THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR
Soon after Bernhardi published his second edition of “Cavalry in Future
Wars,” the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 broke out. Like the Boer War, it
fulfilled to the letter all his prognostications as to the value of fire
for Cavalry and belied all his theories as to the “collision of Cavalry
masses.” Whether he regarded it as abnormal, I do not know. But here, to
our own _arme blanche_ school, as we might have expected, is another
“peculiar” war.
It was the second great land war between civilized races since the
invention of the smokeless, long-range magazine rifle. It was attended
by many circumstances which were absent in South Africa. Both armies
were constructed on the European model; both were regular, not
volunteer; both were in very large force; both possessed steel-armed
Cavalry. The war, in shorts, may be said to have been the complement of
the Boer War in illustrating all those conditions which were not present
in South Africa, but which are likely to be present in a European war.
Much of the terrain was even better than South Africa for shock-tactics.
Though from the Yalu to Liao-yang the campaign was fought in a
mountainous area, from the Tai-tse-ho northward vast open plains,
unfenced, unobstructed, of a character not to be met with in any likely
European war-area, were the rule.
What happened? No shock. That is not quite literally true of
inter-Cavalry combats, for history records one almost laughably trivial
case of pseudo-shock. There are said to have been others between patrols
in the early days.[79] Not a single charge against riflemen on foot. The
lance and sword were nowhere. In combat the rifle was supreme, banishing
the very thought of the sword even from the minds of those who carried
it, and inspiring the only effective action for Cavalry as for Infantry.
-----
Footnote 79:
The recorded case (referred to later) was at Telissu. Colonel
McClernand, the U.S. Official Cavalry observer, quotes the Colonel of
the Japanese Cavalry of the Guard as having referred to a few steel
combats between patrols in the early months of the war.
-----
I ventured to describe the Boer War as presenting a mass of evidence,
vast, various, cogent, against the steel, and in favour of the rifle.
Here is another mass of complementary evidence, equally vast, various,
and cogent, drawn from the very type of war which our soldiers now
envisage—namely, one waged between European armies—in a temperate
climate, at any rate in the matter of heat, and in which both Cavalries
possess the _arme blanche_.
Before he begins even to think about explanations, I want the reader to
grasp the broad _facts_ in all their naked simplicity. Four years of war
in all in South Africa and Manchuria, under every imaginable condition.
No shock. In our war a few small cases of pseudo-shock, which belong
strictly to the realm of the rifle. Numerous rifle charges, some very
deadly. In both wars the rifle supreme, the steel negligible. What
miraculous combination of circumstances could warrant our calling the
Manchurian War in its turn “peculiar”?
In England, the _arme blanche_ theory for a moment seemed to be in great
danger. Some prompt and decisive counter-stroke was indispensable. There
could be no compromise here, nothing but a bold lunge straight at the
heart would suffice to fell the now formidable heresy. What form did the
stroke take? I give it in the words of General Sir John French:
“That the Cavalry on both sides in the recent war did not distinguish
themselves or their arm is an undoubted fact, but the reason is quite
apparent. On the Japanese side they were indifferently mounted, the
riding was not good, and they were very inferior in numbers, and hence
were only enabled to fulfil generally the rôle of Divisional Cavalry,
which they appear to have done very well. The cause of failure on the
Russian side is to be found in the fact that for years they have been
trained on _exactly the same principles_ which these writers” (_i.e._,
advocates of mounted riflemen) “now advocate. They were devoid of real
Cavalry training, they thought of nothing but getting off their horses
and shooting; hence they lamentably failed in enterprises which
demanded, before all, a display of the highest form of the ‘Cavalry
spirit’” (Introduction to Bernhardi, p. xxvii.).
It is true that these words were published in 1906, when information was
still limited; but they appear unmodified in the edition of 1909, and
they are in strict accordance with the theory on which our Cavalry are
at this moment trained. To bring them into line with the facts as now
known would be to declare the _arme blanche_ theory a myth, and to
shatter the system based on it.
But before approaching the facts, I propose, as in Chapter XII., to
criticize the attitude of mind which permits a high Cavalry authority to
brush aside with such confidence another great war in which the sword
and lance fell into complete oblivion. It seems to be perfectly useless
for critics of those weapons to heap up masses of modern evidence
against them and to prove that there is not a tittle of evidence for
them, if we cannot also show to the public the kind of way in which the
problem is viewed by those responsible for their retention.
General French held high command in a long, mainly mounted war. Explain
away the result as we may, this war did, in fact, produce by long
evolution, under exacting stress, a certain type of soldier common to
both belligerents—the mounted rifleman. It was a splendid type on both
sides, and if we combine the best qualities of Britons and Boers we can,
if we please, construct from it an ideal type. At any rate, what these
troops did is on record. The greater their excellence in combining, for
strenuous practical work, the rifle and the horse, the better the
results. This was the criterion of success. Herein lay “dash”; herein,
to borrow General French’s words, lay the “highest form of the ‘Cavalry
spirit.’” It was by approximation to this standard, and by oblivion of
all methods directly associated with the steel, that the regular Cavalry
acquitted themselves best. It was our glory, not our shame, that we were
able to produce this type, and to make it attain, even in the case of
raw volunteers, to such a high standard. It was the glory of our brave
enemies that, by virtue of progressive excellence in this type, they
were able to make the task of the stronger nation so long, costly, and
laborious.
