As far as infantry tactics are conccerned, and in spite of the illustrious names of Marlborough, Eugene and Frederick, the first half of the eighteenth century constitutes a period of stagnation, this being partially due to the fact that, with the exception of the iron ramrod of Mollwitz, no great improvement in weapons was made. The brilliant exception to this lack of interest in the art of war was the famous Marechal de Saxe.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, a complete volte face had been accomplished in tactics. The musketeer, who had taken the place of the archer, the arbalaster, and the light Spanish swordsman, had, through their very missile power, so essential to light infantry, and because of the introduction of the bayonet, so essential to heavy, lost all their light infantry qualities. It was on account of, in place of, in spite of, the progress in the manufacture of small arms that the musketeers became the heavy infantry of the line, who, because they maintained the shallow light infantry formation, were, as heavy infantry, unsuited to carry out effectively shock tactics.
The original twenty-five ranks of the pikemen had been reduced by Maurice to ten, by Gustavus to six, and now, under Marlborough, Villarsand Vileroi, to four and three. The three distinct sections of the company had vanished, namely, the central core of pikemen and the wings of musketeers. The triple line formation evolved by Maurice and Gustavus from the hollow square had also disappeared; it had closed its intervals and become one extended and jointless bar of men, from which such ponderous discharges of musketry were delivered, that cavalry could no longer, armed as they were with pistol and musketoon, attack with any hope of success. Cavalry, consequently, was more and more dispensed with, and for fifty years remained in the background, infantry taking its place, and artillery became an auxiliary to aid the infantry advance. The rigid line formation does not, however, favour the shock; it lacks animation and mobility, nor does it favour fire, as it hinders independent action and aim and, consequently, reduces the destructive power of firearms.
"The battles of this time (War of the Spanish Succession) were decided by nothing more than what the Swiss, the Landsknechts and the German cavalry had been celebrated for in the sixteenth century, viz., order and cohesion, which were now exemplified by the regular and intensive fire of a battalion. As the Germans and English excel all other nations in this peculiarity, these, and especially the French, suffered reverse after reverse."' ("The Influence of Firearms upon Tactics," p. 26.)
A few light infantry would have turned the French reverses into brilliant victories; and though this fact seems to be self-evident, it took exactly another century for Europe to grasp the lessons of Pydna, of Agincourt, and of Barletta; namely, that any body of heavy infantry maintained in mass formation can be destroyed, at leisure, by a much smaller force of well armed light infantry trained to act independently.
In spite of the fact that volleys of lead, at thirty to fifty paces distance, won Blenheim, Oudenarde, Minden and Dettingen, this system was radically faulty, in fact, it was a monstrosity in fire-tactics. That it lasted as long as it did only shows how conservative are systems which depend for their introduction and good name, not on the skill of their introducer, but on the mistakes and ignorance of his victims.
In 1804, one hundred years after Blenheim, a century famous for its wars throughout the world against heavy and light infantry alike, wars which were scattered over four continents, it was left to the illustrious Robert Jackson, an army surgeon, to write these words: "The firelock is an instrument of missile force. It is obvious that the force which is missile ought to be directed with aim, otherwise it will strike only by accident. It is evident that a person cannot take aim with any correctness unless he be free, independent and clear of all surrounding incumbrances; and, for this reason, there can be little dependence on the effect of fire that is given by platoons or volleys, and by word of command. Such explosions may intimidate by their noise; it is mere chance if they destroy by their impression. If there be a general maxim in war, it consists in opening the ranks for the use of missile force, and in closing them for the charge with the bayonet. If the destruction of the enemy be the object of a battle, the arrangements of modem tactic and the drillings of the soldier counteract the purpose. History furnishes proof that the battle is rarely gained by the scientific use of the musket; noise intimidates; platoon-firing strikes only at random; the charge with the bayonet decides the question." ("A View of the Formation Discipline and Economy of Armies," p. 258. Robert Jackson, M.D. Third Edition, 1845.
Yet, though Robert Jackson wrote these words at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was only towards the end of this same century that their intent was appreciated and acted upon.
