How did the wars of the French Revolution differ from those that preceded them? In this essay, I will argue that a fundamental difference existed between warfare that was conducted during the period of the French Revolution and Napoleon and the warfare that was conducted during the period of the Thirty Years’ War, the Wars of Louis XIV, and the eighteenth-century Dynastic Wars that preceded the French Revolution. David Bell pointed out in his engrossing narrative The First Total War that “if we are still to find things to celebrate and marvel at in European history, we should certainly let our gazes linger on the age of the Enlightenment, of the French Revolution, and of Napoleon. But we should not belittle what they destroyed.” I interpret this quote by professor Bell as a perception that the age of Enlightenment, of the French Revolution, and of Napoleon were of paramount importance in the evolution of warfare in the Western World. How did the warfare of the Ancien Regime, notably its gentlemanly warfare differ from the warfare conducted by Revolutionary France? Professor Bell pointed out that “in France itself, the nation and the military, after having supposedly melted into each other in the white heat of the levee en masse, did not solidify back into earlier, complex social latticework dominated by a hereditary military class.” Geoffrey Parker pointed out in his work The Military Revolution: Military innovation and the rise of the West 1500-1800 that sweeping changes in the Military began to take shape in Western Europe about 1500 and continued into the nineteenth century. As a result of these changes, Governments would now be required to devote more resources and develop the administrative ability to maintain these large professional armies. Secondly, a revolution in strategy occurred as a result of tactical changes which allowed these new highly trained and drilled infantry to campaign in armies that were capable of simultaneously being directed using complex maneuvers by a central command against one or more objectives at a time. Thirdly, the scale of warfare in Europe became far greater. This subsequently led to a massive increase in the size of armies. Finally, the impact war had on society accentuated a far greater destructiveness and a greater economic burden. It now became incumbent on the state to develop logistics and administrative support to maintain and operate these large standing armies. The emergence of mass armies, strict discipline, control by the state and submergence of the individual had arrived, however, prior to Revolutionary France (1789) leadership in armies came from the aristocracy and did not include society as a whole. Revolutionary France, instead, witnessed the birth of a far more radical process where the military integrated into society as a whole and where officers as well as common soldiers came from all classes of society vis-à-vis the pre 1789 military where in particular the officers were a product of the aristocracy. Even more drastic changes occurred during the period 1794-1799 that eclipsed the many changes that happened during the eighteenth century. For example, the French no longer fought and made war for the purpose of preserving the perpetual peace among nations. Instead, war was waged for the purpose of expansion and conquest and the conquered peoples were exposed to the concepts of the revolution and the new European order that the French saw as their new order. The French people began to treat their enemies as monsters rather than as honorable adversaries. Professor Bell wrote: “when enemy populations resisted French occupations, they were to be fed the acid medicine of the Vendee.” The French Revolution was the catalyst for a new style of military that was no longer focused on an aristocratic code of dedication, splendor and self-control but instead saw the genesis of a focus on the prowess of individual warriors. Professor Bell wrote: “in short, war was becoming ever more something that societies might desire, and this desire took physical form in the person of Napoleon.” Additionally, prerevolutionary France as a result of the lessons of the wars of the mid-eighteenth-century had reached a new focus on military theory; however, the zenith warfare reached during the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods stunted this focus on military theory and gave rise to men of action more so than the methodologists. Often, during this period, great generals rose from obscurity based on their conduct in battle and a belief that theory can be no substitute for the proper action in battle and at the proper time. These men did not learn war from books but instead they learned war from war and tended to assume that war had to be learned in the manner of empirical observation and practiced on that model. Napoleon was one of these great generals who displayed genius on the battlefield but in the view of many historians lacked the ability to analyze his own methods. Napoleon did furnish a confused mass of commentaries but not an architectural system of thought. There are many examples of great craftsmen devoid of the ability to teach their craft. Historian Dallas D. Irvine wrote: “Napoleon, the artist, sowed nothing but confusion by his writings, for they lent pontifical authority to the idea that the art of war was mostly a matter of genius and not of system.” Napoleon’s marshals and generals also failed to produce any meaningful military theoretical writings as they tended to generalization much like their mentor. Irvine notes that it was not until the Swiss-Italian Antoine Henri Jomini rose in the armies of France to be chief of staff to Marshal Ney and who began to produce great theoretical works like his Traite des grandes operations militaires that Napoleon began to take notice of Jomini’s writings. This particular work was chiefly a critique of the campaigns of Frederick the Great. Jomini, however, garnered a great deal of hostility in the ranks of Napoleon’s army because of his incisive egotism and went over to the Russians in 1813 to finish his active military career in the service of the Tsar. Napoleon held Jomini’s theories in high regard and believed many of his writings were a sound