The Battle of Barrosa 1811 by Oliver Hayes

Author:Oliver Hayes [Hayes, Oliver]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bretwalda Books
Published: 2013-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

A piece of horse artillery in a modern museum. The gun crew were mounted on horses, thus ensuring the rapid deployment of the gun and its crew on the battlefield.

Specialists

In addition to these primary types of fighting troops, all armies had a small number of specialists. Principal among these were the staff, responsible for ensuring that the commander was kept fully informed of developments, and that his orders were carried out. Traditionally a commander would have a small group of officers about him who co-ordinated these tasks, while most of the actual work was done by regimental officers.

During the course of the 18th century it had become clear that this old system, suited to small armies operating for only part of the year, was no longer up to the job of carrying out such duties for modern, larger armies. The Prussians were the first to tackle the problem, founding a military academy that trained officers in staff duties. The Prussians also began a process of temporary secondment of regimental officers to staff duties for a few months, then returning them to their regiment. Thus most officers gained experience of both staff work and regimental duties.

It was Napoleon who took the next step. In 1795 he appointed Louis Berthier to be his Chief of Staff for a campaign in Italy. Berthier put together a team of men knowledgeable in everything from bridge building and the construction of fortifications to how best to feed mules or the best way to destroy a bridge his colleague had just built. Other French commanders copied Berthier's system, but there was no effort to standardise how they did so. Each commander could have the staff that he wanted.

Other nations were slow to adopt a formalised staff system. In the Peninsular War neither the British, Spanish nor Portuguese had anything approaching a proper staff organisation. It was entirely up to the commander of an army who he had to do his paperwork, keep him informed of events and transmit his orders to individual units. Inevitably the quality varied enormously - and it showed. Some armies blundered from one disaster to the next due to a lack of supplies, taking the wrong road or running out of ammunition while others were able to campaign effectively across the most unpromising lands.

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