Talk:Line (formation)

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Military history: Technology / Early Modern / Napoleonic era

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Screwed-Up Redirect

Why does Linear Tactics [as in after musket-and-pike tactics and before perpendicular/impulse tactics] redirect here?72.66.37.150 (talk) 22:01, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Line vs cavalry

". The famous "Thin Red Line" of the 93rd (Highland) Regiment at the Battle of Balaklava successfully held against a Russian cavalry attack, a rare occurrence."

There was nothing rare about a line defeating cavalry. The only way cavalry can defeat a properly supported line is of the troops are poorly trained and psychologically break when charged, which is the entire point of cavalry. They don't use squares because a line can't stand cavalry, but because the cavalry can go around the flank of a line and attack them from the rear. You can't do that with a square. If they didn't do that to the Thin Red Line or was because their flanks were properly supported, and in that case there was nothing unique about them standing their ground and fending off cavalry. Every infantry line that was ever broken by cavalry was broken either because they failed to stand fast or the cavalry went around them . Idumea47b (talk) 20:27, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]