How does General French represent this type when he is deploring the
failure of the hybrid type in Manchuria? The Russians, he says, “were
devoid of real Cavalry training. They thought of nothing but getting off
their horses and shooting,” and had no “Cavalry spirit,” and these, the
General says, were “exactly the same principles” which admirers of
mounted riflemen advocate. No wonder he resents such advocacy, if such
are the “principles,” and no wonder he objects to mounted riflemen who
are taught to regard their horses as checks, not helps, to mobility and
dash. So far from being his opponents’ “principles,” these are the very
principles upon which, under the blighting influence of the _arme
blanche_ school, our fine force of existing Mounted Infantry is
starved—theoretically, at any rate, into a sort of humble subservience
to the steel.
Now, would it not be more natural and normal if, knowing what he knows
by war-experience of what mounted riflemen can do, General French were
to approach this Manchurian question from a somewhat different
standpoint? Should he not consider the possibility that the Russian
Cavalry, which was armed “on exactly the same principles” which he
advocates—and was not, as he seems to imply, trained only in the
firearm—might have failed through lack of excellence in the
whole-hearted union of the rifle and the horse, as the joint
constituents of that aggressive mobility which constitutes the “spirit”
of the mounted rifleman? But no. He rushes at once to the conclusion
least capable of proof, the conclusion for which there are no positive
data since 1870, and very little then, since there were no smokeless,
long-range rifles, nor any type of mounted rifleman to force the issue
into prominence.
And to what strange conclusions his contemptuous definition of the
mounted rifleman brings him! In the admirable Colesberg operations, when
the steel did nothing and inspired nothing, we know that his own
Cavalry, under his own direction, were “continually getting off their
horses and shooting.” After their thirty-mile ride from Kimberley (and
the steel did not help them to _ride_) to intercept Cronje, the same
Cavalry did well only through forgetting their “real Cavalry training,”
and taking what he regards as the discreditable step of “getting off
their horses to shoot.” So did De Wet’s men in their equally long rides
to the fields of Paardeberg and Sannah’s Post. It is true that on many
occasions the Cavalry, when in superior force, were too ready, not
through lack of spirit but through inherent faults of training, to
dismount _prematurely_ and take to the carbine. But at whose compulsion?
That of mounted riflemen. And why? Precisely because they had not
grasped “the highest form of the ‘Cavalry spirit’”—reliance on horse and
firearm in combination. The rifle charge, taught us by the Boers, is, to
say the least, not described in an illuminating way by the words
“getting off their horses to shoot.” Saddle-fire apart, the words,
nevertheless, are perfectly accurate. But the Boers shot to more
terrible purpose than the Cavalry shot. Historical truth compels us to
add that many of our own mounted riflemen excelled the Cavalry in this
respect. The handful of Mounted Infantry, who after a chase of many days
pounced on and pinned down De Wet at Bothaville, were working, I submit,
on the right “principles.” So were the Australians who hung on the same
leader’s heels in the desperate hunt of February, 1901.
If this is General French’s mental attitude towards the Manchurian War,
I am afraid we cannot expect to find him expressing himself lucidly and
cogently on the subject. Turn back to the passage I quoted. The
Japanese, he says, indifferently mounted, indifferent riders, and
inferior in numbers—drawbacks, be it noted, which are as serious for
genuine mounted riflemen as for Cavalry—did very well, but only as
Divisional Cavalry. The meaning is not very plain (for they never did
well with the steel), but I take it to be this: In our own army the
Divisional Cavalry consist, not of Cavalry, but of Mounted Infantry.
Their duties, as officially laid down, are “to assist the Infantry in
the immediate protection of the division by supplying mounted men for
divisional patrolling in connection with the advanced, flank, and rear
guards and outposts; to maintain connection with the protective
Cavalry,” and other small duties. Proceeding from this analogy, the
General means, I gather, to convey that the Japanese Cavalry, acting in
those minor capacities, did very well as mounted riflemen. That is all
to the good, and presumably they would have done better still with
better horses, better riding, and greater numbers.
Is there not also a presumption that with these added advantages they
would have done better still in larger rôles as mounted riflemen? But
where is the argument leading us? Here are the Russians. No praise for
them, even in minor rôles, and even with their better horses, better
riding, immense numbers, and, above all, their “years of training” as
mounted riflemen. Surely the latter characteristic alone would have
enabled them, _qua_ mounted riflemen, to overcome the few and badly
equipped Japanese Cavalry acting as mounted riflemen? Overcome them, I
mean, not merely in minor capacities, but in all the large and important
functions of Cavalry?
The General tacitly admits that neither side made use of the steel. And
yet, why not? One can understand that with these manifold sources of
weakness which he details they did not attack Infantry with the steel,
but why not attack one another? Was the mutual “terror of cold steel” so
great as to neutralize the steel? The two Cavalries frequently met in
different capacities and in different shades of numerical strength,
strategically and tactically. Surely when both sides carry steel weapons
this second total disappearance of the “shock duel,” officially held to
be an inevitable feature of modern war, both in the strategical and
tactical phases, needs further explanation.
Pursuing our scrutiny with an eye trained to detect the _arme blanche_
bias in its myriad fleeting forms, we detect a clue in the word
“enterprises” near the end. This suggests neither the battle-field nor
reconnaissance, but distinctly the big raid. We recall Mr. Goldman’s
complaint of the strategical mishandling of the Cavalry in South Africa,
and his assumption that big raids must end in shock-tactics.
I do not know if this was in the General’s mind when he wrote of
“enterprises which demanded before all a display of the highest form of
the ‘Cavalry spirit.’” If it was, I can only respectfully repeat my
view, expressed frequently elsewhere, that there is here a radical
confusion of thought between combat and strategy, between mobility in
its broadest sense and tactics, and Bernhardi would be the first to tell
him so. Fortunately, this question of raids is as open to positive
demonstration by Manchurian facts as any other point of Cavalry
practice. But before even approaching the Manchurian facts, and taking
my stand purely on South African lessons, I have shown, I hope, that
_prima facie_ the General’s reason for the comparative failure of the
two Cavalries is open to the strongest suspicion. The facts themselves
dispose of the reason altogether.
