Napoleon’s Rise and Decline

hello everybody my name is chance and I am member of the Dole Institute Student Advisory Board the official student group of the Dole Institute first and foremost welcome to the Dole Institute of Politics and thank you for attending today's program it's presented by the department of military history at the command and General Staff College of Fort Leavenworth the Dole Institute would like to hear from you about today's program please let us know if you have any feedback by contacting us on social media or via email at Dole Institute at ke D you we have a great slate of programs covering both current events and historical topics this summer including our summer discussion groups and on issues and opportunities related to the us-mexico border you can find upcoming events on your program hand on today or grab a flyer listing all of our July events on the table outside to view past programs visit our online video archive at wwl institute org a video of today's presentation will be available on our website soon as well we would like to courage each of you to consider becoming friends of the Dole Institute our friends will help our keep our programs free and open and support archived research and our student activities please contact us if you're interested after the presentation we will have some time for the audience to ask questions if you have a question please raise your hand and the student worker with a microphone will come to you please stand if you were able and ask just one brief question before we begin I'd like to remind you to please turn off your cell phones and that our next Leavenworth lecture is going to be on August 3rd at 3:00 p.m. and now please join me in welcoming dr. Dave Cotter the deputy director of the department of military history at the command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth but after the afternoon ladies and gentlemen it's my pleasure to introduce professor Girgis and he wrote this great thing up for me but I don't need that Professor Girgis is a is one of the most outstanding members of the history faculty at the command and General Staff College in the largest military history department in the United States he is our Napoleonic expert students line up to take his courses remarkable scholar great leader over 20 years as a US Army officer certain armored officer served in Desert Storm as a as a company commander and a m1 Abrahms company and then and then came back and went to the Florida State University and studied Napoleonic history under a doctor dr. Donald hor word there he's he say an author of a number of different chapters in a number of different books all of which are related to Napoleon and the this is another one of the episodes in in this series that we have with the dull center that we really are proud to be part of and so ladies and gentlemen without further ado I'd like to introduce you to my friend and colleague dr. Mark Curtis [Applause] Wow nothing makes you feel better than having to bring more chairs in we have about 1,300 Army Navy Air Force Marine officers who come in they spend ten months here and as part of that they get about 60 hours of history class without the electives in the in every single student gets that it's broke down to three blocks and h100 which is what we call the rise the Western Way of war which looks at from the 30 Years War up until 1918 h200 which is military innovation in peace and war it looks at the period between World War One World War two and how organizations dealt with new change new technologies and then how their performance was in the Second World War and then the last one is age 300 the roots of the operational environment that really focus our officers on what the world's like that they're going out to and how theoretically it has been it's been created today we're going to focus on this h100 rise the Western Way of war and then we're going to talk about is really two lessons that we do here and one of the structures that we use is this idea of a military revolution this comes from a historian Michael Roberts in 1955 does a lecture and he talks about Gustavus Adolphus in Sweden in the 16th century and this creation of a modern state and how when Gustavus creates this modern state with a bureaucracy and he's able to kind of squeeze the land a little bit more efficiency and with all these changes going on there creates what they call a military revolution and these are as you can see there's only been five in the last 350 years they're big they're seismic changes we talked to about them like an earthquake and it has a couple of features to it one is that whoever is the paradigm army the best army the one that epitomizes that age after that military revolution probably isn't the paradigm army the second aspect of it is it's not predictable it's not foreseeable and it's not controllable like an earthquake you just hang on and hope that you can survive it and I've come back to why we talk about this with our officers but this the period here and the rise will fall into pullian we're talks about that rise of nationalism in the nation-state the French Revolution and we're going to talk a little bit about the intellectual fervent that's going on in the 18th century prior to the revolution and how the revolution kind of unleashes all the bounds allows these things to come come about I already talked about Gustavus when we talk about the modern state in this creation of a bureaucracy one of the one of the illustrations we use is Frederick the Great Prussia of the five great powers and Europe Russia is the smallest only about nine million people in the 1750s but Frederick's father and then Frederick are able to create this really really efficient model that is allows them to to basically fight at a much higher level and then their size would allow them to do how does he do this well he does it by discipline and it's this age of limited warfare and I say a little bit of warfare I'm not talking about limiting the cost it's not bloodless by any stretch imagination there's lots of battles and and cost that way but what they try to do is limit the effect on society and they do that by taking soldiers making armies as separate from society as they possibly can so to create these soldiers they think it takes two years to create a disciplined soldier to be able to stand in these stereo branks and fire and part of that it's because the the muzzleloaders the smoothbore muskets that are very very inaccurate you have to stand almost shouldered shoulder in fire at relatively short ranges compared to today's weapons and and take it it's kind of instinctually don't want to do that but yet you have to and so they said takes two years to do it the other aspect is prussia doesn't have a big population so where do you get your soldiers from if you take it from your hard-working city of people or farmers that's going to hurt your own society so instead you impress deserters from other armies you take prisoners of war and you make them into Prussian soldiers you take the the drunks the the Ealdor wells the people who create crimes you put them in the army now they don't want to be there so how do you keep them there you keep them there soos fear from there through absolutely harsh harsh discipline one of the things the pressure army has is the gauntlet where they basically line up all the noncommissioned officers and officers of regiment and the soldier would walk in the middle no shirt on and they would smack him in the back with these these birch twigs trying to cut and open the back executions they would ride mutilations to all these different very very harsh traditions and one of the things Frederick the Great and the our pressure