Home › T › Tactics (MILITARY the science)

Tactics (MILITARY the science)

MILITARY, the science which enables one of two opposing bodies of troops to be stronger than the other at every crisis of an engagement.

STRATEGY (q. v.), which has precisely the same objects, merges into tactics as the trians, immovable in their chosen position, with his advanced guard, while his main body under cover of some hills and foggy weather marched in open column of companies round their flank, wheeled into line and rolled up their army. At Waterloo Napoleon showed an example of combined tactics on a large scale. By cavalry charges he obliged the British infantry to form squares, which then became targets for his massed artillery.

When under stress of this "hard pounding" they opened out into line, a renewed charge of cavalry obliged them to take the denser formation again. At Gravelotte the German armies (some 240,000 men) showed an unparalleled instance of grand tactics by marching to their positions across country in seven large masses, each consisting of one complete army corps. Fighting tactics must depend chiefly on the arms in use. The mail-clad horsemen of the 15th century never succeeded in defeating the solid phalanx of pikemen opposed to them by the Swiss Confederation till the employment of artillery prevented the latter retaining such massive formation.

The English archer, protected in front by palisades and on the flanks by spearmen, destroyed the chivalry of France at a