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: