In this thread I shall post another quote from Christоpher Duffу, Military Expеriеnce in the Agе of Rеasоn (1987).
THE INFANTRY BATTLE
Shock action
The officers will take all proper opportunites to inculcate
in the mens’ minds a reliance on the bayonet; men of their
bodily strength and even a coward may be their match in
firing. But the bayonet in the hands of the valiant is
irresistible.
(Lieutenant-General Burgoyne, General Orders, 20 June
1777; Hadden, 1884, 74)
There is not probably an instance of modern troops being engaged in close combat; our
tactics, produced by the introduction of firearms, are opposed to such a mode of action;
we are dependent on the dexterous use of our firelock.
(Dalrymple, 1782, 113)
The employment of cold steel by infantry (like an orderly advance in line) was not
unknown in the Age of Reason, but the well-authenticated instances are much rarer than
might be supposed, and they are associated with specific circumstances. Here is an
explanation of sorts for the contradiction between the quotations entered above.
Soldiers of ‘hot’ nations and certain crack troops undoubtedly had the elemental
courage that was required to press home attacks sword-in-hand, like the Turks at
Belgrade (1717), the Scots at Prestonpans (1745), Falkirk and Culloden (1746), some of
the Austrian grenadiers at Prague (1757) and the Hungarian infantry regiment of Haller at
Kolin (1757).
Among ‘cold’ troops of the line the bayonet was most likely to find employment when
the combat was for some sort of defended position. Surprise attacks against fortifications
were almost invariably carried out at night, when musket fire would have betrayed the
design. Thus, in General Wayne’s successful coup de main against the English garrison
in Fort Stony Point (15/16 July 1779) the front of the American column
led with unloaded arms, relying solely on the use of the bayonet. As they
approached the works, a soldier insisted on loading his piece—all was
now a profound silence—the officer commanding the platoon ordered him
to keep on; the soldier observed that he did not understand attacking with
his piece unloaded; he was ordered not to stop, at his peril; he still
persisted, and the officer instantly dispatched him. (Heath, 1901, 193. See
also Wolfe, 1768, 53)
Likewise troops were known to resort to the bayonet in a full-scale battle when the
fighting was for a fieldwork or a defended house, where the combatants were jammed
together and the normal relationships of space did not apply. An inexperienced Prussian
soldier found himself in the first line of the advance guard which stormed the Russian
fortifications on the Mühl-Berge at Kunersdorf (1759):
This young grenadier was accustomed to the drill of arms on the square,
but not to making real employment of the bayonet. He advanced boldly
enough to the entrenchment, but he could not bring himself to put his
bayonet to deadly use against the Russians who were standing before him.
Whereupon an officer, who had noticed his indecision, dealt him a heavy
blow on the shoulder and yelled: ‘Get stuck in, lad, or somebody will stick
one in you!’ This produced such a marked effect that he at once plied his
bayonet with a will. So he continued in all his later actions, and showed
himself to be a consistently brave soldier. (Kriele, 1801, 171–2. See also
David Holbrook’s experience at Kennington, in Dann, 1980, 91)
The last well-established instances of genuine bayonet fighting relate to accidental
clashes of bodies of infantry, when the troops collided in the fog on ran into one another
at the top of a hill.
The Prince de Ligne drew on what he had seen and heard during his many years of
service in the Austrian army, and he proclaimed that it was ‘almost impossible to attack
an enemy force in the open country without firing. If you try to do so your troops will be
wiped out, it is as simple as that’ (Ligne, 1795–1811, I, 47). Indeed, outside the
eventualities described above, all the evidence suggests that the clash of steel among
infantry was almost unknown. We must respect the authority of Puységur, who
maintained that
firearms are the most destructive category of weapon, and now more than
ever. If you need convincing, just go to the hospital and you will see how
few men have been wounded by cold steel as opposed to firearms. My
argument is not advanced lightly. It is founded on knowledge. (Puységur,
1749, I, 227. See also Guibert [1772], 1804, I, 89; Warnery, 1785–91, IV,
287; Edward Wortley Montagu, in Colville, 1949, 167; Kennett, 1967,
116)
We are left with a number of actions, such as the Prussian triumph at Kesselsdorf (1745),
the French victories at Madonne de 1’Elme, Rocoux (1746), Laffeldt (1747) and
Johannisberg (1762), as well as a number of Russian battles against the Turks, which are
loosely described as having been won with the bayonet. In France, authorities like
Mesnil-Durand and Joly de Maizeroy were inspired to declare that ‘cold steel is made for
the French nation’ (Mesnil-Durand, 1755, heading of Chapter IV) and that the shock of
infantry was a physical reality (see p. 199). Frederick himself misread what had happened
at Kesselsdorf, and for a dozen years thereafter he persisted in a belief that his infantry
could overthrow the enemy without having to fire.
