THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH
DECEMBER, 1899, TO MARCH, 1900.
I interpose a chapter here in order to carry events in other parts of
the theatre of war up to the date of the capture of Bloemfontein.
A sketch will suffice, since specifically mounted operations were few.
No body, either of mixed mounted troops or of regular Cavalry reckoned
separately, comparable in size to that formed by Roberts in the main
theatre, existed anywhere else. The largest homogeneous mounted force
outside this area was Brabant’s newly raised Colonial division,
nominally 3,000 strong, which, in conjunction with Gatacre’s troops, had
been deputed to push back the invaders of Eastern Cape Colony from
Dordrecht and Stormberg, while Clements, succeeding French in the
positions opposite Colesberg, checked the menace to Central Cape Colony.
Brabant, however, seems not to have been able to muster an effective
strength of more than 2,000 during the period under review. That fine
permanent corps, the Cape Mounted Rifles, was a strong, stiffening
element in an otherwise raw force of Cape Colony volunteers.
Fortunately, the work before them was not severe, for the success of
Roberts in the north threw the Boers into a strictly defensive attitude
from the middle of February onwards, and in the early days of March
caused a general retreat. A successful attack upon Labuschagne’s Nek,
between Dordrecht and Jamestown, on March 4, gave the recruits
confidence.
Clements had had a much harder task than Gatacre and Brabant. Stronger
forces opposed him, and the Boer retreat set in later. Early in February
all the regular Cavalry, save two squadrons of Inniskilling Dragoons,
had been diverted to Roberts’s command. There remained, besides these
squadrons, 500 Australian horsemen, together with Infantry and Artillery
which made up the force to a total strength of about 5,000 men and 14
guns. Against Clements—if the official estimate is correct—the forces at
one time were as great as 11,000. Clements, fighting stubbornly, was
forced back south of Rensburg, and, in the course of the retreat, all
his mounted troops, and particularly the Australians, did excellent
service—fire-tactics, of course, being the universal rule. The danger
was soon over. On February 21 Clements was reinforced with 900 mounted
men and two batteries, and at about the same period the tide of invasion
slackened. A week later, on the news of Paardeberg, the Boers were in
full retreat for the north. By the middle of March—two days after the
fall of Bloemfontein—Clements, Gatacre, and Brabant were all within the
Free State borders.
We need not enter at any length either into the siege of Ladysmith or
into the long series of operations which ended in its relief. The
numerical facts, broadly speaking, were that White, with 13,000 men and
51 guns, was invested by a force under Joubert which originally numbered
23,000 men and 17 guns, but which dwindled gradually by abstractions to
the Tugela, to Cronje, and to Colesberg, and finally fell to a strength
of about 5,000; while, on the line of the Tugela, Buller, reinforced in
the period following Colenso to a strength of 30,000 men and 73 guns,
faced Louis Botha and Lukas Meyer with a strength which varied in round
numbers from 7,000 to 9,000 men and about 18 guns.
As in the western theatre and in every other part of the field of war,
the rifle, whether in the hands of mounted men or Infantry, was the
decisive weapon. Artillery, as a mere statement of the relative
strengths in that arm shows, was comparatively negligible. Sword and
lance were out of court. Every responsible person at the time realized
this fact. Short as we were of mounted troops, nobody would have dreamed
of asking for more troops trained to shock on the ground that shock was
either requisite or possible.
The most striking circumstance about the mounted troops in Natal—upwards
of 5,000 in number—was the fact that rather more than half were locked
up in Ladysmith during the whole four months of the sieges. Four Cavalry
regiments, besides the Natal Carbineers, other Natal Volunteers, and the
greater part of the Imperial Light Horse—2,800 men in all—were
demobilized in this way. The mistake, no doubt, was serious, and White
has been freely blamed for it. At the same time, it is only fair to
White to put ourselves in his position, and recognize that the question
of retaining or parting with his mounted troops was subsidiary to the
much larger problem which originally faced him in deciding what was to
be the rôle of the Natal army after the battle of Ladysmith on October
30, 1899. Had he possessed, in his force of professional mounted
regiments, troops really capable, in conjunction with the volunteers, of
tackling the Boer mounted riflemen, it is difficult to believe that, in
spite of the moral and material value of Ladysmith, he would have
accepted investment there as an alternative to the maintenance of his
army as an active field-force. But the battle of the 30th, revealing a
deficiency in the striking-power of the army as a whole, had revealed a
weakness in the Cavalry which was in no way attributable to moral
causes, but simply to armament and training. This circumstance must have
influenced him powerfully in resolving to accept investment, a resolve
which it is exceedingly difficult to impugn. A retreat to the Tugela,
harassed by a greatly superior Boer force, whose temper was exhilarated
by the success at Nicholson’s Nek, would have been a hazardous
operation. It is no reflection on the regular Cavalry, but the simple
truth, to say that they had not as yet shown the capacity to act as
rear-guard for such a retreat.
