This post is a part of the 2024 Selected Papers of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, which were edited and compiled by members of the CRE’s board alongside editors at Age of Revolutions

By Ethan Soefje

Following the Prussian exit from the War of the First Coalition with the signing of the Treaty of Basel on 5 April 1795, Berlin enjoyed eleven years of peace until the war of the Fourth Coalition in 1806. During this period, Prussian officers observed the ongoing French Wars and sought ways to ensure that the Prussian army remained prepared for a future war with France or Russia. This period of Prussian history has been overlooked by most historians in favor of that from 1806 onwards. The story of Prussia’s defeat and subsequent reform has dominated the historiography of Napoleonic Prussia. While Napoleon has received the vast majority of historical attention, those who have written on Prussia have focused on the Prussian reform movement or the 1813-1815 campaigns against Napoleon.^[1] The period before the battle of Jena has received little historical attention. Most writers cover the topic only in passing as a prelude to the Prussian reform movement. This historiographical trend has conveyed the impression that the ideas and measures of the Prussian reformers were conceived in response to the disaster of 1806. This is simply not the case. All of the reforms that the Prussians implemented between 1807-1813 had been discussed or suggested before the Jena campaign. The writings of Prussian army officers and military periodicals before 1806 reveal clear reformist sentiment; in addition, a few reforms were even adopted before Jena, albeit too late to make a difference. The battles of Jena and Auerstedt did not spark the Prussian reform movement: it was underway in the Prussian officer corps well before 1806. The army’s disaster in 1806 merely removed much resistance in the court and army high command to the remaining proposed French-style reforms.

Most historians of Prussia have dismissed the period before 1806 as “a fossilized, gridlocked structure, a backward-looking adherence to unrevised concepts of war first developed under Fredrick the Great”[2] Such writers see the Prussian defeat at Jena as proof of this and generally do not investigate the reforms any further. Scholars of the Prussian reform movement itself tend to focus on only one aspect of the movement or on an individual from the movement. The best example of these works is Peter Paret, Yorck and the Era of the Prussian Reform 1807-1815. These works generally focus on only a single aspect of the reform movement, and they tend to portray the period before 1806 as largely dominated by a conservative mindset which was dismissive towards any need to reform the Prussian army. They are inclined to see the reforms that were adopted as far too little compared to the revolutionary changes in military affairs introduced by the French. The most comprehensive work on the reform movement is probably William O. Shanahan’s, Prussian Military Reforms, 1786-1813. Yet even this work is mostly focused on how the Prussians raised their armies, and only briefly discusses tactics, operations, and organization. Because he focuses on the least successful aspect of the reform movement, Shanahan largely discounts the pre-Jena reform movement. This focus has caused most historians to overlook the actions of the Prussian reformers before the Battle of Jena.

Many within the Prussian army believed that the French Revolution had forever changed warfare and if Berlin wished to retain the reputation of having the best army in Europe, it had to reform. However, the core of enlightened officers around Gerhard von Scharnhorst and in the Military Society of Berlin never comprised a majority of the Prussian officer corps. If they hoped to realize any changes, these men had to convince enough high-ranking officers of the need for reform. The Prussian experience during the War of the Bavarian Succession and the War of the First Coalition shaped the reforms that were adopted by the Prussian army. The measures favorably received and implemented addressed Prussian shortcomings during those campaigns, while other reforms received far less attention. Part of the leadership’s reluctance to reform stems from its understanding of the army’s performance against the French. The Prussian army defeated the French in almost every major engagement and many in the army interpreted this as proof of Prussian military superiority.[3] While the Prussians might have suffered from problems of organization and unity of command, they defeated the French by employing their standard procedures and tactics. This explains the reluctance of many Prussian officers to embrace French-style reforms.

