disposition must have to the columns in advance, and presenting them a little like in the form of organ pipes, like

This disposition by echelons may, (and it is infinitely better [if it does]), in lieu of being formed by squadron and by battalion, be [formed] by regiment or by brigade, and in the same way by more-considerable corps, the said corps being elongated by echelon the one on the other in such a manner as to be able to [engage]2 at need and to occupy the positions that are the most formed outside of being made a prize and [best able] to give illusion to the enemy. Thus, for example, AB is the hammer, the part of the order of battle destined to attack the enemy placed at I, and CDEF are four army columns that are formed en bataille by echelons, occupying different points where they accomplish the objects indicated above.

Of these two manners of taking the oblique order, by “line” or by “echelons,” the former is elementary and purely of method. It is good to execute in a camp of instruction in order to commence making known to the general officers what the oblique order is and what its object is. The latter, which is only a sequel to the first, is simpler, more facile in its deployment, more applicable to all terrains, [and] more susceptible to maneuver and action when the order is formed. This is what must serve in war, mostly when one forms the echelons destined to refuse themselves to the 2 [Guibert uses an idiom, which translates as “shaking hands,” for engage.]

2. In presenting the column heads on a parallel front to the enemy’s order, thus holding them in suspense on the disposition one will take, and next maneuvering part in advance, to carry and deploy on the point that one has reconnoitered to be the most feeble, [and] part to the rear, to [withdraw] and form outside of being made a prize the portions of one’s order of battle that one will weaken and that one wishes to refuse to the enemy. 3. If one forms echelons of large corps, in directing each column or column part that composes them on the point where it must develop. 4. Finally, one may be disposed in oblique echelon, starting in an already-formed parallel battle order, the battalions that must attack marching forward and those that must sustain and refuse themselves to the enemy resting successively to the rear at distances combined on the degree of obliquity that one wishes to take. The officers who saw this maneuver executed by some battalions in the peacetime camps of the King of Prussia have falsely imagined that it was applicable to an army. It is only a corps of troops or a part of [a] line that must form an attack, making successive efforts with part of its forces and holding the other as a reserve and outside the range of enemy fire. Thus, with an army, it is always by movements in column that one must arrive at the formation of the order of battle, because all movement en bataille on a great front is too slow, too heavy, and gives the enemy too much time and advantage to make their counter-disposition. The oblique order may be formed on the right, on the left, or on the center, that is to say that, by means of this order, one may attack the enemy at will on one of these three points and refuse the rest of the battle order. The degree of obliquity of the oblique disposition, whether this disposition is made by line or by echelon,

196 must be combined on the strength of the enemy, on their science, on their hardiness, and, most particularly again, on the nature of the terrain [and] on the points advantageous for the defensive that the terrain may furnish to parts of the order of battle that one wishes to refuse. Thus, the more the enemy army is superior, the more the enemy is skillful and maneuvering, the more one must pay attention to distancing the feeble and defensive parts of the order of battle from them, [and] the more it must be to this end that the direction of obliquity on which the army is ranged forms an open angle with the enemy wing that one attacks. It is hardly possible for the rest to give [a] general principle on this because the nature of the terrain may be such that, on certain points, one may, without inconvenience, approach the enemy [with] the parts of one’s disposition that must rest on the defensive [and] because, by means of the position that these points offer, one will have between the enemy and oneself obstacles that prevent them from making an offensive movement on these feeble parts. I will have occasion to return to this circumstance in speaking of the second species of oblique order. The oblique order almost always forms itself on one of the enemy wings, and its object thus necessarily being to outflank and take it in the [rear], as soon as the general determines that which he wishes to attack, the columns must direct their head and march obliquely against this flank in such a manner that, at the moment of the deployment, the disposition of the wing that must engage the combat outflanks it and may take the flank. To more facilely procure the advantage of outflanking the enemy, when the oblique order must execute itself by the right, all the columns of the army, or at least those of the troops who are destined to form the attack, must deploy themselves on the right, and they must deploy themselves on the left if the oblique order must execute itself on the left. By this means, one gains the terrain where the wing column deploys itself on the flank and outside of the march order. By this principle, it does not then follow that one may never, in similar circumstances, deploy the columns on the center; this species of deployment, being shorter by half, must on the contrary always be employed when, by the direction of its march, the army has already accomplished the object of overtaking the enemy. All that may deceive the enemy on the re-partition of troops in the order of battle as well as on their destination being necessarily employed in the oblique order, a combined mélange of deployments at closed and opened distances must particularly [be] known and made use of. I have explained, in my Essays on the tactics of troops, the advantageous results that one may draw from them.

chapter ix

Another advantage of the oblique order being to surprise the enemy by an unforeseen disposition and to attack before they have had the time to change their own, the columns must be deployed at a distance so well-combined that, as soon as they deploy, the wing that must attack may march on the enemy without loss of time and promptly arrive on them. It is impossible to assign more precise rules on this distance; it may sometimes be quite near if they have little artillery, if their artillery is little redoubtable, or finally if one wishes to debouche on them under cover; another time, it must be quite far if their artillery is numerous and well executed [or] if the terrain to cover to arrive on them is flat and open. The species of troops that one commands must again enter into consideration for much on this object. Are they brave, warlike, [and] skilled at maneuvering? One may dare more; one may chance to deploy them nearer to the enemy than if they are soft and ignorant. Is it cavalry that one has to deploy? One may form them en bataille further away, because they more-rapidly cover the terrain that separates them from the goal of their attack. Is it infantry? One must, for the contrary reason, deploy them closer. Finally, the only general maxims that one may give in this regard are to deploy at distances where the enemy fire is not deadly enough to throw disorder into the troops’ maneuvers, [and] at the same time not to deploy at too-elongated distances, because then one loses the advantage of moving in columns, which is much more rapid and much more facile than moving in line, hides for as long as one can the quantity of troops that one carries against them, and may bring the troops rapidly and on a single route to the object of their attack. I do not need to say to my readers that this article, like the two preceding concerning the manner by which one must deploy to outflank the enemy and the usage that one must make of the combined mélange of deployments at closed and opened distances, is applicable to all the offensive dispositions that the troops may have to form in war. We now speak of the second species of the oblique order, of that in which the army, though not at all being disposed obliquely to the enemy front, nevertheless forms, either by the nature of the terrain or by the skill of its movement, in a situation to attack it on one or several points and to itself be outside of being made a prize on the parts of its disposition that it wishes to refuse. This order is the one that is most commonly taken in war, because it is rare that battles are given in absolutely flat and uncovered plains where consequently dispositions may be made without relation to the terrain and to the regular obliquity established in principles. One is almost always subject to departing from this regularity to profit from the advantageous positions offered by the nature of the countryside,

Oblique Order

whether to favor the illusion that one wishes to make on the enemy or to form the feeble parts of the order of battle with more surety. Thus I name the disposition of the Battle of Leuthen an oblique disposition, though certainly the army of the King of Prussia was not ranged obliquely to the Austrian front; [instead,] he attacked their left wing with the elite of his forces [and] took them in the flank and routed them while he profited from a chain of heights that was on their right and center to give them illusion, to place them in check, and to place there, in an excellent defensive position, the rest of his army, enfeebled by the reinforcements that he had carried to his right.3 Thus I name the disposition of Prince Ferdinand’s army at Krefeld an oblique disposition, because he turned and attacked our left with the elite of his forces while the rest of his army, divided into several corps, contained, in exposing himself on different points to great range of our cannon, the center and the right of our army;4 thus I may say 3 [See Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 105–112.] 4 [Ibid., 145–146.]

197 that nearly all the armies that have engaged in battles for a century have engaged them in the oblique order, because they have reduced their attack to points, and I would say, if it were not true in the majority of these battles (I except from them those given by the King of Prussia) that routine and chance have made the dispositions and certainly that no one has any knowledge of the oblique order, its mechanism, and its objective. The oblique order of the second species being more easily adapted to terrain and circumstances, it is thus particularly it that generals must make a subject of study and meditation, and where may this study be made with success? It is in camps of instruction; it is in war; it is, if I may express myself thus, by force of handling the troops and circumstances. I have posed some principles where there were none; it is to the genius to make their application. It remains to me only to prove the truth of these principles; it is this that I will do in next treating the formation of armies and the assembling of a camp of instruction in which they will execute all the orders of march and battle relative to the theory that I have established.

chapter x

Formation of Armies; [the] Necessity of Assembling Camps Destined to Be Schools of Grand Tactics in Peacetime If a nation had troops and generals as I imagine them, its armies might be much less numerous than those of today and, with that, be of greater value and execute greater things. There would be less cavalry in these armies, fewer light troops, [and] less artillery. Their infantry would be better armed, more warlike, better disciplined, [and] more maneuverable; it would be self-sufficient like the ancient infantry of the Roman legions. Their cavalry would be less numerous, but its goodness, its velocity, [and] its science of movements will supplement its small [size]. Both their light troops would be in line service, and their line troops would be in light service at need; consequently, [there would be] no double employment, no useless and costly corps employed for only one object. Their artillery would be less numerous, but it would only have calibers that are utile and proper to producing great effects; it would be well constituted, well lightened, well hitched, well disposed in its emplacements, [and] well executed in action. All the corps that would compose its armies would have tactics [that are] simple, analogous to each other, and ready to serve [in] general combinations. Parallel armies would not at all be embarrassed by an immense quantity of equipment; they would be sober, indefatigable, [and] more loving of glory than of commodity; they would know how to live off the food of the countryside and not be subordinated to the narrow and routine calculations of an entrepreneur of subsistence; finally, such armies, commanded by great men [and] renewing the prodigies otherwise operated by small armies against ignorant multitudes, would again make great conquests and revolutions in empires. In my specific Essays on the tactics of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, [and] in my chapter on light troops, I have already exposed a part of my ideas on changes that may be made in the current manner of making war. I will develop and support my opinions more and more in this regard. One has just seen in the commencement of this second part what the theory of grand tactics must be; to summarize the new proceedings of orders of march and battle to which it is dedicated, one may begin with judging that tactics are a science, a great science, [and] it is the superiority of genius and not the superiority of number that must decide their success. Grand tactics put into action, as they will be hereafter, will present this truth in their view.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_046

It is a quite-strange thing, the manner in which armies are formed today. War is declared; it resounds in the cabinet of ministers that the enemy must be attacked on [some] point and defended against on another. Here, consequently, armies form [and] generals are chosen. How is this done? The Department of War, if it is the department that has the preponderance of credit in the sovereign’s council, proposes an army in Germany and one in Flanders. One observes that often, the minister who is the head of this department does not know what an army is, or that, if he is military, it rarely arrives that he has commanded armies, and yet rarer that he has commanded them well; consequently, he cannot found a war plan with knowledge of the cause.1 However, this plan is made. One resolves to form two armies; I suppose that one will act offensively in Flanders, and one will rest on the defensive in Germany. How to determine the strength of these two armies? One speculates what the quantity of troops that the enemy may oppose each of these points with will be. One says, “the enemy will have an army of 60,000 men in Flanders, [so] we will form one of 80,000, and [it will] act offensively in this part; there is one of 60[,000] in Germany, [so we] form one of 40[,000], and we place ourselves on the defensive there.” Next, one names the corps that must compose the armies; an evil rule of proportion, or rather of routine, wishes that the army, being of so many thousands of men, it have so much infantry, so much cavalry, so many light troops, so much artillery [in proportion]. One chooses generals, [and] one enters into the field; the generals, the majority of the time, counting more on the[ir] number[s] than on science, have neither peace nor relaxation until they have obtained reinforcements. It is today to cover a point to whose protection their army cannot attend; tomorrow, it will be to oppose a diversion that often would not have taken place if they had closed the [distance] with the enemy; this time, it is because the enemy has three-hundred cannon, and they only have two-hundred; another time, it is because they [the enemy] have 15,000 light troops and they [the 1 [With the exception of the brief tenures of Villars from 1715 to 1718 and Belle-Isle from 1758 to early 1761, none of the Secretaries of State for War between 1715 and 1770 had experience commanding armies. Instead, they were bureaucrats drawn from the magistracy.]

Formation of Armies

generals] have only 10[,000]. They do not sense that, having less artillery, they have less embarrassment; that their two-hundred guns well-employed easily equal the three-hundred of the enemy; [and] that, to render the last useless, they have only to make a war of marches and movements against them. They do not sense that, the enemy having 15,000 light troops, and these light troops being constituted as they are today, they are weakened by this species of troops; [and] that to take advantage of this apparent advantage, they have only to avoid the war of detail and always make one en masse. Finally, they do not sense that the great art of war is to supplement the number rather than to augment it, to engage in actions with the arm in which one is superior, and to support or refuse that which is the weakest. Reciprocally, and in modeling the one on the others, armies thus augment themselves to a point that generals do not know how to handle them, the countryside how to nourish them, [and] governments how to train and pay them. More-enlightened generals will be obliged to conform to established routine and to demand numerous armies. But are there in Europe citizen-troops, troops who, by their constitution, their spirit, their valor, their sobriety, their aptitude for work, [and] their science of maneuvers, who are so decisively superior to those of their neighboring states that one might say, “with 40,000 men, I would dare to go on campaign, and campaign offensively against 60,000?” Are there troops that have enough confidence in their courage, in their tactics, [and] in their generals to regard as an embarrassment and an enfeeblement all number beyond reasonable proportions [and] to not be alarmed to enter into a campaign against a superior army? Are there in Europe generals whose governments would abandon [them] with enough authority so that they may acquire this confidence in advance and inspire it in forming troops to this end during peacetime; by forming them, if I may express myself thus, to their system and their hand? If, by chance, a good general is elevated in a nation, the politics of the ministers and the intrigues of courtiers are careful to keep him far from troops during peacetime. One prefers to confide these troops to mediocre men incapable of forming them; passive, docile to all wills and all systems rather than this superior man who may acquire too much credit, resisting the opinions that have been adopted, rendering himself a channel of the sovereign’s military graces, and finally becoming the man of the troops, the born general. One wishes to give armies to command to one’s creatures; one wishes to accustom the troops to blindly receiving any man that one wishes to place at their head; I say “any man,” provided that he has the sovereign’s brevet. War arrives, [and] only misfortune may bring the choice of a skillful general; he is employed,

199 but at the same time, he is contradicted, he is traversed. One wishes (if it is possible) that affairs succeed and that the general fail. This general attains [the] repairing [of] affairs, [and] sustaining them; soon, his reputation is feared, [and] his glory is importune; peace is made; the general already formed, or who has begun to form himself, is no longer consulted, no longer employed. His talents rust or do not achieve their perfection; the troops that he knew change, renew themselves, [and] take other instructions, other principles. Thus, when new misfortunes replace him at the head of armies, he finds himself a foreigner to these armies, and these armies are foreign to him. This tableau is the history of almost all the states in almost all times; thus, I cannot be accused of having wished to design one.2 What a difference [between] this manner of forming armies [and how] the Greeks, the Romans, [and] all the great conquerors formed theirs! Did Miltiades, Themistocles, [and] Epaminondas count the enemy’s strength?3 Did Alexander compare his to those of Asia, when he wished to conquer it? He departed with an army of 50,000 to go to dethrone a king who could arm millions.4 Hannibal departed with 60,000 men for the 2 [Guibert exaggerates, probably for effect. Despite his imprecations and the general sense of the time that French generals declined in quality after the deaths of Turenne and Condé, numerous skilled commanders fought in the wars between 1675 and Guibert’s period. Had Maurice de Saxe, or even his protégé Ulrich Friedrich Woldemar, graf Löwendahl, lived, they undoubtedly would have commanded France’s army in the Seven Years War. However, the implication that the court nominated its favorites rather than skilled men does notably apply to Charles de Rohan, Prince de Soubise, a prominent commander of the Seven Years War. Soubise was from a long line of military men and was also a client of Jean-Antoinette Poisson, marquise de Pompadour, who desired for him to have a command in the war that she helped to bring about. Soubise received that command in 1757 and promptly lost the Battle of Rossbach, the most humiliating defeat in recent French history. He was given his baton the following year as part of an effort to sideline him, although he would continue to command forces for a portion of the war.] 3 [Guibert names three of the great Greek commanders. Miltiades commanded the Athenian force that defeated the first Persian invasion at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE. Themistocles convinced Athens to fund the creation of its navy in the following decade, allowing him to command the Athenians in the defeat of the Persian navy at the Battle of Salamis in 480. Epaminondas, as noted, was the Theban general who defeated the Spartans at the Battle of Leuctra. Interestingly, all three men met ignoble ends: Miltiades died in prison following a conviction for treason, Themistocles was exiled to Asia on the same charge, and Epaminondas was killed in battle attempting to protect Theban hegemony over Greece.] 4 [Guibert follows the orientalist trope that depicts the tiny but skilled Greek armies facing massive Persian hordes, which originates in Herodotus. The Persians could bring many more soldiers to a given battlefield to face Alexander, but the numbers were rarely as lopsided as Guibert indicates in most of their conflicts. See Peter

200 conquest of Italy [and] Scipio with 50,000 to attack Carthage.5 Caesar, with some legions, subdued the Gauls, Africa, and part of Asia. And, to cite only one modern, Gustav with 25,000 Swedes was the terror of the Empire.6 These great men knew well that they were going to attack superior armies; they knew that they would be opposed by more troops than they had and sometimes [by] arms and manners of fighting unknown to their soldiers, but they had their plan, their tactics, [and] their armies elevated by them and full of confidence in them. In the head of a small number of men who knew it was profoundly engraved that it is science and courage that give victory, and not the multitude.7 We particularly see [this with] the Romans, this people military and conquering by their constitution. They had affairs with redoubtable enemies, with courageous and well-conducted nations; they vanquished them. How did they compose their armies? They were subject to a formation and to proportions from which they did not depart, whatever the enemy’s forces. The consular army, that is to say, the complete army, was of 50,000 men. They also had a tribunician army, or the half-army. An eminent danger menaced the Republic? It at once formed two consular armies; this was their greatest effort, and it only took place on two or three occasions. I do not pretend to say that it

Green, The Greco-Persian Wars (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).] 5 [Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus was the foremost Roman general in the Second Punic War. After Cannae, he conquered much of Carthaginian Spain, severing Hannibal’s overland supply route. He then invaded northern Africa, threatening the Carthaginian homeland and forcing Hannibal’s withdrawal from Italy after a decade there. The two fought the climactic Battle of Zama in 202, where Scipio defeated Hannibal and won the war for Rome.] 6 [All of these examples are exaggerated for effect. Classical armies were supported by large numbers of auxiliary forces, which were usually not counted by contemporary authors. Gustav Adolf may have commanded one of the largest armies in early-modern Europe, when all of the detached forces under his command in the early 1630s are accounted for. See David Parrott, The Business of War, 139–195.] 7 [Guibert’s argument rests on several shaky examples. The Greeks paid close attention to force sizes and ratios, with the exception of the Greco-Persian wars, when Greek armies fought much larger Persian ones out of necessity; even then, several Greek states refused to fight such lopsided battles. Alexander only ever faced a portion of the Achaemenid Persian’ emperor’s “millions” at a time, and only then by making use of terrain features and qualitative superiority to defeat them. The Romans rarely faced a symmetrical enemy; the quality of Roman forces fighting against non-Roman armies generally outweighed quantitative deficiencies. Only Gustav presents an apt example of an inferior force facing largely symmetrical enemies, and even then, Gustav only won a handful of battles before his death.]

chapter x

may be entirely imitated by our modern states.8 I do not pretend that a kingdom with vast frontiers that may be attacked on several points at once and in which the citizens are not soldiers could be confined to having only a single army, but I believe that would at least be quite possible to have armies [that are] less numerous and not subject to regulating their interior composition on those of enemy armies. I believe that 70,000 men must be the most-considerable proportion of the army, and that a similar army, well-constituted and well-commanded, would fight at an advantage against one of 80[,000 or] 100,000. I believe that every general who will know the resources of tactics, and who will be sure of his troops, would never need to go beyond this proportion, because he will calculate [that] what he would appear to gain in numbers, he would lose by the accumulation of embarrassment, by the slowness of movements, and by the difficulty of subsistence. Finally, Turenne said, and the opinion of this great man must be made law, “every army of more than 50,000 men is inconvenient for he who commands it and for those who compose it.”9 But for a general to be able to dare to depart from established routine and introduce a new genre of war, I repeat [that] he must have excellent troops [and] that, if they are not composed of the elite of the citizens and that the constitution of the state be such that the government cannot or wishes not to change anything, they must at least repair this primitive vice [of having] all the perfection possible in their interior constitution, in their discipline, and in their tactics. Peacetime must be made to profit their forming [and] to instruct them and the men who must command 8 [While the formula of the army of Republican Rome was largely prescribed, the Romans were notable for adapting to circumstance, especially following disaster. In addition, there are few reliable sources that give details on the functioning of armies in the early Republic, so Guibert’s assertion is difficult to sustain except as rhetorical device. See Sage, “The Rise of Rome.”] 9 [Turenne did not formally publish during his life, due at least in part to its abbreviation. The quote that Guibert includes does not appear in any extant and available collections of Turenne’s writings. It does, however, occur in Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de la Houssaye, Mémoires historiques, politiques, critiques, et littéraires, 2 Vols. (Amsterdam: Charles le Cene, 1722), I:93. Houssaye was a historian of Italian affairs, particularly Venice, and had translated Machiavelli’s The Prince. Houssaye likely invented the quote, or paraphrased Turenne’s use of it, based on Niccolò Machiavelli, L’art de la guerre, in Œuvres de Machiavel, 8 Vols. (Paris: Volland, 1793), VII:144: “… if you wish to imitate the Greeks and the Romans, you must never [sur]pass the number of 50,000 men [in the army], and take even fewer [if possible], because quantity brings confusion and does not permit the observation of military discipline [or] the best-dressed soldiers’ practicing the good order that they learned.” Guibert perhaps drew the quote from Guillaume le Blond, “Bataille,” Encyclopédie, II:134, which reproduces Houssaye’s nearly verbatim.]

201

Formation of Armies

them. The camps that I will propose will accomplish this important object, I believe. It is a quite old idea, that of forming peacetime camps. The Romans were in this usage; their legions camped almost the entire year. By means of this institution, the discipline of these legions survived the corruption of the Empire for some time. But little by little, luxury penetrated into these camps; discipline relaxed; they were peopled with comedians, courtesans, workers, [and] merchants: all the necessary professions for softness and debauchery. It made them towns, and thus the warrior virtues no longer having asylum, they and the Empire were done.10 No nation imitated the Romans; also no military was the equal of theirs. Louis XIV and August I11 formed peacetime camps, but they were uniquely parade camps. These princes, searching for the occasion to give fetes a new genre, made ostentation in their troops like the gilding on their palaces. The King of Prussia is the first modern who has formed camps of instruction, who has made these camps serve to execute marches, orders of battle, and to form generals. One sees the fruit that he has drawn from them, and yet what difference these camps of fifteen days 10

11

[The general course of Roman military expansion follows the pattern that Guibert indicates. Roman armies, especially during the late Republican and early Imperial periods, created fortified camps to exert control over areas that were newly conquered. Gradually, towns and even cities grew up around them. However, this occurred much more quickly than he might indicate; armies were always followed by camp followers, and many Roman military installations were surrounded by settlements almost as soon as they were constructed, rather than as some outpost of discipline for decades or even generations, as he intimates. Like many of his analogies to Rome, Guibert’s analysis is more Vegetian idyll than reality. See Culham, “Imperial Rome at War;” Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War, and Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science, 120–139.] [While Guibert’s characterization is a bit unclear, he probably refers to Friedrich August I of Saxony, who ruled as King August II of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1697–1733, with an interregnum from 1706–1709. August was a celebrity, known as “the Strong” for his immense physical strength, and fathering hundreds of bastard children, including Maurice de Saxe. He introduced Chinese-style porcelain to Saxony, creating the Meissner porcelain works, which proved lucrative and popular.]

and exclusively destined to render the troops maneuverable have to those stable camps where the Romans braved the seasons, stirred the ground, [and] bend their bodies and sprits to war! During the last peacetime, camps were also formed in France, but no one had the first notions of tactics; good fare was eaten, women maneuvered for, [and] they were [ended] without having learned anything. During this peacetime, we form camps every year, and they are hardly more useful. Time passes in reviews and in exercises of detail. [Their purpose] is to appear with the most brilliant arms [and] the best-kept soldiers; [victory] is to who will most adroitly catch small suffrages and large pensions. Maneuvers of the great genre and proper for forming general officers are not at all executed; one aspires to reach them or to come back to them the following year. If, in the midst of these futilities, some more-enlightened officers raise their voice to say that the camps do not accomplish the object, that an army must be assembled and instructed in grand operations of tactics, one responds that that it is not yet time or that the general officers are not to go to school.12 12

[Training camps proliferated across the continent throughout the century, but they rarely rose above being parade demonstrations of regimental drill and opportunities for poor nobles to secure positions and the pensions that came with them. Many of the records of contemporary camps contained in SHAT 1806, 1807, and 1812 illustrate the difficulties, costs, and minutiae of the camps. The French army staff conducted a study of Old-Regime camps, which is collected in “L’origine des grandes manœuvres – les camps d’instruction aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles” in Revue militaire 1899–1900 and Revue d’histoire 1901–1903 (Paris: various). Guibert also hints at one of the great debates within the French army of the eighteenth century: whether or not officers should be educated, which vexed reformers and practitioners alike. Some insisted on the innate skill of noble officers while others cited the growing Enlightenment emphasis on technical knowledge to call for formal schooling for them. See David Bien, “Military Education in 18th Century France; Technical and Non-Technical Determinants” in Science, Technology, and Warfare: Proceedings of the Third Military History Symposium, U.S. Air Force Academy, 8–9 May 1969, edited by Monte D. Wright and Lawrence J. Paszek. (1971): 51–59; and Guízar, The Ecole Royale Militaire.]

chapter xi

Project of a Camp of Instruction; Composition and Division of the Army That One Proposes to Assemble There If the troops would be constituted as they must be, I would speak of forming camps like those of the Romans; camps where, distant from cities and vices, they would be in the continual exercise of the work of war and where one might make a complete course of education, but it is the interlacement of bourgeois and military life that renders our troops soft and little-proper for great things; it is what turns out officers from study; it is surely Paris that is the grave of talents. There, characters attenuate, courage enervates, morals are corrupted, [and] application relaxes; there, one takes only ideas of fortune instead of ideas of glory, and this is done with honor, all the virtues, with the state consequently, when the ambition of particularists has taken this destructive course.1 But in waiting for an almost-miraculous revolution to operate this change, things that one may and one wishes to execute must be proposed. Not being able to make troops citizens and perfect, they must at least be rendered disciplined and instructed. Thus, I propose to form camps of three months only every year, and to assemble there armies composed, divided, [and] organized as they must be in war. The one that I give in the table below, and that I will employ in the execution of all the operations of grand tactics, will be an army of 50,000 men, and consequently an army of the second order. The instruction of it will be easily applied to a less-numerous or more-considerable one, to one of 60,000 or 70,000 men that I regard as an army of the first order and as the number that must never be passed. Justification tableau of the composition and division of the army proposed for a camp of instruction 80 battalions. 80 squadrons of cavalry or dragoons. 1 [Guibert again borrows from Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science, 3–4: “… I think it could never have been doubted that the rural populace is better suited for arms. They are nurtured under the open sky in a life of work, enduring the sun, careless of shade, unacquainted with bathhouses, ignorant of luxury…. Sometimes, however, necessity demands that city-dwellers also be conscripted. [They] must first learn to work [… and] should be detained away from cities for considerable periods on outpost-duty and be kept far away from the attractions of the city, so that by this means their physical and mental vigor may be increased.”]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_047

2,000 light troops, almost all of horse. 150 guns. One must recall that, in my constitutional plan, I established that my battalions will never be more than fourhundred and fifty combatants and my squadrons no more than one-hundred and twenty. Consequently, the proposed army will be found to be only 40,400 men, including infantry and cavalry, but not counting light troops and artillery. It is clear that, if an army of this order were to be formed for war, and that this war must be made in a difficult country for cavalry, one would diminish the number of troops of this arm to reinforce oneself with a proportionate quantity of infantry. I have said, in my essay on light troops, why I wish that they be almost entirely composed of cavalry and how I think that they must be constituted. My one-hundred and fifty guns would consist of six pieces of the caliber of 16, thirty of 12, fifty of 8, forty only of the caliber of 4 and that we have named “four lengths,” and twenty-four howitzers. I would not at all attach cannon to regiments in times of war; I would have depots of field artillery in the places that are the closest neighbors to the countryside from which I would draw replacements as I have need; if I will have foreseen the need of making sieges, I would have the trains necessary for this object; furthermore, independently of the ordinary teams of all the pieces, there would be a third of light teams, both in the train of the park and in the depots within range of the army. One may now judge what scale of proportion I would follow to form an army of the first order. The last term of its strength would be, I repeat, 70,000 men, but when I say “men,” it is not to say fictitious soldiers or recruits; they would be combatants, instructed soldiers formed and always kept at full complement. Why have I chosen an army of the second order for the execution of operations of grand tactics? It is to have a better understanding of how the multitude is useless and the benefit that one may draw from an army of medium strength and well constituted. I now pass to the order of battle of this army, that is to say, to the primitive disposition of encampment and of organization.

Project of a Camp of Instruction

The eighty battalions will be divided into three divisions, called divisions of the right, left, and center. Each division, composed of twenty-four battalions, twelve in the first and twelve in the second line, will be commanded by a lieutenant-general who will have under him a second lieutenant-general and three maréchaux-de-camp. The eight remaining battalions will be divided into two brigades of four battalions, named the flank brigades; each of them, commanded by a maréchal-de-camp, will camp en potence on the cavalry’s flank, and will be placed in the disposition where the general will judge most necessary.2 The two cavalry wings will each form a division of forty squadrons, twenty in the first and twenty in the second line; this division will be commanded by a lieutenantgeneral and four maréchaux-de-camp. Who could have believed that the ancients had known this order of division, and that we have been so long in applying it to our armies that have become so complicated and so numerous? One reads in Quintus Curtius [Rufus] that Alexander’s army was divided into several divisions; he tells us their number, their strength, and the generals who commanded them; this proves that many people read without fruit, and that the simple and great things do not strike the majority of men.3 The light troops will be encamped in advance and on the wings of the army; they will have the advanced guard of movements that the army will make or will cover its flanks; [and] they will keep ranks in the combat disposition and will ordinarily serve to reinforce the wings and to menace the enemies’ flanks and rear. The artillery will be divided into three divisions, each attached to an infantry division and composed of thirtysix guns, forming six subdivisions of six pieces each in such a manner that each division will be composed of an equal number of pieces of the same caliber. Another subdivision of six pieces will be parked in advance of the army and will be named “subdivision of the advanced guard.” The rest of the artillery, the guns of 16 and half of 2 [En potence essentially means refusing the referenced unit by forming it at an angle to the main line. Contemporary training camps were conducted with units encamping in battle order, which required meticulous planning of march routes and the layout of the camp space.] 3 [Guibert probably references Quintus Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander, 2 Vols., John Rolfe, trans. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001769200, I:121, which depicts Alexander’s lieutenants “each in command of his own troops” prior to the Battle of Issus. Despite Guibert’s identification with the professional and formal units of contemporary armies, Alexander’s divisions much more likely reflected social, state, or even tribal divisions.]

203 the howitzers, will form the reserve division and the head of [the] large park, where all of the baggage wagons and the depot will be. The order of battle of this army presents in Diagram III must make known that it would be in an army of the first order. It would be the same, with the exception that, so as to not render the infantry divisions too strong and too heavy for the maneuvers, if it would be formed on four instead of three. The division of the artillery would follow the same principle. Regarding the cavalry, as my opinion would be to not considerably augment it [and] persuaded that what must principally constitute the difference between an army of the first order and one of the second is the augmentation of the infantry, I would leave each wing to form its division. Obliged to conform myself here to the plan of our current constitution, I will subdivide the infantry into brigades of four battalions each and the cavalry into brigades of eight squadrons or of two regiments. If the constitutional plan that I will propose in my great work had [already] taken place, this division would be much simpler: each infantry regiment, composed of three battalions, would form a brigade, as would each cavalry regiment, which I will compose of seven squadrons. But otherwise this subdivision is a thing of little importance in itself, and whatever it may be, the grand tactics that I will expose would know how to draw advantage from it. What is of more importance, and to which I must return, is the number of general officers. One sees how I depart from the [current] usage in overloading armies with them. I find that only ten lieutenants-general and twenty maréchaux-de-camp are necessary to command the divisions of an army as it is in a camp of instruction. Following this operation, each commands a number of troops proportionate to his grade. The lieutenant-general commanding a division and the one who is under him have twenty-four battalions under their command, and the maréchaux-de-camp, who are under them, have eight each. In the cavalry, two lieutenants-general have forty squadrons under their command, and the maréchauxde-camp, who are under them, have ten each. I would then, for extraordinary occasions like commanding the advanced guard, detachment in places, particular commissions, [or] replacing lost general officers, that one carry, in times of war, twelve lieutenants-general and twenty-four maréchaux-de-camp. I will follow the same proportion in an army of the first order. In thus strictly employing only the necessary number of general officers, one diminishes the immense quantity of baggage and the embarrassment that trails our armies;

diagram iii Order of battle of an army in the camp of instruction

204 chapter xi

Project of a Camp of Instruction

one finds oneself forced to choose the general officers that one employs with greater attention; those whom one has chosen, having more-extended commands and morefrequent [opportunities], will be instructed more easily. As such, these eminent grades take the consideration that they must have, and the troops become accustomed to respecting them. Today, they are scarcely regarded; so many people are vested with them! There are so many in the train of armies and everywhere! So many people, in a word, linger in these grades, to the dishonor of the military, or to its detriment!4 There are many reflections to make in this regard. There are many to make on those who we call “états-majors d’armée.” I can prove that they, as we are in the habit of forming them, are complicated [and] contrary to the secret of operations and to the simplicity of the service. I can prove that the majority of the time, they are composed of [the] creatures of generals and ministers rather than men suited for it. I mostly speak on the class of these états-majors in whom is confided the details of marches, of reconnaissance, of subsistence, etc. We are, on these great subjects, without principles and without theory; we proceed by routine. The maréchal-général des logis of an army and his principal aides must be officers consumed with grand tactics and who join knowledge of details to the ensemble of general views. These sorts of jobs must not be places for young people and [entry-level positions], but [rather] distinguished jobs where only proven talent is admitted. Finally, these jobs must subsist in peacetime; they must be formed in activity in camps of instruction; [and,] during the rest of the year, they must be assigned commissions and courses relative to their functions. All this will be worthy of the pain of being deepened, and it will be in the course of this work. I have spoken, in the theory of orders of battle, of an advanced guard that must march at the head of the army and in whose favor the general must determine the movements of his columns and the disposition that will be taken; I must explain here more particularly what the object of this advanced guard is and how it must be composed. All corps placed in advance of the army and destined to precede its movements are generally named “advanced guard.” Sometimes, one detaches advanced guards from the army that precede it by some leagues. There are operations where these detached corps may be useful, but in general, parceling out armies like this must be avoided, 4 [Guibert makes a play on words that is lost in translation. The phrases “in the train” and “to linger” are close to the same word in French, which makes a sort of pun.]

205 because, is one superior to the enemy? one will be placed on a level with it by this parceling; one exposes these detached corps to being beaten and losing in detail the advantage that one would have had if one had remained en masse. Is one inferior to the enemy? one has an even stronger reason to make war without parceling oneself out; in thus dividing oneself, one is reduced to being on the defensive everywhere, to inquietude everywhere, [and] exposed to checks and coups-de-main everywhere. Finally, is one on decided offensive and generally in some “operation-maneuver?” all one’s detached corps must be recalled, light troops the same, and held together. In effect, if one wishes to attack, why uncover, why announce it, why form a prize of some point? One must desire that, as the lightning has already struck when one sees the light, when the enemy sees the head of the army arriving, all the army is there, and they will not have time to parry the disposition that it will take. If one is on the defensive, if one fears being attacked, is it [not] a better disposition to be unified and ready to make resistance where the enemy will wish to make effort? If this excellent principle of only parceling out an army as little as possible wishes to be contested, if it is in need of an authority to support it, I may cite [the example] of the King of Prussia. All the times that he is in “marchmaneuver,” his advanced guard always holds to his columns, and it is never more than a half-league distant. This advanced guard is, like that which I propose, composed of light troops, of dragoons, and of some grenadier battalions with some cannon. His person is with the general officers commanding his columns. It is as such that he reconnoiters the enemy and that he determines the order of battle that he wishes to take, keeping all his columns in readiness behind him, indicating, when his goal is [determined], to each column commander the points that he must carry and the objects that he must accomplish; using signals in the meantime to make the columns make dispositions preparatory to deployment; and masking with his advanced guard, if he can, all that passes behind him; then, at the moment of the last signal for the formation of the order of battle, carrying this advanced guard entirely or in part to reinforce at the point of the attack while at the same time his columns develop and engage the combat; all the interior mechanism operates the rest with a sogreat accord and so-great speed that the alarmed enemy does not have time to disentangle the disposition that they wish to take and to make changes in their own. For the same reason, the King of Prussia, in offensive march-maneuvers, has his advanced guard almost immediately at the head of his columns; in his retreat marchmaneuvers, his rearguard, composed of hussars, dragoons,

206 and grenadiers, holds to his army. Also, there has never been an affair of the rearguard. What means have heavy and not-at-all maneuverable armies to go to attack an elite rearguard [that is] sustained by an army skillful enough to stop them, to take a disposition, [and] to remake an offensive movement forward at need? [As] for the light troops and advanced guards, they will certainly not compromise themselves; they would only have [harm] to gain by it. As for the grenadier battalions that one sees that I wish to make use of, I must again explain their composition and the reasons that I engage [in] proposing them. The grenadier companies of each brigade, joined to an equal number of chasseur companies or other grenadier auxiliaries, whatever name that one gives them [when] formed at the commencement of the campaign, will compose, when one will judge it appropriate, a battalion that will march, fight, and encamp separately. I propose a chasseur company or a second of grenadiers because these battalions must have the necessary strength and the consistency. Incidentally, it is a vice of our constitution that it [the second company] does not exist all the time and that one of the wings of the battalion be reinforced and supported by an elite troop while the other is not. I propose to assemble and employ, when one will judge it appropriate, these grenadiers in [a] battalion, because, in an infinity of occasions, it is advantageous to have corps on which one may depend, because some failed attack may lead to destructive effects, [and] because some course, some expedition of hard work5 that I would make with grenadier battalions, I would lose with line regiments. I propose it because it [will] never have the worst in detail actions and because it is the little daily success on which depends the spirit of invincibility or discouragement that is established in an army; finally, I propose it because it no inconvenience arises from it, and I believe that the great art of a general is to employ his elite troops, and if he can, employ only them. There is an occasion where one will sense, for example, how the resource of these grenadier battalions is utile. I wish to attack the enemy with my right and to contain them with my left. The regiments of my right will retain their flags and, in the ordinary order, their grenadiers, but I will reinforce this wing with a part of the grenadier battalions of my left. The enemy will, by this means, be 5 [The phrase Guibert uses, “de longue haleine,” has two meanings according to the Fourth Edition of the AF Dictionary: hard work and “to place in a state of uncertainty, mixing hope and fear.” Both could apply to the passage.]

chapter xi

attacked by superior forces, and they will not at all perceive the enfeebled parts of my disposition. As my left will always appear to have the same number of battalions, and whoever has made war knows that flags count and that the illusions that are made [as to] the number of troops, although a well-used means, always accomplish their effect.6 It remains to me to speak of the choice of emplacements and the expenditures of camps of instruction. The former may be found easily. There is not a province of the kingdom that does not offer one. There are few that do not have large [areas of] uncultivated ground, but the preference must be for choosing the provinces of the interior, the provinces that, overflowing with produce, lack vivification and money. These camps must especially be distanced from the court and the capital. As for expenditures, they need not be considerable; it would not be much more than those of the useless camps assembled at Compiègne; it would be even less, if one wished to suppress the luxury of the tables and the enormous profusion of pecuniary graces; if one wished to return the military to the spirit of disinterest, to the austerity of morals, that must make the base of its constitution.7 Finally, while waiting for this revolution to operate, if such camps cost 2,000,000 livres each year, to what advantageous interest this capital would not be placed if the glory of our arms, if some battles won were [its] fruit!8 6 [Contemporary units carried flags, as Guibert indicates in prior passages. Line battalions generally had only one flag, which was carried by the senior-most company. Specialized companies, like the grenadier companies of which Guibert speaks, would have carried their own flags. Ensigns and sous-lieutenants carried the flag, which allowed them to observe and learn the art and science of war. Flags, or cavalry standards, functioned both to signal the position of the unit and as a point of alignment for its men, which would allow an officer, friendly or enemy, to observe enemy positioning. By leaving flags in place while units moved in order to deceive the enemy, Guibert is sacrificing a point of traditional honor in favor of practicality, although he was far from the only person to suggest this ruse, as the passage indicates. See Guillaume le Blond, “Drapeau,” and Charles-Louis d’Authville des Amourettes, “Etendard,” in Encyclopédie V:106–107 and VI:40–43.] 7 [Compiègne is located to the northeast of Paris, a short distance from the city en route to the frontier. It was the site of many contemporary French training camps, particularly those attended by the king.] 8 [Guibert alludes to a significant problem with his proposal: the French government was essentially bankrupt after 1762, and the kind of training camp he proposes would have cost an enormous amount of money. Such a peacetime expense would have little chance of achieving justification, and few training camps were held between 1762 and 1789 as a result, particularly compared to the period between 1727 and 1755.]

chapter xii

Maneuvers That Must Be Executed in the Camp of Instruction I have said enough to now be able to pass on, without preamble, to the execution of all the march and battle orders. I will thus expose them here in the form of a journal and in the rank in which they must be executed.1 I say “in the rank” because they must be successively passed through according to the connection that they have between them, first executing those that are the simplest and then those that are the most complex, and being attached to repeating the same until it [is] perfectly concurrent between the troops and the general officers. I will explain each maneuver by means of the order of march and of disposition that I suppose must be given to the army; this order will be accompanied by a diagram that will represent the different movements that must be executed. It seems to me that the best manner of explaining a maneuver is that of giving the instruction that the troops will have need of for executing it. All the maneuvers have for [their] base the primitive order of the army, appearing in Diagram III. In this order of battle, I have numbered the brigades in order to show the manner in which they must be ranged and so that one may follow their movements without confusion in the plans that they represent. First Maneuver Diagram IV Order of front march, following a parallel order of battle The army will march on five columns, each infantry and cavalry division forming its own and forming en marche by the right, by the left, or on the center relative to the situation of the route that it must follow.2 The two flank brigades will each march at the tail of the infantry column of their wing.3 Each artillery division will march at the head of the infantry division to which it is attached, preceded only by 1 [A journal in the eighteenth century was a publication that summarized the works produced in a particular field. Numerous journals existed in almost every field of public interest. See Jack Censer, The French Press in the Age of Enlightenment (New York: Routledge, 1994); and Roger Chartier, ed., The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, Lydia Cochrane, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).] 2 Figure 1 Diagram IV presents the army in march order. 3 When the nature of the countryside will require that the infantry be joined to the cavalry columns, the flank brigades will take the head or the tail.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_048

the grenadier battalion of the second line of this division that, to this end, will take the head of the column.4 The advanced guard will be composed of the light troops, the two dragoon regiments, the six grenadier battalions of the second line, [and] the two cannon of large caliber. It will precede the army by only 2,000 or 3,000 paces and will march by the route of the center column.5 The general of the army will find himself there, as will the chefs des états-majors and the lieutenants-general commanding the divisions; these last will go there to this end as soon as their columns will be in movement. The light troops will detach two- or three-hundred horse in advance of each wing column. These detachments will march by echelons and will communicate with the advanced guard. The general officer commanding the cavalry column of each wing will send one or two intelligent officers with these detachments to observe, during the march, all the nature of the countryside of the front, so that, if [the army] is obliged to form en bataille, the terrain will be known and that he may consequently make his dispositions of attack or defense. How many times does it happen that, for want of this precaution, a column coming to form does not know the terrain that separates it from the enemy?6 All the columns will march, as much as it will be possible, at the same height, regulating themselves to this end on that of the center, which will regulate itself by the orders that the general will give to the advanced guard.