But what kind of investment was White to accept? Here, no doubt, he is
open to the charge of compromising between two logical alternatives, the
one being to send away instantly the bulk of his mounted troops and
Field Artillery, and with the rest of his force to accept a formal
siege, with the purely passive object of detaining as many Boers as he
could; the other, to keep his force intact, and maintain a defence so
active and supple in character as to enable him to cut loose at any
moment and co-operate with the relieving force. Although something like
this latter course was evidently in his mind, as it would naturally be
in the mind of any spirited Field Commander, he did not clearly grasp
the determining factors and act accordingly. He did not foresee the
initial impotence of Buller before the Colenso position, also largely
attributable to a deficiency in efficient mounted troops. He occupied
too small a perimeter to permit of elastic offence, and he forgot that
the tactical weakness of his Cavalry was an obstacle even more serious
to the kind of operations he had in his mind than it was to the larger
plan of complete freedom which he had rejected. This weakness again
became manifest in the small offensive operations of November 14 and
December 7–8. Then came Buller’s failure at Colenso, and henceforth
White’s attitude, though courageous and unyielding, was strictly
passive. This was all the more to be regretted because the Boer
attitude, save for the one big attack of January 5 on Cæsar’s Camp and
Wagon Hill, and for the minor attack on November 9, was equally passive,
while their numbers sank to a point well below the strength of the
garrison.
White’s mounted troops were reduced by degrees to the rôle of
foot-soldiers, and in that capacity took their share in the defence. The
part played by the regular Cavalry, gallant as it was, could not have
been, and was not, so important as that played by the irregulars, who
were genuine, though improvised riflemen. All alike took part in the
great fight of January 5, and by common consent the chief honours belong
to the Imperial Light Horse, whose heroic defence of Wagon Point, the
key to the threatened position, at a cost of 25 per cent. of the numbers
engaged, was as fine a feat of arms as their final attack at
Elandslaagte. It was by a detachment of the same regiment, in
conjunction with a body of Natal Mounted Volunteers, that the brilliant
little sortie of December 7–8 was carried out and the two heavy guns on
Pepworth Hill destroyed.
During the last month of the siege, when forage became scarce, and 75
per cent. of the Cavalry horses had to be turned adrift or converted
into food, the troopers returned their lances, swords, and carbines to
store, received rifles instead, and took regular posts in the defence.
That change of weapons once made, it is almost inconceivable that it
should not have been adhered to when horses were once more available.
Why deliberately revert to an inferior firearm? Why deliberately resume
steel weapons whose futility was manifest? Tradition—nothing more: the
ineradicable habit of associating together the horse and the steel
weapon as complementary elements of the highest mounted efficiency; the
same habit which induces General French, in defending the _arme
blanche_, to say that “nothing is gained by ignoring the horse, the
sword, and the lance,” as though these weapons were inseparable adjuncts
of the horse, and as though South African experience were not one long
and costly proof of the contrary.
Buller’s mounted force, about 2,600 strong during the period following
Colenso, was composed mainly of South African irregulars,[35] with two
and a half Cavalry regiments, and a few regular Mounted Infantry. It
played a creditable, though not a distinguished, part in the operations.
The battles, from the British point of view, were all pre-eminently
Infantry battles. In one instance only, so far as I am aware, was a
mounted corps employed in conjunction with Infantry in a really critical
and desperate fight, and that was the detachment of Thorneycroft’s
Mounted Infantry at Spion Kop. For the rest, we find them operating on
the wings, seizing advanced positions, and guarding the flanks of the
main attack. Fire-tactics are the invariable rule, and efficiency in
fire-tactics the test of general utility.
