Light Horse
During the Seven Years’ War, Austria made good use of a screen of light troops, both Horse and Foot, in front of her armies. Her Light Horsemen had been very serviceable in the Thirty Years’ War in the previous century, and had been constantly used since in fighting the Turks. These horsemen were irregular troops from Hungary, where they had been raised since the sixteenth century under the name of Hussars. They wore the national dress of Hungary, which Hussars have retained ever since they were imitated by Frederick during the Seven Years’ War, and in other armies later. Lancers were similarly copied everywhere from the Polish Light Cavalry, clothed in their national costume, who joined Napoleon’s service in 1807. The lance, which had not been used since the early sixteenth century, was then reintroduced, and has since held its own, and even won ground in Germany. The British adopted Lancers after their experience against Napoleon’s Polish Lancers at Waterloo. The Prussians called them Ulans, from the Polish, while other nations adopted the French word Lancier, from the Late Latin lancearius (lancea, a lance).
British Light Cavalry began in the eighteenth century, in the Light Troops of the Dragoon Regiments, soon detached to be grouped into Light Dragoon Regiments, which, early in the nineteenth century, were changed to Hussars.
After firing on horseback had been stopped by Frederick, Cavalry discarded the firearm until the close of the century, when the French Light Horse of the Revolutionary armies received a short musket, called by its old name of carbine, which became the universal Cavalry firearm for use on foot. But Heavy Cavalry had no firearms for years; even in the Prussian Army of 1870 only Light Cavalry were armed with the carbine.
Cavalry Regiments were first brigaded during the eighteenth century, but had no higher organization. The Brigade formed one of the lines of Cavalry on each wing of the Army. Cavalry Divisions were first formed by Hoche in 1793, and were adopted by Napoleon, who extended the idea later to creating Cavalry Corps of two or more Divisions.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE EVOLUTION OF ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS
The early history of the Engineers and the Artillery in England may be traced in the continued existence, from the Conqueror to Henry VIII., of a high official called in Latin documents the King’s Ingeniator, because he had charge of Engines of War (Latin ingenium). About 1300 the Ingeniator (or Engyneor, as he was called in English, from the Old French Engineur) became styled Attilator (probably a slovenly rendering of Artillator), from the fact that, having charge of the engines of war, he naturally took over the latest form of them, the new invention of artillery. This word is derived from the French artillerie, which meant the art of the artilleur, or articulier, from articularius, or the man who handled articula, the articles or the “things,” as the newly invented guns began by being styled, that word being a diminutive of art-em, art.