The Book of War is Written By Chance: Napoleon’s 1812 March and the Challenge of Using History as a Guide for Strategy – The Strategy Bridge

Preparing for future warfare based on historical lessons has long been fundamental to military leadership and strategy. Field Marshal Montgomery’s observation that “rule one on page one of the book of war, is: ‘Do not march on Moscow’” belies the fact that one of the most famous marchers on Moscow rigorously studied history and yet marched on Moscow.[1] Whatever the book of war may say, Napoleon Bonaparte understood that “in war, chance is half of everything.”[2] Napoleon’s study of history and march on Moscow illustrate why even the most assiduous students of history often follow their predecessors into disaster.

In June of 1812 Napoleon’s efforts to avoid another war with Tsar Alexander of Russia had failed. As Napoleon and his Grande Armée crossed the Niemen River into Russia, Napoleon requested and studied written accounts of Charles XII of Sweden’s ill-fated invasion of Peter the Great’s Russia in 1709.[3] Charles, like Napoleon, relied on speed to force a rapid decision. Yet Peter the Great’s Russian armies continuously withdrew into the interior, employing a scorched earth approach that ensured Charles would find no support for his army from the land. In extended pursuit, Charles was exposed to the Great Frost of 1708/09 while isolated on inhospitable Russian territory.[4] Voltaire vividly describes 2,000 men freezing to death before Charles’s “very eyes.”[5] Terribly weakened by the ravages of the Russian winter, Charles was defeated at the Battle of Poltava, and the tide turned. Charles fled, and the war ended Sweden’s dominance in Europe.

Napoleon’s study of Charles XII’s disastrous campaign should have warned him of the danger he would face, but he also had his own two previous victories over Russia to consider. In the first victory, Napoleon famously defeated the Russian army at Austerlitz in 1805 through a bold ruse. Far more interesting is Napoleon’s 1807 pursuit of a withdrawing Russian army led by Count Levin von Bennigsen during the War of the Fourth Coalition. A full five years before the disastrous invasion of 1812, Prussian winter weather menaced Napoleon’s army and by December 1807 40% of his army was out of commission at any time with disease, hunger, and exhaustion.[6] Bennigsen intended to remain out of Napoleon’s reach and avoid a potentially decisive battle while the effects of over extension took their toll. However, Bennigsen briefly crossed the Alle River at Friedland to crush a small French contingent and was quickly trapped by Napoleon and the Russian army was destroyed. Shortly thereafter Tsar Alexander sought an armistice.[7] Napoleon’s dogged pursuit of a withdrawing Russian army, through winter, ended in a great victory.

Napoleon’s 1812 campaign repeated Charles’s experience in many important respects. The heat and rains of early summer left sodden, unripe forage in their wake, killing 10,000 horses in the first week of the campaign.[8] Lack of water and cramped campaign conditions led to an outbreak of typhus, which cost 80,000 casualties by the third week in July and ultimately killed as many as 140,000 troops.[9] Marching across eastern Russia in the heat, many of Napoleon’s soldiers discarded the winter clothing they did not expect to need on a short Russian campaign.[10] Napoleon won the battles of Smolensk and Borodino, but even when he occupied Moscow, which was much farther than he intended to pursue Alexander’s forces, the Russians did not sue for peace. Instead, they burned their own ancient city, which Napoleon described as “an event on which I could not calculate, as there is not, I believe, a precedent for it in the history of the world.”[11] By the time Napoleon returned west for winter quarters bad weather struck and his withdrawal devolved into a chaotic flight. Having thoroughly studied several histories of Charles XII’s defeat and downfall, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 largely repeated them and in little more than a year Napoleon was deposed and in exile on Elbe.

Napoleon’s failure in 1812 suggests that he did not learn the correct lessons from the history he studied. Yet 21st century students of history share the same challenge that Napoleon faced as he studied recent and distant historical examples. Students of history often have a perspective that is thickly clouded with outcome and hindsight biases.[12] Outcome bias leads to errors of analysis when outcomes are already known. For example, outcome bias suggests that where there is defeat, mistakes must have been made. Once mistakes have been identified by an observer, hindsight bias suggests that the likely consequences of these mistakes were discernible at the time, if correctly analyzed by a skilled and dispassionate eye. These biases combine to suggest that the true challenge for practitioners is to learn from history to correctly assess future circumstances and make decisions that lead to victory rather than defeat.

Yet some of the greatest strategic thinkers in history, including Napoleon, argue otherwise. Though Machiavelli is often read as a champion of unalloyed realpolitik his discussion of the relationship between skill (virtu) and fortune (fortuna) emphasizes the predominant role of fortune or chance in determining the fates of princes and their armies. Machiavelli likens fortune to a torrential river that overflows its banks, and only those who have prepared for the flood in advance may mitigate its impacts and flourish.[13] Yet “two men, behaving differently, achieve the same result, and of two other men, who behave in the same way, one will attain his objective and the other will not.”[14] Machiavelli writes that “a ruler will flourish if he adjusts his policies as the character of the times changes,” and they will likely fail if they do not, regardless of skill. [15] This is because “fortune determines one half of our actions” and “leaves us to control the other half.”[16]

Clausewitz likewise believes that it is “absolutely useless” to develop rules from past experience that can reliably overcome the power of chance in the practice of strategy.[17] Clausewitz wrote that the difficulties of accurately knowing the past, present, and future set the realm of strategy apart from tactics. For Clausewitz, “tactics will present far fewer difficulties to the theorist than will strategy” because tactics are concerned with material factors such as force ratios, required supplies, interior lines, and other logistical issues.[18] These material challenges are more amenable to the scientific synthesis of rules, principles, and systems from historical lessons to improve performance and efficiency.[19] For tactics, the challenge is simply interpreting the past well enough to derive accurate lessons learned that will enable an accurate understanding of the present and accurate prediction of the future.

