Cavalry Combat at La Chaussee
3rd February 1814
Part 2: Tactics and Doctrine
by Andrew Field, UK
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Every operation of war is governed by certain principles, the judicious application of which will improve the chances of success. These principles are generally accepted across all nations. Further to these, each army has its own regulations laying down the tactics and formations that are designed to give its army an advantage over its adversaries. One of the responsibilities of the leader is the correct application of these principles and the selection of the tactics and formations that are most appropriate for the situation they are in and that are most likely to lead to success. Having discussed the French leadership we must now look at how it failed to react in the most appropriate way to the situations that it faced. The French Some of Weil’s criticism of the French leadership is based on the tactics they used. He was particularly incensed by their decision to receive the Prussian charge at the halt with carbine fire rather than counter-charge, and so we shall study this first. Weil says; ‘They [the French leadership] wanted to try a tactic that had never succeeded and which was, moreover, in complete contrast to the spirit of the arm, is totally flawed and certain to lead to failure. They believed it possible to stop and break, from the beginning of the affair, the élan of Jürgass’ and Katzler’s cavalry, by wait-ing stationary and receiving them at 15 paces with a volley. This tactic only proved fatal to the French cavalry. Fire executed whilst mounted will never be effective and never suf-fice to stop cavalry that is determined to close with its opposing cavalry. The Prussian squadrons
held this fire to no account’. [16]
The generally accepted response of cavalry when facing a charge was to launch a counter-charge. De Brack is quite specific; ‘You must judge at a glance whether the distance between you and the spot where the enemy commences his charge is too great for him to maintain the order and speed of his charge. If the enemy has committed this error, you must await him firmly and charge him vigourously when his men reach you breathless. If he has his distance correct, you move as soon as he has accomplished a quarter of the distance and charge him in your turn’. [17]
The charge was the essence of cavalry tactics and its aim was less to crash into the opposition than to impose on him sufficiently for him to break and run rather than meet it. Du Picq writes;
‘No more than the isolated man is the rider in line willing to meet the shock of a clash with the enemy. There is a terrible moral effect in a mass moving forward … But only pre-eminently brave troops,
equally seasoned in morale, alike well led and swept along, animated alike, will meet face to face. All these conditions are never found united on both sides so the thing is never seen. 49 times out of 50, one of the cavalry forces will hesitate, bolt, get into disorder, flee before the fixed purpose of the other. Three quarters of the time this will happen at a distance, before they can see each other’s eyes’. [18]
A mêlée between two bodies of formed cavalry was therefore quite rare. The whole rationale behind the charge á l’outrance was to gain a psychological advantage over the enemy to try and ensure it was he who broke first. It was a psychological, rather than a physical contest; the original game of ‘chicken’! The counter charge therefore, was an attempt to turn the psychological tables on your adversary.
All contemporary and near contemporary writers on the use of cavalry emphasise the need to use cavalry with audacity and to exploit its mobility. The French tactic to try and break the charge with a volley of carbine fire flies in the face of this overwhelming advice. Weil based his account of this action on mainly Prussian sources but nowhere in his narrative does he offer any concrete evidence that this is actually what they did, or that it was a pre-meditated decision. I thus began to suspect that he had assumed that this was a conscious decision when in fact it was an expedient forced upon the French by circumstances. However, if we turn to Pelet-Narbonne’s work we read that ‘the enemy [the French] received the Prussian cavalry at the halt with the usual [my emphasis] volley’. [19]
This statement makes it clear that not only was this what happened but that the Prussians considered it a common French tactic when facing a charge.
The British Cavalry Regulation comments; ‘ Though circumstances of situation may prevent a line from advancing much, it should never absolutely stand still to receive the shock, otherwise its defeat is inevitable’. [20]
The French regulations also speak of this. There are a number of first hand accounts of the French using this tactic, for example against the British in the Peninsula at Sahagun in 1809, against cossacks in 1812 and at Leipzig. What’s more, they also claim that the volley was delivered at very close range. Given the comment that cavalry charges rarely came so close that they could ‘see each other’s eyes’, it is hard to believe that many troops had the discipline to remain stationary and hold their fire long enough to deliver it at this close range. Because of the well known inaccuracy of the cavalry carbine the volley would have to be left until these sort of ranges to have any significant effect and even then it must be doubted if it could have stopped a charging enemy. Jomini
states; ‘I do not know what the carbine is good for’. [21]
In most recorded cases where the French used this tactic, they were unable to stop the attack with the defensive volley and were broken by the charge. However, in his book Battle Tactics of Napoleon and his Enemies, Brent Nosworthy gives examples where it appears to have been successful. But in each case it must be acknowledged that there were extenuating circumstances that made the issue less straightforward.
