12. military history monthly - december 2015

8/18/2019 12. Military History Monthly - December 2015

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www.military-history.org

December2015 Issue 63 £4.50

NAPOLEON’S

MASTERPIECE

++

CHARTING CONFLICCurious war cartograph

PERIALUSSIA’S ARMY

rimean War to WWI

MPERIALUSSIA’S ARMY

rimean War to WWI

HAWKERHURRICANE

Forgotten ghter of WWII

HAWKERHURRICANE


The Battle of Austerlitz, 1805


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MHM

The centenary of Waterloo has reminded us what acrude slugging match the battle was. A desperatedefence on one side. A succession of clumsy frontal

attacks on the other. A huge butcher’s bill.Our special feature this month focuses on a very

different sort of battle, ten years before. Austerlitz, fought on 2 December 1805 in the heart of Europe, was perhapsNapoleon’s greatest masterpiece.

The basic idea was simple enough: to fix t he flanksand break through in the centre. The mastery was allin the detail.

Victor y depended on a minute appreciat ion of t heground, a precise distribution of force along six miles of front, and an elaborate deception plan designed to makethe enemy do exactly as the French commander wanted.

Then, however, matters depended on the Grande Armée .But in 1805, after ten years of Revolutionary change andNapoleonic reform, this had become the finest army of itsage – a superb all-arms military machine based on mass,morale, and mobility.

Also this issue, Stephen Robert s recalls t he role of that other great British fighter of the Second World War, the Hawker Hurricane; Graham Goodlad analysesthe decline of the Tsarist Army between Borodino and

Tannenberg; and David Flintham reviews the coastaldefences of Henry VIII.

CONTRIBUTORS THIS MONTH’S EXPERTS

SUBSCRIBE NOW

DAVID FLINTHAMis a military

historian with a

particular interest

in the 17th cen-

tury, especially

fortications and

sieges. David is a fellow of the Royal

Geographical Society.

GRAHAMGOODLADhas taught and

written widely

on modern mili-

tary and political

history. His most

recent book, Thatcher , will bepub-

lished by Routledge in 2016.

IANMAYCOCKis a freelance

writer living in

Warsaw, Poland.

His main area

of interest and

expertise is 20th-century central

European history.

STEPHEN ROBERTSis an historian

and former

history teacher.

He has written

several times for

MHM in the past,

including cover stories on Edward III

and the Siege of Leningrad.

MILITARY www.military-history.orgDecember2015 Issue63 £4.50

NAPOLEON’SMASTERPIECE

++

CHARTINGCONFLICTCurious war cartography

U S

i n W

MPERIALUSSIA’SARMY

rimean War to WWI

HA HUR IC

F g t n t r W

HAWKERHURRICANE


tThe Battle of Austerlitz, 1805

ONTHE COVER: Detail from François Gérard’spaintingof theBattle of Austerlitz.

Image: Châteaude Versailles, France/Bridgeman

Images.

Now you can have your opinions

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EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD:

Martin BrownArchaeological Advisor, DefenceEstates, Ministry of Defence

Mark Corby Military historian, lecturer, andbroadcaster

Paul Cornish Curator, Imperial War Museum

Gary Gibbs Assistant Curator, The Guards Museum

Angus Hay Former Army Offi cer, militaryhistorian, and lecturer

Nick Hewitt Historian, National Museum of theRoyal Navy, Portsmouth

Nigel Jones Historian, biographer, and journalist

Alastair MassieHead of Archives, Photos, Film, andSound, National Army Museum

Gabriel Moshenska Research Fellow, Instituteof Archaeology, UCL

Colin Pomeroy Squadron Leader, Royal Air Force(Ret.), and historian

Michael Prestwich Emeritus Professor of History,University of Durham

Nick Saunders Senior Lecturer, University of Bristol

Guy Taylor Military archivist, and archaeologist

Julian Thompson Major-General, Visiting Professor atLondon University

Dominic Tweddle Director-General, National Museumof the Royal Navy

Greg BaynePresident, American Civil War Tableof the UK

MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLYwww.military-history.org 3


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FEATURES

18

44

52

Welcome 3

Letters 7

Notes from the Frontline 8Behind the Image 10MHM looks at a photograph of UN forces landing at Red Beach,Korea, in 1950.

Conict Scientists 12Patrick Boniface assesses thework of Irish-Australian inventorLouis Brennan.

War Culture 14MHM examines quirky war cartography

from Ashley Baynton-Williams’The Curious Map Book .

INCLUDES:

Background

The commanders

The armies

The battle

Battle map

Timeline

14 Tudor WallsThe birth of artilleryfortication in England

David Flintham analyses the anti-

invasion defences of Henry VIII and

Elizabeth I, exploring the greatest

programme of coastal fortication

since the Romans.

UPFRONT

Hawker HurricaneBiography of abattle-winning ghter

Stephen Roberts tells the story

of the other great British ghter

of the Second World War.

December 2015 | ISSUE 63

MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY4 December 2015

26

AusterlitzON THE COVER

This month MHM focuses

on Napoleon’s strategic

brilliance and explains how

he defeated the leading

gures of ancien régime

Europe at Austerlitz in 1805,establishing the hegemony

of France.

For God and TsarImperial Russia’s army fromthe Crimea to World War I

Graham Goodlad describes the

decline of the Tsarist army in the

late 19th and early 20th centuries.


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MHM C ONT E NT S

THE DEBRIEF

INTHEFIELD|MHM VISITS

Museum | 74Richard Lucas travels to Genoa in Italyto visit the Galata Maritime Museum.

Listings | 76The best military history events.

Competition | 80Win a copy of The Agincourt Companion .

Brieng Room | 82All you need to know abouttheBritish WWII OrdnanceQF25-pounder Mark II Artillery Piece.

INTELLIGENCE | MHM OFF DUTY



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BACK AT BASE | MHM REVIEWS

War on Film | 60Taylor Downing reviews Britishwar lm Dunkirk .

Book of the Month | 64

Nick Hewitt reviews In Nelson’s Wake:the Navy and the Napoleonic Wars by James Davey.

Books | 67 John B Winterburn reviews Yanks andLimeys: alliance warfare in the Second WorldWar by Niall Barr; Andre van Loon reviewsThe ‘Russian’ Civil Wars, 1916-1926: ten

years that shook the world by Jonathan DSmele; and Francesca Trowse reviews TheCooler King: the true story of William Ash– Spitre pilot, POW, and WWII’s greatest

escaper by Patrick Bishop.


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A BRIDGE TOO FAR

May I congratulate the editor of Military History

Monthly and its contributors for an excellent maga-

zine, featuring the Battle of Agincourt (MHM 61).

Contrary to the claim in the caption supporting

the picture of Jack Griffiths wearing a Glider PilotRegiment cap badge and a Parachute Regiment tie

(page 16), no bridges were destroyed on the River

Orne on D-Day, only those over the River Dives.

The River Orne and the Caen Canal, running in

parallel from Caen to the sea, formed the base of

the 6th Airborne Division bridgehead, which was

held for two months. The only bridges over these

two waterways of strategic importance were those

on the Canal at Bénouville – later named Pegasus

Bridge – and one over the Orne in the commune

of Ranville – later named Horsa Bridge. Both of

these bridges were captured in the f irst minutes of

D-Day, as the first objectives of the Allied invasion

of Normandy.

Neville Jackson

Australia

STICKING POINT

I understand that

the English archers

at Agincourt fought

stripped to the waist,

and that most were

suffering from dysentery.So were they stripped up

or down? And could this

explain their ‘up stick s’

and move forward?

Have you heard anything

of the theory that Joan of

Arc survived the war, and

her burning was later French propaganda?

