STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 039

The French Marshals and Their Failure of Tactical Analysis

5. Column and Line in the Peninsula (10)

The French Marshals and Their Failure of Tactical Analysis

But this is the mere physical aspect of such a combat. What was its moral result? Many French officers who served in the Peninsular War have left memoirs behind them. Very few of them seem to have got to the bottom of the matter. The only one of them, indeed, who has left a clear and philosophic summary of the consequences of attacking in heavy columns a well-placed British line is Bugeaud, whose interesting paragraphs I have already quoted in the pages of this volume which deal with the Battle of Maida. He saw the moral influence of crushing fire from front and flank against a mass of which the greater part could take no retaliating share in the exchange of volleys, as well as the mere consequences in the casualty list.

The others, even those of highest rank, seem merely to have been impressed with the losses. When Napoleon, before Waterloo, explained his plan of battle to Soult, the Marshal observed, “Sire, l’infanterie anglaise en duel c’est le diable.” To which his master replied brutally, “Because you have been beaten by Wellington you regard him as a good general: et moi je vous dis que Wellington est un mauvais général, et que les Anglais sont de mauvaises troupes: ce sera l’affaire d’un déjeuner.” This strange explosion raises doubts as to the soundness of the Emperor’s views on tactics—or his sanity. But what had Soult made out of his Peninsular experiences? We have his deductions in a letter to the Minister of War, Clarke, in September 1813, wherein he complains bitterly of the shooting power of the British rifle companies.

His particular grievance is that his officers get hit in numbers quite out of proportion to his men. ‘These carabineers do the outpost and skirmishing work. In battle they are specially ordered to pick off the officers. When senior officers go to the front, either to make observations or to encourage their troops, they are almost always hit. This manner of making war is most annoying to us. We lose so many officers that after two consecutive actions the battalion is almost destitute of them. In our casualty lists the proportion is often one officer to eight men. I have seen units where there were only two or three officers left, though not one-sixth of the rank and file were hors de combat.’

The real explanation of this disproportion was that in columnar attacks the French officers led their men with great gallantry in the attack, and stayed behind, trying to hold the troops together, when the break-up began. English observers sometimes note that a last desperate resistance was made by a knot of officers backed by very few rank and file. Soult had got hold of a symptom when he thought he had discovered the disease. He makes no suggestion that the aimed fire of a skirmishing line of good light infantry should be met by a multiplication of his own skirmishers.

Reilie has almost as great experience of the Peninsular battles as Soult. Napoleon asked him on the morn of Waterloo what he thought of the English infantry. “Well placed”, answered the corps-commander, “as Wellington knows how to place it, I regard the English infantry as ‘inexpugnable’, because of its calm tenacity and the superiority of its fire. Before you can get to close quarters you may expect to see one-half of the attacking force knocked over. But it manoeuvres with less agility than our infantry. Though you cannot beat it by a frontal attack, you may be able to do so by manoeuvring.’

Irritated by this discouraging judgement, the Emperor, who had never seen the English infantry in action, broke off the conversation by an exclamation of incredulity.

Foy, in his private journal, under the date September 23, 1811, made an observation somewhat similar to that of Reille: “I think the English infantry superior to our own in equal numbers and on a limited battle front. This opinion I carefully keep to myself: it is better that the rank and file should despise the enemy as well as hate him.’ And again, under the date June 23,1815: “You may in a campaign turn, check, or molest the English; but in pitched battle there is no enemy more redoubtable. Their infantry is solid under fire and well drilled, its fire is perfect. The officers are the bravest and the most patriotic in all Europe. Wellington is not a genius, but he knows his trade perfectly, and is liked and trusted by his men.”

Neither Soult, Reille, nor Foy makes any mention of line and column. None of them seem to have drawn the conclusion which Bugeaud, then only a chef de bataillon, reached—that it was the French tactical formation which made victory impossible.

Officers of less intelligence explained their defeats by a fictitious inferiority of numbers. Both Merle at Bussaco and Victor at Barrosa state in their dispatches that their troops were overwhelmed by an enemy of far superior strength. In each case, as a matter of fact, they possessed a decidedly larger force than the enemy who flung them downhill. And if generals wrote thus, it was only natural that captains and lieutenants followed their example.

I have never, odd though the fact may seem, discovered any contemporary writer save Bugeaud who got to the heart of the matter. He alone described the psychology of the huddled column going forward to inevitable defeat, and saw the reason of it.

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