ISSUE 158 : Jan/Feb - 2003 - Australian Defence Force Journal

42
AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE FORCE JOURNAL NO. 158 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003
as well as violence.” 29 In the years following the
French Revolution Napoleon’s Grande Armée
capitalised not only on the RMA, but also the
socio-political developments of the Revolution.
This lay in stark contrast to their opponents.
The Prussian Army
The Prussian Army of 1806 and its leadership
were the antithesis of the Grande Armée. Buoyed
by their historical success, they were reliant upon
outdated ideas, organisations and technology.
Concepts and doctrine remained unchanged from
the days of Frederick the Great. The tradition of
harsh discipline produced “an army of
automatons” 30 who adhered to a rigid system of
shoulder-to-shoulder drill, in which precision was
more desirable than speed or flexibility. While
the infantry were well disciplined, overregimentation
led to formalised tactics that
discouraged initiative, and most were issued with
50-year-old pattern muskets. The cavalry were
bold but intensely conservative in organisation
and role. The artillery arm was large in size but
badly handled and often misemployed. 31
Although they were numerically superior to
the French, the Prussians could field only
171,000 troops out of a total strength of 254,000
due to flawed administration. Strategic mobility
was reduced to a minimum through reliance on
enormous supply trains and fixed magazines and
supply depots. There was no proper staff corps
and no corps HQs, and divisional staffs were
poorly organised. As a result, orders from
general HQ had to be incredibly detailed and
often contradicted the actual situation on the
ground. The chain of command and decisionmaking
processes used in 1806 were so
convoluted that David Chandler referred to the
Prussian hierarchy as a “many-headed hydra”. 32
An interesting comparison between the
Prussian and French Armies is the relative age of
their commanders. At Jena-Auerstädt Napoleon
and his marshals were aged in their late thirties to
early forties. The Prussian commanders,
however, were positively elderly. The
commander, Charles William Ferdinand (the
Duke of Brunswick) was 71; his rival Friedrich
Ludwig (Prince of Hohenlohe) was 61; cavalry
General von Blücher was 64; and von Mollendorf
– the senior royal adviser who still fancied
himself as a field commander – the grand old age
of 81. 33 Striking a balance between youth and
experience, able to withstand the physical and
mental rigors of modern warfare, and fully
accustomed to the new way of warfare, the
French commanders would simply run rings
around their Prussian counterparts.
Despite these shortcomings morale was high
and an air of “effortless superiority” pervaded all
ranks. 34 Amid this environment the Prussians did
not envisage the disaster that was about to occur
at the hands of Napoleon. In Chandler’s words,
“the warriors of Prussia had to be taught the hard
way that the realities of warfare had changed
beyond all recognition in the 50 years since
Rossbach and Leuthen.” 35
The Prussian Campaign
After the destruction of the Third Coalition at
Austerlitz in December 1805, Napoleon turned
his attention to Prussia. Under Frederick William
III Prussia had avoided participation in earlier
hostilities alongside Russia and Austria under
thinly disguised neutrality, but had planned to
“share in the liquidation of the French Empire” in
the event of Napoleon’s anticipated collapse. 36
The Prussian Government was Napoleon’s first
target in a number of political dealings aimed to
consolidate French domination over Europe. Due
to the disposition of the Grande Armée on its
southern frontier Prussia seemingly had little
option but to capitulate, however in August 1806
Frederick William decided to go to war against
France. Once again, as F.N. Maude highlights,
the scene was set for an epic struggle between the
French republic and one of its aristocratic
opponents:
Here the old and the new school, absolute
Monarchy and Democracy, both in their
highest form of embodiment, met one another
under fairly equal conditions, … 37
True to form, but contrary to the response
initially anticipated by the Prussian military
leadership, Napoleon took the offensive.
However, unlike the prelude to his victory over
the Third Coalition the year before, the political
situation leading up to the invasion of Prussia in
1806 resulted in a high degree of uncertainty. His
campaign plan was to advance through Saxony to
Leipzig, in order to threaten Berlin, whilst