Talk:Column (formation)

Military history: Technology / Napoleonic era

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Untitled[edit]

To all: enough with the overuse of the "Citation Needed" please! Everyone knows the Romans and the Greeks fought in Phalanxes, forerunner of the Column. Sometimes common knowledge is enough.

They came on in the same old way[edit]

From my talk page

Please note that the faulty historiography started by Sir Charles Oman on the French tactical system during the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic wars has been corrected in modern times. The French did not actually attack with columns for most of that period; the "colonne d'attaque" was a columnar method of maneuver, not of attack. When French soldiers got sufficiently close to the enemy for attack, they almost always deployed into lines. At Waterloo....they deployed into lines. Wellington most likely made that comment because he saw them coming in columns, but they would not have attacked that way (and in fact they didn't). Hope this clarifies the matter.UberCryxic 15:36, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I can read and I did annotate the source in the current article (Columns in the Napoleonic Wars) and I have just read the [http://www.napoleon-series.org/military/organization/maida/c_maida.html article by James R. Arnold], but there is no denying that at Waterloo twice the French infantry were caught by the Allies in column formation before they deployed into lines (I Corps and the Guard) although -- I have read that some had started to do so. One of the advantages of Wellington's reverse slope tactics was it was hard for the French to know when they were close enough to the enemy to change formation. So before Arnold's theory on Sir Charles Oman's views are entrenched in this article I would like to see several more sources which agree with Arnold. --PBS 16:09, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

BTW as to the claim on your talk (UberCryxic) talk page:

Hello Again UberCryxic. If you have time can you take a look at the Column (formation) article as there is a disput between me and ‎PBS. I think the two sources I give disprovs what he writes. The sorces are [1] and [2]. Carl Logan 14:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As this is an historical revisionist argument (against that of many historians over many decades) I think it needs more than two references which are not for peer review journals to overthrow an established theory. --PBS 16:25, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is ridiculous. Arnold's argument was not what overthrew this thinking. If you read Arnold's article, you clearly see he references more prestigious authors. Chandler played the biggest role, but there was some work done even before him. In the Campaigns of Napoleon, Chandler speaks about the l'ordre mixte being Napoleon's favorite tactical formation. In a diagram about the Battle of Tagliamento (1797), the French are shown advancing in wings of battalion columns linked by a chain of battalion lines. Either way, later in his career Chandler got the opinion that the French actually did always try to deploy into lines, and whenever they couldn't it was because circumstances didn't permit it, not because they didn't want to.

The French infantry caught red-handed at Waterloo were simply following their tactical indoctrination; that is, moving in column. But they most definitely deployed into line whenever they did attack (or at least tried to).UberCryxic 16:50, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well they must have been caught often enought by the British in column formation for Wellington to make his remark. Clearly they used the formation in battle at a much later stage in an attack than the British did if the British thought their tactics to be "the same old way". --PBS 22:39, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wellington's remark is not that significant, and certainly nothing to base an argument around. And either way he was just referring to the way they were "coming," not attacking. In fact, d'Erlon's I Corps didn't even advance in the columnar style for the initial attack (with the exception of Durutte's division), but rather came with a wide front.UberCryxic 02:21, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism ? It contradicts this page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.181.23 (talk) 15:06, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Redirection to this Page[edit]

I looked for "column formation" in Wikipedia's search box and it reported that there were no matching pages. I searched Google for "column formation" and one of the first results was this page, "Column (formation)". Would it be appropriate to create a redirect of "column formation" to this page? --Smiller933 05:19, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done --PBS 18:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Worldwide View[edit]

I am certainly not going to suggest that we need to cite examples from every period of history and every part of the world; that would be ridiculous and totally unnecessary for such a fundamental basic topic. ... That said, I don't really see the need for the French Napoleonic example/section. If we are to leave that in, I think a few other sections should be added to balance it out. LordAmeth (talk) 14:38, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]