What was there to oppose to this dangerous enemy in the way of tactical efficiency? Roughly speaking we may say that the one point of superiority on which Wellesley counted, and counted rightly, was the superiority of the English formation for infantry in the two-deep line to the heavier order of the enemy’s battalions. For this formation he was, of course, not responsible himself: he took it over as an accepted thing, and thought that he knew how to turn it to the best account.
The effects of the French War on British tactics had been notable and interesting. The first reflections published on the new type of war on this side of the Channel seem to have been mainly inspired by the experience of the Duke of York’s army in 1793–94, when the thick chains of tirailleurs, which formed the protective screen, or first line, of the Republican armies, had done so much damage to troops which fought them in the old three-deep order, adopted from Frederic the Great, without any sufficient counter-provision of skirmishers. We find early in the war complaints that the British forces had no adequate proportion of light troops—that the one light company per battalion, normally used, was wholly unable to prevent the French tirailleur swarm from pressing up to the main line, and doing it much harm before the real attack was delivered. Two remedies were proposed—the first was that the proportion of light companies in a battalion should be increased from one to two,[76] or that in each regiment a certain number of men should be selected for good marksmanship, and taught light infantry drill, while still remaining attached to their companies. Of these proposals the first was never tried: the second was actually practised by certain colonels, who trained fifteen or twenty men per company as skirmishers: they were called “flankers,” and were to go out along with the light company. The only British battle where I have found them specially mentioned is Maida, where their mention illustrates the danger of the system. Generals wanting more light troops habitually purloined the light companies of regiments to make “light battalions”; but not only did they do this, but they sometimes even stole the “flankers” also from the centre companies. Stuart had at Maida not only the light companies, but also the “flankers” of regiments left behind in Sicily, which had therefore been deprived of every marksman that they possessed—an execrable device. The system, however, was only tentative; it soon disappeared; Wellington never skimmed the centre companies of their good shots, though he did occasionally create a light battalion of light companies—even this was exceptional.
British use of Light Troops
But there was a second alternative course open to the British: instead of developing more skirmishers in each battalion, they might create new light-infantry corps, or turn whole units of the line into light troops. For the former there was good precedent: in the War of the American Revolution the British generals had of necessity embodied corps of riflemen, to oppose to the deadly marksmen from the backwoods who formed the most efficient part of the American armies. Such were Simcoe’s Rangers, and the dismounted part of Tarleton’s famous Legion—whose remainder consisted of veritable mounted infantry—the first of their sort in the British army, since dragoons had forgotten their old trade and become cavalry of the line. But all the Rangers, etc., had been disbanded in 1783, and their use seems to have been forgotten before the French War began; the system had to begin again de novo. It was not till 1798 that the first British rifle battalion was created, to wit the 5th Battalion of the 60th Regiment, or Royal Americans, which was formed as a Jäger unit out of the remains of many defunct foreign light corps in British pay: it remained mainly German in composition even during the Peninsular War. This was the first green-coated battalion; the second was Coote Manningham’s “Experimental Rifle Corps,” formed in January, 1800, and finally taken into the service after some vicissitudes, as the 95th—a name famous in Peninsular annals, though now almost obliterated by its new title of the “Rifle Brigade.” The regiment was enlarged to three battalions before it came into Wellington’s hands. Later on, though the number of rifle corps was not increased, yet an addition was made to the light troops of the British army by turning certain picked battalions into light infantry. They were armed with a special musket of light weight, not with a rifle, and all the companies equally were instructed in skirmishing work. The first corps so treated was the 90th or Perthshire Light Infantry, which received the title in 1794. The precedent was not, however, acted on again till in 1803, the 43rd and 52nd, the famous regiments of the Peninsular Light Division, were honoured with the same designation. The last additions during the period of the Napoleonic wars were the 68th and 85th in 1808, and the 51st and 71st in 1809. Most of these corps had two battalions, but, even so, the provision of light infantry was not large for an army which had then nearly 200 battalions embodied. There were also some foreign corps to be taken into consideration, which stood on the British muster-rolls, such as the two Light Battalions of the King’s German Legion, the Brunswick Oels Jägers, and the Chasseurs Britanniques, who all four served in the Peninsula. All these save the last were created after 1803: but at least during the second period of the great French War, our armies were not practically destitute of light troops, as they were in 1793. We shall see that this had no small importance in Wellington’s tactical devices.
