i.—the purely cavalry fight.
("das rein reiterliche gefecht.")
these two sections which i have been criticizing will give the reader a general idea of the way in which von bernhardi regards the action of cavalry in modern war, and of the perplexities which beset him through mingling of the old philosophy and the new. let us follow him through subsequent sections of head b ("action of cavalry"). the third section deals with "cavalry in combat against the various arms, mounted and dismounted," and he first deals with what he calls the "purely cavalry fight," which he now assumes to be a fight with the steel against other cavalry. we must remember that if either side elects to use the rifle; or if the ground is unsuitable (and on page 201 he argues at length that "possible european theatres of war are but little suitable for charges," and that suitable areas are only found in peace by deliberate selection);[pg 87] or if either side, from numerical weakness or choice, is acting on the "defensive" (defence with the steel being ex hypothesi impossible), this steel combat will not take place.
under the circumstances it seems scarcely worth while to talk about it, but let us waive that objection. we at once become impressed with a very remarkable fact—namely, that after all the centuries, extending far back into the mists of time, during which the mounted steel-combat has been used, its most learned and enthusiastic advocates cannot at this day agree upon the elementary rules for its conduct. observe that i am excluding the modifications caused by missile weapons. following the author, i am assuming a combat between two bodies of cavalry who decline to use their firearms, and mutually agree to collide with steel weapons on horseback, outside the zone of fire, on a piece of level ground without physical obstruction. for this type of combat the conditions are the same as in the year one. the three factors—horse, man, and steel weapon—have undergone no appreciable change, and by this time the rules ought to be fixed. yet we find the general at once falling into tirades against erroneous systems, and bitterly denouncing the regulations of his own army.
[pg 88]
"the lance," we learn on page 267, "is the cavalryman's most important weapon," yet the drill laid down for the lance the author declares to be worthless. "no one would fight in this manner in war; how this is to be done our men are not really taught." what a confession after all these ages, from the crusades onwards! and if the lance is really the most important weapon, and if sir john french really believes, as he says he believes, in the infallibility of general von bernhardi, why has he not seen to it that all british cavalry regiments are armed with lances? it would seem to be mad folly to permit our hussars to go into battle destitute of their "most important weapon." but let us look a little closer into the characteristics of this terrible weapon. on page 175 we learn that "in the close turmoil of the fight it is very difficult to handle with success, besides which it easily becomes unserviceable on striking an object too heavily. should it pierce a body at the full speed of a horse's gallop, it will generally bend on being drawn out (if, indeed, the rider in his haste extricates it at all), and then becomes unserviceable." so there must be a sword also, which is to be drawn, apparently, on the instant after the impalement of the first hostile horseman. our own authorities take a brighter view. in their[pg 89] manual the trooper is bidden to impale the foe through and through with his lance, but he is to "withdraw it with ease from the object into which it has been driven." on the other hand, the object in question is to be represented in peace by a sack filled with chopped hay or a clay dummy, neither of them objects of a texture quite adequate to the purpose (see "cavalry training," pp. 309-310).
it is almost cruel to lift the veil from these domestic mysteries and differences, and, indeed, i am almost afraid my readers will suspect me of quoting, not from eulogies, but from skits on the arme blanche. but the words are there for anyone who cares to look them up, and i ask, is not it almost inconceivable that serious soldiers in the year of grace 1911, when war is a really serious matter of scientific weapons, should solemnly call a weapon with such characteristics the most important weapon of the cavalryman? needless to say, the author himself refutes his own proposition in a hundred passages of this very work. but sir john french ignores those passages, and in his own introduction pens a warm defence of the lance; though whether he believes in the "pin-prick policy" which the german authority seems to advocate, or in the plan of "striking the object heavily" at all costs, he does[pg 90] not inform us. after all, it matters little. the taxpayer need not quail at the expense of providing fresh lances to every regiment after every charge. the rest of the world looks on with languid interest while the cavalry authorities carry on their solemn controversies as to the relative merits of steel weapons used from horseback. even in the franco-german war the killing effect of lances and swords was negligible. six germans were killed by the sabre, and perhaps as many by the lance. of the total of 218 german casualties from the sabre and clubbed musket, 138 were in the cavalry, whose total losses by fire and steel combined were 2,236. in the great civilized wars since the invention of the smokeless magazine rifle the casualties from lance and sword have reached vanishing-point.