-----
Footnote 35:
South African Light Horse, Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry, Bethune’s
Mounted Infantry, Imperial Light Horse (1 squadron), Natal Carbineers
(1 squadron), a few Natal Mounted Police.
-----
There is reason to believe that the mounted troops might have been
employed to greater advantage had the higher command of the army been in
stronger hands. Though they were less than half as numerous as the
mounted force at the disposal of Lord Roberts, they were on the average
more than a quarter, and sometimes not far from a third, the strength of
the whole Boer force opposed to them—a tolerably high proportion, if we
reflect that the Boers, immensely strong though their position was, had
to sustain the attacks of 20,000 Infantry, to say nothing of an
overwhelming number of guns.
The most hopeful enterprise in which the mounted troops were ever
actually engaged was in the opening operations of the Spion Kop campaign
(January 18 to 20), when Dundonald’s brigade of 1,500 men, including one
Cavalry regiment, acted as advance-guard to Sir Charles Warren, who,
with the greater part of the army, was deputed by Buller to turn the
Boer right, while Lyttelton threatened the centre.[36] One of the most
disappointing features of a painful story was the waste of a golden
opportunity for utilizing mounted strength against an enemy whose high
tactical mobility rendered surprise exceedingly difficult. Dundonald, a
Cavalry man, certainly did his utmost, and, as far as he was allowed,
did well. Unnecessary delays had attended the turning movement from the
first, but a considerable measure of surprise was, in fact, obtained.
Few Boers had rallied to the threatened flank; none were entrenched.
Dundonald, operating boldly in advance, gained on the evening of the
18th a position, overlooking Acton Homes, which might, under vigorous
generalship, have been turned to great strategical advantage. His men
were in high fettle owing to the skilful surprise and defeat of a Boer
detachment which rode out to check them. But Warren seems to have
regarded his mounted troops wholly in a protective light, and to have
resented anything approaching independent action. The chance was thrown
away[37] and the operations never recovered from the initial
sluggishness of movement.
-----
Footnote 36:
“Official History,” vol. ii., chaps. xx-xxii.; _Times_ History, vol.
iii, chaps. ix. and x.
Footnote 37:
It is just possible, no doubt, to take a different view of the affair.
The German critic, who is always indifferent to mounted questions,
thinks the whole turning movement was a mistake, and that, therefore,
the question of supporting Dundonald was not of much consequence. The
facts of the wretched friction between Warren and Dundonald are set
forth exhaustively in our own “Official History” (pp. 362, 363, and
Appendix 9 [_c_]), and a reader can form his own opinion. The comment
affords an example of that criticism by innuendo which so often mars
the careful and conscientious narrative of facts, and which generally
defeats its own object—that of avoiding direct censure on individuals.
The result frequently is to censure the wrong individual. In this
case, reading between the lines, one is led to infer that Dundonald
was wholly to blame in not sending sufficiently explicit messages to
Warren. This interpretation of what happened leaves out of account all
the larger aspects of the case, and the chapters are so written as to
obscure these larger aspects. Buller’s original orders to Warren (p.
347) “embodied,” we are told, a “broad and bold conception.” So they
undoubtedly did. Here is outspoken praise, well deserved. Whence came
the failure, then? No one could guess from comments in the text,
although, by exercising common sense on a study of the facts, two
explanations stand out plainly: (1) That Buller, having framed his
plan in outline, divested himself of responsibility for its execution,
and remained a passive, though not an uncritical, spectator of events.
(2) That speed in the turning movement was the essence of the plan,
but that Warren never realized this, and was too slow, his mind
perpetually fixed on his heavy transport and oblivious to the
offensive possibilities of his advance. Ignoring these broad
considerations, which have an obvious and direct bearing on the
Dundonald-Warren friction, the Official Historian takes care to
investigate and print every message bearing on that topic, and to
justify, at any rate by implication, Warren’s caution. Could there be
a worse moral, above all, for mounted troops? Overcurt as Dundonald’s
messages were, they struck a note which would have elicited the right
response from a mind tuned to the right key. One must make some
allowance, too, for human nature. Imagine the feelings of a leader of
horse who, at such a time and with such an opening before him, had
been compelled at the outset to send back a regiment of regular
Cavalry “to prevent the grazing oxen being swept away” from the main
body! (Appendix 9 [_c_]).
