Friedrich Engels 
The French Light Infantry 

The Volunteer journal, 
for Lancashire and Cheshire. 
Nr. 3, 21. September 1860 

The French Light Infantry. 

If ever our volunteers should have to exchange bullets with an enemy, that 
enemy will be,—everybody knows it—French infantry; and the finest 
type,—the beau ideal of a French foot-soldier—is the light infantry soldier, 
especially the chasseur. 

The French chasseur is not only the model for his own army; the French 
give the law, to acertain degree, to all European armies in matters regarding 
light infantry service; thus the chasseur becomes, in acertain sense, a model 
for all European light infantry. 

In both these qualities, as a possible opponent, and as, hitherto, the most 
perfect specimen of a light infantry soldier, the French chasseur is a subject 
of high interest to the British volunteer. The sooner our volunteer gets 
acquainted with him the better. 

I. 

Up to 1838, there was not a rifle in use in the French army. The old rifle, 
with its close-fitting bullet, which had to be hammered down, and made 
loading a difficult and slow operation, was no arm for the French. When 
Napoleon once examined the firelocks of a German battalion of rifles, he 
exclaimed:—"Surely this is the most unfortunate arm to give into the hands 
of a soldier." The old rifle was, certainly, unfit for the great mass of the 
infantry. In Germany and Switzerland, a few chosen battalions were always 

armed with it, but they were exclusively used as sharpshooters, to pick off 
officers, to fire on sappers constructing a bridge, etc.; and great care was 
taken to form these corps from the sons of gamekeepers, or other young men 
who had been trained to the use of the rifle long before they entered the army. 
The chamois-hunters of the Alps, the keepers of the great deer forests of 
Northern Germany, formed excellent material for these battalions, and they, 
too, were the model for the rifles of the English line. 

What the French formerly used to call Light Infantry, were men equipped 
and drilled exactly the same as the regiments of the Une; consequently, in 

1854, a decree of Louis Napoleon deprived these 25 regiments of the name 
of Light Infantry, and embodied them in the line where they now number 
from the 76th to the 100th regiment. 

There was, indeed, in every battalion of infantry a company of voltigeurs, 
formed of the best and most intelügent soldiers of small stature; the élite of 

the taller men being formed into the company of grenadiers. They are the 
first to extend when skirmishers are required, but in every other respect they 
are armed and drilled like the remainder of the battalion. 

After the conquest of Algiers, in 1830, the French found themselves face 
to face with an enemy armed with the long musket, common to most Eastern 
nations. The smooth-bore muskets of the French were inferior to them in 
range. The French columns, on the march, were surrounded on every side 
by mounted Bedouins in the plains, by Kabyle skirmishers in the mountains; 
the bullets of these enemies told on the columns, while they themselves were 
out of effective range of the French fire. Skirmishers, in the plains, could 

not move far from their columns, for fear of being surprised and cut up by 
the rapid Arab horsemen. 

When the English army got into Afghanistan, it made acquaintance with 
these same long muskets. The Afghan shots—though from matchlocks only— 
did fearful execution in the English ranks, both in the camp at Kabul and 

during the retreat through the hüls, at distances utterly unattainable to poor 

old Brown Bess. The lesson was a severe one; the war was to be renewed; 
protracted conflicts with the tribes on the north-eastern frontier of British 
India might be expected; yet nothing was done to arm the English soldiers 
sent to that frontier with a weapon able to cope at long range with the Eastern 
matchlock. 

Not so the French. No sooner was the defect found out than steps were 
taken to remedy it. The Duke of Orleans, the son of Louis PhiUppe, on his 
matrimonial tour through Germany in 1837, took occasion to study the 
organization of the two battalions of rifles of the Prussian guard. He saw 

at once that here was a starting point, issuing from which, he might succeed 
in forming the very class of troops required for Algeria. He occupied himself 

at once with the subject. The old French prejudice against the rifle placed 
many obstacles in his way. Fortunately, the inventions of Delvigne and 
Pontchara, in his own country, came to his help; they had produced a rifle 
which could be loaded almost as quickly and easily as the smooth-bore 
musket, while it exceeded the latter by far, both in range and precision. In 
1838, the Duke obtained permission to form acompany according to his own 
ideas; in the same year, this company was increased to a full battalion; in 
1840, it was sent to Algeria to prove what it could do in actual war; and it 
stood the test so well, thatinthe same year nine more battalions of Chasseurs 
were formed. Finally, in 1853, ten other battalions were organized, so that 
the whole Chasseur force of the French army now consists of twenty battal- 
ions. 

