Frederick Engels

Marshal Bugeaud on the Moral Factor in Combat

Written early February 1861.  
From the English.

\["The Volunteer Journal, for Lancashire and Cheshire" No. 23 of February 9, 1861\]

The following lines are a translation of the instructions which the then Colonel Bugeaud of the 56th French Regiment set down for his officers. It is undoubtedly the best thing the marshal ever wrote. In them, with a manly emphasis that is unsurpassed in the military literature of all countries, and with a clarity that only long experience of war can give, are laid down those principles of infantry combat which even today are followed unaltered by the French, and which have given them victory up to now over armies that, through the habits of a long peace, have apparently relied more on scientific tactics than on awakening all the moral forces of the soldiers. These principles are neither new, nor in any way exclusively French; but they are here well compiled and expressed in beautiful, vigorous language. They in no way replace the science of tactics, but form a very necessary supplement to it; and most of them are moreover so evident and require so little military knowledge for their understanding that they will be entirely comprehensible to the majority of the Volunteers.

Gentlemen, the art of deploying a body of troops in combat has a strong influence on its outcome; by it good dispositions are crowned with success, and faulty ones are robbed of their worst consequences. Between troops with highly developed moral qualities, who are led energetically and are imbued with the real principles of combat, and those who are built and trained like most European troops, there is the same difference as between adults and children. That is a truth of which I have been convinced by twenty engagements. I hope that you will recognise it as well, and that you will support me with all your strength in raising the 56th to such a high standard of morale and training that no imperial or royal guards in the world can resist us for five minutes, under conditions equally favourable to both sides.

Most of you, gentlemen, have seen infantry combats that merely boiled down to a timid exchange of fire at very long range between troops standing parallel to one another. Each side seemed to await victory from chance or from the terror which their bullets might inspire in the opponent. Millions of cartridges were fired with no other result than dead and wounded on both sides, until one circumstance or another, usually independent of the fighting troops, brought about the retreat of one of the two lines. Men who have exhausted their firepower in this way and see their ranks thinned are little inclined to fresh exertions and are easily put to flight by fresh troops acting on better principles.

That is not the mode of fighting of thoroughly trained infantry. We shall now attempt to set forth those principles which must give us an overwhelming superiority over every infantry in Europe.

These principles, gentlemen, are not mere speculations of a bookworm; they are the result of my experience since the beginning of the Spanish War of 1808 against England, and they have always secured me success against the Spaniards, English(1) and Austrians. I hope that you will make these principles your own, for they are in harmony with what you must have observed yourselves in the engagements in which you took part. You will do your utmost to imbue your subordinates with them, and if these principles permeate the spirit of the whole regiment, from the drummer to the colonel, the 56th may consider itself invincible; it may be defeated by different arms acting jointly and advancing against the regiment simultaneously, but never by infantry alone, even if that infantry should be far superior in numbers.

Combat has its moral and its physical side. The former seems to me the most important, but let us begin by treating the second.

To fire from a long distance is characteristic of bad infantry; good infantry is sparing with its fire. Because this fire is its strongest power, an infantry should not waste it, but be instructed to aim with the utmost accuracy. When the time to fire has not yet come, keep your troops out of range or under cover. When that moment has come, advance to fall upon the enemy with an energy and coolness that will allow you to accomplish everything. If your opponent, contrary to all probability, should stand firm and allow you to come very close without firing himself, give the first volley and take good care that your men always load two bullets per shot. I have owed success more than once to the use of these two bullets. In the heat of the action I might forget to order it, but you will remember; I attach great importance to it. With this cold-blooded determination and the fire of two bullets per shot, you will seldom have to deliver a second volley, either when attacking a position or when repulsing a body of troops that attacks you.

Whoever understands anything of war will know that it cannot be otherwise. How could the enemy resist if you come close up to him with loaded weapons and he has already exhausted his firepower? His moral courage is paralysed by the fear of a volley at close range, which must be terrible, and he will fall back. Then deliver your volley, penetrate into the enemy's ranks and make prisoners, which is better than killing; while you kill a man with the bayonet, you can have made six prisoners. These combats cost the victor little; you lose a few men during the advance, but as soon as you are in the hand-to-hand struggle and have thrown the enemy into confusion, you lose not a man. This tactic, gentlemen, will secure you the victory; and if the whole army is imbued with it, it will conquer, however bad the general dispositions may be. These dispositions are not our business; but when we are told the place where we are to fight, we must fight in such a way that everything before us is beaten by us. That was the tactic of Duguay-Trouin, and this mode of fighting founded his brilliant reputation more than all his other abilities. He came right up to the enemy ship, all his cannons loaded and his men lying on the deck; as soon as he came into contact with his opponent, his men jumped up and swept the enemy deck with superior fire; that made boarding a simple matter.

