1. The horse-artillery should be placed on such ground that it can move freely in every direction.
2. Foot-artillery, on the contrary, and especially that of heavy caliber, will be best posted where protected by ditches or hedges from sudden charges of cavalry. It is hardly necessary for me to add—what every young officer should know already—that too elevated positions are not those to give artillery its greatest effect. Flat or gently-sloping ground is better.
3. The horse-artillery usually maneuvers with the cavalry; but it is well for each army-corps to have its own horse-artillery, to be readily thrown into any desired position. It is, moreover, proper to have horse-artillery in reserve, which may be carried as rapidly as possible to any threatened point. General Benningsen had great cause for self-congratulation at Eylau because he had fifty light guns in reserve; for they had a powerful influence in enabling him to recover himself when his line had been broken through between the center and the left.
4. On the defensive, it is well to place some of the heavy batteries in front, instead of holding them in reserve, since it is desirable to attack the enemy at the greatest possible distance, with a view of checking his forward movement and causing disorder in his columns.
5. On the defensive, it seems also advisable to have the artillery not in reserve distributed at equal intervals in batteries along the whole line, since it is important to repel the enemy at all points. This must not, however, be regarded as an invariable rule; for the character of the position and the designs of the enemy may oblige the mass of the artillery to move to a wing or to the center.
6. In the offensive, it is equally advantageous to concentrate a very powerful artillery-fire upon a single point where it is desired to make a decisive stroke, with a view of shattering the enemy's line to such a degree that he will be unable to withstand an attack upon which the fate of the battle is to turn. I shall at another place have more to say as to the employment of artillery in battles.
FOOTNOTES:
Thus, the army of the Rhine was composed of a right wing of three divisions under Lecourbe, of a center of three divisions under Saint-Cyr, and of a left of two divisions under Saint-Suzanne, the general-in-chief having three divisions more as a reserve under his own immediate orders.