"An Army Marches on Its Stomach?" Topic

"This paper attempts to assess the rations of the Napoleonic French army (1800-1815) from a nutritional and health standpoint. This will enable a nutritional assessment of an ‘average' Napoleonic soldier to be attempted and conclusions drawn as to the health and fitness of a that individual.

Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, is supposed to have famously quipped than an ‘army marches on it's stomach.' Whilst in essence this is true: an army cannot fight, let alone march with an empty stomach, how full were the stomachs of the Grande Armée?…"
Free to read here
PDF link

Amicalement
Armand

Interesting

I have a thesis from years back on the logistics of Alexander the Great's campaigns – turns out horses eat a lot!

Thanks Armand, interesting study. However, the required calories on active campaign would be 3500 calories (or more under long marches/active fighting).

This tells me that Front Rank Napoleonics are even fatter than I initially thought.

Frederick….believe that thesis was turned into a book……which I have…!

Rittmester -- would that hold true even though people were smaller then? I know they weren't hobbits, but thought the smaller size might mean slightly less calories required.

Glad you enjoyed it boys!. (smile)

My friend Rittmester… by memory… on those days… with the size of the people and the kind of life that usually carry …they need 2000 of calories to march as they did…

Maybe yours standarts of 35000 calories is more modern…?

Amicalement
Armand

@tshyrock
In the Norwegian Army today our rations are at 3500 kcal with the average soldier at 180 cm/72 kg.(1990; even taller and heavier today). As an average for taller than 19th century soldiers 3500 kcal as average is sufficient for the combat arms, but for marches 30km/day over several days/weeks with full combat loads it is insufficient. In winter you may require up to 6000 kcal/day in arduous conditions. If we say people were 10% less in height and weight then (although guard/cuirassier trooper requirements were quite identical with today's average height), we should allow for 10% reduced requirements for nutrition.
Whe we deduct an equivalent amount, 10%, of kcal we are still above 3000 as a requirement. This is not only an adaptation to modern standards, but based on thorough research (50 years of "voluntary" tests on cadets – been there done that).
As the paper says the rations have to be balanced and sufficient in kcal. The result of too low kcal is that the soldiers will first lose fat, then muscle and performance, and ultimately be less resistant to illnesses and more easily fall prey to hypothermia.
Research has shown that man can survive for several weeks with only 500 kcal/day, but the before mentioned cycle will start very soon.
Foraging and use of soldier pay to supplement rations are documented abundantly, so my analysis is that with these supplements soldiers could carry on for years, however with exactly that prerequisite that they were able to make those supplements.
Reading about the conditions during the retreat in 1812-1813 and the results from it translates quite well with the knowledge I have communicated.
My conclusion is that the French rations were probably partially based on being supplemented by the soldiers, and when this was impossible over longer periods it was catastrophic.

I liked the brilliantly simple idea for Napoleons 1812 campaign in Russia, an ox-drawn wagon of bread, and veg, the wagon was unloaded, broken up, and the wood used to make a fire to cook the ox over.

John

"…Research has shown that man can survive for several weeks with only 500 kcal/day…"

I can asure you that with even less… and also fight!… (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

You are right Armand, but not for weeks / months on end and fight effectively. With a couple of biscuits/day you can fight effectively one or two weeks, but you will lose 5-12 kg/week depending on body mass and intensity of operations. After a day your weight loss will primarily be muscle tissue, thus requiring a rather long period of recovery afterwards to get back to the same fitness level.
Guadalcanal was a modern example with the Marines who after the fighting with small rations for a long period needed weeks to fully recover.
:)

Tango01,
I assume that you are referring to personal experience. Were you part of the Argentine forces in the Falklands? If so, whereabouts were you?

I have described a long narrative in the near past about it my friend… it's boring to repeat it again and again…

My friend Rittmester… I agree with you… when I arrived to the Islands I weight 103 kgs (and not for fat because I have none!)… and when I left I weight 76 kgs… even my own mother didn't recognize me when he saw me first time…
(I'm 1,87 mts long)

As to fight… well … I always ask myself how the japanese managed to do that eating only some rice!… untill I understand it in the field… (smile).

Amicalement
Armand

My friend Armand, I see you have had your share of service.
I was with the OMLT in Afghanistan, working alongside the ANA. Although my job was not to eyeball the Talibs, we lost our share of brothers in arms from IEDs and "insurgent mobs". Reading about Italy in 1798 reminded me of what horror man can inflict on each other.
In AFG we were serviced by the U.S. forces and the food was so good and plentiful, even better than back home! There the challenge was to drink enough water to not get dehydrated. I have wondered many times how water supply worked with Napoleons troops, them having few trucks distributing water, but the troops requiring several liters/day when e.g. marching and fighting all day under the Spanish sun. I have read memoirs telling about soldiers dropping dead by the road, so I guess it was hell many a day.
Regards
Trygve

it would also depend what you are doing and what weight you were carrying, like when marching daily about 20 to 30 km and carrying a weight of about 30 kilos you would burn much more calories than sitting in barracks.
Hardly any soldier of the Napoleonic period would carry around such amount of muscle mass and fat as we do now and therefore wouldn't have huge reserves of body mass.
In case you do a war of movement – and daily marching you would need your calories or the physical performance would drop.
About water, they would drink from whatever source is around, the Hannoverian troops of 1815 – when in garrison at Paris would drink water from the Seine river below Paris and complain a lot about the bad quality of it (consequently they had an outbrake of diarrhoea.
Reading memoires – thirst and food are very often main topics – especially in campaigns like of Poland 1807, Russian campaign of 1812 – and dare I say the campaigns in Egypt and Syria.

Glad you had good food my friend… it's very important like water … and to be clean!

As Herr von Winterfeldt have said… you could drink from wathever source you can find… but you have to be carefull with diarrhoea of couse…

Amicalement
Armand

yes tango, in the german army there is the saying

kein mampf – kein kampf (well it should be, due to the bad experience in ww2)

no nosh – no fight

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Unlike Western Europe and Northern Italy, Poland, Russia, Egypt and Syria did not provide much forage.

One practice during the wars was to send officers ahead of the army to Requisition food. Opposing armies would try to find out where this was done to gauge where the enemy was marching. During the Jena Campaign, both sides actual bought up food in various places ahead of either army to deny the enemy those supplies and to confuse them as to where their armies were marching.

Wellington became frustrated with all the camp followers and officers' as well as enlisted men's wives marching a head of the army and buying up all the food. He ordered that any woman caught marching anywhere other than with the baggage train would have their horse or mule shot and any food confiscated.

Simple foraging was only one of several means used to feed a Napoleonic army… or their womenfolk.

I seem to remember from those numerous rifles diaries that the Britsh/Portuguese army was pretty ragged by the time it finished the summer campagning and went into winter quarters. I'm not sure how much food supply was part of that, but a bit of seasonal weight change might be a factor?

"All for the King's Shilling" by Edward Coss, who used to post on TMP has an excellent discussion of the supplies and feeding the British army in the Napoleonic period. Most of the evidence we have is for the Peninsula campaign. He shows a very serious problems with the food supply, the basic provided diet was deficien is 17 or 22 essential items which puts them somewhat below 16thC oarsman on galleys. Discussion of diets covers pages 91 trough 110 inclusive.