tirailleur

Tirailleur (translatable as skirmisher, sharpshooter, or rifleman) has had a variety of meanings in the French army. It applied to specific units, particularly to those raised in the colonies, such as tirailleurs algériens (popularly known as Turcos), annamites and tonkinois (from what is now Vietnam), and senégalais.

In a wider context tirailleurs were infantry skirmishers. They played an important part in the ‘tactics of common sense’ advocated by many French officers who were dissatisfied with the formalism of the 1791 drillbook, and which reflected suggestions made by Guibert as early as 1772. Poor training and difficult terrain between them limited the battlefield effectiveness of drill, and there was often a wide gulf between drillbook theory and tactical reality. We must not make too much of assertions that the British always fought in line and the French in column. A column, screened by a swarm of tirailleurs, was a handy way of moving troops, and often these columns found themselves too close to the enemy to deploy and so attacked as they were. By preference the French often employed l'ordre mixte, with one of a regiment's battalions deployed in line to generate fire, and the other two battalions in column. One company from each battalion—usually its light or voltigeur company—would skirmish ahead of the line. An enemy line would find itself galled by the fire of tirailleurs long before it faced the French main body.

Many authorities, after the Napoleonic wars as well as during them, argued that there was something particularly French about tirailleurs. Skirmishers filled with patriotic ardour and individual resolve, keen shots who made good use of the ground, could pave the way for the decisive attack. As late as 1854, in instructions issued for the Crimea, Marshal St Arnaud wrote: ‘The action of tirailleurs must always precede that of masses.’ And in response to a German suggestion that French infantry attacks would be broken by the fire of breech-loaders, in 1866 a Frenchman responded that ‘For all Frenchman, battle is above all an individual action, the presence of dash, agility and the offensive spirit’.

— Richard Holmes