4 The cannon with caissons indispensable for furnishing the consumption of the first moment are only intended here, because all the baggage wagons must march at the tail of the troops. When one believes not to have need of a so-great quantity of artillery at the head of the columns, one forms less there; finally, in this regard, one will be dictated by circumstances. 5 In front marches, it must always be by the route of the center column that the advanced guard must march, because by it, it is better[-positioned] to reinforce one of the two wings, according to circumstances. Incidentally, it is by this that the general may better observe the enemies’ general disposition and direct the movements of his columns. 6 [Friedrich’s signal victories at Rossbach and Leuthen were both made possible in part by a failure to properly scout the terrain on the part of the Franco-Imperial and Austrian forces in the respective battles. Pierre-Joseph Bourcet, Mémoires historiques sur la Guerre de les français ont soutenue en allemagne depuis 1757 jusqu’en 1762, 3 Vols. (Paris: Maradin, 1792), I:48–57, specifically castigates the French for this failure in the former battle.]

208

diagram iv

chapter xii

Front march order following a parallel battle order: its columns deploy on the left

Maneuvers That Must Be Executed in the Camp of Instruction

When the nature of the terrain will not permit the columns to see each other, the general officers who command them will send experienced officers to their flanks to search for intermediate points where they may discover the march of the other columns and render account of them. The infantry columns will march at a free and determined step, having at their head an officer on foot who will regulate their speed.7 The cavalry columns, having to hold to the height of the infantry columns, will consequently regulate their movements [according to them]. The army will march in this order one or several leagues until it has arrived on the terrain where the general will judge it appropriate to form in battle order. Then a cannon shot from the advanced guard will be fired: this first signal will indicate to the army that it approaches the terrain where it must make the deployment.8 All the columns will form at the same height and will take the necessary distances between them. One supposes that these distances will be determined by the marked route [in] all the times that the terrain will permit the making of the opening of the march according to established principles. The distance from one column to the other must be equal to the frontage of the troops that will be deployed in the first line, and each infantry column being here composed of twenty-four battalions, twelve in the first line and twelve in the second, they will observe 1,800 paces from one to the other.9 In whatever manner that the infantry columns must deploy, whether on the right, on the left, or on the center, the distance between them, once combined on the number and the form of the battalions of the first line, must be equal and always the same. As to the cavalry columns, if the general deployment is made on the right, that of the right will leave between it 7 In all the columns composed of many troops, the march must be less accelerated, because the more troops there are in a column, the more those who are in the tail will be fatigued if those of the head do not march at a pace proportionate to the elongation of the column. 8 This signal will always be 1,000 or 1,200 paces in advance of the columns’ arrival on the deployment terrain so that they have the time to reform their depth, to take their distance, and then to double by division and to prepare for the deployment. 9 One supposes that it is necessary here to have one-hundred and fifty paces for each battalion to form en bataille; if it is necessary to have less or more, the distances of the columns will be calculated consequently. It is the pace of two feet that is the question here.

209

and the infantry column that is to its left the 1,800 paces necessary for the deployment of this column and onehundred and fifty paces more for the interval that must remain between the squadron of the left and the battalion of the right wing of the infantry; the cavalry column on the left will leave between it and the infantry column that is to its right the interval necessary to deploy the twelve squadrons of the first line and one-hundred and fifty paces more that must rest in the interval between the extremity of its right wing and the left wing of the infantry. If the general deployment is made by the left, the cavalry column of the right will leave between it and the infantry column that is to its left the interval prescribed above to the cavalry column of the left, and it [the cavalry column of the left] the interval prescribed to that of the right. If the general deployment is made on the center, each cavalry column will leave between it and the infantry column that is next to it the terrain necessary for the deployment of half of this column, with the 150 more paces of interval that must remain between the cavalry and the infantry and the necessary interval for deploying the six squadrons. When the columns arrive at seven- or eight-hundred paces from the terrain where they must deploy, there will be made a second signal of a cannon shot; then they will quit the route march, close ranks, [and] form by divisions, then take the deployment order at closed distance and commence to march in advance at the double step, augmenting the attention [paid] to aligning their head with those of the neighboring columns. The part of the column that must deploy in the second line will at the same time observe 300 paces of distance, which is the necessary interval between the lines, counting from the division that must serve as [the division of] alignment in its deployment to that which must serve as [the division of] alignment for the deployment of the first line. For example, if here the deployment is made by the left, this interval will be counted from the first division of the first battalion of the column to the first division of the thirteenth battalion. The cavalry columns will observe the same precaution. When the columns will arrive at the point of alignment that the general will have designated to the general officers commanding the divisions, there will be a third signal of the advanced guard; at this signal, the infantry columns will deploy by the left on a fixed pivot and at the double step. The artillery will form en bataille by one of the maneuvers that has been taught in the tactical Essay that

210

chapter xii

concerns it.10 The grenadier battalions that march ahead of it will rejoin their brigades. The cavalry columns will deploy by the same movements as those of the infantry. In all orders of battle, the first line of cavalry will be formed en muraille and the second with intervals between each squadron. This principle has two advantages; 1st when the first line is beaten, it does not reverse the second; 2nd the second line, in outflanking the first, assures and protects its flank.11 The flank brigades will form promptly en potence on the flank of the infantry lines; if they find an advantageous ridge that may cover them, they will keep in columns by division on the flank and ready to make face in forming en bataille; if not, they will [anchor] one of their wings on the flank of the first line and thus stretch along the flank and beyond the second. The grenadier battalions of the advanced guard will promptly rejoin their brigades unless the general will judge it appropriate to dispose of them to reinforce some part of his order of battle. The dragoons will pass the same at the great trot by the intervals that will be between the wings of the cavalry and the infantry and will go to post themselves in [a] third line behind the center of the infantry. The light troops will throw themselves on the flank of the cavalry wings so as to be within range of disquieting enemies in the rear and flank. The deployment finished, the army will find itself formed on two lines parallel to AB, which is supposed to be the enemy position. The lines, being formed, will promptly align on the center. The general may then order that they march 1,000 or 1,200 paces forwards; after this, the army will repose on its arms, will reform some time after in march columns, and will reenter its camp by the same routes. One must recall what I said on the subject of the abuse of wishing to make an army march en bataille in a perfect alignment. This immense movement may only be executed in the following manner. The general indicates the points where he wishes to [go], and then the army sets off at an equal and determined step; each regiment, each brigade, each division aligns itself as perfectly as possible 10 11

[151-168.] [Guibert means that the first line will stand shoulder-toshoulder, like a wall (en muraille), while the second will have intervals between units, meaning that it will occupy a greater frontage and outflank the first line. This formation both provides a backstop for the first line and spaces through which defeated formations of the first line could retreat without disordering the second line.]

in its individual march; each general officer commanding a brigade or a division regulates his march in such a manner as to give the greatest possible ensemble to the lines, but never, in no case, do the lines find themselves aligning from one wing to the other, and [they] do not slow their movements to occupy themselves with the chimera of perfection and of alignment. Second and Third Maneuvers Diagrams V and VI The parallel order, taken at the end of a front march, will then be the subject of a second and third maneuver. In the second (Diagram V), the general deployment will be made on the right, and in the third (Diagram VI), it will be made on the center. You see, by all the detail of the march order and the movements of these two maneuvers, that the preceding example does not have any difference other than that of the species of deployments and the distances that the columns must consequently observe. Fourth maneuver Diagram VII March order of the flank, following a parallel order of battle. Suppose [that] the enemy [is] camped at AB, or else marching by its flank to go to occupy the position CD, and that one or the other of these circumstances engages the army in executing a march by its right. The army will march by its right flank and on three columns. The advanced guard, composed of two regiments of dragoons and six grenadier battalions, will march by a separate column outside the march, at two- or threehundred paces on the flank of the columns and at the height of the center of the army so as to be able to observe the enemy and to give, if it is necessary, time for the army to form en bataille. If the enemy is moving, the attention of the advanced guard must be to principally carry itself at the head of the march so that, if it ceases to follow a direction parallel to the movement of the army, and it projects to gain its flank for the attack against the head of its columns, the army may consequently change its disposition and take its order of battle on the flank. The light troops will march two- or three-hundred paces in advance of the head of the columns to, accomplish the object spoken of above, in concert with the advanced guard, and particularly to scout the front of the march.

Maneuvers That Must Be Executed in the Camp of Instruction

diagram v

Front march order following a parallel battle order, the columns deploying by the right

211

212

diagram vi

chapter xii

Front march order following a parallel battle order, the columns deploying on the center

Maneuvers That Must Be Executed in the Camp of Instruction

The general will find himself in the advanced guard, as will the officers of the états-majors and the division commanders. The first column of the left will be composed of the entire first line of the army in the order that it will encamp. The second will be composed of the entire second line in the same order. The third column will be composed of all the artillery. I have observed, in my principles on the opening of marches, that the route of this column must be opened as near as it is possible to the troop columns in such a manner as to be able, if one is obliged to form en bataille, to rapidly carry itself to their support. If it were same circumstances, and one has had to fear that the enemy may attack the army in its movement, a part of the artillery of each division, and especially the pieces of large caliber, will free themselves of all their equipment wagons, marching at the head and tail of each of the infantry brigades [and] parceling themselves to this end half to the first [and] half to the second line, and the third column will only be composed of the rest of the artillery and the munition and baggage wagons. The flank brigades will march [with] that of the right having two battalions at the head or the tail of the cavalry of the first column of the left and two at the head or the tail of the cavalry of the second, following the nature that the countryside requires of them. The flank brigade of the left will have in the same way, relative to the nature of the countryside, two battalions at the head or the tail of the cavalry of the left. The army will march in this order until judges it appropriate to form en bataille. A cannon shot of the advanced guard will then be fired; at this first signal that warns the army that it approaches the terrain where it must form en bataille, the columns will redress as much as it will be possible to their left file; the platoons will close their ranks [and] will take their entire distances, and the head of the columns will relent its pace. The second column, before forming the second line, will approach, if it is possible, the first to a distance of three-hundred paces, which is the interval that must exist between the two lines. The general will send the general officers to their divisions at the same time, indicating to them the points of alignment of the right and the left of the line. A second signal will warn the army to form en bataille by quarter-conversions to the left and the lines to find themselves formed. The advanced guard will rejoin the army, the six grenadier battalions reentering their brigades and the dragoons

213

passing rapidly by the intervals in the order of battle to go to form behind the center. The flank brigades will take their customary order on the wings of the infantry. The artillery, if it forms a third column, will pass by the intervals in the battalions of the two lines to go promptly to distribute itself in the advantageous emplacements on the front of the first line. The light troops will form on the flank of the order of battle. The army, being formed and aligned, will rest [and] will then reform in march column and reenter the camp. Fifth Maneuver The next day, the same march order will be executed by the left, and the army will form en bataille by the movements contrary to those that I have exposed; this maneuver has need of neither diagram nor explication. Sixth Maneuver Diagram VIII Another march order of the flank, following a parallel order. The march order by the flank may also be executed on four columns, each half of the line forming one in such a manner that, for example, the army marching by its right, the first column of the left would be composed of the first line of the right wing of cavalry and the right half of the infantry of the first line; the second column [would be] of the left half of the same infantry and the left wing of the first line of cavalry; [and] the third and fourth columns [would be] each of half of the second line in the same order. Independently of these four columns, there will be a fifth outside of the march for the artillery, without counting the one outside of the march that the advanced guard will form, conforming to that which was said in the preceding maneuver. It must be recalled here that the routes of these columns must be opened as closely as possible to each other so that at the moment of forming en bataille, the parts of the second line will find themselves nearly carried to the distance where they must be placed. The army will form en bataille at the customary signal, the first column stretching itself on the determined position to occupy the right half of this position; the second column will then direct itself and stop itself in such a manner as to occupy the left half, and the third and fourth columns will make the same movements as the first and second so as to form the second line.

diagram vii Flank march order following a parallel battle order

214 chapter xii

diagram viii Another flank march order following a parallel battle order

Maneuvers That Must Be Executed in the Camp of Instruction

215

216

chapter xii

1 Observation This manner of executing a flank march has the advantage of holding the army in greater ensemble, and consequently, if such be the circumstances that one fears that the enemy [would] steal a movement [and] present itself at the head of the march, the army would find itself better defended against it by this measure, but, unless one has all the necessary time, the troops must not be subjected to being carried from the right to the right of the new disposition and the troops of the left to the left. It would [instead] be, by the most prompt movements, to multiply the columns, to direct them in distancing from one to the other on the points where they must deploy, and to arrive at an order of battle combined on the position that the general of the army would have chosen to face this unexpected circumstance.12 I will give examples of this maneuver when I will treat the orders of battle composed and analogous to the terrain. The parallel order, as I have taken it from the army following different march orders of front or flank, is only a primitive disposition of encampment and organization, without any relation to the terrain and to circumstances. Some examples of the oblique order will [illustrate] how one departs from this primitive disposition to reinforce on a point and to refuse that which one enfeebles. We will next see how this oblique order applies to the terrain and to circumstances. All the sciences of principles must go step by step and in such a manner that the simple things lead to compound things. Seventh Maneuver Diagram IX March order by front, following an oblique order of battle by line. The enemy that one wishes to attack is supposed to be posted at AB and ranged on two lines, its infantry at the center and its cavalry on the wings. The army will march on five columns. The formation of these columns, that of the advanced guard, and all the details of the march order will be the same as in the first maneuver. The general having, at the head of his advanced guard, examined the enemy position and resolved to attack their left wing, will indicate to the division commanders 12

[Guibert means that the units should not be required to maintain the same position in the line as they had in the march simply for form’s sake, but they should rather occupy the position that the commander judges best.]

the order of battle that he wishes to take, the species of deployment by which it must arrive in it, and the points that must regulate the alignment. They will promptly rejoin their columns so as to direct the execution of deployment and the order of battle. The heads of the columns having arrived at 3,000 paces from the terrain where the army must form, there will be a signal from the advanced guard. This first signal will warn the army that it approaches the terrain where it must deploy and that the oblique order must form on the right.13 The columns will take the prescribed distances between them when the deployment is made on the right. You see this in the principles given on the parallel order. The cavalry column of the right and the first infantry column must always deploy here entirely in the first line; they will consequently observe to have on their right the necessary distances to form there. Each column head will rest 600 paces behind the head of the column that is to the right, by means of which the degree of obliquity from the right to the left will be 2,400 paces.14 All the columns will continue to carry themselves in advance in directing themselves imperceptibly to the right so as to gain the flank of the enemy army. The cavalry column of the right and the first infantry column behind must deploy entirely in the first line and commence the attack; they may, so as to be rapidly formed, commence to divide their terrain [by] each forming, I suppose, two or three columns whose heads will direct themselves against the points where they must form en bataille; this preliminary movement is marked in the diagram. The three brigades of the second line of the second infantry column will separate their columns to direct themselves to the right so as to approach the tail of the first infantry column; these three brigades must form in [the] second line immediately behind the three brigades of the right. The three brigades of the second line of the third column will make the same movement to the right so as to form in a position to occupy, when formed en bataille, all the terrain of the second line from the brigades of the right up to those of the left. 13

14

I suppose that different signals will be agreed in advance that indicate to the army the species of the order of battle that it must take, and, if it is an oblique order, the part of the enemy disposition with which this order will engage the combat. In this regard, there are no fixed principles; the general of the army must give more or less obliquity to his disposition according to if he has more or less fear from the enemy for the enfeebled parts of his order of battle.

Maneuvers That Must Be Executed in the Camp of Instruction

diagram ix

Front march order following an oblique battle order in continuous line Note: The brigades are numbered in the march order and in the formation of the battle order so as to make the mechanism of the disposition of this order of battle, which forms the base and the principle of all the other oblique orders, more facilely conceived.

217

218

chapter xii

A second signal made 1,000 or 1,200 paces before the columns arrive on the terrain where they must deploy will warn to prepare the deployment. They will form themselves thus by divisions and will take the order of deployment at closed distances. The cavalry column of the right and the first infantry column will take their order in such a manner as to deploy entirely in the first line. It will be the same for the three brigades of the first line of the second and third infantry columns each. The destination that must be reached by the brigades of the second line of these columns has been indicated above. The twenty squadrons of the head of the cavalry column of the left will carry themselves, at the great trot and with intervals between their divisions, to the height of the advanced guard, and they will maneuver in such a manner as to give to the enemy the greatest ostentation possible of strength and of offensive so as to engage them to believe that the disposition of attack will be carry on their right. On its side, the advanced guard will stop itself at a height of the terrain where the column of the right must deploy itself, and it will maneuver on the front of the army in such a fashion as to mask, as much as it can, the movements that it [the army] makes behind it. One sees that, by means of the twenty squadrons of the left wing carried to the height of the extended advanced guard and maneuvering in advance of the center and by means of the column of the right whose head presents itself at the same height, one seems to indicate to the enemy that one [intends] to form on a parallel alignment to their front, while in effect, this first disposition is only a curtain behind which the army takes an order of battle and which disappears at the third signal.15 The twenty squadrons of the tail of the column of the left will go at the great trot and, if they can, in closed column by division to reinforce the cavalry of the right, passing for this to the rear of the infantry columns and observing to hold as close to them as they can so as to hide their movement from the enemy. At the moment that the head of the column of the right will arrive on the terrain where it must deploy, which will 15

It must be observed again that these movements may, in favor of the different situations of the countryside and combined on them, produce a more complete illusion; that they are made at a considerable distance from the enemy; and that in parallel circumstances, the army against which one marches always has accidental causes against it which makes it imperfectly see what is presented to it [and] the uncertainty of opinions that result in the spirit of he who commands them, and finally, when these opinions are fixed, the slowness of the counter-movements that he seeks to oppose.

be, I think, at 1,200 paces from the enemy, there will be a third signal for the army to form en bataille. All the columns will then deploy by the right, those of the infantry at the double step and the cavalry column to the right at the gallop. The first division of each column, which will be the division of alignment, will make a preliminary demiquarter conversion to the left so that the line may take its degree of obliquity and align itself on it. The cavalry column of the right will all form on one line, and the twenty squadrons that arrive on the left will form the second line behind it. The infantry column of the right will entirely form the first line in the same way. One remembers that I have said that the two columns may divide their terrain so as to approach the points that the brigades that compose them must occupy. It is to the intelligence of the lieutenants-general who command them to direct these internal movements as they judge most convenient to augment the rapidity of the general deployment. The flank brigade of the right will extend the flank of this wing or will keep in column on the flank of the infantry lines in such a manner as to be in range of sustaining the cavalry or of extending the infantry’s front, if it is judged necessary. Circumstances will determine its movement in which[ever] regard.16 The second and the third infantry column will deploy themselves, half in the first line and half in the second. Brigades 15, 18, and 16 of the second infantry column will form in the second line immediately behind the three brigades of the right, and to this end, at the first moment of the signal, they will be directed against the right so as to approach the emplacement that they must occupy in the order of battle.17 Brigades 12, 8, and 4 of the third column, as well as the flank brigade of the left, will occupy the rest of the second 16

17

It is marked in the plan to the extremity of the infantry’s right wing. If one does not judge it necessary to extend this line so much, one may place it in reinforcing [position] on the flank or at any other point in the disposition. One sees here that I shake off the prejudice [against] inversion. My columns being, I suppose, placed in march order by the right, it must be to form the troops en bataille in the primitive order that I would deploy them by the left in advance, or by the right to the rear; in lieu of this, I would deploy myself in advance by my right: [a] movement that places the troops of the tail of the columns to the right, but of little import. Brigade 19 is worth as much as Brigade 1, and I accomplish by this inversion the decisive object of outflanking the enemy and of forming myself in advance of the alignment of the head of my columns: [an] advantage that will be sensed by those who will reflect on it.

Maneuvers That Must Be Executed in the Camp of Instruction

line, leaving the necessary intervals between them and holding disposed to marching to support the right, if it is needed to reinforce. The artillery, which is at the head of the first infantry column, will deploy itself promptly in advance of the right of the line and place itself particularly in advance of the interval that separates the cavalry from the infantry to immediately commence its fire, observing to strike the enemy cavalry obliquely and to principally attach itself to firing on the troops. The artillery that is at the head of the second and third columns, with the pieces of large caliber near that will rest there so as to be able to reach the enemy by their long ranges, will carry itself rapidly to the right to reinforce it and to fatigue the enemy left wing by a great fire. The advanced guard will rapidly retire via the intervals to [join] the order of battle, the dragoons quickly carrying to the third line behind the infantry’s right and the six [grenadier] battalions to reinforce the wing of this same infantry and to form the head of the attack or to sustain it. So that these grenadiers have the time to arrive at their destination, they may commence their approach to the right wing at the first signal. The twenty squadrons of the column of the left, which will be carried to the height of the advanced guard, will rapidly retire and will form themselves on the left wing, all in the first line. By means of all these movements, here is the order in which the army will find itself ranged: its first line will be of sixty squadrons and forty-eight battalions, not counting four battalions en potence on the right flank and six grenadier battalions ready to [take] the head of the attack or to sustain it. The second line will be of twenty squadrons and twenty-eight battalions, of which twelve will immediately sustain the right of the first line. Independently of these, there will be two dragoon regiments in reserve and in [a] third line behind the infantry of this wing. The totality of the reinforcement carried to the point of the attack will consequently be eighteen battalions, twenty squadrons, two dragoon regiments, and two artillery divisions.18 18

One senses that, if the general had judged it appropriate to further extend the right of his first infantry line so as to outflank and more-completely embrace the enemy, he may, by means of the flank brigade of this wing and the six grenadier battalions that were in the advanced guard. One senses the same that, if he wished to extend less, he could then deploy his first infantry column, part in [the] first and part in [the] second line. In the oblique order, it is on the columns of the wings that turns all the mechanism of the disposition; it is by them that one extends one’s front and that one reinforces on the point that must attack; finally, it is they that become the hammer and the acting part of the order of battle.

219

Here may be confined the first repetition of the oblique order, so that the troops commence by perfectly knowing the interior movements by which they form without confusion. One will execute the second according to what follows, to make known to them the manner in which one must attack the enemy after the order of battle is formed, and the object of this order. As soon as the cavalry of the right wing will be en bataille, the general officer who commands it, without regard to the deployment that the rest of the army has achieved during its movement, will break to march on the enemy [by] giving the signal by the trumpets of the center brigade. The 1,200 paces that the cavalry will have to cover to arrive on the enemy will be made with the progression of speed and movement recommended for the charge maneuvers in the tactics of the cavalry. The general officer who commands the right wing of the cavalry line will observe to take his points of direction in his movement in such a manner as to make use of all the parts of his wing that outflank the enemy to embrace them and attack them in the flank. The second line will follow the first at the trot. As soon as the first cavalry line will have covered the prescribed 1,200 paces, supposing it to have reversed those of the enemies, it will halt to reform its squadrons, detach some small troops to pursue the fugitives and prevent them from rallying, and immediately maneuver on the flank and rear of the enemy infantry, while the infantry of the right of the oblique will attack the front. The second line will support the cavaliers sent after the fugitives at the petite trot. As soon as the battalions that are en potence on the flank will see the cavalry’s success, they will make a quarter-conversion to the left to reinforce and extend the infantry line. The light troops will also profit from this first advantage to penetrate to the rear of the enemy and augment their inquietude. At the same time that the cavalry will break to charge what is in front of it, the right of the infantry will march on the enemy at the great step, in describing a species of circular movement to fall on their flank. All the rest of the army will support this movement and follow its direction. This quarter-conversion will not be made with the slowness and precision of a line that wishes [its maneuver] to be executed from the right to the left; the general officer who will command the right wing will only observe, in leading it to the enemy, to take his point of view beyond their front, if he outflanks them, so as to attack them in the rear.

220

chapter xii

It is not a matter of being able to reach all the verisimilitude of war in this maneuver, because one has neither enemy nor obstacles before one; it is only a question of making known that the object of the oblique is to brusquely charge the wing that one outflanks and then to immediately press one’s advantage and to take the enemy lines in reverse and in the flank, the army describing a species of demi-quarter-conversion to accomplish this object and then pressing the enemy before it until they are entirely beaten. One may, if one wishes (but it must only be when the troops are perfectly instructed), suspend the movement of the right wing from time to time, as if, effectively stopped by the enemy, it would have had to fight them, and thus make battalions fire by platoons, [and] then, after some volleys, make them march in advance as if they had the advantage. It will be to the general officer commanding the right wing [that is] supposedly engaged with the enemy to conduct this maneuver, and all the intelligence of the general officers who command the rest of the line will consist of following the movement of this wing, always marching in concert with it and achieving the accomplishment of the quarter-conversion: [the] definitive object of the maneuver because, when it is achieved, one is meant to be master of the enemy’s battlefield. As soon as the right of the line will have arrived at O, which would suppose it to have reversed the enemy left wing, it will stop, as will the rest of the army, the lines redressing and reposing themselves; then they will form in march columns and return to the camp. 2

Observation on the Preceding Maneuver

One must recall what I said on the formation of the oblique order in line in treating the different species of the order of battle. I announced that it was only a principal maneuver and uniquely made to conduct the other manners of executing the oblique order to [one’s] intelligence. When the King of Prussia, in his peacetime camps, wished to give to his general officers the first notions of the oblique order, he executed them as I have detailed them above, and it was only next that he formed them by echelons. In the same way, it seems that he reserved for war the secret of applying this order to terrains and limited himself to having organized his machine, to having prepared the parts; it was only at Leuthen, at Hohenfriedberg, and on some other great occasions, that he put into execution this chef-d’œuvre of his tactics. I will give some examples of the oblique order by echelons below. One will see how this

order is simple, easy, susceptible to action, and applicable to all that war may offer in terrains and circumstances. Eighth Maneuver Diagram X March order following an oblique order of battle by echelons and in deploying on the center The army will march on five columns. See the first maneuver of the parallel order for the formation of columns, for that of the advanced guard, and for the detail of the march order. When the first signal will indicate to the columns to take their distances, the first and the second column will continue to march at the same height. See the seventh maneuver for what the other columns must observe between them and for all the anterior precautions of the deployment; the only other difference from it is that the columns deploy themselves by the center and that the obliquity forms by echelons. The first column will observe to have to its right the terrain necessary to deploy twenty squadrons. The second column will leave between it and the first the terrain necessary to deploy twelve battalions, twenty squadrons, and [the] one-hundred and fifty more paces of interval that must rest between the cavalry and the infantry. The third column will leave between it and the second the terrain sufficient to deploy eighteen battalions. The fourth will leave between it and the third the terrain to deploy twelve. The fifth will leave between it and the fourth the terrain necessary to contain six battalions, ten squadrons, and [the] one-hundred and fifty more paces of interval that must rest between the cavalry and the infantry. At the third cannon shot, which will indicate to the army to form en bataille, all the columns will deploy on the center without the divisions of alignment making demi-quarter-conversions beforehand. The first and the second column, having marched at the same height, will form en bataille on the same alignment; they entirely deploy in the first line, and their second will be formed, as in the preceding example, by the troops of the other columns. With regard to the third, fourth, and fifth columns, which have marched to six-hundred paces of height one from the other, as soon as they will be deployed, they will rest in echelon by division, as is marked in the plan by punctuated lines, or, if the general ordains, they will form in echelon by brigade or by battalion. These three

Maneuvers That Must Be Executed in the Camp of Instruction

diagram x

Front march order following an oblique battle order by echelons, the columns deploying on the center

221

222

chapter xii

manners are marked in the [diagram], and the first two are preferable. Whether the echelons form by division, by brigade, or by battalion, they will be placed each behind the one that is to its right and its right flank to a height perpendicular to the left flank of said echelon. See the example of the preceding maneuver for the movements of the brigades of the second line and for those of the advanced guard. The army, having achieved its deployment, will form two lines of the same strength as that of the aforementioned maneuver, but here the oblique will be in echelons; the divisions, brigades, or battalions that will form these echelons will be ranged parallel to the enemy front and will successively spread from the right to the left, while the right wing that must commence the attack will form a species of hammer in advance of this oblique. See what is said in the sixth maneuver for the cavalry movement of the right after it will be deployed. When it will have beaten that of the enemy, all the infantry of the right will march forward first, the rest of the army supporting it and following its movement, always observing, however, the prescribed distance and degree of obliquity. If the right has need of support, it will be successively reinforced by all the brigades of the line, the order of battle then only shortening itself and the battalions destined to reinforce the right having only to march by the flank or in demi-quarter-conversion to carry themselves to the attack. In proportion to its success and to [how far] the right carries itself forward, the army will support it and follow its movement in such a manner as to never disunite, each battalion carrying its left wing in demi-quarter-conversion to this end so as to march more easily towards the flank. The object of the right wing will always be to gain the terrain on the right, to take the enemy in reverse, and to form on their flank. When the enemy left will be entirely beaten, and when the right of the army will be formed on the terrain that it occupied, the divisions, brigades, and battalions will approach one another in such a manner as to form two contiguous lines and thus push this first advantage to the front until the right of the army, arriving at point P, will be supposed to have entirely put the enemy to rout.19 19

One has already observed in the seventh maneuver that one can only sketch the movements of the army after it has taken its order of battle in an imperfect and approximate manner, because in war, it is circumstances, the nature of the terrain, and the enemy’s resistance that determines the movements, but this sketch will suffice to give to all men of war an idea of the maneuver.

Then the lines will redress themselves, rest on their weapons, and, some time after, reform in march columns to reenter the camp. Remark. It is useless to observe that this oblique order by echelons may be equally executed by the left, and, in deploying the columns, by the right or by the left. Ninth Maneuver Diagram XI March order following an oblique order of battle taken, the columns presenting themselves to the enemy on an alignment parallel to their front. The army will march in the customary order. See the example of the preceding maneuver for the formation of the columns and the advanced guard, for the march order, and for the distances that the columns must guard between them; the columns in this one must be equally deployed by the center.

A first signal will warn the army that it approaches the terrain where it must deploy; then the columns will observe with care the distances between them that are prescribed for the deployment on the center, but, as the object of this maneuver is to deceive the enemy by presenting to them the columns on an alignment parallel to their front and then taking the oblique order by movements to the rear, the columns will always march at the same height until the moment of deployment. A second cannon shot having warned the columns to prepare themselves, they will thus form by divisions and take the order of deployment at closed distances, etc. A third cannon shot will warn the army that it must deploy itself. This signal will be made when the column heads will be around 1,200 paces from the enemy. Then the first and second columns will deploy themselves at the redoubled step and as in the preceding example. All the other columns will make a demi-turn to the right and will march by the same route that they have already taken, the third 1,200 paces, the fourth 1,800, and the fifth 2,400. When each of these columns will have made the number of paces that is prescribed it, it will make front, deploy itself by the center, and then form the oblique echelon by division, by brigade, or [by] battalion, as in the preceding maneuver. The artillery that is at the head of the second infantry column will carry itself at the great trot to reinforce that of the first. That of the third [column] will follow the movement of its column. The brigades of the second line of the second and third infantry columns will form in readiness from the first

Maneuvers That Must Be Executed in the Camp of Instruction

diagram xi

Front march order following an oblique battle order, then the columns present themselves to the enemy on an alignment parallel to their front

223

224 signal, the first to deploy behind the right of the first line of infantry and the second to occupy the second line. The advanced guard will retire by the intervals of the center and will place itself as in the preceding example. As soon as the right wing of the cavalry will be deployed, it will immediately march on the enemy, the rest of the army having time to achieve its deployment during its movement. See the preceding example for all the continuation of this maneuver. The army having arrived at OP, and the enemy being beaten, it will halt, redress its lines, repose, reform some time after in march order, and return to its camp. Remark. The same maneuver may be executed by the left the following day. Tenth Maneuver Diagram XII The enemy is supposedly posed at AB, having its center in a position [that is] hazardous and susceptible to attack. The army will march in the customary order. The general having determined to attack the enemy [center] with his [own] center and to refuse his wings, a cannon shot from the advanced guard will sound. This first signal will warn the army that it approaches the terrain where it must form. The columns will thus observe between them the prescribed distances when the deployment is made on the center. The center column will follow the advanced guard. The second and fourth will allow themselves to be overtaken by it at eight-hundred paces, and they will overtake the first and fifth [columns] by the same distance. The two brigades of the tail of the second and fourth column[s] will direct their march to approach the column of the center so as to be able to deploy in the second line behind the troops that compose this column in the formation of the order of battle. A second cannon shot will warn the columns to prepare themselves for the deployment, then they will form by division and will take the order of the deployment at closed distances. At the same time, each cavalry column will send the twenty squadrons of its head to go at the great trot to maneuver to the height of the advanced guard. They will observe to extend themselves as much as they can so as to deceive the enemy on the alignment that one wishes to take and on the object of its disposition. At the same time, the twenty squadrons of the tail of each cavalry column will depart at the great trot, and, passing as close as possible to the infantry columns so as

chapter xii

to hide their march on the enemy, they will carry themselves behind the center column. When the head of the infantry column will arrive at three-hundred paces from the advanced guard, [which is] supposed to be stopped at 1,200 paces from the enemy, there will be a third signal. At this signal, the six grenadier battalions of the advanced guard will promptly form in such a fashion as to be able to make the head of the attack on the enemy’s center. The artillery of the center column will form at the great trot in advance and on the flanks of the advanced guard so as to commence its fire. The center column will deploy on one line; the second line will be formed of six brigades, three from the head of the second column and three from the head of the fourth. The forty squadrons arriving from the wings will form a third line behind them. The forty squadrons carried in advance of the wings will rapidly return to form on one oblique line in echelons to the right and to the left of the army. The rest of the infantry of the second and fourth columns will deploy itself on one oblique line by echelons, supporting the contiguous line that the infantry of the center will form. The two other columns will deploy [with] three brigades each in the first line and one in the second and forming the oblique by echelons. If the terrain permits, the two dragoon regiments will form in line with the advanced guard so as to sustain it in the attack, but, if it is an affair of post[s], and they are useless, they will rapidly pass by the intervals in the order of battle and go to form behind the cavalry line. In this order, the army will form a species of angle broken at its top; that is to say that its center will present a front to the enemy, [and] its wings will be bent and refused to them by means of the oblique. As soon as the advanced guard will be deployed, it will march on the enemy, sustained by the two center lines; the attack will be made in line or en échiquier, according to the nature of the position that the enemy will occupy; it will be continually refreshed by the center lines and, if it has need, by those of the oblique.20 During the entire attack, the bent parts of the oblique will support the center and will follow its movements, whether to reinforce it or to sustain its progress. The enemy’s center being broken, [the center] of the army will march in advance and will immediately take its 20

[In a quincunx or checkerboard formation.]

Maneuvers That Must Be Executed in the Camp of Instruction

diagram xii March order following an oblique battle order on the center

225

226 lines to the reverse, while the two wings of the oblique, continuing the same movement as above, will carry to its support and will attack the enemy in front. The army’s center having arrived at point O and the wings at points PQ, supposing that the enemy will have separated in two and put to rout, it will make a halt, rest on its weapons, and, sometime after, form in march columns to renter the camp. Remark. The same order may, if one wishes, be executed the next day, all the columns presenting in front

chapter xii

parallel to the enemy line and the wings only taking the oblique at the moment of deployment. See the manner of executing this movement in the ninth maneuver.

chapter xiii

Application of the Preceding Maneuvers to Terrain and to Circumstances In all the maneuvers that I have described, there may not be one that will be executed in war by combinations exactly like those detailed here; the terrain and the circumstances absolutely change the given [maneuvers], and in war, the nature of the terrain and of the circumstances often may not be able to be foreseen, the movements are not at all premeditated, and it is ordinarily the moment that determines them.1 However many infinities, however many varieties that may be in the combinations that one may form, it is nevertheless by the same mechanism that one executes them; I first had to teach what this mechanism was, isolated and without any relation to the terrain and the circumstances; consequently, I have had to always indicate in advance in the march orders what species of order of battle to which they must lead. Now, the primitive object and the principles of the orders of battle being known, the general officers and the troops being formed in coup-d’œil and in intelligence by simple and calculated maneuvers, the sphere of instruction will be extended and will become more and more interesting. One may suppose that the preceding maneuvers were made in absolutely nude and uniform terrain that, consequently, did not oblige any local calculations. Here, the examples will have more verisimilitude: one will always maneuver relative to the terrain and in varied terrain, such as the countryside will offer. The army will form in march order as in war, to carry itself to some point, and it will only be from the advanced guard and relative to the nature of the countryside that the general will determine the battle order that it must take. Thus, I must repeat, this is the advantage of this army organization and the disposition of its march orders: that the army may, rapidly and according to circumstances, take any order of battle and reinforce or refuse any part of this order. The general, marching at the head of his advanced guard, has behind him all of the columns that he commands, advances, retards, stops, and deploys, according to his projects. How wise would the battles of 1 [Guibert’s most significant departure from the “makers of systems” begins here, with the acknowledgement that war does not resemble a parade ground and by providing guidance on how to adapt to circumstance. Few of the systems proffered by his rivals, particularly those that relied on deep and compact formations, would function in rough terrain, similarly to the archetypical Greek phalanx.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_049

Condé and Turenne have been if they had known the simplicity and the resources of this mechanism!2 The army debouching in the plain A (Diagram XIII) to go to attack the enemy occupying the position BC, the general, arriving at the head of the advanced guard at L, will see that the enemy’s left is susceptible to being attacked and outflanked, and he will immediately give the signals so that the army disposes itself to take the oblique order by the right. He will instruct the general officers commanding the divisions [on] the points on which they must direct their columns, the points of alignment of the wings, the manner in which these columns must be deployed, and the general object of the disposition. For this, he will have determined this disposition in knowing by a coup-d’œil the advantages that the terrain offers to the offensive and defensive parts of his battle order. Consequently, he will direct the first and second columns on point F, because he will wish to profit from the plain to form his right and to attack the enemy’s feeble and uncovered left. He will stop the third column on the heights at G so as to give a defensive position to the part of his order of battle that he wishes to refuse, and, covered by these heights, he will carry to his right the brigades of the second line of this column, which will all deploy in the first line. Covered by these same heights, the twenty squadrons of the tail of the column of the left will carry themselves in reinforcement to the right to form the second line of the first column that will all deploy in the first line. If he has need of a greater infantry reinforcement of this right, he will draw brigades from the second line of the fourth column, or he will be within range of drawing them, making them approach the heights of his center and thus leaving less infantry to the left. 2 [The importance of Guibert’s exercises and march orders may not be evident to the modern reader. However, his application of articulated echelons illustrates the very basic elements of how an army broken into divisions should march and fight. He also broke from relying on pre-determined march and battle orders, and from requiring that the one dictate the other. No theorist prior to Guibert had explicated how these processes might occur, as he notes. Operational-level warfare is simply not possible without such advances, marking their importance, even if they seem pedantic, shallow, or obvious.]

228

diagram xiii March order following the formation of an oblique order adapted to the terrain

chapter xiii

Application of the Preceding Maneuvers to Terrain and to Circumstances

He would leave some light troops on the ridge H and make all of his advanced guard file to the rear of this ridge to reinforce his right. He would profit from the wood that is in advance of the columns of his left to menace the enemy’s right wing and to engage it to pay attention. To this end, he would ordain his fourth and fifth columns to maneuver along the edge of the wood, to present several [column] heads there at open distances, to make, in a word, the greatest ostentation possible of strengths and of offensive, to then double back, form en bataille on the edge of the wood, and to concur with the general object of the disposition. The twenty-eight battalions that compose the fourth column will entirely form the army’s left, and the twenty squadrons that rest in the fifth will rapidly go to form in the gap that is between the wood and the heights of the center. He will not subject himself, as one may see in the diagram, to any regularity in the alignment and in the obliquity of the disposition: his center will find itself strong behind the degree of obliquity that we have established in the order of principles because he had wished to profit from the heights to hold himself further away from the enemy; his left will be placed strongly in advance because it is covered by the wood where the enemy certainly will not wish to attack and where it forms en bastion in some manner on the curtain wall of its order of battle.3 The total object of his disposition will nevertheless be to have all of the advantages of the oblique order because he refuses the center and the left of his army and keeps [it] out of the enemy’s range, and he only attacks with his considerably-reinforced right. The preceding example makes seen how the oblique order must be applied to terrain; that which I will give below will show how, having determined that, after the first disposition, one will form the oblique order on a point, and, the army having consequently commenced its movement, if this enemy goes to change their disposition, one could rapidly change the plan of attack and form the oblique order on another point. 3 [“En bastion” means in a strong defensive position, as a bastion. Guibert perhaps references the battles of Maurice de Saxe, who was trained in sieges and brought that mentality to infantry combats. The clearest example of this is the Battle of Fontenoy, where he ordered units on his right to raze a village and deploy infantry and guns behind barriers as if they were building siege works; the resulting formation looked as much like a curtain wall as a traditional battle line. The fact that Guibert uses the siege term for “curtain wall,” which would stretch between bastions, underscores this point. See Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession, 206–217.]

229

The army forms in the accustomed march order to go to attack the enemy posted at AB (Diagram XIV). Arriving within range of reconnoitering the enemy, the general sees that the center of their position is impregnable, that the right presents difficulties, and that the left is, by nature of the terrain, the part [that is] the least strong and the most accessible. Consequently, he determines to attack by his right and makes his army commence the movements necessary to form the oblique order on this wing. Thus arriving more within the enemy’s range and continuing to observe more and more their position and the movements that his approach makes them make in their disposition, he sees, I suppose, the enemy, counting on the boundaries of their right and fearing the feebleness of their left, carry the greatest and best part of their troops there; he sees that, by means of this change of disposition, this left that at first sight appeared to him and was in effect the most-feeble side becoming, by the number and the species of the troops that are carried there, the leastsusceptible point to attack, while the right, more difficult by the terrain, rests nearly abandoned to his local forces and is defended only by a small number of troops; immediately, he changes [his] project and resolves to form his oblique order by his left. A signal indicates this change to his columns, which then take the echelon of obliquity by the left that they had commenced to form by the right; if there are some parts of the troops that are already in movement to carry themselves in reinforcement to this right, they will stop themselves and will re-march on the left in such a manner as to close with the columns from which they were detached. At the same time, and as soon as the general has determined his new disposition, he sends trusted officers to the columns who show them the new disposition the he wishes to take, the direction[s] that they must follow, and the points where they must form. As for him, he carries himself to the army’s left so as to follow the execution of the part [involved] in the movement. Following his first disposition, he must form the oblique order on the right, reinforcing this cavalry wing with twenty squadrons drawn from his left and forming it at C to attack the enemy left; his first infantry column, reinforced with the brigades of the second line of the second and third columns and the troops of his advanced guard, must support this wing and engage the attack in concert with it, while the rest of his third, fourth, and fifth columns must deploy behind by echelons and, in favor of the advantages of the countryside, hold outside of the enemy’s range.

