From the beginning of English history, as the foregoing pages have shown, the English modes of fighting have always led to the adoption of a thin line. Harold's house-carls must have stood in a single rank. The archers of Crecy cannot have been in more than two. The dismounted men-at-arms were drawn up, we are told on one or two occasions, four deep: and seeing that they had to sustain the momentum of mailed horsemen charging, they could not well have had less. The bodily strength and toughness of the English race, perhaps their lack of imagination, qualified them to bear the shock of battle well: and the habit of victory engendered a confidence of superiority, which was doubtless arrogant, but was also calculated to realise the expectation. Thus the national qualities and traditions were favourable to the adoption in later ages of a thinner line than other nations saw their way to employ. The evidence of the drill books seems to be clear that in England the fighting formation in the seventeenth century was three deep, that in the war of American independence the practice of skirmishing in two ranks began, and that in the Peninsula the formation in two ranks for all fighting was finally adopted. A thinner line still is to all intents and purposes impossible. Whether the adoption of this system was the carrying out in full of the fundamental theory of the line, namely that it is the mode in which the largest proportion of force can be brought to bear on the enemy at once, or was suggested by virtual necessity, it is hard to tell. Given two very unequal forces opposed to each other, it is obvious that the smaller can form an order of battle tolerably equal to the larger only by making its line very thin. It is also obvious that this can be done safely only if the men are not to be daunted by feeling the lack of support. These conditions existed, in extreme form, in the early English wars in India. The soldiers of Clive and Coote, whether English or sepoys, were infinitely superior in discipline and equipment, if not in courage, to their enemies, and they were outnumbered many times over. It is quite possible that the first impulse to the two-deep formation came from India. However this may be, it is certain that England, and England alone, adopted a century ago the line of two ranks only; it seems to be also the case that at a much earlier period it was the English practice to fight in line, while other nations made more use of the column. And it is certain too that England gained enormously by being able to do so. The whole Peninsular war forms a commentary on this text, with Waterloo for a crowning lesson. CHAPTER XI THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY