Forward into Battle

by Paddy Griffin

  In France as elsewhere, however, there was also a reaction against the Chasseur movement. Precisely because it concentrated a large number of effervescent and innovative young officers in one place, it was automatically distrusted by many of their elders. Because it represented an attack on the artillery and the cavalry, equally, it could not fail to make many enemies. Of particular importance, perhaps, were some of the moral and political assumptions which lay behind the light infantry movement. No longer was the infantryman to be fully under the control of his officers. He was to be master of his own fire – and indeed the Chasseurs had originally dispensed with the word of command to ‘fire’ altogether.

  For some officers this devolution of decision-making was pure heresy. In the Infantry committee of the French Ministry of War in 1844, for example, we hear that:

  Several members objected to the proposition that soldiers should be the absolute masters of their muskets. The soldier was considered to be no more than a rack on which the musket could be rested.19

  Perhaps rather less extreme but more widespread was the view of Captain Boyer, who wrote in 1833 in favour of close formations and tight ‘surveillance’ of the men by their officers and NCO’s:

  By concentrating your defences into a smaller space … everyone is forced to do his duty. In this order of battle the officers will acquire a great ascendency over the spirits of the men, whose morale is easy to excite on the battlefield, and especially when leaders close at hand give them an example of devotion and contempt for danger.20

  It was especially the morale and obedience of the soldiers which open order was thought to undermine. Skirmishing with long-range rifles was considered to be indecisive – as indeed it had been in Napoleonic times – and therefore to be ultimately demoralising. ‘One would think that their [i.e. rifles’] use would be favourable neither to the courage in action, nor to the intelligence, which have in every age ensured the superiority of the French soldier.’21

  There was a great feeling in the French Army that although long range fire might achieve certain indisputably concrete results, it would do so only at a high psychological cost. There was absolutely no point in killing the enemy if at the same time you also destroyed your own men’s will to advance. Simple humanity seemed to dictate a less indecisive form of action, as did military expediency.

  An official answer to the ‘battle of killing’ of the Chasseur school gradually emerged in the French Army, which stressed heavy firepower at short rather than long range, combined with a vigorous and decisive bayonet charge. This formula had similarities with the British Peninsular technique, although in the French Army the battalions were generally to be formed in columns rather than in lines. The important thing was seen to be keeping the troops under the control of their officers in close formation for as long as possible. Only if this were done could they function with precision and decisive effect.

  We have already seen that when he discussed British tactics Jomini advocated a combination of close range fire with a bayonet charge. Of even greater influence, however, were the writings of Colonel Bugeaud, who later became a Marshal of France. Bugeaud specifically laid down the need to avoid indecisive ‘tiraillements’ between firing lines which would only exhaust each other to no purpose. Instead the troops should advance in close order with only a few skirmishers preparing the way. A single volley with double-loaded muskets followed by a controlled forward rush, would be enough to disperse the enemy.22

  For Bugeaud the true science of the infantry lay not in the target practice of the Chasseurs, but in techniques for fostering high morale and preventing the spread of disorder. There was common ground between the two camps in that they both recognised the need to educate the soldier and develop his skill in rapid marching; but whereas the Chasseurs called for individual initiative, Bugeaud was a firm authoritarian. For him the cohesion of a unit was entirely the responsibility of its officers, and once that principle was fully accepted everything else would be easy. His Napoleonic experience led him to believe that most infantry degenerated too quickly into a formless rabble. A well led French battalion which could maintain its formation, therefore, would be more than a match for all comers:

  A troop thus led will always be brave and rarely defeated, because it will rarely encounter enemies with equal elevation of spirit and equal principles of combat.23

  Bugeaud’s work today appears to be markedly Napoleonic and backward-looking in tone, yet at the time it was written it seemed inspired by daring modernity. It provided an answer to the technical arguments of the light infantry lobby, by appealing less to the past than to brand-new ‘sciences’ of the Romantic Age. Bugeaud ignored the formal geometrical calculations which had for long been central in tactical writing. Instead, he analysed the ‘moral side of combat’, and seemed to be looking deeper into the psychology of soldiers in battle than any previous writer. His talk of deployed lines and a single volley at close range also sounded highly un-Napoleonic to officers who were used to regimental columns and protracted firing between skirmishers: Bugeaud’s system was therefore accepted as a step forward which combined old and new elements into a fresh and constructive vision.

  Our attitude towards early nineteenth-century armies has perhaps been clouded by the belief that they knew nothing of science. We can too easily assume that before the age of mechanisation all generals were opponents of anything which smacked of technology, industry or (worst of all) towns. This picture is not quite correct, however, since although there was certainly a strong ideal of rural nobility among these men, there was also a genuine realisation that they were living in a scientific age. In France the cosmology of Laplace was enjoying an astonishing vogue which even brought it into the curricula of regimental primary schools. The high pace of technical change has already been mentioned in the field of armaments; but it also spilled over into many other types of military equipment such as maps, clothing and transport. All these things were changing rapidly and the achievements of science were on everyone’s lips. Even the most reactionary officer from the remotest Vendean farmyard must surely have been aware that times were moving in a technical direction.

