SIR JOHN FRENCH ON THE ARME BLANCHE
SO the matter stood until, early in 1910, General von Bernhardi
produced his second work, "Cavalry in War and Peace." An admirable
English translation by Major G.T.M. Bridges promptly appeared, again
with an Introduction by Sir John French.
It must, one might surmise, have given him some embarrassment to
pen this second eulogy. The previous book had been "perspicuous,"
"logical," "intelligent," and, above all, "exhaustive and complete."
Two wars, it is true, had intervened, but neither, according either
to Sir John French or, we may say at once, to General von Bernhardi,
was of any interest to Cavalry. What fresh matter, either for German
exposition or for British eulogy, could there be? That is one of the
questions I shall have to elucidate, and I may say here that the only
new fact for General von Bernhardi is the recent promulgation of a
revised set of Regulations for the German Cavalry, Regulations which,
in his opinion, though "better than the old ones," are still almost as
mischievous, antiquated, and "unsuitable for war" as they can possibly
be, and whose effect is to leave the German Cavalry "unprepared for
war." But this is not a new fact which could properly strengthen Sir
John French in recommending the German author to the British Cavalry
as a brilliantly logical advocate of the lance and sword, and it is
not surprising, therefore, that the tone of his second introduction is
slightly different from that of the first.
For the first time there appears a reference to the German Cavalry
Regulations, from which the English reader would gain an inkling of the
fact that General von Bernhardi is not a prophet in his own country,
and that all is not harmony and enlightenment among the "progressive"
Cavalry schools of Europe. On one specific point--raids--Sir John
French "ventures to disagree" with General von Bernhardi, and he
writes, also in quite general terms, that he does not "approve of
all that the German Regulations say about the employment of Cavalry
in battle." But even this latter note of criticism is very faint and
deprecatory; nor is there anything to show that the writer, except
on the one point mentioned, is not thoroughly at one with the German
author's principles. The main purpose of this Introduction, as of
the earlier one, is to claim that Bernhardi's book is a triumphant
justification of the lance and sword. It is a "tonic for weak minds,"
an antidote against the "dangerous heresies" of the English advocates
of the mounted rifleman, whose "appeals from ignorance to vanity"
deserved scornful repudiation.
Once more, and in warmer language than ever, the General protests
against the pernicious tendency to attach value to the lessons of South
Africa; but this time, fortunately, he gives some specific reasons for
regarding the war as "abnormal," and I shall devote the rest of this
chapter to an examination of these reasons.
They are four: (1) That the "Boer commandos dispersed to the four
winds when pressed, and reunited again some days or weeks later
hundreds of miles from the scene of their last encounter." This
curious little summary of the war shows to what almost incredible
lengths of self-delusion a belief in the _arme blanche_ will carry
otherwise well-balanced minds--minds, too, of active, able men like
Sir John French, who have actually been immersed in the events under
discussion. One fails at first to see the smallest causal relation
between the phenomena of the war as he sets them forth and the combat
value of the lance and sword, but the implied argument must be this:
that these weapons could not be given a fair trial in combat because
there was no combat, or, rather, only combat enough to cause the
hundred casualties and prisoners for which, by the recorded facts, the
lance and sword were accountable.
We figure a bloodless war, in which at the mere glimpse of a khaki
uniform the enemy fled for "hundreds of miles"--at such lightning
speed, moreover, that one of the chief traditional functions of the
_arme blanche_, pursuit, was wholly in abeyance. Who would gather that
there had been a "black week"; that Botha and Meyer held the Tugela
heights for four months against forces between three and four times
their superior in strength; that Ladysmith (where there were four
Cavalry regiments) was besieged for four months, Kimberley for the same
period, and Mafeking for seven months; that for at least nine months no
"dispersion" took place even remotely resembling that vaguely sketched
by Sir John French; and that during the whole course of the war no
tactical dispersion took place which would conceivably affect the
efficacy of the lance and sword as weapons of combat? A mere statement
of the fact that the net rate of Boer retreat, even during the purely
partisan warfare of 1901-02, was almost invariably that of ox-waggons
(two miles an hour on the average), that until the last year of the war
the Boers were generally accompanied by artillery, and that from the
beginning of the war to the end not a single waggon or a single gun was
ever captured through the agency, direct or indirect, of the lance and
sword, shatters the hypothesis that these weapons had any appreciable
combat value.