\["The Volunteer Journal, for Lancashire and Cheshire" No. 24 of February 16, 1861\]

Besides what has been mentioned above, we must employ other means, for we should have as many advantages as possible on our side. A good use of skirmishers will be a strong help; their actions must always precede those of the masses, whether in attack or defence. When you are attacking, the skirmishers will ascertain terrain advantages that the eye could not perceive from afar; they will send into the enemy's ranks a hail of bullets that will confuse them and prevent them from aiming accurately at the line advancing without firing. They should be directed as far as possible to the points where the decisive combat will not take place. If the skirmishers, however, are to operate in front of the line of attack, they will finally, in order not to obstruct the action of the line, move off to the flanks and try to act against the enemy's flanks to demoralise him and take prisoners; or they will withdraw through the intervals between the battalions or lie flat on the ground to let the line pass over them.

The fire of the skirmishers should be wasted no more than that of the line. It is not a question of a mere exchange of bullets; these bullets are to contribute to success. For this purpose, the skirmishers are shown, shortly before the line attacks, the positions they are to occupy before they start firing; as soon as they have opened fire, the line will advance to the attack. You will understand that if the skirmishers were left on their own for any length of time in close proximity to the enemy forces, they would be repulsed and the intended object could not be achieved. You would have to reinforce them in order to beat back the enemy's skirmishers who had driven ours back, and that would entail serious difficulties. It is therefore of the highest importance never to employ skirmishers except à propos <at the right moment>, and the appropriate moment will almost always be that of the attack. In the case where the enemy harasses us with his skirmishers before this moment, we shall throw them back by sudden and short but violent attacks. You can be certain of making them fall back if, instead of opposing them with a parallel line of skirmishers, as is usually done, you envelop them in the flanks; or if you break through the enemy line that comes running at you in close order. This is the consequence of a moral effect, which I attempt to explain in the following manner:

Skirmishers cannot have that moral force, that sense of solidarity that arises from the contact of shoulder to shoulder and from the uniformity of command. Each skirmisher, to a certain degree, commands himself and relies only on his own powers. He sees a numerous body of soldiers running towards him; he is too weak to stand firm, and falls back. His right and left neighbours do the same, and they in turn are followed by their neighbours, who run back in unconscious imitation or from fear of being cut off; they rally further back to reopen fire.

Our attacking company will not reply to this fire; it either withdraws again or seeks cover behind some fold in the ground. Nothing is so foolish, so detrimental, as these prolonged skirmishing engagements that lead to nothing; you use up your men and your ammunition without advancing matters, and at the decisive moment you often lack the means you have wasted in this way. I emphasise this because waste of ammunition is the greatest fault of our infantry as of every other. Often, after half an hour's fire and before anything has been decided, you hear everywhere the cry that the cartridges are running out;

Men leave the ranks to fetch them, and that is often the cause of a defeat. Sixty rounds per man should be sufficient for the greatest battle. In 1815 the 14th Line Regiment, then commanded by Colonel Bugeaud, stood under fire for eight hours in the Alps and retained one-third of its cartridges. The enemy fired throughout the whole eight hours, but the 14th replied only with single volleys, and then only when the attacking Austrians were close to its position.

The volley was always and immediately followed by a bayonet charge, which decided this attack without further skirmishing and scattered fire. Both parties returned to their starting positions, which were very close to each other. The Austrians continued their fire, but the 14th held back until it was attacked again.

This example is also intended to bring you to an appreciation of the correct principles of a fight when defending a position, namely always to attack oneself at the last, decisive moment. In defence as in attack, however, there is another extremely effective means of bringing about victory, namely, if at all possible, to avoid a parallel battle, which to a certain degree cancels out advantages and can only be decided in our favour by moral superiority and by our stronger fire of two balls per round. We shall therefore attempt, at the decisive moment, to envelop the enemy’s flanks. In defence in broken terrain this is easily possible. As soon as the enemy’s attack is well developed, we send part of our reserves in column to the flanks of the position, and at the decisive moment these troops appear, advance and deploy in order to take the enemy in flank; we send skirmishers into his rear, and as soon as each battalion or each wing has deployed into line, they attack immediately, in order to give the enemy no time to parry the attack. Attacked simultaneously from the front and in flank, he would have to be defeated quickly.

