Note 94 — PART II HISTORICAL STUDIES

This is exactly my own view; it is that 'essential principle of tactics' on which I have insisted throughout, and on which Miss Norgate has rashly endeavoured to pour contempt.94 Mr Freeman, moreover, further on, wrote of his 'light armed' as 'the troops in the rear',95 which is again my contention. What seems to have happened is that he got into his head (I can imagine how) that the 'light-armed' formed the wings, and arranged the battle on that assumption. Then remembering, when it was too late, that, according to his own precedent, they ought to have been in the rear, he hesitated to introduce a change which would affect his whole theory of the battle, and compel him to approach it de novo.96