I'm trying to decide how to base my 15mm Zulu War figures and would like to ask for some help from those who might be better versed in this period than I.
I read somewhere that, at that time, the British were experimenting with a greater interval (or frontage covered by each file) for their infantry, and that these were no longer the shoulder-to-shoulder ones that they and most other countries had used during earlier wars. If I am reading this right, the interval would be about 3 feet per file rather than the 2 feet which would be average in a shoulder-to-shoulder formation. This would be roughly comparable to the interval used by dismounted cavalry, although in two ranks rather than one.
They did this mostly because of the small armies and the need to cover more frontage, and to make it harder for very mobile enemies like the Zulus to outflank them. Frontally, they assumed that the newer breech-loaded weapons like the Martini-Henry had the rate of fire necessary to compensate for the lessened mass of men covering a given amount of ground.
This writer suggested that the looser formation was not successful and proved too thin against massed enemy formations like those of the Zulus. He said it was one of the lesser-known factors that led to their defeats at Islandwana and other battles.
Has anyone heard or read anything about this topic? Do you know whether wargame rules of the late-Victorian colonial era incorporate such a wider interval for Imperial infantry?