The same means can be applied when we are attacking. Two small columns would advance behind the two flanks of the deployed line and, having come sufficiently close to the enemy, also form line, in order to prolong it and form a kind of crescent which outflanks and envelops the enemy’s line; or, if you do not have enough troops for this purpose, the flank battalions of the attacking line could, during their advance, wheel into open columns, reach the enemy’s flanks, form line again and attack, while the gaps are closed by skirmishers. This movement seems to me very well suited to the intended aim and easy to carry out, if the battalion commander is able to judge his distance well, so that he begins it neither too early nor too late. If darkness or broken terrain allows you to reach your enemy’s flanks unseen, this must of course be exploited as a matter of preference.

Be especially sparing with your ammunition when retiring. As long as you defend yourself by fire, you lose ground and come no nearer to your destination. There are even cases where you must run, in order to get out of the enemy’s range. That is often the only means of escaping destruction. How many bodies of troops have been destroyed because they began a slow and measured retreat, falsely called methodical? The only sensible method is to do everything to achieve your aim: in a retreat, that aim consists in getting quickly out of the enemy’s reach, since the situation no longer allows you to fight; but your aim must never be, out of a misconceived sense of honour, to entangle yourself in a fight which cannot but be ruinous, and from which you will often find no way of extricating yourself. In this case, flight is the only method that promises success. There is an example of this from the life of one of our greatest modern commanders.

During Marshal Massena’s retreat from Portugal, Marshal Ney was charged with holding back the English with the rearguard, in order to give the train time to pass a défilé. He carried out this task with his accustomed energy; but as the English army received reinforcement after reinforcement, the position was no longer tenable. To abandon it, he would have had to descend into a narrow valley and climb up another mountain slope on the other side. In the meantime, his troops would have been exposed to the enemy’s fire, as the enemy would naturally have occupied the abandoned position at once. The marshal considered that a slow retreat would cost him too many losses; he therefore ordered the colour parties of the battalions, the staff orderlies, etc., to mark out a new line on the hill behind the position, which was to be determined by the staff officers. As soon as this was done, he sent his soldiers at the double through the valley to occupy this line, which was thus created as if by magic. Without this admirable precaution we would have lost many men, and the affair would probably have ended by our being put to flight. It is clear, however, that this manoeuvre cannot be applied when you are threatened by cavalry; in that case you must seek to get forward as quickly as you can, while constantly maintaining a respectable order.

I have often heard would-be tacticians say that a retreat must be carried out slowly; however, this principle has always seemed to me false. Undoubtedly there are cases where a part of the army must hold the enemy in check in order to give the rest time to get away, but then one must not march slowly, but must fight and very often advance and attack, in order to restore the moral force of the men and diminish that of the enemy. But when this part of the army has performed its task, when the objective is achieved, when the constant reinforcement of the enemy forces makes it impossible for this part to continue fighting, then it must retire soon, as quickly as circumstances allow.

We must therefore learn to retreat methodically even in open order and quickly form our ranks again; to form line at the double in inverse or close order on an enemy’s flank and always to aim with the greatest precision.

["The Volunteer Journal, for Lancashire and Cheshire," No. 26, March 2, 1861]

Moral force seems to me always to be superior to physical force. You cultivate this moral force by inspiring the soldier, instilling in him a love of glory, a sense of his regiment’s honour, and especially by developing the patriotism that lies dormant as a germ in every soldier’s breast. With soldiers educated in this way you can very easily accomplish great things, if you have succeeded in gaining their confidence. To obtain this, you must fulfil all your duties towards them, make them your friends, often speak to them about war and the conduct of war, and show them that you are capable of leading them well. Under fire you must give them a brilliant example of courage and coolness.

You should pay every attention to any circumstance that leads to an increase in the moral courage of your own men and to the weakening of your enemy’s. This is precisely why the 56th will never allow itself to be attacked; it will always seize the initiative in the fight at the decisive moment and proceed to the attack. In the defensive it will take up position behind the line on which it intends to accept battle, in order to advance to it at the decisive moment. In such a case you see the power of moral influences. Every physical advantage favours a body of troops posted in a position made strong by nature and by human hand. And yet this posted force will almost always be dislodged if it confines itself to a fight on the spot. From the moral as from the physical standpoint it may be said that a good defence must always be conducted offensively.

