The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863

In order to convey a clear and correct idea of the new principles adopted in the organization and equipment of the Chasseurs, and to furnish our readers with some facts that may be interesting to them as historical students, and most useful to such among them as are connected with or may have any aspiration for military life, we must beg them to go back with us, for a moment, to the very period of the invention of gunpowder. It would be out of the question, of course, to attempt, in these pages, a description of all the curious weapons that were at first employed under the name of fire-arms. We will only remark that such weapons were, despite the anathemas of Bayard and the sarcasms of Ariosto, very much used as early as the middle of the sixteenth century, and played an important part on the battle-fields of that epoch.

To the Spaniards belongs the credit of having rendered the use of fire-arms more easy, more regular, and more general among the nations. For more than a hundred years the Spaniards were the very masters of the art of war. Their power had begun to decline, but they still retained their military superiority; and from the Battle of Ceresole, won by the Count of Enghien in 1544, down to the memorable victory of Rocroy, gained in 1643 by a hero of the same race and the same name, they had the upper-hand in all pitched engagements. Their generals were the very best and most thoroughly instructed, and formed a real school; they, too, were the only officers who practised strategy. Their organization was better than any other, and their celebrated tercios were the very model of all regiments. Their armament was likewise superior, as they had adopted the musket, which was the first fire-arm that a man could handle with any facility, load with rapidity, and aim with any precision. Each of their tercios or battalions contained a regulated proportion of these musketeers, and the number was large, compared to the whole mass of troops.

The excellent results attained by the Spaniards, in the more perfect organization and equipment of their infantry, did not escape the attention of the French officers; and one of them especially, the Duke Francis de Guise, endeavored to turn his observations to good account. It is to him that we are indebted for the first rough sketch of regimental organization modelled upon that of the tercios, and, in more than one encounter with the Huguenots, the numbers of thoroughly skilled arquebuse-men embodied in the old French bands in Picardy and Piedmont secured advantages to the Catholic armies. In the opposite party, a young general who was destined to become a great king, endowed with that creative instinct, that genius which is as readily applicable to the science of government as to that of war, and which, when tempered with good sense, may bestow glory and happiness upon whole nations, Henry IV., had taken particular pains to increase the number and the efficiency of his arquebuse-men, and frequently managed to employ them in ways as novel as they were successful. At the Battle of Coutras, he distributed them in groups of twenty-five, in the midst of his squadrons of cavalry, so that, when the royal gendarmerie advanced to charge the latter, they were suddenly received with murderous volleys by these arquebuse-men of the spur, as they were called, owing to their combination with the cavalry, and the shock they thus encountered gave victory to the Protestants. Henry IV. went even too far with his passion for fire-arms. He increased their number and their use among cavalry so extravagantly, that the latter arm was perverted from its proper object. The cavalry, for a long time, forgot that their strength lay in the points of their sabres, in the dash of the men, and the speed of their horses.

Most of the great captains of an early day thus signalized their progress by some improvement in the equipment of their infantry. One of the most formidable enemies of Spanish power, Maurice of Nassau, a skilful engineer and tactician, was the first to array infantry in such a manner as to combine the simultaneous use of the musket and the pike. Before his time, fire-arms had been used only for skirmishing service; he commenced to use them in line. This reform was, however, only foreshadowed, as it were, by the Dutch General; it was reserved for Gustavus Adolphus to complete it. While he was executing a series of military operations such as the world had not beheld since the days of Cæsar, he was also creating a movable artillery, and giving to the fire of his infantry an efficacy which had not been attained before. For the heavy machines of war which were drawn by oxen to the field of battle, and which remained there motionless and paralyzed by the slightest movements of the contending armies, he substituted light cannon drawn by horses and following up all the manoeuvres of either cavalry or foot. He had found the infantry formed in dense battalions. His system arranged it in long continuous lines in which each rank of musketeers was sustained by several ranks of pikemen, so that his array, thus distributed, should present to the enemy a front bristling with steel, while, at the same time, it could cover a large space of ground with its discharge of lead. Attentive to all kinds of detail, he also gave his soldiers the cartouch-box and knapsack instead of the cumbersome apparatus to which they had been accustomed. In fact, Gustavus Adolphus was the founder of the modern science of battle. In strategy and the grand combinations of warfare, he was the disciple and rival of the ancient masters; for, even if this "divine portion" of the military art be inaccessible to the vast number of its votaries, and if history can easily enumerate those who were capable of comprehending it, and, more especially, of applying it, its rules and principles have, nevertheless, been by no means the same in all ages. On the contrary, the invention of fire-arms demanded an entirely new system of tactics, and this the Swedish hero introduced.

