Antoine-Henri Jomini

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Antoine-Henri Jomini; Portrait of George Dawe (around 1824)
Portrait around 1859 of Charles Gleyre in the Russian general uniform and the sash of the Russian Order of St. Anna
Monument to Antoine-Henri Jomini in Payerne (moved to the new Place-Général-Jomini in 2014)

Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini (born March 6, 1779 in Payerne / Waadtland , † March 24, 1869 in Passy near Paris ) was a Swiss officer and one of the most influential military theorists. The teachings he developed had a decisive influence on the military doctrines of the 19th century.

biography

As a young man he worked in trading and banking. His secret love, however, belonged to military tactics and strategy , to which he devoted himself in his free time.

In 1798 Jomini became adjutant to the Minister of War of the Helvetic Republic and did so well that he was promoted to the rank of captain as head of the secretariat of the Ministry of War. He presented a plan for the reorganization of the Helvetic militia, which was accepted and in 1799 brought him promotion to battalion commander. In 1801 he left the service of the Helvetic Republic and moved to Paris, where, with the support of Marshal Ney, he published his first publication in five volumes under the title Traité de grande tactique . Ney appointed him his personal aide in 1804.

In French service he also got to know Napoleon Bonaparte . Thanks to his profound knowledge of military history , he was able to predict the course of army operations. At first he served as Chief of Staff of Marshal Ney and came into conflict with the French Minister of War Berthier , who torpedoed his promotion. In 1810 he received a tempting offer from the Russian tsar to switch to his service. Napoleon then appointed him Brigadier General and gave him the task of describing the Italian wars in a work entitled "Histoire critique et militaire des guerres de la Révolution". He took part in the Russian campaign of 1812 (which he thought could not be won) and, as governor of Smolensk and Vilna, organized the entire logistics and the retreat via the Berezina very successfully . The enmity with Berthier made his promotion to division general impossible in 1813, although he had played a large part in the French victory in the battle of Bautzen . This moved Jomini to transfer to the service of the Russian Tsar Alexander I during the Poischwitz armistice .

Tsar Alexander appointed Jomini his adjutant with the rank of lieutenant general. In this function he took part in the battles near Dresden, Kulm and Leipzig. After the end of the war, Jomini took part in the Congress of Vienna and had a decisive influence on the position of the tsar on the question of Switzerland, particularly with regard to the independence of the canton of Vaud from Bern. Then he finished his "Histoire critique et militaire des guerres de la Révolution". In Russian service he took part in the congresses of Aachen and Verona as an advisor to the tsar and was appointed général en chef in 1826 , which corresponded to the full rank of general in the Russian army. He participated as an adviser to Nicholas I in the war against the Ottoman Empire in 1828/29. He then retired from active service in the Russian army and moved to Brussels. In 1832 he was involved in the establishment of the Russian Military Academy in St. Petersburg. In 1837 he was entrusted with the military instruction of the future Tsar Alexander II. On the occasion of the Crimean War , he returned to St. Petersburg as a military advisor. After the Crimean War he lived in Brussels again and was killed by Napoleon III in 1859 . asked for plans for the forthcoming war in Italy. He then retired to Passy, ​​where he died in 1869.

Jomini wrote over 30 military works. His main work, Précis de l'art de la guerre , originally served the education of the future Tsar Alexander II. In Russia and the still young USA, Jomini's books were included in the curricula of officer training.

Awards

Works

  • Traité de grande tactique, ou, Relation de la guerre de sept ans, extraite de Tempelhof, commentée at comparée aux principales opérations de la derniére guerre; avec un recueil des maximes les plus important de l'art militaire, justifiées par ces différents évenéments. Paris: Giguet et Michaud 1805.
  • Précis de l'Art de la Guerre: Des Principales Combinaisons de la Stratégie, de la Grande Tactique et de la Politique Militaire . Brussels: Meline, Cans et Copagnie, 1838.
  • Histoire critique et militaire des campagnes de la Revolution . Paris 1806 / Brussels 1824 (complete edition in 24 volumes).
  • Vie Politique et Militaire de Napoleon recontèe par lui-meme au Tribunal de Cèsar d'Alexandre et de Frederic . 4 volumes. Anselin: Paris 1827.

literature

  • Xavier Comte de Courville: Jomini , Berlin 1938.
  • Gustav Däniker : General Antoine Henri Jomini , in: Werner Hahlweg (Ed.): Klassiker der Kriegskunst , Darmstadt 1960, pp. 267–284.
  • Antoine-Henri Jomini, Colonel von Boguslawski (Ed.): Demolition of the Art of War , Dresden 1885. ( PDF )
  • Andrej Nikolaevic Mercalov, Lyudmila A. Mercalova: Antoine-Henri Jomini - The founder of scientific military theory - An assessment from a Russian perspective , Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-7281-2987-9
  • Jean-Jacques Langendorf : Waging war: Antoine-Henri Jomini , vdf Hochschulverlag AG at the ETH, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7281-3168-3
  • Johann Ulrich Schlegel: General Antoine Henri Jomini - Swiss military strategist of world class, in: Clausewitz Society, Yearbook 2009, pp. 183–188
  • John Shy Jomini , in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986
  • Edgar Schumacher : Jomini . In: Schweizer Monatshefte 18 (1938/39) 1, pp. 23–36.
  • Jürg Studer: Antoine-Henri Jomini, relative in the spirit of Napoleon? In: Swiss Journal for History , vol. 67, 2017, pp. 450–466.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Déplacement de la statue du Général Jomini. Administration communale de Payerne, June 27, 2014, accessed January 1, 2019 (French).
  2. ↑ Christoph MV Abegglen: Jomini - Influence of his strategic thinking , Military Command School, Zurich 1995 .
  3. ↑ Christoph MV Abegglen: The Influence of Clausewitz on Jomini's Précis de l'Art de la Guerre MA Thesis, King's College London 2003. ( Memento from September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 516 kB)
  4. ↑ Discussed in: Jürg Studer: Antoine-Henri Jomini, relative in the spirit of Napoleon? In: Swiss Journal of History , vol. 67, 2017, pp. 450–466, esp. Pp. 459–462.
personal data
SURNAME Jomini, Antoine-Henri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss military theorist and general
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1779
PLACE OF BIRTH Payerne , Canton of Vaud
DATE OF DEATH March 24, 1869
Place of death Passy near Paris