Everyone who takes a serious interest in military history is aware that, in a general way, the victories of Wellington over his French adversaries were due to a skilful use of the two-deep line against the massive column, which had become the usual fighting-formation for a French army acting on the offensive, during the later years of the great war that raged from 1792 till 1814. But I am not sure that the methods and limitations of Wellington’s system are fully appreciated, and they are well worth explaining. And on the other hand it would not be true to imagine that all French fighting, without exception, was conducted in column, or that blows delivered by the solid masses whose aspect the English knew so well, were the only ideal of the Napoleonic generals. It is not sufficient to lay down the general thesis that Wellington found himself opposed by troops who invariably worked in column, and that he beat those troops by the simple expedient of meeting them, front to front, with other troops who as invariably fought in the two-deep battle line. The statement is true in a general way, but needs explanation and modification.

The use of infantry in line was, of course, no invention of Wellington’s, nor is it a universal panacea for all crises of war. During the eighteenth century, from Marlborough to Frederic the Great, all European infantry was normally fighting in line, three or four deep, and looking for success in battle to the rapidity and accuracy of its fire, not to the impetus of advances in heavy masses such as had been practised by the pikemen of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and were to be introduced again by the French generals of the Revolutionary period. Everyone knows how the victories of Frederic the Great were in part to be attributed to the careful fire-drill of his infantry, who, with their iron ramrods and rapid manual exercise, used to put in a far larger and more effective discharge of musket-balls per minute than their adversaries. But both parties were as a rule fighting in three-deep line, Austrians no less than Prussians. Armies had a stereotyped array, with infantry battalions deployed in long lines in the centre, and heavy masses of cavalry covering the wings. A glance at the battle-plans of the War of the Austrian Succession, or of the Seven Years’ War, shows a marvellous similarity in the general tactical arrangements of the rival hosts, and front-to-front collisions of long parallel lines were quite common, though commanders of genius had their own ways of varying the tactics of the day. Frederic the Great’s famous “oblique order,” or advance in Échelon, with the strong striking-wing brought forward, and the weaker “containing-wing” held back and refused, is sufficiently well known. Occasionally he was able to vary it, as at Rossbach and Leuthen, and to throw the greater part of his troops across the enemy’s flank at right angles, so as to roll him up in detail. But these were “uncovenanted mercies” obtained owing to the abnormal sloth or unskilfulness of the opposing general. Torgau needs a special word of mention, as Frederic’s only battle fought of choice in a thoroughly irregular formation.

There were one or two cases in the old eighteenth-century wars of engagements won by the piercing of a hostile centre, such as Marshal Saxe’s victory of Roucoux (1746), and we may find, in other operations of that great general, instances of the use of deep masses, battalion deployed behind battalion, for the attack of a chosen section of the hostile position, and others where a line of deployed infantry was flanked or supported by units practically in column. But this was exceptional—as exceptional as the somewhat similar formation of Cumberland’s mass of British and Hanoverian infantry at Fontenoy, which, though often described as a column, had originally consisted of three successive lines of deployed battalions, which were ultimately constricted into a mass by lateral pressure. Some of Marshal Broglie’s and Ferdinand of Brunswick’s fights during the Seven Years’ War were also fought in a looser order of battle than was normal.

Normally the tactics of the eighteenth century were directed to the smashing up of one of the enemy’s wings, either by outflanking it, or by assailing it with very superior forces, while the rest of the enemy’s army was “contained” by equal or inferior numbers, according as the assailant had more or less troops than his enemy. The decisive blow was very frequently delivered by a superior force of cavalry concentrated upon the striking wing, which commenced the action by breaking down the inferior hostile cavalry, and then turned in upon the flank of the infantry of the wing which it had assailed. Such a type of battle may sometimes be found much later, even in the Peninsular War, where OcaÑa was a perfect example of it.

Speaking roughly, however, the period of set battles fought by enemies advancing against each other in more or less parallel lines ended with the outbreak of the war of the French Revolution. There had been a fierce controversy in France from 1775 to 1791 between the advocates of the linear, or Frederician, battle-order—headed by General Guibert, and the officers who wished to introduce a deeper formation, which they claimed to have learnt from the instructions of Marshal Saxe—of whom the chief was General Menil-Durand. The former school had triumphed just before the war began, and the RÉglement d’Infanterie of 1791 accepted all their views. It was on this drill-book that the French infantry stood to fight in the following year, when the war on the Rhine and in Belgium began.65 But the attempt of the first generals of Revolutionary France to fight on the old linear system was a failure. The troops of the Republic had been demoralized by the removal or desertion of the greater proportion of their commissioned officers, and their cadres had been hastily filled with half-trained recruits. At the same time hundreds of new units, the battalions of volunteers, had been formed on no old cadre at all, but, with officers and men alike little better than untrained civilians, took the field along with the reorganized remains of the old royal army. It is hardly necessary to remark, that these raw armies suffered a series of disgraceful defeats at the hands of the Austrian and other allied troops in 1792–93. They were beaten both in tactics, in manoeuvring, and in fire-discipline by the well-drilled veteran battalions to which they were opposed.

The French Republic, when it came under the control of the Jacobins, tried to set matters right by accusing its generals of treason, and arrested and guillotined a considerable proportion of the unfortunate commanders-in-chief to whom its armies had been entrusted. But neither this heroic device, nor the sending to the armies of the well known “representatives en mission” from the National Assembly, who were to stimulate the energy of the generals, had satisfactory results. As the representatives were generally as ignorant of military affairs as they were self-important and autocratic, they did no more than confuse and harass the unhappy generals on whom they were inflicted.

