from surveillance. In our battles his action is increasingly individual and rapid. The cavalryman should not be left too free; that would be dangerous. Frequently in action troops should be reformed and the roll called. It would be an error not to do so. There might be ten to twenty roll calls in a day. The officers, the soldiers, would then have a chance to demand an accounting from each man, and might demand it the next day.
Once in action, and that action lasts, the infantryman of today escapes from the control of his officers. This is due to the disorder inherent in battle, to deployment, to the absence of roll calls, which cannot be held in action. Control, then, can only be in the hands of his comrades. Of modern arms infantry is the one in which there is the greatest need for cohesion.
Cavalry always fights very poorly and very little. This has been true from antiquity, when the cavalryman was of a superior caste to the infantryman, and ought to have been braver.
Anybody advancing, cavalry or infantry, ought to scout and reconnoiter as soon as possible the terrain on which it acts. Conde forgot this at Neerwinden. The 55th forgot it at Solferino. [45] Everybody forgets it. And from the failure to use skirmishers and scouts, come mistakes and disasters.
The cavalry has a rifle for exceptional use. Look out that this exception does not become the rule. Such a tendency has been seen. At the battle of Sicka, the first clash was marred by the lack of dash on the part of a regiment of Chasseurs d’Afrique, which after being sent off at the gallop, halted to shoot. At the second clash General Bugeaud charged at their head to show them how to charge.
A young Colonel of light cavalry, asked carbines for his cavalry. “Why? So that if I want to reconnoiter a village I can sound it from a distance of seven or eight hundred meters without losing anybody.” What can you say to a man advancing such ideas? Certainly the carbine makes everybody lose common sense.
The work of light cavalry makes it inevitable that they be captured sometimes. It is impossible to get news of the enemy without approaching him. If one man escapes in a patrol, that is enough. If no one comes back, even that fact is instructive. The cavalry is a priceless object that no leader wants to break. However it is only by breaking it that results can be obtained.
Some authors think of using cavalry as skirmishers, mounted or dismounted. I suppose they advance holding the horse by the bridle? This appears to be to be an absurdity. If the cavalryman fires he will not charge. The African incident cited proves that. It would be better to give the cavalryman two pistols than a carbine.
The Americans in their vast country where there is unlimited room, used cavalry wisely in sending it off on distant forays to cut communications, make levies, etc. What their cavalry did as an arm in battle is unknown. The cavalry raids in the American war were part of a war directed against wealth, against public works, against resources. It was war of destruction of riches, not of men. The raiding cavalry had few losses, and inflicted few losses. The cavalry is always the aristocratic arm which loses very lightly, even if it risks all. At least it has the air of risking all, which is something at any rate. It has to have daring and daring is not so common. But the merest infantry engagements in equal numbers costs more than the most brilliant cavalry raid.
3. Cavalry Against Infantry
Cavalry knows how to fight cavalry. But how it fights infantry not one cavalry officer in a thousand knows. Perhaps not one of them knows. Go to it then gaily, with general uncertainty!
A military man, a participant in our great wars, recommends as infallible against infantry in line the charge from the flank, horse following horse. He would have cavalry coming up on the enemy’s left, pass along his front and change direction so as to use its arms to the right. This cavalryman is right. Such charges should give excellent results, the only deadly results. The cavalryman can only strike to his right, and in this way each one strikes. Against ancient infantry such charges would have been as valuable as against modern infantry. This officer saw with his own eyes excellent examples of this attack in the wars of the Empire. I do not doubt either the facts he cites or the deductions he makes. But for such charges there must be officers who inspire absolute confidence in their men and dependable and experienced soldiers. There is necessary, in short, an excellent cavalry, seasoned by long wars, and officers and men of very firm resolution. So it is not astonishing that examples of this mode of action are rare. They always will be. They always require a head for the charge, an isolated head, and when he is actually about to strike, he will fall back into the formation. It seems to him that lost in the mass he risks less than when alone. Everybody is willing to charge, but only if all charge together. It is a case of belling the cat.
The attack in column on infantry has a greater moral action than the charge in line. If the first and second squadrons are repulsed, but the infantry sees a third charging through the dust, it will say “When is this going to stop?” And it will be shaken.
An extract from Folard: “Only a capable officer is needed to get the best results from a cavalry which has confidence in its movement, which is known to be good and vigorous, and also is equipped with excellent weapons. Such cavalry will break the strongest battalions, if its leader has sense enough to know its power and courage enough to use this power.”
Breaking is not enough, and is a feat that costs more than it is worth if the whole battalion is not killed or taken prisoner, or at least if the cavalry is not immediately followed by other troops, charged with this task.
At Waterloo our cavalry was exhausted fruitlessly, because it acted without artillery or infantry support.
At Krasno, August 14, 1812, Murat, at the head of his cavalry could not break an isolated body of ten thousand Russian infantry which continually held him off by its fire, and retired tranquilly across the plain.
The 72nd was upset by cavalry at Solferino.
From ancient days the lone infantryman has always had the advantage over the lone cavalryman. There is no shadow of a doubt about this in ancient narrations. The cavalryman only fought the cavalryman. He threatened, harassed, troubled the infantryman in the rear, but he did not fight him. He slaughtered him when put to flight by other infantry, or at least he scattered him and the light infantry slaughtered him.
Cavalry is a terrible weapon in the hands of one who knows how to use it. Who can say that Epaminondas could have defeated the Spartans twice without his Thessalonian cavalry.
Eventually rifle and artillery fire deafen the soldier; fatigue overpowers him; he becomes inert; he hears commands no longer. If cavalry unexpectedly appears, he is lost. Cavalry conquers merely by its appearance. (Bismarck or Decker).
Modern cavalry, like ancient cavalry, has a real effect only on troops already broken, on infantry engaged with infantry, on cavalry disorganized by artillery fire or by a frontal demonstration. But against such troops its action is decisive. In such cases its action is certain and gives enormous results. You might fight all day and lose ten thousand men, the enemy might lose as many, but if your cavalry pursues him, it will take thirty thousand prisoners. Its role is less knightly than its reputation and appearance, less so than the role of infantry. It always loses much less than infantry. Its greatest effect is the effect of surprise, and it is thereby that it gets such astonishing results.
What formation should infantry, armed with modern weapons, take to guard against flank attacks by cavalry? If one fires four times as fast, if the fire is better sustained, one needs only a quarter as many men to guard a point against cavalry. Protection might be secured by using small groups, placed the range of a rifle shot apart and flanking each other, left on the flank of the advance. But they must be dependable troops, who will not be worried by what goes on behind them.
4. Armor and Armament
An armored cavalry is clearly required for moral reasons.
Note this with reference to the influence of cuirassiers (armored cavalrymen) on morale. At the battle of Renty, in 1554, Tavannes, a marshal, had with him his company armored in steel. It was the first time that such armor had been seen. Supported by some hundreds of fugitives who had rallied, he threw himself at the head of his company, on a column of two thousand German cavalry who had just thrown both infantry and cavalry into disorder. He chose his time so well that he broke and carried away these two thousand Germans, who fell back and broke the twelve hundred light horsemen who were supporting them. There followed a general flight, and the battle was won.
General Renard says “The decadence of cavalry caused the disappearance of their square formations in battle, which were characteristic in the seventeenth century.” It was not the decadence of the cavalry but the abandonment of the cuirass and the perfecting of the infantry weapon to give more rapid fire. When cuirassiers break through they serve as examples, and emulation extends to others, who another time try to break through as they did.
Why cuirassiers? Because they alone, in all history, have charged and do charge to the end.
To charge to the end the cuirassiers need only half the courage of the dragoons, as their armor raises their morale one half. But since the cuirassiers have as much natural courage as the dragoons, for they are all the same men, it is proper to count the more on their action. Shall we have only one kind of cavalry? Which? If all our cavalry could wear the cuirass and at the same time do the fatiguing work of light cavalry, if all our horses could in addition carry the cuirass through such work, I say that there should be only cuirassiers. But I do not understand why the morale given by the cuirass should be lightly done away with, merely to have one cavalry without the cuirass.
A cavalryman armored completely and his horse partially, can charge only at a trot.
On the appearance of fire arms, cavalry, according to General Ambert, an author of the past, covered itself with masses of armor resembling anvils rather than with cuirasses. It was at that time the essential arm. Later as infantry progressed the tactics changed, it needed more mobility. Permanent armies began to be organized by the State. The State thought less of the skin of the individual than of economy and mobility and almost did away with cuirassiers. The cuirass has always given, and today more than ever it will give, confidence to the cavalryman. Courage, dash, and speed have a value beyond that of mere mass. I leave aside mathematical discussions which seem to me to have nothing in common with battle conditions. I would pick to wear the cuirass the best men in the army, big chested, red-blooded, strong limbed, the foot chasseurs. I would organize a regiment of light cuirassiers for each of our divisions. Men and horses, such a cavalry would be much more robust and active than our present cuirassiers. If our armored cavalry is worth more than any other arm by its dash in battle, this cavalry would be worth twice as much. But how would these men of small stature get into the saddle? To this serious objection I answer, “They will arrange it.” And this objection, which I do not admit, is the only one that can be made against the organization of a light armored cavalry, an organization that is made imperative by the improvement in weapons. The remainder of those chasseur battalions which furnish cuirassiers, should return to the infantry, which has long demanded them, and hussars and dragoons, dismounted in the necessary number will also be welcomed by the infantry.
As for the thrust, the thrust is deadlier than the cut. You do not have to worry about lifting your arm; you thrust. But it is necessary that the cavalryman be convinced that to parry a vertical cut is folly. This can be done by his officers, by those who have had experience, if there are any such in peace times. This is not easy. But in this respect, as in all others, the advantage lies with the brave. A cavalry charge is a matter of morale above all. It is identical in its methods, its effects, with the infantry charge. All the conditions to be fulfilled in the charge (walk, trot, gallop, charge, etc.) have a reason bearing on morale. These reasons have already been touched on.
Roman discipline and character demand tenacity. The hardening of the men to fatigue, and a good organization, giving mutual support, produced that tenacity, against which the bravest could not stand. The exhausting method of powerful strokes used by the Gauls could not last long against the skillful, terrible and less fatiguing method of fighting by the thrust.
