14. Our present Infantry Tactics have adopted two new expedients to accelerate the advance of battalions, and diminish the loss to which columns of attack are liable—Division Columns and Advancing by the Flank of Subdivisions.
As Division Columns break the battalion line into several columns, each of two or three subdivisions deep, as a substitute for a single column four or five subdivisions deep, they undoubtedly diminish the loss from the enemy's artillery fire in corresponding proportion. But in compensation for this partial advantage, they have three defects:—
(1.) In moving rapidly for any distance, especially over broken or obstructed ground, both the alignment and the proper intervals between the columns will usually be lost; thus causing, in the deployment, a dangerous loss of time in re-establishing the alignment and the correct intervals.
(2.) In advancing in line of division columns, there is no means of forming square, except by passing through an intermediate formation.
(3.) The intervals between the columns are so many gaps, through which cavalry could easily penetrate, and take the columns in rear.
The line of division columns appears to have been first suggested by Marshal Marmont, who was a good artillery commander, but not necessarily, for that reason, a weighty authority on a point of Infantry Tactics.
15. The manœuvre of Advancing by the Flank of Subdivisions is obnoxious to all the objections just pointed out in regard to Division Columns. On being threatened by cavalry, though the troops would have no intermediate formation to pass through to prepare for forming square, they would have to face into column and close to half distance, which there would often not be time to do.
In addition to this, the flank march being habitually by fours, the subdivisions would offer a tolerable mark for the enemy's artillery, and thus be exposed to a destructive enfilade.
And in forming into line, where the leading guides have not accurately preserved both their alignment and their intervals, which must be the usual case in the field, there must be more or less delay and confusion, of which a prompt and active enemy would not fail to take fatal advantage.
The mode prescribed by the Tactics (Par. 150, School of the Battalion), for executing the manœuvre of forming line while advancing by subdivision flanks, seems also to call for remark; it being "by company (or division) into line." In other words, each individual soldier brings a shoulder forward, breaks off from his comrades, and hurries up, not on a line with them, but detached from them, and moving independently, to find his proper place. This destroys for the time being, and at a critical moment, the unity of the subdivisions, and so impairs the confidence soldiers derive from realizing that they form part of a compact mass. In thus executing this manœuvre under fire, and near the enemy, there is danger of the men becoming confused and bewildered. For this reason, a better method of forming line would seem to be to re-form the column by a simple facing, and then to wheel into line by subdivisions.