the emperor himself. By contrast, the administrative headquarters, which was
responsible for such matters as reinforcements, prisoners, the wounded, and the
administration (read, exploitation) of the theatre of war, might be located dozens,
even hundreds, of miles to the rear; while Napoleon recognized the need for
military administrators, he did not like them and felt they were ‘repugnant’. 30
One part of the command system to which I myself have drawn attention in the
past, 31 and whose importance cannot be overestimated, was the ‘directed telescope’.
In fact, there was not one ‘telescope’ but two. One consisted of eight to twelve
adjutants genereaux, senior officers with the rank of colonel or brigadier. The other,
of about double that number ofofficiers d’ordonance, intelligent captains whom the
emperor once defined as ‘jeuns gens qu’on peut faire courir’ (‘young menwhom one
can make run’). 32 Both groups were used to cut through the mass of information
regularly passed upward by the subordinate units, which by the nature of things
tended to become standardized and highly profiled. Both enabled Napoleon to
obtain what information he needed at the time he needed it, while, at the same
time, decreasing his dependence on the general staff. The difference between the two
groups was that theadjutants, as senior personnel, were sent on missions that
required independent judgement, including the compilation of reports on the
corps and theirprima donnacommanders, the marshals. By contrast, theofficiers
were used to gather information on more limited, though scarcely less important,
matters, such as the state of roads, bridges, fortresses, and so on.
As Plato wrote in theRepublicaround 420 BC, to describe a dead animal is one
thing, to gain an idea of the harmonious way in which all its parts work together,
another. By 1805, the elements of the system that Saxe had ‘dreamt’ about, that de
Broglie (along with several others) had experimented with, that the national
assembly developed, and that Napoleon perfected were in place. The outcome
was the spectacular campaign culminating in the so-called Three Emperors’
Battle at Austerlitz on 2 December 1805. To see how things worked out in
practice, I have selected the 1806 campaign against Prussia.
A NEW METHOD OF MAKING WAR 33After 1792–3, when its army invaded France as part of the First Coalition and was
repulsed at Valmy, Prussia took no further part in the French Revolutionary and
Napoleonic Wars. Still, friction between the two countries, the one ruled by
Napoleon and the other by Frederick William III (reigned 1797–1840), was not
lacking. In 1805, on his way to fight the Austrians, Napoleon had Bernadotte’s
corps cross the Prussian territory of Ansbach without so much as asking for
permission. The next year, wishing to make peace with England, he dangled
Hanover before the eyes of the Court of St James. Offended by this, as well as by
Napoleon’s insistence that it cede some territory so as to create principalities for
Murat and Berthier, Prussia prepared to go to war.24 The Evolution of Operational Art