The Intendance Militaire
handled the French army’s commissariat from 1817. It was the civil
administration branch of the French army, and as well as feeding and clothing
the army, it was responsible for providing the medical service (Service de
Santé Militaire), veterinary services (Corps
de Veterinaires), military justice (Justice Militaire), and moving
the army’s baggage and rations (via the Train des Équipages).[1] British observers were invariably full of
praise for the Intendance, not only for its organisation but also its
apparent efficiency in providing shelter, food and transport for the army;
French soldiers were thought ‘not to want for anything’.[2]
The perceived superiority of the French Intendance became important
because of the press-campaign by W. H. Russell et al, and letters home
from the front, which exposed apparent failures of the British commissariat,
compared with the French, during the Siege of Sebastopol. The perceived
failures of the British system led John Roebuck MP to call for a Parliamentary
Inquiry into the management of the campaign, which ultimately led to the fall
of Lord Aberdeen’s Government in January 1855.
However, the Intendance was disliked by the rest of the army: its officers were perceived to have 'airs and graces' and were civilians in uniforms not soldiers but, importantly, were to be accorded the same amount of respect as if they were (but they were not allowed to wear moustaches!).
The reform-minded Artillery
Captain Charles Thoumas suggested bitterly that paperwork was the patron saint
of the French army:
Oh! Saint Paperwork! Patron
of the French Army, welfare of the Intendants, foster mother of accountants,
the despair of real soldiers! I have
spent forty-five years with the army, we were
going to lower your importance, and
bring your size back to more modest
proportions, and you are still growing...
as you devour time, money and men![3]
Other French soldiers agreed with Thoumas: the Intendance had ‘many
serious defects’ which were well known but never discussed. It was thought to
work moderately well in peacetime but certainly not under the pressures of
active service.[4] Sergeant Charles Mismer (6th Dragoons) wrote:
During the entire campaign, the Intendance
continued to place importance on paperwork and accounting, as
meticulous as in garrison.
For a trifle
of no value, such as a pistol ramrod,
or replacing a stirrup leather, I
do not know how many statements, covered with several individual signatures, all
controlling each other![5]
The long-standing friction bwetween the Line and the Intednance would finally explode after 1871 when the Intednance was blamed for all the disasters of the Franco-Prussian War, yet unlike its cousin the Corps d'Etat Major,was not disbanded or reformed.
The Intendance had struggled to supply the army in its short campaign in Spain (1822-1823) when the Army had to rely on civilian merchants to feed it; it also struggled in the Greek Campaign (1829) and in Algeria (1830+).
The Intendance was perhaps a
victim of circumstances beyond its control in the Crimean campaign: it does
not appear to have recovered after the bulk of its stores were destroyed in the
catastrophic fire at Varna on 10th August 1854. This made the Intendance
more reliant on civilian merchants from Marseilles, Toulon and even London to
make good the losses. [6] The
situation was not helped by a bread famine in France in 1854. The poor harvest
meant that grain prices rose dramatically, leading to widespread rural
starvation and depopulation. Furthermore due to increasing prices and lack of
availability of bread, French merchants would have been less able to support
the army.[7]
Finally, because the Intendance Militaire was considsered beloved of
paperwork and overly bureaucratic, the
whole French supply chain became choked and slowed down leading to chaos at the
front line.[8]
The official
report by the Minister of War, Maréchal Vaillant, in to the conduct of Intendance
in the Crimea was considered to be a ‘white wash’ by reform-minded French
officers and disguised the fact that the Intendance had come close to or
had in fact broken down during the winter of 1854-1855.[9]
The breakdown of the French Intendance was unknown to British observers
and the Intendance remained the admired ‘perfect model’ upon which the
British army based its commissariat reforms as late as 1870.[10]
This was despite many British commentators quoting reformers in the French army
who stated that the Intendance was a complete shambles.[11]
The break down of the Intendance was partly due to circumstances beyond
its control and its highly bureaucratic nature but also because it was designed
to support a ‘small, professional’ army
(the French army had a theoretical maximum strength of 300,000 in 1851)
in short, limited, campaigns. Furthermore, the Intendance was considerably
over stretched as the French army was engaged or deployed in the Crimean
Peninsula, the Baltic, Algeria, Rome and in various colonial conflicts.[12]
Whilst the Intendance was certainly a bureaucratic nightmare, its major failing in feeding the troops at the front in winter 1854-1855 was due to a combination of unfortunate circumstances: a bread famine, loss of the flour and bread stores in Varnan; loss of the mobile bread ovens and the high price of grain due to the bread famine. That it was considerably over-stretched did not help.
