Battle Studies; Ancient and Modern Battle Part 2

In default of exceptional generals who remold in some campaigns, with a superb stroke, the damaged or untempered military metal, it is of importance to supply it with the ideals of Ardant du Picq. Those who are formed by his image, by his book, will never fall into error. His book has not been written to please aesthetic preciseness, but with a sincerity which knows no limit. It therefore contains irrefutable facts and theories.

The solidity of these fragmentary pages defies time; the work interrupted by the German sh.e.l.l is none the less erected for eternity.

The work has muscles, nerves and a soul. It has the transparent concentration of reality. A thought may be expressed by a single word.

The terseness of the calcined phrase explains the interior fire of it all, the magnificent conviction of the author. The distinctness of outline, the most astounding brevity of touch, is such that the vision of the future bursts forth from the resurrection of the past. The work contains, indeed, substance and marrow of a prophetic experience.

Amidst the praise rendered to the scintillating beauties of this book, there is perhaps, none more impressive than that of Barbey d'Aurevilly, an ill.u.s.trious literary man of a long and generous patrician lineage. His comment, kindled with lyric enthusiasm, is illuminating. It far surpa.s.ses the usual narrow conception of technical subjects. Confessing his professional ignorance in matters of war, his sincere eulogy of the eloquent amateur is therefore only the more irresistible.

"Never," writes Barbey d'Aurevilly, "has a man of action--of brutal action in the eyes of universal prejudice--more magnificently glorified the spirituality of war. Mechanics--abominable mechanics--takes possession of the world, crushing it under its stupid and irresistible wheels. By the action of newly discovered and improved appliances the science of war a.s.sumes vast proportions as a means of destruction. Yet here, amid the din of this upset modern world we find a brain sufficiently master of its own thoughts as not to permit itself to be dominated by these horrible discoveries which, we are told, would make impossible Fredericks of Prussia and Napoleons and lower them to the level of the private soldier! Colonel Ardant du Picq tells us somewhere that he has never had entire faith in the huge battalions which these two great men, themselves alone worth more than the largest battalions, believed in. Well, to-day, this vigorous brain believes no more in the mechanical or mathematical force which is going to abolish these great battalions. A calculator without the least emotion, who considers the mind of man the essential in war--because it is this mind that makes war--he surely sees better than anybody else a profound change in the exterior conditions of war which he must consider. But the spiritual conditions which are produced in war have not changed. Such, is the eternal mind of man raised to its highest power by discipline. Such, is the Roman cement of this discipline that makes of men indestructible walls. Such, is the cohesion, the solidarity between men and their leaders. Such, is the moral influence of the impulse which gives the certainty of victory.

"'To conquer is to advance,' de Maistre said one day, puzzled at this phenomenon of victory. The author of "Etudes sur le Combat" says more simply: 'To conquer is to be sure to overcome.' In fine, it is the mind that wins battles, that will always win them, that always has won them throughout the world's history. The spirituality, the moral quality of war, has not changed since those times. Mechanics, modern arms, all the artillery invented by man and his science, will not make an end to this thing, so lightly considered at the moment and called the human soul. Books like that of Ardant du Picq prevent it from being disdained. If no other effect should be produced by this sublime book, this one thing would justify it. But there will be others--do not doubt it--I wish merely to point out the sublimity of this didactic book which, for me, has wings like celestial poetry and which has carried me above and far away from the materialistic abjectness of my time. The technique of tactics and the science of war are beyond my province. I am not, like the author, erudite on maneuvers and the battle field. But despite my ignorance of things exclusively military, I have felt the truth of the imperious demonstrations with which it is replete, as one feels the presence of the sun behind a cloud. His book has over the reader that moral ascendancy which is everything in war and which determines success, according to the author. This ascendancy, like truth itself, is the sort which cannot be questioned.

