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ATTACK or DEFENCE


SEV E N M I L ITA R Y ESSAYS
BY
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J. J. KELIHER & CO., PRINTERS & PUBLISHERS,
33, KING WILLIAM STREET, AND 139, UPPER THAMES STREET, E.C.,
AND 17b, GREAT GEORGE STREET, S.W.
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C O N T E N T S.
SEVEN MILITARY ESSAYS :
I.
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
II.
THE Evolution of MoDERN DRILL BOOKS.
III.
THE INFANTRY ATTACK, 1892.
IV.
ATTACK OR DEFENCE STRATEGICALLY AND TACTICALLY CONSIDERED.
V.
THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY.
VI.
IMPERIAL INSURANCE.
VII.
EconoMICAL ARMY REFORM.
P. R. E. F. A C E .
(UI”. is a necessary incident in the struggle for national existence.
For a period after the fall of the Roman Empire, the expan-
sion of the habitable area of the world, due to the progress
of discovery, more than kept pace with the growth of population, and
for ages the explosion of European warfare was conditioned by causes
which bear about the same relation to the motives now at work around us
as the law-suits between two neighbouring landowners bear to the reasons
which determine an encounter between two great railway companies, or
between masters and men in a coal or ship-building strike.
We, in the British Isles, being the first to feel the pinch of over-
crowding, were amongst the first to endeavour to open up new markets ;
driven thereto—by a very necessity of existence.
Whilst other nations fought for disputed will cases, rights of way, or
merely for a difference of opinion as to the rights of man; trade, which
is our very life blood, has been the ultimate motive of all our policy.
It was this concentration of purpose on one single object, as
opposed to the many purposes underlying the action of our opponents,
which led us to the culminating victories of Trafalgar and Waterloo-the
latter dependent on the former—and for some sixty years left us in
practically undisputed possession of the field.
During these years we have slept on our laurels, and meanwhile
other nations have recovered from the torpor of exhaustion into which
the events of the Napoleonic and Revolutionary eras had thrown them,
and are now pressing closely at our heels.
Germany is and must remain our most deadly commercial foe.
With a population doubling itself in every forty years, and with the
second mercantile fleet in Europe, not only is foreign trade a
necessity of existence for her, but she is in the best possible position to
seize upon and retain every fraction which circumstances may compel us
to relinquish.
ii. PREFACE.
She has, therefore, nothing to gain and much to lose should she
interfere in a struggle between Great Britain and France combined with
Russia, and as these two Powers now touch us at various points all over
the world, this conflict is sooner or latter bound to occur,
Not as a consequence deliberately engineered by any one of the
three Governments—none of whom would care lightly to face the risks
of battle, but simply because continual frontier friction must necessarily
in time bring about the stoppage of the diplomatic machinery.
When this stoppage occurs we must be prepared to face the fighting
alone, and to see our trade taken away from us by the competition of all
neutral nations. +
At this moment, in view of the accessions to the Navy promised us
by the existing Government, we are certainly in a position to ensure the
safety of our shores against any attempt at invasion; but this power
alone will not suffice to bring our adversaries to their knees.
No sea-power in the world can starve Russia, neither would the loss
of all her ocean-borne commerce greatly incommode France; but the
damage inflicted on our ocean-borne trade by the cruisers which, under
existing conditions of naval warfare, we must expect to escape from our
enemies' ports, would bring about in our Islands a state of tension and
actual suffering which must prove intolerable in the long run.
As matters now stand, I do not for one moment believe that these
sufferings would entail our national surrender, but I hold that they would
bring about a crisis in our national feeling which would lead to the
creation of . armies of continental magnitude, and to the resolute
determination to carry war into the enemy's country on a scale adequate to
compel their submission.
What our cousins across the Atlantic did some thirty years ago, we
should in turn imitate; and, starting from a far better foundation of military
training (thanks to the Volunteers and Militia), within a very few months
we should turn out a million combatants fully capable of fighting their
own weight of any army likely to encounter them, always provided that
they were led in accordance with sound strategic principle.
But the whole point lies in this proviso, and the chances lie against
its fulfilment. So many amateurs devastate the columns of our daily
press and the pages of our serials with their half-digested schemes of
military reform and tactical leading, that the voices of the trained
experts of the Army are likely to be overwhelmed in the turmoil, and the
troops be committed to destruction in obedience to half-instructed
political and newspaper pressure on an irresolute cabinet of ministers;
men who, in the nature of things, have never given serious thought to
military matters, and lacking the grit and character of Grant or Moltke to
fight it out along the whole line offensively, in the sure and certain
conviction that though the attack (whether strategic or tactical) may
locally involve the severest loss, it leads most certainly to a decisive
PREFACE. iii.
result, and thereby reduces enormously the duration of war and the conse-
quent aggregate of suffering to the whole nation.
“When thou hearest the fool rejoicing,
And he says it is over and past,
And the wrong is better than right,
And each turns into good at last ;
Then loosen the sword in thy scabbard
And settle the helm on thine head,
For the men betrayed are mighty, -
And great are the wrongfully dead.”
It is in the firm belief that the time is now at hand when we shall
be called on to fight for our very existence that I offer these papers to
the public, in the hope that some at least will appreciate the reasoning
which brings me to the conclusion that only a resolute offensive can lead
to the results we desire. For the sake of argument, I am content to admit
that this method may involve heavy slaughter to the fighting troops, but I
maintain that, however heavy those losses may be, there is not a man
now wearing the Queen's uniform, or who may then wear it, who would not
sooner meet a soldier's death in battle than see our women and children
starving at home.
F. N. MAUDE, Capt., late R.E.
14th December, 1895.
* From W. MoRRIs's “Nibelungs and Volsungs.”
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
Reprinted, by permission, from “Operations of the Military Engineering of
the International Congress of Engineers, 1894.”
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENGHED GAMPS.
REAT expectations as to the rôle that intrenched camps and field
fortifications will play in the wars of the future have been founded
on the popular interpretations current of the experiences and
phenomena of the Franco-German and Russo-Turkish Wars.
Since popular opinion nowadays greatly affects where it does not
actually control the military policy of States, it is worth while to investi-
gate to what extent the opinion referred to above is well founded.
In the days when Vauban studded the frontiers of France with forti-
fications, armies were everywhere singularly equal in fighting qualities;
they were long-service dynastic troops, withdrawn altogether from pro-
ductive employment; they had to be maintained whether in peace or
war, and the simplest and cheapest way of providing for their main-
tenance was by quartering them on an enemy’s country, where they
might just as well be engaged in a siege as not ; in fact better, for there
was always a considerable amount of capital concentrated within the
walls of a fortress, and its capture usually paid the expenses of the
undertaking and left a handsome profit besides. Time was therefore of
little consequence, but since trained soldiers cost money to replace, their
lives were too precious to be lightly risked, and therefore the proceedings
of a siege were characterised by extreme slowness and caution.
On the other side, since the fate of a captured town was very dis-
agreeable, it was to the interest of the townspeople to find as much
money as possible for the execution of defensive works, and the state,
too, was interested in assisting it, for the greater the physical obstacles
accumulated around the town the longer it would hold out and the fewer
the troops subtracted from the field army for its defence.
As the area to be defended was usually relatively restricted, it was
possible to construct works which by degrees became almost absolutely
secure against assault, and which would require such an expenditure of
time and material for their reduction that their mere existence formed
the best reason possible for not attacking them.
Thus in individual cases years may have elapsed before any particular
work was put to the proof. The defenders then became lulled into a
feeling of false security, and at last the place would be surprised by a
small body of determined men, and the instance cited to all time as a
proof of the uselessness of permanent fortifications.
Further, in those days the communications radiating outward from
the fortress were often of the most elementary description. Metalled, or
paved roads did not exist in Europe, and there were no highway boards
to maintain what tracks there were in order.
A.
2. FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
Generally the duty of maintenance fell by custom on the landed
proprietor through whose ground the way passed, and in his own interest,
on much frequented stretches, he did something to keep it in order,
though not much ; for, when at any point the road became boggy or
otherwise impassable—there being no hedges on the continent in those
days—the traveller simply diverged on to firmer ground in the fields, and
the landlord, to save his own crops, had to dump a few loads of gravel or
bricks to make good the spot.
It can readily be imagined what difficulties these communications
entailed on the besieger in bringing up his heavy siege artillery necessary
for breaching and bombarding purposes; yet these were the best available.
It was otherwise within the fortress itself; there the heavy traffic
over the narrow streets rendered pavement absolutely indispensable,
and in the construction of the works themselves great care and much
ingenuity were always devoted to the communications.
The task therefore of moving guns from side to side of the fortress,
or of replacing damaged material from the central arsenal, was com-
paratively an easy one, and the repair of damages caused by fire, as far as
earthwork alone was concerned, was relatively trivial in the absence of
heavy shells. Moreover, as both range and accuracy of the weapons then
in use were very limited, it was not difficult to choose sites and locate
works so as to completely command the ground around them, and since
the expansion of towns is only a phenomenon of the nineteenth century,
there was not much trouble involved in keeping a clear field of fire all
around the defences.
Under relative conditions such as these, before the period of Vauban,
the fortress very frequently had the best of it; but his systematic
organisation of the means of attack rendered the reduction of even the
strongest then existing works merely a question of time and money; and
when his processes had been repeated time and again for over a century
it became a species of heresy to vary the course of his methods, even
after the conditions on which they were based had entirely altered.
In the main, however, the equality of the conditions persisted until
the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars. As very slowly the
power of the weapons increased, the exposed masonry in the fortress
was better concealed, more care was taken to provide bomb-proof cover
and adequate traverses, and work was piled on work in the hope of
keeping the enemy longer from the body of the place ; and had not the
whole conditions of warfare been in progress of change, change which
was proceeding more rapidly than either the art of defence or attack of
fortifications, many of the great fortresses which had arisen during the
seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries might have given a
very different account of themselves; at any rate, the art of the engineer
would not have been as much discredited as actually happened.
One of the chief among these changes was the growing humanity
with which wars were waged. During the revolt of the Netherlands, and
the Thirty Years' War, religious and national hatred embittered the
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 3
animosity between the combatants to an enormous extent. The Conse-
quence was that the horrible barbarities which had always characterised
the sack of cities, and had only partly been held in check by the customs
and traditions of chivalry, were again revived and intensified. The fate
of a captured city was so terrible, and the bad faith of conquerors so
notorious, that citizens stood by the garrison to the last, aiding it by every
means in their power; but when wars began to be made for purely
political reasons, there was no tie to unite the interests of citizens and
garrison, whilst the assailant had the best possible reasons to desire to
spare the inhabitants, so that they might the more readily transfer their
allegiance to his side.
Hence the citizens ceased to take any vital interest in the defence,
and where they took any side at all, it was usually the side of the attacking
force ; on the other hand, it must be admitted that the commandant and
garrison, where strong enough to enforce respect, troubled themselves
very little about the fate of the town, which might be levelled with the
ground for all they cared, provided the defences were spared. The
French garrisons in the Peninsula War, notably at St. Sebastian, are cases
in point, but when the garrisons were numerically insufficient or wanting
in discipline, which very frequently happened, the defence was for the
most part conducted without much spirit or heart, the assailant pursued
the siege in accordance with the rules of the game, and when a breach
had been satisfactorily established, the commandant hoisted the white
flag of capitulation.
As the eighteenth century wore on, a great improvement and develop-
ment took place in the land communications in France, Belgium, and
along the Rhine. The latest work of the Prussian General Staff, “The
First Silesian War,” points out that the popular idea that Europe was
roadless before the advent of Napoleon is incorrect. Though he improved
the alignments and maintenance of the existing ones, in the main the
network of great roads was fairly the same fifty years before his time as he
left it; but better roads not only rendered it possible to concentrate the
requisite means of attack against the fortresses, but they led also to a great
development of mobility in field warfare.
From 1700 to 1750 all the efforts of the Prussian drill-masters had
been directed to make both infantry and cavalry more fitted for rapid field
operations, and under Frederick the Great the manoeuvring power of both
arms was raised to a pitch even now almost unequalled. Armed with the
powers of this new discovery—for so “mobility” really was—Frederick
invariably sought the decision of the battle-field, and as, moreover, the
district in which his operations mostly took place was relatively scantily
supplied with fortresses (compared with Belgium and France), fortress
warfare fell into the background for the time being.
Meanwhile, as there was no immediate need of their services, the
works in the Netherlands, and especially along the French frontier, were
allowed to fall out of repair. Their armaments were not renewed, and
when at the beginning of the French Revolution they were again required,
many could only by courtesy be called fortifications at all.
A 2
4. FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
This process was repeated during the Napoleonic era, and is one of
the main reasons why, after the peace of 1815, permanent fortification
generally fell into such disrepute, from which indeed it has never entirely
recovered.
I allude here to the very interesting work of Colonel Sir George
Clarke R.E., entitled “Fortification,” which may be taken as typical of
the advanced school of thought on this subject in England. After analysing
the duration of the sieges for the past two centuries, and down to the most
recent times, he points out that, as a rule, the more elaborate the fortifi-
cations, the shorter the siege, and that the most protracted and desperate
resistances have always been made by hastily - constructed and often
exceedingly weak and faultily-designed works, e.g., Sebastopol, Lucknow,
Plevna.
The facts, indeed, are as he has stated them. But the deduction he
endeavours to draw therefrom, that therefore permanent fortification is
necessarily wrong and hasty intrenchments alone right, is obviously
absurd. Pushing his own argument a little further, the ultimate conclusion
would be that no fortifications at all would be better still ; and if one
omits all other factors, such as relative numbers of the garrison and
attacking force, their fighting spirit, and their respective commandants,
the conclusion is equally sound, and, in my opinion, more defensible; for
all fortification existing only with the passive object of preventing defeat
has but a negative value, and is only the refuge of conscious weakness.
The explanation of the phenomena noted by Colonel Sir George
Clarke will, I think, be partly found in what I have written above and in
what now follows.
The eighteenth century soldier was an exceedingly highly-trained
individual; his drill was carried to a perfection never since attained on
land," and by the time he was placed face to face with the enemy he had
cost a great deal of money.
As national credit was then in its infancy, the number of men thus
trained that a king could maintain was decidedly limited, and since,
owing to the discipline, the consequence of the drill above alluded to,
and to the esprit de corps, the consequence of war experience and long
service, these troops when let loose would fight to the last, 30 to 40 per
cent. of loss in the regiment and more being not uncommon ; a single
engagement in the open field, or an attempt to carry a breach by assault,
would both bankrupt the king and ruin the army. To make good the
losses every available man had to be called in from the garrisons, and
* We have certainly nothing nowadays to compare with the six volleys a
minute from the old flint-lock muskets, the minimum requirement of Frederick the
Great at his inspections, nor do we exact anything approaching the same accuracy
in the execution of battalion manoeuvres as he did. Such things may appear
pendantic to us nowadays, but they were introduced by practical men for a
practical purpose, which was then well understood. The main point to notice
here is that these things being required, they involved many months of training
before the recruit was considered fit to join the ranks, and all the time the man
was costing money, and a great deal of it. .
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 5
the care of the fortresses had to be made over to the sick, the lame, and
the blind.
The more formidable the physical obstacles presented to assault, the
fewer men would suffice to defend them, and the further from the theatre
of war the less the chances of attack, and hence when the war took an
unexpected turn many places were found with totally inadequate garrisons,
and fell by surprise.
Now, the engineer who designed the works did so on the assumption
that they were to be defended by a reasonable number of fairly brave men,
and it is unjust to blame the designer because his work failed to stand a
test for which it was never calculated.
This, in brief, is the explanation of fully 70 per cent, of the surrenders
of fortresses in France, the Netherlands, and Prussia throughout the
Napoleonic epoch, and for the rest, treachery in the garrison and inhabi-
tants, particularly in the case of the Austrians in the Netherlands, will
almost complete the list.
The essential factors of a successful defence are a sufficient garrison
and a good commander. Wherever these existed (Colberg, Dantzic, and
Saragossa) the resistance was prolonged and desperate, however inferior
the works; but it is pushing an argument to the verge of absurdity to
assert that the defence was prolonged because the design of the works was
bad. The same proportionate garrison behind suitable parapets would
obviously have done better still, for sickness, hardships, and exposure are
not usually considered the best means of preparing a man for extreme
exertion and peril.
I now come to the influence of changes of system in the method of
recruitment of armies, introduced by the French Revolution—an influence
which has become permanent, and which prevents for the moment, on
the continent of Europe at any rate, the occurrence of works too large
for their garrisons.
As already stated, the wars previous to the revolution had been
dynastic and not national, but the uprising of the people in France let
loose a “nation in arms.” It was the “nation in arms” idea far more
than the genius of Napoleon, not to mention the revolutionary com-
manders (Dumouriez, Jourdan, Moreau, etc.), which really overwhelmed
the dynastic armies of Europe.
These dynastic armies, while for the most part they retained the
advantages of drill and discipline, and regiment for regiment gave a very
good account of themselves indeed, were almost entirely deficient in any
superior organisation and suffered under all the drawbacks of a “coalition”
leading.
The successes obtained by the revolutionary armies in the early years
of the great wars were mainly due to superior numbers, handled with a
reckless disregard of human life, and a certain degree of fixity of purpose
—a factor entirely lacking on the side of the allies.
* Scharnhorst's posthumous papers—“The Causes of Our Disasters in the
Netherlands.”
6 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
Napoleon from the first realised the point that money and men's
lives were within certain limits convertible terms, and that one’s object
might often be obtained more rapidly and certainly by a reckless
expenditure of human life than by the more methodic process of saving
money to buy men to make into soldiers so valuable that the height of
military art became the preservation of the soldier's life, and not the
winning of victory.
Napoleon saw that victory was the true object of war, and the
Revolution placed in his hands the power of forcibly possessing himself of
the whole manhood of the nation, out of which, by a process of survival of
the fittest, a sufficient number became soldiers enough to beat the enemy
at a given time and place.
This is, indeed, the keynote of his success. Whereas his opponents
were prevented from rapid movements simply by reason of the necessity
for economising their material, Napoleon cared nothing for the number
he left by the way, provided only he could reach the given spot with
sufficient men in hand to beat the enemy.
Again, it must be remembered that during the years of peace which
had preceded the revolution, the burden of the standing armies, possibly
also the innate jealousy which everywhere exists between professional
Soldiers and civilians, had rendered the former exceedingly unpopular
to their fellow-countrymen. The doctrines which ultimately brought
On the revolution had been widely disseminated throughout the
continent of Europe, and had everywhere fallen on favourable soil.
The French armies, therefore, till their neighbours became better
acquainted with them, were looked on everywhere by the bourgeoisie,
and even by the small farmer class, as deliverers rather than as enemies,
and while every obstacle was placed in the way of the home armies in
their own country, the inhabitants acted as spies and willingly brought
food and provisions to the invader. Thus in Prussia in 1806 a German
pastor volunteered to show a path up the Landengrafenberg the day
before the battle of Jena, and afterwards the Prussian peasants and
townspeople refused shelter and food to their own wounded whilst
welcoming the French soldiery, and the Berlin evening paper of the
period published an address of congratulation to their conquerors and
abuse of their own sovereign and troops the day of the French entry into
the capital. (See von der Goltz, “Rossbach and Jena.”)
But in almost every country a few months of their conquerors' society
changed the current of opinion, and the inhabitants found they had
only exchanged the dominion of King Log for that of King Stork, and,
driven to despair by the invaders’ exactions, submitted to be organised
in armies as great in numbers as the French nation could supply, and
as determined to die in defence of their country as the French Revo-
lutionary levies had themselves been.
The character of the war now changed altogether, and became cruel
and barbarous to the last degree. What few fortresses remained, defended
themselves with extraordinary determination (e.g., Colberg, Dantzic,
Saragossa), the possession of even hastily-designed and indifferently-
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 7
executed works was disputed for weeks, and had there been a few more
well-constructed works remaining in the hands of the home armies,
probably the opinion in favour of permanent fortifications would have
undergone considerable modification.
As armies developed in numbers and the demands on their mobility
increased, the necessity for vast store depôts secure against bombardment
arose. These could only be protected by means of chains of detached
works, and thus the modern conception of an “intrenched camp ’’ arose.
As refuges for a beaten army or as winter quarters “intrenched camps”
had indeed existed more than a century before; Belfort, Mainz, Lille,
etc. But these differed from the modern type in being rather annexes to
existing fortresses protected by the fortress, instead of relying on their
own powers of defence to keep the enemy at a distance from the central
nucleus.
These lay for the most part on what were, about 1812-13, the frontiers
of France, viz., near the Polish boundaries and on the French lines of
communication through Germany; but, after Leipsic, the prostration of
the French was too complete to enable them to draw much value from
their possession, and indeed they proved rather a source of weakness than
strength, as their garrisons drawn from the field armies were ultimately
lost to Napoleon for ever.
When in 1814 the allied forces crossed the Rhine, their numbers
were so overwhelming that they could afford to disregard the Small
permanent works which had formerly sufficed to block the progress of the
old dynastic armies. They simply masked the fortified towns with
detachments, whilst the main armies passed by new roads opened up
since the fortifications were constructed, and these, left to themselves,
denuded of garrisons, ill-provided with material, and with inhabitants
whose sole wish was for peace, took the first opportunity of making an
honourable surrender.
Hence, at the conclusion of the Napoleonic era, the cause of
permanent fortification had universally sunk into discredit, and this as a
consequence of changes and developments in other branches of military
science which seem at first sight entirely disconnected with it.
In the subsequent pages I hope to show that the existing tendency to
overrate the possibilities of intrenched camps and field fortifications is
as little justified by facts, as they are, as was the converse impression
eighty years ago.
The chief result of the long series of wars that ended with Waterloc
was that one nation, Prussia, definitely adopted the “nation in arms”
idea, and the others broke with the old long-service dynastic traditions,
in so far that their organisations admitted of considerable expansion
in time of war, and of the relatively rapid deployment of numbers far
exceeding those in vogue before the Revolutionary epoch.
For political and other reasons the lead in fortification methods
passed into the hands of Prussia and Germany. Works were required to
hold the Rhine provinces and bar the entrance into Southern Germany at
Mainz, Rastadt, and the valley of the Danube at Ulm and Lintz.
8 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
These became the central depôts for the vast quantities of stores
required for mobilisation, and partly to protect these stores against
bombardment and also as a consequence of the increase in numbers of
the field armies, the central nucleus—the city or town—was encircled by
a chain of detached works, the forerunners of those surrounding Paris,
Cologne, etc., of to-day.
An analysis of the defects and advantages of the places constructed
during this period is beyond my space ; it will suffice to point out that
generally all these works were produced by committees, and, like all
committee work, bear the stamp of compromise. On the whole, what
Colonel Sir George Clarke, R.E., has christened the “drawing-board
School” of engineers, had the best of it. Whilst the Government wanted
a wide commodious place in which to rally a defeated army, which should
fix before it, if attacked, a large force of the enemy, and the nucleus of
which should be protected against destruction by bombardment, the
engineers for the most part, still under the influence of the pre-Revo-
lutionary ideas as to attack and defence, desired the works mainly as
a means to add to the duration of resistance against direct attack, and
therefore endeavoured to arrange them to mutually aid each other and
the enceinte by cross-fire of artillery. The consequences were a series of
cramped designs, already out-classed before they were completed, not
by the increase of range in the artillery in first instance, but by the
numerical growth of the armies they were meant to protect, or by which
they were liable to be attacked.
Metz specially is a case in point. As far as the events of 1870 alone
are concerned, neither investing force nor defenders required any siege
artillery at all. It fell because its designers had not foreseen that
the lesson which Napoleon had taught to Germany would bear such
fruit that, within little more than fifty years, a German invading army
would be able to afford over 200,ooo men to invest it and still have men
to spare to crush the remaining field forces of France in a general
action. It fell also because it had been designed in accordance with
the stereotyped jargon which at the time passed for the “art of war,”
and which was based on the use of the same word to express what in
course of time had come to mean several different things. Thus the
text-books had repeated for so many years the phrase “An army retiring
under shelter of a fortress to refit,” that the saying was accepted as
an axiom, although since the days when it might have been applicable,
and when 30,000 men was about a maximum to bring into the field, the
numbers and complexity of the thing still designated by the term army
had increased at least ten fold, and causes were and still are at work
which will ultimately make it far larger yet.
It is curious how entirely, during the years anterior to the Seventies,
the possibilities of the Prussian system of universal liability to service
were overlooked. The French text-books at use in Metz only a few
years before the war described the army which was destined so soon
to rape the virgin fortress as “une espèce de milice,” and even in Germany
its ultimate development seems never to have been foreseen.
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 9
Yet it was well within the scope of an average intellect, say between
the years 1840 to 1850, to study the Prussian law, and with the help of
statistics to work out what the numerical strength of their army would
be, say, twenty years ahead; and no prudent Frenchman, with even an
elementary knowledge of the ferment at work in the hearts of the German
nation, could afford to neglect the possibilities, nay the certainty, that
Sooner or later the whole race would combine against their hereditary foe.
Properly understood, it will be seen that the fundamental cause of
the chief alterations and developments in both tactics and strategy,
which have taken place since Napoleon's day, was and will be the con-
Sequence of Scharnhorst's law of universal liability to military service,
a law alone rendered possible by the sense of duty to the country,
brought home to every German heart by the exactions and brutality
of the French occupation of their country. In the great changes in the
methods of war the century has seen, this and not the introduction of
the breechloader or rifled field artillery has been the main moving
power. Owing, however, to the accident that the appearance of the
breechloader, and the first really effective rifled field artillery happened
also to coincide with the first fully-trained and organised exhibition of
the “nation in arms,” the former appealing most to popular imagination
received all the credit for the surprising phenomena first witnessed on
the battle-field of 1870, and principally on the German side. I allude to
the dissolution of all order under fire, and the wild confusion which
reigned not only in the fighting line but extended far behind it.
Stragglers and skulkers are no new apparitions in any warfare, but
as Meckel, perhaps the very first of living writers in Germany, openly
states in his “Sommernachts Traum,” no such dissolution of order in
disciplined troops had ever been seen before till in the last moment of
defeat.
The original explanation and the popular one was, that this was due
to the exceptional intensity of the breechloader's fire; this satisfied the
Self-respect of the army, and hence it was a relatively short step to
propose the use of the spade as a palliative, and this popular impression
still persists in most armies, but notably less in the German Army of
to-day than in any other. For statistics soon showed that, judged by
the percentage of hits in a given time, the intensity of fire was by no
means unprecedented or abnormal ; historical retrospect also showed
that the idea of the spade was at least as old as the introduction of
effective firearms; that is to say, of weapons not exceeding 12 lbs. in
weight which could be loaded and fired without a rest. History also
showed that this use of the spade had formed no absolute guarantee
against defeat at any time, though its relative value in earlier times was
conspicuously greater than in the present.
A careful study of the incidents in the American Civil War might
have corrected these erroneous impressions, but though it is not true that
Moltke ever referred to those campaigns as “the struggle between two
armed mobs,” the expression does, however, fairly truthfully indicate the
attitude of the average German military mind in the matter ; and it may
I O FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
be added generally that the earlier pamphleteer literature which made its
appearance immediately after the campaigns of 1866 and 1870 shows
that, on the whole, the study of tactics in Germany had by no means
reached a level to deserve the credence these publications received.
In justice, however, to the German Staff, it must be pointed out that
these productions originated mostly from the pens of irresponsible
writers who for the most part had never studied at the Berlin War
Academy, and that they ultimately exercised far less influence on military
opinion in their own country than to our misfortune they acquired in
foreign ones, notably in England.
For what are the essential points on which the success or failure of
a direct assault, whether on a line of field fortifications or on a breach
in a fortress, depends P. Obviously, only on the intensity of fire to be
faced and the difficulties of ground, including depth of fire-swept space
and obstacles to be overcome.
If a given number of bullets have to be encountered in a given
period of time, and in crossing a given space, it is obvious that it is quite
immaterial which end of the barrel they were originally inserted at,
though it is worth while, with reference to the claims made for the new
Small-bore weapons, to remember that the weight, velocity, and section
of the bullet itself is a very serious factor, for the reason that, as every
Sportsman is well aware, a bone-smashing 12-bore is a much safer weapon
with which to encounter a charging tiger or bison than the chassepôt,
Zündnadel, or indeed, any other small-bore weapon yet tested in war."
Now, history shows that a cross fire exceeding many times in
intensity anything the Germans had to face in 1870 has been victoriously
faced by troops in previous campaigns. One example alone will suffice.
Take Todtleben's defence of Sebastopol. It will be seen that the
narrow neck in front of the Redan was swept by the unsubdued cross fire
of over one hundred heavy guns, mostly 36-pounders; the distance to be
traversed from the British trenches to the Russian works was at least
600 yards, yet in each assault the troops succeeded in reaching their
objective, and even if ultimately unsuccessful, the cause lay in the want
of skill in handling the reserves, not in the intensity of the fire to be
faced.
I have calculated that to supply the same intensity of fire from a
parallel front, a double line of infantry firing twenty-five rounds to the
minute, i.e., something considerably in excess of even the present
repeaters, and, therefore, far superior to the power of the chassepôts,
would be required. Yet if that fire did not stop our men, why should
the less well-aimed fire of infantry—for infantry have nerves which
Shake, and the gun and its platform have not-stop their descendants?
* British troops have had some curious experiences in this direction, and for
myself, before accepting the statements of inventors of new small-bore rifles, I
should suggest that the inventors should personally experiment on dangerous
game, including in the category Afghans, Zulus, and Mahdists, in their native
haunts, the survivor's inventions only to be considered further.
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. I I
Of course, the use of cross fire to strengthen the defence is as open
to the defender to-day as it was then, but cross fire implies more or
less pronounced salients which can be attacked by artillery with far
better prospects of success than formerly. The point, however, is that
cross fire was very rarely indeed employed by either French or Germans
in 1870. They relied—as, indeed, one generally must do in field warfare
—almost entirely on direct fire, and if they mutually failed to stand
the test, it was not the intensity of the fire, but the quality of the
troops which was responsible for the failure. Moreover, since both
Germans and French in the old days had frequently borne victoriously
still heavier punishment without disbanding, the fault lay, not in the
nature of the men, but in some conditions of the training, or organisation,
or both.
It appears to me that in the discussion of modern tactical problems
the following considerations have been too much neglected :-
From the time of the introduction of effective portable muskets,
the object of tactical training has been, on the one hand to develop
by drill the utmost possible rapidity of fire from a given length of
front, and on the other to occupy the greatest possible front with the
minimum of men.
In the early days, troops stood in files one pace apart, and six to
twelve decp. The leading file took a pace to the front, fired, counter-
marched, and the next man stepped up in his place, and so on. In
this way a rapidity of fire up to fourteen rounds per yard of front per
minute was obtained; but the fault was that it required a great number
of men to cover a limited front.
The next step was by the introduction of the iron ramrods, first
coned, afterwards cylindrical, then by an unsurpassed perfection of
“drill,” or what we should nowadays call “fire discipline,” to develop
such a rapidity of loading that a three-deep line could deliver as many
bullets, and more, per yard of front in the same time as the deeper
formation. The smaller number could now outflank the larger, and
thereby a great tactical advantage was scored. It is, however, obvious
that the rapidity of fire which under Frederick the Great reached six
volleys a minute—or allowing 24 inches to the file, then twenty-seven
bullets per yard of front per minute—was far in excess of anything
needed, provided every musket was held horizontal; but experience had
long before demonstrated that, under fire, muzzles were not thus held;
and that, according to the quality of the troops, the product of national
fighting instinct and drill, the fire varied in accuracy with the rapidity of
the losses incurred and the effect on the minds of the men created by the
resolution with which the attack approached.
As far back as the first Silesian War, even farther, except against
very inferior troops, a bayonet charge had no prospect of success, but as
a consequence of “fire superiority” already established—precisely as is
the case now—only the fire superiority is always only a temporary
possession ; and now that the distance to be traversed by the storming
party in open ground has increased ten-fold, time is afforded to re-establish
I 2 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
the fire equilibrium by bringing up fresh reserves again and again by the
side which has momentarily lost its advantage. This is the essential
difference in the problem of attack and defence between now and then,
and it is very important to bear it in mind.
The conditions of armament being equal, the fire duel was generally
commenced at ranges just outside the limit of most effective fire effect,
precisely as under equal conditions of armament it must be commenced
nowadays. Troops can only retain their order up to a certain percentage
of loss. As they come within range of the enemy, individuals begin to
fall, but the troops do not falter for the first or second who drops. One
thing is perfectly certain as the result of experience—they will continue
to advance, retaining their order, in face of a greater percentage of loss
in line than in column or as skirmishers.
A moment, however, will come—depending on their discipline, the
enemy's fire, and the degree of cover the ground affords—when they will
fall so rapidly that all order will be dissolved if they do not halt to reply.
It is, and always has been, the talent of the leader or leaders to call the
halt and open fire the moment before the control of the men slips from
their hands. But as soon as their bullets whistle about the enemy's ears
the precision of his aim is disturbed, and a following line will reach the
same limit with less loss. Subsequently, following lines will each suffer
less loss still, and so on, so that, provided the staff has rightly calculated the
preponderance of force necessary and massed it opposite the decisive
point, the ultimate attainment of the fire Superiority becomes a certainty.
In the old days, once that superiority was attained, a single dash
forward sufficed to penetrate the position. Now, human lungs and limbs
cannot cover the distance in the time, and the same process may have to
be repeated again and again.
The idea of interposing a physical obstacle between oneself and the
enemy was so absolutely a matter of common sense, that from the earliest
times the weaker side has habitually resorted to it. But in proportion as
fire power has become effective at greater ranges, the conception of
“obstacle” has given way to that of cover, and the advantage “cover”
conferred during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries down to the
introduction of the breechloader was greater relatively than it has been
since.
For as long as it was, practically speaking, necessary for men to stand
upright to load, the mere interposition of a 5-foot parapet between one-
self and the enemy reduced the vulnerable area on the defenders' side as
one to six, and loopholes, etc., made it still Smaller. In those days, too,
the artillery did not possess, as it now does, the power of preparing the
way for the attack at a distance. It was impossible, as a rule, to fire over
the heads of assaulting columns to the last moment, and it was perfectly
useless trying to destroy the entrenchments by firing solid shot at them.
Matters, however, have changed since then.
In the days of dynastic armies, the object of the average general, as
given to him by the cabinet and appreciated by him personally, was,
generally, to cover the greatest extent of country with the minimum of
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. I 3
risk to his men. Now there is a difference between the “average"
general and the great leader, which requires to be noted.
In those days, when men spent as many months of the year in face
of the enemy as they now spend weeks at the manoeuvres, they were
practically better informed about many things than we can hope to
be nowadays. Selection was the general rule for important commands,
and though nepotism was tolerably rife, yet it seldom happened that the
man who rose was deficient in a certain sympathy with his men, and
he knew what he could personally ask from them and what he could not.
(Clausewitz, in his campaign of 1796, in giving the biographies of the
Austrian generals, Wurmser, Melas, and others, may be quoted in
support.) When two such “average" leaders faced one another,
both sides trying, for reasons of expense and in accordance with their
instructions, to carry on the war with the minimum of force possible, the
conditions of numbers, armament, and skill being also tolerably uniform,
the game became a species of chess combination, each side endeavouring
to induce the other, by means of feints, stratagems, etc., to extend his
front beyond the maximum admissible, and then to pierce it by massing
his troops in all secrecy against what appeared to be the most favourable
point of attack.
Both sides being vividly alive to the danger, and knowing that a
rapid rush might settle the matter, heaped up passive obstacles, abattis,
fraises, trous des loups, Caltropes, etc., in front of their cover, so that at
length things came to a deadlock, and for months the armies stood
watching one another. This is precisely the same end to which the
extreme advocates of field fortifications and intrenched camps would
ultimately lead us now ; only the condition has totally changed ; both
sides now put forth the whole armed strength of their country, the object
being to end the war as speedily as possible, to allow trade, on which the
life of the nation depends, to resume its course as soon as possible.
Still, the poorest nation can stand the strain least, and therefore, if
populous enough, has the greater incentive to sacrifice human lives
to terminate it.
When a “genius” came on the scene matters were altered. The
essential difference between the genius and the man of average ability
was and is, that the former instinctively devotes his attention only to the
points of vital importance, the other spreads his energies without
discrimination over all alike, and whilst the one is steadily developing the
fighting efficiency of his troops to the utmost, the other is wasting his
time in pigtails and powder, or their modern equivalents.
The men, particularly the long-service professional soldiers, have a
very fine instinct in distinguishing between the commander who works
them so as to develop their fighting power to the best advantage, and the
one who wastes their time on non-essentials, and they soon acquire a
confidence in the former the latter can never hope to attain. Hence the
former can call on them safely for manoeuvres and exertions which to
the other would be impossible ; and hence when two such different
leaders were opposed to one another, the genius could march round the
I4. FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
others flank (exposing his own communication in doing so, of course),
and roll up his line from end to end in a way the average general would
not dare to attempt. Genius is not evinced in the mere conception of
a turning movement—the average intelligence of a board School child
would suffice for that—but genius is evinced by the man who trains his
troops so that he can trust them to face risks, which the average leader,
in spite of character, feels instinctively his own men could not or would
not face under his leadership.
There are, therefore, three grades of leadership : the imbecile, who
makes plans which his troops are not fit to execute; the good, average
general, who knows what he can and what he cannot demand from his
men; and the genius, who so trains his command, and wins their
confidence, that in his hands, but in his hands alone, the impossible
becomes possible.
It was thus that Marlborough and Frederick the Great each broke up
the traditions of the war of position epoch. Thus, too, that Napoleon
destroyed Frederick's school when the latter's troops were no longer led
by their original teacher, and so it will be again when another genius
arises. We may possibly drift into a war of positions and intrenched
camps as vicious in principle as those of the eighteenth century, but the
first genius war produces will crumple up the plans and schemes of
mediocrity precisely as in the past.
The characteristics of the tactics of the Napoleonic era require to be
referred to because they originated from much the same causes as the
German skirmisher swarms of 1870, and a certain and important school
of German tacticians base their justification of the skirmisher and Small
column school on the Napoleonic precedent."
The French pre-revolutionary armies had been drilled on precisely
the same lines as the Prussians. Indeed, their drill-book was only a
translation of an edition of Frederick’s drill-book published at Brunswick
about the year 1776, and officially this book was never revised ; so that
nominally both armies at Jena fought according to the same regulations,
the only difference lying in the spirit in which they were applied. (See
Lettow Vorbeck’s “Feldzug, 1806-1807.”)
When the French revolutionary armies first took the field they were
absolutely destitute of either the drill, or discipline, the consequence of
drill, necessary for fighting in line formations. When brought under fire
the lines dissolved of themselves—under a survival of the fittest principle,
precisely as did the Germans in 1870. The bravest went to the front, the
remainder stayed behind and were driven into clumps and led forward as
best they might be by the most energetic leaders on the spot. After a
few engagements the bravest who survived became expert skirmishers and
! It is worthy of note that Napoleon, unlike Frederick the Great, hardly
devoted a line of his somewhat voluminous writings to tactics, pure and simple.
In the employment of masses, of whatever arm, as he found them and his
subordinates made them, he was undoubtedly one of the greatest, if not the very
greatest, battle leader the world has ever seen.
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. I 5
were permanently selected for the purpose; the others, once the fire of
the skirmishers had damped the enemy's reply, were held together and
retained cohesion enough to be used for the assault when the enemy's fire
had been sufficiently reduced ; and by degrees war training and the
individuality of the French evolved a school good enough to defeat the
degenerate line tactics of the Prussians, destitute as they were of properly
trained light infantry, and, as a consequence of the culminating catastrophe
of Jena, all other continental nations copied them ; but the system was
One most wasteful of human life, absolutely regardless of it, in fact, and
it always failed in front of the combined light infantry and line tactics to
which the British troops continued to adhere.
When, after Austerlitz and Jena, the French school had been
everywhere introduced, and when, under pressure of necessity, the other
nations of the continent had been compelled to put every available man
into the field, and not, as formerly, only the minimum number presumed
to suffice in proportion to the enemy's efforts; when, too, the waste of
material had begun to tell on both the quality and quantity of the French
infantry, Napoleon was compelled to cast about for some new and more
powerful means of preparing his attacks than the old skirmishing fire, and
this he found in the employment of the case fire of artillery masses.
Since, in face of the mobility of the French army, also as a consequence
of the tendency to imitate the practice of successful men everywhere
prevalent, field fortification had very generally fallen into disrepute, his
enemies obligingly supplied him with the most perfect targets conceivable
for his purpose-heavy columns, standing at 300 yards range or there-
abouts—and on these the guns soon obtained such a percentage of hits
that the task of the infantry sometimes became a mere march into the
enemy's position with shouldered arms.
With the introduction of rifled small arms the range became very
considerably extended. The potential accuracy of fire was also much
increased, though not to the same degree the practice ground experimen-
talists had anticipated, for the accuracy of fire in action is less dependent
on the quality of the arm than on the nerves and courage of the man who
holds it. Rifled small arms, in the hands of men selected for approved
steadiness and courage in the field, had everywhere done good service ;
but when the rifle was placed in the hands of Ordinary European peace-
trained troops, as, for example, the Austrians in 1859, the results were
by no means in proportion to the expectations which had been formed,
and the French found that they could still rely on the bayonet in a way
which possibly they might not have been able to do against the withheld
fire of the old musket. The result of this experience proved disastrous
to Austria subsequently in 1866.
