The Art of War

by baron de Antoine Henri Jomini

The system of deployed lines in three ranks was adopted for the infantry; the cavalry, formed in two ranks, and in the order of battle, was deployed upon the wings, or a part was held in reserve.

The celebrated regulation for maneuvers of 1791 fixed the deployed as the only order for battle: it seemed to admit the use of battalion-columns doubled on the center only in partial combats,—such as an attack upon an isolated post, a village, a forest, or small intrenchments.[^[56]]

The insufficient instruction in maneuvers of the troops of the Republic forced the generals, who were poor tacticians, to employ in battle the system of columns supported by numerous skirmishers. Besides this, the nature of the countries which formed the theaters of operations—the Vosges, Alps, Pyrenees, and the difficult country of La Vendée—rendered this the only appropriate system. How would it have been possible to attack the camps of Saorgio, Figueras, and Mont-Cenis with deployed regiments?

In Napoleon's time, the French generally used the system of columns, as they were nearly always the assailants.

In 1807, I published, at Glogau in Silesia, a small pamphlet with the title of "Summary of the General Principles of the Art of War," in which I proposed to admit for the attack the system of lines formed of columns of battalions by divisions of two companies; in other words, to march to the attack in lines of battalions closed in mass or at half-distance, preceded by numerous skirmishers, and the columns being separated by intervals that may vary between that necessary for the deployment of a battalion and the minimum of the front of one column.

What I had recently seen in the campaigns of Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, and Eylau had convinced me of the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of marching an army in deployed lines in either two or three ranks, to attack an enemy in position. It was this conviction which led me to publish the pamphlet above referred to. This work attracted some attention, not only on account of the treatise on strategy, but also on account of what was said on tactics.

The successes gained by Wellington in Spain and at Waterloo with troops deployed in lines of two ranks were generally attributed to the murderous effect of the infantry-fire, and created doubt in some minds as to the propriety of the use of small columns; but it was not till after 1815 that the controversies on the best formation for battle wore renewed by the appearance of a pamphlet by the Marquis of Chambray.

In these discussions, I remarked the fatal tendency of the clearest minds to reduce every system of war to absolute forms, and to cast in the same mold all the tactical combinations a general may arrange, without taking into consideration localities, moral circumstances, national characteristics, or the abilities of the commanders. I had proposed to use lines of small columns, especially in the attack: I never intended to make it an exclusive system, particularly for the defense.

I had two opportunities of being convinced that this formation was approved of by the greatest generals of our times. The first was at the Congress of Vienna, in the latter part of 1814: the Archduke Charles observed "that he was under great obligations for the summary I had published in 1807, which General Walmoden had brought to him in 1808 from Silesia." At the beginning of the war of 1809, the prince had not thought it possible to apply the formation which I had proposed; but at the battle of Essling the contracted space of the field induced him to form a part of his army in columns by battalions, (the landwehr particularly,) and they resisted admirably the furious charges of the cuirassiers of General d'Espagne, which, in the opinion of the archduke, they could not have done if they had been deployed.

At the battle of Wagram, the greater part of the Austrian line was formed in the same way as at Essling, and after two days of terrible fighting the archduke abandoned the field of battle, not because his army was badly beaten, but because his left was outflanked and thrown back so as to endanger his line of retreat on Hungary. The prince was satisfied that the firm bearing of his troops was in part due to this mixture of small columns with deployed battalions.