The anomalous nature of warfare in this age was pronounced; the musket, par excellence, the missile-throwing weapon of the day, was no longer used to prepare the assault by disorganising the enemy's ranks, for its fire carried out an assault of its own, the shock now taking place, not at close quarters, but when still at a distance. Battles were now decided, not by demoralisation followed by shock, not even by manouvre, for, until the advent of Frederick the Great, manouvring of the great unjointed lines was next to impossible; not even by the bayonet charge, the true shock, but by halting at fifty paces distance from a line of men as immobile as a stop butt, and blowing this line off the face of the earth by ponderous discharges of lead. It was, in fact, the elephantiasis of fire-tactics. If the enemy retired, his assailant had to wait until he had halted; if he refused to halt, battles became impossible.
Only two men stand out during this period as men who still understand the essential value of missile and shock, namely, Folard and the Marechal de Saxe. Folard worked out a new tactics in which the line and column were linked together by a chain of skirmishers. Maréchal de Saxe improved on this system and wished to put his ideas into practice, but the means at his disposal were insufficient, so he fell back, as is usual with the weaker party, on the defensive. But, in place of crouching behind stakes and waggons, as the English archers and the Hussites had done, he employed defensive posts, an increased artillery and a successive employment of his forces, with the result that the Dutch and the English sustained one defeat after another - Fontenoy, 1745, Laufeldt, 1747, and Rocoux, 1747; the Netherlands were invaded and Savoy and Piedmont conquered.
Signs, though absent at the time, are not absent now (which is often the case when we read history in place of making it) of the beginnings of a new era of war which was destined to take two hundred years to mature. Through force of circumstance and of necessity that ancient system of tactics which has for its aim the demoralisation of the enemy before the act of decision can be carried out was re-introduced. The battles of the Trebia, Agincourt and Pavia should have taught the leaders of eighteenth century armies this one great lesson, but history is seldom read by those who have the making of it, and only too often is the past buried for the sake of a bubble reputation. They did not, and it was not until bands of howling savages, Tolpatches and Croats, had brought rape and murder into the Palatinate, and Iroquois and Mohawk had scalped the killed and wounded red coats of Braddock on the bank of the Monongahela, that generals began to realise, and then how feebly, that drill and method alone are not sufficient to teach a soldier to slay even a simple savage.
For many centuries, raids, massacres, persecutions and assassinations had been of daily occurrence in south-eastern Europe, where Turk meets Slav, Serbian and Croat. As these interminable skirmishes, at times, led to prolonged wars of rapine, of ravage, and of revenge, rather than of conquest or expulsion, the Austrians would take into their service bands of irregulars drawn from the local militias, cut-throats, banditti and such like, who were called by many names, such as Pandours, Croats, Tolpatches and Crabbates, according to the district in which they were recruited. They were a wild, thieving, plundering, murdering lot of scoundrels, of little use for fighting, but invaluable for purposes of reconnaissance, for outposts, screens and ambuscades. "With in a circle of these ruffians the troops of the line marched in dignified security." ("The British Army," p. 80. 1783-1802 The Hon. J. W. Fortescue.)
In Charles James's "A New and Enlarged Military Dictionary," 1805, we find the following information:
CROATS. Light irregular troops. "They are ordered upon all desperate services."
ARMS. A long firelock with rifled barrel, a short bayonet, a brace of pistols. Maria Theresa employed 5,000 of these irregular troops, "the greater part of which had no pay, but lived on plunder, on the acquisition of which they are remarkably dexterous."
PANDOURS, SCLAVARIANS, who inhabit the banks of the Drave. "The Pandours were originally a corps of infantry named Ruitza; and their chief occupation or duty was to clear the highroads of thieves." They first made their appearance in Germany under Baron Trenck, 1741. See also " Encyclopedie Methodique (Art Militaire), Paris, 1784," Vol. III., p. 296.
TOLPATCHES or TALPATCHES. A nickname of the Hungarian foot soldier, usually used as an insult.
CRABBATES. I have not yet discovered what type of rascals these were. (J. F. C. F.).
Besides these semi-savages, the Austrians frequently employed a corps of riflemen known as the "Tirailleurs of the Tyrol," who were famed for their deadly fire. With such light troops as these they covered and protected the ponderous movements of their heavy masses of infantry ("History and Campaigns of the Rifle Brigade," p. 4. Colonel W. Verner.)