230

diagram xiv Oblique order combined on the first enemy disposition and then changing rapidly on another point, with a view of the changes that the enemy makes in their disposition

chapter xiii

Application of the Preceding Maneuvers to Terrain and to Circumstances

The movements that the enemy has made, [his] engaging in changing this first disposition, and [his] taking the oblique order by the left: here consequently is the new advantage that he takes from the terrain and the orders that he gives to the columns. The enemy right, with the exception of a small part of the plain where they left around twenty squadrons, is on heights [that are] of difficult access and fortified again by redoubts and batteries; that is to say that this wing is incomparably better sited than the left, which is in a razed and uncovered plain, but the enemy, counting a little too much on the advantages of the terrain, has emptied it [the right] of troops and has left there only those on which they can count on the least so as to considerably reinforce their left, for which the nature of the countryside, the facility of the debouches, and the view of the first attack disposition has given them fear. This is the fault that the general of our army knows, and, to this end, he sends orders to his cavalry column of the left, which is rejoined on the way by the twenty squadrons that had already commenced to carry themselves towards the right, to direct them on point D, marching at closed distances and working to hide their strength as much as it is possible. The object of this cavalry is, at the signal of deployment, to form en bataille against the squadrons of the enemy right to profit from its superiority to outflank them; to turn them, if it can, by carrying some squadrons outside of the ravine that supports them; and finally, to attack it vigorously while the infantry that is to its right attacks the enemy infantry’s right. The first infantry column of the left, composed of twenty-eight battalions counting the flank brigade, traverses the great wood E [and] advances at closed distances towards point F; arriving at this point, [it] deploys all on one line and is sustained in second by the six brigades of the second and third infantry columns of the left and further reinforced by the grenadiers and dragoons of the advanced guard that go to place themselves to their right. This disposition made, it immediately marches on the enemy, profiting from the premier advantage of the cavalry to turn the great ridge F, which supports the redoubts of the right, and finally, according to all appearance, by taking a position where the inferior enemy, whether in number or in species of troops, makes little resistance to oppose it. The second infantry column of the left carries itself on the heights G, [and], disposed by design, extends away from the enemy and forms there on a single line, having its left covered by the dragoons of the advanced guard. The three brigades of the second line of this column have

231

carried themselves in [a] second line behind the left, as has been said above. The third infantry column forms on the edge of the wood H; this wood, still further to the rear than the heights G, hides its strength and furnishes it a favorable position. The three brigades of the second line of this column make the same movement as those of the second column. However, these two columns only take their positions in the rear at the moment of the general deployment; until then, they must present themselves in advance of the heights and the wood, showing many column-heads at open distances and appearing to menace the enemy’s center and right. Finally, the fifth column is particularly charged with giving them [the enemy] a change, and consequently, it advances audaciously to traverse the great plain as if it must in effect commence the attack, [and,] as in the first disposition, divides itself into several columns at quite-open distances; then, at the signal of the general deployment, [it] retires at the great trot and goes to form en bataille under the protection of the infantry of the right and of the hamlet I, where the flank brigade has thrown itself. The general effect of this disposition, the facility with which it is executed, the illusion that its execution must produce in the enemy, and the appearances of infallible success that must result for the attacking army must be seen in the diagram. In effect, what can the enemy do? They will be at pains to untangle the goal of this new disposition when their right is already attacked by infinitely superior forces. If they search to maneuver from their left and center to carry to the feeble and distant parts of the oblique? These are at a so-great distance from them that it is a safe bet that they would be recalled by the disasters of their right before they achieved so great a movement. Incidentally, this oblique only has to retreat before them, always resting in retiring on the army’s left so that it does not separate from it. If they carry reinforcements to their attacked wing? It is apparent that they will only arrive to be witnesses to the defeat of this wing. Finally, [if] these reinforcements would arrive to reestablish the combat, [if] the battle would be lost by the attacking army, it has only one of its wings engaged; this wing retires, covered by the other parts of the disposition. It may arrive that an attack made by superior troops, good and well-led, fails, but it is rare; it is nearly impossible that it turns into a rout. To support this example, it rests with me to cite the Battle of Leuthen; such was the case of its conduct. The King of Prussia maneuvered before the Austrians for four or five hours. He first menaced their right, which was the

232 most feeble part by the nature of the terrain. They reinforced it with a great number and with the elite of their troops. They counted their left anchored on redoubtable heights, and they left only the Bavarians and some Imperial troops there. The King of Prussia grasped this fault. His disposition, long uncertain and in suspense, was rapidly determined towards his right. The left wing of Prince Charles was taken in the flank and defeated after a half-hour of combat. The Austrians arrived, but it was too late: two lines were already formed on their flank; all that presented itself was reversed, and the victory of the King of Prussia was one of the most complete and most decisive in war.4 It is a quite-great advantage, and little known in our armies, to hold in column until the order of battle that one wishes to take is determined. By this, one may perfectly hold one’s army in hand; one may rapidly handle it, make interior movements that escape the enemy’s notice, make illusions to them, menace them first on one point and then on another, induce them to error, and yet never become a prize. I have already spoken of this advantage in the chapter on orders of battle. I will, at the risk of partially repeating myself, cite some examples that develop it and make it better-sensed.5 There is an army, instructed in the resources offered by the tactics exposed above, in the case of wishing to attack the enemy; it forms in the ordinary march order and carries itself within view of them. There, the commanding general, at the head of his advanced guard, reconnoiters the enemy position and the disposition by which they intend to defend. If he finds a feeble point in the one or the other, it is on this point that he rapidly forms his attack disposition. If he does not find one, he forms to maneuver against them, [and] he searches to give them change; he employs all the resources of terrain and tactics to give them illusion[s] on his project; he feigns an offensive movement on one of their wings, to have them thin their center or their other wing, and then he forms a real attack. [In one place], he presents to them columns at open distances; [in another], he presents them at closed distances. He does this, in a word, so that, if the enemy is not as skillful as he, they make the change, abandon or occupy a post that makes them a prize, or else enfeeble themselves on a point, whether by leaving there too few troops, leaving too few of the proper arm to defend it, or 4 [Leuthen remains Friedrich’s masterpiece and a case-study in the development of the operational art. See Citino, The German Way of War, 83–90.] 5 [Guibert here repeats the importance of divorcing battle order from march order.]

chapter xiii

leaving the least-good troops of their army, and thus this fault being sensed, the skillful and maneuvering general immediately carries his efforts on this feeble part. Finally, if the enemy does not form a prize either by their position or by their disposition, then the general finds nothing to engage, [and] he retires, takes a position, and waits for a more-favorable occasion. It must be agreed that we have not the least idea of this genre of war, of this manner of reconnoitering the enemy with all the forces of an army, of presenting the fight to them, of inducing a false movement in them and profiting from it with rapidity. We hardly know how to take orders of battle that are momentary and combined on the circumstance; we ignore, to say it all in a word, the art of maneuvering armies.6 If we had known that, then the battles that we have lost would [simply] not have been given! I will only cite one that gives the example and the misfortune that are striking for the nation. Our army departs from the camp of Minden with a disposition combined on the previous day, [based] on a reconnaissance made in the morning. It is our right, considerably reinforced, that must attack the enemy left, which, in this reconnaissance, was found to be weak and susceptible to attack. We debouch on a great plain and opposite a long chain of woods, behind which the enemy disposition was hidden. Following the established routine, we form en bataille, [and] we spread two lines whose strength the enemy could count at leisure; in lieu at least of leaving these lines in the rear and disguising the feebleness from the enemy by the favor of the [rough] countryside that was at the entrance of the plain, we carry these lines forward [and] align on the right, which was charged with the attack. We carry a part of the center in advance of this alignment and a quarter-league from the edge of the wood that the enemy occupies. One will again observe that this order of battle must have been made at daybreak, but that, by a continuation of the clumsiness of our troops and their little habituation to executing grand maneuvers, 7:00 [AM] has come before the lines again grasp their disposition. However, the enemy had changed their own during the night and the morning; their left, which we had counted as feeble and thinned, is reinforced by troops; entrenchments and batteries are raised there. In this situation, this wing is judged unattackable. We determine not to engage a fight whose success could only be destructive on this point. We deliberate; time is lost; the enemy sees our center carried too far in advance and composed of two feeble cavalry lines without infantry to sustain them; 6 [“The art of maneuvering armies” is perhaps the best contemporary phrase for “operational art.”]

Application of the Preceding Maneuvers to Terrain and to Circumstances

they form on it a disposition covered by the woods that are on their front, debouch, attack, penetrate, and win the battle. Had we arrived on the enemy in the oblique order, had we held in columns until we could have judged what the enemy’s situation was, this battle would not have taken place; the enemy would not have untangled the feeble parts of our disposition and formed an attack on them. We would have reconnoitered that their left was reinforced and sheltered from being attacked; we would have, at worst, re-entered into the old camp: it would have been a reconnaissance without loss and without dishonor.7 Thus I dare to advance that it is wrong that we call the march that an army makes to go to attack another and the decision that it takes in retiring when it sees that it cannot engage the combat with advantage [a] “false movement.” A skilled and maneuvering general will often make similar movements without believing that he makes a confession of inferiority in retiring; it is by the strength of doing this that he will finally find a favorable occasion. For the ancients, the army that was on the offensive went thus to present combat to the enemy so as to engage it to sortie from its entrenchments and to form a prize, then retiring when it did not see a favorable occasion to attack: thus Hannibal beat the Romans at Lake Trasimene and Cannae; thus, in their beautiful campaign of 1675, Turenne and Montecuccoli felt [each other out] often without ever engaging. These great men thus quite precisely knew what dishonor or glory consisted of.8 I have promised an example of a flank march order following a front battle order, necessitated by the unforeseen 7 [Guibert adopts present tense to describe the Battle of Minden, which took place in August 1759 as one of the several French efforts to invade Prussia from the west. Two French armies under Louis-Georges-Erasme, marquis de Contades, and Broglie united to fight Brunswick’s allied force. Contades, the senior commander, deployed the French army in a wide arc to the north and east of the city with his infantry on the wings and his cavalry in the center, screening his artillery. The allied center held against repeated French cavalry attacks, and Contades ultimately withdrew. See Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 259–262.] 8 [At the Battles of Lake Trasimene and Cannae, Hannibal held his army until his Roman opponents made a mistake; in the former case, by allowing themselves to be ambushed on the march, and in the latter, by pursuing a feigned retreat of Hannibal’s center to draw them into a double envelopment. See Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, 167–221. The 1675 campaign was Turenne’s last, and it pitted him against Montecuccoli along the Rhine. Both commanders spent much of the season maneuvering against the other without engaging; the campaign ended when Turenne was killed at Salzbach. See Carl Ekberg, The Failure of Louis XIV’s Dutch War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 48–76; and Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 136–144.]

233

appearance of the enemy army on the head of the march and combined on the terrain. Thus, there is an army in march order as in AB (Diagram XV). The light troops that reconnoiter the head of the march warn the general that the enemy appears at CD and comes from the front to attack the army on its march. The general immediately carries himself to the column heads, making his advanced guard follow him, and, having reconnoitered the enemies, immediately makes his disposition to oppose them. In advance of him and on his right is a stream, to the left of which extends a chain of wooded heights; he will rest his right on this stream, extending along these heights. The center of his disposition will be the great plain E, and consequently, he will carry the greatest part of his cavalry there. His left, composed of infantry, will occupy the wood F and rest on the village G, [into which] he will throw an infantry brigade. The rest of his cavalry will be en bataille behind this village and in [the] different gaps that are along the wood to the left so as to sustain the infantry that defends it. His position determined, he will indicate to the general officers commanding his divisions the points where they must carry the troops and the general plan of disposition. The two lines of the right wing of cavalry, which are at the head of the march, carry themselves rapidly on the plain E, forming there the center of the army on a single line, resting their right on the heights and the[ir] left on the woods. The second infantry line, which forms the second column, directs itself towards the right part of the position that it must occupy. The six brigades of the head of the column, including the flank brigade, must form the first line of this right and the four brigades of the tail the second. This column divides itself to this end into two or three columns so as to arrive more promptly on the points where it must form itself. The first infantry line, which comprises the center of the first column, must, in the new order of battle, occupy the left of the position; consequently, it similarly divides into several columns for rapidity of movement and to direct itself on the points where it must form itself. The flank brigade that is at the tail carries itself in a straight line to the village on the left. The five brigades of the head of the column form the first line of the right and the four brigades of the tail the second. With regard to the first line of the left wing of cavalry that forms the tail of the first column, it directs itself forward on the left to form en bataille behind the gaps in the wood that are occupied by the infantry of this wing, and the second cavalry line, which is at the tail of the second column, continues its movement in advance [and] goes to form the second line behind the center. The advanced guard thus is carried in advance of the center in some advantageous

234 position where it can cover the army’s movement and where it is in range to carry to reinforce the most feeble part of the order of battle according to the enemy disposition that the general will see. This order of battle entirely inverts the army’s primitive order, but it rapidly faces an unforeseen circumstance: the troops arrive by the shortest route on the points that they go to occupy, and in war, method must not shackle; it must not degenerate into routine. By this example, one senses that, if the terrain of the position chosen by the general requires other combinations in the emplacement of troops, they will be executed with the same facility. One similarly senses that, if, in lieu of arriving to simply occupy a defensive position, the general would find it advantageous to immediately pass to a counteroffensive movement towards the enemy, it may be equally done. When an army is organized, when it has acquired the habit of great maneuvers, if the man who commands it has genius, there is not a machine that is more easily handled, more simple, and more susceptible to more variety in its combinations. All the examples exposed above, or others differently combined relative to other natures of terrain but tending to teach the same results, may be put into execution in the camp of instruction. The general may, to execute some with more verisimilitude, divide the army into two corps and let them act against each other, after some given circumstance; charging, for example, the general officer commanding one of these corps with going to choose and occupy a position that accomplishes some object and the general officer who will command the other corps with attacking or dislodging him.9 These two general officers will each command according to his enlightenment, the [commanding] general 9 [Guibert describes an idealized training camp that perhaps inspired the most important camp of the post-war period, which occurred at Vaussieux in 1778. A French army of 40,000 under Broglie assembled on the Norman coast to prepare for the invasion of England as part of the War of American Independence. Broglie determined to use the camp to settle the tactical debates within the army, including inviting both Guibert and Mesnil-Durand. After conducting small-scale exercises, Broglie broke the army into his own force and an enemy force under Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, and the two conducted campaigns against each other. Guibert’s Defense of the Modern System of War was composed after the camp and is largely an analysis of it. The camp’s records are in SHAT 1 M 1819, although no detailed accounting of its activities exists. The closest is Wimpffen, Lettre de Wimpffen, 1 M 1819 20. Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare, 233–268, provides an excellent overview of the camp and its implications, echoing Colin, L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle, 213–245. See also Julia Osman, “Guibert vs. Guibert: Competing Notions in the Essai général de tactique and the Défense du système de guerre moderne,” Journal of Military History 83, no. 1 (2019), 43–66.]

chapter xiii

confining himself, during the entire time that the operation will last, to being [a] spectator of their movements [and] to then discussing with them what they did and what they should have done. But, for this, what a man he must be, this general! In certain states, he must be the sovereign himself so that he would not at all be tested by any contradiction; in all [states], he must be of a skill so universally recognized [as] to command opinions. It is under such a man and in a similar camp of instruction that the general officers would learn how to move troops, how to calculate distances, how to sense with a coup-d’œil the analogy of the terrain with the different arms, and many other principles again that are born from circumstances and situations and that may not be indicated here. It is there that they would learn that, after the general has generally indicated the position that they must occupy in the order of battle with a division or a corps of troops, [the] infinity of details that they regard in such a manner as to occupy this position remain [to them]; they must know to occupy a little more-advantageous height in advance or behind the given point, placing the troops behind a ridge or a ravine [and] to form them under cover from the enemy artillery when they are out of commission; to make some light changes in the given alignment, when these changes will be advantageous; [and] to take, in a word, on themselves all that may, in procuring some advantage, work against the order of battle and concur to more-perfectly accomplishing the object of the general disposition.10 In all the maneuvers that are made in the camp of instruction, the troops will never approach within range of the fusil, and one will avoid all these tirailleries that only serve to make tumult and unreality in the movements.11 The advantage will be meant to remain with he who, by the choice of his position, will the best-supplemented by the smallest number of his troops, or he who, by his deployments and his maneuvers, will present means superior to those of the enemy on one of these points of attack and defense; thus it must be, and it is a quiteimportant principle so as not to discredit the instruction, that in peacetime camps, the maneuvers stop when they cease to be plausible. 10

11

[In somewhat complicated language, Guibert reasserts his theme in this section: subordinate commanders must be free to make beneficial decisions relative to circumstance while remaining within the general plan and disposition outlined by the commander. This principle is generally referred to as “mission command” or “mission orders” in modern parlance.] [“Tiraillerie,” which would loosely translate as “skirmishings.” The word lived a brief life in the AF dictionary, appearing only in the fifth, sixth, and seventh editions.]

Application of the Preceding Maneuvers to Terrain and to Circumstances

235

diagram xv Flank march order following a front battle order taken after the inopportune circumstance of the enemy’s arriving at the head of the march

chapter xiv

Application of the Tactics Exposed Above to Defensive Orders of Battle. [The] Necessity of Making This Application Known to the Troops and to the General Officers In considering all the orders of battle relative to the subject of offense, I have demonstrated the advantages that would result from the combination of marches and deployments, whether to deceive the enemy as to the strength of the columns and their point of attack or to rapidly take a disposition. I have made seen that these advantages would be immense when the attacking army, following the ordinary routine, would make its disposition in advance and spread its lines on the disposition that it had to defend, as then the attacking general [would] arrive with his advanced guard, reconnoiter this disposition, count the number and species of troops that defend each point, and determine his order of battle consequently. It would be a quite-imperfect science, this of tactics, if it did not offer to the army the means of balancing those advantages when it was on the defensive. It offers them, and those like the art of mines [and] like that of the attack and defense of places. Equally susceptible to being employed by the two parts, it is to whoever possesses and applies it best that it renders the most decisive services. Suppose [there is] a skillful and tactician general in the necessity of receiving a battle: he will only unmask his defensive position after he has reconnoitered the points where the enemy wishes to make effort. He will hold his army in columns on the battlefield that it must occupy so as to only determine the partition of his troops [based] on those of the enemy troops. Finally, he will oppose finesse with finesse and maneuver with maneuver; that is to say that he will be continually moving before the enemy [and] that he will search to throw them into irresolution, to induce error, to make illusion as to the number and disposition of his troops, to present to them a point thinned in appearance so as to engage in directing their attack on this point; that is to say that he will not be always bounded by a simple defensive disposition, and that, if the enemy forms a prize on some point, he will know how to make an offensive counter-movement against them. It is not a question here of the defensive positions that are so advantageous that the terrain necessarily reduces the attack to a point, for then, as there may be no uncertainty on the part where it is necessary to carry the greatest forces, there is no inconvenience in determining an order of battle in advance. But it is not the same in the positions

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_050

that are susceptible to being attacked on several points; for there, so that one of these points is not uncovered at a time when the others will be uselessly occupied by a toogreat number of troops [and] so that the enemy may not engage their strong part against a feeble part, a disposition must only be determined [based] on that of the enemy; the points of attack must be occupied with the heads of the troops and the rest of the army held in columns behind and between them so as to carry forces where the enemy will carry their efforts, and sometimes where they may form a prize and render themselves susceptible to being attacked; for a quite-stronger reason, in positions on [a] plain, an order of battle must only be determined [based] on that of the enemy because, in these positions, it is the number of troops, it is a more-or-less strong wing, [or] it is some arm rendered superior in a part of the order of battle that decides the success of the action. What then would the enemy general do? He would see the heads of troops in the principal points of the position that he wishes to attack and, in lieu of an army en bataille and disposed to allowing itself to be counted and beaten, this army divided in columns whose depth or objective he would not be able to judge. He would maneuver? This army would also maneuver. He would search to give a change? It would be held on guard against him; it would search to give illusion in its turn. He would decide to attack a point and to unite his forces to carry it? The forces of this army would unite for the defense. Between two parallel armies, it will finally be the one of genius and celerity of maneuvers that wins. This application of defensive tactics is yet more unknown and thus no less important than its application to offensive orders of battle. I have already said how, for want of this latter, attacking armies have lost battles. Blenheim and Ramillies have shown how beaten armies, for having maladroitly flaunted their dispositions at first, [have] by this invited the enemy to advantageously combine an offensive disposition [against] them.1 One must 1 [While the French armies at Blenheim and Ramillies did not stand idle as Marlborough maneuvered against them as Guibert suggests, they were far less active than the allied commander, leading to their defeat. See Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 290–294 and 304–306.]

Application of the Tactics Exposed Above to Defensive Orders of Battle

thus occupy oneself essentially with the defensive order in the camp of instruction. One must familiarize the troops and the general officers with it there. It is mostly when one will divide the army into two corps that one may give quite-plausible lessons in this regard. When I say that the troops must be familiarized with this manner of taking defensive dispositions, it would much surprise them if it were seen to be employed in war without reasoned examples having made its advantages known during peacetime. It is generally opined that an army that must be attacked cannot be too-quickly disposed en bataille. Consequently, it is routine to form

237

lines on the position that is chosen before the enemy has made their disposition. Or would opinions and usages not be shocked, if, the enemy debouching to attack an army, the general commanding it carried several columns onto the reconnoitered battlefield; if there, far from forming en bataille, he waited for the decision that the enemy takes; finally, if he skillfully combined the time that sufficed for him to have achieved his disposition at the moment that the enemy would arrive on him? It is only the reflected habit of this sort of maneuvers that, [in view of] the current prejudice, may reassure the troops against this countenance that they believe to be uncertainty and danger.

chapter xv

Continuation of Objectives That Must Be Put into Practice in the Camp of Instruction But how many other subjects of instruction are still to be presented in the peacetime camps? Sometimes, the army will execute simple marches to go to occupy a position reconnoitered by the officers of the état-major. Independently of the advantage that will result from accustoming the troops to the practice and to the fatigue of marches, they will be the most utile and important instruction for the état-major of the army, because the general will be particularly occupied in examining [whether] the columns are open and disposed relative to the nature of the countryside and to established principles [and whether] the reconnoitered position well-accomplishes the objective that he had indicated, etc. It is thus in applying theory to terrain and in making the officers of the étatmajor work under the eyes of a general that one may hope to form them, rather than by unfruitful courses, sometimes on a frontier, sometimes on another; courses where no one directs them, where they see only naked ground, where consequently they cannot rectify their ideas, and finally where they bring back only topographical knowledge or memoirs entirely of suppositions that cannot be verified and that are often not their work.1 The reconnaissance of a countryside, this interesting part of the functions of the état-major of the army, necessarily having relation with grand tactics, I will assemble some ideas on this subject in a particular article. [For now,] we [simply] say with what one must be occupied in the camp of instruction. This will be to portray attacks and defenses of different genres like entrenchments, posts, villages, [and] convoys; this will be to execute forced marches, passages of rivers and defiles, foraging, etc.: quite important objects, all done to instruct the troops [and] to develop and to extend the ideas of those who command them, but on which it would be superfluous to reason here in advance because they depend entirely on the nature of the terrain and the genius of the general. I have said on tactics, considered in and of itself, all that I believe there is to say. I flatter myself to have presented this science under vast and new connections. I think that 1 [Guibert uses the French word mémoir, which can be translated as both memoire and memory, in both senses, which is lost in translation.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_051

it would be utile and interesting to teach that which I have tried to expose [here] in public courses. [At a time] when all the other sciences are extended and perfected by enlightened theories, will the science of war then be the only one that is abandoned to routine? Is it believed to be so vague, so denuded of positive principles, that it must not be taught? Was it Hannibal’s indignation when he heard the rhetorician of Ephesus giving lessons on the military art that has forever ridiculed the project of demonstrating it in schools?2 Hannibal saw in pity an obscure and ignorant rhetorician daring to speak before him on the work of a general; he would have liked to have heard a man of war, a Xanthippus, an Epaminondas, reasoning on the theory of his art; he would have sensed that, in a country where great men commanded armies during war, it would still be necessary that, during peacetime, they take pains to form troops and successors. The nature of our constitutions and our prejudices defends us from hoping for a parallel spectacle; we at least regret that it cannot take place, and, while waiting, we offer to our fellow citizens the tribute of our feeble work. The complete course of tactics that I will give in my great work will be presented in a most didactic and instructive order. I will try to work to sketch what the object of a public course must be; I will show that this science may be taught by simple and appealing proceedings. It was thus taught to me. Permit me to render homage to my father here! my understanding was hardly opened when he gave me the first lessons on tactics. He demonstrated them to me successively by words, by figures, and on the terrain; when I had well-conceived the elements of tactics, he made a découpage box of a species of figurative and movable plans that represented all sorts of terrains. On these diagrams, he explained to me all the mechanisms of armies with wooden figures. He represented to me battles 2 [Guibert references Marcus Tullius Cicero, De oratore, 3 Vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), II:254, which tells a story of Hannibal’s exile after the Second Punic War. In Ephesus, he was invited to hear a lecture by Phormio on the qualities of a general. Asked his opinion on the oration, Hannibal replied that “he had seen many old madmen, but never one madder than Phormio.” Such critiques, that only practitioners can understand and appreciate military theory, recur throughout the history of the subject, including in the present.]

Continuation of Objectives That Must Be Put into Practice in the Camp of Instruction

that could furnish examples relating to them; he particularly represented to me those of the war that was then going on and whose event and details had most drawn my attention; he then made all sorts of terrain to exercise my coup-d’œil and my judgment.3 We returned to it and renewed our amusement. He permitted me objections. He let my imagination test itself. Gradually, it acquired more development and accuracy; then we formed two armies and we each took command of one of them. Next, in different [types of] countryside represented by chance by 3 [Unless Guibert was a precocious child and engaged in these activities before the age of five, the war he references would have been the Seven Years War. He also illustrates the complete lack of formal education in military theory in France prior to the establishment of the Ecole royale militaire in the early 1750s.]

239

the assemblage of our boxes, we made our armies maneuver; we made them execute marches; we chose positions; we executed one against the other in orders of battle. We then [thought about] what we had done. He liked my doubts and even my contrarieties. Often, the nights were passed in this occupation, so much were we attached to this study [and] so much my instructor knew how to give it his charms.4

4 [Guibert references what is now a common practice for military professionals and hobbyists alike: the wargame. Its use as a formal educational tool only dates from the nineteenth century, but antecedents likely reach back to the earliest periods of formal warfare. See Pat Harrigan and Matthew Kirschenbaum, eds., Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016), especially John Curry, “The History of the Wargaming Project.”]

chapter xvi

Rapport between the Science of Fortifications and Tactics, and with War in General The sciences of fortification and tactics are intimately bound to each other. It is from the science of fortifications that defensive tactics borrows some of its principles like the necessity of supporting the flanks of a disposition, of arranging all the parts of this disposition in such a manner as to be mutually protecting, [and] consequently, the necessity of uniting the greatest quantity of fire and strength on the principle and most-menaced parts. It is, in its turn, on tactics that the good and true principles of the science of fortifications are founded, since works must be sited and combined relative to the nature of the terrain, to the species of troops, to their number, to their ordinance, to the spirit that animates them, [and] to these different objects calculated both on the side that is defending and on that which is attacking. It results from this that, to be a tactician, [one] must know the science of fortifications, and that, to be an engineer, [one] must be a tactician. The first part of this consequence is admitted and recognized in the military, without, however, officers being consequently enlightened. The second seems not to be [the case] among the engineers because generally, they know neither how troops maneuver nor how they must be commanded; they do not wish to know; regarding their art as the premier of the arts, they disdain all the other branches of the military science. If this prejudice is maintained in their [branch] by the fine name of “génie” that honors their corps and the knowledge that they cultivate, I must alert them that this pompous denomination is a new creation, that in the times of Vauban, one simply spoke of “the corps of engineers” and of “an engineer”1 in the institution of this profession, and, in all the languages of Europe, [it] derives, not from the word “génie,” but from the word “engin,” because then, engineers were the constructors and directors of all the machines of war, and particularly those of the siege. It is mostly in the determination of field fortifications that one must sense how it is important that tactics directs these ideas. For want of this, one proceeds with slowness; one does not dare to depart from the routine of method; one sees the effect of a piece of fortification [and] the rapport that it has with its neighboring piece, but one is not 1 Once “engineur” in French, then today “engineer” in English, “konstabler” in German, which is properly rendered “artificer.”

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_052

at all occupied with the general ensemble of the position, with the object that it must accomplish; one moves the earth, one multiplies the works, and one does not calculate either who will defend this immensity of works or that troops closed in these parallel entrenchments lose all the advantages that maneuver and science may give. If one peruses military history over the last century, one will see all the errors into which one falls for lack of having combined fortifications with tactics. It is under mediocre generals, it is in times where all the troops of Europe had neither discipline nor tactics, that the usage of lines was introduced, [an] absurdity that recalls the famous and useless wall that the ignorant Chinese built 6,000 leagues from us.2 To the usage of lines succeeded that of great entrenched positions that were only, to speak truly, lines [that were] short and proportioned to the front of the army that must occupy them, [a] second genre of defensive less-bad than the first but always destructive to the generals who did not know another. This was thus the prejudice, that a position was only believed to be wellentrenched when the works that defended it were continuous. In the correspondence of the generals of Louis XIV with this prince and his ministers, one reads this [literally], and often the equivalent: “our position is already covered with redoubts, and provided that the enemy gives us time to link them, all will go well.” Today, this prejudice has been retreated from; it is in fact regarded that, in field fortifications, curtain walls are useless and that they must be formed only with troops. It is already a great step to make towards enlightenment, towards the true employment that an army must make of fortifications, but it still remains to reduce the merit of army entrenchments to a more-just value and to be well-persuaded that the sublime defensive consists not of always going to search for positions and receive combats but in ceaselessly fearing the enemy offensive, and for this, to maneuver, to force them to do the same, and to spy the moment when some fault 2 [Guibert references the Great Wall of China, which failed on more than one occasion in its intended purpose of keeping the nomadic peoples north of China proper from invading the territory. Eighteenth-century France went through periods of fascination with China and its culture, known as “chinoiserie.” See Oliver Impey, Chinoiserie: The Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).]

Rapport between the Science of Fortifications and Tactics, and with War in General

divides them, retards them, engages them, [and] then to act offensively against them. This is a point too interesting for me not to develop with more detail. What is the goal of fortifications? It is to form a troop, inferior by number, by courage, or by the science of movements, in a state of resisting a troop that is superior on some of these points. Thus, all fortification supposes defensive views and consequently is only the last resort of the troop that is contained there; thus all the times that a general will sense the superiority of genius, and he will see that his troops are more numerous, more warlike, and more maneuverable, he will well-guard against forming entrenchments; he will take the offensive, he will maneuver, [and] he will attack, or, if sometimes he would receive the fight, it will only be because he will have placed the enemy in the necessity of giving it with disadvantage or because he will premeditate a movement that, before the fight or during the same fight, will render the offensive that he would have appeared to have abandoned. We see what will arrive with the general who, finding himself inferior to the enemy, will conduct himself differently and following the principles used in modern armies. If he takes the part of constructing lines and of forming himself behind them, as long as his enemy knows how to maneuver, they will be turned, surprised, [and] pierced, and I have no need of saying why they will be; so many examples and known reasons render this consequence sensible. If he throws himself into an excellent position, and thus all the front is covered by a continuity of entrenchments, he will tie his hands, he will never be within range of making the enemy fear the offensive, he will throw the spirit of timidity and discouragement into his army, [and] he will not dare to compromise himself [by moving] outside of his position. I would [allow] that the enemy will not be able to attack with lively force in his citadel; they will desolate him by courses on his flanks, on his communications, [and] on the countryside that interests him;3 they will approach him, they will constrict him, [and] they will lay siege to him; offensive and mobile, they will take, over this army thus entrenched, all the advantages that the besieger has over the besieged and over the works that are immobile and defensive; they will go to him by trench[es]; they will reunite all their fire and efforts on some points of this position; they will obligate him either to the vexing extremity of tearing down his entrenchments and going to present a disadvantageous 3 [Guibert uses a term that carried only a naval definition during the period, according to the Fourth Edition of the AF Dictionary. “Courses” were raids made by squadrons, quick attacks by single ships, or privateering campaigns, as in the guerre de course.]

241

combat or to laying down arms, like the Saxons at Pirna [and] as Pyotr would have had to at the Pruth, if not for the skill of the Tsarina.4 But I would that, returning from his century’s prejudice that once existed in favor of lines and entrenched camps, he took neither one of these defensives. If he attached himself to only presenting to the enemy in positions covered by several entrenched points like redoubts, batteries, villages, abatis, etc., making some sort of curtain wall of these bastions for his army? This is today the great routine of the modern defensive, [a] routine doubtless preferable to that which it replaced but subject itself to many inconveniences; 1st in that it reduces the army that uses it to the defensive and that it is already a species of check to receive the law of dispositions from the enemy to be ceaselessly occupied in parrying and to not be able to carry them a blow in turn; 2nd in that the enemy never runs any decisive risk in attacking an army thus posted. Beaten, they retire, and it is rare that, with well-taken precautions, they fear the pursuit. Vanquisher, they may render their day complete, because they outflank and take the reverse of the occupied posts; thus was Höchstädt taken; thus may have been Antoing and a part of the army of Marshal Saxe if the enemy’s good dispositions had sustained what chance made them undertake; 3rd in that there are two options: if the fortified points are too distant from each other, like at Fontenoy, Lauffeld, [and] Rocoux, the enemy passes between them, or else makes a disposition against each of these points that half-envelops them with batteries and superior forces, carries them, discovers the army that supports them, and wins the battle. If these fortified points are near enough to mutually protect each other and protect each other’s flanks, this position 4 [The opening move of the Seven Years War was the Prussian invasion of Saxony, which occasioned the bulk of the Saxon army to seek shelter in the mountain fortress of Pirna. An Imperial relief effort failed, and the army capitulated several weeks later, whereupon it was dragooned into Prussian service. See Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 37–45. The Pruth River Campaign of 1711, as told in Voltaire, The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia, trans. Smollet (New York: Leavitt, Trow, & Co., 1848), 200–222, was one of the more dramatic events of the early century. As part of the Great Northern War, Karl XII of Sweden fled to the Ottoman empire, which led Pyotr to declaring war on the Ottoman Empire in support of Moldavia in 1710. The campaign culminated in the Battle of Stanilesti, which began on 18 July 1711 and saw Pyotr’s army increasingly in danger of being forced to surrender to the Ottomans. Pyotr’s wife and future Tsarina Yekaterina suggested that she and the other women at court trade their jewels to bring the Ottomans to the peace table; a treaty was concluded four days later. See related entries in Alexander Mikaberidze, Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia (New York: ABC-CLIO, 2011), I.]

242 falls back into the inconvenience of entrenched camps; the entire army finds itself emplaced in points where it is reduced to the most passive and unequal defense. If one of these points is forced, how would combat be reestablished? There are not at all troops [or] efforts great enough to employ to chase the enemy from the bastion where they are established and from the curtain wall on which they will soon be extended, and thus what becomes of all the troops emplaced in posts where they are outflanked, taken in reverse, and where they may only retire with pain? 4th Finally, this defensive, founded on entrenched positions, is contrary to all the great views of war; it was at least certainly never the manner of great men. One has only to review the battles that they gave: they almost always attacked, and if they received fights, it was almost never behind entrenchments.5 It does not result from this that there do not exist some occasions in which an army may entrench itself. I condemn the abuse that is made of entrenched positions and not the usage that is sometimes appropriate to make. If, for example, an inferior army occupies an important position, and, by it, it absolutely traverses the enemy’s projects; if, wishing to cover a siege, a countryside, [or] an operation, it finds one of these unique positions that leaves the enemy neither the resource of maneuvers nor that of diversions and that necessarily obligates them to attack this position; finally, if the advantage that is found in receiving battle is so much greater than that which would be procured in going before the enemy, there is no equivocation in augmenting the strength of such a position by entrenchments; it still must be disposed in such a way as to conserve the possibility of acting offensively against the enemy if their attack dispositions or combat 5 [Guibert refers to the Battle of Blenheim by its French and German name, Höchstädt (“Blenheim” is a corruption of the name of the local village of Blindheim and is only used in English). At Blenheim, the French forces under Marsin and Tallard did not cooperate, leaving large gaps in their formations that the Allied army exploited to secure the victory. Antoing refers to the small village on the Scheldt that formed Saxe’s right at the Battle of Fontenoy. Much of the early portion of the allied attack was directed on the village, but it did not succeed in penetrating the position. If it had, it would perhaps have rolled up Saxe’s right flank. The Battles of Fontenoy, Lauffeld, and Rocoux were Saxe’s great victories in the War of the Austrian Succession. As noted, Saxe’s preference was to create emplacements on the battlefield that would anchor weak points on his line and allow him to preserve his forces to counterattack. Guibert does not appear to be a proponent of this method, as his passage indicates. See Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession, 257–348; and Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 290–294.]

chapter xvi

movements give reason to hope to draw from this advantage a more-certain or more-complete victory. These entrenchments must be such that the army that is behind them cannot be reduced to the role of the besieged and the entire liberty of movement as well as the courage and the science of maneuvers of the troops that compose it remain to the genius of the man who commands it. Thus, here is how I think that an army must entrench itself in such cases: it will not be by continuous entrenchments or, what become the same, by entrenched points distributed symmetrically from distance to distance in such a manner as to protect each other’s flanks and mutually protect each other; it will be in entrenching only some points of the position like those that are opposite debouches, if the enemy is reduced to debouching; those where one may dispose only a small number of troops, troops whose courage and maneuvers can be counted on the least; it thus will be, in entrenching on some points and in making them safe from being taken while in uniting the elite and the greatest number of troops on other nude and open points, that one prepares against the enemy a disposition [that is] vigorous and ready to become offensive at the least false movement that one sees them make. If one takes pains to reflect on it, this manner of defending a position [that is] absolutely opposed to current routine will nevertheless conform to all the grand and true principles of war, [because] 1st. It would be offensive, [a] primordial quality constitutive of all army defensives. 2nd. The entrenchments would be returned to their true usage, which is to supplement inferior numbers or poor species of troops and to form cover for feeble and thinned parts [of the battle order]; they [entrenchments] would only be an accessory combined on and employed in the general disposition in such a manner as to fortify it on some points to allow the elite and the majority part of the troops to go elsewhere; that is to say to give it a sum of resistance superior to the efforts of the enemy, [and] to procure elsewhere a sum of efforts superior to their offensive. As much as I think that entrenchments must rarely be employed by an army, I believe that all posts and detached corps must make use of them, especially if these posts or detached corps occupy the points where it is necessary that they resist, if they cover an operation, [or] if they guard an entrepôt, a magazine, [or] a debouche, for on these occasions it acts to be firm [and] to wait for support, and the small number, however brave, however well-posted that it is, may be prostrated by the multitude; thus, good entrenchments supplementing the inferiority of number and forming them in a state of waiting for

Rapport between the Science of Fortifications and Tactics, and with War in General

reinforcements: this is the situation in which to construct them; they are, in this circumstance, the principle and primitive means of the defensive. Consequently from the reasoning posed above, posts or detached corps must not occupy themselves in entrenching when they are simply destined to serve as a mask [or] to cover a much greater extent of countryside than they may occupy themselves; in the former case, their goal is not to fight but to alert; in the latter, it is useless to entrench some points because they cannot defend everything and because they serve only to indicate to the enemy where they must seek to pierce. It is in maneuvering, in ceaselessly staying in movement along the line of defense one choses, that one may hope to oppose them. Finally, in both cases, all posts or corps of troops that will take part in entrenching, that is to say of establishing in a position and of staying there for several days, will expose themselves there to being attacked with advantage because they will give to the enemy the temptation and the time to combine an offensive movement on them. This does not exclude the excellent maxim of passing nights in the best position possible [and] of rendering, if one is within range of the enemy, this position better still by some entrenchments, placed not in such a manner as to make the position a combat position, since one does not wish to receive them there, but to give time to assemble, to recall posts, [and] to cover and to facilitate the retreat. Finally, knowing when to entrench or not to entrench; distinguishing the occasions when entrenchments may be utile, useless, or destructive; [and] combining them, when one has resolved to construct them, with the object that that one proposes, with what the troops may do, [and] with what the enemy may do, and for this, to not abandon the determination to an engineer if that engineer is not both [a] man of war and [a] tactician: here is the work of officers who command the troops in war; they must have the necessary knowledge for this; to this end, there must be schools established [among] the troops, and schools of practice more than theory, for the construction, the attack, and the defense of field fortifications. In my great work, I will say on what plan these schools must be formed [and] what subject of instruction they must embrace. I will prove that, in six months, an officer may acquire the indispensable knowledge of this part of the military science. It will then be, if he is born [a] man of war, the experience, the occasions, [and] the fermentation of spirit that always give birth to the view of things and events when one has acquired some illumination that will strengthen him in this knowledge and teach him how to make use of it. I have searched to establish the true rapport that field fortifications must have with tactics and with military

243

operations; we now examine the influence that great fortification, permanent fortification, that is to say, places of war, have had on the military system of Europe. This will lead us to searching for the point up to which this influence must exist, and we will find that it must not be the point where it exists. The spirit of imitation and mania that today soprodigiously augments the artillery and the light troops seemed, at the end of the last century, to wish to convert all cities into places of war. Vauban and Coehoorn gave a so-great celebrity to their art, and nearly all of military Europe was so ignorant then, that it is not surprising that these two men, with genius and principles, drove all opinions. Coehoorn fortified Holland, [and] Vauban fortified Flanders, the Rhine, and part of the frontiers of the kingdom. He built or repaired almost a hundred fortresses. One saw in Flanders especially that he elevated chains of places on two or three lines; one saw at the same time, because errors taken from the same principle are ordinarily contemporaneous, provinces entirely covered by lines; these lines were, [to] say it nicely, “multiplied polygons” and added to each other on an immense development. Finally, such has the rest of the prejudice spread thus that the majority of political calculations, in weighing the forces of France with those of neighboring states, still today [factor] in too much this quantity of places with which some frontiers are garnished, as if bastions could defend an enveloped city by themselves; as if the destiny of these cities, no matter how well-fortified they be, do not depend on the goodness and the vigor of the troops that defend and sustain them; finally, as if poorly-defended places do not turn into the exhaustion, the dishonor, and the slavery of certain vanquished peoples who were their constructors and masters. What has then been the result of this enormous multitude of fortresses? Wars have become more ruinous and less wise; more ruinous on the side of money and men, because they are consumed in a quite-great quantity. These places had to be built, [and] these places must be maintained, but this would be no more than a primitive and annual expense. These positions constructed, they must be provisioned, guarded in peacetime, covered in wartime, [and] defended, [and] those of the enemy attacked; from there, the number of troops and all the relevant equipment had to have been augmented in all parts, [and then] these troops and equipment [had to be supported] in peacetime, [and] consequently being perpetually in a state of war that never allows the people to breathe. We see with a little more detail how our system of places has necessarily augmented the armies. Old places

244 were simply surrounded by a wall with a fosse, and a wall whose towers or other flank works were hardly salient. They did not at all have external pieces of fortification; consequently, they required less-numerous garrisons, [and] they needed to have less-considerable armies to invest and lay siege to them. Modern places occupy much vaster terrain. The curtain walls of their first enceinte hold bastions whose capacity must be large so that they are susceptible to a good defense. In advance of this enceinte, there is a fosse, ravelins, a covered way, a glacis, then external works, sometimes multiplied one in front of the others, so that the last of these works is found four- or five-hundred toises from the body of the place. One senses what means are required to defend and to invest these works.6 Thus, when one state constructs places on its frontiers, the neighboring state works to construct its own. Thus is fortress raised against fortress endlessly. It is especially in Flanders that this rivalry is seen. One would have said that France, Austria, [and] Holland believed that they augmented their power by augmenting the number of their bastions. These ramparts being raised in all parts, it was necessary to make war with more-numerous armies. [They] first needed garrisons in these places, then an army to make sieges, and then another army to cover them. It is again a great evil occasioned by the multiplication, and by the current system, of our places of war that prodigiously increases armies and their expenses, because this surfeit exhausts peoples and the population. We now examine if the art of war has gained [and] if wars have become more vigorous and more decisive. Armies having become more numerous and trailing in their wake a quite-great quantity of equipment, it was necessary that tactics make relative progress in proportion to this increase; this did not happen, and, consequently, armies became no more than masses [that were] more complicated, heavier, [and] more difficult to move and nourish. There were fewer great movements made on either side, fewer maneuvers [and] less skill. In countries covered with places like Flanders, war takes on a character of routine and softness, which is certainly not that of genius. One can almost calculate what each campaign must produce. One or two battles, the majority of 6 [While Guibert’s argument is not incorrect, and the generals of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars would generally eschew sieges for maneuver campaigns, he again bends into the disingenuous. Fortresses in prior eras could be much simpler and less costly because they did not have to contend with contemporary siege guns, which required complicated and overlapping walls to defend against. See Duffy, Fire and Stone, and Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World 1494–1660 (New York: Routledge, 1966).]

chapter xvi

time conducted and decided by chance, given or received, either to cover places or to prepare or cover sieges. Those who lose them retire behind these places, and those who win make or tranquilly finish some sieges. The following campaign is the same thing, and also others, until one of the two parties senses that it is down to its last places, and consequently, according to our current calculations, to its last resources, hastens to conclude the peace. That is to say, to paint this manner of war in a single stroke, that 200,000 men of either side spend some years on the frontier [and] spill much blood and money, ordinarily without decisive effect other than taking some places and the almost-equal exhaustion of the vanquishers and the vanquished.7 To see this from the point of view of philosophy and humanity, it must be fortunate that, whether the effect of places or that of established routine, wars thus pass in petite operations [and] in alternating places taken and retaken in lieu of conquering and ravaging, as it used to be. But, to envisage the military object, the art of war is doubtlessly lost, because its effects are less grand [and] finally, because it does not accomplish the first and the unfortunate goal that it must have: that of [inflicting] the greatest possible ill on the enemy and of promptly deciding the quarrels of nations. It does not follow from this that the art of constructing good places, of attacking them, [and] of defending them, carried to the point where it is on some parts and perfected as it may be on many others, does not honor the human spirit and is not an interesting branch in the vast science of war, but we have made it play too great a role; we have forgotten that it is only an accessory and that grand tactics, the tactics of movements, that of wining battles, was the principle; we have counted too much on places, [and] we have multiplied them too much; we have blindly given ourselves to an infinity of errors and prejudices that engineers, unfortunately little-educated while the rest of the military was not at all, but unfortunately only circumscribed in the sphere of their art, and consequently enthusiasts [and] exclusivists, and, rarely carrying their views outside of their fortifications, did not fail to accredit it and extend it. 7 [Guibert describes Louis XIV’s later wars, which largely achieved little in the way of territorial advancement. They could also characterize the wars of Louis XV; however, Louis XV had a fundamentally different foreign policy from his predecessor. He advocated a policy known as “peace without victory,” where France would act as a kind of armed mediator in European disputes without directly profiting from them. The policy succeeded in securing Lorraine and Corsica for France, although it did not win much glory. Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession, is one of the few Anglophone sources that untangles the messy diplomacy of the war and the subsequent Treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle.]

