He rose early, havifig slept alone; the subject of his sex life obsesses his'biographers but all are agreed that sex, whether hetero- or homosexual, was peripheral to him. Alexander's soldiers had suffered a great deal less than Wellington's from missile strike. He then ordered the advance, but at a slow pace, despite shouts from the ranks 'to charge the foe', 'with halts, so that their advance seemed a leisurely affair'. Alexander was therefore now obliged to take them on suddenly, to shift his axis of operations from right to left after four months of what he must have hoped would have been decisive action, and to make forced marches into their territory. Alexander would have watched narrowly how his father manipulated the ambitions and antipathies of his followers. Bizarre though it seems to us, therefore, his day began with his plunging of a blade into the living body of an animal and his uttering of prayer as the blood flowed. It is a bad thing always to be fighting. . On the other hand, accounts of the fighting at Issus make it clear that the phalanx varied its depth on the move, and, admittedly during a deliberately cautious advance, pivoted on a flank to approach the enemy and extended its length to approximate that of the opposing line. 'People talk of their enlisting from their fine military feeling - all stuff - no such thing. The sword blow to the crest of Alexander's helmet at the Granicus left it dented. The French army had moved onward from this WELLINGTON: THE ANTI-HERO 131 form of organization, which had its origins in that of the mercenary,,, bands of the late middle ages. But he preferred that his volunteers should learn the value of military routine by experience rather than precept. Few towns were so endowed. At 5.30 the white flag was raised and the survivors gave themselves up. The second development was ari extension of the first: as armies grew bigger generals discovered that not all men had to be committed to a single line of battle; some could be retained in the rear to reinforce a weakness or exploit a success. Wellington's Staff Napoleon, according to Wellington's recollection of a conversation with one of the emperor's subordinates, never had a plan of campaign. I don't think it would have done if I had not been there!' Hudson Lowe, Napoleon's future gaoler, was not one of them. What this wound history suggests is a rising temperature of 64 T H E MASK OF COMMAND > commitment, almost as if Alexander's fever for victory rose with the tide of difficulty. They. . The passion that animated the armies of the Revolution, and was transfused from them into the armies of Napoleon, derived from the idea that every man must, but also could, be a soldier. His steeplechasing was almost always successful. He wrote well and knew he wrote well. Grant heard this insubordinate discussion out to its close before mildly observing that he preferred to go on as he did. A European general would have sounded retreat at the first hint of trouble, thinking to regroup on safer ground and fight another day. The topography of the region confronted him with an acute military problem, since choice of movement through it was determined by mountain passes easily held by small enemy forces. T H E MASK O F C O M M A N D by the same author T H E FACE OF W H O ' S W H O IN M I L I T A R Y HISTORY WORLD T H E N A T U R E OF WAR (with Andrew Wheatcroft) ARMIES (with Joseph Darracott) S I X A R M I E S IN NORMANDY (with Richard Holmes) C O N F L I C T (with Andrew Wheatcroft) SOLDIERS Z O N E S OF BATTLE THE MASK : OF COMMAND JOHN KEEGAN JONATHAN CAPE T H I R T Y - T W O BEDFORD SQUARE L O N D O N First published 1987 . . Convention required Philip to take the right wing; he gave Alexander the left and it was there, as it happened, that the decision was struck. It was an enjoyment and a relaxation, when the lyre was played, songs sung, verses declaimed, but also the forum in which personality was tested, wits sharpened, the limits of boasting and taunting measured, reputations assessed and challenges thrown down; on the more sober evenings, dinner was the time for an exchange of news r ALEXANDER T H E GREAT A N D HEROIC LEADERSHIP 61 and a consideration of the future; on wilder nights, talk could tur^ to quarrel, quarrel to violence, violence even to murder. Halleck, 'Old Brains', who acted as general-in-chief at Washington until displaced by Grant in 1864, comprehended the war's nature least of all. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times.' Wellington: The Anti-Hero Wellington the Man Wellington and Western Military Society Wellington’s Army Wellington’s Staff Wellington’s Routine Wellington and the Presentation of Self Wellington in Battle Observation and Sensation 3. If in close order, each file of horses would have occupied a strip of ground 100 feet from first nose to last tail. When he saw the orchard fall he sent down four companies of Coldstreamers, who recaptured it. 'Behaviour' studies explore roles: roles of encouragement, dissuasion and coercion. Once it had secured a foothold, the archers and siege engines with it turned their fire back across the river, and under cover of that rain of missiles the mixed cavalry-infantry force disengaged, crossed the river themselves and rejoined the main party. Yet the reality of warfare is no more wholly conveyed by such episodes than the reality of economics is conveyed by the World Slump of 1929-31 or the reality of politics by the Watergate scandal. ,It fell for him into two stages. is the rhetorical leitmotiv of much of his correspondence from, the Peninsula, rhetorical only because some at least of his staff officers were, when not ill or absent, willing servants of his relentlessly efficient mind. If he were close enough, or the wind in the right direction, the carry of human voices might tell him a great deal. 'An infamously bad army', for example: that was a comment not on the British army, nor even all the British troops at Waterloo, but on the newly recruited regiments and their counterparts in the Allied contingent. 