While the reformers made no headway against the entrenched military aristocracy, their writings influenced a generation of younger officers, including an artillery lieutenant named Napoléon Bonaparte. Calling for root-and-branch reform after the humiliating debacle of the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), they pleaded that their soldiers were fully fledged Frenchmen capable of higher sentiments and could therefore be spurred to greatness through appeals to their sense of honor. In the mid–18th century, however, French officers began to question the social assumptions underlying the existing military order. Whether in France or England, Prussia or Russia, noble officers dominated plebeian soldiers whom the former viewed as inferior beings requiring strict discipline and corporal punishment. Before the 1789 French Revolution all European armies had been organized along similar hierarchical lines. Still in existence today, it exemplifies Napoléon’s greatest contribution to the art of modern military leadership-the democratization of honor.Īlthough Napoléon did not invent the notion that ordinary soldiers were amenable to the call of honor, he was among the first leaders to make it the basis of his leadership style. Created by him in 1802, the order was awarded without regard to rank and thus intended to motivate even common soldiers by appealing to their sentiments of ambition and pride. The baubles to which Napoléon referred were the badges and ribbons of the Légion d’honneur. How, then, can wartime leaders induce their subordinates to sacrifice fundamental self-interest for the good of the collective military endeavor? Napoléon Bonaparte believed he knew the answer: “It is with baubles men are led.” And judging by the legendary devotion of his troops, his answer seems valid. The incentives that grease the wheels of civilian society-money and other material benefits-are of little avail on a battlefield. A combat leader faces the most difficult of motivational challenges: to get soldiers to willingly forgo the most basic of human instincts, namely comfort and self-preservation. That gift of being able to inspire others to enthusiastically undertake unpleasant tasks is especially critical in the armed forces, where the unpleasantness of the tasks, not to mention their potentially fatal consequences, can be extreme. Truman once defined a leader as “a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do, and like it.” A talented combat leader, the diminutive emperor was also a shrewd judge of human nature.
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