shock of one massed body on another. Indeed the physical impulse is nothing. The moral impulse which estimates the attacker is everything. The moral impulse lies in the perception by the enemy of the resolution that animates you. They say that the battle of Amstetten was the only one in which a line actually waited for the shock of another line charging with the bayonets. Even then the Russians gave way before the moral and not before the physical impulse. They were already disconcerted, wavering, worried, hesitant, vacillating, when the blow fell. They waited long enough to receive bayonet thrusts, even blows with the rifle (in the back, as at Inkermann). [36]
This done, they fled. He who calm and strong of heart awaits his enemy, has all the advantage of fire. But the moral impulse of the assailant demoralizes the assailed. He is frightened; he sets his sight no longer; he does not even aim his piece. His lines are broken without defense, unless indeed his cavalry, waiting halted, horsemen a meter apart and in two ranks, does not break first and destroy all formation.
With good troops on both sides, if an attack is not prepared, there is every reason to believe that it will fail. The attacking troops suffer more, materially, than the defenders. The latter are in better order, fresh, while the assailants are in disorder and already have suffered a loss of morale under a certain amount of punishment. The moral superiority given by the offensive movement may be more than compensated by the good order and integrity of the defenders, when the assailants have suffered losses. The slightest reaction by the defense may demoralize the attack. This is the secret of the success of the British infantry in Spain, and not their fire by rank, which was as ineffective with them as with us.
The more confidence one has in his methods of attack or defense, the more disconcerted he is to see them at some time incapable of stopping the enemy. The effect of the present improved fire arm is still limited, with the present organization and use of riflemen, to point blank ranges. It follows that bayonet charges (where bayonet thrusts never occur), otherwise attacks under fire, will have an increasing value, and that victory will be his who secures most order and determined dash. With these two qualities, too much neglected with us, with willingness, with intelligence enough to keep a firm hold on troops in immediate support, we may hope to take and to hold what we take. Do not then neglect destructive effort before using moral effect. Use skirmishers up to the last moment. Otherwise no attack can succeed. It is true it is haphazard fire, nevertheless it is effective because of its volume.
This moral effect must be a terrible thing. A body advances to meet another. The defender has only to remain calm, ready to aim, each man pitted against a man before him. The attacking body comes within deadly range. Whether or not it halts to fire, it will be a target for the other body which awaits it, calm, ready, sure of its effect. The whole first rank of the assailant falls, smashed. The remainder, little encouraged by their reception, disperse automatically or before the least indication of an advance on them. Is this what happens? Not at all! The moral effect of the assault worries the defenders. They fire in the air if at all. They disperse immediately before the assailants who are even encouraged by this fire now that it is over. It quickens them in order to avoid a second salvo.
It is said by those who fought them in Spain and at Waterloo that the British are capable of the necessary coolness. I doubt it nevertheless. After firing, they made swift attacks. If they had not, they might have fled. Anyhow the English are stolid folks, with little imagination, who try to be logical in all things. The French with their nervous irritability, their lively imagination, are incapable of such a defense.
Anybody who thinks that he could stand under a second fire is a man without any idea of battle. (Prince de Ligne).
Modern history furnishes us with no examples of stonewall troops who can neither be shaken nor driven back, who stand patiently the heaviest fire, yet who retire precipitately when the general orders the retreat. (Bismarck).
Cavalry maneuvers, like those of infantry, are threats. The most threatening win. The formation in ranks is a threat, and more than a threat. A force engaged is out of the hand of its commander. I know, I see what it does, what it is capable of. It acts; I can estimate the effect of its action. But a force in formation is in hand; I know it is there, I see it, feel it. It may be used in any direction. I feel instinctively that it alone can surely reach me, take me on the right, on the left, throw itself into a gap, turn me. It troubles me, threatens me. Where is the threatened blow going to fall?
The formation in ranks is a serious threat, which may at any moment be put into effect. It awes one in a terrible fashion. In the heat of battle, formed troops do more to secure victory than do those actively engaged. This is true, whether such a body actually exists or whether it exists only in the imagination of the enemy. In an indecisive battle, he wins who can show, and merely show, battalions and squadrons in hand. They inspire the fear of the unknown.
From the taking of the entrenchments at Fribourg up to the engagement at the bridge of Arcola, up to Solferino, there occur a multitude of deeds of valor, of positions taken by frontal attack, which deceive every one, generals as well as civilians, and which always cause the same mistakes to be made. It is time to teach these folks that the entrenchments at Fribourg were not won by frontal attack, nor was the bridge of Arcola (see the correspondence of Napoleon I), nor was Solferino.
Lieutenant Hercule took fifty cavalry through Alpon, ten kilometers on the flank of the Austrians at Arcola, and the position that held us up for three days, was evacuated. The evacuation was the result of strategic, if not of tactical, moral effect. General or soldier, man is the same.
Demonstrations should be made at greater or less distance, according to the morale of the enemy. That is to say, battle methods vary with the enemy, and an appropriate method should be employed in each individual case.
We have treated and shall treat only of the infantryman. In ancient as in modern battle, he is the one who suffers most. In ancient battle, if he is defeated, he remains because of his slowness at the mercy of the victor. In modern battle the mounted man moves swiftly through danger, the infantryman has to walk. He even has to halt in danger, often and for long periods of time. He who knows the morale of the infantryman, which is put to the hardest proof, knows the morale of all the combatants.
4. The Theory of Strong Battalions
To-day, numbers are considered the essential. Napoleon had this tendency (note his strength reports). The Romans did not pay so much attention to it. What they paid most attention to was to seeing that everybody fought. We assume that all the personnel present with an army, with a division, with a regiment on the day of battle, fights. Right there is the error.
The theory of strong battalions is a shameful theory. It does not reckon on courage but on the amount of human flesh. It is a reflection on the soul. Great and small orators, all who speak of military matters to-day, talk only of masses. War is waged by enormous masses, etc. In the masses, man as an individual disappears, the number only is seen. Quality is forgotten, and yet to-day as always, quality alone produces real effect. The Prussians conquered at Sadowa with made soldiers, united, accustomed to discipline. Such soldiers can be made in three or four years now, for the material training of the soldier is not indeed so difficult.
Caesar had legions that he found unseasoned, not yet dependable, which had been formed for nine years.
Austria was beaten because her troops were of poor quality, because they were conscripts.
Our projected organization will give us four hundred thousand good soldiers. But all our reserves will be without cohesion, if they are thrown into this or that organization on the eve of battle. At a distance, numbers of troops without cohesion may be impressive, but close up they are reduced to fifty or twenty-five per cent. who really fight. Wagram was not too well executed. It illustrated desperate efforts that had for once a moral effect on an impressionable enemy. But for once only. Would they succeed again?
The Cimbrians gave an example [37] and man has not changed. Who to-day is braver than they were? And they did not have to face artillery, nor rifles.
Originally Napoleon found as an instrument, an army with good battle methods, and in his best battles, combat followed these methods. He himself prescribed, at least so they say, for he misrepresented at Saint Helena, the methods used at Wagram, at Eylau, at Waterloo, and engaged enormous masses of infantry which did not give material effect. But it involved a frightful loss of men and a disorder that, after they had once been unleashed, did not permit of the rallying and reemployment that day of the troops engaged. This was a barbaric method, according to the Romans, amateurish, if we may say such a thing of such a man; a method which could not be used against experienced and well trained troops such as d’Erlon’s corps at Waterloo. It proved disastrous.
Napoleon looked only at the result to be attained. When his impatience, or perhaps the lack of experience and knowledge in his officers and soldiers, forbade his continued use of real attack tactics, he completely sacrificed the material effect of infantry and even that of cavalry to the moral effect of masses. The personnel of his armies was too changing. In ancient battle victory cost much less than with modern armies, and the same soldiers remained longer in ranks. At the end of his campaigns, when he had soldiers sixty years old, Alexander had lost only seven hundred men by the sword. Napoleon’s system is more practicable with the Russians, who naturally group together, mass up, but it is not the most effective. Note the mass formation at Inkermann. [38]
What did Napoleon I do? He reduced the role of man in battle, and depended instead on formed masses. We have not such magnificent material.
Infantry and cavalry masses showed, toward the end of the Empire, a tactical degeneracy resulting from the wearing down of their elements and the consequent lowering of standards of morale and training. But since the allies had recognized and adopted our methods, Napoleon really had a reason for trying something so old that it was new to secure that surprise which will give victory once. It can give victory only once however, tried again surprise will be lacking. This was sort of a desperate method which Napoleon’s supremacy allowed him to adopt when he saw his prestige waning.
When misfortune and lack of cannon fodder oppressed him, Napoleon became again the practical man not blinded by his supremacy. His entire good sense, his genius, overcame the madness to conquer at all price, and we have his campaign of 1814.
General Ambert says: “Without military traditions, almost without a command, these confused masses (the American armies of the Civil War) struck as men struck at Agincourt and Crecy.” At Agincourt and Crecy, we struck very little, but were struck a lot. These battles were great slaughters of Frenchmen, by English and other Frenchmen, who did not greatly suffer themselves. In what, except in disorder, did the American battles resemble these butcheries with the knife? The Americans were engaged as skirmishers at a distance of leagues. In seeking a resemblance the general has been carried away by the mania for phrase-making.
Victory is always for the strong battalions. This is true. If sixty determined men can rout a battalion, these sixty must be found. Perhaps only as many will be found as the enemy has battalions (Note Gideon’s proportion of three hundred to thirty thousand of one to one hundred.) Perhaps it would be far and away better, under these circumstances, to fight at night.
5. Combat Methods
Ancient battle was fought in a confined space. The commander could see his whole force. Seeing clearly, his account should have been clear, although we note that many of these ancient accounts are obscure and incomplete, and that we have to supplement them. In modern battle nobody knows what goes on or what has gone on, except from results. Narrations cannot enter into details of execution.
It is interesting to compare tales of feats of arms, narrated by the victor (so-called) or the vanquished. It is hard to tell which account is truthful, if either. Mere assurance may carry weight. Military politics may dictate a perversion of the facts for disciplinary, moral or political reasons. (Note Sommo-Sierra.)
It is difficult even to determine losses, the leaders are such consummate liars. Why is this?
It is bewildering to read a French account and then a foreign account of the same event, the facts stated are so entirely different. What is the truth? Only results can reveal it, such results as the losses on both sides. They are really instructive if they can be gotten at.
I believe that under Turenne there was not existent to the same degree a national pride which tended to hide unpleasant truths. The troops in contending armies were often of the same nation.
