Wellingtons System: Tactics vs the French

From The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wellington's Army 1809-1814, by Charles Oman

This is the key tactics I need to use in FOGN when playing my Anglo-Portuguese army. 

Via a thread on TMP called "Useful Stuff" which is full of links to books and notes on anything and everything from the Napoleonic wars.  

From Wellington's Army 1809-1814 by Charles Omen

Sir Arthur Wellesley had been nine years absent in India before he returned to England in 1805, so that he had to learn the difference between the Republican and the Imperial armies by new experience. The problem had long been interesting him. Before he left Calcutta he is said to have remarked to his confidants that the French were sweeping everything before them in Europe by the use of column formations, but that he was convinced that the column could, and would, be beaten by the line. What he heard after his return to England evidently confirmed him in this opinion. A conversation which he had with Croker, just before he set sail on the expedition which was to end at Vimeiro, chances to have been preserved in the latter’s papers, under the date, June 14, 1808. Sitting silent, lost in reverie for a long time, he was asked by Croker the subject of his thoughts. “To say the truth,” he replied, “I am thinking of the French I am going to fight. I have not seen them since the campaigns in Flanders [1793–94]79 when they were capital soldiers, and a dozen years of victory under Bonaparte must have made them better still. ’Tis enough to make one thoughtful. But though they may overwhelm me, I don’t think that they will outmanœuvre me. First, because I am not afraid of them, as every one else seems to be, and secondly, because (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. I at least will not be frightened beforehand.”

Wellesley went out to Portugal, there to try what could be done with steady troops against the “French system.” But it would be to convey a false impression of his meaning if we were to state that he simply went out to beat column with 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 that—

(1) The line must not be exposed before the moment of actual conflict: i.e. it must be kept under cover as much as possible.

(2) That till the critical moment it must be screened by a line of skirmishers impenetrable to the enemy’s tirailleurs.

(3) 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 as far as possible secured.

(1) It was necessary for success that the line should be kept concealed from the enemy’s distant fire of artillery and infantry as long as possible. Hence we find that one of the most marked features of Wellesley’s many defensive battles was that he took up, whenever it was feasible, a position which would mask his main line, and show nothing to the enemy but his skirmishers and possibly his artillery,80 for the latter having to operate before the infantry fighting began, and being obliged to take up positions which would command the ground over which the enemy must advance, were often visible from the first. At Vimeiro, Wellesley so concealed his army that Junot, thinking to turn his left flank, found his turning column itself outflanked by troops moved under cover behind a skyline. At Bussaco, Masséna, no mean general, mistook Wellington’s centre for his extreme right, and found his attacking columns80 well outflanked when the attack had been pressed to its issue. At Salamanca it was much the same; the main part of the British line was well concealed behind a low ridge of hills, while Pakenham’s division and its attendant cavalry, the force which executed the great stroke, were concealed in a wooded tract, far outside the French marching column that vainly thought to get round the allied right wing. At Waterloo, the clearest case of all, the whole of Wellington’s infantry of the front line was so far drawn back from the edge of the slope that it was invisible, till the enemy had climbed to the brow of the plateau on which it was arrayed. Only the artillery, the skirmishing line, and the troops in the outlying posts of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte could be made out by Napoleon’s eye. Talavera, as I shall mention below, is the only exception to this general rule in the Duke’s defensive battles.

The Advantages of Cover

Wellington’s ideal position was a rising ground with a long glacis of slope in front, and a plateau or a dip behind it. The infantry was drawn back from the skyline, and placed behind the crest, if the hill were saddle-backed, or some hundreds of yards away from the edge, if it were flat-topped. There they stood or lay till they were wanted, secure from artillery fire: they moved forward to their actual fighting ground only when the fire-combat of infantry was to begin. Every one will remember Wellington’s caustic comment on the Prussian order of battle at Ligny, where Blücher had drawn out his army in a chequered81 array all along the declivity of a descending slope. “Damnably mauled these fellows will be—every man visible to the enemy.”81 Or in more solemn phrase, as he afterwards consigned it to paper: “I told the Prussian officers, in the presence of Colonel Hardinge, that according to my judgment, the exposure of the advanced columns, and indeed of the army, to cannonade, standing as they did displayed to the aim of the enemy’s fire, was not prudent.”82

By the end of the Peninsular War, as I have already had occasion to observe, it had become so well known to the French that Wellington’s army, ready for a battle, would be under cover, that he was able, as at Fuente Guinaldo in 1811, and at Sorauren in 1813, to play off on them the trick of offering to fight in a half-manned position, because he knew that they would take it for granted that the ground invisible to them was held by an adequate force. There is an interesting testimony to the same effect in the Waterloo campaign. On the morning before the battle of Quatre Bras began, General Reille, a veteran of the Spanish war, remained halted for some time before a position held by nothing but a single Dutch-Belgian division, because (as he expressed it), “Ce pourrait bien être une bataille d’Espagne—les troupes Anglaises se montreraient quand il en serait temps.”83 This was the lesson taught by many years of Peninsular experience—but on this occasion it chanced to be singularly ill applied—since a vigorous push would have shown Reille that there were as yet no red-coats concealed behind the trees of the Bois de Bossu.

It was only when absolute necessity compelled, owing to there being no cover available in some parts of his chosen position, that Wellington very occasionally left troops in his battle-front visible to the enemy, and exposed to artillery82 fire from a distance. The best known instance of this occurred with his centre brigades at Talavera, who were unmasked perforce, because between the strong hill which protected his left, and the olive groves which covered his right, there were many hundred yards of open ground, without any serviceable dips or undulations to conceal the line. 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 infantry fighting began.84

(2) The second postulate of Wellington’s system was, as I have remarked above, that the infantry of 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 get near enough to it to cause any real molestation, and that it should not be seriously engaged before the French supporting columns came up to deliver the main attack. His old experience in Flanders in 1794 had taught him that the line cannot contend at advantage with a swarm of light troops, who yield when charged, but return the moment that the charge has stopped and the line has drawn back to its original position. There were evil memories of this sort not only from Flanders, but from the Egyptian Expedition of 1801, when Abercrombie’s less engaged brigades suffered severely at the battle of Alexandria from the incessant fire of skirmishers at long range, to whom no proper opposition was made.85

The device which Wellesley practised was to make sure that he should always have a skirmishing screen of his own, so strong that the French tirailleurs should never be able to force it in and to get close to the main line. The moment that he had assumed command in April, 1809, he set to work to secure this desideratum. His first measure was to add to every brigade in his army an extra company of83 trained riflemen, to reinforce the three light companies of the brigade.86 In April, 1809, he broke up the oldest rifle battalion in the British army, the fifth 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 were served by special rifle companies of their own.87 Thus each of the brigades which fought at Talavera had a special extra provision of light troops. Furthermore, when the new Light Division was instituted on the 1st of March, 1810, each of its two brigades was given a number of companies of the 95th rifles: and of the other brigades formed in 1810–11 most were provided with an extra light company by means of taking fractions from the 95th or the newly arrived Brunswick Oels Jägers, and those which were not, had light-infantry corps of their own inside them. But this was not all.88

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.84 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 a85 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 when86 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 by87 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 line88 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.9489 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.

Successes of the French Cavalry

t was of course a very different matter when the French cavalry had to face the steady battalions of the British army. Looking down all the record of battles and skirmishes from 1808 down to 1814, I can only remember two occasions when the enemy’s cavalry really achieved a notable tactical success. Oddly enough both fell within the month of May, 1811. At Albuera there occurred that complete disaster to a British infantry brigade which has already been described in the preceding chapter. The other, and much smaller, success achieved by French cavalry over British infantry at Fuentes de Oñoro, a few days before the greater disaster at Albuera, has also been alluded to.97 These two disasters were wholly exceptional; usually the British infantry held its own, unless it was absolutely taken by surprise, and this even when attacked frontally by cavalry while it was deployed in the two deep line, without forming square. If the British had their flanks covered, they were perfectly safe, and turned back any charge with ease.

Indeed the repulse of cavalry by British troops in line, who did not take the trouble to form square because their flanks were covered, was not infrequent in the Peninsular100 War. The classic instance is that of the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers at El Bodon in 1811, who advanced in line firing against two French cavalry regiments and drove them off the heights, being able to do so because they had a squadron or two of British horse to protect them from being turned. A very similar feat was performed by the 52nd at Sabugal in 1811: and Harvey’s Portuguese brigade did as much at Albuera.

