Military accomplishments
The creation of the French Revolutionary Army was largely due to his powers of organization and enforcing discipline. In order to raise more troops for the war, Carnot introduced conscription: the levée en masse approved by the National Convention was able to raise France's army from 645,000 troops in mid-1793 to 1.5 million in September 1794. He was the first to execute the modern waging of war with mass armies and strategic planning realized by the Revolution. As a military engineer, Carnot favored fortresses and defensive strategies. He developed innovative defensive designs for forts, including the Carnot wall, named after him. However, with the constant invasions he decided to take his strategic planning to an offensive strike. From his intellect sprang the maneuvers and organization that turned the tides of war from 1793 to 1794.
The basic idea was to have a massive army separated into several units that could move more quickly than the enemy and attack from the flanks rather than head on, which had led to resounding defeats before Carnot was elected to the Committee of Public Safety. This tactic was extremely successful against the more traditional tactics of existing European armies. It was his initiative to train the conscripts in the art of war and to place new recruits with experienced soldiers rather than having a massive volunteer army without any real idea of how to wage battle.
Once the problem of troop numbers had been solved, Carnot turned his administrative skills to the supplies that this massive army would need. Many of the munitions and supplies were in short supply: copper was lacking for guns so he ordered church bells seized in order to melt them down; saltpeter was lacking and he called chemistry to his aid; leather for boots was scarce so he demanded and secured new methods for tanning. He quickly organized the army and helped to turn the tide of the war. It added significantly to discontent with the course of the Revolution in still Bourbon-loyalist areas—such as the Vendée, which had broken out in open revolt five months earlier—but the government of the time considered it a success, and Carnot became known as the Organizer of Victory. In autumn 1793, he took charge of French columns on the Northern Front, and contributed to Jean-Baptiste Jourdan's victory in the Battle of Wattignies.
Carnot met Robespierre for the first time in Arras where he was assigned for military duty and shortly after Robespierre finished his legal studies. Both of them were members of the literary club, and they sang Societe des Rosati together. The group was founded in 1778 and was inspired by the works of Chapelle, La Fontaine and Chaulieu. It was here where they became acquaintances and eventually friends. Robespierre preceded Carnot into the Academy of Arras entering in April 1784 while he entered in 1786.
While they were active members of the Committee of Public Safety in 1794, tensions between Carnot and Robespierre began to rise massively. During his time on the committee, which was heavily radical, Carnot signed a total of 43 decrees and drafted 18 of them. Most of them dealt with military tactics and education. Despite leaning on Jacobin beliefs, Carnot was considered the "conservative" of his half. He was not an official member of the radical group and therefore took on his own independent beliefs in regards to many issues. One of these issues included Robespierre's proposal on an egalitarian social system with which Carnot feverishly disagreed.
Although he had taken no steps to oppose the Reign of Terror, he and some other technocrats on the committees, including Robert Lindet and Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, turned on Maximilien Robespierre and his allies during the Thermidorian Reaction by having him arrested. Robespierre was later killed along with 21 of his followers. Shortly after Robespierre's fall, Carnot was charged for his role during the time but the charges were quickly dismissed when he became a member of the Directory.
In 1795, Carnot appointed Napoleon Bonaparte as general in chief of the Army of Italy. He is known to be the only member of the Directory to have supported Napoleon during this time.
In 1800 Bonaparte appointed Carnot as Minister of War, and he served in that office at the time of the Battle of Marengo. In 1802 he voted against the establishment of Napoleon's Consular powers for life and the passing of the title to his children, for as Carnot said when speaking of the power necessary to govern a state "If this power is the appendage of a hereditary family it becomes despotic."
After Napoleon crowned himself emperor on 2 December 1804, Carnot's republican convictions precluded his acceptance of high office under the First French Empire, and he resigned from public life. Probably in response to the fall of the fortress of Vlissingen to the British during the Walcheren Campaign in 1809, Napoleon employed Carnot to write a treatise describing how fortifications could be improved, for the use of the École militaire de Metz. Building on the theories of the controversial engineer Montalembert, Carnot advanced ideas on how the long-established bastioned system of fortification could be modified for close defense and to allow for counter attack by the besieged garrison.
In 1812, Carnot returned to office in defense of Napoleon during the disastrous invasion of Russia and was assigned the defense of Antwerp against the Sixth Coalition. He surrendered only at the demand of the Count of Artois, the younger brother of Louis XVIII who later reigned as Charles X. He was later made a Count of the Empire by Napoleon as Lazare Nicolas Marguerite, Comte Carnot. During the Hundred Days, Carnot served as Minister of the Interior for Napoleon, and was exiled as a regicide during the White Terror after the Second Restoration during the reign of Louis XVIII.