The Sikh cavalrymen of M. Nolan armed with dragoon sabers sharpened by themselves, liked the cut. They knew nothing about methods of swordsmanship; they did not practice. They said “A good saber and a willingness to use it are enough.” True, True!
There is always discussion as to the lance or the saber. The lance requires skillful vigorous cavalrymen, good horsemen, very well drilled, very adroit, for the use of the lance is more difficult than that of the straight sword, especially if the sword is not too heavy. Is not this an answer to the question? No matter what is done, no matter what methods are adopted, it must always be remembered that our recruits in war time are sent into squadrons as into battalions, with a hasty and incomplete training. If you give them lances, most of them will just have sticks in their hands, while a straight sword at the end of a strong arm is at the same time simple and terrible. A short trident spear, with three short points just long enough to kill but not only enough to go through the body, would remain in the body of the man and carry him along. It would recoil on the cavalryman who delivered the blow, he would be upset by the blow himself. But the dragoon must be supported by the saddle, and as he had kept hold of the shaft he would be able to disengage the fork which had pierced the body some six inches. No cavalry of equal morale could stand against a cavalry armed with such forked spears.
As between forks and lances, the fork would replace the lance. That is, of course, for beginners in mounted fencing. But the fork! It would be ridiculous, not military!
With the lance one always figures without the horse, whose slightest movement diverts the lance so much. The lance is a weapon frightful even to the mounted man who uses it properly. If he sticks an enemy at the gallop, he is dismounted, torn off by the arm attached to the lance which remains in the body of his enemy.
Cavalry officers and others who seek examples in “Victories and Conquests,” in official reports, in “Bazancourt” are too naive. It is hard to get at the truth. In war, in all things, we take the last example which we have witnessed. And now we want lances, which we do not know how to use, which frighten the cavalryman himself and pluck him from the saddle if he sticks anybody. We want no more cuirasses; we want this and that. We forget that the last example gives only a restricted number of instances relating to the matter in question.
It appears, according to Xenophon, that it was not easy to throw the dart from horseback. He constantly recommends obtaining as many men as possible who know how to throw the dart. He recommends leaning well back to avoid falling from the horse in the charge. In reading Xenophon it is evident that there was much falling from the horse.
It appears that in battle there is as great difficulty in handling the saber as in handling the bayonet. Another difficulty for the cavalryman lies in the handling of the musket. This is seen in the handling of the regulation weapon of the Spahis. There is only one important thing for the cavalryman, to be well seated. Men should be on horseback for hours at a time, every day, from their arrival in the organization. If the selection of those who know something about horses was not neglected in the draft, and if such men were, made cavalrymen, the practical training of the greater number would be much more rapidly concluded. I do not speak of the routine of the stable. Between mounted drills, foot drills might be gone through with in a snappy, free fashion, without rigidity, with daily increasing speed. Such drills would instruct cavalrymen more rapidly than the restricted method employed.
A dragoon horse carries in campaign with one day’s food three hundred and eight pounds, without food or forage two hundred and seventy seven pounds. How can such horses carry this and have speed?
Seek the end always, not the means! Make a quarter of your cavalrymen into muleteers, a quarter of your horses into pack animals. You will thus secure, for the remaining three quarters unquestioned vigor. But how will you make up these pack trains? You will have plenty of wounded horses after a week of campaign.
CHAPTER IV
ARTILLERY
If artillery did not have a greater range than the rifle, we could not risk separating it far from its support, as it would have to wait until the enemy was but four or five hundred paces away to fire on him. But the more its range is increased, the further away it can be placed from its support.
The greater the range of artillery, the greater freedom of action from the different arms, which no longer have to be side by side to give mutual support.
The greater the range of artillery, the easier it is to concentrate its fire. Two batteries fifteen hundred meters apart can concentrate on a point twelve hundred meters in front of and between them. Before the range was so long they had to be close together, and the terrain did not always lend itself to this.
Furthermore, do not support a piece by placing infantry just behind or alongside of it, as is done three-quarters of the time at maneuvers. On the contrary hide the infantry to the right or left and far behind, cover it without worrying too much about distance and let the artillery call for help if they think that the piece is in danger of being lost. Why should infantry be placed too close, and consequently have its advance demoralized? This will throw away the greatest advantage that we Frenchmen have in defense, that of defending ourselves by advancing, with morale unimpaired, because we have not suffered heavy losses at a halt. There is always time to run to the defense of artillery. To increase the moral effect advance your supports in formation. Skirmishers can also be swiftly scattered among the batteries. These skirmishers, in the midst of the guns will not have to fear cavalry. Even if they are assailed by infantry it will not be such a terrible thing. The engagement will merely be one between skirmishers, and they will be able to take cover behind the pieces, firing against the enemy who is coming up in the open.
Guibert, I believe, held that artillery should not worry whether it was supported or not; that it should fire up to the last minute, and finally abandon the pieces, which supporting troops might or might not recapture. These supporting troops should not be too close. It is easier to defend pieces, to take them back even, by advancing on an enemy dispersed among them, than to defend them by standing fast after having participated in the losses suffered by the artillery under fire. (Note the English in Spain. The system of having artillery followed by infantry platoons is absurd.)
Artillery in battle has its men grouped around the pieces, stationary assembly points, broadly distributed, each one having its commander and its cannoneers, who are always the same. Thus there is in effect a roll call each time artillery is put into battery. Artillery carries its men with it; they cannot be lost nor can they hide. If the officer is brave, his men rarely desert him. Certainly, in all armies, it is in the artillery that the soldier can best perform his duty.
As General Leboeuf tells us, four batteries of artillery can be maneuvered, not more. That is all right. Here is the thing in a nut-shell. Four battalions is a big enough command for a colonel. A general has eight battalions. He gets orders, “General, do so and so.” He orders, “Colonel, do so and so.” So that without any maneuvers being laid down for more than four battalions, as many battalions as you like can be maneuvered and drilled.
CHAPTER V
COMMAND, GENERAL STAFF, AND ADMINISTRATION
There are plenty of carefree generals, who are never worried nor harassed. They do not bother about anything. They say, “I advance. Follow me.” The result is an incredible disorder in the advance of columns. If ten raiders should fall on the column with a shout, this disorder would become a rout, a disaster. But these gentlemen never bother with such an eventuality. They are the great men of the day, until the moment that some disaster overwhelms them.
Cavalry is no more difficult to work with than infantry. According to some military authors, a cavalry general ought to have the wisdom of the phoenix. The perfect one should have. So should the perfect infantry general. Man on horseback and man afoot is always the same man. Only, the infantry general rarely has to account for the losses in his command, which may have been due to faulty or improper handling. The cavalry general does have to do this. (We shall lay aside the reasons why.) The infantry general has six chances for real battle to one for the cavalry general. These are the two reasons why, from the beginning of a war, more initiative is found in infantry than in cavalry generals. General Bugeaud might have made a better cavalry general than an infantry general. Why? Because he had immediate decision and firm resolution. There is more need for resolution in the infantryman than in the cavalryman. Why? There are many reasons, which are matters of opinion.
In short, the infantryman is always more tired than the cavalryman. His morale is therefore harder to keep up. I believe therefore that a good infantry general is rarer than one of cavalry. Also, the resolution of an infantry general does not have to last for a moment only; it has to endure for a long, long time.
Good artillery generals are common. They are less concerned with morale than with other things, such as material results. They have less need to bother about the morale of their troops, as combat discipline is always better with them than with the other arms. This is shown elsewhere.
Brigadier generals ought to be in their prescribed places. Very well, but the most of them are not and never have been. They were required to be in place at the battle of Moscow, but, as they were so ordered there, it is evident that they were not habitually in place. They are men; and their rank, it seems to them, ought to diminish rather than increase the risks they have to run. And, then, in actual engagement, where is their prescribed place?
When one occupies a high command there are many things which he does not see. The general-in-chief, even a division commander, can only escape this failing by great activity, moved by strict conscientiousness and aided by clairvoyance. This failing extends to those about him, to his heads of services. These men live well, sleep well; the same must be true of all! They have picked, well-conditioned horses; the roads are excellent! They are never sick; the doctors must be exaggerating sickness! They have attendants and doctors; everybody must be well looked after! Something happens which shows abominable negligence, common enough in war. With a good heart and a full belly they say, “But this is infamous, unheard of! It could not have happened! It is impossible! etc.”
To-day there is a tendency, whose cause should be sought, on the part of superiors to infringe on the authority of inferiors. This is general. It goes very high and is furthered by the mania for command, inherent in the French character. It results in lessening the authority of subordinate officers in the minds of their soldiers. This is a grave matter, as only the firm authority and prestige of subordinate officers can maintain discipline. The tendency is to oppress subordinates; to want to impose on them, in all things, the views of the superior; not to admit of honest mistakes, and to reprove them as faults; to make everybody, even down to the private, feel that there is only one infallible authority. A colonel, for instance, sets himself up as the sole authority with judgment and intelligence. He thus takes all initiative from subordinate officers, and reduces them to a state of inertia, coming from their lack of confidence in themselves and from fear of being severely reproved. How many generals, before a regiment, think only of showing how much they know! They lessen the authority of the colonel. That is nothing to them. They have asserted their superiority, true or false; that is the essential. With cheeks puffed out, they leave, proud of having attacked discipline.
This firm hand which directs so many things is absent for a moment. All subordinate officers up to this moment have been held with too strong a hand, which has kept them in a position not natural to them. Immediately they are like a horse, always kept on a tight rein, whose rein is loosened or missing. They cannot in an instant recover that confidence in themselves, that has been painstakingly taken away from them without their wishing it. Thus, in such a moment conditions become unsatisfactory, the soldier very quickly feels that the hand that holds him vacillates.
“Ask much, in order to obtain a little,” is a false saying, a source of errors, an attack on discipline. One ought to obtain what one asks. It is only necessary to be moderately reasonable and practical.