It was never part of my scheme to deal in detail with the Manchurian
story. I believe that for Englishmen, their own great war should be
sufficient evidence. And yet, having reached this point, I feel inclined
to regret that I did not begin with the Asiatic war, hardly complete as
the material still is, and briefly summarize our own, so exaggerated
seems to be the craving in many minds for foreign precedents and foreign
models, so reckless the disregard for British experience, even when that
experience is most stimulating and glorious. Happily, the Manchurian
data are simple, uniform, and as absolutely free from complications or
apparent contradictions as the South African data whose lessons they
confirm.
What is the salient point? With all respect to General French, the
salient point for Englishmen, who know by bitter experience that shock
training has failed them, is not whether the Russians or Japanese were
good shock horsemen, but whether they were good mounted riflemen. Our
own Cavalry in South Africa were good shock horsemen, but that did not
save the friends of shock from the necessity of finding elaborate
reasons for the disappearance of shock during that war. Now for our
salient point. Were the Russian Cavalry, who were far the most numerous
and in some ways the better equipped of the two Cavalries, good mounted
riflemen, by our proved standard of what is good? The answer, from all
critics and observers, comes unanimously and emphatically, “No.” In the
first place, they were of the hybrid type, carrying swords and, in the
great majority of cases, lances as well. Their legendary skill in
fire-action proved to be a myth. The Boers would have laughed at them.
Our own mounted riflemen would have regarded them as inefficient and
ignorant. To the surprise of many people, they had none of the “habits
and instincts” for modern war that the Boers had, nothing of the
stalking power, the scouting power, the genius for ground and surprise,
much less the charging power developed. The Historians of our General
Staff (part i., p. 29) supply the explanation: “The system of tactical
training was not unlike that of other European armies. Thus the Cavalry
was trained both for mounted and dismounted combat, but _the musketry
training necessary to make it efficient when on foot fell short of the
requirements of modern war_. The Cossacks, who formed the greater part
of the Russian mounted force, were trained on lines similar to the
regular Cavalry, but did not attain to the standard laid down for the
latter.”
We must allow, of course, for general causes. The whole Russian army, by
the testimony of its own leaders, was in a backward state, and the
Cavalry was as backward as other arms. Its morale, by comparison with
the Japanese morale, was low. In every arm the officers—that vitally
important element—were ill-educated; in every arm, together with much
splendid devotion and zeal, some of the officers were neglectful of
duty. The Cavalry suffered as much as any arm. Wrangel, the Austrian
critic, describes the greater part of the Russian Cavalry engaged in the
Manchurian Field Army, especially those Cossack organizations which
consisted of troops of the second and third class of reserves, as being
in the general sense “inefficient mounted troops.”[80] Our own Official
Reports, however, give a more favourable impression. The older reserve
men were, no doubt, unfit for the field, but among the Don, Orenburg,
and Trans-Baikal Cossacks there seems to have been some very good
material.
-----
Footnote 80:
“Cavalry in the Russo-Japanese War,” pp. 8–11.
-----
Mr. McCullagh, in his book, “With the Cossacks,” gives an interesting
description of the great variety of religions, races, languages,
colours, and military types which were embodied in the troops known
broadly as Cossacks. The Caucasians, though they carried carbines,
appear to have been by tradition and choice steel horsemen pure and
simple. But whatever the training, there is no dispute about the
incompetence of all the Cossacks as riflemen. Captain Spaits gives a
distressing account of their failures.[81] McCullagh says: “They had no
skill whatever in attacking entrenched Infantry. _Once dismounted, they
are lost._” (p. 182). Both these writers accompanied them in the field.
On manœuvre and general employment there is an equally general
agreement. Unlike the Japanese, they were maintained for the most part
in large independent bodies, in dim homage, we may presume, to that
“collision of Cavalry masses” which is the basis of the shock theory. So
massed, they were generally idle, just as the Cavalries of 1866, 1870,
and 1877 were too often idle, by the admission of Bernhardi, Kuropatkin,
and Von Moltke. There never appears a trace of talent for fire-tactics,
or an attempt to play either the aggressive or the delaying rôle of the
riflemen in South Africa.
-----
Footnote 81:
"Mit Kosaken durch die Mandschurei."
-----
What effect had that War had upon Russian Cavalry? None. No more effect
than the brilliant performances of the Civil War leaders had upon the
Austrian, Prussian, and French Cavalries in the wars of 1866 and 1870,
or upon our own Cavalry in 1899. How many Cossack privates had _heard_
of our war? How many of their officers had studied it? Truly those
words, “trained for years on the very principles these writers
advocate,” are a little hard on those Cavalry leaders in South Africa
who led mounted riflemen with distinction. They are very hard, if he
only knew it, on General French.
Kuropatkin (vol. ii., p. 151) is cruelly illuminating. It is true he
never mentions armaments or the tactics derived from it. Nor did Von
Moltke in his equally hard censure of the Prussian Cavalry of 1866 for
the same grave delinquency—timidity on the battle-field. It was left for
Bernhardi to disclose the true cause and the true remedy. Kuropatkin
dwells on “training” and on commanders, most of whom he accuses of
cowardice; for “the material of which our Cavalry was composed was
excellent” (with certain exceptions afterwards named). What “training”
and “command” meant becomes apparent. The Cavalry should have fought as
“_obstinately as Infantry_,” and by way of contrasting the two arms he
gives pitiless statistics of relative casualties at the battles of
Mukden and Telissu, where no observer or historian has ever suggested
that there was any reason for or sense in shock. The single example he
names of a good performance, that of the Cossacks at Yen-tai Mines, was
one of defensive fire-action pure and simple, where the Cavalry “fought
with greater bravery than some of Orloff’s Infantry.” Surely it was
knowledge, not courage, that the rest lacked.
