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honor tactics from Vauban to US Civil War
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From Siege fortress to mass army Honor and Tactics from the Age of Vauban to the American Civil War
Technology & violence • At the Macro Level • Vauban 17th century siege warfare bigger ordnance (mounted guns, artillery) bigger fortresses • Napoleonic warfare – return to mobility in deployment of infantry, artillery cavalry • At the Micro Level • Individual honor, dueling with pistols becomes more common than with swords
Before Vauban • The walls were 3 to 5 meters thick • Defense from projectile weapons/siege engines conducted from towers and walls. Height advantage is important • Major innovation in use of gunpowder is invention of the base with wheels in the early 16th Century making artillery mobile on a larger scale
Medieval fortifications • were easily demolished by new firearms. Shooting distance increased from 200 to 600 meters.
Already in the In the Sixteenth Century • treatises called for regularly fortified polygons as the strongest designs for bastioned enclosures • Vauban began the codification of the art of siege warfare, bringing it to its apex
Francesco di Giorgio “the strength of a fortress depends upon the quality of its plan rather than the thickness of its walls,” • Thickening of walls • Multiple moats
Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban • 1633-1707
Vauban’s achievements • 48 sieges. 20 under the King • 160 projects for fortified places • 8 Wounds • 12 volumes of memoranda, the Oisivetés• Professional ascension: From humble squire to Marshal of France
The Fortifications of Vauban • are made up of 12 groups of fortified buildings and sites along the borders of France. They were designed by military architect Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban during the reign of King Louis XIV
After Vauban Came Napoleon
Napoleon’s Rise to Power • Early Success • 1793, drove British forces out of Toulon. • Defeated the Austrians in multiple battles, forcing the Hapsburg emperor to make peace. • Set up a three-man governing board known as the Consulate. • Took the title of first consulate and in 1802 had himself named consul for life.
Self-Made Emperor • Became the Emperor of France • Invited the Pope to the ceremony to preside over coronation. • He took the crown from the Pope’s hand and placed it on his own head. • This showed he owed his crown to no one. • He held a plebiscite or ballet for each step on his rise to power and the French supported him.
Art of War • Napoleon created his own Art of War. • Never had a set battle plan. • Never used the same tactic twice. • Rapid and audacious attacks. • Surprise and Speed. • Napoleon wanted to confuse his enemies and make them feel unprepared. • Wanted his enemies demoralized but not killed.
The Napoleonic Soldier • took pride in nation, unit and individual person. ... Soldiers were deployed in line and used to soften up the enemy to support cavalry and artillery assaults
Napoleon changed artillery • An often-quoted sentiment is that of Wellington at Waterloo • "He is moving his guns around like they’re a pair of pistols!" • The Swedish invented light field artillery but Napoleon brought its usage to a new level. He was above all an artillery officer. It was thanks to the talents of his gunners that he took Toulon in 1793 and that he began to make a name. It was with cannons that he faced the Royalist revolt against the Directory and gained the nickname "General Vendémiaire". Once in power, Napoleon had the know-how to intelligently reform this weapon from which he was born, having held all the posts, from simple gunner (as part of his training at the military School of Paris) to general.
Napoleon commanded that each army corps • never be more than a day’s march — about 20 miles — away from each other so they could support each other on the battlefield. Each corps commander was relied upon to orchestrate the bodies of men under his command to facilitate Napoleon’s ever-changing tactics. Infantry, cavalry and artillery each had to play their part in order to win battles. Napoleon's Imperial Guard, some of the most feared soldiers in Europe, were used as the ultimate weapon to ensure victory.
the grandest results were obtained by the reserve artillery in great and decisive battles • Held back out of sight and out of range during the greater part of the day, it is brought forward in a mass upon the decisive point as soon as the time for the final effort has come. Formed in a crescent a mile or more in extent, it concentrates its destructive fire upon a comparatively small point. Unless an equivalent force of guns is there to meet it, half an hour's rapid firing settles the matter. The enemy begins to wither under the hailstorm of howling shot; the intact reserves of infantry advance — a last, sharp, short struggle, and the victory is won.