-----
Another opportunity for a vigorous use of mounted troops came after the
great fight at Pieter’s Hill (February 27), which led to the relief of
Ladysmith and to a general retreat of the Boer forces both from the
beleaguered town and from the Tugela heights. If we regard all Buller’s
previous operations as one long-drawn battle—and in a sense they may so
be regarded—now, it would seem, was the time for pursuit. The two
leaders of horse were undoubtedly anxious to pursue. Men and horses were
alike fresh. Buller refrained. There is a general agreement that he was
wrong. Whatever the prospects of success, he should unquestionably have
tried, for instinctive and habitual mounted energy was the vital need in
South Africa if a mounted enemy was to be not only defeated, but
conquered.
At the same time, a close examination of the facts does not appear to
justify the assumption of the _Times_ historian that a pursuit would
have involved the Boers in utter destruction and defeat. The critic lays
excessive and indiscriminating stress on the demoralization of the
enemy. He forgets that Botha’s troops and the investing force combined
numbered in all about 13,000 men, as against 2,600 of our mounted
troops; that there was not much question of further co-operation by our
Infantry, who were exhausted by ten days of continuous fighting, and
that the encounters which actually did take place between our mounted
troops (regulars and irregulars alike) and the Boer rear-guard were not
of such a character as to warrant a belief that a general pursuit, begun
at the earliest possible moment, would have led to the destruction of
the Boer army.
Both the German and British Official Historians correctly point out
that, in order to have been really effective, the intervention of the
mounted troops should have begun at, or immediately after, the climax of
the great Infantry fight on the 27th. Here was just the difficulty: The
British attack, delivered on a front of about three miles, was
threefold—upon Railway Hill, Inniskilling Hill and Pieter’s Hill, the
latter representing the extreme Boer left, the only quarter at which the
mounted troops could possibly have intervened. The two first positions
were stormed in magnificent style by the Infantry, supported by a
tremendous fire of Artillery, and were won at about 5 p.m. and 5.30 p.m.
respectively—that is, very late in the afternoon. On the left, at
Pieter’s Hill, the Boers still stood desperately at bay. It was not till
6.30, in the growing dusk, that the southern, or nearest, crest of the
hill, held by the Standerton and Heidelberg commandos, was carried by a
final charge of 300 Irish Fusiliers, who lost a third of their strength
engaged and had all their officers killed or wounded. The northern part
of the hill was still obstinately held when the battle came to an end,
and was evacuated only during the night.
According to the “Official History,” the same unyielding attitude was
shown by the most valiant among the defenders of the other two hills,
who “clung most stubbornly to the broken ground behind these kopjes,”
after their trenches had been carried, and it was in view, we are told,
of these signs of dangerous resistance that Buller abandoned the idea of
a mounted pursuit. He was wrong, it must be concluded, even at this late
hour, when darkness and the Boer rear-guards must have severely limited
effective action; but his real fault lay farther back, in retaining the
mounted brigades well in the rear and out of sight all day instead of
planting them opposite the Boer left flank, where they would have acted
at least as a passive menace to the enemy, and might have caused a
premature retirement during daylight. We may speculate at will on what
might have happened. All we can say with confidence is that the Boers
were never more formidable than on this culminating day of four months’
strenuous resistance, and that only by using their own fire methods with
the utmost energy and determination could our troopers have turned a
defeat into a rout.
On that night a general Boer retreat set in. Among the besiegers of
Ladysmith, who had not fired a shot, something in the nature of a
genuine panic reigned, but the great majority of these had a long start
in respect both of time and distance. Botha’s commandos, too, gained
fully twelve hours’ start, for, in spite of a strong appeal from Barton
on Pieter’s Hill for a prompt advance by a flying column of all arms,
Buller made no preparation for a swift movement by the mounted troops.
