The celebrated regulation for maneuvers of 1791 fixed the deployed as
the only order for battle: it seemed to admit the use of
battalion-columns doubled on the center only in partial combats,--such
as an attack upon an isolated post, a village, a forest, or small
intrenchments.[56]

The insufficient instruction in maneuvers of the troops of the Republic
forced the generals, who were poor tacticians, to employ in battle the
system of columns supported by numerous skirmishers. Besides this, the
nature of the countries which formed the theaters of operations--the
Vosges, Alps, Pyrenees, and the difficult country of La Vendee--rendered
this the only appropriate system. How would it have been possible to
attack the camps of Saorgio, Figueras, and Mont-Cenis with deployed
regiments?

In Napoleon's time, the French generally used the system of columns, as
they were nearly always the assailants.

In 1807, I published, at Glogau in Silesia, a small pamphlet with the
title of "Summary of the General Principles of the Art of War," in which
I proposed to admit for the attack the system of lines formed of columns
of battalions by divisions of two companies; in other words, to march to
the attack in lines of battalions closed in mass or at half-distance,
preceded by numerous skirmishers, and the columns being separated by
intervals that may vary between that necessary for the deployment of a
battalion and the minimum of the front of one column.

What I had recently seen in the campaigns of Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, and
Eylau had convinced me of the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of
marching an army in deployed lines in either two or three ranks, to
attack an enemy in position. It was this conviction which led me to
publish the pamphlet above referred to. This work attracted some
attention, not only on account of the treatise on strategy, but also on
account of what was said on tactics.

The successes gained by Wellington in Spain and at Waterloo with troops
deployed in lines of two ranks were generally attributed to the
murderous effect of the infantry-fire, and created doubt in some minds
as to the propriety of the use of small columns; but it was not till
after 1815 that the controversies on the best formation for battle wore
renewed by the appearance of a pamphlet by the Marquis of Chambray.

In these discussions, I remarked the fatal tendency of the clearest
minds to reduce every system of war to absolute forms, and