In following out this matter, one is astonished at the lack of foresight found in three out of four officers. Why? Is there anything so difficult about looking forward a little? Are three-quarters of the officers so stupid? No! It is because their egoism, generally frankly acknowledged, allow them to think only of who is looking at them. They think of their troops by chance perhaps, or because they have to. Their troops are never their preoccupation, consequently they do not think about them at all. A major in command of an organization in Mexico, on his first march in a hot country, started without full canteens, perhaps without canteens at all, without any provision for water, as he might march in France. No officer in his battalion called his attention to the omission, nor was more foresighted than he. In this first march, by an entire lack of foresight in everything, he lost, in dead, half of his command. Was he reduced? No! He was made a lieutenant-colonel.
Officers of the general staff learn to order, not to command. “Sir, I order,” a popular phrase, applies to them.
The misfortune is not that there is a general staff, but that it has achieved command. For it always has commanded, in the name of its commanders it is true, and never obeyed, which is its duty. It commands in fact. So be it! But just the same it is not supposed to.
Is it the good quality of staffs or that of combatants that makes the strength of armies? If you want good fighting men, do everything to excite their ambition, to spare them, so that people of intelligence and with a future will not despise the line but will elect to serve in it. It is the line that gives you your high command, the line only, and very rarely the staff. The staff, however, dies infrequently, which is something. Do they say that military science can only be learned in the general staff schools? If you really want to learn to do your work, go to the line.
To-day, nobody knows anything unless he knows how to argue and chatter. A peasant knows nothing, he is a being unskilled even in cultivating the soil. But the agriculturist of the office is a farmer emeritus, etc. Is it then believed that there is ability only in the general staff? There is the assurance of the scholar there, of the pedagogue who has never practiced what he preaches. There is book learning, false learning when it treats of military matters. But knowledge of the real trade of a soldier, knowledge of what is possible, knowledge of blows given and received, all these are conspicuously absent.
Slowness of promotion in the general staff as compared to its rapidity in the line might make many men of intelligence, of head and heart, pass the general staff by and enter the line to make their own way. To be in the line would not then be a brevet of imbecility. But to-day when general staff officers rank the best of the line, the latter are discouraged and rather than submit to this situation, all who feel themselves fitted for advancement want to be on the general staff. So much the better? So much the worse. Selection is only warranted by battle.
How administrative deceits, in politics or elsewhere, falsify the conclusions drawn from a fact!
In the Crimea one hundred per cent. of the French operated upon succumbed, while only twenty-seven per cent. of the English operated upon died. That was attributed to the difference in temperament! The great cause of this discrepancy was the difference in care. Our newspapers followed the self-satisfied and rosy statements given out by our own supply department. They pictured our sick in the Crimea lying in beds and cared for by sisters of charity. The fact is that our soldiers never had sheets, nor mattresses, nor the necessary changes of clothes in the hospitals; that half, three-quarters, lay on mouldy straw, on the ground, under canvass. The fact is, that such were the conditions under which typhus claimed twenty-five to thirty thousand of our sick after the siege; that thousands of pieces of hospital equipment were offered by the English to our Quartermaster General, and that he refused them! Everybody ought to have known that he would! To accept such equipment was to acknowledge that he did not have it. And he ought to have had it. Indeed he did according to the newspapers and the Quartermaster reports. There were twenty-five beds per hospital so that it could be said, “We have beds!” Each hospital had at this time five hundred or more sick.
These people are annoyed if they are called hypocrites. While our soldiers were in hospitals, without anything, so to speak, the English had big, well-ventilated tents, cots, sheets, even night stands with urinals. And our men had not even a cup to drink from! Sick men were cared for in the English hospitals. They might have been in ours, before they died, which they almost always did.
It is true that we had the typhus and the English had not. That was because our men in tents had the same care as in our hospitals, and the English the same care as in their hospitals.
Read the war reports of supply departments and then go unexpectedly to verify them in the hospitals and storehouses. Have them verified by calling up and questioning the heads of departments, but question them conscientiously, without dictating the answers. In the Crimea, in May of the first year, we were no better off than the English who complained so much, Who has dared to say, however, that from the time they entered the hospital to the time that they left it, dead, evacuated, or cured, through fifteen or twenty days of cholera or typhus, our men lay on the same plank, in the same shoes, drawers, shirts and clothing that they brought in with them? They were in a state of living putrefaction that would by itself have killed well men! The newspapers chanted the praises of the admirable French administration. The second winter the English had no sick, a smaller percentage than in London. But to the eternal shame of the French command and administration we lost in peace time, twenty-five to thirty thousand of typhus and more than one thousand frozen to death. Nevertheless, it appeared that we had the most perfect administration in the world, and that our generals, no less than our administration, were full of devoted solicitude to provide all the needs of the soldier. That is an infamous lie, and is known as such, let us hope.
The Americans have given us a good example. The good citizens have gone themselves to see how their soldiers were treated and have provided for them themselves. When, in France, will good citizens lose faith in this best of administrations which is theirs? When will they, confident in themselves, do spontaneously, freely, what their administration cannot and never will be able to do?
The first thing disorganized in an army is the administration. The simplest foresight, the least signs even of order disappear in a retreat. (Note Russia-Vilna).
In the Crimea, and everywhere more or less, the doctor’s visit was without benefit to the patient. It was made to keep up his spirits, but could not be followed by care, due to lack of personnel and material. After two or three hours of work, the doctor was exhausted.
In a sane country the field and permanent hospitals ought to be able to handle one-fifth of the strength at least. The hospital personnel of to-day should be doubled. It is quickly cut down, and it ought to have time, not only to visit the sick, but to care for them, feed them, dose and dress them, etc.
CHAPTER VI
SOCIAL AND MILITARY INSTITUTIONS.
NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS.
Man’s admiration for the great spectacles of nature is the admiration for force. In the mountains it is mass, a force, that impresses him, strikes him, makes him admire. In the calm sea it is the mysterious and terrible force that he divines, that he feels in that enormous liquid mass; in the angry sea, force again. In the wind, in the storm, in the vast depth of the sky, it is still force that he admires.
All these things astounded man when he was young. He has become old, and he knows them. Astonishment has turned to admiration, but always it is the feeling of a formidable force which compels his admiration. This explains his admiration for the warrior.
The warrior is the ideal of the primitive man, of the savage, of the barbarian. The more people rise in moral civilization, the lower this ideal falls. But with the masses everywhere the warrior still is and for a long time will be the height of their ideals. This is because man loves to admire the force and bravery that are his own attributes. When that force and bravery find other means to assert themselves, or at least when the crowd is shown that war does not furnish the best examples of them, that there are truer and more exalted examples, this ideal will give way to a higher one.
Nations have an equal sovereignty based on their existence as states. They recognize no superior jurisdiction and call on force to decide their differences. Force decides. Whether or not might was right, the weaker bows to necessity until a more successful effort can be made. (Prud’homme). It is easy to understand Gregory VII’s ideas on the subject.
In peace, armies are playthings in the hands of princes. If the princes do not know anything about them, which is usually the case, they disorganize them. If they understand them, like the Prince of Prussia, they make their armies strong for war.
The King of Prussia and the Prussian nobility, threatened by democracy, have had to change the passion for equality in their people into a passion for domination over foreign nations. This is easily done, when domination is crowned with success, for man, who is merely the friend of equality is the lover of domination. So that he is easily made to take the shadow for the substance. They have succeeded. They are forced to continue with their system. Otherwise their status as useful members of society would be questioned and they would perish as leaders in war. Peace spells death to a nobility. Consequently nobles do not desire it, and stir up rivalries among peoples, rivalries which alone can justify their existence as leaders in war, and consequently as leaders in peace. This is why the military spirit is dead in France. The past does not live again. In the spiritual as in the physical world, what is dead is dead. Death comes only with the exhaustion of the elements, the conditions which are necessary for life. For these reasons revolutionary wars continued into the war with Prussia. For these reasons if we had been victorious we would have found against us the countries dominated by nobilities, Austria, Russia, England. But with us vanquished, democracy takes up her work in all European countries, protected in the security which victory always gives to victors. This work is slower but surer than the rapid work of war, which, exalting rivalries, halts for a moment the work of democracy within the nations themselves. Democracy then takes up her work with less chance of being deterred by rivalry against us. Thus we are closer to the triumph of democracy than if we had been victors. French democracy rightfully desires to live, and she does not desire to do so at the expense of a sacrifice of national pride. Then, since she will still be surrounded for a long time by societies dominated by the military element, by the nobility, she must have a dependable army. And, as the military spirit is on the wane in France, it must be replaced by having noncommissioned officers and officers well paid. Good pay establishes position in a democracy, and to-day none turn to the army, because it is too poorly paid. Let us have well paid mercenaries. By giving good pay, good material can be secured, thanks to the old warrior strain in the race. This is the price that must be paid for security.
The soldier of our day is a merchant. So much of my flesh, of my blood, is worth so much. So much of my time, of my affections, etc. It is a noble trade, however, perhaps because man’s blood is noble merchandise, the finest that can be dealt in.
M. Guizot says “Get rich!” That may seem cynical to prudes, but it is truly said. Those who deny the sentiment, and talk to-day so loftily, what do they advise? If not by words, then by example they counsel the same thing; and example is more contagious. Is not private wealth, wealth in general, the avowed ambition sought by all, democrats and others? Let us be rich, that is to say, let us be slaves of the needs that wealth creates.
The Invalides in France, the institutions for pensioners, are superb exhibits of pomp and ostentation. I wish that their founding had been based on ideas of justice and Christianity and not purely on military-political considerations. But the results are disastrous to morality. This collection of weaklings is a school of depravity, where the invalided soldier loses in vice his right to respect.
Some officers want to transform regiments into permanent schools for officers of all ranks, with a two-hour course each day in law, military art, etc. There is little taste for military life in France; such a procedure would lessen it. The leisure of army life attracts three out of four officers, laziness, if you like. But such is the fact. If you make an officer a school-boy all his life he will send his profession to the devil, if he can. And those who are able to do so, will in general be those who have received the best education. An army is an extraordinary thing, but since it is necessary, there should be no astonishment that extraordinary means must be taken to keep it up; such as offering in peace time little work and a great deal of leisure. An officer is a sort of aristocrat, and in France we have no finer ideal of aristocratic life than one of leisure. This is not a proof of the highest ideals, nor of firmness of character. But what is to be done about it?
From the fact that military spirit is lacking in our nation (and officers are with greater difficulty than ever recruited in France) it does not follow that we shall not have to engage in war. Perhaps the contrary is true.