army really says is we want the soldiers to fear their own officers more than the enemy is if they're marching forward and you have to fight and you stop like you're even going to start to think about running you know you're gonna get killed by a noncommissioned officer and officer behind you so your chances are better by fighting the enemy what does that allow them to do well allows Prussia starting in 1740 to fight two different wars where they pretty much fight all of Europe Prussia nine million people are there surrounded by 20 million Russians 18 to 20 million Austrians and 20 million Frenchmen and they're gonna fight all through those and so what'll end up happening they'll fight a night 8 years war the world lost between secession they'll have an eight-year break where when kind of rearm shree fuels and changes some diplomatic pieces and then they'll fight a Seven Years War and Prussia at the end of that has been saved by its army the picture up there on the 1st guards battalion a Cohen if you look very closely at that that is a rearguard action Frederick's the great losses but this shows his guards and it shows how high oh good their discipline is if you look there's three ranks of soldiers firing the first two ranks are firing to your left at the enemy they have taken the other rank and they've done it about face and that rank is firing to your right at the other enemy technically that's surrounded and yet these guys are firing in both directions and being fired on and they're going to provide the rearguard allow Frederick's army to get away that's the kind of discipline now that the Prussian army is trying to do it has of course some real disobeyed Vantage's when Frederick goes out to the field with the Prussian army it camp Muir Woods because the soldiers will try to sneak away he has a little hard time with his Calvary operations because his Calvary instead of being the eyes near the army out trying to find the enemy most the time is spending their their time around his army more of a cordon to keep his soldiers in if you send soldiers out to get water for example you can't just send a bunch of soldiers and one noncommissioned officer out to go fill canteens you've got sent a bunch of noncommissioned officers out over there because the soldiers may rush so those kind of disadvantages have tactical implications for him the other thing is you have to keep them fed you have to keep them supplied if you don't feed them the army disappears the soldiers will start to run away so you have to be very very careful on making sure your lines communication also the magazines or fortresses have to be used as points to supply your troops and so all these wagons all this extra supply slows down the movement of the army so I want to keep you to keep that in mind because that's really the epitome of what's going on as we look at the 1700s to the late getting up to the French Revolution now well this warfare is going on of course there's a number of a number of other things intellectually or I could talk too much about this slide you've probably are pretty familiar with most of these ideas but there's this intellectual movement called the Enlightenment and the French feel the softs I have a picture of a couple of them up there are talking about things like this I did topple her ah so that the Atlantan word for blank slate that you're not born into a certain position that you start with a blank slate and by your talent by your abilities you can rise up anywhere you are sounds great for us for a a autocratic ruler in the 17th or 18th century who's King because God made him King and you're a noble because God made you a noble and and a peasant certainly can ever become a nobleman this is a really very unsettling type of idea that person by their own hard work and their own abilities could rise up to whatever level they want it also talks about where do you get national rights these unalienable rights they talk about as as part of what comes in and the other aspect is this idea of a social contract right that the government you give up certain rights to the government the government gives up certain things to protect you and once that bonds have been broken that you have the right first revolts and then revolution should all sound familiar particularly this week after the fourth July from our Declaration of Independence so this is what's going on it and this really comes from the Scientific Revolution that started the century before you think back to a person like Isaac Newton who comes up with gravity if before Isaac Newton if you saw an Apple fall why did it fall because God willed it to fall right not because there's gravity and there's unwritten laws and all these things and so when Newton starts to look at this and says well there's rules that are governing us I can measure this I can figure out why how fast this Apple is going to fall when Halley predicts when a comet is going to come back all these type of things start saying that these observable things if I have the right mathematics if I had the right tool I can start to predict and look at this and so these guys using that rational thought and empirical data try to figure out the rules that are governing society and how a government and the governed fit together there's a similar thing going on with the military and if you look and think back to this time period there's a time to purchase system and it's nothing to have a eight-year-old kernel of a regiment because he's aristocratic his father has money has bought him a regiment the regiment is organized has the number of people on how they fight based on the whim of that commander and so you can't put these regiments they just say a thousand B but you can't put that together with a bigger organization and be able to fight effectively if everyone has different tactics different ways of marching different ways of moving what really causes the impetus for all these military thought is the poor performance the French forces are in the Seven Years War and so there are going to be a number of military commissions that are gonna start looking at different things there's also guys like General de Broglie down there who several you were is seven years worth gonna do some experiments at that time period an army basically was one big element they called a Unitarian army where the only way it fights is as a big thing it comes to a field it deploys it might take it half a day to get out there and then it fights the other army and broadly the experiments with things of taking it this big army and dividing them up into smaller elements all these elements would have different portions they'd have infantry with it Calgary with it artillery with it engineers and so these different elements could on their own fight together the problem is of course is that as like Broglie who are doing some very very innovative things it's all personality driven and there's no system at a shoe systemization of this within France they're really the big two people here to remember is we bear and Boer saying we bear of the two is the as the more important one he's gonna write the essay general essay on tactics and he's gonna talk about what if we had these motivated soldiers that aren't motivated by fear but instead for a love of country what if instead of just trying to shoe the enemy off without a big battle that instead we we look for a decisive battle trying to destroy the enemy army he's also going to talk about dividing up the army making a standardization of the different size units the broke era or say he's going to publish the essay on the principles of mountain warfare his is not going to be published but it'll be published generally but it's available and there are