If national vanity and pride were not so touchy about recent occurrences, still passionately debated, numerous lessons might be drawn from our last wars. Who can speak impartially of Waterloo, or Waterloo so much discussed and with such heat, without being ashamed? Had Waterloo been won, it would not have profited us. Napoleon attempted the impossible, which is beyond even genius. After a terrible fight against English firmness and tenacity, a fight in which we were not able to subdue them, the Prussians appear. We would have done no better had they not appeared, but they did, very conveniently to sustain our pride. They were confronted. Then the rout began. It did not begin in the troops facing the Prussians but in those facing the English, who were exhausted perhaps, but not more so than their enemies. This was the moral effect of an attack on their right, when they had rather expected reinforcements to appear. The right conformed to the retrograde movement. And what a movement it was!
Why do not authorities acknowledge facts and try to formulate combat methods that conform to reality? It would reduce a little the disorder that bothers men not warned of it. They jump perhaps from the frying pan into the fire. I have known two colonels, one of them a very brave man, who said, “Let soldiers alone before the enemy. They know what to do better than you do.” This is a fine statement of French confidence! That they know better than you what should be done. Especially in a panic, I suppose!
A long time ago the Prince de Ligne justified battle formations, above all the famous oblique formation. Napoleon decided the question. All discussion of formations is pedantry. But there are moral reasons for the power of the depth formation.
The difference between practice and theory is incredible. A general, who has given directions a thousand times on the battle field, when asked for directions, gives this order, “Go there, Colonel.” The colonel, a man of good sense, says, “Will you explain, sir? What point do you want me to guide on? How far should I extend? Is there anybody on my right? On my left?” The general says, “Advance on the enemy, sir. It seems to me that that ought to be enough. What does this hesitation mean?” But my dear general, what are your orders? An officer should know where his command is, and the command itself should know. Space is large. If you do not know where to send your troops, and how to direct them, to make them understand where they are to go, to give them guides if necessary, what sort of general are you?
What is our method for occupying a fortified work, or a line? We have none! Why not adopt that of Marshal Saxe? Ask several generals how they would do it. They will not know.
There is always mad impatience for results, without considering the means. A general’s ability lies in judging the best moment for attack and in knowing how to prepare for it. We took Melegnano without artillery, without maneuver, but at what a price! At Waterloo the Hougoumont farm held us up all day, cost us dear and disorganized us into a mad mob, until Napoleon finally sent eight mortars to smash and burn the chateau. This is what should have been done at the commencement of the general attack.
A rational and ordered method of combat, or if not ordered, known to all, is enough to make good troops, if there is discipline be it understood. The Portuguese infantry in the Spanish War, to whom the English had taught their method of combat, almost rivalled the English infantry. To-day who has formulated method? Who has a traditional method? Ask the generals. No two will agree.
We have a method, a manner rather, that accords with the national tendency, that of skirmishers in large numbers. But this formation is nowhere formulated. Before a campaign it is decried. Properly so, for it degenerates rapidly into a flock of lost sheep. Consequently troops come to the battle field entirely unused to reality. All the leaders, all the officers, are confused and unoriented. This goes so far that often generals are found who have lost their divisions or brigades; staff officers who have lost their generals and their divisions both; and, although this is more easily understood, many company officers who have lost their commands. This is a serious matter, which might cost us dear in a prolonged war in which the enemy gains experience. Let us hope that experience will lead us, not to change the principle, but to modify and form in a practical way our characteristic battle method of escaping by advancing. The brochure of the Prince of Prussia shows that, without having fought us, the Prussians understand our methods.
There are men such as Marshal Bugeaud who are born warriors in character, mental attitude, intelligence and temperament. They recommend and show by example, such as Colonel Bugeaud’s battles in 1815 at the Hospital bridge, tactics entirely appropriate to their national and personal characters. Note Wellington and the Duke of York among the English. But the execution of tactics such as Bugeaud’s requires officers who resemble their commanders, at least in courage and decisions. All officers are not of such temper. There is need then of prescribed tactics conforming to the national character, which may serve to guide an ordinary officer without requiring him to have the exceptional ability of a Bugeaud. Such prescribed tactics would serve an officer as the perfectly clear and well defined tactics of the Roman legion served the legion commander. The officer could not neglect them without failing in his duty. Of course they will not make him an exceptional leader. But, except in case of utter incapacity they will keep him from entirely failing in his task, from making absurd mistakes. Nor will they prevent officers of Bugeaud’s temper from using their ability. They will on the contrary help them by putting under their command men prepared for the details of battle, which will not then come to them as a surprise.
This method need not be as completely dogmatic as the Roman. Our battle is too varying an affair. But some clearly defined rules, established by experience, would prevent the gross errors of inefficients. (Such as causing skirmishers to fall back when the formed rank fires, and consequently allowing them to carry with them in their retreat, the rank itself.) They would be useful aids to men of coolness and decision.
The laying down of such tactics would answer the many who hold that everything is improvised on the battle field and who find no better improvisation than to leave the soldier to himself. (See above.)
We should try to exercise some control over our soldiers, who advance by flight (note the Vendeans) or escape by advancing, as you like. But if something unexpected surprises them, they flee as precipitately.
Invention is less needed than verification, demonstration and organization of proper methods. To verify; observe better. To demonstrate; try out and describe better. To organize, distribute better, bearing in mind that cohesion means discipline. I do not know who put things that way; but it is truer than ever in this day of invention.
With us very few reason or understand reason, very few are cool. Their effect is negligible in the disorder of the mass; it is lost in numbers. It follows that we above all need a method of combat, sanely thought out in advance. It must be based on the fact that we are not passively obedient instruments, but very nervous and restless people, who wish to finish things quickly and to know in advance where we are going. It must be based on the fact that we are very proud people, but people who would all skulk if we were not seen, and who consequently must always be seen, and act in the presence of our comrades and of the officers who supervise us. From this comes the necessity for organizing the infantry company solidly. It is the infantryman on whom the battle has the most violent effect, for he is always most exposed; it is he therefore who must be the most solidly supported. Unity must be secured by a mutual acquaintanceship of long standing between all elements.
If you only use combat methods that require leaders without fear, of high intelligence, full of good sense, of esprit, you will always make mistakes. Bugeaud’s method was the best for him. But it is evident, in his fight at the Hospital bridge that his battalion commanders were useless. If he had not been there, all would have been lost. He alone, omnipresent, was capable of resolute blows that the others could not execute. His system can be summed up in two phrases; always attack even when on the defensive; fire and take cover only when not attacked. His method was rational, considering his mentality and the existing conditions, but in carrying it into execution he judged his officers and soldiers by himself and was deceived. No dogmatic principles can be drawn from his method, nor from any other. Man is always man. He does not always possess ability and resolution. The commander must make his choice of methods, depending on his troops and on himself.
The essential of tactics is: the science of making men fight with their maximum energy. This alone can give an organization with which to fight fear. This has always been true.
We must start here and figure mathematically. Mathematics is the dominant science in war, just as battle is its only purpose. Pride generally causes refusal to acknowledge the truth that fear of being vanquished is basic in war. In the mass, pride, vanity, is responsible for this dissimulation. With the tiny number of absolutely fearless men, what is responsible is their ignorance of a thing they do not feel. There is however, no real basis but this, and all real tactics are based on it. Discipline is a part of tactics, is absolutely at the base of tactics, as the Romans showed. They excelled the Gauls in intelligence, but not in bravery.
To start with: take battalions of four companies, four platoons each, in line or in column. The order of battle may be: two platoons deployed as skirmishers, two companies in reserve, under command of the battalion commander. In obtaining a decision destructive action will come from skirmishers. This action should be directed by battalion commanders, but such direction is not customary. No effect will be secured from skirmishers at six hundred paces. They will never, never, never, be nicely aligned in front of their battalions, calm and collected, after an advance. They will not, even at maneuvers. The battalion commander ought to be advanced enough to direct his skirmishers. The whole battalion, one-half engaged, one-half ready for any effort, ought to remain under his command, under his personal direction as far as possible. In the advance the officers, the soldiers, are content if they are merely directed; but, when the battle becomes hot, they must see their commander, know him to be near. It does not matter even if he is without initiative, incapable of giving an order. His presence creates a belief that direction exists, that orders exist, and that is enough.
When the skirmishers meet with resistance, they fall back to the ranks. It is the role of reserves to support and reinforce the line, and above all, by a swift charge to cut the enemy’s line. This then falls back and the skirmishers go forward again, if the advance is resumed. The second line should be in the formation, battalions in line or in column, that hides it best. Cover the infantry troops before their entry into action; cover them as much as possible and by any means; take advantage of the terrain; make them lie down. This is the English method in defense of heights, instanced in Spain and at Waterloo. Only one bugle to each battalion should sound calls. What else is there to be provided for?
Many haughty generals would scream protests like eagles if it were suggested that they take such precautions for second line battalions or first line troops not committed to action. Yet this is merely a sane measure to insure good order without the slightest implication of cowardice. [39]
With breech-loading weapons, the skirmishers on the defensive fire almost always from a prone position. They are made to rise with difficulty, either for retreat or for advance. This renders the defense more tenacious….
CHAPTER II
INFANTRY
1. Masses–Deep Columns.
Study of the effect of columns brings us to the consideration of mass operations in general. Read this singular argument in favor of attacks by battalions in close columns: “A column cannot stop instantly without a command. Suppose your first rank stops at the instant of shock: the twelve ranks of the battalion, coming up successively, would come in contact with it, pushing it forward…. Experiments made have shown that beyond the sixteenth the impulsion of the ranks in rear has no effect on the front, it is completely taken up by the fifteen ranks already massed behind the first…. To make the experiment, march at charging pace and command halt to the front rank without warning the rest. The ranks will precipitate themselves upon each other unless they be very attentive, or unless, anticipating the command, they check themselves unconsciously while marching.”
But in a real charge, all your ranks are attentive, restless, anxious about what is taking place at the front and, if the latter halts, if the first line stops, there will be a movement to the rear and not to the front. Take a good battalion, possessed of extraordinary calmness and coolness, thrown full speed on the enemy, at one hundred and twenty steps to the minute. To-day it would have to advance under a fire of five shots a minute! At this last desperate moment if the front rank stops, it will not be pushed, according to the theory of successive impulses, it will be upset. The second line will arrive only to fall over the first and so on. There should be a drill ground test to see up to what rank this falling of the pasteboard figures would extend.
