"Mobility on the WSS battlefield" Topic

I've been reading a bit about late 17/early 18th century armies. Started with the usual stuff (Chandler, Duffy) and have moved on now to scholarly tomes about military administration and financing and logistics.

One thing eludes me completely thus far: on most maps of a Sun King-era battlefield, you can see some fairly dramatic motion, and I'm not just talking about cavalry. Large bodies of infantry are depicted as moving in large, sweeping, advances, or being brought up from a third-line reserve position to some new position far away, and then sweeping the enemy back, etc.

Infantry is moving, in other words. Almost as often as it did on a Napoleonic battlefield.

Yet in every description of the tactics, there is only one formation depicted: the Line.

So are these guys really advancing and covering that much ground in lines? Obviously they're not moving against the enemy in a march column. Is there some other battlefield formation that writers are glossing over?

Yes, it's quote possible to move about in line formation, it just takes a bit longer time to get to the destination.
The lack of mobility in linear warfare tends to get exaggerated by more than a few authors of rules and history books. While not as fast and nimble as Napoleonic troops they were by no means nailed to the ground.

Look at the tactics of the Great Captains of the time, they would pin your lines down and then use the reserve to overwhelm you at a specific point.

Look at Rmilles where the British Infantry under Orkney pretty much went from one end of the Battle to the other…

Well, one would think that the troops could shuffle along fairly quickly when not under fire or threatened by horse, but would take the time to reform the ranks prior to imminent combat. They were not using a cadenced step yet I believe.

Come to think of it, Churchill mentions several times in his book on Marlborough that the British marched in columns to approach the battlefield and to cross obstacles (like streams filled by fascines). By inference, these columns would be faster than a line formation, could they not march that way behind the lines in 'sweeping' moves while not under fire?

I assume that everybody marched in columns when they *approached* the battlefield.

I'm talking about what happened once they were deployed for battle and the action began.

Did anybody move in anything other than a Line?

Or were they really covering that much ground in Lines?

Why is it so hard to belive they moved about in line formation? By the WSS it had been done a bit over 100 years so there was nothing new to it. What slows the line down is the need to keep order in the ranks, either by mantaining a march rate were this can be done on the move or by advancing at a faster pace and the halting to dress the ranks. On several ocassions in the GNW Swedish battalions actually rant to new postions and then dressed and reformed their ransk in order to meet an enemy threat.

It's all about the training of the troops and the officers willingness to risk disorder to speed up the movement.

[Why is it so hard to belive they moved about in line formation?]

It's not hard to believe; I'd just like somebody to give me a definitive answer, one way or the other:

Once deployed on the battlefield, did they ever move in anything other than a Line?

As a tangent, I am sort of curious, though, about the evolution toward more columnar mobility in the Napoleonic era. If well-trained troops could cover ground so handily in lines, then why did people need to switch to columns? According to many of the scholars I've read, late 17th century troops were NOT given more or better training than Napoleonic troops; in fact, many were simply sent off to their regiments to learn on-the-job. So it's not just a question of superior discipline. If anything, most Napoleonic armies (excepting perhaps the 1813 period) were more intensely trained.

They moved in "columns of lines" :
A column made of very small lines.

More easy to move and to reform line when necessary.
Less rapid than a column of march but faster than a line and easier to go through bad goings…

Why is it so hard to belive they moved about in line formation?

I can understand being in line facing the enemy if action is imminent. However a battalion in line is several hundred yards in length. So I can't understand moving second line or reserve troops laterally behind the main lines using line formation. A line has great difficulty avoiding obstacles. A line has great difficulty maintaining cohesion unless constantly halted to redress. A line moving laterally before the enemy presents a very vulnerable flank to artillery and cavalry. From command and control perspective, command/control of a line is much more difficult than a column.

Now perhaps generals shifted second line troops and reserves laterally along the front from their original positions using line but if so, it doesn't make much sense looking at it today. Maybe they didn't know any better? Although hard to imagine.

I thought that lines "snaked" about at that period. That would allow you to go forward, with the file at the head of the line and subsequent files following, to a position, and then immediately turn perpendicular to face your line towards the enemy. The tail of the formation ends up at the point where the turn began.