Download Manoeuvre Warfare in Upper Canada

MANOEUVRE WARFARE IN UPPER CANADA: THE IROQUOIS AND THE
AMERICAN ARMY AT THE BATTLE OF QUEENSTON HEIGHTS
by 2Lt Mark Gaillard
Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders
Manoeuvre theory draws its power mainly from opportunism - the calculated
risk, and the exploitation both of chance circumstances and (to borrow a
tennis term) of "forced and unforced errors" by the opposition; still more
on winning the battle of wills by surprise or, failing this, by speed and
aptness of response."1
Brigadier Richard Simpkin, Race to the Swift, 1985
Carl Benn’s excellent book, The Iroquois in the War of 1812,2 shows how the Iroquois,
who were for the most part allied with the British in that conflict with the United States of
America, followed a warfighting doctrine that is instantly recognizable to infantrymen as
“manoeuvre warfare”. In particular, his book recalls the exploits of Major John Norton, an
Iroquois combat leader who fought for the British. Norton’s war memoirs deserve careful
reading by all students of infantry tactics.
At the battle of Queenston Heights in Upper Canada (now Ontario) on October 13, 1812,
Major Norton’s small-unit “manoeuvrist” tactics led to the defeat of a much larger American
force, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Winfield Scott of the regular U.S. Army. In his newly
published book, Winfield Scott and the Profession of Arms, Alan Peskin traces the long career of
General Winfield Scott. Peskin’s thesis is that Scott’s defeat in the “battle of wills” at Queenston
Heights dated that officer’s determination to create a disciplined, dedicated army of career
soldiers bound together by dependable professional pride, rather than evanescent patriotic
enthusiasm,3 in effect, to lay the foundations of the modern US Army.
In this essay I will analyze the tactics and leadership of the Mohawk war chief John
Norton in that action by means of the modern precepts of manoeuvre warfare, contrasting these
with the static tactics and ineffective leadership of Winfield Scott.
Beforedoing so, it is necessary to summarize the theory of “manoeuvre warfare.”
Manoeuvre Warfare is the modern doctrinal approach to warfighting.4 The Canadian Army
1
Richard E. Simpkin, Race to the Swift, (London: Brassey's, 1985, paper edition re-printed
2000), p. 22
2
Carl Benn, The Iroquois in the War of 1812, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), see
pp. 90-97 for description of the Battle of Queenston Heights from Norton’s perspective.
3
Allan Peskin, Winfield Scott and the Profession of Arms, (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State
University Press, 2003), p. 26.
4
B-GL-300-000/FP-000 Command, (Ottawa: Department of National Defence, 21 July 1996),
defined Manoeuvre Warfare in 1996 as a “war fighting philosophy that seeks to defeat the enemy
by shattering his morale and physical cohesion, his ability to fight as an effective coordinated
whole, rather than destroying him by incremental attrition.”5 To practice Manoeuvre Warfare,
U.S. Marines Corps Commandant General Charles Krulak noted in 1999 that leaders at all levels
need to be able to “confidently make well-reasoned and independent decisions under extreme
stress...[that] will directly impact the outcome of the larger operation.”6 In manoeuvrist doctrine,
the leaders of small units are given the freedom to respond to ever-changing tactical situations
and challenges, and to seize unforseen opportunities and to act, even without orders, to achieve
favourable results7.
Situation Report: Mid-morning, October 13, 1812, near the village of Queenston, Upper Canada
Advancing in column southward from Fort George towards the tiny Upper Canadian
village of Queenston with a force of British regular infantry, Canadian militia and Grand River
Mohawk warriors, Major General Roger Sheaffe was confronted with a grim tactical situation. A
large force of Americans, consisting of 900 regular troops and 2,650 militiamen and volunteers,
had commenced invading Canadian territory beginning at three o’clock in the morning and had
succeeded in capturing the Heights overlooking Queenston village.
Queenston Heights are part of the massive natural ridge that forms the Niagara
Escarpment. They run at a right angle from the Niagara River 100 meters above the river level.
