Historical patterns: Sun Tzu to Napoleon

With that in mind, let’s push on. For our historical background, let’s look at some early commanders. Here we see Alexander the Great, roughly 300 BC; Hannibal, roughly 200 BC; Belisarius, Byzantine commander, roughly 500 AD; Genghis Khan around 1200; Tamerlane around 1400 AD.

And what’s my point? All these commanders seemed consistent with the ideas of Sun Tzu in one way or the other. But there was a difference between them. The western commanders, I indicate here, are more directly concerned with winning the battle, whereas the eastern commanders were trying to get their adversary all pulled apart before they even hit the army, so it comes totally unglued. So, in that sense, eastern commanders were more closely attuned to the ideas of Sun Tzu. [Name unclear.] Remember, they had access to Sun Tzu. All right? There is some suspicion Belisarius may have had, too. […]

In any case, all of them, one way or another, also played this cheng/ch’i action. Dazzle them here, hose them here. Got to get the dazzle first. You set them up with the vulnerability—get the vulnerability—dazzle to create the vulnerability. And, of course, that’s the point.

These cheng/ch’i notions seem to be rather important, so I want to give you a feel for what they mean. First in a tactical sense, and next in a battle or grand-tactical sense. So let’s look at some early notions of what we’d call the play upon tactics.

Here we’re talking about an early tactical theme. The only reason why the date’s truncated from 300 BC to 1400 AD is because these weapons started going out around 1400. You had two kinds of troops, light troops and heavy troops. I’ll let you read it, then I’ll comment on it.

Note here, the light troops—[…]—taking this statement here, the light troops, in one sense, act as the cheng for the heavy troops’ ch’i, and vice versa. In other words, the light troops get the guy set up so the heavy troops can pull him apart, or vice versa. You see these things unfold. So the intent is quite clear. [Passage unclear.]

See, the basic idea behind what we today would call combined arms or complementary arms is: you use one arm, and a guy, in order to defend against that one arm, makes himself vulnerable to the other arm. He tries to defend against the other arm—and makes himself vulnerable to this arm. So you set your combined arms up such that if he tries to work against one, he’s vulnerable to the other one. That’s the way you play. […] Try to work against one, […] against the other. Once again, that statement […].

Okay, with that in mind, let’s look at some early battles. I’m going to make some comments on them. These are typical schematics you see in military books, like at West Point and other places. Here we see an idealized schematic of the Battle of Marathon, dated roughly 490 BC. The Greeks, with a thinned-out center and heavy wings, are going against the Persians, who outnumbered them. Uniform array here.

The Greeks came down the hill. The center was thrown back. The wings closed in. The Persians, in order to fight the wings, had to change their formations. They were all tightened up. You can imagine, they were all glued in there, and tried to change their formations. What happened? It generates what?

Exactly right. Here you have an early indication of what I call a double envelopment or double-outflanking scheme. I want you to keep that in mind. It’s the only one you remember. That’s just an idealized schematic.

Another early schematic: the Battle of Leuctra, 371 BC, in which we have at the top here the Spartans, roughly 11,000, in this rather uniform array. And at the bottom here we have the Thebans under their commander Epaminondas. He heavied up his left, thinned out his center and pulled it, or refused it, back. Thinned out his right wing, pulled it back, or refused it even further, with a screen in between. It was around 7,000—11 versus 7.

In any case, at the point of action, though, he had what? The greater fraction of his strength than his adversary. He won a fantastic victory. And he rolled up the Pentagon—I mean, Pentagon. Good slip!—the Spartan line there. Rolled up the Spartan line. So here you see a good example of a single envelopment or single-outflanking scheme. That’s all I want you to remember.

How many people have read Liddell Hart, books like that? Remember, he used this battle in a very elegant way. He talks about the oblique order, and you want to be able to display or possess obliquity in battle. Well, you can’t store that scheme in your head. That’s not going to help you. But there is an interesting notion associated with that concept, which others noticed.

I lifted this right out of a translation of a Soviet book—The Basic Principles of Operational Art and Tactics. We’re talking about Engels, of Marx and Engels. He understood the significance of it.

