The Life of a Regimental Officer During the Great War, 1793-1815Mockler-Ferryman, A. F. (Augustus Ferryman)
History
The Life of a Regimental Officer During the Great War, 1793-1815
Mockler-Ferryman, A. F. (Augustus Ferryman)
Great Britain -- History -- 1789-1820; Rice, Samuel, 1775-1840
Moore developed light movements enormously, producing a marvellous
elasticity in comparatively large bodies of troops, and under his
training whole regiments became as mobile and rapid in manœuvre as
previously no company of a regiment had been. To swiftly reach a
given point, and there bring as many rifles or muskets as possible
into the firing line; to make every officer and man use his own
intelligence in carrying out movements; and to impress upon them
the necessity for mutual support,--were the chief aims of Moore's
training; and he it was who originated for the British army that
self-dependent Thin Red Line which so soon was to become the
destroyer of Napoleon's deep and massive columns. For it was proved
over and over again in the long war which followed, that, with
opposing forces of equal numbers, the line two-deep, every man of
which was so disciplined as to stand firm, and every man of which
had the opportunity of using his rifle or musket, could make short
work of the more condensed three-deep line, or of the column which
presented a large target, and which at the same time could return
the fire only from the muskets of two ranks at the contracted head
of the column. It is interesting to note that Colonel Von Ehwald
was a strong advocate of the two-deep line both in attack and in
defence, for purposes of firing as well as for using the bayonet. "In
an attack with charged bayonets," he says, "I am convinced that, if
the corps drawn up in two ranks advances resolutely upon the other in
three, it will not be worse off for that rank less, as the pressure
of one upon the other, of which the French tacticians speak, exists
only in the imagination."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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