Much more, of course, was the square impregnable. When once safely placed in that formation, British troops habitually not only withstood cavalry charges at a stand-still, but made long movements over a battlefield inundated by the hostile cavalry. At Fuentes de Oñoro the Light Division, three British and two Portuguese squares, retreated at leisure for two miles while beset by four brigades of French cavalry, and reached the ground which they had been ordered to take up with a total loss of one killed and thirty-four wounded. Similarly at El Bodon the square composed of the 5th and 77th retreated for six miles, in the face of two cavalry brigades which could never break into them.98

Wellington’s Cavalry Tactics

Allusion has been made in the opening words of this chapter to Wellington’s memorandum for the tactical management of cavalry. It was only issued after Waterloo, in the form of “Instructions to Officers commanding Brigades of Cavalry in the Army of Occupation,” but, no doubt, represents the tactics which he had evolved from his Peninsular experience.101 Too long to give in entirety, it is worth analysing. The heads run as follows:—

(1) A reserve must always be kept, to improve a success, or to cover an unsuccessful charge. This reserve should not be less than half the total number of sabres, and may occasionally be as much as two-thirds of it.

(2) Normally a cavalry force should form in three lines: the first and second lines should be deployed, the reserve may be in column, but so formed as to be easily changed into line.

(3) The second line should be 400 or 500 yards from the first, the reserve a similar distance from the second line, if cavalry is about to act against cavalry. This is found not too great a distance to prevent the rear lines from improving an advantage gained by the front line, nor too little to prevent a defeated front line from passing between the intervals of its supports without disordering them.

(4) When, however, cavalry is charging infantry, the second line should be only 200 yards behind the first, the object being that it should be able to deliver its charge112 without delay, against a battalion which has spent its fire against the first line, and will not be prepared for a second charge pushed in rapid succession to the first.

(5) When the first line delivers its attack at a gallop, the supports must follow at a walk only, lest they be carried forward by the rush, and get mingled with the line in front at the onset. For order in the supports must be rigidly kept—they are useless if they have got into confusion, when they are wanted to sustain and cover a checked first line.

Wellington’s Artillery Tactics

Only a short note is required as to Wellington’s use of artillery. In his early years of command he was almost as weak in this arm as in cavalry. There was not one British battery per division available in 1809. But the Portuguese artillery being numerous, and ere long very efficient, was largely used to supplement the British after 1810. Yet even when it had become proportioned to the number of his whole army, the Duke did not use it in the style of Bonaparte. He never worked with enormous masses of guns manœuvring in front line, and supporting an attack, such as the Emperor used. Only at Bussaco, Vittoria, and Waterloo do we find anything like a concentration of many batteries to play an important part in the line of battle. Usually the Duke preferred to work with small units—individual batteries—placed in well-chosen spots, and often kept concealed till the critical moment. They were dotted along the front of the position rather than massed, and in most cases must be regarded as valuable support for the infantry that was to win the battle, rather than as an arm intended to work for its independent aims and to take a special part in war. Of several of Napoleon’s victories we may say that they were artilleryman’s battles; nothing of the kind can be predicated of any of Wellington’s triumphs, though the guns were always well placed, and most usefully employed, as witness Bussaco, Fuentes de Oñoro, and Waterloo.

 

In conclusion, I should note the following

1- Deploy behind hill ridge lines until the enemy is close, to minimize loss to enemy artillery. If I do have as much artillery as the enemy does, I can deploy on the forward slope earlier. 

2- Get Skirmishers or Rifle Skirmishers in every brigade I can. The army list gives me 3 per division, I should attempt to fill them all.

3- Flanks MUST be covered. Either by terrain, cavalry (2-3 brigades are required) or a longer infantry line deployed in extended line (if there is no enemy cavalry around to take advantage of it).

4. Don't be afraid to stand and shoot charging cavalry, particularly if I have attached artillery with the unit. I would want attached artillery though. 

5. Half to two thirds of the cavalry should be in reserve, behind the lead unit. I can do that with 1 unit behind the main unit, but I'm limited to only 3 brigades in total. Having 1 in front, 1 next to it in line and 1 in the rear. An alternative is only have 2 units, one behind the first. 

6. As I am often lacking in artillery compared to other armies, attach the artillery to infantry brigades.

Two new army lists

This has all made me theorycraft my army list yet again. This maximizes skirmish troops and loses one cavalry unit. Each division has a large or superior unit, useful for assaults. Each Division has a cavalry squadron attached and 1-2 artillery batteries. The large line unit in the 1st Division can withstand being shot at too. It is a smaller army, with only two cavalry brigades.

A second, more defensive variant, with two redoubts. Should probably be only used with someone who hasn't faced me before!