"At the battle of Castiglione," says Marshal Saxe, "the Imperial troops let the French approach to twenty paces, hoping to destroy them by a volley. At that distance they fired coolly and with all precautions, but they were broken before the smoke cleared. At the battle of Belgrade (1717) I saw two battalions who at thirty paces, aimed and fired at a mass of Turks. The Turks cut them up, only two or three escaping. The Turkish loss in dead was only thirty-two." No matter what the Marshal says, we doubt that these men were cool. For men who could hold their fire up to such a near approach of the enemy, and fire into masses, would have killed the front rank, thrown the others into confusion, and would never have been cut up as they were. To make these men await, without firing, an enemy at twenty or thirty paces, needed great moral pressure. Controlled by discipline they waited, but as one waits for the roof to fall, for a bomb to explode, full of anxiety and suppressed emotion. When the order is given to raise the arms and fire the crisis is reached. The roof falls, the bomb explodes, one flinches and the bullets are fired into the air. If anybody is killed it is an accident. This is what happened before the use of skirmishers. Salvos were tried. In action they became fire at will. Directed against troops advancing without firing they were ineffective. They did not halt the dash of the assault, and the troops who had so counted on them fled demoralized. But when skirmishers were used, salvos became impossible. Armies who held to old methods learned this to their cost. In the first days of the Revolution our troops, undrilled and not strictly disciplined, could not fight in line. To advance on the enemy, a part of the battalion was detached as skirmishers. The remainder marched into battle and was engaged without keeping ranks. The combat was sustained by groups fighting without formal order. The art was to support by reserves the troops advanced as skirmishers. The skirmishers always began the action, when indeed they did not complete it. To oppose fire by rank to skirmishers was fools' play. Skirmishers necessarily opposed each other. Once this method was adopted, they were supported, reinforced by troops in formation. In the midst of general firing fire at command became impossible and was replaced by fire at will. Dumouriez, at the battle of Jemmapes, threw out whole battalions as skirmishers, and supporting them by light cavalry, did wonders with them. They surrounded the Austrian redoubts and rained on the cannoneers a hail of bullets so violent that they abandoned their pieces.