What change will it make in tactics?
Will whole armies be deployed as skirmishers, or will it not still be necessary to preserve either the formation of lines deployed in two or three ranks, or lines of battalions in columns?
Will battles become mere duels with the rifle, where the parties will fire upon each other, without maneuvering, until one or the other shall retreat or be destroyed?
What military man will reply in the affirmative?
It follows, therefore, that, to decide battles, maneuvers are necessary, and victory will fall to the general who maneuvers most skillfully; and he cannot maneuver except with deployed lines or lines of columns of battalions, either whole or subdivided into columns of one or two companies. To attempt to prescribe by regulation under what circumstances either of these systems is to be applied would be absurd.
If a general and an army can be found such that he can march upon the enemy in a deployed line of forty or fifty