Disadvantages of the Column

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 manœuvring 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.

The “Ordre Mixte”

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 Ebersberg[72]), 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.

Tactics of Napoleon’s Generals

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.