Rapport between the Science of Fortifications and Tactics, and with War in General

Before daring to substitute my opinion for these errors, I wish to prevent two objections that, already having been made to me in conversation by some persons, may be presented to my readers. Here is the first: “suppose that the multiplicity of places of war has contributed to making [a] revolution in the military system of Europe and to augmenting the armies: has this change produced an evil politics for states? Wars, becoming more ruinous, are becoming shorter; thus, the balance of consumption of men and money must be the same?”8 Here is my response: “Suppose that peoples [that were] invested in the famous Thirty Years War will have shed as much blood, spent as many millions, [and] placed as many men under arms as the nations that fought the last war for seven years in Germany. This consumption, equal in appearance, will nevertheless have effects more onerous and yet more destructive for these latter in that they will be made in fewer years, [and] in that it is quite different to spend over thirty consecutive years a sum proportionate, or a little disproportionate, to one’s capital, [than it is] to spend the totality of this same sum in a small number of years, and consequently to be obliged to engage capital, to augment taxes, and to make recourse to usurious loans. This that I have said here for finances may be applied to the population: it will suffer much less from a consumption of some men that will be made over ten years than from an equal consumption that will be made in two; it will support much more facilely the burden of a million men employed in war, and consequently removed during this time from marriage, from agriculture, [and] from all the utile arts, than the same number of men vowed to the profession of arms in the space of a small number of years. In a word, long wars, and made with little expense of men and money, were light evils that could not alter the constitution of a robust state, while short wars made at immense expense, that is to say, our current wars, are maladies of crisis that throw the healthiest and best-constituted states into languor.”9 I pass to the second objection; it is the great argument of engineers in favor of places of war: “places of war,” they say, “are the strength of a state; they are the recourse in 8 [This argument is close to that of the “Military Revolution” as posed by Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution.] 9 [Guibert’s view of the Thirty Years War perhaps only applies to France of the major states involved in the conflict. Germany, the principal theater of the war and the source of most of its belligerents, was devastated by the conflict, including the deaths of significant percentages of its population in conflict-heavy regions. As an outsider to the conflict, France benefitted from using only the resources necessary to achieve its goals, unlike the majority of states involved. A similar argument could perhaps be made of Sweden. See Wilson, The Thirty Years War, especially 779–821.]

245

unfortunate wars. Without places, wars of incursion and devastation would be made again, like those made in Poland, like those made by the Tartars.” “Without places,” they add, “would France [not] have been overrun in the War of the Spanish Succession? The Battles of Ramillies and Malplaquet were fought behind the Somme.”10 In this reasoning, there is some truth mixed with specious errors. This is a reason to discuss it and deepen it. We first take the latter part. It is quite true that the sequence of misfortunes and faults that France experienced in the War of Spanish Succession might have carried the Allies into Picardy and perhaps further without all the places in Flanders that arrested them step by step. But what does this prove in favor of the multiplicity of places? They were utile; they rendered the Allies’ progress slower and less decisive, but there must be tactics and good troops; the discipline established by Louvois must not be allowed to fall; there must be attachment to forming general officers; a Chamillard must not be made minister, nor the courtiers of Maintenon made generals; we would have made the campaign with advantage; in Flanders, we would have had the ascendancy that an army [that was] national and close to its country over an army of confederates, some of whom were quite distant from their countries; we would have won battles in lieu of losing them; consequently, we would have had no need of disastrous recourse to places.11 In such an unheard-of sequence of faults and maladroitness, in that the vices of our military constitution have rendered some places utile, let us thus not conclude in 10

[In many of the wars of the sixteenth century, enemy armies penetrated into France, some as far as Paris itself. The major reason for the construction of the ne plus ultra lines was to prevent this from happening again, and indeed no foreign army made a comparable incursion into the French heartland between 1660 and 1792.] 11 [Michél de Chamillard was one of Louis XIV’s ministers in the latter part of his reign, one of the many Louis elevated from the anoblis. Chamillard became Controller-General of Finances in 1699 and Louvois’s successor as Secretary of State for War in 1704. He was particularly sanguine about France’s financial plight and the severity of measures that he believed would be necessary to rescue it. He proved unpopular and resigned his portfolio in 1708 and 1709. Françoise d’Aubigné, known as Maintenon, was Louis’s second wife. The marriage took place in secret in the early 1680s; historians have not been able to verifiably date it. Maintenon was a devout woman who became more involved in the administration of the country as Louis aged, particularly after 1700. As Guibert indicates, she played a role in selecting generals during the War of Spanish Succession. In addition to the obvious gender bias of the period, Guibert doubtlessly intends the imprecation to include Pompadour, who also selected generals for Louis XV, including the disastrous Soubise.]

246

chapter xvi

favor of their quantity. It would have been of much greater value if the state and the army had been constituted in such a manner as to pass them; thus millions saved! what millions could we have left in the [domestic] countryside or spent on more useful expenses! Finally, in the war we have spoken of, it was not places that saved France; it was the intrigues of the English court, [and] it was the affair of Denain. Without these events, it would have been Cambrai and Arras like it was with Lille and many other cities, and France would have been overrun.12 We continue. “Places,” it is said, “are the strength of the state.” This requires a great modification, because places in themselves add no more strength to a state than the arsenals and the workshops of war that only become means when one has armies in a state of being served by them. There are only, in a state of real and extant force in and of itself, troops carried to the highest point of instruction and discipline. You have places of war, and the best possible, if you do not have an army, or if this army is bad; these places, however multiplied, however strong that they are, serve only to make [their] garrisons prisoners and to affirm the enemy’s conquests. One sees Holland bristling with places and ordinarily defended by troops [who are] mercenaries and without vigor; in 1672, they were almost completely overrun in six weeks. It was only saved by its inundations [and] by the party that placed the Prince of Orange at the head of the few troops that remained[;  he] restored their courage and resumed the offensive against the French, who were dispersed and enfeebled by the guarding of these same places that they had conquered and maladroitly guarded in lieu of having been destroyed.13 In the war before last [The War of the Austrian Succession], one saw there the same readiness to being overrun. Marshal Saxe, superior in genius and skill to the enemy generals, gave ascendancy to our armies: he won battles; as such, all the softly-defended places opened their gates; it is so true that the destiny of places is always regulated by that of combats, that places are only 12

13

[Guibert speaks of the later stages of the War of Spanish Succession. Despite Marlborough’s victory in the Battle of Malplaquet in 1709, the horrendous casualty toll and court politics conspired to recall him after 1710. Without Marlborough, the Allies lacked an energetic commander who could penetrate the ne plus ultra lines as far as Cambrai and Arras, which would place them dangerously close to Paris. The Battle of Denain rescued the French position in the war and brought it to a conclusion.] [Guibert refers to the opening of the Dutch War in 1672, which is known as the Rampjaar, or “disaster year.” French forces overran the country, which was only saved by flooding it to bog the French down while a coalition assembled against them. See Ekberg, The Failure of Louis XIV’s Dutch War, 13–47; and Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 113–118.]

an accessory, and that the important thing, the thing to which one must be attached, is to have an army superior in maneuvering and master of the campaign.14 “Without places, war would be more devastating; the interior of states would run more risk.” Here are all the best-founded objections that militate the most strongly in favor of places. We carefully deepen it [the subject]. In such a manner as war is made today, it is constant that they hinder incursions and retard the invasion of a country. It remains to know only if places would be obstacles for armies constituted differently from ours [or] if an indefatigable and easy-to-nourish cavalry, like those of the Numidians and Tartars, would fear to pass between them to make raids into the country and to return by an opposing province.15 It remains to be known if a general, [a] man of genius, at the head of an army that would be accustomed to patience, to sobriety, [and] to great and strong things, would not dare to leave behind him all these pretend barriers and carry the war to the interior of states, and to their capitals. The doubts that I propose here would serve perhaps to make seen that, if places [hold] the enemy on the frontiers and distance war from the heart of states, it is because of the species and the similitude of our constitutions, [and] because of the routine of war that we have adopted rather than the rapport between real obstacles that oppose them. But it is not a question of the manner in which war may be made; it is a question of the way it is made, and relative to the latter, relative to our military constitutions, and even more so to our political constitutions: places have a utility on which I will speak and that I would counsel to the majority of states in Europe. This utility has perhaps not been perceived from the same point of view by its most zealous partisans. In the majority of European countries, the interests of the people and those of their government are quite separated: patriotism is only a word; citizens are not soldiers, [and] soldiers are not citizens; wars are not the quarrels of the nation; they are those of a minister or of the sovereign, yet they sustain themselves at the price of money and by means of taxes; you add that, in some of these states, these taxes are excessive [and] that the people there are discontented, miserable, and in a situation that no revolution could make worse. This posed, I say that, in 14

15

[Guibert gives Saxe a bit too much credit. He did conquer the Austrian Netherlands and campaigned into the Dutch Republic, culminating in the fall of Maastricht at the end of the war, but he did not overrun it as the French had in the Dutch War.] [Presumably a reference to the Numidians of the Roman period, but Guibert could also be referencing contemporary Arab/ Berber inhabitants of Algeria.]

Rapport between the Science of Fortifications and Tactics, and with War in General

states of this nature, places are utile, because, independently of the services that they render against internal troubles, it is important for them that wars with foreigners are always made outside of [their] frontiers; if they penetrated into the interior, there would be no vigorous recourse to expect on the part of the people. Indifferent and without courage, they would abase their heads under the new yoke. Misfortunes would perhaps lead to great troubles and shocks in the government; at very least, they would occasion revolutions in the ministry.16 But if there existed a free state; a people that had morals, virtues, courage, [and] patriotism; a people that made war a little less costly, because all the citizens, being armed for the common defense, would not require pay; a people that was self-governing, and consequently, in times of crisis, necessarily placed a most-enlightened and most-dignified man at its head, I would say that such a country could pass places; that it must pass them, so as to conserve its liberty; [and] that in not having any places, it runs no risk of being subjugated; primarily, it is a good bet that its armies, more brave, better constituted, [and] better commanded, will arrest the enemy on the frontier; if the contrary arrives, the state will not be in danger for the loss of some leagues of [territory]; its citizens will assemble in all parts against the common enemy. The more the enemy will have success, the more they will find themselves extended and enfeebled; where the enemy will be, there will be the frontier, because, if I may express myself thus, the state will not fold on itself, and everywhere there remain earth and men, the state will subsist there.17 Thus the Roman countryside was inundated by the Gauls [and] Rome was destroyed, but its chevaliers, its name, its destiny, retired to the Capitoline Hill, waiting for a citizen to reassemble the debris of the nation and to chase off the vanquishers. We resume, as briefly as possible, what I think about places of war. They are too multiplied; they are counted for too much in the balance of forces of states and in the current system of war. They have rendered war more ruinous in that they oblige the reinforcement and multiplication of armies; they render them [states] less wise and less 16 17

[Guibert provides an effective sketch of France during the Wars of Religion, in which the Spanish intervened. See Holt, The French Wars of Religion.] [Guibert displays more accidental prescience. In the FrancoPrussian War, the French determined to fight on after the fall of Paris, drawing the Prussian/German armies into France to extend the war as they had done in the early years of the Revolutionary Wars and reverse their early victories. The strategy ultimately failed, in part for fear of a second Reign of Terror, and France capitulated. See Geoffrey Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870–1871 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).]

247

decisive in that they make them neglect grand tactics, the art of battles, [and] in that they, in general, narrow views and military operations. On the other hand, they [places] have rendered war softer; they have hindered incursions [and] devastations; they may, [if] well defended, hinder or retard conquests; they may perhaps not procure these last advantages if the armies were differently constituted, if a new genre of war was substituted for the adopted routine, but this not being so, the effects that exist must be counted. Finally, speaking politically, places are necessary for the majority of our governments; they would be less so in proportion to that which would be more free, more vigorous, more virtuous, [and] more liked in peoples; they would have more advantage in proportion to how much more distant they are from these qualities. It remains to me to say how places may be the most advantageous to a state. This is when, for example, the debouches of the frontier being reduced to a few points, these places occupy and defend them; it is when, the frontier being found, by the nature of the countryside, [to be] open and without obstacle, they are seated on some principle points like rivers, confluences of rivers, etc.; it is when, wherever they are seated, they are large [and] capable of containing the magazines, arsenals, [and] entrepots of an army; it is when, being thus, they are fortified in such a manner as to receive large garrisons, the debris of an army, and yet, at need, to be able to be defended with few troops; it is, in a word, when they are places of arms, points of entrepot and support, bastions whose curtain wall is a good and maneuverable army or in advance of which this army may act offensively with the surety of finding support there in case of [a] check; or finally, when this army may abandon them to their own strength to wait for favorable circumstances to attack the enemy who lays siege to them. I return to saying that places must be of small number; if they are multiplied, they must consume large garrisons to guard them, which obliges [one] to not go to the field and to take the defensive, or, if one only puts the feeble in them, the enemy menaces all of them, maneuvers, hides a movement, and finishes by investing those that they find devoid [of garrisons]; in lieu of this, if one only has one or two places to cover, one may not lose sight of always keeping the enemy in view over [the safety of] both of them and of facing them [the enemy] with all assembled forces. This holds to the opinion that I have established above, that war on a grand [scale], the field war, must always be the principal objective, because it is the fate of armies that regulates that of places. I return to saying that places must be grand, in such a manner as to be able to serve as entrepots and to support

248 armies; if they are small, if they are like all our places of the second and third orders, they are useless; they are not points of retreat, points of rallying, or points of establishment for armies. When the enemy lays siege to them, they cannot fail to be taken; when the enemy does not wish to lay siege to them, it is easy for them to mask them; they may often, without inconvenience, leave them behind them. [If] one places feeble garrisons in places of this nature? the works abandoned to the methodical defensive are soon prostrated by the superiority of the besiegers. [If] one places large garrisons there? they are only taken more often, because their number becomes an embarrassment to them, because the majority of commandants ignore the art of creating outworks on the enemy approaches and of profiting from the strength of their garrison to render their defense offensive. Finally, the great and decisive reason that one may give against these sorts of places is that it is at least useless to construct them in advance and at great cost; it is that in war, it will be possible to supply the momentary object that they accomplish with momentarily-fortified posts. If one needs an entrepot, a headquarters, on a point defending a debouche? If one chooses a city, a village, a height, [or] an advantageous terrain, if one much employs arms in entrenching there, in few days, one will see constructed a post where good troops and a smart man can sustain themselves enough to give time to the army to support them. What services do the smallest of places, constructed and maintained at great cost, render? One may be a century without having occasion to make use of them, and then one allows them to degrade, or if one does maintain them, the annual expenses that form a considerable sum over a century may be more usefully employed, yet when they are besieged, if an army does not come to their support, they finish by being taken; thus, some days after, the posts raised from the earth like I have proposed will accomplish the [same] object that they [places] accomplish. In a word, these [posts] have the advantages that places do not have: it is circumstance that determines their position, and consequently they are always determined much more conveniently to the object of the moment; it is that, circumstances having changed, one abandons the post, or one razes it to go make another elsewhere; it is that one makes one’s post proportionately to the object that one wishes to accomplish, to the number of days that one wishes to hold it, to the number or the species of troops one wishes to form there, [and] to the strength and the skill of the enemy that is before one; finally, it is the officer who one charges with the defense of the post who presides over its construction [and] directs it according to his views of the defensive and his means, while to the contrary, in the majority of places, his views

chapter xvi

and his means are found in contradiction to the species [and] the too-great or too-narrow disposition of their works. We explain this last idea. To prove it, it is necessary, unfortunately for us, to extend in reasoning. The inconvenience of all places, and an inconvenience that becomes more perceptible in proportion to [their multiplication], is that, in general, the circumstances that determined the foundation and the system of construction being changed by [a] revolution in events, these places find themselves useless, poorly emplaced, or without rapport with the circumstances of the moment. To convince ourselves of this truth, we throw our eyes on [the] two-hundred places that are counted in France. A man who has not reflected on their positioning would be inclined to believe that, with this quantity of fortresses, all the provinces of the kingdom are covered, [but] we have frontiers that are absolutely ungarnished [with them]; there are hardly any in our maritime provinces; our greatest ports, our marine establishments, are at pains of being taken by a coup-de-main from the land side. Elsewhere, we have two or three lines of places; we have them on points where they cover nothing, where they defend nothing; this is [because] the frontier, in certain parts, is advanced, and in others, it is withdrawn; we used to have a system of opposing place to place, and those of the enemy no longer subsisting, ours are, on some points, becoming useless; we then had a mania to fortify everything; today, this branch of the administration is not conducted on a more-determined plan. We do not have the courage to either raze or totally abandon some of these places, nor enough money to maintain them; they are halfway repaired. There are some useless ones that we preserve out of respect for Vauban, or by other prejudices of routine; we augment some because the cities have grants18 that have annual funds for their maintenance, and there is an established rule that these funds must be employed in the fortification of these cities, [even if] these cities did not have need of it. There are some whose commanders or chief engineers please themselves by moving [around] or overloading them with useless pieces so as to counter the opinion of their predecessors or to follow their own. There are others around which we construct enceintes of works 18

[These grants, or octrois, were agreements made between the crown and cities that allowed them a measure of selfgovernment, particularly the ability to tax their residents in order to fund the upkeep of their infrastructure, which would normally fall to the crown. By the Fourth Edition of the AF Dictionary, the first meaning of the term was as a general concession by the various financial bureaus of the royal government, but Guibert clearly intended the former definition in the passage.]

Rapport between the Science of Fortifications and Tactics, and with War in General

that an army alone could defend, works whose immensity, uselessness, and costliness we cannot help but bemoan when we think that, if we do not have an army to throw into these works, the place cannot be saved; that, [if] we have an army, it is much better kept in the field, that it covers the place by a well-taken position or by a war of movements, and that finally, in case of misfortune or too-great inferiority, it entrenches itself in the place and maintains itself in its outworks until its fortune would change.19 One sees how important it is that the government occupy itself with this subject [and] that it form in this regard a plan combined on the current situation of the kingdom and on the true principles of war. If I have untangled the latter well, this plan must be to have, in all the frontier provinces, in proportion to their extent, one or several great and good places situated not only in the position that is most advantageous in itself, but in that which, in the greatest view, covers or supports the frontier the best, which I have called, in a word, “places of entrepot and of rallying.” This would be to have, in the rear of the frontier provinces and in four principal points for the totality of the kingdom, four other places destined to receive the foundries, the arsenals, [and] the workshops of military fabrication of every species, because it is incredible that the majority of these establishments are found on the frontier and in cities of the first line. Our two artillery establishments are at Douai and Strasbourg; almost all our cast iron and our melee weapons are manufactured in villages on the frontier and are so much without protection that, every time war will approach, it will only be to an enemy party to come set them on fire.20 This would be, after having determined the great places that it is important for France to maintain, other than the four places of workshops and of arsenals of which I have spoken, to make in this system the changes that circumstances require, like, for example, after an unfortunate war that will have made a border of a province that was not one, to fortify this province as was the one that 19

20

[By the mid-eighteenth century, most of France’s modern fortifications lay on the northeastern frontiers, facing the Low Countries and the Rhine. The Spanish and Italian frontiers were comparatively less-well fortified, in large part because of Vauban’s focus on the Rhine frontier and because of natural barriers. As Guibert indicates, the Rhine fortresses did protect France from serious invasion throughout most of the century, but they were also costly. See Duffy, Fire & Stone, 19–32, and especially Siege Warfare, 106–139.] [Lee Kennett, The French Armies in the Seven Years War: A Study in Military Organization and Administration (Durham: Duke University Press, 1967), provides an effective overview of the mid-century army and its institutions.]

249

was lost, and the same in a fortunate war that will have [advanced] the frontiers of the kingdom, to abandon the fortifications of old limits and to fortify new ones so that the state would have frontiers on which, or in advance of which, armies may make war with advantage, and that all the expenses relative to the construction and the maintenance of places would be applied with combination and with fruit; finally, this would be to abandon the maintenance of all other places, or perhaps to raze them, because this great number of fortresses, the majority of which are too small, poorly situated, [and] half-degraded, is ruinous, useless, and contrary to the true and good principles of war, and because, in case of war, one may advantageously substitute posts entrenched relative to the object of the moment for this species of places.21 But, to execute a so-great change with fruit, we must have first perfected all the parts of our military constitution: we must have troops that are proven and maneuverable [and] generals who know how to command them and who, daring to depart from established routine, adopt, so to speak, a new genre of war. The troops must be indefatigable, accustomed to work, and be able to, at need and promptly, create mobile places of which I have spoken, like the Roman legions that constructed the castrums that they employed for the same use; these troops must be exercised in the construction and defense of these posts, having continuous and well-directed school[ing] on this subject; finally, the arms and courage of soldiers [and] the head and the opinions of officers must be formed, because, the troops arriving at this point of perfection with the ground and the men, one could easily make posts that accomplish the object of places.22 The late Marshal Broglie foresaw this truth in Prague.23 Eighteen years later, his descendants renewed his example at Kassel and Göttingen. Göttingen had only one earth enceinte, degraded and susceptible to insult nearly 21

22 23

[Such a process took place during the prior century, both as a result of internal issues and territorial acquisition. Internal revolts traditionally made use of fortified cities to fend off the royal army, which occasioned French governments from Richelieu forward to destroy most fortifications within the kingdom. In addition, France gained several new territories during the period, including the Franche-Comté, Alsace, and portions of Lorraine, which required shifting fortresses forward to the new frontier. With the exception of the remainder of Lorraine in the late 1760s, the French frontier had remained relatively stable during the eighteenth century.] [Guibert is here guilty of poor Latin: the plural of castrum should be castra. See Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science, 63–82 and 121–122.] [Guibert refers to the Prague Campaign in the War of the Austrian Succession. See 143n15.]

250

chapter xvi

everywhere. In a month, it was put in a state of defense, provisioned and abandoned to its own strength. The enemies approached and were astonished to see a menacing place where they had expected to find only an insultable one. At Kassel, the comte de Broglie created a part of his outworks during the siege. He created some under the enemy’s fire. He elevated work against work, earth against earth.24 In a word, when one follows history, it is these places of the moment, if I may express myself thus, that sustained the most vigorous sieges; it is what a commandant, who would know how to repair a poor enceinte, imagine obstacles, birth them, [and] advance them, that is to say, under the steps of the besiegers, ordinarily has in the defense of these works: intelligence, sangfroid, and obstinacy of execution. 24

[Kassel was a fortified city on the road north from Frankfurt into the Hanoverian theater that served as the anchor point for the French campaigns there, including securing Göttingen, which is to its northeast. Guibert speaks of the opening of the 1761 campaign, when Broglie fortified the city and stymied Ferdinand of Brunswick’s efforts to capture it. See Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 328–329.]

Having dared to advance my opinions on the true usage one must make of fortifications, I may dare to say that, more appropriate to the corps that commands them, in this revolution of systems, they would have another constitution to give them, a constitution that would bring them closer to the troops and the knowledge of all the other parts of war, that would give them more-instructive and more-military school[ing] on the art that they cultivate, [and] finally, that destroys many prejudices following the current constitution and the manner in which it serves them, rendering them more proper to grander and grander objects. This chapter exceeds the boundaries that I had prescribed for it. But can one tear oneself away from commenced ideas? Can one arrest oneself in the exposition of truths that one believes oneself to have discovered! This part was therefore more interesting because it was new to treat and because the majority of errors that I have searched to combat have accumulated over time and the veneer of some appearance of enlightenment.

chapter xvii

Rapport between Knowledge of Terrain and Tactics Judging by all the military details left us by the ancients, the science of reconnaissance of terrain must have been much less important than it is for us. Their orders of battle, deeper and shorter than ours, did not have need of a position for a great development. One is at pains to see that they made a choice of the positions that they occupied. In the story of all the battles of antiquity, one sees no topographic detail. It seems that their battles were always given in plains and that armies sought this species of terrain by preference. It was thus that all the recourse of troops was in maneuvers. One arm supported the other. Cavalry ordinarily formed the wings.1 At Pharsalus, Caesar disposed his army in oblique echelon, and this was what made him win the battle.2 Rarely does one see in history that it was a question of one wing that found protection in the nature of the terrain. [As] for affairs of posts, they are certainly never made mention: the species of arms and of tactics of the ancients were not appropriate to them. The phalanx was only formidable in plains. A Roman legion had all its confidence in itself. As long as the infantry was brave and well-armed, as long as the war machines did not multiply, as long the fight was hand-to-hand, it was thus, but when the legions degenerated, when they quit defensive arms, when they became timid and trembling in plains, when catapults and ballistae multiplied in armies, like cannon multiply today in ours, [they] commenced to have recourse to the resources of terrain, [they] searched for heights, [they] hoped to augment by them the effects of missile machines, [and they] worked to place obstacles

1 [While Guibert is correct that Greek and Roman accounts are short on detailed terrain descriptions, he neglects the topographical information provided in some of the most famous battles of the era in sources he knows and makes use of. For example, Herodotus, Histories, VIII and IX, note the importance of terrain at both the Battle of Thermopylae and the Battle of Plataea, and Polybius, Histories, XVIII, does the same for the 197 BCE Battle of Cynoscephalae, to provide just a few examples.] 2 [The Battle of Pharsalus was the climax of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. Pompey and his supporters fled to Greece in 48, and Caesar pursued. The battle was largely decided by Caesar’s decision to withhold a portion of his infantry to defend against Pompey’s cavalry, which granted him enough surprise to counterattack. While Caesar’s deployment could perhaps be imagined as an oblique order, Guibert is reading into it a bit much, as his critics would contend. See Gaius Julius Caesar, Civil Wars, III:82–112. See also Palmer, “Fredrick the Great, Guibert, Bülow.”]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_053

between the enemy and themselves.3 In the wars of Arrian of Nicomedia against the Alans, one sees the details of the disposition of a battle which accords very much with our own time.4 Somewhat indifferent to the resources that broken country may have offered to their orders of battle, the ancients appeared even less occupied with topographical knowledge in the daily conduct of their operations. Up to the Second Punic War, one does not see anywhere that Roman tactics had relation to the terrain. Fabius was the first who commenced making profit from the nature of the countryside, to oppose the success of Hannibal. His imprudent predecessors were beaten in plains; he sensed that he was too inferior in tactics [compared to] his adversary to compromise him there; he sought the heights, took positions, made a war of movements, [and] evaded battles. His conduct saved Rome, and he found himself censured, so much were the principles of this good campaign unknown to the Romans, accustomed to fighting rather than maneuvering!5 History shows us that Caesar was sometimes occupied with the nature of the countryside in the choice of his camps, but the few topographical details into which Caesar entered in his memoirs seem to prove that these details were not regarded as too important. They were much less so in the times of ignorance and barbarity that succeeded the good years of the Empire; all the parts of the military art degenerated at once; campaigns were no more than incursions, and hazard or courage alone decided battles.6 When firearms acquired some perfection, terrain necessarily commenced to take influence over operations of war. Infantry sought broken ground; it occupied villages, woods, [and] heights by preference. These points became 3 [Guibert is on firmer footing here. Greek phalanxes were extremely vulnerable when the terrain prevented their maintaining tight ranks, while Roman legions were far more flexible. However, both periods saw frequent use of fortifications. To name just two examples, the Athenian armies of the Peloponnesian War greatly benefitted from the protection of the Long Walls around Athens and extending to the Piraeus, and Caesar’s siege of Alesia involved two concentric lines of fortifications. See Caesar, Gallic Wars, VII; and Donald Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 4 Vols. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), especially II: The Archidamian War, 43–69.] 4 [See 120–121n4.] 5 [See 26n60.] 6 [See 19–20n36.]

252 interesting posts and supports to procure; it [infantry] consequently entered into combinations of castrametation and tactics. This was, without doubt, a new resource for the genius, and a step nearer to the perfection of the art, but, as abuses nearly always follow the truth, little by little, the influence of terrain on operations became too absolute. The science of the movements of troops was neglected; it was believed useless to maneuver [and] that all the science of war consisted in choosing advantageous positions. As such, so many topographical officers are elevated, real or pretend, who replace the états-majors of the army and the cabinet of ministers; officers who, for the most part, have no knowledge of tactics, no habit of handling troops, [and] who even regard this knowledge and this habit as beneath them. This handling of topography, this outré prevention of the états-majors of the army in favor of details with which they are charged was [more prominent] in France than elsewhere, because all the officers there are inclined to reason and to believe themselves elevated by the functions that, gilded with some appearance of importance, initiate them to the mysteries of operations.7 Without doubt, the science of reconnaissance of terrain is important; it must be cultivated and its results entered into the daily combinations of war, but it must not be regarded as a branch of tactics that is, I repeat, the mother science; thus, the officers of the état-major of the army must be tacticians; they must know how to dispose and handle troops; in their computations, they must not forget that troops defend more than positions, that they are not defended by them, that terrain is never more than an accessory, and that the [army] is always the principal; finally, they must not at all have the blind pretention of believing that all the science of war and the sublimity of métier resides in their cabinet work. For this to be thus, how must the officers of the étatmajor be chosen? It must be [from] among men who have had the habit of details and movements of all the arms; [from] among the field officers or corps [commanders]; [from] among those who have the most intelligence, the most activity, [and] the most sagacity and accuracy in the coup-d’œil. As it is then a talent to reconnoiter a countryside well, and this talent is founded on a theory in which it is important to acquire practice, these officers would form a permanent corps of the état-major, in peacetime 7 [Guibert could be making an oblique Masonic reference. The Freemasons were popular during the eighteenth century, and many influential men were Masons. Alternatively, he could mean the phrasing in a more general sense, or perhaps as a reference to a Classical cult like that of Isis or Mithras. See Outram, The Enlightenment, 20–22.]

chapter xvii

as in wartime. This corps would be under the direction of a general officer who would himself join the most decided talents for the great part of war [to] the science and the habit of moving all the arms that enter into the composition of an army, [and] who consequently does not regard tactics as a minute and subaltern science: in a word, under the direction of a general officer, as the denomination of this grade, which too often does not carry almost anything of what it promises, signifies a man who, by his study and by his experience, has embraced all the parts of war and who knows the analogy they must have between them.8 Where should the schools of instruction of this étatmajor be held? They will be in the midst of the troops, in great garrisons, [and] in peacetime camps. There, [there would be] no more ideal[ized] computations that practice cannot clarify; there, the great operations of war like marches [and] orders of battle would be put into execution and combined with the terrain; there, consequently, tactics would be taught, that is to say, tactics as I have defined them: “the science of all the parts of war;” there, the officers of the état-major would acquire more and more the habit of maneuvering troops, of fortifying the coup-d’œil against the illusions that produce the multitude [and] against the differences [between] a nude terrain [and one] covered with troops; there, finally, these officers would familiarize themselves more and more with the troops in lieu of tending to separate themselves from them [and] in lieu of regarding them as purely mechanical parts, as they do today. Compare this school of the état-major to that which we have attempted to form since the peace [the Treaty of Paris 1763]. In the latter, there are some officers, the majority of whom are ignorant and disdainful of the first elements of tactics, who have been sent to make reconnaissance of the frontiers; those in whom greater confidence rests have permission to add military memoirs [and] systems of offensive and defensive operations to the reports of those who make this reconnaissance; the others are young officers designated under the name “students.” From these are demanded only purely topographical memoirs, that is to say, the work of a geographical engineer. Thus, the one and the other lose the view of the troops. “What is 8 [Guibert provides another foundational element in the development of the operational level of war: officers skilled in handling allarms forces, a rarity during the century. He also obliquely addresses another development in military affairs. The état-major functioned as the army’s staff, but the French army did not have a general staff to direct its strategy and operations. Guibert seems to suggest that the état-major might evolve into such an institution, although this may be one of Palmer’s lucky guesses. See Palmer, “Frederick the Great, Guibert, Bülow.”]

Rapport between Knowledge of Terrain and Tactics

253

to be done with the troops?” cry some, and these are the most enlightened. “We are excluded by state [by position] from commanding them; they are absorbed in details; one seems not to imagine that their operations may have anything in common with us.” “What is tactics?” say others, and this is the greater number. “It is a futile science, and we are fortunate to be removed from its details. Of what import [are] all this discipline [and] all these evolutions? It is our reconnaissance, our marches, [and] the choice of our positions that are the sublime and the important [elements] of the métier.” And thus reasoning, they go to drafting, drawing itineraries, making their imaginary armies move, and often not seeing one soldier the entire year. What results from this? It is that in the [next] war, if the generals are forced to indifferently employ all the members of this school, affairs will be found to be poor, [or] that, if they choose the officers of the état-major themselves, those that they choose will not be better, or, even when they have the necessary qualities to succeed, they will be at least inexpert or rusty on the details with which they are charged.9 There is certainly a theory, and [there are] principles, for reconnoitering a countryside [and] for untangling the details, seizing them, and calculating them in memory. In studying the direction of roads and watercourses, one makes a neater and more military idea of a countryside. On the points where an officer will carry himself in entering a countryside that will be unknown, to better-seize the aspect of the points of repair and signal which he will have chosen [and] of the triangles and of the routes that his eye will project, it will be facile to judge if he has or does not have the talent of reconnoitering. Particularly in mountainous countryside, it is an art to well-untangle the principal chains from the summits or from the spurs that derive from them, the points where waters are born and flow, the entries to gorges, the species of overhangs, the depth of valleys, [and] the distances of places. In this regard, there exists an excellent theory created by Bourcet, of which the military must desire the publication.10 But the great means to become skillful in the science of reconnoitering terrain is daily practice; it is in youth to voyage, to hunt, [and] to often make military promenades.

Thus was Philopœmen made: Polybius cites him.11 Thus will all officers be made who wish to elevate themselves to the great parts of war. Thus, in whatever army that one serves, the science of coup-d’œil is of the greatest importance. In my elementary tactics, I have proposed schools for officers in this regard. These schools would produce the good field officers, and, from these field officers, excellent subjects for the états-majors of the armies.12 When one has formed the coup-d’œil; when one knows how to perfectly judge a terrain [and] measure distances judged under different aspects; when one is affirmed in one’s view against the numerous illusions that different terrains may produce, the quantity and the complication of troops of different arms viewed under different aspects, the maneuvers of these troops, the ruses of tactics that serve them if they are skillfully handled, the more-or-less serene horizon, and a thousand other accidental or local causes: [this] is about learning to see a countryside militarily, that is to say, to promptly and surely untangle what influence this countryside may have on military operations; what position it offers, in some case, to the army or to the corps of troops whose movements one computes; what the debouches and the ensemble of a march will be on some point; [and] finally, the general rapport and the details that this mass of countryside may have with the armies that act in it. But this talent may [only] be augmented, not acquired, by habit: it is a present of nature and the instinct of genius. Suppose a man who will be an excellent topographer, who will untangle and embrace well, with the eye and the imagination, the ensemble of a countryside, [and suppose an] abstraction made of troops and circumstances: if this man is not born [a] man of war, transport him to a terrain covered with troops: he would be obliged to combine his local knowledge with that of military operations; [if] he will be charged with determining a movement or a position relative to this or that circumstance, he will be embarrassed, uncertain, [and] blind, and, if he finally determines [one], he will take the worst position; for a stronger reason he will take it, if, as often arrives in war, his determination must be prompt, if it rushes like his coup-d’œil, [or] if it will be taken in the midst of tumult and danger, in the midst of inconveniences that offer all the false positions that often surround the one that is good. It is this sagacity of coup-d’œil

9

10

[The Ecole royale militaire. Like many army institutions during the period, the état-major was the focus of several reform efforts, as Guibert indicates. See Blaufarb, The French Army, 12–45; and Latreille, L’œuvre militaire de la révolution 1–53.] [Guibert’s only overt reference to Bourcet and his pamphlet on mountain warfare. This confirms the long suspicions of historians, that work was read by officers during the period despite not being published for another century.]

11

12

[Philopœmen was a Greek general who served the Achæan League in the late third and early second centuries BCE, including defeating a Spartan army at the Battle of Mantinea in 207. See Plutarch, Comparison of Philopœmen and Titus and Philopœmen.] [61–70.]

254 and of judgement that wins battles and that nature only bestows, in the space of a century, to some privileged men. The science of coup-d’œil and the knowledge of terrain being intimately tied to tactics, one sees how the false and useless the enlightenment given in the schools of the étatmajor will be, not being constituted after this fundamental principle. I will make it sensed even more. It is about choosing a position for an army. If he who determines it is not a tactician, how is he to know how to combine, relative to the strength of this army, the extent that this position must have? How will he regard, in the choice of this position, the species of arm in which the army is stronger or more feeble [and] the species of order of battle that may be the most advantageous to occupy? For want of this combination, one takes positions that are good in themselves but that are found defective relative to the number and the species of troops that garnish them. Positions are taken where the front is redoubtable and where the army may not maneuver for want of depth. Others are taken that are formidable on all parts but in which the army, reduced to the defensive, loses the advantage of being able to maneuver and profit from enemy faults. Finally, they are taken where, by a movement that was not foreseen, the enemy succeeds in turning them, piercing them, or making them be abandoned without being able to resist. But after a position is determined, after it is reconnoitered advantageous, whether relative to the views of the offensive and defensive or by rapport of the number and the species of troops that must occupy it, there remains [the] manner of disposing the different arms, in which the tactics must be combined with the knowledge of the terrain. This mélange of combinations is an art that also has its principles. For example, [suppose] there is a chain of heights determined to be the front of the position that the army must occupy. If, following the ordinary routine, one ordains the disposition of the troops by being on the same terrain and in reviewing the front of the position, one courts [the] risk of not distributing the arms in the emplacements that may be the most advantageous for them and of not drawing from the position all the advantage to which it is susceptible. On the contrary, in going in advance of the position and to points where the enemy could arrive on it, one will discover the ensemble and the details more perfectly; one will at first see the terrain that is before it, the aspect that it presents to the enemy, [and] the disposition of offensive that it may indicate to them. Next, supposing oneself to be in the place of the enemy, one will search for the means by which they might attack this position, and, from there, what counter-means that one may [use to] oppose them. In seeing the position [from the opposite view], one will better judge the emplacement that must be given to each species of arms,

chapter xvii

the advantageous salients for batteries to occupy, the effect that the fire of these batteries must make on the debouches by which the enemy may arrive, the point of heights [that is] most convenient to occupy so that the infantry fire does not plunge too much, [and] the ridges behind which one may form a party of troops to be sheltered from the fire of enemy batteries or make illusion to the enemy on the number of forces and on the true disposition that opposes them. The science of reconnaissance of terrain, combined with tactics, may be, as one sees, the subject of an interesting work, and it would doubtlessly birth a school of the état-major constituted on the plan that I propose. On this branch of the military art, as on so many others, nothing [has been] reduced to principles; it is believed that this is useless, on one hand because the talent to know a countryside is, it is said, an innate gift, and that, on the things of genius, there are no precepts to pose, [and] on the other because [people] are at pains to believe that tactics is a science, and even less that it has an indispensable liaison with knowledge of terrain.13 In supposing that field officers must become tacticians, I admit for a stronger reason that generals would also be them, and thus armies would be more maneuvering; when I say “armies,” I mean armies en masse and not parceled out in corps and detachments. They would know how to execute marches to the enemy’s range, take orders of battle, and win battles by maneuvers. One would depart from the current routine in proportion to [how much] one takes advantage of the war of movement; one would return to armies that are less numerous and less overloaded with embarrassments; one would search less for what are called “positions,” because positions must never be the last resource of a maneuvering and well-commanded army. When an army knows how to maneuver, and when it wishes to fight, there are few positions that it cannot attack in reverse or make the enemy abandon. Positions, in a word, should only be taken when one has reasons to not search to act or when they are of a nature that they reduce the enemy to attacking them with disadvantage or to fail their operations. This merits to be developed with more details. What, in effect, is a good position? It is a vast development of terrain whose front and flanks are furnished with emplacements advantageous to the army that must occupy them and present difficult-to-vanquish obstacles to the enemy that might dislodge them. But what will this position, however good it is, be to a skillfully and 13

[In these paragraphs, Guibert illustrates the intimate linkage between terrain and forces that is presupposed in the French definition of the term “coup d’œil.”]

Rapport between Knowledge of Terrain and Tactics

255

maneuverable enemy? Might it not be turned at a distance, if it is not near? And thus would the army that occupies it not be obliged to abandon it? Is this position, formidable to its front, [also] to the rear? And attacked on this latter side, would it not become disadvantageous? It is rare that nature presents these positions of double-front in which an army may be equally well-posted on both faces. This is the same routine of received ideas as [the idea that], as no one has yet seen an army attacked from the rear, one does not wonder that it may be possible. Nevertheless, there is nothing more possible. Suppose, on one side, an army overloaded with embarrassments, poorly skilled at maneuvering, finally, as ours are; and on the other, an army well-constituted, maneuvering, [and] commanded by a general who has meditated on all the resources of tactics. The one will search for positions [and] will place all its confidence there, will move with difficulty and slowness, will be chained by its methods of subsistence, [and] will think itself lost if it does not always have its establishments quite exactly behind it. The other will be light and maneuverable, capable of hardy movements, of rapid and strong marches; it will always be on the offensive, almost never shut up in positions, and scornful of those that wish to oppose it. The enemy believes that they will be arrested by one of these positions [that are] pretended to be inexpungable? It will know how to steal a movement from them, or, without stealing from them, will go, in their view, to their flank or behind them. To execute this movement, it will carry, if it can, food for eight days, and it will pass on establishments. What will the enemy do, surprised by this new genre of war? Will they wait for an army skilled in moving to fall rapidly on the feeble part of a disposition, to pass, in a movement, from march order to combat order, finding itself able to attack the flank or the rear of their position? This inaction would become destructive to them. Will they change their position? Then they will lose the advantages of terrain on which they had counted, and they will be obliged to receive battle where they could. Perhaps their heavy and slow movement will make a prize of them: they will be embarrassed by their baggage and their means of subsistence; they will fear being separated from their establishments, which they could not do without, because they will have contracted the habit of being subject to them, and because their troops, more numerous than those of the other army, will be, independently of that, less sober and less patient.14

Finally, I say that an army, well-constituted and wellcommanded, must never find before it a position that arrests it or forces it to attack the army that is established there with disadvantage unless it is one of those rare positions that, touching the object that they wish to cover, leaves no resource for maneuvering either behind it or on its flank. It was such a position so skillfully chosen by Marshal Broglie in advance of Frankfurt and so gloriously justified by the victory in the battle that he gave there.15 In general, such are they [those positions] that an army may take at the head of a unique debouche that it wishes to defend, or in advance or quite within range of a place, that it would be necessary for the enemy to lay siege to. I say that in all other cases, positions are contemptible; that it is facile to oblige the enemy to leave them; and [that], if they are obstinate in resting there, to attack them with advantage. One has only to go to their flank or their rear; one has only to attack by all other sides than by the front of this position, which is where they have premeditated their defense disposition and where the terrain is advantageous for them. I say that a general who will shake off established prejudices in this regard will embarrass his enemy, will surprise them, will not allow them to breathe in any way, [and] will force them to fight or to always retreat before him. But for such a general, there must be an army constituted differently from ours, an army that, having been exercised and formed by him, must prepare the species of all-new operations that he would make it execute.16 I have already thrown, in the course of this work, some ideas on this important subject; I will return to them again, because I dare to imagine that there is a manner of conducting armies [that is] more advantageous, more decisive, [and] better-made to procure great success [compared to] those that we have employed up to the present. The King of Prussia is the only general who had sometimes had this manner, and it made his glory.

