A friend of mine saw a couple of battle scenes from The Patriot (2000) and Barry Lyndon (1975). For the modern viewer these might indeed look somewhat absurd. He asked me: “why did those armies of the eighteenth century march on each other so slowly? And why did they stay together in tight lines?” It seemed unwise to him at first. “Until what era did this occur?”

Control during Mayhem

Military personnel in shoulder-to-shoulder formations are seen today during parades on days of celebration or remembrance, or when they stand to attention, ready for inspection or instructions. Fighting in such close ranks only occurs when riot police are deployed. However, these practices have their origins in blood-soaked wars. How do we explain that soldiers fought in such tight formations?

When in a battle, it is of the utmost importance to any army to maintain cohesion among the troops. Furthermore, the commanders of the entire army and smaller units within that army ought to be able to control their men. After all, in combat, they had to order them around. During the seventeen hundreds, every officer was limited to what he could see with with his naked eyes, or maybe a spyglass.

Commands reached as far as vocals or musical instruments could carry them. Cannon and, more importantly, short-range musket fire (up to 100m) caused loads of smoke and sound, blinding and deafening everyone as soon as opposing armies got near each other. And then of course there were the dismal screeches and moans of the dying and wounded.

To maintain cohesion and control over soldiers in such chaos, it was important to keep everyone together as tightly as possible. In the Patriot version of the Battle of Camden (1780) a lot of visibilty remains when the British and Americans open fire on each other. Historian Pádraig Lenihan refered to an observation made by military theorist Ardant du Picq (*1812†1870), who wrote that during battle due to smoke only the gleaming tips of bayonets and hats were visible – the enemy stood only sixty paces away.[1] Shortly after Du Picq was killed in action, smokeless powder became the norm.

In addition to cohesion, close order meant that soldiers made up a razor sharp hedge with their pikes or bayonets. This kept enemies on horseback at bay who sought to charge a line of infantrymen. During the 1600s and 1700s many armies went as far as merely allowing their cavalry to gallop towards a wall of foot soldiers, discharge their pistols, and ride away: a tactics known as to ‘caracole’. Still, cavalry charges remained in some forces or became fashionable again. Generals required offensive tactics.[2]

The downside of every charge was that, as a rule, the cohesion of the attacking units came under pressure. Lenihan wrote: “Attackers had to choose between mass and speed”.[3] As long as soldiers huddled together as one mass their attack was strongest. Infantry lines became longer and thinner to bring to bear as much fire as possible. However, the longer the line, the harder it is to march at the enemy in a synchronised manner.

This was achieved through moving at an equal pace that all could keep up with, in other words quite slowly. Small groups of soldiers going to fast would fairly quickly be too scared to fight. Rightly so, for they would become easy targets.[4] If long distances had to be covered, it was especially advisable to walk slowly and save your breath. Slow attacks made it possible to maintain cohesion and offensive strength. However, assaults carried out too slow ran the risk of having their cohesion shot to bits by enemy fire.

Forbearance & Honour

Oftentimes, ‘mass’ was opted for instead of ‘speed’. Whereas Lenihan stuck to explanations stressing military practicality, historian John Lynn reasoned from a perspective of culture. He explained that war culture of the eighteenth century meant that people prefered ‘mass’. What Lynn termed a ‘Battle Culture of Forbearance’ was at the heart of this.

Rather than causing as much casualties as possible among the enemy, it was believed that battles were won by those who withstood the hardly controllable chaos of the battlefield and enemy fire.[5] Historian Christopher Duffy would have agreed when he wrote that “…killing in a battle was not so much mass murder by deliberate intent as a vast accumulation of lethal incidents”.[6]

Adding speed to a mass offensive required soldiers showing great initiative, thought and effort. To achieve that the individual soldier needed to be trained very well and possess a large amount of motivation. Often tactical regulations implemented in an entire army were lacking, especially during the early eighteenth century. By 1700, armies were growing with tremendous speed, complicating tactical equality between regiments. Therefore, general training was only imposed to a restricted extent.

More important than the limited influence of military training, Duffy wrote and historian Armstrong Starkey after him, was ‘honour’. This concept embodied a number of ideals for combatants to adhere to. To what extend these ideals were of any importance to the private soldier is hard to find out. They left us with few sources. For officers however it clearly was an important idea. It is hard to pinpoint what its meaning was exactly.

For now we can state that honour was tightly knit to humane behaviour towards civilians, prisoners of war and those wounded. More important in light of engagements with the enemy were duty and self-sacrifice.[7] Those who endured chaos for a considerable time, did their duty and possible sacrificed themselves. Armies with a high sense of honour thus remained in the thick of battle longer, enhancing their chances to leave the field as victors.

At the Edges of Europe

In at least two regions infantry was taught to go at the enemy quickly, being the Celtic world and Sweden. The terrifying Highland charge was a tactic deployed by armies of Scottish clans during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The kilt-clad warriors stormed at the enemy, fired one close-range volley, dropped their fire arms and drew their characteristic broadswords to finish the job.

This caused battle to be very short. The main engagement between a few thousand combatants at Prestonpans (1745) is estimated at three to fifteen minutes. British soldiers were scared out of their wits when the clans descended on them shouting.[8] However, during the Battle of Culloden (1746), disciplined line infantry shot the last Highland charge to bits. Causes argued were manifold: was the terrain too rough for a fluid charge? were the attackers too hungry and demoralised? had the defenders learned how to cope with such an assault after a century?[9]

The foot soldiers of Charles XII (*1682†1718) darted towards their enemy too, until they were at some tens of meters from them. There they rapidly formed into lines and fired away at their astonished foe at close range for maximum effect. They differed from the Scots in the sense that their tactic was based on firepower rather than cold steel.

