STAFF, MILITARY. It was not until the time of Cromwell and his "New Model Army" that we find anything comparable to our modern staff system. The organization of the staff of the "New Model Army" was based on that of the Branden burg army of Gustavus Adolphus, the forerunner of the Prussian staff of later years. It bears little resemblance to the extensive and specialized staff organization of to-day, but was a great im provement on anything which had preceded it and was well suited to the small numbers and narrow battle fronts with which it had to deal. It consisted of a headquarters under a "Sergeant Major-General" as chief of staff, and an administrative staff for each of the three commands, infantry, cavalry and train. It con tained nothing corresponding to our present organization of a general staff responsible for the preparation of plans and the formulation of orders.
At the beginning of the 18th century and during the War of the Spanish Succession the increasing size of armies rendered it impossible for the commander-in-chief to exercise personal control over the whole of his forces. It was therefore found necessary to decentralize command by the grouping of units into permanent fighting formations called "brigades." At the same time the or ganization of the staff began to develop as a means of co-ordi nating the action of these formations. Marlborough remodelled Cromwell's system and gave to his chief of staff, the "Quarter master General," wider scope and greater responsibility than had his predecessor, the "Sergeant-Major-General," including ad ministrative arrangements, reconnaissance and the collection of information. A large staff of aides-de-camp and gallopers was employed to convey orders on the battlefield, but these were not staff officers in the modern sense: they were rather the forerun ners of our present signal service for the transmission of orders.
In 1760 during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) Frederick the Great instituted the Prussian new academy and organized a body which he called the "Quartermaster General's Staff"; this latter was primarily responsible for the duties of preparing plans of fortifications and collating and publishing topographical in formation. The French, following the tendency to further decen
tralization of command, introduced the divisional organization, afterwards developed by both Wellington and Napoleon.
The staff system used by Napoleon was designed by Louvois in 1687 and adapted in 1796 by Berthier, his chief of staff, to Napoleon's special requirements : it was organized as a writing staff, a fighting staff and a riding or liaison staff. Napoleon him self controlled the preparation of plans, reconnaissance and move ments, and the conduct of operations; his autocratic military genius required only a confidential clerk of mechanical perfection and reliability, such as was Berthier, to complement it, and he had no use for a chief of staff, as we understand that term. Napoleon's orders were usually issued in the form of instructions which he expected his generals to carry out in the spirit of his intentions ; his control was much less rigid than that of Wellington, whose problem was a more limited one and who was also characteris tically more chary of decentralization. Napoleon's army, corps and divisional staffs, like Wellington's, consisted chiefly of aides de-camp of various grades whose principal duty it was to convey orders on the battlefield and also between theatres of war: one such aide-de-camp rode with despatches from Salamanca to Moscow, a distance of over 2,000 m. They were sometimes given command of troops and appointed to govern provinces.