What had been going on in these so-called victories of the bayonet? Many of them
involved combats for houses or entrenchments, in which hand-to-hand action
undoubtedly took place, as we have noted. Otherwise they were probably attacks that
were pressed home with such determination that the defenders were presented with the
sight of bristling moustaches, bared teeth and glistening bayonet points emerging through
the smoke at terrifyingly close range. A very brave man might stand unmoved,
but the kind of soldier who acts only under pressure will be frightened to
see the enemy come so near, and he will often seek safety in flight without
attempting to defend himself. The closer you approach the enemy the
more fearsome you become, and a coward, who will fire at a brave man at
one hundred paces, will not dare to so much as aim at him at close range.
(Guibert [1772], 1804, I, 216)
The fire-fight
Most encounters of infantry against infantry developed as standing fire-fights. They were
conducted at ranges of between 30 and 200 paces, and they endured until one side or the
other lost heart and gave way. Where the combat was obstinate and prolonged, as at
Klosterkamp in 1760, the evidence was clear to see: The battlefield was strewn with
dead, but we did not notice a single enemy uniform on our ground, or a single French
uniform on that of the enemy’ (Besenval, 1827–8, 97. See also Saxe [1732], 1877, 22;
Toulongeon and Hullin [1786], 1881, 335).
The details of the combat seldom corresponded to what was attainable on the drill
square. In the world of the theorists the battalion put out a storm of bullets at a rate of
1,800 rounds a minute, and the firings of the individual components—divisions, platoons
or ranks—succeeded one another like hammer blows. The reality was far different, as we
might have expected from our review of columns and bayonet-fighting, and in this case
the discrepancies have to do with the limitations of the individual soldier and his weapon,
and the ways in which bodies of troops behave in combat.
The standard muzzle-loading, smooth-bore flintlock musket threw a leaden ball nearly
three-quarters of an inch in diameter. The bullet left the muzzle at a velocity of about 510
paces a second, and at close range it had enough force to penetrate right through a pine
post 5 inches thick. As regards penetration and accuracy at longer ranges, eighteenthcentury
Prussian muskets yielded the following results; the target was a pine board 6
inches thick and 100 feet (50 paces) wide, and 200 rounds were fired at each range:
Paces: 100 200 300 400 500 600
Hits: 92 64 64 42 26 19
Penetrations: 56 58 56 23 28 2
(Scharnhorst, 1813, 80–3)
It will be seen that the performance of these weapons was very erratic. Moreover the hits
by no means corresponded to kills, for the Prince de Ligne once conducted a test against
a comparable target which was painted with figures of Prussian soldiers, and he
discovered that nearly one-quarter of the rounds that struck the target would have passed
between heads and legs, leaving the soldiers totally unscathed, and that only one-ninth of
the bullets would have hit the soldiers in vital parts (Ligne, 1795–1811, I, 49–50).
Backsights were never provided for ordinary muskets, and as a result the following
adjustments in aim were recommended for different ranges:
Paces: Aim:
150 At the knees
225–300 At the waist or chest
375 At the head
450 At the hat or 1 foot above the head
However the men rarely bothered to seat their musket butts firmly on the shoulder, and
this practice and many others (see below) only served to augment the inaccuracy inherent
in the musket.
Many veterans could tell of battalions or entire lines of battle which had fired without
causing any perceptible casualties. In combat conditions the hits at 450 paces (300 yards)
were negligible; there were a few losses at 300 paces (200 yards), some more at 150
paces (100 yards), and real execution at 75 paces (50 yards) and below. The English
officer Nicholas Cresswell has a telling description of a skirmish on Staten Island on 22
June 1777:
When they were about 100 yards from each other both parties fired, but I
did not observe any fall. They still advanced to a distance of 40 yards or
less, and fired again. I then saw a good number fall on both sides. Our
people then rushed upon them with their bayonets and the others took to
their heels; I heard one of them call out murder! lustily. (Cresswell, 1924,
241).
