Among the great strategic minds in history, few, if any, have approached the genius of Napoleon Bonaparte. Through military might, he controlled practically all of Europe for nearly two decades. Alliance after alliance was formed against him, yet he continued to expand the empire. How was this possible? How could one man succeed in what so many before had failed? What made Napoleon Bonaparte different?

The explanation is complex and impossible to answer in its entirety, however if one closely examines the manner with which Napoleon conducted his early, perhaps most brilliant campaigns, one will find Napoleon possessed an unparalleled mastery of the positional style of the art of waging war. Material strength, coupled with delicate, but intricate positional sacrifices enabled Napoleon to achieve victory after victory over the otherwise finest military powers of Europe. Often Napoleon would look months into the future, and make a material or positional sacrifice that would leave his position looking weak and vulnerable. Then, when his enemy thought him to be at his weakest, he would convert the sacrifice into an insurmountable advantage; battle after battle ended with Napoleon ruling the field.

This continuous success on the field of battle eventually led to Napoleon to grow careless. Whereas early in his career he carefully formed his strategic goals, later on personal ambition became reason enough to commit the resources of the empire to the fires of conflict. Only after Napoleon failed to properly execute his own principals and extended the frontiers of war to every frontier, did the power of virtually every other nation in Europe defeat him.

The chess books recommend that novices use combinations when they play. After novices gain experience, as they become masters, they can move on to the positional style. Napoleon used the positional style, as he was a master. His positional style can best be seen in 1793 at Toulon where he was a junior officer with Republican army. Royal forces had relinquished the city to British and Spanish control and the Republicans had for some time been unsuccessfully trying to regain the city. Analyzing the situation, Napoleon realized that a single fort held the key to the harbor, and if it fell the British and the Spanish would be forced to abandon the city. Despite his low rank, he prepared an attack on the fort and the city was taken. None of the superior of ricers present at the scene were able to link the terminal goal of expelling the enemy from the city with the need to achieve control over the entrance to the harbor. Further still, these superior officers could not see this particular fort as the key to the defense of the harbor. Napoleon, however, could and did. In addition to his insight as to the value of the fort, Napoleon had, at a young age, the ability to command men in battle which allowed him to capitalize on his analysis. For his accomplishment at Toulon, he was immediately promoted to brigadier .

While Napoleon displayed the beginnings of a strategic genius, his work at Toulon represented merely the recognition and attainment of a combination in a relatively uncomplicated situation. On October 5, 1795, Napoleon was given joint command of he defense of the Convention. Threatening the Convention were some 35,000 National Guardsmen, numerous mobs, and various other unorganized parties. Rising above his co-commander, Napoleon took control of the small force and placed them, along with some light cannons, on the roof tops of the buildings along the likely approaches to the Convention. Moving men and equipment up to the roof tops was Napoleons first, but not last, break with traditional military doctrine. From the roofs, Napoleon’s men were able to fire the famous whiff of grape down onto the crowd without allowing the crowd the opportunity to either return fire or see those firing upon them. These few hidden soldiers sufficiently demoralized the crowd to turn them away from the Convention with out a significant loss of life on either side. For the first time, Napoleon looked beyond the material side of military conflict and took into consideration its positional/psychological parameters. He understood that the crowd lacking proper leadership and will, would break and run from a hidden foe who was able to indiscriminately take their lives without so much as showing himself. Had Napoleon attempted to defend the Convention with the traditional method of blocking the avenues with his soldiers on the ground, he and the Third Republic of France most likely would have been overthrown. So, it was at this young age that Napoleon first displayed the ability to use semi-conditional values in the evaluation of his strength: the force (total value) of his soldiers on the roof tops far exceeded that of them on the streets. Thus, Napoleon became the hero of the Convention and was soon given the command of the French army in Northern Italy.