copies out among the army and what the principles mountain warfare talk about it's done like a war gamer where he looks at terrain where you can't move an army on one road and so he has to break up this army on multiple routes and each of these routes has to have some infantry some Calvary's of artillery he calls them this mini armies or divisions and they move on multiple routes and then they come together at once to be able to fight in time and space and you start looking at this and you're seeing all this fervor that the problem is of course is that all this can't go into effect as long as you have the existing system if you're an aristocratic officer in the army you you don't want a lot of these things because this is the way we've always done it why should I change what's the the real purpose for me doing it the Lord mixed immense and profound and there's a big argument in the late late 18th century about the order how you deploy your soldiers mostly what Frederick the Great does an employee and land line that's the French ferments and they will fight to linear battles fight against each other and there are people who talk about well we're gonna do it in column instead instead of being in long line of three deep we'll be in a column 30 wide 60 deep and this moves quicker and it also takes they talk about the natural lawn of the French soldiers so you can move around the battlefield much more quickly and it takes into account their their national pride and so all these questions are now are out there and not really settled and then there'll be one big event that kind of clears the table and allows people to try anything they can and that of course the Revolution and I should mention I'll come back to the 1791 regulations because all these ideas are out there and they're gonna write and 1791 the regulations for the army those regulations are before the war start they don't start until 1792 and those regulations have been effective 1830 so all what is used in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era is revolution is this reg this regulations that are written prior to the warfare starting so what what was changed to start well the revolution starts of course you get the king being limited in his ability first of moving around the women's March we're gonna bring the king from Versailles back to Paris and make him a virtual prisoner in Paris then when they find out about him committing treason trying to deal with other other monarchs they first are going to depose him and declare a republic and then in January 1793 they'll execute him at that point the French government can't go back if you voted for the death of the king you can't negotiate with the other Kings okay you are a threat to all of Europe and starting as early as April warfare is going to start and it's going to continue building until by January 1793 they're at war with all of Europe remember there's two Republic's in the world in 1793 us and them in the French okay and so France with 30 million Frenchmen in the middle of Europe is a huge threat and the other countries can't let this go the other one I didn't put up here is on the 4th of August 1789 is a huge day in France they had the Bastille Day they've created this National Constituent Assembly and on the 4th of August they are going to get up and one after another they are going to give up their feudal privileges and so overnight in France the aristocracy disappears and gives up and says we're all citizens we all have the same rights and privileges it's a huge day it really levels out the field it also starts what they call the EMA grace where you start getting aristocrats you don't agree with that you start seeing the handwriting on the wall and start to flee France how big a deal is this well prior to the revolution there's about 18,000 army officers quasi was trying to eliminate get rid of a lot of these officers who really don't have positions he tries to get him down to 9,000 when you look at those 9,000 officers out of those 9,000 ninety percent or aristocrat now when you take that over the French population of 30 million the aristocracy is about thirty thousand three hundred thousand people so it's a very very small portion of the French thing so something like twenty-eight point five percent of the French population twenty-eight point five percent of million people are not able to fill the majority there's officer positions once the emigration starts and once the revolution starts getting more and more violent those aristocratic officers are gonna leave by 1794 three percent of the Army is aristocrat ninety seven percent have come from that middle class and lower class and have risen up what does it do well one it makes the army officers much much younger much more just have more energy more vitality I always tell my students we talk you don't hear lieutenants ever saying we don't do things that way you tell the lieutenant to do something that's usually okay I'll try it and they'll tried no matter how ridiculous it is when you suddenly have 9,000 brand new officers and what they've lost is really all the upper echelon of officers they're willing to try anything if it works it's good it doesn't matter what Trish tradition and custom goes back goes by I want to point this out this is a huge it's not really a battle that's a cannonade is what they call it the Prussians are invading France they're heading to Paris and on the 20th September they get to a town called vom e and they are going to stop their March to fight this revolutionary army and the Revolutionary Army is gonna have cannons the Prussians going to Canada so they're gonna spend the day firing candidates at each other the Prussian commander the Duke of Brunswick sees the Revolutionary Army standing there willing to fight and he says it's not really worth it to continue to Vance and he is going to pull his Prussian forces back out and it saves the revolution at that point and it's also the last time we really see the Prussian army in the war for about a 16 year period because after this time what France is gonna be fighting is the Austrians the Russians Piedmontese all these other states but not depressions and we'll come back to them why why that's important so let's talk about some of the changes that are going on in the army what happens to the army and at first that revolution making war with all of Europe so now you suddenly have about 180,000 man army and you're being invaded in fight and fighting every single army in Europe plus you don't just don't trust the old army and you have a lot of these officers so one of the things that's going to be done is this thing called the levy on mass where Frederick the Great tried to limit the impact of war on his citizens as much as possible and take in really the the outsiders and and the useless ones and make them into good soldiers the French take a different a different approach all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for army service young men will go to fight that married men will Forge your arms and carry supplies the men will make tents in uniforms and serve in the hospitals the children which rebel clothes the old man would take in the public squares to excite the courage of the combatants the hatred loyalty and unity of Republic challenge you to find someone in French society who's left out of that the entire society is at war everybody we have got this experiment liberty equality fraternity we have got to protect it and every single person now has to do that does a couple of things okay so now you have motivation you're not being staying there because of fear can you camp near woods sure people are gonna come there come because they know they're there they're trying to