Physical impulse is merely a word. If the front rank stops it will let itself fall and be trampled under foot rather than cede to the pressure that pushes it forward. Any one experienced in infantry engagements of to-day knows that is just what happens. This shows the error of the theory of physical impulse–a theory that continues to dictate as under the Empire (so strong is routine and prejudice) attacks in close column. Such attacks are marked by absolute disorder and lack of leadership. Take a battalion fresh from barracks, in light marching order; intent only on the maneuver to be executed. It marches in close column in good order; its subdivisions are full four paces apart. The non-commissioned officers control the men. But it is true that if the terrain is slightly accidented, if the guide does not march with mathematical precision, the battalion in close column becomes in the twinkling of an eye a flock of sheep. What would happen to a battalion in such a formation, at one hundred paces from the enemy? Nobody will ever see such an instance in these days of the rifle.
If the battalion has marched resolutely, if it is in good order, it is ten to one that the enemy has already withdrawn without waiting any longer. But suppose the enemy does not flinch? Then the man of our days, naked against iron and lead, no longer controls himself. The instinct of preservation controls him absolutely. There are two ways of avoiding or diminishing the danger; they are to flee or to throw one-self upon it. Let us rush upon it. Now, however small the intervals of space and time that separate us from the enemy, instinct shows itself. We rush forward, but … generally, we rush with prudence, with a tendency to let the most urgent ones, the most intrepid ones, pass on. It is strange, but true, that the nearer we approach the enemy, the less we are closed up. Adieu to the theory of pressure. If the front rank is stopped, those behind fall down rather than push it. Even if this front rank is pushed, it will itself fall down rather than advance. There is nothing to wonder at, it is sheer fact. Any pushing is to the rear. (Battle of Diernstein.)
To-day more than ever flight begins in the rear, which is affected quite as much as the front.
Mass attacks are incomprehensible. Not one out of ten was ever carried to completion and none of them could be maintained against counter-attacks. They can be explained only by the lack of confidence of the generals in their troops. Napoleon expressly condemns in his memoirs such attacks. He, therefore, never ordered them. But when good troops were used up, and his generals believed they could not obtain from young troops determined attacks in tactical formation, they came back to the mass formation, which belongs to the infancy of the art, as a desperate resort.
If you use this method of pressing, of pushing, your force will disappear as before a magician’s wand.
But the enemy does not stand; the moral pressure of danger that precedes you is too strong for him. Otherwise, those who stood and aimed even with empty rifles, would never see a charge come up to them. The first line of the assailant would be sensible of death and no one would wish to be in the first rank. Therefore, the enemy never merely stands; because if he does, it is you that flee. This always does away with the shock. The enemy entertains no smaller anxiety than yours. When he sees you near, for him also the question is whether to flee or to advance. Two moral impulses are in conflict.
This is the instinctive reasoning of the officer and soldier, “If these men wait for me to close with them, it means death. I will kill, but I will undoubtedly be killed. At the muzzle of the gun-barrel the bullet can not fail to find its mark. But if I can frighten them, they will run away. I can shoot them and bayonet in the back. Let us make a try at it.” The trial is made, and one of the two forces, at some stage of the advance, perhaps only at two paces, makes an about and gets the bayonet in the back.
Imagination always sees loaded arms and this fancy is catching.
The shock is a mere term. The de Saxe, the Bugeaud theory: “Close with the bayonet and with fire action at close quarters. That is what kills people and the victor is the one who kills most,” is not founded on fact. No enemy awaits you if you are determined, and never, never, never, are two equal determinations opposed to each other. It is well known to everybody, to all nations, that the French have never met any one who resisted a bayonet charge.
The English in Spain, marching resolutely in face of the charges of the French in column, have always defeated them…. The English were not dismayed at the mass. If Napoleon had recalled the defeat of the giants of the Armada by the English vessels, he might not have ordered the use of the d’Erlon column.
Blucher in his instructions to his troops, recalled that the French have never held out before the resolute march of the Prussians in attack column….
Suvaroff used no better tactics. Yet his battalions in Italy drove us at the point of their bayonets.
Each nation in Europe says: “No one stands his ground before a bayonet charge made by us.” All are right. The French, no more than others, resist a resolute attack. All are persuaded that their attacks are irresistable; that an advance will frighten the enemy into flight. Whether the bayonet be fixed or in the scabbard makes no difference….
There is an old saying that young troops become uneasy if any one comes upon them in a tumult and in disorder; the old troops, on the contrary, see victory therein. At the commencement of a war, all troops are young. Our impetuosity pushes us to the front like fools … the enemy flees. If the war lasts, everybody becomes inured. The enemy no longer troubles himself when in front of troops charging in a disordered way, because he knows and feels that they are moved as much by fear as by determination. Good order alone impresses the enemy in an attack, for it indicates real determination. That is why it is necessary to secure good order and retain it to the very last. It is unwise to take the running step prematurely, because you become a flock of sheep and leave so many men behind that you will not reach your objective. The close column is absurd; it turns you in advance into a flock of sheep, where officers and men are jumbled together without mutual support. It is then necessary to march as far as possible in such order as best permits the action of the non-commissioned officers, the action of unity, every one marching in front of eye-witnesses, in the open. On the other hand, in closed columns man marches unobserved and on the slightest pretext he lies down or remains behind. Therefore, it is best always to keep the skirmishers in advance or on the flanks, and never to recall them when in proximity to the enemy. To do so establishes a counter current that carries away your men. Let your skirmishers alone. They are your lost children; they will know best how to take care of themselves.
To sum up: there is no shock of infantry on infantry. There is no physical impulse, no force of mass. There is but a moral impulse. No one denies that this moral impulse is stronger as one feels better supported, that it has greater effect on the enemy as it menaces him with more men. From this it follows that the column is more valuable for the attack than the deployed order.
It might be concluded from this long statement that a moral pressure, which always causes flight when a bold attack is made, would not permit any infantry to hold out against a cavalry charge; never, indeed, against a determined charge. But infantry must resist when it is not possible to flee, and until there is complete demoralization, absolute terror, the infantry appreciates this. Every infantryman knows it is folly to flee before cavalry when the rifle is infallible at point-blank, at least from the rider’s point of view. It is true that every really bold charge ought to succeed. But whether man is on foot or on horseback, he is always man. While on foot he has but himself to force; on horseback he must force man and beast to march against the enemy. And mounted, to flee is so easy. (Remark by Varney).
We have seen than in an infantry mass those in rear are powerless to push those in front unless the danger is greater in rear. The cavalry has long understood this. It attacks in a column at double distance rather than at half-distance, in order to avoid the frightful confusion of the mass. And yet, the allurement of mathematical reasoning is such that cavalry officers, especially the Germans, have seriously proposed attacking infantry by deep masses, so that the units in rear might give impulse to those in front. They cite the proverb, “One nail drives the other.” What can you say to people who talk such nonsense? Nothing, except, “Attack us always in this way.”
Real bayonet attacks occurred in the Crimean war. (Inkermann). [40] They were carried out by a small force against a larger one. The power of mass had no influence in such cases. It was the mass which fell back, turned tail even before the shock. The troops who made the bold charge did nothing but strike and fire at backs. These instances show men unexpectedly finding themselves face to face with the enemy, at a distance at which a man can close fearlessly without falling out on the way breathless. They are chance encounters. Man is not yet demoralized by fire; he must strike or fall back…. Combat at close quarters does not exist. At close quarters occurs the ancient carnage when one force strikes the other in the back.
Columns have absolutely but a moral effect. They are threatening dispositions….
The mass impulse of cavalry has long been discredited. You have given up forming it in deep ranks although cavalry possesses a speed that would bring on more of a push upon the front at a halt than the last ranks of the infantry would bring upon the first. Yet you believe in the mass action of infantry!
As long as the ancient masses marched forward, they did not lose a man and no one lay down to avoid the combat. Dash lasted up to the time of stopping; the run was short in every case. In modern masses, in French masses especially, the march can be continued, but the mass loses while marching under fire. Moral pressure, continually exerted during a long advance, stops one-half of the combatants on the way. To-day, above all in France, man protests against such use of his life. The Frenchman wants to fight, to return blow for blow. If he is not allowed to, this is what happens. It happened to Napoleon’s masses. Let us take Wagram, where his mass was not repulsed. Out of twenty-two thousand men, three thousand to fifteen hundred reached the position. Certainly the position was not carried by them, but by the material and moral effect of a battery of one hundred pieces, cavalry, etc., etc. Were the nineteen thousand missing men disabled? No. Seven out of twenty-two, a third, an enormous proportion may have been hit. What became of the twelve thousand unaccounted for? They had lain down on the road, had played dummy in order not to go on to the end. In the confused mass of a column of deployed battalions, surveillance, difficult enough in a column at normal distances, is impossible. Nothing is easier than dropping out through inertia; nothing more common.
This thing happens to every body of troops marching forward, under fire, in whatever formation it may be. The number of men falling out in this way, giving up at the least opportunity, is greater as formation is less fixed and the surveillance of officers and comrades more difficult. In a battalion in closed column, this kind of temporary desertion is enormous; one-half of the men drop out on the way. The first platoon is mingled with the fourth. They are really a flock of sheep. No one has control, all being mixed. Even if, in virtue of the first impulse, the position is carried, the disorder is so great that if it is counter-attacked by four men, it is lost.
The condition of morale of such masses is fully described in the battle of Caesar against the Nervii, Marius against the Cimbri. [41]
What better arguments against deep columns could there be than the denials of Napoleon at St. Helena?
2. Skirmishers–Supports–Reserves–Squares
This is singular. The cavalry has definite tactics. Essentially it knows how it fights. The infantry does not.
Our infantry no longer has any battle tactics; the initiative of the soldier rules. The soldiers of the First Empire trusted to the moral and passive action of masses. To-day, the soldiers object to the passive action of masses. They fight as skirmishers, or they march to the front as a flock of sheep of which three-fourths seek cover enroute, if the fire is heavy. The first method, although better than the second, is bad unless iron discipline and studied and practical methods of fighting insure maintaining strong reserves. These should be in the hands of the leaders and officers for support purposes, to guard against panics, and to finish by the moral effect of a march on the enemy, of flank menaces, etc., the destructive action of the skirmishers.
To-day when the ballistic arm is so deadly, so effective, a unit which closes up in order to fight is a unit in which morale is weakened.
Maneuver is possible only with good organization; otherwise it is no more effective than the passive mass or a rabble in an attack.
In ancient combat, the soldier was controlled by the leader in engagements; now that fighting is open, the soldier cannot be controlled. Often he cannot even be directed. Consequently it is necessary to begin an action at the latest possible moment, and to have the immediate commanders understand what is wanted, what their objectives are, etc.
In the modern engagement, the infantryman gets from under our control by scattering, and we say: a soldier’s war. Wrong, wrong. To solve this problem, instead of scattering to the winds, let us increase the number of rallying points by solidifying the companies. From them come battalions; from battalions come regiments.
