Читать книгу Wellington's Army, 1809-1814 - Charles Oman - Страница 9

Ample Provision of Light Troops

In the summer of 1810, Wellington began the system of incorporating a Portuguese brigade of five battalions in each British division. Of these five one was always89 a Caçador or light battalion, specially trained for skirmishing. The old Portuguese army had not included such battalions, which were all newly raised corps, intended entirely for light infantry work. There were originally only six of them, but Wellington ordered a second six to be raised in 1811, utilizing as the cadre of the 7th, 8th, 9th the old Loyal Lusitanian Legion, which Sir Robert Wilson had formed early in the war. As the Portuguese army contained just twenty-four regiments of the line, in twelve brigades, the Caçador battalion gave precisely one unit to each brigade, save that two were incorporated in the Light Division, while none was left with the two regiments which remained behind in garrison at Abrantes and at Cadiz respectively.

As the Caçador battalions were essentially light troops, and used wholly for skirmishing, it resulted that when an Anglo-Portuguese division of the normal strength of six British and five Portuguese battalions set itself in battle array, it sent out a skirmishing line of no less than eight British and ten Portuguese companies, viz. one each from the line battalions, two of British rifles, six of Caçadores, or a total of from 1200 to 1500 men to a total strength of 5000 to 5500. This, as will be obvious, was a very powerful protective sheath to cover the front of the division. It was not always required—the French did not invariably send out a skirmishing line in advance of their main attack: but when they did, it would always be restrained and kept off from the main front of the divisional line. If the enemy wished to push it in, he had to bring up his formed battalions through his tirailleurs, and thus only could he reach the front of battle. The French regiments, whether formed in ordre mixte or (as was more common) in column, had to come to the front, and only so could reach the hitherto intact British line. It may be noted that the enemy rarely used for his skirmishing line more than the voltigeur company of each battalion; as his divisions averaged ten to twelve battalions90 and the unit was a six-company battalion of 600 men or under, with only one voltigeur company, a French division would send out 1000 to 1200 skirmishers, a force appreciably less than the light troops of a British division of approximately equal force. Hence Wellington never seems to have been seriously incommoded by the French skirmishers.

Advantages of the Skirmishing Screen

So considerable was the British screen of light troops that the French not unfrequently mistook it for a front line, and speak of their column as piercing or thrusting back the first line of their opponents, when all that they had done was to drive in a powerful and obstinate body of skirmishers bickering in front of the real fighting formation.91 Invariably, we may say, they had to use their columns to attack the two-deep line while the latter was still intact, while their own masses had already been under fire for some time and were no longer fresh.

It will be asked, perhaps, why the marshals and generals of Napoleon did not deploy their columns before the moment of contact. Why do we so seldom read of even the ordre mixte in use—Albuera is the only battle where we distinctly find it mentioned? The answer to this objection is, firstly, that they were strongly convinced that the column was the better striking force to carry a given point, and that they were normally attacking not the whole British line but the particular section or sections where they intended to break through. But, secondly, we may add that they frequently did attempt to deploy, but always too late, since they waited till they had driven in the British skirmishing line, and tried to assume the thinner formation when they were already under fire and heavily engaged. It was not always that the British noted this endeavour—so late was it begun, so instant was its failure. But there is evidence that it was tried by Kellermann’s grenadiers at Vimeiro, by part at least of Leval’s division at Barrosa, by Merle’s column at Bussaco, when it had already reached the summit of the Serra, and was closely engaged with Picton’s troops. At Albuera we have a good description of it from the British side. When Myers’ fusilier brigade marched against the flank of the 5th Corps, in the crisis of that battle, Soult launched against them his reserve, the three regiments of Werlé, which became at once locked in combat at very short range with the fusiliers. “During the close action,” writes a British officer (Blakeney of the 7th), “I saw their officers endeavouring to deploy their columns, but all to no purpose. For as soon as the third of a company got out, they would immediately run back in order to be covered by the front of their column.” The fact was, that the effect of the fire of a British regiment far exceeded anything that the enemy had been wont to cope with when engaged with continental troops, and was altogether devastating. Again and again French officers who came under it for the first time, made the miscalculation of trying the impossible. Nothing could be more inevitably productive of confusion and disorder than to attempt deployment under such a heavy fire. Wherefore many French commanders never tried it at all, and thought it more safe to go on to the final shock with their battalions in the usual “column of divisions,” in which they had begun their attack. This was little better, and quite as costly in the end. “Really,” wrote Wellington, in a moment of unwonted exhilaration, after the combat of Sabugal, “these attacks in column against our lines are very contemptible.”92 This was after he had viewed from the other bank of the Coa, “where I could see every movement on both sides,” the 43rd regiment repulse in succession three attacks by French columns which came up against it, one after the other.