One thing, however, the Jacobin government did accomplish: it pushed into the field reinforcements in such myriads that the armies of the allies were hopelessly outnumbered on every frontier. The first successes of the Republican armies in the North were won by brute force, by heaping double and triple numbers upon the enemy. And the new tactics of the Revolutionary leaders were evolved from a consciousness of superiority in this respect, a determination to swamp troops that manoeuvred better than their own, by hurling preponderant masses upon them, regardless of the losses that must necessarily be suffered. For they had inexhaustible reserves behind them, from the newly-decreed levies en masse, while the bases of the allies were far off, and their trained men, when destroyed, could only be replaced slowly and with difficulty.

When the generals of the Revolution threw away the old linear tactics learned in the school of Frederic the Great, as inapplicable to troops that could not manoeuvre with the same speed and accuracy as their enemies, the improvised system that succeeded was a brutal and wasteful one, but had the merit of allowing them to utilize their superiority of numbers. It is possible that those of them who reasoned at all upon the topic—and reasoning was not easy in that strenuous time, when a commander’s head sat lightly on his shoulders—saw that they were in a manner utilizing the idea that had been tried in a tentative way by Maurice de Saxe, and by one or two other generals of the old wars—the idea that for collision in long line on a parallel front, partial attacks in heavy masses on designated points might be substituted. But it is probable that there was more of improvisation than of deliberate tactical theory in the manoeuvres of even the best of them.

The usual method was to throw at the hostile front a very thick skirmishing line, which sheathed and concealed a mass of heavy columns, concentrated upon one or two critical points of the field. The idea was that the front line of tirailleurs would so engage the enemy, and keep him occupied all along his front, that at the crucial section of the combat the supporting columns would get up to striking distance with practically no loss, and could be hurled, while still intact, upon those points of the hostile array which it was intended to pierce; they would go through by their mere impetus and weight, since they were only exposed to fire for a few minutes, and could endure the loss suffered in that time without losing their Élan or their pace. The essential part of the system was the enormously thick and powerful skirmishing line: whole battalions were dispersed in chains of tirailleurs, who frankly abandoned any attempt at ordered movement, took refuge behind cover of all sorts, and were so numerous that they could always drive in the weak skirmishing line of the enemy, and get closely engaged with his whole front. The orderly battalion-volleys of the Austrian, or other allied troops opposed to them, did comparatively little harm to these swarms, who were taking cover as much as possible, and presented no closed body or solid mark for the musketry fire poured upon them. It looks as if the proper antidote against such a swarm-attack would have been local and partial cavalry charges, by squadrons judiciously inserted in the hostile line, for nothing could have been more vulnerable to a sudden cavalry onslaught than a disorderly chain of light troops. On many occasions in the campaigns of 1792–93 the French infantry had shown itself very helpless against horsemen who pushed their charge home, not only in cases where it was caught unprepared, but even when it had succeeded in forming square with more or less promptitude.66 But this particular remedy against the swarm-attack does not seem to have been duly employed, and indeed many parts of Flanders are so cut up by small enclosures, that the use of cavalry as a universal panacea might often have proved impossible.

The masses which supported the thick lines of tirailleurs were formed either in columns of companies or columns of “divisions,” i.e. double companies.67 In the former case the eight companies, each three deep, were drawn up behind each other. In the latter the front was formed by a “division,” and the depth was only twelve men. In either case none but the two front ranks could use their firearms properly, and the rest were useless save for the impetus that they gave the rolling mass. But such a column, when properly sheathed by the skirmishing line till the last moment, generally came with a very effective rush against the allied line opposed to it, which would have been already engaged with the tirailleurs for some time, and had probably been much depleted by their fire. It is equally clear that, without its protective sheath of skirmishers, such a heavy column would have been a very clumsy instrument of war, since it combined the minimum of shooting power with the maximum of vulnerability. But when so shielded, the columns which attacked in masses at a decisive spot, leaving the rest of the hostile line “contained” by an adequate force, had a fair chance of penetrating, though the process of penetration might during the last two or three minutes be very costly to the troops forming the head of the column.

The best early summary of this change in French tactics which I know occurs in an anonymous English pamphlet published in 1802, which puts the matter in a nutshell. “The French army was composed of troops of the line without order, and of raw and undisciplined volunteers. They experienced defeats in the beginning, but in the meantime war was forming both officers and soldiers. In an open country they took to forming their armies in columns instead of lines, which they could not preserve without difficulty. They reduced battles to attacks on certain points, where brigade succeeded brigade, and fresh troops supplied the places of those who were driven back, till they were enabled to force the post, and make the enemy give way. They were fully aware that they could not give battle in regular order, and sought to reduce engagements to important affairs of posts: this plan has succeeded. They look upon losses as nothing, provided they attain their end; they set little store by their men, because they have the certainty of being able to replace them, and the customary superiority of their numbers affords them an advantage which can only be counterbalanced by great skill, conduct, and activity.”68

After 1794, when the Republican armies had won their first series of great successes, and had driven their enemies behind their own frontiers, there is a distinct change in the tactical conceptions of the French. The troops had improved immensely in morale and self-confidence: a new race of generals had appeared, who were neither obsessed by reminiscences of the system of Frederic the Great, like some of their predecessors, nor spurred to blind violence and the brutal expenditure of vast numbers of men like certain others. The new generals modified the gross and unscientific methods of the Jacobin armies of 1793–94, which had won victory indeed, but only by the force of numbers and with reckless loss of life. There remained as a permanent lesson, however, from the earlier campaigns two principles—the avoidance of dispersion and extension, by which armies “cover everything and protect nothing,” and the necessity of striking at crucial points rather than delivering “linear” battles, fought out at equal intensity along the whole front. In general French tactics became very supple, the units manoeuvring with a freedom which had been unknown to earlier generations. The system of parting an army into divisions, now introduced as a regular organization,69 gave to the whole army a power of independent movement unknown in the days when a line of battle was considered a rigid thing, formed of brigades ranged elbow to elbow, none of which ought to move without the direct orders of the general-in-chief. A front might be composed of separate divisions coming on the field by different roads, and each adopting its own formation, the only necessity being that there should be no great gaps left between them. As a matter of fact this last necessary precaution was by no means always observed, and there are cases in the middle, and even the later, years of the Revolutionary War, in which French generals brought their armies upon the field in such disconnected bodies, and with such want of co-operation and good timing, that they were deservedly defeated in detail.70 Bonaparte himself is liable to this charge for his order of attack at Marengo, where he committed himself to a general action before the column of Desaix was near enough to the field, and as nearly as possible suffered a crushing reverse for the want of a mass of troops whose action was absolutely necessary to him. Hoche, Jourdan, and Moreau (the last especially), all committed similar mistakes from time to time. But these errors were at least better than an adhesion to the stereotyped tactics of the older generation, where formal set orders of battle had been thought absolutely necessary.

