A GENERALISSIMO

THE vices that are inherent in coalitions have been demonstrated over and over again in the wars of the past. The disappointments of the earlier Crusades were attributable to the mutual jealousies of chiefs banded together to wrest the Holy Sepulchre out of the hands of the infidel. The Thirty Years' War would never have lasted for a whole generation had the partnered States on either one or other belligerent side co-ordinated their efforts. It is no disparagement to the military qualities of that gifted miscreant, Frederick the Great, to say that he would never have maintained himself during four campaigns against the confederated forces of Russia, Austria, Saxony, Sweden, and France had his enemies worked together with single-minded purpose for the common good. Revolutionary France would have been trodden underfoot by the associated Powers of Europe during the first campaign, had their statesmen and soldiers cordially co-operated in the task to which they were committed.

But while history provides abundant examples of the evils that arise when the armies of allied nations fail to execute their plans in close collusion, this absence of concert has by no means always, or even generally, resulted from diversity of strategical and tactical aims on the part of the military chiefs. Friction, rivalry, and differences of opinion have far more often been due to purely political causes. Thus the allies in the opening stages of the campaign of 1814 enjoyed the advantage-such as it was-of possessing a generalissimo in the shape of Prince Schwarzenberg; but the Austrian Emperor shrank from destroying the power of his son-in-law Napoleon, whereas Russians and Prussians were bent on overthrowing their antagonist. Schwarzenberg has been severely taken to task by experts for the deliberation of his movements and for his gnawing anxiety as to communications, but documentary evidence proves that he was hampered by his Sovereign's disinclination for drastic action, and by a desire to keep the Austrian army under his own immediate command intact in view of the situation likely to arise after peace had been adjusted with France. There was little co-ordination between the operations of the Bulgarian, the Serbian, and the Greek armies in

the Balkan War of 1912-13; at an early stage of the campaign the Bulgarian military chiefs indeed wasted a force, much needed in Thrace, by sending it against Salonika, which the Greeks were quite able to deal with, the object being political. If the annals of the Wars of the Spanish Succession and the Austrian Succession, of the Seven Years' War, and of the prolonged struggle that lasted almost without intermission from 1793 to 1815 be carefully studied, it will be found that disunion in the field between associated armies was more often directly or indirectly due to political than to military causes.

Of the importance of co-ordination between allied forces there can be no question. Concentration of effort is the first principle in the art of war. The smooth interworking of the component parts of an army is a test of its value, and where there are several armies in question the concert that exists between them provides a standard as to the efficiency of the whole. Co-ordination can only be secured if there be intimate communion between the commanders of the different armies, and between the respective War Offices under which the armies are acting. In theory it can perhaps best be ensured by setting up a generalissimo; but there are grave objections to a plan which in practice has seldom proved an antidote to the poisons which it is supposed to neutralize and

to overcome.

The career of the great Duke of Marlborough assuredly affords little evidence in favour of the generalissimo system. During his first two campaigns in the Low Countries he was acknowledged commander-in-chief, having Dutch, Hanoverian, Prussian, and other contingents under him, besides the British. They proved a recalcitrant crew. He was thwarted at every turn, especially by the Dutch, who not only did not obey his orders, but also saddled him with "commissaries." commissaries." (Civilian interference in military affairs takes its most pernicious form in the shape of commissaries -vide Russia in 1917.) Churchill's most masterly combinations were thrown out of gear by the commissaries, and by the insubordination of the foreign commanders placed under his charge. It may be suggested that matters might have been even worse had he not been commander-in-chief; but that does not follow. It was the very fact of their being subjected to a foreign overlord that made the Dutch and German generals factiously oppose plans which they must often have been intelligent enough to see promised great results.

But next year there was a transformation. After concerting operations with Prince Eugene, who had previously been campaigning in the south, Marlborough undertook his historic expedition to the Danube, shedding most of the Dutch before starting. There was no question of a generalissimo or of a primus

inter pares. Eugene and he were going to co-operate as equals. There was, as it happened, yet another Rupert in the fieldPrince Ludwig of Baden with his special army-and Marlborough's and Ludwig's forces came together before Eugene and his troops had reached the scene of action in Bavaria. Ludwig had no idea of serving under the English general, so they contrived the quaint arrangement of commanding the combined forces day and day about, and happily Marlborough was in charge on the day of Schellenberg. In due course Eugene arrived, and he and Marlborough thereupon managed to induce Ludwig to take himself and his army off to beleaguer a fortress, and then began that goodly association, ushered in by Blenheim, of the two greatest soldiers who were to appear in Europe between the days of Turenne and the days of Napoleon. For several successive years these Great Captains united their efforts in Flanders, playing into each other's hands unselfishly in the common cause. Would their relations have been equally cordial, would their achievements have been so signal, had one of them been subordinated to the other?

