Isegoria

Napoleon adopted the inspired corps system, Andrew Roberts explains (in Napoleon: A Life), originally the brainchild of Guibert and Marshal de Saxe:

The time spent in encampment at Boulogne and on continual manoeuvres between 1803 and 1805 allowed Napoleon to divide his army into units of 20,000 to 30,000 men, sometimes up to 40,000, and to train them intensely. Each corps was effectively a mini-army, with its own infantry, cavalry, artillery, staff, intelligence, engineering, transport, victualling, pay, medical and commissary sections, intended to work in close connection with other corps.

Moving within about one day’s march of each other, they allowed Napoleon to swap around the rearguard, vanguard or reserve at a moment’s notice, depending on the movements of the enemy. So, in either attack or retreat, the whole army could pivot on its axis without confusion.

Corps could also march far enough apart from each other not to cause victualling problems in the countryside.

Each corps needed to be large enough to fix an entire enemy army into position on the battlefield, while the others could descend to reinforce and relieve it within twenty-four hours, or, more usefully, outflank or possibly even envelop the enemy. Individual corps commanders — who tended to be marshals — would be given a place to go to and a date to arrive there by and would be expected to do the rest themselves.

[…]

‘During the Revolutionary wars the plan was to stretch out, to send columns to the right and left,’ Napoleon said years later, ‘which did no good. To tell you the truth, the thing that made me gain so many battles was that the evening before a fight, instead of giving orders to extend our lines, I tried to converge all our forces on the point I wanted to attack. I massed them there.’

Napoleon pioneered an operational level of warfare that lies between strategy and tactics. His corps became the standard unit adopted by every European army by 1812, and which lasted until 1945. It was his unique contribution to the art of war, and its first use in 1805 can be regarded as heralding the birth of modern warfare.

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