Pat McDonnell

Crosshaven

Your thoughts on issues raised

in Military History Monthly

GAS ATTACKI read with interest the article on the use of poison gas

at Loos ( MHM 61). In July, I visited the First World War

battleelds of north-east Italy, including Caporetto (now

Kobarid in Slovenia).

Two or three miles behind what had been the

Italian front-line is a sunken lane which, in 1917, was

being used by the Italians as a reserve area.

When the Germans launched their assault on

24 October, they shelled this lane with substantial

amounts of chlorine gas. The Italian gas masks proved quite unequal to the task and, as a result, there

were substantial casualties. There is now this rather sad memorial to the disaster.

Incidentally, the area, almost forgotten, is well worth a visit. There are a number of museums of varying

size and quality, and well-maintained British, Italian, and Austrian military cemeteries and trench lines.

Richard Rathbone

Kidderminster

LE T T ER OF THE MONTH

TWITTER@MilHistMonthly

FACEBOOKwww.facebook.com/ MilitaryHistoryMonthly

12 Oct 2015

British nurse EdithCavell was executed by

German firing squad

#OnThisDay in 1915 for

helping Allied prisoners

escape from occupied

Belgium. #WWI

14 Oct 2015The Battle

of Hastings

was fought

#OnThisDay in

1066. But did Harold die

from an arrow to his eye?

19 Oct 2015The Battle of Leipzig ended

#OnThisDay in 1813. It was

the largest battle in Europe

prior to WWI and saw one

of Napoleon’s greatest

defeats. Here, it features

in our list of the five

bloodiest battles in history:

www.military-history.org/

articles/5-bloodiest-battles-

in-history.htm

020 8819 5580

@MilHistMonthly MilitaryHistoryMonthly

[email protected]

WHAT DO YOU THINK?Let us know!

Military History Monthly , ThamesWorks, Church Street, London, W4 2PD

@MilHistMonthly

1 Oct 2015 Alexander the Great

defeated Darius III of

Persia #OnThisDay in 331

BC. But how great was he?

tinyurl.com/prbgdrz

@MilHistMonthly

14 Oct 2015 Just back from a sneak

peek at the Lee Miller

exhibition @I_W_M

LDN. What a fantastic

photographer. Opens

tomorrow. Highly

recommended!

@MilHistMonthly

16 Oct 2015Marie Antoinette was

guillotined #OnThisDay

in 1793, during the

French Revolution.


Please note: letters may be edited for length; views expressed here are those of our readers,

and do not necessarily reect those of the magazine.


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A weeklong excavation to

unearth a Mark I Spitfire,

which crashed at Holme Lode in

the Great Fen on 22 November

1940, has uncovered the plane’s

engine, propeller, and oxygen

tank among other finds.

RAF Spitf ire X4593, of the

266 Rhodesian Squadron, nose-

dived into the peaty fenland on

a routine training flight, killing

Pilot Officer Harold Edwin

Penketh, aged 20.

Investigations into the crash

concluded that a failure of

the oxygen system or another

physical failure had occurred.

Eye-witness John Bliss said,

‘I went down there with my

father and the policeman.

There was an enormous crater,

which was slowly filling up with

water wh ile we were t here.

At Holme Fen the w ater table

is very high, and if you dig a

hole it’s not very long before

it fills up. There was quite a

lot of steam coming out of the

hull, as obviously the engine

was very hot .’

The excavation coincided

with t he 75th ann iversar y of

the Battle of Britain, and of the

crash itself, but most impor-

tantly the timing permitted

archaeologists to recover and

record material from the site,

before restoration of the area to

wetlands made this impossible.

Stephen Macaulay, Project

Director for Oxford Archaeology

East, said, ‘We hoped that,

because the Spitfire crashed

in peat soil, the artefacts would

be well preserved, but the

condition of many of the finds,

including the headrest, oxygen

tank, a nd pilot’s helmet, was

beyond our expectations.’

Our round-up o this month’s military history news

D-DAY LANDING CRAFT TO BE CONSERVEDdimension, Operation Neptune, was

the largest amphibious operation in

history, with more than 7,000 ships

and craf o all sizes landing over

160,000 soldiers on the beaches

o Normandy.

Proessor Dominic Tweddle, Director

General o the National Museum o

the Royal Navy, which raised the

vessel, said, ‘LCT 7074 is one o the

last o these vital workhorses

nown to have participated in D-Day.

rdinary vessels, they perormed

an extraordinary task, carrying

up to ten Sherman tanks, and

transporting almost all the heavy

artillery and armoured vehicles that

landed in Normandy. This allowed

the amphibious orce to win major

engagements and remain equipped to

ght or months without a riendly port.’

It was an emotional visit or

veteran John Jenkins, 96, who, sitting

by the hull o the vessel, reminisced

about his ‘girl in the window’: a

woman he rst noticed in the window

o a ladies’ hat shop in 1938, to whom

he would be married or 74 years.

Separated rom his wie during

the war, he landed on Gold Beach, in

Normandy, shortly afer D-Day, and

now volunteers at Portsmouth’s

D-Day Museum, where it is hope

the vessel, once restored, will be put

on public display.

LCT 7074 was raised rom Liverpool

Docks last year. Despite her rust y

exterior, she is in remarkably good

condition, having been submerged in

brackish water, which has less salinity

than seawater. Conservators hope

work will be completed by the 75th

anniversary o D-Day in 2019.


A small group o D-Day veterans met

in a shipbuilding shed in Portsmouth

Naval Base to visit the recently raised

Second World War Landing Craf Tank

LCT 7074, prior to her conservation.

The vessel is the only one o her kind

lef in Britain.

More than 800 LCTs took par t in

the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944 as

part o Operation Overlord. Its naval

I m a g e : A v i v a G r o u p

A r c h i v e s

I m a g e : L a u r e n

S t o n e b r i d g e


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The Royal Museums Greenwich has

acquired a collection of 17 drawings by

extraordinary WWII artist and Voluntary

Aid Detachment nurse Rosemary Rutherford

(1912-1972). The works have not been on

public display before.

Trained at the Slade School of Art,Rutherford became a Red Cross nurse in

1940, and experienced

first-hand the casualties,

suffering, and disorienta-

tion of war.

After obta ining permis -

sion from the War Artists

Advi sory Committee,

she began recording her

experiences of W WII

through haunting and

evocative drawings of

nurses, hospital staff, and

recovering sailors.Not only do these works

give an insight to women’s

roles during the war, they

lso highlight Rutherford’s

Christian faith: her drawings

ften focus on themes of

ebirth and Christ-like

esurrection.

The acquisition of

hese works complements

the Museum’s existingcollection of war art. The

rawings will be conserved

and digitised.

Thewreck o a 600-year-old warship, thought

to be the Holigost o Henry V, has been

discovered, buried in the mud o the River

Hamble, near Southampton.

The nd was made by Dr Ian Friel, historian and

an expert adviser to Historic England. Friel rst

spotted the wreck site in an aerial photograph o

the Bursledon stretch o the Hamble.

He made a connection with documentary

evidence that the Holigost had been laid up

there in 1426, and subsequent probing o the

site revealed a solid object under the mud.

TheHoligost was a major parto Henry Vs war

machine. It joined the royal eet on 17 November

1415, and took part in operations between 1416

and 1420, playing a key role in two o the most

signicant naval battles o the Hundred Years

War, which enabled Henry to conquer much o

France in the early 15th century.

The ship had a crew o 200 sailors in 1416,

but also carried large numbers o soldiers to

war, and as many as 240 in one patrol.

It carried seven cannon, but also bows and

arrows, poleaxes and spears, along with 102

‘gads’ — earsome iron spears thrown rom

the topcastle (a small, railed platorm at the

masthead). These could easily penetrate the

body armour o the period.

Historic England will undertake urther study,

and assess the site or protection.