The peculiar military qualities of the Bedouins and Kabyles, who undoubt- 
edly were models of light horsemen and of infantry skirrnishers, very soon 
induced the French to try the enlistment of natives, and to conquer Algeria 
by setting Arab to fight Arab. This idea gave origin, among others, to the 
corps of the Zouaves. They were formed, principally of natives, as early as 
1830, and remained a chiefly Arab corps up to 1839, when they deserted in 
masses into the camp of Abd-el-Kader, who had just raised the standard of 
holy war. There remained, then, merely the cadres and the twelve French 
soldiers of each company, besides the two exclusively French companies 
attached to each battalion. The vacancies had to be filled up by Frenchmen, 
and since that date the Zouaves have remained an exclusively French corps, 
destined to take permanent garrison in Africa. But the original stock of old 
French Zouaves had adopted so much of the native character, that the whole 
corps has ever since remained, in its entire spirit and habits, a specially 
Algerian corps, endowed with a nationality of its own, and quite distinct from 
the remainder of the French army. They are recruited mostly from sub- 
stitutes, and thus they are most of them professional soldiers for life. They, 
too, essentially belong to the Light Infantry of the army, and have, therefore, 
been long since provided with rifles. There are now three regiments or nine 
battalions of them in Africa, and one regiment (two battalions) of Zouaves 
of the Guard. 

Since 1841, new attempts were made to enlistnative Algerians for the local 
army. Three battalions were formed, but they remained weak and incomplete 
till 1852, when more encouragement was given to native enlistment; and this 
succeeded so far that, in 1855, three regiments, or nine battalions, could be 
formed. These are the Turcos or Tirailleurs indigenes, of whom we have 
heard so much during the Crimean and Italian wars. 

Thus, not counting the foreign legion (now disbanded, but to all appear- 
anees re-forming) and .the three penal battalions, the French army contains 

38 battalions, especially formed and trained for light service. Of these, the 
Chasseurs, the Zouaves, and the Turcos, each have their dlstmguishing 
characteristics. Troops like the last two classes have too strongly marked 
a local character ever to exercise great influence upon the mass of the French 
army; still, their furious onslaught—during which they still, as has been 
proved in Italy, remain perfectly in hand, and even anticipate by their own 
military tact, the orders of their chief,—will always remain a brilliant example 
to the remainder of the troops. It is also a fact that the French, in their practice 
of the detail of skirmishing, and their mode of taking advantage of ground, 
have adopted a great deal from the Arabs. But that class of light infantry 
which has remained essentially French, and has thereby become, as we said 
before, a model to the army, are the Chasseurs, of whom more in our next 
number. 

The Volunteer Journal, 
for Lancashire and Cheshire. 
Nr. 5, 5. Oktober 1860 

IL 
The Chasseurs. 

The very first page of the French Drill Regulations of 1831, proves what little 
men the French army is composed of. 

Slow time, each step 65 centimètres (25 inches), and 76 paces in a minute. 

Quick time, same length of step, and 100 paces in a Minute. 

Charging time (pas de charge), same length of step, and 130 paces ina 
minute. 

The step of 25 inches is undoubtedly the shortest, and the celerity of 
100 paces in a minute the most sluggish adopted in any army for field- 
movements. While a French battalion moves over 208 feet of ground in a 

minute, an English, Prussian, or Austrian battalion would move over 270feet, 

or thirty per cent more. Our long step of 30 inches would be too much for 
the short legs of Frenchmen. The same at a charge: the French advance, in 
a minute, 271 feet, or as much as the English at simple quick time, while the 
English, at their double of 36 inches, and 150 per minute, would get over 450 
feet, or sixty per cent more. This fact alone shows that the standard size of 
the men cannot be reduced beyond a certain limit without affecting the 
efficiency and mobility of an army. 

