page_title: Grande Armée
section_title: Communications
hierarchical_section_title: Grande Armée / Support services / Communications
caption_attribution_description: English: Optical semaphore telegraph near Saverne, France Français&#160;: Tour du télégraphe Chappe - près du Château du Haut-Barr, Saverne Deutsch: Optischer Telegraf System Chappe bei der Burg Haut-Barr, Saverne, Frankreich
context_page_description: The Grande Armée was the imperial army commanded by Napoleon I during the Napoleonic Wars. From 1804 to 1809, it won a series of military victories that allowed the French Empire to exercise unprecedented control over most of Europe. Widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest fighting forces ever assembled, it suffered terrible losses during the disastrous French invasion of Russia in 1812, after which it never recovered its tactical superiority.
  The Grande Armée was formed in 1804 from the L'Armée des côtes de l'Océan, a force of 100,000 soldiers that Napoleon had assembled for the proposed invasion of Britain. Napoleon later deployed the army in eastern Europe to eliminate the threat of Austria and Russia, which were part of the Third Coalition assembled against France. Thereafter, the name Grande Armée was used for the principal French Army deployed in the campaigns of 1805 and 1807, where it earned its prestige, and in 1809, 1812, and 1813–14. In practice, however, the term Grande Armée is used in English to refer to all the multinational forces gathered by Napoleon in his campaigns.
context_section_description: Most dispatches were conveyed as they had been for centuries, via messengers on horseback. Hussars, due to their bravery and riding skills, were often favoured for this task. Shorter range tactical signals could be sent visually by flags or audibly by drums, bugles, trumpets, and other musical instruments. Thus, standard bearers and musicians, in addition to their symbolic, ceremonial, and morale functions, also played important communication roles.
  The Grande Armée did benefit from innovations made in long-range communications during the French Revolution. The French Army was among the first to employ homing pigeons as messengers in any large and organised manner, and also the first to use observation balloons for reconnaissance and communications. But the real advance for conveying long-range dispatches came in the form of an ingenious optical telegraph Semaphore system invented by Claude Chappe.
  Chappe's system consisted of an intricate network of small towers, within visual range of one another. On top of each was a 9-metre mast, with three large, movable wooden rods mounted on them. These rods, called the régulateur (regulator), were operated by trained crews using a series of pulleys and levers. The four basic positions of the rods could be combined to form 196 different "signs". Provided with good crews of operators and decent visibility conditions, a sign could be sent through the 15 station towers between Paris and Lille, a distance of 193 km (120 mi), in only 9 minutes, a complete message of 36 signs in about 32 minutes. From Paris to Venice, a message could be sent in only six hours.
  Chappe's telegraph soon became one of Napoleon's favourite and most important secret weapons. A special portable version semaphore telegraph travelled with his headquarters. Using it, he was able to coordinate his logistics and forces over longer distances in far less time than his enemies. Work was even begun on a wagon-mounted version in 1812, but was not completed in time for use in the wars.
caption: A Chappe semaphore tower near Saverne, France
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