Necessity of Flank Cover

(3) We now come to the third postulate of Wellington’s system—the two-deep fighting line must be covered on its flanks, either by the ground, or by cavalry and artillery support, or by infantry prolonging the front beyond the enemy’s immediate point of action. At Talavera one of his flanks was covered by a precipitous hill, the other by thick olive plantations. At Bussaco both the French attacks were hopelessly outflanked by troops posted on high and inaccessible ground, and could only be pushed frontally. At Fuentes de Oñoro the final fighting position rested on a heavily occupied village at one end, and on the ravine of the Turon river upon the other. At Salamanca the 3rd Division, the striking-force which won the battle, had its line covered on its outer flank by a British and a Portuguese brigade of cavalry. At Vittoria the whole French army was enveloped by the concentric and converging attack of the much longer British line. At Waterloo flank protection was secured by the advanced post of Hougoumont and a “refused” right wing at one end of the position: by the group of fortified farms (Papelotte, La Haye, etc.), and a mass of cavalry at the other. Wellington, in short, was very careful of his flanks. Only once indeed, so far as I remember, did the French get round the outlying end of his army and cause him trouble. This was in the first episode of Fuentes de Oñoro, where the 7th Division, placed some way out, as a flank-guard, suffered some loss by being taken in rear by French cavalry which had made a great circuit, and only escaped worse disaster because two of its battalions, the 51st and Chasseurs Britanniques, had time to form front to flank, and adapt themselves to the situation, and because a few British squadrons sacrificed themselves in checking, so long as was possible, the enemy’s superior horse.

There was one universally remembered instance during the war which demonstrated the terrible risk that the line might run if it were not properly protected on the flanks. At Albuera Colborne’s brigade of the 2nd Division was thrown into the fight with its flank absolutely bare—there was no support within half a mile—by the recklessness of its divisional general, William Stewart. It was caught unprepared by two regiments of French cavalry, charging in at an angle, almost on its rear, and three battalions were literally cut to pieces, with a loss of 1200 men out of 1600 present, and five colours. Wellington would never have sent it forward without the proper support on its wings, and it is noteworthy that, later on the same day, Cole took the 4th Division into action on the same hill, and against the same enemy, with perfect success, because he had guarded one flank with a battalion in column, and the other (the outer and more exposed one) with a battalion in square and a brigade of cavalry.

These, then, were the necessary postulates required for the successful use of line against column, and when they were duly borne in mind, victory was secure with any reasonable balance in numbers. The essential fact that lay behind the oft-observed conclusion was simply that the two-deep line enabled a force to use every musket with effect, while the “column of divisions” put seven-ninths of the men forming it in a position where they could not shoot at all, and even the ordre mixte praised by Napoleon placed from seven-twelfths to two-thirds of the rank and file in the same unhappy condition.93 But Albuera is the only fight in the war in which there is definite proof that the enemy fought in the ordre mixte with deployed battalions and battalions in column ranged alternately in his front.94 Usually he came on with his units all in columns of divisions, and very frequently (as at Bussaco and in certain episodes at Talavera) he had battalion behind battalion in each regiment. It was a gross order of fighting, but D’Erlon invented a worse and a more clumsy formation at Waterloo, where he sent forward whole divisions with eight or nine battalions deployed one behind the other, so as to produce a front of only 200 men and a depth of twenty-four—with only one man in twelve able to use his musket.

Superior Fire of the Line

Clearly, however, the column of divisions (double companies) was the normal French order, i.e. in a battalion of 600 men in six companies, we should get a front of 66 muskets and 132 men able to fire, while 468 were in the rear ranks, able to be shot but not to shoot. If an English battalion of equal strength lay in front, in its two-deep line, it could give a discharge of 600 muskets against one of 132, and this was not all. Its front was nearly five times that of the French battalion, so that its fire lapped round the flanks of the advancing mass, demoralizing it because there was no proper power to reply. Often the British line, during the moments of fire-combat, somewhat threw forward its wings in a shallow crescent, and blazed with three sides of the column at once. This was done by the 43rd and 52nd at Bussaco, with great effect, against the French brigade, that of Simon, which came up the slope in front of them, with its leading regiment ranged three battalions deep, in a most vulnerable array. How could it be expected that the column would prevail? Effective against an enemy who allowed himself to be cowed and beaten by the sight of the formidable advancing mass, it was helpless against steady troops, who stood their ground and emptied their muskets, as fast as they could load, into a mark which it was impossible to miss. This, probably, is what Wellington meant when (as mentioned above) he stated to Croker, ere ever he sailed for Portugal, that “if all I hear about their system is true, I think it a false one against steady troops. I suspect all the continental armies are half-beaten before the battle begins.” That is to say, the column might win by the terror that its massive weight and impetus inspired; but if the enemy refused to be terrorized, he would be able to hold his own, and to inflict enormous losses on the crowded formation.