On the morning of the 28th they were still behind the Tugela. A block on
the pontoon-bridge delayed the irregular brigade under Dundonald till 8
a.m., and the regular Cavalry brigade under Burn-Murdoch till 9 a.m.
Their orders were to work north-west and north-east respectively, not to
“pursue.” Still, limited as their orders were, they experienced
considerable difficulty in carrying them out. Botha had organized
adequate rear-guards to protect his retreat. Dundonald was checked twice
within two miles of Pieter’s Station, and, on the second occasion, had
to send for the assistance of Burn-Murdoch, who, by a later order of
Buller’s, and against his own repeated requests, had been kept inactive
in the gorge between Pieter’s Hill and the Station. The combined
brigades having eventually driven off this detachment of the enemy,
Burn-Murdoch moved on to the north-east, but in his turn was brought to
a complete standstill at the Klip River by the rifle and Artillery fire
of another Boer rear-guard, which was covering the withdrawal of guns
and waggons from Umbulwana Mountain. He held his ground till dusk,
prevented the destruction of the wooden bridge which spanned the Klip at
this point, and informed Buller that he intended to remain where he was
for the night, and to pursue on the morrow. Buller, for inadequate
reasons, recalled him. Dundonald, meanwhile, still meeting with sporadic
opposition, pushed on slowly in the late afternoon towards Ladysmith,
finally sending in two squadrons, whose arrival denoted the definite
relief of the town.
Buller had now, definitely and finally, set his face against pursuit.
Yet even on the morning of March 1 the chances of success, which had
steadily diminished, were still considerable. Although most of the Free
State forces and a substantial part of the Transvaal forces were out of
danger, the plain east of Ladysmith was still thronged with waggons and
guns, the last of which did not reach Elandslaagte till nightfall. Even
as near as Modder Spruit Station siege-guns were entrained as late as 11
a.m. Despair reigned in the Boer army as a whole. A resolute pursuit
must, we can fairly surmise, have led to the capture of a considerable
quantity of material and many guns. But we are bound equally to affirm
that here, as at every previous stage of these operations, and according
to our invariable experience through nearly three years of war in South
Africa, the measure of success would have been the measure of our
ability to overcome defensive fire-tactics with yet more vigorous
offensive fire-tactics. That Botha, who had effectually covered his
retreat on the 28th with parties of the same men who had gone through
the nerve-shattering experiences of the previous ten days, culminating
in the desperate struggle overnight, would have subsequently allowed his
transport and guns to be captured without an effort for their defence,
is a tempting, but an altogether illusory, hypothesis. Analogy points
the other way. It was one of the most striking characteristics of the
war that, however great the depression of the undisciplined mass, there
were always to be found a few indomitable spirits who were prepared to
sell their lives dearly to avert disgrace. We saw this at Poplar Grove,
when the opportunity for our mounted troops, if we consider the relative
numbers engaged, while making full allowance for the relative condition
of the horses, was far better than at Ladysmith. Botha himself, the
ablest of all the Boer leaders, had again and again in the last few
months proved his power to restore discipline and nerve among his
burghers. His rear-guard tactics, whatever the strength he might have
managed to raise, would in form have been those of Poplar Grove and of
his own resistance to Burn-Murdoch and Dundonald on the 28th. Something
more effective than French’s action at Poplar Grove, and more effective
than the action of Dundonald and Burn-Murdoch on the 28th, would have
been needed to secure results of really supreme importance. As for the
_arme blanche_, we need not regard it seriously as a contingent factor.
If it possessed any utility, it had in the course of the war innumerable
opportunities of proving the fact—above all, in cases of pursuit against
Boer rear-guards. We can scarcely draw negative evidence from occasions
where the opportunity was denied.[38]
-----
Footnote 38:
This, nevertheless, is precisely what Mr. Goldman does in a passage of
his book, “With French in South Africa,” p. 422. His proposition,
sufficiently bold in itself, is that the regular Cavalry were not
given sufficient chances in South Africa, and he instances
particularly Buller’s failure to use his Cavalry in pursuit at this
period. By the use of the vague word “Cavalry” to cover all Buller’s
mounted troops, the majority of whom were irregular mounted riflemen,
Mr. Goldman introduces into a correct statement of fact the
unwarrantable suggestion that the steel weapon, the distinguishing
feature of Cavalry, was deprived of a chance of inflicting a “crushing
defeat” on the enemy. It must be understood that Mr. Goldman, in the
essay I am referring to, is engaged in an express effort to prove the
superiority of Cavalry over mounted riflemen.