The British Two-deep Line
The other lesson that might possibly have been deduced from the campaigns of the earlier years of the great war was the efficacy of columns for striking at the critical points of an enemy’s line. The continental enemies of France were affected by what they had seen of this sort of success, and often copied the formation of their adversaries. But it is notable that the old and wholesome prejudice of the British in favour of the line was in no way disturbed by what had happened of late. The idea that the column was a clumsy and expensive formation was not shaken, and the theory that infantry ought to win by the rapidity and accuracy of its shooting, and that every musket not in the firing-line was wasted, continued to prevail. The reply of the British to the ordre mixte was to reduce the depth of the deployed battalion from three ranks to two, because it had been discovered that the fire of the third rank was difficult, dangerous to those in front, and practically ineffective. Sir David Dundas’s drill-book of 1788 with its Prussian three ranks, which had been the official guide of the British infantry of late, was not formally cancelled at first, but it was practically disregarded, and the army went back to the two-rank array, which it had habitually used in the American War, and had abandoned with regret. Apparently the Duke of York did not altogether approve this change: he at least once issued a General Order, to remind colonels that the formation in three ranks was still officially recognized and ought not to be forgotten. But the permission given by an order in 1801, that inspecting officers might allow regiments to appear “even at reviews” in the two ranks, probably marked the practical end of the Prussian system.[77] It had certainly been disused by many officers long before that date, and it is certain that in Abercrombie’s Egyptian campaign the double instead of the triple rank was in general use.[78] British military opinion had decided that fire was everything, and that the correct answer to the French columnar attack was to put more men into the firing line.
A conclusive proof of the efficacy of the double when opposed to the triple rank was very clearly given at the half-forgotten Calabrian battle of Maida, three years after the commencement of the second half of the great French War. At this fight the French General Reynier had deployed the whole, or the greater part, of his battalions, who were not as usual fighting either in ordre mixte or in battalion column. The result was very decisive—5000 British infantry in the thinner formation received the attack of 6000 French in the heavier, and inflicted on them, purely by superior fire-efficiency, one of the most crushing defeats on a small scale that was ever seen, disabling or taking 2000 men, with a total loss to themselves of only 320.[79] It is worth while remembering that some of the officers who were afterwards to be Wellington’s trusted lieutenants were present at Maida, including Cole, Kempt, Oswald, and Colborne.[79] This was about the only instance that I know where English and French came into action both deployed, and on a more or less parallel front. Usually it was a case of “column against line.”
Wellington’s System
Sir Arthur Wellesley had been nine years absent in India before he returned to England in 1805, so that he had to learn the difference between the Republican and the Imperial armies by new experience. The problem had long been interesting him. Before he left Calcutta he is said to have remarked to his confidants that the French were sweeping everything before them in Europe by the use of column formations, but that he was convinced that the column could, and would, be beaten by the line. What he heard after his return to England evidently confirmed him in this opinion. A conversation which he had with Croker, just before he set sail on the expedition which was to end at Vimeiro, chances to have been preserved in the latter’s papers, under the date, June 14, 1808. Sitting silent, lost in reverie for a long time, he was asked by Croker the subject of his thoughts. “To say the truth,” he replied, “I am thinking of the French I am going to fight. I have not seen them since the campaigns in Flanders [1793–94] when they were capital soldiers, and a dozen years of victory under Bonaparte must have made them better still. ’Tis enough to make one thoughtful. But though they may overwhelm me, I don’t think that they will outmanœuvre me. First, because I am not afraid of them, as every one else seems to be, and secondly, because (if all I hear about their system is true) I think it a false one against steady troops. I suspect all the continental armies are half-beaten before the battle begins. I at least will not be frightened beforehand.”
Wellesley went out to Portugal, there to try what could be done with steady troops against the “French system.” But it would be to convey a false impression of his meaning if we were to state that he simply went out to beat column with line—though the essential fact is sufficiently true. He went out to try his own conception of the proper way to use the line formation, which had its peculiarities and its limitations. The chief of these were that—