Coming from the superior mind of a leader who inspires faith it imposes obedience by its very strength. Colonel Ardant du Picq was a military writer only, with a style of his own. He has the Latin brevity and concentration. He retains his thought, a.s.sembles it and always puts it out in a compact phrase like a cartridge. His style has the rapidity and precision of the long-range arms which have dethroned the bayonet. He would have been a writer anywhere. He was a writer by nature. He was of that sacred phalanx of those who have a style all to themselves."

Barbey d'Aurevilly rebels against tedious technicalities. Carried away by the author's historical and philosophical faculties, he soars without difficulty to the plane of Ardant du Picq. In like manner, du Picq ranges easily from the most mediocre military operations to the a.n.a.lysis of the great functions of policy of government and the evolution of nations.

Who could have unraveled with greater finesse the causes of the insatiable desires of conquest by the new power which was so desirous of occupying the leading role on the world's stage? If our diplomats, our ministers and our generals had seized the warning of 1866, the date of the defeat of Austria, it is possible that we might have been spared our own defeats.

"Has an aristocracy any excuse for existing if it is not military? No.

The Prussian aristocracy is essentially military. In its ranks it does accept officers of plebeian extraction, but only under condition that they permit themselves to be absorbed therein.

"Is not an aristocracy essentially proud? If it were not proud it would lack confidence. The Prussian aristocracy is, therefore, haughty; it desires domination by force and its desire to rule, to dominate more and more, is the essence of its existence. It rules by war; it wishes war; it must have war at the proper time. Its leaders have the good judgment to choose the right moment. This love of war is in the very fiber, the very makeup of its life as an aristocracy.

"Every nation that has an aristocracy, a military n.o.bility, is organized in a military way. The Prussian officer is an accomplished gentleman and n.o.bleman; by instruction or examination he is most capable; by education, most worthy. He is an officer and commands from two motives, the French officer from one alone.

"Prussia, in spite of all the veils concealing reality, is a military organization conducted by a military corporation. A nation, democratically const.i.tuted, is not organized from a military point of view. It is, therefore, as against the other, in a state of unpreparedness for war.

"A military nation and a warlike nation are not necessarily the same.

The French are warlike from organization and instinct. They are every day becoming less and less military.

"In being the neighbor of a military nation, there is no security for a democratic nation; the two are born enemies; the one continually menaces the good influences, if not the very existence of the other.

As long as Prussia is not democratic she is a menace to us.

"The future seems to belong to democracy, but, before this future is attained by Europe, who will say that victory and domination will not belong for a time to military organization? It will presently perish for the lack of sustenance of life, when having no more foreign enemies to vanquish, to watch, to fight for control, it will have no reason for existence."

In tracing a portrait so much resembling bellicose and conquering Prussia, the sharp eye of Ardant du Picq had recognized clearly the danger which immediately threatened us and which his deluded and trifling fellow citizens did not even suspect. The morning after Sadowa, not a single statesman or publicist had yet divined what the Colonel of the 10th Regiment of the Line had, at first sight, understood. Written before the catastrophes of Froeschwiller, Metz and Sedan, the fragment seems, in a retrospective way, an implacable accusation against those who deceived themselves about the Hohenzollern country by false liberalism or a softening of the brain.

Unswerved by popular ideas, by the artificial, by the trifles of treaties, by the chimera of theories, by the charlatanism of bulletins, by the nonsense of romantic fiction, by the sentimentalities of vain chivalry, Ardant du Picq, triumphant in history, is even more the incomparable master in the field of his laborious days and nights, the field of war itself. Never has a clearer vision fathomed the b.l.o.o.d.y mysteries of the formidable test of war. Here man appears as his naked self. He is a poor thing when he succ.u.mbs to unworthy deeds and panics. He is great under the impulse of voluntary sacrifice which transforms him under fire and for honor or the salvation of others makes him face death.