In other words, unequal distribution of forces across the front. I’m going to point that out later on. It’s a very important idea of unequal distribution, in order to gain leverage […]. Very important idea. As a matter of fact, Sun Tzu understood it. You people who’ve read Sun Tzu—he said it differently, but the same idea. He said, “He who prepares and reinforces everywhere is everywhere weak.” That implies unequal distribution. “He who prepares and reinforces everywhere is everywhere weak.”

Frederick the Great later on said, “He who defends everywhere defends nowhere.” And when we come forward, you’ll see that’s very important in your activities too.

Matter of fact, I’ll preempt myself here. Napoleon one time—related to the same idea—had his marshals construct a defense of France. When it was his time to review it, he looked at it and saw all these guys strung out along the border. He said, “What are you trying to do? Stop smuggling?” Same idea: they’re trying to defend […]. Okay. We’re going to come back to this. I just wanted to make that point.

Now let’s look at two more battles and we’ll fold up. Battle of Arbela, or probably more appropriately called Gaugamela, in which we have the Persians under Darius and the Greeks under Alexander. The Persians outnumbered Alexander. Alexander brought his wing over here to the Persian left, or his right, and he began to make his advance.

The Persians then saw a weakness in Alexander’s front and sent some of their troops in here. And that left a gap in their front. Alexander adjusted his stroke and went for that gap.

And the result then was an inside-out single-envelopment scheme. Darius fled, and Alexander won the battle. He barely won it, but nevertheless won the battle.

One more: the Battle of Cannae, dated roughly 216 BC. And we see here the Romans in this very uniform array going against the Carthaginians under the command of Hannibal, who put his weakest troops forward, his better infantry in his left and right wing there, his heavy cavalry on his left, his light cavalry on his right. And the Carthaginian cavalry actually had about the same numbers as the Roman cavalry, plus it was better.

In any case, they drove off the Roman cavalry, came in behind the front in conjunction with the cavalry on the right—on your right and the Roman left here—and forced the Roman cavalry to leave the field. In the meantime, the Romans here pushed back the center—

—and stepped into the bag, so to speak. The wings closed in. The cavalry came back. Battle of encirclement, battle of annihilation. Depending upon the different accounts you read, Hannibal lost around 7,000 troops; the Romans somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000.

You can see what happens when they all start closing in: they’ve got to change all their formations. In the meantime, you’re pulling them apart. They can’t cope. They have to change front. Very ponderous and heavy.

So what’s my point here? Well, there’s a so-called principle of war called concentration. If you look at that, the Romans were more concentrated than the Carthaginians. They lost. Marathon: Persians were more concentrated than the Greeks. They lost. And we see this happening over and over.

So the first few times […], they got very—“Wait a minute, that’s not fair! You’ve got to think of concentration…” They start throwing all the caveats in. Well, if you have to throw all the caveats in, the principle has no meaning. […]

What’s the impression I’m trying to leave you? And it goes like this: if you look at any one of these battles, in one way or another they’re emphasizing unequal distribution as a basis for leverage and success. In fact, that’s what we’re talking about all the way through. Some kind of unequal distribution, uneven distribution, in order to gain leverage and collapse […].

Well, if that’s the case, unequal distribution’s a key idea. Then, if you begin to think about it, concentration and dispersion are nothing more than aspects of unequal distribution. In other words, if you concentrate in some areas, you disperse the others. They’re both folded under the idea of unequal distribution. […] Far better, right? Yet we don’t have a principle of war called dispersion. We have a principle of war called concentration. We’ll get into that later. Beginning my erosive—corrosive—attack upon principles of war, as you probably know.

In any case, you begin to see these kinds of things play out, and you see many authors, historians and other people notice the so-called moral effect, the disturbing effect of flank attack or surprise or those kinds of things: how they build doubt, fear and those kinds of things. People can’t seem to cope. We don’t know what it is yet. We’re going to gather that information so we can sort of pin that down and see what we’re talking about.

With that in mind, let’s push on, come closer to the present. Let’s look at Genghis Khan […], and we see some advantages he had over his adversary: mobility, communication, intelligence and leadership. Intelligence in terms of their intelligence service. […]

Mobility: Asiatic pony army. Each trooper had more than one pony. And those ponies were trained from birth to follow the pony the trooper was astride. They didn’t have to have a tether. So if one got tired, they’d just shift to another, back and forth. They could go [fifty or sixty?] miles a day, day after day, foraging, moving on their adversary. So, in that sense, they had much greater mobility than their adversary. As a matter of fact, up to the present time, they had the greatest strategic mobility of any army in history.

