Our Cavalry

by Michael Frederic Rimington

FIRST PART

It is related that its owner tried as an experiment to find out what was the smallest amount on which a horse could work. When he had reduced the animal to one straw per diem, the experiment ceased, as the horse died.

The reader, constantly bearing in mind the above anecdote (since, if great generals have overlooked in the past the moral of the tale, there is no reason why others should not do so in future), may proceed to the subject of this chapter, but not without the recurrent thought, that, however dashing the conception of the use of cavalry in a campaign, this one point must be foremost. What will the cavalry horses live on? Horses cannot live on nothing. Few survive if put for a prolonged period on ½-grain rations and no hay or grazing, if such is followed by work.

How far motor vehicles carrying supplies have changed the aspect of affairs in regard to this question is at present a moot point. Undoubtedly the effect of the domination of the air by man has materially affected the question of obtaining information.

The principle, “that an army should place in its front the whole of its available cavalry forces from the very beginning of a campaign,” to some extent arises from the desirability of an undisturbed concentration for one’s own army, and also the advantage of checking that of the enemy.

Next in order will be the desire of the commander-in-chief of the army to have definite information of the enemy’s movements whilst at the same time his own movements are covered. This will enable him to direct the movements of his army, whilst still at a distance from the enemy’s advanced guards, and effect concentration for battle neither too soon nor too late (since both of these contingencies entail grave inconveniences), but at the right moment.

But when it comes to practical politics, it is plain, and must be regarded as a principle, that a cavalry brigade, division or corps cannot be relied upon to perform efficiently the duties of policeman and detective at one and the same time. The duty of the latter would carry the former away from his beat.

The French cavalry in 1870, though they possessed what Ardant du Picq describes as the true “Casse cou”[47] readiness to charge (and by the bye, that is a portion of the cavalry spirit), almost entirely lacked skilled direction by the higher leaders. This fault was no doubt due, in some degree, to the three arms training each in separate water-tight compartments, and not on a large and comprehensive scale in peace, precisely as Langlois says of us in reference to our army’s work in South Africa: “The English took no steps in peace to create and strengthen any union between the arms, and evil overtook them.”

Direction by the higher leaders will always be lacking, where those leaders, in peace time, are unable to divorce themselves from the surroundings and prejudices of their own particular arm, whatever it may be, and to enter whole-heartedly and unreservedly into the spirit of the Napoleonic maxim (No. 47): “Infantry, cavalry, and artillery are nothing without each other.”

Be that as it may, after the 1870–71 war the French cavalry had a moving spirit in General Galliffet, and he was well supported by some of the cleverest French military writers. They dissected French and German cavalry action in 1870–71 (and that of cavalry in other wars), laying bare the mistakes and failures of the cavalry of both armies. They saw what was wanted, higher direction and co-ordination of the work of cavalry, so that the two functions of cavalry, information and security (prior to its rôle on the battlefield), might be realized to their full extent. Their deduction from the campaigns of the Napoleonic period was, that that great leader and organizer had discerned the impossibility of co-ordinating these duties; that in his earlier campaigns there were two great units of war, the cavalry of army corps and a corps of reserve cavalry;[48] the latter was composed of numerous light cavalry, acting about a day in front of the columns of the main body. Again, that in 1812, corresponding with the formation of groups of armies, the corps of cavalry was created to act independently, in advance of the general movement of the armies, making a third great unit. They arrived at the conclusion that war brings into play three great units, each of which requires its special cavalry.