According to Guibert ("A General Essay on Tactics." M. Guibert. London, 1781,) in 1740 when the War of the Austrian Succession was imminent, the Queen of Hungary raised bands of Croats. These, as usual, consisted of desperadoes and banditti whose duty it was to bivouack round the Austrian encampments. Under Nadasti and Loudon and the brutal partisan leaders Meutzel and Trenck, they gained a great and also an infamous reputation. At this time also, the Austrians raised several corps of light cavalry - Hussars - from their Hungarian Militia.
Of the four leaders mentioned above, Loudon was undoubtedly the most able. He, by accident, met in Vienna, in 1744, Francis Baron Trenck, then commanding the Sclavonian Free Corps known as the Pandours. Trenck, taking a fancy to Loudon, gave him one of his companies. Trenck himself was a born plunderer - hard, cold, unfeeling, totally without mercy and preferring pillage to war ("Loudon," p. 27. Colonel G. B. Malleson.) He eventually fell into disgrace; but of Loudon we shall hear more when we deal with the light infantry of the Seven Years War.
Shortly after the declaration of the War of the Spanish Succession, Marshal Saxe, who was not only the greatest general of his time, but a man of genius, at once recognised how useful the Pandours and Croats were to the Austrian Forces; not only did they protect them from surprise, but, by laying waste the country on all sides, forced their enemies to scatter in order to live, or to occupy their time in building field depots in place of fighting.
Though the Austrians frequently used the Pandours as sharpshooters, they seldom employed them as true light infantry, namely, as the forerunners of the decisive attack. Saxe saw, however, that their marauding capabilities were often as detrimental to the success of the Austrians as they were an assistance; further he saw, learning by observation of facts based on theories drawn from history by the Chevalier de Folard, that, if these irregular sharpshooters could be trained and disciplined, they might easily be formed into a magnificent light infantry; that is into troops capable of preparing and covering the attack.
In the days of de Saxe there were practically no light troops in the French Army. Under Louis XIV., Duhesme tells us there were no light infantry at all, and that protective duties were carried out by the cavalry. That, in the reign of Louis XV., a few light-infantry were raised, but that they took no part in pitched battles. He relates that an old soldier of the Seven Years War once told him that light infantry was not used by the French during that war ("Essai Historique sur L'infanterie Legere," p. 121. Par le Comte Duhesme, 1864.) This, as a general assertion, is probably correct.
Guibert tells us in his "Tactics" that: "Nations for many ages past have made war without this kind of arm, which we call light troops.
"At the arrival of some officers from the wars of Hungary, who had seen the irregular troops of the Turks and the Hungarians, and who had brought with them a few Hussars of these last people, gave the thought to Marshal Luxembourg of raising, in 1692, the first regiment of French hussars, called Mortagin . . . this led to the raising of others. . . . These hussars and dragoons were followed by independent troops. . . . These independent troops were raised by Swiss officers; . . . history records that these troops . . . signalised themselves by many daring acts of valour." ("A General Essay on Tactics." M. Guibert. London, 1751.)
In 1702, there were in the French Army 4 or 5 "Compagnies Franches," each of 400 to 500 men. "En 1736 il y eut un Reglement qui fixa a trente hommes les Compagnies Franches; elles etoient pour lors aux ordres de M. le Marechal Duc de Bellisle." These companies appear to have been ephemeral. "Traite de la Petite Guerre pour les Compagnies Franches." Par M. de la Croix. Paris, 1752.
Marshal de Saxe now proposed the following syetem:
To form, as the tactical unit, a division of four regiments, each regiment consisting of four companies of one hundred and eighty-four men each, together with a half company of light infantry and another of light cavalry. These regimental half companies were each to consist of seventy men. During the advance, the light infantry were to be thrown out in front as a skirmishing line. When the regiment arrived within assaulting distance, preparatory to the charge, the companies formed company columns at half deploying intervals, through which the light infantry in front could retire. In rear of the regiment the half company of light cavalry was formed into two troops ready to charge through the intervals with the reformed light infantry if the charge of the infantry of the line was successful, or to cover their retirement if it failed.
During the attack, according to Marshal de Saxe, the light infantry, as skirmishers, were to push forward a hundred to two hundred paces in front of the advancing columns, and to open fire when three hundred yards from the enemy, continuing to fire, without word of command, until they had reached a point some fifty yards from the enemy's position. From this distance they were not, suddenly and on their own initiative, to fall back, but to wait for signals from the columns behind them; these signals being given when the columns were ready to charge home. Once given, the skirmishers were not to run until they had reached the intervals through which they retired and reformed. Meanwhile, the company columns moved up. The intervals between the companies were only ten yards in width, and, though they provided enough room for the skirmishers to retire by, they did not offer sufficient for the enemy to surround the companies and defeat them in detail. Besides, as the charging companies met the enemy's line, the deploying intervals were rapidly filled by fighting men. If the enemy managed, however, to insert himself between the companies, the light infantry were then to advance and charge him in flank.
