Napoleon and the First Empire's Ministries of War and Military Administration: The Construction of a Military Bureaucracy PDF
Preview Napoleon and the First Empire's Ministries of War and Military Administration: The Construction of a Military Bureaucracy
APOLEON AND THE MrNISTRIES OF nAK AND MILITARY ADMINISTRATION THE CONSTRUCTION OF A MILITARY BUREAUCRACY EVERETT THOMAS DAGUE NAPOLEON AND THE FmST EMPIRE'S MINISTRIES OF WAR AND MILITARY ADMINISTRATION The Construction of a Military Bureaucracy Everett Thomas Dague The Edwin Mellen Press LewistoneQueenston· Lampeter Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dague, Everett Thomas. Napoleon and the First Empire's ministries of war and military administration: the construction of a military bureaucracy I by Everett Thomas Dague. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7734-5613-6 ISBN-lO: 0-7734-5613-9 1. Title. hors serie. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Front cover image by Jacques-Lollis David (1748-1825), Oath of tile Army made to the Emperor after the distributioll a/the Eagles to tile Fields a/Mars, 1810, National Museum a/the Castle of Versailles Copyright © 2006 Everett Thomas Dague All rights reserved. For information contact The Edwin Mellen Press The Edwin Mellen Press Box 450 Box 67 Lewiston, New York Queenston, Ontario USA 14092-0450 CANADA LOS 1LO The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd. Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales UNITED KINGDOM SA48 8LT Printed in the United States of America To Wilma Table of Contents Foreword by Prof. Dennis Showalter Introduction v Chapter 1 1 Preface and Terminology Chapter 2 15 Introduction: The Historiographical Traditions of Napoleonic Administration Chapter 3 31 A Revolutionary Ministry of War? Antecedents and Precedents, 1715-l799 Chapter 4 51 Bureaucratic Evolution, November 1799 to August 1807 Chapter 5 69 The Rise of Henri Clarke Chapter 6 95 Development and Operations of the War Ministry under Henri Clarke, 1808 -1810 Chapter 7 117 Army-Building, Administrative Operations and the Walcheren Island Colonne Mobile, 18ll Chapter 8 131 The Opportunity of Malet Chapter 9 147 The Coming Storm: 1813 Chapter 10 167 1814: AmlUs Terribilis Chapter 11 185 After the Emperor, Beyond the Empire Appendix 193 Structure and Organization of the Ministries of War, War Administration, and Related Offices, 1799-1815 Bibliography 213 Index 229 Foreword It is a cliche among students of war to say that "amateurs talk about tactics and strategy; professionals talk about logistics." Contemporary avatars of the Warrior Spirit have secured the spelling of "Soldier" with a capital S in the US Army. For some extreme fire-eaters, logistics is a religious experience. The commander prays into a radio and food, water, and ammunition are delivered from above-by helicopter. But from resupply to record-keeping, sustainability has been the historic linchpin of military effectiveness. It is safe to say that what distinguishes war from violence is an adjective: war is organized violence. With some allowance for hyperbole, it is correspondingly safe to say that war especially modern war-- is about administration. Military bureaucracies began developing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The British War Office, for example, came into existence in 1683. Like its counterparts, however, its functions and authority remained limited for over a century. France's Secretariat de la Guerre was a few years older, but the country's military administration was a tangle of overlapping, contradictory agencies and jurisdictions. The multiple humiliations of the Seven Years War brought some rationalization of the system. During the Revolution, the Ministry of War's authority over the nation's military capacities was increased-but recognition of the accompanying political risks kept the institution subject to external pressure ii and influence. Conventional wisdom on the subject has Napoleon bestriding France's administrative world like a colossus, bringing the War Ministry in particular under his supreme authority to a point where he has been described as being his own Minister of War. By extension, the Ministry's achievements and failures were functions of the Emperor's judgment. Everett Dague, in a tour de force of original archival research, fundamentally redefines the nature and position of Napoleon's Ministry of War. Using previously neglected files, he painstakingly demonstrates that under the First Empire the Ministry developed not as a monolith, whether autonomous or under Imperial control, but as a synergy of competing administrative authorities. Stable and self-referencing, it was also f1exible-a quality which Dague demonstrates reflected the Ministry's growing professionalization. Under the Ancien Regime, the Revolution, and the early Empire administrative officers were often chosen for other reasons than administrative ability, and always subject to the influence of military and civilian outsiders. Then Henri-Jacques-Guillaume Clarke held the office he held from 1807 to 1817. Dague calls Clarke France's first professional military administrator. He died a Marshal of France, and performed as heroically behind the desks of Paris as his counterparts did on the battlefields of Europe. A formidable bureaucratic iii infighter, Clarke increased the Ministry's budgets. He established control over previously independent bureaus, such as those dealing with conscription and desertion. He coordinated administrative procedures. Above all, Clarke protected his subordinates, creating a loyalty that, while fragile by later standards, was exemplary in the cutthroat world of the Imperium. In the process, Clarke's ministry sustained an ever-expanding Imperial war effort effectively if not always efficiently. In turn, the field armies translated administrative successes into military victory for a time. Clarke could comb the Empire for men; supervise arms manufacturing; and see that Napoleon was obeyed in regions not directly under his eye. One of Dague's most useful contributions is the support he provides to the revisionist argument that French logistics were a far cry from the improvisations of popular mythology. The invasion of Russia in1812 represented the War Ministry's greatest triumph, and Napoleon's retention of power, while isolated in the depths of Russia, owed not a little to the Herculean efforts of his War Minister. Similarly the series of defeats Napoleon suffered in 1813 owed much to his efforts to whittle away the power of this potentially overmighty subject. No less important is Dague's demonstration that the synergy that developed between its bureaucratic operational elements under the Empire created a stabilizing balance that for over a century enabled the army to preserve its autonomy without challenging the political system, no matter what its nature.
The list of books you might like