When, however, in America the rifle came into the hands of men,
many of them trained from childhood to use it, fire attained a degree of
precision which has probably never before or since been equalled. In
these campaigns (the Civil War) everything favoured the adoption of
cover and defensive tactics generally. The nature of the armies, and in
the commencement, at any rate, their low degree of manoeuvring power,
I 6 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
together with the difficulty of the country and want of communications,
reproduced the same conditions that had in the previous century led to
the extended employment of intrenched positions.
But the advantage to be derived from them had enormously increased.
Generally speaking, it is obvious that the advantage of cover varies with
the accuracy of the fire to which it is subjected. Obvious as this seems,
it is yet very often overlooked. Then, again, the new rifle swept the
ground to the front to a depth of from 800 to 1,000 yards, against, say,
4oo formerly. This entailed on the assailant, who was still compelled to
load standing (or at best crouching), the necessity of Covering from
500 to 700 yards of the fire-swept ground before he could hope to reply
effectively to the enemy.
The possibilities of artillery preparation were, if anything, more
limited even than in previous campaigns, for the smooth-bore Napoleon
field guns could hardly be served in the open under the fire of infantry
marksmen, and with “case” were practically powerless against earthen
parapets of the profile usually opposed to them. The parapets also gave
the defenders the power of placing several ranks of men under cover, to
load and pass their rifles forward, so that the possibility, at any rate,
existed of developing on any given portion of the front a fire at least as
rapid as that which can be delivered with any effect from modern breech-
loaders, and this possibility was sometimes taken advantage of,
as in the case of the defenders of the stone fence at Marye's Heights,
Fredericksburg.
Against all this, only these drawbacks require to be set, viz., that the
rifle itself required longer to load than the smooth-bore, partly owing to
the difficulty of ramming home the charge, but more to the necessity of
fumbling for the percussion cap, a necessity which obviously did not exist
with the old flintlock, and, finally, there was no approach to the drill
precision of the old Frederician soldiers, to which allusion has already
been made. Still, discounting for all these drawbacks, the balance of
advantage in favour of the defence had then attained a superiority which
had never been approached before or can be expected again.
That under such circumstances frontal assaults across the open only
succeeded at the cost of unparalleled loss of life was only to be expected,
and no praise can be too high for the heroism of the troops who again
and again faced the almost hopeless task.
Thanks to the lead which Germany presently assumed in military
matters on the Continent, all these considerations were lost sight of, and
ultimately when the events around Plevna startled Europe, only the fact
that intrenchments had proved of value was recalled and not the reasons
why they had done so.
Returning to the Continent again; in the Bohemian campaign of 1866,
the following factors combined to lead public opinion astray, and they
deserve special attention, because it will be found that almost all the
mistakes of 1870, and the tactical consequences involved, are directly
traceable to the phenomena presented on these battle-fields. The
Prussian breechloader was, ballistically, a very inferior weapon. Its
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 17
chief advantage consisted in the power it conferred on the soldier of
loading under cover. This alone far outweighed the importance of its
Superior rapidity of fire, which in itself, had it entailed the necessity of
standing up to load, would not by any means have precluded Austrian
successes, provided always that the Austrians had been well handled.
The Germans defeated the French in spite of a far more serious disparity
in infantry armament, and similarly the Russians occasionally succeeded
against the Turks, though their weapon, the Krnka, was perhaps the
worst, as the Turkish Martini-Peabody was undoubtedly the very best
military breechloader then existing in Europe. Even had the Austrians
been better handled, strategically, their chance of obtaining the necessary
fire Superiority in the preparatory fire duel, on which, as between troops
of approximately equal quality success alone depends, would have been
small, owing to the faulty tactical methods they pursued, which would
have entailed ruin even against the muzzle-loader, let alone the breech-
loader.
In 1859 they had marched in full confidence in their accurate,
far-ranging rifle, but when on the battle-field they learned that there were
sights to be fumbled with and aim to be taken before anything could be
hit, and had seen the French columns dash in unchecked by what their
teachers had instilled into them must prove an insurmountable barrier,
popular opinion swung round to the opposite extreme.
The bayonet school regained its ascendency, and confident that the
predictions in favour of the breechloader would prove as wide of the mark
as those formerly made about the rifle, they flung themselves against the
Prussians in masses, which must have been destroyed by any weapon in
the hands of steady froops.
In a regimentally excellent artillery, they possessed the means of
ultimately reducing the steadiness of their opponents to any required
degree, but they ostentatiously neglected their opportunity, and in all the
history of the campaign it is well-nigh impossible to find an instance of
systematic co-operation between the two arms.
Naturally their men fell in sheaves, and, equally naturally, popular
opinion, which had been on the look-out for something sensational from
the breechloader, found herein the confirmation of its extremest hopes.
It might, however, have been remembered that for columns to fail against
a suitable fire development was no new thing, and that it was neither
breechloader nor rifled fire that destroyed the old French Imperial Guard,
unquestionably the very steadiest infantry in attack the continent of
Europe ever produced, when they attempted the same tactics at Waterloo
against the British Guards and the 52nd.
It must be borne in mind that this was, for the bulk of the Prussian
Army, its baptism of fire, and it made a very deep impression on individuals,
as the first sight of a battle-field always does; and the most of them,
having been led by their previous education to expect something totally
different from what they actually saw, the whole of this difference was
attributed to the breechloader, other factors being entirely overlooked.
It is thus that false tactical instruction always revenges itself. As a
IB
I 8 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
consequence of the long years of peace the Prussians had enjoyed (?),
the correct mental focus for appreciating the true relation between
cause and effect on the battle-field had been lost. The old soldiers, who
remembered the Napoleonic battle-fields, fully appreciated the importance
of discipline; presumably, also, were aware of its limitations, though the
habit of dwelling on bygone exploits of heroism is also apt to distort
the mental lens. Their successors who had inherited the tradition had
failed to realise the fact that, actual battle-field discipline, being a
consequence of the interaction of many factors, the result of the
application of only a small number of these factors (the greater number,
viz., the flying bullets, all the scenes and surroundings of active service in
fact being necessarily absent from peace training), must be very different
indeed ; and the more absolutely practical the system of preparing troops
for battle during the continuance of war time, i.e., the better suited the
method was to the immediate purpose in hand, the worse must be the
result the longer the system was applied without the necessary corrections
it suffered under fire.
By dwelling too much on the necessity for blind obedience they
drifted into the mistake of erecting a false ideal by unconsciously
assuming discipline and blind obedience to be one and the same thing,
which they are not; and never having seen the havoc shell and bullets
play on formations based on blind obedience alone, they by degrees
forgot that the ultimate units of any fighting force are but human
creatures after all, and that limits do exist beyond which endurance
cannot go.
When, therefore, contact with facts shattered their pre-conceived
ideals, confidence in the theories they had learnt in the war schools and
manoeuvres was seriously shaken, and a very large number of officers
were ready to hail as a new idea the re-discovery of the human-nature
factor, which formed the keynote of the school of Captain May (author of
the “Tactical Retrospect,” etc.).
There was nothing really original in the views he propounded ;
practically everything in his writings had been said by Bülow half a
century before, and even he had been anticipated in all that was of
permanent value by the practice of good light infantry all the world
over ; but the average of military education in Germany was then at a
very low level, and the vast majority of the officers had not the
knowledge necessary to supply the corrections needed by his works.
He initiated the fundamental fallacy that lies at the bottom of
almost all popular theories of improvised defences and the power of
the defensive generally, viz., that the fire of the breechloader is a
constant quantity and that tactical formations must be based on the
assumption that the intensity of fire to be faced remains invariable
throughout the day, whereas the essence of tactics really consists in
so combining the action of the three arms that the fire to be faced
at any given moment shall not exceed the limit of the endurance of
the troops in the particular formation ordered, which is a very
different conception altogether.
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. I 9
The net result of the Austro-Prussian experiences and the military
discussions based thereon was, that the Germans went into the French
War in a very unsettled state of mind. If their very inferior weapon had
produced such results on the fields of Bohemia, what might not be
expected from the far more formidable arm the French had adopted,
which could be fired twice as fast and ranged five times as far.
One thing at least was evident to all, and that was that nothing
was to be gained by playing a game of long bowls, but that it was
the first and absolutely indispensable condition of success to close in
at once to ranges which permitted of an effective reply, viz., 4oo to
300 yards.
As between the two infantries, the problem was almost insoluble ; it
could only be solved by the aid of the other fire-arm, the artillery, but
as a consequence of the vicious tactics the Prussian gunners had, like
the Austrians, pursued in 1866, the infantry as a body felt little
confidence in its power and remained for the most part in absolute
ignorance of the enormous strides it had made in the intervening four
years.
Even the gunners themselves were astounded at the power they
developed, especially at Mars la Tour-Vionville, and it is necessary to
point out here that, great though the progress of the arm had been,
still not more than one in three of the batteries had been trained as
they now all are, and that the system by which their fire was brought
to bear in masses was then only in its infancy and worked with
considerable friction.
It is a safe estimate to make, that the same weapons, handled as
they now could be, would develop at least four times the power
indicated in 1870, a point well worth the attention of those who base
their theories of future tactics on the effect of artillery fire in that
campaign, more especially since, in the interval, improvements in
the gun itself and its projectiles have rendered the arm, gun for
gun, on the practice ground at least five times as efficient as it
was then.
Failing preliminary artillery preparation, not because the guns were
incapable of performing the task, but because the infantry and the staff
had not learnt to appreciate their power, there were three alternatives
open to the infantry: either to endeavour to cross the fire-swept zone
entirely extended in individual order, for which their men were not
well enough trained ; or to rely on discipline alone to carry the men
forward in small columns, a formation which kept the men better in
hand but increased the vulnerable area ; or, finally, to adopt the old and
tried formation of the “line,” which reduced the vulnerable area to one-
half that of the company column and kept the men in hand almost as
well.
The latter was tried but rarely, for it was contrary to the received
traditions of the Service, but as a rule lines of company columns, with a
relatively thin line of skirmishers as scouts in front, was the usual
formation, and this was adhered to till it dissolved of itself under the
B 2.
2 O FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
enemy's fire. Occasionally two-thirds of the company were extended at
once, and after the war many advocated and some still advocate the
complete extension of the whole company from the first; but since the
war the idea has been discouraged by all the responsible authorities in
their service, though it still finds supporters amongst British Volunteers
and other irresponsible and inexperienced tacticians.
It is extremely difficult to summarise the actual experience of the
campaign. So much has been written about it by faddists anxious to
prove their special fallacies, and by popular national historians bent on
demonstrating the heroism of their own men, that the actual facts of the
case have been obscured, and it is only within the last three years that
the truth, long suspected, is beginning to leak out. But this ultimate
truth is still buried under the language of the country, and is as yet
inaccessible to the average of English readers. If what I now write
comes as a surprise to many, I can only suggest the acquirement of the
language and the consulation of the originals.
These facts, however, stand out in a bold light, viz., that the battles,
with two exceptions (Colombey, 14th August, and Vionville - Mars la
Tour, 16th August), were fought for the possession of hastily-intrenched
positions, and that, though few if any attacks (I cannot recall one)
succeeded at the first rush, i.e., when they ought to have done ;
nevertheless the close of the fight always found the French intrench-
ments in German hands. There is, therefore, primd facie case against
the field fortifications, and the case becomes stronger still when the causes
of the failure of the first rush come to be analysed.
First comes the failure of the German cavalry adequately to supply
the following troops with information as to the actual position of the
enemy on the battle-field. During the four years immediately preceding
this campaign the German cavalry had only commenced to revive out of
the Rip Van Winkle sleep into which it had sunk since the Seven Years'
War. When the war broke out there were not ten men in the whole arm
who had ever handled a cavalry division, even in peace manoeuvres, and
the divisions themselves were only organised by royal headquarters on
the 29th July; one indeed, the 4th, only receiving its commander and
staff on the morning of the 3rd of August.
They fell into their collars with remarkable celerity, and, being
entirely unopposed by the French, did excellent strategic service ; but
the system of reporting news was as yet too cumbersome to be of much
use when in actual tactical contact with the enemy.
Much more is required and given by the arm to-day than they
performed either at Woerth or at Spicheren, and up to the present
moment no one has been found to attempt the defence of its failure on
August 16th at Vionville to warn the immediately following troops of
the danger threatening them in front, to account for their inaction on the
17th August (the following day), or of the final blunder which, by failing
to fix the true position of the French left at Roncourt, brought about the
bloody repulses suffered by the 9th Corps at Amanvilliers and of the
Guards against St. Privat.
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHEL) CAMPS. 2 I-
The disconnected attacks at Woerth and the useless slaughter they
entailed are more justly to be attributed to other causes than the failure
of the cavalry, but want of adequate information undoubtedly was the
prime cause of the systemless expenditure of life against the Spicheren
heights, and the surprise of the heads of the 5th Infantry Division when
endeavouring to emerge from the defiles of Gorze, together with the total
defeat of the 38th (Wedell's) Brigade of the 1 oth Corps at Mars la Tour
on the same day, can only be laid on their shoulders. Where the reports
actually made went to is not to be traced in any existing work. They probably
travelled through the routine channel and reached the troops immediately
concerned some days after the battle, but to the ordinary mind it must
always remain inconceivable how it could be possible that, as in the case
of the 38th Brigade, a whole cavalry brigade could have been on the
ground watching for a couple of hours the arrival and formation of the
4th (French) Corps, and yet the infantry brigade commander was left so
entirely without information that he sent in his command to the attack of
the Tronville copses lying due east, whilst the whole French corps, deployed,
lay ready some 2,000 yards to the northward to pounce on him in flank
as he went by. Yet this thing actually did happen, and the result was
the heaviest slaughter in the whole campaign.
It was this want of adequate information as to the nature of the task
awaiting them in front, together with the little confidence felt in the
artillery and the desire to get in to effective range of their rifles at all
hazards, which led to the overhastiness and want of combination
which characterised the German attacks in the early battles of the war.
That under such circumstances these attacks were generally heavily
repulsed is not to be wondered at. Such faults would have entailed
similiar punishment in any previous period, but since there is no reason
to consider them as normal occurrences, their failure forms no basis for
condemning the principle of the offensive in foto. For the purposes of
the argument to be developed hereafter, it is necessary to deal at con-
siderable length with the above-mentioned incident of the 38th Brigade
and the failure of the Prussian direct assaults on St. Privat and Grave-
lotte two days subsequently. A full history of the former will be
found in Captain Hoenig's book, entitled “Tactics of the Future,” and
published in Berlin, 1890. Hoenig was adjutant to the Fusilier Battalion,
57th (Lieut-Colonel von Roell), in the action, and rode about the very
centre of the line between the 16th and 57th Regiments, which together
formed the brigade. His account, therefore, is direct evidence of the
most valuable kind, and it is further checked by the testimony of his
brother officers who survived. I may also add that it is one of the clearest
and most convincing pieces of military history it has been my good
fortune to read. My only regret is that want of space compels me to
Curtail my reference to it so much.
After a long and most exhausting march in almost tropical heat,
the brigade, consisting of the 16th Regiment (three battalions) and the
Ist and Fusilier Battalions, 57th, with two pioneer companies, in all some
4,500 rifles, formed up south of Mars la Tour, and before their deploy-
22 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
ment had been completed, received orders to attack, the point of direction
given being the north-west corner of the Tronville copses.
The idea appears to have been to co-operate with troops of the same
corps already engaged within the copses, but actually these troops were
already being driven out of the copses before the brigade advanced.
Whilst the brigade was still closing up, the divisional commander
(von Schwarzkoppen) was seen in conversation with the brigadier (von
Wedell), but what passed between them has never been ascertained—at
any rate the divisional general’s views, if he expressed any, never reached
the colonels of regiments, still less the majors and captains. It was close
On 4 p.m., the brigade was already suffering loss though the enemy was
not yet visible, the two batteries attached to the brigade trotted round the
south-east flank of the infantry, unlimbered somewhat hurriedly south of
the Metz-Verdun road, and almost simultaneously with the first shots the
advance began.
Crossing the Metz-Verdun chausée they were met by a perfect storm
of shell and rifle bullets, and the mounted officers first saw what they
were in for. Half-left in front of them, and about 1,500 yards distant,
stretched a long line of French infantry and guns, the whole of the 4th
(L’Admirault's) Corps in fact, but the men on foot felt only the fire, they
could not yet see their enemy. Close to the south-east corner of Mars
la Tour they passed von Schwarzkoppen and his chief of the staff, Major
von Scherff (afterwards the well-known military writer). The general
seemed confident of success, and shouted to them, “Give them lots of
skirmishers, we will soon have them out of that,” and then “bring up
your right shoulders a little,” pointing still towards the corner of the
wood. The order was only partially heard, and the men, feeling the fire
more from the north in proportion as they were nearer to it, overdid the
incline and a gap in the line began to open out. A company in the
Second line was thrust in to close it, but the order was lost, and soon the
general tendency to bear up to the north increased as the troops came in
sight of the enemy, and the whole movement degenerated into an attempt
to change front to the left of the whole brigade on a front of some
2,500 yards. The consequence was the centre and still more the outer
flank were soon racing to keep up, the ground intersected by wire fences
still further hampered the movement, and the companies came under the
full sweep of the enemy's aimed fire one by one in succession. The
losses were appalling and increased at every step, but they still pressed on
without firing, for they were not yet within the limit of effective reply for
their own weapons. Suddenly the advance was checked by a deep ravine
that stretched across their path. A low hedge at the break of the slope
gave partial cover, and behind this the troops aligned themselves, opening
a heavy fire which soon shrouded their front in smoke. Skirmishers,
company columns, and line had all been employed, and it is noteworthy
that the latter had maintained its order better and with fractionally fewer
losses than the others.
All at once some six French battalions who had been lying in wait in
the dead angle at the bottom of the ravine sprang forward up the slope
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 23
with the bayonet, and, hidden by the smoke, came within six paces before
they were seen. The shock was too much for the exhausted Germans;
they turned and ran, only the timely charge of the 1st Guard Dragoons
saving them from annihilation. The total losses were:—16th Regiment,
48 officers, 1,313 men killed and wounded, 424 prisoners; of the two
battalions 57th, 24 officers, 653 men wounded, 26 prisoners. The latter
battalion found least cover and had the most ground to traverse. Total
for both, omitting prisoners, 72 officers, 1,966 men, out of 95 officers and
4,546 men, or not quite 43 per cent. Of the men ; of these, 33 Officers.
and 756 men, or not quite 15 per cent., were killed outright.
As to the duration of the attack, Hoenig calculates that the advance
to the edge of the ravine occupied thirty minutes, the standing-fire fight
thirty minutes more, and the retreat, say, twenty minutes more, so that
the men were under fire in all one hour and twenty minutes. If, consider-
ing the exceptional conditions under which the retreat was made, we put
down one-third of the total loss to the time of its duration, then two-
thirds of 1,966, or 1,310 men—i.e., 29 per cent.—fell in the attack itself;
or since the rate of loss must have been pretty uniform, then 14 per cent.
went down in the advance and 15 per cent. in the Subsequent stationary
fire fight—but this was quite the most obstinate fighting in the whole
W3.I.
Now let us turn to St. Privat and Gravelotte. The former has so
often been adduced in support of the views of those who believe in the
invincibility of “troops armed with modern weapons,” that it is necessary
to treat it in some detail.
The first point to note is, that though the position was, by universal
consent, ideal in its strength, and in addition was intrenched to a very
considerable extent, yet at the close of some three hours' fighting the
intrenchments had changed hands. The actual strength of the intrench-
ments themselves is immaterial to our argument both here and elsewhere,
since modern hasty defences are primarily only intended to give cover
from fire, not to oppose a physical obstacle against assault. Secondly,
turning to the list of casualties in the action, supplied in the appendix to
the official history of the war, we find that the conventionally accepted
statement as to the amount of loss actually suffered is, to say the least,
somewhat exaggerated. “Six thousand men out of 18,000 fell in ten
minutes,” according to a pamphlet published shortly after the war by the
Duke of Würtemberg. The duke was an Austrian officer, who came to the
German headquarters some weeks subsequent to the event and picked up
his information by hearsay in the camp. Now it happened that Prince
August of Würtemberg commanded the Prussian Guard Corps, and the
ordinary pamphleteer, being proverbially inaccurate, confused the two
names, and concluded that the duke, on whose authority the statement
rested, was no other than the commander of the Guard Corps in person,
and therefore to be believed. In no other way can I account for the
extraordinary credence the story has received.
The true facts of the case, according to the official record, are briefly
these : The 4th Guard Brigade went into action about 5 p.m., 5,500 men
24. FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
strong, and after fighting till far into the night returned less 72 officers
and 2, 1 oo men. The 1st Guard Brigade, with 5,000 bayonets, in the same
period of time, lost almost exactly the same number of men as the 4th ;
so that the story of phenomenal losses, the keystone of the whole edifice
of the adherents of the “defensive” school, is reduced to 30 per cent. in
a fight lasting for hours. Of course, the losses were not evenly distributed
throughout the time. They were necessarily most heavy during the first
unsuccessful attempt at assault, which broke down at 600 yards from the
enemy's position — a result which, as there had been no preliminary
artillery fire, would have been precisely the same even without the aid of
field fortifications; but that attempt lasted no more than fifteen minutes,
and no computation can assign more than from one-third to one-half of
the total to this fraction of the time, so that it comes to this: that the
momentum of the Prussian Guard died out before a loss not exceeding
15 per cent. and probably not more than 10 per cent, killed and wounded–
Say between 1,500 to 1,000 out of Io, ooo, in round numbers—a very
different story to 6,ooo out of 18,000 in ten minutes.
The question now arises whether even these reduced losses were
unavoidable, and the answer must be decidedly in the negative. There
had been no artillery preparation to speak of. The troops, through inexpe-
rience of the Chassepôt rifle, had been brought under its fire in rendezvous
formation, and had, while still in dense masses, attempted to change
front. Their order had been destroyed at the very outset, and there was
no cohesion in the subsequent endeavour to advance, which was made by
nine out of the twelve battalions engaged, in company columns, with
skirmishers in front—a formation which experiment has since shown to
possess at these ranges a vulnerability twice that of the two-deep line.
The remaining three battalions actually did advance in three-deep line,
and on the whole day lost fractionally less than the others, maintaining
their order markedly better; and it is worth pointing out that, according
to the regimental histories, almost the whole effort of the surviving officers,
once the advance was checked, was to endeavour to close in their scattered
commands into line again. They seem to have had quite enough of
extended order for that day at any rate.
Now, eliminate the amount of avoidable loss which, collectively, may
reasonably be set down at one-half the total, and it seems to me that, even
with the existing disparity of armament, the attack should have been
successful at the first onset.
The fighting on the Gravelotte wing deserves even more detailed
notice, for here the fact at least remains that the French held their position
throughout the day and night, and voluntarily retired unmolested under
cover of the “forts.” This is really the strongest case that can be
adduced by the upholders of the “defensive,” but even this, when
analysed, can be easily shown incapable of holding water.
Hoenig is again my authority. It is true he was not an eye-witness,
having been, as already stated, severely wounded two days before, but he
has studied the ground thoroughly, and collected and collated the accounts
of hundreds of his comrades who expressed themselves to him in a manner
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 25
very different from the usual official report style. The result he has
embodied in a work entitled “Twenty-four Hours of Moltke’s Strategy,”
but the title is in so far misleading, as the book is far more concerned
with tactical than strategic questions.
It will be remembered that the first Army commanded by Steinmetz
consisted of the 1st, 7th, and 8th Corps, of which on the 18th of August
the first was still on the eastern bank of the Moselle. By special Army
headquarters order the 8th Corps was withdrawn from Steinmetz’s control
and handed over to the second Army, Prince Frederick Charles, the 2nd
Corps being assigned to Steinmetz in exchange on its arrival, which was
not expected till late in the afternoon. Steinmetz was by no means
pleased with the arrangement, and his loss of mental balance had a most
sinister influence on the course of the day's fighting.
His orders received from Moltke about Io.30 a.m. indicated his line of
action for the day, viz., an attack on the enemy's left flank from the direction
of the Bois de Vaux, i.e., from the southward, the attack to be combined
with the movements of the second Army, and, pending their develop-
ment, artillery alone to be employed. At the time the infantry of the
7th Corps was scattered about, without any cohesion at all, over a
large space of ground, and the first duty of the Corps Commander should
have been to get them in hand, a duty which Hoenig shows to have been
perfectly practicable. Within two hours nineteen battalions might easily
have been concentrated along the northern edge of the above-mentioned
wood, but nothing of the kind was attempted. When, about noon, the
firing began, the whole artillery available unlimbered south of Gravelotte,
and a number of isolated battalions were launched straight at the French
position, with no unity in their efforts whatever.
Nevertheless, by degrees they captured some very important quarries
along the edge of the plateau, and further north, in conjunction with
Goeben's Corps, the 8th, carried St. Hubert (a farm to the east of the
defile, formed by the cuttings and embankments, by which the Metz-
Verdun road descends into and crosses the ravine of the Mance),
the enemy having been driven out of the buildings by artillery fire.
Hoenig praises Goeben's handling throughout, and St. Hubert having
been won and the edge of the plateau also reached, Steinmetz came to
the conclusion that the enemy was beaten, and nothing remained but to
pursue. Now, exactly at the same moment Goeben, and the artillery
officers of the 7th Corps, who had a good view of the enemy's position,
and could see that only the outposts had been carried, the main line
being still untouched, noticed movements on the other side which led
them to believe a storm was brewing, and Goeben ordered a brigade
across the ravine to support St. Hubert. At this moment Steinmetz had
just issued his orders for the “pursuit.”
“The 1st Cavalry Division crosses the defile of Gravelotte ; the
advance guard, supported by the fire of the batteries of the 7th Corps,
will attack, leaving St. Hubert on its left, in the direction of the Moscow
farm, and will not draw rein till it reaches the glacis of Metz, all other
regiments to follow it.” Metz, I would here point out, is at least seven
26 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
miles from St. Hubert, and the ground between, absolutely impracticable
for cavalry; further, as the direction indicated points to Thionville,
not Metz, it is very evident the old general had not consulted his maps.
Again, if the enemy was retiring, the cavalry must trot to overtake them,
and this would bring them, in six minutes or so, alongside of Goeben's
infantry, already occupying the defile, at a spot where the embankment is
20 feet high or more, in full fire of the enemy. But this was only the
beginning.
Von Zastrow at the same moment ordered the whole artillery of his
Corps at hand to cross the defile and come into action beyond it. The
commander of the artillery could hardly believe his ears as he received
this order. Seeing clearly what was coming, but compelled to obey, he
sent his gallopers down the line to transmit it, with a caution not to go
too fast, and to tell the battery commanders to be as slow about limbering
up as they conveniently could.
Unfortunately, three batteries, not having found room to come
into action, were standing ready at the western exit of Gravelotte, and
nothing could save these, even though the staff officer did his best not to
find them; they trotted off, and being nearer to the road than the cavalry
took the lead of them.
Now [to Quote Hoenig) let us use our imagination :
First. The eastern exit of Gravelotte had been obstructed by wires, only
partially removed by infantry.
Second. St. Hubert had just been carried, and hundreds of wounded,
stragglers, etc., were dragging themselves back along the road.
Third. To meet them comes an infantry regiment (the 29th); one squeezes by
as best one can.
Fourth. But this infantry did not know cavalry and artillery were following.
Fifth. The latter, also, were ignorant that they would find infantry in front of
them.
Sixth. None of the three expected the crowds of stragglers.
Seventh. All three were full of zeal for action. Presently, all of them were
chock a block.
What a picture, and what leading ! There was only one road, and into it
were thrown troops from five different commands without any mutual under-
standing, any order of march, left to themselves to get through as best they
could, then some to pursue, some to reinforce, etc.
Now, add to this a wall of smoke in front, out of which the flames of burning
St. Hubert shot up, the shells from 150 guns in action screaming over head, men
crowding together, crushing the wounded, the cries of the latter, the shouting,
the echoes of bursting shells in the woods, and lowering dense over all a dust
cloud which made dark the burning sun above. Imagine all this, and try to
realise the mental condition of the men struggling to fulfil their orders.
Needless to say, this mighty pillar of dust was not long in attracting
the enemy's attention ; what it was caused by they could not tell, but
it was evidently something very unusual, and they prepared to meet it.
The dust on the road grew denser, men fairly groped in it, and they
began to remember that, as they descended, the enemy’s fire, both of
infantry and guns, had almost ceased. Each felt something was brewing,
and a queer feeling of anxiety as to what it might be arose.
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 27
In front were the 4th and 3rd Light, then the 3rd Horse and the
4th Heavy Batteries, who crushed past the 29th Foot as best they might.
Seizing their opportunity the 1st Cavalry Division pressed in close behind
in the following order:—4th Uhlans, 2nd Cuirassiers, oth Uhlans,
another horse battery, and then the 2nd Brigade, viz., 8th Uhlans,
3rd Cuirassiers, 12th Uhlans, and to these attached themselves the two
divisional regiments, the 9th and 13th Hussars, who, not belonging to the
cavalry division, tried to push past the former. They had originally
all moved off in column of troops, but had been compelled to diminish
the front to threes, and this not being carried out quite as on parade, had
brought the following regiments to a dead halt.
Thirty-two squadrons were thus jammed up on this narrow dyke, or
between walls of rock. Fortunately for themselves the batteries of the
14th Division had been cut off by the stream, and remained limbered up,
awaiting their turn, but this was nevertheless prejudicial to the whole, in
So far as it was deprived of their fire just at the moment it was most
wanted (from the Gravelotte side) to cover their debouch from the other
side of the valley. The leading batteries got through and unlimbered,
the 4th Uhlans also. Both were received with a storm of shot and shell.
Two limber teams, maddened by the noise and pain of wounds, bolted
back into the mass, crushing many. The situation was intolerable.
Then suddenly from over the valley they caught the notes of the “retire,”
and, except the first four batteries and the 4th Uhlans, they obeyed it;
how, Hoenig does not say, but I doubt if they did it at a walk.
Hoenig does not excuse Hartmann, the commanding officer of the
Cavalry Division, from blame. His orders were precise, but he should
have satisfied himself first that they were possible of execution, and
that seems a fair comment.
The batteries of the 14th Division returned to their former place,
and had again to “range ’’ themselves. Had they remained in action,
their covering fire might have done much to reduce the losses of their
comrades on the other side.
The fate of these merits a few lines of description. The officer
commanding the artillery had ridden on in front to reconnoitre a position,
but in their eagerness the batteries had crowded on him too rapidly and
had given him no time to look around. Actually the position is so bad
for artillery that, going over the ground two years ago with several
decidedly capable British officers, we simply could not believe that
four batteries had ever unlimbered there. With the books and maps in
our hands we tried to identify the spot, and came to the conclusion
that either they never got there at all or the distribution of the troops,
as shown on the map, was utterly incorrect. The books, Hoffbauer and
the Prussian Official, state that only the knee-high wall extending
parallel to the road from St. Hubert offered any cover. Gniigge's
battery, the 3rd, took advantage of it. The others extended the line to
the east, front to the north, i.e., Moscow farm, and this brought their
flank within 300 yards of the French infantry in numbers in the farm-
house of Point du Jour. We felt certain there must be some mistake, and
28 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
that at this hour Point du Jour must have been in German hands; but it
was not, and with the fire from this place on their flank and an over-
powering enemy in their front, these batteries held their ground and
served their guns.
The 1st Light, which stood nearest on the flank, was soon shot to
pieces, but as long as a gun could be manned, its captain, Trautmann,
lying mortally wounded on the ground, having dragged himself in
torture until he could prop himself up against a shattered carriage,
directed its fire till his life ebbed out and he sank, a hero, if ever there
W3.S OI) e.
The same fate overtook the 2nd Battery, Captain Hasse’s Orders
were sent to him to retire, but, seeing the importance of standing by his
comrade on the left, he sent back word that he would rather die than give
way. He actually maintained his position for two hours. Then fresh
teams were brought up, and as he had fired his last round and those of
Trautmann's guns also (it appears they only had their limbers with them),
he at length gave the orders to limber up, but all the fresh horses were
killed except two, and these eventually brought off a single gun heavily
laden with wounded.
Gnigge held out all day. He, too, lost very heavily. It was some minutes
before his first round was delivered. Then his guns shot so straight that
with his comrade Hasse they beat down the enemy's infantry fire; range,
about 700 yards. A more extraordinary instance of the power of guns, as
guns were then, it would be hard to discover. It more than equals the
incident of the eight guns on the Rotherberg, which in a half-hour's duel
beat off and compelled a whole French battalion to retreat from their
trenches at 600 yards distance only. The 4th Heavy Battery never
unlimbered at all. Had its commander got it to the south of the road
its fire against Point du Jour would have been invaluable in relieving the
pressure on the flank of the others; but he lost his head and retired
his guns.
The experience of the 4th Uhlans is, perhaps, the most remarkable of
all. They had to halt, as the 4th Heavy Battery prevented their deploy-
ment; but they moved off the road to the southward to clear the way for
the following regiment, and whilst there the colonel heard the “retire”
from over the valley—an order he felt it impracticable under the circum-
stances to carry out. So, the regiment being then in columns of troops,
he sounded the “gallop ’’ and led straight for the quarries to the
Southward, where he halted and wheeled into line, facing the enemy in
Point de Jour at 400 yards only. A slight wave in the ground half hid
the cavalry, and here, for a whole hour, this regiment held out whilst the
rapid-firing, flat-trajectoried weapon of the French poured out bullets
toward them. Then he retired, having meanwhile reconnoitred practi.
cable paths, and taking his wounded with him. In the whole day this
regiment lost 3 officers, 49 men, and Io I horses only.
Meanwhile a second, and if anything worse, catastrophe was brewing.
The 4th Uhlans were retiring into the ravine, Trautmann's battery
had ceased to exist, Hasse had succeeded in withdrawing his last
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 29
remaining gun, and Gnigge alone remained in action. Some 15,000
infantry, densely crowded together, still lay to the south of the road and
St. Hubert in such appalling confusion that all efforts to rally them
proved hopeless; and as the bullets and an occasional shell plunged into
them their pluck died out, and they began to dribble away into the ravine
by hundreds.
All this took some time—about two hours—and all this time other
events were taking place in rear, to which I must now return.
The 2nd Corps, “Fransecky,” was forming up near Rezonville, the
3rd Division already on the ground, the 4th in the act of arrival. This
Corps had been assigned to the first Army by headquarters, which had
ridden forward to the right rear of the 7th Corps, close to Gravelotte,
and here the meeting between the King and Steinmetz took place.
What words passed between them will never be known, the two
staffs remaining a couple of hundred yards away; but, to judge by the King's
gestures, Steinmetz had a rather unpleasant five minutes. If he had
been difficult to get on with before, he became ten times worse after-
wards, and refused to do more than merely transmit the orders received,
without adding the details of execution, which it was his province to
Supply.
The 3rd Division was now rapidly approaching, brigades in ren-
dezvous formation, bands playing, colours flying. As they descended the
gentle slope towards the enemy's position, just above the cleft of the
ravine, the sinking Sun—it was about 6 p.m.—caught their burnished
helmet spikes till the masses glowed like a sea of fire—an apparition not
lost on the French.
Le Boeuf and Frossard met at this moment; they were entirely
unable to guess at the number approaching, and Frossard considered
these newcomers must be the “Reserve Army under the King of Prussia,”
really meaning the third Army under the Crown Prince. Both agreed
that something must be done, and that, to break and defeat the troops
immediately before them, if only to save the honour of their arms and
gain time for retreat.
Both had used the time which had elapsed since the “pursuit fiasco’
to good purpose. New reserves had been organised, cartridges served
out, etc., and the guns which had been driven off the field by the
Prussian artillery were waiting under cover, loaded and limbered up,
ready to gallop forward into their old position, from whence they knew
the ranges.
Frossard's Corps was the first ready, and, unfortunately for the French,
it moved off independently.
Suddenly the front of his line was wrapped in a smoke cloud, a
storm of bullets swept through the air, and the French dashed forward
with all their old gallantry and élan, from Leipsic and Moscow.
The exhausted German fighting line immediately to their front gave
way; the French followed, skirting Gnigge's battery at about 1oo yards;
the latter threw round the trails of his three flank guns and poured case
into them as they passed. The Prussian artillery on the ridge south of
30 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
Gravelotte woke up, and their shells visibly shook the order of the
charge; but still, to the spectators at Gravelotte, it seemed that the
French reached and entered the eastern boundary of the wood in the
ravine.
Then, suddenly, out of the western edge of the same wood there
burst out a perfect torrent of stragglers—the thousands, literally, who for
hours had been collecting in it.
In a wild access of panic they dashed up the steep slope, and on to
the front of their batteries; in vain the gunners yelled at them, and
threatened to fire on them (but did not); in vain mounted officers threw
themselves upon them sword in hand ; the mob was mad with terror, not
to be denied, and swept through the guns, demoralising all they came in
contact with. Here one of the strong points of the artillery came out.
The guns could not move without horses, and the men would not move
without the guns; hence, in a few moments the fire was resumed, and
as at this moment some fresh troops from Goeben's Corps (the 8th)
cut in on the French flank from St. Hubert, the latter were compelled
to retreat.
As a fact, they had not ever really reached the wood ; the artillery
fire, supplemented by that of the really brave men who had rallied at the
edge of it, had stopped the rush, and a very slight pressure on their flank
had induced their rearward movement.
This was the second panic of the day, but a third one was at this
very moment preparing, and curiously as a result of Goeben's order
which had brought the above-mentioned sorely-needed support to the
flank. Goeben, seeing the 2nd Corps approach, knew that he had no
further need for a reserve, and had sent in his last closed troops towards
St. Hubert some minutes before the French counter-stroke.
The direction in which they were sent is open to question on tactical
grounds. There were far too many troops at St. Hubert already as it was,
and with the 2nd Corps on the ridge of Gravelotte a limit was actually
placed to the French attack in any case. His reserve was far more
required on his northern flank, where for hours a most extraordinary gap
had existed, offering a chance to Le Boeuf such as, in the hands of a
Napoleon, must have given the victory to the French arms, but of which,
unfortunately for them, Le Boeuf did not avail himself.
But, right or wrong, Goeben could not conceivably have anticipated
what actually did occur, for it simply passes the wit of man to imagine
such a concatenation of blunders. The 9th Hussars, the divisional
regiment, had returned to the reserve, and when this moved off, either
with or without orders, it followed in its track along the great road.
The deployment and action of the leading troops against the flank
of the French counter-stroke checked the movement of the following
infantry, and the cavalry regiment as usual tried to force its way past.
They were in column of threes; soon the block became absolute, and to
reduce the height of the target the Officer commanding the 9th Hussars
ordered the men to dismount, which they did.
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 3 I
As if things were not already bad enough for the Germans, fortune
ordained yet another cause of perplexity. At this very moment the
reserve men and horses of the Hussars, coming straight from Germany,
arrived on the scene. They had found the last halting-place of their
regiment, had been there rapidly told off into a fifth squadron, and had
immediately moved off in its wake.
Their horses were only half broken to fire, the men even less
trained, and in a few minutes both became exceedingly unsteady in the
roar of the fire re-echoing from the woods and the crash of the bursting
shells. -
The colonel in front knew nothing of this reinforcement, and
presently, finding all possibility of an advance at an end, he decided to get
out of it far enough to give the infantry room.
Having mounted the men, he sounded “threes, about,” that fatal
signal; then “walk, march.” “Threes, about,” was obeyed with unanimity,
but the untrained horses being now at the head of the column, quickened
the pace. The colonel, having retired as far as he wanted to, then
sounded “front,” and was obeyed by the first three and part of the
fourth squadron; but the fifth never heard the “front” at all, or, if they
did, mistook it for the gallop, for at that moment they broke clean away
and dashed back in wildest confusion up the road. The led horses and
teams in the streets of Gravelotte took fright, panic seized on most of
the men, and the next moment a horde of men, horses, teams, etc.,
streamed out of the end of the village and made for the setting sun.
Officers of every rank rode at them with their swords and used them,
but were swept away also, and not 200 yards away the King and staff
were spectators of the disaster. Fortunately for the Germans, the
French were in no condition to take advantage of this disorder, even if
they saw it. The Prussian gunners were still in action, and fairly swept
everything away before them, even with their old-fashioned common
shell and percussion fuses, and we may pause to ask what chance would
any existing troops have against modern shrapnel under similar circum-
Stan CeS.
A lull now took place for a while, but the King's blood was up, as
indeed was everyone else’s excepting Moltke's. The King now ordered
Steinmetz to attack with everything he could lay hands on. Moltke
endeavoured to dissuade him, but in vain. Having said all he could,
Moltke fell away a couple of hundred yards or so and found some other
business to attend to. This is historical, and deserves to be remem-
bered, for Moltke in his recent history of the war has deliberately taken
the blame on his own shoulders to save the King’s prestige, but there
were many witnesses to the Scene, and Hoenig vows they can corroborate
his statements. Steinmetz, as we have seen, had lost both his head and
his temper. He passed on the order as he received it to von Zastrow,
7th Corps, and to Franzsecky, the 2nd Corps. The former had never for
a moment had his command in hand during the whole day, and now all
he could do was to send gallopers to order all they could find to advance,
simply, no direction or method being assigned them. FranzSecky, who
32 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
was a first-class man but perfectly strange to the ground, dared not risk a
movement through the woods direct against the enemy in the fast-growing
darkness (it was now past seven, and in the ravine the light was rapidly
failing). He accordingly chose the good old road, the defile so often fatal
on this unlucky day, though doing so meant, with regard to the position
of his corps at the moment, moving round the arc of the circle instead
of by its chord. The order was given ; the troops took ground to their
left, wheeled into columns of sections down the road, and with bands
playing, King and staff waiting to receive the officer's salutes as they
passed, the unfortunate corps moved forward to what should have been, and
narrowly escaped being, its doom.
