Elite [164] British Napoleonic Infantry Tactics 1792-1815 by Philip Haythornthwaite

Author:Philip Haythornthwaite [Haythornthwaite, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: new
ISBN: 9781780967547
Google: TorvCwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 13584149
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Published: 2008-06-17T04:00:00+00:00

Light infantry tactics when covering a retreat – an illustration from a contemporary manual. At left, an enemy force (shaded block) preceded by skirmishers (a), pursues a retreating body (B, at right), which is covered by its own light infantry rearguard (b & c).

This rearguard uses field boundaries as cover, leapfrogging back by alternate waves; line (b) takes up position (d), line (c) withdrawing to position (e). Once the main body has crossed the river, the rearguard line the nearest hedgerow to the bank (C); if possible they also destroy the bridge, leaving only a plank for their skirmishers to retire across, while they await the enemy. Naturally, movement by alternate waves could also be used while advancing. (Print published by T. Egerton, 1803)

William Grattan of the 88th recalled how a commanding officer got his battalion into square, but was unable to get it out again; after several attempts and increasing confusion, he declared to his officers, ‘Gentlemen! I can clearly discern that there is a something wanting, and I strongly recommend you, when you reach your barracks, to peruse Dundas! Men, you may go home!’32 Confusions could certainly occur on campaign, and one incident even concerned Dundas himself when he commanded a brigade in the Netherlands. Seeing it in great disorder, ‘an old crony and countryman’, referring to the ‘pivots’ that featured in Dundas’s manual, asked him, ‘I say, David, whar’s your peevots noo?’33 At times the prescribed drill may even have been unsuitable: at Talavera, observing his skirmishers retiring in textbook fashion which he thought too slow, Rowland Hill shouted ‘Damn their filing, let them come in anyhow!’34 The more complicated movements might have been difficult on the battlefield, by virtue of circumstances and terrain, so in some cases training may have concentrated only on what was of really vital significance on campaign. Grattan, for example, observed of his 88th – one of the best regiments in the Peninsula – that ‘At drill our manoeuvres were chiefly confined to line marching, echellon [sic] movements and the formation of square in every possible way; and in all those we excelled.’35

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