Acting in accordance with these orders, we may picture the cavalry arrived at a point some twelve or fifteen miles away, where the leader may very well find it is by no means all plain sailing. His progress may be blocked at some bridge or defile, and, whilst he is endeavouring to push aside the opposition, reinforcements, including artillery, come upon the scene, and he finds that to avoid heavy loss he must draw off the larger portion of his force in order to make a still longer detour. This wastes several hours and results in a drawn fight, or, if he does get nearer to his objective, he finds that, with timely warning given, the enemy are well able to hold him off.
Meanwhile the flank left open, or practically denuded of mobile troops, has every chance of being turned; all the tendency of modern fighting is towards extension and dispersion, whilst the desperate counter-attack is the theme of every writer. We can imagine no more galling occurrence than a counter-attack,[36] thrust in on one’s own flank (more probably than not, the very flank from which the cavalry have been sent), and, in their absence, carried through with decisive results. These wide turning movements, or rather action against the flank and rear of the enemy, are in the nature of putting all one’s eggs in one basket, and not infrequently taking it for granted that the enemy will not stand his ground.
It has been very well said that cavalry is an arm of opportunity, and opportunities are most likely to occur where actual fighting is going on. Against the Boers, who had no idea of counter-attack, these turning movements came off; against well-led troops, suitably disposed in depth,[37] and avoiding wide dispersion, their success is very doubtful.
Napoleon said:
Cavalry charges were good at the beginning, during the course of, and at the end of a battle. They should always be made, if possible, on the flanks of infantry, especially when this last is engaged in front.—Napoleon’s Maxim, No. 50.
He would no doubt go further now and speak of the intervention of cavalry with horse artillery and machine guns as likely to turn the scale in the crisis of battle.
But Napoleon would recognize that it is by rapidly prolonging their own flank against being turned, or by enveloping or enfilading the enemy’s line by participation in the counter-attack, or by work such as that done by the German horse artillery and cavalry at Loigny-Poupry on December 2, 1870 (late in the war when the German cavalry had learnt their lesson), that cavalry show to advantage. There 2150 German sabres and 24 guns, acting in combination, first dashed aside the opposition offered by the French in villages on the left flank of their line of battle, and then, sweeping round, proceeded to threaten and shell the left rear of the French infantry line—good work, and showing the value of mobile forces boldly thrown at a flank, but lacking in the final stage in that resolute determination which gives full value to such a movement, and this, no doubt, because they had not been trained in peace to act together.[38]
This leads one to consider what was the training of our own cavalry subsequent to 1870. Was it not the general tendency of our authorities and tactical experts to discredit the action of cavalry on the battlefield, without considering whether the armament, organization, and previous training of the cavalry of both France and Germany were such as to lead to success?
These points all influenced the course of the actions in the first months of the 1870 war in the most remarkable manner. Again, was the leading, except for a few bright exceptions, satisfactory? French and German writers on cavalry plainly intimate that the direction of cavalry enterprise by the higher leaders, and the action of the cavalry leaders, were distinctly disappointing.[39]