During the period from 1792-1805 the French revolutionized warfare at every level. On the tactical level, the French employed large numbers of skirmishers and often deployed their line troops to skirmish. In addition, the French often discarded the old linear formations of eighteenth-century warfare for more mobile assault columns. On the operational level, the French introduced combined arms divisions that granted them far greater operational and strategic flexibility. Each division could march and fight independently, and this allowed them to outmaneuver Frederician armies. On the strategic level, the French sought to destroy enemy armies in battle rather than to defeat them through maneuver. Finally, the French fielded a national army of citizen soldiers rather than a professional army. This allowed them to field much larger armies than previously possible and to trust their troops to live off the land without deserting.[4]

The first and most obvious area of change since the end of the Wars of Fredrick the Great was tactical. The first tactical shortcoming facing the Prussian army was its deficiency in light infantry. This problem originated in the Seven Years War, in which Austrian light forces significantly outperformed the Prussians. The Prussian army adopted a new manual for the light infantry, the fusiliers, in 1788, Reglement für die Königl. Preuß. leichte Infanterie, which incorporated some new elements of light infantry tactics. For the first time, an official Prussian directive described the manner an infantry unit should fight in open order.^[5]

Although increasing the number of fusiliers would certainly improve the Prussian army, many reformers wanted further measures. In an essay to the Military Society in 1803 titled “On Light Infantry,” Lieutenant Alexander Christian von Beulwitz put forward a complete and extensive program for the Prussian light infantry.^[6] The forces Beulwitz advocated were designed to counter threats such as the raids that the Austrian light infantry conducted that winter in Upper Silesia. By contrast, Beulwitz foresaw little need for the light infantry or skirmishers in a battlefield context. This makes sense, given the Prussian combat experience against both the Austrians and the French. The Austrians retreated from Upper Silesia after being threatened by a sizable Prussian force. In addition, during the War of the First Coalition, the Prussians won every major engagement against the French; the Prussian army proved capable of defeating French skirmishers and open order tactics.[7] Along with many Prussian officers, Beulwitz believed that the army’s battlefield tactics remained perfectly adequate to defeat any enemy in battle. The Prussian performance in battles such as Pirmasens and Kaiserslautern reinforced this belief in traditional Prussian tactics.  

While Beulwitz might have opposed any suggestion that the line infantry be trained to skirmish, other members of the Prussian army championed it. They argued that the French employed the line infantry as skirmishers to significant effect. In particular, the future minister of war, Leopold Hermann Ludwig von Boyen, won the Society’s 1804 essay competition by asserting that the third line of infantry should be trained to skirmish. Boyen simply claimed that skirmishing was no longer a tactical hypothesis but a battlefield reality. All French armies employed their line units as skirmishers; therefore, any battalion might find itself in an engagement in which skirmishing was the only practical tactic. Subsequently, increasing the number of light battalions as Beulwitz advocated would not solve the problem. Every Prussian battalion needed the tactical flexibility to fight in open order.^[8] Training the third line of infantry, which in the traditional three-line formation could not effectively fire their musket’s anyways, to skirmish solved this problem without reducing the combat power of the battalion.^[9]

The ideas of Boyen and Scharnhorst may have been unpopular, but they were by no means the most controversial; that title belonged to those of Heinrich Dietrich von Bülow. Before the War of the Second Coalition, Bülow published works in which he presented his system for modern warfare. This system was basically that employed by Frederick the Great, however, Bülow claimed to have “discovered” that the key to this system was a base of operations. Napoleon’s 14 June 1800 victory at the Battle of Marengo forced Bülow to revise his system, while paradoxically claiming that it proved the validity of his original claims.[10] In his reworked approach, Bülow argued that all infantry should fight in open order, that the only value of linear tactics was for parade-ground reviews. He attacked all aspects of the Prussian army, including Fredrick the Great as well as Prussia’s current monarch, King Fredrick William III.^[11] Only one month before Jena, he was imprisoned by the Prussian king and he later died in Russian captivity in 1807. However, his works were widely read and debated in Prussian military circles. While most officers rejected his radicalism, his ideas on the importance of light infantry influenced many. In addition to Bülow’s works, articles written by military thinkers from other German states, with no need to worry about offending Prussian sensibilities, advocated strongly for the training of the third line as skirmishers. They dismissed the idea that German soldiers were unsuited to open order combat.^[12] Given that roughly half to one-third of each edition of the Military Society’s Denkwürdigkeiten was devoted to reviews of books and articles from around Europe, it is clear that these publications exercised at least some influence in Prussia.

