Forward into Battle Page 3
A similar tale can also be told of the American mainforce war in Vietnam. The tactical deadlock continued; and not even the vast resources of modern technology seemed capable of breaking it. Sophisticated systems for surveillance, mobility and firepower alike could in practice deliver no more than a fraction of the benefits which they had originally promised. The traditional role of the infantryman, despite everything, remained paramount.
A great deal of this has been ignored or obscured by the many commentators who still view twentieth-century warfare through technologically tinted spectacles. They do not look far enough into the problems of no-man’s-land because, in a full sense, they have been ‘blinded by science’. What we shall be attempting in the present book, therefore, is to take a more careful look at the evidence, and so rectify our picture of what actually took place in battle.
2
1808–15: The Alleged Firepower of Wellington’s Infantry
Our story starts in 1808 with the opening of the Peninsular War. This date marked the beginning of the end for Napoleon’s armies, since they were thereafter forced to fight on two fronts with ever diminishing success. It also marked the final emergence of the small but professional British army as a force to be reckoned with in the continental warfare of the day. Starting with the Battle of Vimeiro (1808), which cleared the French from Portugal, and culminating in the epochal Battle of Waterloo (1815) the British seemed to go from one victory to another. Much of this success was due to the genius of the Duke of Wellington; but a great part of it was also due to the tactical efficiency of his infantry.
Wellington’s infantry formed a greater proportion of the army than was normal at the time, and it bore the brunt of all the battles. It had a reputation for holding defensive positions against whatever masses the French could throw against it. Deployed in ‘thin red lines’ two deep (the normal practice was to form in three ranks), it would wait until the enemy attack columns came to close range, and then defeat them decisively. Indeed, it was better fed and better trained than the French in the Peninsula; but it was also heavily outnumbered and outgunned. Its successes at the point of contact are thus remarkable and indicate that this was a highly unusual force. A study of how these successes were achieved may reveal much about the tactical conditions of its age.
At first the phenomenon of the British infantry did not excite very much comment, and its tactics remained somewhat mysterious to contemporary observers. As late as Waterloo there was still only a minority of French officers who had learned to respect it at its true value, while not even the extensive post mortem in France after the wars produced very much discussion of the subject. The amazingly prolific strategist Jomini, for example, wrote no more than a few pages about it.1
What little Jomini did write is interesting both because it was influential among later commentators, and also because it was one of the first attempts to identify a tactical ‘system’ behind Wellington’s battles. Jomini was full of praise for the ‘solidity’ and ‘murderous fire’ of the regular British infantry, and like most French commentators of his day he pointed to the advantages of British volunteer recruiting methods over Napoleon’s mass conscription. He then went on to describe how at Waterloo Picton’s line had enveloped the heads of the French columns with fire, to which the latter had been able to reply with only very few muskets. This implied strongly that it was the relative numbers of muskets bearing on the enemy which determined the outcome.
According to Jomini’s implied interpretation, any column formation ought to have been at a disadvantage against a deployed line, since a column would inevitably have the smaller frontage of muskets. What he actually said, however, was that the French might well have succeeded against the British if only they had used small and flexible attack columns rather than large and cumbersome ones. Jomini therefore hedged his bets to some extent, and suggested that firepower was not necessarily the totally decisive factor in these battles after all. His final position turns out to be somewhat paradoxical. He suggests that solid regular infantry deployed in line can hold its ground by musketry fire alone, yet that well organised regular infantry can advance through such fire to achieve the victory. This paradox was to bedevil French thinking right up to 1914, and it ultimately had disastrous results. In terms of the debate of the 1830s, however, it was no more than an interesting aside. Little attention seems to have been paid to it. What really did happen in Wellington’s battles continued to be somewhat mysterious until the very end of the nineteenth century, when the nations of Europe became fired by both a new brand of extreme nationalism and the need to make careful technical preparations for the next war. As part of the general arms race around 1900 there was a renewed interest in the last great European conflict, namely the Napoleonic Wars. Every nation conducted painstaking official and private studies which are still, today, by far the best analyses we have of the Napoleonic period.
One result of this historiographical effort was that the question of Wellington’s infantry tactics was at last brought into the open. In Britain Sir Charles Oman’s monumental History of the Peninsular War laid bare the tactical system of the two sides with the same lucid confidence which he brought to all other aspects of the struggle. In France the General Staff historical section threw up an example of that rarest of species, the true tactical historian, in the shape of Commandant Jean Colin. As a small part of his general work Colin explained what had happened in the Peninsular battles, and set it alongside the development of Napoleonic tactics as a whole.2
The matter would have rested there, had not these two great authorities chanced to disagree. In retrospect it was perhaps inevitable that they should have done so, since they were of different nationality and writing at a moment when national differences seemed to be of paramount importance. Their disagreement has nevertheless remained unresolved, and today we have two contradictory accounts of what happened when Wellington’s infantry faced their French counterparts. There has never been a serious effort to find what really took place.