The example set by Gustavus was not, however, very rapidly followed, and, although some slight improvements were introduced by French officers during the seventeenth century, it was not until the time of Louis XIV. that the reforms started by Maurice of Nassau, and so successfully continued by the Swedish army, began to attain their consummation. The progress made in that direction was due to Vauban, whose eminent genius had mastered every question and every branch of study so completely, that, when applied to on any subject connected with politics or war, his opinion was always clear and correct. The very numerous essays and sketches from his hand which are found deposited in the fortresses and in the archives of France all reveal some flash of genius, and even his wildest speculations bear the stamp of his high intellect and excellent heart. Engineering science was carried by him to such a degree of perfection that it has made but few advances since his time; and it was Vauban who induced Louis XIV. to replace the pike and the musket with a weapon which should be, at one and the same time, an instrument for both firing and thrusting, namely, the bayonet-gun. The Royal Fusileer Regiment, since called the Royal Artillery, was the first one armed with this weapon, (in 1670,) and in 1703 the whole French army finally gave up the pike. Notwithstanding some reverses sustained by the infantry thus armed, and notwithstanding the disapproval of Puységur and others, this gun was soon adopted by all Europe, and the success of the great Frederick put a conclusive indorsement on this new style of weapon. Frederick had taken up and perfected the ideas of Gustavus Adolphus; and he now laid down certain rules for the formation and manoeuvring of infantry, which are still followed at this day; and since that time, no one has disputed the fact that the strength of foot-troops lies in their guns and their legs.

Our present firelock differs from the article used during the Seven Years' War only in its more careful construction and some modifications of detail. The most important of these relates to the more rapid explosion of the charge. In 1840 the old flint-locks were generally replaced by the percussion-lock, which is simpler, is less exposed to the effects of dampness, and more quickly and surely ignites the powder. Even the ordinary regulation-musket with its bayonet was spoken of by Napoleon in his time as "the best engine of warfare ever invented by man." Since the day of the Great Emperor, and even during the reign of the present Napoleon, continued improvements have been made in the character of the weapon used by the French infantry. The weight, length, correctness of aim, durability, and handiness of the gun have all been carefully examined and modified, to the advantage of the soldier, until, finally, we have a weapon which combines wonderful qualities of lightness, strength, correctness of equipoise, ease and rapidity of loading, with perfect adaptability as a combination of the lance, pike, and sword, when it has ceased to be a fire-arm.

We have not here the space to enter upon a disquisition concerning these progressive changes; but suffice it to say that nearly all the peculiar styles of fire-arms were well known at an early period, and that the rifling, etc., of guns and cannon, with the other modifications now adopted, are merely the development and consummation of old ideas. For instance, the rifled arquebuse was known and used at the close of the fifteenth century, and, although the rifled musket was not put in general use by the French infantry, from the fact that its reduced length and the greater complication of movements required in loading and discharging it deprived it of other advantages when in the hands of troops of the line, still it was adopted in a certain proportion in some branches of the French service.

As early as the middle of the seventeenth century, some corps of light cavalry called Carabins were armed with the short rifle-musket, and hence the derivation of the term carabines applied to the weapon. These "carabines" were also very promptly adopted by hunters and sportsmen everywhere. The Swiss and the Tyrolese employed them in chasing the chamois among their mountains, and practised their skill in the use of them at general shooting-matches, which to this very day are celebrated as national festivals. The Austrian Government was the first to profit by this preference on the part of certain populations for accurate fire-arms, and at once proceeded to organize battalions of Tyrolese Chasseurs, or Huntsmen,—to give the meaning of the French word. These Chasseurs were applied in the Austrian service as light troops, and so great was their efficiency against the Prussians that Frederick the Great was compelled, in his turn, to organize a battalion of Chasseur sharp-shooters. France followed suit, in the course of the eighteenth century, and called into existence various corps of the same description, under different names. These, however, were but short-lived, although some of them, for instance, the Grassin Legion, acquired quite a reputation.

Finally came the French Revolution. The troops of the Republic were more remarkable for courage and enthusiasm than for tactics and drill. They usually attacked as skirmishers,—a system which may be employed successfully by even the most regularly disciplined armies, but which is sometimes more especially useful to raw troops, because it gives the private soldier an opportunity to compensate by personal intelligence for the lack of thorough instruction. Struck by the aptitude of the French recruits for that kind of fighting, the Convention, in reorganizing the army, decreed the formation of some half-brigades of light infantry. The picked men were to be armed with the new weapon, and received the name of Carabiniers. The carabine of 1793 is the first specimen of that kind of arm which was regularly employed in France.

