It was never part of my scheme to deal in detail with the Manchurian story. I believe that for Englishmen, their own great war should be sufficient evidence. And yet, having reached this point, I feel inclined to regret that I did not begin with the Asiatic war, hardly complete as the material still is, and briefly summarize our own, so exaggerated seems to be the craving in many minds for foreign precedents and foreign models, so reckless the disregard for British experience, even when that experience is most stimulating and glorious. Happily, the Manchurian data are simple, uniform, and as absolutely free from complications or apparent contradictions as the South African data whose lessons they confirm.
What is the salient point? With all respect to General French, the salient point for Englishmen, who know by bitter experience that shock training has failed them, is not whether the Russians or Japanese were good shock horsemen, but whether they were good mounted riflemen. Our own Cavalry in South Africa were good shock horsemen, but that did not save the friends of shock from the necessity of finding elaborate reasons for the disappearance of shock during that war. Now for our salient point. Were the Russian Cavalry, who were far the most numerous and in some ways the better equipped of the two Cavalries, good mounted riflemen, by our proved standard of what is good? The answer, from all critics and observers, comes unanimously and emphatically, “No.” In the first place, they were of the hybrid type, carrying swords and, in the great majority of cases, lances as well. Their legendary skill in fire-action proved to be a myth. The Boers would have laughed at them. Our own mounted riflemen would have regarded them as inefficient and ignorant. To the surprise of many people, they had none of the “habits and instincts” for modern war that the Boers had, nothing of the stalking power, the scouting power, the genius for ground and surprise, much less the charging power developed. The Historians of our General Staff (part i., p. 29) supply the explanation: “The system of tactical training was not unlike that of other European armies. Thus the Cavalry was trained both for mounted and dismounted combat, but the musketry training necessary to make it efficient when on foot fell short of the requirements of modern war. The Cossacks, who formed the greater part of the Russian mounted force, were trained on lines similar to the regular Cavalry, but did not attain to the standard laid down for the latter.”
We must allow, of course, for general causes. The whole Russian army, by the testimony of its own leaders, was in a backward state, and the Cavalry was as backward as other arms. Its morale, by comparison with the Japanese morale, was low. In every arm the officers—that vitally important element—were ill-educated; in every arm, together with much splendid devotion and zeal, some of the officers were neglectful of duty. The Cavalry suffered as much as any arm. Wrangel, the Austrian critic, describes the greater part of the Russian Cavalry engaged in the Manchurian Field Army, especially those Cossack organizations which consisted of troops of the second and third class of reserves, as being in the general sense “inefficient mounted troops.”[[80]] Our own Official Reports, however, give a more favourable impression. The older reserve men were, no doubt, unfit for the field, but among the Don, Orenburg, and Trans-Baikal Cossacks there seems to have been some very good material.
Mr. McCullagh, in his book, “With the Cossacks,” gives an interesting description of the great variety of religions, races, languages, colours, and military types which were embodied in the troops known broadly as Cossacks. The Caucasians, though they carried carbines, appear to have been by tradition and choice steel horsemen pure and simple. But whatever the training, there is no dispute about the incompetence of all the Cossacks as riflemen. Captain Spaits gives a distressing account of their failures.[[81]] McCullagh says: “They had no skill whatever in attacking entrenched Infantry. Once dismounted, they are lost.” (p. 182). Both these writers accompanied them in the field. On manœuvre and general employment there is an equally general agreement. Unlike the Japanese, they were maintained for the most part in large independent bodies, in dim homage, we may presume, to that “collision of Cavalry masses” which is the basis of the shock theory. So massed, they were generally idle, just as the Cavalries of 1866, 1870, and 1877 were too often idle, by the admission of Bernhardi, Kuropatkin, and Von Moltke. There never appears a trace of talent for fire-tactics, or an attempt to play either the aggressive or the delaying rôle of the riflemen in South Africa.
What effect had that War had upon Russian Cavalry? None. No more effect than the brilliant performances of the Civil War leaders had upon the Austrian, Prussian, and French Cavalries in the wars of 1866 and 1870, or upon our own Cavalry in 1899. How many Cossack privates had heard of our war? How many of their officers had studied it? Truly those words, “trained for years on the very principles these writers advocate,” are a little hard on those Cavalry leaders in South Africa who led mounted riflemen with distinction. They are very hard, if he only knew it, on General French.
