A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms Part 10

The French cavalry succeeded in carrying the plateau of Quatre Bras; but, having no infantry with it to reply to the terrible fire of the Allied infantry from the surrounding houses, it was compelled to retire, and yield it again to the enemy.

According to Wellington, Napoleon frequently used his cavalry in seizing positions, which were then immediately occupied by infantry or artillery.

V.-How Used.

1. Cavalry generally manuvres at a trot. At a gallop, disorder is apt to take place, and exhaustion of strength that will be needed in the charge.

2. The ordinary use of cavalry is to follow up infantry attacks and complete their success. It should never be sent against fresh infantry; and should generally, therefore, be reserved until towards the last of the action.

Napoleon, who, by concentrating his cavalry into considerable ma.s.ses, had enabled himself to use it on the battle-field as a princ.i.p.al arm, sometimes produced great effects by heavy cavalry charges at the very beginning of the action.

But, though Napoleon's splendidly trained heavy cavalry might sometimes break a well-disciplined infantry without any preparatory artillery fire, it would be dangerous to attempt this with cavalry inferior to it in solidity; and the new rifled weapons would seem to render the cavalry charges of his day no longer practicable.

3. Cavalry may be hurled against the enemy's infantry-

(1.) When it has been a long time engaged, and therefore exhausted.

(2.) When it has been shattered by artillery.

And always should be-

(1.) When it is manuvring.

(2.) When the attack would be a surprise.

(3.) When its ranks begin to waver, or when it manifests any unequivocal symptom of hesitation or intimidation.

In the three latter cases, success will usually be certain; in the two former ones, quite probable: but, in most other cases, a cavalry charge will succeed, perhaps, only one time in ten.

4. The chief duties of cavalry in a defensive battle are-

(1.) To watch the enemy's cavalry, to prevent its surprising our infantry.

(2.) To guard our troops from being outflanked.

(3.) To defend our infantry and artillery while manuvring.

(4.) To be ready to charge the enemy the instant his attack on our troops is repulsed.

5. Used offensively, it must promptly attack-

(1.) The enemy's flanks, if uncovered.

(2.) His infantry, when, from any cause, its attack would probably succeed.

(3.) All detachments thrown forward without support.

6. When cavalry has routed cavalry, the victorious squadrons should at once charge in flank the infantry protected by the cavalry just beaten. The great Conde, when only twenty-two years of age, by this means, won the victory of Rocroi.

7. Deployed as skirmishers, by their noise, dust, and smoke, cavalry may furnish a good screen for our movements.

8. Cavalry skirmishers scout their corps, to prevent the enemy reconnoitring it too closely.

9. When a cavalry rear-guard has to defend, temporarily, a defile, a bridge, or a barricade, a part should dismount, and use their carbines till the rest are safe.

So, a cavalry vanguard, by its fire, dismounted, may prevent the enemy from destroying a bridge.

In these, and in similar cases, the cavalrymen should habitually dismount, in order to render their fire effective; acting and manuvring as skirmishers.

VI.-How it Fights.

1. The success of cavalry in battle depends on the impetuosity of its charge, and its use of the sabre. When deployed as skirmishers, mounted or dismounted, its proper weapon is the carbine or pistol; and in individual combats, these weapons may occasionally be very useful. But when acting as cavalry proper, in any compact formation, it must rely on the sabre. The aim with a pistol or carbine in the hands of a mounted man is so unsteady, that the fire of a line of cavalry is generally ineffective; and there are few occasions where it should be resorted to. When cavalry has learned to realize that these are not its true arms, and that it is never really formidable but when it closes with the enemy at full speed and with uplifted sabre, it has acquired the most important element of its efficiency.

2. Cavalry should, therefore, not fight in columns, as most of its sabres would thereby become useless. But if a facing about to retreat is feared, an attack in column would prevent it. It is said, also, that a column is more imposing than a line. If so, it might have a greater moral effect on the enemy.

3. When cavalry are deployed as skirmishers, as a curtain to hide our movements, they should be in considerable number, with small intervals, and should make as much noise, and smoke, and dust as possible. When the charge is sounded, the skirmishers wait and fall in with the rest.

4. The great rule in cavalry combats is to cover our own flanks, and gain the enemy's; for these are his and our weakest points.

5. When the enemy's cavalry is already in full charge on our infantry, it is too late for our cavalry to charge it with much prospect of success. In such a case, it would be better to defer our own charge till the moment that the enemy's is completed; for our success then would be certain.

6. Cavalry attacks cavalry in line, in order to have the more sabres, and, if possible, to outflank the enemy.

7. If we can manuvre so as to attack the enemy's cavalry in flank, our success will be certain.

Military history affords hundreds of instances in proof of this proposition. At one of the battles in Spain, for example, in 1809, fifteen hundred French horse, by charging four thousand Spanish cavalry in flank, completely cut it in pieces.

8. Cavalry never waits in position to be charged by cavalry. Its only safety is in meeting the charge with a violent gallop; it would otherwise be sure to be overthrown.

When hostile cavalries thus meet each other, there is usually but small loss on either side. A certain number of troopers are usually dismounted; but the colliding ma.s.ses somehow ride through each other, allowing but little time for the exchange of points and cuts.

Thus cavalry can defend itself against cavalry only by attacking; which it must do even when inferior to the enemy in number.

9. To attack artillery, cavalry should be in three detachments; one-fourth to seize the guns; one-half to charge the supports; and the other fourth as a reserve.

The first party attacks in dispersed order, as foragers, trying to gain the flanks of the battery. The second party should manuvre to gain the flanks of the supports.

10. Where a cavalry attack can be masked, so as to operate as a surprise, a battery may be taken by charging it in front. The formidable Spanish battery in the Pa.s.s of Somosierra, was finally carried by a dash of Napoleon's Polish Lancers upon it, suddenly profiting of a temporary fog or mist. But, in ordinary cases, when cavalry has to charge a battery in front, its fire should be drawn by our own guns or infantry, immediately before the charge begins.

11. In an attack on an intrenchment, the office of cavalry can rarely be any thing else than to repulse sorties from the work, and to cut off the enemy's retreat from it.

VII.-Its Charge.

1. As cavalry acts effectively on the field of battle only by its charge, good cavalry of the line can be formed in no other way than by being exercised in this, its special and peculiar function.

On taking command of the Army of Italy in 1796, Bonaparte found the French cavalry to be entirely worthless. They had never been accustomed to charge, and he had the greatest difficulty in making them engage. Seeing the great importance of this arm, he determined to make good cavalry of them by compelling them to fight. So, in his attack on Borghetto, he sent his cavalry forward, with his grenadiers on their flanks, and his artillery close behind them. Thus enclosed, and led on by Murat to the charge, they attacked and routed that famous Austrian cavalry whose superiority they had so much dreaded. This was the first step in the formation of the splendid French cavalry to which Napoleon afterwards owed so many of his victories. And, at the battle of Hochstedt, on the Danube, in 1801, its superiority over the Austrian cavalry was, at last, completely established.

2. Cavalry charges-