The lectures are to be given from private notes, without any prescribed hand-book.
[V. TACTICS.]
In the First Cœtus.
The Students of the first cœtus are to receive a thorough instruction in elementary tactics, and the employment of the different arms, both separately and united. The object is not merely that they may pass the Officer’s examination, but that they may gain true general ideas on these subjects, which ought not to be strange to a well-informed officer of any arm. A frequent illustration of the lectures delivered, by examples and problems for actual ground, is particularly recommended.
Lectures on tactics are closely connected with those on artillery, fortification, rules of the service; and in certain respects the lectures on plan-drawing and veterinary art, as well as practical exercises in surveying.
More especially—
a. In artillery: Construction of cannon, of small-arms and side-arms, choice and training of horses for artillery service; organization of the artillery; regulation for the artillery on march and in camp; use of artillery in the field, as regards the specialties of its position, movement, and mode of fighting. The use of artillery in general, in attack and defense, with the use of the reserve artillery in more important battles, in village skirmishes, passage of rivers and defiles, and field fortifications, belongs to the lectures on artillery, but only in the second cœtus; these subjects are therefore to be treated historically with tactics, as far as knowledge of them is required for the Officer’s examination. As a general principle, however, all the relations of detail in the constitution or the specialties of artillery are to be treated in the lectures on that science; in the tactics, on the contrary, only the more general relations which concern all the arms of the service, and where the artillery acts in union with infantry and cavalry.
b. In Fortification; the designing and construction of field-works and all means of obstruction. The manner in which ground in general, and the given position in particular, is to be used for the throwing up field-works. Attack and defense of field-works. Complete exposition of the art of sieges.
c. Veterinary art. Natural history, physiology, and general nourishment of the horse.
d. Plan-drawing and surveying. Everything that is to be said on the general physical laws of the form of the earth’s surface, and specially on a knowledge of topography and its representation.