Part 12
“At Sans Souci there reigned such quiet that one might notice every breath. My first visit to this lonely spot was of an evening in the late fall. I was indeed surprised when I saw before me a small mansion, and learned that in it lived the hero who had already shaken the world with his name. I went around the entire house, approached the windows, saw light in them, but found no sentry before the doors, nor met a man to ask me who I was or what I craved. Then first I understood the greatness of Frederick. He needs for his protection not armed minions or firearms. He knows that the love and respect of the people keep watch at the doors of his modest abode.”
Frederick’s military genius was coupled with absolute control of his country’s resources. Though Gustavus Adolphus was both general and king, he was not an autocrat. The constitution of Sweden prescribed his bounds. In ancient days, only Alexander stood in the position of Frederick, and Cæsar, during the latter portion of his campaigns. Hannibal was always limited in his authority. Alexander, working in a far larger sphere, had personal ambitions and a scope which Frederick lacked, yet each worked for the good of his country. Frederick was not a conqueror. He fought to defend his possessions. His military education was narrow; his favorite studies and occupations essentially peaceful. But from history he had sucked the ambition to make more powerful the country which owed him allegiance, and he had digested the deeds of the great commanders as only a great soldier can. Unconscious of his own ability, necessity soon forced him to show what he was worth. Like the Romans, he laid down one rule: Never wait for your opponent’s attack. If you are on the defensive, let this be still of an offensive character in both campaigns and battles. This rule he followed through life.
Frederick most resembled Hannibal. He possessed Hannibal’s virtue,--the secret of keeping a secret. He never divulged his plans. From the start he was a captain, and so he remained to the end. How did he learn his trade? Alexander and Hannibal learned theirs under Philip and Hamilcar in Greece and Spain. Cæsar taught himself in Gaul; Gustavus Adolphus, in Denmark, Russia, and Poland. But Frederick had had no opportunities, except to learn the pipe-clay half of the art of war. His five years’ retirement after his court-martial must have done for him more than any one ever knew. The fertility of his intelligence, and his power of applying what he learned, were the foundation of his skill. His first campaign advanced him more than a life of war does the greatest among others. The First Silesian War was a school out of which Frederick emerged the soldier he always remained.
That Frederick was not a warrior for the sake of conquest was well shown in his moderation after the First Silesian War. He demanded only his rights, as he understood them. And after the Second Silesian, and the Seven Years’ War, he asked no more than he got at the peace of Dresden, when he might have made far greater claims. Indeed, Frederick’s whole life showed his preference for the arts of peace. After the glamour of the first step had vanished, war was but his duty to Prussia.
Frederick had assimilated the theory of war from the history of great men; but its study was never a favorite pursuit. He was a born soldier. As Cæsar taught himself from ambition, so Frederick taught himself from necessity. What he did had not a theoretical but an essentially practical flavor. He rose to the highest intellectual and characteristic plane of the art, not by imitation of others, but by native vigor. Frederick had by heart the lesson of Leuctra and Mantinæa, but it required genius to apply the oblique order as he did it at Leuthen. No man has ever so perfectly done this. No one in modern times has had such troops.
Frederick placed war among the liberal arts. Perhaps the least straight-laced of any captain, he held that only broad principles can govern it; that the use of the maxims of war depends on the personality of the soldier and the demands of the moment. His “Instructions” to his generals set out Frederick’s whole art. It is full of simple, common sense; apt rules, practical to the last degree. But it was the man who made them so fruitful. Just because they do represent the man they are interesting in this connection.
Frederick is the first writer on the military art who goes to the root of the matter. He always wrote profusely,--most plentifully in bad French verse,--but his “Instructions” are admirable throughout. At the head of the paper stands this motto: “Always move into the field sooner than the enemy;” and this was his course in campaign and battle alike. He asked of the enemy a categorical _yes_ or _no_ to his ultimatum, and upon _no_ struck an instant blow. So novel was Frederick’s quick decisiveness that he was at first looked upon in Europe as a rank disturber of the peace. But his was only the old Roman method revamped.
Underlying this rule was the good of Prussia. This motive he ground into his men’s souls. He demanded as a daily habit extraordinary exertions. His men must perform the unusual at all times. And “from highest officer to last private, no one is to argue, but to obey,” says he. A habit of obedience supplanted fear of punishment. The king’s zeal flowed down through every channel to the ranks. He was himself notoriously the hardest-worked man in Prussia, and his men appreciated the fact.
Next in importance to discipline comes the care of the troops. In his day subsistence tied armies down to predetermined manœuvres. Frederick carried his rations with him, and in his rapid movements made requisitions on the country, as Napoleon, a generation later, did more fully.
