STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 108
A Strategist, Not a Tactician
12. A Strategist, Not a Tactician (15)
Occasionally we find great cavalry charges with the reserve made, not with the usual object of finishing the battle with the decisive blow, but for reasons of momentary necessity. The first clear case of this was the attack of the reserve cavalry at Eylau, which was made with the mere object of gaining necessary time. Napoleon’s main stroke at the Russian centre, with Augereau’s corps, had not only failed but had led to the almost complete extermination of that unfortunate unit, which had been, in a dense snowstorm, led against a great battery flanked by cavalry. So thoroughly was Augereau’s corps broken, that the Emperor had no infantry centre left him for the moment, though his two wings were both gaining ground in a satisfactory way. He solved the problem of preventing the enemy from taking advantage of the break in his line by hurling the whole of his reserve cavalry at their centre, not so much with the hope of winning the battle by their charge, as with the intent of holding the enemy to his ground, till the French line was reorganized and Ney’s corps had come up. The French cavalry, 10,000 strong, favoured by the same snowstorm which had been ruinous to Augereau, broke through both lines of the Russian centre, but could not hold its ground on the plateau which it had conquered, for want of infantry support. It had therefore in the end to recoil with heavy loss, but it had saved the day by holding the Russians fixed during the moment when they might have taken the offensive.
So much for the main outlines of Napoleon’s use of cavalry; into tactics I cannot go, for two reasons—the one is that space fails: the subject is interminable. The second is that the Emperor did not trouble himself, as Frederick the Great had done, with the minutiae of manoeuvres. He handed over the masses of cavalry to his trusted lieutenants, and allowed them to use each the tactics that he chose. It was not, in his idea, the duty of the Commander-in-Chief to dictate the exact methods to be employed by the chief of the cavalry. His orders gave the object to be achieved, and the force to be employed. Murat or Kellerman or Milhaud or Latour-Maubourg or Grouchy settled for themselves how the means were to be brought to bear on the end.
The Emperor was not himself a cavalry but an artillery officer, and he never undertook to settle more than the general outlines of one of his great attacks. It is curious to find that he never even caused to be issued an official manual for cavalry work. The system continued to be in detail that of the Republic, indeed that of 1788, with the additions and improvements unofficially added by the practical knowledge of the great cavalry generals of the Empire in the Ordonnance Provisoire of 1804.
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