As a rule we find the French operating in the later years of the Republic with methods very different from those of 1793, with skill and swiftness, no longer with the mere brute force of numerical superiority, winning by brilliant manoeuvring rather than by mere bludgeon work. Yet, oddly enough, there was no formal revision of official tactics; the Reglement d’Infanterie which had been drawn up in 1791, whose base was the old three-deep line of Frederic the Great, had never been disowned, even when it was for the most part disregarded, in the period when swarm-attacks of tirailleurs, supported by monstrous heavy columns, had become, perforce, the practical method of the French armies. When that unsatisfactory time passed by, the same old drill-book continued to be used, and was no longer so remote from actual practice as it had been. For the use of the deployed battalion began to come up again, as the handiness of the troops increased, and their self-reliance was restored. Only the early Revolutionary War had left two marks upon French tactics—for hard and heavy work, such as the forcing of passes, or bridges, or defiles, or the breaking of a crucial point in the enemy’s line, the deep column remained habitually employed: while the old idea of the orderly continuous line of battle was gone for ever, or almost gone, for (oddly enough) in Napoleon’s last and least lucky fight, Waterloo, the order of the imperial host was more like the trim and symmetrical array of a Frederician army than any French line of battle that had been seen for many a year. Certainly it would have pleased the eye of the Prussian king much better than the apparently irregular, though carefully thought out, plans of battle on which Jena or Wagram, Borodino or Bautzen were won.

It would be doing injustice to Napoleon to represent him as a general whose main tactical method rested solely on the employment of massive columns for the critical operation on each battlefield. He was quite aware that infantry ought to operate by its fire, and that every man in the rear ranks is a musket wasted. If the Emperor had any favourite formation it was the ordre mixte, recommended by Guibert far back before his own day, in which a certain combination of the advantages of line and column was obtained, by drawing up the brigade or regiment with alternate battalions in line three-deep and in column. This formation gave a fair amount of frontal fire from the alternate deployed battalions, while the columns dispersed among them gave solidity, and immunity from a flank attack by cavalry, which might otherwise roll up the line. If, for example, a regiment of three battalions of 900 men each were drawn up in the ordre mixte, with one deployed battalion flanked by two battalions in column, it had about 730 men in the firing line, while if arranged in three columns, it would only have had about 200 able to use their muskets freely. Still, at the best, this formation was heavy, since all the serried back-ranks of the flanking battalions had no power to join in the fusillade. For simple fire-effect it was as inferior to the line as it was superior to the mere column.

Napoleon, however, was certainly fond of it. From the crossing of the Tagliamento (1797), when he is first recorded to have used it, he made very frequent employment of it. In a dispatch to Soult, sent him just before Austerlitz, he directed him to use it “autant que faire se pourra.” It is curious, however, to note that the marshal, less than a week after, having to strike the decisive blow in that battle, did not, after all, use the ordre mixte, but fought in lines of battalions in “columns of divisions,” as he particularly mentions in his report to the Emperor.71

But the ordre mixte was certainly employed again and again, not only in those parts of the battle where Napoleon was simply “containing” his enemy, and where he was merely keeping up the fight and pinning the adversary to his position, but also on the crucial points, where he was endeavouring to deal his main blow. We have notes to the effect that Lannes’ Corps at Jena, Augereau’s at Eylau, and Victor’s at Friedland, which were all “striking forces,” not “containing forces,” used this formation. Its supposed solidity did not always save it from disaster, as was seen in the second of the cases quoted above, where Augereau’s whole corps, despite of its battalions in column, was ridden down by a flank attack of Russian cavalry, charging covered by a snowstorm.

In spite, however, of Napoleon’s theoretical preference for the ordre mixte, and his knowledge that the column was a costly formation to employ against an enemy whose fire was not subdued, it is certain that he used it frequently, not only for the forcing of bridges or defiles (as at Arcola and Ebersberg72), but for giving the final blow at a point where he was determined to break through, and where the enemy was holding on with tiresome persistence. At Wagram the flank-guards of Macdonald’s conquering advance were formed by 13 battalions in solid column, one behind the other, though its front consisted of eight deployed battalions. Friant’s division on the right wing also attacked with three regiments formed “en colonne serrÉe par bataillons.” At Friedland, Ney’s right division (Marchand) came to the front in a single file of ten battalions one behind the other, and never got deployed, but attacked in mass and was checked. In 1812 and 1813 advance in heavy masses was usual—whole regiments formed in “column of divisions,” battalion behind battalion,73 with only 200 yards’ distance between regiment and regiment.

