Introduction
Napoleon Bonaparte, a military genius renowned for his strategic brilliance, faced some of the most defining moments of his career during the Austerlitz Campaign of 1805 and the Russian Campaign of 1812. These campaigns demonstrate both the heights of his logistical ingenuity and the limits of his ability to adapt to unforgiving environments.
This essay examines the logistical innovations implemented by Napoleon and the Grande Armée during those two campaigns. Following this, a quick comparison of two analyses of the defeat in Russia is made and a tentative alternative theory is proposed.
English translation of Charles Joseph Minard's 1869 figurative map of Napoleon's Russian Campaign. The thickness of the lines on top indicate the size of the
Grande Armée, showing how it was decimated as it marched into and out of Moscow. The bottom line shows the temperatures the army encountered.
Graphic by DkEgy on
Wikipedia.
The Austerlitz Campaign of 1805
During the War of the Third Coalition (1805-1806), Napoleon encountered one of the weaknesses of the magazine system when used for extended forays into enemy territory. It was a chicken-and-egg problem: the advancing troops required magazines ahead of them, but the magazines needed to be built and pre-stocked.
Napoleon solved this problem with a combination of logistics techniques: the head of the advancing troops would operate using supplies they carried, by wagon, or foraged. They then established magazines for use by the middle and tail of the advancing troops, as well as for the army on their return. These magazines would be stocked using a modified contribution system - instead of forcing the locals to contribute supplies to the army, the French would provide receipts that could later be redeemed. “Treat the inhabitants as if they were French”[1] was the idea.
Napoleon also established a series of relay stations after crossing the Rhine. Positioned every 15 to 18 miles, these secured stations established a line of communication. It was bidirectional: supplies moved from France to the advancing army, and sick, wounded, and prisoners were moved back into France.[2] He created a second line of communication from Strasbourg to Augsburg. It was divided into seventeen sections, with 60 four-horse wagons operating between each. Van Creveld calculated that between 60 and 120 tons of clothing and ammunition could be shuttled per day in this manner.[3]
Van Creveld hints at a modification to the magazines themselves undertaken by Napoleon: instead of just being supply depots, they were also production locales: for example, Braunau was originally a depot that would bake 50K-60K rations per day in anticipation of a Russian advance. The Russians never came, so Braunau was converted to an advanced center of operations, where 100K rations per day were baked.[4]
Even with these modifications, Napoleon would be forced to modify his campaign: instead of passing through the Black Forest (sparsely populated and resource-poor), he would travel through the rich territories of Baden and Württemberg[5]. This indicates that it was still necessary to rely on foraging and plundering, even with these logistical improvements.
Regardless, Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Austerlitz is considered a tactical masterpiece. As a result of the victory, the Third Coalition collapsed.
The Russian Campaign of 1812
Preparation for the Russian Campaign began over a year before it started: Napoleon had been collecting Intelligence since April 1811[6], he ordered rations, and he amassed ammunition. Earlier, in 1807, he established a military train service that replaced the civilian owned and operated wagons with military counterparts. He expanded this train service in preparation for the Russian Campaign, and he improved the logistics system in Poland through which his army must pass on its way to Moscow.
Napoleon still had to rely on foraging, but only as a supplement to the supplies that would be delivered via wagons and river barges.
The campaign encountered difficulties almost immediately: thunderstorms turned the roads into deep mud, hindering the movements of horses and wagons. The River Vilnya, which Napoleon relied on shipping supplies to Vilna, was too shallow. Laying ahead were further problems: “the country is so wooded that one has trouble to find room for a considerable number of troops”[7]. Finding water would also be difficult[8] for both France and Russia.
Meanwhile, Russia realized that given the size of the Grande Armée and the genius of its leader, to defeat Napoleon required using techniques that to a modern reader appear to be irregular warfare tactics. The French army could only be defeated by distance, climate, and supply. Thus, the Russian army retreated away from the oncoming Grande Armée towards Moscow and in fact had destroyed that city so as to leave nothing for Napoleon to plunder. Further, the Russians swept the fields adjacent to the roads, forcing the French to forage at a distance[9].
