FOLARD, JEAN CHARLES, Chevalier de (1669-1752), French soldier and military author, was born at Avignon on the 13th of February 1669. His military ardour was first awakened by reading Caesar’s Commentaries, and he ran away from home and joined the army. He soon saw active service, and, young as he was, wrote a manual on partisan warfare, the manuscript of which passed with Folard’s other papers to Marshal Belleisle on the author’s death. In 1702 he became a captain, and aide-de-camp to the duke of Vendôme, then in command of the French forces in Italy. In 1705, while serving under Vendôme’s brother, the Grand Prior, Folard won the cross of St Louis for a gallant feat of arms, and in the same year he distinguished himself at the battle of Cassano, where he was severely wounded. It was during his tedious recovery from his wounds that he conceived the tactical theories to the elucidation of which he devoted most of his life. In 1706 he again rendered good service in Italy, and in 1708 distinguished himself greatly in the operations attempted by Vendôme and the duke of Burgundy for the relief of Lille, the failure of which was due in part to the disagreement of the French commanders; and it is no small testimony to the ability and tact of Folard that he retained the friendship of both. Folard was wounded at Malplaquet in 1709, and in 1711 his services were rewarded with the governorship of Bourbourg. He saw further active service in 1714 in Malta, under Charles XII. of Sweden in the north, and under the duke of Berwick in the short Spanish War of 1719. Charles XII. he regarded as the first captain of all time, and it was at Stockholm that Folard began to formulate his tactical ideas in a commentary on Polybius. On his way back to France he was shipwrecked and lost all his papers, but he set to work at once to write his essays afresh, and in 1724 appeared his Nouvelles Découvertes sur la guerre dans une dissertation de Polybe, followed (1727-1730) by Histoire de Polybe traduite par ... de Thuillier avec un commentaire ... de M. de Folard, Chevalier de l’Ordre de St Louis. Folard spent the remainder of his life in answering the criticisms provoked by the novelty of his theories. He died friendless and in obscurity at Avignon in 1752.
An analysis of Folard’s military writings brings to light not a connected theory of war as a whole, but a great number of independent ideas, sometimes valuable and suggestive, but far more often extravagant. The central point of his tactics was his proposed column formation for infantry. Struck by the apparent weakness of the thin line of battle of the time, and arguing from the ἔμβολον or cuneus of ancient warfare, he desired to substitute the shock of a deep mass of troops for former methods of attack, and further considered that in defence a solid column gave an unshakable stability to the line of battle. Controversy at once centred itself upon the column. Whilst some famous commanders, such as Marshal Saxe and Guido Starhemberg, approved it and put it in practice, the weight of military opinion throughout Europe was opposed to it, and eventually history justified this opposition. Amongst the most discriminating of his critics was Frederick the Great, who is said to have invited Folard to Berlin. The Prussian king certainly caused a précis to be made by Colonel von Seers, and wrote a preface thereto expressing his views. The work (like others by Frederick) fell into unauthorized hands, and, on its publication (Paris, 1760) under the title Esprit du Chev. Folard, created a great impression. “Thus kept within bounds,” said the prince de Ligne, “Folard was the best author of the time.” Frederick himself said tersely that “Folard had buried diamonds in a rubbish-heap.” Thus began the controversy between line and column formations, which long continued and influenced the development of tactics up to the most modern times. Folard’s principal adherents in the 18th century were Joly de Maizeroy and Menil Durand.
See Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de M. le Chevalier de Folard (Paris and Regensburg, 1753), and for a detailed account of Folard’s works and those of his critics and supporters. Max Jähns, Geschichte der Kriegswissenschaften, vol. ii. pp. 1478-1493 (Munich and Leipzig, 1890).
FOLD, a pleat or bend in a flexible material, or a curve in any surface, whence its particular application in geology with which this article deals. The verb “to fold” (O. Eng. fealdan) meant originally to double back a piece of cloth or other material so as to form a pleat, whence has evolved its various senses of to roll up, to enclose, enfold or embrace as with the arms, to clasp the hands or arms together, &c. The word is common to Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. falten, Dutch vouwen (for vouden), &c., and the ultimate Indo-European root is found in Gr. πλέκειν, Lat. plicare, plectere, to plait, pleat, weave, and in the suffixes of such words as διπλάσιος, duplex, double, simplex, &c. Similarly the termination “-fold” is added to numbers implying “so many,” e.g. twofold, hundredfold, cf. “manifold.” The similar word for an enclosure or pen for animals, especially for sheep, and hence applied in a spiritual sense to a community of worshippers, or to the whole body of Christians regarded as Christ’s flock, must be distinguished. In O. Eng. it is falæd, and cognate forms are found in Dutch vaalt, &c. It apparently meant a planked or boarded enclosure, cf. Dan. fjael, Swed. fjöl, plank.
In geology, a fold is a bend or curvature in the stratified rocks of the earth’s crust, whereby they have been made to take up less horizontal space. The French equivalents are pli, plissement, ridement; in Germany, Falte, Faltung, Sattelung are the terms usually employed. It is comparatively rarely that bedded rocks are observed in the position in which they were first deposited, a certain amount of buckling up or sagging down of the crust being continually in progress in one region or another. In every instance therefore where, in walking over the surface, we traverse a series of strata which gradually, and without dislocations, increase or diminish in inclination, we cross part of a great curvature in the strata of the earth’s crust.
Such foldings, however, can often be distinctly seen, either on some cliff or coast-line, or in the traverse of a piece of hilly or mountainous ground. The observer cannot long continue his researches in the field without discovering that the rocks of the earth’s crust have been almost everywhere thrown into curves, usually so broad and gentle as to escape observation except when specially looked for. The outcrop of beds at the surface is commonly the truncation of these curves. The strata must once have risen above the present surface, and in many cases may be found descending to the surface again with a contrary dip, the intervening portion of the undulation having been worn away.
| Fig. 1.—Section of the Isle of Wight—a Monoclinal Curve, a, Chalk; b, Woolwich and Reading beds; c, London clay; d, Bagshot series; e, Headon series; f, g, Osborne and Bembridge series. |
The curvature occasionally shows itself among horizontal or gently inclined strata in the form of an abrupt inclination, and then an immediate resumption of the previous flat or sloping character. The strata are thus bent up and continue on the other side of the tilt at a higher level. Such bends are called monoclines, monoclinal folds or flexures, because they present only one fold, or one half of a fold, instead of the two which we see in an arch or trough. The most notable instance of this structure in Britain is that of the Isle of Wight, of which a section is given in fig. 1. The Cretaceous rocks on the south side of the island rapidly rise in inclination till they become nearly vertical. The Lower Tertiary strata follow with a similar steep dip, but rapidly flatten down towards the north coast. Some remarkable cases of the same structure have been brought to light by J.W. Powell in his survey of the Colorado region.
| Fig. 2.—Plan of Anticlinal and Synclinal Folds. |