Les états-majors des armées napoléoniennes

Abstract

The staff officers of the armies of Napoleon ; During the course of the Napoleonic wars the French army benefited from superbly well organised military staffs at all levels, to support the command. At the top of the organisational pyramid stood the Imperial General Staff. This consisted of three bodies : the ‘Imperial Household’, the ‘Emperor’s General Staff’, and the ‘War Administration’. The military staffs of subordinate formations (army corps and divisions ) were divided into three in exactly the same manner. Whatever level one examines in the Napoleonic French army, the staffs all shared the common characteristic of providing the commanding general with the means to plan and direct the movement of his formation’s constituent units. It was this that made possible in that era the material and technical ‘way of war’ that Napoleon pursued. Within each of the military staffs there were specialists, adjutant-majors and their assistants, who ran the offices that generally dealt with non-tactical business, whilst the other officers (including the aides-de-camp to the generals and Napoleon’s personal adjutant officers) took care of observation missions and troop inspections, and acted as courriers -roles that did not require specialist training.