Action in open order was not possible nor evident under Turenne. The majority of the soldiers that composed the army, were not held near at hand, in formation. They fought badly. There was a general seeking for cover. Note the conduct of the Americans in their late war.
The organization of the legion of Marshal Saxe shows the strength of the tendency toward shock action as opposed to fire action.
The drills, parades and firing at Potsdam were not the tactics of Old Fritz. Frederick’s secret was promptitude and rapidity of movement. But they were popularly believed to be his means. People were fond of them, and are yet. The Prussians for all their leaning toward parade, mathematics, etc., ended by adopting the best methods. The Prussians of Jena were taken in themselves by Frederick’s methods. But since then they have been the first to strike out in a practical way, while we, in France, are still laboring at the Potsdam drills.
The greater number of generals who fought in the last wars, under real battle conditions, ask for skirmishers in large units, well supported. Our men have such a strong tendency to place themselves in such units even against the will of their leaders, that they do not fight otherwise.
A number of respectable authors and military men advocate the use of skirmishers in large bodies, as being dictated by certain necessities of war. Ask them to elucidate this mode of action, and you will see that this talk of skirmishers in large bodies is nothing else but an euphemism for absolute disorder. An attempt has been made to fit the theory to the fact. Yet the use of skirmishers in large bodies is absurd with Frenchmen under fire, when the terrain and the sharpness of the action cause the initiative and direction to escape from the commanders, and leave it to the men, to small groups of soldiers.
Arms are for use. The best disposition for material effect in attack or defense is that which permits the easiest and most deadly use of arms. This disposition is the scattered thin line. The whole of the science of combat lies then in the happy, proper combination, of the open order, scattered to secure destructive effect, and a good disposition of troops in formation as supports and reserves, so as to finish by moral effect the action of the advanced troops. The proper combination varies with the enemy, his morale and the terrain. On the other hand, the thin line can have good order only with a severe discipline, a unity which our men attain from pride. Pride exists only among people who know each other well, who have esprit de corps, and company spirit. There is a necessity for an organization that renders unity possible by creating the real individuality of the company.
Self-esteem is unquestionably one of the most powerful motives which moves our men. They do not wish to pass for cowards in the eyes of their comrades. If they march forward they want to distinguish themselves. After every attack, formation (not the formation of the drill ground but that adopted by those rallying to the chief, those marching with him,) no longer exists. This is because of the inherent disorder of every forward march under fire. The bewildered men, even the officers, have no longer the eyes of their comrades or of their commander upon them, sustaining them. Self-esteem no longer impels them, they do not hold out; the least counter-offensive puts them to rout.
The experience of the evening ought always to serve the day following; but as the next day is never identical with the evening before, the counsel of experience can not be applied to the latter. When confused battalions shot at each other some two hundred paces for some time with arms inferior to those of our days, flight commenced at the wings. Therefore, said experience, let us reenforce the wings, and the battalion was placed between two picked companies. But it was found that the combat methods had been transformed. The elite companies were then reassembled into picked corps and the battalion, weaker than ever, no longer had reenforced wings. Perhaps combat in open order predominates, and the companies of light infantrymen being, above all, skirmishers, the battalion again is no longer supported. In our day the use of deployed battalions as skirmishers is no longer possible; and one of the essential reasons for picked companies is the strengthening of the battalion.
The question has been asked; Who saved the French army on the Beresina and at Hanau? The Guard, it is true. But, outside of the picked corps, what was the French army then? Droves, not troops. Abnormal times, abnormal deeds. The Beresina, Hanau, prove nothing to-day.
With the rapid-firing arms of infantry to-day, the advantage belongs to the defense which is completed by offensive movements carried out at opportune times.
Fire to-day is four or five times more rapid even if quite as haphazard as in the days of muzzle loaders. Everybody says that this renders impossible the charges of cavalry against infantry which has not been completely thrown into disorder, demoralized. What then must happen to charges of infantry, which marches while the cavalry charges?
Attacks in deep masses are no longer seen. They are not wise, and never were wise. To advance to the attack with a line of battalions in column, with large intervals and covered by a thick line of skirmishers, when the artillery has prepared the terrain, is very well. People with common sense have never done otherwise. But the thick line of skirmishers is essential. I believe that is the crux of the matter.
But enough of this. It is simple prudence for the artillery to prepare the infantry action by a moment’s conversation with the artillery of the enemy infantry. If that infantry is not commanded by an imbecile, as it sometimes is, it will avoid that particular conversation the arguments of which would break it up, although they may not be directed precisely in its direction. All other things being equal, both infantries suffer the same losses in the artillery duel. The proportion does not vary, however complete the artillery preparation.
One infantry must always close with another under rapid fire from troops in position, and such a fire is, to-day more than ever, to the advantage of the defense. Ten men come towards me; they are at four hundred meters; with the ancient arm, I have time to kill but two before they reach me; with rapid fire, I have time to kill four or five. Morale does not increase with losses. The eight remaining might reach me in the first case; the five or six remaining will certainly not in the second.
If distance be taken, the leader can be seen, the file-closers see, the platoon that follows watches the preceding. Dropping out always exists, but it is less extensive with an open order, the men running more risks of being recognized. Stragglers will be fewer as the companies know each other better, and as the officers and men are more dependable.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to get the French infantry to make use of its fire before charging. If it fires, it will not charge, because it will continue to fire. (Bugeaud’s method of firing during the advance is good.) What is needed, then, is skirmishers, who deliver the only effective fire, and troops in formation who push the skirmishers on, in themselves advancing to the attack.
The soldier wants to be occupied, to return shot for shot. Place him in a position to act immediately, individually. Then, whatever he does, you have not wholly lost your authority over him.
Again and again and again, at drill, the officers and non-commissioned officer ought to tell the private: “This is taught you to serve you under such circumstances.” Generals, field officers, ought to tell officers the same thing. This alone can make an instructed army like the Roman army. But to-day, who of us can explain page for page, the use of anything ordered by our tactical regulations except the school of the skirmisher? “Forward,” “retreat,” and “by the flank,” are the only practical movements under fire. But the others should be explained. Explain the position of “carry arms” with the left hand. Explain the ordinary step. Explain firing at command in the school of the battalion. It is well enough for the school of the platoon, because a company can make use thereof, but a battalion never can.
Everything leads to the belief that battle with present arms will be, in the same space of time, more deadly than with ancient ones. The trajectory of the projectile reaching further, the rapidity of firing being four times as great, more men will be put out of commission in less time. While the arm becomes more deadly, man does not change, his morale remains capable of certain efforts and the demands upon it become stronger. Morale is overtaxed; it reaches more rapidly the maximum of tension which throws the soldier to the front or rear. The role of commanders is to maintain morale, to direct those movements which men instinctively execute when heavily engaged and under the pressure of danger.
Napoleon I said that in battle, the role of skirmishers is the most fatiguing and most deadly. This means that under the Empire, as at present, the strongly engaged infantry troops rapidly dissolved into skirmishers. The action was decided by the moral agency of the troops not engaged, held in hand, capable of movement in any direction and acting as a great menace of new danger to the adversary, already shaken by the destructive action of the skirmishers. The same is true to-day. But the greater force of fire arms requires, more than ever, that they be utilized. The role of the skirmisher becomes preeminently the destructive role; it is forced on every organization seriously engaged by the greater moral pressure of to-day which causes men to scatter sooner.
Commanders-in-chief imagine formed battalions firing on the enemy and do not include the use of skirmishers in drill. This is an error, for they are necessary in drill and everywhere, etc. The formed rank is more difficult to utilize than ever. General Leboeuf used a very practical movement of going into battle, by platoons, which advance to the battle line in echelon, and can fire, even if they are taken in the very act of the movement. There is always the same dangerous tendency toward mass action even for a battalion in maneuver. This is an error. The principles of maneuver for small units should not be confused with those for great units. Emperor Napoleon did not prescribe skirmishers in flat country. But every officer should be reduced who does not utilize them to some degree.
The role of the skirmisher becomes more and more predominant. He should be so much the more watched and directed as he is used against more deadly arms, and, consequently, is more disposed to escape from all control, from all direction. Yet under such battle conditions formations are proposed which send skirmishers six hundred paces in advance of battalions and which give the battalion commander the mission of watching and directing (with six companies of one hundred and twenty men) troops spread over a space of three hundred paces by five hundred, at a minimum. To advance skirmishers six hundred paces from their battalion and to expect they will remain there is the work of people who have never observed.
Inasmuch as combat by skirmishers tends to predominate and since it becomes more difficult with the increase of danger, there has been a constant effort to bring into the firing line the man who must direct it. Leaders have been seen to spread an entire battalion in front of an infantry brigade or division so that the skirmishers, placed under a single command, might obey a general direction better. This method, scarcely practicable on the drill-ground, and indicating an absolute lack of practical sense, marks the tendency. The authors of new drills go too far in the opposite direction. They give the immediate command of the skirmishers in each battalion to the battalion commander who must at the same time lead his skirmishers and his battalion. This expedient is more practical than the other. It abandons all thought of an impossible general control and places the special direction in the right hands. But the leadership is too distant, the battalion commander has to attend to the participation of his battalion in the line, or in the ensemble of other battalions of the brigade or division, and the particular performance of his skirmishers. The more difficult, confused, the engagement becomes, the more simple and clear ought to be the roles of each one. Skirmishers are in need of a firmer hand than ever to direct and maintain them, so that they may do their part. The battalion commander must be entirely occupied with the role of skirmishers, or with the role of the line. There should be smaller battalions, one-half the number in reserve, one-half as skirmisher battalions. In the latter the men should be employed one-half as skirmishers and one-half held in reserve. The line of skirmishers will then gain steadiness.
Let the battalion commander of the troops of the second line entirely occupy himself with his battalion.
The full battalion of six companies is to-day too unwieldy for one man. Have battalions of four companies of one hundred men each, which is certainly quite sufficient considering the power of destruction which these four companies place in the hands of one man. He will have difficulty in maintaining and directing these four companies under the operation of increasingly powerful modern appliances. He will have difficulty in watching them, in modern combat, with the greater interval between the men in line that the use of the present arms necessitates. With a unified battalion of six hundred men, I would do better against a battalion of one thousand Prussians, than with a battalion of eight hundred men, two hundred of whom are immediately taken out of my control.
Skirmishers have a destructive effect; formed troops a moral effect. Drill ground maneuvers should prepare for actual battle. In such maneuvers, why, at the decisive moment of an attack, should you lighten the moral anxiety of the foe by ceasing his destruction, by calling back your skirmishers? If the enemy keeps his own skirmishers and marches resolutely behind them, you are lost, for his moral action upon you is augmented by his destructive action against which you have kindly disarmed yourself.