St. Hubert had remained in the hands of the Germans all this time,
and the ground immediately on either side of it, but Franzsecky and the
officers with the leading regiments, fresh to the ground, appear to have
been unaware of this. As the leading regiment approached the unlucky
garrison of this, their bridge head, unable to distinguish their uniforms
in the twilight, and receiving the bullets meant for their comrades, they
front formed as best they could and opened a violent fire into the backs
of their own men, many of whom broke back, overran the head of the
column, and confusion worse confounded ensued. The bravest men
held on to the post, which was never relinquished, and under their pro-
tection order was ultimately re-established, but not till after a long delay.
We must return for a moment to the events that had been taking
place south of the road, about the great quarries, just before the
2nd Corps began its advance. These quarries, properly utilised, were the
key to the French position, lying as they did but some 4oo yards from
Point du Jour, and affording ready-made cover for a whole division to
form under. They had been captured once by the Germans some hours
before, but the French counter-stroke had forced them out of it, and the
latter had held on to them with grim determination. Shortly before the
2nd Corps moved off, the isolated companies of the Germans, on the
initiative of the leaders on the spot, had again succeeded in rushing
them, and again the French from Point du Jour made desperate and repeated
efforts to re-conquer them, with all the better chances of success, for
the darkness had now deprived the Germans of the support of their
artillery.
Zastrow meanwhile, as already stated, had been sending officers to
order whatever they could find to advance, and fortunately they only
found four out of ten battalions, and these were just now emerging from
the wood in rear of the defenders of the quarries, when the French made
an unusually vigorous rush for their front.
The fresh battalions, receiving a heavy fire and knowing nothing of
the presence of their own men in front of them, rushed forward and
poured a heavy fire into the backs of their comrades, and one must do
honour to the courage these displayed. They were the survivors of the
fittest, weeded out by a process of selection, that had endured for hours,
and no man left his post, but hung on and mowed down the French at
their very muzzles. Then, as the fire from the rear still continued, officers
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 33
and volunteers walked bravely back in the teeth of their own men’s fire,
and at length succeeded in stopping it.
It was now pitch dark, the “cease fire" had been sounded all along
the Prussian line and accepted, curiously and very fortunately for the
Germans, by the French (it is the same in both armies), for the former
were now about to put the finishing stroke to their day's work of blunders
and expose themselves to what should have been absolute destruction. It
is difficult to disentangle what actually took place within my space.
Hoenig takes pages to narrate it, and I have but sentences to dispose of
it in. Briefly, when the troops coming up the road fired into the backs of
their comrades, and a part of the latter broke back, hopeless confusion
ensued at the head of the columns. The troops in rear, mad to get
forward, pressed hard on those in front, and actually, thanks to their close
order and excellent discipline, managed to force their way through as
formed bodies, and then attacked outwards in all directions, only to be
beaten back again. Again there was a lull in the fight, and it seems to
have been about this time that the “cease fire” was sounded. Franzsecky,
his two divisional commanders and their staffs, were at St. Hubert. They
decided that something more must be done, and ordered the 4th Division
forward. At the time it was so dark that the troops had literally to grope
their way across. The leading battalions were brought to a stand by the
darkness and formed in close column, and by degrees the others formed
on them, so that by about Io.30 p.m. twenty-four fresh battalions were
massed beyond St. Hubert, on a space of 1,300 yards front and 900 yards
depth. “How, nobody can now say,” and about these had aggregated
the débris of fifty-nine companies of the 8th Corps and twenty-two
companies of the 7th, so that towards 11 p.m. forty-eight battalions stood
like sheep in a pen on a space of about 1,650 yards front by I, Ioo deep,
and not 300 yards from the enemy's muzzles.
“Surely,” as Hoenig says, “military history contains no parallel case.
Why had one brought these masses together ? To attack; but then, in the
name of all things reasonable, why did they not attack? The answer may
perhaps be given by those who understand the moral of troops. Why did
not at least these twenty-four fresh Pomeranian battalions go straight for
the enemy without a shot P One hears so much of ‘dash' and ‘resolution,”
of an ‘advance with the bayonet,’ of the advantages of a ‘night attack.’
Here lay all the conditions for success in such adventures ready to hand :
the enemy not 300 yards away, the troops massed, and the dreaded fire-
swept zone behind. If, as the troops actually did, it was possible to
remain in this dense mass from 11 p.m. to 6 next morning, and always
under a certain amount of fire—for from time to time the musketry blazed
up anew—then why could not we go forward with drums beating, and
overrun the enemy with cold steel P Three minutes were all that were
required, and we should have lost fewer in those three minutes than we
actually did in those seven hours. Why? The answer is plain, and I
will give it: simply because we did not understand what fighting
means; the whole course of the day shows it. We did not understand
either skirmishing tactics or the employment of lines and columns, and
C
34. FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
the climax of the day was the bankruptcy declaration of our tactical experts.
The spirit was there—that was proved by our seven hours' endurance in this
position—but it is not enough merely that the spirit should be there ;
one must also understand how to use it.”
Turn now to the losses, remembering that it is on the “terrible
losses due to the breechloading arms” that the intrenched-camp schools
base their main argument. The three corps, in round numbers 9o, ooo men,
engaged on this flank by the Germans lost 267 officers and 5,128 men,
or 5.5 per cent. These losses were certainly very unequally divided.
Individual companies doubtless suffered more severely, but this was
certainly due to indifferent handling—firing into each other's backs, for
instance. It is noteworthy that the 32nd Brigade, the only one which
delivered a united attack in the whole action, lost only 2% per cent. ; and
in the 7th Corps only two regiments, the 39th and 73rd, had losses worth
speaking of, viz., the former 4 officers and 124 men, the latter 3 officers
and 164 men, out of some 3,000 each. Certainly these figures do not
justify the German failures, and even if one doubles them, to allow for
mechanical improvements since effected in infantry weapons, well-
disciplined troops would require a better excuse than this for failing to
carry a position.
It may be objected that the above is only the personal expression of
Opinion of one officer, and may perhaps be exceedingly biased; but this
is by no means the case. Though not much confirmation will be found
in the works of popular historians, a good deal exists in more technical
works, and still more can be accumulated orally by those who have lived
on intimate terms with German officers. Still, to strengthen my case, I
give here a short extract from Meckel’s “Tactics,” undoubtedly the
leading work in the German or any other language. Summarising the
conduct of attack operations by the German Army in the first half of the
war, he says :—
The beat of the drum went before the thunder of the guns, and our power
shattered before the fire of his unshaken infantry. Woods, hollows, and villages
were filled with stragglers, and the open fields lay tenanted only by the dead and
dying, victims of our premature violence.
It is, however, the Russo-Turkish War which has furnished the
greatest wealth of argument in support of the views of the passive
defensive school, but, as in the case of the Franco-German fighting, the
statements they bring forward fail to stand detailed criticism.
To deal with all the so-called evidence would require more space than
I can afford; a few instances must, therefore, suffice—they are taken from
the diary subsequently published by Colonel Kouroupatkine, Skobeleff's
staff officer during the campaign.
In the attack on the east front of the Grivitza redoubt (Plevna), the
4th Roumanian Division carried the trenches in its front at the first rush,
then re-formed and made an attempt on the redoubt itself; the first and
second lines successively failed, and the third reached the edge of the
ditch only to be compelled to fall back again for want of support at the
critical moment
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 35
The 3rd Division, directed against the north front, also succeeded in
penetrating into the ditch, but, like the others, had to retreat owing to
want of support.
The two divisions lost in all about 24 per cent. only out of the
battalions actually under fire; there were besides twenty-four other
battalions on the ground which might have been thrown in. Kouroupatkine
is distinctly of opinion that had the attack been properly combined it must
have succeeded.
The conduct of the 1st Brigade, 5th Russian Division, deserves
particular notice. It was detailed to support the left flank of the
Roumanians, and succeeded in reaching and taking shelter in a hollow
some 4oo yards from the redoubt; here it lay during the whole of the
above-mentioned action, as inactive as Lord Cardigan at Balaclava,
during the charge of the heavy brigade, because its orders were only to
support, not to assist, the Roumanians; but when the main attack of the
latter had been beaten back, the Russians began their advance, and
finding cover about 200 yards from their object, halted, brought up all
their reserves, and, headed by their general, rushed the redoubt without
firing a shot. They had been more or less under fire for three hours, and
in the last rush and the subsequent time spent in the redoubt must have
suffered very severely, but still the total for the day only amounted to the
same percentage as above, viz., 24. •
Kouroupatkine's book contains some three hundred pages, and at
least every third one has some mention of the faults above-mentioned.
Thus in another place he says: “No object of attack had been assigned
to the companies; their leaders led them forward haphazard. Overcome
by the Turkish fire, they halted and opened fire; the ground offered no
cover; every moment their losses increased, and once having come to a
stand, it was found impossible to get them to go on again?’ (page 209).
On page 2 I 2 I find an account of a successful rush on some shelter
trenches: “Distances and intervals were soon lost, and the companies
advanced practically in a single line. Nine hundred to 1,000 paces from
the Turkish works one company raised a cheer and the whole rushed
forward together, but the people soon lost their wind in the heavy soil;
at about 500 paces they found shelter in a hollow and halted. After about
three minutes a second hurrah was heard, and the whole threw themselves
forward at a run and carried the trench. The whole attack lasted about
fifteen minutes, and in this instance the losses did not exceed 25 per cent.
in the whole encounter.” -
The action of General Skobeleff's detachment in the battle of the
I Ith September cannot be passed over ; it contains too many important
lessons. The first task before him was to capture the third crest in front
of the Green hill. Owing to the fog, the artillery preparation was only
partial, but it cut both ways, for, for the same reason, the Russian advance
was almost unperceived ; they carried the position, and isolated parties
penetrated even as far as the redoubt Redi Bey tabiya (afterwards
Skobeleff No. 1). The Turks began to waver; a single closed detachment
in sight and they would have run ; but none was at hand; and the
C2
30 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
Russians themselves had to give way before a Turkish counter-attack.
On the third crest there was no cover and no spades to make any, and
for nearly four hours the Russians lay out in the open exposed to the
full sweep of the Turkish fire. Presently the Turks made a desperate
counter-attack and began to press back their enemy all along the line,
and to stop them, Skobeleff sent forward a battery to case-shot range and
attacked in his turn. The Turks gave way, evacuated the Green hill, and
took shelter in and behind the redoubts. The Russians halted and tried
to re-establish their formations; this was about 2.30 p.m. General
Skobeleff decided on pushing his attack against the redoubts.
“The fog was still lying heavily in the valley which separated the Russians from
the Turkish works Abdul Bey tabiya and Redi Bey tabiya. The latter was already
fairly visible, and the uninterrupted fire of the Turks showed by the rising powder
smoke the position of the rifle pits. These were about 120 yards in front of the
redoubts and the long covered approach connecting them. To reach the works
the Russians had to descend the slope, some 1,000 yards long, of the Green hill,
which was closely planted with vineyards ; in the bottom flowed a brook between
steep banks, impassable for artillery; beyond came a stiff ascent of 400 yards which
merged into the glacis of the redoubts.
“Punctually at 3 p.m. the Vladimir and Susdallski regiments, together with the
9th and Ioth Rifle Battalions, advanced with bands playing to the assault.
The Russians dashed forward and commenced with cheers to ascend the further
slope; but the reinforced fire of the Turks brought them to a stand, and only
a small party of the bravest still hung on. Reinforcements were urgently
necessary. . . . The 7th Rewal Regiment was to follow with two battalions in
first line, the 3rd in second ; the companies deployed at small intervals, and with
its bands playing advanced to the attack. The hollow was soon crossed, the
expended débris of the first assaulting troops joined, and all together in a dense
commingled swarm they attempted the ascent.
“They only succeeded in getting halfway, then threw themselves down in the
open and commenced a wild fire. It was evident that without fresh support even
these troops would melt away; there were still in hand twelve companies of the
6th Libau Regiment and two rifle battalions, standing behind the Green hill. The
choice lay between employing them as a covering force behind which to withdraw
the others, or to throw them all in to decide the victory. Skobeleff chose the
latter.
“This fresh support carried the crowd on some way, but the Turks seized the
opportunity to make a counter-attack. The Russian right staggered ; it seemed
as if the whole would give way.
“Then Skobeleff flung in his last reserve, himself, into the scale. What other
leader in Europe but he could, by the power of his will and example, have checked
the instinct in 10,000 men to save themselves by flight P Mounted on his white
horse, himself in fullest white uniform, he galloped to the front, and his ‘Forward,
my lads,’ brought even the dying to life. The troops rose and followed him, and
in a few moments the redoubt was in his hands, and remained in them till, worn
out by hunger and fatigue, and deserted by the whole of the rest of the army, the
gallant remnant of his division retired ‘by order' about 5 p.m. on the following
day, having beaten off five successive Turkish attacks.”
[The above is not a verbal translation, but simply a précis from
Kouroupatkine.]
The total losses in this division, after three days’ constant fighting,
during which it had carried five positions, including the redoubts, by
direct assault, only amounted to 40 per cent., So it is scarcely possible
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMIPS. 37
that any one of them can have demanded a sacrifice of more than 10 per
Cent. ; and it is obvious that, given adequate artillery preparation, and
the arrival of the supporting lines at the right time, these losses would
have been very materially reduced. The whole evidence adducible from
these two campaigns proves only this fact, viz., that the attack of an
intrenched position only failed for one of two reasons, or a combination
of both : either want of preparation, including reconnaissance as well as
artillery fire, and inadequate combination ; or failure of the attacking
forces to stand the strain of the inevitable losses; and a little reflection
will show that both reasons have little to do with the weapons in use, but
everything with the methods of organisation and training and the con-
ditions of service in the opposing forces.
War is essentially a practical art; its successful conduct is principally
a consequence of the skilful adaptation of the means at hand to a given
end. If it were inherently probable that the scenes above described and
the blunders made either were the normal conduct of modern troops
under fire or would be normal in the future, the case for the intrenched
camps and field fortification school would be established beyond reach
of argument. But it is precisely this point that I do dispute. I maintain,
on the contrary, that, at any rate in the German Army, the conditions
which led to the consequences pictured above have been so far removed
by progress in the training of both leaders and men, that both field
fortifications and intrenched camps must, if employed at all, be calculated
to stand up to assaults of a very different description.
Let me endeavour briefly to sketch the form of attack which will have
to be encountered in the future, showing how the strategic attack
ultimately passes into local assault, and the points of resemblance
between the pitched battle and the struggle for possession of a fortress.
It used formerly to be said that a battle was an abbreviated siege.
Now a siege has become a prolonged battle, a distinction to be borne in
mind.
War commences by the collision between vast masses of cavalry that
endeavour mutually to pierce the screen each tries to draw around the
movements of its own side.
Cavalry is the arm which has made perhaps the greatest relative
progress of all since the last great European wars. In precision of
movement and shock-power nothing like it has been seen, except in
individual regiments, since the days of Frederick the Great, but in actual
mobility, depending on the breeding and care of the horses, it is far ahead
of all former standards.
Cavalry also is, of all arms, the most independent of odds. Precision
in manoeuvre, a good leader, and skill in the use of arms in the individual
can insure victory against any numerical preponderance in reason—say
four to one. The side which loses in the great preliminary duels will
find itself almost prostrated ; for just as in the old days of hand to hand
combat on foot, there is no power of stopping the pursuit until pursuer
and pursued fall to the ground from sheer exhaustion; four or five miles
38 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
is the outside distance required, and within that limit there are not likely
to be other troops available.
From the first, therefore, and in proportion as this end, viz., the
absolute destruction of the enemy's cavalry is obtained, one side will almost
entirely lose the power of ascertaining its enemy's position, while the
other, confident in its knowledge of where its opponent stands, can mass
its troops for the decisive act.
This secures to the assailant the certainty of victory in the artillery
duel, for, except under a disparity of conditions such as can only obtain
between Oriental and European armies, superiority in numbers is the
most decisive factor in artillery combats. This is owing to the fact
that from the nature of the arm the guns are necessarily fought with
about equal determination. They are laid by picked men on either
side, the gun's nerves do not shake, so national courage is considerably
eliminated ; and finally the gun anchors its detachment to the ground,
and experience has shown that in practice gunners do not bolt individually.
The consequences of this victory in the artillery duel are, however, far
more important now than at any previous time, and also they ensue
more rapidly. Formerly two field batteries might engage each other
for a couple of hours with the old percussion common shell with very
little injury to either. Now, with high explosives and shrapnel, twenty
minutes to half-an-hour must settle the question, and without the old
protection of the smoke screen, the chances of bringing up the teams
to effect a successful retirement in normal ground will be almost
infinitesimal. Then the assailants' guns are free to turn their undivided
attention on the infantry alone. They can approach to ranges at which
they cannot miss, say 1,500 yards, and not only will the material effect
be greater in proportion to the increased power of the weapon and its
projectiles—at least five times as great as it was in 1870 or 1879—but,
since the moral effect of fire increases very rapidly with the time in
which the losses are inflicted, it is probable that within a time relatively
very limited to what was formerly required, a condition of prostration will
be induced in the defenders in excess of anything hitherto witnessed ;
and it is certain that the time at the disposal of the latter to bring up
his reserves—which depends again on the length of front to be defended
and the accuracy of information disposable—will be very markedly
reduced.
Assuming, even, that the defenders' infantry are less shaken than
anticipated, yet the conditions under which, with equal armament, the
assailants will advance will be very different and far more advantageous
for the latter than formerly.
The principal cause which led to the dissolution of all order in the
Prussian assaults in 1870, viz., the impossibility of replying to the
defenders' fire till well within its effective sweep, will have vanished, for
the effective range against head and shoulder targets is the same on
either side, even where artillery has not prepared the way; but where it
has, and the defenders' nerves are thoroughly shaken, the chances are
that the assailants will shoot very much the straighter. Indeed, at no
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 39
time in history have the conditions been so favourable to the attack;
for not only are they no longer compelled to expose a larger target
to the defenders than he does to them, but in no previous period was
there anything approaching the power of the present guns to prepare
the way.
It is true that superiority of fire is only a temporary possession, and
with each fresh reinforcement on either side has to be fought for again,
but it will be evident that since each advance is only a consequence of
fire superiority, in proportion to the degree in which it is obtained, the
value of field obstacles, which have at most for their object to delay the
assailant under “effective,” fire from the work, will be diminished ; for
if the fire ceases to be “effective,” the obstacle ceases to have any
value, unless, indeed, it is of such a nature as to be in itself physically
indestructible and insurmountable ; but an obstacle of this nature only
permanent works can supply.
But there are yet other stumbling blocks for the defence to be
referred to here. Since experience has proved that the only possible
way of obtaining the advantages of combined fire (which does not
necessarily mean concentrated fire) from large bodies of artillery is to
mass the batteries, the defender is confronted by the horns of a double
dilemma. If he takes up an alignment beforehand it may, and probably
will, happen that the assailant will choose one which will neutralise the
better part of his (the defender's) guns, and take the remainder obliquely;
whilst if he (the defender) holds his guns ready to oppose the enemy in
whatever direction he may appear, he will have to come into action under
the most unfavourable conditions possible—probably will find that the
prolongation of his artillery line intersects the position of his infantry.
This, however, is only the first dilemma, and the second is worse and
generally unavoidable.
On the defensive, it is generally admitted, guns cannot protect their
own front. Infantry must, therefore, be disposed in front to cover
them ; but under normal conditions, viz., slopes suitable for the
manoeuvre of all arms, infantry cannot be safely placed less than
500 yards on the enemy's side of them in consequence of the dangers of
premature shell-bursts.
Nor can infantry be placed less than from 500 to 8oo yards behind
them, on penalty of forming stop butts for the “overs” meant for the
guns, the distance depending principally on the steepness of the reverse
slopes.
The advance line of infantry is therefore 1,000 yards at least from
its supports, and when the guns are finally forced to retire from their
positions, the supports must be brought up to the front line over the
crest of the ridge and down the exposed slope of the position in the full
sweep of both shrapnel and bullet. It might have been possible in
the days of the smoke screen—though, bearing in mind the universal
failure of the French Imperial troops to advance in the teeth of the old
Prussian common shell, I hardly think it was so even then—but under
40 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
existing conditions it is my firm conviction that such a movement is
utterly impracticable.
Imagine the conditions for a moment. We will assume a convex
slope, with a well-marked break in it at precisely the proper distance
in front of the guns. All other variations will be found if investigated
to present even greater difficulties. The infantry in the advance trench
have been crouching down under cover with their backs against the
parapet, watching the ground torn up by the shell and shrapnel of the
enemy; they can perhaps just see the muzzles of their own guns as they
are run up, and the impression the cessation of the fire makes on
them must be the reverse of favourable; 600 yards behind the guns the
Second line, deployed in line, has been lying down for a long time,
every now and then catching a shrapnel a little overtimed. The crisis
of the artillery duel approaches; it is evident the guns can no longer
hold their own and must be withdrawn. A galloper is sent down to
the infantry to order them to get into column to let the guns pass.
The men are young soldiers (as they must be everywhere at the present).
This is their first day under fire, and the impressions they have already
gathered as shells burst just in front of them, and wounded horses,
maddened with pain, now and again came screaming past them, can
hardly have been pleasant ones. As they rise to their feet to obey,
they catch sight of the shell-swept slope in front; the dust struck up
by the whirring splinters drives back in their faces. The gunners, too—
it is also their first day under fire—find their horses somewhat difficult
to manage. In the dust they cannot see the intervals in process of being
made for them. Some teams break away and come thundering right
down on the men straggling into column. They are not seen till within
50 yards; then some voice yells out, “Look out! the cavalry”; and in
that instant the line breaks into a rapid uncontrolled magazine fire.
On the other side, the enemy has not been idle. In the hollow in
front of the defender's position a few coppices give cover from sight, and
noting the bad look-out in his trenches, a brigade, or only a regiment of
cavalry, has crept up, unseen and unsuspected. Seizing the “psycho-
logical” moment they dash forward, and in forty seconds are on the first
line of trenches. They are over this without a pause, perhaps thirty men
down, but within another minute, and just as the supporting infantry on
the defender's side has emptied its last magazine on their own artillery,
the cavalry are on them and into them.
Whether such a stroke would prove decisive may be left open, but it
is certain that it would produce wild confusion, and everything would
depend on the use the assailant made of his opportunity. If, as some-
times happens, his infantry looked on with mouths open at the prowess
of their cavalry, little enough would be gained; but if, as I imagine is
more probable, the instant the cavalry broke ground the leading lines of
infantry advanced, the defender's first line would find itself under the
controlled fire at short range of men in numbers exceeding their own,
whilst they themselves were in the worst possible condition to reply to
them. Two minutes would settle their fate, and then would begin a
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 4 I
retreat uphill in the full power of both rifle and shrapnel. Ten minutes
should suffice to crown the ridge, and in two minutes more the horse
batteries, at any rate, would be in action, with a whole cavalry division
trotting up at hand to profit by further opportunities.
| Such a blow would pierce the line, and that, at any rate, is always the
preliminary of victory in a big battle. The point to be noted here is that
confusion of this description, which gives rise to chances for an enter-
prising enemy to seize, always does occur in a general action and inevitably
On the defender's side, for—
First. The defender is inferior is cavalry, otherwise he would
presumably not be on the defensive.
Second. The weakness in cavalry entails the defeat in the artillery
duel.
Third. The retirement of the guns creates that psychological
moment which is apt to end in panic and furnishes the cavalry with
the Opportunity to act.
War conducted on these lines evidently allows no time for the
evolution of hasty intrenchments into Plevnas. Obviously, and from the
nature of the case as between the great continental Powers, this must be
its normal course, for all of them are thoroughly alive to the drawbacks of
defensive warfare, and none would renounce the rôle of assailant until the
defeat of their cavalry and their consequent ignorance of the enemy's
whereabouts compelled them, but this would probably not occur more
than forty-eight hours before the collision of the main bodies, and,
allowing for time to draw the troops together, twelve working hours will
probably be the maximum for intrenchment available.
Still, things may go differently, and one side take up a strong
defensive line, fortifying it with a week’s work. If such a position were
chosen in an almost impracticable country across the main line of opera-
tions, a frontal attack might become unavoidable. But such country
practically does not exist on any probable theatre in Europe; troops are
too mobile and roads too numerous. Masking the line in front—and this
would be more or less easy in proportion as the natural obstacles were
greater or less—the assailant would march around his enemy's flanks,
compelling him to fall back and intrench fresh positions till his line
eventually formed a circle, and in this way an intrenched camp of the
Plevna type would be created.
Troops thus surrounded must, however, ultimately starve, and the
greater their number the sooner hunger sets in ; on the other hand, the
greater their number the better are their chances, tactically, of breaking
out, for what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander; the rôles of
attacker and defender have now changed hands.
There can be no doubt that in dealing with areas ten and twelve
miles in diameter, the ground will frequently offer to the leader of the
enclosed force great opportunities for massing troops for a surprise
attack, and he has further the permanent advantage of acting on interior
lines. A local and tactical victory is, therefore by no means precluded,
and the chances will be most favourable precisely at the moment when
42 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
the circle is being completed; for the investing force will have reached
its greatest limit of extension, its line will not yet be organised, and
evidently with every additional hour the strength of the obstacles the
investing force will raise will increase, till within a week or ten days they
will have grown into practically insurmountable impediments.
Even if the troops should, as they easily may, win a tactical success,
there yet remains the problem of the trains to be dealt with. 3oo, ooo
men, say six corps, would require wheeled transport extending over about
sixty-six miles of road; and even if by chance there should be as many as
three roads leading out of the camp in the required direction, and within
convenient distances of one another, this would give twenty-two miles to
each road, which, in face of the blown-up bridges, intersected roads, etc.,
the investor would be certain to interpose to their progress, it would
take the rearmost wagons, at best, two clear days, and probably more, to
traverse. Long before they could get clear, the investing forces would
have closed in on their flanks and rear, and though the bulk of the
combatants might succeed in escaping, they would be without ammuni-
tion and supplies and in a few hours defenceless, unless, indeed, the
operation was supported by a field army outside. -
But, except in cases where a very great disproportion in the numbers
of troops available exists, this exterior field army would be dealt with by
troops specially detailed for the purpose, and the balance of forces not
markedly affected ; still, it is just possible that where additional time only
is required to mobilise inferior forces, the expedient of the intrenched
camp might be profitably resorted to. This leads us to the intrenched
camp constructed and provisioned in time of peace.
Here let us take an hypothetical case. The object is to detain as
many of the enemy for the maximum of time and with the minimum
deduction of men from the field army. Such a fortress, surrounded by
an impassable obstacle (if such a thing could exist), could hold out until
starvation compelled surrender, and the smaller the garrison the longer
the stores would last. But the enemy possesses a means of destroying
these stores by fire from a distance, and this danger must be guarded
against. If the stores are to be in quantity sufficient to re-provision a
field army, it is evident that it is practically impossible to supply bomb-
proof accommodation for the whole of them. It will therefore be necessary,
as pointed out above, to push out works for their defence to a sufficient
distance to prevent the enemy's shells setting fire to them. Other causes,
such as the fact that important strategic points are also great trade
centres, owing to the convergence of communications, also tend to
render protection in the same direction advisable; and now the practical
difficulties begin. In 1859, 5, ooo yards radius for the circle of forts was
considered ample ; in 1862-1864, 5, ooo already proved insufficient ; in
1870, Io, ooo was barely enough, and now even zo,ooo is too little. For
the point is, fire is the danger to be guarded against, and fire is as readily
caused by the explosion of a shell that has come twelve miles as by one
that has only traversed a single one. Accuracy of fire is comparatively
unimportant. In a goods depôt, covering 50 acres, it is quite immaterial
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 43
at which end of it the fire breaks out, and even at the extremest ranges
modern guns are quite accurate enough to hit a parish if you aim at the
steeple, and that is all that is required ; nor has the range of artillery
attained its limits.
But 20,000 yards radius means 120,000 yards perimeter, and the
farther apart the forts the greater must be the garrison. Allowing even
three men per yard of front—the very minimum possible—we already
arrive at the figure of 360, ooo men for the garrison.
Again, since the distance between the investing line and the works
of the besieged depends primarily on the limits of sight and of rifle fire,
the greater the radius of the works the less the difference in the fronts to
be occupied, and, hence, the less the numerical superiority required by
the investing force to hold the invested. If we take a mile as the distance
between the opposing forces, then when two miles' radius sufficed to
protect the nucleus, the perimeters of the two circles were as twelve to
eighteen or three to two. A proportionate superiority in numbers,
roughly, was then necessary; but if we take ten and eleven miles as the
radii, respectively, the ratio will only be as sixty to sixty-six, or ten to
eleven ; 4oo, ooo men would, therefore, suffice to retain 360, ooo, and the
gain in retaining power has become infinitesimal. If time is of no
importance, i.e., if no relieving army, no accession of allies, owing to
political causes, is to be expected, hunger alone must soon compel
surrender, as at Metz and Paris; but time may be the element of the
whole situation, and it is therefore necessary to inquire to what extent
modern improvements in arms, organisation, and tactics have tended
either to prolong or curtail the defence.
In the days of Vauban's first system, the main strength of the place
lay in the broad, deep ditch which surrounded it and the flanking defence
which was included in the ditch, and, no matter how much knocked about
by artillery, the bastions always remained and retained their power of
sweeping the ditch, a power all the greater because the defenders felt
themselves always secure against the threat of cold steel. The place
could only be penetrated through a breach, and that breach restricted the
assaulting column to a defile of from 20 to 60 paces width. Nowadays
the forts are detached bastions, and the curtains between them have
stretched from 200 to 4,000 and more yards. The assault can be
delivered on the whole front, and the flanking power of the forts is
relatively, and in spite of the progress in weapons, much reduced.
We must distinguish between two classes of works, viz., intrenched
camps, surrounded by forts furnished with revolving turrets and dis-
appearing guns—a class more often found on the drawing board than on
the ground—and camps protected by works, with ditches deep enough
and escarps sufficiently sunk to be safe against direct assault and difficult
to breach, with their guns served overbank and destitute of overhead
COVér.
The latter are far the most numerous, indeed almost the only ones
actually in existence, and these again may be divided into those so near
the front that they are liable to be attacked within forty-eight hours of the
4-4- FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
first collision, at a time when it is physically impossible for the works of
armament, clearing the front, closing the curtains with field defences, etc.,
to be completed, still less organised; and those at such a distance from
the frontier that ample time will be available to prepare for the coming
attack. It will be obvious how enormously the difficulties of the defence
will be increased in the former case; if, then, I can make my point good
against the latter, it will cover the case of the former.
As the extent of perimeter increases, not only does the difficulty of
adapting the works to the ground increase enormously, but the chance of
surprise on any one particular front becomes greater.
The enemy can make his arrangements for that surprise in complete
Security, and mass his troops against the front chosen to any extent he
may deem desirable.
Accordingly, at break of day some morning, one of the forts—perhaps
two—will find itself overwhelmed with a storm of shells, from sixty to
one hundred field guns, which will engage them at what are for the
forts unknown ranges, and with every advantage of invisibility in
their favour. The artillery in the forts may be far superior in power,
but it is a question of silencing fire on either side, not of destroying
earthworks; and a shrapnel or melinite 12-pounder shell will destroy a
gun detachment as thoroughly as a 50-pounder. It is a question of
straight shooting, not of hard hitting; and just as two good shots with
sixteen bores will kill more snipe than one man with a four bore, the
more numerous field guns will kill more gun detachments than the less
numerous and more clumsy guns of position, and this, whether they are
within or without the works. But the guns of the defence silenced, as
silenced they ultimately must be, the attack of the intermediate curtains
becomes simply the ordinary direct assault against hasty intrenchment
on the battle-field.
The works and obstacles may and probably will be of considerably
heavier profile than usually encountered in the field, but at the most
they can only be “obstacles to delay the enemy under effective fire,”
and since, if the assault is to succeed at all, it can only be on condition
that the fire superiority has been achieved at considerable distances,
the fire from the defenders will be relatively ineffective, and, in proportion
as it is more or less so, the task of the assailants in surmounting
the obstacles will be reduced. Time and thoroughness of preparation
become the only elements of the subject.
The curtains once pierced on a sufficient front to permit of the
passage of large bodies of troops, it becomes a matter of indifference
whether the forts hold out or not.
Just as at the commencement of the century the monster armies of the
allies simply masked the permanent fortifications of France, and with
the bulk of their forces marched round them, so will the assailants of
the fortresses act with the forts in the present day. All that the
defenders can do will be to delay the assailants' progress by fresh
positions; but when Once the chief position, stronger by far than any
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 4-5
subsequent one can reasonably be, has fallen, the fate of the others is
merely a question of a very short time.
But that the frontal assault will succeed, indeed, must succeed, if the
attacking troops are properly handled, I have shown in the long (and
what many readers must have considered irrelevant) tactical disquisition
preceding.
Forts provided with armoured turrets, hydropneumatic-gun carriages,
etc., cannot, of course, be dealt with in so summary a manner; yet the
number of guns so mounted must necessarily be limited, while the area
over which their fire has to be distributed is so large that in practice
cover from sight will almost always be found by troops endeavouring to
operate or penetrate between any two forts. This on the assumption—
an extreme one—that it may be necessary to reduce a fortress without
waiting for the arrival of a heavy siege train.
Even in such a case the difficulties on the ground would not prove
actually as great as they appear in the study. Smokeless powder has
conferred an immense advantage on the mobile field gun, choosing its
own ground as against the fixed gun in a fort or even in low annex
batteries. Take the cramped, restricted view from a turret or observation
tower, and imagine the difficulty of locating any particular flash out
of, say, one hundred flickering round an arc of 120° at the rate of one
a second. Even in the uncovered annex batteries the heavier gun is
at a disadvantage five days out of six, for the dust thrown up by the
blast of the gun is the only trace left to indicate whence the flash came,
and a 60-pounder gun will create a far larger and denser cloud than a
light 12-pounder.
The armour-covered guns in a fort would soon be shrouded in dust
and the smoke of bursting shells—carcasses, too, might be specially
employed for the purpose—and the chances of their hitting rapidly-
moving lines as they appear and disappear over the undulations that
even the levellest plains actually present will be very small indeed.
In any case their want of number and the area to be swept precludes
any possibility of their fire attaining the intensity of that usually developed
in the old bastion trace days to defend the foot of the breach ;
yet even that did not always suffice to stop the rush of good troops,
though other causes frequently did (Badajoz, for instance).
Besides, troops can attack under cover of mist, rain, etc., and when
we consider the enormous gaps that in practice actually separate
many forts (Vaujours and Celles before Paris, for instance), the possibility
of breaking in between on a front of from 2,000 to 3,000 yards must
be amply apparent. It is unnecessary to enter into the question of the
power of modern shells to pierce existing bomb-proofs and cut-down
parapets. It is, at any rate, amply sufficient to keep down any attempt
of the garrison to bring uncovered guns into action ; and if this
is admitted, then it follows that the possession of the few acres of
ground on which the fort actually stands is entirely immaterial (except
in the cases of so-called barrier forts). But if this is the case, then all
46 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
necessity for the prosecution of actual siege works vanishes, and with it
the chief difficulty of the assailants.
To sum up the argument as far as we have proceeded, the old
permanent fortifications, the essential principle of which was a practically
impassable obstacle—a 30-foot ditch generally—lost their value, not from
any inherent defect in design, but through the growth of other conditions
in military matters, including increased mobility, improved training, and
higher organisation. Hasty, improvised defences could never really form
an efficient substitute for them.
For a time, however, the progress of invention in fire-arms gave in
the muzzle-loading rifle a weapon which enormously favoured the defence,
for reasons already specified. The breach-loading rifle restored the
equilibrium, but this was again upset and the scales depressed on the side
of the offensive by the enormous development in power and accuracy
of the modern field gun—a development which has not yet reached its
full limit. This development has conferred on the assailant the power
of preparing his attack, and thereby discounting the value of passive,
but not insuperable, obstacles to an extent not even yet realised ; but it
has in no way lessened the value of a properly-designed irremovable
obstacle—the deep ditch, for instance—for it is no more possible for a
man to drop down a 30-foot counter-Scarp without injury to-day than it
was two or three centuries ago.
Hence, if we seek for the ideal solution of the fortification problem
irrespective of expense, it will be found in an extension of the continuous
emceinte system pushed out to the line of the forts.
When for the moment, during the muzzle-loading-rifle period, the
defence had the best of it, it was a reasonable proceeding to endeavour
to close the curtains by men's bodies rather than by walls; and since,
owing to the smaller radii of the circles requiring to be inclosed, each
man within the fortress neutralised for a time one and a half men outside
of it, the construction of intrenched camps was a fairly practical
expenditure of money, having for its purpose to obtain the numerical
superiority for the field army.
Now that the perimeters of the circles respectively held by defender
and assailant are approaching the ratio of Io to I I, the advantage to be
secured is too insignificant to be worth the sacrifice of money, unless,
indeed, an impassable barrier enabling the garrison to be very markedly
reduced be arranged between the two sides, which can only be done at
prohibitive expense ; still, conditions may arise, favoured by the
topographical lay of the country, where it will be sound policy to face
it—Constantinople, for instance.
For if in the above I have condemned almost absolutely field fortifica-
tions and intrenched camps, it is only on the assumption that the
combatants in point of organisation and training for war are both at the
highest level as yet attained—that of the German army, for instance—
capable of mobilising numerically equal bodies of troops in approximately
the same time, and able to fight out their duel without the assistance of
any allies.
FIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS. 47
All armies and states in Europe, however, are not on this level, and
in proportion as they fall short of it the above deductions must be
modified. Obviously the same time or money spent in works adequate to
stop the rush of troops handled as were the Russians before Plevna, or
the 7th Corps at Gravelotte, would be useless in face of troops of the
quality of Pickett's Division at Gettysburg handled by a Napoleon.
Between first-rate troops the possible gain of time that may result
from the application of field fortifications will probably prove so small
that the men's energy, which is only limited in amount, would generally
better be spent in marching or resting than in making trenches which
too often only save the victor the trouble of digging their defenders'
graves.
In the class of work required for the intrenched camps of the day
the factor of money comes into play. The question for each government
to solve is, whether it is worth while to sink so many millions in passive
defences which cannot gain time enough by their resistance to enable
the country in case of attack to organise during the period of war itself
troops fit to take the field against a victorious enemy. The experience
of France in 1870 shows how hopeless it is to attempt such a task even
in a delay of six months, and it is hardly probable six months will ever
be allowed again. Besides, taking France, Italy, Austria, or Germany,
all able-bodied men being already organised in peace, no appreciable
addition to their strength can be made in time of war. England
(including India), Russia, and Turkey come under a very different
category.
The confidence existing between the government and the people is
another factor to be considered. Where the people exhibit jealousy of
large armies and resent the personal obligation to serve, a government
can get more money for fortifications and men than for men alone.
The ordinary newspaper and magazine editor, who form the opinions
of the average voter, will generally favour fortifications as a means of
reducing the load of personal service which is more felt by the
individual than the money tax. The government then can make such
arrangements in peace that in case of war the gain of time can be put
to some useful purpose.
Similarly, when a nation requires time to recuperate from a great
defeat, as France in 1870, fortifications are necessary to enable the
re-organisation of the fighting forces of the nation to be carried on.
The so-called “Chinese wall ” policy of that country, since so severely
criticised, was actually justified by the circumstances; under the
conditions that existed down to the close of the seventies the gain of time
the fortifications might have afforded would have been very considerable
indeed. But now, if the confidence France feels in her new army is
really well ſounded, then the time has passed for further outlay in
this direction, and her best plan would be to sell off the armaments
and forts for what they will fetch, and with the proceeds improve her
cavalry till, under all circumstances, it may be relied on to give her the
power of assuming the strategic offensive from the outset. In the case
48 RIELD FORTIFICATIONS AND INTRENCHED CAMPS.
of the small Balkan States, liable to Russian attack, fortifications are
also to be recommended ; the tactical leading and organisation in that
army are neither up to the Western level. The gain of time therefore
may be considerable, and time here means the arrival of allies. In
India, too, it is the whole element of the question.
With these exceptions, all money spent on fortifications is to be
deprecated, for whereas capital sunk in works is absolutely unproductive,
the example of Germany proves that money laid out in the
organisation and training for war of the whole able-bodied population
of a nation is not only productive, indirectly, by diminishing the risk
of invasion, and thereby giving confidence to commerce and agriculture,
but also directly by increasing the actual labour power of the country,
which it does in two ways; for not only does the twenty-four months
spent in service under conditions of hygiene relatively infinitely superior
to those under which the bulk of the population exist, largely increase the
man's resisting power to epidemics and thereby prolong the individual
expectation of life, but the habit of concentrated attention to the
performance of the matter in hand, which is taught by the German
method of drill to a far higher degree than by the soulless copies of it in
vogue in other nations, insures better work in the same time from the
trained soldier than can be given by the untrained civilian. On this
point the great employers of labour in Germany (and I have spoken of it
to many) are, I believe, unanimous, and my own observation certainly
confirms their view.
