Regulating Your Battalions?
The Philosophical Solution
by David Commerford & Howie Muir, UK
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At the bottom-most level we have DRILL! Then we have more DRILL and when that’s over we have some more DRILL! We do not propose to “drill” this point too much, as there are those in the hobby, both at the wargames’ and historian’s ends of the spectrum, who have forgotten more about the drill regulations of Napoleonic armies than we’ll ever know. (Come to think of it, one of us has forgotten quite a bit himself but that’s because it gives him a headache.) Suffice it to say that, individuals were drilled to act in a platoon, which was drilled to act in a company, which was drilled to act in a Battalion, which in turn had to perform within a Brigade. At the end of it all you hoped to have a hierarchical series of cohesive units that could march and change formation in common time and in which all concerned knew what role they had to play in achieving the required outcomes. Of course, battlefield operations did not always unfold as planned and hence we see the deterioration in performance found among inexperienced and poorly trained units that contributed to the overall decrease in effectiveness of various formations throughout the period. Now having your units drilled to a standard is only half the solution, you still have to get this series of collectives to move as one.
Within the remit of the platoon/company/battalion this was relatively easy. You had a lot of Officers and NCOs close at hand to give orders and shout at people. However, Napoleonic armies did not fight by Battalion, they fought by Brigade! So you then had one man and a couple of staff officers trying to direct the movements of several Battalions and several thousand individuals. Sir Humphrey Bland, eventually a British lieutenant-general, authored a treatise that guided generations of British officers in the 18th century, A Treatise of Military Discipline, which went through nine editions between 1727 and 1762. While Bland’s target audiences were mostly regimental officers (so he did not illuminate much above battalion-level battle-handling), he did hint at the underlying requirement for the constituent Battalions of the Brigade, or “line,” to act in harmony:
Moreover, officers had to steer their for-mation toward its destination. Already a challenging process for a single battalion, the requirements of steering many battalions in a coordinated way, so that they did not collide or diverge, demanded quickly responsive interunit co-ordination. How was it done? By using the concept of “Regulating Battalions”! Its application being not so different from the mechanics that bound the companies of a Battalion together where the companies usually conformed to, or dressed on, the colours at the centre of the Battalion. It is, however, a concept with which few historians and even fewer wargamers are familiar. Historian Christopher Duffy is one of the few to acknowledge it, and notes succinctly in The Military Experience in the Age of Reason, 1715-1789 — a book that pays ample dividends for Napoleonic enthusiasts:
That, then, was a “regulating battalion”. Quite simply, in each Brigade, one battalion was designated as the Regulating Battalion. The title may have varied and specific national doctrines differed in detail but broadly every army employed this method. In fact, most armies through history, sporting any degree of regularity or discipline, applied some approximation of the idea. An articulation early in our period for the British army was given in Maj-Gen. David Dundas’ Principles of Military Movements, Chiefly Applied to Infantry, first published in 1788, with a second edition in 1792 (the following quotations are found in both, listed as page numbers for 1788/1795):
In column, the leading division is always that of direction, and is conducted by the commander himself. In line, some one battalion, according to circumstances, and the views of the command-er, and in general a flank one, is named as that of direction. To the movement of this body the com-mander himself will attend, and see that its points of march, and pace, are such as he wishes to conduct the line by, and which in every respect conforms to its motions. — He will change his place, whenever he finds it necessary to name a new division [of the battalion] or battalion of direction, and will by a caution apprize the line of such alteration.
Thus:
The Regulating Battalion (which we have bolded both in quotations and in this article to … ah, drill the point home) was the Brigade Commander’s steering wheel by which he guided the remainder of the brigade:
At the word march, rapidly repeated, each battalion at the same instant is put in motion, dressing to their several centres. Every attention required in the movement of the single battalion must be re-doubled in that of the line: on the regulating one particularly does every thing depend, whose pace must be stead, uniform, and direct — The commander of the line who is with it, must from its advanced colour observe and so caution an adjoining one, that the others being enabled at all instants to dress with these, may preserve and carry on a line perfectly parallel to the original line….
The commanders of battalions must look upon the regulating one as infallible; and the general must watch over it, and care-fully direct its motions. The march, and halt, and attention of each battalion in line, is by its own centre; the commander alone attends to the regulating one.
The last paragraph closely echoes the admonishment of the Prussian General Saldern, upon whose works Dundas drew heavily in formulating his Principles and later the British Regulations
Even the French Regulations drew on the same language!
Furthermore:
Regulating Your Battalions Tactical Processes and Simulation
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Well apart from the delegation of responsibility
already referred to, one way of achieving
this co-ordinated movement was through
breaking things down into component parts.