Infantry Tactics, Derived from Material Causes. 1700-1870

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This article was initially a fragment of the manuscript of Part II of Anti-Dühring (MS: end of p. 20, and pp. 21-24 and a large part of p. 25). It was included in Chapter III of Part II. Subsequendy, Engels replaced this with a shorter text (see this volume, pp. 153-58) and gave the former text the tide Infantry Tactics, Derived from Material Causes, 1700-1870. The fragment in question was written in the first half of 1877, during work on Part II of Anti-Dühring (see Note 1). This article was first published in 1935 in Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe, F. Engels, Herrn Eugen Dühring's Umwälzung der Wissenschaft/Dialektik der Natur. Sonderausgabe, Moscow-Leningrad, 1935.

In the fourteenth century gunpowder and fire-arms became known in Western and Central Europe and every schoolchild knows that these purely technical advances wholly revolutionised methods of warfare. But this revolution proceeded at a very slow pace. The first fire-arms were very crude, particularly the arquebus. And although a great number of separate improvements were invented at an early date—the rifled barrel, the breech-loader, the wheel-lock, etc.—still it took over three hundred years before, at the end of the seventeenth century, a musket was constructed suitable for equipping the entire body of infantry.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the foot-soldiery consisted partly of pikemen and partly of arquebusiers. Originally the pike carriers’ task was to effect a decision by charging the enemy, while the arquebus fire served the purposes of defence. The pikemen therefore fought in compact masses many ranks deep, like in the ancient Greek phalanx; the arquebusiers stood in formations eight to ten ranks in depth, because that many could fire in succession before one could load. Anyone whose weapon was loaded jumped in front, fired and withdrew to the last rank in order to load again.

The gradual perfection of fire-arms changed this relation. The matchlock musket could finally be loaded so rapidly that only five men, i.e., troops only five men deep, were required to maintain continuous fire. Thus the same number of musketeers could now hold a front almost twice as long as before. Because of the much more devastating effect of gun-fire on mass formations many men deep the pikemen too were now drawn up in only six to eight ranks, so that the battle order gradually approximated the line formation, in which musket fire decided the issue and the pikemen were no longer kept for the attack but only as cover for the sharpshooters against mounted troops. At the end of this period we find a battle array consisting of two combat detachments and a reserve, each detachment drawn up in line, mostly six men deep, guns and horsemen partly in the intervals between battalions, partly at the wings; each infantry battalion consisted at the most of one-third pikemen and at least of two-thirds musketeers.

At the end of the seventeenth century the flint-lock musket with a bayonet and ready-made cartridges was at last produced. With this the pike disappeared once and for all from infantry service. Loading took less and less time, the more rapid fire was itself a protection and the bayonet replaced the pike in case of necessity. Thus the depth of the line could be reduced from six to four, later to three and finally here and there to two ranks. Hence the line lengthened steadily with the same number of men, and ever more muskets were in use simultaneously. But these long, thin lines became thereby also more and more unwieldy and could move in formation only on level, unobstructed ground, and even then only very slowly, 70-75 paces a minute; and it was just in a plain that the line, in particular its flanks, offered the enemy cavalry prospects of successful attack. Partly to protect these flanks and partly to strengthen the fighting line, which decided the day, the cavalry was totally massed on the wings so that the battle line proper consisted solely of footmen and their light battalion guns. The extremely unwieldy heavy guns were mounted in front of the wings and changed position at the most only once during a battle. The foot-soldiers were drawn up in two detachments whose flanks were covered by infantry drawn up at an angle, the whole array forming a single very long hollow rectangle. This cumbrous mass, when it was not to move as a whole, could only be divided into three parts, the centre and the two wings. This shifting of parts was confined to moving up the wing numerically superior to the enemy’s in order to outflank him, while the other wing was held back as a menace, to prevent him from re-arranging his front accordingly. A complete change in the dislocation of troops during a battle consumed so much time and exposed so many weak spots to the enemy that the attempt almost always ended in defeat. The original array therefore governed throughout the battle and as soon as the footmen joined battle one crushing blow decided the day. This entire method of warfare, developed to the highest pitch by Frederick II, was the inevitable result of two jointly operating material factors: first, the human material of that time, the mercenary armies of princes, rigorously drilled but quite unreliable and only held together by the rod, many of them hostile prisoners of war who had been pressed into service; and second, the armament-the cumbersome heavy guns and the smoothbore rapid but badly firing flint-lock muskets with bayonets.