The village of Queenston lies at the bottom of the north side of the Heights, some twenty meters
above the river level. Part way up the Heights was a redan with one 18-pounder cannon. Earlier
in the day, as dawn was breaking and the invasion was in full swing, the British officer
commanding the small force of light infantry guarding the Heights assumed the Americans could
not scale the steep cliffs and moved his troops into the village of Queenston to support the
hard-pressed defenders of that place. However, about 60 regular troops, led by the wounded
Captain John E. Wool, 13th U.S. Infantry Regiment, found a path leading from the landing place
to the Heights. They scrambled to the top, formed a line, and charged northward down the side of
the hill. The surprised British spiked the redan gun and retreated into Queenston village. The
pp. 27-28.
5
CFP 300(1) Conduct of Land Operations, pp. 2-3. Compare this definition with the US Marine
Corps which states that the purpose of “Maneuver Warfare” is to “shatter the enemy’s cohesion
through a variety of rapid, focussed, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly
deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope...[t]he aim is to render the enemy
incapable of resisting effectively by shattering his moral, mental and physical cohesion - his
ability to fight as an effective, coordinated whole - rather than destroy him physically through
incremental attrition through each of his components”, Department of the Navy, MCDP-1
Warfighting (Washington, D.C., United States Marine Corps Headquarters, 20 June 1997), p. 73.
General Charles C. Krulak, “The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three-Block War,”
Marines Magazine, (January 1999), p. 4.
6
Capt. I. A. Hope, “Directive Control and Mission Analysis: Keys to Manoeuvre Warfare at
Company Level”, Infantry Journal, vol. 31, Spring 1997.
7
3
British Commander-in-Chief, Major General Isaac Brock, deciding that the redan had to be
recaptured, personally led a frontal attack with 190 men of the 49th Foot and Canadian militia,
charging uphill across open ground into the American killing zone. Before reaching the gun,
Brock fell, mortally wounded. His ADC, John MacDonell, took over command and continued
the assault, but the attack faltered as he too was shot and killed. The Americans received
reinforcements which allowed them to outflank the British assault. The remnants of Brock’s
assault force of regulars and militia withdrew northward to the British artillery position at
Vrooman’s Point, some 1.5 kilometers away, while the Americans consolidated their position on
the Heights.
About this time, Lt. Col. Scott was given command of the American force on the Heights.
Arriving there during a lull in the fighting, he conducted a hasty reconnaissance and ordered
defensive works constructed, but since no entrenching tools had been sent across the river, the
work was slow going. Then he turned his attention to repairing the spiked British cannon, though
to no avail8.
Brock’s second-in-command at Fort George, Major General Roger Sheaffe, had received
orders from his now-dead commander to bring as many troops from the fort as could be spared.
Sheaffe’s force of 800 regulars and militia and 250 aboriginal warriors were still on the march
southward as Scott consolidated his position atop the Heights. With a numerically superior force
holding the high ground, and supported by artillery, Scott’s position must have appeared
impregnable to Sheaffe and his men, shaken no doubt by news of Brock’s death and the failure
of his abortive counterattack. Yet before the end of the day, Scott would be decisively defeated
and the only Americans left on the Canadian side of the Niagara River would be either dead or,
like Scott himself, prisoners. This amazing feat of arms would be accomplished by skillful
generalship and through the gallantry of the British and Canadians, certainly. But the decisive
factor was doubtless the “manoeuvre force” of 160 Grand River Mohawks.
Advance to Contact: Noon, October 13, 1812, near the village of Queenston, U.C.
Led by war chiefs John Norton, William Kerr, and John Brant, the Iroquois warriors
raced ahead of Sheaffe’s force as the troops marched southward along the road paralleling the
Niagara River.
John Norton, or Teyoninhokarawen, a young man of Iroquoian-Cherokee and Scottish
parentage, had spent his formative years in Britain but had, by the 1790's, been fully “adopted”
into the Mohawk nation. He rose to become an accomplished diplomat and war chief of the
Iroquois Six Nations who settled along the Grand River in what is now south-central Ontario.
His character later recognized by Lieutenant-General Sir Gordon Drummond as being “so
strongly marked by great Ability, design and Intrigue, that if tempted to change sides he might
prove a most dangerous Enemy”9 , he would fight alongside the British in virtually every
campaign affecting Upper Canada and, after the war, would be honoured by the British
8
Peskin, p. 23.
9
quoted in Benn, p. 185.
4
Government with a non-serving major’s commission in the army and an annual pension of 200
pounds plus rations.