Unusually determined troops firing at close range must have delivered the heavy and
accurate fire which took such a toll of the Prussian high command at Hochkirch (1758) in
a matter of minutes. Frederick’s horse was hit in the shoulder, and Major Haugwitz
nearby took a bullet through his left arm; Field-Marshal Keith was plucked dead from his
horse, and Prince Wilhelm of Brunswick was drilled through-and-through and fell lifeless
from the saddle. One of the lowly subalterns received two bullets through his hat, and he
observed that the majority of the hits on the other men were in the head and chest
(Barsewisch, 1863, 75–7).
The most systematic investigation of the efficacy of musket fire was the one initiated
by Frederick after the battles of Mollwitz and Chotusitz (1741 and 1742), where the
Prussians had kept up a heavy fire without killing many Austrians. From the findings
(reproduced in jähns, 1889–91, III, 2, 425) Frederick recommended that the troops of all
ranks must ensure that the butts of their muskets were held firmly against the shoulder,
and that the barrels must be pointed at the ground eight or ten paces away, to compensate
for the kick of the weapon and the natural tendency of the soldiers to fire into the air. It is
likely that E.Mauvillon used the material which came to light on this occasion in order to
write a passage which caused a considerable stir in military Europe:
According to my sums, the Prussians fired 650,000 rounds of musketry
during their advance at Chotusitz, and the enemy lost scarcely 2,500 dead
and as many wounded. If you subtract the men who were killed or
wounded by the sword, a mighty great number of rounds must have gone
astray! (Histoire de la dernière guerre de Bohème, 3 vols, Amsterdam,
1756, I, 100–1. He discounts the effect of artillery, which was considered
of little importance at that time)
By Mauvillon’s calculations, the ratio of rounds expended to deaths sustained by the
enemy therefore amounts to about one in 260, which equates roughly with the one in 200
given for the English fire at Wandewash in India (1760), one in 300 for the American fire
at Concord (1775), and one in 460 for Wellington’s fire at Vittoria (1813). The lethality
is diminished by the allowance that must be made for the contribution of the other
weapons, but increased by the knowledge that about half the rounds nominally ‘fired’
were probably thrown away by the soldiers (Ligne, 1795–1811, I, 49).
An altogether higher rate of kills was achieved by riflemen who were shooting at
carefully-selected targets. The thump and whistle of a musket shot was much less feared
by troops standing in line than the crack and buzz that told you that jägers or American
back-woodsmen were at work. In America, unlike the theatres of war in Europe, the life
of an individual was sought ‘with as much avidity as the obtaining of a victory over an
army of thousands’ (Anburey, 1969, I, 331).
In 1947 a pioneering study by Colonel S.L.A.Marshall (Men against Fire, reprinted
Gloucester, Mass., 1978), established just how few men in the conditions of modern
combat actually fire their weapons. From his study of the engagements in the Pacific and
Normandy he discovered that the soldier was often an isolated individual, gripped by a
paralysing inertia, and that ‘out of an average of one hundred men along the line of fire
during the period of an encounter, only fifteen men on the average would take any part
with the weapon’ (Marshall, 1978, 57).
The experience of combat in the eighteenth century was radically different. Ranged in
close order, the soldiers at that period appear to have been in the grip of a compulsive
urge to use their weapons at any price, as if they found relief in the physical exertions of
loading and the stunning noise of the discharges. It did not matter to them where the
bullets went. After the first couple of volleys the men neglected the usual procedures of
loading (see p. 114). The ramrod was flung in and out of the barrel, without any attempt
to push the powder, ball and wad firmly home, and sometimes the ramrod was not
employed at all, the soldiers preferring to thump the butt on the ground so as to shake the
load down the barrel.
The rate of fire in ideal conditions gave an altogether false idea of what was attained
by a soldier who was burdened by his sixty cartridges, his rations and perhaps also some
items of camp equipment:
Bowed down under this load, the warrior goes omnia secum portans into
battle. Now, how many rounds of rapid fire do you think he can loose off
in a minute when he is in this condition? At least five a minute? That is
certainly the norm for fire on the drill square, which conjures up visions
of enemy corpses by the thousand. But, when we consider all the
encumbering burden of the soldier, and especially the fact that he is never
trained on the drill square with his full load, any more than he carries it
on the way to the peacetime show camps, then, taking everything into due
account, it would be optimistic to suppose that he fires as many as one or
at the most two rounds in a minute. (Cogniazzo, 1779, 147)
Even at this low rate of fire twenty or thirty rounds were enough to make the barrel too
hot to hold, and during prolonged fire-fights the inside of the barrel became so fouled
with carbon that loading required a great deal of time and considerable effort. The
occasions of misfires were numerous, and they all placed the soldiers in real danger,
whether through the bursting of their weapons, or by leaving them defenceless in the face
of the enemy.
