Napoleon and the Dawn of Operational Warfare

This chapter demonstrates that the emergence of campaigns, made possible by a certain size of military formations, in essence opened the way for the operational level of war, operational warfare, and operational art. The complexity of campaigns, especially those that took place along broad fronts and covered large distances, accentuated the role of effective control, which, in turn, brought into play a new dimension of warfare. The historical factors that ushered the operational dimension into the world were the French Revolution and the levee en masse, and the man who presided over its birth was Napoleon Bonaparte. The revolution in military affairs owed very little to technology per se; it was a result of 'the God of War' combining the corps d'armée system and imperial headquarters with the principle of the 'directed telescope'.