Further, the German system places at the disposal of the state all
that vast force of intellect and labour comprised in the upper classes of a
nation, viz., the men sufficiently well off not to be compelled to work for
a living, and constitutionally averse to engage in trade or professional
pursuits as a means of increasing their incomes. These men, in order to
maintain their social position in a land where military rank is literally the
only one recognised, are constrained to utilise their energies in educating
the lower classes under them, and in so doing are themselves indirectly
enormously benefitted, by being brought in direct contact with human
nature and made to understand that after all there is a deal of human
nature in all men. This, though the gain cannot be expressed in terms
of the currency, is however a guaranty for the maintenance of social
order, on which commercial prosperity ultimately depends, almost
impossible to overvalue; for whatever social dangers may break over that
country the upper classes will be looked up to as leaders, and their
experience of men will have made them competent ones.
The conclusion therefore of the whole matter is briefly this: The
employment of either field fortifications or intrenched camps cannot be
judged as an abstract question apart from conditions of time, social
evolution, and space. Improvements in Organisation and armament are
yearly diminishing the value of the support they can afford, and in
proportion as any given country attains to that perfect evolution of
national defence of which the German system is the highest existing type,
so is any recourse to their aid to be deprecated.
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS.
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL B00KS.
Gº. are certain difficulties with which the armed forces of a
nation, whether on land or sea, have to contend which are
absolutely foreign to any other human occupations, and which are rarely
appreciated by civilians.
Civilian leader-writers constantly compare the organisation of a
great railway with that of an army, and, in England at any rate, deduce
from the efficiency of the former and the obvious deficiency of the latter
an argument for handing over the land forces of the Crown to a board of
able civilian directors.
If the conditions were alike, the deduction would be sound and
incontestable; but they are not, and for the following reasons:—
A railway is constantly on a war footing, engaged in active opera-
tions. From daily experience in face of the enemy—time, the public,
and shareholders—every man becomes absolute master of the practical
details of his daily life. A new idea in locomotives, say, can be discussed
by experts, tested in practice, and its value ascertained by concrete
figures. The process may be slow, but only the fittest ultimately survives.
In an army everything is different. To make the comparison complete,
one must imagine that the railways of the world were only in fitful
activity for a few months at a time, the periods of action being in each
case separated by many years. Assume for instance the London and North-
Western suddenly demobilised in the year 1854, but compelled to
maintain a staff and rolling stock equal to the best in existence, and
capable, on pain of annihilation, of dealing at forty-eight hours' notice
with the actual traffic of the present day; obliged by financial difficulties
to exercise all possible economy; able only to run an occasional train to
exercise the drivers, and limited to the experience gained by similar
outbursts of activity, once in every ten years, say, on other systems equally
handicapped, but acting under totally different circumstances of traffic to
be dealt with, and distances to be traversed. Further, to make the
comparison complete, every driver, Stoker, signalman, station-master, and
even director, must know that his prospects of meeting a bloody and
often agonising death averaged about one to four. What percentage of
trains might be expected to keep their time during the first ten days of
mobilisation ?
This much by way of apology for the apparent intellectual short-
comings soldiers are liable to, and which, afterwards, when all the
conditions are known, it is so easy for the average editor to point to with
the finger of scornful criticism. It is also necessary as a means of
explaining how it happens that false theories crop up and survive with
such extraordinary tenacity in tactical schools of thought.
D 2
2 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN IDRILL ROOK.S.
Imagine, under the conditions above described, the attitude of a
railway manager endeavouring to glean from the accounts of frequently
uneducated witnesses, coloured by national prejudice and party feeling,
just those points from an experiment on a continental railway best fitted
for adoption on his own system. Normally it is hard enough, but under
the assumed conditions it is ten times harder still. Yet that is the
intellectual task which the maintenance of war efficiency sets to the
commander-in-chief of modern armies, and in proportion as his own war
experience is more remote and limited, the task becomes harder.
No army has been placed in circumstances of greater difficulty than
our own. We have had no experience of field warfare in Europe since
Waterloo, and since then a change, relatively as great in the armament
and organisation of land forces as that which separates the old high roads
and stage coaches from the flying Scotchman and the Forth Bridge, has
taken place.
Steam, iron, and steel have not changed the conditions of land
transport more thoroughly than the introduction of universal military
service and breechloaders have altered the methods of war.
When mail coaches first came into competition with Blenkinsop's
locomotive and the first Stockton and Darlington railway, the old flying
stage coaches still kept the road and proved superior, notably in mobility.
It was the same when our old Peninsular army, the most perfect adaption
of the means supplied by long service and party government, met the first
rough shapings of the nation in arms idea, wielded indeed by the genius
of Napoleon, but hampered by the friction in its moving parts, due to want
of skill in their technical finish, i.e., the presence of jealousies amongst the
marshals and the absence of a perfected staff.
I have sometimes watched, from the windows of an Indian train, long
lines of bullock carts moving along the Grand Trunk road and been struck
with the parallel in our army progress.
Under European conditions the railway has long since beaten the
road. In India the road often holds its own ; it is cheaper and better
adapted to the requirements of the country.
So it has been with our army. Long service, which is to universal
service as wood is to steel in construction, is adapted to the necessities of
native warfare, and therefore holds its own for its special purposes; but
to use it for the same purposes for which universal service exists, is like
attempting to copy the cantilevers of the Forth Bridge in wood, and
expecting them to stand their own weight. The abstract principles of
war are to practical generalship what pure mathematics are to the engineer;
a knowledge of the strength of materials is indispensable to the application
of either.
Bearing in mind the nature of our current every-day experiences with
our old-fashioned army, the difficulties with which we had to contend on
the introduction of the breechloader will be more readily understood.
The difficulties of an old stage-coach manager, called on to transform his
property into a fully organised and efficient railway, would have been as
nothing in comparison, for he at least could either have studied the action
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS. 3
of the locomotives and gear in person or have sent reliable men to collect
for him the requisite data on the spot; and since these mostly deal with
concrete facts which can be expressed in figures and dimensions, the
information they conveyed could have been readily assimilated. Such is
not the case in dealing with the activity of troops. There a reliable
opinion can only be formed by men who are thoroughly acquainted not
only with the technical detail of the arms in use, the least important
perhaps of all factors, but with the organisation, training, and spirit of the
troops, and they must have seen them under a sufficient variety of circum-
stances to be able to generalise correctly.
The duration of the campaigns of Bohemia and France was insufficient
even to enable all but a few fortunate officers, specially prepared by
previous training in the German Army, to form opinions worthy of
acceptation. It was still less sufficient for men accustomed to totally
different conditions, and unprepared by serious military study, to arrive at
any true appreciation of the values of the new factors then introduced into
warfare.
I allude of course to the average military correspondent who
notoriously, with perhaps a couple of exceptions, not only had not made
a special study of war, but was bound, by the exigencies of his profession
and by rules of common courtesy to his host, to paint scenes of daring
endurance and magnify the slaughter to increase the heroism of the
troops he marched with.
Certainly now and again one or the other did speak out with a truth
and directness that has hardly been appreciated, but in the main the
pictures of the war with which they presented us conveyed an impression
almost the precise reverse of the truth. But it was these first graphic
pictures which decided the drift of English military opinion and formed
the starting point for the radically false theory of tactics which for the
past twenty years and more has found favour with us.
I wish it to be understood most distinctly that I do not question the
good faith of the correspondents; they did their duty with exemplary
courage and devotion, but as a consequence of the nature of things they
could only report as they did. And for the following reasons:—
It is well-known that in presence of several moving objects, a man
can only follow the movements of a limited number simultaneously ;
whether he chooses the right ones, those that give him the key to the
interaction of the whole, depends on his previous training and of course
on his special talent. An artist who is not a sailor may make a striking
picture of a yacht under sail, but closer inspection will generally reveal
that the sails are not trimmed to suit the breeze, or some vitally important
part of the rigging is omitted. A favourite error is to depict two vessels
on the same canvas, each enjoying a breeze of its own. I once saw a
charmingly-animated picture of Portsmouth harbour with five separate
and distinct breezes blowing simultaneously; and if, untroubled by flying
bullets and screaming shell splinters, many men, talented enough in their
way, can make such blunders, how much more may the unfortunate war
correspondent be pardoned for relatively similar slips.
4. THE Evolution OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS.
Let us try to realise his conditions, assuming that he has previously
Served in another army and is a man of iron nerve, but is witnessing for
the first time the action of an arm of which his reading has taught him to
expect very much. The last point is the important one in this case.
Standing somewhere about a thousand yards in rear, at which
distance a man is only distinguished as a largish dot, he sees a long
line of men dash out to assault a position some 8oo yards in front of them.
In a moment the enemy's front is veiled in smoke ; dust spurts out from
the bare brown plain ; the line wavers, then presses on, leaving little black
dots spotting the ground, and every moment the number of these black
dots increases. The supports come out, keep for a few moments their
sharp outline as little oblongs, then break and dash forward to join their
comrades; the little black dots continue to increase most rapidly.
Presently the line checks, the supports are absorbed, and a long fire-fight
ensues. We need not follow it any further, but will turn to the young
officer in the fighting line who smells powder for the first time, and has
also been led to expect terrible things from the new weapon, but who is
a brave man, determined to do his duty. With the first few yards men
fall—with every step the losses increase—at last the line breaks into a
wild fire and declines to advance any further. Through the smoke he
recognises few of the faces he knows around him, and looking back sees
the ground thickly encumbered with bodies; if a quarter of the section
is with him that is probably the outside. The picture imprinted on his
brain is ineffaceable, and hereafter he will believe, and state as a fact, that
75 per cent. of the company went down in the first five minutes. Subjec-
tively his statement will be true, but objectively false. Now we must
differentiate for temperaments, and note the influence they will exert on
Subsequent histories.
In every army there is a percentage of high-strung, nervous organisa-
tions—men bent on pushing themselves to the front and exceedingly
Self-reliant; these are to the average officer what the hysterical Radical is
to the average of the Members of Parliament. They will be the first on
conclusion of the peace to rush into print with hasty generalisations.
The nerves of the average less-pushing man wore out less rapidly, and
on return to the bivouac his powers of observation were not too blunted
to notice that a great many men whose faces he never expected to see in
this life again collected by degrees around the soup kettles. He will
draw his own deductions, but will probably, out of consideration for
everybody's feelings (the curse of a peace-trained army), keep them to
himself for the time, but his judgment on the value of tactical formations
will be strongly biassed for the remainder of his life.
It will be the same, only more so, with the officers following with the
Reserve. The nervous will notice only the ground strewn with bodies,
and having his mind already biassed with legendary anecdotes of heroic
endurance, will hardly pause to look at the sufferers more closely, but will
jump at the conclusion that they are all bond-fide casualties. His less
excitable comrade will observe more closely, but for obvious reasons will
refrain from publishing the result to the world. For, apart from the desire
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS. 5
not to tarnish the reputation of the army to which he belongs, there is no
particular reason why he should do so. The facts are known to seven-
tenths of his comrades, and in the training of troops for battle are
carefully kept in mind. It seems better on the whole for the military
reputation of the country and the popularity of the service not to
contradict the brilliant, if inaccurate, pictures of heroism common to
popular books on war. And as long as the company officers—the men
responsible for the drill training of the recruits—are aware of the
circumstances, no apparent harm will be done by keeping silence.
The matter, however, assumes a different aspect when, by promotion
and lapse of years, the responsibility of the recruit training passes into
other hands. Then the evil of playing with truth re-asserts itself, and the
older experienced men see that as a consequence of false tradition the
army is being taught on a false assumption, viz., that nine-tenths of the
men are heroes, and not the contrary, which is nearer the fact. In most
services even then silence is preserved ; the task of painting things as they
are is too unpopular in itself, and the man who undertakes it exposes
himself too much to the suspicion of wishing to blow his own trumpet a
suspicion peculiarly repugnant to those very natures most reliable in
presence of actual personal danger. Yet with the view to check the evils
the blind perpetuation of legendary national heroism inevitably entails,
men—and these, too, of the highest reputation for ability and courage—have
been found in the German Army to step into the gap and remind their
juniors of what war actually is like ; but they have had to pay in person for
their courage, and have been vilified and abused all round. Sometimes
their disclosures have been made anonymously, as in the case of the
Militär Wochenblatf's remarks anent the conduct of the Landwehr in the
war, contributed as pièces justificatives for the new Military Bill; but a
few—Meckel, Hoenig, and others—have been bold enough to append
their signatures, with results hardly encouraging for those tempted to
indulge in the same vein.
There is yet a third party whose views exercise a preponderating
influence on military history and literature, and this is formed by the
general officers in command of corps, divisions, and brigades. These
are mostly men of fairly advanced age, fifty to seventy at least. Referring
specially to the Franco-German War, it will be seen that at the time they
entered the Service the conditions were evidently very different to what
they are now. There were no breechloaders, and out of the necessities
of the case a tradition of mass training (there was no time for any other)
had evolved itself. A great reaction after the strain of years of active
service had set in, and almost up to the date of the 1866 campaign their
military experience had been bounded by the horizon of the parade
ground. Then came the introduction of the breechloader. It is not
much to be wondered at if their minds and judgments were a good deal
upset by this new arm, and, failing practical experience on a sufficiently
large scale, each man formed his own conclusions according to tempera-
ment, either refusing to believe in the weapon at all, or swallowing greedily
the extremest doctrines of the inventors and peace time experimentalists,
6 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS.
The war itself came and shook them up. The oldest Conservatives
saw the Austrians fall like packs of cards before the new weapon, and
their confidence in their judgment was shaken ; the theorists saw the
confirmation of their most exalted hopes. The evidence was striking
and undeniable, the new weapon was a success, and attention was taken
off from other factors equally powerful but less apparent.
The war was too short to bring the latter out. An ounce of practice
is worth a pound of theory, and the imagination of the pushing
element, the Radicals of the army, ran riot.
Now, it had happened that the Austrians usually attacked in heavy
columns without artillery preparation, and the Prussians fought in lines of
skirmishers equally without artillery preparation, for the very idea of
massed batteries for the moment had vanished.
The Prussian gunners and a few of the staff were quick enough
to see the point, but for the bulk of the infantry, artillery was only
an impediment. All they had seen and learnt was, that it was easier to
hit the mass of a column than to pick off the individual skirmisher.
Matters were about in this state when the French War broke out.
Having seen the effect of their own breechloading fire there was an
uncomfortable feeling in the air that the new French rifle, ranging three
times as far as their own and firing twice as fast, would be a very awkward
weapon to face, and opinions were considerably divided as to the best
means of doing so.
Again, each man solved the problem much in accordance with
his temperament, and the distance at which he had seen the breechloader
in action. A few pamphlets, notably that of Captain May, had set men
thinking, mostly on the wrong track ; and, generally, the idea had taken
root that lines of skirmishers and a rapid advance to the limit of their
own effective range was the best plan to adopt, on the grounds that in
this way the vulnerable target was diminished.
Other factors still existed which forced the troops into this groove.
In the good old days of the “Freiheits Kriege" the distances at which
troops engaged, and the limited range of the weapons not only enabled
troops moving into action to see what was in front of them, and, there-
fore, rendered them independent of cavalry, but also there was little,
if any, cavalry to send in advance even if they wanted to. The infantry
thus became self-reliant ; and since, after the destruction of the old
Frederician Army, almost all traditional knowledge of war disappeared,
it became also necessary when raising the new levies, to lay down in
regulations, for the guidance of the willing but necessarily ignorant
Volunteer officers, precise directions as to distances to be observed
between scouts and following bodies, and in course of time these
distances, laid down for the smoothbore only, crystallised into drill
prescriptions.
Now we will return to the case witnessed by the war correspondent
referred to above, and note what actually took place.
Along the whole extent of a position, brigades were advancing
towards the enemy to gain a footing for the subsequent attack.
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS. 7
Probably—we will make the assumption at any rate—the corps
commander had no intention of closing with the enemy till all his
troops were in hand, and the gunners had had time to do their work,
only from want of experience he had not realised at what an extreme
range the Chassepôts could bite. On one flank a regiment, having been
duly cautioned to employ skirmishers, moves forward with two-thirds
of each company in first line extended ; on the other, line of company
columns, with a few scouts in advance, is adopted.
Suddenly, at 1,500 yards, the latter is overwhelmed with a whirring,
stinging sweep of lead. Men fall fast. Through the dust, torn up by
the bullets, things are not clearly visible. The following company
Columns, overwhelmed in the same storm meant for the preceding scouts,
break to the front, and in a moment the leading battalion is an extended
line of individual fighters where all cohesion and order have ceased
to exist. The next regiment on the flank, seeing what has happened,
cannot leave its comrades in the lurch, and presses forward, drums
beating, colours flying, but similarly, before the unbroken fire-power of
the enemy, the attempt shatters; they, too, dissolve into a cloud of
skirmishers, and then ensues a struggle of endurance. The following
lines press on to reinforce the hard-pushed fighting line, but they, too,
melt away, and matters are becoming desperate, for the limit placed on
the advance by the enemy's fire is still well outside the effective range of
the assailants' rifles, and the latter is simply being slaughtered at the
enemy's mercy. Fortunately, the latter becomes impatient, a bugle-call
rings out, the French dash out over their trenches, but at this moment
the Prussian gunners have got the range, and their shells tear out wide
gaps in their lines; their advance, too, brings them within reach of the
needle-gun, and in face of the two, shells and bullets, their élan rapidly
dies out. They turn to run, and the Prussians, the fire-pressure on their
front relaxing, rise in pursuit, and gain a couple of hundred yards to the
front. They are now within the effective range of their own weapons,
and the French, disturbed in their aim by the needle-gun bullets hissing
past them, to say nothing of the shells, no longer shoot with the same
precision. A fresh line reaches the front, but the French also are
reinforced, and the fire equilibrium again restored. The French artillery,
crushed by the superior accuracy of their enemy's fire, has gradually
been silenced where it is not masked, and now it is guns and rifles
against rifles alone. Each time the French fire slackens, the bravest of
the Prussian line dash forward, but in doing so their own fire wanes and
that of the French blazes up, and so the fight fluctuates till at length the
balance of reserves in hand, the consequence of the German strategic
Offensive, gives the final impulse, and the position is won with a
last rush.
Now follow the working of the general’s mind in the rear, whatever
his rank. From the first moment the conduct of the fight has been taken
out of his hands. Either too great preliminary extensions, or the hot-
headedness of a subordinate, or a miscalculation of the enemy's range,
has precipitated matters, and beyond feeding up troops as fast as they
8 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS.
arrived he has been powerless. As already indicated, he has only
the superior forethought of the staff to thank that the last closed reserve
is on his side and not on the enemy's.
But the victory is won, and he must write a report. Whatever he
may have thought during the crisis, it is perfectly certain that with
success will come a reaction of thankfulness to the troops engaged ; and
even if he was aware of what was actually going on in the fighting line
all the time, he will forbear to refer to it, but will only express his
gratitude to his gallant troops for having saved the day — and his
reputation.
But from these reports the official history is afterwards constructed.
The only persons who could contradict him are the coolest men who
survive in the front and his confidential staff officer, and neither are likely
to do so, for obvious reasons; but the staff officer, who has seen more
than anyone else, and has presumably better education to enable him to
understand the interdependence of things, will remember it all to suit his
own purposes when his time arrives.
This, then, will be the genesis of military opinion.
The correspondent, only superficially acquainted with the current of
thought in the army, and not specially prepared by long study to
appreciate what he sees correctly, will—
1st. Truthfully report what he saw.
2nd. Since nothing succeeds like success, will conclude that what he
saw was correct in principle, and thus—
3rd. Put the cart before the horse and say that the Germans suc-
ceeded as a consequence of their adopting extended formations, and not
in spite of having done so.
The nervous, pushing young officer will next dash into print, and,
because the last men he saw who rose to go on with him were very much
in extended order—for they were the survivors of the bravest—and
because, moreover, his original closed command had melted into spray
before the impact of the bullets, he, too, will conclude that extended
order is the best—indeed, the only possible formation; unconsciously,
but inevitably owing to the same instinct that drives him into print, his
story of dangers faced will lose nothing in the telling.
Then comes the official history, which speaks of the long lines
rushing forward only to be swept away by the deadly hail of lead, the
heroic endurance of the fighting line, and the final rush of the whole,
all of them subjectively true from the general’s standpoint; and the cold
prosaic figures of losses which might detract from the pictures will be
supplied by another hand and thrust away in the appendix, where only a
few will trouble to look for them.
Meanwhile in the German Army—where captains command their
companies and are ruthlessly rejected if they fail to attain the prescribed
standard—the common-sense judgment of the cooler men, the majority,
will prevail. It did prevail, and I can drop the subjunctive and describe
things as they have since been happening. Within four years of the con-
clusion of the war the pamphleteers had faded into the obscurity from
THE EVOLUTION OF MIODERN DRILL POOKS. 9
which they ought never to have emerged, and though the idea of extended
or better “individual” order still persisted, the object sought by its
retention was no longer the diminution of losses, but the attainment of
the maximum fire-power of the individual ; and it is particularly worth
noting that it was precisely amongst those regiments that had suffered
most heavily that principles of rigid drill were most closely adhered to,
viz., in the Guards on the Tempelhofer drill ground.
Other factors now come into play. After the war the work demanded
from all officers on the active list became enormously intensified. At the
first moment, when wide diversity of opinion prevailed, a few of them
managed to find time for writing, but when tolerable uniformity on the
drill-ground had been arrived at, there was less incentive to defend the
views already practically successful, and the field of military literature
passed mostly into the hands of retired officers out of touch with the men,
and into those who were dissatisfied with the principles accepted by the
mass of the army, and hence the literature of this period affords a false
impression of current contemporary thought.
These conditions in the main still apply, though other causes have
Somewhat modified them. These, briefly stated, are the rise to responsible
positions of the officers who were still young during the war, but had held
special staff appointments which gave them a wider insight into facts as
they were, or who had, as a consequence of their cooler heads and better
judgment, appreciated matters more correctly. These would not have
appeared in print except under pressure of necessity, and this necessity
In OW arC)Se.
For, as time went on and the training of the men fell into the hands
of a new generation that had not seen service, the errors of the earlier
writers and of the popular historians, who had painted the battle-pieces
in the bright and glowing colours military historians too often love to
employ, began to bear their natural fruit. The psychic element in the
training of the men fell into the background, and the value of “drill”
as a means towards making men brave—its sole raison d'être—was
forgotten. Two divergent schools of thought formed themselves, the one
maintaining that drill was obsolete and education everything, the other the
exact opposite. Both based their reasoning on practical experience, but
neither succeeded in bringing all the factors into their focus. The former
accepted the scenes they had witnessed or read about on the battle-fields
of 1870 as the normal conditions of war due to the introduction of the
breechloader, and asserted that in face of the disintegrating effect of
modern fire, close order formations were impossible, and the only salvation
lay in educating the men to a higher sense of their duties and greater skill
in the use of their weapons. The others, pointing to the war experience
of the past, maintained that the disorder both admitted was not normal,
but due to the defective discipline of the short service troops; and a con-
sideration of the tables of losses in different wars shows that in so far they
were correct. They stood out for the most rigid drill and absolute
discipline, denying the possibility of making men brave by education
alone.
I O THE . EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS.
The old Emperor, who had the most war experience of any of them,
settled the matter with his customary good sense, by altering the heading of
a pamphlet by the Archduke Charles with the heading “Drill or Education,”
which was sent to him for his opinion, by striking out the “ or ’’ and
substituting “and,” which exactly hit the nail on the head.
The truth is that the origin and purpose of “drill” has never been
sufficiently inquired into. It is a process which arose on the survival of
the fittest principle, and was adopted by practical men for a practical
purpose, without much inquiry as to its scientific basis. Then men went
to the wars every year as regularly as they now go to the manoeuvres, and
stayed as many months then as we now do weeks. Many things that are
dark to us were to them as clear as daylight. Such soldiers as the
cla Dessauer, Saldern—the founder of line tactics—and Frederick the
Great, did not insist on the rigid “parade” march or the lightning-
like execution of the firing exercise because these things looked
well on the review ground, but because experience had taught them that
they were the readiest, and indeed the only, means available to make men
stand up to fire at all. They thought little of education, partly because
there was no time for such things, but more because in a long service,
war trained army, esprit de corps, and practical knowledge of Outpost and
patrol duties disseminated themselves through the mass almost uncon-
Sciously, and became second nature to all of them. Mistakes in minor
tactics were punished on the spot with death by the enemy, and it was to
each man's interest in any detached party to see that his neighbour
knew what he was about, as the lives of all might be imperilled by
ignorance. But when it came to a great battle, and troops had to storm
positions held by an enemy about equally brave, and whose nerves, in the
then condition of the tactics and mobility of infantry, it was not possible
to shake whilst at a distance, experience invariably proved that the only
guarantee of success lay in the most rigid possible discipline, and that,
under the then existing conditions, that discipline could only be acquired
through “drill.”
It is one of the fundamental fallacies of the modern extended order
School that the breechloader has increased enormously the density or
quantity of the fire to be faced. It seems such an obvious conclusion,
from the admitted fact that rifles load almost five times as fast now as they
did then, that the point is assumed as self-evident. But as a fact it is not
SO. The whole history of the evolution of tactics reveals a constant
struggle, on the one hand to secure the utmost possible quantity of fire
per yard of front, on the other to extend the front as wide as possible
without reducing the fire power below the limits fixed by experience;
and the tendency has always been to utilise increased rapidity and accuracy
of fire to reduce the depth and extend the front.
In Frederick's days the line stood three deep, one man to the pace,
and fired six volleys a minute, or twenty-five bullets per yard of front, quite
as many in fact as a line in single rank can get off to-day. Such a line
was unapproachable then, even though the bullets only ranged 200 yards
against 2,000 now, as long as the men kept steady and held their muzzles
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS. I I
low. That it nevertheless was frequently pierced, just as its successor will
be in the future, was due to advantages inseparable from the attack which
must always obtain when the arms on both sides are equal in power, and
will hold as true for bows and arrows as for the latest products of modern
arsenals. But this forms a subject in itself, the only point here to notice
being “equal armaments.”
The amount of artillery fire to be faced by attacking troops was also
greater than of later years, for an old-fashioned battery, mounting a
number of 18 and 24 pounders, firing case, obviously delivered a larger
number of bullets along their front than modern 9 pounders, using the
same projectile and at 19 yards interval, are capable of doing. Yet again
and again such batteries were carried at the point of the bayonet by
disciplined troops who marched against them, initially in close formation,
whatever order they may have been in at the moment of contact.
Even as recently as Sebastopol and the Indian Mutiny, line was the
normal formation, and though in all these cases the losses were frequently
severe, exceeding those in the recent wars, no one ever asserted that
good troops could not face them, but only questioned their claim to be
considered good if they failed.
So far, the adherents of the “drill’’ school had the best of it, but
they had overlooked a practical factor of immense importance.
That long-service troops inured to war will stand far heavier losses
than those of the Franco-German battles is an indisputable fact, but it
ceases to have much practical value when such troops no longer exist in
the world.
The problem before us is, to adopt some method of fighting suited
to the strength of the materials with which we have to deal. If for
instance the secret of manufacturing steel were suddenly to be lost, it
would be no use endeavouring to build bridges of the dimensions calculated
to the tensile strength of steel when we had only wrought and cast iron
to deal with, and, when bridge after bridge failed, declining to modify our
practice because our forefathers succeeded before us. +.
Yet a change equally great in the strength of our fighting material
has taken place all over the continent, and it is only the accident that it
happened to synchronise with the introduction of the breechloader that
has obscured it.
Our modern armies now must be ready for action at a moment's
notice; it is impossible that they can be inured to war, and there is only
a limited time to train them ; “drill’ must therefore be cultivated with all
vigour; but since drill implies the “absolute concentration of both mental
and physical force on the execution of the thing ordered,” the number of
hours devoted to it in a day can only be small, since no untrained men can
stand more. The spare time must be devoted to the systematic education
of the soldier in all those minor details which he formerly learnt from
his older experienced comrades at the bivouac fire or round the guard-
room chimney, and thus “drill and education,” from the necessities of
the case, go hand-in-hand together : that is to say, in an army in which
the true nature of the soldier's employment in war time is understood.
I 2 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS.
Even then, under ordinary peace-time conditions, it will be impos-
sible altogether to bring men up to the “temper” of the old armies.
Hence it becomes the business of the staff, in time of peace, to see to
it that, in war, tasks above their “tensile strength,” if I may be permitted
the expression, are not put before the troops; in other words, the
training of the staff must be such that if troops will only endure a loss of,
say, 15 per cent. in advancing, they must not be called on to storm
positions which may cost 30 per cent. Or more.
But is this possible P it may be asked. I believe it is, and for the
following reasons:—
Just as in mechanical construction the progress of invention has
placed in our hands tools to economise human labour, so that whereas
formerly the forging of a moderate-sized anchor was a maximum achieve-
ment, nowadays a twenty-ton breech-coil is worked up under a steam-
hammer with comparative ease; the improvement in artillery material,
particularly in the direction of mobility, gives us the power of shaking Our
enemy's nerves at a range, and to an extent, utterly inconceivable in
Frederick the Great's days.
The shaking process cannot of course begin till the enemy's artillery
has been subdued; but with equal armament and equal men the side
which attacks possesses necessarily the power of concentrating against that
part of its opponent's position chosen the necessary superiority of guns,
and its victory in the ensuing duel is simply a matter of time, and time
only.
Once the enemy’s artillery is silenced it becomes simply a question of
machines versus human beings; when the necessary degree of demoralisa-
tion in the opposing infantry is attained, is again conditioned by time
alone. It may be longer or shorter, but occur sooner or later it must.
If therefore troops are prematurely sent to the attack, and fail, as they
did again and again in 1870, one of the two conditions or both must have
been ignored, and this must be due either to the fact that the conditions
forced the hand of the leader, or that the leader did not understand his
work and committed the troops to a task beyond their strength.
“Storming a position,” said Moltke, “is like fording a river; whether
it is possible or not depends on its depth. If it goes over your heads you
are drowned, if the fire is more than your troops can face you are lost.”
The analogy is perfect, only he forgot to point out that in the artillery you
possess the power of reducing the depth of the river, i.e., the intensity of
the fire, to any degree you please, always assuming you can afford the
time, which is only another way of saying that, in war, time and men's
lives are convertible terms up to a certain limit.
There is one special point here never to be lost sight of, viz., that
only the Superior leader can be the judge of when to give the order to
advance, and the troops must be trained to trust their leader's judgment
and obey, which is “close order discipline,” and not to form their own
opinions, which is “individual order.”
There is, however, one aspect of the case which a system of tactics
THE EVOLUTION OF MODER N DRILL BOOKS. I 3
based on the above principle does not meet, and it is a consequence of
the factor of “time” alluded to.
For many reasons it may not always be possible to await the moment
when the guns have completed their work. Are infantry to be taught that
under such circumstances the attack is impossible P I believe that it is
not, but that the present opinions to the contrary simply arose from the
unequal armament of the French and Germans in the last war, and from
the extremely faulty battle-field reconnaissance of the German cavalry.
Examine all the cases of exceptional loss on the German side, and
the first condition will always be found to have been absence of knowledge
of where the enemy stood and his strength: this is particularly marked in
the examples of Wedell’s (38th) brigade at Vionville and the Guards at
St. Privat. The second one will equally be found to have lain in the
depth of the fire-swept zone to be traversed by the Germans before they
could reach the outer limit of their own effective range. It is to cases like
this that Moltke's saying above quoted really applies.
But assume equal armament on either side. Then the Germans
would have advanced as far as their discipline would have enabled them
to hold together; the first man to fall would not have stopped them, nor
the second ; ultimately a distance would have been attained beyond
which they could not go without replying, but from the moment their
bullets began to whistle about the Frenchmen's heads, the aim of the
latter would have been disturbed, and a following line would have
reached the limit attained by the first with less loss, a third with less
loss still, and so on till the necessary fire superiority for a further advance
was attained.
It is the fundamental principle of the tactics of all ages since
projectile arms came into use, that the possibility of advance beyond a
Certain limit, determined by the power of the weapon and the quality of
the opposing troops, is a consequence of fire superiority obtained ; the
difference between now and formally being that the superiority is only a
momentary possession, and that whereas formerly the time required to
Cross the intervening space—perhaps only one hundred yards—was so
short that the fire equilibrium could not perhaps be again attained,
nowadays the time is so long that it may be attained and destroyed
again and again, owing to the arrival of fresh troops on the defenders'
side, the cessation of fire from the wavering troops, or combinations
of both. This, by the way, explains the long undulating lines of
skirmishers, the characteristic of the 1870 battle-fields as seen from
the rear. 4’
From the whole of the above, several important deductions as to the
value of tactical formations follow :-
1st. Whether troops can or cannot advance in close order formations
(including under this head either line or company columns—battalion
and regimental columns being excluded, for reasons as old as the conflict
between the Roman maniple—or company column, and the Greek
Phalanx—or regimental one) is entirely independent of the arms in use,
but simply determined by the momentary condition of the opposing
I4. THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS.
troops; and it is the business of the general commanding, as far as
conditions of time allow, not to commit his men to an assault till the
enemy's fire has been reduced to the necessary degree of inaccuracy to
render the size of the target immaterial.
2nd. The chances of a given body of troops of suitable strength
carrying a given position, assuming reasonable judgment on the part of
the leader, varies directly as the square of their discipline, for the better
their discipline the closer they will get to their enemy before replying
and the greater the effect of their fire when they do reply. Further, the
longer the time they can hold out without reinforcement, and therefore
the greater the distance between the following lines—if that distance
attains or exceeds 400 yards—the less loss the following lines will suffer,
for till they begin to reduce the distance by closing on the leading line
they will be fairly out of the sweep of the “overs” meant for their
comrades in front.
3rd. Since on the degree of control and number of rifles delivered
on the front line depends the rapidity of their fire-effect on the enemy,
then in open ground (the most favourable of course for the latter's fire-
effect), line two deep is on the whole the most favourable formation.
Compared with a single rank of individual fighters at elbow interval, the
target is only infinitesimally increased, the maintenance of discipline is
facilitated, and more men will reach the fire limit; for the line soon
loosens, every man does not cover his front-rank man exactly, and even if
he did, between 1,500 and 800 yards, every bullet, even of the modern
weapons, does not necessarily penetrate two bodies; of course, I mean
the modern line of company units, and not the old rigid brigade or
divisional line without intervals.
Now, though I believe the line to be the best formation for the
execution of the most difficult of all problems, the direct assault over a
glacis-like slope, it does not follow that the training of troops should, as
in the old days, be exclusively based on it.
The idea was shown to be fallacious even as far back as the old
Peninsula days, and what the Germans are now doing is only recurring to
what our old Peninsula Light Division practised under Sir John Moore
at Shorncliffe, and that they learnt from their former experiences in
America. -
Exclusive training in line is bad, because it converts the soldier into
an unthinking machine; he can only do what he has been taught, and the
moment the conditions vary he is at sea.
The strength of the line lay in the concentrated will-power of its
units, but the training gradually sapped the will-power of the individual
and thus lowered the resultant of the mass. But the power which
induces men to face danger and death in their most terrific form is
the resultant power of many wills over one, and this is true of all
organisations in which danger has to be faced, whether in or out of
the army.
Experience has abundantly shown—at least amongst white races—
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS. I 5
that the more intelligent the unit the more readily does he absorb this
collective esprit de corps.
Therefore the conclusion follows, adopt the principles the Germans
are now employing, viz., train your men to fight in individual order so
that each man’s intelligence may be developed to the utmost, and then
when in the assault all order melts, as it inevitably must, the man finds
himself in conditions to which he has been approximately accustomed
and may be therefore trusted to act for himself.
But this alone is not enough ; beyond the mere education of the
soldier it is necessary to teach him how to concentrate his will-power with
the utmost intensity, and to give him command of his limbs and muscles.
This amounts to teaching him courage, for between average individuals,
courage more or less is only self-control, and, as doctors in charge of
hysterical patients know well, self-control can be acquired by proper
exercises.
It is to supply these proper exercises that “ drill” exists. We do not
insist on men's shouldering arms and cutting away the hands with
lighting-like rapidity because by such manoeuvres battles are won, but
simply because the man who can do that has already acquired a con-
siderable degree of control of his muscles by his will and is on the high
road to acquire more ; it is our first guarantee of steadiness in action, for
us the chief consideration. The next step after training the individual is
to accustom a number of men to “will in unison,” so to speak, then the
power of the mass asserts itself over the individual and the formation of
the company or battalion is complete.
This may appear fanciful, but it is founded on ample experience.
From the earliest times, almost in precise proportion as a leader has had
reason to distrust his troops, he has sought to compensate for their
deficiencies in small bodies by massing them in large ones, and that not
because of the increased weight of the mass, which is immaterial, but
simply because of the power of the will of the mass over the will of the
unit. Ultimately the unwieldiness of the mass has defeated its own end
by attracting a fire which destroyed the will-power at too great a rate;
but even Napoleon sanctioned the employment of such masses under his
own eyes, and we may be sure not without a clear idea of what he sought
to gain.
Finally, not only the soldiers but the officers of all grades must be
trained to understand that there is no such thing possible in war as a
“normal formation,” but each situation must be dealt with as it occurs.
It being the duty of each grade in succession to carry out his orders in the
way best suited to the circumstances, his training must contain nothing
as to whether the movement ordered is practicable or not ; that depends,
as above pointed out, on matters of time and place, which can only be
understood by the officer above him who gives the order, who alone can
be aware of all the circumstances, and on whom rests the responsibility.
Each rank below, down to the private soldier, has a certain fire-power
in his hands, and his duty is to make the best possible use of it to the
attainment of the object in view, and with reference to the action of his
E
I6 THE EVOLUTION OF MOD ERN DRILL BOOKS.
comrades around him. This obviously excludes the idea of reckless
exposure, for it would be making poor use of the fire-power to get one's
men, or one's self, if a private, killed without the opportunity of making
use of it, when the decision whether to stand up or lie down had
devolved into one's hands, a stage which is reached by each grade in
succession.
It is often urged that the condition “to make the best possible use
of his fire-power with reference to the action of his comrades around
him " is rather a large demand on the average subaltern, but it is not
really more than one asks of the football or polo player, who plays his
game always with reference to the players around him ; and the difficulty
that an ordinary untrained horseman (such as too many of our polo
players are) finds in controlling his pony, and which he yet learns to
surmount, is certainly no greater than handling an ordinary section of
bipeds on foot and keeping them in their proper position relatively to
the others around him.
Having traced the evolution of the present German system of tactics
in the above I have now to notice how and where our own British system
has diverged from them. This point is of special importance in America,
for, from what I have gathered by conversation with American officers,
and from reading contemporary American military literature, it seems to
me that a very false impression of the prevailing tendency in Germany
has come to them through our tactical books and papers. The subject,
too, is of interest, as it shows how inexorably any defect in organisation
ultimately avenges itself by retarding or distorting the course of evolution.
It happens that at the period of the Franco-German War, and immediately
anterior to it, there were some unusual factors active in our army which
exercised an influence that has not yet been sufficiently investigated, but
which supply us with a key to the extraordinary mental aberration from
which our latest infantry regulations show that we are still suffering.
Our army was then a long-service one, and though no sane man can deny
the superiority of a force of veterans grown old in normal warfare, things
are very different in a force of which only a part has seen active service,
and that active service not only at a relatively remote period of time, but
under conditions anything but normal.
The Crimean War was no school of training for field operations.
The Sikh Wars of '48, '49, and the Indian Mutiny, from the nature of the
enemy, and the natural features of the country in which they were fought,
afforded us little guidance as to modern European tactics. They were all
useful in so far as they accustomed both men and officers to battle, murder,
and sudden death ; but this very acquaintance with the realities of war,
and the tremendous responsibilities involved, acted disadvantageously in
two directions.
Amongst the junior ranks and the men it encouraged a feeling of
extreme Conservatism ; and amongst the seniors, on whom responsibility
ultimately would rest, and who were compelled to give thought to the
matter, an uncomfortable feeling that their experience would not help them
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS. 17
much in presence of such a totally new factor as the breechloader was
reported to be.
Again, at the conclusion of both the Crimea and the Mutiny, the
regiments were largely reduced, recruiting was checked, the oldest men
eliminated, and the pick of the whole—men about the same age, and
all with a couple of medals—were retained: finer regiments were
probably never seen, but they contained in them the germs of their
own decay.
For, unfortunately, the men all grew old together. Having been
trained in war, they knew about all there was for them to know, and a
couple of commanding officer's parades a week were sufficient to keep
them in order: the rest of the time they were idle. The very few recruits
could safely be left to the adjutant and sergeant-major. The regimental
organisation, accustomed to the friction of war, worked like well-lubricated
machinery in time of peace, and the colonel found it possible and easy to
manage everything himself.
