Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

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The qualities which distinguish a good general of advanced posts, are, to reconnoitre accurately defiles and fords of every description; to provide guides that may be depended on; to interrogate the curé and postmaster; to establish rapidly a good understanding with the inhabitants; to send out spies; to intercept public and private letters; to translate and analyze their contents; in a word, to be able to answer every question of the general-in-chief, when he arrives with the whole army.

Foraging parties, composed of small detachments, and which were usually intrusted to young officers, served formerly to make good officers of advanced posts; but now the army is supplied with provisions by regular contributions: it is only in a course of partisan warfare that the necessary experience can be acquired to fill these situations with success.

A chief of partisans is, to a certain extent, independent of the army. He receives neither pay nor provisions from it, and rarely succor, and is abandoned during the whole campaign to his own resources.

An officer so circumstanced must unite address with courage, and boldness with discretion, if he wishes to collect plunder without measuring the strength of his little corps with superior forces. Always harassed, always surrounded by dangers, which it is his business to foresee and surmount, a leader of partisans acquires in a short time an experience in the details of war rarely to be obtained by an officer of the line; because the latter is almost always under the guidance of superior authority, which directs the whole of his movements, while the talent and genius of the partisan are developed and sustained by a dependence on his own resources.

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Generals-in-chief must be guided by their own experience, or their genius. Tactics, evolutions, the duties and knowledge of an engineer or artillery officer, may be learned in treatises, but the science of strategy is only to be acquired by experience, and by studying the campaigns of all the great captains.

Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, and Frederick, as well as Alexander, Hannibal, and Cæsar, have all acted upon the same principles. These have been: to keep their forces united; to leave no weak part unguarded; to seize with rapidity on important points.

Such are the principles which lead to victory, and which, by inspiring terror at the reputation of your arms, will at once maintain fidelity and secure subjection.

“A great captain can only be formed,” says the Archduke Charles, “by long experience and intense study: neither is his own experience enough—for whose life is there sufficiently fruitful of events to render his knowledge universal?” It is, therefore, by augmenting his information from the stock of others, by appreciating justly the discoveries of his predecessors, and by taking for his standard of comparison those great military exploits, in connection with their political results, in which the history of war abounds, that he can alone become a great commander.

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Peruse again and again the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene, and Frederick. Model yourself upon them. This is the only means of becoming a great captain, and of acquiring the secret of the art of war. Your own genius will be enlightened and improved by this study, and you will learn to reject all maxims foreign to the principles of these great commanders.

It is in order to facilitate this object that I have formed the present collection. It is after reading and meditating upon the history of modern war that I have endeavored to illustrate, by examples, how the maxims of a great captain may be most successfully applied to this study. May the end I have had in view be accomplished!

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PART I. THE CAMPAIGN IN ITALY

Address to the Army at the Beginning of the Campaign, March, 1796.

Proclamation to the Army, May, 1796.

Letter to “the Directory,” May 11 1796.

Letter to “the Directory,” May 14 1796.

Proclamation to the Soldiers on Entering Milan, May 15, 1796.

Proclamation to the Troops on Entering Brescia, May 28, 1796.

Address to Soldiers During the Siege of Mantua, Nov. 6, 1796.

Address to the Troops on the Conclusion of the First Italian Campaign, March, 1797.

Address to the Genoese, 1797.

Extract from a Letter to the Directory, April, 1797.

Address to Soldiers after the Signing of the Treaty of Campo Formio, October, 1797.

Proclamation to the Cisalpine Republic, Nov. 17, 1797.

Proclamation on Leaving the Troops at Rastadt, November, 1797.

Address to the Citizens after the Signing of the Treaty of Campo Formio, Dec. 10, 1787.

PART II. THE EGYPTIAN EXPEDITION.

Proclamation to the Troops on Entering Toulon, May 9, 1798.

Address to the Military Commissioners, May 16, 1798.

Proclamation to the Troops on Embarking for Egypt, June, 1798.

Proclamation to the Egyptians, July, 1798.

Letter to "The Directory."

Order Respecting the Government of Egypt, July 27, 1798.

Letter to Tippoo Saib, Jan. 25, 1799.

Proclamation to the Army, on the Abandoning of the Siege of Acre, May, 1799.

Proclamation to the Army on his Departure for France, August, 1799.

PART III. NAPOLEON, FIRST CONSUL.

Proclamation to the French People, Nov. 10, 1799.

Proclamation to the Army of the East, November, 1799.

Proclamation to the French before the Second Italian Campaign.

Proclamation to the Soldiers before the Battle of Marengo, June, 1800.

Letter to the Emperor of Austria, on the Field of Marengo, June, 1800.

Order to Seize all English in France, Announced in the Moniteur, May, 1803.

PART IV. NAPOLEON, EMPEROR OF FRANCE.

Letter to the Pope, 1804.

Address to the Troops on Presenting the Colors, Dec. 3, 1804.

Letter to the King of England, Jan. 2, 1805.

Conversation with Decier Regarding the Marriage of Jerome Bonaparte, May 6, 1805.

Letter to Jerome Bonaparte, May 6, 1805.

Address to the Senate, 1805.

Proclamation to the Troops on the Commencement of the War of the Third Coalition, September, 1805.

Address to the Austrians, after the Fall of Ulm, October, 1805.

Address to the Troops after the War of the Third Coalition, October, 1805.

Proclamation to the Soldiers before the Battle of Austerlitz, Dec. 1, 1805.

Proclamation after the Battle of Austerlitz, Dec. 3, 1805.

Address to the Soldiers on the Signing of Peace with Austria, Dec. 26, 1805.

Proclamation to the Soldiers, February, 1806.

Address to the Senate on Annexation of the Cisalpine Republic, 1806.

To the Legislative Body before the Battle of Jena, October, 1806.

Address to the Captive Officers after the Battle of Jena, Oct. 15, 1806.

Proclamation to the Soldiers before Entering Warsaw, Jan. 1, 1807.

To the King of Prussia, Entreating Peace after the Battle of Eylau, February, 1807.

Address to the Army on its Return to Winter Quarters on the Vistula, 1807.

Proclamation to the Soldiers after the Battle of Friedland, June 24, 1807.

Letter to Champagny, Nov. 15, 1807.

Proclamation to the Spaniards on the Abdication of Charles IV., June 2, 1808.

Address to the Legislative Body, before Leaving Paris for the Spanish Campaign, 1808.

Letter to the Emperor of Austria, October, 1808.

Proclamation to the Soldiers, during the March for Spain, 1808.