Why do you call back your skirmishers? Is it because your skirmishers hinder the operation of your columns, block bayonet charges? One must never have been in action to advance such a reason. At the last moment, at the supreme moment when one or two hundred meters separate you from the adversary, there is no longer a line. There is a fearless advance, and your skirmishers are your forlorn hope. Let them charge on their own account. Let them be passed or pushed forward by the mass. Do not recall them. Do not order them to execute any maneuver for they are not capable of any, except perhaps, that of falling back and establishing a counter-current which might drag you along. In these moments, everything hangs by a thread. Is it because your skirmishers would prevent you from delivering fire? Do you, then, believe in firing, especially in firing under the pressure of approaching danger, before the enemy? If he is wise, certainly he marches preceded by skirmishers, who kill men in your ranks and who have the confidence of a first success, of having seen your skirmishers disappear before them. These skirmishers will certainly lie down before your unmasked front. In that formation they easily cause you losses, and you are subjected to their destructive effect and to the moral effect of the advance of troops in formation against you. Your ranks become confused; you do not hold the position. There is but one way of holding it, that is to advance, and for that, it is necessary at all costs to avoid firing before moving ahead. Fire opened, no one advances further.
Do you believe in opening and ceasing fire at the will of the commander as on the drill ground? The commencement of fire by a battalion, with the present arms especially, is the beginning of disorder, the moment where the battalion begins to escape from its leader. While drilling even, the battalion commanders, after a little lively drill, after a march, can no longer control the fire.
Do you object that no one ever gets within two hundred meters of the enemy? That a unit attacking from the front never succeeds? So be it! Let us attack from the flank. But a flank is always more or less covered. Men are stationed there, ready for the blow. It will be necessary to pick off these men.
To-day, more than ever, no rapid, calm firing is possible except skirmish firing.
The rapidity of firing has reduced six ranks to two ranks. With reliable troops who have no need of the moral support of a second rank behind them, one rank suffices to-day. At any rate, it is possible to await attack in two ranks.
In prescribing fire at command, in seeking to minimize the role of skirmishers instead of making it predominate, you take sides with the Germans. We are not fitted for that sort of game. If they adopt fire at command, it is just one more reason for our finding another method. We have invented, discovered the skirmisher; he is forced upon us by our men, our arms, etc. He must be organized.
In fire by rank, in battle, men gather into small groups and become confused. The more space they have, the less will be the disorder.
Formed in two ranks, each rank should be still thinner. All the shots of the second line are lost. The men should not touch; they should be far apart. The second rank in firing from position at a supreme moment, ought not to be directly behind the first. The men ought to be echeloned behind the first. There will always be firing from position on any front. It is necessary to make this firing as effective and as easy as possible. I do not wish to challenge the experiences of the target range but I wish to put them to practical use.
It is evident that the present arms are more deadly than the ancient ones; the morale of the troops will therefore be more severely shaken. The influence of the leader should be greater over the combatants, those immediately engaged. If it seems rational, let colonels engage in action, with the battalions of their regiment in two lines. One battalion acts as skirmishers; the other battalion waits, formed ready to aid the first. If you do not wish so to utilize the colonels, put all the battalions of the regiment in the first line, and eventually use them as skirmishers. The thing is inevitable; it will be done in spite of you. Do it yourself at the very first opportunity.
The necessity of replenishing the ammunition supply so quickly used up by the infantry, requires engaging the infantry by units only, which can be relieved by other units after the exhaustion of the ammunition supply. As skirmishers are exhausted quickly, engage entire battalions as skirmishers, assisted by entire battalions as supports or reserves. This is a necessary measure to insure good order. Do not throw into the fight immediately the four companies of the battalion. Up to the crucial moment, the battalion commander ought to guard against throwing every one into the fight.
There is a mania, seen in our maneuver camps, for completely covering a battle front, a defended position, by skirmishers, without the least interval between the skirmishers of different battalions. What will be the result? Initially a waste of men and ammunition. Then, difficulty in replacing them.
Why cover the front everywhere? If you do, then what advantage is there in being able to see from a great distance? Leave large intervals between your deployed companies. We are no longer only one hundred meters from the enemy at the time of firing. Since we are able to see at a great distance we do not risk having the enemy dash into these intervals unexpectedly. Your skirmisher companies at large intervals begin the fight, the killing. While your advance companies move ahead, the battalion commander follows with his formed companies, defilading them as much as possible. He lets them march. If the skirmishers fight at the halt, he supervises them. If the commanding officer wishes to reenforce his line, if he wants to face an enemy who attempts to advance into an interval, if he has any motive for doing it, in a word, he rushes new skirmishers into the interval. Certainly, these companies have more of the forward impulse, more dash, if dash is needed, than the skirmishers already in action. If they pass the first skirmishers, no harm is done. There you have echelons already formed. The skirmishers engaged, seeing aid in front of them, can be launched ahead more easily.
Besides, the companies thrown into this interval are a surprise for the enemy. That is something to be considered, as is the fact that so long as there is fighting at a halt, intervals in the skirmish lines are fit places for enemy bullets. Furthermore, these companies remain in the hands of their leaders. With the present method of reenforcing skirmishers–I am speaking of the practical method of the battlefield, not of theory–a company, starting from behind the skirmishers engaged, without a place in which to deploy, does not find anything better to do than to mingle with the skirmishers. Here it doubles the number of men, but in doing so brings disorder, prevents the control of the commanders and breaks up the regularly constituted groups. While the closing up of intervals to make places for new arrivals is good on the drill ground, or good before or after the combat, it never works during battle.
No prescribed interval will be kept exactly. It will open, it will close, following the fluctuations of the combat. But the onset, during which it can be kept, is not the moment of brisk combat; it is the moment of the engagement, of contact, consequently, of feeling out. It is essential that there remain space in which to advance. Suppose you are on a plain, for in a maneuver one starts from the flat terrain. In extending the new company it will reenforce the wings of the others, the men naturally supporting the flanks of their comrades. The individual intervals will lessen in order to make room for the new company. The company will always have a well determined central group, a rallying point for the others. If the interval has disappeared there is always time to employ the emergency method of doubling the ranks in front; but one must not forget, whatever the course taken, to preserve good order.
We cannot resist closing intervals between battalions; as if we were still in the times of the pikemen when, indeed, it was possible to pass through an interval! To-day, the fighting is done ten times farther away, and the intervals between battalions are not weak joints. They are covered by the fire of the skirmishers, as well covered by fire as the rest of the front, and invisible to the enemy.
Skirmishers and masses are the formations for action of poorly instructed French troops. With instruction and unity there would be skirmishers supported and formation in battalion columns at most.
Troops in close order can have only a moral effect, for the attack, or for a demonstration. If you want to produce a real effect, use musketry. For this it is necessary to form a single line. Formations have purely moral effect. Whoever counts on their material, effective action against reliable, cool troops, is mistaken and is defeated. Skirmishers alone do damage. Picked shots would do more if properly employed.
In attacking a position, start the charge at the latest possible moment, when the leader thinks he can reach the objective not all out of breath. Until then, it has been possible to march in rank, that is under the officers, the rank not being the mathematical line, but the grouping in the hands of the leader, under his eye. With the run comes confusion. Many stop, the fewer as the run is shorter. They lie down on the way and will rejoin only if the attack succeeds, if they join at all. If by running too long the men are obliged to stop in order to breathe and rest, the dash is broken, shattered. At the advance, very few will start. There are ten chances to one of seeing the attack fail, of turning it into a joke, with cries of “Forward with fixed bayonet,” but none advancing, except some brave men who will be killed uselessly. The attack vanishes finally before the least demonstration of the foe. An unfortunate shout, a mere nothing, can destroy it.
Absolute rules are foolish, the conduct of every charge being an affair requiring tact. But so regulate by general rules the conduct of an infantry charge that those who commence it too far away can properly be accused of panic. And there is a way. Regulate it as the cavalry charge is regulated, and have a rearguard in each battalion of non-commissioned officers, of most reliable officers, in order to gather together, to follow close upon the charge, at a walk, and to collect all those who have lain down so as not to march or because they were out of breath. This rearguard might consist of a small platoon of picked shots, such as we need in each battalion. The charge ought to be made at a given distance, else it vanishes, evaporates. The leader who commences it too soon either has no head, or does not want to gain his objective.
The infantry of the line, as opposed to elite commands, should not be kept in support. The least firm, the most impressionable, are thus sent into the road stained with the blood of the strongest. We place them, after a moral anxiety of waiting, face to face with the terrible destruction and mutilation of modern weapons. If antiquity had need of solid troops as supports, we have a greater need of them. Death in ancient combat was not as horrible as in the modern battle where the flesh is mangled, slashed by artillery fire. In ancient combat, except in defeat, the wounded were few in number. This is the reply to those who wish to begin an action by chasseurs, zouaves, etc.
He, general or mere captain, who employs every one in the storming of a position can be sure of seeing it retaken by an organized counter-attack of four men and a corporal.
In order that we may have real supervision and responsibility in units from companies to brigades, the supporting troops ought to be of the same company, the same battalion, the same brigade, as the case may be. Each brigade ought to have its two lines, each battalion its skirmishers, etc.
The system of holding out a reserve as long as possible for independent action when the enemy has used his own, ought to be applied downwards. Each battalion should have its own, each regiment its own, firmly maintained.
There is more need than ever to-day, for protecting the supporting forces, the reserves. The power of destruction increases, the morale remains the same. The tests of morale, being more violent than previously, ought to be shorter, because the power of morale has not increased. The masses, reserves, the second, the first lines, should be protected and sheltered even more than the skirmishers.
Squares sometimes are broken by cavalry which pursues the skirmishers into the square. Instead of lying down, they rush blindly to their refuge which they render untenable and destroy. No square can hold out against determined troops…. But!
The infantry square is not a thing of mechanics, of mathematical reasoning; it is a thing of morale. A platoon in four ranks, two facing the front, two the rear, its flanks guarded by the extreme files that face to the flank, and conducted, supported by the non-commissioned officers placed in a fifth rank, in the interior of the rectangle, powerful in its compactness and its fire, cannot be dislodged by cavalry. However, this platoon will prefer to form a part of a large square, it will consider itself stronger, because of numbers, and indeed it will be, since the feeling of force pervades this whole force. This feeling is power in war.