but if lances and swords are harmless to the enemy, they are emphatically harmful to those who carry them. they not only inspire the wrong spirit, but they mean extra weight and additional visibility. sir john french (p. xvi) cheerfully defies physical laws. he scouts the idea that "a thin bamboo pole will reveal the position of a mounted man to the enemy." that is one of the fond illusions of peace. and in peace even a short-sighted layman could prove the contrary by ocular demonstration, and digest the moral, too, by[pg 91] watching lancers operating among the lanes and hedges of england. in war there are field-glasses—and bullets.
it is the same with tactics as with weapons. the german author is for the knee-to-knee riding of frederick the great, as opposed to the looser stirrup-to-stirrup riding which has been introduced because "the modern firearm obliges us to take refuge in broken country, where the closest touch cannot always be kept." a pretty sound reason, we should imagine, but the general will have none of it, and i think this passage is the only one in the book where he disagrees with the regulations in the matter of a concession to the modern rifle. generally it is the other way, and, indeed, it is a most bizarre paradox to hear him calling upon the shades of "frederick the great, seydlitz, and the prominent napoleonic leaders," after saying at the beginning of the book that the wars of these heroes "presented a total absence of analogy" to modern cavalry students. reverting suddenly to common sense, he goes on to denounce the rally from the mêlée, which all cavalry, including our own, assiduously practise in peace. the motive for this wonderful man?uvre is "that troops may quickly be got in hand ready to be led against a fresh foe." "it is astounding," he complains, "that we should give way to such[pg 92] self-deception." rallies are "delightfully easy in peace," but an "absolute impossibility in war."
the troops who have charged are apparently to be useless for any purpose whatever for an indefinite period, and strong supporting squadrons immediately behind them must carry on the fight. but the new regulations do not allow for these supports. what do they enjoin? we are not told here, and have to look in another part of the book under "depth and echelon" (p. 221 et seq.), when, calling once more upon frederick the great and napoleon, he attacks in unmeasured terms, as the offspring of mere "peace requirements," the german system of echelon formation, which leads to "tactical orgies" at man?uvres. echelon apparently is designed to permit of easy changes of front, but in war the opportunity for such changes "never—literally never—occurs." and yet somehow we sympathize with the framers of the regulations. read their inimitable disquisition on echelon, quoted as a footnote on page 224. "in the collisions of cavalry" there is going to be "uncertainty as to the strength and intentions of the enemy." but cavalry acting against cavalry (supposing, we wonder, they turn out not to be cavalry?) never demean themselves by dismounting to reconnoitre. they reconnoitre for one another in[pg 93] mass, and gain the necessary "flexibility" by echelon—if need be, by a double echelon. when they find the enemy, they can at the last moment, if necessary, change front completely, and have at them. "if this did occur," says the general, "it would presuppose the entire failure of reconnaissance, and the corresponding incapacity of the leader." he proceeds to a pitiless exposure of the puerilities and unrealities of the system; but, to tell the truth, the exposure excites only a feeble interest. insensibly he trenches on the realms of fire, and immediately stultifies his own appeals to frederick the great and napoleon. after pages of obscure lucubration about cavalry combat, he suddenly envisages (p. 230) what is, of course, the invariable case, when "total uncertainty prevails as to whether the combat will be carried out mounted or dismounted," and says that in such cases there can be no "stereotyped tactical formations either of units or of smaller bodies within them." "cadit qu?stio," we exclaim, with relief. why appeal to frederick the great?
in "formations for movement" (pp. 232-238) he continues his unconscious reductio ad absurdum of shock. "movements in such close formation right up to the moment of deployment" (and he describes those enjoined by the regulations)[pg 94] "cannot go unpunished upon a modern battle-field." the regulations "cannot be regarded as practical," and are "pretexts for hidebound drill enthusiasts." it is all very well, but these hidebound gentlemen are perfectly right in their own way. they are following his own models, frederick the great and napoleon, in whose days such movements were perfectly possible. they believe in shock and minimize fire, and their regulations, if unpractical, are at least logical.
ii.—the charge upon infantry.