With such short legs, short steps, and slow marching time, no lightinfantry 
could be formed. When the Chasseurs were first organized, care was taken 

from the very beginning to select the best infantry material in the country; 
they were all well-built, broad-shouldered, active men, from 5ft. 4in. to 5ft. 
8in. in height, and mostly chosen from the mountainous parts of the country. 
By the regulations for Chasseur drill and evolutions, (published in 1845), the 
length of the step for the quick march was retained, but the time increased 
to 110 in a minute; the double (pasgymnastique) was regulated at 33 inches, 
(83 centimétres) each step, and 165 in aminute; but for deployments, forma- 
tion of square, or other urgent occasions its time is to be increased to 180 
in a minute. Even at this latter pace, the Chasseur would cover but 45 feet 
more ground in a minute than the English soldier at his double. Butit is less 
by extraordinary rapidity of motion that extraordinary results are attained, 
than by the length of time for which the Chasseurs can continue this ac- 
celerated motion; besides, in cases of great urgency, rallying, etc., they are 
ordered to run as fast as they can. 

The double is the principal thing practised in the Chasseur battalions. The 
men are first taught to mark the time at 165 and 180 per minute, during which 
they shout One ! Two! or Right! Left! which is supposed to regulate the action 
of the lungs, and to prevent inflammations. They are then made to march 
forward at the same rate, and the distance is gradually increased until they 
can go over a French league of 4,000 métres (two and a half miles), in 
twenty-seven minutes. If some of the recruits are found too weak in wind 
and limb for such exercise, they are sent back to the infantry of the line. The 
next step is the practice of leaping and running, in which latter pace the 
greatest possible rapidity has to be obtained for short distances, both the pas 
gymnastique and the running being practised first on the level drill-ground, 
or on the road, and afterwards across country, with jumping over rails and 
ditches. After such preparation only are the men entrusted with their arms, 
and now the whole course of double, running, and leaping is again gone 
through with rifle in hand, and in heavy marching order, the knapsack and 
pouch weighted to the same extent as in the field; and thus they are made 
to continue for a full hour at the pas gymnastique, during which time they 
have to cover at least five miles of ground. A foreign officer in plain clothes 
once attempted to keep pace with such a battalion of Chasseurs in heavy 
marching order; but, untrained as he was, he could scarcely keep up for one 
hour; the Chasseurs marched on, alternately at quick time and at the pas 
gymnastique, and went that day over 22 miles of country. 

The whole of the field movements and evolutions have to be gone through 
at the double; advance in line, forrning column and square, wheeling, de- 
ployments, and everything, so that the men keep in their places as steadily 
at this pace as at the ordinary quick time. The time for all evolutions is 165 
in a minute, only in deployments and wheelings, it is accelerated to 180. 

The Algerian war had made evident to the French military authorities the 
immense superiority of an infantry trained in this long-continued running. 
Since 1853, the question was debated whether this system should not be 
apphed to the whole army. General de Lourmel (killed before Sevastopol, 
5th November, 1854) had specially drawn the attention of Louis Napoleon 
to it. Soon after the Crimean war, the pas gymnastique was introduced in 
all French Infantry regiments. The time, indeed, is slower, and probably the 
step, too, shorter, than with the Chasseurs; besides, the long-continued runs 
of the Chasseurs are much reduced in the line. This was a necessity; the 
unequal bodily strength and size of the Une made the capabilities of the 
weaker and smaller men the standard of the performance of the whole. But, 
still, the old sluggish rate of marching can now be overcome at an emergency ; 
a mile or so may now and then be trotted, and, especially, the aptitude of 
the men to go through their evolutions at the double, admits of that charge, 
at arun, for some six or eight hundred yards, which carried the French, last 
year, in a few instants, over those very distances at which the excellent 
Austrian rifles were most dangerous. The pas gymnastique has done a great 
deal towards the winning of Palestro, Magenta, and Solferino. The run itself 
gives a vigorous moral impulse to the men; a battalion charging might hesitate 
when marching at quick time, but the same battalion, trained so as not to 
arrive out of breath, will, in most cases, go on fearlessly, will arrive com- 
paratively unscathed, and will certainly make afar greater moral impression 
on a standing enemy, if it charges at a run. 

