Military logistics, as an art, dates to the Romans, who had sophisticated systems of supply chains and roads. Except for them, most armies either carried their own supplies or resorted to pillage and plunder[1]. Two changes in European armies in the period between the late 1500s and early 1600s required methods of supply beyond plunder: the size of the armies, and the reduced need for lines of communication back to nonexistent bases.
Indeed, the size of European armies grew considerably, increasing in size by an order of magnitude during that period. Keeping armies of that size stationary was impractical: if they were concentrated and stationary, that number of men would quickly exhaust the supplies that could be foraged or looted. So, the armies had to be kept in motion. It became necessary to carry large amounts of supplies, which was impractical for long campaigns.
One of the consequences of this was that logistics needs had an oversized influence on strategy: Van Creveld notes that “armies could – and did – follow the call of their stomachs by moving about freely to whatever region promised supplies, while largely indifferent to their own communications with non-existent bases.[2]”
There goes the neighborhood.
Van Creveld goes on to note that "logistics were allowed to prevail over strategy,[3]" and that it was food and forage, not the King, which commanded the army[4].
Most armies prior to the late 16th century relied either upon purchasing agents to acquire supplies, or upon plunder and foraging. These two factors indicate that alternative logistics systems were needed, two of them being the use of water courses and the use of magazines.
Water Courses
Water courses meant the use of rivers to move supplies and artillery to locations of battle. There were two factors prompting the development of this: the increasing size of artillery and the increasing carrying capacity of ships. Artillery became enormous during this period: one piece of artillery used by Maurice of Nassau weighted 5 ½ tons and had to be disassembled for travel. Thirty horses were required to move it, of which over 20% were expected to die of exhaustion annually[5].
Compensating for this was the increasing carrying capacity of available ships. Van Creveld notes that 9 ships could carry the same amount of goods as 600 wagons[6].
This is one of the advantages of using rivers to carry supplies: heavy artillery could be moved quickly. A second advantage was that the overall number of horses used to haul supplies was greatly reduced, which meant that horses' supply needs were also reduced.
The conditions of the rivers (were they deep enough to accommodate the ships, did water depth change by season, did they freeze-over, etc.) could be disadvantages, as well as the very existence and course of the rivers: Van Creveld notes that "Spain failed to conquer the Northern Netherlands because there were too many rivers; in their side, the Dutch made no headway in Belgium because there were not enough of them.[7]"
Magazine Systems
Invented by Michel Le Tellier (1603-1685), magazines were stores of materiel that would supply an army as it marched to its destination. They are essentially what the contemporary military would call supply depots or what militias would call defended prepositioned caches. Magazines were established before a campaign began and would supplement the supplies carried by the army, compensating for unexpected shortfalls. In the context of siege warfare, they would supply troops marching to the town they were to capture; once captured, magazines would then be created in that town to prepare for the next campaign[8].
As conceived by Le Tellier, magazines were always temporary arrangements, disbanded at the end of a campaign. The was changed by Le Tellier's son, François Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois (1647-1691). Commonly called "Louvois," one of the things he accomplished as military advisor to King Louis XIV was to make magazines into permanent depots.
In addition to this, Louvois divided magazines into defensive magazines (places fortes du roi, literally strongholds of the king) and offensive magazines (magasins généraux, general stores). Defensive magazines were frontier towns that were able to maintain a garrison for six months. Offensive magazines were designed to supply armies while operating outside the king's realm; they were dispersed, which meant that an enemy would be less likely to observe a massive buildup of troops.
The magazine system had several advantages: they reduced the quantity of supplies that an army needed to carry; they addressed the problem of unexpected supply shortages, such as caused by looting, theft, rotting, consumption by rats, etc.; and once established, the dispersed nature of offensive magazines obscured impending actions.
There were several disadvantages: magazines must be established either before or during the early stages of a campaign; the setup would alert the enemy of impending action; and the magazines would require their own defenses.
The first and second of these disadvantages were addressed by Louvois' permanent magazines, but their existence and level of surrounding activity would still provide valuable information to an enemy.
By using water courses and magazine systems, the relationship between logistics and strategy started to change: instead of logistics determining strategy, logistics supported strategy.
Footnotes
- Kress, Operational Logistics
- Van Creveld, Supplying War, p. 10
- Ibid. p. 14
- Ibid. p. 17
- Ibid. p. 12
- Ibid. p. 10
- Ibid. p. 12
- This section is based on Ibid. p. 17-26
Bibliography
Kress, M. Operational Logistics: The Art and Science of Sustaining Military Operations. Springer. 2016.
Van Creveld, M. Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton. (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. 2013.
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