Subsequently, owing to many practical defects, when Napoleon reorganized the equipment of the French armies, the carabine was dropped from the service, although the regiments of light infantry were retained, and their picked companies preserved the title of Carabiniers. In the Imperial Guard, too, there were companies of Skirmishers, Flankers, and Chasseurs, but neither one of these corps was distinguished by any particular style of arms or drill. The Emperor's wish was to have the armament and training of all his infantry uniform, so that all the regiments should be equally adapted to the service of troops of the line or light troops. Finally, to carry out his design with greater ease, he formed all the men who were more active and agile than the rest, or whose low stature prevented them from becoming Grenadiers, into companies of Voltigeurs,—and this was one of his finest military creations.

However, notwithstanding the correctness of Napoleon's views, as a general principle, the thousand and one uses of a corps of picked marksmen as light troops were so universally admitted that the different nations of Europe continued and even augmented that branch of their military service. Under different names they were found not only in the armies of England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, but also under the banners of the secondary powers, such as Sweden, Piedmont, and Switzerland.

After the disasters of 1815, the reorganization of the French army was confided to Marshal Gouvion de St. Cyr, who united to sincere patriotism every qualification of an able general. He gave to the French service the basis of its present success, his suggestions having, of course, been perfected and expanded in the mean time. Among other things, he prescribed the formation of battalions of Chasseurs, to be organized in legions, side by side with the infantry of the line, but with their own special equipment. This plan was not efficiently executed, and the Chasseur battalions shared the fate of the Department Legions of France, and were merged in the existing regiments.

The project, in a different form, was revived by Marshal Soult, who, as Minister of War, in 1833, succeeded in securing the passage of a royal ordinance prescribing the formation of companies of sharp-shooters "armed with carabines and uniformed in a manner befitting their special service." These companies were to be united subsequently into battalions, and were to undergo a particular course of training. Although the ordinance was not immediately carried into execution, the impulse had been given, and erelong successful improvements in the rifle having been effected by an old officer of the Royal Guard, named Delvigne, and a certain Colonel Poncharra, inspector of the manufacture of arms, the Duke of Orléans brought about the formation of a company of marksmen peculiarly trained and equipped, and provided with the so-called Delvigne-Poncharra carabine. This company was placed in garrison at Vincennes, where, under skilful and popular commanders, it gave such satisfaction that it was finally decided to try the experiment on a larger scale, and a decree of November 14, 1838, created a battalion of the same character.

This corps, then, and even now, known to the people as the Tirailleurs de Vincennes, wore a uniform very similar to that of the present Chasseurs, but quite different from that of the infantry of the period. Instead of the stiff accoutrements and heavy headgear of the latter, they assumed a frock, wide and roomy pantaloons, and a light military shako. The double folds of white buckskin, which were very fine to look at, to be sure, but which oppressed the lungs and offered a conspicuous mark to the enemy, were discarded; the sabre was no longer allowed to dangle between the legs of the soldier and impede his movements; while the necessary munitions were carried in a manner more convenient and better adapted to their preservation. The arms consisted of a carabine, and a long, solid, sharpened appendage to it, termed the sword-bayonet. This latter weapon was provided with a hilt, and could be used for both cut and thrust, with considerable effect, while, affixed to the end of the carabine, it furnished a most formidable pike.

Although the Delvigne-Poncharra carabine had great advantages, it still did not command the range of the coarser and heavier muskets of the line, and, in order to make up for this in some degree, the most robust and skilful men of the corps were armed with a heavier gun, constructed on the same principles, but capable of throwing a heavier charge with precision, to greater distances. The proportion of men so armed was one-eighth of the battalion. The use of these two different calibres of fire-arms had some drawbacks, but they were counterbalanced by some curious advantages. For instance, the battalion could keep up a steady fire at ordinary distances, while, at the same moment, the men armed with the heavy carabines, or Carabiniers, as they were distinctively called, even within their own battalion, could reach the enemy at points where he deemed himself beyond the range of the force he saw in front of him. United in groups, the Carabiniers could thus produce severe effect, and actually formed a sort of hand artillery,—to use an expression often employed concerning them.

The Tirailleurs thus composed were, owing to the shortness of their carabines, drawn up in two ranks, instead of in the regimental style of three ranks. They manoeuvred in line, like all other infantry battalions, but, in addition to the ordinary drill, were trained in gymnastics and double-quick evolutions, as well as in fencing with the bayonet, a special course of sharp-shooting, and what was termed the new Tirailleur drill.

Gymnastics have always been encouraged in the French army, and, when not carried to excess, they are of the greatest use, particularly in developing the strength of young men, giving suppleness and confidence to raw recruits, and facilitating their manoeuvres. Running was naturally a portion of these exercises, although it was rarely permitted in the evolutions of French troops, since it was found to produce much disorder. The Tirailleurs were so trained, however, that they could move, with all their accoutrements, in ranks, without noise and without confusion, at a cadenced and measured running step termed the pas gymnastique, or gymnastic step,—and they could use it even during complicated field-manoeuvres. This was a most excellent innovation, for it enabled infantry to pass rapidly to any important point, and to execute many evolutions with the promptitude in some degree which cavalry obtains from the combination of the two gaits.