I’m not saying we should go back to using ponies. I’m talking in a very broad sense, because we have to operate air, sea and other kinds. […]

Communication: they operated in very wide arrays, with their major units very spread out. Yet they were able to operate in a concerted manner. They had messengers or courier service, signaling devices like mirrors and that, so they could work together.

Plus a great deal of previous training, so each one could sort of understand what the other guy was doing without a great deal of communication. And that’s something we’ll talk about in just a minute; I’ll come back.

Their intelligence service: they penetrated all the way down to Genoa and Venice, totally inside their adversary’s system. Their adversary didn’t even know what they were up to. In other words, they were inside their adversary’s mind, or their adversary’s orientation; you get an inside sort of view of things.

Their leadership, under the first great […], was of a kind today we call leading by general intention. Decide what’s going to be done; the commanders on the spot determine how it’s going to be carried out. They’re responsible. Very important idea today, which we seem to violate, causing enormous difficulties.

And their theme for operations: note all the kinds of things they’re doing here. The idea is to try to pull their adversary apart and exploit their vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Very fast-paced, fast-tempo operations. And also the use of propaganda and terror to destroy their adversary’s resolve.

As an illustrative example: if they were going to take a city, and one city held out too long, they’d slaughter all but a few of the inhabitants and let the other inhabitants go to the other city and say, “If you surrender early, you’re not going to have to go through this slaughter.” That sort of breaks down resistance.

Another way they did it was, when they were going to take a province or a city and somebody was resisting too long, they’d march all the other citizens out in front. So if they wanted to defend that, they had to destroy their own citizens. These people weren’t pleasant people. You see, that kind of drains away resolve. I’m not saying we should do that. I’m just saying that’s what they did. […]

In any case, their aim was quite simple. But note what I say here: widely separated strategic maneuvers. Let me give you a feel for that by looking at this next schematic.

Here we have a schematic of the invasion of the Khwarizm Empire.

Audience, inferred: What empire?

Boyd: Khwarizm Empire. Modern-day Afghanistan area. You know, some of the areas where we’ve got problems in the world right now. And here we have these four units coming through, as indicated here. Note the scale of miles. If you superimpose over that, you’ll find out that Genghis Khan is coming in on a front over 500 miles wide. Just take this mentally. You superimpose it up here—he’s coming in on a front over 500 miles wide. 200,000 troops coming in an area over 500 miles wide.

Not only that, they were outnumbered by the shah and the Khwarizm Empire. Outnumbered by their adversary. Matter of fact, the Mongols were almost always outnumbered by the enemy. […]

In any case, there was an early engagement by a Mongol detachment with a large force under the shah down here. And even though the shah won the engagement, it so unnerved him that he stretched his forces out along this river, and the Mongols rolled them up one by one. In the meantime, Genghis Khan came out of the desert and sacked Bokhara. All of them came together and sacked Samarkand and conquered the Khwarizm Empire.

So that isn’t much of a concentration when you have your forces spread out over 500 miles. I’m coming back to that idea.

So it raises a rather interesting question, which military men particularly appreciate. Even though outnumbered, why were the Mongols able to maneuver in widely scattered arrays without being defeated separately or in detail? That’s one of the reasons why you want to be concentrated, because the army’s worried about being defeated separately or in detail. Yet the Mongols got away with it. Well, maybe there’s an important notion, an important idea there. Why were they able to get away with it? Can we surface that or bring it out in sharp relief? Let’s attempt that.

So here’s the message and the result. I’ll let you read it and then I’ll comment on it.

Key point: Mongols were able to operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than their adversary. […] By being able to operate at a faster tempo or pace, by having an advantage in these kinds of things we’ve talked about, what does that permit them to do? They can play the dispersion-concentration game in its widest possible sense.

On the other hand, if you’re operating very slowly and can’t adapt very much, you’d better keep your forces together. Otherwise you’re going to be what? Defeated separately or in detail. So if you have the tempo or pace, you can play the dispersion-concentration game in the widest possible sense. If you don’t, you’re going to be forced to operate in a more concentrated, more focused, less adaptive manner.

