British Light Infantry in the 18th Century

One of the immediate causes of the outbreak of the Revolution in France was the destruction of the old Royal Army and its replacement by the Garde Nationale. The Bastille fallen and the Swiss Guard slaughtered saw the people freed from the last restraining power which could maintain peace and order.

The Austrian Army of this date was outwardly a very formidable military machine, superbly drilled, well clad and fed, equal to any military machine constructed for linear tactics, but quite unequal to the task it had set itself to perform, namely, the castigation of the sans-culottes of France.

The Revolution had, by 1792, become a religion; men no longer acted or thought like rational beings but like bhang intoxicated fanatics, and once Austria had thrown down the gauntlet of war, recruits rushed to the tricolour of France demanding immediate enlistment. These recruits were not soldiers, they had never been drilled, they knew nothing of war, yet sustained by a fierce enthusiasm, with a cockade in their hats and a musket on their shoulder, they eventually proved themselves more than a match for the best drilled troops in Europe. Discipline and training being at a discount, their place was taken by activity and mobility; the Convention, seeing this (indeed it could see nothing else,) raised the light troops in France to eighty thousand in number.

In Flanders, these first armies of the Revolution were ignominiously routed, more through the phantoms raised by their own fears than by the tactics of their enemies. As skirmishers, unsupported by any nucleus of regular troops, they possessed no stamina, no power of co- operation; a wild comradeship, but no confidence. The Austrians, having been beaten by the solid lines of Prussia, had to a great extent abandoned the art of skirmishing. At this time, or certainly by 1796, they possessed fifteen battalions of well-trained Jaegers, but their contempt for the French was such that they expected to sweep over France at the goose-step in line of battalions in close order! They failed, however, to reckon with the instincts of the nation whose territories they now invaded; they lacked insight into human nature and, lacking it, their failure was fore-ordained.

The French, writes Robert Jackson, "from quick perception, mental activity, and celerity in movement, are excellently fitted by Nature for the practice of partisan war. . . . A swarm of sharpshooters, sent out in every direction, masks the movement of the advancing force. . . . This mode of warfare belongs to a new people acting by common sense and the reality of things, rather than by precedent and pomp of appearance. . . . European sovereigns were often embarrassed, in the early part of the war, by the Proteus-like mutability and energy of the Republican irregulars who fell back upon the reserve, which consisted of tried men, analogous in character to the triarii of the Roman armies." "A view of the Formation Discipline and Economy of Armies," pp. 142-48. Robert Jackson.

This reserve which Jackson mentions was gradually formed from war-trained men as the campaigns proceeded, the younger and untrained soldiers preceding the small columns of veterans, in lines of skirmishers; in fact, the system of Mesnil-Durand was little by little taking form. The French light infantry forged ahead, opened a teasing, demoralising fire along the whole front of the enemy's line, held him in position, discovered his weak places, and acted as a shield behind which the battalion columns manoeuvred, and, once in position, swept through their own skirmishers to break the enemy's line.

GENERAL BONAPARTE'S TACTICS

By degrees the column began to realise its power for shock once the skirmishers had sufficiently demoralised the enemy's ranks. Meanwhile the line formation was undergoing a further change. Being the primary formation for fire, it could in no way be replaced by scattered swarms of skirmishers. By degrees the Revolutionary armies began, more or less intuitively, to realise this, for occasionally we find their skirmishers closing in on one another as they neared their enemy, and so forming scattered groups - fractions of a line - in order to pour in a hail of shot at close range and prepare the way for the charge of the columns behind them. Bonaparte seems to have been one of the first to grasp the tactics of skirmishers and heavy infantry, line and column combined, and to his skilful employment of this combination may be attributed many of his early successes. After Eylau and Friedland he partially abandoned the skirmishing fight, and, like Frederick, trusted to his artillery to produce the necessary demoralisation in the enemy's ranks.

When Bonaparte was appointed to the command of the Army of Italy, he found but very little artillery at his disposal; he had, therefore, to depend on his skirmishers to carry out the act of demoralisation. He supported their attack by artillery fire, and so as not to impair the moral of the force destined to carry out the act of decision, he kept his reserve well out of the zone of effective fire. The successive employment of forces, as formerly made use of in the Roman legion, we here see reproduced, and from now on this system becomes the base of all offensive operations.

Whilst on the Rhine, the light infantry of Moreau, Marceau and Jourdan were carrying out skirmishing battles and were not adequately supporting their attacks or combining their various forces; Bonaparte, in Italy, was teaching Europe the lessons of the future, and was putting into full operation the tactics of Mesnil-Durand.

At Lonato and Castiglione, 1796, Bonaparte made use of battalion colunms at deploying intervals covered by skirmishers. At Rivoli, 1797, again the same tactics won him the day. At the Tagliamento, 1797, he made use of the demi-brigade, and for the first time the new system is seen in its entirety on the field of battle. The two divisions of the French Army having formed their battalions of grenadiers, "ranged themselves in order of battle, each with a demi-brigade of light infantry in their front, supported by two battalions of grenadiers, and flanked by the cavalry, the light infantry manoeuvring as riflemen."