Now I believe it to be a characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race that
no men are more greedy of power and responsibility; but the great
majority do not understand that the way to rule is, never to do anything
yourself that you can possibly get done for you, but content yourself with
exercising a general superintendence. Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, when
he got all the other small boys to lime-wash the fence whilst he himself
looked on, showed a larger grasp of human nature than the majority of
our colonels did then, or even, I am Sorry to Say, do now. They preferred
and still prefer, the saying “if you want a thing done, do it yourself,”
which is excellent as long as the thing to be done is within the power of
one man, but which is bound to defeat itself when, on the outbreak of war,
the work suddenly exceeds the individual's power. Then the man finds
the strain exceeds his capacity, and he has no staff available, trained to
take a part of the work off his shoulders.
There is yet another feature to be considered, viz., the training of
the young officers who joined after the war. When they had once been
through their recruits' course there was nothing further for them to do.
They could not presume to instruct the war-seasoned veterans, and they
would not, under the colonel and Sergeant-major system, have been
allowed to do so even if they had wanted to; and the greater part did not
want to, for it was rather too large a demand on One's self-consciousness,
and well-bred youths dislike the occupation vulgarly known as “teaching
one's grandmother, etc.” I well remember one's utter feeling of helpless-
ness as a young officer in front of a body of veterans. It used to be said
they never made mistakes, “drunk or sober,” and though I never saw
them drunk, and therefore cannot judge, it was certainly true of them in
the latter State. g
Hence it came to pass that about the critical years from '60 to '74,
hardly a captain or lieutenant had ever had the opportuntity of learning
more of his duties than the repetition of the words of command by rote ;
of the method of imparting instruction to recruits only those who had
E2
I 8 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS.
been adjutants or musketry instructors possessed even a trace—but this
alone is a fine art in itself and only to be learnt by experience.
At the same time all the old veterans grew old together. During the
years immediately preceding the Cardwell Short-service Act in 1871, it
was openly stated by General Peel, the previous Secretary of State for
War, in the house, that the question was no longer “how the British
Army was to be recruited, but whether it could be kept up at all.”
Thus when the short-service system became law we found ourselves
face to face not only with the problem of how to train an enormously
increased number of recruits with no trained staff to do it, but with the
task of completely re-organising our tactical system in accordance with
experience with which none of us had any practical acquaintance at all.
One of these tasks at a time would have been sufficient, but, as if this
were not enough, yet another trouble arose through the Abolition of
Purchase Act, passed the same year.
Rightly or wrongly, a great number of officers felt themselves bitterly
aggrieved, and openly proclaimed in mess-rooms and clubs that faith had
been broken with them, and the service, for all they cared, might go to the
dogs. Some, fortunately not many, were as good as their word. This
vitiated the atmosphere in which the subalterns grew up. The immediate
effect of the Bill was to create a tremendous clearance of the senior
officers, so that presently young officers began to obtain captaincies in six
or even five years, and these were certainly, considering the conditions of
chaos out of which they had been evolved, not sufficiently experienced to
accept the full responsibility of a captain's rank as understood in Germany.
All these difficulties naturally retarded the growth of any uniform
school of tactical training, but still another one requires to be dealt with.
From the first appearance of the breechloader, there formed at either
extremity of the long line of indifferentism two little groups which we may
call the tacticians and the soldiers. Unfortunately the tacticians were not
soldiers, and the soldiers not tacticians, enough—there were honourable
exceptions in both classes, but in the main the distinction holds good.
The tacticians were intellectually the most able ; they consisted of
men both energetic and pushing, determined to come to the front, and
shunning no labour, but unfortunately, in many cases, with something too
much of the enthusiast's temperament and a constitutional inability to
grasp the whole laws of evidence. They would have made admirable
special pleaders, but indifferent judges. They soon acquired the control
of the press and magazines, and thus led public opinion.
The soldiers, on the other hand, less able and less addicted to the
pen, led the opposition in the Army. They swore by rigid drill and “spit
and polish,” and actually possessed a decidedly larger share of the
personal gift of command than their opponents, but, the times being
peaceful, the pen proved mightier than the sword, and step by step they
were driven to the wall.
Both sides indulged largely in personalities, which did not tend
to reconciliation exactly; whilst the soldiers were described in the heavy
dailies and magazines as obstructives, barrack-square soldiers, bow-and-
THE EVOLUTION OF MOIDE R N DRILL BOOKS. I Q
arrow generals, etc., their opponents in mess-rooms and clubs were
ridiculed as short-sighted pedants with a firmer seat on an office stool than
on a horse ; and anecdotes went round telling how so-and-so, who, in his
own estimate, would have been a formidable enemy to Napoleon at
Austerlitz, had clubbed his command whilst endeavouring to march it to
church and back. Unfortunately, subsequent events in Africa and
Afghanistan have only too conclusively proved that both were approximately
in the right. Between the two stools the army, of course, fell to the
ground. -
In face of the enormous increase of work thrown on the officers by
the introduction of short service, and the urgent necessity that existed of
educating the latter for the new responsibilities inseparable from the
situation, hearty co-operation between the two was the great and pressing
need of the moment. Bnt that was just what we did not get. Whilst the
tactician taught us from his point of view in the lecture rooms, the
soldiers damned us on the drill ground, and confusion became worse
confounded.
Bearing in mind what has been written above, it can excite no
surprise that it was so; the wonder would be if it had been otherwise.
The first necessity of the moment was the production of text-books
to meet the demand for tactical education, and the penmen were, of
course, the first in the field. Since no previous effort whatever had been
made to teach them the rudiments of the game on sound principles, each
had adopted the point of view best suited to his personal idiosyncrasy;
and, as in the military literature accessible previous to the war of 1870, it
had always been studied more as pure than as applied mathematics, and
long-service traditions tended to strengthen the tendency rather than
otherwise, the ultimate strength of the materials on which the structure
of tactics has to be built up was ignored, and the one new and conspicuous
factor, the breechloader, assumed abnormal proportions. Since it was
so in Germany, where short service had been in force for over sixty years,
it is not to be wondered at that the point escaped observation in our own
army.
The news from the battle-fields strengthened the tendency for the
reasons already indicated. The Germans had fought in dense lines of
skirmishers and had been victorious; therefore they had been victorious
because they fought as skirmishers, and the earliest pamphlets confirmed
the impression.
With the evidence before them, the greater their intellectual ability
the more certain was the conclusion, and no blame can be attached to
them for formulating it.
But we have already traced the genesis of these early pamphlets, and
know now that the conclusion was premature.
The Germans won, not because but in spite of their local tactical
handling. They fought as skirmishers because, under the inequality of
armament, and the want of confidence their infantry felt in the artillery—
a consequence of 1866—they could not fight in any other order; for,
against the unshaken power of the French breechloaders, to which they
20 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS.
could not reply, and owing to the want of discipline inherent in a peace-
trained, short-service army, all other formations scattered or dispersed,
only the bravest going on.
This is what Meckel, one of the very first of their tactical authorities,
says in his “Allgemeine Lehre tiber die Truppenführung im Kriege,”
dated 1881—a book which still enjoys the highest reputation in Germany—
comparing the attack as it should be with the attack as it was —“In the
experiences of the last campaign we see the consequence of this dismal
self-destroying belief in the unavoidable disorder and rudderless confusion
of the individual order. (The idea that originated out of Captain May's
tactical retrospect, be it noted in passing.) There, too, we saw whole
brigades advancing with drums beating and colours flying. Suddenly the
scene changes before the unshaken fire-power of the adversary, and in a
moment all are borne away in the confusion of the ‘individual 'combat.
Woods, villages, hollows, till now denuded, fill themselves to overflowing
with scattered units from all commands, and the open fields lie tenanted
only by the victims of premature violence. But turn the order about ; let
the thunder of the guns precede the beat of the drums, the fire, the
bayonet, and the fight will regain a healthy aspect.”
Unfortunately for us, publishers soon found the issue of translations
of German pamphlets unremunerative, and we had no body of experienced
officers who had seen the breechloader at work to fall back on and to
check the pernicious doctrines embodied in the early works. The older
soldiers who had seen war, and knew almost all there was to be
known as to the conduct of troops under fire, felt there was something
wrong, but could do nothing against the quotations in black and white
from the pages of Boguslawski and other writers; moreover, though
they knew the note of a 12-bore ball, and the whiz and whir of grape,
they had never heard the whistle of the chassepôt or needle-gun bullet,
and felt they were not on very firm ground, so they forebore to answer,
but the tension between the two parties was increased. Why it never
occurred to anyone to calculate the number of projectiles to be faced in
a given time passes my comprehension, yet it ought to have been evident
enough that it is quite immaterial to the man who is down at which end
of the barrel the bullet which stretched him was inserted, and that on the
whole the smaller the bore—velocities being equal—the less dangerous
the wound, for a 13-inch mortar shell in the pit of one's stomach creates
a greater disturbance of the nervous system than a grain of No. 6 shot.
If, therefore, it could be shown that both in the Sikh War, the Crimea,
and the Mutiny, our troops had faced victoriously in lines two deep a
heavier fire than the Germans ever encountered from the muzzles of the
French in 1870, the fact that they failed to stand the strain in the same
formation was no proof that the formation in itself was a bad one, and,
therefore, to be eliminated from our drill-book.
The fact, of course, is that no formation is in itself absolutely good
or bad; the whole point lies in the circumstances under which it is
employed, and these circumstances are never quite the same. But in all
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS. 2 I
cases the commanding officer on the spot is the sole judge, and troops
must be trained to obey and not decide for themselves.
That the facts are as I have stated them can be ascertained from
the maps of the different actions. What our enemies lacked in rapidity
of fire they made up for by superior numbers, and frequently by the
disposition of their works and the weight of their artillery. Thus in the
assault of the Redan at Sebastopol, on the 18th June, more than 1 oo
heavy Russian guns, from 24 to 68-pounders, crossed their fire of grape
and shell over the narrow plateau across which our line advanced, and the
parapets were densely thronged by infantry, yet even our ladder parties
reached the ditch, though the distance to be traversed exceeded
500 yards — and what happened subsequently is not relevant to the
point.
Had this line of argument been insisted on, something might have
been done to check the progress of the evil, but it was not, and with
every year matters went from bad to worse, till the experiences of the
Soudan and Afghanistan gave a temporary check; but the baneful idea,
founded on the early pamphleteers, that the object of the soldier in
battle is only to avoid being killed, had, as a consequence of ten years'
examinations for promotion, taken too deep a hold to be eradicated even
by experience, against which it could always be argued that it was not
gained in face of the breechloader, and that the weapon itself had been
much improved in the interval.
Judging by the earnestness and real ability shown by the tacticians
in analysing the evidence available to them, matters might have gone
very differently had not the publishers interfered and cut off the supply
of fresh facts; but, failing these fresh facts, the evil intensified itself,
partly as a consequence of one very admirable quality of the British
officer when properly applied, viz., his practical common sense. He
studies as a rule with the determination to succeed, not out of any love for
the subject itself.
The introduction of text-books and of examinations for promotion
made it abundantly clear what course of study was the best investment of
intellectual capital, and he took it. In doing so he often acquired a real
interest in tactical literature, but too often an exaggerated belief in his
own intellectual ability, confirmed because he had obtained more marks
in an examination than his comrades. He read more, but with the
pre-conceived bias in favour of what had paid him best, consequently he
selected those works for notice which accorded best with his acquired
line of thought, and, further, he interpreted other books, objective records
of facts—Prince Hohenlohe's Letters on Infantry, for instance—from his
own standpoint, and the greater his ability the worse the intellectual
tangle in which he involved himself, so that with every year matters
became worse instead of better.
With every year, too, the resistance of the soldiers became weaker,
for their generation was passing away and the tacticians were rising into
higher command, so that self-interest pointed the way with double
emphasis.
22 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS.
Thus every year the original errors of the German pamphleteers took
firmer and firmer root. Partly as a consequence of the schism between
the two schools, the fundamental idea of “drill” became obscured, and
the term has received a meaning it was never intended to convey, that is
to say, it has been confused with manoeuvre—“the rapid, orderly change
of troops from one formation to another”—which is not “drill,” but the
“application of drill” to an end; but more particularly because, whereas
it paid to be able to quote glibly from Boguslawski, May, etc., it did not
pay to be equally at home in the latter works of Meckel and Scherff, and
least of all was it remunerative to be in a position to state from personal
observation how these things were actually understood and applied in the
German autumnal manoeuvres.
The whole movement has culminated in the production of our latest
infantry drill-book, which, amongst much that is good and a great deal
questionable, contains one or two statements of principle so absolutely
false, and so dangerous if admitted, that they alone condemn it.
One will suffice to prove my point.
“Close formations are not practicable against troops provided
with modern arms”—that is enough ; it is, too, the fundamental error
of the early German pamphleteers. It assumes that no matter what the
condition of the troops, their fire remains constant, above a certain limit.
In other words:
Let c be any constant taken to represent the fire-power of a given
body of troops, and a the condition of troops, b their armament; then
a × 6 = c.
Since a is distinctly variable and, as experience shows, changes with
every moment of the engagement, then, if c is always to remain
constant, b must vary inversely as a ; in other words, the worse the
troops the better the rifle in their hands becomes, and the new magazine
rifle is intrinsically a better weapon in the hands of a rabble of Hottentots
than in the hands of the British Guards. Therefore, it is useless to waste
time either in education or drill because the rifle adapts itself auto-
matically to their requirements—which is absurd. Q. E. D.
This is the net result of twenty years' construction on bad foundations,
and, as already stated, there are indications that the same process is
leading to similar results in America, as, indeed, it must logically do if
the premises are adhered to. But there is scarcely a shred of evidence
which will bear examination to support these premises, and what there
is simply arose out of a blind unreasoning acceptation of the predictions
of the peace-time Small-arm inventors.
What would be said of the sanity of a board of railway directors who,
in deference to the views of some “crank,” converted the whole of their
rolling stock without sufficient inquiry P. The thing is inconceivable, for,
as already pointed out, daily traffic affords opportunity for experiment
and false prophecies soon find their level. Wherefore, the soldiers should
not be too hardly judged.
The truth all along has been that we have allowed ourselves to be
taken in by a phrase, “the breechloader,” and both in England and
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS. 23
America we should have done better to listen to the voices of our most
experienced men and have learned from them the common-sense view of
the matter, viz., that it is the quantity of well-aimed projectiles to be
faced in a given time which alone signifies; it is immaterial at which
end they are put into the barrel. Given disciplined troops, it is in the
power of the commander-in-chief so to handle them that they shall never
be called on to face more than they are able to bear. -
The greater the skill at arms and the discipline, the consequence of
drill, the smaller the number of men required and the greater the rapidity
with which they can break down the enemy's fire to the requisite
inaccuracy; but “skill at arms” in action depends on “courage,” and
“drill” teaches courage; therefore, fundamentally, the most important
point in a soldier's training is, and remains always, “drill” intelligently
applied.
Had breechloaders suddenly been placed in the hands of both
North and South during the war, beyond an alteration in distances
between following lines, no other change would have been required to
place either side on a level with the German tactics as they now are ; or
had we gone to war in 1870, would more have been necessary, as far as
the drill formations were concerned, than the conversion of the whole of
our line into light infantry. In both cases we should have had to pay
with men's lives for the deficiencies in our artillery and cavalry and staff
training; but, as concerns the infantry only, a general in command of
either would have had in his hands a weapon at least as well suited for
his purposes, and even better in some respects, than the Prussian infantry
in 1870. If the leader had blindly set them tasks beyond their capacity
they would have broken ultimately, even as the Germans did ; but if he
had used his cavalry intelligently to find out where the enemy was on the
battle-field, and massed his troops in the required strength for the assault,
according to the degree of preparation induced by his artillery fire, they
would have overrun their enemy with the same certainty as the Germans
did when they too attended to the same preliminaries (which was very
seldom the case).
In public opinion the idea has taken firm root that the object of a
soldier's training is to teach him how to avoid getting killed, and that
momentary exposure, even at telescopic ranges, to the terrible weapons
of modern days will inevitably entail that result. With the same object,
officers are taught to avoid all risks coupled with direct assaults and to
employ formations which attract the least attention. Though the subject
is sufficiently serious, it always reminds me of Mark Twain's conversation
with Gambetta's second, when, in reply to his suggestion to use battle-
axes, the latter hints that “bloodshed ” might possibly result. “That's
about the size of it,” said Mark. “May I inquire what your side was
proposing to shed P”
The Germans years ago gave up this pusillanimous theory—for which
they have invented the most descriptive, but untranslatable, epithet of
“Verlustseuche,” the avoidance-of-loss epidemic—and have returned to
the healthier view expressed in 1810 by Scharnhorst, when the same idea
24. THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS.
was mooted as a consequence of the disaster of Jena. “We must teach
the soldier how to die and not how to avoid dying.” Their present
extended order system is adopted to secure the fullest development of the
fire-power of the rifle as long as the men retain the necessary coolness to
utilise it, and also as a means of cultivating their intelligence to the best
advantage. Whether it is to be employed or not on any given occasion
depends on the circumstances and their appreciation by the commanding
officer. Sometimes quality of fire alone will suffice. Sometimes
deficiency of quality must be compensated by quantity, and the man on
the spot in direct command is the sole judge which of the two to employ,
but in either case the strictest discipline guarantees obedience.
In the new English drill-book, not only are men and officers taught
that closed formations are impracticable against troops armed with
modern weapons, but by the precise direction “all movements, when
there is possibility of contact with the enemy, will be covered by a
screen of troops in extended order, in order to feel for him and to
prevent surprise,” it entails on us the very conditions which led to the
confusion and loss in the Franco-German War, and practically precludes
our obtaining, except at very great cost, the fire Superiority indispensable
to an assault. For not only will screen, supports, and reserve be involved
in the same sweep of the enemy's projectiles, if he means to surprise
us, but the extended screen compels us to put in our fire-power by
driblets instead of in mass, and ensures our destruction in detail.
That troops in close country should move with proper precautions is
self-evident, but when it comes to the direct assault (and all flank attacks
in battle are locally direct ones) across an open glacis, chosen presumably
by reason of the absence of cover, the utmost possible development of
fire-power in the minimum of time is not only the best guarantee of
ultimate success, but also against possible surprise, and that maximum
development of fire will generally result from the employment of the
line. -
An example will make this clearer. Imagine a line of small columns
advancing in perfectly open ground, preceded by a screen of, say, one
man to two yards, and two hundred yards in advance. At about eight
hundred yards the enemy opens, and his bullets score equally on both
screen and following line. The screen halts and replies, but its fire is
lacking in density to seriously unsteady the enemy's aim, and the support-
ing line has to press on, its fire masked by its own men in front. By the
time it reaches the screen, the screen is practically shot to pieces, and the
line itself considerably out of hand; its fire will therefore be less, and
the following troops suffer more. Had the line advanced with its front
unhampered by a screen, the moment it was compelled to reply it would
have done so with fourfold the intensity of fire, and all the better prospect
of success. In rolling ground the result would be even more marked, for
when two bodies butt up against each other over a ridge in the ground,
the side which develops the heaviest fire the soonest has the best chances
of success.
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN DRILL BOOKS. 25
And even in the desire to save the individual soldier's skin, the
advocates of the “screen, supports, and reserve’ formation have overshot
their mark. Since the screen presents in itself very little power of
endurance, the supports must be close at hand, the reserves also, and so
on. Hence the whole vulnerable area exposed is considerably greater
than when lines follow one another at relatively great intervals. To
satisfy one's self of the fact, it is enough to plot out the troops in position
to scale, or, better still, form a couple of brigades side by side in the two
formations on the drill-ground.
Into a comparison of the detail of the two drill-books it is unnecessary
to enter. It is quite immaterial to the winning of battles whether men
step off with the right or the left foot, whether they shoulder in one or
two motions; but what is vital is, the way in which they are taught to
execute the movement, whatever it may be. In all drill-books that I
know, except the German, the chief stress is laid on getting the move-
ment carried out. In the German one, it is the way in which it is carried
out which is the essential point. Every order is to be obeyed under
all circumstances with “the fullest exertion of will and body,” in other words
with the utmost smartness attainable. In others no stress whatever is laid
on the smartness. But this omission defeats the whole intention of
“drill,” which is nothing more than a practical school of training
designed to give men a higher degree of self-control than they normally
possess. If the object were merely to enable them to shoulder arms
correctly together, a week's training would suffice.
But ample war experience has demonstrated abundantly that a week's
training does not suffice to form troops disciplined enough to stand the
strain of battle ; on the contrary, it has shown that other conditions, such
as patriotism, armament, etc., being equal, the troops longest trained and
best drilled have shown a markedly greater capacity for enduring loss
without defeat. They may, and ofter have been, as were the Prussians at
Jena, defeated by armies less well disciplined, but then the fault has
always lain in the leaders. Statistics show that their endurance of loss
in such cases was above the average, and that alone is the criterion of
excellence for troops as instruments in the hands of their leader. But
this test is precisely the one which it is impossible to apply to an army in
time of peace, and hence it is, of all others, the one most likely to be
overlooked. It is to the credit of the German drill-book to have kept
alive this one and most important tradition, and the value of the others
vary in precise proportion as the point has been more or less imprinted
by regimental officers on the spirit in which they are interpreted.
Fortunately our regimental officers, thanks to their Conservative traditions,
have retained something of the true military spirit in their men, but it is
no thanks to the drill-book itself, which sins in principle more glaringly
than any other with which I am acquainted.—Reprinted by permission
from the “Journal of the Military Service Institution,” Mew Pork.
THE INFANTRY ATTACK, 1892.
THE INFANTRY ATTAC K.
1892.
HE following figures were worked out in studying the possible
effect of the reduction of service contemplated, according to the
Berlin Press, by the new German Army Bill. They also threw much
light on the problem of the infantry attack and our new drill-book; all
that is necessary is to remember that two years' or three years' service
simply means greater or less discipline.
Length of service does not necessarily entail better discipline.
Everything depends on the meaning attached to the word and the
method of imparting it. Where “drill” is regarded merely as a routine
repetition of certain forms, discipline soon perishes. “Drill” is simply
a means to secure a certain definite end, that end being the power of
control over the muscles by the will, and this power can only be acquired
by the execution of the prescribed movements (it is tolerably immaterial
what they are) with the utmost concentrated effort of will and body. The
mind must obtain instantaneous action over the nerve centres ; no
amount of repetition carried out in a Slovenly manner is of any avail
whatever. The power of concentrated thought in the individual transfers
itself to others; all react on one another. Where one thousand men “will”
to reach a certain parapet, cost what it may, for the honour of the
regiment, the prospect of success is indefinitely greater than when all, in
accordance with their instructions, are looking out for cover to shelter
them in the advance, and two-thirds, using their limited tactical judgment,
are already criticising their leader's judgment in ordering them to what
they believe will prove certain annihilation.
This is no attempt to revive the old “machine” theory of the
soldier.
The more intelligent the man, the more rapidly he acquires the
habit of concentrated effort. Therefore you must educate the man’s
intelligence. Drill and education are the necessary complements of one
another.
This is no theory; all practical experience proves it. There never
were armies in which the average level of intelligence was higher than
in those which fought in the American Civil War.
Intellectually, they were much the same at Bull's Run as at
Gettysburg. But in the interval between the two battles they had
acquired drill, and through it the power of individual concentrated effort,
with the result that at the latter battle they stood up to losses far higher
than any since Waterloo.
2 THE INFANTRY ATTACK, 1892.
“In order to carry a given position held by a certain number of
infantry, it is necessary to inflict on that infantry a certain percentage of
loss in a given time.”
The point to be observed here is, that the rapidity with which loss is
inflicted is an essential factor in the problem ; 20 per cent. falling in ten
minutes makes a greater impression than 30 per cent. in two hours.
Exact numerical relations can, of course, never be established
between these two factors, time and loss; but it conduces to clearness of
thinking to assume values for each, as closely adapted to experience as
available figures enable us to go.
Let us take a front of 1,000 yards held by 2, ooo men, with the
conventional glacis-like slope before them; and, further, assume that a
loss of 200 men in ten minutes, or 3oo in half-an-hour, or 4oo in an hour,
will suffice to so completely break the spirits of the defenders, that they
will not await the threat of a bayonet charge.
And with reference to the “bayonet charge.” All infantry must be
trained to believe the bayonet invincible, but all tactical principles must
be based on the fact that fire alone decides—in other words, troops do
not and cannot advance with the bayonet till their fire has rendered the
advance possible. The bayonet charge is a consequence of adequate fire
preparation, and, provided this preparation be adequate, it is immaterial
how or by what arm it is obtained.
To limit the subject, we will assume two infantries facing one another
equal in all respects, except that the assailant has massed his troops
within striking distance of the point he means to attack, and the defender,
being thrown on the defensive, for the reason, or as a consequence, of
the failure of his cavalry to ascertain the enemy's whereabouts, cannot
commence to move his reserves till the point of attack is revealed.
Turning to the attacking troops.
Assume two infantries with equal armament, but one with a three-
year service, the other with two years only.
The quality of troops is measured by their capacity for bearing loss
without bolting.
But under modern conditions of extended order the troops undergo
a species of filtration.
The fire, as it were, forms a series of screens. The first stops, say,
Io per cent. who cannot face death and danger at all. They are not
killed ; they stay behind.
The second screen stops all who cannot face seeing 20 per cent.,
one in five, of their comrades down ; and beyond the third, or 30 per
cent., only the bravest go on.
It is, of course, obvious that somewhere between the limit of extreme
range and the defender's muzzles there must exist a zone at which the
utmost possible intensity of fire can be developed by the assallants—by
“intensity” being understood not rapidity alone, but accuracy and
quantity combined. A halt made too soon, say when only I per cent.
had fallen, would mean inaccuracy due to range; and a halt called too
late, quantity diminished too much by losses.
THE INFANTRY ATTACK, 1892. 3
The tact of the troops themselves, including section leaders, officers,
etc., will determine the limit. The accuracy of fire, apart from the range
and imperfections of the weapon, depends on “discipline,” for “dis-
cipline" is only “acquired courage.” We may leave out of considera-
tion the small percentage of born heroes, for their number in any army is
relatively insignificant. In the vast number of individuals courage under
fire is simply the consequence of the degree of control over the voluntary
and involuntary muscles acquired by “drill,” and may be taken to vary
inversely with the degree of concentrated effort acquired in the drill,
i.e., “smartness” exacted, and the time devoted to the training.
According to the “individuality” of the man, which means the
intellect and will he brings to bear on his movements, the time necessary
to acquire a certain standard will be greater or less. But in the main the
average “courage" of troops trained for two years will be more than that
of men drilled for one, and in those under arms for three decidedly more
than in those for one or two.
Let us assign numerical values as closely approximating to the truth
as figures and observation permit.
I should put them as follows:–
Troops averaging three years' service, or possessing discipline
corresponding to three years' service in the average man, will, in extended
order, have left 1 o per cent. behind when 5 per cent. of loss has been
inflicted, 20 at I o per cent., 30 at 20 per cent., 40 at 25 per cent., and
50 at 30 per cent."
That is to say, when 5 per cent. have fallen 90 per cent. Still press
on, and when 30 per cent. are down 50 per cent. have still some go left
in them.
To return to the enemy's position.
We require to kill 20 per cent. in ten minutes, or thereabouts; but
long before this point is reached our fire unsteadies the enemy's aim in
proportion to the number of rifles we engage and the range.
Troops averaging three years' service are sent in one man to the
yard of front, or 1,000 men. If the limit of 30 per cent. lies at 600 yards,
then, allowing for losses, they will deliver 350 rifles on that line.
Three hundred and fifty rifles held by steady men—and, since it is
obviously a case of the survival of the fittest, we have a guarantee that
they will be relatively steady—will rapidly shake the enemy's aim ; so it
is reasonable to suppose that the following (second line) at five minutes,
* It will be clearer in tabular form. Thus—

Losses ...] 30 p. c. 25 p. c. 20 p. c. Io p. c. 5 p. c.
Three years' average service, men
who go on after percentage of 5O 6o 7o 8o 90
loss on initial total given above |
Two years' service ... ... ... ... 2O 3O || 40 50 6o
4. THE INFANTRY ATTACK, 1892.
or 500 yards distance, will have a less accurate fire to face—sufficient only
to stretch out 20 per cent.
But 70 per cent. will pass this screen, so that the following line will
bring 700, less 14o, or 560 rifles into line.
Allowing 60 for losses in the first line during the intervening five
minutes, we have now 850 rifles in action, and their fire should reduce
the accuracy of the defender's fire to 5 per cent. at the same (600 yards)
limit. The third line will, therefore, bring up goo, less 45 rifles; so we now
have, allowing 30 for losses, 1,675 rifles, against between 8oo and 700
on the defender's side, and the fire superiority is won—and with it the
battle—at that point.
Now assume an average of two years' service only. Out of 1,000
only 140 reach 600 yards.
Their fire only reduces the accuracy of the enemy's reply by 5 per
cent. So the second line only brings 3oo, less 75, i.e., 225, and meanwhile
in the first some 4o have fallen, the third brings 320, the fourth 450,
the fifth probably not 500 ; SO that only 1,835, less losses taken at 335,
or 1,500 in all, have been delivered in twenty minutes from the time
the first reached the 600 yards limit, against 1,675 in ten minutes in the
former case ; and in the one case we have left behind, killed or
“skulking,” 1,425 ; in the other 3,500, or more than double.
So that, even omitting from consideration the use to which the
enemy can put the extra ten minutes in bringing up fresh reserves, thus
perhaps completely turning the action—under similar conditions of
ground and tactical formations—three-year troops will probably carry a
given position with less than one-half the loss of two-year ones.
The question of the employment of reserves merits a word to
itself. It may not be so apparent why the extra ten minutes should make
much difference, but it does.
An army, thrown on the defensive by the failure of its cavalry to
pierce the enemy's screen, cannot place a long line of guns in position
without an infantry advance guard to cover them. In normal rolling
ground, and for technical reasons, 5oo yards is the minimum distance for
the guns behind; and, again, 500 yards behind the gun is the nearest at
which infantry reserves can be placed, if they are not to serve as a
stop-butt for the enemy's shells.
Consequently, there will be a distance of 1,000 yards between the
defender's first line and his second, which will take ten minutes at the
least to cross. It may often be more, and can rarely be less.
It may, of course, be set in motion the moment the attack breaks
cover, but since the attack will not commence till its artillery has broken
the power of its adversary's guns, it will always have to advance down the
slope of its own position in the full sweep of its enemy's shrapnel and of
the bullets meant for its own first line.
I only mention this to show that the possibility of the arrival of
reserves has not been overlooked. I have tried placing troops on the
defensive on different grounds, and according to all kinds of systems, and
find that gently undulating slopes are the most favourable for the defence,
THE INFANTRY ATTACK, 1892. 5
and in every case the decision hangs on whether the reserves can arrive
beforesthe first ten minutes are up or not. Or it would be more accurate
to say the defender's best chance turns on those critical minutes.
This, of course, leads one to consider how the assailant can bring
more rifles into line within the necessary time, and the solution is the
two-deep lines.
In action, no line advances quite as on parade. The order loosens;
the rear rank man does not exactly cover his front rank one. Every bullet
that hits the latter does not necessarily pierce the former. Ultimately
the line melts into single rank, but as the order is more easily maintained,
fewer men find opportunities to stay behind.
“Skirmishing order nourishes the natural coward that lurks in all our
hearts,” said Scharnhorst ; and the saying remains true against all
weapons and for all time, for death and mutilation are equally
objectionable to face, whatever the weapon.
It seems, therefore, a reasonable assumption to make, that the
line two deep will bring up double the number of men; for though
more may be hit, fewer stay behind. So that the first line alone
would bring 7oo rifles into line ; their fire would tell more rapidly
than only 350. So the following line would lose proportionally less,
and would probably bring, say, 1,200. Hence we should have, allowing
for losses meanwhile in the first rank, some 1,800 rifles in action
after five minutes, with correspondingly better chances.
I do not, of course, advocate the old rigid battalion line under any
circumstances. Companies in line with six to twelve paces interval, as I
have seen them morning after morning on the Tempelhofer fields, meet
all requirements, and in dense, intersected ground, company columns,
with skirmishers in front, are required; but where the problem to be faced
is the assault, across the open, of the ideal position, line two deep affords
the best prospect of success.
A few words more as to the problem of attack and defence,
with modern armies and modern weapons.
Battles are not won by the action of any one arm, but by the
combined power of all three.
Two modern armies advancing to meet one another, both confident
in their own fighting power, must necessarily, owing to want of roads,
move on a broader front than their actual deployment requires, or
in deep columns requiring a long time to close up. It is impossible for
them to exist concentrated as densely as in their fighting order.
The side victorious in the preliminary cavalry duel has the power of
ascertaining where the enemy's infantry is, and presumably uses it. It
can immediately decide at which point to appear in force; the enemy
must wait to find out. If the assailant's cavalry has shown a marked
superiority, then in normal ground he can send his artillery boldly to the
front, and engage miles in advance of his infantry; for, if the enemy
attempts to attack his guns with infantry, the guns have only to limber up
and retire ; horses can trot faster than men can walk.
F 2
6 THE INFANTRY ATTACK, 1892.
In all probability the defender will be in no position to attack at once;
he must await the concentration of his forces. The assailant has, there-
fore, time in hand; and, utilising the mobility of his artillery, he can Cram
on guns, at half-interval or in tiers, more rapidly than the enemy. But
with equal skill and armament, numbers must decide, and the degree of
loss to be faced in the final assault by the infantry depends on the com-
pleteness of the preliminary artillery preparation, which again depends on
accuracy of shooting and time available. A markedly superior cavalry,
therefore, not only gives the assailant the power of massing both guns and
infantry where he likes, but gives him also time to break down the enemy's
resistance.
But assuming no advantage to be taken of the mobility and
independence of the artillery, yet the greater the number of troops
engaged the better the chances of the assailant.
For it is evidently easier to prepare for a blow delivered on a front
of a couple of miles, in a position not exceeding five miles in all, than in
one of fifty. And, generally, the greater the front the further back must
the reserves be placed ; consequently, the longer the time required
to deliver them at a given place.
The rapidity with which an attack can be prepared increases with
every improvement in the power of the weapons. Two batteries with
the old percussion common shell might fire away for hours without
seriously injuring one another, whilst two modern batteries with shrapnel
will decide the matter one way or the other in a few minutes, and,
other things being equal, the superiority in numbers will tell.
Similarly with smokeless powder and repeaters; once the initial
superiority obtained, numbers again being the decisive factor, the
destruction of the other side follows much more rapidly than in the days
of the muzzle-loader.
The time available for preparing to meet the attack is settled by the
ground and the limit of vision it allows; there is no reason, there-
fore, why it should be greater in any particular case now than twenty
years ago.
Therefore, whilst the time of preparation and execution has been
diminished, the difficulty of bringing up reserves to meet it has increased,
and we have only to assign numerical values to the different factors to find
that beyond a given extension of front, defence becomes practically
impossible. But a relatively too small degree of extension means
envelopment, and a second Sedan. Where are we to find the genius who
will hit the happy mean?
Such a man may arise, but it is not business-like to trust to the
chance.
The practical lessons to be derived from this and the foregoing are:—
(1) The importance of a perfect cavalry, trained and finished to the
utmost extent; for cavalry of all arms is the least dependent on
numbers. Three hundred brave horsemen have overthrown three
thousand.
THE INFANTRY ATTACK, 1892. 7
(2) Mobility in the artillery. Mobility implies superiority of numbers
at the decisive point.
(3) Discipline in the infantry; for disciplined foot-soldiers will carry
out a difficult service with an aggregate less loss (though locally greater,
for the losses locally suffered victoriously are only a measure of the
excellence of the troops), which will vary almost as the square of the
discipline.
An excellent staff is a sine quá mon, but evidently the best staff badly
served by its cavalry is like a blindfolded man in a dark room ; without
disciplined troops to rely on—troops that obey first and count the cost
afterwards—they are as helpless as a swordsman with a soft iron sword.
The question of losses is simply this: bad leading produces heavy
aggregate losses, good leading can enormously reduce them ; but in great
battles, against a worthy enemy, the better the troops the heavier the
losses (locally, i.e., per battalion engaged) will be.—Reprinted by per-
mission from the United Service Magazine.
ATTACK OR DEFENGE
STRATEGICALLY AND TACTICALLY CONSIDERED.
ATTACK OR DEFENGE
STRATEGIGALLY AND TAGTIGALLY CONSIDERED.
INCE the war of 1870 and the era of improvement in fire-arms
consequent thereon, a tendency, to use no stronger term, in
favour of the defensive as a tactical form of action, has made
itself very conspicuous in contemporary British tactical literature, and this
tendency seeks to buttress itself up with the traditions of the most
glorious epoch in our military annals, viz., the Peninsula and Waterloo.
But, gentlemen, the conditions of war have altered very much since
those days, more so, indeed, than the weapons in use—the only factor to
which this school appears to attach any importance. Breech-loaders and
perfected shrapnel are certainly concrete facts with which we shall have
to deal, but I submit that short service, the development of com-
munications, the chronic state of peace as opposed to a chronic state
of war, the spread of “book” education, and other factors which might
be mentioned, all multiplied altogether, overlay the influence exerted by
changes in armament.
There is only one condition that remains unaltered and unalterable,
and that is the incidence of Death; and I believe I represent correctly
the opinions of the “great majority” in saying that they, as a body, are
profoundly indifferent as to which end of the rifle the bullet that lost
them the number of their mess was originally inserted at. If ten thousand
death-dealing projectiles, the modern Valkyrii, sweep a given plane in a
given space of time, the problem we have to solve is how to encounter
that storm of fate with the greatest possible certainty of victory and the
least possible total expenditure of our material.
In considering this question it is as well to begin at the beginning;
most of the existing confusion in tactical thought is due to the fact that
we have generally begun at the end, or at best in the middle, but have
ignored the initial proceedings altogether.
Let us take two great modern armies, the product of universal
liability to service and an average of two years' training, suddenly
expanded to war strength by the telegram “Krieg mobil” or its
equivalent.
If we assume the forces equal throughout in all respects we get
back to the problem of the irresistible force and the immovable post on
an infinite plane, and it is mere waste of time to discuss it.
The efficiency of an army is the product of the efficiency of its
respective arms and branches, each of which is influenced by many
2 ATTACK OR DEFENCE.
factors. Let us assume a slight differentiation in one of these factors, and
let this factor be the conception of Duty existing throughout the nation,
and follow the consequences of this slight variation.
We will call our contending forces A and B, and assume A to be the
nation with the highest sense of duty. -
And now note the consequences. In A, because the sense of duty is
highest, rolls of Reservists will be more accurately kept, orders will reach
them quicker, railway trains will deliver them more punctually, and they
will shake down into their new situations more rapidly. Contractors will
deliver better stores, boots will be better, clothing better, rifles will not
burst or bayonets bend, and cartridges will be filled with powder—not
with sawdust; it is, therefore, a safe prediction that the armies of A will
be ready for action and in better “fettle,” to use a Yorkshire term, in
fractionally less time than those of B, the amount of time thus gained
being proportional to the difference between d and d".
Still this concentration takes time—time measured by days—and
meanwhile on either side are forces which require minutes only, and not
many of them either, viz., the cavalries, to get under way.
While the armies are completing their strategical deployment in rear
let us note the consequences that the pursuit of duty—for duty's sake—
entails in this arm.
Men fighting on their own feet may make up in a variety of ways, by
fanaticism, innate personal bravery, etc., for neglect of minor details of
duty in peace-time; but with the mounted services, particularly the
cavalry, the horses reflect, with mathematical accuracy, the precise degree
with which these minor duties have been carried out, always provided that
the system on which these details are based is a correct one ; but we have
assumed the contending forces equal in all respects except in this one of
duty, and therefore can confine ourselves to this point alone. Given
equally good Systems, the more punctilious discharge of duty will ensure
Superior condition, Superior mobility, and, finally, superior cohesion in
the charge—but this spells Victory, as I will proceed to show.
The opposing cavalries will be face to face with each other in a few
hours, but neither side has anything to gain by attacking immediately, for
it is always the wisest plan to let a sleeping dog lie until you are prepared
to deal with him. They will, therefore, for the moment form two opposing
cordons, and, since both will endeavour to keep touch with the other, any
withdrawal on the one hand will be met by a corresponding advance on
the other, and from day to day the line will assume an undulating
character.
On the sixth day, let us assume, A is ready to move, and orders in this
spirit go to the cavalry leaders commanding the screen. Their imme-
diate action will depend on the nature of the country in front of them. If
it is open and relatively unguarded, the main bodies of infantry being
miles behind, they will ride straight to the front, confident in their power
to draw the enemy to concentrate against them, and to deal with him when
the necessity arises.
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ATTACK OR DEFENCE. 3
The advantage of the offensive in cavalry work can hardly be over-
rated. Minutes are then of more importance than hours to the infantry;
lines of retreat are almost immaterial to them; you either win or you do
not, and defeat should mean disaster to the beaten side.
Given a long line of cavalry outposts, extended according to orthodox
method. The attacking force coming on at a brisk trot is seen at, say,
1,500 yards distance. Minutes only, and few of them, can be gained for
the opposing concentration : those who have seen it tried know how few.
In nine cases out of ten it is open to the assailant to choose his own
conditions of light, wind, and background, and what advantage these
conditions, when all combine, entail, the practical soldier can judge.