so much for the "purely cavalry fight." we come on page 128 to the mounted charge upon dismounted riflemen, whom, in the manner usual with cavalry writers, he assumes to be infantry, though it is obvious, of course, that they may be unconventional cavalry, who, from a sense of fun or a sane instinct for fighting, have determined to play a practical joke on devotees of the pure faith. here both he and the regulations are up to a certain point in harmony with one another. as a concession to modern conditions, the charge is to be in extended order. here the general has changed his views since writing "cavalry in future wars." there the principles of frederick the great were supreme in all[pg 95] charges, with just a faint concession towards a "loosening of the files" in a charge against infantry. now "wide intervals" are to be employed. sir john french ignores the change of view on an absolutely vital point of tactics, but allows us to infer that he, one of the very men who saw the imperative necessity for the new view, favours the old view; for he described von bernhardi's first book as absolutely complete and faultless. to return, however, to the german author. it is amazing that, having reached this point, he should not trouble to investigate the phenomena of modern war with a view to finding out what actually happens in an extended change of this sort. he writes in the clouds, just as though there were not a mass of experience bearing on the point.
the experience, which a child can understand, amounts to this: if you extend, and, a fortiori, if your enemy is extended also, you lose all hope of "shock," that is, of physical impact; and with the loss of this impact you lose the fundamental condition precedent to the successful use of steel weapons on horseback—the condition which frederick the great's leaders had, but which ours have not. you also lose momentum, speed, because the modern rifle, by immensely widening the bullet-swept zone, necessitates a far longer gallop for the charging force. the[pg 96] german regulations realize this, for they enjoin a slower pace, expressly on the ground that "impact" is not to be aimed at. very well: no shock; comparatively low speed. what is going to happen? your steel charge is useless. individual troopers, bound by their code of honour to remain in the saddle, and pitted against individual riflemen on foot, are helpless, an object of derision to gods and men. our own infantry manual openly treats them as helpless and negligible, and in a few curt lines gives directions, proved in war to be sound, for the event of such a charge, should it take place.
but, in fact, it does not take place. our cavalry in south africa had literally thousands of chances of making such charges, supposing that they were feasible. but they were not; instinctively the leaders felt that they were not, and ceased to think of making them. at the time when, if ever, any given leader should have made up his mind to charge, he was, unfortunately, as a general rule, in that condition of painful "uncertainty as to the strength and intentions of the enemy," to which the german regulations allude. he could not, in the german fashion, ride about in mass to reconnoitre, because the boers, perversely refusing to believe in the tactics of frederick the great, did not co-operate[pg 97] in the game. he had, therefore, the choice between idleness and fire-action. he chose fire-action, and once engaged in fire-action, he found that he had to stick to it. it was physically impossible to "combine" fire-action and steel-action, even if there had been an opening for steel-action, which there was not. that is the whole story, and sir john french, if he chose, could tell general von bernhardi all about it.
i believe sir john french himself never saw a boer or british mounted riflemen's charge, but he ought to know the evidence on the point; it is extensive and precise.[3] it goes to show that it is sometimes possible, even against the modern rifle, to charge in widely extended order, even at a canter, and even into close quarters, on horseback; but it can be done only by fighting up to the charge in the normal way of fire-action, and by casting to the winds the ancient notion that it is beneath a trooper to dismount. sooner or later he has got to dismount, so as to use effective aimed fire against the riflemen opposed to him. they will not mind his sword, whose range is a couple of yards, while their weapon is of any range you please, and squirts bullets like a hose.
frederick the great's infantry firearm was another matter. even in 1861-1865, as von bern[pg 98]hardi would discover if he cared to look close enough into his own chosen war, steel-charges by cavalry against infantry eventually became extinct. the confederate infantry used to jeer at the futile efforts of the federal cavalry.
needless to say, the german regulations only touch the fringe of what is practicable. it is only the leading line, they lay down, and not necessarily the whole even of that, which is to adopt wide intervals. von bernhardi easily shows the folly of these half-measures, and of the "arbitrary assumption that a line of cavalry 1,500 or 2,000 yards wide can cross a mile of country stirrup to stirrup at the regulation pace of the charge" (p. 128).
iii.—the dismounted attack by cavalry.