14

16

[Guibert describes the practice of war by Revolutionary French armies, although the passage clearly imagines it only as an abstraction, not as a prophecy that Guibert believes will be

15

fulfilled in coming decades. See Hayworth, “The French Way of War.”] [Guibert refers to the Battle of Bergin, which took place at the beginning of the 1759 season. Broglie began the campaign by occupying the free city of Frankfurt-am-Main, which became his supply base with possibilities of striking north into Hanover or northeast into Saxony. Ferdinand of Brunswick maneuvered to attack Broglie, resulting in the battle at Bergin just outside the city. The French won the battle, but the year’s campaigning was spoiled by the later defeat at the Battle of Minden. See Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 215–218.] [Guibert again obliquely predicts the kind of operational-level warfare practiced by Napoleon, but with no indication that he believes it possible.]

chapter xviii

Rapport between the Science of Subsistence and War, and Particularly with Campaign War. Examination of the Manner by Which We Make Our Armies Subsist The art of providing subsistence to armies is an important branch in the vast science of war. This art, like all the others, has had its revolutions; it has, following the times, varied in its details and in its principles. I will make an interesting examination here of what it was in the principal ages of antiquity and what it is in ours. One does not see in history, [although] it is easy to conceive, how the small armies of the Greek republics may and must have subsisted, making war some leagues from their territory, and what species of war! Incursions of some days made during the harvest season and ordinarily terminated by a battle, after which the two parties repaired their losses and cultivated their fields. History has left us equally without enlightenment [about], and it is more difficult to [imagine], the manner by which these armies subsisted when the ambition of the Greek states, augmented with their power, made them more numerous, and they went to the conquest of neighboring islands and some parts of the Asian coast.1 One sees only that the soldier, who previously fought for free, received regular pay. History says that this pay was all in silver, and it marks the sum. Was the soldier then charged, by means of this pay, with providing his own food? How was it provided? Did the army form magazines? Here, we are ignorant. I could give conjectures on these subjects, but it is useless to hazard conjectures where enlightenment is missing.2 How the almost fabulous multitudes with which the Kings of Persia attempted to invade Greece were sustained is known even less still. They were so numerous, [and] they trailed in their wake a so-great quantity of baggage and beasts of burden, that they dried the rivers that they sojourned near, according to the hyperbolic Herodotus, and drought and pestilence established themselves afterwards in the countries through which they had passed. As such, one could conclude that these armies 1 [Guibert follows the linguistic standards of Greek writers in referring to Anatolia as “Asia;” the specific reference is to the settlement of the Ionian coastline by Greeks.] 2 [Many of these details have been illuminated, if only in limited quantity, by archaeological studies since the eighteenth century. See Lawrence Tritle, “Men at War,” in The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World, 279–293.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_054

lived, haphazardly and without method, by the means that the countryside offered them, and what confirms this is that their expeditions were only incursions. These armed inundations had the course of torrents and flowed like them.3 As to the rest, it is not the case to regret that history says nothing about how these barbarous armies subsisted in their expeditions; they perished on them, as in the fights that they won, victims of their immensity and their ignorance. But one must regret, in return, not having more detail on the proceedings of subsistence employed by the fortunate and skillful conquerors like Cyrus, Alexander, [and] Hannibal. History has transmitted us nothing. Nowhere do we see their armies arrested by the formation of magazines and by calculations of subsistence. Doubtlessly, they lived off the country where they made war and on the commodities of the countryside; doubtlessly, they were sober and hardened; doubtlessly, they also had combinations of subsistence [that were] less complicated, less timid, [and] less financial than ours. Consider the expeditions of these armies; see Alexander taking the Macedonians to go to conquer Asia; follow Hannibal in departing Spain to go to carry the war to Rome, passing the Pyrenees, traversing the Gauls,4 having at each step unknown peoples to conciliate or to fight, then opening a route to traverse the Alps, descending into Italy, and sustaining nine victorious years, and without drawing any succor from Carthage. If one places these campaigns in parallel to ours, if one transports these vast operations on the current scale of our military combinations, one will be forced to doubtfully revoke history or to agree on the shrinking of our genius.5 3 [Herodotus, Histories, VII describes Xerxes’s invasion of Greece in 480, to which Guibert refers.] 4 [Guibert refers specifically to the Gallic tribes of the regions around the Alpine Mountains, which the Romans referred to as “Cisalpine,” “this side of the Alps” and “Transalpine,” “across the Alps.”] 5 [Guibert misses, or perhaps elides, a vital aspect of warfare during the period: supply by sea. The Carthaginians, like the Greeks before them and the Romans after, were a maritime power as much as they were a land power, and their armies rarely strayed from naval support and supply. Guibert likely ignores this aspect of the Punic Wars because it does not provide an analogy to warfare in his period or in Western Europe. See Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, and especially

Rapport between the Science of Subsistence and War, and Particularly with Campaign War

257

The wars of the Romans do not instruct us much more on the details of the ancients’ science of subsistence. One conceives that they must have been simple and easy when the Roman armies had business with the peoples of Latium. But what they were when Rome undertook foreign and distant wars no historian teaches us. Some traits, scattered here and there, thus form all our enlightenment. Livy sometimes mentions distributions of vinegar, of wine, and of grains; one sees there legions that were being punished being condemned to barley bread, doubtless proof that that another species [of bread] was distributed to the rest of the army.6 One reads in Vegetius that the camp prefects, which was a purely military office, were charged with the detail[s] of subsistence. One reads there that Roman centuries had hand mills [and] that they were distributed grain in kind. Elsewhere, it is said that, on expeditions, each soldier carried his portion of flour for fifteen days, and that, on arriving at the camp, he made, with this moistened flour, a manner of cake that served as his subsistence.7 This usage of hand mills and grain or flour distributions to the troops was proposed several times in our time and treated as chimerical. An instructive example that one must finally draw from the study of the constitution of the Roman legions, in the time of their vigor, and the result of their operations, is the temperance, austerity, [and] indefatigable patience that were at their base. These troops knew how to accommodate themselves to all species of food, and, at need, to endure hunger and thirst. Also, nowhere in the history of the good military age of this nation does one see operations stopped by calculations of subsistence. In our modern history, one sees, at each step, combinations of subsistence making armies halt and commanding the generals.8 Another important truth that one may draw from the study of the Roman wars, [a] truth whose result runs quite contrary to our current systems of subsistence, is that armies lived off the countryside, and at the expense of the countryside. “It must be that war nourishes war,” said Cato in the Senate, and this maxim of Cato was, for the Romans, a state maxim. As soon as an army had set

foot into enemy country, it was to the commanding general to make it subsist, and he had most-usefully served the Republic if, in making the most glorious campaign, [he] better-maintained his army, and brought, after the campaign, more money to the public treasury. From this [came] an almost-continuous state of war, in the midst of which the Republic flourished. It received growth and riches from war, as our states receive enfeeblement and misery today by the disorderly constitution of their military systems. Scipio carried the war to Africa, and quite far from exhausting Rome to nourish his army, Rome’s granaries were refilled with African wheat.9 Caesar went to conquer the Gauls, and Rome heard nothing of him at all but by the sound of his victories. Not only was his army not a charge to the state, but also he enriched this army; he passed funds to the public treasury; he reserved [some] for his vast designs; he embellished the Gauls after they had submitted to him; he changed the face of cities; he constructed roads that are still monuments today; with Gaulish gold, he prepared irons for Germany, for his patrie itself; and the Gauls liked his domination.10 We do not have the art of conducting wars thus, but we return to that which is the subject of my research. I was wrong in saying that no morsel in history exists when there are some orderly details on the manner in which the Romans made their armies subsist. I have found one: it is the detail of the beautiful campaign of Caesar in Africa against Pompey’s lieutenants. This precious morsel, updated and restored by Guichard,11 proves how their science of subsistence was different from ours; how they were simpler in their means, hardier in their combinations, and less awkward in their operations. Caesar landed in Africa with only some legions; he found himself there without food, without magazines, [and] without places of war. A tempest dispersed and distanced the greater part of his fleet. The enemies assembled in all parts; he had against him the indefatigable Numidians, and many more harassers than our current light troops. He entrenched on the

Donald Engels, “Logistics: Sinews of War” and Philip de Souza, “War at Sea” in The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World, 351–368 and 369–394.] 6 [See Adams, “War and Society in the Roman Empire,” 272–274.] 7 [Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science, 65–69.] 8 [Guibert likely speaks of recent experience. French commanders who did not wish to campaign cited supply issues; for example, Louis-François-Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, duc de Richelieu, halted his 1757 invasion of Hanover on just those grounds; see François-Joachim de Pierre, Cardinal Bernis, comte de Lyonnais, Memoirs and Letters, 2 Vols., trans. Katharine Wormeley (Boston: Hardy, Pratt, & Co., 1902), I:296–316 and II:1–27.]

10

9

11

[See Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, 286–309. Following its conquest, Africa would be Rome’s breadbasket.] [“The Gauls liked his domination” is an exaggeration, even for Guibert. The Gauls constantly fought Caesar and only submitted after several wars and what amounted to an attempted Roman genocide.] [Karl Gottlieb Guichard, Mémoires militaires sur les Grecs et les Romains, 2 Vols. (Paris, 1760), includes an analysis of Caesar’s African campaign. Guibert would have been positively disposed towards Guichard’s because of the latter’s attacks on Folard, which are present throughout his work. Guibert had the opportunity to meet and converse with Guichard in 1773 during his tour of Prussia. See Guibert, Journal d’un voyage en Allemagne, I:200–209.]

258

chapter xviii

sea coast; from there, step by step and always conserving his communication with this first entrepot, he advanced into the countryside, where he established posts by echelons; took over the city of Hadrumentum, and made a second entrepot; formed magazines there, [and] then, having received reinforcements, abandoned his position [to] take a second [that was] more offensive [and] made more audacious detachments and establishments; and finally, always harassed and always vanquisher, sustained himself, was joined by all his forces, then deployed them, beat Pompey’s lieutenants, dissipated their army, pacified Africa, and thus terminated the most glorious and the most perilous campaign that he made. Caesar landed in Africa with an army and carried neither food nor baggage [with him]: in this, he conducted himself as a great man and not as an adventurer; he calculated that he landed in a country that was abundant, peopled, [and] replete with cities that were open or feebly fortified; [and] that, in this country, a little-numerous army well-conducted would always find food, if only those commodities that prudence had held in reserve from the mouths of the inhabitants. He calculated that, in making long preparations on the coast of Italy, he would give time to Africa to assemble and to go to dispute the debarkation; that distant dispositions wished to be unexpected, hardy, [and] rapid; and that, when to vulgar eyes they would appear haphazard, the man of genius who commands them would sustain with the most certainty.12 I will have occasion to return to this later. The times of decadence that undermined the Roman Empire, and the centuries of barbarity that followed its fall, offer nothing instructive on any branch of war. Until the epoch of Maurits of Nassau and Gustav Adolf, armies beat each other without combination and subsisted in nearly the same way. Campaigns were species of incursions. They spread across the countryside; they marched by corps and in cantonment. If they assembled, it was only for some days, and in order to give battle. The countryside contributed as it could to the subsistence of people of war, and it could not furnish them at length, because of the extreme indiscipline that reigned amongst them.13 12 13

Caesar, African War. See also Richard Billows, Julius Caesar: The Colossus of Rome (London: Routledge, 2009), 205–235. [To paraphrase Guibert, this passage contains some truth among a great deal of exaggeration. Warfare between around 200 and 1600, particularly during the medieval period, did have many campaigns of the form Guibert mentions: small armies conducting raids or chevauchées to destroy crops. However, there are also many examples of armies acting as they did in the post-1600 period, assembling in large numbers and fighting multi-year campaigns; the Habsburg-Valois Wars are one such occurrence.]

Under Maurits of Nassau and Gustav Adolf, a new order was born in the armies; troops learned to encamp, to march, [and] to fight. With the austere discipline that these great men established, other methods of subsistence followed. Armies, assembled in camps, had need of magazines. Gustav Adolf made daily distributions of bread and meat to his soldiers. In forced operations, they knew how to live more soberly. He had raised them to feed on everything and to fast without murmur. This spirit subsisted long after him in the Swedish troops. The new methods of subsistence did not at all hinder the operations of Gustav Adolf and the skillful generals who succeeded him. Then, armies were less numerous; they did not trail an enormous quantity of artillery and equipment in their wake. Luxury had not enervated morals and augmented needs.14 With these small armies, great conquests could be made. The generals themselves took the office of munitionnaire. The duc de Rohan, in his Parfait Capitaine, detailed these functions. He elevates against those who had proposed to confine these details to non-military people; as if, he says, providing for how an army lives does not make up part of the art of commanding it.15 It was at the end of the reign of Louis XIII and under Louis XIV that, the French armies being organized with more perfection, subsistence commenced being delivered regularly to the troops. The details of subsistence ceased to be in the hands of militaires. If the generals were so maladroit as to esteem themselves fortunate to be rid of them, the ministers saw them, doubtlessly with pleasure, enter into their department[s], because by this, in some way, operations and generals were subject to them.16 The subsistence of our army has since been alternatingly administered by enterprise and by regulation. Louvois was the first minister who commenced giving extension and important to this branch of details, which had been regarded as quite subaltern until then. It became less so as an effect of the change that was made in the system of war, by the prodigious augmentation of armies and their baggage, [and] by the species of the majority of campaigns that passed entirely in sieges. I have already said how, from then on, it was no longer what I call war, on both sides. The science seemed to consist of opposing place to place, magazine to magazine. The mass of provisions, [a] sage precaution when it had its boundaries, degenerated into a mania under Louvois. He had them 14 15 16

[Guibert’s phrasing here is almost verbatim from Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science, 4–5.] [See Rohan, Le parfait capitaine, 222–224.] [See Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle, 67–146; and Parrott, The Business of War, especially 139–195, and Richelieu’s Army, 313– 365 and 399–462.]

Rapport between the Science of Subsistence and War, and Particularly with Campaign War

[magazines] on all the frontiers. By this, he pretended to hold in his hand all the means of operations and to decide the campaign plans. In effect, he decided them. His adulators named him “the general of generals.” I do not pretend to say that Louvois was not a genius, that he did not render great service to the arms of Louis XIV, but for some passing success to which he contributed during his life, his preponderance of genius and his superiority of handling the new system of war [against] the cabinets of other powers, he occasioned great evils in its wake. He misled Louis XIV on his real power; he introduced a genre of war [that is] disastrous for the population and for finances; he augmented the armies [and] expenses; and, not having by this means superior to the rest of Europe, he won nothing; he only forced the other princes to form a league against Louis XIV and to ruin their states like him.17 After Louvois’s death, Louis XIV had poor ministers, and generals poorer still. Yet [his] routine was taken and adopted by all of Europe; it was no longer possible to change it. Obliged to face off [with enemies] everywhere, France found itself overwhelmed under an unfortunate defensive. It is unknown how many millions these new systems of subsistence introduced by Louvois cost the kingdom. There was not a battle lost or a city taken that did not result in the loss of immense magazines. The accessory misfortunes became more destructive than the principal misfortune. Blenheim saw the loss of forty millions’ [worth] of established magazines, by echelons, from our frontiers to the Danube.18 At Turin, we abandoned a prodigious quantity of baggage and provisions in advance of that place and in the rest of Piedmont. Chamillard had tripled the means, counting assured by them the success of the duc de Feuillade, his son-in-law.19 To this, one cannot object that these magazines were formed at the expense of the enemy; they were at France’s cost. Almost all of Germany, where we made war, was our ally, and the purchases that the King made were paid in cash. In Piedmont, the expenses of the duchesse de Bourgogne were made to be covertly paid with the deliveries that we haughtily demanded from the countryside under the title 17 18 19

[Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle, 67–146.] [See Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 200–204.] [Louis d’Aubusson de la Feuillade, duc de Roannais, was a general in the War of the League of Augsburg and the War of Spanish Succession; he received his baton in 1724. He married Chamillard’s daughter, as Guibert indicates, and was a skilled and popular courtier. He was disgraced at the Siege of Turin in 1706, when he refused the advice of Vauban and failed to take the city, then had his army defeated with significant losses by Eugene. As Guibert indicates, Chamillard had directed a great deal of supply to the campaign, leading to its loss. See Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 300–312.]

259

of “contributions.” The kingdom was burdened with debts; all the furnishing of subsistence was done by enterprises; the marches of entrepreneurs accompanied all the campaigns. It was usury that sold their services to necessity.20 Our system of subsistence has not at all been ameliorated since the Spanish Succession; it has become more and more financial and ruinous. The disorder of finances and routine have always had recourse to enterprises. We render justice, in the midst of all this, to the company that, during our last two wars, was charged with furnishing bread to our armies. This citizen company served with honor; it sometimes lost without murmur and never gained to excess. I have followed the payment of its accounts in the last war: its gain, proportionate to its advances, to the uncertainty of payment, [and] to the non-value of royal effects that it reimbursed, was only legitimate gain.21 Unfortunately, this company was not charged with all the branches of enterprise relative to the troops. One particularly recalls the horrors of the campaign of 1757: brigandage was it its height, [and] the hospitals were charnel houses.22 I arrest myself; I will not soil my pen with making a census of these crimes. What still seems to be a problem today is if it is better to administer the armies’ subsistence by regulation or by enterprise. It is uncertain if the administration of the pays d’état is more advantageous than financial administration; it is in doubt if it is better to lease one’s field than it is to cultivate it oneself.23 20 21

22 23

[Ibid.] [Guibert presumably refers to Jean-Joseph de Laborde, midcentury businessman and financier. He made his fortune in Spain, where he also acquired a reputation for honesty and competence. Under the auspices of First Minister Choiseul, Foreign Minister Bernis, and the Pâris family that controlled royal finance in the early part of the century, Laborde was given the contract to supply French armies in the Seven Years War. Despite the disaster that the war represented for French finance and credit, Laborde emerged from it with his reputation intact, as Guibert indicates, but he could not escape being guillotined during the Revolution in 1794. Laborde also published prolifically, particularly on finance. See Jean-Joseph de Laborde, Correspondance (Oxford: Electronic Enlightenment Project), http://www.e -enlightenment.com/person/laborjeanj001081.] It would be a quite-interesting work for humanity, that which would treat a better plan of administration for the hospitals of an army and a better policy to observe in them. [Contemporary France had two basic types of province: pays d’élection and pays d’état. The pays d’élection were under direct royal rule, usually through a royal intendant. The pays d’état retained regional privileges, particularly of avoiding some taxes and devolving power to local assemblies. For example, Brittany was exempt from the gabelle, the royal salt monopoly and tax, and retained its traditional Estates-General, an assembly of representatives from the clergy, nobility, and commons. The pays

260

chapter xviii

All contracts necessarily suppose that the contracting company [adopts] the tacit convention to profit from the contract and the calculated surety of this profit (or this company is a company of dupes).24 It may be that, by extraordinary misfortunes followed by much disinterest, the company gains little, but for this unique luck, there are a thousand [others] that carry gain beyond computed hopes. All enterprise, calculated and conducted by intelligent people, must thus prosper. Their gains will be less considerable in proportion to their being less greedy, more honest, [and] more exact in their supplies in proportion to their closer approaching the principles of the company that I have described above. But if these associations of entrepreneurs are ill-composed, then the gains will become illicit and immense; then, following supplies of poor alloy, [come] the depredations, the supposed or exaggerated losses at the expense of the King, the false procès-verbaux, etc. Then, the protector, the intriguer, [and] the usurer rush from all sides, attracted by the lure of fortune; they unite, [and] they penetrate into the bureaus and the antechambers of the court; they propose shares, interests, [and] they find support. So many people are greedy in a century of luxury and intrigues! The minister is seduced by the offer of a contract at the lowest price; he consents. This enterprise [is then] under-farmed, passing through two or three hands [before] it finally finishes by falling into those of a man who, so as not to ruin it, to suffer through all the remunerations that are imposed on him, is forced to ill-serve the service with which he is charged.25

24

25

d’état tended to be on the kingdom’s periphery, as most were added to the kingdom more recently than the pays d’élection. A third category, pays d’imposition, existed in the most recent territorial acquisitions like Corsica, Roussillon, and Lorraine. Essentially, Guibert is making an argument for centralized government by characterizing the decentralized pays d’état as having inefficient government. See Roland Mousnier, The Institutions of the Absolute Monarchy, 2 Vols., trans. Brian Pearce and Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979–1984), 1:607–611.] [Guibert highlights the fundamental principle of contemporary capitalism: companies existed to make profit, and the accepted method of conducting business allowed for a certain amount of underhanded activity to reach that goal. He also makes a series of social-commentary puns that do not translate, as the word he uses for company, “société,” also means “society.”] [The taxation system in Old-Regime France was incredibly complex, but many indirect taxes were collected by the Farmers of the General Farm. The Farmers were private individuals or companies who contracted with the government to collect indirect taxes, taking a portion of them as their fee. General Farmers were at the top of the system and often contracted with the royal government directly. They would then sell portions of their contracts to lesser Farmers, which is what Guibert

Struck by the truth of what has just been exposed, when there are no other reasons that can be given after this, an enlightened government must thus abstain from all sort of contracts. It must in order for the state to have the entrepreneurs’ profit for itself; in order to remove all temptation of corruption from its surroundings; in order to surprise the public with the éclat of these indecent fortunes, elevated by the way of enterprise; [and] in order to hinder the gangrene that the example of these fortunes brings to public morals. An [easy] decision must be the base of the government’s conduct in this regard. If the company that proposes itself for an enterprise is composed of people of probity and enlightenment, it will only be to establish administration of the object in question at the expense of the state; it will only be to encourage its members by a just salary for their work, by flattering distinctions, [and] by the resources of honor that, wellemployed, more stir the men of this genre than interest. If the company that offers itself is composed of dubious and unknown people, it must be rejected; there would almost always be loss with suspect people, and rarely gain with people who have not been proven. “But,” it is said, “there are inevitable ills.” All the nations of Europe have contracts in different [parts] of their administration. If one reads the journals of the English Parliament, one will see how much the subsistence of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick’s army cost the English in the Seven Years War. Everything was done at the price of gold and with incredible depredations.26 The Austrians

26

means by “under-farm.” The system mirrored the feudal process of subinfeudation where the crown would vest the upper nobility with provinces and the upper nobles would then subinfeudate lesser nobles with counties and smaller parcels of land. As might be imagined, this system was both inefficient and prone to corruption, both in the assessment of taxes and their collection by the Farmers. However, its interests were so entrenched in the government, particularly in the various financial bureaus, that it could not be changed. The intransigence of the General Farm, and the general inefficiency of revenue collection, greatly contributed to the financial crisis and eventual Revolution. See Collins, The Fiscal Limits of Absolutism: Direct Taxation in Early Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) and The State in Early Modern France; Michael Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of Taxation in Eighteenth-Century France (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Mousnier, The Institutions of the Absolute Monarchy, 1:215–219 and 516–517; and Rowlands, The Financial Decline of a Great Power.] [Guibert likely refers to the Journals of the House of Commons, which were published by Parliament starting in the sixteenth century as its official record. Volumes 27–29 cover the period in question; for example, 28:57, gives an accounting of expenditures for 1762.]

Rapport between the Science of Subsistence and War, and Particularly with Campaign War

had entrepreneurs in the Seven Years War. The King of Prussia himself often had recourse to these means.27 But what example can we make of our neighbors? When they are good, imitate them; when they are bad, close [our] eyes towards them and search for the good where it may be. One cites the King of Prussia: to begin with, it is false that his supply in general was administered by enterprise. It was a directory of [the] war [department] divided into several commissariats that administered it. At the alarm, one of these commissariats had command of the bakery. In Saxony, his magazines were formed at the expense of the country and by the cares of the same country. When his troops were quartered, it was the country that furnished their subsistence. The inventories of consumption, looked over by the generals commanding the arrondissements and by the commissariat, were then sent to the grand directory, established at Torgau or at Leipzig, to make the deduction of food consumed from the quantity of taxes demanded from the country. By means of this administration, [there were] no employees, no expenses of magazines, no waste, [and] no non-valeurs; the magazines belonged to the country, as long as it was not consumed.28 The King of Prussia had some affair with entrepreneurs, but I will say on what occasion. It was a question of forming, in extraordinary and pressing circumstances, a provisioning depot at Custrin, at Breslau, or elsewhere. He allowed the enterprise of this furnishing to be given to a particular person or a company. These sorts of temporary enterprises for fixed quantities are never ruinous for a government, and the King of Prussia calculated the price of resources too closely to allow that. He made considerable agiots with Ephraim and other Jews, but these agiots29 were relative to the operations of monies; he is otherwise himself the entrepreneur and the steward of all the furnishings where expenses relate to his military, and it is this sage method that multiplies his resources so universally. I have engaged myself in this detail because the example of the King of Prussia, maladroitly cited by the 27

[See Duffy, The Army of Frederick the Great, 130–142; and The Army of Maria Theresa, 123–134.] 28 [Non-valeur means either a fallow field, from which a farmer drew no profit, or a tax that could not be collected by the Farmer. Both senses work for Guibert’s intention.] 29 [The word agiot, or agio, has changed in meaning since Guibert’s period. Today, it generally refers to an exchange premium when changing currency. In the eighteenth century, it referred to a portion of the contract that the merchant would collect as insurance against loss, akin to a house rake or vigorish in gambling. Veitel Ephraim was a Jewish businessman in Prussia, including military supply. See Selma Stern, The Court Jew: A Contribution to the History of the Period of Absolutism in Europe (London: Routledge, 2020), 137–161.]

261

troublemakers of enterprises, was an authority necessary to destroy.30 But to oversee subsistence at the expense of the state, the state must have money or credit. Without resource to enterprises, how would our armies have lived? There must be daily and considerable funds for an [oversight body]. Grain purchases, equipment formation, employees’ wages, [and] daily storage: all are not at all paid by royal effects. The government, enlightened on the abuse of enterprises, has ceased to employ the most irreproachable and most solid food company that ever existed at the peacetime.31 It now oversees supply, and at the expense of the King; it oversaw them, with success, in the last expedition to Corsica. The expenses of this oversight, which were believed to be exorbitant in France because it was regarded an expedition that did not have the public suffrage, were not more than around six millions for two campaigns. But in the first great war that France will sustain, when it will need to nourish an army of 100,000 men outside the kingdom, how will the ministry [of war] act? From where will it take its funds? Will it borrow in the name of the king? All the purses that open at the name of a known person would close at this sacred name. Yet it must nourish this army. We will be forced to turn to enterprises. We will pray that the company that we dismissed will return to its administration: it will defend itself; it will advance the destruction of its credit; the impossibility of giving it rebirth by the harm that was done to its existence, which the public believed eternal; the dispersal of its members; that of its employees; we will insist, it will obey, and it will estimate itself quite fortunate to be able to pass into a more-expensive contact than the old one, and a contract in perpetuity.32 However certain that it would be that a welladministered oversight body would be more advantageous to the state than an enterprise conducted as honestly as it can be, one will still be constrained to make use of this latter way. For this to not be, in destroying the supply company during peacetime, the means of replacing it need to have been calculated. At the same time that one destroys it, one must assign annual funds [that are] more than sufficient for the expenses of furnishing the troops so as to form reserves for wartime from this excess and to repay loans by annuities that one would thus raise from the oversight body’s coffers. The funds of this new 30 31 32

[See Duffy, The Army of Frederick the Great, 130–142.] [Presumably Laborde’s.] [Guibert neatly predicts the effects of France’s next war, the War of American Independence, on French finances, which was disastrous. See Collins, The State in Early Modern France, 291–341.]

262

chapter xviii

administration would need to be thrown in advance on all points, searching, in the debris of the company, for the most capable subjects so as to attach them to it [by meditating on] how, in drawing the greatest advantage possible from this oversight body, one would create a new system of subsistence in the next war [that is] less complicated and more subordinated to military operations. Hardworking and enlightened men exist in this company who, returning little by little to the routine of Duvernay, will sense the goal of the ministry and extend the progress of their art.33 There exists one34 under the eyes of the ministry who does not know what I write and who might conduct this revolution, because I believe that he senses the necessity.35 We are stultified on this subject, and when we [will] wish to depart from this stultification, it will be too late. War menaces us; we want for money, [and] ten morepressing subjects occupy the ministry at the same time. It is much the same with a state as with a person, and we may apply the old proverb to both: “riches make riches.” Is a state rich and especially well-ordered? It may ameliorate its constitution; it may execute useful projects. Is it at a certain point of disorder and ruin? Everything will augment this sad situation; one can almost never propose to change to what would be good, or at least what would be 33

34

35

[Joseph Pâris-Duverney was from a celebrated family of financiers that included his three brothers, Jean Pâris de Monmartel, Claude Pâris-la Montagne, and Antoine Pâris. Together, they oversaw French finances in the early decades of Louis XV’s rule, especially with regard to military finance. Their companies largely supplied the French armies during the Wars of the Polish and Austrian Succession. While Antoine and Claude both died by 1745, Pâris de Marmontel and Pâris-Duverney were powerbrokers at court; Pâris-Duverney functioned as both a mentor and the maker of ministers until his death in 1770, leaving behind a voluminous correspondence. See Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession, 295 and 330–336; Parrott, The Business of War, 324; and Rowlands, The Financial Decline of a Great Power, 62, 138, and 217–255. See also Bernard Pâris de Bollardière, Joseph Pâris Duverney et ses frères: financiers dauphinois à la cour de Louis XV (Toulon: Presses du Midi, 2006); and Guy Rowlands, Dangerous and Dishonest Men: The International Bankers of Louis XIV’s France (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).] De l’Isle, formerly munitionnaire-général of the armies in Germany, charged since with oversight of supply during the Corsican expedition and now at the head of the bureau of administration that has been established for affairs of that island. [Nicholas-Anne Delisle, or de l’Isle, was head of the Corsican Bureau between 1770 and 1773 and the Bureau of Subsistence between 1771 and 1776. See Jean-Claude Devos, et al., Inventaire des archives de la guerre: sous-série Ya (Vincennes, 2003), Table 1. See also Dumouriez, Life, I:127–145; and Richard Waddington, Guerre de Sept Ans: historique diplomatique et militaire, 5 Vols. (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1899–1914), IV:323–324.]

facile. One can do even less if, for the latter misfortune, one does not at all have a plan of regeneration; if all the departments of ministers cross36 and harm each other; if they do not have the resource of coming to accord with the general will of the sovereign; in a word, if the number and entwining of abuses be such that one has to abandon evil to its progress. This reflection has distanced me a little from the goal. It is impossible that, in reflecting on a subject, ideas do not ramify. But this is still nothing but the pecuniary inconveniences attached to our system of subsistence; [one] must see how the system is contrary to the operations of our armies. This disadvantage does not only rest with the maladroitness of our subsistence methods, but it also rests in the constitution of our troops, in our morals, [and] in the ideas received by our generals. All these subjects are tied together by the rapport whose enchaining and abuse it will be interesting to untangle. Since the details of subsistence of armies are no longer in the hands of militaires in France, and since they form, in some way, a particularist branch of knowledge, militaires do not study them. One would be at pains to name ten officers who know the works that treat them. Why should they be studied? Are there no munitionnaires? As for the other side, these latter [the munitionnaires], secretly flattered to see themselves initiated into the mysteries of operations, and [in] making them, in some regards, dependent on them, [they] do not fail to throw shadows on all the details. The practice and the combination of these details doubtlessly compose a science, but they exaggerate its importance and difficulty, [and] they overload it with calculations. They are surrounded by writings. All this machinery imposes on men who do not pierce the surface of things.37 A general officer thus arrives to command armies. He believes that which he has not studied [to be] a labyrinth. He demands results relative to the operations on which he meditates from the munitionnaire, but in reality, the latter remains master of details, being alone initiated into them, remaining despotic in his area. He demands from the court half as much supply equipment again than is necessary so as to better assure his service. This multiplicity of baggage that doubles the embarrassment and weight of an army is

36

37

[The verb Guibert uses here, se croiser, is only defined as “take up the cross” in the Fourth Edition of the AF Dictionary. He doubtlessly intends to mean it in a fencing context, which might be translated as “cross swords,” although that expression in modern English has been ruined by generations of cliché.] [Guibert again perhaps references Masonic mysteries.]

Rapport between the Science of Subsistence and War, and Particularly with Campaign War

of little import to him.38 At each step, he multiplies magazines [and] establishments. All these establishments are not made at the expense of the company; if they are taken, it is the king’s expense; if they are not, he has precautions on all points; the army can make no movement that will take him by surprise, and this is thus called a brilliant service and covers the general in elegies. Here, he will suppose difficulties so as to give himself merit in vanquishing them. There, he will bend the general towards an operation whose result will be easy and advantageous to all his proper dispositions. Almost always, for want of calculating the ensemble of operations, [a] fault, in this regard, of enlightenment that he cannot have, he will regard his supply as the principle and not as an accessory. Moreover, how could the munitionnaire calculate like a general? 1st It is obvious that he does not have the talent, and consequently, he and the general do not have the same ideas. 2nd His success is independent of that of the general. The campaign will perhaps have been [definitively] lost and the munitionnaire’s service been quite exact. Even better: the more field operations will be timid [and] the less one will act, the more service the munitionnaire will be assured of, [and] the more troops, who only judge the merit of the munitionnaire by the exactitude of distributions and the good quality of the bread, will give him praise. Where, in fact, will the realer merit of the munitionnaire be? It will be in drawing from a country the greatest advantage possible, in being ready for several consecutive forced marches, in unforeseen changes of direction, [and] in rapidly forming establishments: all these circumstances, combined in the cabinet of a general, are ignored by the troops. To attend to the execution of a project of the general, the munitionnaire will depart from his routine, vanquish great difficulties, draw advantage from the country, [and] succeed in giving half-rations in a circumstance where the general must have fear of absolutely failing, perhaps not being able to, by accidents that he could not guarantee, dispense furnishings that are a little altered, change the species of nourishment, and in some manner or another, nourish the troops. The troops, who ignore the object of the general, the merit of 38

In the different contracts that the government has made with supply companies, the purchase of baggage and equipment has always been at the king’s expense. It has been the same in loss of magazines, the capture of convoys, waste, or accidents of raw materials or employees, when these wastes were occasioned by the army’s marches. From this, it must be that the companies are quite poorly administered if they do not make considerable gains, and one sees what the king gains in furnishing subsistence entirely at his expense, since he already has all the expenses of formations of equipment and establishments, of non-valeurs, of accidents, and of losses in his charge.

263

vanquished difficulties, [and] the pain of having procured the little that has been given them, sense only the need that they experience, and perhaps they cry. The munitionnaire thus will have served with distinction in the eyes of the general and of the people who calculate. In the inconveniences that I have spoken of above that must result in the almost-inevitable discord between the combinations of the general and those of the munitionnaires, I have only yet spoken about the munitionnaire[’s being] blindly bounded by the routine of his art and not at all seconding the general, via the incapacity [he has] of [not] perceiving the ensemble of the thing and the subordination that the accessory combinations must have under the principle combination. This munitionnaire may have many other defaults that moreessentially harm the service. He may wish to [hinder] the operations by reason of intrigue or particularist interest. He may, which would be worse, be enlightened and of ill will at the same time. He may, being enlightened and of good will, not have the intimate confidence of the general. Then, not being placed early enough in his secret, his interior measures will not concur with the execution of the general’s projects; then, he will find himself involuntarily behind or in default when the general opens up it to him.39 Enlightened, of good will, and having the confidence of the general, he may finally not be so discreet in his words or in his preparatory measures and thus betray the secret of the operations, in total or in part. It must be to me to make the tableau of all these inconveniences, supposing neither an excellent general nor an excellent munitionnaire. Such men are rare, and they would leave me with nothing to say. In supposing them to both be of an inferior class, I have painted the men and the inconveniences that the course of things must commonly offer. One sees where I tend: it is to regret that we have separated the science of subsistence from the science of war, that it is not one of our subjects of study, [and] that we have abandoned its details to foreign hands. If supply were to be administered at the expense of the king, would the general not be himself the munitionnaire of his army? Is nourishing the army thus a less-important subject, less tied to its operations, than that of encamping and of marching? The general has, for these latter details, a maréchal-général de logis. A general officer, skillful and confident, may also be charged with the details of supply. 39

[“Secret” refers to the close circle of the general; According to the Fourth Edition of the AF dictionary, the term was used during the period to refer to a king’s or minister’s cabinet, among other uses.]

264

chapter xviii

This general officer would work in its cabinet; he would have the necessary employees under him [and] a mounted administration [staff], but with the least expense and baggage possible. I will give, in my great work, a plan of this new administration [staff], developed and compared to that which has taken place in our armies until the present. But, to thus place the administration of supply into the hands of militaires, the militaires must be instructed in it. The details of subsistence cannot be handled by people who have neither their theory nor their habit. Sources exist from which one may draw knowledge [of them]. There is a general treatise on subsistence by Dupré d’Aulnay, war commissaire.40 One finds in this work exact details [and] some excellent views,41 but this work not at all being made by a militaire, the relation of the science of subsistence with tactics is neither deepened nor even perceived. It is the routine of Duverney, commented and a little perfected.42 I know the manuscripts on subsistence left by Dumouriez, war commissaire. These [are] interesting manuscripts, because the author, [who] was a man of spirit and was employed in the armies, detected in detail the greater part of the abuses that existed in the administration of subsistence and hospitals.43 Finally, there is

a quite-complete manuscript on subsistence by Delisle. This quite-modern work, undertaken for the instruction of the eldest son of Marshal Broglie, is a precious morsel in the order of details and the sagacity of views, with which it is replete.44 On all these materials, it would be quite important if an officer, consummated in the great handling of armies, would summarize a work of tactics for the usage of the militaire. When I say “summarize,” it is not the [right] word, because, in many regards, it must depart from the calculations admitted in these works to establish a new system of subsistence that does not have the complication and the defaults of those that we have practiced until now.45 On the science of subsistence, as on all the branches of the military art, there finally must be, in peacetime, a welldirected school. There, the different practical methods, of ourselves and of foreigners, would be tested, compared, [and] perfected. There, the means of simplifying the details of making magazines, of fabrication, of transportation, of compatibility, etc, would be conceived. There, chosen officers would familiarize themselves with the knowledge and the inspection of these details; as in the

40

subsistence Guibert mentions does not appear to have been formally published. Dumouriez is not to be confused with his son Charles-François du Périer Dumouriez, Guibert’s boyhood friend and general of the French Revolutionary Wars. See Charles-François du Périer Dumouriez, Life, 3 Vols. (London: Johnson, 1796), I:1–24, especially 23–24, where Dumouriez notes that his father and Broglie quarreled on campaign, leading to the former’s dismissal and his turn to poetry.] 44 The author here sees all the inconveniences that result for want of the accord of the combinations of the generals with those of the commissaires. He insists on the necessity of this connection, and as such, on the entire confidence that must exist on the part of the general for the commissaires. He senses how it is important that, on extraordinary occasions, the commissaires depart from his methods of routine and precision. Without doubt, better than another, he will find the means of supplying them, of perfecting our system of subsistence, and of making it more subordinate to the operations of generals. But, for this, it must be that he must be the regulator of subsistence and not [a] member of an enterprise company. For it is quite different to work for personal glory [than] for the interests of a company; it is better to operate after one’s own ideas [than] to be dragged by the shackles of the routine and of a plan fixed between the company and oneself. 45 [Guibert speaks of the literary trend of the period to publish works that summarized or epitomized publications. The most important, and the prototype, was the Correspondance littéraire, philosophique, et critique, ed. Friedrich Melchoir, baron Grimm, and Denis Diderot, that summarized publications in the arts and social events for its readers and thus acted as the social journal of record.]

41

42

43

[Louis Dupré d’Aulnay was a commissaire and writer of the early eighteenth century. The work Guibert alludes to is Traité des subsistences militaires (Paris: Prault, 1744). Aulnay also composed works on physics, medicine, and fiction.] The chapters must be particularly read where he proposes to substitute the usage of massive and immobile ovens with portable and wheeled ovens, the reasons that he gives for supporting this change, the detail of these new ovens, their advantages confirmed by the tests that he has made, [and] the secret motives by which they have been rejected by the entrepreneurs until now. It is quite strange that a so-clearly demonstrated abuse continues to exist. It is [demonstrated] not only in the work of Dupré d’Aulnay, but also by the experience of foreign armies. The bakery of the King of Prussia, [and] that of Prince Ferdinand, were seldom ever served other than by portable ovens; I have seen the latter[’s]. Those that Dupré d’Aulnay proposes are of a form [that is] lighter, simpler, and more advantageous. They may perhaps be perfected further. Finally, the usage of these ovens adopted by the field bakeries, would not prevent one from being served on occasion by massive ovens that one finds in the country. Why are there not also hand-mills in the armies? Dupré proposes them. Montecuccoli proposed them before him. How imperfect is our science of subsistence! How distant is it from its goal! [See Aulnay, Traité des subsistences militaires, 145–149 and 632–642; and Raimondo Montecuccoli, Mémoires, ed. Lancelot Turpin de Crissé (Amsterdam/Leipzig: Artktée & Merkus, 1770), I:294–301 and III:142–167. Guibert debits both Aulnay and Pâris-Duverney for not having served in high rank.] [Antoine-François du Périer Dumouriez (sometimes AnneFrançois) was a commissaire who worked under Broglie during the Seven Years War. After the war, he became a poet, publishing several collections before his death in 1769. The work on

Rapport between the Science of Subsistence and War, and Particularly with Campaign War

school of the état-major, they would accustom themselves to the details of marches and reconnaissance. From this school, in a word, would result the infinite advantage of reuniting to the science of war a branch that should never have been separated. I have demonstrated how the default of rapport between the combinations of the generals and those of the munitionnaires harms operations. I will now examine how the other vices render our subsistence system expensive, routine, and contrary to all the principles of war. Our supply train is almost always too large. This must not be made a crime of the munitionnaires who, ordinarily, blindly believed in their part in regulating its formation. They demand [this] to assure the success of their service; they are forced to demand [this] because, in our armies, no one knows how to draw resources from the country where war is made, because no one is either sober or patient, because there are murmurs if the distribution [of supplies] is retarded for some hours [or] if the bread is not always the best quality, [and] because there are even more murmurs if a single day is lost or if the species of nourishment is changed. In the case where the munitionnaires would have had only, for their service, the strictly necessary means, the majority of generals, without calculating these means, would have demanded of them the results that would be disproportionate to them and [that they] would not know how to ready for their situation, how to augment their means in taking profit from the resources of the country, or how to change the spirit of the troops. But if in the next war, a good general be himself regulator of subsistence, or he have a skillful regulator with him, they would sense all that lightens an army [and] renders it better-able to be handled, easier to subsist, [and] more proper for grand operations. They would together find the just proportion that must regulate the formation of supply equipment, the proportion that may be attained of nourishing the army and at the same time not overloading it. They would calculate that, beyond the proportion that must be relative to simple and daily operations, the means that extraordinary operations must be found in industry, in the resources of the country, [and] in the spirit of sobriety and patience that must be given to the troops. Also attentive to diminishing this proportion as much as they can, they would always calculate where the theater of war must be, relative to the countryside. Supply equipment must certainly be less numerous to make war in Flanders, in a countryside covered with places and roadways, than in Germany, where there are few entrepot points, where the routes are almost always only paths traced through the countryside. Thus, equipment must be much less numerous in the Palatinate, [a]

265

country that abounds in food, in wagons, and in inhabitants, than in the deserts of The Ukraine that were the tomb of the army of Karl XII.46 One sees that the premier principle of the science of subsistence in my ideas is to diminish the baggage and to accomplish the most objectives with the least means possible. But it is in the formation of our magazines that exist the most prejudicial abuses. This part, absolutely independent of the general, is in the hands of entrepreneurs, and it is clear, just even, that in thinking as honestly as possible, they conduct themselves according to their greatest interests. It is on the purchase of materials, done at the right time, that the entrepreneurs have assured their gain. On all the rest of the maintenance, when it serves them well, there is often more to lose than to gain. [Finding] the best price is thus, as might be imagined, the principal goal of all their combinations. They buy in the good seasons; they have their obvious magazines and their secret magazines; they have their courtiers, their agioteurs; they underhandedly speculate on food in advance in the countries neighboring the theater of war, and by this, sometimes betray the secret of operations. One may say to me that these purchases, or feigned speculations, may become a ruse against the enemy. I agree, but in the hands of the general, this means will exist all the same, and it will be employed only when he will judge it useful for his projects. Until then, the evil is not so great, [but] it is in the emplacement of materials that the inconveniences become dangerous. One judges well that the less that a general does not know and does not wish to enter into its details, the [more these] emplacements are determined at the will of the entrepreneurs and that the entrepreneurs determine them most often relative to the speculations bounded by and exclusive to their art. Often, these materials are found placed in points that are little military or without relation to operations. Almost always, these materials, too dispersed, form an infinity of small magazines, each of which has its guard, its employees, its waste, its war accidents, or others. Often, such magazines are found engorged with materials, and thus the entrepreneur inclines towards the party that can procure their consumption. Sometimes, he will resist a party that attracts too much consumption on a point where materials are lost and where he can only assemble them by buying them at a high price. At other 46

[Guibert alludes to the Battle of Poltava, which took place in July 1709 between Karl XII of Sweden and Pyotr I of Russia in modern Ukraine. Karl’s defeat precipitated his flight to the Ottoman Empire and marked the shift in fortunes in the Great Northern War that would ultimately see Russia emerge as the Northern European power at the expense of Sweden. See Stevens, Russia’s Wars of Emergence, 219–295.]

