‘Military discipline admits of no modifications.’-Napoleon to Jerome, 3 April 1807.
The army must understand that discipline, wisdom, and the respect for property support its victories, that pillage and theft belong only to the cowardly, who are unworthy of remaining in the ranks…that they plot the loss of honor and that they have no goal other than to stain the laurels acquired by so much bravery and perserverence.’-Order of the Day, 11 June 1796.
‘Without discipline there is no victory.’-Napoleon to the Directory, 6 April 1796.
‘The success of an army and its well-being depend essentially upon order and discipline, which will make us loved by the people who come to greet us and with whom we share enemies.’-Order of the Day, 20 March 1799.
‘Pillaging destroys everything, even the army that practices it. The inhabitants leave, which has the dual drawback of turning them into irreconcilable enemies who take revenge upon the isolated soldier, and of swelling the enemy ranks in proportion to the damage that we do. This deprives us of all intelligence, so necessary for waging war, and of every means of subsistence. Peasants who come to peddle provisions are put off by the troops who stop them, pillage their wares, and beat them.’-Order of the Army, 12 December 1808.
‘When I arrived [in Italy in 1796] the army was injured by the bad influence of the troublemakers: it lacked bread, discipline, and subordination. I made some examples, devoted all of our means to reviving the administrative services of the army, and victory did the rest…Without bread the soldier tends to an excess of violence that makes one blush for being a man.’-Napoleon to the Directory, 24 April 1796.
‘We will never forget to make a disciplinary example of these soldiers who deviate from the rule of severe discipline.’-Napoleon to AM Battaglia, 10 December 1796.
Army Order, 22 June 1812:
‘Each marshal or corps commander will name a provost commission composed of five officers, which will try every soldier who, following the army, is absent from his regiment without a legitimate reason and every marauder and individual caught pillaging or molesting the local inhabitants. The commission will condemn the guilty to death and will have them executed in twenty-four hours.’
From The Road to Rivoli by Martin Boycott-Brown:
'…the instruction that Bonaparte had been given at the beginning of the campaign had stipulated that he was to exact large contributions from conquered enemy territory, so his actions were in line with this. Moreover. the fact that he was able to send large quantities of money and treasure to Paris, and even to help the finances of the struggling armies on the Rhine, undoubtedly increased his political leverage, and he must have been aware that every franc he could raise would help him get agreement for his plans…'
'Bonaparte was not avaricious, though, and merely regarded the money as a means to an end. He was far more interested in the next phase of the campaign…'-335,
'...[Napoleon] held a meeting of his generals in Ceva, which resulted in orders being issued that anyone, whether officer or soldier, who either encouraged or participated in looting, would immediately be shot in front of the troops.'-269.
'Joubert also wrote to his father, passing rapidly over another lucky escape to make known his own feelings about the problems of discipline...'the wealth of the country brings back our army's love of pillage, and I curse and rage to the General-in-Chief to have some of the guilty shot. Because I foresee great troubles if this continues.' Bonaparte was of much the same opinion, and issued a lengthy order of the day on the subject, with strict instructions for the divisional generals to submit reports on the conduct of the generals under them, and so on down the scale. From the way the order is set out, one may conclude that as far as Bonaparte was concerned, discipline was something that worked from the top downwards...this order was clearly a 'shot across the bows' that must have discouraged the less hardened criminals, and large-scale disorders of the kind that had compromised the successes of Dego and San Michele did not recur.'-273-274.
'However, [the proclamation] did go on to say at some length that pillaging would have to stop, and there would be grave punishments for those who transgressed the order. As if to show that this was not an empty threat, there were a few executions. A certain Sapper Latouche was shot during the day for looting, and two soldiers called Urgel and Lefort followed the day after.'-277.
Sorry @tomholmberg , can’t follow the logic. If a burglar steals an item from the swag contained in another burglars house then it is no longer stolen? “It’s only wrong if Napoleon does it” confuses me as: 1. The post was about Napoleon. Shouldn’t be a great surprise if replied were also mainly about Napoleon? 2. Some of the items in my original list were ‘appropriated’ in the revolutionary and directorate periods. They still kept and disposed of by Napoleon though. 3. The “But he was doing it too Miss” defence cut little ice with my infant school teacher, and can’t see it’s gained much traction since then. I would have thought it best confined to the schoolyard? For the life of me I can’t see how it advances the intellectual argument all that far, unless I’m missing a subtext? Which with my failing faculties and poor levels of emotional intelligence is entirely possible.
well this is typical Nabulieone style, officially it is not permitted, but without it the whole French and later Confederation of the Rhine Army couldn't have existed.
Instead of reading Boney propaganda, as soon as he opens his mouth, lies pop out, I recommend to read memoires and eye witness reports which are full of stories of organised plundering, like soldiers just take their ramrods to probe the ground for dug in food.
Yes - on and off - a soldier was shot - to sort of set an example, but it was more or less officially sanctioned by the officers, because also they had to eat and got their share.
Elting, here for once I agree - translated the memoires of Blaze - here you will find plenty of examples of those frictoteurs who formed sort of well organised plundering corps.
Not even the much sterner officers at the Revolutionary Armies could prevent plundering, it was a need for existence in the mobile art of operational art of war, also officers got very rich by that.
Nabulienone was indeed not interested in anything as having soldiers to faire la guerre - and he was stupified to learn in Russia that he didn't have any left.
And I agree with Zach White, without plunder the British soldier would starve to death, the calory intake by official rations wasn't permitting soldiering.
Thanks for sharing these interesting quotes Kevin. What immediately strikes me is the issue of disparity between what the figurehead at the top is saying an official capacity, and the reality of what plays out on the ground.
We see a similar thing with Wellington in the British army - countless general orders of genuine and evidence fury at the conduct of the men plundering, yet the reality was that trials for theft (though the army's second or third most prosecuted crime) were dwarfed by trials for desertion. There was equally what I term in my PhD thesis a 'pragmatic system of discretionary' justice within the army, perhaps best described as a 'live and let live attitude'.
Some senior officers were invested in the notion of plunder for reward (in the British and the French armies) - on the French side think about what happens in, for example, Coimbra during the third French invasion. On the British side, we have clear evidence of battalion and brigade commanders permitting men to plunder food as a reward for hard fighting. At a battalion level, officers accepted that men needed to plunder for food in order to avoid starving - British supply networks just weren't able to supply the men consistently enough. The difficulty, of course, is that if you allow your soldiers to go off in search of a chicken or loaf of bread in order to actually eat (thereby enabling them to march or fight the next day), you end up muddying the water. A soldier who discovers a bag of coins whilst searching for a loaf of bread is not going to leave them lying there.
The issue was obviously aggravated for the French by the policy of living off the land. Essentially then, everything lies in the point at which commanders at a grass roots level invest in notion that there are exceptions to the rule. There is a delicate balance between command and control, and discipline has to be balanced with morale. Wellington himself acknowledged 'A starving army is really worse than none. The men lose their spirit and they plunder'. That said, he enacted similar measures (the Provost, the creation of the Staff Corps of Cavalry - the precursor to the modern Military Police), swifter trial procedures. So the pictures are complex. I don't know enough of Napoleon's actions day to day on campaign, though I gather a large proportion of artwork was taken back to France as a result of the Italian campaigns, and the marshals were not shy about lining their pockets with gold. I'm curious about how rigorously these rules were enforced, prosecution rates, who was held to account etc.
Sorry about all the questions, Kevin - you happen to have tapped into 'my area', and I find the comparison interesting.