John MacDonald (1759–1831)
Instructions for the conduct of infantry on actual service; being a minute methodical detail of all the duties of general-officers, officers, non-commissioned officers, and soldiers, in every situation incident to war; with an appendix, containing a system of regulations for the interior œconomy, discipline, and police of infantry…
London: Printed for T. Egerton, 1807
K.33.43, plate opposite p. cxxx

Following the successes of French arms in the years after the Revolution, the British realized that much was to be learned by studying the theory and practice of their adversaries. As John MacDonald argued in the dedication (to the British Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of York) of this translation from French sources, ‘The military system of an inveterate Enemy to be effectually counteracted, must be first made known’. MacDonald contributed a lengthy preface to his translation, and was not entirely uncritical of the documents he was presenting: ‘Though Truth forces us to give a decided preference to many of the leading principles of French Tactics, it is by no means to be understood, that those of that faithless nation are to be deemed perfect.’ In MacDonald’s view, the ‘most prominent and important case’ where improvement was possible was in the deployment of battalions in close column into line, a manoeuvre in which, he wrote, the ‘quickest possible deployment consistently with the preservation of regularity of procedure, in order, immediately, to lead on to the attack, is the material desideratum‘. This plate illustrates MacDonald’s proposed modification of the French system, whereby ‘much time may be saved, by marching… not, as at present, over the base and perpendicular of a right-angled triangle, but over the hypothenuse only, of such triangle.’ MacDonald, who had served twenty years in the army of the East India Company, became a member of various irregular corps after his return to Britain.