A military dictionary

by William Duane

Tactics of Europe. The following observations respecting the tactics of Europe, may be useful to those who have not the Am. Mil. Lib.

In the time of the Romans, the Gauls and other nations on the continent fought in the phalanx order; it is this order which still prevails through all Europe, except that it has been till lately deficient in the advantages and utility which Polybius ascribes to it, and is injured, by defects unknown in the ancient phalanx.

In Turenne’s days, troops were ranged 8 deep, both in France and Germany. Thirty years after, in the time of Puysegur, the ranks were reduced to 5: in the next Flanders war to 4; and immediately after to 3, which continues to be the order of the French armies; the ranks of light troops only are reduced to 2.

This part of the progression from 8 to 3 being known, we easily conceive how the files of the phalanx had been diminished from 16 to 8 in the ages preceding Turenne. It is to be presumed, that this depth was considered as superfluous, and it was judged necessary to diminish it, in order to extend the front. However, the motive is of very little consequence, since we are now reduced to three ranks; let us see what qualities of the phalanx have been preserved, and what might have been added thereto.

To shew that the defects of the phalanx were preferred in Europe, we suppose two bodies of troops, one of eight thousand men, ranged as a phalanx, sixteen deep; the other a regiment of three battalions, consisting only of fifteen hundred men, drawn up in three lines, after the same manner. Those two bodies shall be perfectly equal and alike in extent of front, and shall differ in nothing but in the depth of their files: the inconveniences and defects, therefore, occasioned by the length of the fronts are equal in both troops, though their numbers are very different; hence it follows, that, in Europe, the essential defects of the phalanx were preserved and its advantages lost.

Let the files of this body of eight thousand, be afterwards divided, and let it be reduced to three in depth, its front will then be found five times more extensive, and its depth five times less: we may, therefore, conclude, that the defects of the phalanx were evidently multiplied in the discipline of Europe, at the expence of its advantages, which consisted in the depth of its files.

The progress which has taken place in the artillery, has contributed greatly to this revolution. As cannon multiplied, it was necessary to avoid its effects; and the method of avoiding, or at least of lessening them, was to diminish the depth of the files.

The musquet, likewise, has a great share in the alteration; the half-pike was entirely laid aside for the bayonet; and in order to have no fire unemployed, it was thought necessary to put it in the power of every soldier to make use of his firelock.

Those are, we think, the two principal causes of the little solidity, or depth given to the battalion.

Thus the defects of the phalanx were multiplied in the European discipline, and its advantages and perfections injudiciously diminished. The system of Prussia, made some alterations, but with every other power until the French revived the principles of the phalanx in their columns of attack, the system was much inferior to the phalanx, and had nothing but the single effect of fire-arms to counterbalance all its advantages. The effect, however, of fire-arms is a partial power, and does not originally belong to the manner of disciplining troops, the sole aim of which, should be to employ man’s natural action. It is man, therefore, and not his fire, which is to be considered as the principal agent; and from hence the European systems before the French revolution were very much inferior to the phalanx, and still more to the Roman arrangement, which so far surpassed that of Greece.