Organization: How Armies are Formed for War

by Hubert Foster

1. The Staff

The origin of the Staff must be looked for in the earliest European organization, that of the Reiters and Landsknechts in Germany about A.D. 1500, and in the armies of Maurice and Gustavus modelled on them. This organization was copied in England, France, Prussia, and other military nations, and survives in essentials to this day.

We find in the sixteenth century that the fighting officers of the troop or company left the drill to the Sergeant, an officer of experience in handling troops, and a most important personage in the unit. In action, while the other officers were in front, fighting, the Sergeant was in rear correcting the men’s movements, and giving orders. In the Infantry he had to run up and down the ranks for this purpose, and was therefore not armed with the long pike, which would hamper him. The Sergeant therefore either retained the halberd when Infantry gave it up for the pike, or was armed with a half-pike. These arms long survived in the British Army, where sergeants carried a halberd down to 1829, and the subalterns a half-pike or “spontoon,” down to 1786.

Similar duties to those of the Sergeant in the Company were performed in the Regiment by the Sergeant-Major, who supervised the drilling of the Companies by the Sergeants, regulated the march of the Regiment and its manœuvres in battle, and was therefore charged with the issue of orders. He was thus virtually a Staff Officer to the Colonel. Similarly, in an army, the Commander required an officer of experience to draw up the army in line of battle, a difficult task, and a delicate one, as the precedence of each corps had to be respected. This officer was called the Sergeant-Major-General, as he filled for the Army the same functions as the Sergeant-Major for the Regiment. He was the Staff Officer of the Army, responsible for planning the battle manœuvres, regulating marches, arranging for the quartering of the troops, and necessarily, therefore, for issuing the orders dealing with these matters. The word Sergeant was soon dropped from both these titles. The Sergeant-Major became the Major of the Regiment, with the duties of the modern Adjutant, and the Sergeant-Major-General became the Major-General of the Army.

We thus find in the sixteenth century that the Staff work of the Army was performed by the officer known in France as le Major-Général des Logis, or Major-General of Quarters, as the allotment of quarters was one of his chief duties. It may be mentioned that the old word for Staff duties was Logistics, formed from the word Logis, and meant the duties of the Major-Général des Logis. This title was then shortened to le Major-Général, by which name the chief Staff officer of the Army has been always called in France down to this day.

The full word was translated Quartier-Meister-General in German, or Quarter-Master-General in English, and this Staff Officer was charged with the Staff duties of the Sergeant-Major-General—namely: Orders, Drill, Manœuvres, Quarters. But the necessity of preceding the army to allot quarters for it entails deciding which road the army is to march by, so the duty of reconnoitring the roads, and thus that of reconnaissance generally, was added to the list of the duties of the Q.M.G. We thus find, in the eighteenth century, that what are now the duties of the General Staff were allotted to the Quarter-Master-General in the British and Prussian Services, and to the Major-Général in the French.

These duties continued to be performed by the Q.M.G. Staff in England, down to a few years ago. In Prussia the Q.M.G. was the second officer to Moltke on the General Staff in the war of 1870, and the appointment was only abolished in 1888.

At the close of the seventeenth century another Staff Officer was established at Head-Quarters by the name of Adjutant-General, who was charged with all questions relating to personnel, and with routine duties, as distinguished from those connected with movement, quartering, and fighting, which were the duties of the Q.M.G. The A.G.’s Staff is in all armies charged to-day with the same duties as in the eighteenth century.

There were generally attached to the Staff some Engineer Officers, who were charged with map-making for military purposes. The maps of European countries are therefore known as Staff Maps, while that of Great Britain is called the Ordnance Survey, because made by the Royal Engineers, a Corps under the “Master-General of the Ordnance.”