-----
Buller has placed on record his reasons for not undertaking a
pursuit.[39] The only one that need concern us is, curiously enough, his
insistence on this very point—Boer skill in rear-guard actions—a skill
which he considered it so futile to combat, that, on this occasion, he
thought it not even advisable to try. And he bases his view on his own
experience in the first Boer War, twenty years before. The admission
throws much light on his handling of the mounted troops under his
command during the South African campaign, and, in particular, on his
dispositions during the battle of Pieter’s Hill. He had calculated
rightly on a victory that day, and, departing from the usual practice,
deliberately kept his mounted men fresh and concentrated in rear of the
army, in order to complete the victory by a pursuit. But the kind of
victory he hoped for was one which excluded the possibility of
rear-guard actions. In other words, he was a prey to that antiquated
habit of thought which was an inheritance from the days prior to the
magazine rifle, and which took shape in dreams of massed Cavalry on
fresh mounts, whirling, sabre in hand, at the psychological moment,
through hordes of helpless fugitives. Even in 1866 this habit of mind
was antiquated. It does not seem to have occurred to him, nor does it
seem to occur to some of the present advocates of the _arme blanche_,
that skill in rear-guard actions, often sneeringly alluded to as skill
in “evasion,” and always spoken of as if it were some miraculous
attribute of the Boers, was, in reality, the simple exercise, by the use
of horse and rifle combined, of one of the most important of the
functions of any corps of mounted troops, Cavalry included, especially
in the case of the numerically weaker side; and that its
counterpart—power to pierce a rear-guard, and drive home a victory, a
power correspondingly dependent on the use of horse and rifle
combined—is a no less crucial test of mounted efficiency. By these
tests, among others, Cavalry in future wars will be judged.
-----
Footnote 39:
War Commission Evidence, vol. ii., pp. 182, 183.
-----
Defensive skill in the Boers suggests the allied question: Had they, in
the course of the long struggle for Ladysmith, shown any new development
of offensive power? That is a question we must always be asking, as we
contrast the merits of the steel weapon and the firearm in war. As I
have often before remarked, there can be no sharp distinction between
defensive and offensive action: excellence in the one is wrapped up with
excellence in the other. The British seizure of Spion Kop, for example,
was an aggressive stroke; the Boer counter-attack was a measure of
defensive necessity. Regarded in this light, Botha’s defence of the line
of the Tugela merits the highest praise. Make what allowance we will for
defects in British generalship, for the ever-present prejudice against
incurring heavy loss of life, and for the extraordinary natural strength
of the Tugela heights, the fact stands out plainly that no class of
troops but mounted riflemen, experts in horse, rifle, and spade
alike—and first-class men at that—could, with numbers comparatively so
small, have held for so long a position whose extent for purposes of
defence cannot be estimated at less than thirty miles. Neither European
Cavalry nor European Infantry of that date could have held it for a week
against a European force of all arms and of the given superiority—the
former from lack of spade and rifle power, the latter from lack of
mobility. But measuring the Boers by their own standard, did they fully
develop their own offensive potentialities?
The answer must be, I think, in the negative. But we cannot in this case
afford to be too sweeping or positive. We must remember, here as
elsewhere, that the dead-weight of numerical superiority, especially in
Artillery, gives a force of low mobility, like the British force, a
defensive power disproportionately greater than its offensive power.
