Part 2:

You see the smoke lingering in front of the British line. A stray gust of wind blows from the north and the smoke dissipates. Your line of sight is clear and you watch the second line of British soldiers present their muskets. You are shocked that only one line of enemy soldiers managed to drop the entire front row of French troops, you had assumed they had fired both ranks again as they did for the first volley. The enemy is well trained indeed. That does not bode well for you. You watch the officer's sword rise into the air and time seems to slow down. As the sword falls, your heart drops with it. You watch the smoke pour out of the barrels and the contents of your bladder pour out into your pants. Something smashes into your thigh and you hear a bone snap, either yours or the man next to you who suddenly is turning the sky from orange to red as the top half of his head explodes. You don't really notice the blood on your face or the bits of brain clinging to your jacket because the musket ball hits you harder than any punch. The force of the shot knocks you back and your leg gives out as a jagged piece of your femur stabs through your leg from the inside out. You fall to the ground and someone steps on your back as the column marches on. Your instincts take over and even though you are in shock, somehow you crawl out of the column. You drag yourself away and realize that you have just become a spectator in this battle.

Through the pain, you watch as the British fire and reload faster than any army you've seen in countless battles. The French column continues to march forward, but in the time it takes them to advance five paces, they lose a rank. Overall, it is not a very big net gain, but they are making progress. The British line is just as thin and frail as any other line formation. There is hope for victory. Victory brings doctors and fresh water.

The drums keep beating, the rifles crack sporadically, and the muskets thunder rhythmically for what seems like hours but could only be minutes. The pain in your leg is your constant companion but it's starting to fade. The column seems to be walking on a carpet of dead bodies, you think you recognize a few of them.

Then, you come to a horrific realization: the British are winning. They are killing the men in the column faster than the column is advancing. The rifles are taking their toll on the officers. The men are tripping over bodies that are stacked two or three men high. The column is losing momentum in the front while the men in the back continue to push forward.

The order is given to retreat. You start dragging yourself backwards, the pain in your leg is almost gone. The retreat is in full swing and the British are moving. At first you think they are advancing to press the retreat on the French. You realize they will get to you before you get to safety and someone will most likely slit your throat to get at the coins in your pockets or the boots on your feet. Panic starts to set in, but then you realize the British are not advancing, they are actually moving backwards.

You hear cannon fire from behind you, the French must be guarding their retreat. You see two men in the British line become a red smear on the ground as a cannonball plows through them. You smile at their deaths although you know it is no victory, the thin line formation does not suffer much from cannon fire. Then, you hear a horse behind you and a line of French cavalry race past. One of the horses almost tramples you. Your spirits soar, the British might be able to shoot faster than the columns can advance, but not faster than a horse can gallop! The cavalry will surely break the line with hoof and pistol and saber. Then, what's left of the columns can fill the gaps, widen them, and turn retreat into victory.

Your cheer dies in your throat however, when you look back and see that the movement in the British line was them reforming into a square formation and fixing their bayonets. The thin human wall has transformed into a solid human fortress. They fell back past the crest of the hill so the cannons wouldn't be able to hit them. You don't understand how you can see them if they backed up over the hill, but then you realize you are floating above your body. A long red smear connects the spot where you were shot to the spot where you died. Your blood glistens brightly in the sunlight and you find the rich red color oddly beautiful when paired with the pale white of your dead face. You do not, however, like the deep black of the flies that are already crawling across your lifeless eyes. As your death sinks in, you try to shrug but you don't have shoulders. You decide you knew you would probably die in battle and you might as well enjoy what's left of the show. You feel oddly detached to the outcome of the battle now that you are dead and not part of the French army anymore.

You watch the battle from a bird's point of view.

The cavalry crash onto the squares like waves onto a rocky shore. Every time they wash past, they leave dead French men and dead French horses behind which the British use as crude obstacles to obstruct the next charge. The cannonballs drop from the sky to ricochet off the crest of the hill and over the heads of the British soldiers, doing no damage at all. Eventually, the French column reforms, bolstered by the reserve troops and new officers, and it advances over the crest of the hill. The British Riflemen fell back too, but they see new targets and begin picking off easy targets once again. The squares are creeping backwards inch by inch and you remember from practice drills how very difficult and time consuming it is to maneuver in that formation. You can only imagine the discipline it takes to move while fending off cavalry charges time and again. As the French column moves over the hill, British cannon hidden in the treeline at the other edge of the field open fire, shooting over the heads of their own troops and carving bloody paths through the thick French column. As ineffective as cannon fire is to a line formation, it is terrifyingly effective against a column formation. The British cannon can't miss, and each cannonball is killing a score of men and leaving gaps so large the soldiers don't even try to fill them. The French column is shred to pieces within minutes.

The French call it quits, retreat back over the hilltop, and run. The British line and square have outmaneuvered the column and the cavalry, inflicting horrible casualties upon the French while suffering very few casualties themselves. You see a white light and decide to see where it leads. - The End.

So as you can see, it's not just the line formation itself that wins the day. The discipline of the soldiers and the overall battle plan add a lot to the end result. The French were able to use the column against the line to great effect in the beginning of the war, but then the British would defeat them over and over again using the same line formation the men of the column had come to think of as a joke.

Once rifles caught on though, warfare changed to flanking and maneuvering a lot more. With rifles, it was much easier to hit your target and since you WERE a target, you needed to hide most of the time and only move in short bursts from cover to cover. I hope that helps.

TL;DR - It's not the size of the formation, it's the technique you use to advance your formation and penetrate the enemy's defenses.