save France can you move quickly do you need huge wagon trains No one of the other things so the army goes for about a hundred eighty thousand to anywhere up to about 1.2 to 1.5 million they're not 100% sure a lot of problems with just the record-keeping at this time a lot of desertions later on so but the armies get huge the other thing is you don't worry so much about casualties when you're Frederick the Great or any of these on Stanberry Team Army's casualties take you two years to replace you don't have two years to replace it these literally are talking about taking soldiers many times they're handing them pikes not even muskets you don't have to train them how to shoot here's a pike move to the front and and you're gonna learn as you go so replacements taking cash these suffering casualties aren't such a big deal officer vacancies something you have this huge pool of people who you can promote based on their performance and if they don't do well you fire them now there's about 60 general officers during this time period who don't do well on when I say fire they guillotine them that's then they say what I mean but you can take these officers up they don't do well or they rise up to a certain level you leave them at that at that level but it allows you to to try people and if you're really good you can keep rising up like some young course again we'll talk about a few more it's logistics problems the society and when you pull up the entire society to go to war pretty much the economy shuts down all these type of just normal logistics we'll be talking in a food ammunition all that kind of stuff stops but that's okay because you don't have to have these huge wagon trains anymore by making officers who aren't aristocratic you now also can have lot smaller wagon trains my area I study and do lot of research in as the peninsula war under the Duke of Wellington in the British a typical British cavalry officer a young lieutenant arrives in Lisbon he gets from his regiment a Batman who's just Anna listed soldier with his horse he has the officer usually brings two maybe three horses of his own then he has his Batman who has a horse then he'll hire a cook who usually has a mule and then he'll have another servant who has a mule then he has another pack mule that's they have a paneer of pots and pans and that kind of stuff and that might be one or two mules and so this one lieutenant might have eight animals with him in five people and all that does is congest the road it just makes it more and more stuff on these roads as you try to move and by having officers who live the same way the soldiers do eat the same way the soldiers do you have a lot less of just stuff on the road to be able to congest it so the armies start to move much more rapidly typical French army at this time period you look like the 1805 campaign on a daily basis does about twenty-eight miles in the US Army after where one is trying to study the 1805 army trying to head a figure I had a speed up our army to march that far where a typical Austrian or Russian army in the same campaign does 11 miles so you're doing almost three times faster so if you think about that from trying to do something on the battlefield the French can react if they know what's going on about three times faster than an Austrian or Russian army control problems these these officers even though you have this motivation you have some really really good don't have the skill set that you add with these older officers and so you start to make these organizational changes one of the things they're going to do is this idea of the division and it's where we get the that the term division today but they've made these all arms teams where you have cavalry infantry artillery engineers all the different component parts but you also have a staff and the important part of the staff is they Lee are talking about and doing the orders on routes where you're gonna stop how you're gonna deploy how you're gonna get fed and so by having this habitually being done you start to have a more articulated type arming the other aspect it does is by having more of this articulation going on it allows the arm to become more robust if you destroy a single Brigade the army doesn't fall apart is you have all these different plug-and-play type of units it just it stays it takes the fight much more effectively and then the tactical changes you have lots of infantrymen who've come they have tons of motivation but they don't have the discipline so you can't stand in these long lines like Fred of great fire so let's use this column to move them around the battlefield and what they find out what initially is a means to move them around the battlefield you now have this capability of moving very very rapidly and having shock effect you can use that formation to hit someone or you can deploy in line and fire on it and so you have the ability of both shock and firepower to use in the organization and these things are by 1793 294 starting to percolate in there and by the late 1790s they have become systematized within the French army and you see I have there add an ambitious and capable leader we'll come back to him this system starts to become this really incredibly vibrant quick-moving seeking decisive action your unlimited aims you go to the jugular you want to destroy the enemy army you're not just trying to get them out of France because they're trying to kill you and they're gonna hang you if your guillotine you from killing the king so you see to seek for decisive battle when you add all those things together this army becomes very very good and I want point out when you start looking at this Napoleon is not the only successful French revolutionary general 1799 eighteenth Brumaire Napoleon will become be part of a coup that takes power and becomes a council but there are a number of other general officers at that time that they're thinking about trying to get into this cube because they're as successful Napoleon's better than everybody else he'll really show that with his administrative skills but he's not the only successful officer in there why well the speed that they move their armies the flexibility the ability to to seek decisive battle and even if you get beat the resiliency of that of that a army the quality of these officers who have risen up who are young enthusiastic all these things make the French and you can see the map they're just how much the French have French Republic expands between 1793 and 1800 now if you want to ever get a chance we're not going to talk about this is unfortunately don't have that much time the 1796 97 campaign shows Napoleon at his absolutely greatest he is going to leave the maritime all Alps defeat Piedmont push Austria out of northern Italy and then move towards a march on Vienna until he actually gets a peace treaty it shows him moving rapidly small numbers threatening lines of communications going around the rear of the enemy hitting them where they're not expecting and again and again and again it's an absolutely brilliant campaign and I should mention up there if you notice it has first first coalition because we're talk a little bit about the various coalition's so the second third coalition's unfortunately this one slide will be the your entire piece for because we're gonna jump over some of the Napoleon's greatest campaigns the Battle of the pyramids in Egypt where he's their soldiers 40 centuries a history looks down on you and three divisions will attack and push the men loops back into the Nile battle Marengo in 1800 where if you like chicken Marengo that's where it comes from 14th of june the day the evening of the battle but defeats the Austrians after the Austrian commander thinks