Napoleon was quite aware of the disadvantages of such formations, “mÊme en plaine,” he observed in a celebrated interview with Foy, “les colonnes n’enfoncent les lignes qu’autant qu’elles sont appuyÉes par le feu d’une artillerie trÈs supÉrieure, qui prÉpare l’attaque.”74 And his advances in column were habitually prepared by a crushing artillery fire on the point which he was about to assail, a fire which he himself, as an old artillery officer, knew how to direct with the greatest accuracy and efficiency. It seems that he relied much more on such preparation by concentrated batteries for the shielding of his columns, than on sheathing them by a thick skirmishing line, the old device of the generals of the Republic. An enemy’s firing line might be occupied and demoralized by shot and shell, as well as by a screen of skirmishers. Jena, indeed, seems to be about the only one of his battles in which a hostile line was masked and depleted by a heavy tirailleur attack, before the columns in support charged and routed it. Often the light infantry seems to have been practically non-existent, and it was artillery and formed battalions alone which fought out the engagement. French generals in the imperial campaigns appear habitually to have used for the skirmishing line no more than the Voltigeur company of each battalion,75 a force making one-ninth of the whole unit only, till the number of companies was cut down in 1808 from nine to six, when the Voltigeurs became one-sixth of the total. We are very far, by 1805 or 1809, from the day of the great “swarm-attacks” of the early Republic.

It was the tactics of the Empire, not those of the Republic, which Wellington had to face, when he took command of the allied army in the Peninsula in 1809. He had to take into consideration an enemy whose methods were essentially offensive, whose order of infantry fighting was at the best—in the ordre mixte—rather heavy, and in many cases, when the column of the battalion or the regiment was used, exceptionally gross and crowded. He knew that the enemy would have a far more numerous cavalry than was at his own disposition, and that it would be used with reckless boldness—the cavalry stroke in the Napoleonic battle accompanied, if it did not precede, the infantry stroke. Moreover, the French army would have a very powerful and effective artillery, trained to prepare the way for infantry attacks by the greatest artillerist in the world. His own proportion of guns to infantry was ridiculously low: there was not even one battery per division in 1809.

What was there to oppose to this dangerous enemy in the way of tactical efficiency? Roughly speaking we may say that the one point of superiority on which Wellesley counted, and counted rightly, was the superiority of the English formation for infantry in the two-deep line to the heavier order of the enemy’s battalions. For this formation he was, of course, not responsible himself: he took it over as an accepted thing, and thought that he knew how to turn it to the best account.

The effects of the French War on British tactics had been notable and interesting. The first reflections published on the new type of war on this side of the Channel seem to have been mainly inspired by the experience of the Duke of York’s army in 1793–94, when the thick chains of tirailleurs, which formed the protective screen, or first line, of the Republican armies, had done so much damage to troops which fought them in the old three-deep order, adopted from Frederic the Great, without any sufficient counter-provision of skirmishers. We find early in the war complaints that the British forces had no adequate proportion of light troops—that the one light company per battalion, normally used, was wholly unable to prevent the French tirailleur swarm from pressing up to the main line, and doing it much harm before the real attack was delivered. Two remedies were proposed—the first was that the proportion of light companies in a battalion should be increased from one to two,76 or that in each regiment a certain number of men should be selected for good marksmanship, and taught light infantry drill, while still remaining attached to their companies. Of these proposals the first was never tried: the second was actually practised by certain colonels, who trained fifteen or twenty men per company as skirmishers: they were called “flankers,” and were to go out along with the light company. The only British battle where I have found them specially mentioned is Maida, where their mention illustrates the danger of the system. Generals wanting more light troops habitually purloined the light companies of regiments to make “light battalions”; but not only did they do this, but they sometimes even stole the “flankers” also from the centre companies. Stuart had at Maida not only the light companies, but also the “flankers” of regiments left behind in Sicily, which had therefore been deprived of every marksman that they possessed—an execrable device. The system, however, was only tentative; it soon disappeared; Wellington never skimmed the centre companies of their good shots, though he did occasionally create a light battalion of light companies—even this was exceptional.

But there was a second alternative course open to the British: instead of developing more skirmishers in each battalion, they might create new light-infantry corps, or turn whole units of the line into light troops. For the former there was good precedent: in the War of the American Revolution the British generals had of necessity embodied corps of riflemen, to oppose to the deadly marksmen from the backwoods who formed the most efficient part of the American armies. Such were Simcoe’s Rangers, and the dismounted part of Tarleton’s famous Legion—whose remainder consisted of veritable mounted infantry—the first of their sort in the British army, since dragoons had forgotten their old trade and become cavalry of the line. But all the Rangers, etc., had been disbanded in 1783, and their use seems to have been forgotten before the French War began; the system had to begin again de novo. It was not till 1798 that the first British rifle battalion was created, to wit the 5th Battalion of the 60th Regiment, or Royal Americans, which was formed as a JÄger unit out of the remains of many defunct foreign light corps in British pay: it remained mainly German in composition even during the Peninsular War. This was the first green-coated battalion; the second was Coote Manningham’s “Experimental Rifle Corps,” formed in January, 1800, and finally taken into the service after some vicissitudes, as the 95th—a name famous in Peninsular annals, though now almost obliterated by its new title of the “Rifle Brigade.” The regiment was enlarged to three battalions before it came into Wellington’s hands. Later on, though the number of rifle corps was not increased, yet an addition was made to the light troops of the British army by turning certain picked battalions into light infantry. They were armed with a special musket of light weight, not with a rifle, and all the companies equally were instructed in skirmishing work. The first corps so treated was the 90th or Perthshire Light Infantry, which received the title in 1794. The precedent was not, however, acted on again till in 1803, the 43rd and 52nd, the famous regiments of the Peninsular Light Division, were honoured with the same designation. The last additions during the period of the Napoleonic wars were the 68th and 85th in 1808, and the 51st and 71st in 1809. Most of these corps had two battalions, but, even so, the provision of light infantry was not large for an army which had then nearly 200 battalions embodied. There were also some foreign corps to be taken into consideration, which stood on the British muster-rolls, such as the two Light Battalions of the King’s German Legion, the Brunswick Oels JÄgers, and the Chasseurs Britanniques, who all four served in the Peninsula. All these save the last were created after 1803: but at least during the second period of the great French War, our armies were not practically destitute of light troops, as they were in 1793. We shall see that this had no small importance in Wellington’s tactical devices.

