Wrangel himself throws some light on these perplexing conundrums. It is on page 24. He has just been deploring the fiasco of Mishchenko’s raid, and has added that throughout the war the Russian Cavalry showed none of that “desire for action” which “we recognize as the first and most important attribute of our arm.” (As though, forsooth, it was not the first attribute of Infantry and Artillery!) We await resignedly the usual Cavalry dictum—that they were ill-trained for shock, and were “continually getting off their horses.” Not a bit of it. He goes on thus:
“On the other hand, a just critic, without any further ado, must admit that the prevailing conditions made it extraordinarily difficult for the Cavalry masses of Kuropatkin to play the part of Cavalry in battle. Indeed, we do not mind openly declaring that, in our opinion, no other European Cavalry, supported by the principles of the Cavalry tactics of the day, would have been in a position to perform anything of note on the Manchurian battle-fields” (“Cavalry in the Russo-Japanese War,” p. 23).
He goes on to say that Cavalry cannot attack “Infantry masses” (but there were no masses during Mishchenko’s raid) unless utterly demoralized, and that “as long as the two battle-fronts are struggling with one another, the Cavalry arm is obliged to respect unrestrained the emptiness of the modern battle-field, ... which is ruled by the magazine rifle.”
Really, what are we coming to? It was something of a shock to hear Bernhardi saying that Cavalry had been driven from their place of honour on the battle-fields of the plains, but that this arm, whose soul is offence, is to respect unrestrained the emptiness of the modern battle-field is surely a counsel of appalling levity. Mounted riflemen, at any rate, do not carry respect for the dangers of the battle-field to this length. If they had, there would have been no war in South Africa at all. Our foes would have respected the emptiness of the veld from Pretoria to Cape Town.
Wrangel marches cheerfully on towards the inevitable reductio ad absurdum:
“As the lion-hearted Japanese Infantry never gave the Russian dragoons or Cossacks the pleasure of retreating in disorder to exemplify the last-mentioned principles, it remained only for the latter to seek out the hostile Cavalry. This also the Russian Cavalry divisions did not succeed in doing—whether through their own fault remains for the present undecided” (ibid., p. 29).
This is not sarcastic; it is the sincere thought of a serious Cavalry soldier, who believes in the arme blanche. Here is the admission, frank and unabashed, that Cavalry, because they are deficient in fire-power, are only formidable to Cavalry, who are equally deficient in fire-power; that nobody cares a snap of the fingers for the lance or sword but those who, choosing to carry those weapons, agree to fear them. Clearly, even this exception is no exception, because one or both parties may by caprice or design break the compact and take to the firearm, which will then “rule the battle-field.” In another passage on page 17, when commenting on the failure of the Russian Cavalry to use an “active screen” in the phase of strategical reconnaissance—i.e., in non-battle-field encounters of the rival Cavalries—he gives as a cause the fact that the “Japanese Cavalry seldom committed themselves to shock tactics”—precisely the opposite cause alleged by General French—namely, that the Russians themselves were “continually getting off their horses.” Wrangel perceives that the steel weapon is lost if this sort of thing goes on; so in his final conclusion, quoted in my last chapter (p. 316), he urges his own Cavalry to remain deaf to the “so-called” intelligence of the advocates of fire training, which is impossible to combine with shock training, but to give the carbine an emphatically secondary place, and concentrate on shock. If all Cavalries agree on this self-denying ordinance, then, he implies, ground permitting, and far from the unseemly fire-scuffles of the battle-fields, we shall have, if both sides play fair, some grand spectates of shock. There is less mental chaos in Wrangel than in most exponents of shock, because he ignores the historical achievements of mounted riflemen, and therefore feels no need for compromise; but he cannot altogether escape self-contradiction. In order to proffer an illustration of the theory that shock should decide inter-Cavalry combats, he instances the first in the war—at Tschondschu (Tiessu) on March 28, 1904 (pp. 51–53)—a small affair where six squadrons of Cossacks were driven away from a walled town by the fire-action of three squadrons of Japanese Cavalry. We read that the Russians, being in larger force, should have “obtained a brilliant result” with the arme blanche, and also that the Japanese, after forcing the Russians to accept fire-action, should have charged and defeated the Russians. At the end we discover that the writer has no knowledge of the terrain beyond the fact that the town was situated in a “mountainous district,” from which fact he infers that there must have been “ground over which the Japanese could have advanced unseen” for their charge. Truly a startling variation of the usual complaint of lack of “Cavalry” ground!
