The world's leading conquerors

by Wilson Lloyd Bevan

Napoleon’s inferiority cannot be discovered in his lack of morality as a ruler, if morality be determined according to the standards of the allied Powers; his chief opponents were trained and acted according to the principles adopted in the partition of Poland. His lack of scruples carried him farther, simply because of the immeasurable distance between his own genius and the commonplace characteristics of any of his antagonists. He built up his personal rule on his military skill by consistent and well-directed effort. France was made the instrument of his ambition; it was in his interest, not in the interest of the country he ruled, that Germany, Italy, and Spain were made dependent states. France would have been more solidly established, if, in spite of all military success abroad, her ruler had been satisfied with her natural frontiers.

Under Napoleon the divorce of national from personal aims is seen in the changed character of the French army; there was no longer a general levy as in the time of the Revolution, for in 1800-1804, service was regulated by lot and by permission to provide substitutes. Middle-class families as a rule took advantage of this permission, and there were plenty of opportunities, because old soldiers were anxious to re-engage for the service. War had become a profession. The mass of the troops were made up of children of the people, while the officers were mostly scions of well-to-do families. As time went on, owing to the exhausting character of the wars, one year’s conscription was not enough. Sometimes there was an anticipated enrollment of the conscripts of the two following years. Then came the turn of the National Guard, made up of men from forty to sixty years, and of those from twenty to twenty-six who had been relieved from regular army service, because of their poor physique or because their families were dependent on their work; these, too, were placed on the active list.

Altogether 3,153,000 French soldiers were called upon for military duty from 1800 to 1815. The losses from wounds and disease, apart from the fatalities on the battlefield, were enormous. In all, the victims of these wars are reckoned at 1,750,000 men. Oftentimes, those who desired to escape military duty had to buy themselves off as many as three times, and yet, even after spending $4000, they were obliged to take part in the campaigns of 1813 and 1814. Finally, owing to the scarcity of officers, requisition by force was resorted to. Lists were made of special families in Paris and the departments, whose children between the ages of sixteen and eighteen were constrained to prepare themselves for service at the military school at St. Cyr.

In the complicated system of the Napoleonic army, a place had to be made for the various national elements and groups, who served in it. But the characteristic feature was the Imperial Guard. In itself it was a replica on a small scale of the whole force, because the various arms of the service all found a place within it. It grew out of the consular guard, first numbering 7000 men, then increased to 50,000, until it was finally brought to 92,000 in 1813. The Guard was always with the Emperor in a campaign, it fought under his eye, and was ordinarily kept in reserve for a critical point of the battle. The section of the Guard which was closest to the Emperor, was the mounted scouts or “guides,” who wore a green uniform, the imperial color, and were first commanded by his son-in-law, Eugène, and then by another member of the Beauharnais house, Lefebre-Desnouettes. Napoleon described them as a body of brave men who had always seen the enemies’ cavalry flee before them. A part of this division was a corp of Mamelouks, recruited in the Eastern campaign, from the Coptic and Syrian volunteers, a picturesque body of men that still continued to wear Oriental dress, though later on many Frenchmen were added to their number.

In the infantry divisions of the army little change was made; there were grenadier regiments composed of the tallest and best proportioned soldiers, and companies of slight, undersized men intended for the kind of work done in the present Italian army by the bersaglieri. Experiments with dismounted dragoons proved a failure. Napoleon’s special work was the reorganization of the cavalry, an arm of the service which had almost altogether disappeared at the time of the Revolution, because large numbers of the cavalry officers went into exile on account of their monarchical sympathies. The most conspicuous branch of the cavalry was the hussars, who gained a reputation for dare-devil bravery, and whose charges with drawn sabers were the dramatic feature of an engagement. They were led by generals of the type of Murat, Marbot, and Ségur.

As to the French artillery and engineers, their already high reputation among European armies was fully maintained. In many of Napoleon’s hardest contested battles, such as Eylau, Friedland, and Wagram, the cannonading of the French played a decisive part. In the later campaigns troops of the allied states came to be a more important element, and they gave the army a cosmopolitan character. There were German, Swiss, Italian, Spanish, Polish auxiliaries; even Albanians, Greeks, and Tartars were represented in the enormous masses of men drawn about the Emperor, in his final efforts to subjugate the European continent.

The weapons used by the army showed no technical advance on those employed in the last half of the eighteenth century. The guns were flint-locks of the model of 1777, and the cannon were of the type employed in 1765, most of them pieces of 12 and 6 with mortars that had a carrying power of between 800 and 1900 feet.

Owing to the years of incessant warfare, the administration of the army was the chief care of the government. It was under the supervision of the Emperor himself, who was untiring in attending even to the most minute details. He made frequent inspections, kept in personal touch with his soldiers, and looked out for their comfort. In preparing for a campaign he knew with accuracy all matters relating to the equipment of his troops, the actual resources of the arsenals, and the amount of military stores. But the army in the field was expected to provide its own rations. “I made eight campaigns under the empire,” De Brack said, “and always at the front; I never saw during this whole time a single army commissary. I never touched a single ration from the army stores. The soldiers depended on requisitions from the inhabitants or on pillage.”

It was the Emperor’s maxim that war must support war. When in Spain he wrote to Dijeon, the administrative director of war in Paris: “Send back the reserves of cattle; I don’t want any foodstuffs, I have an abundance of everything. What I need are caissons, military transports, hats, and shoes; I have never seen a cavalry in which the troops had as much to eat.” The requisitions that had been found so profitable in the Italian campaign were continued without any regard for their effect on the conquered country. Enormous stores of money were accumulated in this way. After the treaty of Tilsit the treasury of the army was credited with about $70,000,000, and Napoleon reckoned that he could continue to make war for five years without increasing French taxation or asking for a fresh loan.

As companions in arms Napoleon had under him a large number of able generals, formed just as he had been, in the wars of the Revolution. When the empire was constituted many became marshals. These were selected from all classes of society: Davout, MacDonald, Marmont, Grouchy, Clarke, from the old nobility; Monery, Bernadotte, Soult, Mortier, Gouvion, Suchet, Brun-Junot, from the middle classes; Jourdan, Masséna, Augereau, Murat, Bessières, Ney, Lannes, Victor, Oudinot, Lecourbe, Sebastian, Driant were all children of the people. It was the policy of the Emperor to have young men in command of his troops; by 1813 there were forty-one cavalry generals alone, who, though less than fifty years old, were on the retired list. The life of an officer was so strenuous that there was little chance of resisting for long the tremendous demands made on the constitution by the long marches and frequent battles. Advancement was speedy and the rewards were munificent; many of the marshals received princely titles with pay suitable to their rank. For example, Berthier’s annual income was over $250,000. Masséna, Davout, and Ney were almost as well provided for. After the battle of Eylau each guest at the Emperor’s table found under his plate a 1000-franc bill. But these personal rewards were not at all confined to those in high command. The Emperor was careful to retain the devoted loyalty of his men by words and acts of personal note, which by their spontaneity kept the army from being turned into a mere mechanical organism. He went among the men, rewarding those who had distinguished themselves on the field of battle, and showing consideration to the wounded and the weary. The weak spot in the army was the practice of pillage. The soldiers were forced to it and regarded it as their right. Their exactions, too, were imitated on a large scale by the commanders and marshals. Masséna made millions by selling trade permits during the blockade against England. Soult despoiled Spain of works of art and exacted large contributions from rich monasteries.