The Thirteenth Hussars in the Great War

by H. Mortimer Durand

Truly, the day of Cavalry seemed to be over, and this was the opinion frequently expressed at the end of the century. Their day was not over.

It will probably have been noticed that so far we have been dealing only or mainly with the question of Cavalry on the battlefield. But their work lies not only on the battlefield—indeed, it may be doubted whether their work there, however great, has not always been of less value than the services they have been able to render in other ways.

The operations of war are generally treated by military writers as consisting of two distinct branches—those leading up to battle, and those of battle itself. The former are of great variety and scope, involving all the preparations and manœuvres which will result in bringing upon the battlefield an army with “every possible advantage of numbers, ground, supplies, and moral” over the army of the enemy. These operations are the province of “strategy.” The operations of the battle itself, when the opposed armies have actually come into touch, are the province of “tactics.” The latter are the more picturesque, and naturally appeal to the fighting spirit of the soldier; but the former are often, if not usually, of the greater importance to the issue of a war. “Strategy,” says Henderson, “is at least one half, and the more important half, of the art of war”; and he says elsewhere: “An army may even be almost uniformly victorious in battle, and yet ultimately be compelled to yield.”

Now it may safely be asserted that with regard to strategical operations there has never been any serious question as to the great value of Cavalry in any war confined to the land. To quote Colonel Denison, in “their fitness for scouting, reconnoitring, raiding, &c., Cavalry have always been the foremost arm and without rival. In covering an advance, in pursuing a retreating foe, their capacity has always been unequalled.” Henderson, himself an Infantry officer, states that “the Cavalry is par excellence the strategical arm,” that “it depends on the Cavalry, and on the Cavalry alone, whether the Commander of an army marches blindfold through the ‘fog of war,’ or whether it is the opposing General who is reduced to that disastrous plight.” And Von Bernhardi, discussing the future of Cavalry, says, “It is in the strategical handling of the Cavalry that by far the greatest possibilities lie.” He admits that on the battlefield and in retreat their rôle can only be a subordinate one. “But for reconnaissance and screening, for operations against the enemy’s communications, for the pursuit of a beaten enemy, and all similar operations of warfare, the Cavalry is, and remains, the principal arm.” These passages were written before the aeroplane was used in war, but they show clearly that until then—that is, throughout the nineteenth century—Cavalry was still as necessary as ever for the proper working of a campaign.

And further, it may be pointed out that even with regard to the battlefield, horsemen armed and trained in a different way might conceivably be of greater use than horsemen depending solely or mainly upon shock and the arme blanche.

This was proved, though the majority of Continental soldiers would never open their eyes to the fact, by the fighting in the American Civil War. Henderson, with clearer vision, writes of this great conflict: “So brilliant were the achievements of the Cavalry, Federal and Confederate, that in the minds of military students they have tended in a certain measure to obscure the work of the other arms.” No doubt many of these achievements were rather of a strategical than a tactical nature, but many were not. The American Cavalry was from first to last constantly used for actual fighting, and in numberless instances its value as a battle arm was amply demonstrated. It would be impossible to enumerate them here, but Henderson expressly declares, for example, that “there is no finer instance ... of effective intervention (by Cavalry) on the field of battle than Sheridan’s handling of his divisions, an incident most unaccountably overlooked by European tacticians, when Early’s army was broken into fragments, principally by the vigour of the Cavalry, in the valley of the Shenandoah.” The fact was that, adapting themselves to the new conditions brought about by rifled firearms, the Americans had created a mounted service which could fight both on foot and on horseback, with the rifle or the sword or the pistol; “they used fire and l’arme blanche in the closest and most effective combination, against both Cavalry and Infantry.” Assuredly Cavalry was not yet a negligible arm in battle.

The closing years of the century saw the beginning of another war in which the horse and his rider were again very prominent. The Boers, who made so gallant and protracted a fight against the vast resources of England, were all mounted men, and it was not until the British forces opposed to them also consisted in a large measure of mounted men that their resistance was broken down. They differed in many respects from the American Cavalry. The latter were trained to fight on foot if necessary, but preferred fighting on horseback whenever they could, though they fought with the pistol rather than the sword. The Boers fought mainly, almost entirely, on foot. Their arms and training were inconsistent with fighting from the saddle. They were in fact rather mobile riflemen than anything else. Nevertheless the fact remains that they were mounted men, and that a large part of their value lay in their being so. For many of the essential duties of Cavalry, for scouting and collecting information, for raids on their enemy’s communications, for the capture of his trains and guns, for covering a retirement, they were exceptionally well fitted. Henderson, writing of the duties of Cavalry, says: “But most important perhaps of all its functions are the manœuvres which so threaten the enemy’s line of retreat that he is compelled to evacuate his position, and those which cut off his last avenue of escape. A Cavalry skilfully handled, as at Appomattox or Paardeberg, may bring about the crowning triumph of grand tactics—viz., the hemming in of a force so closely that it has either to attack at a disadvantage or surrender.” The example of Paardeberg is one in which the triumph was due to the British Cavalry, but the Boers had some triumphs of the same kind, for instance at Nicholson’s Nek, and they were very near to gaining one which might have shaken the Empire. If Ladysmith had fallen, with its garrison of 12,000 men, as at one time seemed probable, the disaster would undoubtedly have been due in the main to the mobility of the Boers, whose rapid movements on horseback enabled them not only to drive in and besiege White’s troops, but afterwards to hold up for months, with inferior numbers, Buller’s relieving force, while still maintaining their grip on the starving garrison. In fact it may be said that even on the actual field of battle they fought partly as Cavalry—Von Bernhardi goes so far as to say “exclusively as Cavalry,”—for though they almost invariably dismounted to use their rifles, yet it was by the speed of their horses that they were able to extend their flanks, and, galloping out to any threatened point, form a fresh front against any turning movement. Our slow-moving Infantry had no chance of getting round and enveloping them, but was forced time after time to undertake desperate frontal attacks upon the lines, often more or less entrenched, which their rapidity of manœuvre had made it possible for them to take up. Altogether, the fighting value of the 50,000 Burghers with whom Paul Kruger set out to defy Great Britain, was doubled or trebled by the fact that they were mounted men. It made them in their own country, and perhaps would have made them anywhere, a formidable fighting force.

This was not clearly understood on the Continent of Europe, but it was understood in England. It had a great effect upon the views of our leading soldiers with regard to the future of Cavalry, and the subsequent Russo-Japanese War did not in any way contradict the lessons drawn from the campaigns in America and South Africa.

To sum up this chapter, it may be said with confidence that when the Great War broke out the value of Cavalry, both as a strategical arm and on the field of battle, had been demonstrated by the experience of three thousand years. During that time it had fluctuated, especially with regard to the battlefield, but it had always been great. For some centuries, especially since the development of efficient firearms, the tendency had been for the Infantry to oust the horsemen from their pride of place in the actual shock of armies, and by the end of the nineteenth century the supremacy of the Infantry in this respect had been generally acknowledged. But even so it had not been shown that Cavalry, properly armed and trained, were incapable of joining with effect in the decision of battles, and the American and South African Wars had given reason to believe that it certainly could do so. Its great strategical value was not disputed. Clearly, therefore, Cavalry was still a necessary and important part of any efficient army—one of the most important. Whether for strategical duties or for full victory in battle, the other arms could not do without the horsemen.

No doubt the value of Cavalry might be altered in the future, as it had been in the past, by new developments in the art of war, but such was the position at that time.