For example, on one occasion the French fired their volley at 100 yards and then counter-charged at the trot. In this case it can be argued that it was the counter-charge rather than the fire that resulted in success. On another, the French cavalry positioned themselves behind a stream that would have prevented the opposition from closing with them in good order, with or without the volley.
It is no surprise that the tactic was anathema to such a beau sabreur as Murat. When he took over as the commander of the Reserve Cavalry in 1807 he had an Order of the Day published which said;
‘His Highness has seen with sadness that the regiments of light cavalry have received an enemy charge with carbine fire. Experience proves that it is the means to ensure you are broken .
The Prince advises against this manner of fighting and in future will publish in an Order of the Army all regiments which commit a similar fault’. [22]
Surely, if this tactic never succeeded it would have quickly been abandoned and this begs the question why, if it apparently always failed on open ground, did the French attempt it throughout the Napoleonic Wars?
It is generally accepted that two compact, ordered bodies, who held to their purpose, would have to come to a virtual stand still in order to engage in hand to hand combat. First hand accounts of when two cavalry forces did come to blows certainly support this theory and place the advantage with the side with the best order rather than the greatest velocity. Lasalle, probably the most respected of Napoleon’s cavalry commanders, seemed to believe that cohesion and order were the most important aspects of a successful charge; recommending the charge at the trot to his subordinates. Seeing an enemy force approaching at the gallop he is quoted as saying; ‘there are lost men’. [23]
I believe that the opponents of this tactic have missed the essential element of it. My own hypothesis is that the tactic put more emphasis on holding the ground firmly and meeting the charge, rather than believing a carbine volley would stop it. Perhaps the French never believed that a volley would actually stop the charge but rather that the charging troops would be sufficiently imposed upon by their
steadiness and good order to stop or turn them aside?
In other words it may just have been another attempt to gain a psychological advantage over the enemy. The use of the carbine may only have been for the psychological welfare of the French troops, by giving them something to concentrate on, rather than an attempt to stop the opposition by causing unacceptably heavy casualties.
My own guess is that at La Chaussée, the French light cavalry, with insufficiently high morale to meet the Prussians, fired their volley far too early to have any effect (if in fact they fired at all!) and broke to escape contact. This may well have been in spite of the best intentions of the French officers!
But even if we do not term this tactic as a failure of the French commanders, there were other tactical errors committed by them. They certainly seem to have deployed their cavalry in two lines with only a short distance between them.
Wellington recommended that the distance between two lines of cavalry should be 400 to 500 yards. This was to give a broken unit space to go around the supporting unit without disordering them and to give the second line room to conduct their own charge against the victorious, but now disordered, enemy. It is clear from first hand accounts that the Carabinier contingent was swept away by the fugi-tives of the front line, with the inference that they could not have been the regulation distance behind. [24]
Although the rising terrain from the village of La Chaussée may have made the siting of the second line difficult we must remember that Exelmans himself designated where the Carabiniers were to take position and so to him must fall much of the blame. The French deployment was also constrained by the terrain they chose to occupy. This was clearly not tactically sound. De Brack advises that the worst position for cavalry was ‘that with a defile to the rear’.
[25]
Although the initial French position had reasonably secure flanks, the Marne and Fion rivers, it had the bridge over the Fion and the village of La Chaussée directly to its rear; a double defile. It threatened, in the event of a reverse, to trap a portion of the French cavalry on the enemy bank where they would almost certainly become prisoners. As it turns out, it seems that the courageous resistance of some of the French second line, and the fire of the infantry skirmishers in the village, saved their comrades from this fate.
De Brack also cautions against positions with ‘no depth’. Authorities all seem to agree that; ‘with troops and commanders equally good, the victory will remain with the party having the last squadron in reserve’.
[26]
With a minimum of two lines as the accepted deployment of cavalry, reserves would come from a third line. It was generally considered that a reserve should consist of about a third of the total troops engaged. With the whole of the II Cavalry Corps deployed in two lines the French had no reserves and no depth in order to deploy them.
