[L] On active service, when a gun sticks in very heavy ground, it has been usual to place a gunner upon every unmounted horse, and, if necessary, behind every driver on the mounted ones. By this additional weight or power a gun has repeatedly been extricated and brought into action.
How to Hobble and Anchor Horses.
"Hard pummelling," said the Duke of Wellington to the Guards at Waterloo, "Hard pummelling, Gentlemen! Well, we must just see who'll pummel the hardest."
During the reign of Brown Bess the great battles of Europe were decided very much in the manner above described.
Two armies met on a battle-field, or two fleets on "the wide, rude sea," as in England two prize-fighters have entered a small space encircled by ropes, to "see who'll pummel the hardest." In all three cases, endurance, indomitable courage, and physical strength sooner or later conquered.
As, however, in mechanics, a timid, puny boy, with the assistance of a pulley, could drag towards him Mars or Hercules, so must the new arms of precision lately invented, give victory, not to the bravest or the strongest, but to whichever of two combatant armies shall exercise their deadly weapons with the greatest amount of science.
And, as fortification has justly been defined "the art of enabling a small body of men to resist for a considerable time the attack of a greater number," so will, in future, the science of war consist in the art of concealing by every possible artifice the general commanding, his staff, his artillery, cavalry, and infantry, from the fire of rifled cannon and Minié muskets, of which, when properly directed, it may be said that almost "every bullet will have its billet."
On this principle, if England were to be invaded, it would be the endeavour and the duty of the general on whose intellectual powers the destiny of the empire would hang, to direct his army to take against their enemy (after, in spite of his utmost efforts, they had effected a landing), not, as in by-gone days, "the field," but rather possession of the banks, hedges, and ditches thereof; to make every great mansion, building, or village, by loop-holing their walls, a Hougoumont; every railway embankment a covert-way and parapet; every hollow road a protector or ambuscade for cavalry or infantry; the scarped summit of every hill a battery; in short, by avoiding exposure, and by every means that ingenuity can devise, to make the invaders, during every step of their advance, smart under a lash, and fall from blows, administered by a nimble, intellectual army which they feel, which they are literally dying to see, but which is skilfully continuing, out of their reach, to decimate their ranks, in order that when the great battle is given, the invading army—though infinitely superior when it disembarked—shall be reduced to a force inferior in number to that of the stern, steady, stalwart defenders of their native soil.
It is evident, however, that to carry on war on the above principle, it will be necessary that cavalry, in their equipment as well as drill, should undergo a complete revolution, with a view to enable them in future, in addition to the use of their sabres, to help artillery with their lassos,—act as mounted infantry,—in short, make themselves generally useful; for, at present, they form on a field of battle so large a target, that under existing circumstances they would have, either out of harm's way to sit on their horses all day long waiting for an opportunity not likely to occur, or be destroyed by rifled guns and muskets before their services could be required: in fact, as it would be impossible for them to charge men in squares, or even in position armed with muskets of unerring aim, they could be of little use until after the battle was won, by following up the enemy in their retreat.