All that has been said upon pivots of operations is applicable to temporary bases and to strategic reserves, which will be doubly valuable if they possess such well-located pivots.
ARTICLE XXIV.
The Old System of Wars of Position and the Modern System of Marches.
By the system of positions is understood the old manner of conducting a methodical war, with armies in tents, with their supplies at hand, engaged in watching each other; one besieging a city, the other covering it; one, perhaps, endeavoring to acquire a small province, the other counteracting its efforts by occupying strong points. Such was war from the Middle Ages to the era of the French Revolution. During this revolution great changes transpired, and many systems of more or less value sprang up. War was commenced in 1792 as it had been in 1762: the French encamped near their strong places, and the allies besieged them. It was not till 1793, when assailed from without and within, that this system was changed. Thoroughly aroused, France threw one million men in fourteen armies upon her enemies. These armies had neither tents, provisions, nor money. On their marches they bivouacked or were quartered in towns; their mobility was increased and became a means of success. Their tactics changed also: the troops were put in columns, which were more easily handled than deployed lines, and, on account of the broken character of the country of Flanders and the Vosges, they threw out a part of their force as skirmishers to protect and cover the columns. This system, which was thus the result of circumstances, at first met with a success beyond all expectation: it disconcerted the methodical Austrian and Prussian troops as well as their generals. Mack, to whom was attributed the success of the Prince of Coburg, increased his reputation by directing the troops to extend their lines to oppose an open order to the fire of skirmishers. It had never occurred to the poor man that while the skirmishers made the noise the columns carried the positions.
The first generals of the Republic were fighting-men, and nothing more. The principal direction of affairs was in the hands of Carnot and of the Committee of Public Safety: it was sometimes judicious, but often bad. Carnot was the author of one of the finest strategic movements of the war. In 1793 he sent a reserve of fine troops successively to the aid of Dunkirk, Maubeuge, and Landau, so that this small force, moving rapidly from point to point, and aided by the troops already collected at these different points, compelled the enemy to evacuate France.
The campaign of 1794 opened badly. It was the force of circumstances, and not a premeditated plan, which brought about the strategic movement of the army of the Moselle on the Sambre; and it was this which led to the success of Fleurus and the conquest of Belgium.
In 1795 the mistakes of the French were so great that they were imputed to treachery. The Austrians, on the contrary, were better commanded by Clairfayt, Chateler, and Schmidt than they had been by Mack and the Prince of Coburg. The Archduke Charles, applying the principle of interior lines, triumphed over Moreau and Jourdan in 1796 by a single march.
Up to this time the fronts of the French armies had been large,—either to procure subsistence more easily, or because the generals thought it better to put all the divisions in line, leaving it to their commanders to arrange them for battle. The reserves were small detachments, incapable of redeeming the day even if the enemy succeeded in overwhelming but a single division. Such was the state of affairs when Napoleon made his début in Italy. His activity from the beginning worsted the Austrians and Piedmontese: free from useless incumbrances, his troops surpassed in mobility all modern armies. He conquered the Italian peninsula by a series of marches and strategic combats. His march on Vienna in 1797 was rash, but justified by the necessity of overcoming the Archduke Charles before he could receive reinforcements from the Rhine.