Let me give you an illustration of that. How many people here have read Clausewitz? Anybody? Well, in his Book Eight there’s a long discussion about the ideas of concentration and what he calls speed, or what we call tempo or pace. Long discussion. When he’s talking about concentration, he laid out four exceptions to the idea of concentration. In terms of the idea of speed, no exceptions.

Well, if there are no exceptions to speed and there are some to concentration, then the premier idea is speed, not concentration. Not only that, when you read very carefully those exceptions, you find out if you can operate at a faster tempo than the adversary, then you don’t have to abide by the principle of concentration.

Another illustration, and I’ll preempt myself here again. The British down in North Africa, early 1940s, against Rommel. One of the things they complained about when they lost: they weren’t operating in a concentrated manner, and Rommel was able to do it. They missed the whole point. Rommel was able to take them out there for a while because he’s operating at a faster tempo or pace. Sometimes he’s operating in widely spaced arrays, other times tight. He’s working one between the other.

So the key idea: if you can operate at a faster tempo or pace, it gives you greater freedom of action. You can play this dispersion-concentration game in the widest possible sense. If not, then you’re confined. Yet in our principles of war, we don’t have a principle of speed, only a principle of concentration, which means we don’t even understand that idea. But the Russians, in one of their principles of war, do have the principle of speed or tempo or pace. Remember, I said different countries lay out those principles differently.

Boyd: Yeah. Not only that—⁴⁴ they were also reading Rommel’s communications then. Not only that, he was also in Europe when that attack took place. They knew he was there. He was on medical leave.

Audience, inferred: Did that limit the Germans’ ability to maneuver because Rommel wasn’t there?

Boyd: Well, no, they didn’t know it was coming. So remember, they had a lot of deception. They had a beautiful deception campaign, if you want to read about it. And all of a sudden this whole thing folded over.

Audience, inferred: What you’re saying is that the British were successful in this case in intelligence and all that?

Boyd: Yeah, many things. Remember, when I’m talking about OODA, you’re not just talking about speed. Remember, you’ve got to have these many things that fit in that. That’ll become evident as we go through it. I’m just laying on the preemption. Yeah, you can go fast right over a cliff, you know! We’re a little bit more refined than that. You’ll get a feel for it as we go through.

The question was raised to me in one of my discussions: each guy goes faster and faster, pretty soon you’re all going crazy. No, you don’t have to do it that way. You’re thinking wrong. If he’s fast, you have to be faster. If you’re slow, you want him slower. You can always slow him down. As long as your pace is faster, it makes no difference whether you’re going—remember that. It’s relative.

You don’t have to go super fast. If you can’t go fast, as long as you slow him down, then you’re faster. Even if you’re slow, he’s slower. Same thing. Just keep that in mind. Don’t you lose your perspective. You’ll see this with guerrillas and the way they go against their adversary. We say they go fast or speedy, but they’re not moving that fast. Their adversary is even slower than them. So you have to keep that perspective in mind all the time.

Like I said, otherwise you’re just going speedy over a cliff. I’m not talking just physical; it’s also mental. So we want to keep those perspectives in mind. Okay?

With that in mind, let’s come closer to the present. Here’s the Battle of Leuthen. The only reason why I show you this: later theorists drew a great deal of significance from this battle. Matter of fact, [Name unclear.].

Here we see the Austrians spread out, as indicated. Frederick the Great with his force here—he was outnumbered greatly by the Austrians, I think about two to one—came behind the screen, hills, put his weight against the Austrian wing here, plus he stretched out some diversionary operations here, and won a fantastic victory.

Basically, all you’re really seeing here is a more modern replay of the Battle of Leuctra: a single-outflanking, or single-envelopment, scheme. Just a more modern replay of it in that context.

So the top’s the same, and all I’ve done is rewritten the action statements. And particularly on the negative side, you see the power to use these things to generate certain things. But if you substitute variety and harmony for uniformity […], then what happens? You become less adaptable, more predictable. That’s what Napoleon did. As time went on, he lost the ability to adapt, became more predictable. Adversaries were able to use it against him.