People who calculate only according to the fire delivered, according to the destructive power of infantry, would have it fight deployed against cavalry. They do not consider that although supported and maintained, although such a formation seem to prevent flight, the very impetus of the charge, if led resolutely, will break the deployment before the shock arrives. It is clear that if the charge is badly conducted, whether the infantry be solid or not, it will never reach its objective. Why? Moral reasons and no others make the soldier in a square feel himself stronger than when in line. He feels himself watched from behind and has nowhere to flee.
3. Firing
It is easy to misuse breech-loading weapons, such as the rifle. The fashion to-day is to use small intrenchments, covering battalions. As old as powder. Such shelter is an excellent device on the condition, however, that behind it, a useful fire can be delivered.
Look at these two ranks crouched under the cover of a small trench. Follow the direction of the shots. Even note the trajectory shown by the burst of flame. You will be convinced that, under such conditions, even simple horizontal firing is a fiction. In a second, there will be wild firing on account of the noise, the crowding, the interference of the two ranks. Next everybody tries to get under the best possible cover. Good-by firing.
It is essential to save ammunition, to get all possible efficiency from the arm. Yet the official adoption of fire by rank insures relapsing into useless firing at random. Good shots are wasted, placed where it is impossible for them to fire well.
Since we have a weapon that fires six times more rapidly than the ancient weapon, why not profit by it to cover a given space with six times fewer riflemen than formerly? Riflemen placed at greater intervals, will be less bewildered, will see more clearly, will be better watched (which may seem strange to you), and will consequently deliver a better fire than formerly. Besides, they will expend six times less ammunition. That is the vital point. You must always have ammunition available, that is to say, troops which have not been engaged. Reserves must be held out. This is hard to manage perhaps. It is not so hard to manage, however, as fire by command.
What is the use of fire by rank? By command? It is impracticable against the enemy, except in extraordinary cases. Any attempt at supervision of it is a joke! File firing? The first rank can shoot horizontally, the only thing required; the second rank can fire only into the air. It is useless to fire with our bulky knapsacks interfering so that our men raise the elbow higher than the shoulder. Learn what the field pack can be from the English, Prussians, Austrians, etc…. Could the pack not be thicker and less wide? Have the first rank open; let the second be checkerwise; and let firing against cavalry be the only firing to be executed in line.
One line will be better than two, because it will not be hindered by the one behind it. One kind of fire is practicable and efficient, that of one rank. This is the fire of skirmishers in close formation.
The king’s order of June 1st, 1776, reads (p. 28): “Experience in war having proved that three ranks fire standing, and the intention of his majesty being to prescribe only what can be executed in front of the enemy, he orders that in firing, the first man is never to put his knee on the ground, and that the three ranks fire standing at the same time.” This same order includes instructions on target practice, etc.
Marshal de Gouvion-Saint Cyr says that conservatively one-fourth of the men who are wounded in an affair are put out of commission by the third rank. This estimate is not high enough if it concerns a unit composed of recruits like those who fought at Lutzen and Bautzen. The marshal mentions the astonishment of Napoleon when he saw the great number of men wounded in the hand and forearm. This astonishment of Napoleon’s is singular. What ignorance in his marshals not to have explained such wounds! Chief Surgeon Larrey, by observation of the wounds, alone exonerated our soldiers of the accusation of self-inflicted wounds. The observation would have been made sooner, had the wounds heretofore been numerous. That they had not been can be explained only by the fact that while the young soldiers of 1813 kept instinctively close in ranks, up to that time the men must have spaced themselves instinctively, in order to be able to shoot. Or perhaps in 1813, these young men might have been allowed to fire a longer time in order to distract them and keep them in ranks, and not often allowed to act as skirmishers for fear of losing them. Whilst formerly, the fire by rank must have been much rarer and fire action must have given way almost entirely to the use of skirmishers.
Fire by command presupposes an impossible coolness. Had any troops ever possessed it they would have mowed down battalions as one mows down corn stalks. Yet it has been known for a long time, since Frederick, since before Frederick, since the first rifle. Let troops get the range calmly, let them take aim together so that no one disturbs or hinders the other. Have each one see clearly, then, at a signal, let them all fire at once. Who is going to stand against such people? But did they aim in those days? Not so accurately, possibly, but they knew how to shoot waist-high, to shoot at the feet. They knew how to do it. I do not say they did it. If they had done so, there would not have been any need of reminding them of it so often. Note Cromwell’s favorite saying, “Aim at their shoe-laces;” that of the officers of the empire, “Aim at the height of the waist.” Study of battles, of the expenditure of bullets, show us no such immediate terrible results. If such a means of destruction was so easy to obtain, why did not our illustrious forbears use it and recommend it to us? (Words of de Gouvion-Saint-Cyr.)
Security alone creates calmness under fire.
In minor operations of war, how many captains are capable of tranquilly commanding their fire and maneuvering with calmness?
Here is a singular thing. You hear fire by rank against cavalry seriously recommended in military lectures. Yet not a colonel, not a battalion commander, not a captain, requires this fire to be executed in maneuvers. It is always the soldier who forces the firing. He is ordered to shoot almost before he aims for fear he will shoot without command. Yet he ought to feel that when he is aiming, his finger on the trigger, his shot does not belong to him, but rather to the officer who ought to be able to let him aim for five minutes, if advisable, examining, correcting the positions, etc. He ought, when aiming, always be ready to fire upon the object designated, without ever knowing when it will please his commander to order him to fire.
Fire at command is not practicable in the face of the enemy. If it were, the perfection of its execution would depend on the coolness of the commander and the obedience of the soldier. The soldier is the more easily trained.
The Austrians had fire by command in Italy against cavalry. Did they use it? They fired before the command, an irregular fire, a fire by file, with defective results.
Fire by command is impossible. But why is firing by rank at will impossible, illusory, under the fire of the enemy? Because of the reasons already given and, for this reason: that closed ranks are incompatible with fire-arms, on account of the wounding caused by the latter in ranks. In closed ranks, the two lines touching elbows, a man who falls throws ten men into complete confusion. There is no room for those who drop and, however few fall, the resulting disorder immediately makes of the two ranks a series of small milling groups. If the troops are young, they become a disordered flock before any demonstration. (Caldiero, Duhesme.) If the troops have some steadiness, they of themselves will make space: they will try to make way for the bullets: they will scatter as skirmishers with small intervals. (Note the Grenadier Guards at Magenta.)[42]
With very open ranks, men a pace apart, whoever falls has room, he is noticed by a lesser number, he drags down no one in his fall. The moral impression on his comrades is less. Their courage is less impaired. Besides, with rapid fire everywhere, spaced ranks with no man in front of another, at least permit horizontal fire. Closed ranks permit it hardly in the first rank, whose ears are troubled by the shots from the men behind. When a man has to fire four or five shots a minute, one line is certainly more solid than two, because, while the firing is less by half, it is more than twice as likely to be horizontal fire as in the two-rank formation. Well-sustained fire, even with blank cartridges, would be sufficient to prevent a successful charge. With slow fire, two ranks alone were able to keep up a sufficiently continuous fusillade. With rapid fire, a single line delivers more shots than two with ancient weapons. Such fire, therefore, suffices as a fusillade.
Close ranks, while suitable for marching, do not lend themselves to firing at the halt. Marching, a man likes a comrade at his side. Firing, as if he felt the flesh attracting the lead, he prefers being relatively isolated, with space around him. Breech-loading rifles breed queer ideas. Generals are found who say that rapid firing will bring back fire at command, as if there ever were such a thing. They say it will bring back salvo firing, thus permitting clear vision. As if such a thing were possible! These men have not an atom of common sense.
It is singular to see a man like Guibert, with practical ideas on most things, give a long dissertation to demonstrate that the officers of his time were wrong in aiming at the middle of the body, that is, in firing low. He claims this is ridiculous to one who understands the trajectory of the rifle. These officers were right. They revived the recommendations of Cromwell, because they knew that in combat the soldier naturally fires too high because he does not aim, and because the shape of the rifle, when it is brought to the shoulder, tends to keep the muzzle higher than the breech. Whether that is the reason or something else, the fact is indisputable. It is said that in Prussian drills all the bullets hit the ground at fifty paces. With the arms of that time and the manner of fighting, results would have been magnificent in battle if the bullets had struck fifty paces before the enemy instead of passing over his head.
Yet at Mollwitz, where the Austrians had five thousand men disabled, the Prussians had over four thousand.
Firing with a horizontal sector, if the muzzle be heavy, is more deadly than firing with a vertical sector.
4. Marches. Camps. Night Attacks.
From the fact that infantry ought always to fight in thin formation, scattered, it does not follow that it ought to be kept in that order. Only in column is it possible to maintain the battle order. It is necessary to keep one’s men in hand as long as possible, because once engaged, they no longer belong to you.
The disposition in closed mass is not a suitable marching formation, even in a battalion for a short distance. On account of heat, the closed column is intolerable, like an unventilated room. Formation with half-distances is better. (Why? Air, view, etc.)
Such a formation prevents ready entry of the column into battle in case of necessity or surprise. The half-divisions not in the first line are brought up, the arms at the order, and they can furnish either skirmishers or a reserve for the first line which has been deployed as skirmishers.
At Leuctra, Epaminondas diminished, by one-half, the depth of his men; he formed square phalanxes of fifty men to a side. He could have very well dispensed with it, for the Lacedaemonian right was at once thrown into disorder by its own cavalry which was placed in front of that wing. The superior cavalry of Epaminondas overran not only the cavalry but the infantry that was behind it. The infantry of Epaminondas, coming in the wake of his cavalry finished the work. Turning to the right, the left of Epaminondas then took in the flank the Lacedaemonian line. Menaced also in front by the approaching echelons of Epaminondas, this line became demoralized and took to flight. Perhaps this fifty by fifty formation was adopted in order to give, without maneuver, a front of fifty capable of acting in any direction. At Leuctra, it simply acted to the right and took the enemy in the flank and in reverse.
Thick woods are generally passed through in close column. There is never any opening up, with subsequent closing on the far side. The resulting formation is as confused as a flock of sheep.
In a march through mountains, difficult country, a bugler should be on the left, at the orders of an intelligent officer who indicates when the halt seems necessary for discipline in the line. The right responds and if the place has been judged correctly an orderly formation is maintained. Keep in ranks. If one man steps out, others follow. Do not permit men to leave ranks without requiring them to rejoin.
In the rear-guard it is always necessary to have pack mules in an emergency; without this precaution, considerable time may be lost. In certain difficult places time is thus lost every day.
In camp, organize your fatigue parties in advance; send them out in formation and escorted.
Definite and detailed orders ought to be given to the convoy, and the chief baggage-master ought to supervise it, which is rarely the case.