Still, there were undoubtedly a few occasions when the Boers missed
opportunities for counter-strokes. By common consent, I think, the best
opportunity of all was on February 23 and 24, when the position of
Buller’s army, huddled together in Hart’s Hollow and other parts of the
Colenso basin, after the magnificent but unavailing assaults of the
23rd, was in the highest degree dangerous.[40] A casual outburst of Boer
fire on the night of the 24th actually caused a partial panic among the
troops in Hart’s Hollow. According to the German historian, who quotes a
German officer present with Botha at the time, Botha’s reason for not
ordering a counter-stroke on the 24th was that it would “cost too many
lives.” If so, it was a costly error, an irreparable error. But there
was much excuse for it. Moral administrative weaknesses, from which we
were free, had sapped their strength from the first, and among these
troops on the Tugela at this latter end of February, in spite of Botha’s
untiring efforts, the tension was becoming unbearable. We have only to
contrast the same man, leading tried veterans of the same commandos in
latter phases of the war, to understand the full aggressive power that
mounted riflemen can develop. Nevertheless, we must, as far as we can,
disentangle technical from moral causes, and it remains true that up to
this point the Boers had not brought into line the horse and the rifle
as the twin factors of aggressive mobility.
-----
Footnote 40:
“Official History,” vol. ii., chaps. xxvi. and xxvii.; _Times_
History, chap. xvi.
-----
The offensive honours rested with the British Infantry. I hope by this
time that the reader is beginning to realize how indefinable is the
border-line between mounted and dismounted attacks, both of which
equally draw their power from that master of modern battle-fields, the
rifle. Look at Wagon Hill, where soldiers classed as mounted riflemen
were engaged against soldiers classed as Infantry, mounted riflemen, and
Cavalry. Here is a case where one almost forgets which class had horses
and which had not. When we read of the memorable charge of the Devons,
we care very little whether they were Infantry or Mounted Infantry,
recognizing, as we must, that, in the given conditions, such efforts are
within the power of both classes alike. Our ambition should be to
discover how and when the horse may be made to serve as an engine of
still more formidable tactics. Look, too, at the Infantry charges on
February 23 and at the battle of Pieter’s Hill. Watch the old problem of
mobility versus vulnerability being worked out in terms of
foot-soldiers, and, without rushing to the impracticable extreme of
demanding that all riflemen should be provided with horses, observe how
close is the analogy when the same problem is worked out in terms of
horse-soldiers. Note how the German historian, from whom nothing will
force any compromising allusion to shock as a function of Cavalry, lest
the whole edifice of Cavalry theory should tumble about his ears, slips
unconsciously into the deprecation of “shock” in Infantry, without
sufficient fire-preparation.[41] But for those separate mental
compartments, would not some glimmering of the analogy have occurred to
him? Observe, on the other hand, the fundamental differences between the
steel weapon of the foot-soldier and the steel weapon of the Cavalry,
the efficacy of the former being conditional, not only on the vigour and
skill of the previous fire-fight, but on being used at the climax of the
fire-fight, still in association with the rifle, and still on foot; the
efficacy of the latter a minus quantity, and, for the same reason,
everywhere and always, because it was not only incompatible with, but by
the habits of mind it engendered, and by the nature of equipment it
involved, actively prejudicial to the vigorous offensive use of the
firearm.
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Footnote 41:
Vol. ii., p. 270.
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Grasp now the nature of the problem which confronted us in this war. Our
foes were not only riflemen, but mounted riflemen, comparatively few in
numbers, but able both to fight stoutly and to retreat safely when
overcome in combat. Infantry, though they possess the power to overcome
and eject mounted riflemen, have not the power to catch and destroy
them, simply because Infantry move too slowly. The responsibility for
securing complete victory lay with our mounted troops acting as mounted
riflemen.
Widening our horizon to include the whole area of the war at this
period, we perceive that the Cavalry theory, so far as it was based on
the _arme blanche_, had collapsed. The only and not especially
remarkable achievement of that weapon is the pursuit at Elandslaagte on
the second day of hostilities. Everywhere else we have seen it directly
or indirectly crippling the Cavalry, and the greater the numbers
employed and the larger the measure of independence permitted, the more
unmistakable is the cause. When the Cavalry succeed strategically, as in
the ride to Kimberley and back to Paardeberg, they succeed in spite of
disabilities traceable to _arme blanche_ doctrine. When they succeed
tactically, as in the Colesberg operations and in containing Cronje’s
force on the eve of Paardeberg, they succeed through the carbine, in
spite of its inferiority as a weapon of precision. In tactical offence,
the paramount _raison d’être_ of the _arme blanche_, and in
reconnaissance, they show marked weakness.