advancement had already been choked off, but it still had meaning during
the Directory.
However, there was considerable irony in that Napoleon himself
discounted this factor, except for propaganda purposes, and quickly
moved to replace a revolutionary ethos with a purely military one. Esprit
de corps replaced civic virtue and patriotic virtue as the ideological cement
in Napoleon's army. By the imperial period the process was complete, but
Napoleon's army of 1796----97 was already very far from the citizen army
raised by levee en masse in 1793-94: one obvious pointer is that the lust
for booty replaced zeal to export the Revolution.
This involves the question of morale and how Napoleon was able to
bind the troops to him, so that they were prepared to endure amazing
hardships on his behalf. The discipline of his army needs stressing, since
to switch from column to line, as in the ordre mixte which Napoleon used
in Italy, required precise coordination if the result was not to be a
shambles. In theory it was all straightforwa rd: the line provided superior
firepower and the column superior mobility, weight and shock. Napo
leon's instructions sounded simple, but they were always based on the
ability of highly trained units to implement them.
Napoleon's military maxims presuppose an army keyed to the highest
pitch of elan and commitment. What sounds like armchair theorizing
turns out on closer inspection to require every single army corps to be an
elite unit. Take the following: 'When you are driven from a first position,
you should rally your columns at a sufficient distance in the rear, to
prevent the enemy from anticipating them; for the greatest misfortune
you can meet with is to have your columns separately attacked before
their junction.' What is merely implicit in that prescription becomes
explicit with this: 'An army should be ready every day and at all hours to
fight ... an army ought always to be ready by day, by night, and at all
hours, to make all the resistance it is capable of making.'
To get entire army corps committed to his principles Napoleon had to
win hearts and minds. This he was able to do for a number of reasons.
For a start, he had a track record of almost continual onwards and
upwards triumph over his enemies. Nothing succeeds like success, and
morale increased almost geometrically at the thought of being part of an
ever-victorious army. Napoleon headed off the possible sources of his
troops' discontent: he clothed and equipped them well, paid them in
specie, and turned a blind eye to their pillaging expeditions. Victory in
battle was not just the largely meaningless prelude to diplomacy it had
been under the ancien regime; to win a battle now meant there was a
serious chance of riches.
marcin
(Marcin)
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