Then pace and condition decide, but these are a consequence of duty
better performed, and therefore presumably on the side of A, who can
hence manoeuvre to induce the masking of B's guns by his own horsemen.
But with guns and cavalry against cavalry alone the result cannot for a
moment be doubtful, and since, as a consequence of duty conscientiously
carried out, condition and speed are on the side of A, in the resulting
mêlée B cannot get clear of pursuit, and if A sticks to his enemy in true
cavalry spirit, “to the last breath of man and horse,” B can only escape
annihilation by a miracle.
If the ground behind B is broken and occupied with frontier guards
on foot, A will fall back, and the cavalry screen acting almost automati-
cally, B will be drawn into country which offers A more favourable
conditions, and the ultimate result will be the same. B will ride up
against A’s frontier guards, will be shot to pieces and charged in the
most unfavourable direction, and the expenditure of the “last breath of
man and horse” will reap the same favourable result for A.
Hence, from the very outset of the war, this one slight differentiation
in the spirit of duty will have borne fruit, and in precise proportion to the
magnitude of the difference.
Meanwhile A's main body is moving forward, with its corps at close
supporting interval and distance. B is still necessarily engaged in
flank marches to complete concentration.
A’s cavalry having been victorious, in proportion to the extent of that
victory, A's infantry can sleep in peace and preserve its fighting power
relatively intact for the great decision.
B’s main body must not only march both faster and further, but his
infantry will be worn out all night by outpost duty, and the accuracy of
his musketry fire will be seriously discounted beforehand.
If the start thus gained by A is considerable, then his corps advancing,
ready to fight at a moment's notice, will probably encounter B's as shown
in Plate A, either as in Fig. I or Fig. 2, and the consequences must be
as depicted, unless B develops an altogether unexpected fighting capacity.
The variations on this theme are almost endless, and everyone can
work them out for himself, always allowing for differentiation in the
quality of the two cavalries, which must have worked itself out by this
time. -
But we will assume that the line of B's frontier is so densely held
4. ATTACK OR DEFENCE.
that he has been able to occupy a position with, say, Io Corps, and to
entrench it or not, as he may have preferred.
Such a force would occupy at least 20 miles, and possibly more, and
since it it is only necessary to burst through that line on a front of two
miles, considerable uncertainty must exist as to which precise two miles
will incur the brunt of the attack, and, by hypothesis, he has no longer any
Cavalry capable of adequate Scouting.
Let us assume B's army to be devoted to the cult of the shovel, and
to pin its faith on tactical key points—not an extreme assumption in the
circumstances of the day.
It frequently happens that in war the tactical lay of the ground by no
means corresponds with the strategical requirements of the situation, and
again, between the ideal position, with gentle glacis-like slopes, exactly
intersecting the line of the enemy's approach, and the ridges all tending
in the line of that approach, there is a considerable limit of variation.
But we will take the conditions most favourable for the defence—
ridges transverse to the direction of attack.
Then since, by hypothesis, the cavalry of the attacking force has
demonstrated its superiority, and in proportion to the degree in which
that superiority has been proved, the defender cannot tell precisely on
which two miles of his front out of the available zo the shock is about to
fall; he, the defender, must therefore be equally prepared at all
points, and the bulk of his reserves are consequently constrained to a
central position.
Now, in a great initial struggle, it will be as well to make sure of your
bear before contracting to deliver the skin, and to sacrifice the proba-
bility of victory to its possible consequences would be the grossest
conceivable error.
This thrusts the factical decision into the foreground ; there will be
time enough to reap the consequences of victory when the battle is won.
This was not always the case, for reasons which are too obvious for
investigation now.
The attacking force, therefore, masses its men into that particular
direction which promises most immediate results, and it by no means
follows that this direction promises either strategical consequences or
local tactical advantages, though the latter are the most probable.
While the assailant is thus massing for the attack, let us turn to the
defender for a moment. We have assumed that he occupies the most
favourable position in plan, let us now consider it in profile.
Confining ourselves only to the broad undulating features of the
ground in which alone great masses can be manoeuvred, we have only
three possible sections. Variations are introduced by the length of the
slopes, but I will select the most difficult for the attack, 6.
a is very rarely met, except where the ridges are relatively close
together, say, from 1,500 to 2,000 yards. Then there is a dead angle
between the two, in which infantry can rally unobserved.
b is the most common, or a variation of a and b, as in d. Then the
longer the lower limb of the slope the better for the assailants, for the
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ATTACK OR DEFENCE. 5
defender's artillery is masked by his infantry, as the lines of fire on the
diagram show. &
In c, and as the portion a y is long or short, the assailant can
choose his own range from ac, and disregard the defender's guns entirely
until the moment for the assault arises, when a turn of the elevating
screw will enable him to keep down the fire of the latter, and, at the
same time, to prevent either the supports for the infantry at v arriving, or
its orderly retreat.
It may be argued, why should the defender's guns and infantry be
separated ; why not put them in the same line at once P The answer is
that practically you can’t.
If you attempt it, then “skirmishers,” using the word in the old
light-division sense—which is totally distinct from the skirmishing of
the Napoleonic or German 1870 epoch—can creep up and pick off the
gunners at their ease, under any ordinary conditions of ground, and thus
materially assist the attacking artillery in the preliminary duel.
On the defensive, the guns must be protected by infantry, and that
infantry must be at least far enough in advance both to keep these
skirmishers at a distance and to be safe from the dangers of
“prematures.”
On the other hand, supports for this infantry cannot lie out on an
exposed slope between the guns and the firing line, for they would simply
form passive targets for both the guns and infantry of the assailant.
Nor can they be placed immediately behind the guns, or they would
play the part of mere stop-butts for the enemy’s “overs.” 6oo yards is
the least distance which will save them from this unsatisfactory rôle.
Balancing one condition against the other, the most favourable
section of ground I can find for defence is as shown in d. And when the
defender's guns at P have been reduced to silence or compelled to retire,
as they must be before the actual assault can be delivered with any
prospect of success, from T to R is still 1,200 yards, and 6oo of it, from
P to T, must be crossed in the full sweep of the enemy’s shrapnel.
I purposely pass over the possibilities of confusion in the reserves,
as a consequence of the enforced retirement of the guns; equally, I
ignore the depressing effect on the nerves of the fighting line, due to the
cessation of their fire.
My case is strong enough to dispense even with these very important
factors of the whole.
Now to revert to the attack.
The defender's cavalry having been decisively beaten, the assailants
can start boldly out to the front, screened and protected against possible
ambush or surprise by their own horsemen.
Let us take an attacking force of two armies, say, ten corps, formed
as in Fig. 3, eight in first line, two in reserve.
Choosing their own positions, within limits, and practically simul-
taneously, some twenty miles of batteries (ten to the mile) unlimber, and
the artillery duel commences.
The defender must either renounce his position, and come out and
6 ATTACK OR DEFENCE.
attack himself, when the gunners simply limber up and trot out of the
way, or he must stand still to be pounded at, when it becomes more or
less a case of machines against human nerves.
Here we come on another dilemma for the defender, either he has
constructed his epaulements beforehand, and his guns are ready in
position, when it may happen that the assailant appears in an unexpected
direction, necessitating a change of front and the abandonment of the
works constructed—a case that has frequently occurred in war—or his
batteries are held back in hand, under cover, till the intentions of the
other side have disclosed themselves, and then his batteries are com-
pelled to come into action under fire, a proceeding which can hardly be
undertaken without heavy loss. Of course the same applies, to a con-
siderable extent, to the assailants, only the latter enjoys, as a rule, a far
wider choice, both of time and position, and is therefore more likely to
effect his purpose without serious injury.
Both sides will now soon be engaged in a heavy canonnade, and, under
cover of the confusion, the assailant masses his forces for the decisive
blow opposite the point of his own choice, the bulk of the infantry being
retained far back to the rear, and under cover. The artilleries of the two
reserve corps trot up to the front. As they near the guns already in action
the latter raise their fire to the utmost intensity possible, and whilst the
enemy's front is hidden by the smoke and dust of bursting shells the new
arrivals sound the gallop, dash through the intervals in the first line, away
down the slope, unlimbering some I, ooo yards closer in.
We have now on a front of some two miles a numerical superiority
of two to one in guns, and, assuming anything approaching equality of
skill in the gunners on either side, the result cannot long be doubtful.
What will this result be P Another dilemma for the defender—either
he stands his ground, accepting total destruction, or he limbers up and
withdraws in the hope of finding a better opportunity later in the action,
Neither alternative is exactly inviting, and the latter perhaps the least of
the two nowadays, when no favouring Smoke-cloud screens the retire-
ment, and one has to consider the nervous impressionable natures of the
young peace-trained conscripts, who will not remain unaffected by the
sight of their comrades going to the rear, in however orderly a manner
the movement may be effected, and the possibilities of a disorderly with-
drawal must also not be left out of our calculations.
The assailant's guns are now left free to devote their undivided
attention to the infantry, and the question arises what is the result
likely to be P
The unanimous testimony of Continental experts who have under-
gone this “ordeal by fire” is, that it is a very unpleasant experience
indeed, and that the crash of bursting shells soon reduces the best of
infantries to a condition of nervous prostration which renders futile any
hope of accurate controlled fire action, and it must be remembered that,
since the introduction of rifled weapons, nothing approaching the intensity
of modern artillery fire has been endured. The Germans, in 1870, had no
reliable shrapnel. Their common shell was five times less effective, on an
ATTACK OR DEFENCE. 7
average, than the Ordinary doubled-wall shell, and still further behind the
new high explosive ones in use all over the Continent. Further, not one
battery in five, probably, had ever been really taught to shoot; so that the
results actually obtained may everywhere be put down as a minimum.
Yet some of these were striking enough. The duel between the eight
guns on the Rotherberg against the 64th French line regiment, behind
a substantial entrenchment at 600 yards, which ended in the defeat of the
latter, is sufficiently suggestive, and Gnigge and Haas's batteries at St.
Hubert are also instances to the point, and many more might be quoted
if my space permitted.
If, therefore, under the then existing conditions of projectiles and
armaments, isolated batteries could hold their own under the most adverse
circumstances of range against infantry under cover, how much more,
therefore, may they be relied on to do so now when their power has
increased at least tenfold, and that of the infantry in a far smaller ratio—
but to that point I shall recur later.
It has frequently been asserted in this country that on the whole
there is nothing the infantry soldier enjoys more thoroughly than a good
steady rain of shells, and the men who have made the assertion have been
notorious for the highest personal gallantry. But, gentlemen, there
is always this trouble in dealing with the testimony of exceptionally brave
men, viz, they are so abominably modest. It never occurs to them that
they are different from other people, and because their nerves don’t
fail them amidst the lashing hail of the shrapnel bullets, they imagine that
other people's don't fail either; but I submit that the bravest men of any
army are by no means fair samples of the average man throughout that
army, and that tactical forms and methods must be adapted to the general
and not to the particular. However, I can afford to concede this point,
viz., the moral effect of shell fire, also, provided they will allow that a
dead man is not as efficient as a live one ; that assumption will suffice me.
For the consequences of this artillery preparation are certain to
be “bloodshed,” more or less in proportion to the precision of the fire
and its duration, and if by the time the infantry are sent in to the attack,
Some 20 per cent. on the other side are lying killed or disabled, then the
task of the infantry will have been very materially lightened, for under
equal conditions 80 rifles will not do as much work as I oo.
But I will make an even greater concession and leave the artillery out
of account altogether, allowing the two infantries to fight it out without
interference. I will also assume the conventional glacis-like slope
and make any further allowances the other side may desire, only
assuming equality of armament as the one essential element of the
problem.
It is perfectly certain that the attacking side will not be stopped at the
extreme range of the rifle. They will not check for the first man who falls,
or for the second. How far they will go will depend on their discipline,
which again is a product largely affected by the factor of “duty.”
Ultimately, for a given standard of discipline they will reach a given
limit of distance, still preserving the power of controlled fire. Then
8 ATTACK OR DEFENCE.
they will halt, and reply to the enemy, and it must be obvious that
the nearer they get, and the greater the control, the more effective will
that reply be.
In proportion as this reply is more or less effective the enemy's
bullets will come in less numbers and with less accuracy. If, therefore,
the percentage of loss with which the limit a was reached by them was,
let us say, 3, then a following line will reach the same limit with a less
loss, ac', a third line will suffer less still, and so on. So that, ultimately,
given a sufficient number of lines, the attainment of a fire Superiority is a
mathematical certainty. Of course the other side can feed up troops in
the same way, but it is evident that since he cannot know at what point
to hold his reserves in readiness, the feed will not work with the same
regularity and precision as on the side which has enjoyed the option of
choice and the power of pre-arrangement.
Hitherto I have said nothing of distances or formations, and for these
we must go to practical experiences.
At this point in the proceedings it is usually customary for the
partisans of the defensive to trot out the unfortunate Prussian Guards,
and to immolate them on the blood-stained plain in their thousands, with
the same cruel dexterity and the same weapon which Samson used with
such effect against the Philistines in Gath. Then on their mangled
remains they rear up a fabric of forms and fancies as ludicrous as the
misstatements on which they are based.
Possibly this tendency may admit of scientific explanation. In India,
when the engineers propose to build a big bridge, there is a hurried
exodus of babies from all the neighbouring villages, the natives believing
that no structure can stand unless the foundations are laid on infants’
skulls, and the brickwork cemented with their blood. This superstition
appears to have been common to all Aryan races. May we not here have
an illustration of Atavism to the beliefs of our forefathers worthy of the
investigations of the Anthropological Society P For the idea is equally
baseless in either case ; the alleged holocausts never took place, either
at St. Privat or on the banks of the Jumna or Ganges, and even if they
had, would be immaterial to the real question.
Von Pape's division of the Prussian Guard went into action about
3.30 p.m., on 18th August, 12,000 strong, and lay out in the open under
shell fire, losing men till about 5 ; then both brigades advanced in ren-
dezvous formations, and having miscalculated the power of the Chassepôt
rifle, were suddenly overwhelmed by a storm of lead, and found them-
selves compelled to execute a change of front and deployment under the
most disadvantageous circumstances well possible.
It speaks well for the heroism of the men that they ever extricated
themselves at all ; but they did so, and then made a desperate dash for-
ward, to get within effective range of their own weapons, but in this
they only partly succeeded, for their momentum died out before they had
attained to 6oo paces from the enemy's position, at which distance their
needle-guns were only fractionally more effective than old Brown Bess,
and here they lay out, losing men all the time, until about 7 p.m. the
ATTACK OR DEFENCE. 9
village was finally rushed. Then ensued a scene of almost unexampled
confusion, and for another five hours they served as stop-butts for the
French “overs” from the great artillery duel that raged from Aman-
villiers, and the firing at this point did not ultimately die out till past
midnight. Having been under fire for eight hours and a half, they
ultimately re-formed, 4,000 men short of their strength, or with a loss of
30 per cent., and if we concede one-third of this total to have been
inflicted during the initial blunder and subsequent first rush, we have
gone as far as common sense and reason can in any way justify.
What it all comes to is this ; that in spite of a grave initial miscalcu-
lation, and in spite of inadequate artillery preparation, a division of
Prussian Guards succeeded in reaching a 600 pace, say 5oo yards limit
short of their enemy's position, and that, whether in line, column, or
skirmishers, for all formations were employed, they maintained sufficient
cohesion for purposes of fire control. That they subsequently failed to
advance during two whole hours can be accounted for by their inefficient
armament and the general consequences of their initial mistake, and by
the unfavourable formation they for the most part adopted.
The exact number of rifles available to bear on them cannot be given
with any approach to accuracy. I should put it at 15, ooo, and dividing
these by half to allow for the absence of repeaters, we are still within the
limits of a two to one numerical superiority laid down by Regulations as
the essential condition for a successful attack.
Wedel's brigade is another case in point, and a most important one.
For full details I must refer you to Hoenig's “Two Brigades,” a transla-
tion of which appeared in the American Journal of the Military Service
Institution, about two years ago, but which has otherwise to my know-
ledge received no notice in English tactical literature. Briefly, the story
is this:—
The 38th Brigade, numbering 4,500 bayonets, arriving at Mars-la-
Tour, after a most exhausting march, received orders to attack, in
co-operation with the 39th Brigade, which was advancing from the
direction of Tronville against the copses of that name. The order
arrived too late, and at the moment of moving off—“Direction, the north-
west corner of the Tronville copses"—the other brigade was already
beaten and in retreat, but this they did not learn till afterwards. The 2nd
Guard Dragoons had already been in full possession of the ground over
which the advance was about to be made for more than an hour, but the
substance of their reports, if any were made, never found its way to the
regimental officers who were chiefly concerned. The two batteries
attached to the brigade trotted forward round the right flank of the
infantry, as they stood in rendezvous formation, and as the latter, in pur-
suance of the order to advance, crossed the Metz chaussée, they heard the
first shots fall, away over towards Vionville. The next moment a perfect
storm of lead and shell splinters burst on them from the north, and the
mounted officers saw for the first time—the men on foot could not—the
whole of the Bruville heights before them densely occupied by con-
G
I O ATTACK OR DEFENCE.
tinuous lines of infantry and guns, in fact by the whole of L'Admirault's
Corps.
Instinctively, without orders, they brought up their right shoulders
and endeavoured to change front to meet the newly-disclosed danger.
The 16th Regiment on the left naturally completed the wheel first and
Some of its companies got into the ravine by La Greyère farm, where they
were met by a counter-stroke of the French, and lost 300 prisoners; but
the 57th (two battalions) and the two pioneer companies on the right had
further to go ; they simply raced forward, never stopping to fire, in
skirmishers, Small columns, and line, ultimately reaching the southern edge
of the ravine, whence they opened a rapid fire which soon shrouded their
front in smoke.
Hoenig, to whose work I have referred above, was adjutant of the
fusilier battalion of the 57th, and rode with his Colonel, von Ruell, in the
centre of the line; they reached the edge of the ravine, and there von
Ruell fell mortally wounded, and the next moment Hoenig was hard hit
himself. Lying on the ground he took a last look around him, and the
scene, as he says, is indelibly burnt in on his brain; to his left a long
straggling line of skirmishers on the ground firing as fast as they could
load, to his right two companies erect in line, which had just fired a volley,
and the surviving captain—mounted with the colours in his hand—was
calling on them to advance, when through the smoke, and not ten paces
distant, burst forth the bayonets of the French infantry, who, some six
battalions strong, had been laying for them in the ravine. That was
enough; the whole turned and ran, followed by the French, until the
dashing and self-sacrificing charge of the 1st Guard Dragoons put a stop
to their pursuit.
Hoenig calculates that one-third of the total loss was incurred in
the advance up to the edge of the ravine, one-third more during the fire
fight, and the remainder during the retreat. -
The net result for the purpose of my argument is therefore this,
viz., that good troops succeeded in advancing from 2,000 yards to within
500 yards, those units in close order still retaining the power of controlled
fire in the teeth of the bullets and shell delivered by 12, ooo rifles, sixty
guns, and twelve mitrailleurs, and in spite of want of artillery preparation
and the counter-effect of their own return fire. Divide the French
numbers as above by two, to allow for the absence of repeaters, and the
numerical superiority still remains largely on the side of the defenders,
but even this did not suffice to stop the assailants.
Therefore the conclusion is justified that, whether in skirmishers,
small columns, or line, and without artillery preparation, infantry can
count on reaching a 600 yards limit, even allowing for repeaters, provided
they will stand up to a 15 per cent. punishment; and perhaps these
figures are the best data to work on, for we are unlikely ever to See again
at the commencement of a great war the war-trained long-service
veterans who made the strength of the old Napoleonic War, of Welling-
ton's Peninsular army, and of Grant and Lee's splendid infantry. Still it
is worth while calling attention to their endurance, and recalling the fact
ATTACK OR DEFENCE. I I
that the losses they bore without flinching were inflicted within the space
of a few minutes, whereas these modern losses frequently took hours.
Compare Albuera, Chillianwallah, and the 24th, or lest I should be accused
of chauvinism, the consequences of a somewhat similar blunder to that
of St. Privat and Mars-la-Tour, in the case of the French Imperial
Guard at Waterloo, or, again, the punishment borne by the French and
ourselves at the Malakhoff and Redan respectively. The case of the Redan
is specially worth attention, for whatever else stopped us it was certainly
not the fire, yet the actual storm of projectiles encountered across that
6oo yards of open was considerably greater, I would say many times
greater, than anything troops have been called on to face in more recent
times. Take Todtleben's plans, and you will see at least Ioo heavy guns,
mostly 36-pounders, crossing their fire on our line of advance, to say
nothing of their infantry lining the parapets, and if you calculate out the
number of bullets delivered by both guns and infantry, the former firing
grape, I think it will be admitted that my statement is within the mark.
Yet practical men did not propose to abolish our formations for combat
on the grounds of the losses we there incurred, and it must be re-
membered that at the date of the Redan we possessed a considerable
number of practical soldiers in our army, for, as Napoleon said, “Men
age fast on the battle-field.”
The question, therefore, only remains—What formation promises the
best results P e
All formations were tried, and, of the lot, line succeeded best; but
the prejudice against the line was, and even is, extraordinary. The
original conception, handed down from Napoleonic days, that the
skirmisher protected the following column from loss, proved absolutely
illusory.
It was proposed to increase the distances; then the skirmishers
lacked support and momentum to carry them forward. So the skirmisher
line was thickened till it became merely rank entire, and gradually the
obedience to orders exacted killed the skirmisher proper and introduced
the hybrid line.
This is the condition which still holds its own more or less all over
Europe.
Instead of the true original skirmisher—the “verlorne haufe,” forlorn
hope of former days—the man who scouted in front of the storming
column, or the old decision compelling line, and who cleared the front or
took his chance between the decisive fire fronts of the contending forces,
we have now the man trained neither to know his own mind nor his
officer's, and who can never be certain whether it is his right to die where
he pleases or where his leader orders him. Could any system be more
calculated to induce hesitancy in execution, which means the negation
of discipline P
Let us reason it out first as a purely infantry question.
Given two contending forces and the hypothetical glacis-like slope.
The assailant comes under fire at 3,000—say 4,000 yards. How is
he to continue his advance P
G 2
I 2 ATTACK OR DEFENCE.
Would you immediately throw away all the cohesion which months
of training, based on the experience literally of centuries, has given you,
and tacitly let the reins go on the neck of the command 2–say to them,
in fact, “It is true I have been endeavouring to force my will on yours
by the means and within the limits allowed by regulation, for the past
two years or so; but now, in the presence of death and danger, I admit
all my efforts were founded on error. From henceforth it is for you to
decide as you like, and die as you please.”
Or would you not rather take up the reins, feel the bit, close your
legs, and say to the men : by deeds—not words—“By right of the
uniform I wear, and by the power I have exercised over you in peace, it
is my duty to lead you into the closest possible range, under the utmost
possible control, and irrespective of losses. I will carry you there. You
shall die where I please, not where you may prefer” P And can there be
any doubt which spirit in the leaders will carry the troops in furthest?
But it is not merely a question of getting the men there. The point
is, that when they arrive at a certain distance fixed for you by the intensity
of the enemy's fire, and the gradual deterioration of your own will (which,
in proportion as you more or less command your men, is also their will),
they should be able to open fire in reply, simultaneously, with every rifle
bearing. -
To keep the men in hand, the best formation is the column; but to
develop the maximum fire power, that column must deploy, and deploy-
ment means loss of time at the most critical moment, with consequences
familiar to all students of the Peninsula and Waterloo.
Is it not better to take the mean and employ the line P
For the regimental officer, everything hinges on bringing the men he
personally commands up to the shortest possible range compatible with
controlled fire. That range need not necessarily be the final range, and,
in so far, it is not the decisive one.
But it is the decisive one, in fact, notwithstanding, for if you do not
attain the first fire superiority you will certainly never survive to reach the
Subsequent stages.
When you, in the first line, have reached that first limit of the fire
contest, your work is done. You can co-operate with others as long
as your life remains, but the direction of the fight has passed from your
hands, and all that remains for you is to do your duty in that station of
life unto which it has pleased the D.A.G. of the British Army to call you.
The responsibility for ultimate success, in so far as this first conflict
has not decided it, now rests on the General and the arrangements that he,
through his Staff, has made for your support.
If he possesses true battle genius—that indefinable gift of feeling the
throbbing pulse of the immense fighting machine he controls—then at that
precise moment when your strength was on the point of failing, and
seconds would decide whether you turned and ran, your ear would have
caught the beat of the drums, and if you turned the head your eyes would
have seen the following line, closing always inward and presenting a front
which no wavering will could possibly have faced. You would—you
ATTACK OR DEFENCE. I 3
will—gain a psychologic impulse from its strength, and go forward with a
cheer till the enemy's fire again calls halt to your progress; and so on.
It is now a conflict between the battle instinct of the opposing
leaders; all the individual, of whatever rank, can do is to back this genius
by all the resolution at his command, and all any regulation can accomplish
is to train and steer that resolution.
Resolution is will-power, and discipline is only a Latin name for the
resultant will-power of thousands, willing the same purpose with all the
strength of their natures; and the object of drill is to teach this will-power,
this sustained and concentrated effort of the mind, to control the muscles,
both voluntary and involuntary, of the body; but to effect this the drill
must be practised with smartness, and herein we have the scientific
justification of the “cut away them hands there like lightning ” of the
drill sergeant.
One moment, whilst I endeavour to develop this idea. In the old
days when men went to the wars as regularly every summer as we now go
to the manoeuvres, many things which are dark now to us were
clear to them. Experience had taught them that in the few weeks at
their disposal steadiness could not be overdone; if by chance it was, then
the bullets of the next campaign soon restored the equilibrium. But
when the conditions altered and war became the occasional—the very
occasional—pursuit of the soldier, and peace his chronic employment, and
as the experience of the battle-field ceased by lapse of time to influence
the conduct of the drill-masters, this oversmartness became a positive
danger, and I, for one, am not disposed to throw stones at those who
twenty years ago revolted against the pedantry of the barrack square
martinet, though I do think we have gone further than is wise in this
direction, and that it is the highest time that we copied the Germans
again, and braced ourselves up.
If in the old days practical experience showed that the utmost
possible strictness of discipline was needed to bring up troops to the
limit of effective fire, and that only specially picked men could be trusted
for the exceptional risks to which the skirmisher is exposed, then, if the
deadliness of modern arms has increased to the extent inventors tell us,
the need for the sternest discipline has intensified tenfold. Napoleon did
not sanction the massing of men in heavy columns, characteristic of his
later campaigns, because that formation rendered them less vulnerable,
but because it made the maintenance of control easier, and he relied
on the combined efforts of his artillery and cavalry to reduce the strain on
the slower moving foot to the limits of the endurable. It was deterioration
of material which led to this massing of men and not increase of fire
power on the part of the infantry, but the point is purely a relative
one, and it is immaterial whether the fire power increases and the quality
of the men remains constant, or vice versä.
I hold that the strain on the infantry, if properly handled, has not
increased, but on the contrary has diminished, for the reasons broadly
stated, that in the old days it took four Prussians a short day to kill one
Frenchman, or vice versä, but in recent years six Prussians or Frenchmen
I 4. ATTACK OR DEFENCE.
working over the legal eight hours day have barely succeeded in
accounting for one adversary. In the single instances in which the
Prussians did come up to their old record of one to four, they took
ten hours to do it, and the artillery committed most of the slaughter,
and on the same day it took about eight Frenchmen the full ten hours
to kill one German, though they never fought better.
There is a point at which improvement in weapons ceases to be
an unmixed advantage. The weapon must be precisely adapted to
the capabilities of the man; when this point is exceeded then what you
want to do is to invent a new man, not a new weapon, and that is what
the Germans, and, indeed, our own new regulations intelligently applied,
are endeavouring to accomplish.
Normal evolution has in fact supplied us with a new man, relatively
so as regards the era of Wellington, a being more nervous and possessed
of greater individuality, which requires to be utilised. A rational system
of military training endeavours to derive the utmost advantage from this
increased individuality and to increase it also, by trusting the man more
and educating him both to realise his position as a factor in the nation
and to accept the responsibility inseparable from that position; he is no
longer a machine, but a responsible being, and the greater his intelligence
and the more it is cultivated, the greater the latitude he may, under
certain circumstances, be accorded. At the same time his nervousness
must be counteracted and a support found for the weaker vessels in the
concentrated will-power which numbers and the habit of close-order drill
smartly executed supply him. There are armies in which these facts
are not appreciated.
The two seemingly contradictory tendencies are both met by the
same procedure. Training in extended order, etc., increases the intelli-
gence and develops the will-power, and then the intelligence thus
developed increases the power of willing together as a mass.
That intelligence alone will not suffice, the history of the American
War demonstrates. The men who ran at Bulls Run were fully as
intelligent as those who fought at Gettysburg—the sole distinction was
that the latter had since been drilled.
Space and time prevent me from enlarging on the rôle of the cavalry,
on Smokeless powder, new rifles, and the shelter trench.
I must proceed to sum up the steps of my argument.
Given two armies equal in all other respects, except in the national
conception attaching to the word “duty.”
Then that army in which duty is most highly developed will be
ready for action first, and to utilise the gain of time become the assailant.
By the time it reaches the enemy's position its psychological superiority
will have sensibly risen, from causes already detailed.
If in the Napoleonic era le moral est pour les frois quarts, then in
these days of Smokeless powder and long-range weapons it counts for
more, and hence the chances of success are markedly the greater.
An incompetent commander may neutralise by his blunders the
qualities of his troops, but these qualities, mainly the product of their
ATTACK OR DEFENCE. I 5
national sense of duty, can extricate the commander, and, moreover, in
proportion as the sense of duty is more or less developed in the race,
the probabilities increase that incompetency will not be found in the
higher ranks.
Finally, under existing conditions of society, and for many generations
to come, duty and loyalty are practically synonymous terms. The average
man requires a concrete symbol on which to concentrate his attention,
and that symbol for us is and remains the Crown; and in the era of
warfare which is inexorably moving towards us I venture to predict that
victory in the long run will incline to that nation which has remained
true to a monarchical form of government. Philosophers may reason
about and sacrifice themselves for abstractions, even for Humanity with
a capital H, but the rank and file of the nation requires something more
tangible.—Lecture delivered before the Royal United Service Institution, 1894.
Republished by permission.
THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY.
THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY.
HE principal cause which, to my mind, leads to the extraordinary
confusion of thought that exists in the domain of tactics, not
only in England, but elsewhere, is that we attach a constant
value to names denoting things which, in their nature, are essentially
variable. This is especially the case in all discussions as to the relative
power of cavalry and infantry. The cavalry enthusiast sees in his mind's
eye perfectly-trained and fresh squadrons bearing down in extended
gallop, with well-closed files, over level ground, on exhausted, demora-
lised infantry; or, more often does not reason at all, but picks up from
some text-book instances in which cavalry have been successful, never
stops to inquire the cause of their success, but jumps to the conclusion
that if they only ride home they will always be equally fortunate. The
infantry enthusiast, on the other side, views matters in an exactly contrary
direction. To him, the squares or lines await the onset of the blown and
disordered cavalry in perfect coolness, and a couple of volleys suffice to
empty every saddle; and if he is a Briton he points with pride to the
bearing of our troops at Waterloo, or to that exceptionally daring
advance with the bayonet of the 5th Fusiliers at El Boden and its
successful result, forgetting to inquire what kind of cavalry it really was
which we there encountered.
The truth really lies between the two extremes; but as a means of
testing the value of the historical occurrences on either side we are sadly
in want of information from whence to gather an approximation to the
actual conditions under which the two arms really met; and further we
require to know, as a means towards securing the tactical efficiency we
desire, what causes actually have led from time to time to the success or
failure, more especial of the cavalry arm.
As a rule such information is most difficult to acquire. I have been
utterly unable to find any reliable record of the evolution of our own
cavalry, for our regimental histories, though brimful of personal incident
and adventure, never give a page to these really essential matters, and
French military history is equally deficient; even Marbot tells us very
little about them ; all alike forget to mention what the standard of
efficiency really was, or how it was judged, and failing these points of
Support it is impossible to construct an estimate.
Only in Prussia can one obtain the desired information, and even
here there are gaps in the history very imperfectly closed.
What one has always wanted to know is how it came about that,
whereas in the Seven Years' War Prussian cavalry broke almost all they
rode at, fifty years later the cavalry of the same nation failed nearly
invariably against the same infantry weapon; and again why, after the
2 THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY.
comparatively trivial results achieved by the German horse in 1870,
twenty-two years afterwards, and in spite of the immense improvement in
the mechanical perfection of the weapons which has since taken place,
the leaders of cavalry opinion in that country claim that they will revive
the glories of Ziethen and Seydlitz in the coming war. -
The key to these questions will, I hope, be found in the following
lines. The evidence is by no means as perfect as I could wish, but I
trust it may suffice to set other minds working at the same problem.
The state of the Prussian cavalry at the commencement of the first
Silesian War may be gathered from the new official history of that
campaign published in Berlin last year. It was far from perfect, and
did not particularly distinguish itself. At the beginning of the Seven
Years' War it had much improved; younger and more talented leaders
were rapidly coming to the front; but throughout the whole campaign it
constantly suffered from the evils of new formations, and its ranks had to
be flooded by recruits and remounts to make up for the heavy drain, the
necessary result of the war; still even under these conditions it achieved
unequalled successes. No nation can boast of a more startling victory
than Rossbach, achieved in half-an-hour by Seydlitz and his thirty-three
Squadrons over 50,000 French and allies; and the claim of the cavalry
cannot be disputed, for the Prussian infantry brought only seven battalions
into action, of which two expended between twelve and fifteen rounds
and the remainder but a couple of rounds a-piece; and the artillery—
18 guns—only fired for a few minutes. Zorndorf, which would have been
a Prussian defeat but for the cavalry, and Hohenfriedberg, with the
celebrated exploit of the Baireuth Dragoons—six squadrons strong, who
brought in sixty-nine stands of colours besides guns and prisoners—these
are too well-known to require further mention.
What principally concerns us is what happened to this arm after the
war, during the fifty years which elapsed between the victory of Rossbach
and the catastrophe of Jena.
At the conclusion of peace its efficiency rose rapidly. Though
reductions were made, these were chiefly effected by drafting out the
worst horses and men.
Very few of the original rank and file can have survived the
campaigns—that is to say, have failed to achieve promotion—so that the
cavalry must then have been an ideal force—all the privates in the prime
of youth and strength, all or nearly so with two or three years' war
experience, and the whole led by officers who had won their rank before
the enemy with the greatest cavalry General the world has ever known as
their inspector.
I have repeatedly seen it asserted in German works, and can well
believe it, that during the following nine years the Prussian cavalry
reached their absolute zenith, and that the arm has never really been seen
on any battle-field in such perfection as they had then attained.
Now begins the decadence; and it appears to me that its history
throws a strong side light on many difficulties with which of late we have
ourselves had to contend.
THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY. 3
Since with men in the prime of life the death rate was necessarily
low, very few recruits were accepted, and these were handed over to a
drill-sergeant per squadron. It was not worth an officer's while to go
out and see half-a-dozen men drill. -
Young officers, as they joined, drilled with the recruits, as ours do
still, till dismissed, but then ceased to have any particular incentive to
further study. What influence could they exert, or what could they teach
the war-worn veterans before whom they were privileged to ride P They
were mere children by their sides, and probably felt it. All amongst us
who joined in the old long-service days must remember a feeling of the
same kind. Then, out of our own experience, we also know that the vast
majority of men who have acquired their own knowledge by practical
action very generally forget the difficulties they encountered when they
first started. By practice they grew insensibly out of the stage of
complete ignorance without even noticing their own progress. Now
that they have knowledge they forget there was a time when they had
none, and cannot put themselves in the position of the young officer who
has no longer, in a state of peace, their opportunities. Everything to
them seems so much a matter of common sense that they cannot conceive
the necessity of teaching their juniors how to post a piquet or conduct a
patrol. A young officer growing up with long-service soldiers does not
appreciate the difficulties either, for they carry out all minor duties by
tradition and custom, excellent as long as the real war-experienced men
remain.
But there comes a time when medals are conspicuously absent in the
front rank, and tradition has been degraded into rule of thumb. War
seems very distant and the inspection very near. The more ambitious
and practical an officer is under such circumstances, the more certainly
will he devote his time and energy to the practice of movements which
will tell in the latter. If, then, the inspecting General is wanting in
activity and knowledge, the doom of any arm, but more particularly of
the cavalry, is sealed.
And there is yet another rock on which long-service soldiers are apt
to split. Troops once thoroughly trained and disciplined, men and
officers fail to perceive any object in the constant repetition of movements
long since familiar to them. A couple of parades a week are ample to
keep the men in form, and more only makes them sulky. Thus the
element of laziness creeps in, becomes in due course traditional, and
ultimately proves the hardest bad habit of all to eradicate.
War inevitably tends to decentralisation and to habits of self-reliance
in the junior officers; peace as inevitably to the reverse.
Since with old drilled soldiers, who practically work themselves,
there is very little for captains and subalterns to do, they take as much
leave as possible, and the command of the whole becomes centralised in
the colonel and sergeant-major.
All these factors tended to the disintegration of the Prussian horse
and there were yet others more peculiar to them at work.
Owing to the heavy losses of the campaigns, all who survived, men
4. THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY.
and officers alike, came out much about the same age, and, as a conse-
quence, they all grew old together.
Now, as a fact that I can vouch for, from personal observation, the
Prussian, and indeed the German, ages much more rapidly than the
Englishman, particularly in the higher classes. Very few Germans
indeed, even nowadays, maintain their figures and activity over forty.
When, therefore, Seydlitz died, and the junior captains averaged
some twenty years' service, there being no longer the example and
pressure of an exceptional man at the head, the elderly gentlemen who
commanded regiments and squadrons found it easier and much less
exhausting to judge the efficiency of their commands in the manège, or by
watching an occasional charge from a flank, than by riding in front of
their men in the open field; and as Marwitz, on whose journal this article
is principally based, very rightly points out, this was the beginning of the
end. In the old days charges were judged from the front; the men
prided themselves on riding boot to boot; his own regiment, the Gens
d’Armes, went even further, and their particular swagger was to ride knee
behind knee. Accurate dressing was thereby rendered out of the question.
The charge was, as already stated, judged from the front, and if that was
closed and unbroken everything was well. But, when judging from the
flank came in, the correct alignment began to be considered the main
thing, and this could only be attained by allowing the ranks to open when
the gallop sounded; and so it came to pass that the descendants and
survivors of the old Frederician cavalry, attacking at the gallop, were
ridden through and dispersed by French cuirassiers, who moved only at
the “trot,” but “closed up.”
In addition came the troubles introduced as a consequence of the
absolute necessity for economy.
Marwitz's description of his own regiment, the Gens d'Armes, with
whom he served for thirteen years, will sufficiently illustrate this point:—
“Our strength was ten troops (companies they were then called),
each company consisting of sixty-six privates, without counting N.C.O.'s,
of whom half were on furlough, and were only called up for the drill
season, which lasted from the 16th March to the 23rd May, nine weeks
in all.
“Out of these nine weeks, only three were allotted to riding in the
school, and each man rode for an hour a day, or eighteen hours in all.”
It must be admitted that eighteen hours is not too much for a man
who, for the rest of the year, was engaged at his trade in the fields, or in
the workshops. (I must add that Marwitz is here defending the old
regiments from spending too much time and attention on equitation
only, instead of on more “practical” work.)
“Then for three weeks to the time of the “special review,’ the
regiment went out to drill on alternate days, so that the man again
mounted his horse nine times.
“After the “special review,’ a number of the men were again sent
on furlough, only enough remaining to enable us to go out to drill with
THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY. 5
twenty-four files per troop, and these few men mounted their horses nine
times in all.
“In the autumn we had another three weeks' drill, but only with
twenty files per company, and no individual riding at all. Hence it
follows that, at the outside, no furlough man had more than eighteen
hours' riding drill, and only mounted his horse for drill in the ranks
twenty-seven times, and no one who knows what the difficulties of the
business are, will contend that this is too much time to bestow on such
an all-important matter.
“But it may be asked, How was it with the remaining thirty-three
duty men, surely they must have been perfect centaurs? Unfortunately
from these we must deduct the recruits and ‘freiwáchters’ (men struck
off all duties, and allowed to work at their trades in the town). There
were ten of the latter allowed by regulation, and as a body they rode
worse than the furlough men, for they only turned out when the regi-
ment paraded at its full strength, and never went to riding drill at all.
“Of recruits there would be an average of eight annually, and
since two years is the least time in which it is possible to make a
horseman, there were at a time sixteen men undergoing their training;
so that of the thirty-three, only seven remained from whom one could
with reason expect that they should ride perfectly.
“Of horses, each troop had seventy-five, and received every year
eight remounts. As the latter joined very young, they could not be
put in the ranks under three or four years; twenty-four must therefore
be subtracted from the available strength. But, amongst the horses
dismissed by the riding-master, there are always some which, owing to
defective shape, weakness, or trifling unsoundness, can never be regarded
as capable of perfect training. Take these at a seventh of the whole,
and we must deduct another ten. Finally, a certain number had to
be set apart for the recruits, and these it was impossible to train
perfectly, for they passed from the hands of one recruit to another, and
as every recruit had to ride daily, we must deduct two for each, or in
all sixteen horses” (I am following Marwitz exactly), “so that for the
whole troop there were necessarily sixty-six part trained, and could only
be nine thoroughly trained horses.