It is not patriotic to say that the military spirit is dead in France? The truth is always patriotic. The military spirit died with the French nobility, perished because it had to perish, because it was exhausted, at the end of its life. That only dies which has no longer the sap of life, and can no longer live. If a thing is merely sick it can return to health. But who can say that of the French nobility? An aristocracy, a nobility that dies, dies always by its own fault; because it no longer performs its duties; because it fails in its task; because its functions are of no more value to the state; because there is no longer any reason for its existence in a society, whose final tendency is to suppress its functions.
After 1789 had threatened our patriotism, the natural desire for self-protection revived the military spirit in the nation and in the army. The Empire developed this movement, changed the defensive military spirit to the offensive, and used it with increasing effect up to 1814 or 1815. The military spirit of the July Restoration was a reminiscence, a relic of the Empire, a form of opposition to government by liberalism instead of democracy. It was really the spirit of opposition and not the military spirit, which is essentially conservative.
There is no military spirit in a democratic society, where there is no aristocracy, no military nobility. A democratic society is antagonistic to the military spirit.
The military spirit was unknown to the Romans. They made no distinction between military and civil duties. I think that the military air dates from the time that the profession of arms became a private profession, from the time of the bravos, the Italian condottieri, who were more terrifying to civilians than to the enemy. When the Romans said “cedant arma togae,” they did not refer to civil officials and soldiers; the civil officials were then soldiers in their turn; professional soldiers did not exist. They meant “might gives way to right.”
Machiavelli quotes a proverb, “War makes thieves and peace has them hanged” The Spaniards in Mexico, which has been in rebellion for forty years, are more or less thieves. They want to continue to ply the trade. Civil authority exists no longer with them, and they would look on obedience to such an authority as shameful. It is easy to understand the difficulty of organizing a peaceful government in such a country. Half the population would have to hang the other half. The other half does not want to be hanged.
We are a democratic society; we become less and less military. The Prussian, Russian, Austrian aristocracies which alone make the military spirit of those states, feel in our democratic society an example which threatens their existence, as nobility, as aristocracy. They are our enemies and will be until they are wiped, out, until the Russian, Austrian and Prussian states become democratic societies, like ours. It is a matter of time.
The Prussian aristocracy is young. It has not been degenerated by wealth, luxury and servility of the court. The Prussian court is not a court in the luxurious sense of the word. There is the danger.
Meanwhile Machiavellian doctrines not being forbidden to aristocracies, these people appeal to German Jingoism, to German patriotism, to all the passions which move one people who are jealous of another. All this is meant to hide under a patriotic exterior their concern for their own existence as an aristocracy, as a nobility.
The real menace of the day is czarism, stronger than the czars themselves, which calls for a crusade to drive back Russia and the uncultured Slav race.
It is time that we understood the lack of power in mob armies; that we recall to mind the first armies of the revolution that were saved from instant destruction only by the lack of vigor and decision in European cabinets and armies. Look at the examples of revolutionaries of all times, who have all to gain and cannot hope for mercy. Since Spartacus, have they not always been defeated? An army is not really strong unless it is developed from a social institution. Spartacus and his men were certainly terrible individual fighters. They were gladiators used to struggle and death. They were prisoners, barbarian slaves enraged by their loss of liberty, or escaped serfs, all men who could not hope for mercy. What more terrible fighters could be imagined? But discipline, leadership, all was improvised and could not have the firm discipline coming down from the centuries and drawn from the social institutions of the Romans. They were conquered. Time, a long time, is needed to give to leaders the habit of command and confidence in their authority–to the soldiers confidence in their leaders and in their fellows. It is not enough to order discipline. The officers must have the will to enforce it, and its vigorous enforcement must instill subordination in the soldiers. It must make them fear it more than they fear the enemy’s blows.
How did Montluc fight, in an aristocratic society? Montluc shows us, tells us. He advanced in the van of the assault, but in bad places he pushed in front of him a soldier whose skin was not worth as much as was his. He had not the slightest doubt or shame about doing this. The soldier did not protest, the propriety of the act was so well established. But you, officers, try that in a democratic army, such as we have commenced to have, such as we shall later have!
In danger the officer is no better than the soldier. The soldier is willing enough to advance, but behind his officer. Also, his comrades’ skin is no more precious than is his, they must advance too. This very real concern about equality in danger, which seeks equality only, brings on hesitation and not resolution. Some fools may break their heads in closing in, but the remainder will fire from a distance. Not that this will cause fewer losses, far from it.
Italy will never have a really firm army. The Italians are too civilized, too fine, too democratic in a certain sense of the word. The Spaniards are the same. This may cause laughter, but it is true. The French are indeed worthy sons of their fathers, the Gauls. War, the most solemn act in the life of a nation, the gravest of acts, is a light thing to them. The good Frenchman lets himself be carried away, inflamed by the most ridiculous feats of arms into the wildest enthusiasm. Moreover he interprets the word “honor” in a fashion all his own. An expedition is commenced without sufficient reason, and good Frenchmen, who do not know why the thing is done, disapprove. But presently blood is spilled. Good sense and justice dictate that this spilled blood should taint those responsible for an unjust enterprise. But jingoism says “French blood has been spilled: Honor is at stake!” And millions of gold, which is the unit of labor, millions of men, are sacrificed to a ridiculous high-sounding phrase.
Whence comes this tendency toward war which characterizes above all the good citizen, the populace, who are not called upon personally to participate? The military man is not so easily swayed. Some hope for promotion or pension, but even they are sobered by their sense of duty. It comes from the romance that clothes war and battle, and that has with us ten times more than elsewhere, the power of exciting enthusiasm in the people. It would be a service to humanity and to one’s people to dispell this illusion, and to show what battles are. They are buffooneries, and none the less buffooneries because they are made terrible by the spilling of blood. The actors, heroes in the eyes of the crowd, are only poor folk torn between fear, discipline and pride. They play some hours at a game of advance and retreat, without ever meeting, closing with, even seeing closely, the other poor folks, the enemy, who are as fearful as they but who are caught in the same web of circumstance.
What should be considered is how to organize an army in a country in which there is at the same time national and provincial feeling. Such a country is France, where there is no longer any necessity for uniting national and provincial feeling by mixing up the soldiers. In France, will the powerful motif of pride, which comes from the organization of units from particular provinces, be useful? From the fusion of varying elements comes the character of our troops, which is something to be considered. The make-up of the heavy cavalry should be noted. It has perhaps too many Germans and men from the northern provinces.
French sociability creates cohesion in French troops more quickly than could be secured in troops in other nations. Organization and discipline have the same purpose. With a proud people like the French, a rational organization aided by French sociability can often secure desired results without it being necessary to use the coercion of discipline.
Marshal de Gouvion-Saint Cyr said, “Experienced soldiers know and others ought to know that French soldiers once committed to the pursuit of the enemy will not return to their organization that day until forced back into it by the enemy. During this time they must be considered as lost to the rest of the army.”
At the beginning of the Empire, officers, trained in the wars of the Revolution by incessant fighting, possessed great firmness. No one would wish to purchase such firmness again at the same price. But in our modern wars the victor often loses more than the vanquished, apart from the temporary loss in prisoners. The losses exceed the resources in good men, and discourage the exhausted, who appear to be very numerous, and those who are skilled in removing themselves from danger. Thus we fall into disorder. The Duke of Fezensac, testifying of other times, shows us the same thing that happens to-day. Also to-day we depend only on mass action, and at that game, despite the cleverest strategic handling, we must lose all, and do.
French officers lack firmness but have pride. In the face of danger they lack composure, they are disconcerted, breathless, hesitant, forgetful, unable to think of a way out. They call, “Forward, forward.” This is one of the reasons why handling a formation in line is difficult, especially since the African campaigns where much is left to the soldier.
The formation in rank is then an ideal, unobtainable in modern war, but toward which we should strive. But we are getting further away from it. And then, when habit loses its hold, natural instinct resumes its empire. The remedy lies in an organization which will establish cohesion by the mutual acquaintanceship of all. This will make possible mutual surveillance, which has such power over French pride.
It might be said that there are two kinds of war, that in open country, and in the plain, and that of posts garrisoning positions in broken country. In a great war, with no one occupying positions, we should be lost immediately. Marshal Saxe knew us well when he said that the French were best for a war of position. He recognized the lack of stability in the ranks.
On getting within rifle range the rank formation tends to disappear. You hear officers who have been under fire say “When you get near the enemy, the men deploy as skirmishers despite you. The Russians group under fire. Their holding together is the huddling of sheep moved by fear of discipline and of danger.” There are then two modes of conduct under fire, the French and the Russian.
The Gauls, seeing the firmness of the Roman formation, chained themselves together, making the first rank unbreakable and tying living to dead. This forbade the virtue they had not divined in the Roman formation, the replacement of wounded and exhausted by fresh men. From this replacement came the firmness which seemed so striking to the Gauls. The rank continually renewed itself.
Why does the Frenchman of to-day, in singular contrast to the Gaul, scatter under fire? His natural intelligence, his instinct under the pressure of danger causes him to deploy.
His method must be adopted. In view of the impossibility to-day of the Roman Draconian discipline which put the fear of death behind the soldier, we must adopt the soldier’s method and try to put some order into it. How? By French discipline and an organization that permits of it.
Broken, covered country is adapted to our methods. The zouaves at Magenta could not have done so well on another kind of ground. [46]
Above all, with modern weapons, the terrain to be advanced over must be limited in depth.
How much better modern tactics fit the impatient French character! But also how necessary it is to guard against this impatience and to keep supports and reserves under control.
It should be noted that German or Gallic cavalry was always better than Roman cavalry, which could not hold against it, even though certainly better armed. Why was this? Because decision, impetuosity, even blind courage, have more chance with cavalry than with infantry. The defeated cavalry is the least brave cavalry. (A note for our cavalry here!) It was easier for the Gauls to have good cavalry than it is for us, as fire did not bother them in the charge.