Then follows the study of topography. Positions were to Frederick only links in a chain, or resting places, but he ably utilized the lay of the land in his battles. He taught his generals, wherever they might be, to look at the surrounding country and ask themselves, “What should I do if I was suddenly attacked in this position?” He enunciated many maxims scarcely known at his day. “If you divide your forces you will be beaten in detail. If you wish to deliver a battle bring together as many troops as possible.” Frederick did not try to keep everything, but put all his energy into the one important matter. His was no hard and fast system. He did what was most apt. His battle plans were conceived instantly on the ground. What was intricate to others was simple to him and to the Prussian army. Frederick held Hannibal up as a pattern. “Always,” said the king, “lead the enemy to believe you will do the very reverse of what you intend to do.”
Minor operations are clearly treated of. In general the _motif_ of these “Instructions” is attack and initiative. “Prussians,” said he, “are invariably to attack the enemy.” Close with him even if weaker. Make up for weakness by boldness and energy. He opposed passive defence. Every one of his battles was offensive. He complained, indeed, that he had to risk much all his life.
Frederick’s irrepressible courage under misfortune is equalled in history only by Hannibal’s. Fortune was not his servant as she was Alexander’s and Cæsar’s. He thanked himself for his good luck, or rather his successes were due to the fact that he made use of good luck when he had it, and threw no chances away. The magnificence of his warlike deeds is traceable almost solely to his own mental power and remarkable persistency. No danger or difficulty ever, in the remotest degree, changed his purpose or affected his reasoning power. It was this kept the ascendant on his side.
Despite sternest discipline, Frederick was familiar with his men, who knew him as Vater Fritz, and bandied rough jokes with him. “The Austrians are three to one of us, and stoutly entrenched,” said the king, riding the outposts before Leuthen. “And were the devil in front and all around them, we’ll hustle them out, only thou lead us on!” answered a brawny grenadier. “Good-night, Fritz.” He gained such personal love from his men that it seems to have been transmitted as a heritage of the Hohenzollerns. He spurred his men to the most heroic efforts, the most extraordinary feats of daring and endurance. As the complement to this quality, he infused in his enemies a dread of his presence. He utilized the mistakes they made and led them into still others, less from any system than by doing the right thing at the right moment. Strict rules aid only the minds whose conceptions are not clear, and whose execution lacks promptness. Rules were as nothing to Frederick. He observed them, not because they were rules, but because they were grounded on truths which his own mind grasped without them. He broke them when there was distinct gain in so doing. His operations against six armies surrounding him was based on his own maxim, that “Whoso attempts to defend everything runs danger of losing everything,” and he turned from one to the other, risking much to gain much. This idea of Frederick’s was a novel one in his century, whose warfare consisted in an attempt to protect and hold everything by fortresses and partial detachments. In working out this idea he is unapproached.
Frederick never allowed his enemies to carry out their own plans. His movements imposed limitations upon them. He impressed his own personality on every campaign. To carry his victuals with him enabled him to outmanœuvre them, for his enemies relied exclusively on magazines established beforehand. He could select his routes according to the exigencies of the moment, while they must keep within reach of their depots.
Tactically, Frederick stands highest of all soldiers. Strategically he was less great. In strategic movements, his brother, Prince Henry, did occasional work worthy to be placed beside the king’s. Tactically, no one could approach him. His method of handling the three arms was perfect.
Gustavus Adolphus had given new impulse to systematic, intelligent war. But what he did was not understood. His imitators jumbled the old and new systems. They placed too much reliance on fortresses and magazines, and on natural and artificial obstacles; they made strained efforts to threaten the enemy’s communications; they manœuvred for the mere sake of doing something and apart from any general plan; they avoided decisive movements and battles.
Frederick, by making his armies less dependent on magazines, acquired a freer, bolder, and more rapid style. The allies aimed to parcel out Prussia. Frederick met them with decision. Surrounded on all sides by overwhelming numbers, he was compelled to defend himself by hard knocks. And his individual equipment as well as the discipline of his army enabled him to do this with unequalled brilliancy. In all history there is no such series of tactical feats as Frederick’s.
Each captain must be weighed by the conditions under which he worked. We cannot try Alexander by the standard of Napoleon. While Napoleon’s battle tactics have something stupendous in their magnificence, Frederick’s battles, in view of numbers and difficulties, are distinctly finer. Frederick’s decisiveness aroused fresh interest in battle. Manœuvres now sought battle as an object, while sieges became fewer and of small moment.
All Europe was agog at Frederick’s successes, but no one understood them. Lloyd alone saw below the surface. As Gustavus had been misinterpreted, so now Frederick. Some imitated his minutiæ down to the pig-tails of his grenadiers. Some saw the cure-all of war in operations against the enemy’s flanks and rear. Some saw in detachments, some in concentration, the trick of the king. Only Lloyd recognized that it all lay in the magnificent personality of the king himself, that there was no secret, no set rule, no legerdemain, but that here again was one of the world’s great captains. The imitators of Frederick caught but the letter. The spirit they could not catch. Until two generations more had passed, and Lloyd and Jomini had put in printed form what Frederick and Napoleon did, the world could not guess the riddle.