“Is this overdriving the art, when by no possibility could there be
more than seven trained horsemen out of sixty-six, and only nine
thoroughly broken horses out of seventy-five, when this art is the one
mainspring of the efficiency of the whole P
“The butcry simply arose from the fact that, when anyone saw a
selected detachment ride in the school, he was astonished at the perfor-
mances, and easily came to the false conclusion that the whole regiment
had attained the same degree of skill”—a point, by the way, enthusiasts
for Agricultural Hall displays would do well to note. As long as the
efficiency of a given regiment is all that a competent Inspector-General
says it should be, there is no ground for complaint, for the best regi-
ment will turn out the best riders; but when, as sometimes happens,
the whole routine of an underhorsed regiment is sacrificed in order to
6 THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY.
make a show before the public, even with the laudable desire to obtain
recruits, it is time for a critic to step in and show the injury actually being
inflicted on the Service.
Under the conditions above indicated, the Prussian cavalry de-
generated fast. The king knew all about it, but when Seydlitz had gone
he had no one to help him, and, overwhelmed by the stress of work he
had voluntarily taken on himself, he could only now and again find time
to give them an occasional scolding. One of these, delivered at
Potsdam, Marwitz has preserved word for word, and, as it explains a very
great deal, I give it in extenso.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I am entirely dissatisfied with the cavalry;
the regiments are completely out of hand ; there is no accuracy, no order.
The men ride like tailors; I beg that this may not occur again, and that
each of you will pay more attention to his duty, more particularly to
the horsemanship. .
“But I know how things go. The captains think only of making
money out of their squadrons, and the lieutenants how to get most leave.
You think I am not up to your dodges, but I know all, and will recapitu-
late them. To-morrow, when you start on your march back to your
garrisons, before you are ten miles away, the squadron commander will
ask his sergeant-major whether any of the men live in the vicinity, and
the sergeant-major will reply, ‘Yes, Sir, there are So-and-so who live
quite close here, and would be glad to get furlough.” “Very well, then,’
the captain will say, ‘we can save their pay. Send the names to me
to-night, and they shall all have it.’ And so it goes on every march. The
subalterns get leave to visit their friends, and the captain arrives at his
garrison with half the squadron mounted, leading the horses of the other
half, like a band of disreputable Cossacks. .
“Then, when the season for riding drill comes on, the captain sends
for the sergeant-major and says, “I have an appointment this morning at
So-and-so; tell the first lieutenant to take the rides.’ So the sergeant-
major goes to the senior subaltern, and gives him the message, and the
latter says, “What! the captain will be away, then I am off hunting; tell
the second lieutenant to take the men.” And the second lieutenant, who
is still probably in bed, says, “What I both of them away ! then I will
stay where I am ; I was up till three this morning at a dance; tell the
cornet I am ill, and he must take the rides.’ Finally the cornet remarks,
‘Look here, sergeant-major, what is the good of my standing out there in
the cold; you know all about it much better than I do. You go and
take them.’ And so it goes on, and what must be the end of it all P
What can I do with such cavalry before the enemy 2 I tell you I think so
much of the importance of your arm, that I expect more from a lieutenant
of cavalry than from a major of infantry. When I visit the outposts I
expect every subaltern in charge of a piquet to be able to tell me exactly
all about the ground for five miles round, and be able to make an
intelligible sketch of it.” (Frederick's standard, by the way, was not
very high, and some of his own topographical work, recently republished
in fac-simile, would certainly have entailed his failure in “C” and “D.”)
THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY. 7
“If I send him on a patrol, he must be able to tell me exactly where,
and how strong the enemy is, and how best to get at him ; what the roads
are like, and whether I can move guns by them, etc.; and when the time
for the charge arrives I expect you all to seize the opportunity, and not
wait for orders, which always come too late.
“You see how high an opinion I hold of your service. Now go;
attend to your duties better; and don’t let me have to speak like this
again.”
Nothing could show more graphically how far the Prussian horse
had fallen. Still, they preserved a few of their traditions. One instance
—that of his first appearance on parade—Marwitz quotes; it took place
about the same time, when he was still riding as a recruit in the ranks.
He had been given a great raw-boned animal, with no mouth to speak of,
and when the “Charge” sounded he broke the ranks, and tore past the
colonel into space. “For this I should have deserved the ‘fuchtel”
(corporal punishment with the flat of the sword), but in consideration of
my youth, and the obvious physical impossibility of holding the horse’’
(he was then a very little fellow, about 15 years of age), “I escaped with a
reprimand.”
This at least shows that knowledge of horsemanship was still
traditionary in the Service, for it implies that the art of acquiring
complete control over the horse existed somewhere ; otherwise breaking
the ranks would have become too common to notice, and impossible
to punish, for when in a whole regiment no man can show another how
to hold a horse, punishment cannot be justly awarded to an individual
who fails to do so. I remember seeing a certain hussar regiment, on
inspection in the Long Valley, break up and squander when charging,
with at least half the men out of the ranks. The event was specially
impressed on me, since these disbanded warriors tore through our own
intervals, we (the R.E. troops) being drawn up for inspection also on Clay
Cart Hill. Even the formidable obstacle of Scrogg's Bottom could not
check their impetuosity, and we saw many riderless horses emerge from
it on the other side. Three men were picked up with broken legs, to the
best of my recollection.
To return to the history. The causes of the failure of the Prussian
cavalry in 1806 were principally these:—The distribution of the cavalry
in small bodies to the infantry divisions; the want of uniformity in
training, which prevented the few larger bodies that were retained
together from delivering a proper charge; and want of dash and pluck in
a great majority of the old long-service, peace-trained soldiers. Though
individual squadrons behaved magnificently, there can be little doubt
that as a body they funked the French, and they funked, not because they
were individually less brave, but because as a consequence of the long-
service evils pointed out, they had, as a rule, no real confidence in their
leaders.
The efforts made during the ensuing years to create some kind of
cavalry fitted to cope with the French are of the greatest interest, for
II
8 THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY.
here we can see whence many of the false ideas on cavalry and cavalry
training had their origin.
Owing to the appalling losses in men and horses suffered by the
French as the wars continued, the efficiency of their cavalry rapidly fell,
till, in individual instances, hastily-raised Landwehr squadrons obtained
local successes.
Yet the moment it came to united action of larger bodies the failure
was complete, as at Ligny. Blücher was so disgusted with their
performances on that day that he wrote a very severe dispatch, which was
felt by one commander of an irregular corps to reflect on the personal
courage of his regiment, and he called the old Field-Marshal out. It
hardly needs to be said that the challenge was declined, but the whole
event caused considerable stir, and Marwitz took up his pen to defend
the action of the Field-Marshal by showing that the failure was by
no means due to want of courage, but to the fact that owing to the
gradual extinction by age of the old Seydlitz Scholars, the elements of
cavalry efficiency and training had been forgotten.
His pamphlet is one of the most suggestive and able to be found in
the whole range of cavalry literature, and, as it raises many points which
are of direct application to our existing system, it will not be out of place
to précis it at considerable length. His first question is: “What are the
elements which make an efficient cavalry P” and his second, “Were
these elements in existence in the Prussian horse of that day?”
“These elements are partly moral, partly physical, in principle ;
they are analogous to those which constitute the strength of a good
infantry, but their application is infinitely more complicated because they
depend on the co-operation of two living organisms—the rider and the
horse. The moral elements are personal courage in the individual and
espriţ de corps vivifying the whole mass.
“The physical ones are soundness and condition combined with
‘horsemanship' in the ultimate unit—the horse and his rider—and
mobility and precision in all fixed movements in the whole body.
“The words of Blücher’s report have been taken by the other arms
to imply a deficiency of personal courage in the individuals of the cavalry,
but this view is untenable, because the recruits of the mounted arm come
from the same class as those of the infantry, whose courage nobody
questions, and all were equally imbued with the same love of country and
the same desire for revenge. It is ridiculous, therefore, to assume that
all the brave men joined the infantry whilst all the cowards elected for
the cavalry. The reason for our failure must lie deeper than this, and we
will return to it when we have dealt with the other points.
“Esprit de corps is a virtue which requires a “body’ in which to
manifest itself. Where it exists it raises the courage of the individual
through the confidence he feels in his comrades, and the dread of their
ridicule should he prove himself unworthy. Honour and shame are more
keenly felt by the mass than by the individual, and when, as in the last
two years (1813-15), the desire to sacrifice oneself to achieve the
liberation of the Fatherland has inflamed every heart, it can by a
THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY. 9
judicious choice of means be made into almost an irresistible moral force.
Were these judicious means adopted in our cavalry P
“The officers are the representatives of the men, the true pillars on
which regimental tradition, which is almost synonymous with esprit de
corps, rests. If it dies out among them it cannot live long among the
lower ranks except in a perverted form, which in time may re-act most
perniciously on the officers, giving rise to a spirit of exclusiveness and
regimental self-righteousness which may cause most serious embarrassment
to the army leaders by the friction it entails in the execution of orders.
“As a consequence, the members of a body of officers must be
relatively numerous, so that the seed may take root in them and the public
opinion of the majority be able to compel the obedience of individuals.
In a body of from ten to twenty members only, a healthy espriţ de corps
can scarcely exist.” -
I may here note that Marwitz never contemplated such overgrown
bodies of officers as the R.A., R.E., or the Indian Staff Corps, though
the two former have maintained their regimental traditions to some
purpose. From forty to sixty was the limit he had in mind, though the
limit might be increased to, say, Ioo.
“The officers must belong for a considerable time to their regiments,
so that they learn to look on the regiment as their home. For a corporate
spirit is opposed to the promptings of selfishness, and if men live long
enough together no personal consideration will induce a man to cut the
ties which bind him to his brother officers. But if you wish to destroy
this collective spirit, then move your officers constantly about so that
they never have time to form these ties. You may thus evolve men of
ambition fit to be leaders, but you will have no regiments in the true
sense of the word for them to lead.
“The observance of these rules is all the more essential with troops
of new formation, such as ours have been during the recent wars; for
when no time has been given for esprit de corps to form among the
men, the officers become its sole supporters.
“With regard to the men, the same principles require strong
regiments. Better fewer strong regiments formed by the expansion of
weak cadres and inheriting the traditions of their names and colours, than
many weak ones formed new from colonel to trumpeter.
“The number of officers in our cavalry regiments is too small—
only twenty-three, and that total is rarely maintained. They have been
too frequently interchanged, and notably before the commencement of
the last campaign whole regiments were denuded of their leaders, who
were distributed throughout other ones.
“The regiments are in themselves too weak, and the formation of
Some more by taking a squadron from each and grouping every four of
these squadrons to form a new regiment was a blunder of the worst
kind at a time when we were almost in face of the enemy.
“Hence of all the elements that go to the formation of a true esprit de
corps not one existed, nor in the nature of things could exist, in the
Prussian cavalry when we last took the field.
BI 2
Io THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY.
“Of courage and zeal in the individuals there was as much as in any
other body of troops, but of the habit of mind which can combine these
qualities into a useful whole, and which alone renders the regiments and
squadrons reliable tools in the hand of their leader, there was not, and
could not be, a trace.
“Coming now to the physical qualifications, and taking first the
soundness of man and horse—considered as an indissoluble unit—it is
the case that the great majority of our horses were radically unsound.
After 1812, when the few remaining suitable horses had either died in
Russia or been ruined by overwork, we had to collect an enormous
number of animals to reconstruct the cavalry, and there was not time
enough for suitable selection even had horses existed in sufficient
numbers. We had, in fact, to take what we could get—old riding horses,
carriage horses, cart horses, whatever the French had left us. All these,
whether already broken-down horses or young untrained ones, had to be
mounted by recruits who could not be expected to, and certainly did not,
understand how to save their mounts, by bringing the strain on the
stronger and sounder limbs and muscles and saving the weaker ones. In
two rapidly-conducted campaigns, including the last one in winter, the
forehands of almost all the surviving horses were ruined. They became
so hopelessly wooden in the forelegs that one can characterise the whole
lot with absolute conviction as entirely unsuited for cavalry purposes.
And during the few intervening months of peace we received only a very
small percentage of remounts, and then were compelled to take the field
in a most unsatisfactory condition as regards soundness.
“As to the usefulness of man and horse combined, the standard was
an exceedingly low one, and for the following reasons:—Taken together,
the usefulness of the unit (man and horse) depends on this, viz., that the
man is able to take his horse at any desired pace in any direction, and
over any ground ; and under all conditions is able to use his weapons with
effect against the enemy. The art by which these purposes are attained,
and which on the one hand develops the strength of the rider, and on the
other secures that the powers of the animal are made the most of by
saving the weaker and working the stronger parts of his frame, is termed
horsemanship.
“An unbroken horse, as long as he remains in that condition, is
useless for the above purposes. A rider who does not know how to
control the movements of his mount, to the extent needful to obtain the
amount of control indicated as essential, is nothing more than an unfor-
tunate surrendered to the uncontrolled impulses of a timid, yet dangerous,
beast. Now during late years the art of horsemanship has become
extinct in our cavalry. The horses are no longer under the control of
their riders. When one wants them to gallop, they bolt; when they are
required to stand still they turn about, because they do not understand
what the pressure of the leg is intended to indicate. If one requires them
to leave the ranks or to leave other horses, they decline to do so or run up
against the others; in short, they obey their own untutored instincts
instead of the will of their riders.
THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY. I I
“The young soldier on such a brute is indeed in a pitiable state, for
he has to submit to the animal's moods without knowing how to control
them ; compelled to do the best he can, as far as his strength permits,
he jobs the poor brute in the mouth, sticks his spurs into him, and at
length brings him into a state of desperation worse even than his own.
For the aids he employs are almost always the wrong ones, and only
encourage the horse to resist, not to yield himself. That such a man,
entirely occupied with his horse, and being carried whither he knoweth
not, is in no position to make use of his weapons, is self-evident. He is
therefore useless as a cavalry soldier. But this, in the main, is the
condition of our cavalry.
“I do not say that every rider is so helpless, for that is nearly
impossible, and if they were so, all hope of improvement would be at an
end; but I insist that the above accurately represents the condition of
the majority, and, though some regiments are better than others, yet, as a
body, they are all more or less in the same boat.
“As an old and experienced cavalry soldier, I say that the art of
horsemanship is so far lost that, in the whole army, there is hardly a
single young officer left who understands how to train horse and rider
from the beginning upwards. If we go on at the present rate, then, with
the last of the old squadron leaders, the art will finally disappear from
amongst us.
“A new view of the matter has crept in since the time when our
cavalry first began to deteriorate, and perhaps the cause of its origin
lies in this very deterioration. This view is, that horsemanship is
unnecessary for cavalry; courage, the reins loose on the horse's neck, a
sharp pair of spurs, these are the only necessary elements of success
in the field ; so alone can one count on the overthrow of the enemy.
“This idea at once stamps the school whence it arises as no cavalry
soldier's. A man on a horse who cannot ride will only then succeed in
driving his horse into the enemy's ranks, by letting go the reins and
sticking in his spurs when the horse is either blind with terror, or so
fresh, from over-feeding or standing in the stable, that he runs away from
sheer light-heartedness. Under all other conditions, when wearied with
the long marches necessary to meet the enemy, he never goes straight
for him, but always tries to run away in an arc until his head is turned
towards his last night's quarters.
“Whoever has ridden in a charge which the enemy attempted to
face knows for certain that no single horse of itself ever desires to
face the collision, but that rather they all pull up and try to turn away
from it.
“If the charge is to succeed, then the rider must compel his horse
to maintain the direction. The French try to prevent this inevitable
tendency by closing the files so tight that the horses cannot turn round,
and advancing so slowly (at a trot, sometimes even at a walk) that the
line cannot open out.
“The opponents of horsemanship base their case on the fact that
the French, whom they admit to be execrable horsemen, have nevertheless,
12 THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY.
on occasions, succeeded, ignoring that it was by this method that they
did so, and from isolated occurrences have established a principle,
without troubling themselves over such details. Strangely enough,
though many people will admit their deficiencies in other arts, such as
dancing, fencing, swimming, and so on, no one will ever allow that he
cannot ride. He may go so far as to confess that he is not a school
rider, but he gets out of that by saying that he considers school riding,
i.e., horsemanship, as of no account. He gets to the place he wants
to somehow, and he does not fall off, and that seems to him sufficient.
One's eyes tell one that he ought to fall off a dozen times a day, if he
were not careful to avoid the risks which a cavalry man between his
comrades has to take as they come, for it is evident his legs are in the
wrong place to control his horse’s movements, and he is entirely at
the mercy of the animal. Many a horse has been rejected by him as
vicious and untameable because it refused to stand still when its rider
was applying aids to make it go on ; and, after many disappointments,
he has perhaps got together three or four animals gentle and long-
suffering enough to allow him to do what he likes on their backs, and
he is then satisfied. He can ride, not school-fashion perhaps, but he
can ride.
“Such a man forgets that a cavalry soldier cannot choose his own
mount, but must take what is given him, and can never avoid the
opportunities of falling off that present themselves, but must at all times
be ready to go where he is ordered on the horse provided for him.
“The horse is a living machine which the rider controls at his will ;
but, just as little as a machine can go of itself, but is at all times
dependent on the knowledge of the man who employs it, so little also
can a horse be managed by one who has not been taught how to do so.
“From the above it is clear that our cavalry has decayed, for two
reasons: first, because the horses were not trained, or had become
broken-down past training by the service, and, secondly, because our
men could not have ridden them, with the training they possessed, in
any case.
“Next comes skill in field movements. Perhaps after what has been
said above, it may seem unnecessary to enlarge on this point, for how can
a cavalry possess skill in combined movements when the individuals are
in themselves useless P But it will throw additional light on the subject
if we investigate a little the conditions which the field movements of a
good cavalry ought to satisfy.
“These conditions, briefly stated, are mobility and vehemence in the
charge.
“But the two conditions are in themselves contradictory. Mobility
is most easily obtained with light men on small, active horses, vehemence
in the charge by men on powerful upstanding ones, and you cannot easily
combine the two.
“If Nature had made all men of one weight and all horses of the
same size, such a combination might be possible; but, since men and
horses are not all cast each in the same mould, the best way out of the
THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAvALRy. 13
difficulty is to sort them out in at least two, possibly three, different
classes of cavalry—light, heavy, and medium—and give to each its special
drill regulation, which should develop the pace and vehemence of the
heavy branch to the utmost and the certainty and power of overcoming
all obstacles in the light cavalry to its extreme limit.
“A cavalry neither vehement in shock nor rapid in its movements is
practically useless; it would be better to spend the money they cost on
infantry only. For the foot soldier is more independent; he has no horse
to get hungry, sick, or lame; and, as long as his strength holds out, no
obstacle is altogether insuperable to him ; whereas external influences
constantly impede the horseman. If, therefore, I sacrifice these two
advantages of vehemence and mobility, and accustom my heavy cavalry
to charge only at a trot or walk, as the French do, or my light horsemen
to find an insuperable obstacle in every ditch and fence they meet with,
I should do better without them altogether, preserving only a few mounted
men to carry orders and perform a little perfunctory Scouting.
“But how will it fare with me in a war with an enemy who possesses
a numerous and determined cavalry, rapid and quick in manoeuvre, and I
meet him in an open country P. History gives the answer—and it is not
an encouraging one.
“Cavalry, therefore, is essential ; and, if essential, then it follows
that it must be trained to develop those powers in which it is superior to
infantry to the highest limit possible : the light cavalry, especially, in
rapidity of movement across country independently, the heavy, in pace
and vehemence in the charge.
“Rapidity of movement is, however, not merely a question of
reckless galloping about ; such a course only ruins the horses by uselessly
wasting their strength. The true art consists in handling the horse in
such a manner as to save him as much as is consistent with the object to
be attained, and next, in a drill which permits of a desired movement
being executed in the least time and by the shortest line. The vehement
charge, the special province of heavy cavalry, requires the fulfilment of
two conditions, viz., pace and closed files; the latter with the special
object of uniting, by the pressure inwards, the momentum of the indi-
viduals into that of the mass.
“Our cavalry is incapable of either form of action; it can neither
get about nor charge boot to boot. Its drill regulations are modelled on
those of the infantry. Common sense would indicate, with arms having
such widely different methods of action, that the same forms of drill
cannot possibly be common to both. Things have got to such a pass
that a regiment of infantry now manoeuvres faster than one of cavalry.
Those who do not believe that our cavalry is nowadays slow, because
they adopt the French standard, should look back twenty-six years or so,
and recall what our drill used to be when the traditions of Seydlitz's days
were still with us.
“Our charges are ridden too loose. This dates from the time when,
on the drill-ground, charges began to be judged from the flank instead of
from the front. The criterion of good charging is now held to be perfect
I4. THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY.
dressing; but perfect dressing with properly closed files is only possible
with perfectly trained men and horses, neither of which we at present
possess. Since the inspectors would have it so, it has become the custom
to open the files, so that now one may see even a cuirassier regiment
charge with a horse's width between the files; and hence it has happened
to us that we have been overthrown in the charge by the worst cavalry in
the world, which possesses only the one qualification of sticking to one
another, knee to knee, at a trot or walk.”
I have dwelt at length on this pamphlet of Marwitz's partly because
it is one of the soundest works on cavalry questions with which I am
acquainted, and can be applied to our own circumstances to an extent
that each reader must decide for himself, partly also because his writings
are the principal connecting link between the present and the past of the
Prussian cavalry, and have since proved of almost inestimable value, freely
admitted, in the regeneration of the arm during the past seventy years.
For yet darker days were at hand for the Prussian horse.
The same causes already detailed, which acted so injuriously on
them after the Seven Years' War, were soon at work after Waterloo, and
they worked all the more rapidly because, in the first place, the prestige
of success was principally on the enemy's side, and, secondly, there was
no Seydlitz, and no King, to keep the men and officers together.
In addition to the reaction which inevitably followed the long years
of strain, there was the trouble that only a very few men indeed, such as
Marwitz, had ever seen a really efficient cavalry, and, as he points out, the
traditional methods of training man and horse were dead.
Blücher, though an ideal leader in action, was both too old and also,
even when at its best, had never understood the reasons of his success.
He could handle the finished weapon—none better—but he could not
forge one to answer to his hands.
The then King's knowledge was limited to the number of buttons on
his cavalry men's different orders of dress—no small feat of memory,
considering their diversity; and, to crown all, the offices of Inspector-
Generals of Cavalry had lapsed.
Till the appointment of Prince Frederick Charles, in the winter of
1866-67, the efficiency of the Prussian cavalry was judged by infantry
Generals, for the most part, and only that was needed to complete its
ruin. For N.C.O.'s, horses, and officers all grew old together; the men
under the three years' service system of course were constantly changing
(this, together with the fact that the Prussian troop or squadron leader's
commission renders him personally responsible for the efficiency of his
command, proved ultimately the salvation of the whole); and the stagna-
tion of promotion became such that instances are on record of father and
son both serving in the same Squadron as lieutenants, and, as far as age
goes, many a regiment might have been commanded by a great-grand-
father as colonel, grandfathers as squadron leaders, fathers as senior, and
sons as junior lieutenants, provided that the family was sufficiently
prolific. Under such circumstances, it is needless to add, the tendency
THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY. 15
to judge charges from a flank and the efficiency of the squadron in the
manège became exceedingly pronounced.
Now, School horsemanship, though an indispensable part of the
education of the cavalry soldier, is the veriest pitfall for the elderly and
lethargic squadron leader that can be created, more especially if the
Squadron leader himself has never been taught to ride.
Thanks to the docility and intelligence of the horses, such wonderful
results can be obtained, given sufficient time, even by a fundamentally
vicious system, that the man who has never himself been trained to
understand the actual requirements of field service, and is now too old to
learn, habitually mistakes the form for the spirit, and is satisfied by results
which, though they may do well enough for the musical-ride standard, are
worse than useless for the field.
Von Rosenberg, now Inspector-General of Cavalry, wrote, some
years ago, a short pamphlet on cavalry equitation, which has since proved
the starting point of a new regeneration, in which he quotes a charac-
teristic utterance of an authority (von Elpons) on the system of equitation
in vogue between 1825 to 1845, which exactly stamps the tendency of
the day. I give it with Rosenberg's remarks: “Many of von Elpon's
pupils had complained to him how difficult it is to understand the Prussian
riding regulations,” and to this he replies : “This expression, often uttered
with sad resignation, always filled me with a certain secret satisfaction.”
“Obviously,” says Rosenberg, “he was of opinion that the object of
instruction was not to impart light and leading, but to disseminate
darkness and obscurity, a view characteristic of a certain school of
instruction in military sciences in all times. Conscious of their own
ignorance, their efforts have always been to avoid being found out, and
with this object they have adopted the policy of the common cuttle-fish,
who exudes ink to delude his pursuers. These we shall always have
with us,”
As a fact, the old Prussian riding regulations were by no means
difficult to understand by men trained in the right spirit to appreciate
them. The difficulty only began when the inspecting officers demanded
results from their application which they were never intended to supply.
It was in vain that General von Wrangel, and the two or three others
who thought with him, endeavoured to keep alive a true standard of
efficiency; they were not backed up by their sovereign, and the average
inspecting officer, being too frequently an infantryman, was more easily
pleased by circus tricks than by true horsemanship.
Now it was very much easier for the old gentlemen who then filled
the rank of squadron leader to potter about the riding school on foot than
to spend five hours every day in the saddle handling their commands at
speed ; they were therefore only too happy to meet the inspecting officer's
wishes half-way. Thus it came about that, about the middle of the
forties, the squadron leader who could take his squadron past the saluting
base at the slowest possible canter without breaking, and all horses
leading with the same leg, was looked on as the best, and since long
rapid movements and the charge were the worst possible preparation for
I 6 THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY.
the purpose, they were seldom, if ever, practised. “It tended to get the
horses out of hand,” it was said, and I have heard the same remark in
certain of our own cavalry regiments, not more than fifteen years ago.
As a further consequence of this state of things, the stable manage-
ment adapted itself to the same end. Fat horses, not condition, being
the criterion of efficiency, the stables were kept over-heated, ill-ventilated,
and the corn administered without reference to the work done. The
latter has happened nearer home within my knowledge, and the result
was the same in both cases, viz., that the art of deriving the best possible
value out of the corn ration in relation to the work to be done became
practically a lost one.
Those who would form an idea of the contrast between the Prussian
cavalry about the middle of the century and at the present time should
compare von Wrangel’s requirements, given in Kaehler’s “Geschichte
der Preussischen Reiterei,” which were considered far in excess of
possibilities in the army at the time, and those laid down in Prince
Hohenlohe’s “Letters on Cavalry,” about 1884, which, high as they then
appeared, have since then been considerably surpassed.
1847 marks about the lowest level they ever touched. The Schleswig-
Holstein War and the Baden Rebellion, which broke out the following
year, infused fresh life into the arm, and it was now that the advantages
of the squadron system began to show themselves. Amongst the young
officers coming forward were von Schmidt, von Rosenberg, von Krossigk,
and, indeed, all the men who of late years have made the arm what it is.
Being men thoroughly imbued with the true cavalry spirit, they
individually revolted against the cult of the fat horse and circus rider, and
claiming, as far as possible, the free hand their commissions accorded
them, they independently set to work to elaborate a system better suited
to their practical requirements.
It was in the small garrisons, “far from the madding crowd’’ (of
“brass hats” understood), that the foundations of the new structure were
laid. The views of the reformers slowly spread through their regiments, and
the more independent amongst their comrades instinctively copied their
practice. But the progress was exceedingly slow, and but little had been
gained when the Austrian War of 1866 broke out. Into the tactical
shortcomings of the arm during this campaign I have no space to go—
they are sufficiently apparent to those who read the official history
between the lines;–what saved them was the work of individual officers
and squadrons who during the long years of peace had been striving to
make their commands more fit for war, in spite of inspection ideals. The
war, however, had the good result of attracting universal attention to the
state of the arm, and initiating a better system.
This was marked by the appointment of Prince Frederick Charles as
Inspector-General of Cavalry immediately on its termination. This at
once changed the whole spirit of the inspections, and now came the
opportunity the reformers had longed for.
During the next three years the progress was rapid, but the time was
too short for really great and thorough changes.
THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY. 17
Though after 1866 the majority of the officers had become imbued
with the new spirit, and recognised the necessity for change in the
existing method of training both man and horse, there were probably
not 5 per cent. who knew by experience and with conviction what the
new method ought to be ; and since this experience and the precision
with which the routine of training must work to secure good results
cannot possibly be acquired under several years, the actual performances
of 1870 fell far short of the ideal to which the spirit pointed.
It is not my intention or desire to write disparagingly of what the
Prussians did in this war, and I willingly concede that the results were a
surprise to the world, and relatively of a very high order; but I want to
bring home to my readers that it is no good possessing, even in its
highest form, the dash and daring of the true cavalry spirit unless one has
also the perseverance and endurance to train one’s command, wherever
it may be, to serve as an efficient tool in one’s hands.
It is an admirable characteristic in a young subaltern to volunteer for
a I oo-mile reconnaissance, and a grand resolution for a great leader to
hurl 60 Squadrons against the foe; but if the subaltern's horses and men
have never been trained to cover a third of the distance, or the General’s
Squadrons have never learnt to manoeuvre together, the dashing spirit will
only meet with disaster, and the resolution which in one case makes a
man's name for life, in the other establishes only his reputation for
unbounded folly.
The mistake very generally made in other countries outside of
Germany was the assumption that everything had happened in 1870
as the result of design, carefully prepared and thought out beforehand,
that, in short, all was for the best in the best of worlds possible, and that
the cavalry acted in each instance as it did because it was cavalry, i.e.,
a body of uniform excellence led by commanders of uniform skill,
and not that any particular action was strictly conditioned at the
moment, because a particular leader happened to be at the spot with
a particular body of men whom, for the most part, he had trained
himself.
But the Germans discriminated, and only took their best results as
a criterion of merit. Their cavalry leaders were not in the least inflated
by the relatively high average of their achievements, but admitted frankly
that, though with the material as it was they had done well, they
had done nothing to what might have been achieved had a higher
standard of training and greater uniformity placed better weapons
at the disposal of the excellent spirit undoubtedly displayed by all
ranks.
Scarcely was the war over when they were at work again, and already
by 1876 their cavalry manoeuvres showed a great improvement. This was
the time of von Schmidt's greatest activity. His inspections, even of a
single squadron, lasted from morning till night. He would dismount
man after man, and get up and show him how the thing Ought to be
done himself, and this not because he was not perfectly aware of the evils
of interference with subordinates, but because the actual method of
18 THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY.
training had as yet not reached more than, say, 10 to 15 per cent. of the
squadrons, and both officers and men still required to be shown by
example what was actually demanded of them. It was a death struggle
between the old and the new schools, between the routine traditions
handed down from von Elpons and his followers, and the practical
methods of von Rosenberg, von Schmidt, and their scholars.
In spite, however, of almost superhuman efforts—von Schmidt fairly
killed himself by overwork—progress was only slow. How slow, the
following quotation from a work published in 1885 affords an indication:—
“Our riding education keeps our horses during the whole of the
winter, viz., from October to April, in the riding school. Then follow
the squadron training and regimental drills, also on level parade grounds.
Only during the short period of detachment exercises and manoeuvres,
which last only four weeks, is it necessary for cavalry to ride straight over
whatever comes first. Is it possible that the soldier will feel full con-
fidence that his horse will carry him safely as long as he sits still and does
not worry his mouth P Is it to be expected that he can keep his eyes
fixed on his squadron leader and the enemy P Is it not much more likely
that he will be anxiously looking down at every stone and cart rut on the
ground, pulling at his horse's head, and thereby destroying the order of
the formation ? But how can a leader who has been brought up in this
groove feel confidence in the ability of his men to follow him, when
he knows that every potato field, every ridge and furrow, loosens their
Order P”
This extract is taken from Prince Hohenlohe’s “Conversation about
Cavalry,” a book that grew up out of his “Letters on Cavalry" previously
referred to. In the preface to the former he gives the origin of the book,
which was briefly stated as follows:—
His letters, though warmly received by the army in general, met with
considerable dissent in the cavalry in particular; not because he
praised them too little, but because he overrated their performances,
making them out, they felt, so much better than they really were,
that it was feared its tendency would be to relax their efforts towards
perfection, not to encourage them.
An old friend of his, who throughout the book is designated as
von S., and who my friends in Germany have always told me was none
other than the Crown Prince, now King, of Saxony, came to him as
spokesman of the arm, and submitted their views on the subject, from
which resulted a series of conversations, which are embodied in the book,
and of which, in passing, I would only say that it embodies almost every
essential of the principles and methods of training horses and men
in a manner and with a clearness hitherto unequalled in military literature;
and of all the many books which ought to, but never, have been translated
into English of late years, it occupies one of the first, if not the very first,
place in order of merit."
* A translation is now appearing in the “Journal of the United States Cavalry
Association.”
THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY. 19
My own experience of the German cavalry, not Prussian even, in the
same year certainly did not convey quite so pessimistic an impression to
my own mind. Again and again I saw whole divisions sweep over cart
ruts, field drains, and other minor obstacles without any of the anxious
craning he refers to, and though I certainly did see a regiment of hussars
charge infantry across 600 yards of open in column, when there was no
conceivable necessity for their doing so, their performances seemed to
me, fresh from studying our own cavalry brigades at Aldershot, under the
late Colonel Percy Barrow's guidance, as just about all that could be
demanded of such numbers and far more than could reasonably be
expected from such short-service soldiers.
I have, therefore, always discounted von S.'s opinion, accepting it
not as a statement as to how things actually were at the date of publication,
but of what they had been some few years beforehand, but at any rate a
good deal subsequent to the war.
Generalising from numerous conversations with German cavalry
officers during the past three years, I am inclined to believe that the
great move in advance did not commence in earnest till about 1884, at
which time the bulk of the squadron leaders were men trained under the
new system, and with the advantage of early war experience; but from
this date it went forward with ever-increasing velocity, as each old colonel,
bred under the old régime, was removed and his place taken by a
younger man.
The process of eliminating old traditional errors, more particularly
in equitation, continues, and although there is a tendency still in certain
districts to coddle both men and horses during the winter months, it is
rapidly disappearing, and I myself saw last winter the cavalry in the
Brandenburg garrison go out for field movements with the thermometer
some 8° below zero; so that in the main von S.’s criticism can no longer
be held to apply.
As an instance, by no means the only one I could cite, let me
give a case I saw in the manoeuvres of 1891 in the Cassel-Erfurt district.
The first encounter took place between the cavalries of the two armies in
the vicinity of Mühlhausen on the 17th September. On this day the
cavalry division of the XIth Corps issued from the mountainous district
they had been marching through from Cassel and came in contact with
the cavalry of the IVth Corps advancing from Erfurt. Close to the
village of Seebach I came on a brigade of three regiments of the latter
force. Just as I reached it the brigade moved off westward in a
rendezvous formation, i.e., with the three regiments abreast in line of
squadron columns at close interval. From where I stood the ground fell
away to the north and west in gentle undulations; there were no fences or
hedges, but in the trough of each undulation lay, generally, a running
stream a couple of feet wide, flowing between boggy banks, a few pollard
willows indicating its course. Here and there slight outcrops of rock
and some patches of low scrub offered further impediments to progress.
Northward lay the town of Mühlhausen, out of which a chaussée,
bordered with the usual avenue of poplars, ran almost due west along the
2O THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY.
crest of a long gentle spur that came down from the distant mountains,
and amongst the trees on the chaussée I could detect, by their white-cap
covers, the enemy's patrols.
The brigade moved off down the slope and across the first hollow at a
steady trot, crossing the stream in the bottom without losing for a second
its sharply-defined rectangular outline, every horse quiet and steady in its
place, not a sign of that useless expenditure of force indicated by plunging,
restive horses, which the passage of the Smallest obstacle usually entails.
Then they brought up their left shoulder, and in the distance I saw
a second brigade converging on them. Presently they came within
supporting distance of one another, and both wheeled up till they fronted
northward; their horse artillery battery galloped out on the inner flank,
and its first round was answered by the enemy's guns in position along the
chaussée.
The two brigades had meanwhile continued their advance towards the
enemy at the same uniform pace, their outline as sharply defined as the
edges of the squares on a chess board ; but on hearing the first round they
opened out to line of squadron columns at full interval, at the same time
forming two lines in échelon, two-thirds of the whole strength in first
line.
Descending into the hollow, they were, for a moment, hidden from
the defender's artillery, but beyond that they would be in the full sweep of
his shrapnel. They crossed the brook in the bottom with perfect steadi-
ness, and then, taking advantage of the cover the rise afforded them,
sounded “Line to the front,” and, the moment this was completed,
“Gallop,” and swept over the brow of the hill in a well-closed-up line.
For a moment, as they descended into the last hollow between them and
the enemy, I lost sight of them ; but presently they re-appeared, dashing
up the further slope at the fullest extended speed of their horses, but I
noticed that the rear rank was no longer quite as well closed up as usual.
The inner flank was almost on the road, it seemed to me, when suddenly
the two nearest squadrons went “troops left,” and the head of the column
thus formed, changed directions to the right, the rest of the first line,
followed at a couple of hundred yards by the second one, dashed over the
road ditches, and the whole disappeared behind the screen formed by the
trees and into the valley beyond.
The countercharge, which was actually attempted, was masked from
my view by the advancing lines, but less than a minute after the troops
crossed the road I saw two regiments of white caps and their battery tearing
up the slope beyond above the screen of the trees, and closely followed
by three regiments of our own side. The Umpire Staff then appeared
and put a stop to the proceedings, and I had time to examine the
ground.
In the hollow in front of the chaussée I came on the cause of the
unsteadiness in the rear rank referred to above. This was a broad
drainage channel, about 12 feet wide at top and 5 feet deep, cut along the
bottom, with side slopes of one by one, a sufficiently serious obstacle.
The horses, by the marks of their hoofs, had mostly skated down the first
THE RISE, DECAY, AND REVIVAL OF THE PRUSSIAN CAVALRY. 2 I
3 feet, and then jumped the remainder clear. Further on I found the
reason for the break into column above alluded to. The road was here
Scarped out of the side of the hill, and there was a drop of about 13 feet
into it. They had seen it only just in time, and though going at speed
were yet so perfectly in hand that they were able to wheel up sharp, and
the tracks of the Outermost horses were not more than a few feet from the
edge. But down in the hollow beyond a still greater surprise awaited me,
for here ran a stream of water 6 feet broad, in a trench 40 feet wide from
cutting line to cutting line, and at least 12 feet deep ; a big “in and
out” with running water where one would have wanted to take off. It
would have scattered any ordinary hunting field, but a battery and five
regiments in all had swept over it, without a single man down, at the
fullest extended speed of their horses.
I have since measured the distances carefully, and checked and
counter-checked the above account in conversations with several officers
who took part in the event, notably the officer commanding the battery,
and, therefore, can vouch for the accuracy of my statement, on which in
England, at the time I first made it, considerable doubt was cast. It
is only necessary here to add, in continuation of my argument, that none
of the five regiments were among the half-dozen reputed crack Prussian
regiments, but were ordinary line cavalry, two of them Hessians, and that
the distance from where the trot first sounded to where they halted
was as nearly as possible Io, ooo yards, the last 1,500 of which were
covered in the charge and pursuit.
Since then I have witnessed many charges, one even in which sixty
squadrons took part under one leader, and though in none was the
ground quite as difficult as in the above instance, still it was far from
being the level parade ground style to which von S., in his depreciatory
remarks quoted above, refers.
Individual regiments gave proof of skill but little, if at all, inferior
to this even in 1870 ; but the point to notice is that now all can
be relied on to accomplish what then only crack Squadrons could under-
take.
One point on which all German cavalry officers are agreed, is the
enormous improvement in the horses during the last twenty years,
but it is difficult to decide how much of this is due to better remounts
supplied by the Government studs, and how much can be fairly attributed
to more thorough stable management and a higher standard of condition.
This much, however, is tolerably clear, that had the old cult of the “fat”
horse still persisted, no results achieved in the breeding establishments
would have been of any avail. The key-stone of German cavalry
efficiency is, undoubtedly, the now universal appreciation of what is
really signified by “condition,” for without condition the drill necessary
to obtain their perfect precision of manoeuvre would only end in the
breakdown of the material.— Written in 1892, republished from the Royal
Onited Service Institution Journal by permission.
IMPERIAL INSURANCE.
IMPERIAL INSURANCE.
HE debates on the Employers' Liability Bill have shown that
both Parties are agreed on the principle that the individual
workman must be insured against the risks of his calling by a
contribution which will ultimately come out of the pockets of the
consumers. If, however, it is reasonable and just that individuals should
be protected against the risks of their calling, by a tax on the whole
nation of consumers—and it is claimed that the Act will “protect”
directly, by compelling employers to improve their plant and supervise
their staff more efficiently—surely it is equally just and reasonable that
the Empire should be protected as a whole against the far greater
suffering and calamity in which everyone would be involved by an un-
successful war. Stated in this abstract form, few probably will object to
this proposition ; but, if the attempt were made to apply it practically, a
storm of opposition would be raised. We should be told that war is an
anachronism—a disgrace to the principles of the nineteenth-century
humanitarianism—that we pay sufficient taxes for defence already; that
the proposal is only the thin end of Protectionism, etc., etc., ad mauseam.
