After a brief description of Meagher’s attack at Fredericksburg, and Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, Captain Maude continues:
“Surely, Moltke never spoke of such gallant soldiers as an armed mob, seeing that they succeeded in driving an attack home against four times the per centage of loss that stopped the Prussian guard at St. Privat.... And assuming, for the moment, that the saying attributed to him is really true, we cannot help fancying that he must have often bitterly regretted it when watching his own men in the manœuvers of late years, attacking in what is really, practically the same formation which the armed mobs worked out for themselves.
“The points of contrast between ourselves and the Americans are far too numerous to be dismissed without comment. They began the war with a drill book and system modeled on our own, and they carried it out to its conclusion, with only a few modifications of detail, but none of principle. The normal prescribed idea of an attack appears to have been as follows: A line of scouts, thickened to skirmishers according to the requirements of the ground; from 2 to 300 paces in rear, the 1st line, two deep, precisely like our own, then in rear a 2d line and reserve. Of course, their lines did not advance with the steady precision of our old peninsula battalions. Their level of instruction was altogether too low, and besides, the extent of fire-swept ground had greatly increased. Eye witnesses say that after the first few yards, the line practically dissolved itself into a dense line of skirmishers, who threw themselves forward generally at a run as far as their momentum would carry them; sometimes, if the distance was short, carrying the position at the first rush, but more generally the heavy losses brought them to a halt and a standing fire fight ensued. They knew nothing of Scherff’s great principle, on which the ‘Treffen Abstande’ or distances between the lines are based, but they generally worked it out in practice pretty successfully. The second line came up in the best order they could and carried the wreck of the first on with them; if they were stopped, the reserve did the same for them, and either broke too, or succeeded.
“It will be seen that except in its being more scientifically put together, this German attack is, practically, precisely similar to that employed by the Americans, with the sole difference that the breech-loader has conferred on the assailants the advantage of being able to make a more extended use of their weapons, and has reduced to a certain extent the disadvantage of having to halt.
“Had we, in 1871, been thoroughly well informed as to the methods employed across the Atlantic, we should have seen at once that the new weapons did not necessarily entail any alteration in principle in our drill book, and with a little alteration in detail, have attained at one bound to a point of efficiency not reached even in Germany till several years after the war.”—“Tactics and Organization,” by Capt. F. N. Maude, R. E., p. 299, et seq.
[21] In Clery’s “Minor Tactics” occurs the following astonishing passage: “The use made of entrenchments by the Turks was not the least remarkable feature of the war of 1877. Field works, as aids in defense, had been used with advantage in previous wars, but no similar instance exists of an impregnable system of earthworks being improvised under the very noses of the enemy.” Col. Clery’s book is an evidence of his intelligent study and thorough knowledge of European military history; yet, as late as 1885, this professor of tactics at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst seems not to have heard of Johnston’s works at Kenesaw Mountain, or the fortifications constructed at Spottsylvania and Petersburg.
[22] May’s “Tactical Retrospect.”