Upon arriving in Nice, Napoleon found that his army consisted of ill-content soldiers who were poorly equipped and fed. In addition to the logistical problems associated with supplying the army, the Directory had run out of money for paying the army. Unlike the commanders of his time, Napoleon understood the paramount importance of the intangible assets of an army such as overall morale and the negative impact of poor food, worn equipment, and no pay on such intangibles. So, instead of immediately marshaling the army and marching on the well-prepared Austrians and Piedmontese in Mondovi and Ceva, he went directly against orders and took the unconventional step of personally raising funds in Toulon and Marseilles to better feed and equip his army. While raising the funds was very unusual, Napoleon took the even more unorthodox step of making sure that all of his soldiers knew he was the sole individual responsible for their better food, equipment, and pay. Over and over a letter quoting Napoleon as telling the Directory that "The army here will here-after eat good bread and have meat" was read aloud in the barracks and garrisons." Again he displayed an innate ability to evaluate a position. Napoleon understood that the general rank and file soldiers of any army felt that their leaders cared little about them or their welfare. The men were both expendable and cheap, and they knew it. However, the extraordinary lengths that Napoleon went through to improve the overall morale paid off as the men realized that he was attentive to their needs. Napoleon invested in relationship between him and his men and supplied them well. With these acts, he activated the positional and material parameters of his army which greatly improved its overall position.

Soon after raising the funds, Napoleon instituted a intense retraining program for his soldiers. Worried that there was no group cohesiveness and that his army was one of individual soldiers, he had them drilled on maneuvering in groups and on functioning in units. Then, with his men adequately equipped and trained, Napoleon mobilized on April 2 and, with 37,000 men, crossed the Alps.

Before presenting the analysis of the Northern Italian Campaign of 1796-97, it is necessary to present some of the issues that one must consider. We are attempting to evaluate the actions of a military player acting in an indeterministic system, with the time out of joint, in the absence of a final goal, and with incomplete information, thus this prelude is needed.

The first topic is the problem of the final product. Unlike many systems that have a specific and clearly discernible product, war in general has no final product against which the actors can evaluate their current position. For instance, in the game of chess, there exists the goal of capturing the enemies king before he is able to do the same to yours. The cost of victory does not matter; you may lose most of your pieces, but so long as the king is captured, you win. In battle, there is no such set goal. A victory on a specific battle field may involve the capture of the enemy leader (doubtful), a material object such as a bridge, city, or industrial area, or of the complete destruction of the opposing forces. Which of these will cause victory changes from battle to battle and from moment to moment within that battle. Additionally, the price of victory is extremely important. What has a commander gained if the cost of his triumph is that his forces lose the ability exploit it? The psychic victory!

The issue of exploiting a victory raises the problem of linking the current state with the immediate next state, the state after that state, the state after that state, and so on. War is a social institution that takes place between major players who will exist beyond the lives of the minor human actors who wage it. Thus, what should the commanders of the battle field consider when making decisions on that field. Is the post-battle position one that should favor their respective countries in terms of captured material that will add to the general wealth of their nations and, ideally, benefit the populace of their nation (assuming that the nation is one in which the relative good of the people is a consideration), or should the position be one that will favorably benefit the nation at some point in the near or far future? The chain of possible states being effected by the previous and affecting the following, extends far beyond the possible sight of the actors in any one state. If the battle is to have any meaning, the commander must select one state into which he will attempt to transform the present.

Political leaders have done the battle field commander the great service of always having goals that the commanders must eventually achieve (unfortunately political leaders never seem to be able to stick to one goal for a period of time, thus recreating the same problem that they solved). Therefore, the commander merely has to evaluate the current position against its ability to create the potential for the achievement of the terminal state dictated by the political leaders.

The problem of the continuum of states gives rise to another problem: the evaluation of the starting positions in war and battle. Unlike chess, where the starting position is equal at the beginning of every game, the current starting positions in war, are dictated by the ending conditions of previous states, and these are almost never equal. Therefore one actor will always start at a disadvantage to the other (this can be based on material parameters, positional parameters or both). An added difficulty in evaluating the military actor is that the rules of armed interaction are not fixed across states, or even within them. For example, one leader may find it abhorrent to sacrifice his soldiers, while the other may not. One may respect the neutrality of a third actor while the other will not. This creates a major problem for it would seem that the actor who has the least rules will win the most often, yet human nature forces man to impose rules upon man’s actions. So one actor will usually be operating with a completely different set of rules than the other. Thus, the two actors will probably end up having different goals, different starting positions, different rules of interaction, different valuations of the fixed material assets they both possess, different time horizons, and incomplete information about both his overall position and that of his opponent. Under these conditions, the actors have no real option other than to make their decisions based upon the positional art of waging war. And at this, Napoleon had no equal.