analysis of war at the time, however, Jomini’s writings tended to be an anatomical analysis and not really a physiological or psychological one. It was distinctly a post-mortem analysis more than it was a creative work for the future. Irvin wrote: “There is no god but Napoleon, and Jomini was his prophet!” In a sense, Jomini’s writings diverted the French focus from the effects of technological developments and the psychological aspects of the art of war and relied on Jomini’s geometrical aspects of military operations. Even so, Jomini was the writer during the period outside of Germany that deserved lasting fame as a military theorist, and it was his fortune to win more than his due. Most historians acknowledge Major General Carl Von Clausewitz as the other major military theorist of the period. Clausewitz’s ideas were largely in conflict with those of Jomini. Professor Irvine points out about Clausewitz that “The great criticism leveled against him by his contemporaries was that he was almost entirely negative…his work is rather a philosophy of war than a conveniently useful guide of practice.” Most historians agree that both of these great military theorists had a significant impact on the study of warfare in the Western World during the revolutionary and Napoleonic period and beyond. Professor David A. Bell points out in his work The First Total War an interesting quote by Clausewitz that epitomizes the contrast between the limited wars experienced prior the French Revolution and total war that occurred after 1789. Formerly…war was waged in the way that a pair of duelists carried out their pedantic struggle. One battled with moderation and consideration, according to the conventional properties…War was caused by nothing more than a diplomatic caprice, and the spirit of such a thing could hardly prevail over the goal of military honor…There is no more talk of this sort of war, and one would have to be blind not to be able to perceive the difference with our wars, that is to say that the wars of our age and our conditions require…The war of the present time is a war of all against all. It is not the King who wars on a king, not an army which wars on an army, but a people which wars on another, and the king and the army are contained in the people. War will only lose this character with much difficulty, and, in truth, the return of that old, bloody, yet often boring chess game of soldiers fighting is not to be desired. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars witnessed considerable change in the way that war was waged. As the wars progressed, the radicalization of the French government meant a radicalization of its policies toward its enemies. This resulted, in some cases, into an existential threat for other European princes. The purpose of this paper is not to detail the events of the wars and to the many phases of the wars of the Revolutionary period but to analyze the fundamental differences in warfare before and after the French Revolutionary period. Professor Peter Paret wrote in his essay “Napoleon and the Revolution in War”: The French Revolution coincided with a revolution in war that had been under way through the last decades of the monarchy. Soon the two meshed. Profound changes in military institutions and practice, some already firmly established under the Old Regime, others still tentative and experimental, were adopted by the Revolution, and developed further. By infusing them with its dynamic, and linking them with its frequently violent domestic and foreign policies, the Revolution expanded the scope of these innovations. Professor David Bell points out another interesting point about a decline in the aristocratic ethos, to which he attributes much of the rise of modern war. Bell saw a paradox: That eighteenth-century aristocratic culture helped place surprising limits on war. These limits existed despite the gruesome tolls of the major battles and despite the fact that European elites had war as their principle purpose. Indeed, in some ways, they existed because the elites had war as their principle purpose. In conclusion, there were several key fundamental differences between the military culture that existed in Europe prior to the French Revolution and the military culture that existed after the French Revolutionary period. David Bell points out those European armies prior to the French Revolution were not distinguishable as separate from society as a whole as they are even today. For example, today soldiers live on military bases that provide a separate military community with special housing and support facilities. The military academies and other specialized schools provide a separate education for professional soldiers. On the other hand, soldiers in the pre-revolutionary period were hardly distinguishable from the society. Before 1750, there were no peacetime barracks for European soldiers and they were instead quartered on the general population. For the most part officers seldom wore uniforms. Specialized military education was almost non-existent. Even on military campaigns civilians mixed among the soldiers. The military except for mercenaries was not a full time occupation. It was in Revolutionary France where this fundamental shift in military culture occurred where “In France every citizen must be a soldier and every soldier must be a citizen.” It might be said that France went from fighting for her life during the Revolutionary period to almost conquering Europe during the Napoleonic period and all of this related to the many fundamental changes that occurred after 1789. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bell, David A. The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It. Boston: Mariner Books, 2007. Irvine, Dallas D. “ The French Discovery of Clausewitz and Napoleon.” The Journal of the American Military Institute. Vol. 4, no.3 (1940): 143-61. Accessed December 24, 2012. Paret, Peter, Ed. Makers of Modern Strategy: from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Parker, Geoffrey. The Military Revolution: Military innovation and the rise of the West 1500-1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 02:28:48 +0000
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