Political conditions and military conditions alike were singularly complex and indeterminate during the War of the Austrian Succession. Nevertheless there was a campaign of sorts each year in the Low Countries, heterogeneous international contingents -British, Dutch, Hanoverian, and Austrian-striving to make headway against French armaments, handled in 1744 by the formidable Marshal Saxe. There was no commander-in-chief in 1742, 1743, and 1744, nor any co-ordination. Then, in 1745, the young Duke of Cumberland was accepted as overlord, and for a brief space there was less conspicuous dislocation of effort; but after Fontenoy, where the disappointing performances of the Dutch and Austrian troops neutralized the wonderful exploit of the British infantry, recriminations arose and the generalissimo was prevented by Austrian obstruction from consummating his plans. The consequence was that Saxe had already overrun great part of Flanders before Cumberland, together with most of the British units, was summoned home to confront the Young Pretender. Prince Charles of Lorraine, an Austrian general, then became commander-in-chief for 1746, to be replaced by Cumberland in 1747; but neither the Austrian Prince nor the BritishHanoverian Royal Duke found it easy to extort obedience from the commanders of the various contingents or to escape from political interference which rendered a vertebrate conduct of operations virtually impossible. All that can be said is that matters might have been even worse had there been no commanderin-chief.

It is a singular fact that Frederick the Great during the later

campaigns of the Seven Years' War does not seem to have been in the position of generalissimo in respect to his principal assistant, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, who was commanding a mixed force of British and Hanoverian troops and of German mercenaries in British pay in the west, and who was a field-marshal in the Prussian army. For when Frederick's fortunes were at their lowest ebb in the east in the winter of 1759-60 after the misadventure of Kunersdorf, Ferdinand, as Carlyle puts it, " magnanimously sent him the Hereditary Prince with 12,000, who stayed two months." There was no question of a behest to transfer force from west to east. For practical purposes Prince Ferdinand was absolutely independent of the King.

A generalissimo, Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg in the Austrian service, was appointed at an early stage of the coalition against Revolutionary France; but the arrangement did not prove an unqualified success. The Prince found it most difficult to manage his team, seeing that the instructions of the different contingents varied with the political views entertained by the governments to which they owed allegiance. Nor did the subordinate generals manifest any liking for serving under an Austrian chief, although Coburg was by no means a bad soldier. When the situation was at its very worst for the Republican army owing to the follies of the Convention before the Committee of Public Safety was established, Coburg decided on a march from Flanders on the enemy's capital. But the Duke of York promptly produced definite instructions from the British Government to capture Dunkirk, the King of Prussia called off his contingent to the Rhine, Holland would not suffer the participation of Dutch troops with the Austrian forces in their proposed advance, and the opportunity for striking a decisive blow was sacrificed, never to return. Because next year the Republic was infinitely better equipped for the encounter, the generalissimo was harassed as much as ever by factiousness on the part of generals supposed to be under his orders, and the campaign of 1794, winding up with a mortifying discomfiture at Fleurus, proved a complete failure. Coburg may not have been a diamond of the first water as a strategist and tactician, but a Marlborough or a Frederick would have come to grief under the same circumstances.

When the great coalition of Great Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Sweden was formed against Napoleon in 1813, the Emperor Alexander hankered after the chieftainship in Central Europe. But Moreau's arrival in the allied camp created difficulties; for the distinguished French soldier at once established close relations with the Russians, and the Austrians fought shy of the victor of Hohenlinden. Bernadotte, ambitious, intriguing, Crown Prince Elect of Sweden, and possessor of a military record equal to that of

any commander warrantable as a candidate, made the situation still more complex. Eventually, more or less as a compromise, Prince Schwarzenberg was made commander-in-chief, and he found himself on no bed of roses. Alexander's personality, his resolution and his high character marked him out in reality for the position of supreme military head, if there was to be one, and had he been chosen history might possibly have provided at least the one example of a generalissimo who genuinely controlled the armies of several different rival powers, and who achieved success with them. It must be owned that Schwarzenberg's position was rendered particularly uncomfortable by the presence of a posse of Sovereigns at his headquarters. He was, indeed, never really master except in name. After the combats of Brienne in 1814, Blücher became virtually independent; and when Napoleon committed his fatal error of marching against the Austrian communications and uncovering his capital, it was the Emperor Alexander, not Schwarzenberg, who for all practical purposes decided that the allies were to ignore the menace, and were to move straight on Paris, thus bringing the campaign to a triumphant conclusion.

The story of 1815 is a familiar one. Who will suggest that anything would have been gained had either Wellington or Blücher been appointed commander-in-chief in Belgium? The Prussian generals, other than old "Marshal Vorwärts," were jealous of the great British soldier, and had they been subordinated to him untoward tracasseries would inevitably have occurred. To have foisted the old Prussian upon the British as chief would have caused bitter resentment in their ranks, seeing that Wellington was an incomparably more capable leader than Blücher, and it would have seriously shaken the confidence of the foreign contingents included in the Iron Duke's army. It is true that if Wellington had been supreme he might perhaps have insisted upon Blücher drawing up his Prussians less unskilfully at Ligny-he did make a suggestion, which infuriated Gneisenauand had he intervened peremptorily his allies might not have been SO damnably mauled" as he foretold they would be. But whatever effect the setting up of a generalissimo might have had, one thing is certain, the allies would not have achieved a more decisive triumph than they actually did as independent partners in that extraordinary four days' campaign.

Although the story throws no special light upon the subject, SaintArnaud's efforts to acquire chief command in the Crimea in 1855 deserve recalling. It occurred to the marshal that if he obtained control over the Turkish host, it and the French army together would constitute a force so decidedly superior to Lord Raglan's armament that this must almost inevitably also come under his orders. So