The writings on light infantry make it clear that a large group of officers believed that some reform of the Prussian light infantry was necessary. Although they may have disagreed about the form change should take, it is apparent that many within the Prussian officer corps understood that warfare had changed since the Wars of Fredrick the Great and that to remain effective, Prussian tactics had to change as well. Although they failed, for the most part, to convince the cautious and conservative Fredrick William III to adopt their ideas, that does not change the fact that those ideas existed.

The assault column and reliance on shock tactics represented the second major French tactical innovation. Both contemporary theorists and modern writers believed that this was the most important innovation introduced by the French Revolution.[13] However, before 1806, Prussian officers devoted virtually no time to debating the assault column. It appears in none of the published essays or debates of the Military Society, nor was it often raised by other Prussian officers.[14] Even the contentious Bülow argued for the exclusive use of infantry in open order and that close order formations were obsolete.[15] This lack of interest in the assault column demonstrates the continued Prussian faith in their traditional linear tactics. The Prussian army faired quite well against French assault columns at Pirmasens and Kaiserslautern. In addition to their own experience against the French in battle, many Prussian officers believed that the French victories against the Allies after 1795 owed little to the column. For example, Scharnhorst argued that the French victory at Marengo owed more to French strategic, operational, and organizational innovations than to tactics.[16] In his essay on the campaigns of 1799 and 1800,  Massenbach does not mention the French tactics as a reason for either their successes or failures, but instead focuses on operational and strategic analysis.[17] Other Prussian writers never discussed the assault column in their assessment of the War of the Second Coalition.[18] The  lack of interest in the assault column demonstrates the way in which Prussian combat experience minimized their interest in some of the French reforms.

The changes to the organization of the army are more difficult to define and received less discussion than those in tactics. The most drastic change in army organization brought on by the French Wars was combined arms divisions. Divisions acted as mini-armies, comprising troops from all three arms of service: infantry, cavalry, and artillery. In theory they could act and fight independently, granting French armies far greater flexibility and speed. They gave the early commanders of the French Republic an edge against their enemies, and in the hands of a master of war like Napoleon, they proved to be devastating.[19] However, the genius of Napoleon and the tactical innovations overshadowed the French utilization of combined arms division. Many officers believed that the greater flexibility and speed of the French army was due solely to Napoleon’s skill; as such they received less attention.

Nevertheless, some officers in Prussia believed that combined arms divisions held the key to French success and that Prussia had to adopt them to have a chance of matching Napoleon. The foremost advocate for divisions in the Prussian army was Scharnhorst. In his analysis of the Battle of Marengo, he argues that a key factor in the French victory was their combined arms organization.

Despite the fact that divisions received less support in Prussian military circles, Scharnhorst had more success with their implementation. Shortly after joining the Prussian service in 1801, the native Hanoverian brought the advantages of divisions to the attention of Fredrick William III. However, the king saw no need to adopt them.^[20] Nevertheless, he did approve  reorganizing the army into divisions in 1806 after the army began the Jena campaign.^[21] This caused a great deal of confusion as the army had to be reorganized while on the march. The adoption of the combined arms division came too late to have any real effect on the Jena campaign.^[22] Still, this adaptation proved that reformers, in this case mainly Scharnhorst, had convinced the king of the value of this reform before the disaster at Jena.

The second major innovation of the reform movement, the General Staff, was also implemented shortly before the Battle of Jena. The idea of a modern General Staff to create peacetime contingency plans, aid army commanders in operational planning, and assist in controlling the increasingly large armies of the Revolutionary Wars was first proposed by Massenbach as far back as 1795.^[23] While staff officers had existed before, the staff that Massenbach and later Scharnhorst envisioned was far more than simply aides to run messages for the general or to translate his commands into orders. These staff officers were to be highly educated in military history and theory and able to aid their commanders in developing plans and controlling the increasingly complex armies of the Napoleonic era. The best example of this kind of officer was August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, the chief of staff to Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, the commander of the main Prussian army during the Wars of the Sixth and Seventh Coalitions (1813-1815). Gneisenau played a crucial role in the Prussian victory over Napoleon and the Prussian staff system provided them a far better system of command and control over their armies than any other military of the period.^[24] Unlike the other reforms the Prussians adopted, the role of the General Staff was not copied from the French. The French certainly had a General Staff, but it served a very different function than that eventually performed by the Prussian General Staff.^[25]