While still about 4 kilometres from the Heights, Norton received word that the Americans
were on the Heights and now were advancing northward towards Fort George in the forest
several hundred meters from the riverbank, on Norton’s right. Norton disbelieved this
intelligence, believing that the forest was too thick to admit US troops. Nevertheless, Norton’s
force veered right, entering the forest, in order to investigate this report and to prevent an
ambush.
Meanwhile, back on the Heights, instead of advancing, Scott’s troops were drawn up in
line along the top of the ridge, facing northward, with an advance party at the gun redan. The
Niagara River was on Scott’s right, the forest on his left. Expecting the British to attempt another
frontal assault, Scott neglected to station light infantry in the forest to cover his left flank. He
stationed skirmishers only in his front and rear, that latter detachment having been ordered to
watch for British reinforcements advancing from Chippewa to the south.
Winfield Scott, a 26 year old regular Army lieutenant-colonel, the future conqueror of
Mexico and a presidential candidate, was now conducting his first battle. Although he was a
lawyer in Virginia before being commissioned into the 2nd U.S. Artillery Regiment in 1808, he
was a serious student of the military art. During his 53-year army career that ended with his
retirement as General-in-Chief at the start of the American Civil War, he would do more than
any other to professionalize the U.S. Army officer corps (his tomb is located where he died in
1866, at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point). Enthralled by the European tactics of the
Napoleonic wars, Scott, in actual combat for the first time, was unaware of lessons learned from
officers who had experience in “native warfare”.
Scott was unaware of the writings of such officers as Colonel Henry Bouquet of the
British Army, who, analyzing his own tactical experience in the forests of North America in the
18th century, had identified the three principles of the “native art of war”: fight scattered;
surround; and give ground when hard-pressed. When faced with “native warfare”, Bouquet
recommended that the defending commander deploy scouts and light infantry to watch for signs
of ambush. He should also arrange his command so that it could deploy itself quickly in a square
in order to defeat native attempts to surround it and to hit weak points along the line. If attacked,
a commander had to maintain his force’s equilibrium because the key to success was a
disciplined counterattack using coordinated firepower and bayonet charges that were pressed
with vigour to force the natives to retreat.10
Before Norton’s Iroquois force traveling through the forest reached the Heights, the van
of Sheaffe’s main force, consisting of a two-gun detachment under Captain William Holcroft,
Royal Artillery, supported by some regulars of the 41st Foot, re-entered Queenston village at the
base of the Heights. They pushed Scott’s light troops back up the hill and then, along with the
gun at Vrooman’s Point, opened up a destructive barrage on the boats carrying American
reinforcements across the Niagara River. During the combat on the Heights, very few
10
Benn, p. 81.
5
additional American troops would cross the river in the face of British artillery bombardment.
This set the stage for Scott’s defeat by isolating his command and cutting him off from American
reserves still on the U.S. side.
Scott’s neglect to post light infantry on his open left flank, and his failure to prepare to
conduct “native warfare”, would now prove his undoing. As Captain Holcroft sited his guns in
Queenston village, Norton’s small force, split up into five or six files so that they could search
out the enemy and avoid being surprised by the Americans. If all went well, this manoeuvre
would achieve the classic native tactic of surrounding and surprising the enemy, as well as
creating a diversion to give the British more time to concentrate more troops for the
counterattack. On their way, the warriors found no Americans, only some panic-stricken
Canadian militiamen who reported that some 6,000 U.S. troops were ahead. This alarming report
undermined the morale of some of the attacking Iroquois, and, doubtless feeling the stress of
impending combat, more than half the force of 160 warriors melted away to the rear. Norton
used his combat leadership skills to boost the remaining warriors’ morale, exhorting his
followers to: “Be men, remember the fame of ancient Warriors, whose breasts were never
daunted by odds of number”. Seeking to further inspire and motivate his warriors, he set out his
“commander’s intent” through his “orders” to manoeuvre with: “Haste - Let us Ascend upon yon
Path, by which, unperceived, we may gain their rear; your Bullets shall soon spread Havock and
dismay among those Ranks that form so proudly...Let not their numbers appall you: - look up, it
is He above that shall decide our fate.”11
So inspired, the remaining warriors led by Norton climbed the Heights unseen through
the cover of the forest. Once on top, they took up a position behind Scott’s line to gain the
advantage by upsetting the American’s equilibrium. The Iroquois, moving with stealth, had
concealed their sweep around the Americans’ left so well that, when they attacked, the
Americans assumed they had come from Chippewa, from the south, instead of from Fort George,
to the north. The United States rearguard, composed of militia riflemen, stood between the
warriors and the American line. The warriors advanced to the edge of the forest screen; the U.S.
