French Revolutionary Army - Tactics

Tactics

Seeing the failure of the 1791 Reglement, several early revolutionary commanders followed de Broglie's example and experimented with the pre-revolutionary ideas, gradually adapting them until they discovered a system that worked. The final standard used by the early Revolutionary Armies consisted of the following.

• Troops with exceptional morale or skill became skirmishers, and were deployed in a screen in front of the Army. Their main fighting tactics were of a guerrilla-warfare nature. Both mounted and on foot, the large swarm of skirmishers would hide from enemies if possible, pepper their formations with fire and deploy ambushes. Unable to retaliate on the scattered skirmishers, the morale and unit cohesion of the better trained and equipped émigré and monarchist armies was gradually worn down. The incessant harassing fire usually resulted in a section of the enemy line wavering, and then the 'regular' formations of the Revolutionary Army would be sent into the attack.

• Troops with less skill and of more dubious quality, making up the 'regular' part of the army, were formed into battalion columns. The battalion column required little training to perfect, and provided commanders with potent "battering ram-style" formations with which to hit the enemy lines after the skirmishers had done their work. The skirmish screen also provided protection for those troops