It is a mistake to furnish mules to officers and replace them in case of loss or sickness. The officer overloads the mule and the Government loses more thereby than is generally understood. Convoys are endless owing to overloaded mules and stragglers. If furnished money to buy a mule the officer uses it economically because it is his. If mules are individually furnished to officers instead of money, the officer will care for his beast for the same reason. But it is better to give money only, and the officer, if he is not well cared for on the march has no claim against the Government.
Always, always, take Draconian measures to prevent pillage from commencing. If it begins, it is difficult ever to stop it. A body of infantry is never left alone. There is no reason for calling officers of that arm inapt, when battalions although established in position are not absolutely on the same line, with absolutely equal intervals. Ten moves are made to achieve the exact alignment which the instructions on camp movements prescribe. Yet designating a guiding battalion might answer well enough and still be according to the regulations.
Why are not night attacks more employed to-day, at least on a grand scale? The great front which armies occupy renders their employment more difficult, and exacts of the troops an extreme aptitude in this kind of surprise tactics (found in the Arabs, Turcos, Spahis), or absolute reliability. There are some men whose knowledge of terrain is wonderful, with an unerring eye for distance, who can find their way through places at night which they have visited only in the day time. Utilizing such material for a system of guides it would be possible to move with certainty. These are simple means, rarely employed, for conducting a body of troops into position on the darkest night. There is, even, a means of assuring at night the fire of a gun upon a given point with as much precision as in plain day.
CHAPTER III
CAVALRY
1. Cavalry and Modern Appliances
They say that cavalry is obsolete; that it can be of no use in battles waged with the weapons of today. Is not infantry affected in the same way?
Examples drawn from the last two wars are not conclusive. In a siege, in a country which is cut off, one does not dare to commit the cavalry, and therefore takes from it its boldness, which is almost its only weapon.
The utility of cavalry has always been doubted. That is because its cost is high. It is little used, just because it does cost. The question of economy is vital in peace times. When we set a high value upon certain men, they are not slow to follow suit, and to guard themselves against being broken. Look at staff officers who are almost never broken (reduced), even when their general himself is.
With new weapons the role of cavalry has certainly changed less than any other, although it is the one which is most worried about. However, cavalry always has the same doctrine: Charge! To start with, cavalry action against cavalry is always the same. Also against infantry. Cavalry knows well enough today, as it has always known, that it can act only against infantry which has been broken. We must leave aside epic legends that are always false, whether they relate to cavalry or infantry. Infantry cannot say as much of its own action against infantry. In this respect there is a complete anarchy of ideas. There is no infantry doctrine.
With the power of modern weapons, which forces you to slow down if it does not stop you, the advance under fire becomes almost impossible. The advantage is with the defensive. This is so evident that only a madman could dispute it. What then is to be done? Halt, to shoot at random and cannonade at long range until ammunition is exhausted? Perhaps. But what is sure, is that such a state of affairs makes maneuver necessary. There is more need than ever for maneuver at a long distance in an attempt to force the enemy to shift, to quit his position. What maneuver is swifter than that of cavalry? Therein is its role.
The extreme perfection of weapons permits only individual action in combat, that is action by scattered forces. At the same time it permits the effective employment of mass action out of range, of maneuvers on the flank or in the rear of the enemy in force imposing enough to frighten him.
Can the cavalry maneuver on the battle field? Why not? It can maneuver rapidly, and above all beyond the range of infantry fire, if not of artillery fire. Maneuver being a threat, of great moral effect, the cavalry general who knows how to use it, can contribute largely to success. He arrests the enemy in movement, doubtful as to what the cavalry is going to attempt. He makes the enemy take some formation that keeps him under artillery fire for a while, above all that of light artillery if the general knows how to use it. He increases the enemy’s demoralization and thus is able to rejoin his command.
Rifled cannon and accurate rifles do not change cavalry tactics at all. These weapons of precision, as the word precision indicates, are effective only when all battle conditions, all conditions of aiming, are ideal. If the necessary condition of suitable range is lacking, effect is lacking. Accuracy of fire at a distance is impossible against a troop in movement, and movement is the essence of cavalry action. Rifled weapons fire on them of course, but they fire on everybody.
In short, cavalry is in the same situation as anybody else.
What response is there to this argument? Since weapons have been improved, does not the infantryman have to march under fire to attack a position? Is the cavalryman not of the same flesh? Has he less heart than the infantryman? If one can march under fire, cannot the other gallop under it?
When the cavalryman cannot gallop under fire, the infantryman cannot march under it. Battles will consist of exchanges of rifle shots by concealed men, at long range. The battle will end only when the ammunition is exhausted.
The cavalryman gallops through danger, the infantryman walks. That is why, if he learns, as it is probable he will, to keep at the proper distance, the cavalryman will never see his battle role diminished by the perfection of long range fire. An infantryman will never succeed by himself. The cavalryman will threaten, create diversions, worry, scatter the enemy’s fire, often even get to close quarters if he is properly supported. The infantryman will act as usual. But more than ever will he need the aid of cavalry in the attack. He who knows how to use his cavalry with audacity will inevitably be the victor. Even though the cavalryman offers a larger target, long range weapons will paralyze him no more than another.
The most probable effect of artillery of today, will be to increase the scattering in the infantry, and even in the cavalry. The latter can start in skirmisher formation at a distance and close in while advancing, near its objective. It will be more difficult to lead; but this is to the advantage of the Frenchman.
The result of improving the ballistics of the weapon, for the cavalry as for the infantry (there is no reason why it should be otherwise for the cavalry), will be that a man will flee at a greater distance from it, and nothing more.
Since the Empire, the opinion of European armies is that the cavalry has not given the results expected of it.
It has not given great results, for the reason that we and others lacked real cavalry generals. He is, it seems, a phenomenon that is produced only every thousand years, more rarely than a real general of infantry. To be a good general, whether of infantry or cavalry, is an infinitely rare thing, like the good in everything. The profession of a good infantry general is as difficult as, perhaps more difficult than, that of a good cavalry general. Both require calmness. It comes more easily to the cavalryman than to the foot soldier who is much more engaged. Both require a like precision, a judgment of the moral and physical forces of the soldier; and the morale of the infantryman, his constitution, is more tried than is the case with the horseman.
The cavalry general, of necessity, sees less clearly; his vision has its limits. Great cavalry generals are rare. Doubtless Seidlitz could not, in the face of the development of cannon and rifle, repeat his wonders. But there is always room for improvement. I believe there is much room for improvement.
We did not have under the Empire a great cavalry general who knew how to handle masses. The cavalry was used like a blind hammer that strikes heavily and not always accurately. It had immense losses. Like the Gauls, we have a little too much confidence in the “forward, forward, not so many methods.” Methods do not hinder the forward movement. They prepare the effect and render it surer and at the same time less costly to the assailant. We have all the Gallic brutality. (Note Marignano, where the force of artillery and the possibility of a turning movement around a village was neglected). What rare things infantry and cavalry generals are!
A leader must combine resolute bravery and impetuosity with prudence and calmness; a difficult matter!
The broken terrain of European fields no longer permits, we are told, the operation of long lines, of great masses of cavalry. I do not regret it. I am struck more with the picturesque effect of these hurricanes of cavalry in the accounts of the Empire than with the results obtained. It does not seem to me that these results were in proportion to the apparent force of the effort and to the real grandeur of the sacrifices. And indeed, these enormous hammers (a usual figure), are hard to handle. They have not the sure direction of a weapon well in hand. If the blow is not true, recovery is impossible, etc. However, the terrain does not to-day permit the assembling of cavalry in great masses. This compelling reason for new methods renders any other reason superfluous.
Nevertheless, the other reasons given in the ministerial observations of 1868, on the cavalry service, seems to me excellent. The improvement of appliances, the extension of battle fields, the confidence to the infantry and the audacity to the artillery that the immediate support of the cavalry gives, demand that this arm be in every division in sufficient force for efficient action.
I, therefore, think it desirable for a cavalry regiment to be at the disposal of a general commanding a division. Whatever the experiences of instruction centers, they can not change in the least my conviction of the merit of this measure in the field.
2. Cavalry Against Cavalry
Cavalry action, more than that of infantry, is an affair of morale.
Let us study first the morale of the cavalry engagement in single combat. Two riders rush at each other. Are they going to direct their horses front against front? Their horses would collide, both would be forced to their feet, while running the chance of being crushed in the clash or in the fall of their mounts. Each one in the combat counts on his strength, on his skill, on the suppleness of his mount, on his personal courage; he does not want a blind encounter, and he is right. They halt face to face, abreast, to fight man to man; or each passes the other, thrusting with the sabre or lance; or each tries to wound the knee of the adversary and dismount him in this way. But as each is trying to strike the other, he thinks of keeping out of the way himself, he does not want a blind encounter that does away with the combat. The ancient battles, the cavalry engagements, the rare cavalry combats of our days, show us nothing else.
Discipline, while keeping the cavalrymen in the ranks, has not been able to change the instinct of the rider. No more than the isolated man is the rider in the line willing to meet the shock of a clash with the enemy. There is a terrible moral effect in a mass moving forward. If there is no way to escape to the right or to the left, men and horses will avoid the clash by stopping face to face. But only preeminently brave troops, equally seasoned in morale, alike well led and swept along, animated alike, will meet face to face. All these conditions are never found united on either side, so the thing is never seen. Forty-nine times out of fifty, one of the cavalry forces will hesitate, bolt, get into disorder, flee before the fixed purpose of the other. Three quarters of the time this will happen at a distance, before they can see each other’s eyes. Often they will get closer. But always, always, the stop, the backward movement, the swerving of horses, the confusion, bring about fear or hesitation. They lessen the shock and turn it into instant flight. The resolute assailant does not have to slacken. He has not been able to overcome or turn the obstacles of horses not yet in flight, in this uproar of an impossible about face executed by routed troops, without being in disorder himself. But this disorder is that of victory, of the advance, and a good cavalry does not trouble itself about it. It rallies in advancing, while the vanquished one has fear at its heels.
On the whole, there are few losses. The engagement, if there is one, is an affair of a second. The proof is that in this action of cavalry against cavalry, the conquered alone loses men, and he loses generally few. The battle against infantry is alone the really deadly struggle. Like numbers of little chasseurs have routed heavy cuirassiers. How could they have done so if the others had not given way before their determination? The essential factor was, and always is, determination.
The cavalry’s casualties are always much less than those of the infantry both from fire and from disease. Is it because the cavalry is the aristocratic arm? This explains why in long wars it improves much more than the infantry.
As there are few losses between cavalry and cavalry, so there is little fighting.
Hannibal’s Numidians, like the Russian Cossacks, inspired a veritable terror by the incessant alarms they caused. They tired out without fighting and killed by surprise.