266

chapter xviii

times, magazines are too full, because [he] hastened to buy at favorable prices, or [he] wishes to empty the magazines, because speculations learn when the moment is to make good purchases, requiring the entrepreneurs to consume; then, [they] well-guard against the army’s living at the expense of contributions exacted from the countryside; [they] find difficulties in this system, [they] gain time, and the enterprise’s food is consumed. From this unknown labyrinth, and which I went through in a moment, ordinarily emanate all the combinations of subsistence that the entrepreneurs place in advance of the generals’ cabinet. When it is a question of calculating the means of some operation, the general well-perceives a resistance or a secret inclination, but he cannot untangle the cause; the great calculations make an illusion of it; commonly, he is neither firm enough to resist nor enlightened enough to furnish means; his project is not executed, and he finds that, far from commanding subsistence, it is subsistence that has commanded operations. I repeat that I have no one in view; if I paint abuses that do not exist, they are abuses that one may fear. If a general would regulate his subsistence himself, or if he had under him a skillful overseer who would start from the same system, they would at once combine purchase, the species and quantity of materials to procure, the places where they must make purchases, those where they must deposit them, etc. An infinity of economic or military views must influence these subjects, foreign to war in appearance. The moment of purchase is not indifferent, either relative to the price of materials or relative to the indications that the enemy may draw from them. The species and the quality of materials are even less so because they must be combined on the job that one must do. It is thus in the emplacement of magazines; [they] must be founded relative to the next or distant operations on which one meditates [and] relative to extraordinary operations to which one may force the army. The choice of these emplacements may give arousal or change to the enemy. Circumstances must sometimes also determine provisioning in one countryside more than in another. If one can make these purchases in one’s own country, and this does not cause harm to any military view, it must be preferred, [even] finding that one could buy the same materials at a better price in a foreign country.47 If one 47

One cites, with reason, the providential trait of Louvois to, in the preparations for the Dutch War, secretly make all purchases in Holland and by them deprive the Hollanders when they wished to form their magazines in their turn, but other than this occasion, and also some others when it is advantageous to purchase in a foreign country, it is almost always [better] to consume the food of one’s own country. This is a consideration

is on the defensive, one exhausts the countryside that is between the enemy and oneself; if one is on the offensive, one is more frugal.48 In all cases, one spares, as much as possible, the country that is behind oneself and where operations may be conducted; for a stronger reason, one spares it, as much as possible, if one must seat one’s quarters there [and] if, by the position of things, this country is friendly or must nourish the army at length. For the opposite reason, one is less frugal if it is a foreign [country] or if one foresees being obliged to abandon it. Finally, the country where one is and that one is surrounded by will be more or less spared [and] more or less exhausted in proportion to events that one meditates on and foresees; it is, as one sees, a part of the science of subsistence that military combinations must considerably influence. If one would reproach me for repeating known truths, how many examples I would be able to cite that would prove that, if they are [known], they are vague and without application to circumstances. In 1757, the army of the king entered into the country of Halberstadt; this principality is the granary of the March, of Brandenburg, [and] of almost all of lower Saxony. The harvest had just been gathered; there was enough rye and wheat to nourish an army like ours for two years. A general who would have had the true principles of the science of subsistence would have said, “I arrive in an abundant countryside; I have only for my goal to pass the autumn here; winter arriving, this countryside must be abandoned. If I wish quarters that the enemy could not raise, I have them in the rear, and sheltered by a great river, like the Weser, for example.” This computation was easy to make. The season was advanced, [and] the court did not wish the siege of Magdeburg. The Hanoverians avoided the execution of the Convention of Klosterzeven. The fashion in which the Imperial Army marched, united with ours, [made it] easy to judge that, if it were not beaten, it would be forced to winter in Hesse and Thuringia. Consequently, the general who I suppose would have continued to say “all possible advantage must be drawn from the position where I am; not being able to operate, [we] must at least live at the expense of the enemy.” Thus, in lieu of devastating the countryside, in lieu of foraging à la Françoise; in lieu of consuming, in six months and without profit for the state,

48

to which entrepreneurs cannot give themselves, as their interest is in [buying] where they find the best price. An enlightened regime would regard where it spends the kingdom’s money, and it would sense that it is better to draw materials at a high price from Alsace, or Trois Evêchés, than to buy them at a lower price in Holland or in Germany. [See Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 109–112, where he calls Louvois’s plans his “chef d’œuvre.”]

Rapport between the Science of Subsistence and War, and Particularly with Campaign War

that which would nourish an oriental army for six months; in lieu of continuing, in the midst of this abundance, supply by enterprise and the formation of magazines by the work of employees; in lieu of letting the army live on French grains; in lieu of letting them [his officers] pay their soldiers with the gold of the kingdom, he would have kept his troops in good discipline, he would have made a profit of the resources of the country, [and] he would have returned the entrepreneurs, magazine guards, and other useless employees behind the Weser. The army would have subsisted on the countryside’s wheat, and it would have still formed large magazines in its rear. Contributions extended to Magdeburg, Brandenburg, and to the gates of Berlin would have brought what would suffice for the troops into the army’s coffers. One would have seen, for the first time, a French army not at all being charged to the kingdom and subsisting on the fruit of its conquests. For me, I do not know if there would have any more merit, any more glory in the eyes of men who know true glory, than at the end of the campaign, after which Marshal Richelieu could have said “I have not taken Magdeburg, because it was not wished that I lay siege to it. I have not beaten the enemy, because they were not at all against me, but I have made the king’s army live at their expense, and for six months; it has cost the state nothing.”49 This that I have said about our sojourn in the country of Halberstadt could have happened since the king’s army was in the Electorate of Hanover and could have continued as long as it remained there. The King of Prussia has shown us the example in Saxony, and the enemy country that we occupied was three times larger than Saxony; it was the Duchy of Hanover and that of Brunswick, Hesse, the principality of Halberstadt, East Frisia, the county of The Mark, Guelders, etc. But it is an art of which we are totally ignorant, that of knowing how to make war serve to nourish war. If a general were elevated who had this talent, would he be allowed to have the power to put it into execution? It is customary in France that the views of ministers and generals cross; this same contrariety exists between the departments of the different branches 49

[Guibert speaks of the French campaign in the second half of 1757. Earlier that year, the French defeated a Hanoverian army, leading to the Convention of Klosterzeven, which removed Hanover from the war. Richelieu then marched his army east, as Guibert indicates. Another French army under Soubise operated to its south, and Richelieu detached units to it in advance of the fall campaign, which ended in Soubise’s defeat at Rossbach. Richelieu managed to accomplish little in his campaign before retiring. The Hanoverians used the campaign as an excuse to repudiate Klosterzeven and re-enter the war. See Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 89–122.]

267

of administration, and through these unfortunate contradictions, all the abuses escape, grow, and [become] inveterate. What arrives when a French army sets foot in an enemy country? At the instant and on the step of this army, another arrives of employees, of clerks, of officials: all people who search for fortune. Under the pretext of forming order and compatibility everywhere, all is divided, complicated, [and] confused. One projects, one orders, [but] nothing is executed; the heads of the country’s administrators are turned. If there are contributions, they evaporate in all the channels where they pass. Some individuals make obscure and scandalous fortunes. The king’s expenses do not diminish. The army is impoverished in lieu of being enriched; the countryside takes on an appearance of devastation and of misery, closes our gold, curses us, and sees us leaving, hating us without fearing us. But we pursue the examination of our subsistence. During the winter of 1757–1758, the army took its quarters between the Weser and the Aller. Finally, it was said that it would live at the expense of the countryside. Grain deliveries [requisitions] were imposed on the bailliages between the two rivers; 200,000 sacks were assembled at Hanover, at Brunswick, etc. Reason would have said to a general who had the oversight of supply or to an overseer who had made his combinations relative to the position of the army: “we consume this grain, because it is impossible that the army passes the winter here. If the enemy moves, at the first effort that they make, we will be obliged to re-cross the Weser.” This event was not difficult to foresee; it was perceived by the entire army. But in lieu of this, supply continued from its rear. Although gorged on subsistence on the Weser, it made purchase on the Meuse and on the Rhine. The enemies pierce the quarters [and] magazines are burnt or they are abandoned; the army retires without regarding what is behind it; it traverses abundant and not-at-all exhausted country; it traverses it by divisions and in canton, a sort of movement quite favorable to making the troops subsist by means of the countryside, and nevertheless, it is the supply company that continues to nourish them, and to this end, it makes haste to go to Wesel and the banks of the Rhine to send grain in advance of the army.50 One may accuse me of [exaggerating] this tableau, but I have 50,000 French as witness, the unfortunate rest of the 100,000 that composed the most-flourishing army 50

[In Hanover, near the city itself. Re-crossing the Weser would mean retreating back towards France, and further river crossings over the Meuse and Rhine. Wesel is positioned at the merger of the Lippe and Rhine Rivers.]

268 eight months prior. I have for guarantee the two-hundred millions that this destructive campaign cost the nation. I have seen all the army’s pontoons and twenty-four large guns abandoned at Hamelin, and I will not forget this trait because it will complete the idea that one must make of our maladroitness in drawing resources from a countryside. I have seen twenty-four other pieces of 24 left at Lippstadt; this was for lack of horses to pull them. The quartier-général had thus to rest for several days at each of these cities, and the countryside of which I speak was so abundant in horses that a hussar brigadier would have assembled five-hundred in twenty-four hours. It is amazing how a good military handling could draw the resources of a countryside. I speak of an inhabited and fertile country like Flanders and the greater part of Germany. In such a country, a well-constituted army, that is to say, not at all too numerous, sober, patient, [and] accustomed to living on everything without murmuring: an army preceded by the greatest reputation of discipline and that consequently would not cause the flight of the inhabitants nor the hiding of their food, would find great facilities for subsisting; it could advance into it, traverse it, and even dwell in it without baggage and without establishments. Thus certainly, in such a country, the inhabitants do not live day-to-day; they have advances of subsistence for several weeks even when their sowing is done. Here will the skill of an overseer of supply be: in knowing how, on extraordinary occasions, to draw advantage from these resources; to make bread everywhere; to make nourishment everywhere; [and] to find, in a word, the means of making an army advance and subsist in a country where the amazed enemy would not imagine that it could pass and subsist, and where they, shackled by ordinary methods, would not dare to chance without establishments. I am neither exclusive nor outré in my opinions; I do not say to an army, “do not at all have supply equipment, magazines, [or] means of transport; always live off the countryside; advance, if necessary, into the deserts of the Ukraine; Providence will nourish you.” I would, [and] I believe that I have already said, that an army have supply equipment, but the least amount possible proportionate to its strength, to the nature of the country where it must act, and to the means that ordinary operations require. I would that, crossing a river [or] a frontier, it have, at its base, entrepot magazines [that are] well-disposed relative to their surety and to the plan of their operations. I would that, if it is in enemy country, its magazines be formed at the expense of the country and by its care. I would, as much as possible, that the country be charged with the handling, accounting, preservation, [and] transfer from

chapter xviii

one place to another in order to have, by this means, no misfortunes, events, employees, or procès-verbaux to pay. I would that, whether in friendly or enemy country, magazines be formed from materials that are the habitual nourishment of the people of the country, because then they will be at a cheaper price and in greater abundance; consequently, if the inhabitants nourish themselves with rye, the troops will nourish themselves with it, and they will not at all be subject to the species and form of the bread that must be delivered to the soldier so that only [one] form and [one] species will be distributed because of a regulation that the bureau determined eighty years ago.51 I would that, when operations will be simple, facile, [and] within range of establishments that have already been formed, bread be made and delivered in the accustomed rule, [and] the overseer accomplish his service with the greatest possible order and exactitude. I intend that the means of transport that one may procure in the countryside would be employed in the interior detail of this handling so that by it, the supply equipment would be much relieved, wear down less, [and] be within range of the army and ready to effectively serve in extraordinary operations. [If] movements become multiplied and successive? [If] it is necessary to make a hardy operation, forced marches? The overseer must force the means; he must know to depart from his methods of routine and precision. I suppose that the enemy takes an unexpected position and where I do not wish to nor am able to attack it; I am sure to de-post it or to take it in the rear by marching on its flank. Following our current routine, for this change of direction, I must form new establishments and new lines of communication. Fifteen days are demanded of me for the formation of these new establishments; one must, it is said, assemble the materials, build the ovens, etc. Here is precisely what I do not wish, if it is possible, of the supply I command; here is where I would that the overseer redouble industry; that the army live on the resources of the countryside; [and] that it know to suffer, change nourishment, [and] fast, if it can, without murmur. It is my movement that, in this circumstance, is the principal object; all the other combinations are only accessories and must work to submit themselves to it. The enemy must see me marching when they would believe me chained by calculations of subsistence; this new genre of war must amaze them, not leaving them time to breathe, and would show, at their expense, this true constant: there is almost no tenable position before an army [that is] well constituted, sober, patient, and maneuverable. The moment of crisis passes, my movement having 51

[See Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle, 67–146.]

Rapport between the Science of Subsistence and War, and Particularly with Campaign War

accomplished its object, then subsistence returns to the accustomed system of order and precision. One takes into account the efforts that the troops have made [and] the ills that they have suffered. It is by this well-managed alternation of softness and of work that one distances them from distaste, ennui, indiscipline, [and] maladies; it is by it one makes them, on occasion, do things beyond human strength. Finally, if I am in an enemy country and it is abundant, I suspend the payments of the overseer for all the time that it may furnish; I live at its expense. I suspend them for the strongest reason if I enter into winter quarters, [and] I make requisitions of the country like magazines, furnishings, [and] accounting. There, I would that the troops be compensated for the fatigue of the campaign, that they [be quartered] with the inhabitants, [and] that they place their pay in reserve [instead of spending it on food and housing]. I oversee what they may require on a reasonable footing and in the species of food that the countryside consumes. At the same time that I procure this softness for the troops, I establish an iron discipline to suppress the least disorder. During this interval of repose, the supply equipment repairs itself [and] remounts itself, and the overseer prepares, in the silence, his means for the following campaign. This leads me to an important political truth that is not sensed by our government: it is that a constituted and powerful kingdom, like France must be, must rarely have great allies and never small [ones]; it must especially avoid having them in the country or the environs of the country where it carries the theater of war. This was a state maxim for the Romans: their allies being a species of vassal, they contributed to the costs of the war, [and] they nourished the army if it was in their territory. Our politics of economy, of secret subsidies, is small and ruinous for a great people, it is certainly destructive to military operations, [and] it embarrasses generals and places the armies ill at ease. France, at the point of splendor and preponderance that a plan of regeneration must carry it to, [a plan] that must unfortunately be despaired of seeing, must, in the midst of Europe whose center it is, sustain itself only by its own weight; it must, with a manner [that is] frank, large, [and] hardy that suits great empires, say to its neighbors, “I do not at all wish to extend myself; I work to not make enemies, and I do not at all wish for allies.” Here I have only thrown general views on the necessity of giving a new form to our system of subsistence. These views may be developed and supported by details; they will be in my great work. I will speak of that other branch of subsistence, so important to deepen and perfect: that of “forage.” The study of this, like that of provisioning, has its principles, its theory; it requires practice and intelligence

269

on the part of those with whom it is charged; it must also be at all times, in peace and in war, on campaign and in winter quarters, in the hands of the militaires; [and] it must enter into the plan of the school of subsistence that I have proposed to form. We have an officer52 in the kingdom who has greatly extended knowledge on this part.53 The minister appealed to him four years ago and would seem to have made use of his enlightenment.54 This good intention rested without effect. It is thus with almost all those formed by men charged with a great administration when they are incoherent and lacking rapport with a general plan that reminds them. A circumstance, a moment of reflection, carries the eyes of the minister to an abuse; he senses [it and] he desires to remedy it, [but] other affairs ensnare him, his desire is effaced, and this passing élan was only a useless sigh towards good. But, to conclude this important article, a recasting as total as that which I propose in our methods of subsistence cannot take place if we will not change the constitution of our troops and that of our morals. Our troops are not constituted militarily. Our morals are not military. Our soldiers, and our officers even less, do not have the frugality, patience, [or] strength of body that are the primordial 52

53

54

Dubois, lieutenant-colonel of dragoons, and employed in the état-major of the army during the Seven Years War. It is under the orders and instructions of Marshal Broglie and the comte de Broglie that this officer formed the details of this part of subsistence. They sensed the necessity of rendering to him its military handling, and they rendered as much as possible to him. I say “as much as possible” because it is not possible that we completely succeed in our French armies. Our generals are ordinarily contradicted by the ministries. The ministries are most often commanded by their bureaus, and the bureaus are enemies born of the whole system that tends to remove the administration of military details from the hands of the militaire. [Jean-Elie Dubois de la Bernade was a mid-century officer who came up through the Orléans Dragoons before his posting in Corsica. He was the source of a minor controversy in the late 1780s as a result of his posting to the état-major by Vaux, which occasioned a dispute within the War Department that Ségur had to settle. See Léon Hennet, Regards en arrière: études d’histoire militaire sur le XVIIIe siècle: l’état-major (Paris: Chapelot, 1911), 104–106; Alexander Mazas and Théodore Anne, Histoire de l’ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis depuis son institution en 1693 jusqu’en 1830, 3 Vols. (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1860), II: 87. See also Victor-François, duc de Broglie, Correspondance inédite de Victor-François de Broglie avec le prince Xavier de Saxe, comte de Lusace, pour servir à l’histoire de la guerre de sept ans, 4 Vols. (Paris: Albin Michel, 1905), Xavier to Broglie, 18 June 1761: “the zeal and the intelligence with which Dubois has provided our subsistence,” III:578n1 and 596–603, and IV:5–10; and “Chevalier Dubois,” friend of Muy and Maurepas in 1775, in Jacob Moreau, Mes souvenirs, 2 Vols. (Paris: Plon, 1901.), I:233.] [Presumably Choiseul, who was Secretary of State for War during most of the 1760s.]

270 and constitutive qualities of people of war. These qualities are not honored in our century; they are enfeebled and turned to ridicule by luxury and by the spirit that dominates. We are Sybarites, and this is thus the influence of the example and the mode of our nation, at once feeble and strong [and] light and capable of reflecting, that, if the sovereign wished to change its morals, give it a military spirit, learn to command its armies, command them, banish luxury, [and] be himself frugal and patient in suffering, before a few years [had passed], the warrior virtues

chapter xviii

would become common and respected as much as they are little [so] today.55 Will the honor of regenerating the nation, so easy, not ever tempt one of these princes? 55

[Sybaris was a Greek city in Magna Græcia. In the fifth century BCE, it was destroyed in a series of conflicts with its neighbors. Over time, writers began to characterize the Sybarites as morally weak, lazy, and craven, in contrast with the disciplined and militaristic Spartans. The characterization remains in both modern English and French. See “Luxury,” “Sybaris,” and “Sybarites,” Encyclopédie, IX:763–771 and XV:710–711.]

Conclusion I terminate my general essay on tactics here. I have examined this science in all its branches and in all its connections. If there are some parts that I have not deepened, it is because this essay is only a draft of my great work. I would that work, time, experience, [and] criticism enlighten me and give more authority to my opinions. I resemble those architects who, given the responsibility for a great building project, expose the[ir] drafts and wait [as] attentive observers for the remarks that the public will make [in order] to profit from them before they elevate their edifice. There are important subjects upon which I have only thrown doubts. Such is the examination of our current system, relative to the formation of armies, to their conduct on campaign, and [to] the changes that I think will be advantageous for them to make. I have supported these doubts with some details and reasons [in order] to place them in the path of anyone who may hear me. In giving them as assertions, I would not have better-convinced [readers], and I would have indisposed many more. All that is drawn from genius and from generals is so delicate to treat! That which is drawn from genius necessarily carries a systematic imprint and announces systems; this already forms against them an infinity of people who condemn them without reading them. It is yet more dangerous to reason on that which regards generals. Newton, without fear of blasphemy, dared to attack Descartes and the entirety of Europe [that had] become Cartesian. Another geometrician may elevate a system against Newton. He chases only the danger of dishonor if he does it without genius. But, in the military profession, one is at pains to convince that study may mature the spirit, that genius may overtake experience. To have the right of speaking on the science of generals, one must have commanded armies: the subordination of age and grade is extended to thought. Outside of the service and in military discussions, if I may give this name to the military controversies that have been printed, this servitude may damage the progress of the art, but it is necessary, and although I have freed myself from it, I do not think that it the shackles must be relaxed in a century and in a nation where portions of knowledge spread into almost all heads [and] give almost all the pretention to opine and the appearance of talents.1

In the course of this essay, attentive to avoid personalities, I have sometimes risen forcefully against reigning abuses. I have been counseled to soften these passages. I have tried, but doubtlessly the foundation of my thoughts has held to my expressions, because the words that I would substitute would not at all render what I wish to say. [This] would be a quite-necessary talent, but I believe it to be the fruit of years to speak coolly of truths that one senses with heat. This is an encyclopedia, it alone, of the military science. It is the most interesting of the sciences, whether one considers it relative to the variety of its details, to the importance of its goal, or the glory and to the great interests that it carries. May this truth, sensed by the men who are destined to command armies, make them perceive the immensity of their obligations! For the acquisition of the knowledge that composes the military science is yet nothing; he must, to be a general of the first order, know how to employ this knowledge; he must have the genius that cannot be acquired, the coup-d’œil that habit perfects and cannot be given; he must unite an assemblage of physical and moral qualities that is more than human. Also, one must rest confounded in amazement and respect to see the small number of generals on whom posterity has bestowed the name of “great.” It seems that nature only produces them here and there, amidst the centuries, to serve as epochs of the grandeur of the human spirit. People of letters have generally not had this high idea of the science of war. They believe it [to be] vague and denuded of positive principles. This unfortunate prejudice is similarly spread among many militaires. For lack of having studied their art, they do not make enough of their profession. I will [consider] my work a great prize if I open the eyes of some of them. It is so encouraging, when one cultivates a science, to see it acquire esteem and importance in the opinion of men.

1 [Guibert’s argument here belies the popular historiographical notion of him as prophet of the Revolution. Essentially, he argues

for a traditionalistic social and organizational structure in order to avoid the chaos of an unregulated marketplace of ideas.]

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_055

appendix a

The French Army in the Eighteenth Century 1 Organization The eighteenth-century French army had three arms, to use contemporary terminology: infantry, cavalry, and light forces. These may be grouped into two categories: line and light forces, or the forces that arrayed themselves in linear formations and those that dispersed across the battlefield or theater, respectively. Infantry and cavalry proper fell into the former category. The General Essay on Tactics largely concerns itself with infantry, although the other arms and branches are represented to some degree in the text, unlike many contemporary works. As such, the organization of the infantry is most important. The cavalry, light forces, and artillery generally operated with systems analogous to that of the infantry, if only for simplicity’s sake. Generally, especially when comparing cavalry and light forces to infantry, the most significant changes in organization were the titles of certain officers. The more technical branches, particularly the artillery and génie, adapted these mores to suit their services. 1.1 Infantry The infantry was the core of the army and composed the majority of its forces. Infantry was broken into two categories: fusiliers, or fantassins, and grenadiers. The former were the general-purpose infantry and were the bulk of any army. The latter were veteran soldiers expected to lead attacks and hold positions in defense; despite their name, they had long set aside their titular bombs and were usually armed like the fusiliers. After 1700, infantry equipment was largely standardized. The average infantryman carried a smoothbore flintlock musket that was around four feet long, which extended to around six feet with its socket bayonet attached. It fired a solid lead ball of around .60 caliber. The contemporary musket, or fusil, to give it its proper name, was an inaccurate and inefficient weapon. Its effective range was no more than two-hundred yards, and soldiers fired between one and perhaps five rounds per minute, depending on their skill and training. The fusil was inaccurate and slow because of technical limitations. The concept of machining equipment to precise specifications was relatively new, particularly in mass production, and thus imperfect. The need to load the fusil from the barrel also required large barrels to accommodate a

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_056

variety of balls, often roughly cast by the soldier himself. Because of this, barrel width could vary significantly, as could the caliber of the balls used. In addition, even one firing with black powder fouled the barrel, and repeated firings required frequent cleaning. As a result, the windage, or gap between the projectile and the barrel, could be significant, allowing exploding gas to escape around the ball and all but preventing aiming. Infantry training consisted of the manual of arms and drill. Subalterns (non-commissioned and junior officers) had to instruct their charges first in the use of the musket, which had been honed over centuries into a science. They then had to teach the soldiers how to cooperate with each other by marching in formation, performing evolutions, and firing. While the army taught volley firing, almost every period writer acknowledged that volleys were relatively rare in combat, usually occurring only once or twice at the beginning of the fight and then degenerating into fire-atwill, known as feu à volonté or the billebaude. Following this, officers instructed men in ever-larger formations, up to the entire battalion. This training was collectively known as the “school of the battalion” and occupied most of the time and energy of non-commissioned and junior officers. 1.2 Cavalry “Cavalry” to the French meant heavy shock forces. For most of the eighteenth century, the cuirassier was the standard unit of cavalry. Cuirassiers were armored with a cuirass, a metal breast- and back-plate, and a helmet. They were armed with a cavalry saber that was either curved for slashing or straight for stabbing. Some cavalry forces were also armed with pistols or carbines, but technical limitations rendered them largely useless on the battlefield; the effective range of a contemporary pistol was probably less than ten feet. Cavalry units were still familiar with the caracole, the orderly rotation of men forward in order to fire volleys, but it largely remained a relic of the seventeenth century. Cavalrymen trained together with their horses, a process that took far longer than the training of infantry. They would first train as an individual rider, then in increasingly large formations like the infantry. A significant portion of training was dedicated to keeping horses and men in formation, especially once they determined on a charge. Discussions of contemporary cavalry tactics

274 are replete with admonitions against allowing men to give their horses their heads and exhausting them before they contacted the enemy line. Dragoons were another form of cavalry, albeit one that occupied an uneasy space that straddled the definitions of cavalry and light. Rather than being mounted infantry, as in later American historical practice, dragoons were cavalry units that were also trained in infantry tactics. They did not wear the full accoutrements of the cavalryman, with most eschewing spurs and even the cuirass and helmet. They were expected to perform a variety of roles within the purview of all three arms, including shock attacks alongside traditional cavalry, scouting, harassing, and fighting as infantry on occasion. As the century progressed, the role of the cavalry diminished. Fire was the major reason for this, as even the best-planned charge could be stymied by coordinated defensive fire from enemy infantry, artillery, and light forces. However, cavalry was still seen as the masse de décision, expected to open an enemy line for an infantry assault, finish a wavering opponent, contest with enemy cavalry, and pursue a defeated foe. 1.3 Light Forces Light forces were the third arm of the French army, and the newest. “Light” was a catch-all term that included all units that were not easily categorized into one of the other arms. Their use was inspired by fighting on the Habsburg-Ottoman frontier during the late seventeenth century, where battlefields often transcended the formulaic infantry and cavalry blocks of Western Europe. There was no standardization of light forces during the period. They could be mounted or dismounted. They were armed with a wide variety of weaponry, from standard fusils to rifled muskets capable of far greater accuracy. They went by a variety of names, including chasseurs, hussars, jägers, Grenzer, carabiniers, and many others; within the French army, they were generally referred to as “chasseurs.” Confusingly, line units could be trained in skirmishing, the tiraillerie, and were usually called chasseurs themselves. By the later part of the century, most French regiments had at least one “chasseur company,” although that term rarely denoted any specificity of role or equipment beyond designating the unit as elite. The role of light forces was to supplement the line forces, particularly on campaign. They performed the majority of the scouting, intelligence collecting, and harassing in advance of the army’s march columns. In the battle, light forces were expected engage in the tiraillerie, particularly if they were heavy in light forces themselves.

appendix a

1.4 Artillery and the Génie (Engineers) Artillery occupied a liminal space in the French army. It was not considered an arm equal to the infantry, cavalry, and light forces for two reasons. First was the role that artillery played in siege warfare, both traditionally and throughout the century. Second, and related, were technical limitations that the artillery faced, particularly early in the century. French artillery originated in the fourteenth century as a weapon for attacking enemy fortifications. As siegecraft evolved through the age of Sébastien le Prestre, seigneur de Vauban, artillery remained a key component of the siege. Cannon needed to be large and heavy in order to fire the projectiles necessary to damage fortress walls, which could be dozens of feet thick. Additionally, artillery pieces were usually cast around a mold, which left a seam through the barrel and made it vulnerable to exploding if not properly cared for. Guns also suffered from the same issues of windage and fouling as did infantry weapons. As a result, artillery pieces were large, heavy, and virtually immobile. There was no formal organizational distinction between siege and field artillery. Gun crews were trained to move their gun, site it, and fire it at a relatively slow pace, whether at an enemy position or army. The use of artillery evolved the most of any of the branches of the French army over the eighteenth century. The example of the German states and the implementation of the Gribeauval System both contributed to this transition. Early in the eighteenth century, Austria was believed to have the best artillery service in Europe. Austrian artillerists generally made use of artillery for sieges, but they also trained gun crews and officers to use cannon as field artillery as well. Friedrich II was rudely inaugurated into the use of field artillery by his Austrian opponents in the War of the Austrian Succession; by the Seven Years War, the Prussian army possessed nimble field artillery that helped it win several battles. While field artillery was not a new concept, the German states innovated and adapted various means of making guns lighter and more maneuverable that became the standard of field artillery across the continent, including France. Jean-Baptiste-Vaquette de Gribeauval, the foremost artillerist in France, had served in Germany during the midcentury wars and returned with a system based on light, maneuverable field guns that would support the combat arms. This system was implemented in the 1770s, and it transformed the French artillery away from a primarily siege-based force to one that would eventually become an arm proper, albeit not until after 1789. Until then, because of its limitations and inability to fight without support from one of the arms, artillery was not considered a true arm.

The French Army in the Eighteenth Century

The génie was often considered alongside, or even amalgamated with, the artillery. This occurred in large part because of the natural synergy between the two services in sieges as well as the technical nature of both. In the 1750s, the two corps were combined into a single body, the Royal Corps of Artillery and Génie. Engineers travelled with the army as distinct units and performed the engineering duties typical to armies of any period like building bridges, clearing roads, constructing camps and defensive works, and engaging in siege operations. Officers of both branches were considered to be technical specialists, and most attended specialized educational institutions. They rarely left the branch, and as a result, few rose to high command or even prominence; Vauban, who was Louis XIV’s siege master and most prominent general after 1690, was one exception. Because of this, army commanders rarely appreciated the abilities of and constraints on the two services, particularly as the artillery evolved to be more mobile and thus more useful on the battlefield. This contributed to both the absence of the services from high command and to the lack of true integration of all arms and branches until after 1789. 1.5 Unit Organization Throughout the century, organization remained largely at the whim of the regimental commander, its colonelproprietor. Even after the reforms of the 1770s that ostensibly eliminated venality, regiments continued to be conducted in accord with tradition rather than War Department regulation. As a result, it is all but impossible to provide specific details of organization across the French army of the eighteenth century; only generalities are possible. The regiment was the chief administrative unit in the three arms and could have from as few as five-hundred men to over 2,000. Infantry regiments and some light regiment analogs consisted of between one and four battalions of between three-hundred and 1,000 men each. The infantry battalion was also largely an administrative unit. Battalions were broken into companies of between forty and two-hundred men; these companies were the chief tactical unit. Generally, each battalion maintained a company of grenadiers, and some preferred to keep a chasseur company as well. Companies were generally broken into squads, but formal subdivisions either did not exist or were not implemented for most of the century. Regimental, battalion, and company commanders created a variety of subdivisions, including demi-battalions, demi-companies, platoons, squads, divisions, manches (sleeves), and many others.

275 Efforts to standardize regimental organization were made in the 1760s and again in the 1770s. The former decade set a battalion at eight fusilier companies and one grenadier company each. The latter reduced the fusilier companies to four and added a chasseur company to the battalion, along with setting most infantry regiments at two battalions each. However, both because of fierce opposition and disagreements over the propriety of reform, these changes proved transitory. In addition, France did not fight a major land war between 1763 and 1789, meaning they were never put into practice. Cavalry organization reflected the roots of the arm, both in resistance to change and the relative simplicity compared to the infantry. Cavalry regiments were usually smaller than infantry units and divided into squadrons, the cavalry equivalent of the battalion. Because the cavalry tended to be the province of the upper nobility and composed a relatively small portion of the army, less reform attention was directed towards it during the eighteenth century. It did not develop the same subdivisions as the infantry, meaning its internal organization was less complex but also more resistant to centralized control. Because of the nature of the light forces, few were standardized in any way during the period. They remained largely the province of their commanders, both in their organization and their practice, even after the issuing of documents like the 1769 Instructions for Light Troops. The exception to this is the creation of the chasseur company within infantry battalions in the 1770s, which signaled the blurring of the lines between line and light forces that would continue throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and the ultimate disappearance of light forces as a discrete arm within the French army. Like the cavalry, the artillery generally resisted centralized control. Because it was the most technical of the services, most commanders and even War Department bureaucrats did not have much knowledge of its workings. As a result, they left it largely to itself when compared to the infantry. The artillery technically comprised a “corps,” meaning it was a single unit, or it was combined with the génie. The exception to this was the presence of small guns, usually 3- or 6-pound cannon, that were attached to battalions and regiments sporadically throughout the century; contemporaries bemoaned both their weight and lack of effective firepower. Eighteenth-century theorists, when they addressed artillery at all, generally referred to batteries as analogs for companies and squadrons, which loosely conformed with field artillery practice from the middle of the century onwards. However, the true integration of field artillery with the combat arms would not occur during the Old Regime.

276 Above the level of the regiment, organization became significantly less prescribed, largely because the regiment was the largest permanent organization in the French army prior to 1787. This was long tradition, as placing an echelon above the regiment would necessarily infringe on the rights of the regimental proprietors to dispose of their units as they saw fit. During peacetime, most regiments only encountered other regiments in the training camps that were held sporadically throughout the kingdom, particularly on its frontiers. The senior commander would divide the forces as he saw fit to achieve the purpose of the camp, which was usually to test a new theory or innovation in tactics. A further complication was the presence of the foreign regiments, free companies, and the Maison du roi (king’s household). Over the centuries, the French army had accumulated several regiments of foreign extraction, most notably from Switzerland and Flanders. These units originated as mercenary companies manned from their place of origin, but they gradually evolved into French army units that still drew on non-French manpower. Around twenty percent of the French army’s line units were foreign regiments, mostly infantry, but also cavalry. Free companies were similar units, ad hoc formations that were usually smaller than regiments and that were drawn into French service over the decades. Many of them were light formations, but some were line or cavalry units. Finally, the Maison du roi consisted of the elite units that ostensibly guarded the king and carried his honor onto the battlefield. Because of the prestige attached to these units, they were a favorite target of wealthy anoblis and robe nobles who purchased commissions in them in order to ensure their sons’ nobility. The presence of the foreign regiments, free companies, and the Maison du roi further complicated army organization. They resisted efforts to standardize the army and adopt doctrine, as they relied on their traditions as the foundation of their identity. In battle, the foreign regiments were generally reliable and even elite, but the free companies and the units of the Maison du roi were of questionable quality. By mid-century, commanders and theorists alike recognized that the Maison du roi served a largely ceremonial role and could not be relied on in a fight. However, they were still included in the order of battle, as leaving them behind would insult the king’s majesty. Commanders thus had to balance the needs of the campaign with political and social mores in constructing and deploying their armies. During war, regiments combined to form a field army under the command of a senior general and his subordinate general officers. There were no formal echelons

appendix a

above the regiment, but commanders had been in the habit of forming ad hoc brigades since at least the midseventeenth century. These formations were more akin to a task force than to a brigade, in modern parlance; the Encyclopedia article “Brigadier” notes that such an officer “has only a commission and not a charge, nor properly a grade in the army.” Brigades, and brigadiers, were generally used to dispatch a group of regiments from the main army rather than within the army itself, although they could be used for that purpose as well. Officers also sought the title of “brigadier” as a method of promotion, particularly in peacetime. On the march, officers generally commanded a portion of the march order, from their individual companies all the way up to a full march column. In battle, commanders usually assigned a wing of the army to a subordinate, especially if the army exceeded 40,000, as they often did. The beginnings of operational-level warfare appeared during the Seven Years War in the French army. In 1760, Victor-François, duc de Broglie, divided his army into divisions containing two or more arms, the first formal use of the term and concept in French history. However, the usage did not last beyond the war, and echelons above the regiment would have to wait for the Revolutionary Wars. As a result, French armies of the eighteenth century can be characterized as collections of regiments. 2

Command and Control

French armies were led by officers of varying educational levels, skills, and competencies. The lower ranks tended to be populated by long-service professionals, men who knew their craft and were seasoned by combat. The upper levels of command varied greatly depending on the skill and ability of the men who were available and held purchase at court. It was controlled by the War Department with the assistance of other parts of the royal government, and it answered to the king and his court, although individual officers could hold sway far above their rank if they maintained powerful patrons and/or clients at court. The result was a hybrid organization of dizzying complexity that defied easy understanding, even by contemporaries. Despite this, the rank structure and hierarchy, particularly at the regimental level and below, will be familiar to the modern reader, as several Western militaries base their rank structure on the French example. 2.1 Infantry The junior officers and non-commissioned officers (sousor bas-officiers and subalterns) were the men of captain

277

The French Army in the Eighteenth Century

rank and below. With the exception of the period before the War of the Polish Succession when France had not fought a major war for almost two decades, almost all junior and non-commissioned officers were experienced veterans. As with organization, their ranks were in constant flux throughout the century, but some generalities may be sketched. The lowest level of non-commissioned officer was the corporal, who oversaw a group of five to fifteen soldiers, often referred to as a squad. Each company had around ten corporals, with grenadier companies usually having more to provide a higher ratio of non-commissioned officers to soldiers. Above the corporal was the sergeant, with a typical company having half the number of sergeants as corporals. Each company also had one sergeant-major who was almost always the senior sergeant. Above the sergeants were the lieutenants. Like their counterparts in modern armies, the corporals and sergeants oversaw the daily affairs of the army, whether in camp, in garrison, or on the march. Almost every eighteenth-century company had at least one lieutenant, and they often had several, whether supernumerary, junior (sous-lieutenant), or simply multiple. The lieutenants were often placed in command of subdivisions of the company and may be said to be the lowest-level tactical commanders of discrete units in this role. Commanding them was the company’s captain, the senior officer in the unit. He was the chief executive of the company, responsible for its training and functioning, particularly when it was encamped or in a depot, as well as disbursing its funds, distributing its equipment, and, for most of the century, its manning. The battalion level marked the transition from junior officers to field officers (officiers-majeurs). Each battalion maintained an officer responsible for ensuring the uniform training of the companies; he usually held the rank of major or battalion chief (chef de bataillon). For much of the period, this position was not a formal rank, nor was it standardized across the army, and it was often conferred on the senior captain, who continued to command his company along with his added responsibilities. Every regiment had a colonel who owned the regiment and was responsible for its maintenance, readiness, and direction. Many regiments maintained officers between the colonel and the major/battalion chief. Foremost among these was the position of lieutenant-colonel. A lieutenant-colonelcy was usually not a formal rank, and it was often granted as an honorific to a long-serving captain. This created situations where an officer could be a captain, major/battalion chief, and lieutenant-colonel at the same time. In addition, many colonels were not competent or experienced enough to lead their regiments into battle, so they

employed experienced officers to do so for them. These could hold the position of lieutenant-colonel, colonel-insecond, or colonel-commandant, among others. Finally, there would be specialty officers and men within the regiment and in lower echelons, including aides, drummers, flag-bearers, surgeons, financial officials, and cadets, who were usually the young sons of the nobility. 2.2 Cavalry, Light Forces, Artillery, and the Génie As with the infantry, only generalities may be sketched of the other arms and branches. Non-infantry units generally had officers who performed roles specific to the arm or branch like the cavalry mestre-de-camp or the technicians of the artillery and génie. Command and control varied by practice. Cavalry units closely resembled infantry units, with the important note that cavalry units carried fewer officers, as they were usually much smaller than infantry units. Artillery and engineering units engaged in far less linear drill than their counterparts in the infantry and cavalry, as it was not incumbent in the operation of their branch. Instead, they practiced the skills and techniques relevant to their purpose, particularly in siege warfare. Light forces were often under less strict control than the other arms and branches, as they often dispersed across the battlefield or theater, and thus trained according to the standards their commander desired. Operational and Strategic Command and Control As with organization, command and control above the regimental level largely ceased to be standardized, especially in peacetime. Generals assigned to command a field army were almost always granted the marshal’s baton. While the position of marshal is often imagined to be a formal military rank, it was not; instead, it was a court honor that enabled the marshal to hold command over other generals. A general did not have to be a marshal, but if he were not, he would endure ceaseless complaints from his subordinate generals, who would take affront to being commanded by someone they viewed as a peer or even as an inferior, to the point of outright refusing orders from him. Commanding generals were selected by the court, usually in consultation with the War Department, but not always. Often, especially during the reign of JeanneAntoinette Poisson, marquise de Pompadour, armies went to court favorites rather than the skilled or experienced candidate. Princes of the Blood expected to be assigned command of an army, even if such an assignment were only pro forma, and the king might even decide to command an army himself, as Louis XV did after 1744 in the 2.3

278 Low Countries. These men rarely exerted control over the army, preferring to leave that to the accompanying marshal or general and commanding only in title. Court intrigues could also occasion the recall of a general, although very rarely formally, as such an action would offend the nobility of the commander. Much more common was the resignation of a command, whether desired or not, at the end of a campaign season, usually under pressure from the crown and/or court. A commanding general received virtual carte blanche to conduct affairs within his army as he saw fit. He was dispatched with a strategic plan and knowledge of the other armies that might be operating in the same region, and he was expected to communicate regularly with the Secretary of State for War, the king and court, and his fellow army commanders. He expected to have supplies and reinforcements dispatched from his rear, which connected him and his army to the vast web of the French bureaucracy, military and civilian. Almost every other detail was left up to the general. Assisting the general was an array of subordinates, officials, and bureaucrats. The senior officers of regiments and armies were referred to as the état-major, which is often translated as “staff.” While the translation is accurate for the modern French army, the analogy is not exact in the eighteenth century. In modern English, “staff” connotes a formal organization with officers performing set duties in assigned roles. In contrast, the eighteenth-century étatmajor was simply the senior officers, many of whom had formal duties other than staff work. The regimental étatmajor included men who might be company commanders, while the état-major de l’armée included all men of rank. The état-major consisted of many officers of varying rank and experience. Senior among them were the men who held the rank of lieutenant-general, the highest permanent rank. Collectively, they were known as the general officers (officiers-généraux). There were normally two lieutenants-general with the army, and they rotated command (technically, command of the watch) every day. Directly beneath them were the men named maréchal-decamp whose job it was to translate the generals’ orders into action, both by interpreting them and delivering them to subordinates. As their name indicates, the maréchauxde-camp usually concerned themselves with details of march, subsistence, and encampment. If any brigadiers were present, they ranked below the maréchaux-decamp. Officers could be formally commissioned brigadier, but they could also be breveted so; any field officer could be breveted brigadier, including the odd captain on rare occasion. In addition, generals often appointed

appendix a

a major-general to oversee the army’s infantry, a practice sometimes expanded to include one each for the cavalry, dragoons, and the état-major during the mid-century wars. Each army also had a maréchal-général des logis, an officer tasked with ensuring the army’s logistics throughout the campaign. Each of these officers had numerous aides; the maréchaux had aides-maréchaux, the general officers had their own aides, and the infantry regiments generally maintained at least one aide-major. Aides were aspiring officers, men of skill or experience, or the children of officers engaging in their military apprenticeship. The état-major of the army may be generally divided into three categories: operational command, sustainment, and bureaucracy. The general officers, maréchauxde-camp, and brigadiers comprised the first category. The second and third were collectively known as the service. The maréchal-général des logis supervised the second, but not solely on his own authority. The third was headed by a military intendant, a royal official appointed by the king to oversee the army’s bureaucracy. Intendants headed the civilian portion of the army’s bureaucracy and worked alongside the maréchal-général des logis to ensure supply and other sustainment needs, particularly via purchase forward of the army’s advance. Assisting them were the army’s commissaires de guerre, bureaucrats charged with overseeing the details of the army, from food and supply to discipline and punishment. Both men also maintained contacts with various munitionnaires, private men who ran supply companies and could always be found around armies in the field or at court. These positions were not regularized across time or armies, so officers could simultaneously belong to two or even all three categories at the same time, and contemporary commanders enjoyed complaining that the logisticians dictated strategy rather than vice-versa. In addition to the état-major, the field army possessed numerous supernumerary officers at every level. These ranged from cadets up to lieutenants-general. These positions existed for two main reasons. First, they provided a rank that idle nobles and anoblis could purchase to burnish their social standing. Second, they constituted a pool of officers who could be tasked with duties like running messages, staff planning, commanding a detachment, or even assuming command of echelons within the army itself. The commander’s headquarters was thus a warren of officers and bureaucrats who worked to ensure the army’s success, albeit not always in concert. As might be imagined, the civilian and military officials did not always agree, although far less friction existed between them than might be imagined. The more contentious relationships