Finally, and
perhaps most importantly, despite the Intendance having broken down,
French soldiers were not so badly affected as their British allies simply
because they were better able to survive on campaign: their ability to forage
for food and fuel combined with their communal messing arrangements meant that
even if rations did not appear, French soldiers might go hungry but not starve.[13]
Because of this, the French army would have appeared in a better condition than
it really was. The French historian Alain Gouttman has suggested that it was
this factor, the ability of the French soldier to look after himself in the
field, with each soldier looking out for each other, which ‘saved’ the French
army in the Crimea from the incompetence of the Intendance.[14]
[1]
Mismer, Souvenirs, p. 124.
[2]
A. Gouttman, La Guerre de Crimée
1853-1856. La Première
Guerre Moderne (Paris: Éditions
Perrin, 2006), pp. 288-290.
[1]
De Marcy, ‘Henri de Bouillé’,
p. 81.
[2]
Dr. F. R. de Trehonnais, ‘On the past and present of French agriculture’, Journal
of the Royal Society of the Arts,vol. VI (November 1857-November 1858), pp.
279-281.
[3]
Bertin, ‘Les 6eme Dragons’, pp. 491-492; Thoumas, Mes Souvenirs,
p. 9.
[4]
Anon, L’Intendance Militiare en Crimée. Campagnes de 1854, 1855 et 1856 (Lyon:
E. B. Labaume, 1864).
[5]
Third Report, p. 71; ‘Army Intendance’, The Saturday Review of
Politics, vol. XXIII (1867), pp. 167-169; ‘The Administration of the
Army’, The Quarterly Review, vol. CXXIX (July – October 1870), pp.
146-149.
[6]C.
M. Clode, Military Forces of the Crown (London: John Murray, 1869), vol.
II pp.572-578.
[7]
P. Griffith, Military Thought in the French Army 1815-1852 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1988), chapter 2; B. Giovanangeli, ed, Campagnes
du Second Empire (B. G. Éditions,
2010), pp. 15-63.
[1]
C-A Thoumas, Mes Souvenirs de Crimée (Paris: La Librairie Illustrée, 1892), pp.
14-15.
[2]
General J. B. A. Montaudon, Souvenirs Militaires: Afrique, Crimée, Italie (Paris:
Charles Delagrave, 1898), p. 224 and pp.239- 231; General F. de
Wimpffen, Le Situation de France et les reformes neccessaires (Paris: A.
Le Chevalier, 1873), p. 90; Thoumas, Mes Souvenirs de Crimée, pp. 14-15; W.
Serman, ed, Colonel Denfert Rocherau. Lettres d’un Officier Republicain
(1842-1871) (Vincennes: Service Historique de l’Armée du Terre, 1990),p. 205.
[3]
C. Mismer, Souvenirs d’un Dragon en Crimée: avril 1854-juillet 1856 (Paris: Hachette,
1887), p. 118.
[1]
H. Ortholan, L’Armée
du Second Empire (Saint Cloud: Éditions
Napoleon III, 2010), p. 181; P. Griffith, Military thought in the French
Army, 1815-1851 (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1989), p. 153.
[2]
C. F. Campbell, Letters from Camp, (London: Richard Bentley & Co,
1894), p. 54; ‘Letter from the East’, Daily News (7 July 1854).
No comments:
Post a Comment