Look at the only large “enterprise” undertaken by the Russian
Cavalry—Mishchenko’s great raid, with 8,000 men and 34 guns, upon
Ying-kou in January, 1905. No better example could be found for proving
the fallacy of associating the success of independent strategical
enterprises with the steel weapon. Of the conditions of success, one
category has nothing to do with combat, but purely with mobility. The
distance was 80 miles, as compared, for example, with the 100-mile raids
imagined by Mr. Goldman for South Africa. There was a slow-moving
millstone of a convoy, requiring protection and limiting speed, exactly
our own difficulty when our mounted troops, Cavalry included, cut
themselves completely adrift from their communications, exactly the
difficulty which Bernhardi insists on when dealing with the limitations
to Cavalry raids. Scouting was bad. Contrast the Boer scouting. Scouts,
at any rate, do not have shock duels. Passing to combat, we find no
shadow of a suggestion in any narrative that there was the remotest
opportunity for shock (except for a case mentioned by McCullagh, where a
Cossack brigade charged a few Chinese brigands). The Japanese troops met
with were always Infantry, and were always in great numerical
inferiority. Until actually reaching Ying-kou, they were met with in the
shape of small detachments guarding villages or railway-bridges. Result,
small fire-actions, in which the Cossacks showed incompetence. Contrast
De Wet’s skill in raiding similar posts. One of the three Russian
columns, several regiments strong, was kept back, says Captain Spaits,
for three hours by half a company of Infantry, which occupied a small
trench—the history of Dronfield and Poplar Grove repeating itself in
Manchuria. Another column was defied by a handful of Infantry at
Niu-chuang. Finally, at Ying-kou, after the repulse of one Russian
column by a precipitately de-trained batch of Japanese Infantry,
Mishchenko, with 1,500 men, made a night attack on the railway-station,
held by 300 Japanese Infantry. His dispositions were painfully crude; he
was repulsed with heavy loss, the retirement, says Colonel Shisnikoff,
was “an utter rout,” and that was the end of the raid. Contrast the Boer
night attacks, so rarely, even when unsuccessful, suffering serious
loss, so often highly successful. The results of the raid, a few
transports burnt and some trivial demolitions on the railway, may be
regarded as _nil_. The retreat to the base was precipitate, headlong,
and what was the reason for the retreat? The rumour that a force of
Japanese _Infantry_ was preparing to block the line of retreat. In view
of what had happened, Mishchenko was right not to risk that contingency.
But is not all this a pitiful satire on the theory of hybrid training?
Observe that the conditions were strictly normal. Raids on
communications always have to meet stationary dismounted detachments of
the enemy. What, then, is the use of a Cavalry which cannot attack and
defeat Infantry by Infantry methods? The only abnormality was the
absence of any hostile Japanese Cavalry throughout the whole course of
the raid. And we are asked to believe that the grand _raison d’être_ for
elaborate and perfect training in the steel is to overthrow the enemy’s
Cavalry, who are also, by our official hypothesis, “thoroughly
efficient” in the rifle, and who, on this occasion, were not present at
all! And after overthrowing them by shock, then there is to be, in
General French’s words, “a brilliant field of enterprise for Cavalry as
mounted riflemen.” Brilliant! “The story of the raid,” says Colonel
Shisnikoff, “is a memory of shame to those who took part in it.” And to
crown all, it is General French’s warning to our Cavalry that the
Cossacks failed in the war owing to overtraining as mounted riflemen!
_Quo non mortalia pectora cogis, ferri sacra fames?_
These are the Cavalry who, he suggests, were trained on _our_ heretical
principles. “Continually getting off their horses!” Is it a disgrace to
dismount? Does he regret that Scobell’s Lancers at Bouwer’s Hoek did not
use shock with the lance in storming Lotter’s laager? Would Mr. Goldman
have had these Russians charge loop-holed buildings on horseback? Once
in the course of this raid, they are said to have charged a wall, and
one account of the night attack on Ying-kou represents some of the
Cossacks as having advanced on foot, “sword in hand.” The true fighting
moral of this enterprise was that the Cossacks should have been better
riflemen. Contrast the great raids of the Civil War, when the firearm,
although so imperfect, was the governing factor. Why were there never
any great raids in the Franco-German War? Study Bernhardi, that
unconscious satirist of the steel, and you will guess why. Lastly,
contrast the Japanese raid (described fully in our “British Officers’
Reports,” ii.) by 172 men, under Colonel Naganuma, who, in the course of
an expedition round the Russian rear, beginning on January 9, 1905,
lasting more than two months, covering a vast distance, and including
several hotly contested fire-actions, achieved the substantial result of
blowing up by night the great railway-bridge at Hsin-kai-ho on February
12. The result was to cause Kuropatkin to divert 8,000 men, including a
division of Cavalry, from the imminent battle of Mukden for the defence
of his communications. This raid and its fellow under Hasegawa were in
the style of Stuart and De Wet. Compare, too, the ride of Smuts to Cape
Colony, and its subsequent results in diverting troops to that quarter
and in actual damage to our forces and communications.[82]
-----
Footnote 82:
_Times_ History, vol. v., pp. 302–319, 388, 394.
