Tactics (MILITARY enemy comes within)

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

MILITARY enemy comes within striking distance, and the latter science is therefore sometimes defined as the strategy of the battlefield. Modern writers use different terms for the various branches of tactical science; grand tactics and manœuvre tactics, for the marshaling of large masses (30,000 and upward) of men on the battlefield; minor tactics, for the conduct of small bodies, such as advanced and rear guards, outposts, patrols, etc.; fighting tactics, for the combat whatever the numbers of the force; fire tactics, for the best use of guns and rifles, the massing of their fire, and the selection of the target; and the special tactics of cavalry, artillery, or infantry, combined tactics, siege tactics, and and mining mi tactics. In Judges xx. we read of a favorite and dangerous manœuvre, the Israelites feigning to retreat before the Benjamites, so as to draw them on till their flanks and rear were exposed to the "liers in wait." Hannibal at Cannæ and William the Conqueror at Hastings were among the many successful imitators of these tactics. Others, like the Duke of Burgundy in 1476 at Granson, lost their armies through attempting it with unsteady troops. Frederick the Great owed his victory at Mollwitz to the rapid fire and steady discipline of his men, and the former was chiefly due to the introduction of iron ramrods. His later battles give us good examples of manœuvre tac- Leuthen 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. a The English archer, protected in front by palisades and on the flanks by spearmen, destroyed the chivalry of France at