Friedrich Engels

Written mid-September to mid-October 1860.

From the English.

["The Volunteer Journal, for Lancashire and Cheshire" No. 3, 21 September 1860]

If the English volunteers ever have to exchange bullets with an enemy, that enemy — as everyone knows — would be the French infantry, and the best type — the beau idéal <noble model> of a French foot soldier — is the soldier of the light infantry, in particular the Chasseur.

The French Chasseur is not only the model for his own army. The French are, with regard to light infantry, to a certain extent trend-setting for all European armies; thus the Chasseur becomes, in a certain sense, a model for the entire European infantry.

In these two capacities, as a potential opponent and as the hitherto most perfect example of a light infantry soldier, the French Chasseur is an object of the highest interest for the British volunteer. The sooner the English volunteer makes his acquaintance, the better.

I

Until 1838 there was not a single rifled musket in the French army; the old rifle with its tight-fitting ball, which had to be rammed down and made loading a difficult and slow operation, was no weapon for the French. When Napoleon once examined the flintlock musket of a German Jäger battalion,

he exclaimed: “That is certainly the most miserable weapon that one can put into a soldier’s hands.” The old rifle was certainly unsuitable for the great mass of the infantry. In Germany and Switzerland a few select battalions were always armed with it. They were, however, used exclusively as sharpshooters, to pick off officers or to fire upon sappers building a bridge, etc., and care was taken to form these bodies of troops from the sons of gamekeepers or other young men who had been practised in the use of the rifle long before entering the army. The chamois hunters of the Alps, the foresters of the great deer forests of North Germany formed excellent material for these battalions, and they were also the model for the riflemen of the English line.

What the French used to designate as light infantry were soldiers armed and trained exactly like the line regiments; therefore, in 1854 a decree of Louis-Napoleon took the designation light infantry from these 25 regiments and incorporated them into the line troops, where they are now carried as the 76th to 100th regiments.

In fact, in every infantry battalion there was a company of Voltigeurs, formed from the best and most intelligent soldiers of small stature, while the Grenadier company was recruited from the elite of the taller men. They deploy first when skirmishers are needed, but in every other respect they are armed and trained like the rest of the battalion.

After the conquest of Algiers in 1830, the French found themselves faced with an enemy armed with the long musket, common among most Oriental peoples. These were superior in range to the smooth-bore muskets of the French. The French columns, marching in the plains, saw themselves surrounded on all sides by mounted Bedouins, and in the mountains by Kabyle skirmishers; the bullets of their opponents took effect upon the columns, while the marksmen themselves were beyond range of the French fire; skirmishers could not venture far from their columns in the plains for fear of being surprised and cut down by the swift Arab horsemen.

The English army made the acquaintance of these long muskets when it came to Afghanistan. The shots of the Afghans — although only from matchlock muskets — produced a fearful effect in the English ranks, both in the camp at Kabul and during the retreat over the mountains, at distances which the poor old

Brown Bess was utterly incapable of reaching. That was a serious lesson; the war had to begin all over again. Longer conflicts with the tribes on the north-east frontier of British India were to be expected, and yet nothing was done to provide the English soldiers sent to that frontier with a weapon that could match in range the matchlock musket customary in the East.

Not so with the French. No sooner was the deficiency recognized than steps were taken to remedy it. The Duke of Orléans, son of Louis-Philippe, on his wedding journey through Germany in 1837, took the opportunity to study the organization of the two rifle battalions of the Prussian Guard. He immediately recognized that here was a starting point from which he could succeed in forming precisely the type of troops required for Algeria. He at once occupied himself with the subject. The old French prejudice against the rifled musket threw many obstacles in his way. Fortunately, the inventions of Delvigne and Poncharra in his own country came to his aid. They had constructed a gun that could be loaded almost as quickly and conveniently as the smooth-bore musket, while far surpassing it in range and precision. In 1838 the Duke obtained permission to form a company according to his own plans; in the same year this company was expanded to a full battalion; in 1840 it was sent to Algeria to test what it could do in a real war; it passed the test so well that in the same year nine more Chasseur battalions were formed. Finally, in 1853, ten more battalions were raised, so that the entire Chasseur troops of the French army now consist of twenty battalions.