-----
Few as the achievements of the Russian Cavalry were, whatever they did
achieve was through fire-action. Kuropatkin and all critics praise
Samsonoff’s defence of the Yen-tai coal-mines during the battle of
Liao-yang, when he checked by fire the Japanese pursuit of Orloff’s
beaten division. Rennenkampf, another leader of Cavalry who showed signs
of ability, in the course of the great battle of the Sha Ho, led 1,500
Cossacks against the Japanese communications on the upper Tai-tse-ho
(October 8 to 12, 1904). Wrangel commends his enterprise, but admits his
complete failure. Our “British Officers’ Reports,” vol. i., pp. 664–668,
give a full account of the whole episode, and describe the brilliant
success of the Second Japanese Cavalry Brigade under Prince Kanin, first
in anticipating Rennenkampf at Chaotao, which had been defended by only
seventy Infantry for two days, then in driving the Cossacks back and
forcing them to uncover one of their own Infantry brigades, which was
attacking Pen-hse-hu, on the northern bank of the Tai-tse-ho. Prince
Kanin, unmolested by the Cossacks, proceeded to surprise the reserve
battalions of this brigade, and in the space of a few minutes killed
many hundreds with his six Maxims. The result was the retirement of the
Russian left and Stackelberg’s eventual retreat. Needless to say, there
was no question of shock between the two Cavalries, nor any suggestion
from any quarter that there was any reason for it or possibility of it.
Wrangel credits the Russians with having “adequately solved some
strategical tasks”—for instance, the guarding of the passes of the
Fen-shui-ling Mountains against Kuroki and Nodzu, and the discovery, but
nothing more than the bare discovery, of Kuroki’s flank movement at
Liao-yang, and of Nogi’s terrible turning stroke at the battle of
Mukden. In other respects they showed the most pitiful weakness at that
last great crisis. No less than 25,000 strong, they were outmanœuvred
and outfought by two brigades of Japanese Cavalry acting with Infantry.
Of course no shock duel, and yet was the effect of the Japanese Cavalry
“negative,” in the words of “Cavalry Training”? On the contrary, it was
tremendously positive, and with larger numbers might have been as
decisive as Sheridan’s interception of Lee in April, 1865. Wrangel
gravely remarks that _if_ the Cossacks had first overthrown the Japanese
Cavalry a great rôle would have been open to them in resisting Nogi’s
main force—not, he goes out of his way to say, with the _arme blanche_,
but with fire-action. The old story! If they could not overcome even the
Japanese hybrid Cavalry with fire, how could they overcome Japanese
Infantry? As for shock, it is cynical levity to breathe the word in
connection with that Titanic fire-struggle of March, 1905.
Wrangel himself throws some light on these perplexing conundrums. It is
on page 24. He has just been deploring the fiasco of Mishchenko’s raid,
and has added that throughout the war the Russian Cavalry showed none of
that “desire for action” which “we recognize as the first and most
important attribute of our arm.” (As though, forsooth, it was not the
first attribute of Infantry and Artillery!) We await resignedly the
usual Cavalry dictum—that they were ill-trained for shock, and were
“continually getting off their horses.” Not a bit of it. He goes on
thus:
“On the other hand, a just critic, without any further ado, must admit
that the prevailing conditions made it extraordinarily difficult for
the Cavalry masses of Kuropatkin to play the part of Cavalry in
battle. Indeed, we do not mind openly declaring that, in our opinion,
_no other European Cavalry, supported by the principles of the Cavalry
tactics of the day_, would have been in a position to perform anything
of note on the Manchurian battle-fields” (“Cavalry in the
Russo-Japanese War,” p. 23).
He goes on to say that Cavalry cannot attack “Infantry masses” (but
there were no masses during Mishchenko’s raid) unless utterly
demoralized, and that “as long as the two battle-fronts are struggling
with one another, the Cavalry arm is obliged to respect unrestrained the
emptiness of the modern battle-field, ... which is ruled by the magazine
rifle.”
Really, what are we coming to? It was something of a shock to hear
Bernhardi saying that Cavalry had been driven from their place of honour
on the battle-fields of the plains, but that this arm, whose soul is
offence, is to respect unrestrained the emptiness of the modern
battle-field is surely a counsel of appalling levity. Mounted riflemen,
at any rate, do not carry respect for the dangers of the battle-field to
this length. If they had, there would have been no war in South Africa
at all. Our foes would have respected the emptiness of the veld from
Pretoria to Cape Town.
Wrangel marches cheerfully on towards the inevitable _reductio ad
absurdum_:
“As the lion-hearted Japanese Infantry never gave the Russian dragoons
or Cossacks the pleasure of retreating in disorder to exemplify the
last-mentioned principles, _it remained only for the latter to seek
out the hostile Cavalry_. This also the Russian Cavalry divisions did
not succeed in doing—whether through their own fault remains for the
present undecided” (_ibid._, p. 29).
This is not sarcastic; it is the sincere thought of a serious Cavalry
soldier, who believes in the _arme blanche_. Here is the admission,
frank and unabashed, that Cavalry, because they are deficient in
fire-power, are only formidable to Cavalry, who are equally deficient in
fire-power; that nobody cares a snap of the fingers for the lance or
sword but those who, choosing to carry those weapons, agree to fear
them. Clearly, even this exception is no exception, because one or both
parties may by caprice or design break the compact and take to the
firearm, which will then “rule the battle-field.” In another passage on
page 17, when commenting on the failure of the Russian Cavalry to use an
“active screen” in the phase of strategical reconnaissance—_i.e._, in
non-battle-field encounters of the rival Cavalries—he gives as a cause
the fact that the “Japanese Cavalry seldom committed themselves to shock
tactics”—precisely the opposite cause alleged by General French—namely,
that the Russians themselves were “continually getting off their
horses.” Wrangel perceives that the steel weapon is lost if this sort of
thing goes on; so in his final conclusion, quoted in my last chapter (p.