MHM

F R ONT L I NE

NEWS IN BRIEF The George Cross

that was posthu-

mously awarded

to Second World

War secret agent Violette Szabó hasbeen

put on permanent display in theLordAshcrofGallery at the Imperial War Museum, London.

During the war, Violette was recruited to the

Special Operations Executive, joining the French

‘F’ section, whose agents were sent undercover

to occupied France.

On the night o 7 June 1944, the day afer

D-Day, Violette parachuted intoFrance to set up

a network with local resistance groups.

Captured three days later by German soldiers,

she was brutally interrogated in prison beore be-

ing deported to Germany. Violette was executed

in Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1945.

Her daughter, Tania Szabó, commented, ‘Her

legacy will live on andit is my hope that anyone

who visits the Imperial War Museum maybe

inspired by her story.’

Over 350 Army Headquarters war

diaries have been published onlineto

mark the centenary o theBattle o

Loos, therst major British offensive

o the First World War. The battle

began on 25 September1915.

The diaries contain condential

accounts o the battle, revealing tactics and

the high-level decisions taken by HQ commanding

officers. They also uncover strategies, such as acarrier-pigeon messenger service or communicat-

ing the direction o artillery re during the battle.

To view the diaries, visit www.nationalarchives.

gov.uk/rst-world-war

The UK Government and

the National Museum

o the Royal Navy have

each announced plans to

commemorate the Battle o

Jutland, ought in the North

Sea during WWI.

Between 31 May and 1 June ,Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet, under Admiral Sir John

Jellicoe, ought the Imperial German Navy’s High

Seas Fleet, under Admiral Reinhard Scheer.

Head o Heritage Development at the NMRN

Nick Hewitt said, ‘The Battle o Jutland is the

Royal Navy’s dening moment in the Great War,

and perhaps the largest sea battle in history.’

Commemorative events will start in 2016, and

plans include an exhibition titled ‘36 Hours: Jutland

1916, thebattle that won thewar’; theopeningo

theHMS Caroline , thelast survivor o thebattle;

anda service at St MagnusCathedral,Orkney.GOT A STORY?Letusknow! [email protected]

Military History Monthly , Thames Works,Church Street, London, W4 2PD

020 8819 5580


DISCOVERY OF

HENRY V’SHOLIGOST

I m a g e : © B

r i t i s h L i b r a r y B o a r d , H a r l e y M S 3

2 6 , f . 2

9 v

I m a g e : ©

J a m e

s O

D a v i e s /

H i s t o

r i c E n g l a n d

I m a g e : I W

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I m a g e : C r o w n C o p y r i g h t – c o u r t e s y

o f t h e N a t i o n a l A r c h i v e s


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MHM

BEHI NDTHEI MA GE

INCHON LANDINGS,

KOREA,1950On 15 September 1950, American-dominated

UN orces carried out the biggest amphibious

operation since WWII, landing deep behind

enemy lines at Inchon in Korea.

This photograph, taken by American reporter

and war correspondent Marguerite Higgins,

shows the second assault-wave landing on

the northern side o Red Beach.

Wooden scaling-ladders are being used to

disembark the LCVP landing craf that brought

the men to shore. First Lieutenant Baldomero

Lopez, rom Tampa Florida, leads 3rd Platoon,

A Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines over the

seawall. Lopez carries an M-1 Carbine, while

the other Marines carry M-1 Ries.

The North Korean invasion o South Korea

had pushed most o the ghting to the Pusan

Perimeter in the south-east corner o the

peninsula. US Army commander Douglas

MacArthur had campaigned or a surprise

attack on the west coast at Inchon – thought

to be a risky operation.

The attack, code-named Operation Chromite,

managed to catch the North Koreans off guard,

breaking their supply-lines, and paving the way

or UN orces to push inland and recapture the

capital at Seoul.

Just a ew minute s afe r thi s pho tograph

was taken, Lieutenant Lopez was killed.

Exposing himsel to enemy re, he was

preparing to throw a grenade into a North

Korean bunker when he was shot in the right

shoulder and chest, alling backwards and

dropping the grenade.

He went to retrieve the weapon and,

when not able to grasp it rmly enough

to throw it, cradled it under his body to

absorb the impact o the explosion and save

his ellow soldiers. He was posthumously

awarded the Medal o Honor. .

SURPRISEATTACK

T e x t : P o l l y H e ff e r

I m a g e : U . S .

N a t i o n a l A r c h i v e s a n d R e c o r d s A d m i n i s t r a t i o n

11MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY


12/84

Louis Brennan was born in

Ireland, but her verdant green

hills were barely home to this

man’s brilliant mind. Shortly

afer his ninth birthday, his amily

made thedecisionto transplant to

Melbourne in Australia.

The young Louis was educated

at the local technical college and

attended evening classes in engi-

neering at Collingwood Artisan’s

School o Design. Such was his

aptitude or devising engineering

solutions that, as a 21-year-old

man, he put on a spellbinding

display at the Juvenile Industries

Exhibition, held at Victoria in 1873,

with designs or a bill iard marker,

a mincing machine, and a window

saety latch.

Such brilliance rarely goes

undiscovered, and Brennan

came to the attention o wealthy

industrialist Alexander Kennedy

Smith, who ostered the young

man’s creativity.

BREAKNECK SPEED

One aternoon, Louis Brennan was

toying with a cotton reel. The expe-

rience led directly to thecreation o

the world’s irst successul guided

It is not only yourtorpedo we want to buy.

We want to buy yourbrains as well.

Edward Stanhope

missile. The simple process o

pulling the thread on the reel rom

underneath saw the reel move

away. The aster Brennan tugged at

the line, the aster the reel moved.

While this process ascinated the

young inventor, he had to wait

weeks beore he could think o

a practical use or it.

His Eureka moment came when

he was introduced to the Victoria

Patrick Boniface considers the inuence o science on warare


“

LOUISBRENNAN

BELOWTheBrennan Torpedo was

driven by counter-rotating propellers

connectedto tworeelsofwire inside

thebodyof theweapon.

BIOGRAPHY

Born: 28 January 1852, Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland

Married: Anna Quinn in September 1892

Died: 17 January 1932, Montreux, Switzerland

Famous for: Brennan Torpedo

Volunteer Artillery Regiment,

whose sister-unit was the Victoria

Torpedo Corps. He knew he had

ound a practical application

or his cotton-reel observation:

an anti-ship torpedo that was

directed to its target by the use

o a strong line.

Brennan developed the system

urther, patenting the Brennan

Torpedo on 1 February 1878. He

showed o his design in public

or the irst time in the spring o

1879, on the shores o Melbourne’s

Hobson Bay.

The weapon was described as

looking ‘ like a ch ild’s coffi n’, atter


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MHM

C ONFLI CT S CI E

NTI ST S

QUOTES

ABOUTBRENNAN

IN CONTEXT: BRENNAN

Revolutionary designsIn the late Victorian era, military strategy and technology werechanging and expanding in ways that had not been conceived

of just a few years earlier. Into this maelstrom of development

emerged an unlikely genius from County Mayo in Ireland, bythe name of Louis Brennan.Brennan would be credited with inventing the world’s first

guided-missile system, but his contribution extends muchfurther, from locomotives to motorcycles and helicopters.Indeed, it was his designs for a gyroscopic monorail that ledSir Winston Churchill to exclaim, ‘Sir, your invention promisesto revolutionise the railway systems of the world.’

