The Campaigns of 1813–1814
This was the last time that he was outnumbered and forced back upon his old methods. In 1813, owing to Napoleon’s drafts from the army of Spain, which were called off to replace the troops lost in the Moscow campaign, the allies had at last a superiority in numbers, though that superiority consisted entirely in Spanish troops of doubtful solidity. But even these were conditions far more favourable than Wellington had ever enjoyed before—he knew how to use his newly joined Spanish divisions in a useful fashion, without placing them in the more dangerous and responsible positions. The campaigns of 1813 and 1814 are both essentially offensive in character, though they contain one or two episodes when Wellington was, for the moment, on the defensive in his old style, notably the early part of the battles of the Pyrenees, where, till his reserves came up, he was fending off Soult by the use of his more advanced divisions. But the moment that his army was assembled he struck hard, and chased the enemy over the frontier, again in the series of operations that begun on the last day of Sorauren. There was a very similar episode during the operations that are generally known as the battle of the Nive, where Wellington had twice to stand for a movement in position, while one of his wings was assailed by Soult’s main body. But this was distinctly what we may call defensive tactical detail, in a campaign that was essentially offensive on the whole. The main character of the operations of 1813–14 may be described as the clearing out of the enemy from a series of positions—generally heavily fortified—by successful breaking through of the lines which Soult on each occasion failed to hold. Invariably the French army was nailed down to the position which it had taken up, by demonstrations all along its front, while the decisive blow was given at selected points by a mass of troops collected for the main stroke.
CHAPTER IV
WELLINGTON’S INFANTRY TACTICS—LINE VERSUS COLUMN
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.
Frederic II. and Marshal Saxe
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]