British Infantry Private at Waterloo: the Two-Deep Line (NAP0160)

British infantry private at Waterloo: the man in the two-deep line

One man, standing, on nothing. Belgic shako with the gilt plate, plume white over red, red coat with buff facings and paired lace loops, grey campaign trousers, black knapsack with the blanket rolled on top, a blue canteen, Brown Bess with the bayonet fixed. Start with the plume, because it is the least decorative thing here.

The plume says he is nobody in particular

Grenadier companies wore white, light companies green. White over red is a centre company — the battalion companies, the eight of ten that were simply the regiment. This plate does not portray a picked man. It portrays the man the line was actually made of, which on that ridge is the point.

Two ranks instead of three

Every major army in Europe formed three deep. The British formed two, and it is the single most important tactical fact about them. In three ranks the third can barely fire; in two, every musket in the battalion is in action. A given frontage therefore produces something like half again as much fire — and against a French attack column, which can only shoot with its leading files, the arithmetic becomes brutal long before anyone reaches bayonet range.

It only works if the line does not break

A two-deep line is thinner, and thin things snap. It was a bet on steadiness: on men who would stand while being shot at and would reload without being told. That is why British drill spent so much of its time on loading and so little on manoeuvre. The doctrine and the temperament had to match, and if they had not, the formation would have been suicidal.

The musket is not the weapon — the volley is

A Brown Bess is inaccurate past fifty metres and fires three or four times a minute. On its own it is nearly useless. Six hundred of them, fired together on command, are an event: what breaks the enemy is not marksmanship but the arrival of the whole battalion’s fire in one second. Everything about the drill exists to produce that instant.

What he is carrying, and where he spent the day

Knapsack, rolled blanket, canteen, sixty rounds in the pouch, musket and bayonet: around twenty-five kilos. And for most of 18 June, men dressed like this were lying down behind the crest of the ridge, out of sight of the French guns, standing up only when the attack was close. Wellington’s reverse slope is the reason the line in NAP0002 still had something to break against.