The sound and complete discussions of Ardant du Picq take up, in a poignant way, the setting of every military drama. They envelop in a circle of invariable phenomena the apparent irregularity of combat, determining the critical point in the outcome of the battle. Whatever be the conditions, time or people, he gives a code of rules which will not perish. With the enthusiasm of Pascal, who should have been a soldier, Ardant du Picq has the preeminent gift of expressing the infinite in magic words. He unceasingly opens an abyss under the feet of the reader. The whole metaphysics of war is contained therein and is grasped at a single glance.

He shows, weighed in the scales of an amazing exact.i.tude, the normal efficiency of an army; a mult.i.tude of beings shaken by the most contradictory pa.s.sions, first desiring to save their own skins and yet resigned to any risk for the sake of a principle. He shows the quant.i.ty and quality of possible efforts, the aggregate of losses, the effects of training and impulse, the intrinsic value of the troops engaged. This value is the sum of all that the leader can extract from any and every combination of physical preparation, confidence, fear of punishment, emulation, enthusiasm, inclination, the promise of success, administration of camps, fire discipline, the influence of ability and superiority, etc. He shows the tragic depths, so somber below, so luminous above, which appear in the heart of the combatant torn between fear and duty. In the private soldier the sense of duty may spring from blind obedience; in the non-commissioned officer, responsible for his detachment, from devotion to his trade; in the commanding officer, from supreme responsibility! It is in battle that a military organization justifies its existence. Money spent by the billions, men trained by the millions, are gambled on one irrevocable moment. Organization decides the terrible contest which means the triumph or the downfall of the nation! The harsh rays of glory beam above the field of carnage, destroying the vanquished without scorching the victor.

Such are the basic elements of strategy and tactics!

There is danger in theoretical speculation of battle, in prejudice, in false reasoning, in pride, in braggadocio. There is one safe resource, the return to nature.

The strategy that moves in elevated spheres is in danger of being lost in the clouds. It becomes ridiculous as soon as it ceases to conform to actual working tactics. In his cla.s.sical work on the decisive battle of August 18, 1870, Captain Fritz Hoenig has reached a sound conclusion. After his biting criticism of the many gross errors of Steinmetz and Zastrow, after his description of the triple panic of the German troops opposite the French left in the valley and the ravine of the Mance, he ends by a reflection which serves as a striking ending to the book. He says, "The grandest ill.u.s.tration of Moltke's strategy was the battle of Gravelotte-Saint Privat; but the battle of Gravelotte has taught us one thing, and that is, the best strategy cannot produce good results if tactics is at fault."

The right kind of tactics is not improvised. It a.s.serts itself in the presence of the enemy but it is learned before meeting the enemy.

"There are men," says Ardant du Picq, "such as Marshal Bugeaud, who are born military in character, mind, intelligence and temperament.

Not all leaders are of this stamp. There is, then, need for standard or regulation tactics appropriate to the national character which should be the guide for the ordinary commander and which do not exact of him the exceptional qualities of a Bugeaud."

"Tactics is an art based on the knowledge of how to make men fight with their maximum energy against fear, a maximum which organization alone can give."

"And here confidence appears. It is not the enthusiastic and thoughtless confidence of tumultuous or improvised armies that gives way on the approach of danger to a contrary sentiment which sees treason everywhere; but the intimate, firm, conscious confidence which alone makes true soldiers and does not disappear at the moment of action."

"We now have an army. It is not difficult for us to see that people animated by pa.s.sions, even people who know how to die without flinching, strong in the face of death, but without discipline and solid organization, are conquered by others who are individually less valiant but firmly organized, all together and one for all."

"Solidarity and confidence cannot be improvised. They can be born only of mutual acquaintanceship which establishes pride and makes unity.

And, from unity comes in turn the feeling of force, that force which gives to the attack the courage and confidence of victory. Courage, that is to say, the domination of the will over instinct even in the greatest danger, leads finally to victory or defeat."

