Column vs. Line: How the Myth Was Born
In any popular book about Napoleon, the reader will encounter a familiar image: dense French columns advance like a battering ram, crashing head-on into a thin British line. The line showers them with lead, and the column breaks into disorder. The conclusion is simple: the British fought correctly, and the French foolishly. At the statutory level, however, things were more complicated. Where did the image of the "army of columns" come from? And who made the French column look foolish? Let me clarify right away: what follows will primarily be discussed in the English-language tradition—it is there that this image was formed and cemented as self-evident.
From the charter to the battlefield
On paper, the French system seemed quite rational. The commander had a set of tools at his disposal, each with its own purpose.
- line - formation for firefight at the decisive area.
- Column — a convenient form for marching, passing through gorges (defiles), moving over uneven terrain and attacking in narrow sections of the front, for example in villages or near fortifications.
- Kara - formation to repel cavalry.
- Loose formation - for firefights and reconnaissance of the area.
The 1791 regulations provided the commander with a set of ready-made formations and rules for transitioning between them, and how to combine them was decided on the spot. First, the riflemen and artillery They break up the enemy's ranks, then the column approaches, deploys into a line, or takes matters to the bayonet. What the regulations don't require is a requirement to drive a deep column across an open field. The column was neither a universal assault force nor the only possible battle formation.
In previous articles in this series, we examined how a person changed in formation and how the 1791 regulations became the grammar of battle, a set of rules by which formations evolve into actions. We also discussed how infantry, cavalry, and artillery were supposed to operate in coordination, and how Napoleon managed maneuver and concentration of attack at the level of operational art. At all these levels, French tactics are not limited to a single technique for all situations: they are a set of solutions for different situations. There is no eternal assault of columns in the regulations.
But the battlefield is rarely a perfect extension of the parade ground. Lack of training, time pressure, and fear are all factors. And there's another factor that's often overlooked: battle descriptions are written by people who already know who won. It's in these descriptions that the column gradually turns into a caricatured symbol of stupid tactics. To understand why the image of "column versus line" has prevailed in the public consciousness, it's worth getting to know the man who largely created it.
The Birth of a Stereotype: Oman and the British School
Charles Oman (1860–1946) was a British historian of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. His seven-volume "History The Peninsular War, published from 1902 to 1930, became for a long time the definitive reference work for English-speaking readers. Oman undertook a tremendous amount of research into the 1808–1814 campaign on the Iberian Peninsula and was one of the first to systematically describe Wellington's war.
Charles Oman (1860–1946) was a British historian of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In his presentation, almost every major battle in Spain and Portugal boiled down to a single pattern. The French advance in columns; the British stand and fire in two ranks; the column, having reached firing range, discovers that only its forward section can respond and quickly breaks formation. I emphasize: this is how Oman saw it, and it was this pattern that later solidified as self-evident. From it, he drew a direct consequence: a two-rank line is technically superior to a column, and Wellington's victories are explained primarily by sound tactics.
The picture proved remarkably convenient. It emphasized the rationality, discipline, and firepower of the British infantry; the heroism of a handful of soldiers holding back the onslaught of massive columns with a thin line; and the purity of victory: the enemy lost not by chance, but because their system was inferior. Against this backdrop, the French appeared less trained, more brutal, and more inclined to rely on mass and moral impulse than on measured fire. The thesis of the superiority of the line over the column is a specifically British view; outside the Anglophone tradition, the picture looked different, as will be discussed below.
The line is thin but clever; the column is dense but stupid. This formula has become so commonplace that many have stopped noticing: it reflects not so much the actual tactical practice of the French as the victors' view of their opponents.
Oman was not a propagandist. He worked as a serious scholar of his time. But, like any historian of the era of national empires, he viewed the war from a certain perspective. For him, the Peninsular War was, above all, a triumph for the British infantry, and a clear formula explained this triumph best.
Problems with the classical scheme
The weakness of Oman's theory isn't that he was mistaken. He simply didn't see everything. He relied primarily on British reports, officers' memoirs, and official correspondence. French documents—that is, orders, reports, and dispatches—long remained on the fringes of English-language scholarship. As a result, the battle is described through the eyes of those standing in line and firing at the column, and attention naturally focused on what was happening at the front.
Next came a second simplification. The complex battle formation collapsed into two figures: a thick column and a thin line. The mixed formations, the interaction of lines and columns, the wide lines of skirmishers in loose formation, and the artillery preparation were all omitted from the picture. Yet it was precisely these elements that formed the real fabric of the battle.