Oman’s view is that the British owed their success primarily to their superiority of fire and protection. This derived firstly from the choice of terrain which sheltered their main infantry line from the enemy artillery, and secondly from their heavy and efficient skirmish screen which kept French skirmishers at bay at the same time as it inflicted casualties upon approaching attackers. There can be no question about either of these factors, and Oman was quite correct to underline their importance. His third point, however, was the one to which he attached the greatest importance. He said that the British superiority came from their close range fire by extended lines of infantry against dense French columns.
It is the mathematical relationship between the column and the line which is the hallmark of Oman’s view. He makes, at some length, the point that a battalion of soldiers drawn up in a line two deep will be able to point more muskets at the enemy than an equal number of soldiers massed in column on a frontage restricted to between thirty and a hundred men across. One has only to count the muskets, and one will find that the firepower of the line will always be greatly superior to that of the column. It therefore follows, according to Oman, that Wellington’s troops could shoot the French to pieces faster than vice versa, even if the French column was two or even three battalions in depth against a single British battalion. He also admits that the French must have dimly realised this in the course of some of their attacks, since they did occasionally attempt to deploy into a wider formation once they had become embroiled in a fire fight, in order to bring more muskets to bear.
Oman’s view, supported as it was by his prodigious documentation, brought the debate onto a much more scientific plane than it had previously reached. His arguments were neat, attractive, and apparently unassailable. Unfortunately, however, they seemed to suggest that the French tacticians of the Napoleonic Wars were rather stupid, and blind to the most fundamental principles of infantry fighting. That was an idea which Commandant Colin refused to accept. In
Colin’s view the French had not really been trying to make attacks in column at all. They had known as well as the British that the important thing was to deploy into line to achieve maximum firepower; but their problem had been a failure to know exactly where the British were waiting for them, and thus where they ought to have deployed their own line.
Colin leapt upon Oman’s admission that the French had sometimes attempted a deployment at the last minute, and claimed that this demonstrated a desire to attack in line rather than in column. Column was the formation for manoeuvre, he said, but not for combat itself. He supported this claim with a number of examples of French attacks in line drawn from other theatres of war, and pointed to the French 1791 infantry drill book, which clearly advocated line attacks with volley fire in the eighteenth-century manner. Finally, he asserted that Wellington’s use of dead ground to shelter his men from artillery fire made it difficult for attacking French infantry to locate them. Attacks tended to blunder into the British line before the French had a chance to deploy into their preferred fighting formation.
The disagreement between Oman and Colin was centred upon the question of what the French infantry had intended to do at the point of contact. Oman claimed that it had wanted to charge forward with the bayonet in a massed column, relying wholly upon shock action and élan. Colin, on the other hand, denied this and said that the French had wanted to develop a musket line to beat down their opponents by firepower. It is important to note, however, that they were unanimous that the British did rely upon firepower, and that whatever the French may actually have wanted to do, they too should have relied upon firepower. Within the disagreement, therefore, there was a high degree of accord about the importance of firepower.
It is tempting for us today to accept the things about which Oman and Colin agree, and take sides only on their points of difference. Almost all modern authorities have in fact done precisely that.3 There is something highly persuasive to the English mind in Oman’s account of the thin red-coated line standing its ground against heavy odds, doggedly firing until the foreign hordes melt away. Apart from anything else, it seems to fit perfectly into the national tradition set at Agincourt and later continued at Mons. The Englishman likes to think of his soldiers as expert shots who can get far more from their personal weapons than their excitable alien opponents. Whether the weapon be a longbow, a Brown Bess musket or a Lee-Enfield rifle seems to make little difference. Phlegmatic solidity and accurate shooting appear to be factors which have remained constant through the centuries.
Another assumption which is almost universally accepted today is the general point that it must be firepower which kills people in battles. The enormous improvement in weapon power during the twentieth century seems to make this conclusion unavoidable. The butchery by direct fire weapons during the First World War has left an ineradicable impression upon all of us. When we contemplate a battle before the twentieth century, therefore, it is only natural that we should want to interpret the result primarily in terms of firepower. If writers from before the First World War take the same line, as Oman and Colin did, we are only too ready to accept their findings at face value.
Oman’s arguments are certainly alluring, but we must ask ourselves whether they may not also be a trifle anachronistic. We tend to forget that the rise of weapon power had already been noticed and had influenced theorists even in Jomini’s day, some eighty years before the First World War. It was certainly a commonplace by the time Oman was writing. His geometrical count of muskets between the column and the line, in fact, looks suspiciously similar to another tactical debate which was going on around 1900, in the field of naval warfare. In ironclad naval tactics the important thing was known as ‘crossing the enemy’s “T” ’, or placing one’s fleet in an extended line across the head of the enemy’s column. By doing that all one’s guns could fire in broadsides, while only a few of his forward-facing guns could fire from the head of his column. Precisely the same mathematics would then apply as Oman had claimed for the Peninsular battles. So he did not have very far to look for his model: it was ready made for him by the naval gentlemen of his day.
