Introduction
Europe in the Nineteenth Century was in flux: Napoleon Bonaparte’s star was in descent, and the Industrial Revolution was beginning to yield technical advances. This paper investigates how Europe’s armies adapted to this fluid situation.
We begin by considering how various European armies emulated the Grande Armeé under Napoleon, and how theoreticians analyzed his logistics systems.
Next, we examine how Prussia prepared for future wars and started to utilize railroads for military purposes. Leading the way in the latter was Friedrich List[1], a German economist who proposed that a network of railways could allow troops to concentrate over vast distances, and Helmuth von Moltke, who would later become the First Chief of the German General Staff.
Two campaigns of the Prussian army are then surveyed. As Moltke wrote, “no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force,” and these two campaigns are examined with an eye to the logistics failures that were encountered. The commonalities of these difficulties are listed, and we conclude with a note that these types of failures continue to the present day.
European Armies After Napoleon
Armies were trying to duplicate logistical aspects of the Grande Armeé even before Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. For example, the Austrian army limited the amount of baggage authorized in 1799-1800 and again after the Austrian defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz. As a result, the Austrian army was able to match the Grande Armeé’s marching performance in 1809[2].
Not everyone was seeking to emulate the Grande Armeé, however. The two primary critics of Napoleon were André de Roginat and Carl von Clausewitz.
André de Roginat argued[3] that Napoleon paid insufficient attention to lines of communication during his campaigns. While de Roginat believed that penetration deep into enemy territory could be successful when executed by small armies, he maintained that large armies faced problems due to their great need for subsistence, ammunition, and replacements. These problems forced the large invading army to live off the land, which resulted in desertions, indiscipline, and conflicts with the local population. De Roginat went as far as labeling the Austerlitz Campaign the “height of madness” due to the number of deaths by starvation, even though Austerlitz was Napoleon’s most successful campaign.
De Roginat proposed[4] an alternative to Napoleon’s reliance on magazines, requisitioning, and living off the land: the army was to be loaded with 8 days’ provisions and advance 30 to 40 leagues (90 to 120 miles). They would stop, take stock, then wait for the Armeé de Reserve to arrive. Stores would be accumulated, and a new base would be established. Once this was all complete, the process would repeat.
Von Clausewitz’s criticisms[5] were less specific. He acknowledged the speed of Napoleon’s troop movements and argued that the need to requisition supplies could cause delays comparable to those in a base supply system. He believed that the requisition system became more advantageous for longer distances, noting that war conducted by requisitions was superior to one by magazines.
Russians implemented reforms favoring requisitions starting in 1812, but commanders were unable or unwilling to follow, resulting in “much suffering” during the campaigns of 1828-1829 (against Turkey) and 1831 (against Poland). Russia introduced “ambulant magazines” in 1846 and established trains of bakeries and butcheries. These proved ineffective during the Crimean War of 1853-1856, and the result was “innumerable carcasses of men and horses lined the routes to Bulgaria and Sebastopol.”[6]
Prussia Prepares for War
Van Creveld describes Prussia’s logistics system as “sketchy” from 1814-1815[7]. There was no formal body of train officers until 1816, and even then, a body of NCOs was established. This remained until Wilhelm of Prussia wrote that logistics was the weakest part of the Prussian army. Reforms were initiated in 1853 to bolster the train system. This included designating a staff officer in each corps to create a “nuclei” of train personnel that would train 14 days per year. In 1856, these “nuclei” were expanded into battalions consisting of five provision columns, a field bakery, one main hospital, and four field hospitals.
As all this was happening, a product of the Industrial Age was making its debut: the railroad. The Prussian military was initially hesitant to use railroads, their hesitation being rooted in the fear that “good communications only made a country easier to overrun.”[8] The army even opposed commercial railroads. The Prussians took interest in railroads in 1848-1849 when moving troops by road became unsafe, for whatever reason.