That was only a very general statement, but I’ll pin that down when we talk about Napoleon. And once again, […].

So the impression I want to leave you with is that the ideas of all these gentlemen—Sun Tzu, Saxe, Bourcet, etc.—are at home with either regular or guerrilla warfare.

Now, why do I make that point? Because very often we like to draw a very sharp distinction between regular warfare and guerrilla warfare. That’s not too useful, because remember, there are many notions that are similar in both. I’m going to show you both regular warfare and guerrilla warfare, and we’ll keep track of how one interconnects with the other. […] Sometimes we draw very sharp distinctions, and then we get lost, so to speak. We don’t want to get lost.

I think it’d be a good time to take about a five-minute break. We’ll come back to it.

[…] It’s the only way you’re going to generate any options. I’ve been in the design business. You have to put assumptions in your math, your algorithms and that. And there are other things you leave out because they’re hard to measure.

Well, just because it’s hard to measure doesn’t mean it isn’t important. We have some of our science and engineering people saying, “You can’t measure it.” You mean because you can’t measure it, it’s unimportant? “No, it’s important.” I said, “Well, then why are we making these things so optimal, then? If that’s important—it’s not included—how do you know it’s optimal?” […]

Okay, here’s where we left off. Let’s go right to the next part. Now I want to talk […]. What we’re going to look at next is what I call the three giants of the nineteenth century. First, Napoleon, the super-practitioner. Next, Clausewitz, the philosopher on war. And next, Jomini, sometimes called the systemizer on war. [Name unclear.]

You might say, [Question unclear.] And for a couple of reasons: one, they had a very pervasive influence upon the way we look at war and conflict. In other words, things that are inculcated in us came out of their time in a very pervasive way. Not all good. We may be hanging on to some images and views that are causing difficulty. And when you have images or views that are causing difficulty, you might want to get new images or views. Otherwise, you have a prescription for pain.

As a matter of fact, one of the reasons why the communists have done so well against us is not because they’re so clever. It’s because we’ve been acting like mastodons—in some areas, not adaptable. Got to keep that in mind. I want you to keep that in mind all the way through it. We don’t want to overthrow certain traditional values, obviously. We don’t want to retain those things that are going to destroy us. We have to keep that in mind.

Okay, with that in mind, I want to look at these three people. Because they have a very pervasive influence, we want to see what that influence is. Maybe get some insight into how we can think about it.

Okay, with that in mind, first Napoleon, the super-practitioner. Remember, when Napoleon came on the scene there were certain things already available—what I call the revolutionary army gifts to Napoleon, right in his art of war.

First of all, we’re talking about the period of the revolution. In other words, the peasants are going to get a piece of the action, instead of being robots or nuggets for somebody else’s enterprise. So morally, spiritually, they have all kinds of energy, dynamism. In other words, they want to play. So you have that going for you. You want to capture and use that.

Second, the so-called subdividing an army into self-sustaining components. Today we call it the divisional concept. It showed up even before Napoleon. Why is that important? Think of two armies bashing together here, like I’m doing with my hand. Then you have one that separates out into divisions, intervals in between. They can get at the flanks, literally pull the other army apart—apart. […] Of course, you have to have a good commander to do that, but remember, Napoleon was a good commander.

Third, note this one. Here I’m in essence saying poverty is a virtue. Instead of depending upon these heavy resupply columns and resupply efforts, they’re literally living off the land. So they move at a much faster tempo, at a much faster pace. So from that viewpoint revolutionary armies operated at a very fast pace, and in that sense poverty was a virtue.

This one you see very often in the literature: the so-called rapid march, sometimes called the revolutionary quickstep, Napoleonic quickstep—120 versus 70 steps per minute. The reason why I put those quotations around it: I’m not sure I believe that. You know, it’s like a contractor’s brochure. Because it’s in there doesn’t mean it’s true.

The idea is correct. Whether it’s 120 or something else, if you loosen people up, they can operate at a faster tempo or pace. If you keep them tight, it’s more difficult to do so. So whether the numbers are correct or not, the basic idea is correct.

