But when Napoleon’s armies were opposed to troops who could not stand firm to meet them in a line formation, they generally succeeded. The Spaniards, in their earlier battles, often tried to resist in a line of deployed battalions, but their _morale_ was not good enough when the attacking column drew close to them, and they generally gave way at the critical moment and let their assailants break through[89]. The same had often been the case with the Austrians and Prussians, who in their earlier wars with Napoleon used the line formation which Frederick the Great had popularized fifty years before. The great king had accustomed his troops to fight in a three- or four-deep line, with a comparatively small provision of skirmishers to cover their front, for it was by the fire of the whole battalion that his troops were intended to win. The masses of tirailleurs which the French sent forward in front of their columns generally succeeded in engaging the Prussian or Austrian line so closely, that the columns behind them came up without much loss, and then broke the line by their mere momentum and moral effect. Hence in their later wars the German powers copied their enemies, and took to using a very thick skirmishing line backed by battalion columns in the French style. [89] The reader who wishes to see a logical explanation of the phenomenon may find it in the remarks of the Spanish Colonel Moscoso (1812) in Arteche, ii. 394. He explains that the skirmishing line of his compatriots was always too thin to keep back the tirailleurs. The latter invariably pushed their way close up to the Spanish main body, and while presenting in their scattered formation no definite mark for volleys, were yet numerous enough to shoot down so many of their opponents as to shake the Spanish formation before the columns in the rear came up.