Early in the morning, or in damp weather, the most common cause of malfunction was
damp seeping into the firing mechanism. An English soldier reported after Culloden
(1746) ‘they [the Jacobites] thought it was such a bad day that our firelocks would not
fire, but they were very much mistaken for scarce one in a regiment missed firing, for we
kept them dry with our coat laps’ (Linn, 1921, I, 24).
After a number of rounds (which varied according to the quality of the stone) the flint
became blunt and failed to ignite the charge in the priming pan, which forced the soldier
to stop and fit a replacement. Frequently the touch hole became blocked with fouling, and
the priming charge literally ‘flashed in the pan’, without communicating with the main
charge in the barrel. In the excitement and noise of action there was no guarantee that the
soldier would notice that his musket had failed to fire, and in such a case he loaded round
after round, until five, six or more charges were superimposed. If the first round now took
fire, the barrel exploded like a bangalore torpedo. The barrel was also liable to burst
when the muzzle was obstructed by dirt or snow, when a bullet happened to stick in the
bore, or if the ramrod was left in the barrel after loading.
Ramrods were originally of beech or some other wood, and tipped with brass. These
frail sticks frequently broke in the stress of loading, and the Prussians gained a clear
tactical advantage when they introduced ramrods of iron, beginning with the regiment of
Anhalt-Dessau as early as 1698. The English and other nations gradually followed suit in
the course of the eighteenth century, but Colonel Hawley complained that the new
rammers had vices of their own:
The iron ramrods that the Foot are coming into are very ridiculous…for if
they have not some alloy of steel they stand bent and cannot be returned.
If they have the least too much steel they snap like glass; in wet weather
or in a fog they rust and won’t come out, as always by standing in the bell
tents where arms always rust a little by the dew. (Hawley [1726], 1946,
93)
It is clear that the first round must have been a precious resource, for it was loaded at
leisure before the action began, and it was fired from a clean weapon with a sharp flint.
When a volley of such rounds was discharged at short range, it was capable of causing a
massacre like that at Fontenoy (1745), when 19 officers and 600 men of the French and
Swiss Guards were killed in an instant. Quincy was adamant on this point: ‘We must train
the soldiers above all to hold their fire, and to endure the fire of the enemy. In normal
circumstances a battalion is beaten once it has opened fire, and the enemy still has all its
fire in reserve’ (Quincy, 1726, VIII, 67). However, one of his countrymen argued no less
forcefully:
Is it credible that, having sustained several volleys from the enemy, a
battalion will be in any condition to open fire when it finally desires to do
so? Will it be in any state to withstand a charge, or launch a charge of its
own against a fresh and intact enemy? Can such conduct be imagined, let
alone recommended by officers who have seen anything of war? (Bigot,
1761, I, 260. See also Santa Cruz, 1735–40, VI, 50–1)
As often as not the question was settled by the infantry opening fire anyway. Where fresh
and very well-trained troops were concerned, the process was initiated by the battalion or
platoon officers through an almost automatic procedure. The French diplomat Valori
accompanied the Prussian army during the Silesian Wars, and he noted how
at Mollwitz they fired at a range of 800 or even 1,000 paces. At
Hohenfriedeberg part of the left wing opened fire without seeing anything
of the enemy—the spring was wound up, and platoons on the right and
centre loosed off and the others followed in a mechanical way, though
always in strict order of platoons. (Valori [1748], 1894, 308)
The Prussian infantry at Mollwitz had no conception that combat could develop in any
other way than the one they had learned on the drill square. They kept step under a hail of
bullets, and when they were ordered to make ready to open fire ‘the first rank knelt down
in regulation style and waiting patiently upon the word of command. If any disorder now
became manifest in the ranks, the officers ordered the men to return their muskets to their
shoulders’ (Archenholtz, 1974, 22–3. See also Berenhorst, 1845–7, I, 70–1). A regular
fire by volleys was kept up by the Austrian grenadiers at Prague (1757). Strict fire
discipline was also observed by the Prussian regiment of Lestwitz in the counterattack on
the village of Kleinburg in the battle of Breslau (1757).
The regiment of Lestwitz had been heavily engaged at Prague less than seven months
before, but it is notable that all the other instances cited are from armies which
encountered their first experience of combat after an intensive period of peacetime
training. Every reliable source indicates that in the later battles of the wars the regular
volley firing, and especially the complicated firings by division, platoons or ranks, came
to an end soon after the fire-fight had begun (Fermor’s Disposition of 1736, Baiov, 1906,
55–6; Dalrymple, 1761, 51; Saint-Germain, 1779, 225; Wissel, 1784, xxxix; Toulongeon
and Hullin [1786], 1881, 197, 355; Houlding, 1981, 354).