This method of combat prevailed as long as both adversaries remained on the same level with regard to manpower and armament and it suited both to adhere to the prescribed rules. But when the American War of Independence broke out the well-drilled mercenary troops were unexpectedly met by hordes of rebels who, while not knowing how to exercise, were splendid shots who for the most part carried accurate rifles and fought in their own cause, hence did not desert. These rebels did not do the English troops the favour of dancing with them the well-known battle minuet, stepping slowly across open plain, observing all the traditional rules of military etiquette. They drew their opponent into dense forests, where his long columns in marching order were, without the possibility of defence, exposed to the fire of scattered invisible skirmishers. Operating in loose order they took advantage of every bit of cover the terrain afforded to harass the enemy, maintaining at the same time great mobility that could never be matched by the cumbersome mass of the enemy troops. The combat fire of scattered skirmishers, which had been of importance as early as the introduction of the portable fire-arm, proved therefore superior here, in certain cases, particularly in small encounters, to the linear formation.

The soldiers that composed the mercenary troops of Europe were not suitable for fighting in loose order; their armament was still less so. True, the musket was no longer pressed against the chest on firing, as had been necessary with the old matchlocks; the musket was brought up to the shoulder, as now. But there could still be no question of aiming, since with a perfectly straight stock continuing the line of the barrel the eye could not freely run down the latter. It was only in 1777 that in France the slanting of the butt characteristic of the hunting rifle was also adopted for the infantry rifle and effective tirailleur fire made possible. A second improvement to be mentioned was the lighter but still solid gun-carriage constructed in the middle of the eighteenth century by Gribeauval, which alone made possible the greater mobility later demanded of artillery.

It was reserved to the French Revolution to utilise these two technical improvements on the field of battle. When allied Europe attacked it it placed at the disposal of the government all the members of the nation capable of bearing arms. But this nation had no time to practise the intricate manoeuvres of linear tactics sufficiently to be able to oppose the veteran Prussian and Austrian infantry in similar formation. On the other hand, France lacked not only the primeval forests of America but also its virtually boundless territory for retreat. What was needed was to defeat the enemy between the frontier and Paris, that is, to defend a definite area, and that in the long run could be done only in open mass battle. Consequently it became necessary to find, in addition to the skirmish chains, still another form in which the badly drilled French masses could face Europe's standing armies with some prospect of success. This form was found in the close column, which was already being used in certain cases, but mostly on parade grounds. The column was easier to keep in order than the line. Even when thrown somewhat into disarray its compact mass nevertheless continued to offer at least passive resistance. The column was easier to handle, was more under the direct control of the commander and could move faster. Its speed rose to 100 paces and more a minute. But the most important result consisted in the following: the use of the column as the exclusive mass battle formation made it possible to divide up the cumbrous uniform whole of the old linear order of battle into separate parts, each granted a certain degree of independence, each adapting its general instructions to the circumstances confronted, and each composed, if so desired, of all three arms of the service. The column was plastic enough to permit of every possible combination of troop employment; it allowed the use of villages and farm-houses, which Frederick II had still strictly forbidden; henceforth they became the main points of support in every battle. The column could be employed in any terrain; and finally it could counter linear tactics—where all was staked on one card—with combat tactics in which the line was fatigued and so worn down by skirmish chains and the gradual use of troops to protract the engagement that it could not withstand the thrust of the fresh fighters that had been kept in reserve to the very end. Whereas the linear formation was equally strong at all points, an adversary fighting in close column formation could keep part of the line engaged by feint attacks of small bodies of troops and concentrate his main force for the assault on the key position.-Loose bodies of skirmishers now did most of the firing while the columns attacked with the bayonet. This restored the similar relation that had existed between the skirmish chains and the mass of pikemen at the beginning of the sixteenth century, with the exception, however, that the modern columns could at any time disperse to form skirmish chains and the latter again mass to form columns.

