Napoleon and the First Empire's Ministries of War and Military Administration: The Construction of a Military Bureaucracy

247 Pages·2006·8.74 MB·English

by  Everett Thomas Dague

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.