they've beaten the French it's late in the day about five o'clock the Austrian commander has actually left the battlefield to go back to write a report to the Vienna saying we've beaten the French the point gets one more division comes marching up to the sound of the guns they counter-attack and win and then his probably his greatest set piece battle of Austerlitz the Battle of three emperors where Napoleon defeats the Austrian Emperor and the Russian Emperor destroys the Austrian army knocks them out of the war destroys the main Russian army I'm gonna jump right ahead into the war of the fourth coalition which at this point is the Russians who are licking their wounds and try and create a new army in 1806 and the Prussians who in the summer of 1806 begin to prep to go to war and everyone in Europe is saying good finally the French have been beaten up on the jayvees they have been fighting the second tier armies now we're gonna get the army of Frederick the Great a Frederick's been dead for 15 years 16 years down they haven't fought the Prussians for 14 years so think about from 2017 it's not that far ago fourteen years you can yeah so the the idea that this is still the army Frederick great this is still the best army in Europe it is going to show and put the rut of the French in its place really shoulder pull in how it's gonna be done you see the one image there that is the Prussian guards throughout the summer of 1818 oh six they go to the French Embassy and they sharpen their sabers on the front steps of the French Embassy this time a little bit of just showing the French their disdain of what they're gonna do when war comes the Prussians don't act logically the Prussians think that they may attack and try to do a spoon attack against Napoleon and then in 1807 due to the big campaign when the Russians get there an opponent of course isn't going to wait and he creates this organization called the battalion cray it's it's the battalion square I should mention the point invents if you want to say tactically he wants or organizationally he invents one thing he invents the Corps he takes the division that is that's being done by the French revolutionary armies and puts a couple of divisions together with a Marshall staff and that is that ends up being a corps and in this particular one this service this battalion square is still a tactic we used today if you look at the US Army going out to the National Training Center out in California if we don't know what the enemy's gonna do and our intelligence is poor we deploy in a battalion square at a tank battalion and it has its reconnaissance out in the front in the sides you usually have some sort of advance guard and then you have your reserve and the idea being is wherever you make contact you can react so if you're going forward and you hit the enemy whoever hits first fixes the enemy and then the other units come around to the flank inside and try to to envelop it if you hit them on the side and you're intelligent you get them over here these units would fix and then the east units would come around and do an envelop man and so Napoleon not understanding what the Prussians are going to do is going to move into Russian territory using this battalion carry the Prussians at this time we're also trying to do their initial plan of doing a splitting attack against Napoleon and they're gonna be moving south near the town of gana and our stott they're gonna get down here they're gonna stop part of they have a another advance guard that's down here in the third and fourth so that'll be destroyed by the French about the time they start to figure out where the French are they stop and they're gonna start to move back as Napoleon and his army is moving that up and they're gonna make contact and the battalion Corre is gonna work exactly the way it's designed they do basically a big left flank the course here run into the Prussian advanced guard under the direct command of Napoleon this corner guy named a vous I have a friend who's the head of history Barbour to West Point he loves to VU because the views building and has spectacles he's a short guy he says that's the epitomize epitome of a real warrior the guy with a speckle I say so you like that description no yeah exactly but the blue is probably the best corps commander in in the Grand Army the Blues three cores are three divisions excuse me are going to turn and attack the Prussia main got body he is outnumbered three to one in infantry does anyone want to guess how this battle goes with the French he's gonna win he is going to continue to advance and he is going to destroy the Prussian main body he suffers 25% casualties in his core it is a very very costly but that night he is writing back to Napoleon saying hey boss I just defeated the Prussian main guard Napoleon thinks he has defeated the main body of the Prussians and that's where that quote is tell your marshal he is seeing double they confront of his glasses no he isn't seeing double and if you think about the main French army has destroyed the advanced guard but a single Corps has destroyed it and then he lets loose the cavalry in a 33-day pursuit the French Calvary and the first Corps of Bernadotte who purposely I have this here he doesn't get involved in either fight that day he kind of wanders around in he almost gets fired napoleon decides to keep them they're gonna destroy the prussian army one hundred forty thousand prisoners twenty-five stands or colors so we're talking to Prussian national flag and the regimental flags and mm cannons the Prussian army ceases to exist on the after in the month of October of 1806 this is the same Prussian army that for 15 years fought all of Europe and now in a single afternoon and then a pursuit afterwards is destroyed Europe is absolutely stunned and this shows really the epitome of how good this French system is because of all battles that we've talked about so far this is the one that Napoleon probably does the worst in he doesn't give two of his cores any orders that day he loses a core that kind of wanders around he thinks he's fighting the main guard he doesn't have a good picture this is really his subordinate commanders in the strength of the French army and they are the ones who win the battle for him that day and they do it against the Prussian army it's an absolutely astounding victory so how do you men start to match what the French had done and this is what a number of these are these are burrs going to do is they're starting to look at how could we make these reforms because we see this this absolutely incredible system the French have the problem is of course if you're a monarch like the austria austrian emperor you can't go too far because too far of course was my cousin getting his head cut off and the end of the monarchy so you have to try to figure out what things you can do what things you can the Prussians are going to go up to memo on the Baltic and it's about as far away from France and the French army as you can get and they are going to have a military commission that's going to go there and the ponies gonna say what is going on a memo seems like a bad joke and they're gonna say and there's some little names in Russian military history Scharnhorst denies and now one of the chiefest have one of the subordinate officers there as guy named Clausewitz they're up there and they're trying to figure out how do we confront the French and one of the things that's going to come out there's also civil reforms by Hardenberg and the Prussian ministers is there to come out and the first reform edik says we abolish serfdom wait a second that's not reforming the army but they were abolished serfdom they make the restrictions off the nobility