And the idea of the discontinued adherence to the so-called 1791 Drill Regulations. They prescribed the use of line and column for fighting and for movement, and evolutions between one and the other, the idea being to get some kind of leverage over your adversary. They initially came out in 1788; they were modified, came out in final form in 1791, and lasted until 1830, 1831—for a forty-year period.

In other words, they were in effect before Napoleon and were in effect after Napoleon. But there was a period there where they didn’t adhere to them. We’ll get to that.

So if you pull all this together, here’s the advantage you get over your adversary if he hadn’t done these kinds of things. In other words, you get a mobility/fluidity of force much better than your adversary’s. And it raises a rather important question, particularly with respect to Napoleon: how did he exploit this superior mobility of force? Because his warfare is characterized by mobility, fluidity, quickness, etc. So how did he exploit that? Let’s dive into that.

So I want you to look at this chart here. A little snapshot of what I call an aspect of his war. ²³ We’ll pull the right side over after we look at the left side. It’s a fairly busy chart here. The general features: plan and resolution, security, strategic dispersion and tactical concentration, and vigorous offensive action. I’ll let you read the left side, and then I’ll comment on it. Don’t read the right side. I’ll get to it.

Okay, let’s look at the first bullet here. Note what’s going on here, all these kinds of things he’s doing. The idea is to find out what his adversary is not up to, […], figure out what he’s up to. In other words, a basis for not only simplifying the way he operates, but also removing uncertainty with respect to his adversary. In other words, sort of an inverse process.

Notice his ideas on security, all the different kinds of things he’s doing. The key idea is to cloak or mask his moves from his adversary. So he’s doing all these kinds of things as I’ve indicated. So in that sense you can think of his security as being a cheng for his vigorous offensive, which is his ch’i. I’m showing you another way you can think of it.

Now, note this third bullet here, which I’ve depicted as strategic dispersion and tactical concentration. For you people who have read the Napoleonic literature, you’ll usually see it described differently. They’ll describe it as assembly and concentration. Then you have a hard time: what’s the difference between assembly and concentration?

When you read into it, you find out what he’s doing. Initially he’s keeping his forces spread out, with intervals in between. As they start closing down, they start to get a tactical concentration. So it’s an initial strategic dispersion followed by a tactical concentration. In other words, you get a sharper distinction. It’s a better way of describing it.

Note what’s happening here. They’re describing it. They have these large intervals, they start closing in and get a better picture. Then the large fraction of their force pounces upon a small fraction of their adversary. In other words, a way of getting strength against weakness.

Plus the fact, in their very movements here, [“irregular and rapid fashion”—partly slide-assisted], it adds another notion of security. In other words, it acts as a cloaking or masking or amorphous kind of movement, too. Hard to keep track of. Remember, if you think back to OODA, if you don’t get a good observation, your orientation’s screwed up. Your orientation’s screwed up, your decision’s screwed up. Your decision’s screwed up, your action’s screwed up.

So if you screw a guy’s observations up, then you’ve corrupted his OODA, and once you’ve got that corrupted, you’ve got things working your way.

And in the fourth point, the idea of a vigorous offense: basically it was to grab the initiative and have his adversary not react quick enough, so he’s a step or two ahead, or inside them, and gradually pulling their adversary apart. Can’t keep up, not adapting, start coming unglued.

Okay, now his theme with respect to those general features. The idea of using what you see very often in the literature, a single or unified line of operations. Now, don’t think of it as a line per se on a map. Some people do. If you’re really thinking in terms of a line, remember these units are spread out adjacently and also longitudinally. It’s a line only in the sense of trying to operate in a concerted or coordinated manner. Only in that sense. Like a line of reasoning, you know, or a party line: you get different kinds of things. But that doesn’t mean that you’re trying to do things along a very narrow or rigid line.

Now, very often it’s depicted that way. It’s an unfortunate use of words, but that’s what’s done. Don’t think of it that way. Think of many lines which are operating in a concerted way. So in that sense it’s a single line, or a line of operations, when you read that literature.

The other idea is to try to grab your adversary’s communications: to cut his lines of communication, seize his lines of communication, isolate his forces so he can’t get resupply, can’t get reinforcement. Also to force him to fight under unfavorable circumstances. Plus, think of it yourself: if you’re in a force and you get cut off, […]. […]

Then, as a result of that, you employ a fraction of your force in order to divert, grab his attention, and hold him down. Then the other portion of your force is going to his flank, going to his center, in order to pull him apart, wherever is the weak or vulnerable point. So you begin to see here, this is a cheng and ch’i. There’s your cheng; there’s your ch’i. You see it right there. You have a cheng/ch’i operation there.

