Soldiers who have not been drilled on this principle, or who have not acquired it by experience, are, when extended under fire, continually liable to be transformed into unmanageable mobs. Skirmishers who understand it, will always show a formidable front, be ready for every changing event, and, under the worst possible circumstances, act together in the mighty energy of mutual confidence.
Unreflecting mechanical precision is at direct variance with such practice, active intelligence and a wise well-defined general system are its component elements. Active intelligence, therefore, in every point of view, is invaluable to the skirmisher; and the attention of all drill superintendents and instructors should be unremittingly directed to stamp it on his mind and to mix it with his practice.
II.
The soldier at close order always has, or should have, a large mark for his fire. Nothing can be more unsteady or unsoldierlike than for a closed body to pour a volley upon mere skirmishers: from troops concentrated, no object but an opposing mass or line within 200 yards should provoke a single shot.[[4]] The skirmisher has not this advantage, his mark is generally small and often indistinct; besides which, the temptation to careless aim is much greater to him, who fires away sixty or one hundred and twenty rounds over hedge and ditch without intermission, than to the battalion soldier, who seldom expends more than twenty at any one time. Hence the peculiar necessity for practising light troops to cool steady aim and accurate firing.
The immense importance of very great attention to the ball practice[[5]] of this branch of the service, is too obvious to require an enforcing observation; but it ought to be impressively remarked, that good practical aim is not to be acquired only in front of the target, but to the full as much in the every day drill firings, with or without blank cartridge.
It is not the case that careful firing is provoked by the sight of an enemy; on the contrary, arithmetical calculation has repeatedly proved, to the blush of the good soldier, that under no circumstances are balls so wildly and carelessly thrown away as in those moments when the fortunes of empires are thrown away along with them. In action, the greater number of the musquets are pointed generally at masses of dust and smoke, and not precisely at the dark active figures which they envelop.
For these reasons, on the drill field, instead of the loose careless practice too common in this particular, the soldier, and especially the skirmisher, should be unsparingly compelled to go through the motions of aiming and firing at a precise object, as accurately as if at actual ball practice, until the habit be engraven too deep on his mind to be obliterated by any circumstances of confusion.
III.
Daring courage, as an acknowledged essential to the thorough soldier of every class, it would scarcely have been necessary to have noticed in the present enumeration, did not an opinion appear to obtain, much on the continent and with some in Great Britain, that light troops are required to exercise it in a less desperate degree than men at close order.
Foreigners, when extended, often spend systematically much time in long shots and shy fighting, and give way, as a matter of course, before troops in weightier formations. In the British service this opinion does not prevail; there is no good reason why it should, and it is of great importance to the thorough efficiency of skirmishers that it should not.