we pass to the dismounted attack by cavalry, and the reader will realize now, if he has not before, that it is due to unfamiliarity with the technique and true possibilities of fire-action that the general clings to the discredited tactics of frederick the great in defiance of his professed enthusiasm for the rifle. for the dismounted attack by cavalry, "the principles," he says, "are the same as for an attack by infantry" (p. 133). but the led horses render the business "considerably more difficult." "there is also a certain[pg 99] difference according as the opponent is cavalry or infantry"; for in the former case he may charge your led horses. it is here and in the pages which follow that the reader can get the clearest insight into the mental attitude of cavalrymen towards that arbiter of modern war, the rifle.
all turns on the magical word "cavalry," which derives its significance from the arme blanche. those weapons give cavalry their "proper r?le." if under stress of fire they "abandon" this r?le, they become infantry; but they are worse off than infantry, because they are embarrassed by their led horses, which present difficulties from which infantry are free. the horse becomes a danger and an encumbrance, just as sir john french tacitly assumes it to become, when he says that mounted riflemen always flee defenceless before good cavalry, while infantry show "tenacity and stiffness." no wonder, then, that cavalrymen grow indignant at the criticism of their steel weapons. it is bad enough to be converted into a hybrid between good cavalry and bad infantry, but it is worse still to undergo a metamorphosis into a pure type of bad infantry, that is, into mounted riflemen.
if we once grasp this point of view, we bring light into this tangled controversy, and we can bring into sharp contrast the rational point of[pg 100] view, as the facts of war demonstrate it. we perceive instantly the falsity of the antithesis between the weapon and the horse. the mounted rifleman is a foot rifleman plus a horse, and the horse is not an embarrassing encumbrance, but a source of enhanced power. it is the intrusion of the steel weapons, not the intrusion of the horses, which introduces "difficulties." witness von bernhardi's own scathing exposure of the german regulations for combat with the steel.
space forbids me to follow him far into his remarks upon his bugbear, the led horses. there are probably about 150,000 persons now living who, by war experience, know more than he does about this purely technical question; yet he spins feverish dreams about it out of his own brain, without a glance at the rich and varied material provided by three years of war in south africa; without a glance at manchuria, where the japanese cavalry converted themselves into excellent mounted riflemen; without a glance even at the american methods of 1861-1865, where the problems that worry him were successfully solved. as usual, he has no difficulty in exposing the absurdities of the regulations, but his own comments and suggestions are sometimes even less admissible. behind the incubus of the horse we perceive that additional incubus,[pg 101] the lance. he pictures the unhappy horse-holders wrestling ("a practical impossibility") with armfuls of lances, as the regulations bid them (p. 137), and concludes that if you are to make these men guardians, not only of the horses, but of these precious but exacting impedimenta, it will not do to detail only one man out of four to act as horseholder. on the other hand, if you detach more, you weaken the firing line so much that the whole business becomes scarcely worth while. and yet, if you don't weaken the firing line, how are you to guard the led horses against attack from some other quarter? they, it appears, must have a complete firing line of their own. but, disregarding this necessity, the regulations contemplate reinforcing the main firing-line from the horse-holders (p. 139), so making the armfuls of lances still bigger. and then what is to happen if, in a "real fight," the brigade wants to advance and the brigadier is told it can't, because some of the horse-holders are fighting, and the lance-encumbered remnant cannot move? and so on. he seems, so far as i understand him, eventually to throw up in despair the problem of keeping the led horses "mobile," and to fall back on the plan of "immobility," a plan which he himself in several passages admits can be used only when there is[pg 102] no likelihood whatever of any sudden call upon the led horses either for advance or retreat. if the regulations, as he says, are "not suitable for real war," neither is his counsel of despair. the chapter is quite enough to cure the most liberal-minded cavalryman of his last lingering inclination towards fire-action, even though he is told that fire-action must be used in all but "exceptional cases." "abandon my proper r?le for this?" he might answer. "no. my proper r?le is good enough for me, as it was good enough for frederick the great."
there is worse to come; but let me comment here upon the astounding fact that sir john french should regard chapters like this as sound instruction for war. our cavalry profess, at any rate, to have now solved the lance-problem during fire-action by their latest method of carrying the lance. but that is a minor point. it is the ignorance of, and pessimism towards, fire-action, as disclosed in this and subsequent chapters, which ought chiefly to strike english readers. and all sir john french has to say is that "we expose our ignorance and conceit" in accepting the teaching of our own war experience, and that our duty is to assimilate the best foreign customs.