The Frenchman has more qualities of the cavalryman than of the infantryman. Yet French infantry appears to be of greater value. Why? Because the use of cavalry on the battlefield requires rare decision and the seizing of the crucial opportunity. If the cavalryman has not been able to show his worth, it is the fault of his leaders. French infantry has always been defeated by English infantry. In cavalry combat the English cavalry has always fled before the French in those terrible cavalry battles that are always flights. Is this because in war man lasts longer in the cavalry and because our cavalrymen were older and more seasoned soldiers than our infantry? This does not apply to us only. If it is true for our cavalrymen, it is also true for the English cavalrymen. The reason is that on the field of battle the role of the infantryman against a firm adversary requires more coolness and nerve than does the role of the cavalryman. It requires the use of tactics based on an understanding of the national characteristics of ourselves and of our enemies. Against the English the confidence in the charge that is implanted in our brains, was completely betrayed. The role of cavalry against cavalry is simpler. The French confidence in the charge makes good fighting cavalry, and the Frenchman is better fitted than any other for this role. Our cavalry charge better than any other. That is the whole thing, on the battle field it is understood. As they move faster than infantry, their dash, which has its limits, is better preserved when they get up to the enemy.
The English have always fled before our cavalry. This proves that, strong enough to hold before the moral impulse of our infantry, they were not strong enough to hold before the stronger impulse of cavalry.
We ought to be much better cavalrymen than infantrymen, because the essential in a cavalryman is a fearless impetuosity. That is for the soldier. The cavalry leader ought to use this trait without hesitation, at the same time taking measures to support it and to guard against its failings. The attack is always, even on the defensive, an evidence of resolution, and gives a moral ascendancy. Its effect is more immediate with cavalry, because the movements of cavalry are more rapid and the moral effect has less time to be modified by reflection. To insure that the French cavalry be the best in Europe, and a really good cavalry, it needs but one thing, to conform to the national temperament, to dare, to dare, and to advance.
One of the singular features of French discipline is that on the road, especially in campaign the methods of punishment for derelictions become illusory, impractical. In 1859 there were twenty-five thousand skulkers in the Army in Italy. The soldier sees this immediately and lack of discipline ensues. If our customs do not permit of Draconian discipline, let us replace that moral coercion by another. Let us insure cohesion by the mutual acquaintanceship of men and officers; let us call French sociability to our aid.
With the Romans discipline was severest and most rigidly enforced in the presence of the enemy. It was enforced by the soldiers themselves. To-day, why should not the men in our companies watch discipline and punish themselves. They alone know each other, and the maintenance of discipline is so much to their interest as to encourage them to stop skulking. The twenty-five thousand men who skulked in Italy, all wear the Italian medal. They were discharged with certificates of good conduct. This certificate, in campaign should be awarded by the squad only. In place of that, discipline must be obtained somehow, and it is placed as an additional burden on the officer. He above all has to uphold it. He is treated without regard for his dignity. He is made to do the work of the non-commissioned officer. He is used as fancy dictates.
This cohesion which we hope for in units from squad to company, need not be feared in other armies. It cannot develop to the same point and by the same methods with them as with us. Their make-up is not ours, their character is different. This individuality of squads and companies comes from the make-up of our army and from French sociability.
Is it true that the rations of men and horses are actually insufficient in campaign? This is strange economy! To neglect to increase the soldier’s pay five centimes! It would better his fare and prevent making of an officer a trader in vegetables in order to properly feed his men. Yet millions are squandered each year for uniforms, geegaws, shakos, etc!
If a big army is needed, it ought to cost as little as possible. Simplicity in all things! Down with all sorts of plumes! Less amateurs! If superfluous trimmings are not cut down it will be unfortunate! What is the matter with the sailor’s uniform? Insignificant and annoying details abound while vital details of proper footgear and instruction, are neglected. The question of clothing for campaign is solved by adopting smocks and greatcoats and by doing away with headquarters companies! This is the height of folly. I suppose it is because our present uniforms need specialists to keep them in condition, and smocks and greatcoats do not!
APPENDIX I
MEMORANDUM ON INFANTRY FIRE
[Written in 1869 (Editor’s note)]
1. Introduction
It may be said that the history of the development of infantry fire is none too plain, even though fire action to-day, in Europe, is almost the sole means of destruction used by that arm.
Napoleon said, “The only method of fire to be used in war is fire at will.” Yet after such a plain statement by one who knew, there is a tendency to-day to make fire at command the basis of infantry battle tactics.
Is this correct? Experience only can determine. Experience is gained; but nothing, especially in the trade of war, is sooner forgotten than experience. So many fine things can be done, beautiful maneuvers executed, ingenious combat methods invented in the confines of an office or on the maneuver ground. Nevertheless let us try to hold to facts.
Let us consider, in the study of any kind of fire, a succinct history of small arms; let us see what kind of fire is used with each weapon, attempting at the same time to separate that which has actually happened from the written account.
2. Succinct History of the Development of Small Arms, from the Arquebus to Our Rifle
The arquebus in use before the invention of powder gave the general design to fire arms. The arquebus marks then the transition from the mechanically thrown missile to the bullet.
The tube was kept to direct the projectile, and the bow and string were replaced by a powder chamber and ignition apparatus.
This made a weapon, very simple, light and easy to charge; but the small caliber ball thrown from a very short barrel, gave penetration only at short distances.
The barrel was lengthened, the caliber increased, and a more efficient, but a less convenient arm resulted. It was indeed impossible to hold the weapon in aiming position and withstand the recoil at the moment of firing.
To lessen recoil there was attached to the bottom of the barrel a hook to catch on a fixed object at the moment of discharge. This was called a hook arquebus.
But the hook could only be used under certain circumstances. To give the arm a point of support on the body, the stock was lengthened and inclined to permit sighting. This was the petrinal or poitrinal. The soldier had in addition a forked support for the barrel.
In the musket, which followed, the stock was again modified and held against the shoulder. Further the firing mechanism was improved.
The arm had been fired by a lighted match; but with the musket, the arm becoming lighter and more portable, there came the serpentine lock, the match-lock, then the wheel-lock, finally the Spanish lock and the flint-lock.
The adoption of the flint-lock and the bayonet produced the rifle, which Napoleon regarded as the most powerful weapon that man possesses.
But the rifle in its primitive state had defects. Loading was slow; it was inaccurate, and under some circumstances it could not be fired.
How were these defects remedied?
As to the loading weakness, Gustavus Adolphus, understanding the influence on morale of rapid loading and the greater destruction caused by the more rapid fire, invented the cartridge for muskets. Frederick, or some one of his time, the name marks the period, replaced wooden by cylindrical iron ramrods. To prime more quickly a conical funnel allowed the powder to pass from the barrel into the firing-pan. These two last improvements saved time in two ways, in priming and in loading. But it was the adoption of the breech-loader that brought the greatest increase in rapidity of fire.
These successive improvements of the weapon, all tending to increase the rapidity of fire, mark the most remarkable military periods of modern times:
cartridges–Gustavus Adolphus
iron ramrod–Frederick
improved vent (adopted by the soldiers if not prescribed by competent orders)–wars of the Republic and of the Empire breech-loading–Sadowa.
Accuracy was sacrificed to rapidity of fire. This will be explained later. Only in our day has the general use of rifling and of elongated projectiles brought accuracy to the highest point. In our times, also, the use of fulminate has assured fire under all conditions.
We have noted briefly the successive improvements in fire arms, from the arquebus to the rifle.
Have the methods of employment made the same progress?
3. Progressive Introduction of Fire-Arms Into the Armament of the Infantryman
The revolution brought about by powder, not in the art of war but in that of combat, came gradually. It developed along with the improvement of fire arms. Those arms gradually became those of the infantryman.
Thus, under Francis I, the proportion of infantrymen carrying fire arms to those armed with pikes was one to three or four.
At the time of the wars of religion arquebusiers and pikemen were about equal in number.
Under Louis XIII, in 1643, there were two fire-arms to one pike; in the war of 1688, four to one; finally pikes disappeared.
At first men with fire-arms were independent of other combatants, and functioned like light troops in earlier days.
Later the pikes and the muskets were united in constituent elements of army corps.
The most usual formation was pikes in the center, muskets on the wings.
Sometimes the pikemen were in the center of their respective companies, which were abreast.
Or, half the musketeers might be in front of the pikemen, half behind. Or again, all the musketeers might be behind the kneeling pikemen. In these last two cases fire covered the whole front.
Finally pike and musket might alternate.
These combinations are found in treatises on tactics. But we do not know, by actual examples, how they worked in battle, nor even whether all were actually employed.
4. The Classes of Fire Employed With Each Weapon
When originally some of the infantry were armed with the long and heavy arquebus in its primitive state, the feebleness of their fire caused Montaigne to say, certainly on military authority, “The arms have so little effect, except on the ears, that their use will be discontinued.” Research is necessary to find any mention of their use in the battles of that period. [47]
However we find a valuable piece of information in Brantome, writing of the battle of Pavia.
“The Marquis de Pescani won the battle of Pavia with Spanish arquebusiers, in an irregular defiance of all regulation and tradition by employing a new formation. Fifteen hundred arquebusiers, the ablest, the most experienced, the cleverest, above all the most agile and devoted, were selected by the Marquis de Pescani, instructed by him on new lines, and practiced for a long time. They scattered by squads over the battlefield, turning, leaping from one place to another with great speed, and thus escaped the cavalry charge. By this new method of fighting, unusual, astonishing, cruel and unworthy, these arquebusiers greatly hampered the operations of the French cavalry, who were completely lost. For they, joined together and in mass, were brought to earth by these few brave and able arquebusiers. This irregular and new method of fighting is more easily imagined than described. Any one who can try it out will find it is good and useful; but it is necessary that the arquebusiers be good troops, very much on the jump (as the saying is) and above all reliable.”
It should be borne in mind, in noting the preceding, that there is always a great difference between what actually occurred, and the description thereof (made often by men who were not there, and God knows on what authority). Nevertheless, there appears in these lines of Brantome a first example of the most destructive use of the rifle, in the hands of skirmishers.
During the religious wars, which consisted of skirmishes and taking and retaking garrisoned posts, the fire of arquebusiers was executed without order and individually, as above.
The soldier carried the powder charges in little metal boxes hung from a bandoleer. A finer, priming, powder was contained in a powder horn; the balls were carried in a pouch. At the onset the soldier had to load his piece. It was thus that he had to fight with the match arquebus. This was still far from fire at command.