316), he urges his own Cavalry to remain deaf to the “so-called”
intelligence of the advocates of fire training, which is impossible to
combine with shock training, but to give the carbine an emphatically
secondary place, and concentrate on shock. If all Cavalries agree on
this self-denying ordinance, then, he implies, ground permitting, and
far from the unseemly fire-scuffles of the battle-fields, we shall have,
if both sides play fair, some grand spectates of shock. There is less
mental chaos in Wrangel than in most exponents of shock, because he
ignores the historical achievements of mounted riflemen, and therefore
feels no need for compromise; but he cannot altogether escape
self-contradiction. In order to proffer an illustration of the theory
that shock should decide inter-Cavalry combats, he instances the first
in the war—at Tschondschu (Tiessu) on March 28, 1904 (pp. 51–53)—a small
affair where six squadrons of Cossacks were driven away from a walled
town by the fire-action of three squadrons of Japanese Cavalry. We read
that the Russians, being in larger force, should have “obtained a
brilliant result” with the _arme blanche_, and also that the Japanese,
after forcing the Russians to accept fire-action, should have charged
and defeated the Russians. At the end we discover that the writer has no
knowledge of the terrain beyond the fact that the town was situated in a
“mountainous district,” from which fact he infers that there must have
been “ground over which the Japanese could have advanced unseen” for
their charge. Truly a startling variation of the usual complaint of lack
of “Cavalry” ground!
It is greatly to be regretted that Count Wrangel’s ignorance of the
attainments of British Cavalry permits him to class them among other
European Cavalries as equally incompetent to have succeeded better than
the Russians on the Manchurian battle-fields. Like de Negrier’s biting
criticism of the French Cavalry, the pronouncement throws a strange
light on our own theory of imitating the armament of Continental armies.
Our Cavalry have very good firearms, and are, so far as time allows,
trained to use them a good deal better than the Austrians permit. And
they _can_ use them well, as they showed in South Africa, where they did
engage in the “battle,” and as they have shown in our recent
manœuvres. But, that point made clear, I make no apology whatever for
quoting at length the Austrian critic in a chapter starting originally
from an appreciation of Manchurian problems by our foremost Cavalry
authority, General French. The fundamental line of reasoning in both
cases is precisely the same, but Wrangel is ruthlessly logical and
careless of the logical consequences. General French’s reasoning leads
him inexorably to precisely the same conclusion as Wrangel—namely, that
steel-armed Cavalry can be formidable only to steel-armed Cavalry. Both
men believe in the indispensable shock duel, both underrate the rifle as
a source of dash—for Cavalry. General French sneers at it in the words
“continually getting off their horses”; Count Wrangel does not sneer at
it. He respects it so much as to banish Cavalry from the sphere of fire
altogether, for clean and decent encounters with a less formidable
weapon. This is the inevitable tendency of the present reaction in
England. “Cavalry Training” and Bernhardi’s book admit, no doubt, of the
most liberal interpretation in the right direction by officers who
resolutely work out to their logical conclusion the directions given for
fire-action, and ignore the conflicting directions for the steel. But
whence is to come this liberal interpretation, when high Cavalry
authorities denounce leanings towards fire as a betrayal of the “Cavalry
spirit,” and, so far from depreciating the sword, add the lance?
Let us turn to the Japanese Cavalry. They were a very small force.
Outside the thirteen, and eventually seventeen divisional regiments of
420 men apiece, which seem to have been in excess of divisional
requirements (for Infantry did much of the work required), there were
only two independent brigades of three regiments apiece—2,300 sabres
together. The troopers carried good firearms, though of too short a
range, but were trained principally for shock, and used the antiquated
German drill-books denounced by Bernhardi. Lances wisely had been left
at home, and only swords taken to the war. The men, constitutionally,
were bad horsemen. Their horses were poor and were overloaded.[83] The
astonishing thing is that they did so well under these conditions. As
soon as they grasped the fact that fire governed action, the talent for
fire which they shared with the Infantry, coupled with great keenness,
was their salvation. Enormously outmatched in numbers, they overawed and
outfought the enemy’s Cavalry; they fulfilled sufficiently well, at any
rate, in conjunction with the Infantry, the task of reconnaissance, both
protective and offensive—and, in short, took a substantial part in
enabling Japan to win the war. Needless to say, they were just as
“lion-hearted”—to use Wrangel’s expression—as other arms, but, having
been trained and armed on false principles, naturally did not win
laurels as great as those of the Infantry. Nevertheless, there is truth,
I believe, in what Wrangel—always frank, at whatever cost—says in the
following passage:
“The Japanese Cavalry, scarcely without exception, carried out their
performances with the _carbine_, and in close touch with their own
Infantry. To this circumstance, without doubt, we have to ascribe the
principal reason why there has been hesitation among military critics
in giving full recognition to their activity. A certain
narrow-mindedness obstructs the means used to gain the end, which in
no way is inclined to further the interests of the arm” (pp. 49, 50).
-----
Footnote 83:
Both on horses and on horse-mastership opinions differ (see “British
Officers’ Reports,” vol. ii., and the U.S. Reports). The figures of
wastage seem to show good management.
-----
Extraordinary the words seem, in the face of Wrangel’s ultimate
conclusion about the _arme blanche_; but the topic breeds paradox. Still
stranger is what follows:
“‘_To be victorious is the chief thing._’ Under all circumstances this
will remain our motto. If we do not succeed with the sword or lance,
then let us try firearms. If we are too weak to gain success alone,
then let us only be too thankful and accept without scruple the help
of our Infantry. Accordingly, on these principles the Japanese Cavalry
consistently acted. To reproach them because of this is extremely
unjustifiable” (p. 50).
Then, forgetting that he has previously explained the absence of shock
in the Russians by the Japanese adoption of fire-tactics, he adds:
“Besides, it must not be forgotten that they (the Japanese), as the
weakest force, had the manner of fighting dictated to them by their
opponents.”
