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Napoleon and the Campaign of 1806

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Napoleon and the Campaign of 1806
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Author(s): Colonel Vachée
Date Published: 2009/07
Page Count: 208
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-735-6
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-736-3

Napoleon as commander and military genius

Colonel Vachee's work, previously published under the title 'Napoleon at Work', is a somewhat different view of a great Napoleonic Campaign. Vachee takes his readers through momentous events by describing them from the perspective of the Emperor and his command structure. Thus Napoleon's strategic thoughts and instructions for implementation are explained as they were applied to the Imperial Staff, his Generals, the army as a whole and its soldiers. Each aspect of the great man's genius for war and his inspirational command of his subordinates is considered, culminating in an analysis of his management of his forces on the field of battle itself which brought about the victories of Jena and Auerstadt for the French. An important and different insight into Napoleonic warfare.

We will examine successively under these different aspects, and by transporting ourselves to his head-quarters, Napoleon’s method of command. But before entering on this analysis a general glance at his campaigns and life shows us immediately the dominant character of his influence. That which, above all, characterized Napoleon was the power of his individuality. This individuality, animated by an ardent and passionate soul, impatient for movement and eager for success, overwhelmed all who surrounded him, and invaded every employment.<br>
His egoistic ambition impelled him to direct everything in order to conduct all things to his own profit. It is related that, when about to leave for his first Italian campaign, he said to a journalist friend: “Bear in mind, when writing the narratives of our victories, to speak only of me,—always of me, do you understand?” This moi was the eternal cry of his wholly selfish ambition. “Refer to no one but myself—celebrate, praise, and paint no one but me,” he said to orators, musicians, poets, and painters. “I will buy you what you like, but you must all sell yourselves.”<br>
Place at the service of this formidable egoism, from which, however, all narrow ideas must be excluded, the most powerful and embracing mind, the strongest and most tenacious will, and an audacious soul, and you will understand the reason why, in his command, Napoleon reduced to the role of blind instruments of execution all those men who, by the nature of their duties, ought to have been conscious collaborators in his work.<br>
We shall see, later, how he quickened the execution of his orders, how he gave his generals and soldiers that principle of life which he called “the sacred fire.” Let us linger, for a moment, over the birth of the governing idea which was, as it were, the conducting wire of a campaign or a manoeuvre. This idea was absolutely his own; it belonged to him entirely. His only rule was his own opinion, and, as he himself said, that good instrument, his head, was more useful to him than the advice of men who were accounted to possess both knowledge and experience.<br>
“In war,” he wrote on August 30, 1808, “men are nothing; it is one man who counts. When, at the dead of night, a good idea flashes through my brain, the order is given in a quarter of an hour, and in half an hour it is being carried out by the outposts.” This was not an idle boast. Acts conform to words—on that point we have the evidence of a man who, from 1802 to 1813, followed the Emperor in all his campaigns, living and sleeping under his roof. Notwithstanding his habitual admiration for his master, Méneval, his private secretary, indulged, as regards this matter, in a discrete criticism: he tells us that Napoleon’s indefatigable activity of mind and body led him to practise in too absolute a manner the principle “that one must not leave to others what one can do oneself.”<br>
Having pointed out this tendency once, Méneval returns to it again and expresses himself in the following significant and peremptory words:<br>
“Berthier, Talleyrand, and many others did not give an order or write a despatch which had not been dictated by Napoleon. He took not only the initiative in thought, but also attended personally to the details of every piece of business. I do not contend that he was quite justified in thus wishing to do everything himself, but his genius, superhuman in its activity, carried him away: he felt he possessed the means and the time to manage everything; in reality it was he who did everything.”<br>
But the very originality of Napoleon’s work precluded all collaboration. His orders and instructions bear the master’s signature. Manoeuvres such as those of Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, and Echmühl, to mention only these particularly great and striking masterpieces, could only have been conceived by one mind, that of the Emperor. As a contrast, notice how, at the same moment, among his adversaries, controversy in councils of war was killing originality of thought, retarding a decision, leading to intermediate and slow solutions which let the opportunity for success slip by.<br>
An example will enable us to see more clearly Napoleon’s method in the elaboration and birth of an idea. We take it from Ségur, who was at once his historian and aide-de-camp.<br>
The scene took place at the imperial quarters at Pont-de-Brique in September 1805. The Emperor had just learnt that, after the battle of Cape Finisterre, Admiral Villeneuve, instead of following the English fleet, had entered Ferrol and thus shattered the hope of crossing the Channel by surprise. He sent for Daru, commissary-general of the army. Daru appeared at four in the morning and found the Emperor in his room, with a grim look on his face, a fulminating expression in his eyes, over which his hat was pulled down, and breaking forth into bitter invectives and reproaches against Villeneuve. Then, suddenly changing his tone, Napoleon, pointing to a desk loaded with papers, said to Daru: “Sit down there and write.” Immediately, without transition and apparently without meditation, he dictated, unhesitatingly and in his concise and imperious manner, the plan of the 1805 campaign, as far as Vienna.<br>
For four or five hours did he thus dictate. Having made certain that his instructions were well understood, he dismissed Daru with the words: “Leave immediately for Paris, but feign to set out for Ostend. Arrive at your destination alone and at night; and let no one know you are there. Go to the house of General Dejean; closet yourself with him, and prepare, but with him only, the orders for the marches, stores, etc., etc. I do not want a single clerk to know of this; you will sleep in General Dejean’s study, and no one must know you are there.”<br>
The absolute exactitude of this narrative, which is contained in a note communicated to the Archives (January 14, 1836) by Daru’s son, matters little. Certain details are open to discussion. But it depicts the man from whose brain there seemed to spring, by a flash of genius, a host of plans and projects. However, we must not be deceived; the improvisation was only apparent. For a certain time past Napoleon had been pondering over his business, but had said nothing about it to anyone. “If I appear to be always ready to reply to everything,” he said to Rœderer, “it is because, before undertaking anything, I have meditated for a long time I have foreseen what might happen. It is not a spirit which suddenly reveals to me what I have to say or do in a circumstance unexpected by others—it is reflexion, meditation.”
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