The peculiar military qualities of the Bedouins and Kabyles, who undoubtedly served as models for the light cavalry and the infantry skirmishers, very soon prompted the French to try to recruit natives for the army and to conquer Algeria by pitting Arab against Arab. This idea, among others, gave the impetus for the formation of the Zouave corps. It was formed as early as 1830 largely from natives and remained a mainly Arab corps until 1839, when its members deserted in masses to the camp of Abd el-Kader, who had just raised the standard of the Holy War. At that time only the cadres of each company and the 12 French soldiers, as well as the two exclusively French companies attached to each battalion, remained. The vacancies had to be filled by

Frenchmen, and since then the Zouaves have remained an exclusively French corps, destined to garrison Africa permanently. But the original stock of old French Zouaves had so much taken on the native character that the entire corps has since been, in its whole mentality and in its habits, a special Algerian corps, with its own national traits and completely different from the rest of the French army. They are mostly recruited from substitutes, and thus most of them are professional soldiers for life. They belong mainly to the light infantry of the army and have therefore long been equipped with rifles. There are now three regiments or nine battalions in Africa and one regiment (two battalions) of Guard Zouaves.

From 1841 on, new attempts were made to recruit native Algerians for the local army. Three battalions were formed, but they remained weak and incomplete until 1852, when more encouragement was given to native recruiting. This met with such success that in 1855 three regiments or nine battalions could be formed. These are the Turkos or tirailleurs indigènes <native skirmishers>, of whom we have heard so much during the Crimean War and the Italian War.

Thus the French army — not counting the Foreign Legion (which is now disbanded, but by all appearances will be reconstituted) and the three penal battalions — has 38 battalions specially formed and trained for light infantry service. Of these, the Chasseurs, the Zouaves, and the Turkos each have their characteristic features. The two last-named troops have taken on too strong a local character ever to exert great influence on the mass of the French army, yet their furious attack — in which, as was shown in Italy, they remain completely in hand and, through their own military sense, anticipate the orders of their superior — will always be a brilliant example for the other troops. It is also a fact that the French have taken over much from the Arabs in the execution of the details of skirmishing and in their ability to make use of terrain. But the part of the light infantry that has remained essentially French and, as we said before, has become the model for the army, is the Chasseurs. More of them in our next number.

["The Volunteer Journal, for Lancashire and Cheshire" No. 5, 5 October 1860]

II

The very first page of the French drill regulations of 1831 shows of what small men the French army is composed.

Slow march: each step 65 cm (25 inches) and 76 steps per minute.

Quick march: same step length and 100 steps per minute.

Charge step (pas de charge): same step length and 130 steps per minute.

The step of 25 inches is undoubtedly the shortest, and the speed of 100 steps per minute the slowest that any army has ever applied for movements in the field. While a French battalion covers a distance of 208 feet in a minute on the ground, an English, Prussian, or Austrian battalion would cover a distance of 270 feet, i.e., thirty per cent more. Our long step of 30 inches would be too much for the short legs of the French. The same with the charge: the French advance 271 feet in a minute, or as far as the English in ordinary marching pace, while the English at their quick march of 36 inches and 150 steps per minute would cover 450 feet, or sixty per cent more. This fact alone shows that the average height of the men cannot fall below a certain limit without impairing the effectiveness and mobility of an army.

From men with such short legs, such short steps, and such a slow marching pace, no light infantry could be formed. When the Chasseurs were organized, from the very beginning care was taken to select the best infantry material in the country; they were all well-grown, broad-shouldered, agile men, 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 8 inches in height, mostly chosen from the mountainous parts of the country. Through the drill and evolution regulations for Chasseurs (published in 1845), the step length for the marching pace was retained, but the pace was raised to 110 steps per minute; the running step (pas gymnastique) was set at 33 inches (83 cm) per step and 165 per minute; but for deploying, forming square, or other occasions where haste is necessary, the number of steps was raised to 180 per minute. Even at this latter pace, the Chasseur would cover only 45 feet more ground in a minute than the

the English soldier at the double-quick pace. But extraordinary results are achieved less by extraordinary speed than by the length of time for which the chasseurs can sustain this increased speed; besides, in cases of great urgency, when rallying, etc., they are ordered to run as fast as they can.

