Line vs Column in Napoleonic Warfare
A Napoleonic battalion of six to eight hundred men could stand in a line two or three ranks deep and a couple of hundred metres wide, or in a column of divisions perhaps fifty metres wide and many ranks deep. The line fires; the column moves. Almost everything an infantry commander did in this period came out of choosing between those two facts under time pressure.
The trade the two formations make
| Line | Column | |
|---|---|---|
| Firepower | Every musket bears on the enemy. This is the whole point of the formation. | Only the leading ranks can shoot. Most of the battalion is standing behind men who are firing. |
| Movement | Slow, and slower still over broken ground, where a long line loses its dressing. | Marches at road pace and keeps its shape while doing it. |
| Turning | Ponderous. Wheeling a two-hundred-metre line takes time and discipline. | Quick. A narrow formation pivots on itself. |
| Under artillery | A thin target. Round shot that misses the rank it aimed at tends to miss everything. | A deep target. One ball can travel the length of the formation. |
| Cohesion | Brittle. A long line that starts to give way gives way everywhere at once. | Solid. Men packed together with officers on all sides stay together longer. |
Neither formation is better. They answer different questions, and the commander who picks the wrong one for the next ten minutes usually cannot undo it in time.
Why the column kept being used anyway
It is tempting to read the firepower table and conclude that the column was a mistake. It was not. A column is what you use to get somewhere. It moves over ground that would tear a line apart, it changes direction without a drill manual, and it holds together when men are frightened, which is most of the time.
The French army in particular built its tactics around moving quickly in column and deploying into line at the last useful moment. When that worked, the enemy faced a formed line that had arrived faster than it should have. When it did not work, a column was caught mid-deployment by a line that was already firing, and the result was the kind of one-sided exchange the Peninsular War is remembered for.
That second case is the origin of the old story that British lines simply beat French columns. Later historians have been careful to point out that French battalions usually did try to deploy, and that the decisive factor was whether they got the chance. The column did not lose to the line. It lost to the clock.
The third option: the square
Against cavalry, neither line nor column is the answer. A line has flanks and a rear; a column has flanks. Both can be ridden down from a direction they are not facing. The formation that solves this is the square, which has no flank to take at the cost of being a dense target for everything else on the field. How the infantry square worked.
How Lines of Battle models it
Lines of Battle is a free Napoleonic strategy game, and formations are its central decision rather than a cosmetic setting. The numbers below are the ones the simulation actually uses.
- Line roughly doubles a battalion's ranged output and takes 30% less fire in return, but moves 10% slower at a walk and 50% slower at a run, turns far more slowly still, and needs eight seconds to form or unform.
- Column fires at 20% of its potential and takes 15% more fire, but marches at full speed, pivots readily, forms in four seconds, and holds its organisation markedly better while being shot at.
- Both are equally exposed to a charge that lands on the flank.
Because both players write their orders at the same time, you are choosing a formation for a situation you cannot see yet. How simultaneous turns work.
Every unit and its stats is published here too.