Nothing but good horses, with plenty of bone and substance, ridden at a very rapid gallop by determined men, can break up a solid square of infantry composed of good men well drilled in the use of the bayonet. Such squares formed by our own men in the face of the best cavalry that could be brought to bear against them have never yet been broken; but, on the other hand, our cavalry have never been known to fail in breaking up solid squares of our enemies’ infantry. A reference to the history of any of our great battles will be sufficient to confirm this statement.
A battle between two regiments or brigades of cavalry is, however, a species of fighting in which our own dragoons excel over every other mounted troops that ever were, or in my opinion, ever will be, opposed to them in action. They are most unnecessarily encumbered with a heavy, unwieldy firearm (the carbine), when a neat and exceedingly effective weapon—a repeating pistol, or revolver—could be loaded with five rounds of ball-cartridge before going into action, and when fairly engaged and surrounded with enemies on every side, the revolver could be drawn from a holster-pipe, and every round it contained fired at such close quarters as to render it a matter of certainty that a man would be killed at every shot.
As an illustration of the value of this weapon, I may state that the 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars (one of the regiments engaged in the Light Cavalry charge at Balaclava) had fifty of these revolvers served out to them before embarking for India to assist in quelling the Mutiny in 1858. Soon after their arrival, they were called into action at Gwalior, where they charged the rebels, and in a few minutes the latter were put to flight, leaving upwards of one hundred dead on the field. On examining the bodies, it was found that, with one or two exceptions, they had all been killed by the men armed with revolvers, who composed the front rank. Now, if the leading squadron had simply been armed with a carbine and sabre, the manner in which the majority of our cavalry regiments (except lancers) are armed, the odds are that not a man of the enemy would have been killed, inasmuch as the rebels would have fled before our troops had been near enough to use the sabre.
The carbine, by its great weight, adds materially to the load which the horse has to carry in long and forced marches. Its weight and length also render it a cumbersome and awkward weapon to load and fire in close action; and the continual plunging, unsteady movements of the horse make it a pure matter of chance whether the soldier can take a correct aim so as to hit an enemy at any range. Then, again, it is much in the way of the sword-arm in cutting to the right, and the manner in which it is attached to the saddle is at all times extremely dangerous to the soldier when mounting in a hurry, or if, when a horse is hit or killed in action (a thing of very frequent occurrence), the animal should fall on his off (right) side, the soldier’s thigh being wedged, as it were, between the stock of the carbine crosswise, the man’s thigh is snapped like a twig, and he is therefore incapable of releasing himself.
After the famous charge at Balaclava some noise was made about the inefficiency of the carbine, and the necessity of equipping our dragoons with a better weapon; but it is very difficult to introduce such a change into the British army.
Corporal Shaw, the life-guardsman, threw his carbine away on the field of Waterloo, and trusted to his sabre, with which he killed eleven men. In the face of the improved equipment of foreign cavalry, it is to be hoped that our dragoons will not be left with this unwieldy, cumbersome, and most useless weapon in future campaigns.
Further reference to this subject, together with my own experience on active service, must be reserved for the concluding chapters of my story. For the present, it will be my especial business to endeavour to amuse my readers with the continuous events and other matters connected with my term of service at home.