A whimsical side-light on all of which is thrown by General Sir C. J.
Burnett (“British Officers’ Reports,” vol. ii., p. 543), who thinks the
“much-maligned” Japanese Cavalry, “with their thorough knowledge of
shock-tactics,” must have found it “gall and wormwood to hang on to the
skirts of their Infantry,” instead of “riding straight at the opposing
Cavalry whenever the opportunity offered.”
Wrangel adds that men on “fast-galloping horses,” and on “not too
unfavourable ground,” will be able to enjoy the “irresistible pleasure
of charging home with the sword” against dismounted Cavalry. Elsewhere
he speaks, in a passage I have quoted before, of the necessity of
“eternally galloping.” Our minds go back to the vast destruction of
British horseflesh in South Africa, to the wild chimera of the
“eternally galloping” horse in any war, to the hard incessant work
imposed on scouts and patrols (who have somehow to combine scouting and
patrolling with battle duties), and lastly to the charges at the canter
made by the ill-fed, undersized Boer ponies. Again, I make no apology
for quoting these passages. Wrangel is another of the _enfants
terribles_, like Bernhardi. He betrays his own case, and the more
fatally because he does not seem to have studied our war at all; but his
case _au fond_ is the same as that of our own Cavalry school.
Among the achievements of the Independent Japanese Cavalry I have
mentioned the case of Naganuma’s raid, of Prince Kanin’s important
success at Pen-hse-hu, and of the energetic co-operation with the Second
and Third Armies at Mukden. In this latter case Wrangel credits them
with having pushed forward “in an extraordinarily quick and energetic
manner,” driving the Russian Cavalry before them. That the praise is
well deserved is shown by the “British Officers’ Reports” (vol. ii.).
The Russian Cavalry are estimated at 25,000, the Japanese at 3,240. The
latter, both in obtaining information and in action, did extraordinarily
well, especially with Nogi’s Third Army. The information is not wholly
complete. Exactly how near the Cavalry came to interception does not
appear.
Wrangel also gives high praise to the work of the First Cavalry Brigade
at the battle of Telissu on June 14–15, 1904. Sir Ian Hamilton (vol.
ii., p. 330, etc.) conveys the same impression in regard to the battle,
though he, like Kuropatkin, dwells principally on the feebleness of the
Russian Cavalry in not using plain opportunities for delaying
fire-action against Oku’s turning force. A preliminary combat of
advanced guards on May 30 had led to the only recorded case of an _arme
blanche_ charge in the war, when two squadrons of Cossacks charged one
Japanese squadron and, not having room to gather speed, used their
lances as quarter-staves. Would not revolvers have done better? The
squadron was defeated, but the “general results of the engagement were
indecisive.”[84] In the culminating battle of the 15th the Japanese
Brigade checked a critical counter-attack by Glasko’s Thirty-fifth
Infantry Division, freed the flank of the Third Japanese Division, and
took an energetic part in the pursuit of the Russians, driving back the
rear-guard by fire.
-----
Footnote 84:
Our Official Historians (Part ii., p. 32), referring to the same
incident, speak of a charge in “open order” over fifty yards of
ground, and of lances being used with “great effect.” The losses on
both sides were evidently small.
-----
All critics and historians mention the splendid behaviour of the Second
Japanese Cavalry Brigade and of other divisional detachments at the
battle of January 26 to 29, 1905, called by the Russians Shen-tan-pu,
and by our historians Hei-kou-tai (see “British Officers’ Reports,” vol.
ii., pp. 45–58). It was a vehement attack of four divisions against the
left of the Japanese entrenched line, held by the Second Army, forty
miles south of Mukden. The Japanese Cavalry brigade occupied a cluster
of villages near the junction of the Hun and Taitsu Rivers, and in the
course of a bitterly contested battle, lasting three days, had to take
their share, sometimes with Infantry support, in meeting attacks by
greatly superior forces. In this case the work they had to do was
precisely the work of Infantry, and our minds go back once more to the
directions of our “Cavalry Training”—that Cavalry may be called upon to
“occupy localities for defence,” but that their defences are on no
account to be otherwise than of the “simplest description,” so as not to
weaken the offensive instinct of an essentially offensive arm—in other
words, so as not to compromise the steel weapon. This is to organize
defeat. If the Japanese had thought so lightly of fire and the
concomitants of fire, they would never have had the offensive instinct
which they showed at Pen-hse-hu, Telissu, and Mukden.
Everywhere the same moral. In screening, raiding, and battle, fire is
master. No observer suggests on any definite occasion any definite
opportunity for the use of steel by the Cavalry engaged. Sir Ian
Hamilton, the senior of the large staff of British officers who watched
the Manchurian War, himself a successful leader in South Africa, has
given his opinion officially (“Reports,” vol. ii., p. 526) and in his
published diary. He does not miss or evade the point; he grapples with
it directly, and is constantly contrasting South African mounted men and
methods with Manchurian men and methods, and his conclusion is
unreservedly in favour of the rifle. His opinion began to be confirmed
at the first battle of the war, the Yalu, where neither Cavalry had any
effect on events. His Japanese friends, he tells us, were very much
surprised, and naturally, for they held German theories. But “the
warmest advocate of shock must allow, when he follows the course of
events on this occasion over the actual ground, that there was no place
or opportunity where the horse could possibly have been of any value
except to bring a rifleman rapidly up to the right spot” (vol. i., p.
137). Throughout the Manchurian campaign “the thought never” but once
“occurred to him to long for Cavalry to launch at the enemy during some
crisis of the struggle. Neither Infantry has the slightest idea of
permitting itself to be hustled by mounted men, and it has been apparent
... that the Cavalry could not influence the fighting one way or
another, except by getting off their horses and using their rifles.”