Offensive movements on the flanks and in the rear of your enemy almost always tell; even when carried out by a mere handful of men, they impair the morale of the enemy enormously. No manoeuvre is better suited to these movements than the formation of close columns behind the flanks of the attacking line; these columns then wheel into line and envelop the enemy as soon as they come into his immediate vicinity. And because these manoeuvres are so effective, you must warn your own men of them, by making clear to them that they themselves could be attacked in this way, and showing them how to guard against it. You must also tell them that cries of terror may be heard in the rear, such as: ‘We are surrounded’, ‘We are cut off’, etc. You will inform them that the file-closers and, alongside them, detachments of picked men in the rear have strict orders to put to the bayonet or shoot any men sent forward by the enemy, or any of your own bad soldiers who utter such cries; that any enemy detachments that should dare to threaten us in the flanks and rear will soon be destroyed by our reserves, and that your own men, for the moment, have nothing else to think of but how to beat the enemy immediately in front of them.

To raise the soldiers’ morale, you will further take care that your ranks are not thinned by men who pretend to be looking after the wounded. When the fight is over, we shall, if we are nearby, give them every care; but our first task and our first duty is to win. The wounded of a victorious army are never abandoned; those of a beaten army have to suffer a thousand-fold. To concern ourselves with the wounded during the battle is therefore false charity and, generally, a mere pretext for cowardice. Here the officers must again set an example of fidelity to the cause and, when wounded, refuse all offers of help from soldiers who should be fighting.

At the Battle of Austerlitz one could see a large number of our wounded soldiers sending back to their battalions the comrades who wanted to carry them to the dressing stations.

One of the best means of maintaining the soldiers’ moral courage is the exemplary conduct of the officers in every phase of an engagement. If the regiment is halted by artillery fire, you must walk up and down before your men with your head held high and maintain their enthusiasm by cheerful conversation or vigorous words. When it comes to throwing oneself upon the enemy, you must prepare your soldiers for it, repeat to them the principles laid down above concerning the use of their fire, and advise them to keep together as much as possible during the hand-to-hand fight and to rally at once at the first signal.

There is a good means of preventing your men from opening fire too early; it consists simply in the mounted officers placing themselves before the line. “Soldiers,” the colonel might say, “you will not fire on your officers! I shall not go to the rear until it is time to open fire.” Troops led in this way will always be brave and will seldom be defeated, as they will scarcely find an opponent who possesses their moral firmness and their combat principles.

Should cavalry appear, the soldiers should be reminded of the strength of our square, which renders it unassailable. As for me, I declare to you that I heartily wish we might be attacked by cavalry in the first engagement in which we take part—so confident am I that this would be an opportunity for the 56th to earn glory.

The moral courage of soldiers is never more severely tested than during a retreat. It has often been said that the French are little suited to this type of fighting, which would amount to saying the French are bad soldiers. This is absurd. Innumerable facts have proved over the last forty years that the French, when well led, can execute excellent retreats. The national character has often been held responsible when the blame ought to have been assigned to the generals, who made poor dispositions or were incapable of rousing the moral force of the troops.

An old proverb says: “Make a sheep of yourself and you will be shorn.” In retreat you must make lions of yourselves; and when you have dealt three or four hard blows to an enemy who pursues you too hotly, you will be respected. With a little experience in warfare it is easy to achieve some of those rearguard successes which do so much to raise the moral courage of an army in retreat and to intimidate the pursuers to the highest degree. In a retreat the choice of the ground on which to fight is always yours; there you assemble and group your forces so as to be able easily to envelop the head of the enemy’s column, which will have become greatly elongated during the pursuit. The task to be carried out by each individual must be thought through carefully beforehand, and the attack must be executed swiftly and with dash. Neither irresolution nor hesitation must be shown. The head of the enemy’s column must be destroyed, and then you withdraw rapidly so as not to become involved with the reinforcements that are steadily arriving.

Gentlemen, I have said enough to enable you rightly to estimate the power of moral strength. This moral strength arises from the confidence an officer knows how to inspire in his subordinates; it is won by tactful, intelligent, and courageous action. You must take care to give your soldiers, in time of peace, a good opinion of what you are capable of in time of war. You will achieve this if you do not rely on inspections or reviews, or on mere monotonous drilling—all matters that are undoubtedly very useful but without any influence on the morale of the soldiers. You must debate with your men about our earlier wars, recount to them the outstanding actions of our brave army, arouse in them the desire to emulate them, and, in a word, do everything to awaken in them the sense of honour.

Footnotes by Frederick Engels

(1) Marshal Bugeaud commanded, as major and lieutenant-colonel respectively, a battalion in Marshal Suchet’s army in Catalonia. It is well known that this part of the French troops was the most successful in Spain and maintained its position longer than any other.