Enter your search text in the box above

Select a result to preview

Velocity towards his goal helped Napoleon win battles

Summary

Details

References

Quotes

Napoleon* became famous for his emphasis on speed toward a goal in the context of his military campaigns. “‘The strength of the army’, he stated, ‘like power in mechanics, is the product of multiplying the mass by the velocity.’”2 His desire to move faster in his planned direction helped him win many battles and changed how enemies were able to respond. His rewriting of battle tactics to achieve velocity ultimately influenced military strategy. This speed was literal—he moved his troops at an unprecedented pace. But the speed was toward a goal. Faster troop movement was a part of his overall strategy.

We can understand how his ability to move his troops faster contributed to his successes when we look at his Italian campaign, which was early in his career and exemplified the velocity-based approach which continued throughout his life. As Adam Zamoyski explains in Napoleon: A Life, when he was just 26, Napoleon led a campaign in Italy against the Austrians. It was his first as the commander-in-chief of an army and was actually his first independent command in the field. He went into the Italian campaign as an unknown quantity in the French Republic and came out as a celebrated leader and defender of France. He achieved this by employing new and unexpected tactics, many inspired by the principle of velocity.

Napoleon made velocity one of his core principles of battle. In Italy, his army was not the strongest nor the best trained, and thus superior movement was a battle tactic. “Bonaparte needed to keep up the momentum so that neither of his opponents had time to strike back.”3 The effects of investing in velocity weakened the enemy by not giving them time to adjust. Moving fast toward his objectives actually obviated potential obstacles, because the Austrians didn’t have time to put any up.

The pace of his troops was unprecedented at the time. Even barefoot or poorly clothed, they would move fast. There are records of one division covering 80 km in 36 hours. Another stretch of four days saw his troops fight three battles and cover 90 km. In Napoleon: A Life, Andrew Roberts writes: “The sheer tempo of the operations ensured that he always kept the initiative, bowling unstoppably along a narrow valley gorge replete with places where the Austrians should have been able to slow or halt him.”4

Part of what allowed him to move fast while on this campaign was “a profound study of the history and geography of Italy before he ever set foot there [and] his willingness to experiment with other’s ideas.”5 He developed expertise of the territory which gave him flexibility, and he chose his path so as to maintain as constant a velocity as possible.

In order to move with velocity, Napoleon also needed to get others to move at the same pace. He was very involved in the lives and welfare of his troops, partly to inspire them to push themselves to meet the tempo he wanted to move at. He employed various tactics to achieve this. First, “his treatment of the troops under his command had been designed from the start not only to make them more effective as fighting men, but also to turn them into his men.”6 By “giving them victory and talking to the men as equals,” 7 he boosted their self-esteem by making them feel they were achieving what other men and armies could not. They admired Napoleon and completely bought into his vision. Velocity became a group goal. They all wanted to move quickly, seeing it as integral to victory.