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Updated: June 10, 2025
Such a method of making war obviously differs in a fundamental manner from that which Napoleon habitually adopted, and yet we have it presented by Jomini and Clausewitz, the two apostles of the Napoleonic method. The explanation is, of course, that both of them had seen too much not to know that Napoleon's method was only applicable when you could command a real physical or moral preponderance.
This same day General Jomini, Swiss by birth, but until recently in the service of France, chief of staff to Marshal Ney, and loaded with favors by the Emperor, had deserted his post, and reported at the headquarters of the Emperor Alexander, who had welcomed him with demonstrations of most intense satisfaction.
Jomini, from an extended experience, and a study of the genius of Napoleon, which his Russian position could never induce him to undervalue, has produced those standard works which must always remain the treasure-houses of military knowledge. We admire veracity, but let no soldier confess that he has not read the "Vie Politique et Militaire," and the "Précis de l'Art de la Guerre."
The navy doubtless reaped honor in that brilliant sea struggle, but the honor was its own alone; only discredit accrued to the statesmen who, with such men to serve them, none the less left the country open to the humiliation of its harried coasts and blasted commerce. Never was there a more lustrous example of what Jomini calls "the sterile glory of fighting battles merely to win them."
"On the side of the French," says Jomini, speaking of Bonaparte at this very period, "was to be seen a young warrior, trained in the best schools, endowed with an ardent imagination, brought up upon the examples of antiquity, greedy of glory and of power, knowing thoroughly the Apennines, in which he had distinguished himself in 1794, and already measuring with a practised eye the distances he must overpass before becoming master of Italy.
From Jomini also I imbibed a fixed disbelief in the thoughtlessly accepted maxim that the statesman and general occupy unrelated fields.
Baron Jomini said that "Napoleon discounted time." So did Washington. Baron Jomini said, also, that "Napoleon was his own best chief-of-staff." So, pre-eminently, was Washington.
This acute perception of the reason why it was at times desirable and proper to hurl a smaller though more efficient force against superior numbers, content that the latter, as a factor, were for the campaign annihilated, this realization of the possible fruitfulness of a defeat, or rather, of a battle wisely lost, as contrasted with what Jomini calls the sterile glory of fighting battles merely to win them, is one of the most marked and decisive features of Nelson's genius as a general officer.
A fatal event immediately followed the rupture of the conferences. On the 17th of August Austria, wishing to gain by war as she had before gained by alliances, declared that she would unite her forces with those of the Allies. On the very opening of this disastrous campaign General Jomini went over to the enemy.
With this large force he was to advance due west, towards the River Brenta, while Davidovich, marching through Tyrol by the valley of the Adige, was to meet him with the remainder near Verona. As Jomini has observed, the Austrians gave themselves infinite trouble and encountered grave risks in order to compass a junction of forces which they might quietly have effected at the outset.
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