This new method of combat, the use of which Napoleon developed to the acme of perfection, was so superior to the old that the latter hopelessly collapsed when faced by it, the last time being at Jena, where the cumbersome, slow moving Prussian lines, largely useless for skirmishing, virtually melted away when the French tirailleurs poured in their fire, to which they could reply only with platoon fire. But even if the linear battle order succumbed, this was by no means true of the line as combat formation. A few years after the Prussians had made out so badly with their lines at Jena, Wellington led his English troops in line formation against the French columns and as a rule beat them. But Wellington, to be sure, had adopted the whole of French tactics, with the exception that he had his close-formation infantry fight in line, and not in column formation. He thus secured the advantage of bringing into simultaneous action, when firing, all his rifles, and when attacking, all his bayonets. In this battle array the English fought up to a few years ago and got the best of the bargain both in attack (Albuera) and defence (Inkerman) even when considerably outnumbered. Until his death, Bugeaud, who had faced those English lines, preferred them to the column.

Moreover, the infantry fire-arm was extremely bad, so bad that at a hundred paces it could hit a person standing alone only seldom and at three hundred paces a whole battalion just as seldom. Thus, when the French came to Algiers they suffered heavy losses from the Bedouins’ long firelock muskets fired at distances at which their own muskets scored no hits. Here only the rifled musket could be of any use. But it was precisely in France that the rifle, even as an emergency weapon, had always been objected to, because it took so long to load and clogged so quickly. But now when the need for an easily loaded musket made itself felt it was met at once. The preparatory work of Delvigne was followed by Thouvenin’s tige-rifle and Minié’s expansive bullets, the latter having placed the rifled and the smoothbore musket on an absolute par with regard to loading time, so that now the entire infantry could be equipped with accurate long-range rifles. But before the rifled muzzle-loader could establish the tactics suitable to its use it was supplanted by the most up-to-date weapon, the rifled breech-loader, while at the same time rifled ordnance developed ever increasing efficiency.

The arming of the entire nation, which the revolution had ushered in, soon experienced considerable restriction. Only part of the young people liable to military service were called up, by lot, into the standing army and a greater or smaller part of the rest of the citizens were, at most, formed into an untrained National Guard. Or, in those countries where universal conscription was really strictly enforced, as in Switzerland, at most a militia was formed which was drilled under the colours for no more than a few weeks. Financial considerations made necessary the choice between conscription and militia. Only one country in Europe, and at that one of the poorest, attempted to combine universal conscription and standing army. That was Prussia. And even though the universal obligation to serve in the standing army was enforced only approximately, also necessitated by financial considerations, the Prussian Landwehr system nevertheless placed at the disposal of the government such a considerable number of trained people organised in ready cadres that Prussia was decidedly superior to any other country of equal population.

In the Franco-German War of 1870 the French conscription system succumbed to the Prussian Landwehr system. In this war, however, both sides were for the first time equipped with breech-loading rifles, while the regulations for moving and fighting remained essentially the same as at the time of the old flint-locks. At most the tirailleur chains were somewhat more compact. As for the rest, the French still fought in the old battalion column formation, at times also in line formation, while on the German side at least an attempt was made, in the introduction of the company column formation, to find a form of fighting which was better adapted to the new type of arms. Thus one managed in the first few battles. But when, in the storming of St. Privat (August 18), three brigades of the Prussian Guard tried to apply the company column formation seriously, the devastating power of the breech-loaders became apparent. Of the five chiefly engaged regiments (15,000 men) almost all officers (176) and 5,114 men, that is, upwards of one-third, fell. The Guard Infantry alone, whose strength had been 28,160 men when it joined the fray, lost 8,230 men including 307 officers that day. From that time on the company column as a battle formation was condemned no less than the battalion mass formation or the line. All idea of further exposing troops in any kind of close formation to enemy rifle fire was abandoned; on the German side all subsequent fighting was conducted only in those compact chains of tirailleurs into which the columns had so far regularly dispersed of themselves under a deadly hail of bullets, although this had been opposed by the higher commands on the ground that it was contrary to good battle formation. Once again the soldier had been shrewder than the officer; it was he who instinctively found the only way of fighting which has proved of service up to now under the fire of breech-loading rifles, and in spite of opposition from his officers he carried it through successfully. Likewise the double was the only step now used within the range of the frightful rifle fire.