Antoine-Henri Jomini

Antoine-Henri, baron Jomini (6 March 1779 24 March 1869) was a general in the French and later in
the Russian service, and one of the most celebrated writers on the Napoleonic art of war. According to the
historian John Shy, Jomini "deserves the dubious title of founder of modern strategy."
[1]
Jomini's ideas were a
staple at military academies. The senior generals of the American Civil Warthose who had attended West
Pointwere well versed in Jomini's theories.
Early life and business career[edit source | editbeta]
Jomini was born in Payerne in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, on 6 March 1779, where
[2]
his father served
as mayor.
[3]
The Jominis "were an old Swiss family"
[3]
of distant Italian descent
[2]
with a decidedly pro-French
outlook.
[3]
As a young boy, Jomini "was fascinated by soldiers and the art of war," and hoped to join the military,
but his parents pushed him towards a career in business. As a result, Jomini entered a business school
in Aarau at the age of 14.
[2]

In April 1795, Jomini left school and went to work at the banking house of Monsieurs Preiswerk inBasle. In
1796, he moved to Paris where he worked first at another banking house and then as astockbroker.
[2]
After a
short time in banking, however, "Jomini convinced himself that the tedious life of a banker was not to be
compared with the life afforded in French Army," and decided to become a military officer as soon as he found
an opportunity.
[4]

Swiss Army[edit source | editbeta]
In 1798, after the establishment of the Helvetic Republic, Jomini became an "eager revolutionary", following the
example of Frdric-Csar de La Harpe and found a position in the new Swiss government as a secretary for
the Minister of War with the rank of captain.
[3]
In 1799, after being promoted to the rank of major, Jomini took
responsibility for reorganizing the operations of the ministry. In that capacity, he standardized many
procedures, and used his position "to experiment with organizational systems and strategies."
[2]

After the peace of Lunville in 1801, Jomini returned to Paris, where he worked for a military equipment
manufacturer. He found the job uninteresting, and spent most of his time preparing his first book on military
theory: Trait des grandes operations militaires (Treatise on Major Military Operations).
[2]
Michel Ney, one of
Napoleon's top generals, read the book in 1803 and subsidized its publication.
[5]
The book appeared in several
volumes from 1804 to 1810,
[2]
and was "quickly translated and widely discussed" throughout Europe.
[6]