The End of an Era • Downfall of Napoleon • Russia • Czar Alexander I withdraws from the Continental System due to economic and political frustrations. • Napoleon responds by sending 400,000 soldiers to Russia. Instead of fighting, Russians retreat East, burning crops and villages (scorched earth) as they went. • When Napoleon entered Moscow he realized he could not feed his troops so he returned home with only 10,000 troops.
End of an Era • Defeat at Leipzig • An alliance of Britain, Russia, Prussia, Sweden and Austria attacked France and defeated Napoleon’s Army in 1813 at Leipzig. • The most decisive defeat suffered by Napoleon Bonaparte. • Fought on German soil • A large proportion of Napoleon 's troops came from the German Confederation of the Rhine.
The End of an Era • Waterloo • After returning from exile Napoleon fought the British and Prussian armies at Waterloo, Belgium. The French lost in a day long battle and Napoleon was forced into exile again.
After the period of battlefield and mobile war • in the French Revolution and under Napoleon, there was a revival of interest in land fortifications when Paris was besieged in 1815.
In the American Civil War • the economic power of the industrialized North was linked with the abolitionists cause to end slavery. With a religious fervor like that of the Puritans in the English Civil war they faced the slave owning Plantation owners of the south with their grand houses and a Cavalier culture inspired by medieval knighthood.
Feudalism vs. Capitalism? • Napoleonic tactics continued to be used after they had become technologically impractical, leading to large-scale slaughters during the American Civil War • Civil War armies transitioned from Napoleonic tactics to trench warfare. • It was the first war to bring the full impact of the industrial revolution to bear on the battlefield.
The duel was a highly ritualized activity • practiced mainly by the upper classes from about 1500 to 1900. It was held in private, usually at dawn, as dueling was illegal throughout Europe and America. It was neither a recreational sport, nor a simple urge of male aggression - the duel was an affair of honor.
Alexander Hamilton • one of the Founding Fathers of the U.S. died in a duel in 1804. The seventh President of the U.S. Andrew Jackson, dueled over 100 times, was wounded in two and killed at least one man.
Honor was a crucial concept • for gentlemen, and ladies. The importance placed on defending honor made refusing a duel challenge nearly impossible; the social consequences for doing so were severe. Indeed, gentlemen did not shoot each other over trivial matters, but rather over slander and accusations of falsehood or dishonesty.
Duels involving women were not fought to gain a woman’s love • but rather because men took responsibility for the protection of honor of certain women in their lives. The duel, therefore, was a way to honorably and privately resolve offences. Its causes varied from accusations of cheating to women’s infidelity.
Alexander Pushkin, • considered by many to be Russia’s greatest poet, died in a duel in 1837, defending the accusations that his wife Natalya had been unfaithful. His death echoed in many ways the famous duel between Eugene Onegin and Vladimir Lensky in Pushkin’s Onegin.
Scrupulous regulation • A duel was regulated by an elaborate and detailed set of rules. Many codes of dueling and help manuals were published throughout the 18th and 19th century, the most popular being the Irish code duello, published in 1777. • The dueling gentlemen would always have “seconds” - friends whose role was to negotiate a resolution of the dispute to avoid a potentially lethal confrontation, usually to very little success.
As pistols became more fashionable than rapiers • The high probability of death was, of course, ever present in duels. Pistols could misfire and rarely shot straight and could also be deadly in the hands of incompetent seconds, whose task it was to provide and load them. • Doctors were also indispensable in duels. The Art of Duelling, published by “A Traveller” in 1836, warns the duelist to remember to “secure the services of his medical attendant, who will provide himself with all the necessary apparatus for tying up wounds and arteries, and extracting balls”. • Public opinion (and ridicule) eventually led to the death of the duel. By the late 19th century, it was successfully banned by most countries, heavily criticized in the press, and frowned upon by the public.