'He always decided according to the circumstances of the moment. Whatever his initial vision, he was now hellbent on displacing Darius as 'Great King' and making himself master of the world. Showers and mist made for poor visibility, which worsened as soon as cannonade and musketry began to fill the windless air with clouds of dense, white smoke. The evidence, indeed, was unmistakable. Sword and steed were their armour against fate. Their usefulness on the field of battle, where professional pride and gheer force of habit worked to keep them in place, was undeniable. Uploaded by Lotu Tii on October 15, 2014. 21 Lincoln with General J .A. In both cases the decisive stroke was delivered at speaking, if not spitting distance, and in both cases the commanders were close enough to the enemy for their lives to be at extreme risk. The mixture of hard information, informed speculation and direct command contained in this signal is evidence of how closely textured was the flow of intelligence into Grant's headquarters, and so testimony of how central was the telegraph to his methods of work. It would not be possible to construct a general economic theory drawn from examples of asset-stripping, any more than from examples of gold rushes. T h e duty of arranging the cuisine at Grant's headquarters was shared in turn by the officers of his staff. The emperor, who had fled from Alexander once before, turned his horses and rode pell mell from the field. Download Ebook The Mask Of Command Alexander Great Wellington Ulysses S Grant He now ordered the army to 'clang their spears upon their shields' and raise the Macedonian war cry, a deep-throated ululating A/a/a/ate', which frightened more of the enemy out of his path. This brutal scrimmage - the unusually high total of 130 Macedonian spearmen were killed in what must have been quite a prolonged, noisy, angry, fear-smelling bout of shoving and thrusting - was resolved only when part of the Macedonian right-hand cavalry wing managed to overlap the Greek mercenary left. In his own time he was universal man, who, as Robin Lane Fox lists it, 'wrote books on the constitutions of 158 different states, edited a list of the victors in the games at Delphi, discussed music and medicine, astronomy, magnets and optics, made notes on Homer, analysed rhetoric, outlined the forms of poetry, considered the irrational side o£ men's nature, set zoology on a proper experimental course, was intrigued by bees and began the study of embryology'. The Revolution, however, had taught anyone connected with politics, whether in old monarchies or new republics, that professional soldiers in command of mass armies were not merely a menace but the principal menace to the stability of government. . 273, 275, 290 OKL, (Oberkommando der Luftwaffe) 273 OKM (Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine) 273 OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) 235-6, 263, 266, 272, 273, 275, 290, 293 Obersalzberg 274 364 INDEX Odyssey 2S, Ohio River 218 Olympias 14-15, 20-1 Opis 50. He decided to temporize, hoping that the will of the Theban peace party would prevail. He was quiet in speech, though he had an impressively resonant voice, undemonstrative in manner, indiscriminately courteous to all callers, and a listener rather than a talker. Between times he read the newspapers, chuckling over the London gossip and once taking a brief nap on the ground with a copy of the 5MM spread over his face; was it deliberate sang-froid or; his own natural imperturbability? The General, rides on the dusty flank, and so nobody stays with him . He froze at the idea of self-dramatization. . But it would have been a staff better in degree than kind. It was to become the hallmark of Frederick the Great's battlecraft in the eighteenth century when it was known as the 'Oblique Order'. That was the United States where, from the outset, a single military academy trained the army's embryo leaders in a stringently scientific discipline. Alexander's intimate friends, the inner circle of Companions, were by no means all hard-drinking highlanders, boastful and empty-headed. In Spain he was nearer London than Alexander was to Macedon when in Babylon. The battle was won by the steady advance of his infantry, supported by artillery, in the centre, and a cavalry charge on the right. And he staged a similar ceremony after the ordeal of the desert crossing in Sind, making thanks offerings for his conquests in India. That Grant did do the work of command himself is authenticated in a variety of ways. Nowhere do the dimensions of, his heroic effort show more clearly than in his persqnaX conduct: on the battlefield. By early evening Wellington, then by his elm, could not see the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte just 250 yards to his front. I never dreamed I was held so popular, fine-looking and talented as I found I am during the past few days.' And absolutely true: New Tyre lay 1,000 yards offshore oh a rocky island, was surrounded by walls 150 feet high, had a garrison of perhaps 15,000 'exceptionally able and brave' warriors, and was stocked with ample provisions. . Before 6 an officer of the Inniskillings saw him at his window watching regiments march to the front. . Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Prime Minister of England and idol of every last common man in the country. They were not ends in themselves. Alexander was, in fact, ordering his ranks for a breakthrough. But when they reached his reserve position, the British main body jumped up, volleyed and charged with the bayonet and drove them down the hill. His system, none the less, seems to have been an inherited one, originally devised by his father to unshackle his army from the bonds that limited the mobility of his Greek opponents. From them he learned of the movements of Darius, while the latter remained in ignorance of his. Colonel Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg of the German army, Lieutenant-Colonel Michel Camus of the French army and Generals Alfred C. Wedemeyer, Mark Clark and William Westmoreland of the United States army. In the following year, however, Britain hit on the key to an effective Peninsular strategy. But two factors operated to inhibit the supplantation of the old landowning, 'feudal' hosts by the new mercenary armies (new only in a relative sense: mercenaries are as old as social upheaval in any settled society). whose understanding is so defective and who has such a passion for new invented modes of doing ordinary things'), he could generally count on intelligent and hard-working subordinates to aid him. In a war of amateur armies, transported by railroad, controlled by telegraph, paid ^ y taxes voted by democratic assemblies of which the soldiers w§re themselves electors, the likelihood was that men who had known the workings of commerce, industry and politics at first hand would be better attuned to the ends and means of the conflict than those who had spent their lives within barrack walls. The enemy were driven and are now in full retreat. 'As we emerge in disorder, the weakest of formations, the enemy cavalry in good solid order will charge.' Better still, he had given himself the time to choose the battleground. His radius of action during the battlefield was to be defined by the end of the ridge about Hougoumont at one extreme and the point where the farm track crossed the Brussels road at the other. News that the Mallians, a people who controlled its lower reaches, intended to oppose his passage came as an unpleasant surprise. While making his refusal, he was brought the news that La Haye Sainte had fallen. Many of their subordinates, particularly Gordon and de Lancey, were also able staff officers, conscientious and competent. A democrat and populist to his fingertips, he was possessed by the reality of American civilization and the difference between it and that of the Old World. Meanwhile, however, a parallel French column was attacking farther to the south. However, as he handed Alexander the medicine, a note arrived from Parmenio which read, 'Beware Philip; I learn that Darius has Bribed him to murder you.' He was mounted on Copenhagen, the chestnut charger that had carried him at Vitoria, the Pyrenees and Toulouse. The object of tactical practice, as in Alexander's day, was either to 'turn' a flank or cause a break in the face of the enemy's opposed line. We have his own account of how he began to trust this capacity he found in himself. Then he sent a letter to say they would soon see him again; 'even then most of them could not believe this for excess of fear . Originally the home 0f a Carthaginian" deity, it had subsequently been adopted by the Egyptians, who proclaimed Ammon the father of the universe. He may be diplomat: in their different ways Marlborough and Eisenhower excelled as much at conciliation as at strategy. He sat with his head bent low over the table, and when he had occasion to step to another . They went about officering themselves in a uniquely American way. Alexander took his sword to a famously tangled skeiii no man had been able to unravel, thus presumably demonstrating a radical impatience: the nioff complicated commentaries are for ancient historians. But they were equally, because private property, their defence against the displeasure of their superiors. He drank one glass of wine with his companion, 'To the memory of the Peninsular War,' then, holding up both hands 'in an imploring attitude', exclaimed, 'The hand of Almighty God has been upon me this day,' jumped up, and went to a couch, to fall instantly asleep. … Through portraits of four generals - archetypal hero Alexander the Great, anti-hero Wellington, the unheroic Ulysses S. Grant and the false heroic of Hitler - John Keegan propounds the view of heroism in warfare as inextricable linked with the political imperative of the age and … One of them remarked on the remarkable contrast between the Duke and his governor-general brother: 'the one scorning all display, the other living for nothing else'. There was, of course, no direct correlation between, on the one hand, civilian success or military obscurity and, on the other, victorious generalship. T h e mercenary had been a familiar figure in the Greek military world from early times and in Alexander's day was, as we have seen, a mainstay both of his own and of the Persian army. Of some 2,000 graduates of West Point living in 1861, 821 were in service. In the first flush of enthusiasm for revolutionary ideals or imperial glory, men flocked to their colours; exposed to the harsh reality of campaigning, men deserted in droves. In every one of those battles the enemy 'moved forward in the old style and was driven off in the old style'. Political liberation logically required that all citizens should bear an equal share of the state's military burdens. Impatient at the slowness with which his siege engineers commenced their deliberate procedures, Alexander put himself at the head of a small storming party and rushed the inner wall. I went to see him, and said I was sorry he was WELLINGTON: THE ANTI-HERO 161 SO severely wounded, at the same time taking hold of his hand, 'Thank God you are safe,' was his reply. In the Peninsula his methods were mixed. . In those words. News of the rebellion at Thebes, which the Macedonians had garrisoned since it had accepted Philip's hegemony in 327, reached him on the Balkan border in October 335. Darius had marched up from Babylon (near modern Baghdad) with 140,000 men, planning to confront Alexander in Cilicia. Neither army had the resources to imprison the recalcitrants who, if really determined not to serve, could always make their escape to the open frontier or the immigrant-swollen cities of the North. His orgy of victory was, of course, even more telescoped in time than Napoleon's, who in turn gave battle oftener than Alexander ever did. 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