Organization: How Armies are Formed for WarFoster, Hubert
History
Organization: How Armies are Formed for War
Foster, Hubert
Armies -- Organization
At the close of the seventeenth century another Staff Officer was
established at Head-Quarters by the name of Adjutant-General, who
was charged with all questions relating to personnel, and with
routine duties, as distinguished from those connected with movement,
quartering, and fighting, which were the duties of the Q.M.G. The
A.G.’s Staff is in all armies charged to-day with the same duties as
in the eighteenth century.
There were generally attached to the Staff some Engineer Officers,
who were charged with map-making for military purposes. The maps of
European countries are therefore known as Staff Maps, while that of
Great Britain is called the _Ordnance Survey_, because made by the
Royal Engineers, a Corps under the “Master-General of the Ordnance.”
The General Staff was created in Prussia in 1815, in consequence of the
experience gained in the Napoleonic Wars. The then Q.M.G. Staff was
transformed into the General Staff, and placed under the direct orders
of the King. Some of the General Staff Officers were attached to Army
Corps and Brigades (there were not yet any Divisions), and the rest
formed the Great General Staff at Berlin. There has been but little
change in this organization of the Prussian General Staff, which, it
may be noted, acts for the whole military forces of the German Empire,
for there is no _German_ General Staff in the sense in which there is a
_German_ navy.
All armies have now copied the Prussian General Staff system, with
modifications, but it is an error to suppose that the General Staff
duties were not performed before the Prussians so styled them. We have
seen that they were carried out by the Q.M.G. Staff. In the small
armies commanded by Frederick and Wellington, and by Napoleon at the
outset of his career, these great Generals were virtually their own
Chief of the General Staff. They wrote or dictated detailed orders,
worked out movements on the map, and perused states and returns.
Frederick himself gave orders for marching, pitching camp, and
fighting, sent them out by his orderly officers, and watched their
execution personally.
As Napoleon’s armies increased in size, the General Staff duties
became very heavy, and were carried out most ably by Berthier, his
“Major-Général,” or Chief of the Staff. Their nature is stated in quite
modern shape by the great Swiss Military writer Jomini, who had himself
been Chief of the Staff to Ney in 1805, as well as to the Russian
Army in 1813, after his desertion from the French. (See “L’Art de la
Guerre,” Vol. ii., chap, vi., par. 41.)
The Head-Quarters Staff in Napoleon’s great wars was organized in the
following manner:[B]
[B] These particulars are taken from an article in the _Times_
by the Military Correspondent of that newspaper.
The Staff was divided into five branches:
1. Personal Staff of Napoleon.
2. Personal Staff of the Chief of Staff.
3. The Staff proper.
4. Officers “at disposal,” generally away on special missions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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