Napoleonic weaponry and warfare

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Napoleon I of France is recognised as one of the greatest commanders in military history. His main strategy was focusing on one part of the enemy, quickly defeating them, and continuing onward. His success was made possible not only by his ambition, but also through the dynamic composition of his army.

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars that followed revolutionized military strategy. The impact of this period was still to be felt in the American Civil War and the early phases of World War I. With the advent of cheap small arms and the rise of the drafted citizen soldier, army sizes increased rapidly to become mass forces. This necessitated dividing the army first into divisions and later into corps. Along with divisions came divisional artillery; light-weight, mobile cannon with great range and firepower. The rigid formations of pikemen and musketeers firing massed volleys gave way to light infantry fighting in skirmish lines.

Napoleon took advantage of these developments to pursue a brutally effective "strategy of annihilation" (see scorched earth) that terrorized the populace and cared little for the mathematical perfection of the geometric strategy. Napoleon invariably sought to achieve decision in battle, with the sole aim of utterly destroying his opponent, usually achieving success through superior manoeuvre. As ruler and general he dealt with the grand strategy as well as the operational strategy, making use of political and economic measures.

While not the originator of the methods he used, Napoleon very effectively combined the relatively superior maneuver and battle stages into one event. Before this, General Officers had considered this approach to battle as separate events. However, Napoleon used the maneuver to battle to dictate how and where the battle would progress. The Battle of Austerlitz was a perfect example of this maneuver. Napoleon withdrew from a strong position to draw his opponent forward and tempt him into a flank attack, weakening his center. This allowed the French army to split the allied army and gain victory.

Napoleon used two primary strategies for the approach to battle. His "Manoeuvre De Derrière" (move onto the rear) was intended to place the French Army across the enemy's lines of communications. This forced the opponent to either march to battle with Napoleon or attempt to find an escape route around the army. By placing his army into the rear, his opponent's supplies and communications would be cut. This had a negative effect on enemy morale. Once joined, the battle would be one in which his opponent could not afford defeat. This also allowed Napoleon to select multiple march routes into a battle site. Initially, the lack of force concentration helped with foraging for food and sought to confuse the enemy as to his real location and intentions. This strategy, along with the use of forced marches created a morale bonus that played heavily in his favor.

The "indirect" approach into battle also allowed Napoleon to disrupt the linear formations used by the allied armies. As the battle progressed, the enemy committed their reserves to stabilize the situation, Napoleon would suddenly release the flanking formation to attack the enemy. His opponents, being suddenly confronted with a new threat and with little reserves, had no choice but to weaken the area closest to the flanking formation and draw up a battleline at a right angle in an attempt to stop this new threat. Once this had occurred, Napoleon would mass his reserves at the hinge of that right angle and launch a heavy attack to break the lines. The rupture in the enemy lines allowed Napoleon's cavalry to flank both lines and roll them up leaving his opponent no choice but to surrender or flee.

The second strategy used by Napoleon I of France when confronted with two or more enemy armies was the use of the central position. This allowed Napoleon to drive a wedge to separate the enemy armies. He would then use part of his force to mask one army while the larger portion overwhelmed and defeated the second army quickly. He would then march on the second army leaving a portion to pursue the first army and repeat the operations. This was designed to achieve the highest concentration of men into the primary battle while limiting the enemy's ability to reinforce the critical battle. The central position had a weakness in that the full power of the pursuit of the enemy could not be achieved because the second army needed attention. So overall the preferred method of attack was the flank march to cross the enemy's logistics.

Napoleon used the central position strategy during the Battle of Waterloo

Napoleon masked Wellington and massed against the Prussian army, and then after the Battle of Ligny was won, Napoleon attempted to do the same to the Allied/English army located just to the south of Waterloo. His subordinate was unable to mask the defeated Prussian army, who reinforced the Waterloo battle in time to defeat Napoleon and end his domination of Europe. It can be said that the Prussian Army under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher used the "maneuver de derrière" against Napoleon who was suddenly placed in a position of reacting to a new enemy threat.

Napoleon's practical strategic triumphs, repeatedly leading smaller forces to defeat larger ones, inspired a whole new field of study into military strategy. In particular, his opponents were keen to develop a body of knowledge in this area to allow them to counteract a masterful individual with a highly competent group of officers, a General Staff. The two most significant students of his work were Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian with a background in philosophy, and Antoine-Henri Jomini, who had been one of Napoleon's staff officers.

One notable exception to Napoleon's strategy of annihilation and a precursor to trench warfare were the Lines of Torres Vedras during the Peninsular War. French Armies lived off the land and when they were confronted by a line of fortifications which they could not out flank, they were unable to continue the advance and were forced to retreat once they had consumed all the provisions of the region in front of the lines.