The other lesson that might possibly have been deduced from the campaigns of the earlier years of the great war was the efficacy of columns for striking at the critical points of an enemy’s line. The continental enemies of France were affected by what they had seen of this sort of success, and often copied the formation of their adversaries. But it is notable that the old and wholesome prejudice of the British in favour of the line was in no way disturbed by what had happened of late. The idea that the column was a clumsy and expensive formation was not shaken, and the theory that infantry ought to win by the rapidity and accuracy of its shooting, and that every musket not in the firing-line was wasted, continued to prevail. The reply of the British to the ordre mixte was to reduce the depth of the deployed battalion from three ranks to two, because it had been discovered that the fire of the third rank was difficult, dangerous to those in front, and practically ineffective. Sir David Dundas’s drill-book of 1788 with its Prussian three ranks, which had been the official guide of the British infantry of late, was not formally cancelled at first, but it was practically disregarded, and the army went back to the two-rank array, which it had habitually used in the American War, and had abandoned with regret. Apparently the Duke of York did not altogether approve this change: he at least once issued a General Order, to remind colonels that the formation in three ranks was still officially recognized and ought not to be forgotten. But the permission given by an order in 1801, that inspecting officers might allow regiments to appear “even at reviews” in the two ranks, probably marked the practical end of the Prussian system.77 It had certainly been disused by many officers long before that date, and it is certain that in Abercrombie’s Egyptian campaign the double instead of the triple rank was in general use.78 British military opinion had decided that fire was everything, and that the correct answer to the French columnar attack was to put more men into the firing line.

A conclusive proof of the efficacy of the double when opposed to the triple rank was very clearly given at the half-forgotten Calabrian battle of Maida, three years after the commencement of the second half of the great French War. At this fight the French General Reynier had deployed the whole, or the greater part, of his battalions, who were not as usual fighting either in ordre mixte or in battalion column. The result was very decisive—5000 British infantry in the thinner formation received the attack of 6000 French in the heavier, and inflicted on them, purely by superior fire-efficiency, one of the most crushing defeats on a small scale that was ever seen, disabling or taking 2000 men, with a total loss to themselves of only 320.79 It is worth while remembering that some of the officers who were afterwards to be Wellington’s trusted lieutenants were present at Maida, including Cole, Kempt, Oswald, and Colborne.79 This was about the only instance that I know where English and French came into action both deployed, and on a more or less parallel front. Usually it was a case of “column against line.”

Sir Arthur Wellesley had been nine years absent in India before he returned to England in 1805, so that he had to learn the difference between the Republican and the Imperial armies by new experience. The problem had long been interesting him. Before he left Calcutta he is said to have remarked to his confidants that the French were sweeping everything before them in Europe by the use of column formations, but that he was convinced that the column could, and would, be beaten by the line. What he heard after his return to England evidently confirmed him in this opinion. A conversation which he had with Croker, just before he set sail on the expedition which was to end at Vimeiro, chances to have been preserved in the latter’s papers, under the date, June 14, 1808. Sitting silent, lost in reverie for a long time, he was asked by Croker the subject of his thoughts. “To say the truth,” he replied, “I am thinking of the French I am going to fight. I have not seen them since the campaigns in Flanders [1793–94] when they were capital soldiers, and a dozen years of victory under Bonaparte must have made them better still. ’Tis enough to make one thoughtful. But though they may overwhelm me, I don’t think that they will outmanoeuvre me. First, because I am not afraid of them, as every one else seems to be, and secondly, because (if all I hear about their system is true) I think it a false one against steady troops. I suspect all the continental armies are half-beaten before the battle begins. I at least will not be frightened beforehand.”

Wellesley went out to Portugal, there to try what could be done with steady troops against the “French system.” But it would be to convey a false impression of his meaning if we were to state that he simply went out to beat column with line—though the essential fact is sufficiently true. He went out to try his own conception of the proper way to use the line formation, which had its peculiarities and its limitations. The chief of these were that—

(1) The line must not be exposed before the moment of actual conflict: i.e. it must be kept under cover as much as possible.

(2) That till the critical moment it must be screened by a line of skirmishers impenetrable to the enemy’s tirailleurs.

(3) That it must be properly covered on its flanks, either by the nature of the ground, or by cavalry and artillery.

When we investigate all his earlier pitched battles, we shall see that each of these three requisites was as far as possible secured.

(1) It was necessary for success that the line should be kept concealed from the enemy’s distant fire of artillery and infantry as long as possible. Hence we find that one of the most marked features of Wellesley’s many defensive battles was that he took up, whenever it was feasible, a position which would mask his main line, and show nothing to the enemy but his skirmishers and possibly his artillery, for the latter having to operate before the infantry fighting began, and being obliged to take up positions which would command the ground over which the enemy must advance, were often visible from the first. At Vimeiro, Wellesley so concealed his army that Junot, thinking to turn his left flank, found his turning column itself outflanked by troops moved under cover behind a skyline. At Bussaco, MassÉna, no mean general, mistook Wellington’s centre for his extreme right, and found his attacking columns80 well outflanked when the attack had been pressed to its issue. At Salamanca it was much the same; the main part of the British line was well concealed behind a low ridge of hills, while Pakenham’s division and its attendant cavalry, the force which executed the great stroke, were concealed in a wooded tract, far outside the French marching column that vainly thought to get round the allied right wing. At Waterloo, the clearest case of all, the whole of Wellington’s infantry of the front line was so far drawn back from the edge of the slope that it was invisible, till the enemy had climbed to the brow of the plateau on which it was arrayed. Only the artillery, the skirmishing line, and the troops in the outlying posts of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte could be made out by Napoleon’s eye. Talavera, as I shall mention below, is the only exception to this general rule in the Duke’s defensive battles.