I might add at this point, Sun Tzu was translated into French in Paris in 1772 and later on again in […], by the Jesuits. Which revealed two things: the Chinese suspected the Jesuits were spies, and they were. And two, it’s very often suggested—no proof—people think that Napoleon did read Sun Tzu […]. If you look at some of his operations, they have some of that character, but we really don’t know. At least it hasn’t been uncovered to this day. But there is some suspicion because he read so many things military at that particular time.

And the next point here, note this: set up supporting centers or bases of operation, or local depots. While they didn’t have formal bases […], as they conquered territory and foraged in the areas, they’d set up local depots or local bases of operation. They would set them up such that they’d have alternative lines of communication. They wouldn’t only have one line of communication, but alternatives. So if they have one cut off, they can appeal to another one for resupply.

You can see what that does. It frees up their freedom of maneuver, frees up their action. It gives them leverage against their adversary. It also makes them more unpredictable, or more uncertain to him.

In any case, his aim was quite simple: destroy enemy army. Remember what I said earlier: terrain doesn’t wage wars, machines don’t wage wars, people do, and they use their minds. He’s onto a partial truth here. He recognized, if you take out the army, then you own the terrain. If you go after the terrain, you may have to fight the army again and again. So in that sense he was correct. He didn’t have it all, though.

If you look at his operations down in Spain, remember, he beat and destroyed the Spanish army, then he had to fight the guerrillas and lost the guerrilla war. So it’s not only the formal instruments you have to fight, you also have to fight the—what?—informal instruments, or the irregulars. Whether it be guerrillas, people, dirty tricks, whatever it might be. Or today we have terrorists, all that kind of thing can cause a problem.

But he did have a partial truth. He tended to think of it more as a formal instrument, as they did in the latter part of the eighteenth century, early part of the nineteenth century. We see that kind of thing.

But note these operations up here. I’ll show you some schematics. Tie them up in one direction, hose them over here. Cheng and the ch’i.

Let me show you what I call an idealized schematic. I lifted this right out of the book, as indicated at the bottom there. The only thing I added is the cheng and the ch’i. And what we see is what we call a strategy of [envelopment—contextual completion of a badly recognized phrase].

Here’s a pinning force. Here’s a maneuver force that comes back, cuts off the lines of communication, folds in behind them. They put the pressure on, pull the guy apart. [Exchange unclear.]

Okay, you have a pinning force here to tie up your adversary, to grab his attention […]. In the meantime, this maneuver force comes in the back door here, cuts off his lines of communication, has one hold with part of the force; the rest of it folds back in, so these people can’t interfere. Now they have these people isolated. As they try to adjust to this, these other people put more pressure on in order to pull your adversary apart. In other words, they’re trying to adjust under very trying circumstances.

No, this is a method that he would apply over and over again in many battles, in different ways. You see that kind of thing. That’s one notion. I’m just trying to depict a cheng/ch’i operation. You remember Patton said, “Hold them by the nose, kick them in the rear.” You’re holding them by the nose, kicking them in the rear.

Okay, another operation called the strategy of central position. If his adversary was spread out a little bit—two forces there, a large interval in between—he would strike into that interval. Then he’d send in what he calls an SA, a secondary attack here, to keep these people tied up. He’d use a major portion of his force to grab these people and try to defeat them. Then he’d swing back to the other force.

Well, that sounds nice and dandy, but there’s a hidden assumption there. You’re not going to get away with that unless you can operate at a faster tempo or pace than your adversary. That’s not explicitly in that diagram. You’ve got to remember that’s a hidden assumption there. Providing you operate at a faster tempo or pace, you can do that. Remember, the Mongols did that kind of stuff too. But if you’re operating slow, then you’re not going to be able to play that game. Okay?

Okay, with that in mind, now let’s step down to his tactics. I’m showing you an example of his early tactics and an example of his later tactics. And they were so beautifully stated I thought I would just take the quotes. The underlines are mine, for emphasis.