We are left with the suspicion that the ‘firepower’ interpretation of Wellington’s success may have been accepted rather too rapidly, due to the technical developments which took place after the Napoleonic Wars had ended, as well as the existing national myth of British infantry fire accuracy through the ages. It also seems odd that so very few accounts have come down to us from the wars themselves which describe Wellington’s battles in anything like the neat mathematical terms employed by Oman. Napier comes nearest, but with Jomini he is very much in the minority. In general the phraseology which eyewitnesses chose to use in their accounts seems to be rather seriously at variance with the mental constructions of later writers.
As an example of this discrepancy it is worth looking at the defeat of Thomières’ ‘Brigade’ (actually only two battalions) by the 1st Battalion of the British 50th Regiment during the Battle of Vimeiro in 1808. Depending on which authorities one believes, this was either the very first ‘column against line’ action of the Peninsular War, or the second by only a short head. It is certainly one of the actions which has made a forceful impression upon historians, as is illustrated by the following passage which appeared in 1962:
The first volley from the First Battalion of the Fiftieth was fired at a range slightly over 100 yards; others followed regularly at 15 seconds intervals as the range gradually shortened. Slowly, the flanks of the 50th wrapped around the column. The British line was using every one of its 900 muskets; the French could reply with no more than 200 of their 1,200 firearms. General Thomières, who commanded the French brigade, endeavoured to deploy from column to line under fire, but found this impossible. The French recoiled at each volley; they finally broke and fled to the rear with the riflemen in hot pursuit.4
This account bears more than a trace of Oman’s musket-counting, and is in fact even more explicit. It claims that many British volleys were fired, that they were fired regularly at 15 second intervals, and that the flanks of the British line furthest from the centre of the action gradually edged forward to close the range (this was a tactic which Oman had noted in a number of British fights and which, ironically, appeared in the writings of a French theorist, Guibert). Nor is an attempted French deployment omitted. All in all this account of the action represents a textbook statement of what is today the orthodox view. It makes it clear that the French were defeated purely by British infantry fire.
The Duke of Wellington (or Wellesley), however, who effectively commanded at Vimeiro, did not see things in quite the same light. He said that the French were ‘Checked and driven back only by the bayonets of that corps’ (i.e. the 50th).5 This brief comment does not, admittedly, tell us very much, and it is possible that Wellington was using the word ‘bayonets’ as shorthand for ‘infantrymen’ in the same way as it was conventional to refer to the number of cavalrymen in a squadron as so many ‘sabres’. Nevertheless his phraseology at least permits us to keep an open mind on whether the French were in fact defeated by fire or by real bayonets.
Descending to the other end of the scale, we find that Rifleman Harris was a little more specific. He said that the regiment charged grandly, and ‘The French, unable even to bear the sight of them, turned and fled.’6
This account does not mention fire any more than the Duke’s, but it does make two interesting points. Harris states that the British made a charge, and that it was what they looked like which beat the enemy.
Another brief mention of the fight comes to us from General Anstruther, who commanded the next brigade on the left flank of the 50th. He must have been at some distance from the action, although he did send one of his battalions, the 3/43rd, to support it. He says little about what happened, but confirms that the British charged the French: ‘The 50th Regiment, however, by a very bold attack, defeated the enemy opposed to them, taking all their guns, tumbrils, etc.’7
Considerably more circumstantial accounts of this little battle come to us from two officers who were actually involved in it. The first is Captain Landmann, who commanded the army’s engineers and was initially posted immediately behind the 50th’s position. He describes the development of the preliminary skirmishing which was done at long range by British riflemen reinforced by line companies, including some individuals from the 50th itself. The latter would bob up from behind the crest of the hill, fire their shot, and then retire to the sheltered position where the main body was waiting.
He says that the French halted to form up at long musket range from the British crestline (i.e. 2–300 metres?), and then came on in a column, heading straight for Robe’s artillery battery which was just to the left of the 50th. Roundshot cut lanes through the French ranks, and cannister hit many soldiers in the front of the column. The British gunners refused to abandon their pieces and continued to fire as the French came closer:
The enemy’s column was now advancing in a most gallant style, the drum by the side beating the short taps, marking the double-quick time of the pas-de-charge. I could distinctly hear the officers in the ranks exhorting their men to persevere in the attack, by the constant expressions of ‘en-avant – en-avant – en-avant, mes-amis’, and I could also distinguish the animated looks and gestures of the mounted officers, who, with raised swords, waving forwards, strongly manifested their impatience at the slowness of their advance, and to which they also loudly added every expression of sentiments, which they thought best calculated to urge their men to be firm in their attack and irresistible in their charge.
In this way, the enemy having very quickly approached the guns to within sixty or seventy yards, they halted, and endeavoured to deploy and form their line, under cover of the Voltigeurs. I was then by the side of Anstruther, to whom I said, ‘Sir, something must be done, or the position will be carried.’ The general replied, ‘You are right;’ and, without a moment’s delay, he called out to the 43rd and 50th Regiments, as he raised his hat as one about to cheer, ‘Remember, my lads, the glorious 21st of March in Egypt; this day must be another glorious 21st.’ I have no doubt that this appeal had its effect.