Opposed to their enemies’ tactical
systems, yet frustrated by their own, many eighteenth-century French tacticians
turned to the armies of antiquity for inspiration. This turn was in fact not
unusual. Ultimately, tacticians turned to classical military models because the
systems of antiquity could fix all the problems which philosophes had
outlined with the ancien régime army. Greek and Roman warfare appeared
successful, decisive, methodical, and, as an added bonus, dignified.[1]
Furthermore, it relied on massed infantry offensives using deep formations –
such as the Greek and Macedonian phalanxes — to charge and break the
enemy lines. This was just the sort of approach which French soldiers were supposedly
ideally suited for. Even better, the soldiers of the hoplite phalanx, inspired
by their state, did not seem to desert their ranks.[2]
Contemporary intellectual trends already strongly encouraged a turn towards
antiquity. Steeped in classical literature, the philosophes of the Enlightenment
have, perhaps rightly, been accused of knowing the history of Greece and Rome
better than that of their own state.[3]
Inevitably, ideas from the political and social branches of the Enlightenment
filtered into military discussions. Calls for a more humane approach to
warfare, new political systems which might include a citizen militia instead of
a mercenary army, and new social discourse which might encourage more equal
battlefield formations evoked regular comparisons to Rome, Sparta, and Athens.[4]
As J.E. Lendon suggests in “The Rhetoric
of Combat,” the way the Greeks and Romans approached, understood, and therefore
wrote about war placed particular emphasis on soldiers’ moods and morale. He
demonstrates in particular how Caesar emphasized morale and spiritual condition
as a deciding factor on the battlefield.[5]
Entrenched in such texts, and having grown into the humanist tradition of the
Renaissance and Early Modern periods, it is easy to understand how Enlightenment
scholars, concerned with the humanity of individuals and the social contract,
could easily and quickly identify with the classical approach to warfare.
Consequently, tacticians’ investigation
of classical military texts, and in particular Folard’s Commentary on
Polybius in which the ordre profond was first propagated, did not
seem out of place. Indeed, Nathaniel Wolloch claims that the vocabulary used
for understanding war was based on a classical understanding of warfare, and
necessarily shaped how military philosophes
understood and expressed warfare.[6]
Moreover, military study of the classics was in no way unprecedented in the
eighteenth century. Throughout the Renaissance, classical military treatises
were the subject of much debate and comparison. Machiavelli begins his Art of War, for example, by suggesting
that “if we consider the practice and institution observed by the old Romans
(whose example I am always fond of recommending), we shall find many things
worthy of imitation; these may be easily introduced into any other state.” [7] This demonstrated to many tacticians that
they were indeed on the right track. Finally,
it helped that classical tactical systems were both attainable and inexpensive.
Technologies did not need to be invested in, mercenaries did not need to be
hired, and little training was required. Instead, the French infantryman, armed
with his own spirit and a pike, could decide the result of a war.
[1] Gat, Origins, 8; David Bell suggests that the
birth and popularity of the novel was in part responsible for this trend by
giving readers a new way to identify with the classics. David A. Bell, The
First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (New
York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007), 202.
[2] Saxe, “My
Reveries,” 145-147.
[3] Bell, 101.
[4] Rousseau is
particularly known for this, though Montesquieu and others suggested it as
well- consequently, the application of such citizen soldiers to the battlefield
by Saxe cannot be seen as out of place or as revolutionary. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques.
Constitutional Project for Corsica.Kessinger Press, 5, 36, http://books.google.ca/books?id=X4kNrHO_3fAC&pg=PA5&dq=rousseau+tilling+the+soil&hl=en&ei=DUA2TandDoa-sQO-vPDJAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-thumbnail&resnum=
1&ved=0CCoQ6wEwAA#v= onepage&q&f=false.
[5] J.E. Lendon,
“The Rhetoric of Combat: Greek Military Theory and Roman Culture in Julius
Caesar’s Battle Descriptions,” Classical Antiquity 18, no. 2 (October
1999): 281-282, 293.
[6] Nathaniel
Wolloch, “Cato the Younger in the Enlightenment,” Modern Philology 106,
no.1 (Aug. 2008): 6.
[7] Niccolo
Machiavelli, The Art of War, trans. Ellis Farneworth (New York: The
Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc, 1965), 12.
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