The Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in 1806 was the Duke of York. His innovations as described in this valuable book and practised in London’s Hyde Park, were essentially manoeuvre, and the experiments consisted of trying various methods of combining infantry, artillery and cavalry on the parade ground, to evaluate their possible use in battle.
At this time, early in the Napoleonic Wars, troops had to move en masse, for there was no other way that infantry in particular would be able to give effective fire on the battlefield. The accompanying artillery and cavalry, although having greater fire or shock effect, were transitory, and, then as now, only the infantry could take and hold ground. The experiments are graphically supported by a frontispiece which shows the effect of fire at various ranges, and which clearly illustrates the problems facing infantry commanders when ordering their men to fire on the enemy. The experiments here described were to find out how long various infantry and cavalry charges would take to close upon the attacked force, and to how many volleys of musket fire the advancing troops would be exposed. The results of similar experiments in Jersey, and the whole book is completed with a number of observations made by suitable commentators of the period.