The Peninsular campaign was notable for the development of another method of warfare which went largely unnoticed at the time, but would become far more common in the 20th century. That was the aid and encouragement the British gave to the Spanish to harass the French behind their lines which led them to squander most of the assets of their Iberian army in protecting the army's line of communications. This was a very cost effective move for the British, because it cost far less to aid Spanish insurgents than it did to equip and pay regular British army units to engage the same number of French troops. As the British army could be correspondingly smaller it was able to supply its troops by sea and land without having to live off the land as was the norm at the time. Further, because they did not have to forage they did not antagonise the locals and so did not have to garrison their lines of communications to the same extent as the French did. So the strategy of aiding their Spanish civilian allies in their guerrilla or 'small war' benefited the British in many ways, not all of which were immediately obvious.

One of the major components in Napoleon's arsenal of weaponry was his heavy artillery. With the development and improvement of combat weapons throughout the Seven Years' War prior to Napoleon, heavy artillery had expanded to almost every European country, including France with 12 pound, 10 pound and 8 pound cannons. "The Gribeauval guns, developed between 1765 and 1774, were 12-, 8-, 6- and 4-pounders with 6- and 8-inch howitzers."^[1] This style of gun was the artillery of choice for Napoleon, considering they were lighter by one third of the cannon of any other country. For example, the barrel of the British 12-pounder weighed 3,150 pounds, and the gun with carriage and limber about 6,500 pounds. The Gribeauval 12-pounder's barrels weighed 2,174 pounds and the gun with carriage and limber 4,367 pounds. Since Napoleon insisted on speed and mobility in conducting his maneuvers, this lighter cannon provided the flexibility he desired. Along with the artillery, the army had vast quantities of mortars, furnace bombs, grape and canister shots, all of which provided substantial support fire. Artillery also played a role in the war at sea, with most ships containing anywhere from 50-100 cannons. In 1798, Napoleon's flagship L’Orient, with 120 guns made it the most heavily armed vessel in the world.^[1] Napoleon's quick, destructive artillery force contributed to a majority of his victories.

As for the base infantry soldier himself, Napoleon primarily equipped his army with the 1777 Charleville—a product of perfection from older designs and models. Used during the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, the Charleville was a .69- caliber, (sometimes .70 or .71) 5ft long, muzzle-loading, smoothbore musket. Since the weapon was quite slow to load, on average, French infantry could fire three volleys a minute. Along with its sluggishness, the musket was also noticeably inaccurate. To hit the target from 80 paces was possible by a trained marksman, but anything further was probably due to chance.^[2] To assist the main use of the musket, French soldiers had their sidearm .69 pistol as a secondary weapon. This backup weapon still had to be muzzle loaded and fired with a flintlock, making it mostly efficient for a one-shot kill. Besides guns, soldiers used a variety of swords, bayonets and pikes for close range, or melee combat. Cavalry, officers, sergeants and other higher ranked officials mainly used swords, while the bayonets were equipped to the majority of infantry soldiers. Despite the fear they generated in opponents, bayonets were somewhat impractical and used as a last resort.

The cavalry and engineers of the army essentially carried the same musket as the infantry. At 10 inches shorter, the musketoon was less cumbersome, making it more suitable for the mobility that horseback riders required. Besides the usage of the shortened musketoons, the light-cavalry typically wielded curved sabers with a 33-inch blade, and the heavy-cavalry, straight sabers with a 38-inch blade.^[1] Both musketoon and sword provided the necessary carnage that Napoleon's cavalry dealt with their blitzkrieg attacks.

Throughout the Napoleonic Wars rifles were also introduced into the battlefield. Rifles were substantially more accurate at a maximum range of 200 paces, because the barrel put spin on the bullet.^[2] Despite this advantage, rifles were more expensive and took longer to load—something Napoleon was not fond of and a reason why he did not incorporate them into his army. Instead, he settled for speed of the musket, as it allowed for his rapid maneuvers. The British did eventually utilize the rifle, which proved to be decisive in a number of battles Napoleon later faced.

One of Napoleon's largest advantages was the speed of his troop movements. Napoleon insisted on extreme speed when conducting the marches, movements and attacks of his army. He claimed that the "Loss of time is irreparable in war…I may lose a battle but I should never lose a minute."^[3] Many factors contributed to Napoleon's ability to perform these flexible movements, from the division of his army into an independent corps system, to the avoidance of slow- moving, lengthy supply lines. Instead, Napoleon's army looked to live off the land, acquiring the motto, "The war must feed the war." Napoleon sought to acquire food from his surrounding environment, whether that meant paying friendly countries or simply foraging. These factors, combined with Napoleon's innate persuasive ability to inspire his troops, resulted in successive victories in dominating fashion. His opponents were often confused and unsettled as Napoleon intricately correlated strategical attacks on profound scales.