Strategy takes for its object the political conditions beyond the military instrument that are utterly unique, unbounded, and rarely conform to previous experience.

However, Clausewitz argues that at the level of national strategy, “the conduct of war branches out in almost all directions and has no definite limits; while any system, any model, has the finite nature of a synthesis.”[20] Synthetic principles derived from historical lessons always involve the falsification of reality through abstraction.[21] Though abstraction is tolerable for tactics, falsity undermines the strategic art of “quickly and accurately grasping the topography of any area.”[22] Abstraction prevents the strategist from discerning “the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for nor trying to turn into, something that is alien to its nature.”[23] Strategy takes for its object the political conditions beyond the military instrument that are utterly unique, unbounded, and rarely conform to previous experience. Therefore, talent and genius are required to guide the strategist because “talent and genius operate outside the rules.”[24] For strategists, the lessons of history provide only a heuristic value through reflection and study; according to Clausewitz, “the knowledge needed by a senior commander is distinguished by the fact that it can only be attained by a special talent, through the medium of reflection, study, and thought.”[25] Yet this study never provides more than the ability to think and react to the chance circumstances, the fog and friction of war.

Napoleon’s 1812 march on Moscow can best be understood not in terms of historical lessons drawn from the “book of war.” Napoleon was far more familiar with the simple if discomforting notion that “in war, chance is half of everything.”[26] By the time Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, “the die is cast” was already a common phrase for describing the dominant role of chance in determining fate. In the case of Charles in 1708, the historically bad winter could not have been anticipated; it was a chance occurrence that favored the Russians. Likewise, the failure to detect Napoleon’s ruse, the weakening of their lines on Pratzen Heights, and the timely arrival of Marshal Davout at Austerlitz enabled Napoleon’s victory in 1805. Bennigsen’s mistake at Friedland in 1807 was likewise a chance occurrence that enabled Napoleon’s victory and ended the war.

Outcome bias often leads modern observers to start with the fact of defeat and then search for the mistakes that inevitably led to it. But the military decisions made by Charles in 1709 and Napoleon in 1805, 1807, and 1812 should not be judged based on the chance occurrences that delivered their catastrophic defeats or spectacular victories. These decision makers ought to be judged based on the decisions made at the time with the information available to those who must act, and later observers must fundamentally appreciate the role of chance in strategy. Neither Napoleon nor Machiavelli nor Clausewitz offer any easy resolution to the troubling role of chance in the extraordinarily high stakes arts of strategy and war. Machiavelli simply leaves his readers with the advice that “it is better to be headstrong than cautious” which is succinctly captured by the Latin proverb “fortune favors the bold.”[27]

As today’s strategists gaze across the Pacific and contemplate possible future conflicts, we would do well to reflect on the role of chance in determining strategic outcomes. Napoleon, Machiavelli, and Clausewitz suggest the study of history is invaluable in preparation for future conflict. Yet they assign a specific educational role to history that does not afford the practitioner with reliable tools to control the capricious forces of chance. Instead, today’s strategists should emulate Machiavelli’s barrier builders who embrace the torrents of fortune and boldly channel their forces. While there are no guarantees of fortune’s unending favor, “talent and genius operate outside the rules” including even “rule one on page one of the book of war.”[28]

As today’s strategists gaze across the Pacific and contemplate possible future conflicts, we would do well to reflect on the role of chance in determining strategic outcomes.

Peter L. Hickman has a PhD from Arizona State University in International Relations and a Master of Philosophy in Military Strategy from the U.S. Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS). He has served on Active Duty and in the Air National Guard including assignments to the US Department of State and the staff of a member of the House Armed Services Committee. The perspectives presented here are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Air Force, the Air National Guard, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Header Image: Crossing the Berezina. The Flight of Napoleon’s Army from Russia in 1812 (Bogdan Willewalde)

Notes:

[1] Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 580.

[2] Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 595.

[3] During the Great Northern War from 1700 to 1721, Charles XII’s Swedish Empire confronted an anti-Swedish Coalition, led by Russia’s Peter the Great, determined to roll back Sweden’s domination of Europe. Enjoying early success against coalition members in the west, Charles invaded Russia in early 1708. Roberts, 569.

[4] Stephanie Pain, “1709: The Year That Europe Froze,” New Scientist, accessed December 30, 2022, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126942-100-1709-the-year-that-europe-froze/.

[5] 1694-1778 Voltaire and Winifred Todhunter, Voltaire’s History of Charles XII, King of Sweden (London : J.M. Dent, 1908), http://archive.org/details/voltaireshistory00voltuoft.

[6] Roberts, Napoleon, 434.

[7] Roberts, 451–56.

[8] Roberts, 578.

[9] Roberts, 590.

[10] Roberts, 615.

[11] Roberts, 612.

[12] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 1st edition (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 207.

[13] Niccolò Machiavelli, Selected Political Writings, ed. David Wootton (Hackett Publishing, 1994), 74–75.

[14] Machiavelli, 75.

[15] Machiavelli, 75.

[16] Machiavelli, 74.

[17] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Indexed Edition, trans. Michael Eliot Howard and Peter Paret, Reprint edition (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1989), 136.

[18] Clausewitz, 141.

[19] Clausewitz, 134.

[20] Clausewitz, 134.

[21] Clausewitz, 6.

[22] Clausewitz, 109.

[23] Clausewitz, 88–89.

[24] Clausewitz, 140.

[25] Clausewitz, 146.

[26] Roberts, Napoleon, 595.

[27] Machiavelli, Selected Political Writings, 76.

[28] Clausewitz, On War, Indexed Edition, 140.