Louis Brennan, however, will always be remembered as theman who devised the Brennan Torpedo, the world’s first steer-able guided-weapon system. It made him famous and, for a short while, rich. Fu rther more, such was the advanced nature of h is

work that some deta ils of hi s torpedo designs are st ill , over 100 years later, cla ssified.


in the middle, with tapering ends

to the ront and rear. Inside were

two reels o wire, each 3km long,

attached to two propellers. The

torpedo was attached to a steam-

driven machine, which pulled the

wire at ‘breakneck speed’. It was

steered towards its intended target

by a gunner, who judged distance

and speed by sight. The demon-

stration ended with the torpedo

successully striking a target-boat,

moored 400m away. The military

were impressed, and the Royal

Navy in London inormed.

As a result, Brennan was invited

to London to show o his invention

to the Royal Navy. Four years would

elapse beore the Navy expressed

any urther interest: they had been

reluctant to buy the torpedo since

it was, in its early stages, cumber-

some to transport, weighing close

to three tonnes.

Brennan, however, was not one

to be deterred. He ound a riend

and advocate in Sir Andrew Clarke,

who campaigned on his behal. The

ABOVEA full-size version of

Brennan’s gyroscopic monorail,

carrying passengers.

our years also allowed Brennan

to enhance his design, so that by

1885 it could be guided all the way

to the target, run at 40 knots, and

had a range o 3km.

Once the Royal Navy accepted

this new weapon, they built a

series o ortications around the

British coast between 1884 and

1894, as well as at Malta and at

Fort Camden, near Crosshaven,

County Cork. The Brennan torpedo

would, or the next two decades,

be a crucial part o Great Britain’s

coastal deence strategy, until

superseded by artillery.

Brennan was paid handsomely

or his work, and was honoured by

Queen Victoria with a Companion

o the Order o Bath in May 1892.

His wealth brought him a large

house or his amily. Even though

he had made his money rom the

torpedo, his inventive air never

lef him, and he went on to create a

gyroscopically balanced monorail

system, an 800m track version

o which illed a large part o his

garden. Sadly, the monorail also

sapped his personal wealth, and

Brennan paid his workorce rom

his own pocket when unds ran dry.

Having lost his ortune, which

orced him to sell his beloved home,

Brennan worked during WWI at

the Royal Aircrat Establishment

in Farnborough, in the munitions

inventions department. In 1919,

One of themost importantand far-reachingsteps yet madein the history or

aeronautics.”New York Times ,

1922

Sir, yourinventionpromises torevolutionisethe railwaysystems of

the world.”WinstonChurchill

A cold, small,and anonymousresting place fora man who madesuch a mark onthe world.”

Taoiseach

Enda Kenny

he convinced the Air Ministry to

allow him to develop the world’s

irst working helicopter. In 1922,

the device actually ew a ew eet

off the ground. Ultimately, it would

be unsuccessul; our years later

the project was cancelled.

On 26 December 1931, Louis

Brennan was struck by a car in

Montreux in Switzerland. He died

o his injuries on 17 January 1932.


14/84MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY14 December 2015

Today, maps are considered instruments o navigational

precision, though they have ofen been used as channels

or cultural sel-denition. Designed to depict both local

and global arrangements o diverse lands, they have

long been used as vehicles to convey political and

propagandistic messages.

The art o map-making stretches across 14,000 years o

human history. The earliest maps were engravings, which

recorded basic geographical eatures on stone tablets. Over

time, however, depictions o the physical world grew ever

more intricate, and were relied on by armies, merchants, and

travellers to ensure sae passage rom one place to another.But map-makers also used their artistic skills to create

maps or pleasure and entertainment. Drawing on cultural

stereotypes and allegories, some produced satirical

geographies o the world, especially in times o war.

Others sought to distract their users rom the harsh

realities o conict by ashioning game maps based on

militarised landscapes.

The degree o accuracy reected in these maps could

vary widely. William Nicholson’s ‘The Evil Genius o Europe’,

or example, uses the natural lay o the land to its advantage,

capitalising wittily on the shape o the Italian peninsula.

Kisaburo Ohara’s ‘A Humorous Diplomatic Atlas o Europe

and Asia’, on the other hand, is less restricted by topography

in personiying Eurasia’s constituent countries.

In a new book published by the British Library, Ashley

Baynton-Williams has collected and analysed 100 entertainingand imaginative maps, produced between 1493 and 2008.

The book includes high-quality reproductions o a variety

o cartographic curiosities. Here, MHM eatures six creative

maps born o war.

1


15/84

1. ‘A HUMOROUS DIPLOMATIC ATLAS OFEUROPE AND ASIA’1904. Kisaburo Ohara, Tokyo. Chromolithograph

Russia was often depicted as an octopus inEuropean allegorical cartography, to emphasiseher sprawling evil. This map depicts Eurasia

during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905).

2. ‘MAP OF EUROPE, 1859.ILLUSTRATIVE WAR SCENE’1859. Jacobus Johannes van Brederode,Haarlem. Lithograph

Here, King Victor Emmanuel II clings to the legof Emperor Napoleon III. During the SecondItalian War of Independence (1859), the Kingdomof Sardinia sought aid from France.

3. ‘THE EVIL GENIUS OF EUROPE’1859. William Nicholson, London. Lithograph

Napoleon III’s cunning in the Second Italian War

of Independence is represented by his slippingon the ‘boot’ of the Italian peninsula.

4. ‘A NEW MAP OF ENGLAND & FRANCE’1793. James Gillray, London. Copper etching

After the French Revolution, Britain foughtFrance in the War of the First Coalition (1792-1797). The French threat prompted this amusing,scatological portrayal of the Channel.

MHM

WAR C ULT URE


2

3 4


16/84

TheCuriousMapBook

byAshleyBaynton-Williams

British Library, £25.00

ISBN 978-0712356190

GO FURTHER


5. ‘HARK! HARK! THE DOGS DO BARK!’1914. Johnson Riddle & Co., London. Chromolithograph

This light-hearted take on the early part of the First World War usescanine comparisons to play on national stereotypes. Baynton-Williamsspeculates that this map was intended for use by children, designed toanimate and simplify the complexities of war.

6. ‘THE SILVER BULLET OR THE ROAD TO BERLIN’ (GAME)1914. R Farmer & Son, London. Card and paper in wooden frame,with glass and metal ball-bearing

One of many cartographic games, this map is the least geographicallyaccurate of our selection. It features German towns that must betravelled through on the way to Berlin. The player was instructed todirect a metal ball-bearing down ‘the road to Berlin’, avoiding a varietyof wartime dangers.

5

6 I m a g e s : ©

B r i t i s h L i b r a r y


17/84


18/84

IMPERIAL RUSSIA’S ARMY FROMTHE CRIMEA TO WORLD WAR I

God Tsar


19/84

A l l i m a g

e s : W I P L

Historian Graham Goodlad

asks why Russia’s army failed

to meet the challenges of

war in the declining years

of Tsarist autocracy.

T sarist Russia’s final century was

punctuated by a series of serious

military reverses. Defeat in the

Crimean War of 1853-1856 was

followed by further disaster in

the Russo-Japanese War 50 years later, and the

army’s poor performance in the First World

War was a critical factor in the collapse of the

autocracy in the February 1917 revolution.

Yet these disasters befell a country whose

military strength had played a major role in

the downfall of Napoleon in the early 19th

century. In the legendary campaign of 1812,

when France invaded its homeland, Russia’s

defensive strategy was of devastating effect.

The French were drawn into the country’s

bleak interior, where a combination of harass-

ment by cavalry, deteriorating weather, and

hunger and disease put paid to the French

emperor’s dream of conquest. Russian troops

then helped to push Napoleon back into

France, forcing his abdication in 1814.

Just over 40 years later, Russia was to be

beaten by a hostile alliance whose troops

invaded its territory and established a bridge-

head on the shores of the Black Sea. The

Crimean War saw Russia lose heavily to the

combined but by no means militarily impressive

forces of Britain, France, Sardinia, and Turkey.