The double-quick pace is the thing on which the greatest stress is laid in the chasseur battalions. The soldiers are first taught to march on the spot at 165 to 180 paces a minute, calling out One! Two! or Right! Left!, which is supposed to regulate the action of the lungs and prevent inflammation. They are then made to march forward at the same cadence, the distance being gradually increased until they can cover a French league of 4,000 metres (2 ½ English miles) in 27 minutes. If the lungs and limbs of some of the recruits are found too weak for such exercises, the men are sent back to the line infantry. The next stage consists of jumping and running exercises, in the latter of which the greatest possible speed for short distances is to be attained; both the *pas gymnastique* and the running are first practised on the level drill ground or on the high road, and afterwards across country, leaping over fences and ditches. Only after such preparation are the soldiers handed their weapons, and then the whole course of running, jumping and racing is gone through once more, musket in hand and in full field marching order, knapsack and cartridge-pouch packed exactly as in the field; and they are thus brought to the point of keeping up the *pas gymnastique* for a full hour, during which they must cover at least 5 miles. A foreign officer in civilian clothes once tried to keep up with such a battalion of chasseurs in full equipment; but, untrained as he was, he could hardly hold out for an hour. The chasseurs marched on, alternating between the marching pace and the *pas gymnastique*, and covered a distance of 22 miles that day.

All field movements and evolutions – advancing in line, forming columns and squares, wheeling, deploying, and the like – must be carried out at the double-quick in such a way that the soldiers keep their places as at the ordinary quick pace. The cadence for all evolutions is 165 paces a minute; only when deploying and wheeling it is accelerated to 180. The following is the opinion of a Prussian staff officer on the chasseurs:

“On the Champ de Mars I saw several companies of chasseurs manoeuvring alongside a line regiment. What a contrast in their mobility, in the whole style of their movements, to that regiment! At the first glance one sees that they are a picked body of men, selected from among the best men of the forest and mountain districts; they are all powerfully built, compact, strong and yet extraordinarily agile. When they move with astonishing speed, one recognises their spirit of enterprise, their daring, their quick intelligence, their indefatigable endurance, though one of course also recognises their immense conceit and their French vanity. And wherever one sees them, in Strasbourg, in Paris or in any other garrison, they everywhere make the same impression, they all look as if cast in the same mould. At their head I saw hardly any but young officers; only a few of the captains seemed to be thirty-five, most of them younger, and even the staff officers no older. Their rapid mobility shows neither strain nor does it appear forced; constant practice seems to have made it second nature to them, since these battalions carry out their movements with such ease and unconstraint. Their blood flows more calmly, and their breath is less violent than in others. Individual orderlies would overtake on a road, in a short time, all persons walking before them, and with the same rapid pace whole battalions defile through the streets to the cheerful sound of the bugle. Whenever one sees them, on the drill ground, on the march to or from the barracks, they never seemed to me weary. Ambition may here go hand in hand with habit.

If speed of movement and sureness of aim appear to be incompatible, the chasseurs have evidently overcome this apparent incompatibility. I have not seen them at target practice myself; but according to the judgment of experienced officers their performances in this respect are quite considerable. If their sureness of aim is disturbed at all, it must be to a degree that very little impairs their efficiency on the battlefield. In Africa, where many an engagement was preceded by similar marches at the double-quick pace, they have always known how to strike their opponents; and that proves that the special system of training to which they are subjected helps to develop bodily strength and does not impair sureness of aim. With troops not so trained it would of course be quite different.

The great advantages of this training system are obvious. In war it may often be of decisive importance for the infantry to be capable of quicker changes of position than at present. For example, to forestall the enemy in the occupation of an important position, to reach a commanding point rapidly, to support a body of troops attacked by superior forces, or to surprise the enemy by suddenly making a detachment appear from a direction quite unexpected by him.”