However this presently appeared. Gustavus Adolphus was the first who tried to introduce method and coordination into infantry fire. Others, eager for innovations, followed in his path. There appeared successively, fire by rank, in two ranks, by subdivision, section, platoon, company, battalion, file fire, parapet fire, a formal fire at will, and so many others that we can be sure that all combinations were tried at this time.
Fire by ranks was undoubtedly the first of these; it will give us a line on the others.
Infantry was formed six deep. To execute fire by rank all ranks except the last knelt. The last rank fired and reloaded. The rank in front of it then rose and did the same thing, as did all other ranks successively. The whole operation was then recommenced.
Thus the first group firing was executed successively by ranks.
Montecuculli said, “The musketeers are ranged six deep, so that the last rank has reloaded by the time the first has fired, and takes up the fire again, so that the enemy has to face continuous fire.”
However, under Conde and Turenne, we see the French army use only fire at will.
It is true that at this time fire was regarded only as an accessory. The infantry of the line which, since the exploit of the Flemish, the Swiss and the Spaniards, had seen their influence grow daily, was required for the charge and the advance and consequently was armed with pikes.
In the most celebrated battles of these times, Rocroi, Nordlingen, Lens, Rethel and the Dunes, we see the infantry work in this way. The two armies, in straight lines, commenced by bombarding each other, charged with their cavalry wings, and advanced with their infantry in the center. The bravest or best disciplined infantry drove back the other, and often, if one of its wings was victorious, finished by routing it. No marked influence of fire is found at this time. The tradition of Pescani was lost.
Nevertheless fire-arms improved; they became more effective and tended to replace the pike. The use of the pike obliged the soldier to remain in ranks, to fight only in certain cases, and exposed him to injury without being able to return blow for blow. And, this is exceedingly instructive, the soldier had by this time an instinctive dislike of this arm, which often condemned him to a passive role. This dislike necessitated giving high pay and privilege to obtain pikemen. And in spite of all at the first chance the soldier threw away his pike for a musket.
The pikes themselves gradually disappeared before firearms; the ranks thinned to permit the use of the latter. Four rank formation was used, and fire tried in that order, by rank, by two ranks, upright, kneeling, etc.
In spite of these attempts, we see the French army in combat, notably at Fontenoy, still using fire at will, the soldier leaving ranks to fire and returning to load.
It can be stated, in spite of numerous attempts at adoption, that no fire at command was used in battle up to the days of Frederick.
Already, under William, the Prussian infantry was noted for the rapidity and continuity of its fire. Frederick further increased the ability of his battalions to fire by decreasing their depth. This fire, tripled by speed in loading, became so heavy that it gave Prussian battalions a superiority over others of three to one.
The Prussians recognized three kinds of fire, at a halt, in advancing, and in retreat. We know the mechanics of fire at a halt, the first rank kneeling. Of fire in advancing Guibert says: “What I call marching fire, and which anybody who thinks about it must find as ill advised as I do, is a fire I have seen used by some troops. The soldiers, in two ranks, fire in marching, but they march of course at a snail’s pace. This is what Prussian troops call fire in advancing. It consists in combined and alternating volleys from platoons, companies, half battalions or battalions. The parts of the line which have fired advance at the double, the others at the half step.”
In other methods of fire, as we have said, the Prussian battalion was in three ranks; the first kneeling. The line delivered salvos, only at command.
However, the theory of executing fire by salvo in three ranks did not bother Frederick’s old soldiers. We will see presently how they executed it on the field of battle.
Be that as it may, Europe was impressed with these methods and tended to adopt them. D’Argenson provided for them in the French army and introduced fire at command. Two regulations prescribing this appeared, in 1753 and 1755. But in the war which followed, Marshal de Broglie, who undoubtedly had experience and as much common sense as M. D’Argenson, prescribed fire at will. All infantry in his army was practiced in it during the winter of 1761-1762.
Two new regulations succeeded the preceding, in 1764 and 1776. The last prescribed fire in three ranks at command, all ranks upright. [48]
Thus we come to the wars of the Revolution, with regulations calling for fire at command, which was not executed in battle.
Since these wars, our armies have always fought as skirmishers. In speaking of our campaigns, fire at command is never mentioned. It was the same under the Empire, in spite of numerous essays from the Boulogne school and elsewhere. At the Boulogne school, fire at command by ranks was first tried by order of Napoleon. This fire, to be particularly employed against cavalry–in theory it is superb–does not seem to have been employed Napoleon says so himself, and the regulations of 1832, in which some influence of soldiers of the Empire should be found, orders fire in two ranks or at will, by bodies of men, to the exclusion of all others.
According to our military authority, on the authority of our old officers, fire at command did not suit our infantry; yet it lived in the regulations. General Fririon (1822) and de Gouvion-Saint-Cyr (1829) attacked this method. Nothing was done. It remained in the regulations of 1832, but without being ordered in any particular circumstances. It appeared there for show purposes, perhaps.
On the creation of the chasseurs d’Orleans, fire by rank was revived. But neither in our African campaigns nor in our last two wars in the Crimea and Italy can a single example of fire at command be found. In practice it was believed to be impracticable. It was known to be entirely ineffective and fell into disrepute.
But to-day, with the breech-loading rifle, there is a tendency to believe it practicable and to take it up with new interest. Is this more reasonable than in the past? Let us see.
5. Methods of Fire Used in the Presence of the Enemy; Methods Recommended or Ordered But Impractical. Use and Efficacy of Fire at Command
Undoubtedly at the Potsdam maneuvers the Prussian infantry used only salvos executed admirably. An unbelievable discipline kept the soldier in place and in line. Barbaric punishments were incorporated in the military code. Blows, the whip, executions, punished the slightest derelictions. Even N.C.O.’s were subjected to blows with the flat of the sword. Yet all this was not enough on the field of battle; a complete rank of non-commissioned officer file closers was also needed to hold the men to their duty.
M. Carion-Nisas said, “These file-closers hook their halberds together and form a line that cannot be broken.” In spite of all this, after two or three volleys, so says General Renard, whom we believe more than charitable, there is no power of discipline which can prevent regular fire from breaking into fire at will.
But let us look further, into Frederick’s battles. Let us take the battle of Mollwitz, in which success was specifically laid to fire at command, half lost, then won by the Prussian salvos.
“The Austrian infantry had opened fire on the lines of the Prussians, whose cavalry had been routed. It was necessary to shake them to insure victory. The Austrians still used wooden ramrods. Their fire came slowly, while the Prussian fire was thunderous, five or six shots to the rifle per minute. The Imperial troops, surprised and disconcerted by this massed fire, tried to hurry. In their hurry many broke their fragile ramrods. Confusion spread through the ranks, and the battle was lost.”
But, if we study actual conditions of the period, we see that things did not happen in such an orderly sequence.
Firing started, and it is said that it was long and deadly. The Prussians iron ramrods gave them the advantage ‘over an enemy whose ramrods were wooden, harder to manipulate and easily broken. However, when the order to advance was given to the Prussians, whole battalions stood fast; it was impossible to budge them. The soldiers tried to escape the fire and got behind each other, so that they were thirty to forty deep.
Here are men who exhibit under fire an admirable, calm, an immovable steadiness. Each instant they hear the dead heavy sound of a bullet striking. They see, they feel, around them, above them, between their legs, their comrades fall and writhe, for the fire is deadly. They have the power in their hands to return blow for blow, to send back to the enemy the death that hisses and strikes about them. They do not take a false step; their hands do not close instinctively on the trigger. They wait, imperturbably, the order of their chiefs–and what chiefs! These are the men who at the command “forward,” lack bowels, who huddle like sheep one behind the other. Are we to believe this?
Let us get to the truth of the matter. Frederick’s veterans, in spite of their discipline and drill, are unable to follow the methods taught and ordered. They are no more able to execute fire at command than they are to execute the ordered advance of the Potsdam maneuver field. They use fire at will. They fire fast from instinct–stronger than their discipline–which bids them send two shots for one. Their fire becomes indeed, a thunderous roll, not of salvos, but of rapid fire at will. Who fires most, hits most, so the soldier figures. So indeed did Frederick, for he encouraged fire in this same battle of Mollwitz; he thereafter doubled the number of cartridges given the soldier, giving him sixty instead of thirty.
Furthermore, if fire at command had been possible, who knows what Frederick’s soldiers would have been capable of? They would have cut down battalions like standing grain. Allowed to aim quietly, no man interfering with another, each seeing clearly–then at the signal all firing together. Could anything hold against them? At the first volley the enemy would have broken and fled, under the penalty of annihilation in case they stayed. However, if we look at the final result at Mollwitz, we see that the number of killed is about the same on the side that used fire at command as on the side that did not. The Prussians lost 960 dead, the Austrians 966.
But they say that if fire was not more deadly, it was because sight-setting was then unknown. What if it was? There was no adjustment of fire perhaps, but there were firing regulations; aiming was known. Aiming is old. We do not say it was practiced; but it was known, and often mentioned. Cromwell often said, “Put your confidence in God, my children, and fire at their shoe-laces.”
Do we set our sights better to-day? It is doubtful. If the able soldiers of Cromwell, of Frederick, of the Republic and of Napoleon could not set their sights–can we?
Thus this fire at command, which was only possible rarely and to commence action, was entirely ineffective.
Hardy spirits, seeing the slight effect of long range firing in battle, counselled waiting till the enemy was at twenty paces and driving him back with a volley. You do not have to sight carefully at twenty paces. What would be the result?
“At the battle of Castiglione,” says Marshal Saxe, “the Imperial troops let the French approach to twenty paces, hoping to destroy them by a volley. At that distance they fired coolly and with all precautions, but they were broken before the smoke cleared. At the battle of Belgrade (1717) I saw two battalions who at thirty paces, aimed and fired at a mass of Turks. The Turks cut them up, only two or three escaping. The Turkish loss in dead was only thirty-two.”