Therefore, when their first line was broken and thrown back, it quickly disordered and broke some of the second line and pushed it back in it’s own retrograde movement. There were then no reserves to attempt to repair the damage by a counter attack; their classic role. The option of using some or all of the III Cavalry Corps as a reserve to the II Cavalry Corps was ruled out by Macdonald’s orders for deployment the night before.
Even so, in a battle that lasted all day it seems incomprehensible that none of III Cav Corps was sent forward to support their comrades.
A final comment on the French performance is the contribution, or lack of one, by the French infantry. There were after all, three divisions of them (although weak in numbers and morale) in the close vicinity of the action, and a considerable force of artillery. It seems that they started their withdrawal immediately after the first contact. Its sole contribution seems to be the use of some skirmishers to hold
up the Prussian pursuit. However, if they had held the villages with determination and brought their artillery into action, they should have easily been able to hold their own against a cavalry force with the minimum of artillery support.
As the Prussian infantry did not arrive on the battlefield until the end of the day, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that a coordinated, combined arms counter-attack,
supported by the III Cavalry Corps and launched after the II Cav Corps had rallied, could have seen a very different result. Indeed, if their cavalry had been swept from the field, the Prussian infantry could well have been embarrassed in their turn. Given their stated aim of attacking, one must question the determination and mindset of the French commanders.
The Prussians
Tactically, it is difficult to find fault with the initial Prussian attack. It is interesting to note that their original plan was to attack with a succession of lines rather than in echelon, which is recommended by most contemporary writers. However, as things turned out, the imperative of launching a quick attack, before the French were able to react, resulted in just this. They resisted the temptation to expand
their lines to fill the full frontage, thereby having sufficient troops to give depth to their deployment and a reserve. Instead they used artillery to secure their right flank and a force of cavalry their left.
There was a moment when part of the French second line, resisting stubbornly, tried to save its battery. The entire Prussian front line, which had pushed on a little too far due to it’s elan and the ardour of it’s pursuit, was in danger of being beaten and possibly even put to rout. If the Prussian second line had not been immediately pushed forward to the support of the first, it is most probable that the French would have been able to retake their artillery. As we have already discussed, if their infantry had had the time to occupy the edge of the village of La Chaussée more strongly and their artillery had been able to play a more decisive role, the combat itself would then have assumed an altogether different character. Instead of a pursuit of the French along the road to Châlons, it would have been necessary above all to consider having to seize La Chausée which, lying behind the Fion would have proved beyond the capability of cavalry alone. The celerity and effectiveness of the Prussian attack prevented this.
In this action (but not uniquely) the new Prussian army exhibits a remarkable flexibility in the organisation of its forces. In modern military parlance we would call this ‘Task Organisation’, that is; putting together a force from across the formations that made up the corps that is specifically designed to best carry out a particular mission. Whilst Macdonald failed to concentrate his two main cavalry forces the Prussians deployed not only their corps cavalry reserve, but drew in further cavalry units that were an integral part of the infantry brigades, in order to reinforce them. These were then formed into ad hoc battlegroups, or abteilungs, for this specific mission. This included allocating a fusilier battalion to Henkel’s command. Although this was not unusual in most armies, particularly in the organisation of advance or rear guards, it was far less so in these kinds of action.
One area of the Prussian performance that was not so effective was the pursuit. The vast majority of the detail of this action covers the successful initial assault. However, this was delivered at first light and can only have been of very short duration. There were no lengthy mêlées, or artillery bombardments and yet the action did not finish until last light.
It seems to me that although the initial charge did break the French cavalry they were not put to rout and were able to rally behind La Chaussée and then conduct an orderly retreat to a defensive line behind the Moivre. The Prussian failure to exploit their initial success was due to the difficulty of crossing the double defile of the Fion and the village of La Chaussée, although it is perhaps ironic that this is identified as being one of the weaknesses of the French position. This defile and the French infantry that manned it were sufficient to hold up the pursuit long enough give the French cavalry time to rally and their infantry to start their withdrawal unmolested. By the time the Prussians had moved through and by-passed the village, the French were in a position to offer organised resistance. It was only at the crossing of the Moivre that the Prussians were able to cause the French some final embarrassment as they faced the inevitable difficulties of crossing a defile whilst in contact.
Cavalry Combat at La Chaussee Part 2: 3rd February 1814
Cavalry Combat at La Chaussee Part 1: 3rd February 1814
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