Wellington’s ideal position was a rising ground with a long glacis of slope in front, and a plateau or a dip behind it. The infantry was drawn back from the skyline, and placed behind the crest, if the hill were saddle-backed, or some hundreds of yards away from the edge, if it were flat-topped. There they stood or lay till they were wanted, secure from artillery fire: they moved forward to their actual fighting ground only when the fire-combat of infantry was to begin. Every one will remember Wellington’s caustic comment on the Prussian order of battle at Ligny, where BlÜcher had drawn out his army in a chequered array all along the declivity of a descending slope. “Damnably mauled these fellows will be—every man visible to the enemy.”81 Or in more solemn phrase, as he afterwards consigned it to paper: “I told the Prussian officers, in the presence of Colonel Hardinge, that according to my judgment, the exposure of the advanced columns, and indeed of the army, to cannonade, standing as they did displayed to the aim of the enemy’s fire, was not prudent.”82

By the end of the Peninsular War, as I have already had occasion to observe, it had become so well known to the French that Wellington’s army, ready for a battle, would be under cover, that he was able, as at Fuente Guinaldo in 1811, and at Sorauren in 1813, to play off on them the trick of offering to fight in a half-manned position, because he knew that they would take it for granted that the ground invisible to them was held by an adequate force. There is an interesting testimony to the same effect in the Waterloo campaign. On the morning before the battle of Quatre Bras began, General Reille, a veteran of the Spanish war, remained halted for some time before a position held by nothing but a single Dutch-Belgian division, because (as he expressed it), “Ce pourrait bien Être une bataille d’Espagne—les troupes Anglaises se montreraient quand il en serait temps.”83 This was the lesson taught by many years of Peninsular experience—but on this occasion it chanced to be singularly ill applied—since a vigorous push would have shown Reille that there were as yet no red-coats concealed behind the trees of the Bois de Bossu.

It was only when absolute necessity compelled, owing to there being no cover available in some parts of his chosen position, that Wellington very occasionally left troops in his battle-front visible to the enemy, and exposed to artillery fire from a distance. The best known instance of this occurred with his centre brigades at Talavera, who were unmasked perforce, because between the strong hill which protected his left, and the olive groves which covered his right, there were many hundred yards of open ground, without any serviceable dips or undulations to conceal the line. And this was almost the only battle in which we find record of his troops having suffered heavily by artillery fire before the clash of infantry fighting began.84

(2) The second postulate of Wellington’s system was, as I have remarked above, that the infantry of his battle-line must be covered by such a powerful screen of skirmishers, that the enemy’s advanced line of tirailleurs should never be able to get near enough to it to cause any real molestation, and that it should not be seriously engaged before the French supporting columns came up to deliver the main attack. His old experience in Flanders in 1794 had taught him that the line cannot contend at advantage with a swarm of light troops, who yield when charged, but return the moment that the charge has stopped and the line has drawn back to its original position. There were evil memories of this sort not only from Flanders, but from the Egyptian Expedition of 1801, when Abercrombie’s less engaged brigades suffered severely at the battle of Alexandria from the incessant fire of skirmishers at long range, to whom no proper opposition was made.85

The device which Wellesley practised was to make sure that he should always have a skirmishing screen of his own, so strong that the French tirailleurs should never be able to force it in and to get close to the main line. The moment that he had assumed command in April, 1809, he set to work to secure this desideratum. His first measure was to add to every brigade in his army an extra company of trained riflemen, to reinforce the three light companies of the brigade.86 In April, 1809, he broke up the oldest rifle battalion in the British army, the fifth of the 60th regiment, and began to distribute a company of it to each of his brigades, save to those of the King’s German Legion, which were served by special rifle companies of their own.87 Thus each of the brigades which fought at Talavera had a special extra provision of light troops. Furthermore, when the new Light Division was instituted on the 1st of March, 1810, each of its two brigades was given a number of companies of the 95th rifles: and of the other brigades formed in 1810–11 most were provided with an extra light company by means of taking fractions from the 95th or the newly arrived Brunswick Oels JÄgers, and those which were not, had light-infantry corps of their own inside them. But this was not all.88

In the summer of 1810, Wellington began the system of incorporating a Portuguese brigade of five battalions in each British division. Of these five one was always89 a CaÇador or light battalion, specially trained for skirmishing. The old Portuguese army had not included such battalions, which were all newly raised corps, intended entirely for light infantry work. There were originally only six of them, but Wellington ordered a second six to be raised in 1811, utilizing as the cadre of the 7th, 8th, 9th the old Loyal Lusitanian Legion, which Sir Robert Wilson had formed early in the war. As the Portuguese army contained just twenty-four regiments of the line, in twelve brigades, the CaÇador battalion gave precisely one unit to each brigade, save that two were incorporated in the Light Division, while none was left with the two regiments which remained behind in garrison at Abrantes and at Cadiz respectively.

As the CaÇador battalions were essentially light troops, and used wholly for skirmishing, it resulted that when an Anglo-Portuguese division of the normal strength of six British and five Portuguese battalions set itself in battle array, it sent out a skirmishing line of no less than eight British and ten Portuguese companies, viz. one each from the line battalions, two of British rifles, six of CaÇadores, or a total of from 1200 to 1500 men to a total strength of 5000 to 5500. This, as will be obvious, was a very powerful protective sheath to cover the front of the division. It was not always required—the French did not invariably send out a skirmishing line in advance of their main attack: but when they did, it would always be restrained and kept off from the main front of the divisional line. If the enemy wished to push it in, he had to bring up his formed battalions through his tirailleurs, and thus only could he reach the front of battle. The French regiments, whether formed in ordre mixte or (as was more common) in column, had to come to the front, and only so could reach the hitherto intact British line. It may be noted that the enemy rarely used for his skirmishing line more than the voltigeur company of each battalion; as his divisions averaged ten to twelve battalions90 and the unit was a six-company battalion of 600 men or under, with only one voltigeur company, a French division would send out 1000 to 1200 skirmishers, a force appreciably less than the light troops of a British division of approximately equal force. Hence Wellington never seems to have been seriously incommoded by the French skirmishers.