No matter what the Marshal says, we doubt that these men were cool. For men who could hold their fire up to such a near approach of the enemy, and fire into masses, would have killed the front rank, thrown the others into confusion, and would never have been cut up as they were. To make these men await, without firing, an enemy at twenty or thirty paces, needed great moral pressure. Controlled by discipline they waited, but as one waits for the roof to fall, for a bomb to explode, full of anxiety and suppressed emotion. When the order is given to raise the arms and fire the crisis is reached. The roof falls, the bomb explodes, one flinches and the bullets are fired into the air. If anybody is killed it is an accident.
This is what happened before the use of skirmishers. Salvos were tried. In action they became fire at will. Directed against troops advancing without firing they were ineffective. They did not halt the dash of the assault, and the troops who had so counted on them fled demoralized. But when skirmishers were used, salvos became impossible. Armies who held to old methods learned this to their cost.
In the first days of the Revolution our troops, undrilled and not strictly disciplined, could not fight in line. To advance on the enemy, a part of the battalion was detached as skirmishers. The remainder marched into battle and was engaged without keeping ranks. The combat was sustained by groups fighting without formal order. The art was to support by reserves the troops advanced as skirmishers. The skirmishers always began the action, when indeed they did not complete it.
To oppose fire by rank to skirmishers was fools’ play.
Skirmishers necessarily opposed each other. Once this method was adopted, they were supported, reinforced by troops in formation. In the midst of general firing fire at command became impossible and was replaced by fire at will.
Dumouriez, at the battle of Jemmapes, threw out whole battalions as skirmishers, and supporting them by light cavalry, did wonders with them. They surrounded the Austrian redoubts and rained on the cannoneers a hail of bullets so violent that they abandoned their pieces.
The Austrians, astounded by this novel combat method, vainly reinforced their light troops by detachments of heavy infantry. Their skirmishers could not resist our numbers and impetuosity, and presently their line, beaten by a storm of bullets, was forced back. The noise of battle, the firing, increased; the defeated troops, hearing commands no longer, threw down their arms and fled in disorder.
So fire in line, heavy as it may be, cannot prevail against the power of numerous detachments of skirmishers. A rain of bullets directed aimlessly is impotent against isolated men profiting by the slightest cover to escape the fire of their adversaries, while the deployed battalions offer to their rifles a huge and relatively harmless target. The dense line, apparently so strong, withers under the deadly effect of the fire of isolated groups, so feeble in appearance. (General Renard.)
The Prussians suffered in the same way at Jena. Their lines tried fire at command against our skirmishers. You might as well fire on a handful of fleas.
They tell us of the English salvos at Sainte-Euphemie, in Calabria, and later in Spain. In these particular cases they could be used, because our troops charged without first sending out skirmishers.
The battle of Sainte-Euphemie only lasted half an hour; it was badly conceived and executed, “And if,” says General Duhesme, “the advancing battalions had been preceded by detachments of skirmishers who had already made holes in enemy ranks, and, on close approach, the heads of columns had been launched in a charge, the English line would not have conserved that coolness which made their fire so effective and accurate. Certainly it would not have waited so long to loose its fire, if it had been vigorously harassed by skirmishers.”
An English author, treating of the history of weapons, speaks of the rolling fire, well directed, of the English troops. He makes no mention of salvos. Perhaps we were mistaken, and in our accounts have taken the fire of a battalion for the formal battalion fire at command of our regulations.
The same tendency appears more clearly in the work on infantry of the Marquis de Chambray, who knew the English army well. He says that the English in Spain used almost entirely fire in two ranks. They employed battalion fire only when attacked by our troops without skirmishers, firing on the flanks of our columns. And he says “The fire by battalion, by half battalion and by platoon is limited to the target range. The fire actually most used in war is that in two ranks, the only one used by the French.” Later he adds “Experience proves fire in two ranks the only one to be used against the enemy.” Before him Marshal Saxe wrote “Avoid dangerous maneuvers, such as fire by platoon, which have often caused shameful defeats.” These statements are as true now as then.
Fire at command, by platoon, by battalion, etc., is used in case the enemy having repulsed skirmishers and arrived at a reasonable range either charges or opens fire for effect himself. If the latter, fire is reciprocal and lasts until one or the other gives way or charges. If the enemy charges, what happens? He advances preceded by skirmishers who deliver a hail of bullets. You wish to open fire, but the voices of your officers are lost. The noise of artillery, of small arms, the confusion of battle, the shrieks of the wounded, distract the soldiers’ attention. Before you have delivered your command the line is ablaze. Then try to stop your soldiers. While there is a cartridge left, they will fire. The enemy may find a fold of ground that protects him; he may adopt in place of his deployed order columns with wide intervals between, or otherwise change his dispositions. The changing incidents of battle are hidden by smoke and the troops in front, from the view of the officers behind. The soldiers will continue to fire and the officers can do nothing about it.
All this has been said already, has been gone into, and fire at command has been abandoned. Why take it up again? It comes to us probably from the Prussians. Indeed the reports of their general staff on their last campaign, of 1866, say that it was very effectively employed, and cite many examples.
But a Prussian officer who went through the campaign in the ranks and saw things close up, says, “In examining the battles of 1866 for characteristics, one is struck by a feature common to all, the extraordinary extension of front at the expense of depth. Either the front is spun out into a single long thin line, or it is broken into various parts that fight by themselves. Above all the tendency is evident to envelop the enemy by extending the wings. There is no longer any question of keeping the original order of battle. Different units are confused, by battle, or even before battle. Detachments and large units of any corps are composed of diverse and heterogeneous elements. The battle is fought almost exclusively by columns of companies, rarely of half-battalions. The tactics of these columns consists in throwing out strong detachments of skirmishers. Gradually the supports are engaged and deployed. The line is broken, scattered, like a horde of irregular cavalry. The second line which has held close order tries to get up to the first promptly, first to engage in the fight, also because they suffer losses from the high shots directed at the first line. It suffers losses that are heavy as it is compact and supports them with impatience as it does not yet feel the fever of battle. The most of the second line then forces entry into the first, and, as there is more room on the wings, it gravitates to the wings. Very often even the reserve is drawn in, entirely, or so largely that it cannot fulfill its mission. In fact, the fighting of the first two lines is a series of combats between company commands and the enemy each command faces. Superior officers cannot follow on horseback all the units, which push ahead over all sorts of ground. They have to dismount and attach themselves to the first unit of their command met. Unable to manipulate their whole command, in order to do something, they command the smaller unit. It is not always better commanded at that. Even generals find themselves in this situation.”
Here is something we understand better. It is certainly what occurs.
As for the instances cited in the general staff reports, they deal with companies or half-battalions at most. Not withstanding the complacency with which they are cited, they must have been rare, and the exception should not be taken as establishing a rule.
6. Fire at Will–Its Efficacy
Thus fire at command, to-day as in the past, is impractical and consequently not actually used in battle. The only means employed are fire at will and the fire of skirmishers. Let us look into their efficacy.
Competent authorities have compiled statistics on this point.
Guibert thinks that not over two thousand men are killed or wounded by each million cartridges used in battle.
Gassendi assures us that of three thousand shots only one is a hit.
Piobert says that the estimate, based on the result of long wars, is that three to ten thousand cartridges are expended for each man hit.
To-day, with accurate and long range weapons, have things changed much? We do not think so. The number of bullets fired must be compared with the number of men dropped, with a deduction made for the action of artillery, which must be considered.
A German author has advanced the opinion that with the Prussian needle rifle the hits are 60% of the shots fired. But then how explain the disappointment of M. Dreyse, the happy inventor of the needle rifle, when he compared Prussian and Austrian losses. This good old gentleman was disagreeably astonished at seeing that his rifle had not come up to his expectations.
Fire at will, as we shall presently show, is a fire to occupy the men in the ranks but its effect is not great. We could give many examples; we only cite one, but it is conclusive.
“Has it not been remarked,” says General Duhesme, “that, before a firing line there is raised a veil of smoke which on one side or the other hides the troops from view, and makes the fire of the best placed troops uncertain and practically without effect? I proved it conclusively at the battle of Caldiero, in one of the successive advances that occurred on my left wing. I saw some battalions, which I had rallied, halted and using an individual fire which they could not keep up for long. I went there. I saw through the smoke cloud nothing but flashes, the glint of bayonets and the tops of grenadier’s caps. We were not far from the enemy however, perhaps sixty paces. A ravine separated us, but it could not be seen. I went into the ranks, which were neither closed nor aligned, throwing up with my hand the soldiers’ rifles to get them to cease firing and to advance. I was mounted, followed by a dozen orderlies. None of us were wounded, nor did I see an infantryman fall. Well then! Hardly had our line started when the Austrians, heedless of the obstacle that separated us, retreated.”
It is probable that had the Austrians started to move first, the French would have given way. It was veterans of the Empire, who certainly were as reliable as our men, who gave this example of lack of coolness.
In ranks, fire at will is the only possible one for our officers and men. But with the excitement, the smoke, the annoying incidents, one is lucky to get even horizontal fire, to say nothing of aimed fire.
In fire at will, without taking count of any trembling, men interfere with each other. Whoever advances or who gives way to the recoil of his weapon deranges the shot of his neighbor. With full pack, the second rank has no loophole; it fires in the air. On the range, spacing men to the extremity of the limits of formation, firing very slowly, men are found who are cool and not too much bothered by the crack of discharge in their ears, who let the smoke pass and seize a loophole of pretty good visibility, who try, in a word, not to lose their shots. And the percentage results show much more regularity than with fire at command.
But in front of the enemy fire at will becomes in an instant haphazard fire. Each man fires as much as possible, that is to say, as badly as possible. There are physical and mental reasons why this is so.
Even at close range, in battle, the cannon can fire well. The gunner, protected in part by his piece, has an instant of coolness in which to lay accurately. That his pulse is racing does not derange his line of sight, if he has will power. The eye trembles little, and the piece once laid, remains so until fired.
The rifleman, like the gunner, only by will-power keeps his ability to aim. But the excitement in the blood, of the nervous system, opposes the immobility of the weapon in his hands. No matter how supported, a part of the weapon always shares the agitation of the man. He is instinctively in haste to fire his shot, which may stop the departure of the bullet destined for him. However lively the fire is, this vague reasoning, unformed as it is in his mind, controls with all the force of the instinct of self preservation. Even the bravest and most reliable soldiers then fire madly.
