The Infantry Square

Why cavalry could not break a formed square

The usual explanation is that the bayonets were too dangerous to ride into. The real reason is simpler and has to do with the horse rather than the rider. A horse will not run into what it reads as a solid, unbroken obstacle. Faced with a continuous hedge of men and steel that does not flinch, the animal veers off or pulls up, and the charge dissolves into a mass of riders milling in front of a formation that is shooting at them.

Everything about the square follows from that. It has no flank and no rear to take, because every face is a front. It presents the same unbroken wall in whatever direction the cavalry arrives from. And crucially, it does not have to win the fight. It only has to refuse to open.

Which is why the moment that mattered was never the charge itself but the seconds before it. Infantry caught in line or column by cavalry it had not seen in time did not get a second chance. Cavalry that arrived after the square was formed had, in practice, already failed.

What a square costs

A square is a deep, dense block of men standing still in the open. That is close to the ideal target for every other arm on the battlefield.

• Artillery. Round shot fired into a square passes through ranks rather than past them. A battery that is allowed to work on a square unopposed will break it without any cavalry needing to be involved.
• Skirmishers. Loose infantry can stand off and shoot into a target that cannot disperse without inviting the cavalry back in.
• Movement. A square barely moves. Ground given up while in square is ground given up for good.

This is the trap that makes the formation interesting. Cavalry that cannot break a square can still pin it, and a pinned square is a gift to the guns. The cavalry arm's real contribution against formed infantry was usually not the kill but the delay.

Waterloo, the usual example

The afternoon of Waterloo is the case everyone reaches for, and it illustrates both halves of the point. Massed French cavalry went forward against the allied centre without infantry alongside them and with the guns largely unable to fire while friendly horsemen were in the way. The allied battalions formed square and stayed formed. The charges went on for a long time and broke almost nothing.

The lesson usually drawn is that squares beat cavalry. The more useful one is that cavalry sent on its own against prepared infantry beats nothing. Squares fell during this period, regularly. They fell to combined arms, to surprise, and to being caught in the act of forming.

How Lines of Battle models it

Lines of Battle is a free Napoleonic strategy game where the formation you are standing in when contact happens decides most of the fight. The square is implemented as the trade it historically was, using the numbers the simulation actually runs on.

• A square has no flank: no attack on it counts as a flank attack, from any direction. Cavalry can still ride round behind it, but the charge lands as though it had come at the front, which is the mechanical form of having every face a front.
• It resists charges 30% better than a battalion not in square, but shoves with 50% less strength once the two sides are pressed together.
• It takes 40% more damage from fire. Left in front of guns, it dies.
• It moves at 20% of its normal speed and is poor at charging anything itself.
• Unlike line and column, which need eight and four seconds to form, a square forms immediately. The cost is paid in what it does to you once you are in it, not in getting there.

Because orders are written blind and resolve together, forming square is a bet on what the cavalry you can see is about to do. How simultaneous turns work, and how line and column trade off against each other.

Every unit and its stats is published here too.