279

The French Army in the Eighteenth Century

tended to be between the various lieutenants-general, as they often believed themselves to have the superior title and thus the right of command, even over an appointed marshal. A Prince of the Blood might also supersede his generals, as frequently occurred in the later wars of Louis XIV, as Guibert notes. Thus, the commander’s task was to mediate between various individuals and factions, to ensure the functioning of his army, and to liaise with both the court and his fellow army commanders, if a friendly army was within range. The baggage trains added further to the confusion. Every officer maintained his lifestyle as much as possible in the field, necessitating a massive amount of baggage to keep him in relative luxury. Eighteenth-century French armies were axiomatically heavy, slow-moving, and ponderous as a result. While the commander was physically separated from the War Department and the court, he was expected to maintain communication with both. Mail moved relatively quickly across the distance via highway and the trans-state postal system, but a delay of up to a week was still normal. Most importantly, supplies and reinforcements flowed from France to the front, requiring a great deal of coordination between the field army/armies and the government, hence the preponderance of logistics officers and men in the état-major de l’armée. The Department of War was one of the most important departments in the French government. It was headed by a Secretary of State for War, one of the five to ten mostimportant non-royal men in the government. His chief role was to coordinate all of the available resources for the war effort, dispatching them to the field armies. To support him in this, he had an array of bureaus that worked within the War Ministry as well as various private individuals who either acted as munitionnaires or liaised with munitionnaire companies. The Secretary of State for War was also responsible for strategic planning, although no general staff structure existed to perform this duty. Instead, as with supply, he was expected to draw on his client network, official and unofficial, to see to the success of the armies. The War Ministry answered to the king and the court. The three kings of the eighteenth century had different approaches to the task. Louis XIV preferred a small cabinet and direct intervention in affairs, even of detail, although his energy waned during the War of the Spanish Succession. Louis XV was more distant, ruling through ministers, particularly his First Minister but also including a wide array of men and women who competed with each other for his attention and favor. Louis XVI tended to rely most on his ministers, largely opting not to directly interfere in military affairs. Each had his favorites, and almost

everyone at court competed to be counted in that number. Thus, command and control at the highest level could be a varying process subject to the court and its cabals. A skilled Secretary of State for War was required to navigate these various elements to ensure the success of the armies while maintaining both his grace and his position; the high rate of turnover during wartime indicates how difficult a position in which he often found himself. 3 Manning 3.1 Soldiers Throughout the Old Regime, every French soldier had ostensibly volunteered for duty. In reality, manning took a variety of forms, many with elements of coercion. Wartime especially strained conventional methods of recruitment. Desertion also presented a significant barrier to maintaining manpower, necessitating frequent recourses to more forceful means. For the first half of the eighteenth century, recruiting was the duty of company commanders. Captains would receive their company’s pay and funds from the colonel and then deputize their subordinates to recruit from the populace. The stereotypical recruiting drive involved a sergeant spending lavishly on food and especially drinks for the young men in a public house, then signing them up for service as they grew both more grateful and more impaired. The new recruit found himself with both an enlistment bounty and a lengthy contract. If the recruiters’ numbers were not met, they were not above clearing out the local prisons, enlisting deserters from other units, inventing paper soldiers, or even outright kidnapping men to fill the ranks. Recruiting was not “national;” soldiers were gladly accepted from any country as long as they could communicate with their officers in some common language, whether in a French unit or a foreign regiment, although non-French soldiers were normally taken in by a corresponding foreign regiment. Wartime occasioned a variety of other manning methods. The most obvious and accessible was the milice, the royal militia. All military-age males were liable for militia service, at least in theory, by drawing of lots. Like most contemporary militias, the milice was territorial and designed to defend the kingdom in case of invasion. It was forbidden from operating outside the kingdom’s borders or being used in regular army service. However, it frequently became a ready reserve for the army, despite the edicts forbidding such usage. In addition, the kingdom had recourse to the medieval arrière-ban, which was used infrequently throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth

280 centuries to call men to the army, usually ineffectually. Numerous companies were also scattered throughout the kingdom to garrison its many fortresses; while these were usually manned by invalides, disabled men, they were scoured for manpower if necessary. The French Navy maintained significant manpower, including men trained in land combat; these occasionally appeared in the army, particularly to guard rear areas and man garrisons when those forces were sent to the front. Finally, the free companies could be amalgamated into the army’s regular units if necessary, either wholly or by dispersing their manpower across existing companies. Despite these measures, the French army was chronically short of manpower, as was the case with most contemporary armies. Desertion could consume up to twenty percent of manpower on campaign, but a portion of deserters returned to service, albeit perhaps not with the original company. Combat and disease casualties also took their toll, and although the French army had an excellent medical service by comparison to its contemporaries, medical and surgical knowledge was still rudimentary. 3.2 Officers The major source of the manpower for the officer corps was the nobility. The French state and society had been constructed in part on the military relationship between the king and his nobility: the crown granted use of its land in exchange for military service. As a result, the nobles considered it a duty to send their sons to the military, especially the army. While exact numbers are difficult to determine, the French nobility comprised around oneand-a-half percent of the French population of around twenty million, providing a large manpower pool from which to draw officers. In addition, tens of thousands of people regularly entered the nobility via purchase of noble patents, including army commissions. This provided a virtually inexhaustible supply of manpower to the officer corps, but not all officers were suited to command. Traditionalists held that the skill of command was in the blood, but even the most stringent recidivists acknowledged that nobles needed some form of education and training. Most nobles were sent to a school for basic education or received private tutoring; a large number also attended the collèges that were administered by the Church. After 1750, many were sent to the various incarnations of the Ecole royale militaire, a school designed to educate male, teenage members of the poor nobility in the art and science of warfare. If they were not a student in at the Ecole royale militaire, noble sons were expected to undergo a military apprenticeship by purchasing a commission in a company or regiment at the age

appendix a

of majority, around thirteen, and serving throughout the remainder of their able life. By this combination of basic education and experiential training and genetics, a noble became an officer suited to command. The exception to this was the highest nobility, particularly the Princes of the Blood, who may have had only an ineffectual private education at best. The officer corps was almost exclusively noble. Around ninety to ninety-five percent of officers held a noble patent. The few common officers, known as roturiers, tended to rise no further than the rank of captain, and even then, only after many years’ service. The nobility jealously guarded its position in the army, both out of class solidarity and because its members genuinely believed that noble status conferred some degree of military competence. However, there were divisions between the various noble classes, especially the poor provincial nobility and the rich robe nobles and anoblis. Nobles of older extraction resented the parvenus of the anoblis and railed against their perceived lack of education and experience, while the anoblis lobbied for a more open system and society, reflecting one of the fundamental disputes in French society during the period. In addition, foreign officers frequently appeared in the French army, and the profession of officer may be said to have been a truly international one in the eighteenth century. As with the recruitment of soldiers, ideas of “nation” or even patriotism rarely prevented an immigrant from serving in France’s military. Irish, Scottish, Swiss, and Flemish officers abounded, honoring the long tradition of service that each of their countries and societies had to the French crown. Geography also played a role in officer immigration: many Germans and Italians were found in the French officer corps, although Spanish officers tended to be less so. By the eighteenth century, this timeworn system was increasingly under assault from a variety of sources and developments in French society. A major source of criticism came from Enlightenment philosophes, who called for technical education and training for all officers, especially as armies grew larger and war became more technical and complicated. Another was the increasing intrusion of the anoblis and noblesse de la robe into the officer corps. Their members frequently purchased commissions for their sons, especially in the Maison du roi. Most of these were supernumerary positions, but many were also in positions of authority. As officers were required to spend only the campaign season with their units in wartime and only a few months in peacetime, they increasingly knew little about the units they commanded, the responsibilities they held, or military affairs in general. Both traditionalists and

The French Army in the Eighteenth Century

progressives pushed to require education for all officers and that they spend more time with their units. However, none of these proposals permanently cohered both in regulation and practice during the Old Regime and would have to wait for the Revolution. The French officer corps was thus a semi-professional caste with a porous floor and borders. French officers served in non-French armies, and non-French officers served in the French army. Officers may have had some experience, training, and education, but none was required. Every year, thousands of young men entered the officer corps, prepared or not. Supernumerary officers abounded, leading to rancorous arguments over the propriety of officer commissions, the proper nature of an officer, and the direction of the future officer corps. 4 Services The various services that supported the French army relied on the same convoluted bureaucracy that produced its command and control. Supply systems, equipment, and medical services occupied much of the time and energy of the Department of War and the functionaries of the army état-major. They also cost a great deal, which proved increasingly onerous throughout the century as the financial crisis loomed. Supply systems relied almost entirely on private companies, both in France and abroad. While armies usually had commissaires overseeing munitions in the army étatmajor, supply was not provided directly by the government. Instead, the Department of War contracted with munitionnaires, individuals who could provide supply, transport, and storage to the army. The War Department

281 also purchased food, fodder, and warehousing in advance of the army, which were almost always available no matter how hostile the population might be in the invaded area. This was largely systematized through court figures who built client networks of munitionnaires and could efficiently direct supply to the armies. The most famous example of this was the Pâris brothers, all four of whom were deeply entrenched in the government of the early half of the century and oversaw supply and finance for the wars of the period. Equipment relied on a vast web of manufactories and distributors, both within France and in other countries. Certain resources, like saltpeter, could be found domestically, but others, like iron, had to be found elsewhere. Most equipment was manufactured in France in a variety of government-supported workshops, particularly in the more industrialized region in the north and east. It would be stored in garrisons or warehouses in anticipation of war, then dispatched to the armies by the War Department. Supply and equipment reached the soldier through a variety of means. Soldiers’ equipment needs were usually met on campaign via the état-major, with the exception of shoes and weatherproof clothes, on occasion. Official sources usually provided a minimum of sustenance, although frequently not of high quality. While the vast clouds of camp followers of the previous century had largely evaporated, many survived, including the cantinières and vivandières that seem to be ubiquitous in military history. Soldiers supplemented their supply with items bought or taken from locals. Pillage was not as common during the eighteenth century as the prior, largely due to changing social mores, but it certainly occurred, especially of food and clothes.

282 table a1

appendix a Comparative table of Old-Regime officer ranks to modern French and USA ranks

Title General Officers Marshal-General of the King’s Camps and Armies* Constable (obsolete)* Marshal of France* Colonel-General Lieutenant-General Maréchal-de-camp Major-General Brigadier

Command

Modern French equivalent

Modern USA equivalent

All land forces

None (8-star)

General of the Army (5-star) General (4-star) ″ ″ ″ ″

All land forces A theater; a field army All forces of one branch An army; a portion of an army

None Maréchal de France (7-star) None Général d’armée (5-star) Général de corps d’armée (4-star) A portion of an army; administrative Général de division (3-star) Lieutenant-General (3-star) All of the majors of a field army None Major-General (2-star) A detachment or task force Général de brigade (2-star) Brigadier-General (1-star)

Regimental Officers – Regimental Etat-Major Colonel A regiment Colonel-Commandant A regiment (commander) Colonel-Proprietor A regiment (owner) Colonel-in-Second A regiment Lieutenant-Colonel* A regiment Major All captains of a regiment Battalion Chief/ A battalion Commandant Aide-Major None; assists the Major Sous-Aide-Major None; assists the aide-major Company Officers Captain Captain-in-Second Lieutenant Sous-Lieutenant/ Lieutenant-in-Second Cadet-Gentilhomme

Colonel None None None Lieutenant-Colonel None Commandant

Colonel None None Lieutenant-Colonel None None Lieutenant-Colonel

None None

Major Captain

A company A company Various sub-units Various sub-units

Capitaine None Lieutenant Sous-Lieutenant

Captain First Lieutenant Lieutenant Second Lieutenant

None

Aspirant

None

Sergent-chef Sergent Caporal None

First Sergeant Sergeant (various ranks) Corporal None

Non-Commissioned Officers Sergeant-Major A company’s men Sergeant A portion of a company’s men Corporal A small group of men Appointé (trainee officer) None *denotes office, not formal rank Created with the assistance of Bill Nance

283

The French Army in the Eighteenth Century table a2

Etat-major

Regimental manpower per Choiseul reforms of the 1760s. Most regiments of 2 battalions; battalions of 8 fusilier companies and 1 grenadier company

Fusilier Company

At the discretion of the 1 Captain Colonel; approximately 1 Lieutenant 10 officers 1 Sous-Lieutenant 1 Supply Officer 4 Sergeants 8 Corporals 8 Appointés (trainee officers) 2 Drummers 40 Fusiliers (peacetime strength; raised as necessary during war) Total: 66

table a3

Grenadier Company

Battalion Strength

1 Captain 1 Lieutenant 1 Sous-Lieutenant 1 Supply Officer 2 Sergeants 8 Corporals 8 Appointés (trainee officers) 1 Drummer 40 Grenadiers (peacetime strength; raised as necessary during war) 63

8 Fusilier Companies 1 Grenadier Company Total:

528 63 591

Regimental Strength 2 Battalions Etat-major Total:

1182 10 1192

Regimental manpower per 1776 ordinance. Regiments of 2 battalions; battalions of 4 fusilier companies, 1 chasseur company, 1 grenadier company, 1 depot company

Etat-major

Fusilier/Chasseur Company

Grenadier Company

Battalion Strength

1 Colonel 1 Colonel-in-Second 1 Lieutenant-Colonel 1 Major 1 Quartermaster-Treasurer 2 Flagbearers 1 Adjutant 1 Surgeon-Major 1 Almoner 1 Drum-Major 1 Armorer

1 Captain 1 Captain-in-Second 1 Lieutenant 1 Lieutenant-in-Second 2 Sous-Lieutenants 1 Sergeant-Major 1 Supply-Writer 5 Sergeants 10 Corporals 1 Cadet-gentilhomme 1 Barber 144 Fusiliers/Chasseurs 2 Drummers 171

1 Captain 1 Captain-in-Second 1 1st Lieutenant 1 2nd Lieutenant 2 Sous-Lieutenants 1 Sergeant-Major 1 Supply-Writer 4 Sergeants 8 Corporals 1 Cadet-gentilhomme 1 Barber 84 Grenadiers 2 Drummers 108

4 Fusilier Companies 1 Chasseur Company 1 Grenadier Company Depot Company Total:

684 171 108 171 1134

Regimental Strength 2 Battalions Etat-major Total:

2268 12 2280

Total:

Adapted from Bacquet, L’infanterie au XVIII e siècle

Batteries

Artillery

Génie

Aides

Prototypical midcentury French field army organization Adapted from Kennett, The French Army in the Seven Years War

Regiments

Regiments

figure a1

Cavalry Etat-major

Infantry Etat-major

Army étatmajor

Commandant

Munitionnaires

Maréchalgénéral des logis

Marshal

Intendant

Money

Provost

Medical

Food (on campaign)

Food (from rear)

284 appendix a

figure a2

Field Armies

Generalized diagram of French strategic command and control

Bureaus

Secretary of State for War

Inf

n lue

ce

Influence

Inf

First Minister

ce lue n

Supply

Funding

Court

King

Advisory Councils

nd in

Fu

g Munitionnaire companies

Controller- Finance General of Chancellor Finances

ce

en

flu

In

Influence

Influence

Allies

The French Army in the Eighteenth Century

285

appendix b

Glossary of Terms Anoblis A person who has a noble patent but is not fully accepted as noble; the classes of such people who formed the liminal space between the upper classes of commoners and the nobility Arme blanche Generic term for melee combat; originates from the cavalry, which was the exclusive province of the nobility in the medieval period, and white was the color of nobility, signifying pure blood Avant-propos A form of introduction often used in French academic writing that outlines the work’s purpose and approach and situates it within its larger field Break To separate the constituent parts of a unit, usually from closed order for deployment. Usually synonymous with “shake” and “tear” Carabinier Literally, a soldier who carries a carbine, but not all carried actual carbines during the period; instead, often a general term for light troops and/or skirmishers, as distinguished from fusiliers/fantassins Change, give or make To induce an opponent to change his formation or position, preferably to his disadvantage Closed order A formation in which no interval is left between the constituent units. Closed order only became possible after the adoption of the cadenced step, as it required precision in march and maneuver to avoid units’ becoming entangled Combine/combination In eighteenth-century military theory, “combine” and “combination” denoted how a commander arranged his forces in formations and for action; for example, a general may combine his forces on a place to receive an oncoming army Commissaire Officer within the army charged with ensuring the troops’ discipline, pay, and provision. Guibert usually use the term to refer to a munitions officer, but not always. The term should not be confused with the later commissar/komissar/commissaire de guerre, which usually denotes a political officer separate from the military hierarchy Constitution While the modern term generally denotes a written plan of government, the eighteenth-century definition of the word is more general, meaning a systematic concept or fundamental ideas and mores. Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws would have been considered a political constitution by contemporaries, for example. Guibert most often uses the term to refer to what would now be called doctrine in military institutions, but he also uses

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498211_057

it in the political sense, especially in the Preliminary Discourse Coup d’œil The ability of a commander to envision when and where enemy and friendly forces will be positioned before and during a battle. The French, especially in the eighteenth century, usually use the term specifically to refer to the commander’s ability to judge the terrain and how forces may be placed on it; the English use of the term is more broad, largely reflecting the expansion of the term by Clausewitz to include ephemeral factors like morale and enemy psychology Deploy See Ploy and Deploy Etat-major The senior officers of a unit, usually battalionsized or larger, some of whom were expected to perform staff functions. While the term is commonly translated as “staff,” it does not align directly with the modern definition of staff, which is a much more rigid system with staff officers in assigned roles under the direction of the unit commander and chief of staff En bastion “As a bastion;” a formation that resembles a bastion En bataille Sometimes translated as “in battle order,” particularly when paired with “in march order;” also as “in line” or “in battle line.” John Lynn, The Bayonets of the Republic, provides a persuasive case for leaving the term in French, as it can have multiple meanings that do not always translate En batterie “In battery.” As with en bataille, this term refers to preparing artillery for battle but does not have a direct translation that would make sense to a modern Anglophone En échiquier “In a quincunx or checkerboard formation” En muraille “In a wall;” to stand shoulder-to-shoulder without intervals. The term recalls siegecraft Evolution Essentially, a tactical maneuver. “Evolutions” generally refers to the suite of maneuvers available to a commander to prepare for and engage in battle, particularly at the battalion level Facile While the modern English definition of the word connotes a negative simplicity or lack of sophistication, Guibert uses it to mean “simple” or “easy,” with a positive rather than a negative connotation Fantassin Line infantryman who is not a member of a light or elite company; eighteenth-century equivalent of “general infantry.” See fusilier

Glossary of Terms File The men in a line in front of and behind a soldier in formation; a line perpendicular to the unit’s front Flank march A march to the right or left, along a line perpendicular to the center of the unit and projected forwards and backwards Floating The drifting apart of men or sub-units within a formation that required redressing it; usually paired with “disorder” Front march A march forward or backwards, along a line parallel to the center of the unit and projected forwards and backwards Fusil The technical term for a period weapon, even though they are popularly referred to as “muskets.” A fusil was a smoothbore flintlock musket around four-and-a-half feet long, which would reach six feet with socket bayonet attached. Its effective range was around two-hundred yards, or one-hundred toises Fusilier A soldier who uses a fusil; can sometimes be used to distinguish from a carabinier or other specialized unit; also a generic term for infantry, interchangeable with fantassin Grands Grandees; originally, lords who controlled a large demesne; by Guibert’s time, simply people who held power, especially at court Height A geometrical term referring to the placement of a unit in formation, usually the unit of alignment. The height of a formation would be the position of its front rank. Subsequent units could deploy to the same height, meaning by aligning their front ranks on a line drawn through the first rank of the original unit and extending to its right and left, which would usually be perpendicular to its files Huguenot A French Protestant Interval The distance between divisions of men within a unit or between units. When marching or deploying, “full interval” would be an interval equal to the units’ frontage, and “half interval” would be a lesser interval, although likely not exactly half Inversion Changing the prescribed method of deployment, especially via maneuvers that did not end with the most prestigious unit deployed on the formation’s right Marine The Ministry of the Marine, which encompassed both the French Navy and the administration of all French colonies. Military writers generally use the term as shorthand for the Navy, but not always Militaire A person engaged in military activities, usually as a serious hobby or profession. While the term is occasionally translated as “military man,” it is clunky to translate into de-gendered English, which is why it remains in the French

287 Munitionnaire A businessman who contracts with the army to provide provisions on campaign Noblesse de l’épee “Sword nobles,” nobles of old extraction, particularly those who could trace their lineage back to the traditional feudal exchange of fealty and military service for protection and a fief Noblesse de la robe “Robe nobles,” nobles of recent extraction who had purchased ennobling offices, especially within the judicial and financial administrations. Many members of the noblesse de la robe were considered to be anoblis Noblesse du sang “Nobles of the Blood,” members of the royal family, which had several cadet branches and thus comprised several hundred members at any given time Officier-major The officer responsible for a battalion’s discipline and order; often shortened to simply “major” Open order A formation in which an interval is left between the constituent units. Open order, especially in column, was easier to maneuver in, as it left a margin for error, but it required several more steps to deploy into line, as the intervals would first have to be closed Parlement A regional law court located in a major province; traditionally, France had thirteen, but the number was never fixed. Its members were almost exclusively jurists from wealthy families, both common and anoblis. During the eighteenth century, the parlementaires were one of the major groups of rising bourgeoisie, and many of them wished to make the parlements, or the Parlement of Paris, into a quasi-legislative body or bodies. Despite the similar name and frequent equation, a parlement is not a parliament, nor is it at all akin to the English Parliament, even though they are sometimes equated or confused Patrie Generally translated as “fatherland;” the French is usually retained in order to draw a distinction from other cultures that use a similar term, particularly Germany during the Nazi period Philosophe Literally “philosopher” but denotes a supporter of the Enlightenment and its thought patterns during the period. While the terms “Enlightenment” and “enlightened” were used, most contemporaries referred to them simply as “philosophy” and their practitioners as “philosophers,” hence the retention of the French term for the specific period Pivot Point on which a unit turns. A fixed pivot requires all units in a formation to turn on the same point, while a moving pivot assigns a separate point to each man, subdivision, or unit at the discretion of the officers Place (of war)/Point A defensive and/or fortified position, ranging from a small and temporary battlefield emplacement to entire fortified cities and fortress complexes

288 Ploy and Deploy Drill-specific verbs that refer to the movements from column to line (deploy) and line to column (ploy). “Ploy” has fallen out of common usage, even among militaries, and “deploy” has become a more generalized term analogous to preparation. The technical meanings are intended throughout Guibert’s book Point-blank (but en blanc) Like ploy and deploy, point-blank is a general term with a more technical meaning in military ballistics. Its common modern definition is simply “very close,” but in ballistics, it refers to the distance over which a projectile will travel and still hit the target without needing to compensate for gravity. In most cases, Guibert intends the technical meaning of the term Rank The men in a line to the right and left of a soldier in formation; a line parallel to the unit’s front

appendix b Shake see break System Guibert usually uses “system” to refer to prescriptive doctrines, especially those crafted in imitation of the ideas of Jean-Charles, Chevalier Folard. He condemns them as “makers of systems” and rejects their rigid nature. However, the word does not always mean this in Guibert’s writing; the difference should be apparent in context Tear see break Tiraillerie “Skirmishings;” to deploy in skirmish order or for skirmishing Toise A measurement of land distance, akin to a nautical fathom, equaling around two modern meters

Bibliography Archival Service Historique – Armée de Terre, Vincennes, France.

Primary Apollodorus. Library. Perseus Digital Library. http://www.per seus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0022. Appian. Foreign Wars. Perseus Digital Library. http://www.per seus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0230. Arrian. Array Against the Alans. http://s_van_dorst.tripod.com/ Ancient_Warfare/Rome/Sources/ektaxis.html#translation. Aulnay, Louis Dupré de. Traité des subsistences militaires. Paris: Prault, 1744. Bernis, François-Joachim de Pierre, comte de Lyonnais, Cardinal. Memoirs and Letters. 2 Volumes. Translated by Katharine Wormeley. Boston: Hardy, Pratt, & Co. Besenval, Pierre-Victor, baron. Mémoires. Paris: 1821. Bombelles, Henri-François, comte de. Mémoires sur le service journalier de l’infanterie. 2 Volumes. Paris, 1719. Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne. An Universal History from the Beginning of the World to the Empire of Charlemagne. Translated by James Elphinston. Dublin: Marchbank, 1785. Bourcet, Pierre-Joseph. Mémoires historiques sur la guerre que les français ont soutenue en Allemagne depuis 1757 jusqu’en 1762. Paris: Maradan, 1792. Bourcet, Pierre-Joseph. Mémoires militaires sur les frontières de la France, du Piémont, et la Savoie, depuis l’embouchure du Var jusqu’au Lac de Genève. Paris: Chez Levrault, 1802. Bourcet, Pierre-Joseph. Principes de la guerre de montagne. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1888. Broglie, Victor-François, duc de. Campagnes du maréchal duc de Broglie en Allemagne 1759–1761. Frankfurt et Leipzig, 1761. Broglie, Victor-François, duc de. Correspondance inédite de Victor-François de Broglie avec le prince Xavier de Saxe, comte de Lusace, pour servir à l’histoire de la guerre de sept ans. 4 Volumes. Paris: Albin Michel, 1905. Caesar, Gaius Julius. Civil Wars. Perseus Digital Library. http:// www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999 .02.0076. Caesar, Gaius Julius. Gallic Wars. Perseus Digital Library. http:// www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999 .02.0001. Caesar, Gaius Julius. On the African War. LacusCurtius. https:// penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Caesar/ African_War/home.html.

Chevert, François de. Journal en vers de ce qui s’est passé au camp de Richemont, commandé par Chevert. Paris Lambert, 1755. Choiseul, Etienne-François, duc de. Mémoires. Paris: Mercure de France, 1982. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De oratore. 3 Volumes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979. Correspondance littéraire, philosophique, et critique. Edited by Denis Diderot and Friedrich Melchoir, baron Grimm. Crissé, Lancelot Turpin, comte de Sanzay et. Commentaire sur les institutions de Végèce, 3 Volumes. Montargis: 1779. Crissé, Lancelot Turpin, comte de Sanzay et. Commentaires de César. 3 Volumes. Montargis, 1785. Crissé, Lancelot Turpin, comte de Sanzay et. Commentaires sur les Mémoires de Montecuccoli. 3 Volumes. Paris: 1769. Crissé, Lancelot Turpin, comte de Sanzay et. Essai sur l’art de la guerre. 2 Volumes. Paris: 1754. Dryden, John. Alexander’s Feast, or The Power of Musique. London: Tonson, 1697. Dumas, Alexandre. The Three Musketeers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Dumas, Alexandre. Twenty Years After. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Dumas, Alexandre. The Vicomte de Bragelonne. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Dumouriez, Charles-François du Périer. Life. 3 Volumes. London: Johnson, 1796. Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts, et des métiers. Paris: 1751–1772. Feuquières, Antoine de Pas, marquis de. Mémoires contenants ses maximes sur la guerre et l’application des exemples aux maximes. 4 Volumes. London: Dunoyer, 1736. Feuquières, Antoine de Pas, marquis de. Memoirs Historical and Military, Containing a Distinct View of all the Considerable States of Europe. 2 Volumes. London: Woodward, 1736. FM 6-0: Commander and Staff Organization and Operations. Washington, DC: US Army Publishing Directorate, 2014. Folard, Jean Charles, chevalier. Histoire de Polybe. 6 Volumes. Amsterdam, 1774. Folard, Jean Charles, chevalier. Nouvelles découvertes sur la guerre, dans une dissertation sur Polybe, où l’on donne une idée plus étendue du commentaire entrepris sur cet auteur, et deux dissertations importantes détaches du corps de l’ouvrage. Paris: Jean-François Josse and Claude Labottiere, 1726. Folard, Jean Charles, chevalier. Traité de la colonne, la manière de la former et de combattre dans cet ordre. Amsterdam, 1774. Frontinus, Sextius Julius. The Stratagems of War. Translated by Robert Scott. London: Coxhead, 1816.

290 FT-05: The Tactical Commander’s Guide to Command and Control in Operations. Vincennes: Armée de Terre Centre de Doctrine et d’Enseignement du Commandement, 2011. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. A General Essay on Tactics. 2 Volumes. London, 1780. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. Considérations militaires et patriotiques. Avignon. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. De la force publique, considérée dans tous ses rapports. Paris, 1790. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. Eloge de Maréchal de Catinat. Edinburgh, 1775. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. Eloge du roi de Prusse. London, 1787. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. Eloge historique de Michel de l’Hôpital, Chancelier de France. 1777. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. Essai général de tactique. 2 Volumes. Liège: Plomteaux, 1773. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. Essai général de tactique. 2 Volumes. London: Librairies Associés, 1772. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. Journal d’un voyage en Allemagne. 2 Volumes. Paris: Treuttel et Würtz, 1803. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. Lettre à M. le comte de Guibert sur les précis de ce qui est arrivé à son égard à l’assemblée du Berry. 1789. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. Œuvres dramatiques. Paris: Persan, 1822. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. Œuvres militaires. 5 Volumes. Paris: Magimel, 1803. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. Projet de lettre à un citoyen sur son discours projeté aux trois ordres de l’Assemblée de Berry. 1789. Guibert, Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de. Voyages de Guibert, dans diverses parties de la France et en Suisse faits en 1775, 1778, 1784, et 1785. Paris: D’Hautel, 1806. Guichard, Karl Gottleib. Mémoires militaires sur les Grecs et les Romains. 2 Volumes. The Hague: Hondt, 1758. Herodotus. The Histories. Perseus Digital Library. http://www .perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01 .0126. Houssaye, Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de la. Histoire du gouvernement de Venise. Paris: Léonard, 1676. Houssaye, Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de la. Mémoires historiques, politiques, critiques, et littéraires. 2 Volumes. Amsterdam: Charles le Cene, 1722. Houssaye, Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de la. Le prince de Nicolas Machiavel, citoyen de Florence. Amsterdam: Wetstein, 1684. Isocrates. Busiris. Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus .tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.014 4%3Aspeech%3D11.

Bibliography Jomini, Antoine-Henri, baron. The Art of War. Translated by G.H. Mendell. Boston: Lippincott, 1862. Le Blond, Guillaume. L’artillerie raisonnée. Paris: Jombert, 1761. Le Blond, Guillaume. The Elements of Fortification. Philadelphia: Wayne, 1801. Le Blond, Guillaume. A Treatise of the Attack of Fortified Places. London: Cave, 1748. Lespinasse, Julie de. The Love Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse to and from the Comte de Guibert. Edited by Armand VilleneuveGuibert. Translated by E.H.F. Mills. London: Routledge, 1929. Livius, Titus. The History of Rome. Perseus Digital Library. http:// www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text: 1999.02.0145. Lloyd, Henry. War, Society, and Enlightenment: The Works of General Lloyd. Patrick Speelman, editor. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Louis XIV and the comte de Vergennes: Correspondence, 1774– 1787. Edited by John Hardman and Munro Price. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1998. Machiavelli, Niccolò. Œuvres de Machiavel. 8 Volumes. Paris: Volland, 1793. Maïzeroy, Paul-Gédéon Joly de. Cours de tactique théorique, pratique, et historique. 2 Volumes. Paris, 1766. Mandeville, Bernard. The Fable of the Bees: Or Private Vices, Publick Benefits. New York: Penguin, 1989. Marcellinus, Ammianus. Rerum Gestarum. Edited by John Rolfe. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=urn:cts:latin Lit:stoa0023.stoa001.perseus-eng1:14. Maro, Publius Vergilius. The Aeneid. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Melfort, Louis Drummond, comte de. Traité sur la cavalerie. Paris: Desprez, 1776. Mesnil-Durand, François-Jean de Graindorge d’Orgeville, baron de. Défense d’un système de guerre national, ou, analyse raisonnée d’un ouvrage intitulé Réfutation complète du système de M. de M[esnil-]Durand. Amsterdam, 1779. Mesnil-Durand, François-Jean de Graindorge d’Orgeville, baron de. Projet d’un ordre français en tactique, ou la phalange coupée et doublée soutenue par le mélange des armes. Paris: Antoine Boudet, 1755. Mesnil-Durand, Francois-Jean de Graindorge d’Orgeville, baron de. Fragments de tactique: ou six mémoires. Paris: 1774. Montecuccoli, Raimundo. Mémoires. Edited by Lancelot Turpin de Crissé. Amsterdam/Leipzig: Artkée & Merkus, 1770. Montesquieu, Charles-Louis Secondat, baron de la Brède et de. De l’esprit des lois. Paris: Gallimard, 1995. Montesquieu, Charles-Louis Secondat, baron de la Brède et de. Lettres persanes. Paris: Garnier, 1960. Montesquieu, Charles-Louis Secondat, baron de la Brède et de. The Spirit of the Laws. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

291

Bibliography Morogues, Sébastien-François bigot, vicomte de. Tactique navale, ou traité des évolutions et des signaux. Paris: Guerin & Delatour, 1763. Morris, Gouverneur. Diary and Letters. 2 Volumes. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1888. Naso, Publius Ovidius. Metamorphosis. 2 Volumes. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1872. Pictet, Gabriel. Essai sur la tactique de l’infanterie: ouvrage méthodique où l’on trouve en detail et par ordre. 2 Volumes. Amsterdam/Geneva, 1761. Plutarch, Comparison of Philopœmen and Titus. Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Per seus:text:2008.01.0032. Plutarch, Philopœmen. Perseus Digital Library. http://www.per seus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2008.01.0056. Plutarch. Camillus. Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus .tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2008.01.0012. Pollio, Marcus Vitruvius. Ten Books of Architecture. Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text? doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0073. Polybius. Histories. Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus .tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0234. Puységur, Jacques-François de Chastenet, marquis de. Art de la guerre par principes et par règles. 2 Volumes. Paris, 1749. Puységur, Louis-Pierre de Chastenet, comte de. Etat actuel de l’art et de la science militaire à la Chine. Paris: Didot, 1773. Regnard, Jean-François. Œuvres complètes. 6 Volumes. Paris: Brière, 1832. Richelieu, Armand Cardinal Jean du Plessis, duc de Fronsac et de. The Political Testament of Cardinal Richelieu. Translated by Henry Hill. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961. Rochambeau, Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, comte de. Mémoires militaires, historiques, et politiques. 2 Volumes. Paris: Fain, 1809. Roguet, François, comte. “Etude sur l’ordre perpendiculaire.” Le spectateur militiaire 18 (1934): 484–527. Rohan, Henri, duc de. Le parfait capitaine. Paris: 1639. Rules and Regulations for the Field Exercise and Maneuvers of the French Infantry issued August 1, 1791, and the Maneuvers Added which has been since Adopted by the Emperor Napoleon; also, the Maneuvers of the Field Artillery with the Infantry. Edited and Translated by Irenée Amelot de Lacroix. Boston: T.B. Wait, 1810. Saint-Germain, Claude-Louis, comte de. Mémoires et commentaires. 2 Volumes. London, 1781. Saint-Remy, Pierre Surirey de. Mémoires d’artillerie. 6 Volumes. Paris: Rollin, 1745. Santa Cruz de Marcenado, Alvaro de Navia-Orosio y Virgil de la Rúa, vizconde del Puerto, marqués de. Réflexions militaires et politiques. 12 Volumes. Various, 1724–1730.

Saxe, Maurice de. Mes rêveries. Amsterdam: Arkstée et Merkus, 1751. Siculus, Diodorus. Library of History. LacusCurtius. http:// penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus _Siculus/23*.html. Staël-Holstein, Anna-Louise-Germaine. Mémoires. Paris: Charpentier, 1843. Toulongeon, François-Emmanuel. “Notice historique de JacquesAntoine-Hippolyte Guibert, écrit en 1790.” Journal d’un voyage en Allemagne. Paris: Treuttel et Würtz, 1803. 1–85. Tranquillus, Gaius Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars. Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text? doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0132. Valois, Marguerite de. Memoirs. Translated by Violet Fane. New York: Scribner’s, 1842. Vauban, Sebastien le Prestre, siegneur de. The New Method of Fortification. Abel Swall, translator. London, 1691. Vegetius, Flavius Renatus. Epitome of Military Science. Translated by N.P. Milner. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001. Vernon, Simon François Gay de. Traité élémentaire d’art militaire et de fortification, à l’usage des élèves de l’Ecole Polytechnique et des élèves des écoles militaires. 2 Volumes. Paris: Allais, 1805. Voltaire. Letters Concerning the English Nation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Secondary Abel, Jonathan. “An Aspect of the Military Experience in the Age of Reason: The Evolution of the Combined-Arms Division in Old-Regime France.” Essays in Honor of Christopher Duffy (working title). Edited by Alex Burns. Forthcoming. Abel, Jonathan. “Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, comte de Guibert,” Oxford Bibliographies Online, 2014. http://www.oxfordbiblio graphies.com/view/document/obo-9780199791279/obo -9780199791279-0037.xml. Abel, Jonathan. Guibert: Father of Napoleon’s Grande Armée. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Allmand, Christopher. The De re militari of Vegetius: The Reception, Transmission, and Legacy of a Roman Text in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Anderson, M.S. War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime, 1618–1789. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988. Anderson, M.S. The War of the Austrian Succession, 1740–1748. New York: Longman, 1995. Antoine, Michel. Louis XV. Paris: Fayard, 1989. Aragon, Marie-Christine d’. Julie de Lespinasse. Paris: Ramsay, 1980. Asprey, Robert. Frederick the Great: The Magnificent Enigma. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1986.

292 Bacquet, Louis-Hippolyte. L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle. L’organisation. Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1907. Barbiche, Bernard. Les institutions de la monarchie française à l’époque moderne. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999. Bardin, Etienne-Alexandre. Notice historique sur Guibert. Paris: Corréard jeune, 1836. Barker, Juliet. Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, 1417– 1450. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. Baugh, Daniel. The Global Seven Years War 1754–1763: Britain and France in a Great Power Contest. New York: Routledge, 2011. Beasley, Faith. Salons, History, and the Creation of SeventeenthCentury France: Mastering Memory. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. Beik, William. Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Bell, David. The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It. New York: Mariner Books, 2008. Berkovich, Ilya. Motivation in War: The Experience of Common Soldiers in Old-Regime Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Best, Geoffrey. War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770– 1870. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982. Bien, David, et al. Caste, Class, and Profession in Old Regime France: The French Army and the Ségur Reform of 1781. St. Andrews: Centre for French History and Culture, 2010. Bien, David. “Military Education in 18th Century France: Technical and Non-Technical Determinants.” Science, Technology, and Warfare: Proceedings of the Third Military History Symposium, U.S. Air Force Academy, 8–9 May 1969. Edited by Monte D. Wright and Lawrence J. Paszek. (1971): 51–59. Bien, David. “The Army in the French Enlightenment: Reform, Reaction, and Revolution.” Past & Present 85 (1979): 68–98. Bien, David, and Godneff, Nina. “Les offices, les corps et le crédit d’état: l’utilisation des privilèges sous l’Ancien Régime.” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 43e Année. (1988): 397–404. Bien, David, and Rovet, J. “La réaction aristocratique avant 1789: L’exemple de l’armée.” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 29e Année no. 3 (1974): 505–534. Bien, David. and Rovet, J. “La réaction aristocratique avant 1798: L’exemple de l’armée.” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 29e Année no. 2 (1974): 23–48. Billows, Richard. Julius Caesar: The Colossus of Rome. London: Routledge, 2009. Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne. Edited by LouisGabriel Michaud. 45 Volumes. Paris: Desplaces, 1842–1865. Black, Jeremy. European Warfare, 1660–1815. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.

Bibliography Black, Jeremy. Warfare in the Eighteenth Century. London: Cassell, 1999. Blaufarb, Rafe. “Noble Privilege and Absolutist State Building: French Military Administration after the Seven Years War.” French Historical Studies 24 (2001): 223–246. Blaufarb, Rafe. The French Army, 1750–1820: Careers, talent, merit. New York: Manchester University Press, 2002. Bond, Brian. War and Society in Europe, 1870–1970. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998. Bouissounouse, Janine. Julie: The Life of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse: her Salon, her Friends, her Loves. Translated by Pierre de Fontnouvelle. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962. Brialmont, Alexis. Précis d’art militaire. Brussels, 1850. Broglie, Albert. Le secret du roi. New York: Cassel, 1879. Browning, Reed. The War of the Austrian Succession. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995. Buffington, Arthur H. The Second Hundred Years War, 1689–1815. New York: Holt and Co., 1929. The Cambridge New Medieval History. 7 Volumes. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Camon, Hubert. Quand et comment Napoléon a conçu son système de bataille. Paris, 1935. Camon, Hubert. Quand et comment Napoléon a conçu son système de manœuvre. Paris: 1931. Carlyle, Thomas. History of Friedrich the Second, Called Frederick the Great. 8 Volumes. New York: John B. Alden, 1885. Cassirer, Ernst. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955. Censer, Jack. The French Press in the Age of Enlightenment. New York: Routledge, 1994. Chartier, Roger. The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991. Childs, John. Armies and Warfare in Europe, 1648–1789. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982. Childs, John. Warfare in the Seventeenth Century. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2006. Citino, Robert. The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to the Third Reich. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012. Clark, Christopher. Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947. Cambridge: Belknap, 2006. Clausewitz, Carl von. On War. Edited by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Cole, Charles. Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism. 2 Volumes. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939. Colin, Jean. L’éducation militaire de Napoléon. Paris: R. Chapelot, 1901. Colin, Jean. L’infanterie au XVIIIe siècle. La tactique. Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1907.

Bibliography Collins, James. The Fiscal Limits of Absolutism: Direct Taxation in Early Modern France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Collins, James. The State in Early Modern France. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Corvisier, André. Armies and Societies in Europe, 1494–1789. Translated by Abigail Siddall. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979. Corvisier, André. Les contrôles des troupes de l’ancien régime. 2 Volumes. Paris, 1970. Craveri, Benedetta. Madame du Deffand and Her World. Translated by Teresa Waugh. Boston: David R. Godine, 1994. The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy. Edited by Julian Swann and Joël Félix. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Roger Chartier. Translated by Lydia Cochrane. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century. Edited by Hamish Scott and Brendan Simms. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. The Darnton Debate: Books and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century. Edited by Haydn Mason. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1998. Darnton, Robert. The Business of the Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the “Encyclopédie.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. Darnton, Robert. The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France, 1769–1789. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995. Darnton, Robert. The Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995. Darnton, Robert. The Literary Underground of the Old Regime. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. Davies, Brian. Warfare, State, and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500–1700. New York: Routledge, 2007. De Vries, Kelly. Guns and Men in Medieval Europe, 1200–1500: Studies in Military History and Technology. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002. De Vries, Kelly. Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century: Discipline, Tactics, and Technology. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1996. De Vries, Kelly. Medieval Warfare 1300–1450. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Delbrück, Hans. History of the Art of War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Devos, Jean-Claude, et al. Inventaire des archives de la guerre: sous-série Ya. Vincennes, 2003. Dewald, Jonathan. The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: Reassessments and New Approaches. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Dictionnaire de l’Académie française. First through Ninth Editions. Paris: Académie française, 1694–2021.