Kuropatkin (vol. ii., p. 151) is cruelly illuminating. It is true he never mentions armaments or the tactics derived from it. Nor did Von Moltke in his equally hard censure of the Prussian Cavalry of 1866 for the same grave delinquency—timidity on the battle-field. It was left for Bernhardi to disclose the true cause and the true remedy. Kuropatkin dwells on “training” and on commanders, most of whom he accuses of cowardice; for “the material of which our Cavalry was composed was excellent” (with certain exceptions afterwards named). What “training” and “command” meant becomes apparent. The Cavalry should have fought as “obstinately as Infantry,” and by way of contrasting the two arms he gives pitiless statistics of relative casualties at the battles of Mukden and Telissu, where no observer or historian has ever suggested that there was any reason for or sense in shock. The single example he names of a good performance, that of the Cossacks at Yen-tai Mines, was one of defensive fire-action pure and simple, where the Cavalry “fought with greater bravery than some of Orloff’s Infantry.” Surely it was knowledge, not courage, that the rest lacked.
Look at the only large “enterprise” undertaken by the Russian Cavalry—Mishchenko’s great raid, with 8,000 men and 34 guns, upon Ying-kou in January, 1905. No better example could be found for proving the fallacy of associating the success of independent strategical enterprises with the steel weapon. Of the conditions of success, one category has nothing to do with combat, but purely with mobility. The distance was 80 miles, as compared, for example, with the 100-mile raids imagined by Mr. Goldman for South Africa. There was a slow-moving millstone of a convoy, requiring protection and limiting speed, exactly our own difficulty when our mounted troops, Cavalry included, cut themselves completely adrift from their communications, exactly the difficulty which Bernhardi insists on when dealing with the limitations to Cavalry raids. Scouting was bad. Contrast the Boer scouting. Scouts, at any rate, do not have shock duels. Passing to combat, we find no shadow of a suggestion in any narrative that there was the remotest opportunity for shock (except for a case mentioned by McCullagh, where a Cossack brigade charged a few Chinese brigands). The Japanese troops met with were always Infantry, and were always in great numerical inferiority. Until actually reaching Ying-kou, they were met with in the shape of small detachments guarding villages or railway-bridges. Result, small fire-actions, in which the Cossacks showed incompetence. Contrast De Wet’s skill in raiding similar posts. One of the three Russian columns, several regiments strong, was kept back, says Captain Spaits, for three hours by half a company of Infantry, which occupied a small trench—the history of Dronfield and Poplar Grove repeating itself in Manchuria. Another column was defied by a handful of Infantry at Niu-chuang. Finally, at Ying-kou, after the repulse of one Russian column by a precipitately de-trained batch of Japanese Infantry, Mishchenko, with 1,500 men, made a night attack on the railway-station, held by 300 Japanese Infantry. His dispositions were painfully crude; he was repulsed with heavy loss, the retirement, says Colonel Shisnikoff, was “an utter rout,” and that was the end of the raid. Contrast the Boer night attacks, so rarely, even when unsuccessful, suffering serious loss, so often highly successful. The results of the raid, a few transports burnt and some trivial demolitions on the railway, may be regarded as nil. The retreat to the base was precipitate, headlong, and what was the reason for the retreat? The rumour that a force of Japanese Infantry was preparing to block the line of retreat. In view of what had happened, Mishchenko was right not to risk that contingency. But is not all this a pitiful satire on the theory of hybrid training? Observe that the conditions were strictly normal. Raids on communications always have to meet stationary dismounted detachments of the enemy. What, then, is the use of a Cavalry which cannot attack and defeat Infantry by Infantry methods? The only abnormality was the absence of any hostile Japanese Cavalry throughout the whole course of the raid. And we are asked to believe that the grand raison d’être for elaborate and perfect training in the steel is to overthrow the enemy’s Cavalry, who are also, by our official hypothesis, “thoroughly efficient” in the rifle, and who, on this occasion, were not present at all! And after overthrowing them by shock, then there is to be, in General French’s words, “a brilliant field of enterprise for Cavalry as mounted riflemen.” Brilliant! “The story of the raid,” says Colonel Shisnikoff, “is a memory of shame to those who took part in it.” And to crown all, it is General French’s warning to our Cavalry that the Cossacks failed in the war owing to overtraining as mounted riflemen! Quo non mortalia pectora cogis, ferri sacra fames?
