A Review.
Military Institutions--
By Duke of Reguna.
Trans from the
Paris edition (1859) and by biographical historical and military notes.
With a new version of celebrated part I. of Treatise on Grand Military Operations.
By Frank
Colonel 92d Regiment of
Mississippi infantry.
Columbia S. C. Evans Copewell, 1864.
A bock of this character, setting forth the general them of the art military, suggesting the best methods of organising, forming maintaining armies, describing the various operations of war, and discussing its principles and practice with the calmness and sobriety of the philosopher, has long in the
Confederacy — That this work fully answers the desired purpose we know too little of military matters to affirm.
Yet he must be a poor soldier, indeed, who does not see, upon even a slight persual, that it abounds in practical suggestions, of great value to all classes of military men.
The translator we take to be, from his name, an adopted son of the
Confederacy, and the impression is confirmed by the frequent occurrence of certain expressions in the translated text, which by a too faithful difference to the original
French, have a ten to French fly the
English Version.
We constantly meet with expressions like these well to my long enjoin at the the camp where, for more than a year,
I have occupied, &c." Strike out "
have been" and insert "
was." The form here adopted to express time would be good in
French, but in
English.
It is constantly occurring in
Millord's History of
Greece, which, although a work of great power and is a proverb for its bad
English Webster, who was a good grammarian though a bad speller, says very justly, when speaking of the use of this very expression, "the tense he
was, he
arrived, he is not properly called the
imperfect tense.
These verbs, and all verbs of this time, denote
actions, finished or
perfect. As in six days God
created." (not has created observe) "the heavens and the earth."--This of the perfect tense of the verb occurs very many times, and is We hope it will be in future editions.
"I
perfected that the battle
was not lost in the beginning,"&c. Here is more bad --the result of translating too literally it should be, "I prevented the battle
from lost."
There are a few other little errors to which we would call the attention of the translator "in 1805 the
French army, after the fine march from the shores of
La Mancha to
Germany," &c. La Mancha is a province of Old Castile, and several hundred miles distant from
Boulogne, which was the starting point of the army, to say nothing of its being in a country not belonging to
France.
Marmont, no doubt, wrote
La Mancha.--"Manche," in
French, means "a sleeve." The
French call the
English Channel "La Manche," "the sleeve," from its fancled resemblance, on the map, to that part of a lady's gown.
The
province of La Manche is on the channel, and is called after it. It is a province of what was formerly called
Normandy, and is really the country from which the
French army began its march in 1865.
This might have been a type graphical error,--we suppose indeed it was — but it is a very serious error.
The translator tells us that the battle of
Borodino was fought on the 6th September, 1812. It was fought on the 7th September, 1812. "On the
day preceding the battle a strong advanced work had been carried by the
French with considerable daughter." The redoubt of Schwardino — which we presume is the "advance work" here alluded to was carried on the 5th September
two days preceding the battle of
Borodino.
These are but small blemishes, it is true; but in as much as they indicate baste and carelessness in the translator, they call for the notice, of the press.
We do not mean by any means to detract from the value of his original remarks.
Some of them — especially those concerning the Confederate cavalry--deserve, and we hope will receive, the serious attention of the proper department.--Upon the whole we like
Mr. Schaller much better in his character of author, than in his character of translator.
He does ample justice to our Great Generals,
Jackson and
Johnston.
But there is another still alive whose name is scarcely alluded to, and who, it seems to us, can be passed over in a book illustrative of Confederate glory, with fully as much propriety as
Washington's name could be omitted in a history of the
American Revolution, and not one bit more.
We need not name the person to whom we allude.
In the text itself there are doubtless many suggestions of value to the military man, especially upon the subject of artillery, which was
Marmont's speciality.
But its character is rendered suspicious by a prevailing and pervading taint — the desire to underrate and detract from the talents and time of
Napoleon, his benefactor, whom he first betrayed and afterwards vilified, and by whom he was denounced as a traitor in a proclamation.