Now, I’ll let you read both these, and then I’ll comment. For your information, voltigeurs means sharpshooters or skirmishers. Read the left and then read the right.

One other point. Remember, this didn’t happen all of a sudden. Over time, he was shifting to this kind of a mode.

Okay? Let’s look at the left-hand side. These two underlines literally capture the essence of the statement. Note this: a general rather than a minutely regulated mission. If you have a general rather than minutely regulated mission, what happens? If you have a minutely regulated mission, you lose your ability to adapt. You become very predictable. It’s hard to change. General mission: more adaptable, less predictable. That’s the key idea there.

Being more adaptable, less predictable, you can start exploiting the so-called chinks in his armor. In other words, exploit his weaknesses, his vulnerabilities.

Now let’s go to the right side. Heavy bombardment. You’re attacking his strength. Bash away. Not only that, note then: the secret is careful timing and coordination. Here you are in the confusion of combat, and you have everything carefully timed. That’s nice. Hard to do. Most often isn’t done, even when you want to do it.

So now you’re putting up a situation where you have careful timing in a very confused situation. A very difficult thing to do. The other guy, remember, he’s adjusting to you too. So the point is, here we see heavy bombardment going strength against strength. You’ve got these very carefully timed, more minutely regulated missions, which means you become less adaptable, more predictable.

The only way you can do that, you have to put yourself into […], doing very predictable things at lower and lower levels […]. In any case, that’s my essential point: fluid, adaptable on the left; less fluid, less adaptable on the right. More unpredictable on the left, more predictable on the right. So we see the evolution of his tactics over time taking place.

So let’s critique that. Obviously, there are some questions related to that. Why? Let’s begin the answer here.

So when you look at Napoleon, you find out he did exploit ambiguity and deception at the strategic level. He did beautiful work all the way up to Waterloo. Unfortunately, on the tactical level he started going back to what I call more formal battering-ram methods. As a matter of fact, he reinstalled the 1791 Drill Regulations, even in a very heavy-handed fashion.

Why? Napoleon emphasized the conduct of war from the top down. He wanted to get strategic success in order to gain grand-tactical and tactical success. And to do that he set up what we call a highly centralized command-and-control system, as indicated here, where he kept a grand design in his mind. His own marshals and generals didn’t know what that was.

Now, why would somebody do that? Because it gives him control over his inferiors, so they can’t deviate too far. Otherwise, they’ll blow the whole thing apart. It’s a control mechanism. Well, if they know that and they’re going to get in trouble, what are they going to do? Typically, they just pass that right down the chain of command. Any organization does that. So you get more rigid, less fluid at the bottom level, lower and lower levels.

And the result’s not too surprising. Even though your strategic maneuvers are very gifted, after concentration your tactical maneuvers become—note the quotes around the “maneuvers” there—stereotyped and obvious. Hence it became very difficult, as time went on, to gain that tactical victory, […].

Let me give you an example where they didn’t adapt. In Spain, for example, Wellington, when he went against Napoleon’s forces, one of his favorite schemes was to put his troops on a reverse slope with a heavy skirmisher screen. Well, if you put them on a reverse slope, then it’s kind of hard to observe how they’re deployed or arrayed against you. That’s one thing. So observation-wise, you have a disadvantage.

The other point is, it’s very difficult for you to savage them, so to speak, with your own artillery on reverse slopes. Plus the heavy skirmishers—you have a skirmisher screen. Then you can see what Napoleon was up to. What would happen when you come over the slope? Correct: they’d be ready for them and beat the hell out of them when they come over the slope.

Guess what? Same technique Wellington used against Waterloo later on. Point is, Napoleon didn’t adapt, still using the same assault form. Very important. Same kind of predictability. We’ll get into that; just keep that in mind.

So, partial critique so far. We’ll actually make it more involved after we look at Clausewitz and Jomini. Remember, Clausewitz and Jomini came out of the Napoleonic period. In a sense, they were trying to articulate the type of warfare that Napoleon was trying to wage.

In any case, the point: strategic fog followed by stereotyped and ruinous tactical assaults. ⁵²

In other words, I give him credit at the strategic level. […] Obvious, less adaptable, more predictable. You’ve seen that over and over.