It was at the outset of this campaign that Jomini handed in to Marshal Ney, his chief, a paper showing what Napoleon must necessarily do if he would beat the Prussians and cut them off from their approaching allies. He alone had divined the strategic secrets of the Emperor.
In this campaign we plainly see the growth of risk commensurate within the magnitude of plan, but we also recognize the greater perfection of general intuitions, the larger plan and method. Details had to be overlooked, but the whole army was held in the Emperor’s hand like a battalion in that of a good field officer. In forty-eight hours his two hundred thousand men could be concentrated at any one point. And the very essence of the art of war is to know when you may divide, to impose on the enemy, subsist, pursue, deceive, and to know how to divide so that you may concentrate before battle can occur.
JENA CAMPAIGN
Again Napoleon had carried out his principle of moving on one line in one mass on the enemy, and a few great soldiers began to see that there was a theory in this. Jomini first grasped its full meaning and showed that only battle crowns the work. Without it a general is merely uncovering his own communications. Victory is essential to the success of such a plan. Napoleon pushed restlessly in on the enemy. “While others are in council, the French army is on the march,” quoth he.
In the Austerlitz and Jena campaigns, Napoleon’s manœuvre was so admirably conceived that he kept open two lines of retreat, which he could adapt to the enemy’s evolutions,—at Austerlitz via Vienna and Bohemia, at Jena still more secure lines on the Rhine and on the Main or Danube. This is a distinct mark of the perfection of the plans.
The succeeding Friedland campaign has several items of interest. At his first contact with the Russians, Napoleon, instead of sticking to his uniform plan of one mass on one line, tried to surround his enemy before he knew where the tactical decision of the campaign would come. Result, a thrust in the air by one corps, another did not reach the appointed place, a third met unexpected and superior forces, and the enemy broke through the net. Napoleon seemed to be experimenting. The captain of 1796, Ulm, Jena, is for the moment unrecognizable.
The Russians attacked Napoleon in his winter-quarters, and the bloody and indecisive battle of Eylau resulted, where for the first time Napoleon met that astonishing doggedness of the Russian soldier, on which Frederick had shattered his battalions at Kunersdorf. Later came the victory of Friedland. Napoleon’s order for this day is a model for study. Every important instruction for the battle is embraced in the order; details are left to his lieutenants. Only the time of launching the first attack is reserved to the chief. But the strategy of the Friedland campaign was not so crisp. The true manœuvre was to turn the Russian left, their strategic flank, and throw them back on the sea. Napoleon turned their right to cut them off from Königsberg. It was mere good luck that Friedland ended the campaign. Even after defeat the enemy could have escaped.
In the Spanish campaign of the winter of 1807–8, Napoleon reverted to his 1796 manœuvre of breaking the enemy’s centre. But Napoleon had undertaken what could not be accomplished,—the subjugation of Spain. His own strategy and the tactics of his marshals were both brilliant and successful; he could have compelled a peace, had such been the object. But to subdue a people fanatically fighting for their homes, in a mountainous country, is practically impossible by any means short of extermination. It was in the political, not the military, task that Napoleon failed.
While Napoleon was struggling in Spain, Austria deemed the occasion good again to assert herself. This gave Napoleon an opportunity of leaving to his lieutenants a game he already saw he could not win, but in which he had achieved some brilliant openings, and hurry to fields on which he felt a positive superiority. His army and allies were already on the scene.