In the wake of this catastrophe, the empire’s

autocratic leadership overhauled its military

system, and then managed to defeat Turkey in

a short war in 1877-1878.

A generation later, however, to widespread

surprise, the rising power of Japan inflicted a

major defeat on Russia in the Far East. In the

Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, fought in

Manchuria (today’s North Korea and north-

east China), the Tsarist forces lost every battle.

This was a curtain-raiser for the Great War,

which broke out ten years later. Although it

achieved some temporary successes against its

German and Austro-Hungarian opponents on

the Eastern Front, the Russian army ultimately

proved unequal to the challenges it faced.

Why did the Russian military lose so

many contests in the twilight years of

imperial rule?

PEASANTS IN UNIFORM

One reason for Russia’s difficulties was the

sheer scale of the task facing its fighting forces.

Although able to mobilise the largest army in

Europe in the mid 19th century – counting

reservists, it totalled more than

two million men – it could not

deploy more than 320,000 in

the Crimea at any one time.

This was partly because of the need to defend

the rest of its very extensive borders – notably

in Poland and on the Baltic coast – and partly

because the country’s primitive internal commu-

nications made it impossible to supply a larger

deployment on the Black Sea.

In 1914, Russia was able to mobilise just

over five million men, while Germany put

approximately four and a half million men in

the field, and these were supported by three

million Austro-Hungarians.

OPPOSITE PAGE The Battle of Borodino,

7 September 1812. The Tsar’s army played a

central role in the downfall of Napoleon between

1812 and 1814. Thereafter the Russian military

tradition went into steep decline. What went wrong?

BELOW Russian soldiers kneel before the Tsar

and a holy icon during the First World War – an

image of loyalty, piety, and tradition. But it was the

calm before the storm: revolution was imminent.

The year-longdefence ofSevastopol began

with a religiousprocession,and icons andlamps adornedthe defences.


20/84

TSARIST ARMY

Although contemporaries spoke fearfully of

he mighty ‘Russian steamroller’, the Tsar was

unable to wage war on the Eastern Front with-

out Western allies. By now, however, Russia

had formed an alliance with France, whose

army of four million evened up the odds.

Numbers in relation to territory – or mass

n relation to space – was only one part of

Russia’s problem. Throughout the period, the

Russian Army was composed overwhelmingly

of conscripted peasants. Until 1861, when Tsar

Alexander II belatedly decreed their emancipa-

ion, these were agricultural serfs, selected by

heir village elders, who served for 20-year terms.

Russian practice differed sharply from that

of most Western countries, which tended by

he mid 19th century to favour short service

and the build-up of a trained reserve. Taken

from their homes for what was effectively a life

entence under arms, Russian soldiers tried

o recreate the sense of community they had

known in their rural communes.

On the whole, the quality of Tsarist troops

n the Crimea was poor. Commune leaders

ried to keep back the best men for agricul-

ural work, so that a disproportionate number

of draftees were those judged to be ‘trouble-

makers’. Most soldiers were illiterate.

A dogged sense of loyalty to the Tsar, rein-

orced by the rituals of the Orthodox Church,

helped to bind them together. The year-long

defence of Sevastopol in the Crimean War, for

December 2015

‘We have no army: we have a horde ofslaves cowed by discipline, ordered aboutby thieves and slave traders.’

Leo Tolstoy

ABOVEThe Battle of Inkerman, 5 November 1854.The Russians suffered three successive battlefield

defeats in the Crimea – at the Alma, Balaclava, and

Inkerman – and then lost the great naval base atSevastopol. The need for military reform was obvious.

BELOW The Siege of Plevna, 1877. This was the

central action of the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878).The Russians were eventually victorious – but only

in a local war against the ‘Sick Man of Europe’.


21/84

example, began with a religious procession,

and icons and lamps adorned the defences of

the beleaguered fortress. Many soldiers main-tained a naïve belief that they would be granted

liberation from serfdom as a reward for service.

BRUTALITY AND STUPIDITY

The troops displayed remarkable courage and

endurance under fire, reinforced by brutal

physical punishment. In a minor concession

introduced after the Crimean War, the maxi-

mum number of lashes permitted was reduced

from 6,000 to a still incredible 1,500 strokes.

The savagery of military life led the writer Leo

Tolstoy, who witnessed the war at first hand as an

artillery officer, to write that ‘we have no army:

we have a horde of slaves cowed by discipline,ordered about by thieves and slave traders.’

Officers showed little concern for their

men’s welfare, and training laid great emphasis

on the detail of drill rather than the develop-

ment of tactics. Karl Marx wrote scornfully that

those who secured promotion were usually

‘martinets, whose principal merit consists of

stolid obedience and ready servility added to

accuracy of eyesight in detecting a fault in the

buttons and buttonholes of the uniform’.

This obsession with regulation and disci-

pline, dubbed ‘paradomania’ by some observ-

ers, was in part a response to the inefficiency

of the firearms issued to the infantry. The

standard weapon was still the smoothbore per-

cussion musket, which was wholly outclassed

by the Minié rifled musket that had been

issued to the British Army.

As a result, Russian soldiers were forced to

rely more on cold steel than accurate fire – a

principle embodied in the much-quoted words

of the Napoleonic-era general Suvorov that

‘the bullet is a fool, the bayonet a fine fellow’.

Throughout the period, regulations insisted

that the bayonet should be permanently fixed

when soldiers were in the zone of combat.

BACKWARDS INTO THE FUTURE

Defeat in the Crimea forced the Tsarist regime

to undertake a partial modernisation of the

country’s military and social system. The eman-

cipation of the serfs was now unavoidable if the

empire was to go down the path of managed

change rather than undergo outright revolution.

The indebted gentry were obliged to give

up ownership of their peasants, in return for

redemption payments levied on the land now

transferred to the freed serfs – in effect, the

latter had to pay for their own liberation.

In 1874, a reforming War Minister, Dmitry

Miliutin, introduced universal conscription,

organised through a territorial system of mili-

tary districts, which made service compulsoryfor all males over the age of 20. Soldiers now

spent a total of five years on active service,

with a further nine in the reserve; these

figures were changed to three and 15 years

respectively by the time of the First World War.

Although numerous exemptions persisted,

Russia had started to come into line with the

rest of Europe in having a mass conscript army.

There were also some modest improvements

in the quality of troops, with elementary edu-

cation made compulsory for recruits.

In the wake of the Crimean defeat, the

Russian Army made some uneven advances in

its adoption of new weaponry and equipment.

Progress in artillery was slow, with the charac-

teristic weapon of the 1870s being a bronze

breech-loader that was far behind the rifled

steel guns then being introduced into the

German Army.

www.military-history.org 21MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY

MODERN ARTILLERY

AND SMALL-ARMS

By the end of the century, however, Russia

had come to terms with the artillery revolution

caused by the invention of smokeless powder

and the appearance of workable recoil mecha-

nisms. The army that confronted Japan in

1904 was armed with an effective quick-firing

76mm field-gun, which was to remain the stan-

dard light field-piece well into the Soviet era.

But the Russians proved slower than the

Japanese in adopting techniques of indirect

fire from concealed positions, where observers

used telephones to coordinate attacks on targets

not visible to the gun crews.

Another weakness was in the provision of

heavy artillery. In the run-up to the First World

War, the Russian high command tended

to concentrate its largest weapons in East

European border fortresses rather than issu-

ing them to field armies. In the strongholds

RIGHT & BELOW RIGHT The Russo-Japanese War(1904-1905) stunned the world. A rising Asiatic

power defeated one of Europe’s traditional great

states. Inside Russia, the disaster triggered thefirst (abortive) revolution.


22/84

.30 calibre Mosin, a clip-loaded magazine rifle

with a range of more than 2,000 yards, which

was still holding its own against the models

favoured by the country’s opponents in the

First World War.

