<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by zinkyusa</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by D.S. Walter</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by zinkyusa</i>
<br />The column was sometimes used in ACW and it does not go against history to use column attacks in some instances in our games.
The most famous example that comes to mind was Col. Emory Upton's assault using 12 Federal regiments <b>in a 3 regiment front</b> [...]
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Exactly. The individual regiments were in line of battle.
Just because the history books say it was "a column" does not mean it was a column of companies or divisions. But that's what using the column formation provided in the BG/HPS games would mean.
To my knowledge, there is only a small handful of examples where "columns" were indeed formed with a frontage of less than one battalion. I believe there are a couple of cases where it was a half-battalion, usually in a very restricted space. Other cases where comparatively small units attacked in column were sometimes simple SNAFU's. (That's for instance true for those cases often quoted from the Mexican War.)
But the Upton "column" you quote would have to be formed, in game terms, three regiments wide and four regiments deep, with the individual regiments being in line of battle.
Gen. Walter, USA
<i>The Blue Blitz</i>
3/2/VIII AoS
West Point Class of '01
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Dierk, it is my understanding that Uptons' regiments were deployed in three long lines with each line being four regiments deep not in 4 lines of battle each three regiments wide. What you describe would not be a column but more of a rectangular formation. I think you point may have been was that indiviual regiments in the ACW were not generally formed into assaulting columns as done by the French in the Napoloeonic and Revolutionary wars to which I agree.
Lt. Gen. Ed Blackburn
I/I/VI/AoS
"Forward Bucktails"
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NEVER MIND it was a compact rectangle as Dierk said. It was 4 lines each three regiments wide, not really a column at all.[:D]
Lt. Gen. Ed Blackburn
I/I/VI/AoS
"Forward Bucktails"