German Influence on British Cavalry. Erskine Childers

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      Anyone familiar with the history of the war must have felt deep bewilderment at the General's choice, for purposes of illustration, of this action, which has not generally been held to have reflected high credit on the Cavalry.

      It is needless to discuss the battle in detail, because the accounts of it are set forth clearly and accurately enough in the "Official" and Times Histories, and, inter alia, in Mr. Goldman's work, "With French in South Africa." As a very small and unimportant episode in the battle, there was certainly a charge by a whole brigade of regular Cavalry against some Boers whom the Times History describes as a "party," and whom Mr. Goldman, who was present, estimates at 200 in number; but it is perfectly clear, from all accounts, (1) that the casualties resulting from the charge were too few to deserve record; (2) that the charge had no appreciable effect upon the fortunes of the day; (3) that the Cavalry on the flank in question suffered serious checks and losses at the hands of a greatly inferior force; and (4) that Sir John French's turning force, like General Broadwood's turning force on the opposite flank, completely failed to perform the supremely important intercepting mission entrusted to them by Lord Roberts, and failed through weakness in mobile fire-action.

      Sir John French's version of the action teems with inaccuracies. All the cardinal facts, undisputed facts to be found in any history, upon which the judgment of the reader as to the efficacy of the steel must depend, are omitted. There are no figures of relative numbers, no times, no description of the terrain, no statement of casualties. I will instance only one, but the greatest, error of fact. He writes that "the rôle of the Cavalry division was to bring pressure to bear on the right flank of the Boer army, in order to enable Lord Roberts to advance across the river and attack the main Boer forces."

      This is a highly misleading account of Roberts's tactical scheme for the battle. Eight thousand Boers, disposed in a chain of scattered detachments, held no less than twenty-five miles of country along the north bank of the Zand River, their right resting on the railway, which ran at right angles to the river. We had 38,000 men, including 12,000 mounted men, of whom 5,000 were regular Cavalry. To have used the mounted Arm merely to "bring pressure to bear" upon the Boer flanks would have been a course altogether unworthy of Lord Roberts and the great army he controlled. He set no such limited aim before the Cavalry. He planned to surround and destroy the enemy by enveloping movements on both flanks, and gave explicit orders to that effect. French, with 4,000 men, had orders to ride round the Boer right flank, and seize the railway in their rear at Ventersburg Road. The same objective was given to the turning force under Broadwood, 3,000 strong, on the Boer left. Both enveloping operations failed. To "press" the Boers into retreat was nothing. They must have retreated anyhow, in the face of an army five times their superior. The point was to prevent them from retreating into safety, to cut off their retreat, and with mounted turning forces together nearly equal to the whole Boer force this aim was perfectly feasible, given one condition, which was not fulfilled—that our mounted troops, headed by our premier and professional mounted troops, the Cavalry, could use their rifles and horses approximately as well as the Boers.

      Now let us come to the heart of the matter.

      Let us waive all criticism of the accuracy and completeness of Sir John French's narrative, and test the grounds of his belief that it was owing to their fear of the sword that the Boers gave way when Dickson's brigade charged. The Cavalry carried firearms as well as swords, and outnumbered the party charged by at least five to one. We cannot apply the test of casualties, because there were so few. The only test we can apply is that of analogy from other combats. Conditions similar to those of Zand River were repeated, on a smaller or larger scale, thousands of times. Do we find that steel-armed mounted troops had greater moral effect upon the enemy than troops armed only with the rifle? Did the presence of the lance and sword on the field of combat make any difference to the result? The answer, of course, is that it made no difference at all. Anyone can decide this question himself. We know precisely what troops were present, and how they were armed, in all the combats of the war.

      We can detect many different factors at work, psychological, technical, tactical, topographical; but there is one factor which we can eliminate as wholly negligible, and that is the presence of the lance and sword. The same phenomena reappear whether those weapons are there or not. For example, during Buller's campaign for the conquest of Northern Natal (May to June, 1900) very little use was made of regular Cavalry. During the first phase, the advance over the Biggarsberg, the six regiments of Cavalry at Buller's disposal were left behind at Ladysmith. The mounted work throughout was done mainly by irregulars. Was it of a less aggressive and vigorous character on that account, by analogy, say, with the mounted operations during the advance of Roberts from Bloemfontein to Pretoria? We find, on the contrary, that the results were better. The total relative numbers on the Boer side and our side were about the same: we were about four to one. But while Roberts had 12,000 mounted men, of whom 5,000 were Cavalry, Buller had only 5,500 mounted men, of whom 2,500 were Cavalry. Do we find that when the steelless irregulars mounted their horses, as Dickson's brigade mounted their horses, and made a rapid aggressive advance—"charged," that is—the Boers were any less inclined to retreat? On the contrary, they were more inclined to do so. Witness, for instance, Dundonald's long and vigorous pursuit with his irregular brigade over the Biggarsberg on May 14.

      Or take the Bloemfontein-Pretoria advance, in which Zand River itself was an incident. Can we trace any further this alleged "terror of the cold steel"? Allowance must be made for the brief and inadequate training of the Mounted Infantry and Colonials; but, even with this allowance, a study of the facts shows that they did as well as the Cavalry, and sometimes better. The only effective local pursuit was made by Hutton's Australians at Klipfontein (May 30), where a gun was captured. These men had no steel weapons, yet they charged, and rode down their enemy.

      Take Plumer's brilliant defence of Rhodesia with mounted riflemen. Take the relief of Mafeking, one of the most arduous and finely-executed undertakings of the war. Did the 900 troopers of the Imperial Light Horse who carried it out suffer from the lack of swords and lances? They would not have taken them at a gift. Did their work compare unfavourably with that of the Cavalry Division, 6,000 strong, in the relief of Kimberley? On the contrary, when we contrast the numbers employed, the opposition met with and the distance covered (251 miles in eighteen days), we shall conclude that the achievement of the irregulars was by far the more admirable of the two.

      An infinity of illustrations might be cited to prove the same point, but, in truth, it is a point which stands in no need of detailed proof. The onus probandi lies on those who defend weapons which palpably failed. It is the Cavalryman's fixed idea that "mounted action," as the phrase goes, is associated solely with steel weapons; that soldiers in the saddle are only formidable because they carry those weapons. Mounted riflemen are pictured as dismounted, stationary, or as employing their horses only for purposes of flight. These fictions were blown to pieces by the South African War, and the irony of the case is that Sir John French gratuitously brings ridicule on the Cavalry by reviving them. If they are not fictions, the Cavalry stand condemned by their own pitifully trivial record of work done with the steel. But this is to slander the Cavalry. They do not stand condemned; their steel weapons stand condemned. They themselves, like all other mounted troops, did well precisely in proportion to their skill in and reliance on the rifle and horse combined. Their lances were soon returned to store; their swords, after rusting in the scabbards for another year, were also, in the case of nearly all regiments, abandoned; a good Infantry rifle replaced the weak carbine, and the Cavalry became definitely recognized as mounted riflemen.

      No one has ever regarded Sir John French himself as otherwise than a leader of conspicuous energy and resource. But, so far from owing anything to the lance and sword, he suffered heavily from the almost exclusive education of his troops to those weapons, and from the inadequacy of their firearm.

      CHAPTER III

      THE BRITISH THEORY OF THE ARME BLANCHE

      And now, what in Great Britain is the real СКАЧАТЬ