riflemen fired, withdrew, halted, and fired again. The warriors pursued them at the rush and
pushed them back to the main line. When the American senior officers heard the firing in their
rear, they re-formed their line behind a split-rail fence with its back both to the river and to the
village in order to withstand the advancing natives. Some soldiers on the right of the re-formed
American line moved forward, perhaps in the hope of turning the Mohawks left flank. In
response, the war chiefs manoeuvred their warriors in the direction of the American right to get
beside or behind it and to thwart Scott’s flanking movement. With the small numbers of warriors
present, there was little else they could do but hit one of the flanks. This operation also opened
up the possibility of surrounding at least part of the American force if the battle progressed in the
Iroquois’ favour.
The Americans fired heavy volleys at the warriors moving in the scrub to their front, but
the shots passed over them as the warriors skillfully used the broken terrain as cover. The
tribesmen, as John Norton recalled, “returned the Fire of the Enemy with coolness & Spirit, - and
11
John Norton, The Journal of Major John Norton, 1816, (Toronto: Carl F. Klinck and James J.
Talman, eds., 1970), pp. 305-6
6
altho’ their fire certainly made the greatest noise, from the Number of Musquets, yet I believe
ours did the most Execution.”12
Meanwhile, Sheaffe’s main column had reached Queenston village. Choosing not to
make a frontal attack up the steep slope of the Heights, as Brock had done earlier that day, he
instead veered right so that he could march to the top of the Heights out of the range of musketry
of the American line , and then attack across flat ground atop the plateau. To support this
operation, the guns in Queenston, having successfully interdicted the American river crossing,
now began to lob shrapnel onto the Heights. Norton, hearing the detonations of the exploding
shells, mistakenly believed that Sheaffe was attacking Scott on the Heights. Therefore, he pushed
forward with greater boldness than was prudent in order to distract the Americans. The warriors
suffered casualties, and some of them retreated to take cover in a ravine in the rear. The
American line fired volley after volley into the bush from which the Iroquois had emerged and
Norton, feeling that the American fire was “rather too hot” withdrew all his followers into the
defiladed ravine. The Americans decided to press their advantage by charging after the warriors
and ejecting them from their cover. Following the principles of good light infantry doctrine as
well as the “native art of war”, the warriors withdrew from their now-untenable position,
disappearing deeper into the forest.
Once the Americans themselves were into the woods, the Iroquois regrouped and began
to snipe at the American soldiers while managing to hide from American counter-fire. Scott,
lacking light troops to advance ahead of his line and to drive the native sharpshooters away, and
instead of pressing his attack “with vigour”, now decided to discontinue his charge. He
attempted to improve his security by increasing the distance between the edge of the woods and
his own line by withdrawing to a new position 100 meters closer to the Niagara River than the
one he had occupied at the beginning of the Iroquois assault. This gave the Americans some
respite from native sniping because the warriors could not advance too closely without
dangerously exposing themselves in the open.
However, the change in American position and orientation, necessitated by Norton’s
position in the woods at the brow of the Heights, allowed Sheaffe to advance virtually
unhindered. The Iroquois had thus fulfilled the mission of light infantry: (1) they had knocked
out Scott’s light infantry, thus eliminating the American line’s protective screen and allowing
Sheaffe’s troops to reach the Heights unmolested; (2) they had prevented the Americans from
moving inland, thus permitting Sheaffe to move around the American left without interference;
(3) they had boxed Scott in and had pushed him into a dangerous topographical position; and (4)
they had upset the American line’s equilibrium and thus weakened the American capacity to
withstand attack by Sheaffe’s fresher troops.
As Sheaffe reached the Heights, Norton sent a messenger to him to advise him of the
current Iroquois disposition. Sheaffe in turn sent an officer to Norton to acquire further
information. Once that officer returned, Sheaffe “reinforced success” by dispatching100 light
infantry of the 41st Foot plus a company of militiamen to support Norton. At the same time, a
group of 80 Cayuga warriors from Fort George attached itself to Norton’s force.
12
Norton, p. 306.
7
Final Assault: 3 o’clock p.m., October 13, 1812, atop Queenston Heights, U.C.
