Having in view the above consideration, cavalry should not be prepared to forgo their horse artillery in a great general engagement, since it foredooms them to the inaction of the French and German cavalry divisions of the war of 1870, or perhaps to their comparative failure and losses, when, unsupported by horse artillery fire, they attacked infantry columns to cover the retreat of their own infantry.

Special arrangements of this kind are not made, and we know also, too well, that “No man can serve two masters.”

The latest German regulations appear, therefore, to have been formulated on sound reasoning.

CHAPTER XII
HORSE ARTILLERY FIRE EFFECT COMPARED WITH RIFLE FIRE

Henderson in Science of War, written in 1893–1902, asked the question, whether the necessary fire power should be found by the cavalry itself or by a body of mounted riflemen attached to the brigade or the division? and answered it by proposing trained mounted infantry. To the view that this fire power had better be supplied by the horse artillery he gives little or no consideration. Machine guns are also more or less ignored, and yet these in common with horse artillery are what the cavalry attack requires most in support.

Those who have frequently had to rely on fire to cover a mounted advance will agree that the fire of two hundred riflemen at eight rounds a minute for five minutes is not to be compared in efficacy with the shells of a Q.F. horse artillery battery. Their comparative value would work out in projectiles as follows:

Guns. Rounds. Bullets. Minutes.Bullets.
6×10×236×5= 70,800.
Rifles. Rounds. Minutes.Bullets.
200×8 ...×5= 8000.

That is, the riflemen fire less than 1/8 of the number of projectiles fired by a battery, or 1770 riflemen shoot as many projectiles as a battery in five minutes.