318 FREDERICK AND WAR(1786), 1881, 198; Kaltenborn, 1790-1, II, 55). He certainly put his
troops through a series of artificial and demanding drills in peace-
time, but his purpose was to sharpen the wits and responses. By
learning to do complicated manoeuvres very well on exercise, the
officers and men might be able to give a passable rendering of
something much more simple in the stress of combat.
One of the fundamental problems of tactics related to the diffi-
culty of changing a column (best for marching) into a line (best for
firing). Two devices were available. The ordinary parallel march
(Alignements-Marsch, Aufmarsch) brought the army onto the field
in two or more columns of open platoons. The force continued on its
way, across the front or around the flank of the enemy host, until a
single word of command wheeled the component platoons into line.
This stately but simple manoeuvre was the favourite of Frederick
throughout his wars.
The Deployiren was a more dramatic affair, in which tight
columns of closed platoons marched directly at the enemy, then
branched out in sub-units which made off to right or left directly to
their assigned places in the intended line. This was an invention of
Frederick's, and it was thought to have important applications when
the terrain was too cramped for the Alignements-Marsch, or the
commander desired to conceal his strength or intentions from the
enemy. The Deployiren was described by Frederick in 1748 ('Instruc-
tion fiir die General-Majors von der Infanterie', Oeuvres, XXX, 157),
and it became one of the most celebrated peacetime evolutions of the
Prussian army.
The actual use of the Deployiren in warfare was much more
limited. According to General Buddenbrock, the movement was first
essayed in battle at Soor in 1745 (D. de G., 1767, 17). Thereafter it
appeared only when its application was suggested by some peculiar
conformation of ground or unpredictable turn of events - as in the
narrow valley at Lobositz, the encounter battle at Gross-Jagersdorf,
or the complicated deployment of the royal army at Torgau.
Frederick derived his infantry tactics from the Old Dessauer, who
had himself observed the practice of Marlborough in the War of the
Spanish Succession. Prussian parade ground drills were based on a
rolling fire of platoons, each firing four rounds a minute (six from the
later 1770s, after the invention of the 'cylindrical', or rather double-
ended, ramrod). Once again the reality in warfare differed from the
theory, for the scientific repartition of fire among the platoons
usually degenerated into a general blazing-away, and the rate of fire
sank to a sustainable two rounds per minute. However, the king was
not a blind reactionary when he tried to hold as far as possible to the
ideal of volley firing. Greater average accuracy could be obtained