Russia’s War Ministry also recognised theimportance of the machine-gun, purchasing

the reliable Vickers-Maxim, which, with a rate of

fire of 250 rounds per minute, equalled the fire-

power of 50 infantrymen in a defensive position.

Like all European armies prior to 1914,

the Russian military assumed that frontal

assault by waves of infantry was the way to

capture enemy positions. In 1900, it was

decided that the distance over which troops

would charge with the bayonet should be

reduced from 1,000 paces to 300. Yet, with

Russian troops still organised in close forma-

tions, this was incapable of reducing signifi-

cantly the losses caused to attacking troopsby massed artillery- and rifle-fire.

At the same time, attention was given to

defensive tactics. The key features of trench

warfare were present a full decade before the

outbreak of the First World War, notably in the

six-month-long defence of Port Arthur against

the forces of Japan.

This was still an army that functioned on

the basis of detailed instructions, and in which

little importance was attached to initiative.

It was the reverse of the ‘mission-oriented’

approach that had been part of German mili-

tary practice for a generation, whereby junior

TSARIST ARMY

22

officers were required to think for themselves,

within an overall framework laid down by the

commander. Russian soldiers had not moved

beyond the volley-firing, on the orders of an

officer, that had typified 19th-century battles.

Sheer numbers, combined with the stolidendurance of adversity of the Russian peasant

conscript, was expected to deliver victory.

ON THE MOVE

Russia’s gradual transition to the modern

world was achieved at the cost of severe

pressure on its military budget. Slowly

industrialising as the new century dawned, the

Tsar’s empire lacked the advanced economic

infrastructure which favoured its principal

opponent in Europe, the German Reich.

Of course, given its huge size, Russia was

never likely to be able to mobilise its armies

as swiftly as its opponents. Tsar Alexander II’sgovernment began to address this problem

after the Crimean War, recognising that the

empire’s lack of railways had been a key weak-

ness. Its opponents had managed to resupply

their forces more rapidly by steamship, from

bases much further afield, than Russia had

been able to do overland.

Transport was a major weakness, too, in

the Russo-Japanese War. The critical link

was provided by the Trans-Siberian Railway,

a single-track link extending over 5,500

miles from European Russia to the Far East.

Long distances, combined with the line’s low

December 2015MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY

It could stilltake between30 and 50 days tomake the journeyfrom Moscow toManchuria.

ABOVEThe Imperial Russian Army in 1914. From left

to right: an infantryman of the line, an artilleryman,

a cavalryman of the guard, a dragoon, and a Cossack.

they captured in 1915, the Germans found

some two million shells stockpiled to equipalmost 6,000 heavy guns. Russia’s Great War

field artillery, on the other hand, was allocated

a shell reserve per gun that was half that of the

French and a third that of the Germans.

Efforts were also made to improve the

weaponry available to the infantry. By the

time of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878,

troops had been issued either with a converted

muzzle-loading rifle, the Krenk, or with a

single-shot, bolt-action rifle, the Berdanka.

From 1891, the Army adopted the superior


23/84

carrying-capacity, meant that munitions and

weapons failed to reach the theatre of war

quickly enough in the required quantities.

Transit speeds improved from October 1904,

with the completion of the rail line around

Lake Baikal. This meant that troops and

equipment no longer had to be moved across

the 35-mile-wide strip of water by ship and,

in winter, over the frozen ice. Nonetheless, itcould still take between 30 and 50 days to make

the journey from Moscow to Manchuria.

Shortages of rolling stock, conflicts between

railway managers and the mili tary, and the

tendency of senior officers to use the line

for their own private purposes, all prevented

the Trans-Siberian Railway from operating

at full capacity.

RAILWAY WARS

The situation was more favourable for the

empire in the European theatre ten years

later. On the outbreak of the First World War,

Russia proved able to move more quicklyagainst Germany than had been expected.

Railway construction in the preceding decade

had been boosted by French investment, and

in any case two-fifths of the Russian Army was

already stationed in the Polish borderlands.

Russian forces entered East Prussia in August

1914, less than two weeks after the declaration

of war, initially causing panic among the defend-

ing forces. The invaders’ further progress was

slowed, however, by a technical difficulty.

Russia had traditionally favoured a wider

gauge than that employed by most European

railway systems. This meant that on reaching

the frontier, soldiers had to continue on footor commandeer one of the few captured

German standard-gauge trains.

The Germans then made use of their rail

network to effect a rapid redeployment under

the bold leadership of Generals Hindenburg

and Ludendorff. They successfully concen-

trated their troops against the main invading

force under General Samsonov, while a

smaller force held the less formidable army

of General Rennenkampf further north. The

result was the decisive German victory of

Tannenberg at the end of August.

Technological deficiencies of another kind

played a part in this great defeat. The limitedavailability of wireless sets, and the tendency of

operators to send unencrypted messages, was

a serious weakness, given the increasing size

of battlefields in the early 20th century. The

more prevalent telephone communications

suffered from their dependence on the laying

of lines, the vulnerability of these, and the

limited reach of most systems.

Cavalry, who still conceived of their role

primarily as one of assault rather than recon-

naissance, were unable and unwilling to

provide the continuous flow of intelligence

that commanders required.

The First World War caught Russia’s Army

in the middle of an incomplete process of

modernisation. Ironically, the year that itshigh command had set for the completion

of its ‘grand programme’, aimed at making

Russia Europe’s greatest military power, was

1917. This was to be the year in which, under

the pressure of global conflict and industri-

alised war, the Tsarist system fell victim to

internal revolution. In the end, ancien régime

Russia ran out of time.

FAILURE AT THE TOP

In spite of successive attempts at reform, criti-

cal deficiencies at the level of command and

control persisted. Seniority rather than ability

was the main criterion for promotion, and theofficer corps was divided by faction-fighting

and professional jealousies. In the August

1914 campaign in East Prussia, the fact that


In this battle, which took place soon afer British

and French troops had landed on the Crimean

peninsula, the invaders encountered Russian

orces drawn up on high ground on the oppositeside o the River Alma, blocking the way to the

key ortress town o Sevastopol.

Although the Russians occupied a strong

deensive position, they aced an adversary armed

with a new and much more accurate weapon: the

Minié rie. Rather than a smooth ball, it red a

conical bullet with a hollow base, which expanded

to t the grooves inside the barrel. The Minié was

lethal rom well beyond the range o the Russian

inantry’s weapons.

As the Russian engineer Eduard Totleben recalled

‘our inantry with their muskets could not reachthe enemy at greater than 300 paces, while

they red on us at 1,200. The enemy, perectly

convinced o the superiority o his small-arms,

avoided close combat; every time our battalions

charged, he retired or some distance, and began

a murderous usillade.’

Russian casualties exceeded 5,000 men, while

total allied losses were in the region o 3,600.

The siege o Port Arthur, a key Russian naval base

on the Liaotung peninsula in Manchuria, was the

longest action o the Russo-Japanese War.Although the garrison was signicantly outnum-

bered by the attacking Japanese orces, the city

possessed ormidable deences in the orm o

a series o heavily ortied hills. Many o Port

Arthur’s deensive eatures were to become

amiliar in the battles o the First World War,

with overlapping elds o re, machine-gun

emplacements protected by barbed-wire

entanglements, mineelds, searchlights, and

artillery batteries connected by telephone to

eld headquarters.

The Japanese eventually overwhelmed the base

by mining under the ortications and deploying

huge 280mm howitzers.Both sides showed a willingness to accept heavy

casualties. In one part o the action alone, the battle

or 203 Metre Hill, the Russians suffered almost 5,000

killed and wounded, the Japanese close to 12,000.