It only remains to be said that, with the battalion in column of divisions as unit, the French had two ways of drawing up their attacking line. They might either draw up the battalions of each regiment in a line of columns, or they might place them one behind the other, making the whole regiment into a single column. Both methods were from time to time employed. It was not details of arrangement like this which made the difference—the essential weakness was the “column of divisions” which formed the base of all the array—it was too helpless in fire-contest against the line.

The physical aspect of the contest between line and column we have now sufficiently dealt with. What was the moral aspect? Fortunately we can explain it with accuracy, because one of the many thousands of French officers who went through the Peninsular War has left us, not personal anecdotes or confused impressions like so many of his fellows, but a real account of the mental state of a battalion going forward in column to attack the British line. I make no excuse for quoting in full the paragraphs of Bugeaud, a chef de bataillon in 1812—a marshal of African fame thirty years later—because they give us exactly what we want to know. It should be premised, however, that Bugeaud did not serve in the Army of Portugal, nor face Wellington’s own troops. He served in Suchet’s army, along the Mediterranean Coast of the Peninsula, and his personal observations must have been made at Castalla and other combats in the East. It is to be noted also that he gives no account of the clash of skirmishers which so often took place, and describes his column as going forward unsheathed to the main clash of battle.

Bugeaud on Column versus Line

“I served seven years in the Peninsula,” he says; “during that time we sometimes beat the English in isolated encounters and raids [e.g. Ordal] which as a field officer detached I was able to prepare and direct. But during that long period of war, it was my sorrow to see that only in a very small number of general actions did the British army fail to get the better of us. We almost invariably attacked our adversaries, without either taking into account our own past experience, or bearing in mind that the tactics which answered well enough when we had only Spaniards to deal with, almost invariably failed when an English force was in our front.

“The English generally held good defensive positions, carefully selected and usually on rising ground, behind the crest of which they found cover for a good part of their men. The usual obligatory cannonade would commence the operation, then, in haste, without duly reconnoitring the position, without ascertaining whether the ground afforded any facilities for lateral or turning movements, we marched straight forward, ‘taking the bull by the horns.’95

“When we got to about a thousand yards from the English line the men would begin to get restless and excited: they exchanged ideas with one another, their march began to be somewhat precipitate, and was already growing a little disorderly. Meanwhile the English, silent and impassive, with grounded arms, loomed like a long red wall; their aspect was imposing—it impressed novices not a little. Soon the distance began to grow shorter: cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur,’ ‘en avant à la baïonnette,’ broke from our mass. Some men hoisted their shakos on their muskets, the quick-step became a run: the ranks began to be mixed up: the men’s agitation became tumultuous, many soldiers began to fire as they ran. And all the while the red English line, still silent and motionless, even when we were only 300 yards away, seemed to take no notice of the storm which was about to beat upon it.

“The contrast was striking. More than one among us began to reflect that the enemy’s fire, so long reserved, would be very unpleasant when it did break forth. Our ardour began to cool: the moral influence (irresistible in action) of a calm which seems undisturbed as opposed to disorder which strives to make up by noise what it lacks in firmness, weighed heavily on our hearts.

“At this moment of painful expectation the English line would make a quarter-turn—the muskets were going up to the ‘ready.’ An indefinable sensation nailed to the spot many of our men, who halted and opened a wavering fire. The enemy’s return, a volley of simultaneous precision and deadly effect, crashed in upon us like a thunderbolt. Decimated by it we reeled together, staggering under the blow and trying to recover our equilibrium. Then three formidable Hurrahs termined the long silence of our adversaries. With the third they were down upon us, pressing us into a disorderly retreat. But to our great surprise, they did not pursue their advantage for more than some hundred yards, and went back with calm to their former lines, to await another attack. We rarely failed to deliver it when our reinforcements came up—with the same want of success and heavier losses.”96

Helplessness of the Column

This is the picture that we need to complete our study of the conflict of column with line. The psychology of the huddled mass going forward to inevitable defeat could not be better portrayed. The only thing that is hard for us to understand is the reason which induced capable men like Soult, D’Erlon, or Foy to continue to use the columnar formation all through the dark days of 1813–14, and even in the final campaign of Waterloo. All honour must be paid, however, to the rank and file who, with five years of such experience behind them, were still steadfast and courageous enough to put up a good fight even in their last offensive battles in the Pyrenees, as well as in the defensive actions of Orthez and Toulouse.