Fig. 16.
The order of attack in columns on the center and on one extremity at the same time (Fig. 16) is better than the preceding, especially in an attack upon an enemy's line strongly arranged and well connected. It may even be called the most reasonable of all the orders of battle. The attack upon the center, aided by a wing outflanking the enemy, prevents the assailed party falling upon the assailant and taking him in flank, as was done by Hannibal and Marshal Saxe. The enemy's wing which is hemmed in between the attacks on the center and at the extremity, having to contend with nearly the entire opposing force, will be defeated and probably destroyed. It was this maneuver which gave Napoleon his victories of Wagram and Ligny. This was what he wished to attempt at Borodino,—where he obtained only a partial success, on account of the heroic conduct of the Russian left and the division of Paskevitch in the famous central redoubt, and on account of the arrival of Baggavout's corps on the wing he hoped to outflank. He used it also at Bautzen,—where an unprecedented success would have been the result, but for an accident which interfered with the maneuver of the left wing intended to cut off the allies from the road to Wurschen, every arrangement having been made with that view.
It should be observed that these different orders are not to be understood precisely as the geometrical figures indicate them. A general who would expect to arrange his line of battle as regularly as upon paper or on a drill-ground would be greatly mistaken, and would be likely to suffer defeat. This is particularly true as battles are now fought. In the time of Louis