5. Column and Line in the Peninsula (8)
The Second Postulate of Wellington’s Line Formation
The second postulate of Wellington’s system, as I have remarked above, was that his battle line must be covered by such a powerful screen of skirmishers that the enemy’s advanced line of tirailleurs should never be able to draw near enough to it to cause any serious molestation, that it should not be seriously engaged before the French supporting columns came up to the attack.
His old experiences in Flanders in 1794 had taught him that the line cannot contend at advantage with a preponderant mass of light troops, which yield when charged, but return the moment that the charge is stopped. The device which he had thought out to provide against this danger was that he would always make his own skirmishing screen stronger than that of the enemy, so that the French tirailleurs should never be able to force it in. The moment that he assumed permanent command of the Peninsular Army, in April 1809, he set to work to secure this desideratum.
His plan was to add to every brigade in his army an extra company of trained riflemen to reinforce the three light companies of the brigade, and to each division, when the composite Anglo-Portuguese divisions were formed, in 1810, a whole battalion of Portuguese caçadores, or light infantry. In April 1809 he broke up the oldest rifle battalion in the British Army, the 5th of the 60th regiment, and began to distribute a company of it to each of his brigades, save to those of the King’s German Legion, which had separate rifle companies of their own. Next year, when he incorporated a Portuguese brigade of five battalions in nearly all his divisions, he took care to have a caçador battalion among the five, and this was always used in the divisional skirmishing line.
The result of this arrangement was that if an Anglo-Portuguese division of the normal strength of two British and one Portuguese brigade, or eleven battalions in all, set itself out in battle array, it had no less than eighteen light companies to send forward into its skirmishing line—one each from ten line battalions, two of British rifles, six of caçadores. A French division of a similar strength of eleven battalions, put in front of the British line, would undoubtedly send out only its eleven voltigeur companies to form the covering screen for its supporting line of columns. Not unnaturally, as Wellington had calculated, the skirmishing line of the allies invariably contained and kept back the inferior skirmishing line of the enemy, and was never driven in till the French brought up their supporting columns into the fighting front, when, of course, the allied light troops had to retire on to the line in their rear. But the columns, having got up to the front and become engaged, had then to take the lead, and to go on to fight the hitherto intact British main line.
In short, Wellington made his light infantry screen so thick and strong that he habitually smothered the French tirailleurs, and forced the hostile column to commit itself to the main fight without any protective sheathing. So strong was the British skirmishing screen that French contemporary diarists often mistake it for a front line, and speak of their columns as piercing and driving back the first line of their adversaries, when really all that they had done was to drive in a powerful and obstinate chain of light troops. Invariably, we may say, the French had to attack the two-deep line when the latter was intact, while their own columns had already been under fire for some time and, if not shaken, were at least no longer fresh.
It will be asked why the marshals and generals of Napoleon did not deploy their columns before the moment of contact. The answer to this objection is, firstly, that they were strongly convinced that the column was the proper striking force to carry a given point, and they normally attacked not the whole British line simultaneously, but the particular point or points where they intended to break through. But secondly, that they sometimes 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.
I have come on several narratives dealing with attempts to deploy on the part of a French brigade or regiment which had forced its way to the front, and on every occasion it only led to confusion. When the Fusilier brigade fought Werlé’s nine battalions at Albuera, an English diarist remarks that “during the close action 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”. Similarly, Merle on the hill-top at Bussaco tried to deploy when he was already under the fire of Picton’s line, and failed with disastrous results.
The French, in short, could not deploy, because they were destitute by this time of their protective sheath of light troops, which (as Wellington had devised) had always been crushed in by the superior English skirmishing line. Nothing could be more inevitably productive of confusion and disorder than an attempt to deploy under heavy fire. Wherefore many of the French commanders never tried to do so at all, and thought it more safe to go on to the final shock with the battalions massed in their original formation of column of companies or column of divisions.
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