The Algerian war had shown the French military authorities the enormous superiority of an infantry practised in this prolonged running. From 1853 onwards the question was discussed whether this system

should not be applied to the whole army. General de Lourmel (killed before Sevastopol on 5 November 1854) had particularly drawn the attention of Louis Napoleon to it. Soon after the Crimean War the *pas gymnastique* was introduced in all French infantry regiments. The cadence is, to be sure, slower and probably the pace also shorter than with the chasseurs, and moreover the prolonged running of the chasseurs is very much curtailed for the line troops. That was a necessity; the varying bodily strength and size of the line soldiers made the capacities of the weaker and smaller men the standard for the performance of the whole. Yet, in spite of this, the old clumsy mode of marching can now be overcome in case of necessity; about a mile can be got over at a trot now and then, and precisely the soldiers’ ability to carry out their movements at the double-quick pace permits the attack at the run for about 600 to 800 yards, which last year in several cases carried the French just over the distances at which the excellent Austrian carbines were most dangerous. The *pas gymnastique* contributed a great part to the victories at Palestro, Magenta and Solferino. The running itself gives the soldiers a powerful moral impulse; a battalion might hesitate in the attack when marching at the quick pace, but the same battalion, practised in arriving without getting out of breath, will in most cases advance fearlessly, arrive comparatively unscathed and will certainly exert a far greater moral effect upon a standing enemy when it attacks at the run.

The extreme perfection of the chasseurs in running may suit such a special corps, but it would be unusable and useless for the mass of the line infantry. Nevertheless, the English line, with its better human material, could easily be brought to surpass the French line troops in this respect by far, and, like every healthy exercise, this would have an extraordinary physical and moral effect on the soldiers. An infantry that cannot alternately walk a mile and run a mile for a couple of hours will soon be regarded as slow. As regards the Volunteers, the great difference in age and bodily strength existing in their ranks would make it difficult to achieve this result at all, but there can be no doubt that progressive exercises at the double-quick pace over distances of from half a mile to a mile would harm no soldier’s health and would extraordinarily improve his efficiency in the field.

["The Volunteer Journal, for Lancashire and Cheshire" No. 7 of 20 October 1860]

III

Nothing is neglected in France to develop the physical, intellectual and moral powers of each individual recruit and especially of each chasseur, to train him into the most perfect soldier possible. Everything that makes him strong, active and agile, which gives him a quick eye for advantages of ground or for rapid decision in difficult situations; everything that may strengthen his confidence in himself, in his comrades, in his weapons, is attended to. Drill is therefore only a small part of military training in France, and in our opinion a French battalion carries out its marching, wheeling and manual exercises on the drill ground with unheard-of negligence. But that seems to be a consequence of the national character and has hitherto produced no bad results. English or German troops seem to prefer a stricter drill; they obey the word of command more promptly and after a certain period of drilling always show more precision in all their movements than the French will ever attain. In other respects the system of tactical movement on the drill ground in France is almost the same as in England, although on a battlefield it is completely different.

One of the chief occupations of the French soldier is gymnastic exercises. There is a central military gymnastic school in Paris which trains the instructors for the whole army. There are fifteen to twenty officers from different regiments, and also one sergeant from each line regiment or chasseur battalion, who stay six months and are then relieved by others. The course of exercises to be gone through does not differ greatly from what is carried out in other countries; there seems to be only one new exercise: the scaling of walls, using holes made by cannon-balls with hands and feet, or by leaning a pole against the wall, or with the help of a rope with a hook thrown over the wall. This type of exercise is undoubtedly of practical value and contributes a good deal to teaching the soldiers to rely on the use of their hands and feet. Bayonet drill is also taught in this school, but it is limited to the exercises of the various positions of attack and defence. In reality, the

soldiers have never had to defend themselves one against another or against cavalry.