In battle conditions the platoon firings demanded altogether too much of the officers.
They had to step three or so paces in front of the first rank, then turn left and look along
the front of their platoons,
whereupon every platoon officer finds the bullets streaking past his chest
and back at a distance of between eight and ten inches… The soldiers in
the platoons have to be extraordinarily attentive to the commands of their
officer, and learn to recognise him by his voice so as not to be confused
by the shouts of the neighbouring officers. If they turned to look at him
they would have to take their eyes off the barrels of their muskets, which
is not permitted.
The officer commanding the second platoon must keep an eye on the
seventh platoon, just as the one commanding the first platoon marks the
eighth, because they must follow them in the order of the firings. If a
cloud of smoke hangs between the platoons the view of the officers is
blocked. (Berenhorst, 1798–9, I, 226–7. See also Bigot, 1761, I, 273)
The men were in a state of high agitation, and none more so than the unfortunates in the
front rank, who were in danger of having their heads blown off by their comrades behind
(see p. 246). Once the troops of the first rank had loaded, knelt down and fired, they were
therefore under a powerful incentive not to stand up again. At the battles of Parma and
Guastalla in 1734 a large part of both the French and Austrian infantry sank to its knees,
and ended up crawling around on the battlefield and firing ‘in the fashion of the Croats’
(Guibert [1772], 1804, I, 102; Warnery, 1785–91, II, 210–11; Ligne, 1795–1811, XVIII,
70).
The Prussians found that in most of their battles they could hope at the very best to get
off crude battalion salvoes, or mass discharges of the whole line of infantry, like the great
volleys at Gross-Jägersdorf (1757). Far more frequently the conventional fire discipline
was broken and the troops blazed away at will (feu de billebaude, Plackerfeuer,
Bataillenfeuer). Thus at Dettingen (1743) the English infantry
were under no command by way of Hyde Park firing, but the whole three
ranks made a running fire of their own accord…with great judgment and
skill, stooping all as low as they could, making almost every ball take
place…the French fired in the same manner…without waiting for words
of command, and Lord Stair did often say he had seen many a battle, and
never saw the infantry engage in any other manner. (Quoted in Orr, 1972,
65. The description rings true, even if the deadliness of the fire is
exaggerated)
Prussian and Hanoverian officers were embarrassed by this phenomenon, which appeared
to destroy the possibility of control even at the lowest level of command, but two at least
of the French writers recognised the feu de billebaude as a reality, and proposed that it
should be turned to positive use. General Chabot pointed out that individual fire
permitted the soldiers to select their own targets, fire at their own best speed, and attend
to misfires as they occurred, and he attributed the victories of 1734 to this way of fighting
(Chabot, 1756, 5–20). Guibert regarded the feu de billbaude as the most effective of all,
and he emphasised that it required only two commands, namely to signify when to start
and when to stop. He had seen the regiment of Royal Deux-Ponts fight in this way at
Vellinghausen (1761), when the appropriate signals were given by a ruffle of drums
(Guibert [1772], 1804, I, 108).
The battle against cavalry
Versatility was the greatest single strength of infantry, and on campaign the foot soldiers
enjoyed a number of advantages over the cavalry. Except in certain specific areas, like
the plains of Silesia or Hungary, the theatres of war in Europe were composed of broken
terrain which favoured the action of infantry. The infantrymen did not have horses which
demanded to be watered and fed, they could be ready for action much sooner than
cavalry, and they could operate with much greater freedom at night.
In open combat it was less easy to distinguish which party had the upper hand. The
quantifiable superiority of the cavalry in weight and speed was counterbalanced by the
fact that more infantrymen could be crammed into a given frontage: the cavalry were
usually formed in two or three ranks, as opposed to the infantry’s three or four, and a file
of cavalry was at least 3 feet wide, whereas a file of infantry took up only 2 feet.
Moreover the infantrymen had the capacity to inflict casulaties on the horse before they
suffered any losses themselves, and in close-quarter combat the foot-soldier had a
weapon (musket and bayonet) about 6 feet long to present against a cavalryman whose
sword measured only just over 3 feet.