Soon after crossing the Alps, Napoleon changed his direction and headed toward the prize city of Genoa. Having previously pressured Genoa to allow him free passage to the coastal plains of Italy, Napoleon added further credibility to the ruse that he would attack Genoa by dispatching La Harpe with 8,000 men towards the Austrian stronghold of Voltri. The main part of his army turned left and headed toward Millesimo. Unaware of this new development and thinking that Napoleon would soon be on his way to rolling up the Eastern coast of Italy, Turin ordered Beaulieu, the Austrian commander, to threaten the French flank and protect the material asset of Genoa and the Southern coastal plains. Beaulieu, acting as he had been trained, responded by sending reinforcements to Voltri thus splitting his original force of 35,000. After splitting his army, he moved the remaining men forward in order to threaten the flank. When Beaulieu’s main force made contact with Napoleon’s, Napoleon was able responded with a limited set of skirmishes that pushed the Austrians slightly back to the hills south of Mondovi.

Napoleon, having paid careful attention to the topography of the area, carefully planned the skirmish to force a potentially weak juncture between the Austrian army and that of the Piedmontese. By maneuvering his forces such that he could affect the positioning of the other two armies he was able to place the Piedmontese on one side of a several fast streams and a ridge line and the Austrian on the other. To further damage the position of the opposition, Napoleon was able to maneuver into a position where the armies themselves were at the heads of several different valleys, severely hampering any mutual support that would have otherwise existed.

Yet, the Directory back in Paris, underestimating Napoleon’s abilities, still hadn’t given Napoleon a clear objective; he was supposed to harass the enemy until a larger army commanded by a superior officer was to arrive. Thus, having no clear idea of his final goal or terminal state, Napoleon began to use a classic positional style.

He had already made a positional sacrifice by ordering La Harpe and 8,000 men away from the main theater of the battle (about which Paris sent him a stern letter of reproach). He had then converted the sacrifice, through a series of precise maneuvers, into a position in which he held not only the superior position, but also a material advantage in numbers over the Austrian army. While maneuvering his army during the skirmishes between the Austrians, Napoleon had made further positional sacrifices by allowing his army to be pushed backwards. Then by rotating his front slightly during the engagement, Napoleon was able to effectively place the Austrian army where he wished, converting the positional sacrifice into a positional advantage. On top of this, he had also changed his lines of communication so as to preserve their integrity and avoid interference from the Austrians.

The change in the lines of communication was a standard move that most of Napoleon’s contemporaries would have made. However, what made Napoleon’s move different was that, even though he still planned a frontal assault, he sacrificed time in order to moved the lines of communication enough to allow for a potential maneuver around to the rear of the Piedmontese position (a maneuver that had been exploited by a few of the finer military commanders before Napoleon, but one that few of his rank would have been willing to try). This additional maneuvering in his lines of communication cost Napoleon two days, but would later be worth far more. After the frontal assault failed, Napoleon immediately planed and executed an encircling maneuver around the Piedmontese position. The sacrifice of time was thus transformed into the ability to develop his position much faster than the Piemontese could respond, which resulted in the Piedmontese being routed from their position and thrown back into the plains. Consequently, Napoleon learned a lesson he was to repeat many times; the sacrifice of tangible assets in order to allow for the future development of his overall position, especially when lacking an overall operational goal.

With the Piedmontese in flight, Napoleon turned his attention to the smaller Austrian force arrayed between Ceva and Mondovia. While it would have been virtually impossible for him to attack their force with the Piedmontese anchored on their southern front at Dego (though he may have been able to squeeze out a victory, he would have lost too many soldier in the attainment of that victory to have been able to capitalize on it), now it was possible for Napoleon pressure the Austrian formation from the South, North, and West. Realizing the folly of staying and being massacred, the Austrians withdrew and, expecting Napoleon to head for Milan, moved to a blocking position on the road to Alessandria in Acqui.

Napoleon, however, had already learned to wage positional war, not the combinational that the other commanders waged and expected him to wage. Instead of a direct attack on any of the main cities in the Northern Italy he would apply the art of the indirect attack. To this end, he agreed to an armistice with Piedmont in which he granted concessions in return for permission to move his armies through Piedmont and to cross the River Po at Valenza.