For the Western European understanding of war, these tactics were absurdly aggressive. It was argued that this originated from limited numbers: in order to defeat more numerous peoples, the Swedes sought to shock them as much as possible, as soon as possible.[10] The Celts and Swedes raised the speed of maneuvers, but kept to the closed order. ‘Light infantry’ would change this.

It seems a missed opportunity to depict Swedish soldiers as stereotypically Western European in the movie The Sovereign’s Servant (2007). However the Battle of Poltava (1709), portrayed here, the troops of Charles XII were exhausted and underfed. This might account for a relatively slow advance.

The True Patriot

Thus, fighting slowly in closed lines was the most common option, because it was the safest and easiest. Influenced by the native inhabitants of New England and peoples in the east, Western Europeans began experimenting with ‘light’ troops: units fighting with a lot of distance between individual soldiers.

Their tasks contained shielding line troops, disrupting enemy battle and supply lines, and even sharpshooting. These practices required them to operate independently, and to not desert if their officers lost visual contact with them. Put otherwise: they had to be motivated well.[11]

In an age when nationalism was still in its infancy, only a small part of armies was considered loyal enough to commit to such a role. Therefore they were often classed as elite. During the French Wars of 1792-1815 an increasing number of light units were created. It is thinkable that a link to that era’s growing patriotism existed.[12]

So are the battles in The Patriot and Barry Lyndon accurate portrayals? What aspects are, and which are not? As said, the amount of smoke in those scenes might be rather low. From the perspective of a movie director such a choice makes sense. A viewer has to be able to see what happens.

Small and somewhat trivial mistakes in colours and uniforms set aside, at least two interesting a-historical words were shouted during the depiction of the Battle of Camden: “Take aim!” If we have to believe regulations of the time, line infantrymen never aimed their weapons in the modern sense. Smoothbore muskets, other than rifled weapons, most times had no sights with which to aim at a specific target.

Instead of taking aim, soldiers pointed in the general direction of the enemy. Officers used the order “present”, after which immediately the order “fire” was given. To shock the enemy to the utmost, soldiers fired together at once.[13]

Especially in Western Europe armies made an attempt to keep their lines as tight as possible, causing them to engage slowly with the enemy. During the nineteenth century organisation and tactics reached higher levels of formalisation and standardisation. Militaries extended their grip on rapidly evolving weapon technology. Small arms’ accuracy and artillery’s force took great leaps as well. This had destructive consequences for closed order formations. Slowly, these began to disappear.[14]

Closing Questions

What exactly motivated soldiers to fight is a question that has a bigger answer than ‘nationalism’. One could ask indeed why Scottish clans were so motivated as to deploy such blunt charges. Nationalism had evolved to a similar level as elsewhere in Europe. Highland society was even quite tribal and feudal. Clans were furthermore busy fending off each other as London’s influence.

Answers to the questions my friend asked, show that there are important connections between tactics, culture, the individual soldier and the reality of the battlefield. Similar questions could be posed with regards to today’s Syria or Ukraine: why do combatants fight in the manner they do? Why do they fight at all? As long as conflicts are with us, these questions remain of importance.

References

[1] Pádraig Lenihan, 1690: Battle of the Boyne (Stroud: Tempus, 2003), 157.

[2] Geoffrey Parker, “The ‘Military Revolution 1560-1660’ – A Myth?”, in The Military Revolution Debate, Clifford Rogers ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,1995), 37.

[3] Lenihan, Battle of the Boyne, 170-171, 175.

[4]  Put very abstractly, every individual soldier is locked in a very intricate version of the ‘two-army problem’: victory is only possible, when everyone attacks at the same time. Means of communication however are very limited.

[5] John Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003), 128-130.

[6] Christopher Duffy, The Military Experience in the Age of Reason (Chatham, Kent: Woodsworth Editions Limited, 1998 (First published by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1987)), 315.

[7] Armstrong Starkey, War in the Age of Enlightenment (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 82-88, 92-93; Duffy, The Military Experience, 49.

[8] Martin Margulies, The Battle of Prestonpans 1745 (Prestonpans: Prestoungrange & Cuthill Press, 2013 (First published by Tempus Publishing Limited, 2007)); Starkey, War in the Age of Enlightenment, 146.

[9] James Michael Hill, “The Distinctiveness of Gaelic Warfare, 1400-1750”, European History Quarterly 22 (1992): 323-345.

[10] One could however ask why other, relatively small peoples have not produced agressive soldiers. This would suggest that there is more to the Swedish story than a lack of manpower.

[11] Starkey, War in the Age of Enlightenment, 53-54; John Lynn, “Nations in Arms 1763-1815”, in The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare: The Triumph of the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 (First published in 1995)), 191-192; for the way of war of North American Indians, see Timothy Shannon, “The Native American Way of War in the Age of Revolutions, 1754-1814”, in War in an Age of Revolution, 1775-1815, Roger Chickering and Stig Förster eds., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013 (First published in 2010)), 137-157.

[12] Jeremy Black, War and the World: Military Power and the Fate of Continents 1450-2000 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1998), 161.

[13] On the webpage www.geheugenvannederland.nl one could search for ‘snaphaan’ and find some regulations militaries tried to practise in the seventeen hundreds. In Dutch, a matchlock musket was called a “musket”, and a flintlock a “snaphaan”; Margulies, The Battle of Prestonpans, 43.

[14] Adam Zamoyski, Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe (William Collins: London, 2014 (First published by HarperPress, 2008)).