The Americans on the Heights, exhausted and running out of ammunition, were in a
virtual state of collapse as Sheaffe formed up his regulars and militia facing them. Realizing that
“without succor, our situation had become desperate,” Scott could only hunker down behind his
lines and await promised reinforcements13. However, over on the American side of the river, the
invasion force commander, had failed every attempt to persuade his force of militia and
volunteers to succor their stranded countrymen on the opposite bank, and had to content himself
with trying to get additional supplies of ammunition across.
It was at this point, according to folklore and ballad, that Scott jumped on a log and
addressed his men. “The enemy’s balls begin to thin our ranks,” he supposedly said. “In a
moment the shock must come, and there is no retreat...Let us then die, arms in hand...Those who
follow will avenge our fall and their country’s wrongs. Who dares to stand?” “ALL!” was the
answering cry.14p. 54, quoted in Peskin, p. 24. Scott, turning from leadership theatre to the
tactical situation, decided to withdraw his line closer to the cliff edge. When the U.S. line started
to move back, Sheaffe commenced his attack, the Iroquois near the front, yelling bloodcurdling
war whoops. The Americans fired one final volley of musketry, and then, breaking ranks, fled
helter-skelter down the face of the steep riverbank. As Scott’s command collapsed under the
weight of Sheaffe’s attack, the warriors moved rapidly forward from the British left flank and
worked their way behind the Americans on the cliff to prevent them from reaching the river and
from escaping back to the United States side. Many prisoners were taken as the panicked
Americans gave themselves up to the roving, tomahawk-armed Iroquois warriors. Among the
prisoners was the chastened and humiliated Lieutenant-Colonel Winfield Scott.
After Action Report: Sunset, October 13, 1812, Queenston Heights, U.C.
The British victory was decisive. The Americans had suffered around 500 killed and
wounded, and some 960 were prisoners-of-war. They had also lost their 6-pounder gun, its
ammunition wagon, the colours of the 13th U.S. Infantry Regiment, and a huge quantity of
weapons. Sheaffe’s force of regulars, militia and Indians had lost 19 killed, including 5 Iroquois,
and 85 wounded, of whom 5 or 7 were Iroquois. There were 21 missing, including one chief who
was taken prisoner by the Americans.
The Iroquois had played an important role in the battle, indeed, had it not been for the
Iroquois, the victory would not have been as easy nor as decisive as it proved to be. The warriors
had skillfully and effectively used the forested terrain for cover and for manoeuvre. Their
fighting qualities demonstrably prevented the Americans from consolidating their strong position
before the arrival of the main British force, and they had undeniably contributed in large measure
to the destruction of the invaders’ military cohesion. Without a doubt, Norton’s small force of
13
14
Peskin, p. 24.
Winslow Elliott, Winfield Scott: The Soldier and the Man, (New York: MacMillan, 1937),
8
about eighty warriors, confronting a strong enemy force of 1,300 men in a strong defensive
posture, had succeeded through the practice of what would be termed, almost two hundred years
later, “manoeuvre warfare.”
Winfield Scott, who started the War of 1812 as a captain and ended it as a major general,
never forgot his humiliating defeat at Queenston at the hands of Norton and Sheaffe. Disgusted
by the refusal of the New York militia to reinforce his command atop the Heights that day, for
the rest of his life he would blame his defeat on those “vermin, who...no sooner found
themselves in sight of the enemy than they discovered that the militia of the United States could
not be constitutionally marched into a foreign country!”15 But he accepted that he was partially
to blame. In his after-battle report, he concluded: “Every officer who had a principal
command...appears to have committed an error in not descending from the heights and
occupying the village of Queenston, and the batteries before it. This, I neither heard suggested by
others at the time, nor did it occur to myself.16” The Heights were important as an observation
post, but the position should not have consumed Scott’s entire attention. Nor should he have
wasted his own efforts on the mundane task of un-spiking the captured cannon when he had
subordinates perfectly capable of performing that task.
The battle, and perhaps the war, would have had a better outcome for the Americans if
Scott had concentrated his troops down below to clear the British force and artillery out of
Queenston village. With the beachhead secured and enlarged, reinforcements from the American
side of the river would have crossed over more readily. Advance parties could then have been
sent down the road toward Fort George to impede Sheaffe’s advance by tearing up bridges and
constructing defensive works17. Instead, Scott clung to the Heights, remained on the defensive,
and allowed his command to become unhinged and defeated by a much smaller native force.
