A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms: Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry

by Francis J. Lippitt

IX.—General Remarks.

1. Besides its uses on the field of battle, cavalry may render most important service in completing the destruction of beaten corps, or compelling their surrender, and so enable us to secure the great strategic objects of the campaign. Thus, after the battle of Waterloo, it was the Prussian cavalry that completed the dispersion of the French army, and prevented it from rallying. And, but for Napoleon's ill fortune in respect to Grouchy, in that battle, he would, to all appearance, have succeeded in accomplishing his plan of campaign, which was, to separate the English from the Prussians, beat them in detail, and complete their destruction with his twenty thousand cavalry.

2. The battles of the late War of the Rebellion, the earlier ones, at least, were mostly indecisive. One chief cause of this was, that neither side had a sufficient force of true cavalry to enable it to complete a victory, to turn a defeat into a rout, and drive the enemy effectually from the field. The cavalry charges were generally such as mounted infantry could have just as well made; charges in which the pistol and carbine played the principal part, instead of the spur and sabre. It was not until the fight at Brandy Station, in June, 1863, that sabres were used, to any extent, at close quarters. Thus, neither of the contending armies was able to break up and disperse, destroy, or capture its enemy's infantry masses, in the manner practised in Napoleon's great wars, not having, to any considerable extent, that description of force called Cavalry of the Line, which alone is capable of effecting these results by its solid and compact formations, its skilful, yet rapid manœuvring, and its crashing charges.

3. European cavalry of the line is divided into Heavy and Light. Heavy cavalry is heavily armed; that is, their weapons are larger and heavier than those of light cavalry, and to these weapons, carbines, in most of the corps, are added. Some of the corps wear steel or brass cuirasses; and the men and horses are of the largest size.

In Light cavalry, the only weapons are the sabre and pistol; and the men and horses are light and active, rather than strong and large.

Lancers are considered a medium between Heavy and Light cavalry.

4. Great as may be the advantages of a large force of regular cavalry of the line, there were serious objections to its being raised at the opening of the late war.

(1.) The theatre of war presented nowhere any of those wide and level plains so common in Europe, and on which cavalry masses are able to produce such decisive effects in battle. On the contrary, the ground was almost everywhere so rugged and mountainous, or else so densely wooded, as to be extremely unfavorable to the movements of cavalry of this description.

(2.) Since the introduction of the new rifled arms, exposing cavalry masses to a deadly fire at far greater distances than ever before known, a fire often reaching to the reserves, it seemed doubtful whether the manœuvring and charging in heavy, compact masses, which formerly rendered cavalry of the line so formidable, would any longer be practicable.

(3.) The comparative cost of this kind of force is so great, that, if it had been raised and kept up on the scale required, the expense of this war, enormous as it has been, would have been vastly augmented. Three years are required for the thorough training and instruction of the men and horses; so that it would not have been until the fourth year of the war that we could begin, even, to reap the fruits of so enormous an outlay.