The extreme perfection of the Chasseurs in running may pass for a special 
arm like theirs, but it would be both impracticable and useless to the mass 
of the infantry of the line. Nevertheless, the English line, with its better 
material of men, might easily be made to far surpass the French line in this 
respect, and like every healthy exercise, this would have a capital effect on 
the men, bodily and morally. An infantry which cannot alternately run a mile 
and walk a mile for a couple of hours, will soon be considered slow. As to 
the volunteers, the great difference of age and bodily strength existing in their 
ranks, would make it difficult to obtain even this result, but there can be no 
doubt that gradual training for the double, at distances from half a mile to 
a mile, would hurt nobody's health and improve wonderfully their efficiency 
for the field. 

The French Light Infantry - 111. 

The Volunteer Journal, 
for Lancashire and Cheshire. 
Nr. 7, 20. Oktober 1860 

MI. 

Nothing is neglected in France to develope the physical, mental, and moral 
powers of every individual recruit, and especially of every chasseur, in such 
a manner as to form him into as perfect a soldier as possible. Everything is 
attended to that can make him strong, active, and nimble, that can give him 
a rapid glance for advantages of ground, or quickness of decision in difficult 
situations; everything that will heighten his confidence in himself, his com- 
rades, his arms. Drill, therefore, is but a small portion of a soldier's duties 
in France; and to our notions, a French battalion on the drill-ground marches, 
wheels, and does the manual in a shockingly loose manner. But this appears 
to be a consequence of the national character, and has not, so far, been 
attended with any bad results. English or German troops seem, themselves, 
to prefer a stricter system of drill; they obey the command more in- 
stantaneously, and, after a certain amount of drilling, will always exhibit 
more precision in all their movements than the French will ever attain. For 
the remainder, the system of tactical movements for the drill-ground is 
nearly the same in France as in England, though it is vastly different on a 
field of battle. 

One of the chief occupations of the French soldier is gymnastic exercise. 
There is a central military gymnasium in Paris, which forms the teachers for 
the whole army. There are fifteen to twenty officers from different regi- 
ments, and besides, one sergeant from every regiment of the line or 
battalion of Chasseurs, who remain for six months and are then relieved 
by others. The course of exercises gone through is not very different from 
what is practised in other countries; there appears to be only one original 
exercise, the escalading of walls, either by putting hands and feet in holes 
produced by cannon-balls, or by a pole leaned against the wall, or else by 
means of a rope with a hook thrown over it. This kind of exercise is undoubt- 
edly of practical value, and will contribute a great deal to make the men rely 
on the use of their hands and feet. The bayonet exercise is also taught in this 
school; but it is confined to the practising of the various points and guards; 
the men are never made to actually defend themselves one against the other 
or against cavalry. 

Every garrison, in France, has the necessary conveniences for gymnastic 
exercise. There is, first of all, a piece of ground set apart for the more 
common gymnastics, with all the necessary appliances; to this the whole of 
the soldiers are marched in turns, and have to go through a regular course 

enemy's masses, and disturbing them by a well-sustained fire; and, in small 
engagements, the possibility of deciding them without calling in the masses 
at all. With them, surprise and ambush are the very essence of skirmishing. 
They do not use cover merely to open fire from a comparatively sheltered 
position; they principally use it to creep, unseen, close up to the enemy's 
skirmishers, jump up suddenly, and drive them away in disorder; they use 
it to get on the flanks of their opponents, and there to appear unexpectedly 
in a thick swarm, cutting off part of their line, or to form an ambush, into 
which they entice the hostile skirmishers, if following too quick upon their 
simulated retreat. In decisive actions, such artifices will be applicable in the 
many pauses occurring between the great efforts to bring on decision; but 
in petty warfare, in the war of detachments and outposts, in collecting in- 
formation respecting the enemy, or securing the rest of their own army, such 
qualities are of the highest importance. What the Zouaves are one example 
will show. In outpost duty, in all armies, the rule is that, especially during 
the night, the sentries must not sit, nor much less lay down, and are to fire 
as soon as the enemy approaches, in order to alarm the pickets. Now read 
the Duke of Aumale's description of a camp of Zouaves (Revue des Deux 
Mondes, 15th March, 1855): "At night, even the solitary Zouave placed on 
the brow of yonder hill, and overlooking the plain beyond, has been drawn 
in. You see no videttes; but wait till the officer goes his rounds, and you will 
find him speak to a Zouave who is lying flat on the ground just behind the 
brow, and watchful of everything; you see yonder group of bushes; I should 
not be at all surprised if on examination you were to find there ensconced 
a few couples of Zouaves; in case a Bedouin should creep up into these 
bushes in order to espy what is going on in the camp, they will not fire, but 
despatch him quietly with the bayonet, in order not to shut the trap." What 
are soldiers who have learnt their outpost duty in peace garrisons only, and 
who cannot be trusted to keep awake except standing or walking, to men 
trained in a war of ruse and stratagem, against Bedouins and Kabyles? And 
with all these deviations from the prescribed system, the Zouaves have been 
surprised only once by their wary enemies. 