De Saxe's system was based on the tactical rule that shock must be preceded by fire. He tells us: "To cross three hundred yards will take six to seven minutes. Light infantry should be able to fire six shots a minute, but under the stress of battle four should only be allowed for. Each man will, consequently, fire thirty shots during the advance, and as there are seventy men, two thousand shots will altogether be fired. If the men who fire are men who pass their lives in firing at targets, who are not in close order, and who fire freely and independently . . . I hold that one shot fired by a light infantryman thus exercised is worth at least ten fired by another. . . ." "Un fusil a secret," writes de Saxe, "carries four hundred yards point blanc (de but en blanc) and if you raise it twenty to twenty-five degrees it will carry one thousand yards." ("Essai Historique sur L'Infanterie Legere." Le Comte Duhesme, 1864. "Un fusil a secret" was probably some type of rifle; if so, though it might have fired 1,000 yards, no infantryman could have fired six shots a minute with it.)
Unfortunately de Saxe was not able to put this system to the test; nevertheless, though he was not in a position to make use of a trained light infantry, except his Grassin troops, he made use of an untrained one with signal success. During his campaign in Bohemia, recognising the utility of the Austrian Hussars and Croats, he raised several troops of Hulans. In his army he had the famous legion of Grassin, a combined light infantry and light cavalry corps. "Mons. de Grassin's regiment des Arquebusiers," was the first the French had of riflemen; they were raised in 1744, on the advice of Marechal de Saxe. Extract from a note in the "History of his Campaigns," Vol. II, p. 17: "This regiment of light troops, composed of 900 men, of which 600 were infantry and 300 cavalry, was raised in less than two months; and it proved itself from its first campaign as useful as the older corps: so true is the saying that men have only to be led well to prove themselves good soldiers. M. de Grassin, to accustom his men to fire, sent them out daily to skirmish with the patrols sent out by the garrison of Tournay. This irregular fighting inspired them with such confidence in themselves, that a little later, when they had joined the army of M. de Saxe at Courtrai, two of their piquets being attacked by the free Companies of the Allies defended themselves so staunchly that they forced the enemy to retire in disorder, and harassed them for a considerable time during their retreat." "A Partial Reorganisation of the British Army," p. 43. General J. Money. 1799.
Grassin's troops were the first true light infantry of modern times; they behaved splendidly at Fontenoy, 1745, and decided the battle of Mesle. Of Fontenoy, Fortescue ("History of the British Army," Vol. II, p. 109. Hon. J. W. Fortescue) writes: "On the 9th of April, 1745, Cumberland arrived at Brissoel, within sight of Saxe's army. The ground immediately in front of the Allies was broken by little copses, woods and enclosures, all of them commanded with mercenary irregular troops - Pandours, Grassins, and the like - which, imitated first from the Austrians, had by this time become a necessary part of the French as of every army."
At Lauffeld, 1747, Saxe masked his movements by sending forward a cloud of irregular troops.
Besides Grassin's legion, Saxe employed other light troops, such as those of Morliere, Cantabres, Ghent, Guesreich and Beausobre, as well as Fischer's free corps. According to General J. Money (a veteran of the Seven Years War) in "A Partial Reorganisation of the British Army," 1799, the French, in 1760, "had only one Corps of Irregulars with their army, commanded by Fischer, and we had only one commanded by Colonel Shitzer. . . ." Fischer was in early life a domestic servant. In 1742, he organised as a free-band, a few of his comrades to resist the attack of the Pandours at Prague. This corps, in 1743, took service in the French Army as the Chasseurs de Fischer. Fischer was killed at Welter by Lieut.-Colonel Harvey of the Inniskillings, "who struck off his head with one blow of his broadsword." "A Record of the Services of the Fifty-first (Second West York), The King's Own Light Infantry Regiment," p. 19. W. Wheater, 1870.