293 Dictionnaire militaire portatif contenant tous les termes propres à la guerre. 3 Volumes. Paris: Duchesne, 1758. Doniol, Henri. Histoire de la participation de la France à l’établissement des Etats-Unis d’Amérique. 6 Volumes. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1886–1892. Doyle, William. The Origins of the French Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Doyle, William. Venality: The Sale of Offices in Eighteenth-Century France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. Duby, Georges. The Legend of Bouvines: War, Religion, and Culture in the Middle Ages. Translated by Catherine Tihanyi. Berkeley: University of California Pres, 1990. Duffy, Christopher. Fire & Stone: The Science of Fortress Warfare 1660–1860. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 2006. Duffy, Christopher. Russia’s Military Way to the West: Origins and Nature of Russian Military Power, 1700–1800. Boston: Routledge, 1981. Duffy, Christopher. The Army of Frederick the Great. Warwick: Helion, 2018. Duffy, Christopher. The Army of Maria Theresa: The Armed Forces of Imperial Austria, 1740–1780. New York: Hippocrene, 1977. Duffy, Christopher. The Military Experience in the Age of Reason. New York: Atheneum, 1988. Duffy, Christopher. The Military Life of Frederick the Great. New York: Atheneum, 1986. Dull, Jonathan. A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Dull, Jonathan. The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975. Easum, Chester Verne. Prince Henry of Prussia, Brother of Frederick the Great. Madison:  WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1942. Eckberg, Carl. The Failure of Louis XIV’s Dutch War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979. Egret, Jean. The French Pre-Revolution 1787–1789. Translated by Wesley Camp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Elliot, John. Imperial Spain, 1469–1716. New York: St. Martin’s, 1964. The Evolution of Operational Art: From Napoleon to the Present. Edited by John Andreas Olsen and Martin van Creveld. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923. New York: Basic Books, 2003. Forestié, Emerand. Biographie du Cte. de Guibert. Montauban, 1855. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

294 France, John. Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000– 1300. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. French Women and the Age of Enlightenment. Edited by Samia I. Spencer. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984. Frost, Robert. The Northern Wars: War, State, and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721. New York: Longman, 2000. Furet, François. Interpreting the French Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Gambier-Parry, Mark. Madame Necker: Her Family and her Friends. London: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1913. Gat, Azar. A History of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Gay, Peter. The Age of Enlightenment. New York: Time, 1996. Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: A Comprehensive Anthology. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973. Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: The Rise of Modern Paganism. New York: Knopf, 1969. Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 3 Volumes. New York: Penguin, 2005. Goldsworthy, Adrian. The Punic Wars. London: Cassel, 2000. Goldsworthy, Adrian. The Roman Army at War, 100 BC–AD 200. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Gooch, G.P. Louis XV: The Monarchy in Decline. New York: Longmans, 1956. Goodman, Dena. The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994. Granier, Raymond. “Ou est né le Maréchal Guibert?” Actes du congrès des sociétés savantes. Section d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 77 (1952): 29–33. Green, Peter. The Greco-Persian Wars. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Groffier, Ethel. Le stratège des lumières: le comte de Guibert (1743– 1790). Paris: Editions Champion, 2005. Guibert ou le soldat philosophe. Edited by Jean-Paul Charnay. Paris: Chateau de Vincennes, 1981. Guízar, Haroldo, The Ecole Royale Militaire: Noble Education, Institutional Innovation, and Royal Charity, 1750–1788. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Guyot-Desfontaines, Pierre. Histoire des ducs de Bretagne et des différentes revolutions arrives dans cette province. 6 Volumes. Paris: Clousier, 1739. Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989. Hall, Thadd. France and the Eighteenth-Century Corsican Question. New York: New York University Press, 1971. Hardman, John. French Politics 1774–1789: From the Accession of Louis XIV to the Fall of the Bastille. New York: Longman, 1995.

Bibliography Hardman, John. Louis XVI. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Hardman, John. Overture to Revolution: The 1787 Assembly of Notables and the Crisis of France’s Old Regime. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Hayter, Tony. The Army and the Crowd in Mid-Georgian England. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978. Heuser, Beatrice. The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Heuser, Beatrice. “Guibert: Prophet of Total War?” War in an Age of Revolution, 1775–1815. Edited by Roger Chickering and Stig Förster, 49–67. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Higgonet, Patrice. “The Origins of the Seven Years War.” Journal of Modern History 40, number 1. (1968): 57–90. Histoire du 1er régiment de cuirassiers. Angers: Lachèse & Dolbeau, 1889. Holt, Mack. The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Hornung, Eric. History of Ancient Egypt. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Hughes, Lindsey. Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Hume, David. Histoire d’angleterre depuis l’invasion de Jules César jusqu’à l’avenement de Henri VII. 6 Volumes. Amsterdam, 1765. Hume, David. The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Abdication of James II, 1688. 8 Volumes. London: Cadell, 1770. Huntington, Samuel P. The Soldier and the State: The Theory of Politics and Civil-Military Relations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957. Impey, Oliver. Chinoiserie: The Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Israel, Jonathan. The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Its Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Jacobs, Paul, and Conlin, Diane Atnally. Campus Martius: The Field of Mars in the Life of Ancient Rome. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Jaurgain, Jean de. Notice sur les familles Vallet et VilleneuveGuibert. Paris: Imprimerie de la Cour d’Appel, 1893. Jebb, Camilla. The Star of the Salons: Julie de Lespinasse. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908. Jombert, Charles-Antoine. Dictionnaire portatif de l’ingénieur et de l’artilleur. Paris: Jombert, 1768. Kale, Steven. French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.

Bibliography Kennett, Lee. The French Armies in the Seven Years War: A Study in Military Organization and Administration. Durham: Duke University Press, 1967. Kettering, Sharon. French Society, 1589–1715. London: Routledge, 2017. Knox, MacGregor and Murray, Williamson. The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Komlos, John; Hau, Michael; and Bourguinat, Nicolas. “An Anthropometric History of Early-Modern France.” European Review of Economic History 7, no. 2 (2003): 159–189. Kwass, Michael. Privilege and the Politics of Taxation in Eighteenth-Century France. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Latreille, Albert. L’œuvre militaire de la révolution: l’armée et la nation à la fin de l’ancien régime; les derniers ministres de la guerre de la monarchie. Paris: Chapelot, 1914. Lauerma, Matti. Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte de Guibert (1743– 1790). Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1989. Le Beau, Charles. Histoire du Bas-Empire en commençant à Constantin le Grand. 27 Volumes. 1757–1811. Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. The Ancient Régime: A History of France, 1610–1774. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998. Lendon, J.E. Empire of Honor: The Art of Government in the Roman World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Lendon, J.E. Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Liddel-Hart, Basil. Strategy. New York: Praeger, 1967. Lintott, Andrew. The Constitution of the Roman Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). “L’origine des grandes manoeuvres  – les camps d’instruction aux XVIIIe et XVIIIe siècles.” Revue militaire 1899–1900 and Revue d’histoire 1901–1903. Paris: various. Luvaas, Jay. Napoleon on the Art of War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Lynn, John. “Recalculating French Army Growth during the Grand Siècle, 1610–1715.” French Historical Studies 18 (1994): 881–906. Lynn, John. “Toward an Army of Honor: The Moral Evolution of the French Army, 1789–1815.” French Historical Studies 16 (1989): 152–173. Lynn, John. Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610–1715. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Lynn, John. The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791–94. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. Lynn, John. The Wars of Louis XIV 1667–1714. New York: Longman, 1999. Mackesy, Piers. The Coward of Minden: The Affair of Lord George Sackville. London, 1979.

295 Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age. Edited by Peter Paret. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Mallet, Michael, and Shaw, Christine. The Italian Wars, 1494– 1559: War, State, and Society in Early Modern Europe. London: Routledge, 2014. March, Jennifer. Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014. Mas, Raymond. “L’éssai général de tactique (1770) de Guibert ou le rationalism des Lumières face à la guerre.” La Bataille, l’armée, la gloire, 1745–1871: actes du colloque international de Clermont-Ferrand. Edited by Paul Viallaneix and Jean Ehrard (1985): I:119–134. Massie, Robert. Peter the Great: His Life and World. New York: Random House, 1981. McConachy, Bruce. “The Roots of Artillery Doctrine: Napoleonic Artillery Tactics Reconsidered.” The Journal of Military History 65, no. 3 (2001): 614–640. McCullough, Roy. Coercion, Conversion, and Counterinsurgency in Louis XIV’s France. Leiden: Brill, 2007. McLaren, Moray. Corsican Boswell: Paoli, Johnson, and Freedom. London: Secker & Warburg, 1966. Menard, E.R. “De la force publique ou le testament militaire du comte de Guibert.” Revue de défense nationale (1969). Middleton, Robert Nelson. French Policy and Prussia after the Peace of Aix-la-Chappelle, 1749–1753. Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1968. Mikaberidze, Alexander. Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia. Volume I. New York: ABC-CLIO, 2011. Mikaberidze, Alexander. The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe. Clifford Rogers, editor. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. Les Ministres de la Guerre 1570–1792. Edited by Thierry Sarmant. Paris: Bellin, 2007. Mitchell, Stephen. A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284– 641. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015. Mitchener, Margaret. A Muse in Love: Julie de Lespinasse. London: The Bodley Head, 1962. Mousnier, Roland. The Institutions of the Absolute Monarchy. 2 Volumes. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer and Brian Pearce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979–1984. Murphey, Rhoads. Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700. London: University College London Press, 1999. Murphy, Orville. Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes: French Diplomacy in the Age of Revolution, 1719–1787. New York: State University of New York Press, 1982.

296 Napoleon and the Operational Art of War: Essays in Honor of Donald D. Horward. Michael Leggiere, editor. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Nosworthy, Brent. The Anatomy of Victory: Battle Tactics 1689– 1763. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1990. Nouveau dictionnaire pour servir de supplement aux dictionnaires des sciences, des arts, et des métiers. 4 Volumes. Various, 1776. Oakeshott, Ewart. The Archaeology of Weapons: Arms and Armour from Prehistory to the Age of Chivalry. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2019. Oakley, Stewart. War and Peace in the Baltic, 1560–1790. New York: Routledge, 1992. Osman, Julia. “Ancient Warriors on Modern Soil: French Military Reform and American Military Images in 18th Century France.” French History 22 (2008): 223–246. Osman, Julia. “Guibert vs. Guibert: Competing Notions in the Essai général de tactique and the Défense du système de guerre moderne.” Journal of Military History 83, no. 1 (2019): 43–66. Osman, Julia. “Patriotism as Power: The Old Regime Foundation for Napoleon’s Army.” International Congress of Military History Conference Proceedings 2009 (2010). Osman, Julia. Citizen Soldiers and the Key to the Bastille: War, Culture, and Society, 1750–1850. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Ostwald, Jamel. Vauban under Siege: Engineering Efficiency and Martial Vigor in the War of Spanish Succession. Boston: Brill, 2007. Outram, Dorinda. The Enlightenment. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World. Edited by Brian Campbell and Lawrence Tritle. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pajol, Charles-Pierre-Victor, comte de. Les guerres sous Louis XV. 7 Volumes. Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1881–1891. Pâris de Bollardière, Bernard. Joseph Pâris Duverney et ses frères: financiers dauphinois à la cour de Louis XV. Toulon: Presses du Midi, 2006. Parker, Geoffrey. The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Parker, Geoffrey. The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Parrott, David. The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Parrott, David. Richelieu’s Army: War, Government, and Society in France, 1624–1642. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pavlov, Andrei, and Perrie, Maureen. Ivan the Terrible. London: Routledge, 2003.

Bibliography Perrault, Charles. Les hommes illustres qui ont paru en France pendant ce siècle. 2 Volumes. Paris: Dezallier, 1697. Pichichero, Christy. The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017. Pitts, Vincent. Henri IV of France: His Reign and Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Poirier, Lucien. Les voix de la stratégie. Paris: Fayard, 1985. Price, Roger. A Concise History of France. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Quimby, Robert. The Background of Napoleonic Warfare: The Theory of Military Tactics in Eighteenth-Century France. New York: Columbia University Press, 1957. Ranum, Orest. The Fronde: A French Revolution, 1648–1652. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993. Revue militaire rédigée à l’Etat-major de l’armée. 11 Volumes. Paris: Chapelot, 1899–1900. Riley, James. The Seven Years War and the Old Regime in France: The Economic and Financial Toll. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. Roberts, Michael. Gustavus Adolphus. London: Routledge, 2016. Roberts, Michael. Sweden as a Great Power: Government, Society, Foreign Policy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1968. Roche, Daniel. France in the Enlightenment. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Roemer, J. Dictionary of English and French Idioms Illustrating, by Phrases and Examples, the Peculiarities of Both Languages. New York: Huntington and Mason Brothers, 1853. Rogister, John. Louis XV and the Parlement of Paris, 1737–1755. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Ross, Steven. “The Development of the Combat Division in Eighteenth-Century French Armies.” French Historical Studies no. 1 (1965): 84–94. Ross, Steven. From Flintlock to Rifle: Infantry Tactics, 1740–1866. London: Frank Cass, 1996. Rothenberg, Gunther. The Military Border in Croatia, 1740–1881: A Study of an Imperial Institution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966. Rowlands, Guy. Dangerous and Dishonest Men: The International Bankers of Louis XIV’s France. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Rowlands, Guy. The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV: Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661–1701. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Rowlands, Guy. The Financial Decline of a Great Power: War, Influence, and Money in Louis XIV’s France. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Royde-Smith, Naomi Gwladys. The Double Heart: A Study of Julie de Lespinasse. New York: Harper, 1831.

Bibliography Rufus, Quintus Curtius. The History of Alexander. 2 Volumes. Translated by John Rolfe. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946. Savkin, Vasilii Efimovich. The Basic Principles of Operational Art and Tactics: A Soviet View. Washington, DC: US Government, 1974. Savory, Reginald Arthur. His Britannic Majesty’s Army in Germany during the Seven Years War. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. Schieder, Theodor. Frederick the Great. Translated by Sabina Berkeley and H.M. Scott. New York: Longman, 2000. Scott, H.M. The Birth of a Great Power System, 1740–1815. Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2005. Scott, Samuel. From Yorktown to Valmy: The Transformation of the French Army in the Age of Revolution. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1998. Scott, Tom. The Swiss and their Neighbours, 1460–1560: Between Accommodation and Aggression. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Scullard, H.H. From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68. London: Methuen, 1970. Ségur, Philippe-Marie-Maurice Henri, marquis de. Julie de Lespinasse. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1927. The Seven Years War: Global Views. Edited by Mark Danley and Patrick Speelman. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Showalter, Dennis. Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology, and the Unification of Germany. Warwick: Helion, 2013. Showalter, Dennis. The Wars of Frederick the Great. New York: Longman, 1996. Smith, Jay. The Culture of Merit: Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600–1789. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1996. Smith, Jay. The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: Reassessments and New Approaches. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Smith, William. Historical Account of Bouquet’s Expedition against the Ohio Indians in 1764. Cincinnati: Clarke, 1868. Southern, Patricia. The Roman Army: A Social & Institutional History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Southern, Patricia, and Dixon, Karen. The Late Roman Army. London: Routledge, 2014. Southern, Patricia. Ancient Rome: The Empire, 30 BC–AD 476. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley, 2011. Spalding, Oliver. “The Military Studies of George Washington.” The American Historical Review 29, number 4 (1924): 675–680. Starkey, Armstrong. War in the Age of Enlightenment, 1700–1789. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Starobinski, Jean. The Invention of Liberty, 1700–1789. New York: Rizzoli, 1987. Stevens, Carol. Russia’s Wars of Emergence, 1460–1730. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007.

297 Stinchcombe, William. The American Revolution and the French Alliance. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1969. Stone, Bailey. The French Parlements and the Crisis of the Old Regime. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. Storring, Adam. “ ‘The Age of Louis XIV’: Frederick the Great and French Ways of War.” German History 38, no. 1 (2000): 24–46. Sumption, Jonathan. The Hundred Years War. 5 Volumes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990–2015. Sutton, John L. The King’s Honor & the King’s Cardinal: The War of the Polish Succession. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1980. Swann, Julian, and Félix, Joël, editors. The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy: France from Old Regime to Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Swann, Julian. Exile, Imprisonment, or Death: The Politics of Disgrace in Bourbon France, 1610–1789. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Swann, Julian. Politics and the Parlement of Paris under Louis XV, 1755–1774. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Szabo, Franz. The Seven Years War in Europe, 1756–1763. New York: Routledge, 2013. Tapie, Victor-Lucien. France in the Age of Louis XIII and Richelieu. Translated by D. McN Lockie. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Telp, Claus. The Evolution of Operational Art, 1740–1813: From Frederick the Great to Napoleon. New York: Frank Cass, 2005. Thompson, I.A.A. War and Government in Habsburg Spain 1560– 1620. London: University of London Press, 1976. Thrasher, Peter Adam. Pasquale Paoli, an Enlightened Hero, 1725– 1807. Hamden, CT: Archon, 1970. Van Creveld, Martin. Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Van Creveld, Martin. The Transformation of War. New York: Free Press, 1991. Van Wees, Hans. Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Vivent, Jacques. “Un précurseur de la tactique moderne: le comte de Guibert.” Revue historique de l’armée; revue trimestrielle de l’état-major de l’armée, service historique. Waddington, Richard. La guerre de sept ans: historique politique et militaire. 5 Volumes. Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1899–1914. Wasson, James N. Innovator or Imitator: Napoleon’s Operational Concepts and the Legacies of Bourcet and Guibert. Fort Leavenworth, KS: US Army Command and General Staff College, 1998. Waters, Matthew. A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire, 550–330 BCE. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

298 Wawro, Geoffrey. The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870–1871. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Weigley, Russell. The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Wilkinson, Spenser. The Defense of Piedmont, 1742–1748: A Prelude to the Study of Napoleon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927. Wilkinson, Spenser. The French Army before Napoleon: Lectures Delivered before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1914. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915.

Bibliography Wilson, Peter. The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. Wolf, John. Louis XIV: A Profile. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Worthington, Ian. By the Spear: Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Young, Marcia. “The Enlightenment and the French Military Aristocracy.” Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1984.

Index Académie des sciences 4n1 Académie française xxx-xxxi, 22-23n47 Adriatic Sea 33 African War, Caesar’s 141, 200, 257-258 Agonistic war 172n1, 256 Aguesseau, chevalier d’ 31 Alberoni, Cardinal 12 Alexander III “the Great” 18, 19, 25, 68n15, 199-200, 203, 256 Algeria 33, 43n15, 129, 246 Aller River 267 Alps 9n12, 188, 256 Alsace 11n18, 142n6, 249n21, 266n47 American Revolution see War of American Independence Americas, North and South xviii, xxx, 10n16, 27, 192 Anatolia (“Asia”) 256n1 see also Greece/Greeks, Ottoman Empire Anoblis xvi, xxi, xxiv, 276, 278, 280 Antoing 241-241 see also Battle of Fontenoy; Saxe, Maurice de; War of the Austrian Succession Aquilo 7 Arabia 129n6 Aragon 6 Arbalest 73 Archimedes 97 Argenson, comte d’ xxiii, 174 Arme blanche 63-64, 73, 122 Armor 43, 120-123, 141-142 Arquebus 43, 73n7 Arras 246 see also War of the Spanish Succession Arrian 120-121n4, 251 Arrière-ban 143, 279-280 Artois 11n18 Astyages, King of the Medes 156 Athens/Athenians 4, 27, 39, 199n3, 251n3 see also Peloponnesian War Atlas 4 August II, King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 201 Augustus, Emperor of Rome 8, 11n18, 25 Austrian Netherlands xvii, 6n6, 24n51, 33, 246n14 Austro-Turkish War of 1716-1718 23n47, 142n9 Auxilia 19n36, 27n63, 43n14, 141n2, 200n6 Banér, Johan 21 Barca, Hamilcar 172 Barca, Hannibal 19, 26, 172-173, 199-200, 233, 238, 251, 256 see also Carthage/Carthaginians, Punic Wars Basques 62 Battle of Agincourt 43-44, 82, 120-121, 173

Battle of Adrianople 121n5 Battle of Alesia 251n3 Battle of Assietta, 1747 144-145 Battle of Bergin 255 Battle of Blenheim 23n47, 120, 236, 242, 259 see also Marlborough, Duke of Battle of Bouvines 173 Battle of Cannae 19n35, 26n60, 193, 200n5, 233 see also Barca, Hannibal Battle of Crécy 43-44, 58n4, 82, 120-121, 173 Battle of Denain 23n47, 147, 246 see also Villars, duc de Battle of Fleurus, 1690 23n47, 120 see also Luxembourg, duc de Battle of Fontenoy 23-24n47, 229n3, 241-242 see also Antoing; Saxe, Maurice de Battle of Grave, 1675 22, 155n2 see also Chamilly, marquis de Battle of Guastalla 74 Battle of Hohenfreidberg 190-191, 220 see also Friedrich II Battle of Lake Trasimene 19n35, 26n60, 233 see also Barca, Hannibal Battle of Lauffeld 23n47, 241-242 see also Cumberland, duke of; Saxe, Maurice de Battle of Leuctra 27, 199n3 see also Epaminondas, Oblique Order, Sparta/Spartans, Thebes/Thebans Battle of Leuthen 157, 190-191, 197, 207n6, 220, 231-232 see also Friedrich II Battle of Leuze 23n47, 120 see also Luxembourg, duc de Battle of Malplaquet 23n47, 245-246 see also Churchill, Duke of; Eugene, prince of Savoy; Villars, duc de Battle of Mantinea, 362 27 see also Epaminondas, Oblique Order, Sparta/Spartans, Thebes/Thebans Battle of Marignan 156 Battle of Maxen 144 see also Friedrich II Battle of Minden 232-233, 255n15 Battle of Narva, 1700 156-157 Battle of Neerwinden, 1693 23n47, 91 see also Feuquières, marquis de; Luxembourg, duc de Battle of Parma, 1534 74 Battle of Pharsalus 40, 251 see also Caesar, Gaius Julius; Pompey; Rome/Romans Battle of Poitiers 58n4, 120-121, 173 Battle of Poltava, 1709 25n52, 265 see also Karl XII Battle of Ramillies 23n47, 120, 236, 245

see also Churchill, Duke of; Villars, duc de; Villeroy, duc de Battle of Rocoux xxiv, 241-242 see also Saxe, Maurice de Battle of Rossbach xviii, xxii, xxiv, 91n7, 157, 207n6, 267 see also Friedrich II; Soubise, prince de Battle of Torgau 175 see also Friedrich II Battle of Turin, 1706 23n47, 259 see also Eugene, prince of Savoy; Feuillade, duc de; Marsin, comte de Battle of Vellinghausen xxiv, 74, 78 Battle of Verneuil 43-44 Bavaria/Bavarians xvii, 25-26, 33, 142-143, 232 Bayonet xviii, xxxii, 22n45, 24-25n51, 53-54, 57-58, 64, 71, 78, 82n1, 84, 273 Belle-Isle, chevalier de 144-145 Berlin 267 “Bessi” 27 Billebaude 78, 273 Black Sea xxv, 33, 141 Boeotia see Thebes/Thebans Bohemia 143 see also Siege of Prague, 1742 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne 18n32 Bourbon, duc de xxviii Bourcet, Pierre-Joseph xxi, xxvi, 28, 173, 207n6, 253 Brandenburg xxii, 266-267 see also Prussia/Prussians Branuschweig, Ferdinand, prince de xviii, xxiv, 74, 92n9, 197, 250, 255, 260, 264n41 Breslau 261 Brissac, duc de 142 Broglie, François-Marie, duc de xxv, 74n8, 143n15, 249, 269n52 see also Siege of Prague, 1742 Broglie, Victor-François, duc de xxiv-xxvi, xxx, 146, 175, 233-234, 250, 255, 264, 269n52, 276 Brunswick 267 Burgundy/Burgundians 156 Busiris, mythical King of Egypt 11 Cadmus 11 Caesar, Gaius Julius 14n23, 40, 120-121, 148, 200, 251, 257-258 Cambrai 246 see also War of the Spanish Succession Camillus, Marcus Furius 28 Camp of Vaussieux, 1778 xxx, 37n9, 234n9 Capitoline Hill 247 see also Rome/Romans Carthage/Carthaginians 19, 200, 256 see also Barca, Hamilcar; Barca, Hannibal; Punic Wars

300 Castile 6 Catholic League 48 Catinat, Nicolas 22-23 Cato, Marcus Porcius the Elder 47, 49n5, 191n6, 257 Centaur 128 Chamillard, Michél de 245, 259 Chamilly, marquis de 22, 155n2 see also Battle of Grave, 1675 Champ de Mars 47 Charlemagne 20 Charles the Bold, duc de Bourgogne 156 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor xxviii, 24n51, 156, 173 Charles VI, King of France 8 Charles X, King of France xxxi Chess 142, 152 Chevert, François de 86 see also Siege of Prague, 1742 China/Chinese 240 Chiron 128 Choiseul, duc de xxv, 46, 128, 143n13, 269 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 45n26, 238n2 Clausewitz, Carl von xxvii Clovis 20 Coehoorn, Menno 22, 27, 243 Cohort 54, 58 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 4, 10-11 Columbus, Christopher 3 Compiègne 206 Condé, prince de xxxii, 21-23, 47, 199n2, 227 Conflans, Louis 133n3 Constantinople see Istanbul Contades, marquis de 233n7 see also Battle of Minden Convention of Klosterzeven 24n47, 266-267 Corsica xxv, 33, 92, 148n4, 244n7, 260-262 Coup d’œil xxiv, xxvii, xxxii, 34, 37, 65-68; 98-100, 106-107, 117, 128, 135-137, 164, 227, 234, 239, 252-254, 271 Créquy, Francois de Bonne de 174 Croatia/Croats xxviii, 142 Crusades 122, 173 Cuirassiers du roi 122 Cumberland, Duke of 22-23 Custrin 261 Cyrus II, Emperor of Persia 18, 156, 256 D’Alembert, Jean la Rond xxviii, 14 Dacia/Dacians 20n37, 27 Danish axe 122 “Dark Ages” 19-20, 192 Daun, Leopold von 26 Defense of the Modern System of War xxvii, xxx, 40n5, 234n9 Deffand, marquise du xxviii Delisle, Nicholas-Anne 262, 264 Denmark/Danes 33, 43 Diderot, Denis xxviii Douai 249 Dragoons 121, 127, 142-147, 202, 205, 207, 210, 213, 219, 224, 231, 274 Dryden, John 68n15

Index Dubois de la Bernade, Jean-Elie 269 Dumouriez, Antoine-François du Périer 264 Dumouriez, Charles-François xxviii, xxxi, 264 Dupré d’Aulnay, Louis 264 Dutch Revolt see Eighty Years War, Maurits of Nassau Dutch War 4n1, 22-23, 174, 246, 266n47 East Frisia 267 Ecole royale militaire xxi-xxii, 47, 201, 239n3, 253, 280 Egypt/Egyptians 28 Eighty Years War 9 see also Maurits of Nassau Elbe River 175 Elizaveta, Tsarina xviii Epaminondas 27, 199, 238 Ephraim, Veitel 261 Estates-General 259-260n23 Estrades, comte d’ 4 Eugene, prince of Savoy 22-24, 259n19 Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cuncator, Quintus 26, 172, 251 Farmers see General Farm Felipe V, King of Spain 23-24, 174 Feuillade, duc de la 259 Feuquières, marquis de 91 Fidenates 172 First Nations, American (“savages”) 71 Flanders 6, 26, 46, 143, 160, 188, 198, 243245, 265, 268, 276 Folard, chevalier xvi, xxi-xxx, 24, 39-40, 5556, 103, 257n11 Fonneuve xxiv Franche-Comté 9, 11n18, 249n21 Francisca 43, 122n10 François I, King of France 48n3, 156, 173 François-Etienne, Holy Roman Emperor  xvii, 25n55 Franco-Prussian War 247n17 Frankfurt-am-Main 255 Franks 40, 43, 122 Freemasons 252n7, 262n37 French Wars of Religion xxiii, 4, 48-49, 246-247 see also Catholic League, Henri IV Friedrich August I, Elector of Saxony  see August II Friedrich I, King of Prussia 25n53 Friedrich II “the Great,” King of Prussia  xvii-xviii, xxii, xxviii, 6-7, 24-26, 29, 34, 40, 42, 44n23, 77, 97, 102, 124, 126, 143-144, 157, 175, 190-191, 194-195, 197, 201, 205, 207, 220, 231-232, 255, 261, 264, 267, 274 Friedrich Wilhelm I, King of Prussia 25 Fronde 21-23, 48 Gabelle 259 Gallic Wars, Caesar’s see Caesar, Gaius Julius

Gassion, Jean de 21-22 Gauls 5, 29, 40, 43, 200, 247, 256, 257 General Farm 260-261 Genoa 33 Geoffrin, Marie xxviii Germany/Germans xxiv, 6, 19n36, 33, 43, 143, 158, 173, 198, 245, 257, 259, 262n34, 265, 268, 274 Gibbon, Edward 19n36 Goths 20 Göttingen 92n8, 249-250 Great Britain/British xii, xvi-xviii, xx, 11-12, 33, 35, 43-44, 46, 82, 129, 164, 173, 246, 260, Great Northern War 157, 241, 265 Great Turkish War, 1683-1699 23n47, 142 Greece/Greeks xxii, 4, 18-19, 27-29, 39, 41-43, 54, 58, 61, 63, 68, 121, 128, 172, 189, 199200, 251, 253, 256, 270 Grenzer 142n9, 274 Gribeauval, Jean-Baptiste xxix, 154-155, 274 Guast, du 128 Guelders 267 Guibert, Charles-Benoît xxiv-xxv, xxx-xxxi, 42, 46n28, 74n8, 157n6, 174n13, 238-239 Guichard, Karl 40, 257 Guise, duc de 48 Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden 20-22, 25, 41, 43, 54, 141-142, 158, 173, 200, 258 Habsburg Family xvi-xx, xxviii, 4, 6, 9, 2226, 142-143, 156, 274 see also Charles V; François-Etienne; Karl VI; Leopold I; Maria-Theresa Habsburg-Valois Wars, 1515-1559 156n3, 258n13 Hadrumentum 258 Halberstadt 266-267 Hanover/Hanoverians xviii, 24, 122, 175, 250, 255, 257, 267 Hayes de Courcelles, Alexandrine-Louis Boutinon des xxxviii Helvétius, Claude 32 Hénault, “Président” xxviii Henri II, King of France 49n6 Henri III, King of France 48 Henri IV, King of France 4n1, 26n59, 47-48 Henry V, King of England 8n11 Herodotus 18n28, 156n1, 199-200n4, 256 Hesse/Hessians 266-267 Homer 61 Houssaye, Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de la  200n6 Hume, David 44n22 Hundred Years War 8, 44, 58, 120 Huns 19-20 India/Indians xvii-xviii, 18 Infantry square 92-93 Instructions for Light Troops, 1769 xxv, 275 Insurrection, Hungarian 143 see also arrière-ban Inversion 98-100, 105, 132-133, 185, 218

301

Index Ireland/Irish 6 Islam 9, 122, 129 Istanbul 20, 33 Italian Wars, 1494-1559 see Habsburg-Valois Wars Italy/Italians xvii, 6, 9, 18-20, 22-25, 33, 74, 156, 173, 199-200, 249, 256-258, 280 Ivan III, Tsar 156-157 Ivan IV “the Terrible,” Tsar 156-157 Jaucourt, comte de xxix Jewish Revolt, 66-73 20 Jomini, baron xxxii Karl VI, Holy Roman Emperor 25 Karl VII, Holy Roman Emperor xvii, 25-26 Karl XII, King of Sweden 25, 54, 156-157, 241, 265 Kassel 92, 249-250 Klosterzeven, Convention of 24, 266-267 La Harpe, Jean-François de xxviii Lance 43, 121-122 see also arme blanche Latium/Lazio 18, 172, 257 see also Rome/Romans Le Beau, Charles 19n36 Le Blond, Guillaume xxiii, 82n2 Legion, Roman 19-20, 25-27, 39, 43, 61-64, 99, 122, 141, 156, 198-201, 249, 251, 257 see also Rome/Romans Leibniz, Gottfried 14 Leipzig 261 Leopold Gotthard, Grand Duke of Tuscany 6 Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor 25n53 Lespinasse, Julie de xxvii-xxviii, xxxx Levant xxv, 18, 33 Lille 246 Linnaeus, Karl 23n2 Livy (Titus Livius) 5n4, 61, 257 Lloyd, Henry xxi Lombardy 33 Lorraine 244n7, 249n21, 260n23 Louis XIII, King of France 4, 10, 142n12, 258 Louis XIV, King of France xiv, xvi-xvii, xxii, xxxii, 4, 10-12, 22-25, 48, 143, 174, 201, 240, 244-245, 258-259, 275, 279 Louis XV, King of France xiv, xvi-xviii, xxvn37, 26, 244-245, 262n33, 277-279 Louis XVI, King of France xxxi Louis, Dauphin of France 24n51 Louisiana xviii Louvois, François-Michel le Tellier 4, 11, 28, 245, 258-259, 266 Lucca 33 Luxembourg, duc de 22-23, 120, 142-143, 174 Lycurgus 4 Macedonia/Macedonians 18, 43n15, 172n1, 256 see also Alexander III, Philip II Machiavelli, Niccolò 200n9

Magdeburg 26, 266-267 Maghreb 129 Maintenon, Françoise d’Aubigné 245 Maison militaire du roi xxi, xxix, 23n47, 56n1, 128, 142, 276 Maïzeroy, Joly de 39-40 Malta 33, Marcy, graf 74n8 Maria-Theresa, Austrian Empress 25n55, 143, 155n2 Marie Antoinette, Queen of France xxviii Marlborough, Duke of 23-24, 236n1, 246n12 Marsin, comte de 22-23, 26 Marx/Marxism xxin20, 30n72 Mathematics xxiv, 14, 27-29 Maurits of Nassau 21, 41, 141-142, 173n4, 173, 258 Maximilian II, Elector of Bavaria 142 Mazarin, Cardinal 48 see also Fronde Merovech, King of the Franks 20 Merovingian Dynasty 20, 49 Mesnil-Durand, baron de xvi, xxi, xxix-xxx, 39-40, 55n2, 96n12, 234n9 Meuse River 33, 267 Milan 156n3 Militia 13-15, 48, 143, 158, 173, 279 Miltiades 199 Ministry of the Marine xx, xxv, xxx, 11 Mississippi River xviii Modena 33 Mongols 141, 157n4 Montauban xxiii-xxiv Montecuccoli, Raimundo 21-23, 40, 173, 233, 264, Montesquieu xxvii, 12, 17, 32 Monteynard, marquis de 46 Montmorency, Henri II 14n10 Montreal xviii “Moors” see Islam Morocco 33, 129 Morris, Gouvernor xxviii Muslim see Islam Muy, comte de xxviii Napoleon xii, xxxii, 22n43, 29n69, 142n7, 177n1, 255n16 Napoleonic Wars xvii, xxii, xxxii, 38n10, 122, 154n1, 157n5, 164n1, 244n6, 275 Ne plus ultra lines 22-24, 245-246 Necker, Suzanne xviii, xxxi Neo-Classicism see Greece/Greeks, Rome/ Romans Newton, Isaac 14, 271 Normandy/Normans 20, 37n9, 45, 234n9 Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris 23n47 Numa Pompilius 4, 18n32 Numidia/Numidians 43, 121, 129, 141, 246, 257 Oder River 25, 157 Ordinance companies 43n21, 121n5 Oriflamme 58n4

Orion 128 Orléans, Gaston, duc d’ 48n4 Orléans, Philippe II, duc d’ 23n47 Ossat, Cardinal d’ 4 Ottoman Empire 20-21, 44, 122n9, 129, 142, 156, 173, 192, 241n4 Pacuvius, Marcus 45n26 Palatinate 22-23, 265 Papal States 33 Paris xxvii-xxviii, xxxi, 20n40, 47n3, 48-50, 57n2, 202, 245-247 Pâris family 259n21, 262n33, 264, 281 Parliament, English 12, 260 Parma 33, 74 Parthia/Parthians 19-20, 141 Pasquale Paoli xxv, 33 Patrie 3, 5, 15, 16, 31, 34, 45, 49, 172, 257 Peloponnesian War 4, 27, 172, 251 Pericles 4 Persia/Persians, Achaemenid 18-19, 199200, 256 Phalanx, Greek/Macedonian xxii, 18-19, 24, 26-27, 39, 42-43, 63, 227n1, 251 Philopœmen 253 Philip II, King of Macedonia 18 Philippe II “Augustus,” King of France 48n3, 173n3 Phormio 238 Physics 29 Physiocratism/Physiocrats 10 Pikes xviii, xix, xxii-xxiii, 21-25, 39, 42-43, 142n11, 156n3 Pilum 42, 58, 63-64 see also Legion Pirch, baron xvi, xxi, xxix-xxx Plésion 54-55 see also Mesnil-Durand Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth xxviii, 21n41, 25, 33, 122, 201, 245 Polybius 4-5, 27-28, 253 Pompadour, marquise de xviii, xxv, 199, 245, 277 Pompey (Gaius Pompeius) 40, 251, 257-258 Portugal/Portuguese 9, 33 Potsdam xxviii Provence/Provençal 45, 62 Prussia/Prussians xvi-xviii, xx, xxii-xxiv, xxviii-xxix, 12, 29, 33, 43, 46, 71, 73, 77, 79, 104, 124, 129, 133, 145, 156-157, 174-175, 274 see also Friedrich II Pruth River Campaign 241 Publius Considius 148 Punic Wars 19, 26-28, 47, 61, 172, 193, 200, 233, 238, 251, 256-257 Puységur, marquis de 24, 37-42, 87, 100, 109, 174, 184-185 Puységur, comte de 24 Pyotr I, Tsar 7, 25, 156, 241, 265 Pyrenees 9, 256 Pyrrhus, King of Epirus 19, 172

302 Quebec xviii Quintus Curtius Rufus 203 “Quintus Icilius” see Guichard Ragusa 33 Rameses II, King of Egypt 18n28 Reconquista 9n13, 122n10 Regnard, Jean-François 103 Reign of Terror xxxi, 247n17 Renaissance 20-21 Rentier 45 Rhine River xvii, 9, 20-23, 33, 143, 156n3, 233n8, 243, 249, 267 Richelieu, Cardinal 4, 9-10, 12, 21n41, 48n4, 249n21 Richelieu, duc de 257n8, 267 Rivail, Suzanne-Thérèse de xxiv Rochambeau, comte de xxx, 234 Roguet, François xxxii Rohan, duc de 40, 43n16, 173, 258 Rome/Romans xiv, xxviii, 4-5, 12-14, 17-20, 26-28, 41-43, 47, 61, 120-121, 141-142, 172173, 193, 200-201, 247, 251, 256-258 Romulus, purported founder of Rome 4n1, 18n31 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques xxvii-xxviii Roussillon 9, 260n23 Russia/Russians xviii, xxviii, 7, 21n41, 33, 43, 156-157, 265 Saale River 157n6 Sack of Rome, 300s BCE 28n65 Saint Petersburg 7 Saint-Denis, Abbey 58n4 Saint-Germain Fair 57 Saint-Germain, comte de xxiv, xxviii-xxx, 44n23, 92n9, 154n1 Saint-Simon, duc de 11n18 Samnites 19, 172 San Marino 33 Santa-Cruz, marqués de 39n3 “Saracens” 122, 129 Sardinia/Sardinians 33, 74, 87, 144-145 Savoy/Savoyards 24n51, 33 Saxe, Maurice de xvii, xxiii-xxiv, xxxii, 21, 23-24, 26, 40, 42, 54-55, 61, 143, 174-175, 199n2, 229n3, 241-242, 246 Saxony/Saxons 20, 33, 157, 201, 241, 255, 261, 266-267 Scheldt River 242 Schweidnitz 155 Scipio, Publius Cornelius 61, 200, 257 Scythians 129, 141 Secret du roi xxviii Ségur Decree xxi, xxxi Ségur, comte de 143, 269 Seine River 20n40, 37, 47 Senones 5 Senusret III, King of Egypt 18n28 Sesostris, purported King of Egypt 18

Index Siege of Prague, 1742 86, 143, 249 Siege of Vienna, 1683 122n9 Silesia xvii, 6n7, 25, 157, 175 Sipahi 129n6 Social War 19n35, 172n1 Soubise, prince de 199, 245, 267 Spain/Spanish xvii-xviii, xxvn37, 4, 6, 9-12, 19-24, 33, 43, 47-49, 121-122, 129, 142, 156n3, 174, 200n5, 247n16, 256, 259n21, 280 Spandau 26 Sparta/Spartans 4, 27-28, 39, 42, 199n3, 253, 270n55 Spree River 25 Stäel, Germaine de xxviii Strasbourg 249 Suetonius 8n11 Sweden/Swedish 7n9, 20-21, 25, 33, 43-44, 156-157, 173n4, 200, 241n4, 245n9, 258, 265n46 Switzerland/Swiss 10n15, 21, 33, 43-44, 48, 57n3, 143, 156, 158, 173, 276, 280 Sword 25, 42-43, 84, 121-122 Sybaris/Sybarites 270 Syracuse 97 Tallard, comte de 242n5 “Tatars” 141, 156-157 Teil, Jean and Jean-Pierre du 168n6 Tercio 21n42, 23, 43 The Iliad 61n2 The Mark 267 Thebes/Thebans 11, 27, 39, 199 Themistocles 199 Thessaly/Thessalians 43, 121-122, 128, 141 Thirty Years War 4n1, 21-22, 28, 40n7, 141142, 245 Thomas, Antoine-Léonard xxviii Thucydides 4 Thutmose III, King of Egypt 18n28 Tiber River 47 Timotheus 68 Tirailleurs 77, 91-92, 126 Titus, Emperor of Rome 20 Torgau 175, 261 Toulouse xxiii-xxiv Trajan, Emperor of Rome 20 Transylvania/Transylvanians 126, 143 Treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle, 1748  xviii, 26, 244n7 Treaty of Paris, 1763 128, 154, 157, 252 Treaty of Passarowitz 23n47 Treaty of Rastatt 23-24 Treaty of Troyes, 1420 8n11 Treaty of Utrecht 24n51 Tripoli 33 Trois Evêchés 266n47 Troy/Trojans 18, 61n2 Tullus Hostilius, King of Rome 18 Tunis 28, 33

Turenne, vicomte de xxxii, 21-23, 40, 47-48, 142-143, 158, 173-174, 199-200, 227, 233 Turin 23, 259 Turkey/Turks see Ottoman Empire Turpin de Crissé, comte de 39 Tuscany 6, 33 Two Sicilies 33 Uhlans 143 Ukraine 265, 268 Vallière, Jean-Florent de xxix, 154 Vandals 20 Vasily III, Tsar 156-157 Vatican 4n1 Vauban, Sébastien le Prestre 22, 24, 27, 39n3, 240, 243, 248, 259n19, 274-275 Vaussieux, Camp of xxx, 37, 234 Vaux, comte de xxv, 92 Vegetius 17-18, 21, 27, 61, 191, 194, 202, 257-258 Vendôme, duc de 22-23, 174 Vespasian, Emperor of Rome 20 Villars, duc de 22-24, 142, 174, 198n1 Villeroy, François de Neufville 22-23 Virgil 18 Vitruvius Pollio, Marcus 7 Volscians 172 Voltaire xxvii-xxviii, 11n18, 12n22, 15n25, 17n26, 32n2 Walpole, Horace xxviii War Ministry xxv, xvii, xxii-xxiii, xxxi-xxxii, 37n9, 154-155, 158n7, 174-175, 279 War of Devolution 22n43 War of American Independence xxx, 234n9, 261n32 War of the League of Augsburg 11, 23, 91n7, 120n2, 259n19 War of the League of Cambrai 156n3 War of the Polish Succession xvii, 6n6, 2324, 74n8, 143, 277 War of the Quadruple Alliance xvii, 12n21 War of the Spanish Succession xvii-xix, 11, 23-26, 142, 174, 245-246, 259, 279 Wars of Religion, French xxiii, 4, 48-49, 128n3, 142n12, 247n16 Washington, George xxvii Wesel 267 Weser River 266-267 Willem the Silent, Prince of Orange 21n42 William the Bastard, duc de Normandie, King of England 20n40 Wimpffen, baron xxix Winged Hussars 122n9 Xanthippus 28, 238 Year of the Four Emperors 20n37 Yekaterina, Tsarina 241n4