where your only job isn't being the officer corps so now anyone can be in the officer corps they start making administrative restrictions they start to say okay we're trying to make these citizens of prussia not subjects that we're going to do the harsh punishment so they loosen the punishments and so they're gonna have about a five year period of trying to do this when they go back and fight the French for the first time in 1813 they're going to fight for a day out gross beer and Napoleon's comment at the end of the day is the beasts have learned something it's an interesting comment the beasts have learned something there's a lot of disdain in that the beasts but at the same point there's a grudging respect that they've gotten better and they're not the only army that's that is doing these reforms and trying to see what it is making the French so good we're finally up to the sixth coalition sixth of seven and we're not going to get to the seven because that's Waterloo 1813 1814 now I need to back up to for a second because if you think about the sixth coalition warfare against the French and the Russians start in June of 1812 and go all the way to April 1814 so we're talking about two and a half year period of warfare or two year period of warfare and there's going to be some constant periods of it we're starting started waving from battle and starting to get into campaigns it's a much more modern way of warfare where you're seeing series of battles and the size of the army start to grow the poem does an absolutely amazing thing he loses an army in Russia rushes back to to Paris comes back with something like 60,000 soldiers after going into Russia was about 600,000 and about a four month period will build a new Grand Army and take the field in May of 1813 in the first two battles he wins he doesn't have the ability to destroy those other armies but it absolutely stuns the Allies and it's gonna start to change the dynamic the war one thing is this war becomes not just a war against Napoleon it becomes a war against it's a nationalistic war it's to liberate the German people's from this French influence that's an interesting piece because if you think about Germany at this time it's 37 different states it's not just Prussia in Austria but it's 37 different kingdoms and principalities there's also been the peninsula war for the last six years Napoleon has been fighting his brother has been the king in in Spain against the british army portuguese and spanish army the army that fights again our stock in 1806 is the one that goes to the peninsula and is going to be stuck there for the next six or seven years so this army that goes into russia is a different army it's not the same grand army that had been trained for years up on the channel coast and the quality starts to go down he has to call up the reserves not just the the class here of 1813 when he's in Russia in 1812 he calls up the class of 1813 so he's starting to get younger and younger richer recruits they call them real eases because the queen is very young and these recruits are very very young to augment these infantrymen that aren't doing as well on individual basis yes to start putting more and more artillery out there on the field the army in 1813 has about five hundred sixty cannons with it and typically a cannon dragged by eight horses and then it has a couple of other caissons and stuff with it when he's in northern Italy in 1796 his army had 80 cannons so you can just see how he's augmenting the the decline of his infantry but it also has other effects too they can't move as quickly they can't they can't do these sweeping bold movements as rapidly because of the road congestion they're also fighting in Silesia again again fighting in Saxony over and over and so the basically the area is becoming denuded of food so you have to rely more on logistics you can't just orient and all this has taken away his ability to to fight the other issue is allied boot evasion I have up there on the upper right corner of course the burning of Moscow the point doesn't burn at the Russians burned it themselves but that takes that takes a lot of hatred and of course they want to get to Paris they want to do the same type of thing so they're in it for the long long haul and they're going to come up with a drinking burg protocol and Reichenberg plan it's pretty simple first off don't fight where Napoleon is the points got three armies we have three armies wherever Napoleon is avoid battle and retreat pull him in and allow our other armies to defeat his marshals in generals wear him out as much as possible and they're going to do that throughout the fall of 1813 finally to Leipzig where they'll have the battle nations and Napoleon will have to give up Germany the other aspect they do which is pretty smart is the three allied armies are not national armies there's not an Austrian army a Prussian army and a Swedish army and Russian army every one of the armies has every nationality in it so the main army under general Schwarzenberg in the center 200,000 men made up of Austrians Russians and Prussians army of the North Underberg dot is now the king of Sweden is made up of Swedes North Germans Prussians and all that's done is so that the plane can't destroy one army and knock a country out of the war every army has got elements of the other ones so let's talk a little bit about the reasons for his decline or as they probably should have put the reasons for everybody else getting better the Allies learn from defeats they are getting beaten the Austrians are the most common opponent to Napoleon they have gotten beaten excuse me about four different times and every time they're learning and they're getting a little bit better if you need to the Allies we already talked about the political peace this longest term battles two campaigns such where the French au fining infantry hard to be Napoleon of 18 or 1796 me you don't have cavalry and know where you are one of the big things they can't scuse me one of the things they can't recover from is the lack of Calvary that they lose in the Russian campaign takes about five years to get a horse to be strong enough to be ridden as a cow for a battle and so those horses destroyed 1812 or not they're for it and the last thing is Napoleon's declining abilities or capabilities if you look at paintings of him from say 1810 he still looks relatively healthy not necessarily thin like he was in 1796 but not fat and like he is there in 1814 he's a 44 years old he's not that old at the time period but between about 1812 and 1814 you see a physical just going down some people speculate that he's gonna die of stomach cancer in 1821 that possibly he started to feel the effects of stomach cancer he does have hemorrhoids which limits the amount of time he can spend on horseback which is a really bad thing for a general because that's how you command your horses they're your things and so all these things are coming together so let's talk a little bit about this what you should take away from this Napoleon not an innovator okay he system eise's systematizes and codifies his strength is he takes these existing things from the revolution and makes it into systems that's able to to react to his his personal command it's these pre-revolutionary reforms the intellectual models that they use is there in the regiment the 1791 regulations and it's just putting it into effect once they have the revolution opponents start to copy what they can to make themselves more efficient but as you can't say you can't copy all of them limitation military revolutions this is one of the pieces that we spend a lot of time with our officers talking about if the army that is the top paradigm army before