Our first object must, therefore, be to show that in the existing state of
national evolution, war, or a succession of wars, is an absolutely inevitable
consequence of the struggle for existence. Nations live on trade, and
when their numbers begin to press on their means of subsistence, conflict
must ensue, and the weakest goes to the wall. Viewed in the mass, the
human race exhibits two planes of cleavage—one vertical and the other
horizontal. The vertical plane divides nations from one another; the
horizontal separates the different layers of Society, as in rock structures.
The former is usually the best defined, and in both, rupture takes place
along the line of least resistance. The Socialists and Radicals, having
discovered that the nation presses too closely on its means of subsistence,
are accumulating pressure in the hope of rending the social strata
asunder; but the result will be different from what they anticipate, for
the strata cohere more intimately than is imagined, and, when the
pressure has increased sufficiently, the mass will fall apart along the
vertical plane of cleavage. And for these reasons: The attack on the
upper classes destroys credit and drives away capital. The pressure on
the means of existence is thereby intensified. But the process cannot go
on indefinitely, for all capital is not capable of transference, and the
conditions being everywhere almost equally unfavourable, Capital will be
compelled to find employment within its own nation by endeavouring to
Secure more favourable conditions for its own flag.
At first its efforts will be confined to protective tariffs, reasonable
enough as an expedient for fostering infant industries, but, once the
infant industries have developed into manhood, about as wise as sitting
I 2
2 IMPERIAI, INSURANCE.
on the safety-valve to prevent an engine making steam. This is what is
happening throughout the continent of Europe at the present time, and
only the equilibrium of armed forces, held in by Governments that play
the part of the boiler shell, has prevented a rupture. But the weakest
boiler, to continue the metaphor, is France, and for her the line of least
resistance lies through England. In strong monarchical Governments,
held together by dynastic ties, peace may be maintained long after it has
ceased to be the interest of the stronger to preserve it. Monarchs, too,
are frequently averse to incurring direct responsibility for bloodshed, and
Capital, through the Press, is powerless to move them. But, in a Republic,
Capital is all-powerful, and can work the Press for a war to any extent it
pleases. Direct responsibility for bloodshed cannot be brought home to
any individual member of the Government, and Capital takes no account
of human lives. -
Contrary to the conventional view; given an adequate force, war,
with modern weapons, is not expensive, either in lives or money, to the
successful side. The campaign of 1870-71 cost the Germans, in round
figures (including those who were killed and those who died of wounds
or disease), four per cent. of the troops who actually crossed the frontier,
and our railways exact a similar percentage from their employés (exclusive
of clerks in offices) every ten years. The money sunk in their con-
struction, to say nothing of the lives sacrificed, for which no figures are
available, almost exactly equals the cost of the maintenance of the
German Army since 1815, and it is at least open to question whether the
benefits brought to Germany through the increased security which attracts
Capital, the increased labour power, the education of character, and
training of the body, which the German system confers on those who
undergo it, do not considerably exceed the advantages we have obtained
through our railway system.
Is it not within the bounds of possibility that, sooner or later, this
business view of the question may present itself to a nation that feels
itself strong enough to count on a success P
I do not suppose that any such cold-blooded syndicate yet exists
even in France. If it did I should feel more hopeful for the future.
Such a body of men would be hard to convince of the certainty of
success. The real danger lies in the widespread diffusion of the idea
that something must be done to provide more favourable markets, and
the indifference and hopeless ignorance that prevails amongst the items
that go to make up the mass of public opinion as to the risks to be run ;
and this is particularly the case where naval operations are chiefly con-
cerned. A war between France and Germany would entail risk to life
and limb for every able-bodied man between twenty and forty-five (between
which age limits, by the way, very few capitalists or newspaper editors
would be included), whereas, war with England would at most require
one-tenth of the available forces—say 400,000 men.
I do not wish to imply that capitalists are more tainted with original
sin than other men—for this is not the case: all are equally indifferent to
human suffering in pursuit of their special fads, and when they have not
IMPERIAL INSURANCE. 3
to witness it. The travelling lunatics who annually brandish lighted
torches in our Indian powder-magazine, for instance, think little of the
risks our wives and children out there run as a consequence of their
antics; and, nearer home, shareholders in the many deadly trades sleep
none the less soundly for the sufferings they indirectly foster. It is,
however, a feature of our environment which we may as well notice in
passing. It is in the ignorance of the masses, irrespective of social
position, that the real danger lies; for this ignorance renders them
peculiarly susceptible of direction by interested parties. Unfortunately,
these interested parties—principal amongst which is the War Party—are
ready to hand everywhere—especially in France.
Of the constitution and doings of this War Party it is necessary to
give a short summary. Every army and navy contains a body of pushing,
ambitious men eager for distinction, and bursting with egotism, which
they mistake for national pride. In war they are the life and soul of an
army, though they require to be kept in check by the “duty” soldier of
the Duke of Wellington and Moltke type. In peace they are a standing
danger, but in a monarchical country like Prussia, Austria, or England,
they may be controlled by court influence, and in England our little wars
and the Chartered Companies afford an outlet for their energies, but in
France neither outlets nor checks exist. Besides, in the latter country,
the reaction after 1870 has brought them to the front in greatly increased
numbers. They are filled with desire to bring back Za gloire to their
Eagles, and have been fed upon the Napoleonic legend d la Thiers, the
most dangerous of meat for unbalanced intellects, as many of their best
“duty” soldiers admit. These fire-eaters are not necessarily known to
one another, but hang together by community of taste, and where one
gives the lead they all follow. These men and the warlike capitalists
have to a large extent “collared the Press '' in Paris.
It was in 1880 that it first began to dawn on them that we might be
a profitable foe, and the Egyptian crisis was the result. How great our
danger was at the moment the public have never realised; it will be
enough to point out that when the French fleet steamed westward from
Alexandria, it is alleged to have passed Gibraltar in the night with its
lights out, and was next heard of in the Atlantic—where we had only
four vessels, none of the first-class, to meet it. Whether it so passed the
Straits or not, it is certain that we had not the power to prevent them
doing so had they desired it.
The French Chambers, however, refused to vote any money—the
nation was not yet with the Anglophobes—but, had they done so—I will
not insult the military judgment of the French leaders by presuming to
doubt their capacity to see where the decision lay—not beneath the
pyramids, but on the cornfields of Kent.
Then, for some years, attention was distracted by the Boulanger
incident and the Lebel rifle. But the Germans were before them, and
the “soldiers ” realised that they were also behindhand in that most
essential element of a modern army, a mobile cavalry capable of over-
throwing its opponents by knee to knee shock, and acquiring as a
4. IMPERIAL INSURANCE.
consequence of their success that information of their enemies' where-
abouts, without which the leading of the monster armies of to-day is a
practical impossibility. They then turned to Russia—and a scheme of
combined action against Germany was devised—if not between the two
responsible staffs, at any rate between the leaders of the War Parties,
which deserved success.
France found money for Russian strategic railways, to be completed
in 1892, without which her monster armies could not even be fed, let
alone manoeuvred, and at the same time prepared and passed in 1889 an
Army Bill which brought back to the colours, by a stroke of the pen,
6oo, ooo war-seasoned soldiers, taught in the school of defeat certainly,
but for that very reason, perhaps, of greater value to the French Army
than more confident victory-trained men would have been.
These men began to retire from the service altogether in the Autumn
of 1892, but at that time, owing to famine, disease, and the unpunctuality
of Russian contractors, the railways were not yet ready, and the plan
hung fire. Desperate efforts were made in Russia to complete these
preparations, and as a fact they were open for traffic in the month of
February last year. At the same time the whole movement of troops
westward on to the frontiers of Germany and Austria, with the exception
of one division, was completed. This movement had been in progress
for some years, and had so often given occasion to the cry of “Wolf l’”
that when at length it was actually completed and the danger was really
imminent, it passed unnoticed in the Press. Yet it was very near, indeed.
Gourko in his new year's address to his officers, at Warsaw, showed that
he, for one, believed war to be certain; but at the critical moment all the
efforts of the War Party failed to stir the natural indolence or shake the
sound common sense (it may have been either) of the Tsar, and at length
it dawned on the French that it was useless to look for any practical
assistance from Russia, on land. The troops are too deficient in
individuality for modern tactical requirements, the Staff too unequal in
their training, and the whole nation brought too low by hunger and
pestilence, which have come to stay, to bear the expenses of a protracted
campaign.
Besides, it was seen to be tolerably hopeless to work up any active
enthusiasm in France for a war of revenge; financially there is nothing
in it, and politically it would not be so popular a card to play as it is
thought in other countries, for it would involve risk to life and limb for
almost the whole adult male population of the country. Moreover, the
social democrats amongst the working-men would rather combine with
their comrades in Germany against capital, and the peasants cordially
loathe the idea. The better informed soldiers also are well aware that,
great as has been the progress they have made during the past twenty
years, that of the German Army has been relatively far greater, and the
prospect of success appears dim indeed. They have not been misled by
the self-depreciation so amply indulged in in the German Reichstag
during the Military Bill" discussions, but have understood all along that
* On the question of two years' service.
IMPERIAL INSURANCE. 5
this Bill was really a life and death struggle between the Government
and the Socialists, the aim of the former being to strike at the latter by
cutting off their recruiting grounds, which chiefly exist amongst the
weaker untrained classes who are crushed to the wall in the labour market
by the competition of the physically and mentally superior product of
the great Army mill.
The only card thus left to the French War Party to play was the cry
against England, which would unite all interests. A successful raid
against us would bring trade to the country with profits to the capitalist,
new markets for manufactures, colonies ready made to be exploited—
which is the modern Frenchman's mediaeval conception of colonisation—
and finally it would turn the position of the Germans, and render the
realisation of la revanche ideal both easy and practicable.
It is also the only way to derive real assistance from the Russian
Alliance. Money spent on ironclads in Russia, from a military point of
view, gives a far greater immediate return for the outlay. To bring the
Russian Army up to the standard of that of either Austria or Germany
requires not only the intelligent co-operation of thousands in their
different grades, but the outlay of millions to increase, double, and other-
wise improve her means of communication. A new fortress costs as
much as three ironclads; forty miles of railway is equivalent to a first
class cruiser, and the efficient use of either ship depends ultimately on
the nerves of one capable man ; for the gun crews can neither skulk nor
run away as infantry advancing in extended order over broken ground
both can and do. And the Russian, though deficient in that particular
form of individual courage which makes American and British soldiers
the toughest fighters in the world, will fight his guns well enough when
compelled to do so.
In saying this I do not wish to depreciate the Russian Army unduly,
but simply to call attention to the fact that the courage of nations varies.
The Russian troops have again and again shown a passive endurance of
punishment—at least as high as either we or any other race can truthfully
lay claim to ; but they fail in the passion for killing for killing’s sake,
which forms the strength of the Anglo-Saxon race when properly
employed; and under modern conditions, you will never get men who
do not fight to kill, to advance over many hundreds of yards of fire-swept
ground.
War is always and everywhere ultimately a calculation of probabilities.
In no other act of human intercourse does chance play so all-important a
part, and the point on which we should concentrate our attention in
considering its probability, is, not the actual value of the different
factors involved, but how they present themselves to our possible
enemy. As we are committed by circumstances and inclinations to an
attitude of passive defence, at least until the storm breaks, the decision
whether to fight or not to fight, and the choice of objective, depends on
the enemy's estimate of his chances of success—not on our own. Now,
the training of French officers has for many years been based on the
Napoleonic legend, and it is impossible to suppose that as a body they
6 IMPERIAL INSURANCE.
can have failed to become saturated with the fundamental principle of
his greatest offensive campaigns. On paper, and with the usual assump-
tions current amongst the closet strategist of the period, they were each
and all fundamentally false; yet, with one exception—Moscow—they were
brilliantly successful, for Waterloo belongs to a different category. To
quote Clausewitz, the highest authority, his plan was simply to march for
the enemy's field army, or, failing knowledge of where the latter stood,
then straight for his capital, confident that the enemy would do his utmost
to interpose, be beaten in battle, and that then the menace to, or, at any
rate, the occupation of, the capital would compel his opponent to make
terms.
As long as the defensive force of a nation was measured by its
organised, long-service, dynastic troops, his calculation proved successful;
but the growing tendency to oppose him with a “nation in arms,” which
was first distinctly evident after Lobau, should have given him cause for
caution. None the less, he staked his whole Empire on the throw for
Moscow, and, though he failed, extenuating circumstances concealed the
real reasons for his disaster.
To men trained in this school, therefore, the problem of war with
England presents itself in the following manner: The French fleet can
be concentrated in peace-time in crushing superiority to ours, either in
the Atlantic or Mediterranean, the British proceedings at Copenhagen
repeated, and each of our fleets crushed in detail. Not without loss, no
doubt; but the balance in favour of the victor will evidently be greater
than before the encounter; and since the French fleet coming clean out
of its dockyards would possess an average superiority of at least three
knots in speed, it is more than possible that defeat for us 1,500 miles
from adequate dock accommodation might mean extermination. The
victorious fleet now masks our ports, as we used to mask theirs. The
channel is now open—at least, to the military mind it appears to be open
—and from the point of view of the French Staff Officer, who can hardly
be expected to share our confidence in our Militia and Volunteers,
destitute of field guns, and condemned to a passive defensive, one week
should suffice to place two hundred thousand men in London.
Would the occupation of London suffice to bring us to our knees P
We may be permitted a doubt, but can hardly blame a Frenchman if he
takes an opposite view of the matter, and sees, as the immediate
consequence, the surrender of the balance of our fleet, possibly also of
our colonies, and certainly one thousand million as war indemnity.
France possesses ample resources in men to equip all our ships, and the
absolute supremacy of the seas passes into her hands.
Now Germany is no longer self-supporting, and with the means of
interrupting her ocean-borne trade, the Dual Alliance can enter on a
“saigner & blanc” struggle, as Bismarck called it, with every chance in
her favour, and this is literally the only possible line on which la revanche
ideal can ever be attainable. This being so, the question at once
suggests itself—would Germany, i.e., the Triple Alliance, stand by and
see us crushed 2 The answer again depends on the appearance the facts
IMPERIAL INSURANCE. 7
present, seen through German spectacles. Germany realises more
correctly perhaps than we do ourselves the enormous latent power of
resistance we possess, and was herself in the old days too well acquainted
with the strong and weak points of the Napoleonic system not to detect
its chances of failure. A life and death struggle between England and
France would be her opportunity; much of our transferable capital would
fly to her, and be available for purchasing outright the flower of our
commercial marine; with that would go our carrying trade, and the
example of America in the Civil Wars from 1862-65 enables us to
appreciate the consequences. If events took for us a bad turn, then the
whole German Army is ready, and even at the eleventh hour, with the
French in full march on London, a blow could be delivered on the
Eastern frontier which would bring France sharply to her bearings.
Against this must be set the French calculation, whether, with 2 oo, ooo
men engaged elsewhere, she and Russia combined are not capable
of holding their own on their frontiers, until, by the transference of our
fleet to their flag, the saigner d blanc process can be commenced.
Seeing that for some years to come the French alone will possess
a numerical superiority over Germany, the answer from their point of
view can hardly be doubtful. -
In the above I have indicated the plan in its broad outline, not
complicating it with the many possibilities to favour it which may arise—
the decoy of our fleet to the Dardanelles, civil war in Ireland, etc.; these
corrections each can apply for himself, my only object being to show how
the problem of invasion presents itself to the military and Napoleonic
view in contra-distinction to the naval one, and to bring home to my
readers that the maintenance of peace is not in the hands of the latter,
but in those of the former. The plan is open to many and serious
objections; it is certainly open to question whether any dynastic and
responsible ruler would entertain it for a moment; but as Moltke, in
almost his last speech in the Reichstag, pointed out, one of the dangers
in dealing with France is that there is no really responsible head with
stake enough in the country to resist the pressure of parties, and, as
pointed out above, a plan on these lines would unite all France, capitalists,
pressmen, work-people, and peasants, as no other one ever could.
This being the danger, how are we to guard against it P. The naval
answer is that we must be strong enough to make the enemy's coasts our
frontier line, and hermetically seal up their ships in port. This implies a
numerical superiority of at least three to two in battle-ships. Even with
this preponderance, isolated cruisers would escape at first, so we should
require fast cruisers and torpedo destroyers in the proportion of at least
tWO to One. +.
This implies an enormous increase in naval construction, and the
doubling at least of our fleet and dockyard personnel—and where is the
money to come from ? My answer is, that if it is worth while to tax
the consumer to provide insurance against the risks of the individual
producer, it is doubly worth the consumer's while to pay for his own
insurance against risks of a far worse kind—risks which are inevitable as
8 IMPERIAL INSURANCE.
a consequence of the conditions of civilisation under which we exist.
Including cost of litigation, the expense of the Employers' Liability Act
cannot work out to less than an average of two per cent. on the wage bill
of the nation, and this two per cent. can only act as a further handicap on
our already over-burdened trade. Its ultimate effect can only be to drive
our moveable capital into fields which are for the present less weighted
by similar conditions. To raise an additional seven million out of the
income-tax would be to further curtail the available wage fund of the
nation, and would intensify the centrifugal tendency.
An ad valorem tax of two per cent. on our ocean-borne commerce,
which, according to Lord Brassey's figures in the July number of The
Mineſeenth Century, now amounts to 1,200 million per annum, would give
us twenty-four million a year to spend on our Navy; and, whilst setting
free fifteen million a year from the wage fund of the community, it would,
by the increased security our fleet would afford to our trade, attract capital
instead of repelling it from our shores. Protected by the fleet such an
expenditure would suffice to create, England would then cease to afford
the line of least resistance to the coming explosion, and when that event
did occur we should be in the strongest possible position for picking up
the disorganised trade of the Continent, one-half of whose steam marine
would almost inevitably seek protection by bond fide transference to our
flag.
The essential feature of this plan is that the State should assume all
liability for war risks. The Navy would then become a National Salvage
Institution—the greater its efficiency, the less the risks and the greater the
attraction to Capital even in time of peace. The nation also would thus
Secure the best possible guarantee that the Government would expend the
money provided to the best possible advantage. But, since experience
has shown that no Chancellor of the Exchequer can be trusted not to
divert money for the purpose of catching votes, far greater additional
stability would be given to the Empire by the general recognition by all
parties that the national defences form no Party question; and this would
be secured by definitely vesting the proceeds of this tax in the Board for
Imperial Defence, strengthened and increased by representative members
elected by the Chambers of Commerce in the great ports and all Colonies.
The Board would of course have no voice in the declaration of peace
or war, but would merely be responsible for the necessary security of our
ocean trade in the event of hostilities.
In this way, too, we should arrive at a practical solution of Imperial
Federation. There is only one interest essentially common to all parts of
the Empire—viz., uninterrupted trade communication under all circum-
stances; and this would be secured amply by such a fleet as could be
maintained for £24,000, ooo annually. This plan would be exempt from
the taxation without representation difficulty, which everywhere else besets
us, for election by the Chambers of Commerce would secure the repre-
sentation of the very classes most immediately affected by the proposed
tax. -
Not being a fanatical Cobdenite, I decline to believe that a two per
IMPERIAL INSURANCE. Q
cent. duty would be found to appreciably affect the selling price of
ordinary necessaries of life. Two per cent. on corn at twenty-five shillings
is sixpence; yet the price of corn may fluctuate twenty per cent. without
any noticeable effect on our bakers' bills. The fourpence a ton duty on
coal in London exceeded two per cent. on the selling price of the lower
qualities, yet, since the removal of those duties, I am not aware that the
poor during the winter months have been able to enjoy the luxury of a
good warm fire at a cheaper rate.
At any rate, nine-tenths of the manufacturers in England voluntarily
bear far heavier burdens out of sheer sloth and indolence. Seven-tenths
of all the steam boilers in the country are burning from ten to fifteen per
cent. more coal than is requisite to develop the power required, and our
towns are disfigured and their atmosphere poisoned, not because the
problem of smoke-consumption is too difficult or expensive, but because
their owners are too indolent to investigate the laws of combustion,
finding it simpler to impose the extra cost for fuel on the consumer; and
this extra cost comes to at least 4, 10,000,000 a year in the aggregate.
To sum up the argument: If it is worth while for the nation to pay
for the not inevitable risks of the individual workman’s calling, it is still
more worth our while to pay for the inevitable risks attending our national
existence. The cost of the Employers' Liability Act tends to drive capital
out of the country. The cost of the insurance I propose not only keeps
it in the country, but tends to attract it by the increased value of the
security offered. The expense involved to the consumer is too infinitesi-
mal to be appreciated, but would lead the manufacturer to increased
economy of production in order to maintain his rate of profit. Finally, by
vesting the money raised by the proposed two per cent. duty in a Board of
Imperial Defence, Imperial Federation would come into existence ipso
facto, and the Empire would stand united in the event of war.—Reprinted
from the Wational Review, January, 1894.
ECONOMICAL ARMY REFORM.
ECONOMICAL ARMY REFORM.
HE subject of Army Reform is a difficult one to deal with in
this Journal. Nevertheless, there are some fundamental
principles involved, so generally recognised by all parties,
that a few lines in explanation of the limitations these principles suffer
in practice, owing to conditions peculiar to all armies in a state of
transition, may, it is hoped, prove of service to all who are endeavouring
to solve the problem of a maximum degree of efficiency in our Army for
a minimum expenditure.
Speaking generally, the tendency of all serious reformers is to
approximate our military organisation to the model of our great
commercial institutions, railways, shipping companies, and the like, the
key-stone of whose efficiency is “decentralisation,” and there can be
no doubt that this tendency is a right one. Unfortunately in all these
schemes the difference in the conditions under which these commercial
undertakings and the Army have to work is left entirely out of sight, and
a rate of progress is consequently anticipated which cannot conceiv-
ably be attained. Hence impatience results, and rival reformers
clamour to dig the whole plant up by the roots and try transplanting it
elsewhere. This system rarely answers in horticulture, and, therefore,
reasoning by analogy, I doubt very much if it will be more successful in
the Army.
Actually, the seed of “decentralisation ” is planted in the Army, and
its progress has been as rapid as circumstances have permitted. Why it
has failed to do better, it is the object of this paper to explain.
The broad contrast is this : the Army is organised primarily for war,
but remains normally at peace ; our great commercial undertakings,
railways, canals, etc., are permanently at war, and never at peace.
The railway company, for instance, is always at war against the
public, the shareholders, and the elements. The Army is now and again
at war with death, disease, bullets, and the public, and must always be
ready within a limit of days, dependent on the efficiency of the Navy, to
meet the utmost demand that can be made upon it.
To bring the two down to a common basis of comparison, we must
imagine our railways, say the North-Western, as a concrete case, working
under the following conditions:—
No dividends to be earned, and a minimum of money to be
expended for an uncertain term of years. One-half of the staff only
to be maintained, but to be capable of expansion at twenty-four hours'
notice. Only an occasional train to be run for the training of the staff,
and yet locomotives, drivers, permanent-way department, every one down
2 ECONOMICAL ARMY REFORM.
to the greasers, capable of meeting and dealing with the present August
traffic at an uncertain date in the future; and even that does not make the
comparison complete—the average risk to life and limb to every man
throughout the Service must be just one hundredfold what it is at present;
but this, under the supposed conditions, would doubtless arrange itself
without further trouble.
Now imagine the working of such a line after twenty years of
profound quietude, and with no particular prospect of immediate activity
in the future. New engines, new rolling stock, new signalling, and all
the consequences they involve, must be provided for; and where is the
experience to guide men in their choice, to come from ?
If the sense of duty were as high in the railway service as it is in
the Army, there is no reason to suppose that it would be higher, the best
men would be selected to attend the trial trips and spasmodic moments of
activity of other railways often acting under totally different conditions;
but who is to collate the results, and, above all, who is to select the men to
report on them P Let every business man imagine his own concern
working under these conditions, and supply his own answer.
The above will have sufficed to clear the ground, and to show that the
question of Army reform is not quite so simple as our amateurs imagine.
Let us now consider the working of the Army organisation as we find it.
First, we must trace its history.
Our existing organisation was fundamentally evolved in a period of
almost chronic warfare. The Crown contracted with a number of men
for the supply of certain regiments and the execution of certain duties, in
return for which the contractors were granted certain privileges and
advantages. Each of these contractors sublet his contract to a given
number of smaller men, who again, in return for certain privileges made
themselves responsible for the fighting efficiency of a given number of
men—these were the company commanders—hence the purchase system
and its justification. Things were working out their own salvation, and
very practically so too, when in the Prussian Army—which even then led
the tactical fashions of the day—a break in the continuity of conditions
intervened.
There came a long spell of peace, and necessities of the parade
ground received more attention than they deserved. Everything was
sacrificed to mechanical accuracy in the execution of manoeuvres, and these
were much simplified by subdividing the battalion into equal divisions—
generally eight—which no longer corresponded with number or strength
of the companies. This process is technically known as “equalising the
companies,” and insignificant as the detail seems, it ultimately led to the
Prussian disaster on the field of Jena, and to the semi-paralysis under
which we have long been suffering.
For the captain of the company now no longer of necessity com-
manded his men, and hence his immediate responsibility for their fighting
efficiency ceased, consequently his interest in their training died out.
The colonel and the adjutant alone became responsible, and in peace-
time they sufficed for themselves. *
ECONOMICAL ARMY REFORM. 3
Simultaneously, as a consequence of the prevalence of peace and the
long-service conditions everywhere existing, very few recruits came in
annually to the colours. They could easily be trained by a single man,
and so they were handed over to a specialist, who took all the trouble
of their education off the officers' shoulders. One other point requires to
be mentioned. As long as war was chronic the young soldier was handed
over to the charge of two or three old soldiers, who, by long experience,
were thoroughly acquainted with every minor trick of the game; and
since at any moment in the spring campaign their lives might depend on
his knowledge, they had the strongest possible interest to see that he
made the most of his opportunities. The custom was thus essentially
practical as long as the conditions remained the same, but when peace
became normal, a result ensued which was entirely unexpected, and
proved exceedingly unwelcome. As the war-seasoned veterans passed out
of the regiment, the tradition of minor expedients died with them, and
the old soldiers had nothing to teach but the bad habits they had
themselves acquired, of getting through their duty with the minimum
friction and punishment; and it would have been well if the evil had
stopped there, for they also taught the youngsters their special vices, and
it is from this cause that the prevailing prejudice against standing armies
exists—a prejudice only too well founded at the time; for an idle, long-
Service Army of necessity eats its own heart out.
- The above is a very compressed summary of the causes at work, but
students of history can easily verify the results by tracing the downfall
of the Prussian Army during the period after the Seven Years' War up
to Jena, and the troubles in our own subsequent to the Peninsular War
and Waterloo. Our constant little wars saved us from experiencing the
full consequences; but what these would have been had we been called on
in 1870 to face a storm similar to that which burst over France, we can
learn from her disasters, for the two armies were very much on the
same level.
Curiously, it was one of the strongest and best characteristics of our
race—the delight in power and responsibility—which aggravated our case.
What happened after Waterloo was briefly this. Colonels and
adjutants, finding the task of commanding 1,000 long-service men in
peace-time well within their capacity, gradually absorbed the whole
power into their own hands, not out of innate viciousness, but from a
love of work and uniformity. The captains, finding their occupation
gone, nothing for them to do but to repeat words of command, very
willingly met their superiors half-way, accepted as much leave as they
could get, and forgot entirely to think of their subalterns, who grew up in
ignorance and idleness. As by degrees each rank died out or retired,
the young officers who had never been taught, either by precept or
experience, succeeded to the command. Generally the men with most
energy and ability, tired of idleness, sold out at a comparatively early
age, and the least useful ones stayed on to realise the full value of their
commissions. Not being entirely without latent judgment, they selected
as their adjutants the smartest and most energetic men they could find,
IX.
*
4. ECONOMICAI, ARMY REFORM.
who promptly usurped all authority they could lay their hands on. If
there is one thing worse than a colonel and adjutant's regiment it is an
adjutant and sergeant-major's regiment, and to this all our regiments must
ultimately inevitably have come, had not our little wars from time to time
brought us in contact with the conditions for which we were originally
Organised.
But the evil did not cease here. The incapable colonels in course of
time became still more incapable generals, and the training of the Army,
instead of being calculated to meet an enemy in the field, was modelled
to suit the convenience and ineptitude of ignorant inspectors. There
was consequently no incentive to the able and emergetic young officers
to master their profession, but every motive was supplied them to pander
to the inspectors' vanity, and the greater the degree of decentralisation,
the greater became the evil.
Further, there being no incentive to the young officer to master his
profession, with a falling demand the supply naturally diminished. Those
generals, therefore, who wished to supply themselves with a competent
staff found their area of choice distinctly restricted. Having no means
of ascertaining the real value of a young officer, they chose those with
whom they were best acquainted, viz., their nephews and relations, which
was the only course available to them ; and the less capable amongst them,
untrained to the responsibilities of independent decision, consulted their
wives and abode by their selection; but women are hardly the most
competent judges of these matters. To make matters worse, those arms—
the cavalry and artillery—which depend specially for their efficiency on
the genius and judgment of their inspectors, were handed over to the care
of ex-infantry officers, who, as regards a horse or a gun, could only
distinguish between fatness in the one, and glitter and polish in the other.
The cavalry suffered less than might have been expected, for a cavalry
colonel was too big a man to be over-ridden by an ex-colonel of foot;
but they sank very low, and in the effort to satisfy the cult of the fat
horse they forgot that speed and the power of delivering a charge knee
to knee were the primary objects of their existence. Not ten years ago the
practice of charging on the drill ground was strongly deprecated, for the
reason that it tended to letting the horses get out of hand, and move-
ments “to the halt,” “at a walk” occupied most of their time. The
artillery suffered more, for the battery commander was too humble a
person to beard a divisional general, and since in peace-time the
only road to advancement lay in attention to the fads of the
inspecting officer, the battery commander having a unit on which he
could, thanks to its limited numbers, impress the stamp of his own
personality, succeeded along this line better than any other Service. Our
batteries had the sleekest horses, and shiniest harness in Europe, but
unfortunately they could neither march nor shoot, which purposes formed
their sole raison d’être.
In Prussia, circumstances had compelled military organisation into
other courses. As a consequence of the sufferings inflicted during the
Napoleonic era, the nation had been compelled to adopt the principle of
ECONOMICAL ARMY REFORM. 5
universal liability to service—not the same thing as conscription. This
threw into every battalion and regiment from 33 to 50 per cent. of
recruits annually, a number which could not be dealt with by the adjutant
and sergeant-major. Hence the responsibility for the efficiency of the
recruits was again thrown on the company officers and squadron leaders.
The full consequences did not ensue immediately ; for some forty years,
like the children of Israel, they too underwent their wanderings, suffering
from infantry officers inspecting cavalry, and war-weary veterans carrying
out the duties in which they had ceased to take any interest; but at
length the dawn began to break. About ten years before Moltke and the
old King came into power, a new generation of young officers had come
into being, who had learnt the details of their profession from the very
foundation upwards, and without whose loyal aid not Moltke, not even
Napoleon himself, could have effected anything; for with the monster
armies universal service supplied, leading in the Napoleonic sense of the
term had ceased to be practicable, and a devolution of responsibility had
become imperative, and this was alone rendered possible by the existence
of this class of young officer referred to above.
The young officers had found out for themselves that if you want to
teach others you must first learn yourself, and since with the advent of
Moltke success in the business of teaching, as measured by the efficiency
of their commands, was the sole avenue of success, the keenest rivalry set
in, and by a process of trial and error a sound and practicable system of
training was arrived at.
Things were still in a transition stage when the wars of 1866 and
1870 came upon them. Many of the old school still survived in the
intermediate ranks and even in the lower ones, for the Prussians are
intensely conservative ; and wherever cases of unusual loss incommen-
Surate with the tactical gain occurred during those wars, analysis will
show that the result was not due to the nature of the weapons employed,
but to the bungling ineptitude of those particular commanders. Yet how
great the advance had been, is proved by the nett results of the campaigns
themselves, and testified to by the evidence of all competent observers.
Since the war, they have continued on the same lines with redoubled
vigour, and the consequence is that at the present moment the German
Army, and particularly the Prussian section of it, has reached a degree of
efficiency beyond that ever yet attained by any other army in peace-time,
and there is every reasonable guarantee that the standard reached will be
permanently retained.
The points to notice are, that it was the fortuitous conjunction of
two factors—Moltke and the King representing the survival of true
war-like tradition on the one hand, and the crop of young, energetic, and
practical officers which short service had, so to speak, unintentionally
evolved on the other. Without the practical system of inspection due
to the former, the young officers could have achieved nothing more than
our own artilleryman succeeded in obtaining, viz., fat horses and polished
harness, with all the drawbacks the existence of these imply; and without
6 . - ECONOMICAL ARMY REFORM.
the young officers bred by decentralisation, neither Moltke nor any
one else could have attained anything worth the attainment at all.
We have copied in a modified form, as our circumstances compelled
us, the principle of short service; but we have omitted the essential
feature of its success in Germany, and the omission is not to be wondered
at, when we remember that the German originators of the system
themselves failed to grasp where it would lead them.
The point for us to consider now is, whether the time has not
come to take the final step yet needed to secure real efficiency.
To have attempted it in 1870 would have been premature, for in
those days neither the trained inspectors existed, nor yet even the junior
officers capable of being at once entrusted with the responsibility the
change would have involved. It is the duty of the short-service company
Squadron or battery officer to teach his men the essentials of minor tactics
which they can no longer pick up from their veteran comrades, and drill,
with all that is implied by the application of drill, in the field. But
thanks to the conditions induced by years of long service in peace, the
young officers knew even less about these things than the men, for it
had been nobody’s business to teach them.
Consequently, a period of inaction was inevitable, and the authorities
took the best step opened to them at the time in enforcing examinations for
promotion as a first step. Even this step was not without its risks and
drawbacks; for military knowledge was in such a chaotic condition—both
in England and elsewhere—that it was difficult to know what to teach or
how to examine; but the necessity of study of some kind compelled men
to use their intellect, and the ultimate problems of war being inevitably
very simple, by degrees common-sense principles are beginning to assert
themselves, and the fads and dross of earlier years are rapidly being shed.
The value of our little wars now began to assert itself. However
much the conditions may vary even between two different expeditions,
and however great the contrast between a great European conflict and a
Burmese jungle scrimmage, one element is common to all, viz., danger;
and the airy fabrics of the peace-time experimentalists, based on the
weapon and not on the man, vanish like clouds in the sunshine before the
touch of the bullet, irrespective of which end of the weapon it was originally
inserted at. Hence our progress has been relatively more rapid than
that of the Prussians during the first fifty years of the century. It is
barely twenty-five years since we made the great change, and the
essential factor forced on the former by the shorter term of service
supplying more recruits has not yet found root in our Army; but still, in all-
round tactical knowledge, we are decidedly in advance of the limit
attained by them in 1866. Small wars, too, and our fortunate adherence
to monarchical institutions have also brought good men to the front, still
in their full physical vigour, and hence an adequate supply of competent
inspecting officers can be vouched for.
We have evidence enough to prove that it will pay, that it is not
owing to any racial idiosyncrasy that the results in Prussia have been so
exceptional; and, indeed, who, knowing the nature of the two races, could
ECONOMICAL ARMY REFORM. - 7
be in doubt on the point P The average uncorrupted Englishman revels
in responsibility, the average untrained German shuns it ; this is the
universal consensus of commercial experience, and if, nowadays, we are
suffering more than ever under German trade competition, the fact that in
the German Army all ranks are trained to the acceptance of responsibility
probably supplies the answer. Some ten years ago an exact copy of the
Prussian squadron system was introduced into the 19th Hussars by the
late Colonel Percy Barrow. In spite of the circumstances of the moment,
viz., that the regiment was on active service, and in spite of the premature
death of its introducer, that regiment raised itself head and shoulders
above all its competitors within the short space of six years, and
on the eve of its embarkation for India—though the average service
of the men in the ranks was decidedly below that in a good
Prussian regiment—its efficiency, skill in manoeuvring, and discipline
were fully up to their best standard, which no expert would have
dared to allege of any other regiment in the Service. In India,
Lord Roberts appointed a first-rate inspector-general for the artillery, in
which arm the tradition of decentralisation has always been maintained,
and again the results were astounding; where formerly the cult of the
fat horse and polished harness had alone been in existence, the inspector-
general had only to lay down a high standard of shooting and mobility,
to at once obtain it. The inspector-general of cavalry, though fully the
equal of his artillery colleague, had the mortification to see many of his
best hopes temporarily frustrated by the general inability of regimental
officers, even with the best will in the world, to emancipate themselves at
once from the traditions, literally, of ages.
I trust I have now made it clear that the Army stands in no need of
heroic measures; what we chiefly require is that the public should stand
clear and let us work out our own salvation. True, healthy reform can
only be conceived by the operation of two causes—competent inspectors
and capable subordinates. For the first time for many ages these two
causes synchronise, and had best be left to their own devices.
To attempt to re-organise the Service by the expedients suggested by
Lord Hartington’s commission, the substitution of a civilian head to the
Army in place of a Royal Commander-in-Chief, or by any other of the
methods freely recommended by irresponsible newspaper correspondents,
is to rebuild the house from the roof downwards. A wise engineer
begins, as a rule, with the foundation first.
Briefly, all we require is that the initiative and zeal of the junior
ranks should be allowed free play, controlled only by competent
inspection, which, moreover, must be free from the merest suspicion
of political partisanship. This last is the rock on which French efforts
at re-organisation have principally split, and which nullifies all their
attempts to learn from their conquerors. They have copied the German
system with Chinese-like accuracy, but the results are painfully short of
their expectations, and for this reason alone, that Republican forms are
totally incompatible with the organisation of victory in times of peace;
though, given adequate time, they may succeed under pressure of war,
8 ECONOMICAI, ARMY REFORM.
but only at a cost of life and money beyond all comparison with the cost
at which the same result can be attained by nations more favourably
situated. To adopt any of the various panaceas recently put forward, would
be voluntarily to incur their liabilities; and unfortunately these schemes
commend themselves to many able minds in this country, who for want
of time and study have failed to realise the conditions which differentiate
Army organisation from commercial undertakings—a difference to which
I have called attention above.
Even without the addition of a farthing to the Army estimates, the
reform I advocate, viz., delegation of responsibility for the drill
efficiency of their commands to the company and squadron officers of the
Army would quadruple our efficiency within the space of five years;
but the results would be far greater if money could be found to carry out
the augmentation of the infantry by some I I, ooo men, so often recom-
mended by Lord Wolseley, and the increase in establishment of horses
needed by the cavalry, and both guns and horses to the artillery.
Under the existing system, an infantry captain's work is robbed of all
interest by seeing his company annually stripped of all his best men to
furnish the drafts for India; he has hardly time to learn their names
before they are taken away, and the work has to begin de novo. The keen
cavalry soldier, with sometimes barely twenty horses to call his own,
where he should have 1 20, finds his consolation in his club in town,
pouring out his grievances into the ear of any sympathetic listener; and
the gunner, though proud of the responsibility his regimental tradition
accords him, has his heart broken by want of ammunition for practice
and want of teams to drill his command.
As matters stand at present, out of every I oo officers we lose the best
energies of ninety-five, as a consequence of adherence to traditions which
have had their day; and the Army in consequence suffers. Under
the proposed alteration, without additional men or horses, some 40 per
cent. would rapidly become efficient, and in ten years the Army would be
able to earn its pay; and, finally, with decentralisation and adequate
numbers of men and horses, we should be fit to justify our existence
within a couple of years.
It may be asked: How does all the above affect the War Office P And
the answer will depend on the reply each will give to the question.
Does the War Office evolve the Army, or does the Army evolve the
War Office P
I believe that a healthy army evolves an efficient administration,
and that every army has the war office it deserves, and for the following
Te2SOI).S.
Every human organisation—unless animated by some exceptional
Sentiment, such, for example, as is evolved in men who directly command
fighting men—tends after a lapse of time to settle down into a routine
that accomplishes the work demanded of it with least effort to its con-
stituent particles. Thus, if any particular check shows itself in practice
to provoke more bother than it is worth, human nature quietly sheds it.
If, on the other hand, the absence of that particular check leads to
ECONOMICAL ARMY REFORM. 9
Constant correspondence and recrimination, on grounds of self-interest, it
will be immediately introduced.
Enthusiasm and sentiment have and can have no place in a clerical
organisation, but both are compatible in a fighting Service; and in pro-
portion as they are founded on and guided by sound principles, it is in
the interest of the clerical organisation to encourage them.
Opposition, therefore, to sound reform will never come from the
administration. When the latter appears to obstruct, the real reason will
generally be found in the fact that the accumulated experience of the
administrators, which must of necessity exceed that of the reformer, shows
that the particular branch of the Service affected is not yet ripe for the
change ‘advocated. As soon as it is ripe, then, in their own interests,
the administrators will adopt it.
That this generalisation is correct, anyone may satisfy himself who,
with a fair knowledge of our War Office machinery, will undertake the
study of the relations between the Army and the War Ministry in France
and Germany respectively.—Reprinted, by permission, from the Journal of
the Royal United Service Institution, August, 1895.
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