Before Napoleon: How the Man in the Line Changed
The painting depicts one of the bloodiest battles of the Seven Years' War, which took place on August 25, 1758, between Russian troops and the Prussian army.
A Prussian soldier of the era of Frederick II could fire three or even four volleys in a minute—not because he was braver or smarter than others, but because he had been drilled for years, honing his musket loading to the point of unconscious automatism. A French recruit of 1793 couldn't fire at such a rapid rate. This is where the gap begins. story, in which the dense line gives way to a column. This change is often explained by the fact that linear tactics have become obsolete. This explanation misses the point. The man in the line has changed, and the tactics have merely followed suit.
Line as an engineering calculation
In the 18th century, infantry formed a nearly continuous line two or three ranks deep, stretching hundreds of meters along the front. This formation is primarily associated with the Prussian army of Frederick II, and behind its apparent rigidity lay a precise calculation of the properties weaponsThe smoothbore flintlock musket had a short range and was inaccurate. Relying on the accuracy of an individual shooter was pointless. The effect was achieved by density: the more barrels fired simultaneously at a single front line, the greater the likelihood of inflicting significant damage on the enemy.
The line met this task better than any other formation. Each soldier in the front rank fired; in a three-row formation, the third rank theoretically fired as well, shifting slightly or raising its position. In practice, this was far from always successful, and the gap between what the regulations prescribed and what actually happened in combat was obvious. The line had other advantages, too. The wide front made it difficult to outflank, and the thin line artillery The cannonball pierced through with far less damage than it would through a dense, deep column, where it would mow down an entire row of men. So inertia had nothing to do with it: the linear formation simply followed the physics of the musket.
"The Prussian Life Guards in the Battle of Kolin" (German: Das preußische 1. Bataillon Leibgarde in der Schlacht bei Kolin), written by Richard Knötel before 1914
Line price - person
Firepower came at a price, and the price was the most precious: training. The line was sensitive to uneven terrain: a ravine, a hedge, or a copse would disrupt its geometry. It required numerous well-trained non-commissioned officers and officers capable of holding the line under fire, as well as extensive training for the rank and file. All this was within the capabilities of relatively small but highly disciplined professional armies. The 18th century essentially knew no other army.
Maneuvering in such a formation was difficult. Turns, reorganizations, and transitions into and out of column required well-practiced commands and synchronicity; movement over rough terrain threatened to disrupt the front. Add to this the communication, primarily visual and through messengers, and the nature of the conservatism of the time becomes clear. A commander who could not quickly and reliably transmit orders preferred a simple, proven scheme to risky innovation. Tactics favored the reliable over the bold, because otherwise they lost control.
Revolution changes the material
The French Revolution shattered this system from within, not through theory, but through the simple arithmetic of conscription: there were too many soldiers, and too hastily recruited. Small professional armies were replaced by mass troops, raised by universal conscription. By the early 1790s, France was already deploying tens and hundreds of thousands of men, many of whom had minimal training. Worse, there was a shortage of experienced junior commanders: officers were being produced from veteran soldiers and former volunteers in months, whereas previously it had taken years. There was simply no one and no time to teach recruits the intricacies of linear formation. Frederick's Line, in all its formal rigor, became practically impossible for such an army.
This is where the "column" comes into play. It's worth clarifying right away what this word meant on the battlefield: not a line of soldiers standing behind each other, but a fairly wide formation—a battalion would line up its companies in lines, one behind the other, so that they were about ten ranks deep and about a hundred men along the front. In other words, a column was noticeably narrower than a front line, but far from the thin "gut" it's sometimes portrayed as. It had long been known as a marching and maneuvering formation, but now it took on a new meaning.
In a column, it was much easier for a recruit to maintain formation on the march and over uneven terrain: where the line broke, the column moved. A commander could turn more quickly, narrow or widen the front, or lead a unit through a defile—a narrow passage between obstacles. The revolutionary army compensated for the tactical awkwardness of an individual soldier with mobility: a loose battle formation, light infantry, and skirmishers in loose formation. Added to this was the transition from a single line army to a system of divisions, and later corps, operating on a broad front. Napoleon, following in the footsteps of the revolutionary generals, perfected a process that had already been underway for ten years.
It's worth immediately forestalling a possible objection: didn't Suvorov, who attacked the Turks without any solid line, fight in columns and squares? He did—and this isn't an exception to our logic, but a confirmation of it. The Turkish army of that era was built not on volley fire, but on a massive cavalry charge and hand-to-hand combat. Against such an enemy, a line with its main asset, dense fire along the front, was meaningless: it faced not a counter volley, but envelopment and slaughter. Therefore, Suvorov led dispersed columns, instantly closing into a square, bristling with bayonets in all directions. And here, the square wasn't a forced sacrifice to cannon fire, as it was for the French under European batteries, but a primary, winning formation, since the Turks lacked powerful field artillery capable of punishing him. Here too, the formation was dictated not by regulations or fashion, but by the properties of the weapons and the character of the enemy—the same reason that drove revolutionary France from the line to the column.
A French square repels an attack by Austrian cuirassiers.
Idea before the author: Giber
It's all the more surprising that the theoretical tool for this turning point was ready even before the Revolution and long before Napoleon. European military thought had long debated the merits of columns and lines. A narrow, deep column is more convenient for maneuver and bayonet attacks, especially on rough terrain, but is inferior to a line in terms of fire, since only its head can fire at the front. A line provides maximum firepower, but is vulnerable to cavalry on the flanks. This debate was systematized by Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte de Guibert in his work General tactical test.
Guibert belonged to the generation of "philosopher-officers" of the Enlightenment and reflected on the experience of the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), where Prussian discipline had demonstrated its full potential. He acknowledged the merits of this discipline but pointed out the main flaw of the rigid line—its inability to quickly adapt to the situation. Stretched out over hundreds of meters, it responded poorly to flank threats, struggled to traverse uneven terrain, and made it almost impossible to concentrate forces in a narrow sector without risky reorganizations. The future, Guibert believed, lay in maneuver and concentration, not in the mechanical alignment of the front.
He understood the column not as a "wall of bayonets," but as a means of rapprochement, ready to deploy into a line at any moment. Fire remained the most important factor in combat for him, and he retained the line as the bearer of fire; the column, however, served as an instrument for quickly changing the battle formation. From this emerged his most original idea—the mixed formation. ordre mixte, in which some battalions stand in a line, forming a fire screen and pinning down the enemy, while others remain in columns at intervals, in reserve for a decisive blow, ready to fill the gaps, cover the flank or intensify the onslaught.
A special place in these discussions was occupied by the "attack column"—a battalion column whose internal structure is specifically adapted to rapid deployment. The French were attracted by its organization, which allowed the unit to deploy in a line on both flanks, and when threatened by cavalry, quickly form a square, a closed quadrangle bristling with bayonets in all directions. The column was conceived as a collapsible form, ready at the first command to transform into a line or such a square, and not at all as a faceless, dense cube of soldiers.
By the late 1780s, French military thought had almost everything it needed. It had the tools—the flexible column capable of deploying on command—and a ready-made mixed-order system. What was missing was a mass army—the very one for which these developments, conceived for entirely different conditions, unexpectedly proved the ideal solution. Nor was there a commander who could combine the established theory with this new army. Napoleon would become that leader. And the debate over "column versus line," which British historiography would later, following Charles Oman, transform into a beautiful and deceptive formula, was in fact far more complex. But that's the subject of the next article.
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