"Bringing Order Out of Chaos: Post-Battle Expectations..." Topic

… AT EYLAU AND BORODINO

"As war ravaged Europe in the wake of the French Revolution, the expanding scale of the conflict confronted European armies with new humanitarian and logistical challenges. In response, both the French and their enemies attempted to find ways to mitigate the worst excesses of this "modern" war as well as make some moral sense of its unsettling realities. Although these efforts are usually overshadowed by the drama of combat and debates of strategy, post-battle activities such as the burying the dead, treating the wounded and clearing debris from the battlefield all helped determine not only the extent of a victory but also the moral meaning ascribed to a battle. Far from being inconsequential afterthoughts, the execution and observation of these activities provided experiences that helped shape military culture, war memory, and the conception of national identity.

As one might expect, soldiers' first experiences of battle have long been a focal point of discussions of war memory; of particular note is how actual combat could contradict the expectations fostered by the eighteenth and nineteenth century's often romanticized notions of warfare. However, a soldier's "‘"baptism of fire" was not always the most disillusioning experience which a Napoleonic soldier encountered on a battlefield. Although traumatic and chaotic, the action of combat remained an area where soldiers and their comrades retained some agency over the events occurring around them. In contrast, what soldiers witnessed and experienced after combat often left them with feelings of powerlessness, exhaustion and unpreparedness. These were episodes where logistical preparations and the willingness to prioritize post-battle work over continued combat were often the defining factors. Despite the horrors of battle, even veteran soldiers of Napoleon's Grande Armée could long believe that their army was mostly living up to the expectations cultivated by popular culture, official reports and their leaders' humanitarian rhetoric. Yet when circumstances forced soldiers to actually observe the results of post-battle arrangements, they were often shocked by how the military systems in place failed to cope with the demands of ever-larger battles…"

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Armand