HKB
invisible and unapproachable foes. The sharpshooters thereupon were brought into existence as a part of the army organization--a new method of fighting arising from a change in the military material.
What the American Revolution began the French completed in the military realm. To the drilled troops of the Coalition the French Revolution opposed soldiers who were badly drilled but who constituted large masses, the product of the whole nation. Some means had to be discovered of protecting Paris with these masses. That could not be done without victory in the open field. A mere musketry engagement would not suffice, a form would have to be discovered by which the masses could be utilized and this was found in the column. The column formation allowed slightly drilled troops to keep better order and by means of a better marching speed (one hundred steps to the minute) allowed it to break through the stiff old-fashioned line arrangement. It was possible by this formation to fight in country unsuitable to the line formation, to mass troops in places suitable, to associate scattered sharpshooters with the columns, to keep back, occupy and wear the lines of the enemy, until the decisive movement came when a charge could be made by the troops held in reserve. This new method of combining riflemen and columns and making a complete army corps consisting of all arms, which was fully developed on its tactical and strategic side by Napoleon, was only rendered possible by the change in military material brought about by the French Revolution. There were still two very important technical preliminaries, first the making of light carriages for field pieces which were constructed by Gribevaul by means of which alone the required quick advance was rendered possible, and making the army rifle a more precise weapon by adapting to it some of the features of the hunting rifle. Without these improvements military sharpshooting would have been impossible.
The revolutionary method of arming the entire population was subjected to certain limitations and chiefly as regards the excusing of the well to do, and in this form became common to most of the great continental countries. Prussia alone sought by its militia system to make the entire force of its people available for military purposes. Prussia was the first state to provide its entire infantry with the latest weapons, and to place officers in the rear, since between 1830 and 1860 trained officers leading their troops had played an unimportant part. The results of 1866 were largely due to these innovations.
In the Franco Prussian War two armies came into contact both of which had their officers in the rear and which both used substantially the same tactics as in the time of the old smooth bore flintlocks. The Prussians however by the introduction of company columns had made an attempt to discover a method of fighting more suitable to the new system of arming. But on the 18th of August at St. Privat the Prussian guard which employed the company column formation lost the most part of five regiments, over a third of its strength in two hours (176 officers and 5114 men) after which the company column form of battle order came in for no less criticism than the battalion column form and the line formation. Every attempt to oppose a solid formation to the fire of the enemy was thereafter abandoned. The battle was thereafter, on the German side, carried on by dense swarms of riflemen into which the columns dissolved under the fire of the enemy spontaneously, without orders from the superior officers, and this was, in fact, the only possible method of advance under fire. The private soldier was again cleverer than his officer; he had discovered the only form of fighting formation, and set himself to follow it in spite of the resistance of his leaders.