Some other cool Napoleon & Chess related links:
This is Edward Winter's essay "Napoleon Bonaparte and Chess"
http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/napoleon.html
And you can watch 4 of Napoleon's games here at chessbase, including one wherein he battles the Turk:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=77025
I've read a couple of older chess books, My System,Aron Nimzowitsch, and Pawn Power in Chess, Hans Kmoch. Both of these books are elaborate in their description of concepts - which does read a lot like what you have posted here.
'to concentrate one’s forces – usually by swift marches – so as to confront with superior numbers a segment of the enemy too far from the center to be reinforced in time: these were the elements of Napoleonic strategy.'
this part here is pure Nimzo!
Luckily however, we do not have to worry about terrain or feeding our pieces :)
*edit* There is a Napoleon post extravaganza at the moment, so I've done the ol' copy and paste.
Also I read a fictional book about the Turk and it's creator - I'll have a wee look to see if I can get it's details.
2nd edit - here you go The Secerts of the Chess Machine by Robert Löhr and Anthea Bell
I know it's cold, but cold enough out that you're cracking out the old texts? Ouch. I'm sticking to online chess as my chosen indoor activity -- sanity (and marriage) be damned.
Seriously though -- it is eerie how the text parallels some of the fundamental principals of chess. The ones that caught my attention were:
Very nice find, thanks for sharing.
I read in The Immortal Game that Napoleon was a keen chess player but he never really was that great at it. Supposedly when he was later locked in prison he was sent a chess set and hidden inside one of the pieces was plans for his escape but he never found out about it even though he used the board all the time.
Wow, a very interesting read. Thanks for sharing Rael. Napoleon also said something else I think is eerily reminiscent of chess: "From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step". (sounds like blunders to me)
Don't know if you have the time and inclination, but if you like Napoleon, you may want to give Tolstoy's "War & Peace" a try...Tolstoy actually spent years delving in Russian libraries and reading all the historical accounts available on Napoleon's conquests throughout Europe and Russia. Superb historical fiction with a lot of the same things you quote in Napoleon, but not a light read.
I think it would be really interesting to see if anything in Lao Tzu or Machiavelli, Nietzsche or Bruce Lee, Marcus Aurelious or Miyamoto Musashi, or even Donald Rumsfeld - if any of their aphorisms inadvertently applied to chess.
I feel Rumsfeld brings his queen out too early
Napoleon is like the guy who understands the very physics of war and of victory and he doesn't allow mistaken conventional wisdom to decrease his effectiveness, discarding it when it doesn't make sense--when it doesn't conform to the physics he knows to be real. It's like he's got his ear to the traintracks and knows for certain a train is coming when other "experts" are sure there's no train because they looked at the train schedule. I'd like to see how he'd combat terrorist organizations--he'd probably measure the world situation and create a new brand of warfare that'd be more efficient than what we're doing now, because some of our missteps arise from not knowing how to attack this threat--not being in touch with the physics that govern this new kind of war.
Napoleon, or Nap, is one of the tougher animated opponents on my Playstation chess game (The title of the game: Chess.) He's wearing a big red and yellow French coat that doesn't look comfortable and his facial expression is dismissive, like he's poo-pooing you for even sitting across from him. I can't remember if he's the strongest the computer gets or if Socrates is higher rated. He comments when you start, at first check, when he's the equivalent of "lost" or "cocky" in the middlegame, and at the end. I think, based on his portrayal in the game, the historical guy must have been a little bit of a jerk. But hey that's how you get things done, as proven by Donald Trump, the Governor of Illinois, Kanye West, Terrell Owens, Napoleon, Walmart, Simon Cowell, just about everyone's mom at times, and car salesmen (whom I just now started feeling sympathy for--for the first time ever--because ain't nobody gonna be buying a car for like a year or more.)
Very cool! I had no idea Napolean played chess. Thanks for the article Rael.
If those games are real he was a terrible chess player.
I wrote on Napoleon and chess a few years ago.
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lab/7378/napoleon.htm
“The art of war is an immense study, which comprises all others.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte
I found this downright eerie: last night, thinking that I might actually take my mind off of chess for one evening, I grabbed a random book from my bookshelf – one of the old hardcover academic books bequeathed to me by an English professor, laid down with it and flipped randomly into it. The book I’d chosen was “The Age of Napoleon” by Will and Ariel Durant. After reading a little while, I came upon a section entitled “Napoleon Himself”, part IV of which described what he was like as a general – and his ideas about strategy in war.
Now this was astounding – at a few pivitol moments, if I’d been reading the sentences out of context, I would’ve sworn it was chess being discussed. I’m going to quote two long paragraphs in full below – particular sentences are unreally applicable. I guess chess really does simulate war after all. And I guess, even as I try and take a night off, it finds me nevertheless. Enjoy!
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From The Age of Napoleon (pages 248)
Napoleon expressed part of his strategy in a mathematical formula: “The strength of an army, like the amount of momentum in mechanics, is estimated by mass times the velocity. A swift march enhances the morale of an army, increases it’s power for victory.” There is no authority for ascribing to him the aphorism that “an army travels with its stomach” – that is, on its food supply; his view was rather that it wins with its feet. His motto was “Activité, activité, vitesse” – action and speed. Consequently he placed no reliance on fortresses as defenses; he would’ve laughed at the Maginot Line of 1939. “It is axiomatic,” he had said, far back in 1793, “that the side which remains behind its fortified line is always defeated”; and he repeated this in 1816. To watch for the time when the enemy divides or elongates his army; to use mountains and rivers to screen and protect the movement of his troops; to seize strategical elevations from which artillery could rake the field; to choose a battleground that would allow the maneuvers of infantry, artillery, and cavalry; to concentrate one’s forces – usually by swift marches – so as to confront with superior numbers a segment of the enemy too far from the center to be reinforced in time: these were the elements of Napoleonic strategy.
The final test of the general is in tactics – the disposition and maneuvering of his forces for and during battle. Napoleon tooks his stand where he could survey much of the action as his safety would allow; and since the plan of operations, and it’s quick adjustment to the turn of events, depended on his continued and concentrated attention, his safety was a prime consideration, even more in the judgement of his troops than in his actual practice; if he thought it necessary, as at Arcole, he did not hesitate to expose himself; and more than once we read of men being killed at his side in his place of observation …
In battle, he believed, soldiers acquired their value chiefly through their position and maneuverability. Here too the aim was concentration – of massed men and heavy fire on a particular point, preferably a flank, of the enemy, in the hope of throwing that part into a disorder that would spread. “In all battles a moment comes when the bravest troops, after having made the greatest efforts, feel inclined to run… Two armies are two bodies that meet and endeavor to frighten each other; a moment of panic occurs, and that moment must be turned to advantage. When a man has been present in many actions, he distinguishes that moment without difficulty.”
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…!!!!!! Cool, eh? Lot's to talk about in there.