Why were battles decisive in the Napoleonic Wars and not the Civil War?

It seems to me that battles of the Napoleonic Wars were decisive in that they could decide a campaign in many ways. One well known example is that after the Battle of Austerlitz, William Pitt famously said "Roll up that map; it will not be wanted these ten years."

By contrast, battles in the Civil War, when they had a winner or loser, rarely were the decisive factor in a campaign. Instead, sieges and attrition eventually broke down the Confederate Army.

These wars were approximately 50 years apart so my question is what changed during those 50 years technology/doctrine wise that caused the temporary end of the "decisive battle?"

Are there any PoDs where a single battle during the Civil War could be decisive?
 
The US was vast. If a battle was lost you can retreat twenty miles and the resources lost to the other would not be relevant. It may represent only 1/2 of 1% of the countries land, population, wealth, etc. It would be easy to find another defensible position and rebuild the army.

Europe, on the other hand, was made up of tiny countries, relatively speaking.

In a European war, if you crush the Austrian army outside of Vienna, you would control the whole country in days. The monarch would be desperate to maintain their crown and would make a deal. This is how Europe did things. Better to give up a border land than risk wholesale loss of the Patrimony.
 
I suspect it has something to do with distances.

It made sense for European armies to fight with even their last reserves, because retreating might mean losing your capital.
Famously, the Russians did keep retreating, and as a result didn't fight a very decisive battle with Napoleon's army during his invasion (but did when he started retreating and falling apart).

Another distance factor might well be weapon range. A Napoleonic army would probably fight up a lot closer than an ACW army due to the increased effective range of infantry weapons (and guns?).

In other words I think an ACW army that routs starts with a bigger headstart, has more space to retreat into, and the infrastructure for a fast chase might also be worse.
 

takerma

Banned
The explanations I heard(there are so many)

1. Range of rifled musket vs smoothbore
2. Massive amount of high quality cavalry vs not so much. You need horse breeding programs and a lot of training to change this, cavalry is not easily conscriptable.
3. Amount of officers and specifically amount of staff officers. I heard somewhere that whole army of both Virginia had staff similar to size of staff of one brigade in Napoleon's army. This led to much less ability to control what happens on the battlefield, much more fog of war etc. Basically US needs to be much more militarized then it was.
4. Distances involved.
5. Napoleon. Looking at Austerlitz and whole campaign before it, you do wonder if he had a crystal ball.. until Russia that is.


Hooker did try to setup a battle to completely annihilate Lee and finish the war. But his cavalry proved to be terribly led and he himself for some reason balked at following the plan.
 
The explanations I heard(there are so many)
4. Distances involved.

That is a good point. The longer distances in Europe would allow more maneuvering, leading to more decisive battles. The only issue is there weren't many decisive battles in the Russian campaign, even though it had the most room for maneuver.
 
The Civil War was industrialized. That was the big difference.

Explain the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars, then. Both involved extremely decisive battles.

And I disagree with the 'distance' argument. Washington DC was -right- next to Richmond, and loads of battles took place around there---big ones---and yet none of them over the first three or four years of the conflict were decisive enough to force capitulation by one side or another.

ACW commanders were largely skittish and lacked gumption, IMO. European commanders knew that it was fight or die, and everything hung on the outcomes of a few battles.
 
The Civil War was industrialized. That was the big difference.

This is pretty much it.

What it means in reality is that when a big battle was brewing the whole country knew about it via the telegraph and troops and stores were accumulated from all over the country rather than what was in the immediate vicinity and options were considered and plans made before the battle. When the battle was won or lost the result was known within hours and stopgaps were put in place, troops were rushed by train from quiet theatres, the telegraph informing commanders about where was quiet and could be thinned. The result is that wounds were staunched as they occurred rather than leading to an amputation to save the body.

I'm sure that if Boney's enemies could keep track of his movements and could rush assistance to their allies they would have done, it was how Waterloo was won after all. In 1800 this was technologically impossible, but by 1861 the Industrial Revolution made it possible.

I'd also point out that just prior to the Napoleonic wars battles weren't very decisive, wars were often a series of sieges, opponents would retreat into fortifications and deny their enemy a victory.
 

Redbeard

Banned
When Napoleon was low on good cavalry he could still win but never decisively (1813 spring campaign). The armies in the American Civil War rarely had much good cavalry, so that might be one reason.

Next the firepower of armies by 1860s was much bigger than in 1810s (rifled firearms) - that all other things equal made it difficult to achieve a decisive victory as that usually would involve some swift movement - into the enemy's fire.

But as another poster already has remarked, there were decisive battles in Europe by the 1860-70s and some also involving quite some distances.

So the last factor might be: No Moltke and his Prussian General Staff in the ACW!
 
not every battle in the Nap wars were decisive. There were plenty of inconclusive engagements. we just tend to remember some of the asskickings.

But, in the Nap wars, the countries tended to mass their forces and go at it in one big push. when one side suffered casualties (usually the coalition countries), they tended to cry uncle, surrender, and live to fight another day.

The civil war did not have that luxury. The North demanded that the South rejoin the union and would not accept a splintering of the union. So it was a fight to the death for the South. At the same time, the South didn't have the means to conquer the North. The best they could do was win enough battles that the North gave up trying to force them to stay in the union. Plus, the forces were fairly equal. Add that to the sheer size of territory that needed to be conquered, it was going to take time for either side to wear down the other. it was not a war of battles, but a war of attrition. It didn't help that both sides had opportunities to severely defeat opposing armies but failed to follow up, choosing instead to regroup rather than chase down armies in disarray.

