Commanders-in-chief imagine formed battalions firing on the enemy and do not include the use of skirmishers in drill. This is an error, for they are necessary in drill and everywhere, etc. The formed rank is more difficult to utilize than ever. General Leboeuf used a very practical movement of going into battle, by platoons, which advance to the battle line in echelon, and can fire, even if they are taken in the very act of the movement. There is always the same dangerous tendency toward mass action even for a battalion in maneuver. This is an error. The principles of maneuver for small units should not be confused with those for great units. Emperor Napoleon did not prescribe skirmishers in flat country. But every officer should be reduced who does not utilize them to some degree.
The rôle of the skirmisher becomes more and more predominant. He should be so much the more watched and directed as he is used against more deadly arms, and, consequently, is more disposed to escape from all control, from all direction. Yet under such battle conditions formations are proposed which send skirmishers six hundred paces in advance of battalions and which give the battalion commander the mission of watching and directing (with six companies of one hundred and twenty men) troops spread over a space of three hundred paces by five hundred, at a minimum. To advance skirmishers six hundred paces from their battalion and to expect they will remain there is the work of people who have never observed.
Inasmuch as combat by skirmishers tends to predominate and since it becomes more difficult with the increase of danger, there has been a constant effort to bring into the firing line the man who must direct it. Leaders have been seen to spread an entire battalion in front of an infantry brigade or division so that the skirmishers, placed under a single command, might obey a general direction better. This method, scarcely practicable on the drill-ground, and indicating an absolute lack of practical sense, marks the tendency. The authors of new drills go too far in the opposite direction. They give the immediate command of the skirmishers in each battalion to the battalion commander who must at the same time lead his skirmishers and his battalion. This expedient is more practical than the other. It abandons all thought of an impossible general control and places the special direction in the right hands. But the leadership is too distant, the battalion commander has to attend to the participation of his battalion in the line, or in the ensemble of other battalions of the brigade or division, and the particular performance of his skirmishers. The more difficult, confused, the engagement becomes, the more simple and clear ought to be the roles of each one. Skirmishers are in need of a firmer hand than ever to direct and maintain them, so that they may do their part. The battalion commander must be entirely occupied with the rôle of skirmishers, or with the rôle of the line. There should be smaller battalions, one-half the number in reserve, one-half as skirmisher battalions. In the latter the men should be employed one-half as skirmishers and one-half held in reserve. The line of skirmishers will then gain steadiness.
Let the battalion commander of the troops of the second line entirely occupy himself with his battalion.
The full battalion of six companies is to-day too unwieldy for one man. Have battalions of four companies of one hundred men each, which is certainly quite sufficient considering the power of destruction which these four companies place in the hands of one man. He will have difficulty in maintaining and directing these four companies under the operation of increasingly powerful modern appliances. He will have difficulty in watching them, in modern combat, with the greater interval between the men in line that the use of the present arms necessitates. With a unified battalion of six hundred men, I would do better against a battalion of one thousand Prussians, than with a battalion of eight hundred men, two hundred of whom are immediately taken out of my control.
Skirmishers have a destructive effect; formed troops a moral effect. Drill ground maneuvers should prepare for actual battle. In such maneuvers, why, at the decisive moment of an attack, should you lighten the moral anxiety of the foe by ceasing his destruction, by calling back your skirmishers? If the enemy keeps his own skirmishers and marches resolutely behind them, you are lost, for his moral action upon you is augmented by his destructive action against which you have kindly disarmed yourself.
Why do you call back your skirmishers? Is it because your skirmishers hinder the operation of your columns, block bayonet charges? One must never have been in action to advance such a reason. At the last moment, at the supreme moment when one or two hundred meters separate you from the adversary, there is no longer a line. There is a fearless advance, and your skirmishers are your forlorn hope. Let them charge on their own account. Let them be passed or pushed forward by the mass. Do not recall them. Do not order them to execute any maneuver for they are not capable of any, except perhaps, that of falling back and establishing a counter-current which might drag you along. In these moments, everything hangs by a thread. Is it because your skirmishers would prevent you from delivering fire? Do you, then, believe in firing, especially in firing under the pressure of approaching danger, before the enemy? If he is wise, certainly he marches preceded by skirmishers, who kill men in your ranks and who have the confidence of a first success, of having seen your skirmishers disappear before them. These skirmishers will certainly lie down before your unmasked front. In that formation they easily cause you losses, and you are subjected to their destructive effect and to the moral effect of the advance of troops in formation against you. Your ranks become confused; you do not hold the position. There is but one way of holding it, that is to advance, and for that, it is necessary at all costs to avoid firing before moving ahead. Fire opened, no one advances further.
Do you believe in opening and ceasing fire at the will of the commander as on the drill ground? The commencement of fire by a battalion, with the present arms especially, is the beginning of disorder, the moment where the battalion begins to escape from its leader. While drilling even, the battalion commanders, after a little lively drill, after a march, can no longer control the fire.
Do you object that no one ever gets within two hundred meters of the enemy? That a unit attacking from the front never succeeds? So be it! Let us attack from the flank. But a flank is always more or less covered. Men are stationed there, ready for the blow. It will be necessary to pick off these men.
To-day, more than ever, no rapid, calm firing is possible except skirmish firing.