A MILITARY THINKER

NEAR LONGEVILLE-LES-METZ ON THE MORNING of August 15, 1870, a stray projectile from a Prussian gun mortally wounded the Colonel of the 10th Regiment of the Line. The obscure gunner never knew that he had done away with one of the most intelligent officers of our army, one of the most forceful writers, one of the most clear-sighted philosophers whom sovereign genius had ever created.

Ardant du Picq, according to the Annual Register, commanded but a regiment. He was fitted for the first rank of the most exalted. He fell at the hour when France was thrown into frightful chaos, when all that he had foreseen, predicted and dreaded, was being terribly fulfilled. New ideas, of which he was the unknown trustee and unacknowledged prophet, triumphed then at our expense. The disaster that carried with it his sincere and revivifying spirit, left in the tomb of our decimated divisions an evidence of the necessity for reform. When our warlike institutions were perishing from the lack of thought, he represented in all its greatness the true type of military thinker. The virile thought of a military thinker alone brings forth successes and maintains victorious nations. Fatal indolence brought about the invasion, the loss of two provinces, the bog of moral miseries and social evils which beset vanquished States.

The heart and brain of Ardant du Picq guarded faithfully a worthy but discredited cult. Too frequently in the course of our history virtues are forsaken during long periods, when it seems that the entire race is hopelessly abased. The mass perceives too late in rare individuals certain wasted talents—treasures of sagacity, spiritual vigor, heroic and almost supernatural comprehension. Such men are prodigious exceptions in times of material decadence and mental laxness. They inherit all the qualities that have long since ceased to be current. They serve as examples and rallying points for other generations, more clear-sighted and less degenerate. On reading over the extraordinary work of Ardant du Picq, that brilliant star in the eclipse of our military faculties, I think of the fatal shot that carried him off before full use had been found for him, and I am struck by melancholy. Our fall appears more poignant. His premature end seems a punishment for his contemporaries, a bitter but just reproach.

Fortunately, more honored and believed in by his successors, his once unappreciated teaching contributes largely to the uplift and to the education of our officers. They will be inspired by his original views and the permanent virtue contained therein. They will learn therefrom the art of leading and training our young soldiers and can hope to retrieve the cruel losses of their predecessors.

Ardant du Picq amazes one by his tenacity and will power which, without the least support from the outside, animate him under the trying conditions of his period of isolated effort.

In an army in which most of the seniors disdained the future and neglected their responsibilities, rested satisfied on the laurels of former campaigns and relied on superannuated theories and the exercises of a poor parade, scorned foreign organizations and believed in an acquired and constant superiority that dispenses with all work, and did not suspect even the radical transformations which the development of rifles and rapid-fire artillery entail; Ardant du Picq worked for the common good. In his modest retreat, far from the pinnacles of glory, he tended a solitary shrine of unceasing activity and noble effort. He burned with the passions which ought to have moved the staff and higher commanders. He watched while his contemporaries slept.

Toward the existing system of instruction and preparation which the first blow shattered, his incorruptible honesty prevented him from being indulgent. While terrified leaders passed from arrogance or thoughtlessness to dejection and confusion, the blow was being struck. Served by his marvelous historical gifts, he studied the laws of ancient combat in the poorly interpreted but innumerable documents of the past. Then, guided by the immortal light which never failed, the feverish curiosity of this soldier’s mind turned towards the research of the laws of modern combat, the subject of his preference. In this study he developed to perfection his psychological attainments. By the use of these attainments he simplified the theory of the conduct of war. By dissecting the motor nerves of the human heart, he released basic data on the essential principles of combat. He discovered the secret of combat, the way to victory.

Never for a second did Ardant du Picq forget that combat is the object, the cause of being, the supreme manifestation of armies. Every measure which departs therefrom, which relegates it to the middle ground is deceitful, chimerical, fatal. All the resources accumulated in time of peace, all the tactical evolutions, all the strategical calculations are but conveniences, drills, reference marks to lead up to it. His obsession was so overpowering that his presentation of it will last as long as history. This obsession is the rôle of man in combat. Man is the incomparable instrument whose elements, character, energies, sentiments, fears, desires, and instincts are stronger than all abstract rules, than all bookish theories. War is still more of an art than a science. The inspirations which reveal and mark the great strategists, the leaders of men, form the unforeseen element, the divine part. Generals of genius draw from the human heart ability to execute a surprising variety of movements which vary the routine; the mediocre ones, who have no eyes to read readily therein, are doomed to the worst errors.

Ardant du Picq, haunted by the need of a doctrine which would correct existing evils and disorders, was continually returning to the fountain-head. Anxious to instruct promising officers, to temper them by irrefutable lessons, to mature them more rapidly, to inspire them with his zeal for historical incidents, he resolved to carry on and add to his personal studies while aiding them. Daring to take a courageous offensive against the general inertia of the period, he translated the problem of his whole life into a series of basic questions. He presented in their most diverse aspects, the basic questions which perplex all military men, those of which knowledge in a varying degree of perfection distinguish and classify military men. The nervous grasp of an incomparable style models each of them, carves them with a certain harshness, communicates to them a fascinating yet unknown authority which crystallizes them in the mind, at the same time giving to them a positive form that remains true for all armies, for all past, present and future centuries. Herewith is the text of the concise and pressing questions which have not ceased to be as important to-day (1902) as they were in 1870:

“General,

“In the last century, after the improvements of the rifle and field artillery by Frederick, and the Prussian successes in war—to-day, after the improvement of the new rifle and cannon to which in part the recent victories are due—we find all thinking men in the army asking themselves the question: ‘How shall we fight to-morrow?’ We have no creed on the subject of combat. And the most opposing methods confuse the intelligence of military men.

“Why? A common error at the starting point. One might say that no one is willing to acknowledge that it is necessary to understand yesterday in order to know to-morrow, for the things of yesterday are nowhere plainly written. The lessons of yesterday exist solely in the memory of those who know how to remember because they have known how to see, and those individuals have never spoken. I make an appeal to one of those.

“The smallest detail, taken from an actual incident in war, is more instructive for me, a soldier, than all the Thiers and Jominis in the world. They speak, no doubt, for the heads of states and armies but they never show me what I wish to know—a battalion, a company, a squad, in action.

“Concerning a regiment, a battalion, a company, a squad, it is interesting to know: The disposition taken to meet the enemy or the order for the march toward them. What becomes of this disposition or this march order under the isolated or combined influences of accidents of the terrain and the approach of danger?

“Is this order changed or is it continued in force when approaching the enemy?

“What becomes of it upon arriving within the range of the guns, within the range of bullets?

“At what distance is a voluntary or an ordered disposition taken before starting operations for commencing fire, for charging, or both?

“How did the fight start? How about the firing? How did the men adapt themselves? (This may be learned from the results: So many bullets fired, so many men shot down—when such data are available.) How was the charge made? At what distance did the enemy flee before it? At what distance did the charge fall back before the fire or the good order and good dispositions of the enemy, or before such and such a movement of the enemy? What did it cost? What can be said about all these with reference to the enemy?

“The behavior, i.e., the order, the disorder, the shouts, the silence, the confusion, the calmness of the officers and men whether with us or with the enemy, before, during, and after the combat?

“How has the soldier been controlled and directed during the action? At what instant has he had a tendency to quit the line in order to remain behind or to rush ahead?

“At what...