These calculations do not allow for the fact that the cavalry were employed, if
possible, not against unbroken infantry, but when the tactical situation favoured the
mounted arm, as for example when the infantry presented a vulnerable flank, when they
were depleted by casualties or when they were already in flight. There was also an
important psychological dimension. The combat of infantry against infantry was usually a
prolonged affair, and was ultimately broken off when one side or the other became
disorganised and gave ground. In most actions the beaten troops were allowed to march
away unpursued, for the victors were likely to be as exhausted as themselves. The
relations in a contest against cavalry were different, for in this case a defeat could be
followed by instant annihilation: ‘Where do we find the kind of men who will stay calm
at the terrible moment when they face the charge of a force of cavalry which happens to
be well led? No other episode in warfare is more destructive, except the explosion of a
mine’ (Mottin de la Balme, 1776, 94).
No infantrymen could withstand cavalry without confidence in themselves and their
weapons. Probably the crucial zone for their survival was between 50 paces, when
musket fire became really effective, and a lower limit of about 30 paces when the soldiers
might become subject to panic and began to open their formation (Turpin de Crissé,
1754, I, 204). However, success was nearly assured when you brought down enough
horses in the leading rank to form a barrier against the advance of the cavalry coming up
behind.
The remaining cavalry seldom reached the infantry at anything faster than a trot, and
even at this late stage the horses might be disconcerted by a hedge of bayonets presented
at their muzzles (in his peacetime training Santa Cruz used to show his troops how a
horse could be turned aside by a man armed with nothing more than a stick (Santa Cruz,
1735–40, III, 68). However, a potentially lethal gap could be opened up if a few men fell
or turned, and wounded horses had a way of gathering furious strength and bursting
through the ranks (Grandmaison, 1756, 194).
Well-disciplined troops might still be able to close up the gaps after a breakthrough,
and turn about to fire at the cavalry. The 21st Royal North British Fusiliers accomplished
this evolution at Dettingen (1743) and brought down large numbers of the French
Gendarmerie. The third rank of the Prussian regiment of Bevern tried to do the same at
Kolin (1757), but its fire had little effect and the troops were virtually wiped out.
Lieutenant Prittwitz began to get up after a storm of horses had passed over him, but a
veteran NCO shouted to him to lie down again. This was good advice, for a prone figure
was out of reach of the cavalrymen’s swords, and Prittwitz survived the day with cuts and
bruises (Prittwitz, 1935, 139).
In the Napoleonic period the square was the classic formation which was adopted by
foot soldiers against cavalry. In the Age of Reason, however, linear tactics were
paramount, and the square was normally adopted only by isolated bodies of infantry, like
the French units which so often had to fight for their lives against the swarming Austrian
hussars during the War of the Austrian Succession. Squares were almost invulnerable as
long as they possessed a reserve of fire, but the troops were in mortal danger if they were
goaded into firing all their muskets at once.
In all of this we have assumed that the infantry were content to receive the attack of
the cavalry. There were isolated but striking examples of the foot soldiers going over to
the offensive, like the English infantry at Minden (1759) and the Prussian regiment of
Anhalt-Bernburg at Liegnitz (1760). These apparently suicidal enterprises were more
successful than might have been expected, ‘for nothing upsets horses more than to see a
rnass of troops…coming resolutely at them’ (Silva, 1778, 53).
Under shot and shell: the infantry as targets for artillery
The foot soldiers were rarely in a position to take direct action against their most
formidable enemy, the artillery, which grew markedly in power in the 1750s (see p. 231).
Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Downman gloated on the effect of his guns in an action on St
Lucia in 1778:
I had a fine situation for galling the French army as they marched to the
attack in columns. I had them charmingly, and while forming, and after
being formed, and also in their retreat. I kept up as heavy a fire as I could
on their flank which was presented to me the greatest part of the action.
My shot in this situation swept them off by the dozens at a time, and
Frenchmens’ heads and trotters were as plenty and much cheaper than
sheep’s heads and trotters in Scotland. (Downman, 1898, 105)
The missiles on this occasion were solid shot, which represented the most versatile of the
tools of the artillerymen. Weighing up to twelve pounds, the iron balls worked to
devastating effect on the battlefields of the Age of Reason. They were capable of
inflicting multiple casualties both at the first graze and the subsequent ricochets, thanks to
their stored energy, and they could not be considered safe until they had rolled to a
complete stop.
The heavier roundshot could be used effectively from about 900 paces downwards.