So considerable was the British screen of light troops that the French not unfrequently mistook it for a front line, and speak of their column as piercing or thrusting back the first line of their opponents, when all that they had done was to drive in a powerful and obstinate body of skirmishers bickering in front of the real fighting formation.91 Invariably, we may say, they had to use their columns to attack the two-deep line while the latter was still intact, while their own masses had already been under fire for some time and were no longer fresh.

It will be asked, perhaps, why the marshals and generals of Napoleon did not deploy their columns before the moment of contact. Why do we so seldom read of even the ordre mixte in use—Albuera is the only battle where we distinctly find it mentioned? The answer to this objection is, firstly, that they were strongly convinced that the column was the better striking force to carry a given point, and that they were normally attacking not the whole British line but the particular section or sections where they intended to break through. But, secondly, we may add that they frequently did attempt to deploy, but always too late, since they waited till they had driven in the British skirmishing line, and tried to assume the thinner formation when they were already under fire and heavily engaged. It was not always that the British noted this endeavour—so late was it begun, so instant was its failure. But there is evidence that it was tried by Kellermann’s grenadiers at Vimeiro, by part at least of Leval’s division at Barrosa, by Merle’s column at Bussaco, when it had already reached the summit of the Serra, and was closely engaged with Picton’s troops. At Albuera we have a good description of it from the British side. When Myers’ fusilier brigade marched against the flank of the 5th Corps, in the crisis of that battle, Soult launched against them his reserve, the three regiments of WerlÉ, which became at once locked in combat at very short range with the fusiliers. “During the close action,” writes a British officer (Blakeney of the 7th), “I saw their officers endeavouring to deploy their columns, but all to no purpose. For as soon as the third of a company got out, they would immediately run back in order to be covered by the front of their column.” The fact was, that the effect of the fire of a British regiment far exceeded anything that the enemy had been wont to cope with when engaged with continental troops, and was altogether devastating. Again and again French officers who came under it for the first time, made the miscalculation of trying the impossible. Nothing could be more inevitably productive of confusion and disorder than to attempt deployment under such a heavy fire. Wherefore many French commanders never tried it at all, and thought it more safe to go on to the final shock with their battalions in the usual “column of divisions,” in which they had begun their attack. This was little better, and quite as costly in the end. “Really,” wrote Wellington, in a moment of unwonted exhilaration, after the combat of Sabugal, “these attacks in column against our lines are very contemptible.”92 This was after he had viewed from the other bank of the Coa, “where I could see every movement on both sides,” the 43rd regiment repulse in succession three attacks by French columns which came up against it, one after the other.

(3) We now come to the third postulate of Wellington’s system—the two-deep fighting line must be covered on its flanks, either by the ground, or by cavalry and artillery support, or by infantry prolonging the front beyond the enemy’s immediate point of action. At Talavera one of his flanks was covered by a precipitous hill, the other by thick olive plantations. At Bussaco both the French attacks were hopelessly outflanked by troops posted on high and inaccessible ground, and could only be pushed frontally. At Fuentes de OÑoro the final fighting position rested on a heavily occupied village at one end, and on the ravine of the Turon river upon the other. At Salamanca the 3rd Division, the striking-force which won the battle, had its line covered on its outer flank by a British and a Portuguese brigade of cavalry. At Vittoria the whole French army was enveloped by the concentric and converging attack of the much longer British line. At Waterloo flank protection was secured by the advanced post of Hougoumont and a “refused” right wing at one end of the position: by the group of fortified farms (Papelotte, La Haye, etc.), and a mass of cavalry at the other. Wellington, in short, was very careful of his flanks. Only once indeed, so far as I remember, did the French get round the outlying end of his army and cause him trouble. This was in the first episode of Fuentes de OÑoro, where the 7th Division, placed some way out, as a flank-guard, suffered some loss by being taken in rear by French cavalry which had made a great circuit, and only escaped worse disaster because two of its battalions, the 51st and Chasseurs Britanniques, had time to form front to flank, and adapt themselves to the situation, and because a few British squadrons sacrificed themselves in checking, so long as was possible, the enemy’s superior horse.

There was one universally remembered instance during the war which demonstrated the terrible risk that the line might run if it were not properly protected on the flanks. At Albuera Colborne’s brigade of the 2nd Division was thrown into the fight with its flank absolutely bare—there was no support within half a mile—by the recklessness of its divisional general, William Stewart. It was caught unprepared by two regiments of French cavalry, charging in at an angle, almost on its rear, and three battalions were literally cut to pieces, with a loss of 1200 men out of 1600 present, and five colours. Wellington would never have sent it forward without the proper support on its wings, and it is noteworthy that, later on the same day, Cole took the 4th Division into action on the same hill, and against the same enemy, with perfect success, because he had guarded one flank with a battalion in column, and the other (the outer and more exposed one) with a battalion in square and a brigade of cavalry.

These, then, were the necessary postulates required for the successful use of line against column, and when they were duly borne in mind, victory was secure with any reasonable balance in numbers. The essential fact that lay behind the oft-observed conclusion was simply that the two-deep line enabled a force to use every musket with effect, while the “column of divisions” put seven-ninths of the men forming it in a position where they could not shoot at all, and even the ordre mixte praised by Napoleon placed from seven-twelfths to two-thirds of the rank and file in the same unhappy condition.93 But Albuera is the only fight in the war in which there is definite proof that the enemy fought in the ordre mixte with deployed battalions and battalions in column ranged alternately in his front.94 Usually he came on with his units all in columns of divisions, and very frequently (as at Bussaco and in certain episodes at Talavera) he had battalion behind battalion in each regiment. It was a gross order of fighting, but D’Erlon invented a worse and a more clumsy formation at Waterloo, where he sent forward whole divisions with eight or nine battalions deployed one behind the other, so as to produce a front of only 200 men and a depth of twenty-four—with only one man in twelve able to use his musket.

