organized according to the proportions
usual in Europe, the importance of the square will disappear, and the
Russian infantry will show its superiority in Rumelia.

However this may be, the order in squares by regiments or battalions
seems suitable for every kind of attack, when the assailant has not the
superiority in cavalry and maneuvers on level ground advantageous for
the enemy's charges. The elongated square, especially when applied to a
battalion of eight companies, three of which would march in front and
one on each side, would be much better to make an attack than a deployed
battalion. It would not be so good as the column proposed above; but
there would be less unsteadiness and more impulsion than if the
battalion marched in a deployed line. It would have the advantage, also,
of being prepared to resist cavalry.

Squares may also be drawn up in echelons, so as entirely to unmask each
other. All the orders of battle may be formed of squares as well as with
deployed lines.

It cannot be stated with truth that any one of the formations described
is always good or always bad; but there is one rule to the correctness
of which every one will assent,--that a formation suitable for the
offensive must possess the characteristics of _solidity, mobility_, and
_momentum_, whilst for the defensive _solidity_ is requisite, and also
the power of delivering _as much fire as possible_.

This truth being admitted, it remains yet to be decided whether the
bravest troops, formed in columns but unable to fire, can stand long in
presence of a deployed line firing twenty thousand musket-balls in one
round, and able to fire two hundred thousand or three hundred thousand
in five minutes. In the later wars in Europe, positions have often been
carried by Russian, French, and Prussian columns with their arms at a
shoulder and without firing a shot. This was a triumph of _momentum_ and
the moral effect it produces; but under the cool and deadly fire of the
English infantry the French columns did not succeed so well at Talavera,
Busaco, Fuentes-de-Onore, Albuera, and Waterloo.

We must not, however, necessarily conclude from these facts that the
advantage is entirely in favor of the shallow formation and firing; for
when the French formed their infantry in those dense masses, it is not
at all wonderful that the deployed and marching battalions of which they
were composed, assailed on all sides by a deadly fire, should have been
repuls