"Introduction of the Army Corps" Topic

Was there any obvious technical or practical reason that made the organisation of troops into army corps more feasible at the end of the 18th century than earlier.

e.g.
More extensive road systems.
Better maps
Lighter field artillery
Larger armies

Larger armies, I would have thought…

It required a breed of educated professional staff officers, able to run the logistics of moving troops. But few were found by the mid 18-hundreds. A lot more by the napoleonic period. It is the key to it all.

All arms divisions had been theorized by de Saxe in the mid 1700's and utilized after that but it took the larger armies of the French Revolution to force the need for a larger all arms organization of the corps. Then we move to army groups as war grows larger still.

The organisation of troops into army corps became necessary with the formation of hitherto unknown large armies created by French conscription during French Revolutionary wars. This caused a break from the concept of small professional armies with a comprehensive logistical train and by necessity forced the new large armies to bivouac and forage. The need to sustain these large armies by foraging forced them to spread over large areas of the countryside, potentially making them vulnerable attack. In addition a general found it difficult to manage such widely spread large armies. The Corps developed as a small army within a larger army, with its own general to maintain cohesion and control and combined arms to provide the ability to engage and hold enemy formations even bigger than itself, long enough for other corps to march to the sound of guns and bring the larger army into the field.