ABSTRACT
During the course of the eighteenth century, major tactical developments occurred in four main areas. The infantry began to use the column for battle as well as for manoeuvre, light troops were employed with increasing frequency, the artillery emerged as an arm to rival the cavalry and the infantry, and armies separated into divisions to fight as well as to march. All these innovations were to be exploited by the armies of Napoleon. Their antecedents, however, lay in the previous hundred years.