In 1859, the first Eisenbahntruppe formation was established to make minor railroad repairs and to build small bridges, leaving larger work to civilian experts. They were expected to guard the rails was well as restore them; the task of guarding the rail was taken away from them in 1866.[9]
The importance of railroads became painfully apparent to Moltke as Austria was amassing forces along the border in 1866. Prussia was slow to mobilize due to Bismarck’s desire to avoid limiting diplomatic options until the last moment[10]. The five railways to the front allowed Moltke to rapidly deliver three Prussian armies and their supplies to the front. This arrangement worked well for Moltke, who had an unusual working definition of “concentration of forces”: concentration was “achieved not when men and units stood shoulder to shoulder on a given spot, but when the distance between units permitted their concentric cooperation and mutual support.” [11]
Prussian Campaign of 1866
As part of the Austro-Prussian War (also called the Seven Weeks War), the Prussian Campaign of 1866 revealed many problems in the train company organization[12]. Supply trains had to share the roads with infantry, cavalry, and artillery columns, with supply trains given lowest priority. Supply trains were thus separated from the troops they were supposed to supply. Further, unauthorized vehicles joined the supply trains, and individual vehicles rested on the roads, thus blocking them. Congestion became acute in defiles and other narrow passages.
In parallel with utilizing supply trains, the Prussians also employed railroads during this campaign. As mentioned above, Prussia was late in mobilizing but compensated for this by utilizing all five railways leading to the frontier. This enabled deployment along a 200-mile arc, giving rise to Moltke’s innovative “strategy of external lines,” a decentralized approach to maneuvering multiple armies toward a unified goal[13].
This campaign encountered significant logistical hurdles, particularly the “last mile” problem: while transporting supplies to railheads was efficient, distributing them from there to the troops proved far more challenging. To address this, Moltke brought his railway expert, Von Wartensleben, into the field, a decision that inadvertently stripped the supply system of centralized oversight. Without direction, corps quartermasters flooded the railheads with excessive supplies, sending forward vast quantities that overwhelmed the endpoints.
This lack of coordination led to severe congestion, with 17,900 tons of supplies trapped on the railway lines, unable to move forward or back. Rail cars, intended for transport, became makeshift storage units, causing bread to go stale, fodder to rot, and horses to starve as troops advanced beyond the reach of their lagging supply convoys. The breakdown exposed the limitations of relying heavily on railways without solving the final distribution stage. Van Creveld argues that, despite Prussia’s extensive use of rail, it did not significantly influence the campaign’s progress, as the system faltered under pressure. Compounding the issue, Prussian forces could not utilize Austrian railways, which were strategically blocked by fortresses, further limiting their logistical flexibility.
The Campaign of 1870 of the Franco-Prussian War
During the Campaign of 1870, the Prussians (now called Germans because of the unification) continued to use railroads, though they faced an opponent with a more advanced railway system. The French railway[14] was widely considered superior to Germany’s due to its purposeful strategic design, prioritizing military utility over commercial interests. In contrast to Germany’s "geometric network" of north-south and east-west lines, the French system featured lines running parallel to the frontier, connecting the major forts and forming a complex web of routes extending from a central hub. This configuration offered significant military flexibility, facilitating swift troop and supply movements along fortified borders and throughout the country. By focusing on defense and mobilization rather than compass directions, France gained a clear logistical advantage.
Still, Moltke was able to penetrate hundreds of miles into enemy territory. Prussian forces encountered similar problems to the Campaign of 1866: suppliers rushed materials forward without considering the unloading stations’ capacity to manage them. A shortage of unloaders, combined with the inability of the army’s horse-drawn transport columns to clear accumulating stock, exacerbated the problem. Local commanders worsened the situation by commandeering railway wagons to serve as temporary storage, leading to trains being backed up for hundreds of miles. To mitigate this, Moltke instructed his commanders to deploy cavalry to seize French wagons and locomotives, though these efforts were hampered by sabotage, further disrupting operations.
By the war’s end, the Prussians captured and operated 2,300 miles of French track.[15] This railway operation was marked by chaos, including frequent crashes, derailments, and even trains plunging into the Meuse River. These incidents stemmed from poor maintenance and the Germans’ lack of experience with the French railway system.
As a side note: just as the Campaign of 1866 inspired Moltke’s external lines strategy, the Campaign of 1870 inspired[16] Moltke’s Auftragstaktik, a command-and-control style that focuses on individual initiative. This is similar to the U.S. military’s concept of mission command but differs in that Auftragstaktik is based on the virtues of “knowledge, independence, and the joy of taking responsibility.”[17]
Common Failures
Despite the four years between the two campaigns, and even though railroads became more common, the same problems were encountered and remained unsolved.