The reactions of others in the Prussian government and army to this idea were more mixed. In January 1802, Massenbach submitted the “Memorandum on the New Organization for the General Staff” to Frederick William III.[26] The king was impressed with the work of the Military Society and agreed to circulate their proposal among several senior generals. While some of the traditionalist Prussians held out against the new general staff, the king favored the reform. On 26 November 1803, Frederick William approved the reorganization of the general staff, incorporating nearly all of the recommendations of Massenbach and Scharnhorst.[27] The adoption of the general staff clearly demonstrates that the Prussian army was open to reform ideas and far from stagnant before 1806. Moreover, it also suggests that the Prussian field experience between 1778 and 1806 convinced a sizeable number of Prussian officers, as well as the king, that the army needed to change to fight a modern war. In addition, unlike the other reforms discussed by the Prussians, the general staff was not adapted directly from the French. Rather, it arose out of the Prussian officers’ perceptions of their army’s weaknesses. Both Möllendorf and Brunswick served in the War of the Bavarian Succession and War of the First Coalition, and both witnessed the Prussian army’s lack of unified strategy and tactics.[28] The receptiveness of the Prussian high command and government to this reform demonstrates the effect of the past two wars on their thinking.

The final changes to the organization of the army were Scharnhorst’s reform of officer education. As the director of the Institute in the Military Sciences for Young Infantry and Cavalry Officers, Scharnhorst greatly improved the education of Prussian officers. He hired more teachers and widened the curriculum to include military history, logic, philosophy, and all the useful sciences.^[29] In doing so, Scharnhorst made the Institute the main training institution for Prussian officers. Surprisingly, the Military Society published no essays about the education of officers, and it does not seem to have been much discussed in Prussian military circles. Outside of Prussia, a number of articles were published stressing the need for good education of officers.^[30] Yet, in Prussia, it seems as if Scharnhorst simply carried out his educational reforms without a great deal of debate. While some traditional nobles expressed concern about educated officers and doubted the value of education, no one seemed invested enough to attempt to oppose it. This change educated many of the officers who implemented the other reforms of the Prussian army after 1806.^[31]

The final, and most controversial, area of reforms was the attempt to create a national army. In 1793, the French Republic instituted the levée en masse, which theoretically drafted every man, woman, and child in France into the war effort. Although it would fall short of this goal, it did create a vast and highly motivated citizen army that could overwhelm its enemies through sheer numbers. In addition, the French troops were citizen soldiers with a direct stake in the state they fought for. As such, French generals could demand more of their troops and could trust them not to desert. This allowed the French army to march longer and to forage for supplies without fear of losing men to desertion. Prussian reformers believed that this gave the French armies an advantage in battle because the French soldier had far more to lose than their enemies. A corollary to the argument for a national army was the more humane methods of discipline and the opening of the officer corps to commoners. These were some of the steps necessary to give the citizen a feeling of investment in the state.^[32]

Unsurprisingly, the idea of a nation in arms frightened the Prussian nobility and Fredrick William III because it threatened both their political power and their privileged place in society. They believed that to motivate common people en masse, they would have to give them some kind of stake in the state. This would weaken the power of both the nobility and the crown, as well as expose the common people to dangerous ideas. If the common soldier could fight for honor or love of king and country just as the nobility did, then were they not entitled to the same rights as the nobles? For this reason, the kings of Prussia had traditionally opposed the idea of a militia.^[33]

The attempt to create a national army would be the least successful before the Battles of Jena-Auerstedt, and indeed the most difficult to implement afterwards. Both the king and many officers opposed the idea primarily over political and social fears. Even the shock of the defeat by Napoleon in 1806 failed to remove resistance to the idea of a nation in arms. Although some officers believed that national armies were superior to the armies of the eighteenth century, they were, for the most part, unwilling to risk their positions to advocate for them. It was only after the Battles of Jena-Auerstedt and the drastic reduction in manpower imposed by the Treaty of Tilsit that the Prussian state was forced to create a nation in arms.