Nevertheless, two of the officers who were present do succeed in
concluding that the war proves the supreme value of the steel weapon;
and if my readers wish to gauge the tyranny of a blind faith over the
minds of accomplished practical men, whose Reports on any other point
are lucid and convincing, let him read, in close connection with Count
Wrangel’s two contradictory explanations of the absence of shock, the
remarks on the Japanese Cavalry by General Sir C. J. Burnett and Colonel
W. H. Birkbeck (vol. ii., pp. 542–545). It would be a comedy, if such
comedies did not have tragic consequences. Colonel Birkbeck seeks an
interview with General Akiyama. That vigorous employer of aggressive
fire-action states that his Cavalry learnt to draw their “greatest
confidence” from the firearm. Wincing, however, under a reminder from
Colonel Birkbeck of the religious “cult of the sword” in Japan, he
pleads defensive necessities against the enormous numerical strength of
the Russians, who, however, were "incapable of forcing an issue at close
quarters"! If they had been Cavalry" truly trained as such," besides
being enormously superior, then—but the General is too clever to court
the _reductio ad absurdum_—then “the case would have been different.”
General Burnett’s comment I quoted on page 347, and to complete the
comedy, Colonel Birkbeck, in a separate report (No. 10), has
conjecturally attributed the inaction of the 25,000 Russian Cavalry at
the battle of Mukden to their lack of training for shock! In his
interview with the more tactful Colonel McClernand, of the United States
army, Akiyama speaks the plain, unvarnished truth.
Let the reader now take a bird’s-eye view of the historical chain of
authoritative comment on the performances of Cavalry.
Here is Von Moltke reporting to the King of Prussia, after the
Austro-Prussian War of 1866:
“Our Cavalry failed, perhaps not so much in actual capacity as in
self-confidence. All its initiative had been destroyed at manœuvres
... and it therefore shirked bold, independent action, and kept far in
the rear, and as much as possible out of sight,” etc.
(“Taktisch-Strategische-Aufsätze”).
General French, in his Introduction to Bernhardi (p. xxvii), actually
quotes this view as a warning to our Cavalry of the present day against
“ultra-caution” with the _steel_ in the presence of Infantry fire;
quotes it, I repeat, in the beginning of a volume whose central thesis
is the futility of the steel in opposition to fire.
It may be added that an “Austrian officer of high rank,” who is quoted
in the French translation of the Austrian Official History of that same
war of 1866, attributed what he calls the “success” of the Prussian
Cavalry to their reliance on the support of Infantry—that is, on _fire_.
His compatriot Wrangel, forty years later, says the same of the Japanese
Cavalry.
Bernhardi reminds his countrymen that in the war of 1870 their own
Cavalry, and in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 the Russian Cavalry,
only obtained the poor success they did obtain because “not even
approximately equal Cavalry” opposed them, criticizes their performances
severely, and passionately advocates perfection in the use of the rifle.
We come to the South African War, where the firearm inspires the best
achievements of Cavalry and the steel weapon is discarded, and where we
find even the most convinced upholders of the _arme blanche_ forced to
construct an elaborate and often self-contradictory scheme of
explanation for the failure of the British Cavalry—_qua_ Cavalry—in that
campaign.
The Japanese Cavalry only approaches other arms in so far as it uses
fire well. And we end with Kuropatkin, who has condemned the Russian
Cavalry in the war of 1877, and who, in the war of 1904–5, almost in the
identical words used by Von Moltke, deplores the lack of confidence and
dash in the Cavalry, and regards them as having _failed_.
Unanimity. Censure and excuses always. Of what other class of soldiers
is this invariable complaint made? And what is the common element in all
these censured Cavalries? Inefficiency in fire-action. Of the wars prior
to the invention of the deadly modern rifle, which is the war where
Cavalry are least censured and most praised? The American Civil War,
earlier than any of those I have named, where the Cavalries learnt
reliance on the firearm, though their example passed unnoticed in
Europe. After that invention, what type do we find winning its way to
success in South Africa? The mounted rifleman. Which weapon succeeds in
Manchuria? The firearm.
I have carried the reader of this volume through a very Wonderland of
paradox. Let him collect the threads of one more paradox in our own
domestic history.
In 1899, deaf to history and its most brilliant English exponent,
Colonel Henderson, our Cavalry went to war equipped and trained like the
present French Cavalry.
They and the nation suffered accordingly. After the war, Lord Roberts
embodied in a preface to the “Cavalry Training” Manual of 1904 the ripe
experience, not only of the South African War, but of a long life spent
in military service. He inculcated reliance on the rifle as the
principal weapon for all purposes of the Cavalry soldier. Two years
later, although Manchuria had confirmed his words in every particular,
the injunction was forgotten, and our Cavalry were sitting at the feet
of a German writer who had nothing to tell them about the rifle which
they had not already learnt by costly war experience, and who was
addressing, not them, but a Cavalry ignorant of the ABC of modern
fire-tactics. But, as a matter of theory, not of experience, he clung to
shock, expounding it in terms irreconcilable with fire. Our Manual of
1904 was superseded by the Manual of 1907, with the directions of Lord
Roberts expunged and Bernhardi’s self-contradictory counsels embodied.
In the August number of the _Revue des deux Mondes_ of 1908 many people
were astonished to find set forth in full by General de Negrier, as a
model to the “dreaming” French Cavalry, Lord Roberts’s preface to our
Manual of 1904. That Manual is cancelled. So that to find in its living,
authoritative form the verdict of our greatest living soldier, derived
from facts, not from theory, on a technical and tactical question of
vital importance, the student has to search the files of a French
review.