He could hardly write a book upon the subject of war without bringing in the name of the greatest of all warriors; yet we are told that it was a defect in his military training, that he had not been a colonel in actual command of a
regiment, which advantage, it seems, he himself had enjoyed, and the enjoyment of which he would no doubt have us to infer had made him no superior to his master that after 1809 he was not the same that he had been, that his military skill had deteriorated that he no longer thought of obtaining victory by any other means than by brave force, that
Segur, the renegade, gave the best account of the battle of
Borodino in a book evidently written to curry favor with the Russians, &c. In this spirit he blames
Napoleon for not giving his Guard at
Borodino at a time when,
Segur says, it would have insured the rout and destruction of the whole
Russian army, overlooking entirely the overwhelming reply of Gourgaud upon that subject, and the answer of
Napoleon himself, who did not think that the critical time had arrived. "Suppose I have to fight another battle to-morrow, what shall I do if my reserve be destroyed to-day?" What rejoinder could he make to such an answer, conveying as it did a full picture of the situation his belief that the Russians were not at that moment so badly beaten that they would not offer a furious resistance, killing and disabling a vast number of the Guard; the distance from his reserves allowing of no reinforcements, and his conviction that the victory could not be rendered so complete as to dispense with the necessity of fighting another battle?
Another objection, that he did not the day before the battle send a heavy force around one of the
Russian wings, was also answered by him on the field, when
Davoust offered to conduct it with his corps of 40,000 men. His objection was that
Davoust would necessarily pose communication with the main body, and thus expose himself to destruction.--This was consistent with all his practice.--In order to
units all his forces in 1869 before attacking the enemy in the neighborhood of
Ratisbon, he made this same Davonat evacuate that city, and bring his force to his on the flank of the
Archduke's march.
He accomplished it with great difficulty, and the whole force was united.
Now, it seems, when the whole army was already united,
Napoleon was to send off one-third of it, and thus expose himself to attack in detail.--Such, at least, was the opinion of
Segur, and of Marment, too. The policy which, on a former occasion, had secured the most triumphant success was to be reversed on this, when concentration was more necessary than it ever had been.
To his own criticism of the conduct of
Napoleon on this occasion
Marmont himself offers the best answer.
He had just been speaking of
Macdonald's defeat by
Blucher at the Katsbach in 1813.
It was a case directly in point.
Macdonald, the day before the battle, detached a large force to turn
Blucher's flank.
Blucher took advantage of its absence, attacked
Macdonald, annihilated his army, and thus completed the first act of the tragedy that found its
denouement at
Leipzig and its result in
Napoleon's overthrow.
This is what
Marmont says of it:
‘
"Nothing is more dangerous than to make a large detachment before a battle has been fought, a victory achieved, and a decided advantage obtained over the enemy.
"The execution of this hazardous requires that the army have a sufficient superiority to assure great probabilities of victory, and that concentrated forces be never weakened beyond the strength of the enemy."
’
Now,
Napoleon, according to his own account, had at
Borodino 120,000 men. The
Russians had, according to the book of one of their
Generals, (we forget his name,) published a few years ago, and said to be the best
Russian account, 132,000.
So that here is the very case in which, according to
Marmont,
Napoleon would not have been excusable had he weakened his concentrated forces.
Was ever man more fully convicted out of his own month?
We place no confidence in what
Marmont says about his own operations, especially those in
Spain.
As for the battle of
Salamanca, for the loss of which he attempts to excuse himself by a wound which he received an hour before it commenced, the manœuvre which lost it was ordered by him before he received his wound, and he was superintending it at the time.
That manœuvre brought on the battle, as well as decided it against him. It was the very same which had lost Frederick the battle of Colin, and the Russians and Austrians the
battle of Austerlitz, in which last
Marmont himself participated.
It was an attempt to make a flank march in the face of an enemy already in position.
It was a gross blunder of his own, and resulted in an overwhelming defeat.
Wellington saw the blunder, and attacked him while he was perpetrating it.--But for that blunder he would not have been attacked.
Clausel saved the army, which his stupidity had nearly destroyed.
One month before the battle
Napoleon, at
Dresden, on his way to
Russia, having in his hand the map of the country and the last dispatch of
Marmont, saw from the tenor of the latter that he must inevitably he beaten, and wrote to the
Minister of War at
Faris, directing, him to send 20,000 men to
Bayonne, to remedy the disaster which he foresaw.--After his defeat he was removed, and then commenced his life-long hatred of his benefactor.
Nevertheless, this book, apart from what personally concerns
Marmont himself and
Napoleon, the object of his hatred, is no doubt, as we have said, valuable to the military man.