The bayonet-exercise was very acceptable to the men, for it augmented their confidence in their weapons and their skill in handling them.

The target or sharp-shooting drill was much the most complicated and difficult, as the troops were taught to fire when kneeling and lying on the ground, and to avail themselves of the slightest favoring circumstances of the soil. The rules and methods adopted in this branch of the drill have been the subject of profound and careful study, and are exceedingly ingenious.

The approval of these measures by the French Government was such, that, by a decree of August 28th, 1839, the merely temporary organization of the Tirailleurs was made permanent and separate, and the corps was sent to camp at Fontainebleau. There, the agility of the men, their neat and convenient uniforms and equipments, and their rapid and orderly evolutions struck every one who saw them. When, at the close of their period of encampment, the King was passing them in review as a special compliment, he warmly asked Marshal Soult what he thought of the new corps. The Marshal, in replying, emphatically expressed the wish that His Majesty had thirty such battalions instead of only one.

However, the new organization found some opponents, and many urgent arguments were adduced to prevent its extension. In order to put all these to the test, it was finally determined to submit the Tirailleurs to the ordeal of actual warfare; and they were speedily shipped to Africa, where it was quickly discovered that their gymnastic training had so prepared them that they easily became inured to the fatigues and privations of campaigning life. Their heavy carabines succeeded admirably, and the skill of their marksmen—among others, of a certain Sergeant Pistouley—was the theme of universal praise.

The Tirailleurs were now brigaded with the Zouaves, and erelong had shared glorious laurels with those celebrated troops.

Finally, in 1840, the dangers that seemed to be accumulating over France on all sides assumed so dark a form that the patriotism of the whole nation was aroused, and, in the midst of the general outpouring of men and means, the Duke of Orléans was authorized to form no less than ten battalions of Chasseurs.

The Duke set himself about this important task with all the zeal that had characterized his first effort to create the organization, and all the erudition he had gleaned from years of military study and research. In the first place, he abandoned the title of Tirailleurs, as being not sufficiently distinctive, and adopted that of Chasseurs à Pied, or Foot-Chasseurs. The organization by battalions was retained, and the one formed two years before at Vincennes was designated as the First Battalion, and recalled from Africa to St. Omer as a model for the other nine that were to be organized. St. Omer offered extensive barracks, a vast field suitable to military exercise, and, in fine, all the establishments requisite for a large concourse of troops. The ranks were soon filled with picked men from all sides, and ardent, ambitious officers from every corps of the army sought commands. Among the latter we may mention a certain Captain, since Marshal de M'Mahon, who was put at the head of the Tenth Battalion.

Under the eyes of the Prince Royal, and in accordance with a series of regulations drawn up by him with the greatest care, and constantly modified to suit circumstances, the battalions were drilled and trained assiduously in all the walks of their profession connected with their own destined service. Every branch of their military life was illustrated by their exercises, and even the officers went through a thorough course of special instruction under accomplished tutors, who were also officers of peculiar ability and experience. While the Duke of Orléans, with the distinguished General Rostolan and two picked lieutenant-colonels, remained at St. Omer in charge of the growing force, another lieutenant-colonel was intrusted with the task of training subordinates to serve as teachers in sharp-shooting, and for this purpose a detachment was assembled at Vincennes, consisting of ten officers and a number of subalterns who had attracted attention by their particular aptitude. These, after having been thoroughly instructed in the manufacture of small arms, the preparation of munitions, and the rules and practice of sharp-shooting, were sent to St. Omer to furnish the new battalions with the officers who were to form part of the permanent organization. The weapon selected was an improvement upon the former carabines of the Tirailleurs; and while the old proportion, to wit, the eighth part of each battalion, were armed with guns of longer range, and styled distinctively Carabiniers, these were set apart as the picked company of each battalion. The Duke, taking up his residence at St. Omer, attended in person to all that was going forward; and so constant were his exertions, and so warm the zeal of those who assisted the enterprise, that in a few months all the battalions were equipped, armed, and well drilled.

One fine spring morning,—it was in May, 1841,—a long column of troops entered Paris with a celerity hitherto unknown. There was no false glitter, no tinsel; everything was neat and martial, with bugles for their only music, and a uniform that was sombre, indeed, but of such harmonious simplicity as to be by no means devoid of elegance. This column consisted of the Chasseurs, coming to receive their standard from the hands of Louis Philippe, and speeding through the streets with their gymnastic step. On the very next day, as though to signalize the serious and entirely military character of the organization, four of these battalions were sent off to Africa, and the remaining six posted at the different leading fortresses of France, where the collections of artillery, etc., enabled them to proceed with the perfect development of their training.