England has, in the north-west frontier of India, a district very similar, in 
its mihtary features, to Algeria. The climate is nearly the same, so is the 
nature of the ground, and so is the border population. Frequent forays and 
hostile encounters do occur there; and that district has formed some of the 
best men in the British service. But that these long and highly instructive 
encounters should not have had any lasting influence upon the mode in which 
all kinds of light service are carried on in the British army,—that after twenty 
and more years of fighting with Affghans and Beloochees, that part of the 
service should have been found so defective that French examples had to 

be hurriedly imitated in order to bring the infantry, in this respect, into a state 
of efficiency;—this is, certainly, strange. 

The French Chasseurs have introduced into the French army: 1. The new 
system of dress and accoutrements: the tunic, the light shako, the waist belts, 
instead of the cross belts. 2. The rifle, and the science of its use: the modern 
school of musketry. 3. The prolonged application of the double, and its use 
in evolutions. 4. The bayonet exercise. 5. Gymnastics ; and, 6. Together with 
the Zouaves, the modern system of skirmishing. And if we will be sincere, 
for how much of all this, so far as it exists in the British army, are we not 
indebted to the French? 

There is still plenty of room for improvements. Why should not the British 
army come in for its share? Why should not the north-western frontier of 
India, even now, form the troops employed there into a corps capable of 
doing that for the English army which the Chasseurs and Zouaves have done 
for the French? 

Lastly, the serfs themselves preferred the simplest formula of the emanci- 
pation question. What they understood by it was the old state of things, minus 
their old landlords. In this mutual strife, where the Government, despite 
menaces and cajohng, split upon the opposition of the nobles and the peas- 
ants—the aristocracy upon the opposition of the Government and of their 
human chattels, the peasantry upon the combined opposition of their central 
lord and their local lords—an understanding, as is usual in such transactions, 
has been arrived at between the existing powers at the cost of the oppressed 
class. The Government and the aristocracy have agreed together to shelve 
the emancipation question for the present, and to again try their hands at 
foreign adventures. Hence the secret understanding with Louis Bonaparte 
in 1859, and the official congress at Warsaw withthe German princes in 1860. 
The Italian war had sufficiently broken the self-reliance of Austria to trans- 
form her from an obstacle into a tool of the Russian schemes of foreign 
policy, and Prussia, which had made a fool of herself by combining, during 
the continuance of the war, the airs of ambitious perfidy with an utter nullity 
of action, cannot, threatened as she is by France on her Rhenish frontiers, 
but follow in the wake of Austria. It was one of the great delusions of the 
Gotha party to fancy that the blows Austria was likely to receive on the part 
of France would dissolve her into her constituent parts, so that Austrian 
Germany, disconnected from its ties with Italy, Poland, and Hungary, might 
easily enter into the formation of one great German empire. A long historical 
experience has shown us that every war which Austria may have to wage 
with France or Russia would not free Germany from her weight, but only 
make her subservient to the schemes of France or Russia. To break her up 
into her constituent parts by one great blow, would be bad policy on the part 
of those Powers, if they were possessed of the force to strike the blow; but 
to enfeeble Austria, in order to turn its remaining influence to their own 
account, was and must always be the main object of their diplomatic and 
military operations. Nothing but a German revolution, with one of its centers 
at Vienna and the other at Berlin, could shatter to pieces the Hapsburg 
empire, without endangering the integrity of Germany, and without sub- 
jecting its non-German dominions to French or Russian control. 

The impending Warsaw Congress would immensely strengthen Louis 
Bonaparte's position in France, if the prospect of a conf lict in Italy between 
the truly national party and the French party, did not spoil his opportunity. 

As it is, one must hope that the Warsaw Congress will at last open the eyes 
of Germany, and teach her that either to withstand encroachments from 
without or realize unity and liberty at home, she must clear her own house 
of its dynastic landlords.