5. Column and Line in the Peninsula (7)
The First Postulate of Wellington’s Line Formation
Wellesley went out to Portugal to see what could be done with perfectly steady troops, as he said, against the “new French system”. But it would be to convey a false impression of his meaning if we merely stated that he went out simply to beat the column with the line, though the essential fact is sufficiently true. He went out to try his own conception of the proper way to use the line formation, which had its peculiarities and its limitations. The chief of these were first that the line must not be exposed before the moment of actual conflict; the second that until that moment it must be covered by a screen of skirmishers impenetrable to the enemy’s tirailleurs; and third, that it must be properly covered on its flanks, either by the nature of the ground or by cavalry and artillery. When we investigate all his earlier pitched battles, we shall see that each of these three requisites was carefully secured.
It was necessary for success that the line should be kept concealed from the enemy’s distant fire, of infantry or of artillery, as long as was possible. Hence we find that one of the most marked characteristics of Wellesley’s battles was that he took up, whenever it was feasible, a position in which he could mask his main line, and show nothing to the adversary but his skirmishers and possibly his artillery, for the latter, having to operate before the infantry fighting began, and having to take up commanding positions, were very generally visible from the first.
At Vimeiro he so concealed his army that Junot, thinking to turn his flank, merely ran into his left wing with the turning column. At Bussaco, Masséna, no mean general, mistook his right centre for his extreme right, and was out-flanked the moment that his attack was well pronounced. At Salamanca it was much the same; Pakenham’s division and its attendant cavalry, concealed in a wood, were far outside the French marching column that vainly thought that it had got round the British right wing. At Waterloo the main line of infantry was practically invisible to the enemy, till they had climbed the slope above which it stood.
Wellington’s ideal position was a glacis of rising ground with a plateau or a dip above it. The infantry were drawn back from the skyline, and placed just behind the crest, if the hill was saddle-backed, or some hundreds of yards from the edge if it was a flat-topped plateau. There they stood or lay till they were wanted, screened from all artillery fire, and advanced to their fighting ground only when the fire-combat of infantry was to begin. Everyone will remember Wellington’s caustic comment on the Prussian order of battle at Ligny, where Blücher had drawn out his army all along the declivity of a descending slope: “Damnably mauled these fellows will be—every man visible to the enemy!”
By the end of the Peninsular War it had become so well known to the enemy that Wellington’s army would be under cover, that he was able to play off on them the trick of offering battle in a half-manned position, because he knew that they would take it for granted that the ground invisible to them held ample forces. The mere fact that Wellington appeared ready to fight convinced Soult on the first day of Sorauren that the whole British army was up, whereas the British general was merely “bluffing”, making an appearance of calm readiness to fight, when he would have had to retreat if only he had been seriously attacked.
Two years later the same conviction that Wellington’s forces might be hidden behind any crest or slope kept Reille halted for certain fatal hours in front of Quatre-Bras, where there was nothing really opposed to him beyond one Dutch-Belgian division. “Ce pourrait bien être une bataille d’Espagne, les troupes anglaises se montreraient quand il en serait temps”, were the words of this corps-commander, who had so many old Peninsular lessons on his brain.
It was only when absolute necessity compelled, owing to no cover being available in some parts of the line, that Wellington occasionally left troops in his battle-front visible to the enemy, and exposed to distant artillery fire. The best-known instance of this was the case of his centre brigades at Talavera, which were unmasked perforce, because between the stony hill, which protected his left, and the olive groves, which covered his right, there were many hundred yards of open ground without even a serviceable dip or undulation in which the line could be concealed. And this was almost the only battle in which we find record of his troops having suffered heavily by artillery fire before the clash of conflict began.
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