The writings and debate over the changing art of warfare before the Battles of Jena-Auerstedt proves that a sizable number of Prussian officers recognized a need for reform. Far from being an army trying to refight the wars of Fredrick the Great, the Prussian army was struggling to find the best manner to adapt to the new trends in warfare. Some of the major ideas of the reformers were implemented before the Jena Campaign, such as combined arms divisions and the new General Staff, and to a lesser extent, more light infantry.[34] These reforms addressed the problems that the Prussian army experienced during the War of the Bavarian Succession and the War of the First Coalition. However, other reforms proved harder to implement because many in the Prussian army believed that it had proven itself the equal of the French in the 1793 campaign. Their battlefield victories over the French led some officers to reasonably doubt the efficacy of many of the French innovations. It would take the shock of the defeat at Jena-Auerstedt to convince the king of their necessity. While these reforms remained theoretical, the debate around them proves that the reformers knew that they needed to change and had already started moving in this direction. The Battles of Jena-Auerstedt demonstrated to the Prussians the effectiveness of the new French system at its height. In addition, the campaign removed many of the opponents of reform and provided an opportunity for the most prominent reformers to rise to positions of power. Nevertheless, the reform movement began before the Jena campaign; 1806 simply convinced the king that reform was necessary for Prussia’s survival.

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Ethan Soefje is an MA student, Teaching Assistant, and Student Fellow of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in History and Classical Civilizations in 2015 from Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. Ethan’s main interest is early modern Germany and Napoleonic military history. He is currently working on his master’s thesis under the direction of Dr. Michael V. Leggiere, on the Prussian army during the French Revolutionary Wars. His thesis seeks to challenge the traditional interpretation of the Prussian army as a force in decline before its defeat in the War of the Fourth Coalition.

Title Image: “Battle of Jena ” colored lithograph by Antoine Charles Horace Vernet (1758 – 1836) and Jacques François Swebach (1769-1823). Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Endnotes:

[1] General historians of the Prussian army, such as Gordon Alexander Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640-1945 (New York: Oxford Univ Pr, 1995); Martin Kitchen, A Military History of Germany: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1976); and Gerhard Ritter, The Sword and the Scepter: The Problem of Militarism in Germany, trans. Heinz  Norden (Princeton Junction, N.J.: Scholar’s Bookshelf, 1988), dismiss the pre-Jena period entirely as a fossilized, gridlocked structure. Specialist of the reforms such as Peter Paret, Yorck and the Era of the Prussian Reform 1807-1815 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1966); William O. Shanahan, Prussian Military Reforms, 1786-1813 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1945); and Charles Edward White, The Enlightened Soldier: Scharnhorst and the Militärische Gesellschaft in Berlin, 1801-1805 (New York: Praeger, 1989) have focused on one aspect of the reforms and present the pre-Jena period as a prelude to the reform. Showalter has challenged this view, but he focuses on the political goals of the king and operations of the army rather than the ideas of Prussian officers. Dennis E. Showalter, “Hubertusberg to Auerstadt: The Prussian Army in Decline?,” German History German History 12, no. 3 (1994).

[2] Showalter, “Hubertusberg to Auerstadt: The Prussian Army in Decline?.” 308

[3] J. A. R. von  Grawert, Ausführliche Beschreibung der Schlacht bei Pirmasenz, Den 14. September 1793 in Drei Abschnitten: nebst einem Bataillen-Plan und dazu Gehöriger General-Charte (Horvath, 1796), 32; Chuquet, Mayence, 99.

[4] Peter Paret, “Napoleon and the Revolution in War” in Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret, Gordon A. Craig, and Felix Gilbert. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 123.

[5] Reglement für die Königl. Preuß. leichte Infanterie, (Decker, 1788), 44-45.

