The Art of War. baron de Antoine Henri Jomini
from which it starts when it takes the offensive, to which it retreats when necessary, and by which it is supported when it takes position to cover the country defensively.
The base of operations is most generally that of supply—though not necessarily so, at least as far as food is concerned; as, for instance, a French army upon the Elbe might be subsisted from Westphalia or Franconia, but its real base would certainly be upon the Rhine.
When a frontier possesses good natural or artificial barriers, it may be alternately either an excellent base for offensive operations, or a line of defense when the state is invaded. In the latter case it will always be prudent to have a second base in rear; for, although an army in its own country will everywhere find a point of support, there is still a vast difference between those parts of the country without military positions and means, as forts, arsenals, and fortified depots, and those other portions where these military resources are found; and these latter alone can be considered as safe bases of operations. An army may have in succession a number of bases: for instance, a French army in Germany will have the Rhine for its first base; it may have others beyond this, wherever it has allies or permanent lines of defense; but if it is driven back across the Rhine it will have for a base either the Meuse or the Moselle: it might have a third upon the Seine, and a fourth upon the Loire.
These successive bases may not be entirely or nearly parallel to the first. On the contrary, a total change of direction may become necessary. A French army repulsed beyond the Rhine might find a good base on Béfort or Besançon, on Mézières or Sedan, as the Russian army after the evacuation of Moscow left the base on the north and east and established itself upon the line of the Oka and the southern provinces. These lateral bases perpendicular to the front of defense are often decisive in preventing the enemy from penetrating to the heart of the country, or at least in rendering it impossible for him to maintain himself there. A base upon a broad and rapid river, both banks being held by strong works, would be as favorable as could be desired.
The more extended the base, the more difficulty will there be in covering it; but it will also be more difficult to cut the army off from it. A state whose capital is too near the frontier cannot have so favorable a base in a defensive war as one whose capital is more retired.
A base, to be perfect, should have two or three fortified points of sufficient capacity for the establishment of depots of supply. There should be a tête de pont upon each of its unfordable streams.
All are now agreed upon these principles; but upon other points opinions have varied. Some have asserted that a perfect base is one parallel to that of the enemy. My opinion is that bases perpendicular to those of the enemy are more advantageous, particularly such as have two sides almost perpendicular to each other and forming a re-entrant angle, thus affording a double base if required, and which, by giving the control of two sides of the strategic field, assure two lines of retreat widely apart, and facilitate any change of the line of operations which an unforeseen turn of affairs may necessitate.
The quotations which follow are from my treatise on Great Military Operations:—
"The general configuration of the theater of war may also have a great influence upon the direction of the lines of operations, and, consequently, upon the direction of the bases.
Fig. 1.
"If every theater of war forms a figure presenting four faces more or less regular, one of the armies, at the opening of the campaign, may hold one of these faces—perhaps two—while the enemy occupies the other, the fourth being closed by insurmountable obstacles. The different ways of occupying this theater will lead to widely different combinations. To illustrate, we will cite the theater of the French armies in Westphalia from 1757 to 1762, and that of Napoleon in 1806, both of which are represented in Fig. 1, p. 79. In the first case, the side A B was the North Sea, B D the line of the Weser and the base of Duke Ferdinand, C D the line of the Main and the base of the French army, A C the line of the Rhine, also guarded by French troops. The French held two faces, the North Sea being the third; and hence it was only necessary for them, by maneuvers, to gain the side B D to be masters of the four faces, including the base and the communications of the enemy. The French army, starting from its base C D and gaining the front of operations F G H, could cut off the allied army I from its base B D; the latter would be thrown upon the angle A, formed by the lines of the Rhine, the Ems, and the sea, while the army E could communicate with its bases on the Main and Rhine.
"The movement of Napoleon in 1806 on the Saale was similar. He occupied at Jena and Naumburg the line F G H, then marched by Halle and Dessau to force the Prussian army I upon the sea, represented by the side A B. The result is well known.
"The art, then, of selecting lines of operations is to give them such directions as to seize the communications of the enemy without losing one's own. The line F G H, by its extended position, and the bend on the flank of the enemy, always protects the communications with the base C D; and this is exactly the maneuvers of Marengo, Ulm, and Jena.
Fig. 2.
"When the theater of war does not border upon the sea, it is always bounded by a powerful neutral state, which guards its frontiers and closes one side of the square. This may not be an obstacle insurmountable like the sea; but generally it may be considered as an obstacle upon which it would be dangerous to retreat after a defeat: hence it would be an advantage to force the enemy upon it. The soil of a power which can bring into the field one hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand troops cannot be violated with impunity; and if a defeated army made the attempt, it would be none the less cut off from its base. If the boundary of the theater of war should be the territory of a weak state, it would be absorbed in this theater, and the square would be enlarged till it reached the frontiers of a powerful state, or the sea. The outline of the frontiers may modify the shape of the quadrilateral so as to make it approach the figure of a parallelogram or trapezoid, as in Figure 2. In either case, the advantage of the army which has control of two faces of the figure, and possesses the power of establishing upon them a double base, will be still more decided, since it will be able more easily to cut the enemy off from the shortened side—as was the case with the Prussian army in 1806, with the side B D J of the parallelogram formed by the lines of the Rhine, the Oder, the North Sea, and the mountainous frontier of Franconia."
The selection of Bohemia as a base in 1813 goes to prove the truth of my opinion; for it was the perpendicularity of this base to that of the French army which enabled the allies to neutralize the immense advantages which the line of the Elbe would otherwise have afforded Napoleon, and turned the advantages of the campaign in their favor. Likewise, in 1812, by establishing their base perpendicularly upon the Oka and Kalouga, the Russians were able to execute their flank march upon Wiazma and Krasnoi.
If any thing further be required to establish these truths, it will only be necessary to consider that, if the base be perpendicular to that of the enemy, the front of operations will be parallel to his line of operations, and that hence it will be easy to attack his communications and line of retreat.
It has been stated that perpendicular bases are particularly favorable in the case of a double frontier, as in the last figures. Critics may object to this that it does not agree with what is elsewhere said in favor of frontiers which are salient toward the enemy, and against double lines of operations with equality of force. (Art. XXI.) The objection