The Influence of Antoine Henri de Jomini on Winfield Scott's Campaign in the Mexican War

Abstract

T HE NAME OF THE BARON ANTOINE HENRI DE JOMINI, IF FAMILIAR to military historians, is less so to those who specialize in other areas. A Swiss by birth and nationality, he went to Paris to study banking, which had been his family's occupation for generations. During his stay in that city he was caught up in the excitement of the Napoleonic wars; and shortly thereafter he forsook a career in finance and entered the French army. He proved to be a staff officer of considerable skill and soon became a competent assistant to Michel Ney, one of the more prominent marshals of France. After a relatively brief stay with the marshal, he moved on to serve Napoleon himself. In 1813, however, before disaster befell La Grande Arme'e, he quit the French command, in part because of unfair treatment at the hands of Pierre Alexandre Berthier, Napoleon's chief of staff. He then enrolled in the service of Czar Alexander. In this latter capacity, he reformed much of the Russian military establishment, bringing into existence both the War College and the General Staff.1 Jomini was also a prolific writer-altogether he wrote twenty-seven volumes. His chief interest was recent military history, thus his predilection for the wars of Frederick the Great, the French Revolution, and Napoleon. His earliest work, Traite' des Grandes Operations Militaire (hereafter called Treatise on Grand Military Operations), was basically an examination of the campaigns of Frederick. The early volumes contained a number of flattering, but accurate, analogies between the campaigns of Frederick and those of Napoleon; and it was their publication which first attracted the emperor's attention. The young Swiss officer was only twenty-five years old