[6] Alexander von Beulwitz, “Ueber die leichte Infanterie” Denkwürdigkeiten der Militärischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin, (1803), 246.

[7] Paret, Yorck and the Era of the Prussian Reform, 70; Grawert, Beschreibung der Schlacht bei Pirmasenz, 91.

[8] White, The Enlightened Soldier, 77.

[9] Paret, Yorck and the Era of the Prussian Reform, 103; White, The Enlightened Soldier, 77.

[10] Palmer, “Frederick the Great, Guibert, Bülow”, 115.

[11] A. H. D. von  Bülow, Neue Taktik der neueren wie sie sein sollte, vol. 1 (Barth., 1805), 1:7.

[12] J. G. von Hoyer ed.,  Neues militairisches Magazin: historischen und scientifischen Inhalts mit Plans und Karten (Leipzig, Baumgärtnerischen Buchhandlung, 1804), 8.

[13] Paret, Yorck and the Era of the Prussian Reform, 79; Martin Kitchen, A Military History of Germany: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1976), 59; Shanahan, Prussian Military Reforms, 109; . G. von Hoyer ed.,  Neues militairisches Magazin, 8; A. v. P, “Ueber die verſchiedenen Arten des Angriffs” Denkwürdigkeiten der Militärischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin, 1 (1802), 36.

[14. A. v. P, “Ueber die verſchiedenen Arten des Angriffs,” 36; Paret, Yorck and the Era of the Prussian Reform, 79.

[15] Bülow, Neue Taktik der neueren wie sie sein sollte, 2:7.

[16]Gerhard von Scharnhorst, “Ueber die Schlacht bei Marengo” Denkwürdigkeiten der Militärischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin, 1 (1802), 55-56.

[17]Christian von Massenbach, “Lobrede auf des Prinzen Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen Königliche Hoheit, gehalten am Tage der erſten Stiftungsfeyer der militäriſchen Geſellſchaft zu Berlin” Denkwürdigkeiten der Militärischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin, 3 (1803) 40-44. 

[18] Ibid, 45-48; E. Walsh, “Der Feldzug in Nordholland nach Anleitung des Werks: A Narrative of the expedition to Holland, in the Autumn of the Year 1799” Denkwürdigkeiten der Militärischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin 3 (1803), 204-205.

[19] Steven T. Ross, ” The Development of the Combat Division in Eighteenth-Century French Armies,” French Historical Studies 4, no. 1 (1965): 84-85; Michael V. Leggiere, ed. Napoleon and the Operational Art of War (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 8.

[20] G. J. D. von Scharnhorst, Scharnhorsts Briefe, K. von  Linnebach ed., (Kraus-Reprint, 1980), 241.

[21] Shanahan, Prussian Military Reforms, 109.

[22] Ibid.

[23] White, The Enlightened Soldier, 106.

[24] Robert Michael Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich (Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 138;  Leggiere, Blücher: Scourge of Napoleon , xv; White, The Enlightened Soldier, 162-164.

[25] Christian Karl August Ludwig Massenbach, Memoiren zur Geschichte des Preussischen Staats unter den regierungen Friedrich Wilhelm II. und Friedrich Wilhelm III (Amsterdam: Kunst- und Industrie-comptoir, 1809), 2: 186.

[26] R. K. von Scherbening, “Die Reorganisation der Preußischen Armee nach dem Tilsiter Frieden: Redigirt von der Historischen Abtheilung des Generalstabes,” in Militär-Wochenblatt, 18 (1855), 1:250-251.

[27] Scherbening, “Die Reorganisation der Preußischen Armee,” 1:260-262.

[28] Duffy, Frederick the Great: A Military Life, 272-275.

[29] White, The Enlightened Soldier, 89.

[30]  Hoyer, Neues Militairisches Magazin, 7.

[31] White, The Enlightened Soldier, 112.

[32] Blanning, The French Revolutionary Wars, 117.

[33] Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State: The Man, His Theories, and His Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 423.

[34] Shanahan, Prussian Military Reforms, 85.