  Soldiers even started to appreciate that science could bring promotion. In some cases this was true to a limited extent at a personal level, as for the infantrymen Delvigne and Minié, who both invented improved rifles. It was much more true, however, at the institutional level. In the eighteenth century the so-called ‘technical arms’ of the artillery and engineers had gained an influence in the army which far exceeded their numerical strength. Not only on the battlefield but also in ministerial committees had these branches been able to multiply numbers by technology. Their privileged position was much envied by other arms with less science at their disposal.

  After the Napoleonic campaigns, however, warfare seemed to have changed. It was felt that in the new age there would be a greater opportunity for other arms to rival the artillery and engineers in their scientific achievements. Professional staff officers, especially, pointed out that the ‘science’ of strategy had now come of age, giving the staff a natural authority over other branches.24 The infantry also tried to develop a variety of ‘sciences’ of its own, as we have seen; while the cavalry equally plunged into an ambitious programme for applying the new ‘sciences’ of horse breeding and horse care. When Field Marshal the Earl Haig made his famous statement after the First World War to the effect that the well bred horse would always have a place in battle, he was doubtless echoing the cavalry’s belief that it had kept up with the march of technology just as much as any other arm. The ‘well bred horse’ of the early twentieth century was indeed a very different animal from the nags deployed by Murat and Lassalle. Applied science had made it so, and the cavalry therefore believed itself to be numbered among the ‘technical arms’.

  Far from being unaware of science, early nineteenth-century armies did everything they could to invent new sciences. Their problem was that there was too little genuine innovation to g
o round. Many branches of the service had to make do with pseudo-sciences such as gymnastics or horse-care. This did not diminish the ardour with which such activities were pursued, but rather increased it. Ever greater efforts were made by the sponsors of new techniques to demonstrate their scientific status. The first training course for French regimental gymnastic instructors, for example, lasted three years and included a number of theoretical subjects at university level. It was perhaps hardly surprising that some of the pupils left the army in disgust, while the remainder committed acts of indiscipline against their instructor.25

  It is in this context that Bugeaud’s emphasis on high morale should be seen. He was effectively offering the line infantry a new self-image which would allow it to claim equal status with the Chasseurs and even with the more traditional technical arms. He was implying that morale-building was a science which could bear comparison with any other. However seriously this may have been received, there was undeniably a great sense of innovation and change about the infantry throughout this period. It was conscious of doing more for each individual soldier than had ever been done before. As a long-service conscript he was seen as the best possible compromise between the citizen and the professional. He embodied all that was best in the nation, and deserved far more than a deadening round of drill. His enthusiasms were to be aroused and maintained by better barrack conditions, lighter discipline, regimental education courses, gymnastics, fencing, target practice (a notable innovation, this!), and even singing and dancing. The ‘spirit of Sir John Moore’ was powerfully at work in France at this time, albeit without his central theme of fighting by long range fire.

  In practice the Chasseurs à Pied found that their skills were never fully understood or employed on the battlefield. Commanders tended to regard them as élite assault troops rather than as skirmishers. They were thrown into a van of attacks and suffered disproportionately heavy casualties. On the other hand they did at least have the satisfaction of seeing some of their morale assumptions gradually absorbed into the army. Throughout the remainder of the century there was a strong emphasis on the need to educate the soldier, as well as a steadily growing acceptance of open-order formations. In the short term, however, it was Bugeaud’s slightly different emphasis which predominated.

  In 1854 Bugeaud’s instructions were issued almost verbatim by Marshal St. Arnaud to the troops about to fight in the Crimea. On the battlefield they seemed to have worked fairly well, although in confused fights such as Inkerman it was already being realised that soldiers might use a lot more individual initiative than had been foreseen. The Crimea was perhaps not a fair test, however, since the French and British enjoyed a marked superiority in both armament and tactical flexibility (Balaklava notwithstanding). The Russians tended to manoeuvre in excessively deep columns, and did not possess the rifle-musket.

  A rather more serious test came in 1859, when for the first time the French encountered an enemy who was himself fully equipped with modern weapons. In this case it was the Austrians in North Italy, with their Lorenz rifles. French tacticians believed that this challenge would require a somewhat altered response, and in some respects they moved away from Bugeaud’s prescriptions. While retaining his emphasis upon morale and leadership, they felt that in this war there should be a greater stress upon rapid forward movement through the zone beaten by the enemy’s fire. Battalion columns covered by skirmishers were therefore to be preferred to Bugeaud’s deployed lines, and the soldiers making the charge itself would no longer be expected to stop to give a volley as they came. There was an increased fear that troops which stopped to fire would become bogged down in an indecisive exchange of shots. Everything possible had to be done to come to close quarters.