"General Dammaritin on the left, and General Lespinasse on the right, made their artillery advance, when a brisk cannonade commenced, upon which Bonaparte gave orders for every demi-brigade to file off in close column on the wings of their second, first, and third battalions. General Dupont, at the head of the twenty-seventh light infantry, threw himself into the river and presently gained the opposite bank, being supported by General Bon with the grenadiers of Guieux's division. General Murat made the same movement on the right, and was in like manner supported by the grenadiers of Bernadotte's division. The whole line put itself in motion, each demibrigade en echelons with squadrons of cavalry placed at intervals in the rear. The Imperial cavalry attempted several times to charge the French infantry, but without success; the river was crossed, and the enemy routed in every direction." "Campaign of General Bonaparte in Italy 1796-7," p. 324. By a General Officer. Translated from the French by T. E. Ritchie, 1799.

At Marengo, 1800, much the same system was employed. At Austerlitz, 1805, Napoleon's formation was that of one regiment of two battalions deployed, and one regiment of two battalions on the flanks. At Jena, 1806, the Napoleonic column met the line of Frederick and cost the Prussians one of the most decisive defeats in history.

After Austerlitz the French Army consisted of one hundred demi-brigades of infantry and thirty demi-brigades of light infantry. Napoleon's voltigeurs were in every respect true light infantry. At the end of the Napoleonic wars the proportion of light troops to heavy in the European armies was as follows: Russia, one-quarter; France, one-third; Prussia, five-ninths; Denmark, one-tenth; and Sweden, one-sixth. "Staff College Essays," p. 60. Lieut. Evelyn Baring.

GENERAL DUHESME'S PRINCIPLES

General Duhesme was born at Bourgneuf in 1766. In 1791, he raised and equipped 200 light infantry for the war against Austria. In 1815, Napoleon appointed him general of the two divisions of the Young Guard, and at Waterloo, at the head of one of these divisions, he was mortally wounded. Napoleon wrote of him in his "Memoirs": "Soldat intrepide et general consomme, ferm et inebranlable dans la bonne comme, dans la mauvaise fortune."

Duhesme, in his "Essay on Light Infantry," lays down very clearly the principles of the light infantry combat of his day.

A division of eight battalions was formed in line, numbered one to eight, from right to left. The advance being ordered, battalion columns were formed and the advance was made chequerwise, the left battalions forming the first line and the right the second. As the first line moved off, it threw out its skirmishers in front of it; these worked in company swarms and not in line, each swarm protecting the head of its own battalion column and keeping touch with the swarms on its right and left; each swarm also maintained as a support some ten to fifteen men in close order; these supports marched behind the swarms as a nucleus to rally on, should the skirmishers be attacked by cavalry. The voltigeurs of the second line, in place of marching at the head of their line, advanced into the intervals between the battalion columns of the first line, so that if the voltiguers of the first line could not make headway, those of the second line could rapidly support them. The captains of the light companies remained with their supports and kept the buglers by them whilst the subalterns led the attacking swarms.

Behind the skirmishing fight the battalions continued their advance as rapidly as circumstances permitted, their chief duty being to maintain direction. Once demoralisation seized upon the enemy, the battalions in column would push on with all speed and charge their demoralised foe. As the first line of columns approached, the skirmishers slowed down their advance and fell back into the intervals fighting, the second line pushing forward to fill the gaps from the rear. If the first line of columns was checked, the second line supported it; if the first line was successful, the second line pursued; if the first line was repulsed the second covered its retirement.

Fire action was almost entirely independent, and therefore, aimed, a broadside being only occasionally fired by the leading double company of the battalion columns, just prior to the charge, more to produce panic and consternation than to kill. Duhesme calculated that the eight hundred light infantry covering a division could fire two thousand four hundred shots a minute, and setting down the duration of the fire fight at ten minutes, this meant that twenty-four thousand shots would be fired prior to the assault. "If one tenth of these hit," he writes, "no less than two thousand four hundred casualties will occur in a line of eight to ten thousand men. . . . The fire of the enemy's line will not have caused a similar loss on account of the narrow fronts of the columns and the scattered formation of the skirmishers."

Duhesme states that the best system is that which meets the most usual occurrences. "I have behind me," he writes, "much experience, and I dare to hope that officers who have seen service, even if they differ over detail, will adopt the principle of this method of fighting."

And further on: "It is thus that good light infantry, by harassing a retiring enemy, by hindering and impeding his march by every kind of means, will deliver him over to the shock of the victorious columns, and so prepare his entire destruction! Thus a well-instructed and well-formed light infantry begins the attack, is an important factor in its decision, and contributes greatly to the completion of victory! Almost totally ignored in the days of Louis XIV., and during the revival of the military arts in the reign of Louis XV. only employed in guerilla warfare, this arm has resumed in this century the position it held in the tactics of the ancients, in taking a glorious part, not only in those battles which are fought in rugged and woody country, but as well in those which are fought upon the most open of plains." "Essay Historique sur l'Infanterie Legere,- pp. 298-315. Le Comte Duhesme. Third Edition. Originally written in 1803.