The General Staff was created in Prussia in 1815, in consequence of the experience gained in the Napoleonic Wars. The then Q.M.G. Staff was transformed into the General Staff, and placed under the direct orders of the King. Some of the General Staff Officers were attached to Army Corps and Brigades (there were not yet any Divisions), and the rest formed the Great General Staff at Berlin. There has been but little change in this organization of the Prussian General Staff, which, it may be noted, acts for the whole military forces of the German Empire, for there is no German General Staff in the sense in which there is a German navy.

All armies have now copied the Prussian General Staff system, with modifications, but it is an error to suppose that the General Staff duties were not performed before the Prussians so styled them. We have seen that they were carried out by the Q.M.G. Staff. In the small armies commanded by Frederick and Wellington, and by Napoleon at the outset of his career, these great Generals were virtually their own Chief of the General Staff. They wrote or dictated detailed orders, worked out movements on the map, and perused states and returns. Frederick himself gave orders for marching, pitching camp, and fighting, sent them out by his orderly officers, and watched their execution personally.

As Napoleon’s armies increased in size, the General Staff duties became very heavy, and were carried out most ably by Berthier, his “Major-Général,” or Chief of the Staff. Their nature is stated in quite modern shape by the great Swiss Military writer Jomini, who had himself been Chief of the Staff to Ney in 1805, as well as to the Russian Army in 1813, after his desertion from the French. (See “L’Art de la Guerre,” Vol. ii., chap, vi., par. 41.)

The Head-Quarters Staff in Napoleon’s great wars was organized in the following manner:[B]

[B] These particulars are taken from an article in the Times by the Military Correspondent of that newspaper.

The Staff was divided into five branches:

1. Personal Staff of Napoleon.

2. Personal Staff of the Chief of Staff.

3. The Staff proper.

4. Officers “at disposal,” generally away on special missions.

5. Topographical Bureau, comprising a dozen officers employed in mapping.

1. Napoleon’s Personal Staff consisted of:

(a) The Civil Secretariat.

(b) The Military Secretariat, which had charge of the Map, and took down Napoleon’s dictated Orders.

(c) Several Generals, Aides de Camp to the Emperor, available for special missions.

(d) Orderly Officers to carry Orders.

(e) Equerries.

2. Berthier’s Staff comprised:

(a) The Civil Secretariat.

(b) The Military Secretariat.

(c) A dozen Aides de Camp.

Berthier’s duty was to embody Napoleon’s instructions in Orders, and transmit them.

3. The Staff proper, which comprised a score of officers, and was divided into three branches:

(a) Correspondence, orders, movements, states, intelligence.

(b) Camps, billets, police, subsistence, hospitals.

(c) Laws, decrees, conscription, prisoners.

UNITED STATES STAFF IN THE CIVIL WAR

An example of organization of a Head-Quarters Staff in a great war may be found in the Civil War, in the United States. When General Grant was Commander-in-Chief, his Staff consisted of nineteen Officers:

Chief of Staff	1
A. G. Department	3
Q.M.G. Department	4
Provost-Marshals	2
Military Secretaries	2
A.D.C.’s	7

PRUSSIAN STAFF IN 1870

It may be interesting to see how the Prussian Head-Quarters Staff was organized for the strategical conduct of the War of 1870.

At the head was Moltke, the “Chief of the General Staff” in peace and war, who really directed the operations, although nominally only the adviser of the King of Prussia, the Supreme Commander.

Moltke was assisted, and replaced when absent, by the Q.M.G., who acted as Chief of the Office.

The General Staff under Moltke consisted of twelve officers, and was organized in three Sections as follows:

1. Operations.
2. Railways and Communications.
3. Intelligence.

Each Section was under a Colonel, the “Chief of the Section,” with one Field Officer and two Captains as his assistants.

The Commissary-General of Supplies, and the Director of Military Telegraphs were also attached to the Staff.

Each Army had the following Staff, comprising six to nine General Staff Officers:

One Chief of General Staff.
One Chief Q.M.G.
One to two Field Officers.
Three to five other Officers.