Service in the Napoleonic Wars[edit source | editbeta]
French Army[edit source | editbeta]
Jomini served in the 1805 campaign, serving on Ney's staff. Jomini fought with Ney at the Battle of Ulmand in
December of that year, he was offered a commission as a colonel in the French Army.
In 1806 Jomini published his views as to the conduct of the impending war with Prussia. This, along with his
knowledge of Frederick the Great's campaigns, which Jomini had described in the Trait, led Napoleon to
attach him to his own headquarters. Jomini was present with Napoleon at Jena and atEylau, where he won the
cross of the Legion of Honour.
After the peace of Tilsit Jomini was made chief of the staff to Ney and created a Baron. In the Spanish
campaign of 1808 his advice was often of the highest value to the marshal, but Jomini quarrelled with his chief,
and was left almost at the mercy of his numerous enemies, especially Louis Alexandre Berthier, the emperor's
chief of staff.
Russian Army[edit source | editbeta]
Portrait by George Dawe from the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace.
Overtures had been made to him, as early as 1807, to enter the Russian service, but Napoleon, hearing of his
intention to leave the French army, compelled him to remain in the service with the rank of general of brigade.
For some years thereafter Jomini held both a French and a Russian commission, with the consent of both
sovereigns. But when war between France and Russia broke out, he was in a difficult position, which he dealt
with by taking a non-combat command on the line of communication.
Jomini was thus engaged when the retreat from Moscowand the uprising of Prussia transferred the seat of war
to central Germany. He promptly rejoined Ney, took part in the Battle of Ltzen. As chief of the staff of Ney's
group of corps, he rendered distinguished services before and at the Battle of Bautzen, and was recommended
for the rank of general of division. Berthier, however, not only erased Jomini's name from the list but put him
under arrest and censured him in army orders for failing to supply certain staff reports that had been called for.
How far Jomini was responsible for certain misunderstandings which prevented the attainment of all the results
hoped for from Ney's attack at Bautzen, we cannot be sure. But the pretext for censure was in Jomini's own
view trivial and baseless, and during the armistice Jomini did as he had intended to do in 18091810, and went
into the Russian service. As things then were, this was tantamount to deserting to the enemy, and so it was
regarded by many in the French army, and by not a few of his new comrades. It must be observed, in Jomini's
defense, that he had for years held a dormant commission in the Russian army and that he had declined to
take part in the invasion of Russia in 1812. More importantand a point that Napoleon commented uponwas
the fact that he was a Swiss citizen, not a Frenchman.
His Swiss patriotism was indeed strong, and he withdrew from the Allied Army in 1814 when he found that he
could not prevent the allies' violation of Swiss neutrality. Apart from love of his own country, the desire to study,
to teach and to practise the art of war was his ruling motive. At the critical moment of the battle of Eylau he had
exclaimed, "If I were the Russian commander for two hours!" On joining the allies he received the rank of
lieutenant-general and the appointment of aide-de-camp from the tsar, and rendered important assistance
during the German campaign: an accusation that he had betrayed the numbers, positions and intentions of the
French to the enemy was later acknowledged by Napoleon to be without foundation. As a Swiss patriot and as
a French officer, he declined to take part in the passage of the Rhine at Basel and the subsequent invasion of
France.
In 1815 he was with Tsar Alexander in Paris, and attempted in vain to save the life of his old commander Ney.
This defense of Ney almost cost Jomini his position in the Russian service. He succeeded, however, in
overcoming the resistance of his enemies and took part in the Congress of Vienna.
Post-war service and retirement[edit source | editbeta]
After several years of retirement and literary work, Jomini resumed his post in the Russian army, and in about
1823 was made a full General. Thenceforward until his retirement in 1829 he was principally employed in the
military education of the TsarevichNicholas (afterwards Emperor) and in the organization of the Russian staff
college, which was established in 1832 and bore its original name of the Nicholas Academy up to the October
Revolution of 1917. In 1828 he was employed in the field in the Russo-Turkish War, and at the Siege of
Varna he was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Alexander Order.
This was his last active service. In 1829 he settled in Brussels which served as his main place of residence for
the next thirty years. In 1853, after trying without success to bring about a political understanding between
France and Russia, Jomini was called to St Petersburg to act as a military adviser to the Tsar during
the Crimean War. He returned to Brussels upon the conclusion of peace in 1856. Later he settled at Passy
near Paris. He was busily employed up to the end of his life in writing treatises, pamphlets and open letters on
subjects of military art and history. In 1859 he was asked byNapoleon III to furnish a plan of campaign for the
Italian War. One of his last essays dealt with theAustro-Prussian War of 1866 and the influence of the breech-
loading rifle. He died at Passy only a year before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
Works and influence[edit source | editbeta]
Jomini's military writings are frequently analyzed: he took a didactic, prescriptive approach, reflected in a
detailed vocabulary of geometric terms such as bases, strategic lines, and key points. His operational
prescription was fundamentally simple: put superior combat power at the decisive point. In the famous
theoretical Chapter 25 of the Trait de grande tactique, he stressed the exclusive superiority of interior lines.
As one writer rather partial to Carl von Clausewitz Jomini's great competitor in the field of military theory put
it:
Jomini was no fool, however. His intelligence, facile pen, and actual experience of war made his writings a
great deal more credible and useful than so brief a description can imply. Once he left Napoleon's service, he
maintained himself and his reputation primarily through prose. His writing style--unlike Clausewitz's--reflected
his constant search for an audience. He dealt at length with a number of practical subjects (logistics, seapower)
that Clausewitz had largely ignored. Elements of his discussion (his remarks on Great Britain and seapower, for
instance, and his sycophantic treatment of Austria'sArchduke Charles) are clearly aimed at protecting his
political position or expanding his readership. And, one might add, at minimizing Clausewitz's, for he clearly
perceived the Prussian writer as his chief competitor. For Jomini, Clausewitz's death thirty-eight years prior to
his own came as a piece of rare good fortune.
[7]

Jomini took the view that the amount of force deployed should be kept to the minimum in order to lower
casualties and that war was not an exact science. Specifically, Jomini stated in his book:
"War in its ensemble is NOT a science, but an art. Strategy, particularly, may indeed be regulated by fixed laws
resembling those of the positive sciences, but this is not true of war viewed as a whole. Among other things,
combats may be mentioned as often being quite independent of scientific combinations, and they may become
essentially dramatic, personal qualities and inspirations and a thousand other things frequently being the
controlling elements. The passions which agitate the masses that are brought into collision, the warlike qualities
of these masses, the energy and talent of their commanders, the spirit, more or less martial, of nations and
epochs,[51]in a word, every thing that can be called the poetry and metaphysics of war,will have a
permanent influence on its results." .
[8]
While in Russian service, Jomini tried hard to promote a more scientific
approach at the general staff academy he helped to found.
[9]

Prior to the American Civil War, the translated writings of Jomini were the only works on military strategy that
were taught at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His ideas, as taught by professor Dennis Hart
Mahan permeated the Academy and shaped the basic military thinking of its graduates.
[10]

The regular army officers who became the general officers for both the Union and the Confederacy in the Civil
war began by following Jominian principles.
[11]
However, British historian John Keegan argues in The American
Civil War that the peculiarities of American geography, particularly as pursued byUlysses S. Grant and William
T. Sherman in the western theater of the war, forced them to move beyond his geometric conventions and find
other strategic solutions to the problems which confronted them.
[12]