The first difficulty encountered was the problem of unloading - how to rapidly remove supplies from a rail car? The standard way was to unload cargo from the side. The Prussian army experimented with wooden ramps to unload them from the rear instead of the side.[18]
Next, there is the problem of one-way tracks. Track can only have one train operating on it in a single section, and this entailed either having the tracks arranged in loops; or that trains could operate only as shuttles with loading and unloading at the ends of the segments; or that side rails be built to allow trains to pass each other; or that only one train was permitted to use the entire rail line. The latter is the most impractical approach. Unfortunately, Van Creveld does not indicate which method was adopted.
Breakdowns along the rail were a real possibility and were addressed by Moltke in his reforms of 1859 that created the Eisenbahntruppe. There was also the problem of sabotage. To address this, Moltke had hostages carried along in the locomotives to dissuade saboteurs.[19]
Then there is the problem of congestion. Breakdowns and sabotage accounted for some congestion, but the fundamental source is that more supplies were being sent than the transport method (train rails) or destination (railhead) could manage. Congestion can be mitigated by having the railhead signal to the rear the quantity of supplies they can manage. It isn’t clear what forms of communication existed along any individual line of Prussian military rail, but at the time couriers and semaphores were used and telegraphs were coming into use. The simplest form of communication – sending messages back to the rear carried by the railroad engineers – would have helped.
Finally, there is the “last mile problem.” This is a term from information technology and transportation logistics that describes how the delivery of goods or services becomes extremely difficult or expensive as the package nears its destination. In the situations encountered in the two campaigns discussed here, the last mile problem was exacerbated by the fact that the destinations are troops, and they are constantly in motion.
Conclusions
All the difficulties encountered during the two campaigns, especially the problem of congestion and the last mile problem, are still with us today. Anyone who drives during rush hour has encountered congestion; anyone whose plane had to circle an airport instead of landing has encountered congestion. The fact that delivering supplies to a distribution center takes a few large trucks, while getting packages to a customer’s home takes many delivery vans is an example of the last mile problem.
In a sense, Moltke made contact with universal phenomena, problems that the transition from supply trains to railroads did not solve, problems that continue to this day. Van Creveld discredits Moltke’s optimism for railways, stating that promised supplies didn’t catch up to the troops until after the major battles were won. During the Campaign of 1866, for example, the supply trains fell behind the troops on 29 June and did not catch up with them until after the Battle of Königgrätz was fought and won on 3 July 1866[20]. What Van Creveld misses, though, is that railways allowed for rapid concentration of troops and supplies before fighting began in both campaigns. He also underappreciated how, under Moltke, the Prussians captured and operated 2,300 miles of French track. Moltke was thus able to use the enemy’s own resources against itself.Endnotes
[1] Lechner.[2] Van Creveld, p. 75.
[3] Ibid, p. 75.
[4] Ibid, p. 76.
[5] Ibid, p. 76.
[6] Ibid, p. 77.
[7] Ibid, p. 77.
[8] Ibid, p. 82.
[9] Ibid, p. 91-92.
[10] Showalter, p. 63.
[11] Ibid, p. 62.
[12] Van Creveld, p. 80.
[13] Ibid, p. 84.
[14] Ibid, p. 86.
[15] Ibid, p. 96.
[16] Coumbe, p. 92-95.
[17] Vandergriff.
[18] Ibid, p. 83.
[19] Ibid, p. 96.
[20] Ibid, p. 80.
Bibliography
Coumbe, A. “Operational Command in the Franco-Prussian War.” U.S. Army War College, 1991. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA527978.pdf
Lechner, J. “Developments in Logistics after Napoleon.” [Video], n/d. https://libertyuniversity.instructure.com/courses/764197/pages/watch-developments-in-logistics-after-napoleon?module_item_id=83250132
Showalter, D. “Mass Multiplied by Impulsion: The Influence of Railroads on Prussian Planning for the Seven Weeks' War.” Military Affairs, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Apr. 1974), pp. 62-67. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1987237
Van Creveld, M. Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton. 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Vandergriff, D. “How the Germans defined Auftragstaktik: What mission command is – and – is not.” Small Wars Journal, 21 June 2018. https://archive.smallwarsjournal.com/index.php/jrnl/art/how-germans-defined-auftragstaktik-what-mission-command-and-not
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