revolution and a revolution comes they normally are not the paradigm army anymore they have no incentive to change it's another army that is is not the paradigm who's going to pick up those pieces and learn and become that new paradigm army it's a lot of officers to talk about you know what's the new military revolution is an information and I always have to tell them I said you better be very careful one you can't predict it and you certainly can't control it and if we're the paradigm army now this is really a military revolution going on then we're probably not going to be the paradigm army afterwards the other aspect of these military revolutions they're they're finite in time that you have an advantage somebody gets this incredible performance boost but everyone catches up and so after as it takes in this one about a dozen years or so all the other armies catch up and so no longer do you see the French having such a definite advantage okay I have time for some questions I should leave you not with Napoleon on say Halina looking back at his his glory but young Napoleon looking forward to is his future from 1798 or so okay thank you I know you mentioned about the getting no ability out of the officer corps but looking at the Crimean War the British still had that problem yep and I think they learned from the Crimean War what that same problem yeah the British Army it's the one on the most familiar with because that's right do my research is the most like and what we call an honest am regime prior to 1789 type of army where its political connections the Duke of Wellington in the peninsula has a a Calvary brigade commander Major General Jack Slade who's not a very good commander he would love to get rid of him however Slade when he was deploying is met on the dock side by the Prince of Wales who will be the new King George the fourth in a few years and had Slade doesn't have a sword so the Prince of Wales takes his sword off and hands it to him so that's how close Slade is to the regent and so long as he can't fire this guy you know he has to wait for this guy to get recalled into another position so those type of issues particularly the British Army plays were a lot of role the Prussian army for example though of the I think it's 186 officers or on active duty 186 generals are on active duty in 1806 with the poor performance they reform and they come back in 1813 and out of there's a hundred eighty-six general officers who are on active duty there's three the 183 were retired or moved out retired because they were so old and that's part of the reasons why the Prussians are able to have so much better performance oh really yeah did Napoleon look for many innovations in weapons and equipment and things like that that's an interesting question and when you say weapons not really I mean the the the charm of the musket or the brown bess musket which the flintlock muzzleloader weapon is virtually unchanged for about 150 years the weapon his army is using in 1812 is the same weapon the French give us in 1777 it's the same weapon that was being used in the Seven Years War or the world war Austrian succession in 1740s so the weapons technology really hasn't kept up there's minor improvements in the artillery and what they call the great befall system where they standardize the artillery and make it a little bit lighter but not a major advantage what Napoleon does seek is he has yearly prizes for innovators canned foods the putting something into you know boiling water into a can or jar type of thing is a French invention during this time period it's an award Napoleon gives out he has a yearly word how do you reserve food and someone comes up with that so there's wagonload of canned food going into Russia in 1812 getting rid of the trying to innovate the silk industry in France so you can get rid of the cotton imports from England so there are those aspects that he's trying to improve but not really in weapons it's kind of an interesting piece it's not we haven't gotten into the Industrial Revolution yet it's just starting in England so there's not really the the ability to have the fine-tuning if you will the weapons are still pretty much shop made individually he's come up with the manager thing here I'm pretty familiar with most of the the Western Napoleonic battles but regarding the Russian campaign could you say something about why he chose to do that I mean from his perspective it just seems like a good idea at the time well the biggest thing I think about Napoleon in in his foreign policy one is the Russians are mobilized Russians have pulled out of the Treaty of Tilsit where they have agreed to be part of the Continental System and Russian mobilization is started in 1811 there's thought that the Russians are going to attack into the Duchy of Warsaw the year before so you're a Napoleon you can Lane 1812 and wait for them will attack you because you're in a state of war down or you can attack them and of course the Polian being this aggressive having these revolutionary type of things you don't wait you know wait for someone to attack you you take the offensive and take it into their their country so it's not this I want to conquer the whole world type of thing I mean there's I think that's one of the big things is get it's oversold there is this great power interaction where you know everybody is is is is wanting to do things I mean one of the reasons why the Austrians don't join the coalition in 1813 initially one is there the pole Ian's father-in-law the second reason is they don't trust the Russians they think the Russians are going to take a lot of Eastern Europe and stay there and so they don't want to join there the Russian side and help them to do that and in the Congress of Vienna in 1814 going into 1815 when Napoleon comes in it almost breaks up with a war at that time between the great powers not between France and so these great power rivalries we kind of tend to forget those and kind of want to blame him to pull you in on everything so I read once that Napoleon had a great ability to read maps I really didn't understand what I was being really to go any further into detail yeah it part of it is questioned about his reading gaffes it's it's not just this reading of maps I mean one of the things the Poynting does is he systemize does everything for example before he goes in the campaign say into to poland in eastern russia he will create and have all these books made he has these traveling libraries and he'll have he has a particular coach he has made that is his headquarters on the road and he has a library set and so every castle he has has the exact same library and has the exact same books in the exact same order so whichever home he's in he can go to that place and pick up the book he's at he has a traveling set of library books which he's had the books made so they have very very little margins so you can get thinner books and really really small print so he can do that so there's a lot of study beforehand and one of the other things is he will take and you'll see drawings of him we'll have the map out on the floor they'll have calibers that are marked there they're put at the point with how far core can move in a day and he'll be laying on the floor measuring out how far his core his cores will go all the cores move on separate routes but they are within one day's march of each other so if one person makes contact someone else can come and help and the other part that we kind of overlook is his chief of staff a guy named I was that Bertier who's supposedly the only man who can read his handwriting because no point will do is he will sit there and he will talk about what I want these different corset even bertier's taken