His own fortresses were of importance to Frederick because his enemy respected them. But he paid small heed to the enemy’s. He could strike him so much harder by battle, that he never frittered away his time on sieges, except as a means to an end. The allies clung to their fortified positions. Frederick despised them, and showed the world that his gallant Prussians could take them by assault.
This period, then, is distinguished for the revival of battles, and of operations looking towards battle. Of these Frederick was the author. Battles in the Seven Years’ War were not haphazard. Each had its purpose. Pursuit had, however, not yet been made effective so to glean the utmost from victory. No single battle in this period had remarkable results. Frederick’s battles were generally fought to prevent some particular enemy from penetrating too far into the dominions of Prussia. In this they were uniformly successful. But in the sense of Napoleon’s battles they were not decisive. The superior decisiveness of Napoleon’s lay in the strategic conditions and in his superiority of forces. No battles--as battles--could be more thoroughly fought out than Frederick’s; no victories more brilliant.
Frederick not only showed Europe what speed and decision can do in war, but he made many minor improvements in drill, discipline, and battle-tactics. He introduced horse-artillery. His giving scope to such men as Seydlitz and Ziethen made the Prussian cavalry a model for all time. He demonstrated that armies can march and operate continuously, with little rest, and without regard to seasons. Light troops grew in efficiency. War put on an aspect of energetic purpose, but without the ruthless barbarity of the Thirty Years’ War.
No doubt Napoleon, at his best, was the greater soldier. But Napoleon had Frederick’s example before him, as well as the lessons of all other great captains by heart. Napoleon’s motive was aggressive; Frederick’s, pure defence. Hence partly the larger method. But Frederick in trial or disaster was unspeakably greater than Napoleon, both as soldier and man.
In the forty-six years of his reign Frederick added sixty per cent. to the Prussian dominion, doubled its population, put seventy million thalers in its treasury, and created two hundred thousand of the best troops in existence. Prussia had been a small state, which the powers of Europe united to parcel out. He left it a great state, which all Europe respected, and planted in it the seed which has raised its kings to be emperors of Germany. This result is in marked contrast to what Napoleon’s wars did for France.
Whoever, under the sumptuous dome of the Invalides, has gazed down upon the splendid sarcophagus of Napoleon, and has stepped within the dim and narrow vault of the plain old garrison church at Potsdam, where stand the simple metal coffins of Frederick the Great and of his father, must have felt that in the latter shrine, rather than the other, he has stood in the presence of the ashes of a king.
Whatever may be said of Frederick’s personal method of government, or of the true Hohenzollern theory that Prussia belonged to him as an heritage to make or to mar as he saw fit, it cannot be denied that he was true to the spirit of his own verses, penned in the days of his direst distress:--
“Pour moi, menacé du naufrage, Je dois, en affrontant l’orage, Penser, vivre et mourir en Roi.”
LECTURE VI.
NAPOLEON.
The career of Napoleon Bonaparte is so near to our own times and so commonly familiar, that it is not essential to describe any of those operations which were, within the memory of some men yet living, the wonder and dread of Europe. In certain respects Napoleon was the greatest of all soldiers. He had, to be sure, the history of other great captains to profit by; he had not to invent; he had only to improve. But he did for the military art what constitutes the greatest advance in any art, he reduced it to its most simple, most perfect form; and his and Frederick’s campaigns furnished the final material from which Jomini and his followers could elucidate the science; for it has taken more than two thousand years of the written history of war to produce a written science of war.
I shall not touch upon Napoleon’s life as statesman or lawgiver, nor on his services in carrying forward the results of the Revolution toward its legitimate consequence,--the equality of all men before the law. In these rôles no more useful man appears in the history of modern times. I shall look at him simply as a soldier.
Napoleon’s career is a notable example of the necessity of coexistent intellect, character, and opportunity to produce the greatest success in war. His strength distinctly rose through half his career, and as distinctly fell during the other half. His intellectual power never changed. The plan of the Waterloo campaign was as brilliant as any which he ever conceived. His opportunity here was equal to that of 1796. But his execution was marred by weakening physique, upon which followed a decline of that decisiveness which is so indispensable to the great captain. It will, perhaps, be interesting to trace certain resemblances between the opening of his first independent campaign in 1796, and his last one in 1815, to show how force of character won him the first and the lack of it lost him the last; and to connect the two campaigns by a thread of the intervening years of growth till 1808, and of decline from that time on.