Every garrison in France has the necessary facilities for gymnastic exercises. For one thing, a piece of ground is available with all the necessary apparatus, destined for the ordinary gymnastic exercises. All the soldiers march there in turn and have to go through a regular course of instruction as part of their duty. The introduction of this type of exercise is not very old; the chasseurs, who were the first to have to do gymnastics, are copied exactly. After the system had so well fulfilled its purpose with them, it was extended to the whole army.

Then in every barracks there is a fencing-room and a dancing-room. In the former fencing with the small-sword and the broadsword is taught, in the latter dancing and a competition the French call *la boxe*. Every soldier has the choice of what he wishes to learn, but he must learn one of these skills. Generally dancing and the small-sword are preferred. Singlestick is still taught now and then.

All these exercises and the so-called gymnastic exercises in the proper sense are not taught because they are regarded as necessary in themselves; they are carried out because they develop the soldier’s bodily strength and agility in general and give him greater self-confidence. The fencing and dancing rooms, far from being places where fatiguing duty is performed, are, on the contrary, an attraction that keeps the soldier in the barracks even in his free hours. He goes there to amuse himself; while in the ranks he was nothing but a machine, here, small-sword in hand, he is a free man who tests his personal skill against his comrades, and whatever confidence in his own quickness and agility he gains here is always a great gain for his tasks as a vedette or skirmisher, where he is likewise more or less thrown upon his own resources.

The new system of skirmishing which the Chasseurs had developed was subsequently adopted not only for the whole French army, but it has also served as a model for many European armies, among others for the improved mode of fighting in the British army during the Crimean War and afterwards. We shall therefore merely indicate some of its principal features, especially as in an engagement the French very often proceed quite differently, partly in accordance with the usual order (as in 1859 in Italy), partly because the officers are given every latitude to act entirely according to circumstances, and partly because all drill regulations are considerably modified in a battle. The tirailleurs act in groups of four, each group deployed in a line with five paces’ interval from man to man. The interval between the groups is at least five paces (whereby a continuous line is formed with one man every five paces) and at most forty paces from group to group. The non-commissioned officers stand ten paces behind their sections, the officers, each accompanied by a guard of four men and a bugler, twenty to thirty paces behind. When only a part of the company is thrown out as skirmishers, the captain takes up his position halfway between the tirailleurs and the reserve. To take advantage of cover is the chief principle to be observed; to it the alignment of the line as well as the exactness of the intervals are sacrificed. The whole line of tirailleurs is commanded solely by bugle signals; there are twenty-two signals; besides, each chasseur battalion and each of its companies has its own distinguishing signal, which precedes the command signal. The officers carry a signal whistle, which they are, however, allowed to use only in the utmost extremity; it gives five signals: Attention! Forward! Halt! Withdraw! Rally! These whistles have been the occasion for a part of the rifle volunteer regiments adopting them into the equipment of every soldier, thereby rendering it useless for their officers to use the whistle in an emergency. When attacked by cavalry in open order, the tirailleurs rally in groups of four, in sections and sub-divisions, in irregular compact masses, or they close upon the supports, where they form a kind of company square, or upon the battalion, if the latter is to act in line or form a square. These various forms of rallying are much practised, and the French particularly excel in them. Their multiplicity never causes confusion, since the men are instructed, in case of immediate danger, to rally as best they can and then to apply the most suitable movements in order to join the larger body to which the signal has called them. The squares are sometimes two, sometimes four ranks deep.