Napoleon was pursued by the Russian army, militias, and Cossacks as he retreated back towards France. Their target wasn’t the Grande Armée itself, but rather their logistics system. Napoleon was reduced to foraging, and the Tsar’s forces wanted to deny them even that: the Russians controlled the Grande Armée’s movements, pushing them to retreat along the same roads it used to enter Moscow - paths that were already foraged and stripped bare during Napoleon’s advance.
This was not only Napoleon’s first major defeat but also his most disastrous. Approximately one million military and civilian fatalities were recorded. The result was not only a numerically smaller and demoralized military, but it also marked the first stage of failure of Napoleon’s designs for European conquest.
Why the Defeat?
A defeat of the magnitude Napoleon experienced during the Russian Campaign is rightly the subject of numerous historical and military analyses. Van Creveld attributed it to logistics concerns:
First, the army’s supply vehicles proved too heavy for the Russian ‘roads’, a problem aggravated still further when thunderstorms during the first fortnight of the campaign turned them into bottomless quagmires. Secondly, the river Vilnya, on which Napoleon had relied for shipping supplies to Vilna, turned out to be too shallow to allow the barges through. Thirdly, discipline in the army was lax, with the result that the troops plundered indiscriminately instead of carrying out orderly requisitions, the outcome being, paradoxically, that the officers - at any rate, those who refused to take part in such excesses - starved even when the men found enough to eat. Furthermore, the troops’ indiscipline caused the inhabitants to flee, and made the establishment of a regular administration in the army’s rear impossible. Fourthly, some of the troops, notably the German ones, simply did not know how to help themselves. Finally, there was deliberate destruction by the Russians. This sometimes assumed disastrous proportions, e.g. early in July when Murat reported he was operating in ‘very rich country’ which, however, had been thoroughly plundered by the Tsar’s soldiers.[10]
Clausewitz provides a different list of factors that contributed to the defeat:
a. The uninterrupted movement in advance (120 miles in 81 days), which prevented all following of sick, wounded, or tired.
b. Continual bivouacking.
c. Very bad weather in the first five days.
d. Want of precaution in supply, which, so early as upon reaching Witebsk, caused the issue of flour in place of bread.
e. A very hot and dry summer in a country scantily watered.
f. The bloody and extravagant offensive tactic by which Buonaparte always endeavoured to overwhelm his adversary.
g. The great deficiency in hospital preparations, making impossible the recovery and restoration to their corps of sick and wounded, which, indeed, first showed itself during the great halt in Moscow.[11]
Suggested in both these lists are a number of intelligence failures: a lack of detailed maps[12], the depth of relevant rivers at the time of the campaign, the dry conditions near Moscow, the thick forest, the rainy weather and what it did to the roads, the presence of militias and Cossacks, the scorched-earth mindset of the Russians, and so on. Napoleon had been gathering intelligence since April 1811, but all this was missed. All these intelligence gaps would have been discovered in preparation for the campaign, had Napoleon dispatched scouts.
Conclusion
Napoleon implemented great advances in logistics, and through his example downplayed the importance of siege warfare. His modifications to the magazine system, and the improved contribution system, allowed him to move an army as large as the Grande Armée on to enemy soil. He invaded a country then built a logistics system behind him while also establishing multiple lines of communication. Napoleon was apparently the first to create a continually resupplied ammunition depot.[13]. His planning contributed to his success in the Battle of Austerlitz, but his defeat in the Russian Campaign showed that logistic planning was insufficient to guarantee victory.
Footnotes
[1] Van Creveld, p. 53.
[2] Ibid, p. 53.
[3] Ibid, p. 56-57.
[4] Ibid, p. 60.
[5] Ibid, p. 50.
[6] Ibid, p. 62.
[7] Clausewitz, p. 148.
[8] Ibid, p. 193.
[9] Ibid, p. 178.
[10] Van Creveld, p. 65-66.
[11] Clausewitz, p. 97.
[12] Ibid. p. 193.
[13] Van Creveld, p. 57.
Bibliography
Clausewitz, C. von. The Campaign of 1812 in Russia. London, 1843. https://clausewitzstudies.org/readings/1812/Clausewitz-CampaignOf1812inRussia-EllesmereTranslation.pdf
Van Creveld, M. Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton. 2nd ed. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
