Observations on
Deployments at Salamanca, 1812

A Question of Unrecognized SOPs at Work?

Introduction

by Howie Muir, Burkina Faso

Intrigued by a question I recently encountered about orders of march during the Napoleonic period, the question led, in turn, to a consideration that there may have been a widespread, although unwritten, practice of a standard operating procedure (SOP) for marching columns and battlefield deployment when no other specific, controlling directive was in force. It seems likely that the particular practice varied from nation to nation, based quite naturally upon the historical, social, and hierarchical experiences peculiar to the militaries of each. This probably should not be surprising, but the literature does not appear specifically to address it, although writers do make occasional, oblique reference to effects of such SOPs. That companies within a battalion had rigid principles of arrangement within the battalion based upon the specific formation adopted is a well-established fact. That regiments of a brigade, or that brigades of a Division might have had customary places in their formations' respective battle array seems less well illustrated or described.

It certainly is not the subject of regulation as was the internal arrangement of a battalion (after all, one reads of the "school of the soldier", the "school of the company", the "school of the battalion", but above that, little is stipulated). If such SOPs existed, it seems reasonable to suppose them to have been a natural historical evolution from imperatives of earlier wars which necessitated rigid co-operation between neighbouring units in order to maintain the beautiful battlefield geometry so cherished by the captains of the age and so often necessary to permit even modest articulation of the army's components on the field while keeping total chaos and confusion at bay. Hints of such SOPs appear with the continued usage of what would otherwise have been an archaic "left in front" or "march by the right," which was applied not only to battalions, but brigades, Divisions, and whole armies as well.

To have meaning, such a phrase must have described the application of a system of internal ordering to these formations. Sometimes the "order of their going" was an implementation of a directive by the commander of the formation or army. Yet often, there was no specific instruction for the order of march when approaching a battle or for the exact interrelationship of units when deploying for battle. Nevertheless, any organisation long engaged in repetitive tasks adopts a customary or standard procedure for executing them – if only because that makes life simpler. Thus, it would seem probable that some sort of natural precedence, native to the social hierarchy or national taste, developed in each army to provide a basis for self-organisation.

Acknowledging the heavily British - and Peninsular - oriented bent of my research (mostly Oman and Napier), I can only plead the paucity of the sources available to me in my present location, but this very lack spices the risk of venturing to share the thesis that seemed to reveal itself. I offer an examination of the Battle of Salamanca (1812), as a vehicle for pondering whether there might have been a greater period reliance on standard formats for deployment than generally seems to be acknowledged by either contemporary chroniclers (who would have had little reason to remark upon it) or modern commentators (who might have been expected to find the phenomenon interesting).

Somewhat uniquely to the battles in the Peninsula, the engagement at Salamanca was a peculiar mix of encounter and set piece. Sustained manoeuvre in the immediate face of the enemy would have placed a heavy strain on maintaining any existent SOP while simultaneously increasing the imperative to follow one. The contending armies had danced a dangerous minuet in parallel for days through the July heat, at times marching within mere hundreds of yards, as they worked their collective way southwards from the Duoro to the Tormes, each seeking some moment of positional advantage inadvertently offered by the other.

One conclusion that might be drawn from this with respect to dispositions is the anticipation that the French army would have consciously "marched by its left", prepared to give instant battle by facing right, while the British would have mirrored this situation by marching with its "right in front", equally braced to give battle to its left. I raise this not so much to suggest the placement of Divisions within the respective armies (surely those relationships would have readily evolved in response to any number of circumstances or perceived requirements), but to explore the consequent imperatives for the brigades within Divisions and regiments within brigades – themselves open to reordering as occasion demanded, but evidently much more subject to a standard operating procedure when deployed for combat.

Company order within the battalion was the most important basis of deployment for all of the European combatants, and both France and Britain had an internal ordering of companies that appears to have been rigidly adhered to throughout the wars, although the order could vary in specific formations. And, of course, the deployment of a battalion to one flank or the other was most rapidly accomplished by a simultaneous wheel of the constituent companies to that flank, an action that could only be undertaken if that would dispose the companies in their proper order. Otherwise, the battalion had to use the much slower processional deployment of successively wheeling companies into line as the next company in column passed the rear of the preceding company and arrived at its appointed place to add to the lengthening line.

Given the often close proximity of the two armies in the days leading up to the battle at Salamanca, if might be fair to suppose that each arranged its battalions to act as quickly as possible to the right (the French) or the left (the British) as possible.

Building on this assumption, the battalions of the brigade might also have been found placed according to whatever standard operational procedure for deployment applied in their respective armies so as to allow them to be found in their proper order when faced left or right. And one might extend this expectation, though with decreasing certainty, to the constituent brigades of Divisions. As for Divisions within the armies, any established order of march would have been utterly altered owing to the pause and preparations for the near combat of the morning of the 22 July to the northeast of the subsequent battlefield.

As a note of caution about the following sketch of the battle: it became quite clear that it was beyond the scope of this survey to create a definitive chronology of events, the sources vary too widely. Thus, although there are references to particular hours, these are given mostly in the spirit of trying to establish a sense of the order of events rather than the specific space of time that may have separated them.


Observations on Salamanca 1812: Photographs (Jumbo: very slow: 292K)

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