Take Bussaco, September 1810, a battle that Oman himself analyzed as a model for the triumph of the line. Wellington positioned his infantry along the reverse slope of a ridge, sheltering them from fire and sight, and advanced dense lines of skirmishers. The French corps of Marshal Ney and General Reynier advanced up the hill in columns, but not as a solid mass: their own skirmishers advanced ahead, exchanging fire as they ascended. The British line opened fire at almost point-blank range, emerging from cover at the last moment. The battle indeed ended with the line's firepower superior, but the initial battle was an exchange of skirmishes between skirmishers, not a blind ramming of a column into a wall of musketry. Upon closer inspection, the same pattern breaks down into several phases with different formations.
This engraving depicts the Battle of Bussaco, which took place on September 27, 1810, during the Peninsular War.
Modern researchers who have studied French regulations and combat reports emphasize that columns often deployed into line just before the clash. The column itself was intended for approach, concentration, and reserves. Even on the peninsula, many attacking columns were either partially deployed or operated in conjunction with lines and skirmishers. The image of an army that had forgotten how to deploy into line is a product of simplification, not a tactical norm.
Who benefits from the foolish column?
A column stubbornly advancing and breaking against a thin line is a perfect image for a popular book. It symbolizes brute force losing to a smart and disciplined defense. But this image is advantageous to some, and it's easier to understand who benefits from the obvious: war is always described with the outcome already known.
It's advantageous for the victor to present their victories as the result of systematic superiority rather than a confluence of circumstances, and to portray the enemy as cruder and less disciplined. For British military tradition, the myth of the "foolish column" is convenient because it transforms the Peninsular War into a textbook of correct infantry tactics. Victory is attributed not only to the soldier's bravery but also to a technically superior fire system.
This image can also be convenient for the loser. Postwar French memory is reluctant to argue with it: lost campaigns in Spain can be attributed to a poor tactical system, not to the mistakes of individual marshals or political miscalculations. French memory of Napoleon is rooted in great victories, while Iberian failures are overshadowed or explained away by the peculiarities of the theater. Thus, the column becomes a convenient scapegoat. The British confirm their superiority, the French attribute some of their defeats to systemic flaws, and both sides converge on the same picture.
A look from the other side: the domestic school
It's worth remembering that the formula "a smart line versus a dumb column" is a uniquely Anglophone tradition. In Russian and Soviet military historiography, contemporary with Oman's work, the emphasis was reversed. Column and shock tactics were viewed as more progressive than linear tactics, rather than as a sign of backwardness. Moreover, the very "authorship" of column tactics was often disputed by the French: priority in its development was attributed to Alexander Suvorov and his school of bayonet combat. Thus, in the Russian tradition, the column did not require rehabilitation—it was not condemned in the same way as the British. This is useful to keep in mind when discussing "emerging from Oman's shadow": it was primarily the Western reader and Western scholarship that had to emerge from it.
Modern revision
In the second half of the 20th century, Western historiography of the Peninsular War began to emerge from the shadow of Oman. Works appeared that viewed French troops not as a mass of columns, but as a complex system combining different formations and branches of service. Among those who reconsidered the classic model was the military historian Paddy Griffith. He emphasized the role of tirailleurs, light infantry in loose formations, the importance of artillery preparation, and the prevalence of mixed formations. Griffith's conclusions are controversial, and some colleagues accused him of going too far, underestimating the column's striking role; but he set the direction. Other scholars of Napoleonic infantry, including James Arnold and Brent Noseworthy, worked in the same vein, drawing on documents from both sides.
Added to this was the extensive use of French archives and the reconstruction of battle formations based not only on British maps. The picture of the battle became noticeably more complex.
- Riflemen operate in front of the front, conducting fire battles and disrupting the enemy's ranks.
- Artillery provides fire support and undermines morale.
- The column serves as a means of bayonet attack or as a way to quickly bring a deployed line to the front.
- Lines, columns, squares and loose formations replace each other according to the situation.
So the myth of the column versus the line turned out to be not so much false as overly simplistic. It's convenient for illustration, but poorly suited to understanding real practice.
Finale
The myth didn't spring from nothing. It's based on the genuine impressions of British officers, who actually saw advancing columns in front of them in many battles, and the extensive work of Charles Oman. The problem is that the path from impression to diagram turned out to be much shorter than the path from diagram back to documents.
To see the column not through the eyes of the victors, but as it was intended, we must return to two sources—the regulations and practice. In the next article, we will examine what the 1791 regulations prescribed for the column, how a marching column differed from an attack column, and why French commanders considered it a tool of maneuver and rapprochement, not a battering ram.
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