In 1346, the year in which the famous Battle of Crecy was fought, Edward III
was based west of Paris. From there, Harari says, the king would have needed
about a week to pass an order to his lieutenant in Flanders or receive a report
from him. Let us assume that, to exercise effective command over a distant
subordinate, a commander-in-chief has to go through four stages. First, he has
to send a message to that subordinate, who presumably is more familiar with
local conditions, and ask him for a plan. Second, he must have that plan
submitted to him; third, he must transmit his orders back to the subordinate;
and, fourth, he must receive confirmation that those orders have been under-
stood and will be carried out. Still assuming the king is based in the region west of
Paris, and his subordinate in Flanders, the entire cycle will require a full month to
go through. Of course, this is an ideal cycle and one that was rarely completed in
this precise form. Shortcuts were made, the subordinate’s initiative and ability to
look out for himself taken into account. Even if we reduce it to a minimum,
though, a week is a long time to receive a piece of information or to send out an
order before it can arrive and be obeyed.
Other English armies operating in France at the time were even further away
and, consequently, even harder to reach. Thus, a considerable force was stationed
in Gascony; however, communicating with it took about twice as long as with the
one in Flanders. As a result, Harari tells us, ‘for armies coming from different
fronts to join hands [was usually possible] only when they were not opposed by a
strong hostile army...how each [local commander] conducted operations on his
front was affected to only a small degree by [the king’s] plan or by operations on
other fronts’. 10 As a matter of fact, we have reason to think that Edward, who was
an excellent commander,didintend to have three armies meet before fighting the
battle. However, communication difficulties seem to have interfered and pre-
vented the juncture from being brought about.
When the time came in August, all the king could do was take up a defensive
position between two woods. There, his front covered by a muddy field, he stood
and fought outnumbered, man against man, with only the forces immediately
available to him. There certainly was a question of tactics, which turned out to be
superb and led to the French army being routed, but hardly one of operational
art. Indeed, one could almost say that the dire situation in which he found
himself on this occasion was the result of the failure of operational art, to the
extent that he understood it and tried to exercise it.
Over thousands of years, the technology of transportation and communication
changed hardly at all—men could not walk faster or further in AD 1346 than in
1346 BC, and horses remained horses. Accordingly, it is perhaps not surprising
that this statement can be generalized. The wars of Alexander the Great, of the
Hellenistic kingdoms, and of Rome all point to the same conclusion. 11 It was, of
course, always possible to create a diversion by sending a force to some remote
theatre of war, as the Romans did when they sent Scipio to fight in Spain;
however, a commander could only exercise effective command over the forces
that formed part of his own army and marched with him. As a result, comman-
ders who knew what they were doing took good care not to disperse their forces
Napoleon and the Dawn of Operational Warfare 13