Against a capable opponent, that was a recipe for failure. You had to watch. Never lose control. Whatever else, stay calm.
The officers and soldiers within eyesight were watching him. Quite closely. They knew just as well as Torstensson and von Armim that their commanding officer was a neophytre general. And they knew just as well what the calamitous results might be.
They were reassured. He might not really know what he was doing, but he seemed confident and relaxed. He had good advisers. All he had to do was listen to them.
"The key thing right now, sir, is to anchor ourselves on that river." Colonel Long pointed ahead of them and to the right.
That was the Pleisse, Mike thought. Like most so-called "rivers" in the area, it was really just a creek—and not a particularly large one at that. By North American standards, all the rivers he'd seen in Europe were on the small side. Even major rivers like the Elbe—the Rhine and Danube too, he'd been told, although he hadn't yet seen them himself—were far smaller than the Mississippi.
But while Mike hadn't been in a battle yet, by now he'd had a fair amount of experience in the seemingly simple task of getting an army to move. He'd also read a copy of von Clausewitz's On War that Becky had obtained for him. So he'd already learned just how cruelly accurate the military theorist had been.
War is very simple, but in war the simplest things become very difficult.
Now, looking at the little river that his aide Long was pointing to, Mike could see how important it would be for his division to place its right flank against it. Even a creek ten feet wide and probably not more than a foot or two deep could serve as a significant protection against a possible flank attack. It didn't look like much—and, indeed, to a man enjoying a hike through the countryside, it wasn't much. He could cross it quite easily. At worst, get his boots wet.
But crossing that same creek during a cavalry charge, with bullets and cannonballs flying, would be something else entirely. Horses were big animals, and like all big animals, the prospect of falling made them very nervous, especially falling on a run. An eight-year-old boy weighing fifty pounds would race across that creek without a second thought, shrieking gleefully the whole while. A warhorse weighing a thousand pounds and carrying an armored man weighing another two hundred pounds might balk. Or, if they did wade across, might trip and fall if the bottom was soft or stony or simply uneven.
A balked or spilled cavalryman is likely to be a dead or maimed cavalryman, and nobody knew that better than cavalrymen themselves. So the mere fact that an opponent had his flank anchored against a creek, be that creek never so modest, would automatically shape the battle. Whether or not that creek could be forced was likely to become a purely theoretical exercise, because no general wanted to take the risk of finding out.
"Makes sense to me, Christopher. See to it, if you would."
That lesson, Mike had not learned from an aristocratic Prussian military theorist at the age of forty. He'd learned it from his hillbilly mother, at the age of four. A none-too-gentle slap accompanied by the words be polite!
Lieutenant Krenz was looking slightly less unhappy. "Well, at least he knows enough to anchor our flank on the river. Now if we could just get off these damned horses."
Jeff shared Eric's opinion on both issues. Especially getting off the horses. Having to ride one was the biggest disadvantage he'd found so far to being an officer, and he was still pretty disgruntled over the issue. He was supposed to be an infantry officer. He'd made quite sure of that after he returned from Amsterdam. I want an infantry assignment, he'd specified—and he had been assured he'd receive one.
Technically, they hadn't lied. He had been assigned to the infantry. What Jeff hadn't considered—never even crossed his mind, the notion was so absurd—was that in this day and age it was expected that all officers had to be mounted.
Laundry officer? Officer in charge of day care for the camp follower kiddies? Didn't matter. Up you go, buddy.
There was no logic to it. None whatsover. He had to stay with his troops, didn't he? For Pete's sake, he was the battalion's commander. Of course he had to stay with his troops. They were infantry, no? I-N-F-A-N-T-R-Y. That meant they walked into battle. Not rode. Walked. Except for their officers. They had to ride, whether they wanted to or not.
This was one of the disadvantages of being in the seventeenth century that was a lot harder to shrug off than the quality of the toilet paper or (more often) total absence thereof. And that was nothing to shrug off lightly.
"He must be listening to his staff officers," Krenz went on.
Jeff's horse did one of those incomprehensible little jiggly things that horses so often did. Itchy hoofs? Bad hair day? Gelding equivalent of that time of the month? Who knew? By definition, they were dumb animals. What person in his right mind would plant himself on top of one of these huge beasts and place himself at the mercy of a brain which, relative to body mass, probably wasn't much of a step up from a chipmunk?