The accounts o oreign military observers testied

to the horrors o the intense hand-to-hand ghting,

as men encountered each other across mounds o

mangled, unburied corpses. In the words o Britain’s

General Ian Hamilton, ‘Here the corpses do not so

much appear to be escaping rom the ground as to

be the ground itsel’.

CASE STUDY: THE BATTLE OF THE ALMA, SEPTEMBER 1854

CASE STUDY: THE DEFENCE OF PORT ARTHURJULY 1904 TO JANUARY 1905

‘Here the corpsesdo not so muchappear to beescaping from theground as to be

the ground itself.’Ian Hamilton


24/84

Rennenkampf and Samsonov belonged to

rival factions was a major problem.

Russia’s chances of success were further

underminedby problems higher up the chain

of command. At the start of the war, Tsar

Nicholas II appointed his cousin, Grand Duke

Nicholas, as supreme commander of his coun-

try’s forces. The latter not only lacked experi-

ence of strategic planning, but his effectiveness

was also limited by his inability to work with the

War Minister, Vladimir Sukhomlinov.

Friction was reduced by the Tsar’s decision

to replace his cousin in August 1915, but this

was insufficient to overcome the wider problems

of the military establishment.

No less seriously, Russia lacked an efficient

general staff of the kind developed by

Germany. The staff was subordinate to the

War Ministry, and its personnel lacked the

standing to assert themselves over the aristo-

cratic officers – mainly in the guards and the

cavalry – who still dominated the Army.

Hidebound deference to social superiors

reduced the worth of military exercises. Thus it

was obligatory for the side commanded by the

Tsar on manoeuvres to emerge as the winner.

TSARIST ARMY

24

There were insufficient staff officers

to work out plans, and the opening cam-

paigns of the First World War revealed an

inability to communicate effectively with

the battlefront.

It was little wonder that the Russian Army

struggled against Germany’s more efficient

war machine. The empire’s troops were let

down by their leaders. The fruits of this were

military failure, progressive demoralisation,

and the erosion of discipline, which, by early

1917, had doomed the Tsarist regime. .

Graham Goodlad teaches History and Politics

at St John’s College, Southsea.

December 2015MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY

Richard Connaughton, Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear: Russia’s War with Japan (Phoenix, 2004).

Orlando Figes, Crimea: the Last Crusade (Penguin, 2011).

Bruce Menning, Bayonets before Bullets: the Russian Imperial Army, 1861-1914(IndianaUniversity Press, 1992).

FURTHER READING

It was obligatoryfor the sidecommanded by theTsar on manoeuvresto emerge asthe winner.

ABOVEThe Tsar tries on a variety of uniforms –

from left to right, those of the Cuirassiers of theGuard, His Majesty’s Hussars, the Grodno Hussars,

the Preobrazhensky Regiment, and the Cossacks.


25/84


26/8426 December 2015MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLY

ABOVENapoleon commissioned French

artist François Gérard (1770-1837) to

commemorate his victory at Austerlitz.The painting depicts a romantic, highly

idealised scene in which General JeanRapp (1771-1821) presents the

defeated Prince Repnin to Napoleon.


27/84

Introduction

A

A usterlitz was not one of world history’s most

decisive battles. Eight years later, on the battlefield

of Leipzig, its outcome would be reversed.

But, at the time, it was a political earthquake:

the upstart emperor, the soldier of revolution,

the man from nowhere now stood on a par with the scions of ancient

royal dynasties. Indeed, he had surpassed them. They still looked moreresplendent in their plumes, sashes, and gold braid, but it was the little

man in the cocked hat and plain grey coat who was the victor.

Austerlitz broke the resistance of Habsburg Austria, chased

Romanov Russia back inside its eastern homeland, and destroyed

the diplomatic edifice painstakingly constructed by Hanoverian

Britain. In short, it established the European hegemony of

Napoleonic France.

Despite Leipzig and Waterloo, the world was never the same after

1805. Austerlitz sounded the death-knell of ancien régime Europe,

for the conservative social orders and creaking military traditions of

the other Great Powers had been exposed as anachronisms by the

dynamism of revolutionary France.

Napoleon’s brilliance was a concentrated expression of the potential

of a new way of war based on the mass, morale, and mobility of a ‘nation

in arms’. In the French Army, each man was a citizen with rights as well as

obligations; each officer had been promoted on merit rather than birth;

and each regulation could be justified by effectiveness, not tradition.

After ten years of defeat, France’s enemies were adapting: but too

slowly to catch up. French armies marched faster, manoeuvred better,and fought with greater aggression, élan, and system.

The new way of war had been forged in the fires of revolution and war,

despite the chaos of insurrections and coups, of divisions and defections,

in a decade of internal upheaval that had frequently imperilled the

survival of the nation.

But in 1804 Napoleon had made himself Emperor of the French, and

the following year he dubbed the new army he had assembled on the

Channel coast La Grande Armée . There was now a single, unified, central-

ised state; a sole autocrat who was both head of state and commander-in-

chief; and one great national army.

The leader’s supremacy was unchallenged. The instrument of conquest

had been forged. The time had come for a lightning war to dazzle the world.



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: W I P L

TheThreeEmperors


ABOVENapoleonBonaparte (1769-1821).

The Commanders

The French Emperor The coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte

(1769-1821) in 1804 deflated Royalist hopes

of restoring the Bourbons. The Emperor

hoped to legitimise an hereditary Bonapartist

dynasty, and in time produce a successor.

This move, however, challenged the status

of Francis of Austria (1768-1835) as Holy

Roman Emperor, fuel being added to the

diplomatic fire when Bonaparte declared

himself King of Italy, extending the French

sphere of influence into a region traditionally

dominated by Austria.

Although Napoleon’s new Code Civil

of 1804 – a condensed single volume of

law based on that of the Ancien Régime

and the Revolution – proclaimed equality

before the law, it also enabled the state

to intervene in the private affairs of the

citizen. Accordingly, by the end of 1800,

all newspapers except nine had been

closed down, and those that remained

were heavily censored; private correspon-

dence was routinely opened; spy networks

flourished; and imprisonment without trial

was commonplace.

The Concordat of 1802 effectively

reconciled the Church to the Bonapartist

regime, defusing pro-Royalist feeling while

attempting to make political agents out of

village priests. Moreover, it signalled an

end to Republicanism and the beginning

of Bonaparte’s autocratic rule.

Thus, in the years between his seizure

of power in 1799 and the campaign of

1805, Napoleon had transformed France

and established an extraordinary personal

ascendancy. France was united, streamlined,

centralised as never before.

Napoleon attempted to placate public

opinion through spectacular battlefield

victories and lucrative conquest (France was

to gain an estimated 50 million francs from

Austerlitz). He sought to equate personal

success and national triumph. To maintain

a grip on his empire, Napoleon relied on

members of his extended family, many of

whom simply enriched themselves at the

expense of their master and the people

over whom they ruled.

The regime appeared precarious. Astute

Frenchmen of dubious loyalty like foreign

minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

(1754-1838) and police chief Joseph Fouché

(1759-1820), guessing that Napoleon’s hold

on power would be brief, conducted private

negotiations with Third Coalition diplomats

prior to Austerlitz.

Ian Maycock considers the opposing commanders at the Battle of Austerlitz.

He sought toequate personalsuccess andnational triumph.


29/84MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLYwww.military-history.org 29

A failed bomb plot left Napoleon believing

France was riddled with British and Royalist

agents. He ordered that prominent Bourbon

émigré the Duc d’Enghien (1772-1804),

who was living in Baden near the French

border, be kidnapped and bought back

to France.

The subsequent mock trial and execution

of the Duc hardened the growing anti-

Bonapartist resolve around the salons of

Europe. Napoleon – the upstart monarch,

the soldier of revolution, the standard-bearer

of anti-feudal and anti-clerical reform – was

perceived as a threat to the European ancien

régime as a whole.

