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 manœuvring, 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 manœuvred 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.
Tactics of the French Revolution
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 manœuvre 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 manœuvres 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.
Tactics of the French Column
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 manœuvring 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.