STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 035
A False System Against Steady Troops
5. Column and Line in the Peninsula (6)
A False System Against Steady Troops
There were also some foreign corps, however, to be taken into consideration, which stood on the British muster-roll, viz. the two light battalions of the King’s German Legion, the Brunswick Oels Jágers, and the Chasseurs Britanniques. But all these were created after 1805. But at least, during the second period of the Great French War, our armies were not practically destitute of light troops, as they had been in 1793–4, and we shall see that this had no small importance in Wellington’s tactical devices.
The other lesson that might conceivably have been deduced from the campaigns of those years was the efficacy of columns for striking at the critical points of an enemy’s line. The Continental enemies of the French 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 not perceptibly disturbed by what had happened of late. The idea that the column was clumsy and expensive was not in the least 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 French 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.
I cannot discover what was the first important engagement in which the two-deep line was employed, but it was certainly in common use before the Egyptian campaign of 1801, and an ordinance of that year made it the normal formation for British Infantry, “even for reviews”. See Fortescue, iv, 921. Hitherto the three-rank Prussian order, stereotyped in David Dundas’s drill book of 1788, had been the official array of the battalion. British military opinion, therefore, had decided that the lesson of the late campaigns was that fire was everything, and that the correct answer to the columnal attack was to put more men into the firing-line.
It cannot be said that the efficiency of the two-deep line against the column was publicly demonstrated by a crucial experiment of the most conclusive sort till three years after the commencement of the second half of the Great French War. But for all those who were present, or who received the report of an intelligent eye-witness, the little-remembered Calabrian Battle of Maida was an epoch-making day in British military history. On the sandy plain by the Lamato, 5,000 infantry in line received the shock of 6,000 in column, and inflicted on them one of the most crushing defeats on a small scale that took place during the whole war, disabling or taking 2,000 men, with a total loss to themselves of only 320.2 The troops and the order of battle won the victory, for the commander, Stuart, was an incapable officer whose personality had no influence on the fight, and who sacrificed all the fruits of his success by his torpidity.
But the moral was unmistakable—on the critical point of the field four battalions of the best troops of the old French army of Italy, in column of divisions, had been met in frontal shock and blown to pieces by three British battalions in two-deep line. The event had never been for a moment doubtful; the losses of the vanquished had been fearful, those of the victors trifling. And, as I have observed elsewhere, some of the officers who were afterwards to be Wellington’s most trusted lieutenants were present at Maida and understood its meaning, among them Cole, who later commanded the Peninsular 4th division, the brigadiers Kempt and Oswald, and Colborne, the famous colonel of the 52nd Light Infantry.
Sir Arthur Wellesley himself was, of course, far away from Calabria in July 1806; he had returned from India, after an absence of nine years from England, only in the preceding autumn. But the tale of Maida only confirmed him in conclusions that he had drawn long before. 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 the formation in column, but that he was fully convinced that the column could and would be beaten by the line”. It was two years before he himself got the chance of making the great experiment, but he sailed for Portugal in the summer of 1808 with the idea in his head.
A conversation which he held with Croker just before his departure chances to have been preserved in the latter’s diary, under the date June 14, 1808. After a long reverie he was asked 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 campaign in Flanders (1794–5), 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 they will out-manoeuvre me. First, because I am not afraid of them, as everyone 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.”
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