A participant in virtually every battle of the War along the US-Canada frontier, by the
end of the war in 1814 Scott was presiding over a board created to choose a new tactical system
for the infantry. Afterwards, he embarked on a tour of Europe and returned to the United States
full of admiration for French military practices. Determined to improve American military
professionalism, for the next three decades he translated each French infantry manual as well as
numerous technical texts. In 1846, he commanded the army in Mexico, where he planned and
mounted a daring campaign that brought the surrender of the Mexican capital and a quick peace.
The Mexican war was the graduate school of war for a new generation of officers with names
like Lee, Grant, Jackson, Johnston, Sherman, McClellan and Beauregard.18
15
Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, LL.D., Written by Himself, 2 vols (New
York: Sheldon, 1864), I:63, quoted by Peskin, p. 26.
16
17
Report of Winfield Scott to Secretary of War, Dec. 29, 1812, quoted in Peskin, p. 24.
Peskin, p. 25.
Donald E. Graves, Where Right and Glory Lead! The Battle of Lundy’s Lane, 1814, (Toronto:
Robin Brass, 1997), pp. 241-242.
18
9
Lessons Learned: John Norton as a Manoeuvrist Leader
Manoeuvre Warfare is actually a theory of psychology, not war. It really has little to do
with the mobility of troops or the word “manoeuvre” at all19. Manoeuvrist leaders, like John
Norton, aim to unhinge the enemy’s command and control and to dislocate his capacity to resist
through “manoeuvre”, rather than to smash his forces to bits through “attrition”. By exploiting
the compounding effects of firepower by manoeuvre, an enemy force, as was Winfield Scott’s
command atop Queenston Heights, is made to fall victim to the psychological dislocation of its
fighting elements. The resulting psychological collapse spreads throughout the defeated force
and eventually leads to paralysis. Only when paralysis occurs can the attacking side, like the
British and Canadians under Roger Sheaffe, gain the overwhelming decision it seeks at minimum
cost to itself. It thus draws its power from opportunism - the calculated risk, and the exploitation
both of chance circumstances and on winning the “battle of wills” either by means of surprise or,
failing this, by speed and aptness of response .20
The exploitation of chance circumstances, such as Scott’s failure to post skirmishers in
the forested belt on his left flank, is the crux of Manoeuvre Warfare. Chance has always loomed
large as a factor in war. Indeed, the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, twenty years
after the Battle of Queenston Heights, would write that:
War is the province of chance. In no sphere of human activity is such a margin to be left to this intruder,
because none is so much in constant contact with him on all sides. He increases the uncertainty of every
circumstance, and deranges the course of events. 21
By accepting as given this vital fact, Manoeuvre Warfare stresses that the chaos of
combat is beyond rational control and planning and, instead of futilely attempting to regulate
chaos, commanders and leaders ought to use it to their advantage. The doctrinal underpinning of
Manoeuvre Warfare is that “chaos is to be exploited for the opportunities it offers, by the
commanders, and indeed by all soldiers, at all levels.”22
Thus, for the manoeuvrist, “success depends on the skill in the art, leadership and above
all creative thinking - all of them fields in which the rules are, to say the least, a shade skimpier
and more pliable” than the rules of war.23 John Norton and his small band of aboriginal warriors,
using stealth to surprise the enemy, detecting and then exploiting Scott’s blunder of not
Capt. D. Price, “Canadian Army Land Force Tactical Doctrine and Manoeuvre Warfare: Do
We Practice What We Preach?”, Infantry Journal, vol 33, (1999).
19
20
Simpkin, pp. 20-22.
21
Carl von Clausewitz, tran. by Col. F. N. Maude, On War, abridged version, (London: Penguin
Books, 1968), p. 140.
J. Shaw, “Examining the Mechanics of Change: How We Can Create Manoeuvre Warfare”,
British Army Review, vol. 97 (April 1991), p. 20.
22
23
Simpkin, p. 57.
10
screening his flank with protective light troops, and creatively using fire and movement to
disrupt the enemy’s cohesion and to sap his will to fight, were certainly practitioners of
“manoeuvre warfare” in Canada almost two centuries before this doctrine would be formally
adopted by the Canadian Army.
Endnotes