The greater number fire from the hip.
The theory of the range is that with continual pressure on the trigger the shot surprises the firer. But who practices it under fire?
However, the tendency in France to-day is to seek only accuracy. What good will it do when smoke, fog, darkness, long range, excitement, the lack of coolness, forbid clear sight?
It is hard to say, after the feats of fire at Sebastopol, in Italy, that accurate weapons have given us no more valuable service than a simple rifle. Just the same, to one who has seen, facts are facts. But–see how history is written. It has been set down that the Russians were beaten at Inkermann by the range and accuracy of weapons of the French troops. But the battle was fought in thickets and wooded country, in a dense fog. And when the weather cleared, our soldiers, our chasseurs were out of ammunition and borrowed from the Russian cartridge boxes, amply provided with cartridges for round, small calibered bullets. In either case there could have been no accurate fire. The facts are that the Russians were beaten by superior morale; that unaimed fire, at random, there perhaps more than elsewhere, had the only material effect.
When one fires and can only fire at random, who fires most hits most. Or perhaps it is better said that who fires least expects to be hit most.
Frederick was impressed with this, for he did not believe in the Potsdam maneuvers. The wily Fritz looked on fire as a means to quiet and occupy the undependable soldiers and it proved his ability that he could put into practice that which might have been a mistake on the part of any other general officer. He knew very well how to count on the effect of his fire, how many thousand cartridges it took to kill or wound an enemy. At first his soldiers had only thirty cartridges. He found the number insufficient, and after Mollwitz gave them sixty.
To-day as in Frederick’s day, it is rapid random fire, the only one practicable, which has given prestige to the Prussians. This idea of rapid fire was lost after Frederick, but the Prussians have recovered it to-day by exercising common sense. However our veterans of the Empire had preserved this idea, which comes from instinct. They enlarged their vents, scornful of flare backs, to avoid having to open the chamber and prime. The bullet having a good deal of clearance when the cartridge was torn and put in the gun, with a blow of the butt on the ground they had their arms charged and primed.
But to-day as then, in spite of skill acquired in individual fire, men stop aiming and fire badly as soon as they are grouped into platoons to fire.
Prussian officers, who are practical men, know that adjustment of sights is impracticable in the heat of action, and that in fire by volleys troops tend to use the full sight. So in the war of 1866 they ordered their men to fire very low, almost without sighting, in order to profit by ricochets.
7. Fire by Rank Is a Fire to Occupy the Men in Ranks
But if fire at will is not effective, what is its use? As we have already said its use is to occupy the men in the ranks.
In ordinary fire the act of breathing alone, by the movement it communicates to the body greatly annoys men in firing. How then can it be claimed that on the field of battle, in rank, men can fire even moderately well when they fire only to soothe themselves and forget danger?
Napoleon said “The instinct of man is not to let himself be killed without defending himself.” And indeed man in combat is a being in whom the instinct of self preservation dominates at times all other sentiments. The object of discipline is to dominate this instinct by a greater terror of shame or of punishment. But it is never able entirely to attain this object; there is a point beyond which it is not effectual. This point reached, the soldier must fire or he will go either forward or back. Fire is then, let us say, a safety vent for excitement.
In serious affairs it is then difficult, if not impossible, to control fire. Here is an example given by Marshal Saxe:
“Charles XII, King of Sweden, wished to introduce into his infantry the method of charging with the bayonet. He spoke of it often, and it was known in the army that this was his idea. Finally at the battle of —- against the Russians, when the fighting started he went to his regiment of infantry, made it a fine speech, dismounted before the colors, and himself led the regiment to the charge. When he was thirty paces from the enemy the whole regiment fired, in spite of his orders and his presence. Otherwise, it did very well and broke the enemy. The king was so annoyed that all he did was pass through the ranks, remount his horse, and go away without saying a word.”
So that, if the soldier is not made to fire, he will fire anyway to distract himself and forget danger. The fire of Frederick’s Prussians had no other purpose. Marshal Saxe saw this. “The speed with which the Prussians load their rifles,” he tells us, “is advantageous in that it occupies the soldier and forbids reflection while he is in the presence of the enemy. It is an error to believe that the five last victories gained by the nation in its last war were due to fire. It has been noted that in most of these actions there were more Prussians killed by rifle fire than there were of their enemies.”
It would be sad to think the soldier in line a firing machine. Firing has been and always will be his principal object, to fire as many shots in as short a time as possible. But the victor is not always the one who kills the most; he is fortunate who best knows how to overcome the morale of his enemy.
The coolness of men cannot be counted on. And as it is necessary above all to keep up their morale one ought to try above all to occupy and soothe them. This can best be done by frequent discharges. There will be little effect, and it would be absurd to expect them to be calm enough to fire slowly, adjust their ranges and above all sight carefully.
8. The Deadly Fire Is the Fire of Skirmishers
In group firing, when the men are grouped into platoons or battalions, all weapons have the same value, and if it is assumed to-day that fire must decide engagements, the method of fighting must be adopted which gives most effect to the weapon. This is the employment of skirmishers.
It is this class of fire, indeed, which is deadliest in war. We could give many examples but we shall be content with the two following instances, taken from General Duhesme.
“A French officer who served with the Austrians in one of the recent wars,” says General Duhesme, “told me that from the fire of a French battalion one hundred paces from them, his company lost only three or four men, while in the same time they had had more than thirty killed or wounded by the fire of a group of skirmishers in a little wood on their flank three hundred paces away.”
“At the passage of the Minico, in 1801, the 2nd battalion of the 91st received the fire of a battalion of Bussi’s regiment without losing a man; the skirmishers of that same organization killed more than thirty men in a few minutes while protecting the retreat of their organization.”
The fire of skirmishers is then the most deadly used in war, because the few men who remain cool enough to aim are not otherwise annoyed while employed as skirmishers. They will perform better as they are better hidden, and better trained in firing.
The accuracy of fire giving advantages only in isolated fire, we may consider that accurate weapons will tend to make fighting by skirmishers more frequent and more decisive.
For the rest, experience authorizes the statement that the use of skirmishers is compulsory in war. To-day all troops seriously engaged become in an instant groups of skirmishers and the only possible precise fire is from hidden snipers.
However, the military education which we have received, the spirit of the times, clouds with doubt our mind regarding this method of fighting by skirmishers. We accept it regretfully. Our personal experience being incomplete, insufficient, we content ourselves with the supposition that gives us satisfaction. The war of skirmishers, no matter how thoroughly it has been proven out, is accepted by constraint, because we are forced by circumstance to engage our troops by degrees, in spite of ourselves, often unconsciously. But, be it understood, to-day a successive engagement is necessary in war.
However, let us not have illusions as to the efficacy of the fire of skirmishers. In spite of the use of accurate and long range weapons, in spite of all training that can be given the soldier, this fire never has more than a relative effect, which should not be exaggerated.
The fire of skirmishers is generally against skirmishers. A body of troops indeed does not let itself be fired on by skirmishers without returning a similar fire. And it is absurd to expect skirmishers to direct their fire on a body protected by skirmishers. To demand of troops firing individually, almost abandoned to themselves, that they do not answer the shots directed at them, by near skirmishers, but aim at a distant body, which is not harming them, is to ask an impossible unselfishness.
As skirmishers men are very scattered. To watch the adjustment of ranges is difficult. Men are practically left alone. Those who remain cool may try to adjust their range, but it is first necessary to see where your shots fall, then, if the terrain permits this and it will rarely do so, to distinguish them from shots fired at the same time by your neighbors. Also these men will be more disturbed, will fire faster and less accurately, as the fight is more bitter, the enemy stauncher; and perturbation is more contagious than coolness.
The target is a line of skirmishers, a target offering so little breadth and above all depth, that outside of point blank fire, an exact knowledge of the range is necessary to secure effect. This is impossible, for the range varies at each instant with the movements of the skirmishers. [49]
Thus, with skirmishers against skirmishers, there are scattered shots at scattered targets. Our fire of skirmishers, marching, on the target range, proves this, although each man knows exactly the range and has time and the coolness to set his sights. It is impossible for skirmishers in movement to set sights beyond four hundred meters, and this is pretty extreme, even though the weapon is actually accurate beyond this.
Also, a shot is born. There are men, above all in officer instructors at firing schools, who from poor shots become excellent shots after years of practice. But it is impossible to give all the soldiers such an education without an enormous consumption of ammunition and without abandoning all other work. And then there would be no results with half of them.
To sum up, we find that fire is effective only at point blank. Even in our last wars there have been very few circumstances in which men who were favored with coolness and under able leadership have furnished exceptions. With these exceptions noted, we can say that accurate and long range weapons have not given any real effect at a range greater than point blank.
There has been put forward, as proof of the efficacy of accurate weapons the terrible and decisive results obtained by the British in India, with the Enfield rifle. But these results have been obtained because the British faced comparatively poorly armed enemies. They had then the security, the confidence, the ensuing coolness necessary for the use of accurate weapons. These conditions are completely changed when one faces an enemy equally well armed, who consequently, gives as good as he gets.
9. Absolute Impossibility of Fire at Command
Let us return to fire at command, which there is a tendency to-day to have troops execute in line.
Can regular and efficient fire be hoped for from troops in line? Ought it to be hoped for?
No, for man cannot be made over, and neither can the line.
Even on the range or on the maneuver field what does this fire amount to?
In fire at command, on the range, all the men in the two ranks come to the firing position simultaneously, everybody is perfectly quiet. Men in the front rank consequently are not deranged by their neighbors. Men in the second rank are in the same situation. The first rank being set and motionless they can aim through the openings without more annoyance than those in the first rank.
Fire being executed at command, simultaneously, no weapon is deranged at the moment of firing by the movements of the men. All conditions are entirely favorable to this kind of fire. Also as the fire is ordered with skill and coolness by an officer who has perfectly aligned his men (a thing rare even on the drill ground) it gives percentage results greater than that of fire at will executed with the minutest precautions, results that are sometimes astonishing.
But fire at command, from the extreme coolness that it demands of all, of the officer certainly more than of the soldier, is impracticable before the enemy except under exceptional circumstances of picked officers, picked men, ground, distance, safety, etc. Even in maneuvers its execution is farcical. There is not an organization in which the