In asking for a doctrine in combat and in seeking to base it on the moral element, Ardant du Picq was ahead of his generation. He has had a very great influence. But, the doctrine is not yet established.

How to approach the adversary? How to pa.s.s from the defensive to the offensive? How to regulate the shock? How to give orders that can be executed? How to transmit them surely? How to execute them by economizing precious lives? Such are the distressing problems that beset generals and others in authority. The result is that presidents, kings and emperors hesitate, tremble, interrogate, pile reports upon reports, maneuvers upon maneuvers, r.e.t.a.r.d the improvement of their military material, their organization, their equipment.

The only leaders who are equal to the difficulties of future war, come to conclusions expressed in almost the same terms. Recently General de Negrier, after having insisted that physical exhaustion determined by the nervous tension of the soldier, increased in surprising proportions according to the invisibility of the adversary, expressed himself as follows:

"The tide of battle is in the hands of each fighter, and never, at any time, has the individual bravery of the soldier had more importance.

"Whatever the science of the superior commander, the genius of his strategic combinations, the precision of his concentrations, whatever numerical superiority he may have, victory will escape him if the soldier does not conduct himself without being watched, and if he is not personally animated by the resolution to conquer or to perish. He needs much greater energy that formerly.

"He no longer has the intoxication of ancient attacks in ma.s.s to sustain him. Formerly, the terrible anxiety of waiting made him wish for the violent blow, dangerous, but soon pa.s.sed. Now, all his normal and physical powers are tried for long hours and, in such a test, he will have but the resoluteness of his own heart to sustain him.

"Armies of to-day gain decisions by action in open order, where each soldier must act individually with will and initiative to attack the enemy and destroy him.

"The Frenchman has always been an excellent rifleman, intelligent, adroit and bold. He is naturally brave. The metal is good; the problem is to temper it. It must be recognized that to-day this task is not easy. The desire for physical comfort, the international theories which come therefrom, preferring economic slavery and work for the profit of the stranger to the struggle, do not incite the Frenchman to give his life in order to save that of his brother.

"The new arms are almost valueless in the hands of weakhearted soldiers, no matter what their number may be. On the contrary, the demoralizing power of rapid and smokeless firing, which certain armies still persist in not acknowledging, manifests itself with so much the more force as each soldier possesses greater valor and cool energy.

"It is then essential to work for the development of the moral forces of the nation. They alone will sustain the soldier in the distressing test of battle where death comes unseen.

"That is the most important of the lessons of the South African war.

Small nations will find therein the proof that, in preparing their youth for their duties as soldiers and creating in the hearts of all the wish for sacrifice, they are certain to live free; but only at this price."

This profession of faith contradicts the imbecile sophisms foolishly put into circulation by high authority and a thoughtless press, on the efficiency of the ma.s.s, which is nothing but numbers, on the fantastic value of new arms, which are declared sufficient for gaining a victory by simple mechanical perfection, on the suppression of individual courage. It is almost as though courage had become a superfluous and embarra.s.sing factor. Nothing is more likely to poison the army. Ardant du Picq is the best specific against the heresies and the follies of ignorance or of pedantry. Here are some phrases of unerring truth.

They ought to be impressed upon all memories, inscribed upon the walls of our military schools. They ought to be learned as lessons by our officers and they ought to rule them as regulations and pa.s.s into their blood:

"Man is capable of but a given quant.i.ty of fear. To-day one must swallow in five minutes the dose that one took in an hour in Turenne's day."

"To-day there is greater need than ever for rigid formation."

"Who can say that he never felt fear in battle? And with modern appliances, with their terrible effect on the nervous system, discipline is all the more necessary because one fights only in open formation."

"Combat exacts a moral cohesion, a solidarity more compact that ever before."

"Since the invention of fire arms, the musket, rifle, cannon, the distances of mutual aid and support are increased between the various arms. The more men think themselves isolated, the more need they have of high morale."

"We are brought by dispersion to the need of a cohesion greater than ever before."