These are the Cavalry who, he suggests, were trained on our heretical principles. “Continually getting off their horses!” Is it a disgrace to dismount? Does he regret that Scobell’s Lancers at Bouwer’s Hoek did not use shock with the lance in storming Lotter’s laager? Would Mr. Goldman have had these Russians charge loop-holed buildings on horseback? Once in the course of this raid, they are said to have charged a wall, and one account of the night attack on Ying-kou represents some of the Cossacks as having advanced on foot, “sword in hand.” The true fighting moral of this enterprise was that the Cossacks should have been better riflemen. Contrast the great raids of the Civil War, when the firearm, although so imperfect, was the governing factor. Why were there never any great raids in the Franco-German War? Study Bernhardi, that unconscious satirist of the steel, and you will guess why. Lastly, contrast the Japanese raid (described fully in our “British Officers’ Reports,” ii.)[ii.)] by 172 men, under Colonel Naganuma, who, in the course of an expedition round the Russian rear, beginning on January 9, 1905, lasting more than two months, covering a vast distance, and including several hotly contested fire-actions, achieved the substantial result of blowing up by night the great railway-bridge at Hsin-kai-ho on February 12. The result was to cause Kuropatkin to divert 8,000 men, including a division of Cavalry, from the imminent battle of Mukden for the defence of his communications. This raid and its fellow under Hasegawa were in the style of Stuart and De Wet. Compare, too, the ride of Smuts to Cape Colony, and its subsequent results in diverting troops to that quarter and in actual damage to our forces and communications.[[82]]
Few as the achievements of the Russian Cavalry were, whatever they did achieve was through fire-action. Kuropatkin and all critics praise Samsonoff’s defence of the Yen-tai coal-mines during the battle of Liao-yang, when he checked by fire the Japanese pursuit of Orloff’s beaten division. Rennenkampf, another leader of Cavalry who showed signs of ability, in the course of the great battle of the Sha Ho, led 1,500 Cossacks against the Japanese communications on the upper Tai-tse-ho (October 8 to 12, 1904). Wrangel commends his enterprise, but admits his complete failure. Our “British Officers’ Reports,” vol. i., pp. 664–668, give a full account of the whole episode, and describe the brilliant success of the Second Japanese Cavalry Brigade under Prince Kanin, first in anticipating Rennenkampf at Chaotao, which had been defended by only seventy Infantry for two days, then in driving the Cossacks back and forcing them to uncover one of their own Infantry brigades, which was attacking Pen-hse-hu, on the northern bank of the Tai-tse-ho. Prince Kanin, unmolested by the Cossacks, proceeded to surprise the reserve battalions of this brigade, and in the space of a few minutes killed many hundreds with his six Maxims. The result was the retirement of the Russian left and Stackelberg’s eventual retreat. Needless to say, there was no question of shock between the two Cavalries, nor any suggestion from any quarter that there was any reason for it or possibility of it.
Wrangel credits the Russians with having “adequately solved some strategical tasks”—for instance, the guarding of the passes of the Fen-shui-ling Mountains against Kuroki and Nodzu, and the discovery, but nothing more than the bare discovery, of Kuroki’s flank movement at Liao-yang, and of Nogi’s terrible turning stroke at the battle of Mukden. In other respects they showed the most pitiful weakness at that last great crisis. No less than 25,000 strong, they were outmanœuvred and outfought by two brigades of Japanese Cavalry acting with Infantry. Of course no shock duel, and yet was the effect of the Japanese Cavalry “negative,” in the words of “Cavalry Training”? On the contrary, it was tremendously positive, and with larger numbers might have been as decisive as Sheridan’s interception of Lee in April, 1865. Wrangel gravely remarks that if the Cossacks had first overthrown the Japanese Cavalry a great rôle would have been open to them in resisting Nogi’s main force—not, he goes out of his way to say, with the arme blanche, but with fire-action. The old story! If they could not overcome even the Japanese hybrid Cavalry with fire, how could they overcome Japanese Infantry? As for shock, it is cynical levity to breathe the word in connection with that Titanic fire-struggle of March, 1905.