Clearly, however, the column of divisions (double companies) was the normal French order, i.e. in a battalion of 600 men in six companies, we should get a front of 66 muskets and 132 men able to fire, while 468 were in the rear ranks, able to be shot but not to shoot. If an English battalion of equal strength lay in front, in its two-deep line, it could give a discharge of 600 muskets against one of 132, and this was not all. Its front was nearly five times that of the French battalion, so that its fire lapped round the flanks of the advancing mass, demoralizing it because there was no proper power to reply. Often the British line, during the moments of fire-combat, somewhat threw forward its wings in a shallow crescent, and blazed with three sides of the column at once. This was done by the 43rd and 52nd at Bussaco, with great effect, against the French brigade, that of Simon, which came up the slope in front of them, with its leading regiment ranged three battalions deep, in a most vulnerable array. How could it be expected that the column would prevail? Effective against an enemy who allowed himself to be cowed and beaten by the sight of the formidable advancing mass, it was helpless against steady troops, who stood their ground and emptied their muskets, as fast as they could load, into a mark which it was impossible to miss. This, probably, is what Wellington meant when (as mentioned above) he stated to Croker, ere ever he sailed for Portugal, that “if all I hear about their system is true, I think it a false one against steady troops. I suspect all the continental armies are half-beaten before the battle begins.” That is to say, the column might win by the terror that its massive weight and impetus inspired; but if the enemy refused to be terrorized, he would be able to hold his own, and to inflict enormous losses on the crowded formation.

It only remains to be said that, with the battalion in column of divisions as unit, the French had two ways of drawing up their attacking line. They might either draw up the battalions of each regiment in a line of columns, or they might place them one behind the other, making the whole regiment into a single column. Both methods were from time to time employed. It was not details of arrangement like this which made the difference—the essential weakness was the “column of divisions” which formed the base of all the array—it was too helpless in fire-contest against the line.

The physical aspect of the contest between line and column we have now sufficiently dealt with. What was the moral aspect? Fortunately we can explain it with accuracy, because one of the many thousands of French officers who went through the Peninsular War has left us, not personal anecdotes or confused impressions like so many of his fellows, but a real account of the mental state of a battalion going forward in column to attack the British line. I make no excuse for quoting in full the paragraphs of Bugeaud, a chef de bataillon in 1812—a marshal of African fame thirty years later—because they give us exactly what we want to know. It should be premised, however, that Bugeaud did not serve in the Army of Portugal, nor face Wellington’s own troops. He served in Suchet’s army, along the Mediterranean Coast of the Peninsula, and his personal observations must have been made at Castalla and other combats in the East. It is to be noted also that he gives no account of the clash of skirmishers which so often took place, and describes his column as going forward unsheathed to the main clash of battle.

“I served seven years in the Peninsula,” he says; “during that time we sometimes beat the English in isolated encounters and raids [e.g. Ordal] which as a field officer detached I was able to prepare and direct. But during that long period of war, it was my sorrow to see that only in a very small number of general actions did the British army fail to get the better of us. We almost invariably attacked our adversaries, without either taking into account our own past experience, or bearing in mind that the tactics which answered well enough when we had only Spaniards to deal with, almost invariably failed when an English force was in our front.

“The English generally held good defensive positions, carefully selected and usually on rising ground, behind the crest of which they found cover for a good part of their men. The usual obligatory cannonade would commence the operation, then, in haste, without duly reconnoitring the position, without ascertaining whether the ground afforded any facilities for lateral or turning movements, we marched straight forward, ‘taking the bull by the horns.’95

“When we got to about a thousand yards from the English line the men would begin to get restless and excited: they exchanged ideas with one another, their march began to be somewhat precipitate, and was already growing a little disorderly. Meanwhile the English, silent and impassive, with grounded arms, loomed like a long red wall; their aspect was imposing—it impressed novices not a little. Soon the distance began to grow shorter: cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur,’ ‘en avant À la baÏonnette,’ broke from our mass. Some men hoisted their shakos on their muskets, the quick-step became a run: the ranks began to be mixed up: the men’s agitation became tumultuous, many soldiers began to fire as they ran. And all the while the red English line, still silent and motionless, even when we were only 300 yards away, seemed to take no notice of the storm which was about to beat upon it.

“The contrast was striking. More than one among us began to reflect that the enemy’s fire, so long reserved, would be very unpleasant when it did break forth. Our ardour began to cool: the moral influence (irresistible in action) of a calm which seems undisturbed as opposed to disorder which strives to make up by noise what it lacks in firmness, weighed heavily on our hearts.

“At this moment of painful expectation the English line would make a quarter-turn—the muskets were going up to the ‘ready.’ An indefinable sensation nailed to the spot many of our men, who halted and opened a wavering fire. The enemy’s return, a volley of simultaneous precision and deadly effect, crashed in upon us like a thunderbolt. Decimated by it we reeled together, staggering under the blow and trying to recover our equilibrium. Then three formidable Hurrahs termined the long silence of our adversaries. With the third they were down upon us, pressing us into a disorderly retreat. But to our great surprise, they did not pursue their advantage for more than some hundred yards, and went back with calm to their former lines, to await another attack. We rarely failed to deliver it when our reinforcements came up—with the same want of success and heavier losses.”96

This is the picture that we need to complete our study of the conflict of column with line. The psychology of the huddled mass going forward to inevitable defeat could not be better portrayed. The only thing that is hard for us to understand is the reason which induced capable men like Soult, D’Erlon, or Foy to continue to use the columnar formation all through the dark days of 1813–14, and even in the final campaign of Waterloo. All honour must be paid, however, to the rank and file who, with five years of such experience behind them, were still steadfast and courageous enough to put up a good fight even in their last offensive battles in the Pyrenees, as well as in the defensive actions of Orthez and Toulouse.