By this adroit manœuvre the enemy succeeded in taking over two hundred prisoners, capturing the guns of the 12-pounder field battery,—which had not been brought into play for the simple reason that only ammunition for 9-pounders had been collected in the town,—and seizing a large quantity of stores and ammunition of various kinds.
This success gave the enemy the key to the situation.
As on sea, so on land, our blundering defensive policy had resulted in awful disaster. Sufficient attention had never been paid to detail, and the firm-rooted idea that Britain could never be invaded had caused careless indifference to minor matters of vital importance to the stability of our Empire.
The contrast between the combined tactics of the enemy and those of our forces was especially noticeable when the cavalry patrol of the British flying column was captured on the Cowfield road and the column defeated. The commander of the column, a well-known officer, unfortunately, like many others, had had very little experience of combined tactics, and looked upon cavalry not merely as "the eyes and ears of an army," but as the army itself. It was this defect that was disastrous. For many years past it had never appeared quite clear whether British cavalry were intended to act en masse in warfare, or simply as scouts or mounted infantry, therefore their training had been uncertain. The Home establishment of our cavalry was supposed to be about 12,000 men, but owing to a parsimonious administration only about half that number had horses, and in some corps less than a half. Another glaring defect was the division of many regiments into detachments stationed in various towns, the inevitable result of this being that many such detachments were without regimental practice for months, and there were many who had not manœuvred with a force of all arms for years!
Army organisation proved a miserable failure.
The supply of ammunition was totally inadequate, and a disgrace to a nation which held its head above all others. It was true that depôts had been established at various centres, yet with strange oversight no provision had been made for the work of ammunition trains.
Originally it had been intended that men for this most important duty should be found by the Reserves, and that the horses should be those privately registered; nevertheless it was found necessary at the very last moment to weaken our artillery by detailing experienced men for duty with the ammunition column. Many of the horses which were registered for service were found to be totally unfit, and very few of the remainder had been previously trained. In the case of those which were required for the cavalry regiments—nearly six thousand—the best men in the regiments had to be told off at the very beginning of the invasion to hurriedly train and prepare these animals for service, when they should have been available to proceed to any part of the kingdom at twenty-four hours' notice. By such defects mobilisation was foredoomed to failure.
The scheme, instead of being so arranged as to be carried out without confusion, resulted in muddle and farcical humiliation.
Again, the infantry, owing to the recent departure of the Indian drafts, had been considerably weakened, many battalions being found on mobilisation very disorganised and inefficient. As an instance, out of one battalion at Aldershot, which was on paper 1000 strong, 200 had been sent away to India, while of the remainder more than half had only seen twelve months' service, and a large percentage were either under eighteen years of age or were "special enlistments," namely, below the minimum standard of height.
Such a battalion compared very unfavourably with the majority of Volunteer regiments,—those of the Stafford Brigade, for instance,—the average service of the men in those regiments being over five years, and the average age twenty-seven years. British officers had long ago foreseen all these defects, and many others, yet they had preserved an enforced silence. They themselves were very inefficiently trained in manœuvring, for, with one or two exceptions, there were no stations in the kingdom where forces were sufficiently numerous to give the majority of the superior officers practice in handling combined bodies of troops.