In response to the Piedmontese granting Napoleon permission to cross the Po at Valenza, the Austrians moved across Po to take up a position on its North bank to protect Lombardy. Once there, they set up regular patrols along the river in the direction the agreement with Piedmont would let Napoleon cross. However, Napoleon’s demands in the armistice with Piedmont were yet another example of his growing mastery of the positional style; he sacrificed certain concessions to the Piedmontese in return for the ability to gain a stronger position in the future. So, Napoleon initially marched toward Valenza, and then turned south to Piacenza where he gained an easy crossing of the river. Thus, Napoleon was 50 miles to the Austrian’s East before they knew that he had crossed the Po. Outflanked and with the prospect of rapidly losing their communications lines, the Austrians retreated through Venetian territory to the fortified city of Mantua. Interestingly, by crossing the Po at Piacenza, Napoleon violated the tradition of respecting the neutrality of independent states, but managed to get the upper hand on the Austrians by doing so. In their retreat, the Austrians in turn violated the neutrality of Veiana, but managed to escape being captured by Napoleon — the innovator was imitated! This was an unexpected outcome resulting from a predisposition of the foe. It was something that Napoleon had not expected, but he would rarely make the miscalculation of thinking that his opponents would not break the rules by which they waged war (the Russian campaign of 1812 and Waterloo are the notable exceptions to this rule).

His army running low on supplies and the Directory lacking the recourses to resupply him, Napoleon decided to turn Southward where his intelligence agents had indicated he could find the necessary supplies for his army. This was yet another improvement in the art of war that Napoleon devised to maintain the mobility of his army, a parameter that he weighed above all else. In the past, nations supplied their armies in the field by stockpiling supplies at forward staging areas and them moving them to the army by a long wagon train. The Revolutionary army had learned to live off of the land. Napoleon improved the army by making material parameters, food, clothing, shoes, and equipment supplies, standard items that his intelligence force was to look for and catalog. When his army was approaching the area, he would dispatch special small units to gather the supplies as they were needed. By sacrificing the certainty of supplies, Napoleon was able to gain a force that was far more mobile and far better able to project its power than the traditional army (traditional armies supplied by the traditional method must completely clear their rear of any enemy forces or risk having their supply trains plundered. This forced them to proceed slowly and methodically forward with a wide front and a immobile force).

The biggest departure from tradition was not taking a covering position to keep the Austrians bottled up in Mantua. Instead he left a small, but highly skilled, motivated, and mobile force there to watch them. This enabled Napoleon to resupply and prepare for coming offensives against Austria itself. Again, Napoleon showed that he had mastered the evaluation of force. While, one soldier is worth one soldier when unconditional values are used in the evaluation, Napoleon knew that the compensatory parameters in the evaluation of his forces gave them the upper hand. While the Austrian forces were demoralized and extremely inefficient in group organization and movement (the Austrian army still operated on the traditional system of one army from which smaller groups would be formed on the actual battlefield), Napoleon’s were highly psychologically accustomed to winning, motivated and mobile, not just because of the different supply system, but also because the Napoleon had broken the French army down into smaller sub-groups who were accustomed to working as independent groups and could coordinate an attack from different flanks. Napoleon calculated that the semi-conditional weight of the force left behind was sufficient to prevent the Austrians from either retreating to Austria or attacking his rear.

Austria, frustrated with their troops being bottled up in Mantua, sent a force to relieve Mantua. Much as he had done to the previous Austrian army, Napoleon destroyed the new one. In the ensuing months, the Austrians sent three additional armies into northern Italy to relive their force in Mantua, and each time Napoleon used his mastery of the positional style to defeat them. In the end, Napoleon destroyed the entire Austrian army without fighting one battle on Austrian soil; the indirect attack proved just as effective, if not more so, than the direct attack, and the actor utilizing the positional style devastated the one playing combinationally.

Thus, as the first three months of the Italian campaign of 1796-97 drew to a close, Napoleon was the master of the field and would remain so some time to come. His use of the indirect attack, positional sacrifices, semi-conditional values, mobility, and intangible assets made him the dominant military commander of his age, and ushered in modern warfare. Since Napoleon’s time, his tactics and principals have been studied and, to some degree, implemented by every successful military commander. Good or bad, the application of the positional style of play to the art of war is his legacy.

Back to History

 Back to Title Page