SUPPLY AND TRANSPORT, MILITARY. In all ages the operations of armies have been influenced, and in many cases absolutely controlled, by the of providing and dis tributing food, forage, munitions, and stores for men and horses. In modern history these supplies have become more and more varied as weapons developed in complexity, power, and accuracy of workmanship. In proportion, the branches of an army which are charged with the duties of "supply and transport" have be come specialized as regards recruiting, training, and organization, in consequence also of the progress with transport which provide! more reliable and efficient haulage.
The predatory armies of the middle ages not only lived upon the country they traversed but enriched themselves with the plunder they obtained from it, and this method of subsisting and paying an army reached its utmost limits in the Thirty Years' War. During the last stages of this war Germany had been so thoroughly devastated that the armies marched hither and thither like packs of hungry wolves, every soldier accompanied by two or three non-combatants—camp followers of all sorts, mistresses, ragged children, and miserable peasants who had lost all and now sought to live by robbing others under the protection of the army.
From these horrors there followed a revulsion to the other extreme. Unless ordered by higher authority for political reasons to sack a particular town or to pillage a particular district, the soldiers were rigidly kept in hand, rationed by their own supply officers and hanged or flogged if at any moment an outbreak of the old vices made the example necessary. After 1648 there were very few districts in Middle Europe that could support an army for even a few days, and the burden of their sustenance had to be distributed over a larger area. Thus, at the mere rumour of an army's approach, the peasantry fled with all their belongings into the fortified places; armies soon came to be supplied from "magazines," which were filled either by contract from the home country or by inducing the peasantry—by means of good conduct and cash payments—to bring their produce to market. These magazines were placed in a strong position, and if one was not available, a siege had to be undertaken to meet the demand.
Moreover, soldiers in Marlborough's time were not so easily obtained as in the Thirty Years' War, and they had to be housed and fed comfortably enough to make it worth their while to stay with the colours instead of deserting. From these and similar conditions there grew up a system of supply and transport usually called the "magazine system," under which an army was bound, under penalty of dissolution, to go no farther than seven marches from the nearest fortress, two days from the nearest field bakery, and so on. When an i8th century army foraged for itself it was because the regular supply service was interrupted, i.e., when it was in extremis. But the relative rarity of wars in the i8th century, the habit of demanding nothing from the inhabitants of the country traversed by an army, and the virtual exclusion of the people from the princes' quarrels, gave Europe a century's respite in which to recover from the drain of the Thirty Years' War. And therefore, when the French Revolution came, the attempts of the armies of old Europe to suppress it without rob bing a single Frenchman of a loaf of bread proved futile, and soon the national army created by the Revolution, unencumbered by tents, magazines, and supply trains, swept over southern Germany and Italy. The Revolutionary armies differed indeed from those of the old wars in this, that they did not devastate wantonly, nor did they murder for the sake of loot. But they were merciless in
their exactions, and, moreover, the tides of their invasions flowed in particular channels, so that the greater part of the invaded country escaped. This had a considerable, sometimes even a pre dominant, influence on the strategy pursued, a retreat along their own lines of communication being of ten in fact avoided by the French as being the worst fate that could befall them. Napoleon, however, systematized the wasteful and irregular requisitioning that his predecessors had introduced, and in his hands the supply service, like all else connected with the art of war, underwent a thorough reform. His strategy' in the offensive passed through two distinct stages—(a) the swift and sudden descent into the theatre of war, and (b) the close grouping of his armies in view of the decisive blow. The first stage was characterized by extraor dinarily swift movement, freedom from dependence upon supply columns (other than the reserves of ammunition) and thorough exploitation of the food resources of the traversed zone. If the troops suffered, as well as the inhabitants, this effect did not shake his purpose. But the second stage, which as a general rule involved three or four days' occupation, without considerable movement, of a restricted area, required other measures of supply. In this the army lived upon magazines, which were filled from the captured supply transport, from the available supplies in the area, and from the resources accumulated in requisitioned vehicles close to the head of the routes followed in the first period. These resources were collected in the towns within this concentration area, and placed "out of reach of an insult" (that is, made safe against raiders) with a garrison and field works to supplement the town walls and gates. From this centre of operations Na poleon never allowed himself to be severed, whereas to the preservation of the route between France and that centre of operations he gave very little thought and assigned few or no troops, and confusion of strategical thought has often ensued from a failure to perceive the essential distinction, in Napoleonic practice, between a centre of operations and a "base." In the i9th century, however, there came the inevitable reac tion. Purely political wars, and the consequent indifference of the inhabitants to the operations of war, produced as before a return to the system of cash payments and convoy supply, espe cially in the Austrian army. As regards Europe, the introduction of railways enormously facilitated the supply and transport service, and campaigns were neither as barren nor as prolonged as they had been under the old conditions. The French and British armies did not, at least to the same extent, wage political wars, but their ceaseless colonial warfare imposed upon them the magazine and convoy system, and habituated them to it. The French, in 187o, stood still in the midst of the rich fields of Lorraine, and as a prolonged halt is fatal to the system of living on the country, it would have failed, even had it been tried. The Germans, on the other hand, levied requisitions, civilian transport, and contribu tions in money in accordance with Napoleonic tradition, though (owing to the existence of railways) with much less than Napole onic severity. Their system was adopted as the best for European warfare by all the great Powers, whose organizations and methods of transporting and issuing supplies became the same in principle.