When Napoleon was appointed to the command of the Army of Italy he had for the moment a serious problem. In this army were able and more experienced officers of mature powers and full of manly strength, who looked on this all but unknown, twenty-seven years old, small, pale, untried commander-in-chief, decidedly askance. But Napoleon was not long in impressing his absolute superiority upon them all. They soon recognized the master-hand.
The army lay strung out along the coast from Loano to Savona, in a worse than bad position. The English fleet held the sea in its rear, and could make descents on any part of this long and ill-held line. Its communications lay in prolongation of the left flank, over a single bad road, subject not only to interruption by the English, but the enemy, by forcing the Col di Tenda, could absolutely cut it off from France. The troops were in woful condition. They had neither clothing nor rations. They were literally “heroes in rags.” On the further side of the Maritime Alps lay the Austrian general, Beaulieu, commanding a superior army equally strung out from Mount Blanc to Genoa. His right wing consisted of the Piedmontese army under Colli at Ceva; his centre was at Sassello; with his left he was reaching out to join hands with the English at Genoa. Kellerman faced, in the passes of the Alps, a force of twenty-five thousand Sardinians, but for the moment was out of the business.
Napoleon spent but few days in providing for his troops, and then began to concentrate on his right flank at Savona. He knew that his own position was weak, but he also divined from the reports brought in from the outposts that the enemy’s was worse. From the very start he enunciated in his strategic plan the maxim he obeyed through life: Move upon your enemy in one mass on one line so that when brought to battle you shall outnumber him, and from such a direction that you shall compromise him. This is, so to speak, the motto of Napoleon’s success. All perfect art is simple, and after much complication or absence of theoretical canons from ancient times to his, Napoleon reduced strategy down to this beautifully simple, rational rule.
Nothing in war seems at first blush so full of risk as to move into the very midst of your enemy’s several detachments. No act in truth is so safe, if his total outnumbers yours and if you outnumber each of his detachments. For, as always seemed to be more clear to Napoleon and Frederick than to any of the other great captains, you can first throw yourself upon any one of them, beat him and then turn upon the next. But to do this requires audacity, skill, and, above all, tireless legs. And success is predicated in all cases on the assumption that God is on the side of the heaviest battalions.
So Napoleon, who was very familiar with the topography of Italy, at once determined to strike Beaulieu’s centre, and by breaking through it, to separate the twenty-five thousand Piedmontese in the right wing from the thirty-five thousand Austrians in the left wing, so that he might beat each separately with his own thirty-seven thousand men.
Beaulieu’s reaching out toward Genoa facilitated Napoleon’s manœuvre, for the Austrian would have a range of mountains between him and his centre under Argenteau, whom he had at the same time ordered forward on Savona via Montenotte. Napoleon’s manœuvre was strategically a rupture of Beaulieu’s centre. Tactically it first led to an attack on the right of Argenteau’s column. The details of the manœuvre it would consume hours to follow. Suffice it to say that by a restless activity which, barring Frederick, had not been seen in war since the days of Cæsar, Napoleon struck blow after blow, first upon Argenteau, throwing him back easterly, then on Colli, throwing him back westerly, absolutely cut the allies in two, fought half a dozen battles in scarce a greater number of days, and in a short fortnight had beaten the enemy at all points, had captured fifteen thousand prisoners, fifty guns, and twenty-one flags.
Still the problem was serious. Beaulieu, if active, could shortly concentrate one hundred thousand men. Napoleon must allow him not a moment of breathing spell. He issued a proclamation to his troops which sounds like the blare of a trumpet. It set ablaze the hearts of his men; it carried dread to his enemies, and Napoleon followed it up by a march straight on Turin. Alarmed and disconcerted, the King of Sardinia sued for peace. Napoleon concluded an armistice with him, and thus saw himself dis-embarrassed of the enemy’s right wing and free to turn on the left under Beaulieu. His columns were at once launched on Alexandria, and by his skilful manœuvres and unparalleled alertness he soon got the better of the Austrians. He had at a stroke made himself the most noted general of Europe. The rest of the campaign was equally brilliant and successful.
Napoleon had shown his army that he commanded not by the mere commission of the Directory, but by the divine right of genius. He had not only taken advantage of every error of his opponents, but had so acted as to make them commit errors, and those very errors of which he had need. His army had been far from good. But “I believe,” says Jomini, “that if Napoleon had commanded the most excellent troops he would not have accomplished more, even as Frederick in the reversed case would not have accomplished less.”
We recognize in this first independent campaign of Napoleon the heroic zeal of Alexander, the intellectual subtlety of Hannibal, the reckless self-confidence of Cæsar, the broad method of Gustavus, the heart of oak of Frederick. But one fault is discoverable, and this, at the time, was rather a virtue,--Napoleon underrated his adversary. By and by this error grew in the wrong direction, and became a strong factor in his failures.