  In his tactical instructions of 1859 Napoleon III made a classic statement of what he wanted his men to believe:

  The new weapons are dangerous only at long range; they do not prevent the bayonet from being, as in the past, the terrible arm of the French infantry.26

  The astonishing thing about this apparently optimistic formula was that it worked beyond the wildest dreams of its architects.

  The 1859 Italian campaign was possibly the most important of all the steps which led to the tactics of the First World War. In this campaign the leading military nation of Europe devised and executed a successful technique for overcoming an enemy armed with rifled muskets. It was a technique which rested not upon firepower but upon the bayonet. High morale and rapid movement in small columns were found to make an effective answer to improved firearms. The French took this lesson to heart, and felt that it finally resolved the debate about firepower which had been raging since 1815. It was therefore small wonder that they showed little interest in the tactics of the American Civil War a few years later.27 Why should they, since the Americans were only tackling a problem which the French had already solved?

  The central fact of the Italian campaign was that charges with the bayonet were able to carry enemy positions more often than not. This in itself was a crucially important finding. It was soon joined, however, by two rather less comfortable elements in the debate. Firstly there was the matter of racial characteristics and secondly there was what came to be called the ‘flight to the front’.

  In the eighteenth century there had been a feeling among tactical theorists that the further north one went in Europe, the less active and excitable would the local inhabitants appear. Their soldiers would be less well fitted for rapid manoeuvres and bayonet charges, but much better at the careful and steady business of firing musket volleys. Germans were thought to fight best by fire, while Frenchmen were better at charging and individual skirmishing.

  These ideas had been present in the tactical debate for over a century, although admittedly the firepower of the Germans had not seemed particularly impressive in the Napoleonic wars. What gave the theory a new lease of life around 1859 seems to have been the increased general interest in ‘heredity’. Horse breeding was starting to be more scientifically based at this time, and it is perhaps no coincidence that Darwin’s Origin of Species first appeared in 1859. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century a variety of pseudo-scientific racial theories gained wide circulation in Europe, and they inevitably left their imprint upon the discussion of tactics:

  The French, the Italians, and Latin armies in general have … a more ardent temperament than the troops of Germanic stock. As a result firing, which especially calls for sang-froid to be effective, is less suitable for them and pleases them less than the bayonet attack or individual action, in which their fiery natures can be given free rein.28

  Having thus ‘scientifically’ identified the tactics which were natural for the French, theorists could believe that great advantages might be gained by taking them to extremes.

  Attempts by officers to restrain the racially ‘natural’ ardour of their troops, or to stick to some rigid drill-book, could be represented as disadvantageous. It was therefore with some glee that the analysts of 1859 reported that the officers had sometimes been left behind in the charge:

  The bayonet was in fashion in the whole of the allied army. It was a veritable frenzy, and very often the officers, far from commanding their men, were forced to obey those of them who threw themselves forward with cries of ‘à la baionette!’, and follow them whether they liked it or not. Before Melegnano, at the cemetery of Solferino and beneath San Martino, these courageous impulsions admittedly cost us dear; but the final result crowned them with success.29

  This ‘flight to the front’ was also recognised as being partly the result of the improved firearms themselves. With bullets falling around a unit at long range, the men would be goaded into advancing all the faster. Paradoxically it was greater defensive firepower which actually speeded up the attack and gave it more enthusiasm. Losses to fire might be heavy; but they could be minimised if the soldiers did not stand still as passive targets.

  Some commentators, however, saw that because it was fear which drove men forward, t
heir attack would not be solidly based. It would lack the deliberation and cohesion which Bugeaud had recommended, and would be fragile if it encountered difficulties such as an enemy counter-charge. According to the members of this school the best tactics would be those which could somehow reduce the disorder and dispersion which the modern battlefield seemed to impose. Colonel Ardant du Picq in particular made a remarkable collection of eyewitness accounts of battle, which convinced him that the history of modern warfare was in reality the history of increasing fear and confusion. As firepower improved, so the ability of soldiers to retain their calmness decreased. It was thus but a short logical step to the view that measures should be taken to increase calmness and discipline, in order to reduce the effects of fear:

  Combat requires today, in order to give the best results, a moral cohesion, a unity more binding than at any other time. It is as true as it is clear, that, if one does not wish bonds to break, one must make them elastic in order to strengthen them.30

  Ardant du Picq, himself a former Chasseur, was advocating a looser but stronger form of discipline which would allow troops to fight more independently but more effectively in the dispersed and somewhat disorganised formations of the modern battlefield. Unlike Bugeaud or Napoleon III he did not feel that close order was necessarily the best answer to the problem, but he certainly did recognise the need for what he called ‘order’. ‘The victor will be he who secures most order and determined dash.’31