It is greatly to be regretted that Count Wrangel’s ignorance of the attainments of British Cavalry permits him to class them among other European Cavalries as equally incompetent to have succeeded better than the Russians on the Manchurian battle-fields. Like de Negrier’s biting criticism of the French Cavalry, the pronouncement throws a strange light on our own theory of imitating the armament of Continental armies. Our Cavalry have very good firearms, and are, so far as time allows, trained to use them a good deal better than the Austrians permit. And they can use them well, as they showed in South Africa, where they did engage in the “battle,” and as they have shown in our recent manœuvres. But, that point made clear, I make no apology whatever for quoting at length the Austrian critic in a chapter starting originally from an appreciation of Manchurian problems by our foremost Cavalry authority, General French. The fundamental line of reasoning in both cases is precisely the same, but Wrangel is ruthlessly logical and careless of the logical consequences. General French’s reasoning leads him inexorably to precisely the same conclusion as Wrangel—namely, that steel-armed Cavalry can be formidable only to steel-armed Cavalry. Both men believe in the indispensable shock duel, both underrate the rifle as a source of dash—for Cavalry. General French sneers at it in the words “continually getting off their horses”; Count Wrangel does not sneer at it. He respects it so much as to banish Cavalry from the sphere of fire altogether, for clean and decent encounters with a less formidable weapon. This is the inevitable tendency of the present reaction in England. “Cavalry Training” and Bernhardi’s book admit, no doubt, of the most liberal interpretation in the right direction by officers who resolutely work out to their logical conclusion the directions given for fire-action, and ignore the conflicting directions for the steel. But whence is to come this liberal interpretation, when high Cavalry authorities denounce leanings towards fire as a betrayal of the “Cavalry spirit,” and, so far from depreciating the sword, add the lance?
Let us turn to the Japanese Cavalry. They were a very small force. Outside the thirteen, and eventually seventeen divisional regiments of 420 men apiece, which seem to have been in excess of divisional requirements (for Infantry did much of the work required), there were only two independent brigades of three regiments apiece—2,300 sabres together. The troopers carried good firearms, though of too short a range, but were trained principally for shock, and used the antiquated German drill-books denounced by Bernhardi. Lances wisely had been left at home, and only swords taken to the war. The men, constitutionally, were bad horsemen. Their horses were poor and were overloaded.[[83]] The astonishing thing is that they did so well under these conditions. As soon as they grasped the fact that fire governed action, the talent for fire which they shared with the Infantry, coupled with great keenness, was their salvation. Enormously outmatched in numbers, they overawed and outfought the enemy’s Cavalry; they fulfilled sufficiently well, at any rate, in conjunction with the Infantry, the task of reconnaissance, both protective and offensive—and, in short, took a substantial part in enabling Japan to win the war. Needless to say, they were just as “lion-hearted”—to use Wrangel’s expression—as other arms, but, having been trained and armed on false principles, naturally did not win laurels as great as those of the Infantry. Nevertheless, there is truth, I believe, in what Wrangel—always frank, at whatever cost—says in the following passage:
“The Japanese Cavalry, scarcely without exception, carried out their performances with the carbine, and in close touch with their own Infantry. To this circumstance, without doubt, we have to ascribe the principal reason why there has been hesitation among military critics in giving full recognition to their activity. A certain narrow-mindedness obstructs the means used to gain the end, which in no way is inclined to further the interests of the arm” (pp. 49, 50).