For shorter-range work, at some 400 paces or less, the gunners might choose to employ
canister fire, which turned the cannon into a giant shotgun, discharging a sheet metal can
which burst open at the muzzle and scattered a shower of bullets or small shot. Canister
was the tactical equivalent of machine gun fire, and in the Seven Years War it probably
inflicted more casualties on the Prussian infantry than any other weapon. Colonel Eckart
reported to Frederick about the experience of the regiment of Kalckstein at Kolin (1757):
‘It was the enemy canister fire in particular which hit the second battalion, leaving not a
single survivor among the lieutenants who commanded the platoons’ (Duncker, 1876,
55).
Howitzers were stubby artillery pieces which threw explosive shells at high trajectory.
They were encountered much less frequently than the conventional cannon, but they had
a distinctive ‘signature’ what with the shell trailing its thin stream of smoke across the
sky, spinning and fizzing after it had dumped itself on the ground, and finally exploding
with a howl.
Scharnhorst once conducted a series of elaborate tests with canvas screens. He
discovered that the 7-pound shell (Frederick’s favourite) burst into about twenty-four
splinters; the 10-pound shell of the Prussian battery howitzer produced a considerably
greater blast, but no more effect from its splinters. He concluded that ‘when a shell or
bomb explodes on the surface of the earth, the splinters will hit a [continuous] six-foot
high object only occasionally at a distance of forty to fifty feet, and at greater ranges they
are almost totally ineffective’ (Scharnhorst, 1813, 31). The most productive targets for
howitzer fire were in fact not the infantrymen in the open field, but defended buildings
(which were readily set on fire by the bursting shells) and the cavalry (whose horses
might be thrown into panic).
The moral results of the various kinds of artillery fire counted for as much in their way
as the physical damage. At first the missiles took their effect on the vegetation, as clods
of earth were flung into the air and leaves and branches cascaded from the trees. Then a
clattering ran out from the bayonets, and thuds told of the impact of shot upon horses and
files of men, producing the most horrible sights, sounds and smells. Almost every soldier
could tell of experiences like those of Lieutenant Hülsen at Zorndorf:
My flank man’s head was blown off, and his brains flew in my face. My
spontoon was snatched out of my hand, and I received a canister ball on
my gorget, smashing the enamelled medallion. I drew my sword, and the
tassel of the sword knot was shot away. A ball went through the skirts of
my coat, and another knocked my hat aside, stripping the knot from the
band in the process. (Hülsen, 1890, 88–9)
Artillery struck from a distance, and killed impersonally, and recruits who came under
artillery fire quickly lost the confidence they otherwise enjoyed in their first experience
of action. Veterans respected the artillery for what it could do, but they knew when it
was, and was not, really dangerous. They were aware, for example, that a cannon shot
coming straight at you might be visible as a black dot, or be seen as a quivering in the air.
The experience was inherently alarming, but at least it gave you a chance to get out of the
way. At Dettingen (1743) an Englishman saw the Austrians ‘dip their heads and look
about them for they dodge the balls as a cock does the stick, they were so used to them’
(Davis [1743], 1925, 37).
However, all troops found the ordeal near-intolerable, if they had to stand immobile in
the open and at the mercy of these blind forces. Montbarey condemned the perverted
sense of honour displayed at Minden (1759) by Lieutenant-General de Saint Pern who,
having seen the bloody losses sustained by his poor grenadiers,
nevertheless kept them exposed to fire throughout the battle, instead of
ordering them to sit on the ground, or descend a few paces to the rear,
where they would have been covered by the crest of the hill on which they
were standing. (Montbarey, 1826–7, I, 175)
Some kind of movement not only made the troops more difficult to hit but did a little to
assuage the acute demand for action. At Hochkirch (1758) Saldern successfully covered
the Prussian retreat with five battalions, which escaped largely unscathed by the intense
fire of the Austrian cannon and howitzers:
as soon as he saw the enemy cannon shot falling in one of the regiments,
he would immediately draw it off to the right or the left, so that the balls
fell too long or too short. Through this useful expedient he accomplished
most of the retreat in a zig-zag movement…Saldern’s eyes perpetually
switched between the enemy, the regiment in question, the surrounding
terrain and his destination. (Küster, 1793, 12–13).
The infantry had some guns of their own, in the shape of the little regimental or battalion
cannon which were served by artillery detachments and borrowed foot soldiers. These
pieces made an encouraging noise and created at least the illusion that you were hitting
back at the enemy.