The Peace of Amiens (1802) therefore

turned out to be the briefest of respites. It broke

down after barely a year, and Napoleon – before

his programme of administrative and military

reforms was complete – found himself again

at war with Britain. Before his newly formed

Grande Armée , massed on the Channel coast,

could attempt an invasion, he found himself

at war with Austria and Russia as well.

Napoleon, however, was at the height of

his powers, and was now in sole, undisputed

control of the French state and its army. The

campaign of 1805 – an autumn blitzkrieg that

destroyed the Third Coalition – represented

the summit of his military achievement.

The Russian Tsar Tsar Alexander I (1777-1825) reportedly

fled the field of Austerlitz in tears. The

young monarch had effectively seized

control of the army from the veteran

general Mikhail Kutusov (1745-1813)

prior to the battle – with dire results

for Russia.

Having ascended the throne in

1801 following the assassination of

his father Paul (1754-1801), Alexander

had flattered, attempted to emulate, and

then finally squared up to Napoleon in

response to the latter’s expansion into

the eastern Mediterranean, Germany,

Italy, and the Balkans.

Russia assumed the role of defender

of the European political and social order

against the disruptive impact of Napoleonic

France – a role as the ‘gendarme of Europe’

that it would retain throughout the 19th cen-

tury. Alexander knew that he could not break

the power of the Bonapartist state alone, so

he entered into alliance with Austria, and

sought one with Prussia also.

Despite the disaster at Austerlitz, creating

and sustaining future coalitions would prove

to be Alexander’s most notable achievement.

He insisted that the rolling back of French

conquests and the toppling of ‘the ogre’

from his throne were the only way to achieve

peace and stability in Europe.

Alexander’s military competence was

another matter. He ignored the advice of

Kutusov – a socially well-connected aristocrat

rather than the wily peasant of War and Peace

– and insisted on giving battle at Austerlitz

when to do so played into Napoleon’s hands.

Kutusov – in 1805, as in 1812 – favoured a

retreat to extend the enemy’s supply-lines

to breaking point.

The Austrian Emperor The rivalry between the Archduke Charles(1771-1847), brother of Emperor Francis(1768-1835), and General Karl Mack

(1752-1828) split the Austrian high com-

mand. Charles has often been portrayed

(not least by Austrian historians) as

the ‘anti-Napoleon’.

Certainly, he advised against war in 1805,

and was to defeat Napoleon in a set-piece

battle at Aspern-Essling in 1809. However, the

fact that his proposed political and military

reforms had not been acted on prior to 1805

led to his rather half-hearted participation in

the Austerlitz campaign.

Instead of trusting Charles, Francis and his

hawkish advisers turned to the ambitious son of

a saddle-maker, General Mack, who promised

he could implement reforms and still mobilise

the army in time to meet the French.

Mack pushed for the main Austrian effort

to be made along the Danube, while Charles

had proposed Italy as the main theatre of war.

Mack was lured into the Black Forest defiles,

outflanked by the Grande Armée , and then

allowed himself to become bottled up at Ulm.

Emperor Francis, demoralised and dis-

oriented by the disaster, then became prey

to another military adventurer, Francis von

Weyrother (1755-1806). Convinced that the

French were on the back foot, Weyrother’s

aggressive and complex plan for an all-out

Coalition attack on the left at Austerlitz was

exactly what Napoleon had hoped for.

The double disaster at Ulm and Austerlitz –

coupled with the fall of his capital (Vienna) –

broke the spirit of the Austrian Emperor, who

sought an interview with Napoleon the day

after the second battle to secure an armistice,

and had signed the Peace of Pressburg within

the month. .

The Commanders

ABOVETsar Alexander I (1777-1825).

BELOWEmperor Francis II of Austria (1768-1835).


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Mustering the Troops


The Armies

LA GRANDE ARMÉE The French Revolution created both problems

and opportunities for the new state that

emerged from it. French governments could

no longer rely on a well-drilled professional

army capable of the complex battlefield

manoeuvres that had characterised the

European killing-fields of the Seven Years

War. Instead, huge levies of enthusiastic but

untrained troops had to make up in élan and

vigour for what they lacked in textbook drill.

Unsurprisingly, the old officer corps was

looked on as a potential hotbed of counter-

revolution, since, in 1789, 85% of new offi-

cers were drawn from the nobility. This had

fallen to fewer than 3% by 1799 – a measure

of the upheavals of the Revolution, which,

on the one hand, had caused many aristo-

crats to flee and others to be purged, and,

on the other, had made of the French officer

corps ‘a career open to talent’.

In 1790 conscription was introduced, and

in 1793 the National Convention brought in

the levée en masse , whereby all French males

were conscripted into the army until an unspec-

ified ‘time of national crisis’ had elapsed.

If the state claimed to be the legitimate

voice of the people, then it s tood to reason

that the citizen was duty-bound to defend the

state. Thus ‘the nation in arms’ was born: a

military meritocracy wherein the individual’s

social standing depended on his military role.

In consequence, by the end of 1794, France

could boast an unprecedented 700,000

men under arms. This was the base metal

from which Napoleon would later forge

La Grande Armée .

THE CORPS SYSTEM

For the Austerlitz campaign, the French

deployed an army of seven corps (approxi-

mately 176,000 men in total), an arrange-

ment that gave them the operational edge

over their opponents, both in manoeuvre

and flexibility.

Napoleon had improvised a corps system

in Italy in 1800, in effect creating small,

independent, all-arms armies of 25,000-30,000

men, each capable of travelling along a

separate route of march, foraging for them-

selves, yet remaining close enough to their

neighbours for mutual support and rapid

concentration. If well handled, the corps

was capable of holding off a more numerous

opponent until help arrived.

Subdividing armies into self-contained

divisions was not, in fact, new: it had been

done during the Seven Years War. But the

French revived the practice, and Napoleon

Ian Maycock reviews the armies at the Battle of Austerlitz.

LEFTBy 1805, the French cavalry had become as

good as any in the world. Shown here is a light

cavalryman of the Chasseurs à Cheval . Napoleon’s

light cavalry played a key role in the campaign,

screening his strategic movement from the enemy,

which allowed him to carry out his manoeuvres

unobserved and achieve complete surprise.


31/84MILITARYHISTORY MONTHLYwww.military-history.org 31

turned it into one of the foundation-blocks

of his strategic method – though the corps

system could go awry if wayward marshals

deviated from their strategic objectives or

route marches became disrupted.

Undaunted by unfavourable odds,

Napoleon’s main strategic aim was nearly

always to crush his opponent’s field forces.

This was best achieved by lightning marches

and manoeuvres, the French often appearing

behind or on the flank of the enemy.

BLITZKRIEG

In order to maximise speed and surprise,

the French Army was encouraged to live

off the land, dispensing with cumbersome

supply-trains. This enhanced speed but often

alienated host populations. It also meant

that once an area had been exhausted, it

was rendered useless if the army had to cross

it again (a major problem during the 1812

campaign in Russia).

In 1805, Bernadotte’s corps en route to

fighting the Austrians marched through the

Prussian territory of Ansbach while foraging

for provisions – an event that almost succeeded

in bringing Prussia into the war on the Coalition

side. Such ‘lightning’ manoeuvres could also

leave an army’s flank exposed.

Napoleon often achieved favourable

battlefield conditions by isolating enemy

armies that had strayed out of the supporting

range of their allies (Austerlitz being a case

in point). Utilising the French superiority in

manoeuvre, he would then attempt to ‘pin’

his victim against some natural barrier prior

to destroying him. Having dealt with one

enemy, he would then move onto the next,

while deploying a holding force to keep

any intervening force at bay.

In time, Napoleon’s enemies grew wise

to this method

12. military history monthly - december 2015

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