DIAGRAMS

NO. PAGE
I.Defensive and Offensive Flanks[40]
II.The Two Forms of Attack[43]
III.Column of Regimental Masses compared with Column of Squadrons[45]
IV.The Formation for the Attack[47]
V.Squadrons en bondes[60]
VI.Cavalry Brigade in Action[64]
VII.The Passage of a Defile[67]
VIII.Cavalry Attack on Dismounted Men holding a Kopje[104]

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

“We study the past to foresee the future.”

In these bustling days of headline-up-to-date newspapers, one shrinks from reminding one’s readers that Xenophon gave excellent advice to cavalry trainers and leaders—advice which a cavalryman will recognize is quite as applicable to-day as it was in those distant ages; since details with regard to grooming horses on hard stones, exercising cavalry in rough ground, and so on are by no means out of date. There is every reason to believe that Alexander, and later Rome and Carthage at their zenith as military nations, had proportionately as highly-trained cavalry as is possessed by any nation of to-day. Those who have fought in rearguards and running fights realize that the Parthian method of fighting must have required the highest training and moral. The cavalry of the predominant nations were drawn from those who kept horses for their own sport and amusement, and for the gratification of their pride, and who felt they were better fighting men on a horse. The descendants of the horse-lovers of those ages are with us to-day; they are those who love danger, excitement, and pace, and who find in the blood-horse an animal which shares their love for these, and will generously sacrifice its life or limbs in the co-partnership.

Those who have never felt the sensation of a really good horse bounding and stretching away under them, and the consequent elation, the wonder as to “what could stop us?” cannot grasp what a cavalry soldier’s feelings are in the “Charge.”

Following the centuries which saw the final success of the ordered phalanx of Rome, time after time the more savage races of horsemen—Attila with his Hunnish squadrons or Abdur-Rahman with Moslem hordes—drive all before them, anticipating the flight of peace-loving, easy-going farmers and traders, living on the country and carrying off what pleases them.

Then held sway