But the other French armies of the day do not seem to have used them so extensively. Nevertheless, we find in Italy, in 1746, in the combined French and Spanish armies under Conti and Don Philip of Piedmont, two battalions of mountain fusiliers. These Spanish mountain troops were called "los Mignones," better known as Miquelets. They were originally a band of Catalonian bandits led by one Michel. This type of robber often turned mercenary in order to legitimise his robberies.
Also, at about this time, the King of Sardinia owed his deliverance to his corps of irregulars, called Barbets, which were recruited from the Alpine valleys between Pignerol and Nice. The Barbets were formed into irregular troops for the defence of the Alpine villages . . . "who scatter themselves and retire from tree to tree, from rock to rock, and destroy a party, who can neither beat them, nor take one of them." See "A Treatise on the Art of War," p. 158, 1803; also "Military Instructions for Officers detached in the Field. Containing a scheme for forming a Corps of a Partisan." Roger Stevenson, 1770.
In England we find a similar force being raised in the Scottish Highlands.
Independent companies of Highlanders had been raised by the English as far back as 1710, but, owing to the rebellion of 1715, these were disbanded in 1717. In 1725, to enforce the disarmament of the Highlands, four companies of Highlanders were raised in Scotland and became known as the Black Watch. In 1739, four additional companies were raised, the whole being constituted into the 43rd Regiment of the line, now the 42nd Royal Highlanders ("History of the British Army," Vol. II., p. 49. Fortescue.) Grosse informs us that the companies raised in 1739 were "for the protection of the country against robbers" ("Military Antiquities," p. 156. Francis Grosse. 1812;) they were, in fact, an irregular police, and are well described in a work published in 1743 ("A Short History of the Highland Regiments.")
About 1725, independent companies of Highlanders, each three hundred strong, were recruited. ". . . They were principally intended to put a final period to the insurrections of the Clans, and to secure their country from any attempts that might be made by the Highlanders in the Jacobite interest, it was thought requisite to preserve their ancient habit, that they might be the more able to pursue any of these offenders into their fastnesses.
"The Highlander wears a sort of thin pump or brogue, so light that it does not in the least impede his activity in running; and from being constantly accustomed to these kind of shoes, they are able to advance or retreat with incredible swiftness, so that if they have the better in any engagement it is scarce possible to escape from them; and on the other hand, if they are overpower'd they soon recover their hills, where it is impossible to reach them. The reader will easily perceive that this is one of the advantages which the Croats and Pandours have over the French troops, especially in such a country as Bavaria, which is everywhere intersected by rivers. They gain from hence an opportunity, first of wearying their enemy 'till they are forced to break, and then they are sure to be knocked on the head, as finding it is impossible to run away from these people. . . ."
Their weapons were a "fuzil, a broadsword, a dirk or dagger, an Highland pistol all of steel. . . ." In the use of these arms they were extremely adroit, having learnt how to handle them from their infancy.
By the time the War of the Austrian Succession had been concluded by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748, we find that untrained light infantry had, chiefly on account of the Croats and Pandours, forced themselves, willy nilly, into recognition as a necessary adjunct to the line, an arm which could harass, and sometimes even destroy the line, and a shield which could nearly always protect it. Further, though the true value of these irregulars was not appreciated by the generals of the day, except by the brilliant Marshal de Saxe, they were, even in their acts of wanton plunder, sowing the seed of a new tactics, which, though ungrasped by the Great Frederick, by distant onlookers, such as Guibert, Turpin and Mesnil-Durand, was to be criticised, dissected and reshaped, until it was built into the perfected infantry tactics of the early Napoleonic Wars.
As in the fourteenth century, the hillmen of Wales, Scotland and Switzerland gave to Europe a new infantry tactics, reviving the military glory of ancient Greece; now, in the eighteenth, it was the hillmen of the Tyrol, of the Carpathians, of the Pyrenees, and of Piedmont, of Switzerland, and of Scotland, who revived the splendour of the Roman legion, the model which Napoleon adopted.
This is only as it should be, for in sparse mountainous countries, where agriculture is difficult and unprofitable, man relies as much on the bow and arrow, the musket or rifle for hunting, as on the plough for tilling his fields. A mountainous country always produces good soldiers, fleet of foot and sure of eye. The first light troops in the British Standing Army were the Royal Highlanders, the second, as we shall shortly see, the Royal Americans, under their famous leader, Colonel Bouquet.