Compared with the old-fashioned system, as it was customary in almost all armies before the Chasseurs were organised, this new method is far superior. But it must not be forgotten that with all this it is merely a collection of drill-ground regulations. As they stand, they leave no room for the intelligence of the individual soldier, and provided the regulations were carried out on level ground, this system would be entirely compatible with the pedantry that would satisfy the most rigid martinet. The lines are formed with regular intervals – they advance, withdraw, change front and direction exactly like any battalion in line, and the men are set in motion by the bugle like marionettes by a wire. The real training ground for tirailleurs is before the enemy, and here the French had an excellent school for their light infantry on the dangerously broken ground of Algeria, which was defended by the Kabyles, the bravest, toughest and most warlike tirailleurs the world has ever seen. Here the French developed to the highest degree that instinct for fighting in open order and for taking advantage of every cover which they have displayed in every war since 1792. Here, especially, the Zouaves applied the lessons taught them by the natives to very good advantage, thereby serving as a model for the entire army. In general, it is expected that a chain of tirailleurs advances in a kind of deployed line, crowding together at points offering good cover, and extending when it has to cross open ground; it is to engage the enemy’s skirmishers in front, while only now and then availing itself of the advantage of a hedge or the like to deliver a small flanking fire, and it is not expected even to attempt to do more than keep its opponents occupied. Not so the Zouaves; with them, extended order signifies the independent action of small groups directed towards a common aim; the attempt to exploit advantages the moment they present themselves; the chance to get close to the mass of the enemy and to disconcert him by a well-directed fire and, in small engagements, possibly to bring about a decision without the mass of the troops being involved at all. With them, surprise and ambush are the very essence of the tirailleur’s fight. They use cover not only to open fire from a relatively protected position; they use it mainly to crawl up, unseen, close to the enemy’s tirailleurs, suddenly to spring up and to chase them off in total disorder. They use cover to get on to the flanks of the opponent and there to appear unexpectedly in a dense swarm, to cut off parts of his line or to create an ambush into which they lure the enemy tirailleurs when they follow a feigned retreat too hastily. In decisive actions, such artifices can be applied during the many pauses between the great encounters to accelerate the decision; but in petty warfare, in the struggle between detachments and outposts, for obtaining information about the enemy or for protecting the rest of one’s own army, such skills are of the highest importance.

What the Zouaves are like, an example may show. For outpost duty the rule in all armies, especially during the night, is that the sentries may neither sit nor lie down; and they are to fire as soon as the enemy approaches, in order to alarm the pickets. Let the reader consult the Duke of Aumale’s description of a Zouave camp (*Revue des deux Mondes*, 15 March 1855):

“At night even the single Zouave who had been posted on the edge of that hill and could overlook the plain beyond has been withdrawn. No vedettes are to be seen; but wait until the officer makes his round, and you will see him address a Zouave who lies flat on the ground, just behind the slope, observing everything. There is that clump of bushes; I should certainly not be surprised if, on closer inspection, a handful of Zouaves were found hidden there. Should a Bedouin crawl into those bushes to spy out what is going on in the camp, they will not fire, but will quietly dispatch him with the bayonet, so as not to render the trap ineffective.”

What sort of soldiers are they who have learned their outpost duty in peace-time garrisons and who cannot be trusted to stay awake unless standing or walking about, compared with men who have been exercised in a war full of cunning and ruse against Bedouins and Kabyles? And with all these deviations from the prescribed regulations, the Zouaves have only once been surprised by their cunning opponents.

England possesses on the north-west frontier of India a territory very similar to Algeria in its military peculiarities. The climate is almost the same, as are the nature of the ground and the frontier population. Frequent predatory incursions and hostile encounters occur there; and this territory has produced some of the best soldiers in the British army. It is certainly strange that these protracted and highly instructive encounters have had no lasting influence on the way in which the whole of the light infantry service in the British army is carried forward – that after twenty years and more of fighting with Afghans and Beloochees this branch of the troops was found to be so deficient that French models had to be hastily imitated to render the infantry efficient in this respect.

The French Chasseurs have introduced into the French army: 1. the new system of clothing and equipment, the tunic, the light shako, the waist-belt instead of the shoulder-belt; 2. the rifle and the scientific knowledge of its use, the modern school of musketry; 3. the use of the double-quick over longer distances and its employment in evolutions; 4. bayonet exercises; 5. gymnastics and 6., jointly with the Zouaves, the modern system of skirmishing. And if we are to be honest: are we not for much of all this, as far as it exists in the British army, indebted to the French?

There are still many opportunities for improvements. Why should not the British army contribute its share? Why should not the north-west frontier of India just now form the troops stationed there into a corps capable of doing for the English army what the Chasseurs and the Zouaves have done for the French?