When France won the wars, they tended to kick ass. France ultimately losing was a lot like the civil war in that they had to get worn down by attrition til finally they had to surrender.
 
But, in the Nap wars, the countries tended to mass their forces and go at it in one big push. when one side suffered casualties (usually the coalition countries), they tended to cry uncle, surrender, and live to fight another day.

The civil war did not have that luxury. The North demanded that the South rejoin the union and would not accept a splintering of the union. So it was a fight to the death for the South.

I think this gets to the heart of it. For the sides involved, there was more hanging in the balance in the U.S. Civil War than in, say, the War of the Third Coalition. Austria and Russia didn't like Napoleon but they weren't in danger of disappearing from the map if they made peace with him.

The Peninsular War was more like the Civil War in that for Spain, the stakes were huge - they were fighting to restore their independence. There, the early French victories were not decisive, and the fighting dragged on until the French were gradually worn down.
 
I would say there were battles in the American Civil War that would have been treated like Decisive Battles, were it not for the fact that both sides felt they were fighting for their life, that if they lost, it would literally be the End of their entire Way of Life.

In the Napoleonic Wars states generally did not act that way. Napoleons Primary Continental Enemy, Austria, was always okay with giving up some territory after a defeat because they were not threatened with complete extermination.

You can see this distinction play out in the one place during the Napoleonic Wars where this was not the case; The Peninsular War. There, the Spanish felt they were fighting to preserve their entire country, that defeat would mean the end of their way of life, and because of that no amount of Battles could be Decisive Enough, they would always retreat, not to surrender, but to keep fighting.

It's one of the reasons why I remain skeptical towards all the people who propose that Napoleon could have just 'dismembered Austria' and been done with it. Given the Loyalty many Hungarian Statesmen had towards the Habsburgs, I contend all it would have done was gotten Austria to treat this like a war for survival, and create "The Peninsular War Pt. 2".

And given how Napoleon utterly miserably pathetically horribly failed in the first one I doubt he would do much better in the second.
 
When Napoleon was low on good cavalry he could still win but never decisively (1813 spring campaign). The armies in the American Civil War rarely had much good cavalry, so that might be one reason.

Next the firepower of armies by 1860s was much bigger than in 1810s (rifled firearms) - that all other things equal made it difficult to achieve a decisive victory as that usually would involve some swift movement - into the enemy's fire.

But as another poster already has remarked, there were decisive battles in Europe by the 1860-70s and some also involving quite some distances.

So the last factor might be: No Moltke and his Prussian General Staff in the ACW!


The distances were still small compared to the CSA. The CSA alone was larger than the size of Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and an area twice Hungary's combined. That doesn't count the fighting in the border states of Missouri and Kentucky which were substantial at times.
 

jahenders

Banned
A lot of it has to do with the portion of total forces involved in a single battle. In the ACW, you rarely had more than 10-20% of the total army involved in a single campaign, not to mention a battle. So, even if you lost an army of 50K men, there was often another army of similar size a day or two's march down the road.

That's why, even though Richmond and DC were perilously close, neither fell for 4 years. With several US losses not far from DC, there were still enough troops (and fortifications) in DC that the victorious CSA army could do little more than harass. Likewise,

Another reason for the less decisive nature is that more of the ACW battles were heavily defensive affairs vs. battles of maneuver. That means that the attacker, even if he wins, is probably substantially weakened and less able to pursue. Meanwhile the defender (even if he wins) isn't too inclined to leave the fortifications that have just saved him.
 
In addition to the point about size, there is the fragmented nature of the coalitions versus the unitary (even the Confederacy) states of the Civil War. France was almost always at war with at least some of her neighbors; a major victory would just cause one or two of the Coalition members to drop out. And since they fought as nations, a decisive victory or two would seriously cripple a nation's army (since it was likely that e.g. the Austrian army was fighting as a unit). If Austria's army is defeated, they are unlikely to continue to fight in the hope that Prussia will liberate them, and will make peace.

In contrast, there was no way to force, say, Pennsylvania or North Carolina to make a separate peace. Note that US states are basically the size of countries; there were battles/campaigns that essentially ejected the enemy from states. Pea Ridge, for instance, effectively secured Missouri for the Union (outside some partisan activity); in a Napoleonic context that would be seen as a "decisive" battle, but it's fairly obscure in the ACW.

Finally, for all that one talks about "decisive" battles, the War of the First Coalition broke out in 1792, and the Hundred Days ended in 1815. That's 23 years, in which nations joined and then abandoned the war, with only very brief interludes of partial peace. In contrast, the American Civil War lasted almost exactly 4 years. If anything, it seems the Europeans were the ones who were unable to finish their enemies.
 
One well known example is that after the Battle of Austerlitz,

The battle of Austerlitz, was fought after the French had captured the Austrian capital, if the Army of Northern Virginia had fought and lost a battle after the loss of Richmond, would future generations refer to that battle as decisive?
 
Another thing is there were a lot of areas for the South to lose without much of importance being lost. Losing plantation #213 isn't as devastating as losing a major city and major cities were few and far between in the CSA but not so in Europe.
 
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