notes and then Bertier goes over to his portion of it has all the secretaries and he creates the actual orders that are read and implemented by the Grand Army and there's there's lots of studies to talk about when an order comes in how the point gets it when it leaves how far it gets but it's all part of the system so it's not necessarily his ability to read a map the other thing is he can look at it's this Qi this this French term for that the look at the eye that he can immediately look at a situation and understand what's going on and make the right right decisions for that where so many other commanders need all this intelligence they need all these these the this confirming type of data and he can look at a situation understand exactly what's going on and give those orders to have people start to move and it's that ability to we call today a neuter loop the the ability to react quicker they in your opponent and and make decisions quicker an act that constantly keeps them off of basis someone review questions would you say fear was the key to his success or was a respect that the men had or a company it's certainly not fear it's certainly not fear the men love Napoleon Napoleon has this ability he has the ability to to to get this amazing devotion and loyalty out of his soldiers matures the night before the battle of Austerlitz he sits out there on the battlefield on a a straw in front of a guard fire he eats what the soldiers do he had the ability to you know they will reward he would go to a regiment and say okay tell me your two bravest soldiers and it'll give them say legions of Honor and he'll come back years later and see some soldiers how you doing I remember I gave you that and that ability to have the most powerful man in Europe to remember your name to remember the instant you did those soldiers loved him he leaves in April of 1814 goes off to Alba with a thousand soldiers I camera how many three ships thousand soldiers came over how he cannons he comes back a year later basically a March of 1815 it's a start the hundred days campaign he it's bloodlessly done he starts marching on the French coast at near Conn and marches to Paris and everybody who comes out to to pose Lee put him in a cage goes to his side I mean and he creates this army that's gonna go to Waterloo that is one of the best armies he's had it's an army of the 1805 campaign because soldiers won they've seen what the the Bourbons are like and everything but they also they love the man and so it's it's a maze charisma that he has now he's he can be a jerk I mean I mean it's it's certainly not to say that he it's he's always just such a nice guy I'm they talked about some of the evenings you know balls or something like that he would you know go up to a woman say madam he that dress don't ever let me see you wearing it again you know and and just be absolutely Frank and every wife had so but uh the charisma he had and to build the loyalty of the soldiers is really amazing oh no not Tom don't keep him to Mike it's easy to play on it first okay the French Revolution and leadership and 25 year period the question is in your opinion what is the most important legacy of warfare in this period for warfare today that's a that's an interesting question because I've got so many different ways with that particular piece it's interesting because I think the long-term effects of them play out worse in this study really of maneuver and Gary the US Army when I was still in active duty I went to Florida State University is that air dr. Don hor word one of the leading deploying experts but every single year he would have one or two US army officers down there who after we completed our masters would go to West Point and teach for three years of West Point so the US Military Academy always had one or two Napoleonic people in there it was that important to them in there and of course as we talked about with h100 we still spend time on his campaigns talking about why in in you know so much for our focus and h100 is not on the military changes it's it's looking at how society changes and how those society changes affect warfare and it's for a very practical reason we're looking at what society changes are going on now how is that going to affect for warfare in the future all I can do is help the students kind of think about that in a historic context so as they go out they start to look on that um so all those pieces I think fit together I mean from just if you want a concrete type of experience of what the legacy I mean the the code Nepal the Civil Code it's still used in France and Louisiana in most Europe is the code Napoleon from 1803 the organization of France the districts although those pieces are Napoleonic he starts the unification of Germany he starts unification of Italy I could go on and on that sounds a good bill still in here I'd be another good talk talk about what he does is a First Consul for about a two-year three-year period but all those are I think are concrete type of things that we get out of out of this era it's not just sorts and bayonets I guess any other questions what was Napoleon's evaluation of Suvarov he seemed to be very successful yeah super off early fights try remember it's the 1800 observe campaign you know Russian cults the bay event I'm not sure if I know exactly when you say his evaluation I think he respects them but I don't know if he says oh he's a really good commander I need to be took a word I don't I don't have that answer I would say in arica breach that at LSU who writes on the rushing forces a campaign would be the one to to consult he'd probably know come on another question because that wasn't a good one that I like to be able to answer a question okay give me a softball now what did he think of Wellington he thinks he's overrated you know Waterloo the morning Waterloo were his his officers are basically saying you know it's it's the British Army and the point thinks you know first off he's Napoleon and Wellington's overrated he says just because he's beating you doesn't make him a good general and it doesn't think very highly of you through the British soldier or Longton himself he's never faced him on the battlefield before Waterloo well just kind of a spin off of both those two questions did any of his opposition generals reached the point that Napoleon actually respected them and thought hey this guy's you know a real because they always had the benefit of more more resources even though they were in sometimes clunky coalition's yeah I think he has veteran respect for Archduke Charles from Austria he does a lot of it reforms the Austrian army at Bagram and in the 18:09 campaign as for nestling Austrian forces do much much better before migration I mean those those Russian commanders he certainly does not think the Russians are a pushover but I stretch the imagination and and and they are worthy opponents kind of think which other ones rise up to that level not not I'm not getting anything and you know part of those problems some of those armies have is them they have the Emperor or their you know their monarch riding along with them and I remember which the battles in 1813 where the nominal commander the Russian czar shows up and says I'm taking command and he basically goes to sleep under a tree because what else am I gonna do so those type of things hamper hand print any other questions all right well thank you for coming out appreciate [Applause] you

Channel: The Dole Institute of Politics

Views: 52,386

Rating: 4.5971732 out of 5

Keywords: Dole Institute of Politics, University of Kansas, Napoleon, Mark T. Gerges, France

Id: XZqPM52B3dk

Length: 69min 30sec (4170 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 06 2017