The infantry officer in battle
The colours served as rallying points, just as the drums might be used to convey some
basic orders, but the officer’s authority and power of control depended on his voice more
than anything else:
Every officer must practice giving his words of command, even to the
smallest bodies, in the full extent of his voice, and in a sharp tone…. The
justness of execution, and the confidence of the soldier, can only be in
proportion to the firm, decided, and proper manner in which every officer
of every rank gives his orders. (Dundas, 1788, 28)
Every unit was enclosed within a light cordon of officers and NCOs. In armies like the
Prussian, the lieutenant-colonel and the major usually had their place at the head of the
regiment or battalion, and it was their particular responsibility to preserve the direction of
the march and the alignment of the front.
A second and slightly thicker line of individuals (captains and lieutenants) was
positioned just in front of the first rank, or actually inside it, with the main purpose of
regulating the fire (see p. 213). In this location an officer was ‘in danger of being shot by
his own men, among whom there might be untrained recruits or ill-intentioned
characters… I served one campaign as captain of infantry, and I confess that I suffered
frequent anxieties on this account’ (Warnery, 1785–91, II, 54).
A final line of officers and NCOs extended across the rear of the battalion, and
employed whatever means were necessary to keep the troops in action. ‘Inner
Leadership’ was a concept unknown in the eighteenth century (and perhaps held in
exaggerated regard in the later twentieth), and according to the universally accepted code
of the Age of Reason superiors had the right and duty to kill any soldier who ran away, or
even looked as if he might turn tail. The men could be directed from behind much more
easily than from the front, and by dint of shouting commands, manhandling the troops
into place, or pushing them forward with spontoons and halberds levelled across their
backs, the officers and NCOs preserved the regularity of the line as best they could.
Casualties in the first two ranks were replaced by men who were fed in from the third,
and all the time the officers and NCOs sought to prevent the ‘scandalous evil’ of
bunching (Reglement für die sämmentliche-Kaiserlich-Ködniglich Infanterie, Vienna,
1769, 229).
In the Austrian and Russian armies the rear was also the station of the lieutenantcolonel
and the major. They were on horseback, and ‘enjoying a higher position, they
were able to see along the whole length of the battalion under their command, and
remedy any of those sudden disorders which might arise in some part of the formation’
(Vorontsov [1802], 1876, 474).
There was a sharp difference of opinion as to whether it was proper for the officers to
take part in the combat with personal weapons. A number of English senior commanders
insisted that ‘no officer is supposed to fight himself, and more than to defend his head;
his business is to see the men fight and do well; that’s sufficient’ (Cumberland, [1755],
1945, 99. See also An Old Officer, 1760, 180; Burgoyne’s General Orders, 30 June
1777, Hadden, 1884, 74–5). A clear case of an officer forgetting his priorities occurred in
the action at White Plains on 28 October 1776, when the advance of two English
battalions on the far side of the Bronx stream came to a fatal halt, simply because the
officer at the front stopped to fire against the Americans.
The opposing party argued that many officers carried light muskets (fusils) anyway for
immediate self-defence, and that by arming all the officers and NCOs with long guns you
could augment the firepower of a battalion by about fifty barrels (Fermor’s Disposition,
1736, Baiov, 1906, 56; d’Espagnac, 1751, I, 281; Pictet, 1761, I, 24; Bonneville, 1762, II,
46; Dalrymple, 1782, 16; Vorontsov [1802], 1876, 474).
Officers were objects of interest to certain sharp-eyed people in the enemy army. The
English lieutenant Thomas Anburey noted after the battle of Freeman’s Farm in 1777:
The officers who have been killed or wounded in the late action, are much
greater in proportion than…the soldiers, which must be attributed to the
great execution of the riflemen, who directed their fire against them in
particular; in every interval of smoke, they are sure to take off some, as
the riflemen had posted themselves in high trees. (Anburey, 1969, I, 429)
Frederick, who killed men at one remove by the scores of thousands, objected to the
killing of individuals as murderous. In the Seven Year War he hauled one of his jägers
out of a ditch where he had been lying in wait for a victim, and he was singularly
reluctant to allow his gunners to knock down enemy officers.
Infantry officers were naturally delighted to survive a day of battle unscathed, but we
are told that the experience of combat left them with feelings of frustration:
In battle, an officer of the infantry can make not the slightest movement of
his company or division on his own initiative… Whether in general
actions or formal sieges, the individual officer is lost in the crowd of
combatants, and he kills or is killed without any hope of sharing in the
glory which is desired as greedily by every military man. (Warnery,
1785–91, III, 120; Lacuée de Cessac, 1785, 2)
Historical research 2: the infantry battle
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Originally Posted by Fish Dude