Why is the cavalry handled so badly?–It is true that infantry is not used better.–Because its role is one of movement, of morale, of morale and movement so united, that movement alone, often without a charge or shock action of any sort can drive the enemy into retreat, and, if followed closely, into rout. That is a result of the quickness of cavalry. One who knows how to make use of this quickness alone can obtain such results.
All writers on cavalry will tell you that the charge pushed home of two cavalry bodies and the shock at top speed do not exist. Always before the encounter, the weaker runs away, if there is not a face to face check. What becomes then of the MV squared? If this famous MV squared is an empty word, why then crush your horses under giants, forgetting that in the formula besides M there is V squared. In a charge, there is M, there is V squared, there is this and that. There is resolution, and I believe, nothing else that counts!
Cohesion and unity give force to the charge. Alignment is impossible at a fast gait where the most rapid pass the others. Only when the moral effect has been produced should the gait be increased to take advantage of it by falling upon an enemy already in disorder, in the act of fleeing. The cuirassiers charge at a trot. This calm steadiness frightens the enemy into an about face. Then they charge at his back, at a gallop.
They say that at Eckmuhl, for every French cuirassier down, fourteen Austrians were struck in the back. Was it because they had no back-plate? It is evident that it was because they offered their backs to the blows.
Jomini speaks of charges at a trot against cavalry at a gallop. He cites Lasalle who used the trot and who, seeing cavalry approach at a gallop, would say: “There are lost men.” Jomini insists on the effect of shock. The trot permits that compactness which the gallop breaks up. That may be true. But the effect is moral above all. A troop at the gallop sees a massed squadron coming towards it at a trot. It is surprised at first at such coolness. The material impulse of the gallop is superior; but there are no intervals, no gaps through which to penetrate the line in order to avoid the shock, the shock that overcomes men and horses. These men must be very resolute, as their close ranks do not permit them to escape by about facing. If they move at such a steady gait, it is because their resolution is also firm and they do not feel the need of running away, of diverting themselves by the unchecked speed of the unrestrained gallop, etc. [43]
Galloping men do not reason these things out, but they know them instinctively. They understand that they have before them a moral impulse superior to theirs. They become uneasy, hesitate. Their hands instinctively turn their horses aside. There is no longer freedom in the attack at a gallop. Some go on to the end, but three-fourths have already tried to avoid the shock. There is complete disorder, demoralization, flight. Then begins the pursuit at a gallop by the men who attacked at the trot.
The charge at a trot exacts of leaders and men complete confidence and steadfastness. It is the experience of battle only that can give this temper to all. But this charge, depending on a moral effect, will not always succeed. It is a question of surprise. Xenophon [44] recommended, in his work on cavalry operations, the use of surprise, the use of the gallop when the trot is customary, and vice-versa. “Because,” he says, “agreeable or terrible, the less a thing is foreseen, the more pleasure or fright does it cause. This is nowhere seen better than in war, where every surprise strikes terror even to the strongest.”
As a general rule, the gallop is and should be necessary in the charge; it is the winning, intoxicating gait, for men and horses. It is taken up at such a distance as may be necessary to insure its success, whatever it may cost in men and horses. The regulations are correct in prescribing that the charge be started close up. If the troopers waited until the charge was ordered, they would always succeed. I say that strong men, moved by pride or fear, by taking up too soon the charge against a firm enemy, have caused more charges to fail than to succeed. Keeping men in hand until the command “charge,” seizing the precise instant for this command, are both difficult. They exact of the energetic leader domination over his men and a keen eye, at a moment when three out of four men no longer see anything, so that good cavalry leaders, squadron leaders in general are very rare. Real charges are just as rare.
Actual shock no longer exists. The moral impulse of one of the adversaries nearly always upsets the other, perhaps far off, perhaps a little nearer. Were this “a little nearer,” face to face, one of the two troops would be already defeated before the first saber cut and would disentangle itself for flight. With actual shock, all would be thrown into confusion. A real charge on the one part or the other would cause mutual extermination. In practice the victor scarcely loses any one.
Observation demonstrates that cavalry does not close with cavalry; its deadly combats are those against infantry alone.
Even if a cavalryman waits without flinching, his horse will wish to escape, to shrink before the collision. If man anticipates, so does the horse. Why did Frederick like to see his center closed in for the assault? As the best guarantee against the instincts of man and horse.
The cavalry of Frederick had ordinarily only insignificant losses: a result of determination.
The men want to be distracted from the advancing danger by movement. The cavalrymen who go at the enemy, if left to themselves, would start at a gallop, for fear of not arriving, or of arriving exhausted and material for carnage. The same is true of the Arabs. Note what happened in 1864 to the cavalry of General Martineau. The rapid move relieves anxiety. It is natural to wish to lessen it. But the leaders are there, whom experience, whom regulations order to go slowly, then to accelerate progressively, so as to arrive with the maximum of speed. The procedure should be the walk, then the trot, after that the gallop, then the charge. But it takes a trained eye to estimate distance and the character of the terrain, and, if the enemy approaches, to pick the point where one should meet him. The nearer one approaches, the greater among the troops is the question of morale. The necessity of arriving at the greatest speed is not alone a mechanical question, since indeed one never clashes, it is a moral necessity. It is necessary to seize the moment at which the uneasiness of one’s men requires the intoxication of the headlong charging gallop. An instant too late, and a too great anxiety has taken the upper hand and caused the hands of the riders to act on the horses; the start is not free; a number hide by remaining behind. An instant too soon: before arrival the speed has slowed down; the animation, the intoxication of the run, fleeting things, are exhausted. Anxiety takes the upper hand again, the hands act instinctively, and even if the start were unhampered, the arrival is not.
Frederick and Seidlitz were content when they saw the center of the charging squadron three and four ranks deep. It was as if they understood that with this compact center, as the first lines could not escape to the right or left, they were forced to continue straight ahead.
In order to rush like battering-rams, even against infantry, men and horses ought to be watered and fresh (Ponsomby’s cavalry at Waterloo). If there is ever contact between cavalry, the shock is so weakened by the hands of the men, the rearing of the horses, the swinging of heads, that both sides come to a halt.
Only the necessity for carrying along the man and the horse at the supreme moment, for distracting them, necessitates the full gallop before attacking the enemy, before having put him to flight.
Charges at the gallop of three or four kilometers, suppose horses of bronze.
Because morale is not studied and because historical accounts are taken too literally, each epoch complains that cavalry forces are no longer seen charging and fighting with the sword, that too much prudence dictates running away instead of clashing with the enemy.
These plaints have been made ever since the Empire, both by the allies, and by us. But this has always been true. Man was never invulnerable. The charging gait has almost always been the trot. Man does not change. Even the combats of cavalry against cavalry today are deadlier than they were in the lamented days of chivalry.
The retreat of the infantry is always more difficult than that of the cavalry; the latter is simple. A cavalry repulsed and coming back in disorder is a foreseen, an ordinary happening; it is going to rally at a distance. It often reappears with advantage. One can almost say, in view of experience, that such is its role. An infantry that is repelled, especially if the action has been a hot one and the cavalry rushes in, is often disorganized for the rest of the day.
Even authors who tell you that two squadrons never collide, tell you continually: “The force of cavalry is in the shock.” In the terror of the shock, Yes. In the shock, No! It lies only in determination. It is a mental and not a mechanical condition.
Never give officers and men of the cavalry mathematical demonstrations of the charge. They are good only to shake confidence. Mathematical reasoning shows a mutual collapse that never takes place. Show them the truth. Lasalle with his always victorious charge at a trot guarded against similar reasonings, which might have demonstrated to him mathematically that a charge of cuirassiers at a trot ought to be routed by a charge of hussars at a gallop. He simply told them: “Go resolutely and be sure that you will never find a daredevil determined enough to come to grips with you.” It is necessary to be a daredevil in order to go to the end. The Frenchman is one above all. Because he is a good trooper in battle, when his commanders themselves are daredevils he is the best in Europe. (Note the days of the Empire, the remarks of Wellington, a good judge). If moreover, his leaders use a little head work, that never harms anything. The formula of the cavalry is R (Resolution) and R, and always R, and R is greater than all the MV squared in the world.
There is this important element in the pursuit of cavalry by cavalry. The pursued cannot halt without delivering himself up to the pursuer. The pursuer can always see the pursued. If the latter halts and starts to face about the pursuer can fall upon him before he is faced, and take him by surprise. But the pursued does not know how many are pursuing him. If he alone halts two pursuers may rush on him, for they see ahead of them and they naturally attack whoever tries to face about. For with the about face danger again confronts them. The pursuit is often instigated by the fear that the enemy will turn. The material fact that once in flight all together cannot turn again without risking being surprised and overthrown, makes the flight continuous. Even the bravest flee, until sufficient distance between them and the enemy, or some other circumstances such as cover or supporting troops, permits of a rally and a return to the offensive. In this case the pursuit may turn into flight in its turn.
Cavalry is insistent on attacking on an equal front. Because, if with a broader front, the enemy gives way before it, his wings may attack it and make it the pursued instead of the pursuer. The moral effect of resolution is so great that cavalry, breaking and pursuing a more numerous cavalry, is never pursued by the enemy wings. However the idea that one may be taken in rear by forces whom one has left on the flanks in a position to do so, has such an effect that the resolution necessary for an attack under these circumstances is rare.
Why is it that Colonel A—- does not want a depth formation for cavalry, he who believes in pressure of the rear ranks on the first? It is because at heart he is convinced that only the first rank can act in a cavalry charge, and that this rank can receive no impression, no speeding up, from those behind it.
There is debate as to the advantage of one or two ranks for the cavalry. This again is a matter of morale. Leave liberty of choice, and under varying conditions of confidence and morale one or the other will be adopted. There are enough officers for either formation.
It is characteristic of cavalry to advance further than infantry and consequently it exposes its flanks more. It then needs more reserves to cover its flanks and rear than does infantry. It needs reserves to protect and to support the pursuers who are almost always pursued when they return. With cavalry even more than infantry victory belongs to the last reserves held intact. The one with the reserves is always the one who can take the offensive. Tie to that, and no one can stand before you.
With room to maneuver cavalry rallies quickly. In deep columns it cannot.
The engagement of cavalry lasts only a moment. It must be reformed immediately. With a roll call at each reforming, it gets out of hand less than the infantry, which, once engaged, has little respite. There should be a roll call for cavalry, and for infantry after an advance, at each lull. There should be roll calls at drill and in field maneuvers, not that they are necessary but in order to become habituated to them. Then the roll call will not be forgotten on the day of action, when very few think of what ought to be done.
In the confusion and speed of cavalry action, man escapes more easily