But that is only the negative side of the argument. We have to deal
with a mass of plain, positive facts in favour of the rifle as an
aggressive weapon for mounted troops. The Boer rifle caused us 29,000
casualties, over 40 guns and 10,000 men taken in action--losses which,
to say the least, are evidence that some stiff fighting took place;
for men who, when "pressed," run for "hundreds of miles" cannot take
prisoners and guns.
We have before us the details of some hundreds of combats, in which
Cavalry as well as other classes of troops were engaged, and the only
effective way of testing the value of the steel weapons is to see
what actually happened in these combats. The result of this inquiry
is to show that the lance and sword were practically useless both
in attack and defence, whatever the relative numbers and whatever
the nature of the ground. No serious historian has ever attempted to
make out any case to the contrary. No responsible man at the time
would have ventured publicly to assert the contrary. It was patent to
everybody--leaders and men--that the Boers were formidable because they
were good mounted riflemen, and that our bitter need was for mounted
riflemen as good as theirs. It is only when years of peace have drugged
the memory and obliterated the significance of these events--melancholy
and terrible events some of them--that it is possible to put forward
the audacious claim that the lance and sword had no chance of proving
their value because the Boers invariably ran away from them.
It must be evident that if this first reason for the failure of
the lance and sword given by Sir John French is valid, it would be
needless to proffer any others. And the others he does proffer only
demonstrate further the weakness of his case. "Secondly," he says,
"the war in South Africa was one for the conquest and annexation of
immense districts, and no settlement was open to us except the complete
submission of our gallant enemy." Such a campaign, he goes on to
say, "is the most difficult that can be confided to an army," etc.
Perfectly true--we agree; but what bearing has this obvious truth on
the combat value of the lance and sword?
The issue before us is this: Is a certain mode of fighting possible in
modern days? Is it practicable for men to remain in their saddles and
wield steel weapons against men armed with modern rifles? "No," answers
Sir John French, "it is not practicable, if your aim is annexation and
the complete submission of a gallant enemy." Poor consolation for the
unhappy taxpayer who pays for the maintenance of exceedingly expensive
mounted troops, and commits himself to a scheme of conquest and
annexation in the faith that these troops are efficient instruments of
his will! Where would Sir John French's argument lead him, if he only
followed it up and supplied the missing links? But that is the worst of
this interminable controversy. Such nebulous arguments never are worked
out in terms of actual combat on the battle-field.
Thirdly, says Sir John French, the horses were at fault. "We did not
possess any means for remounting our Cavalry with trained horses...."
"After the capture, in rear of the army, of the great convoy by De Wet,
our horses were on short commons, and consequently lost condition,
and never completely recovered it." This is an old argument, expressed
in the old vague, misleading way. The war lasted nearly three years,
beginning in October, 1899. The period referred to by Sir John French
was in February, 1900. Long before this, when there was no complaint
about the horses, the futility of the lance and sword, and the grave
disabilities under which the Cavalry laboured owing to their inadequate
carbine, had been abundantly manifest. The steel weapons may be said to
have been obsolete after Elandslaagte, on the second day of the war.
At the particular period referred to by Sir John French--the period
of the operations against Cronje and Kimberley--heat and drought did
undoubtedly play havoc with all the horses in both armies, with those
not only of the Cavalry, but of the mounted riflemen and Artillery on
both sides. In February, 1900, a third of Cronje's small force was on
foot, a pretty severe disability, since his whole force was scarcely
equal to our Cavalry division alone, with its gunners and mounted
riflemen included, while it was less than a quarter as strong as the
whole army at the disposal of Lord Roberts. Sir John French makes
use of a misleading expression when he says that "the Cavalry horses
lost condition, and never completely recovered it." Nine-tenths of
the horses here referred to succumbed altogether within a few months,
and the Cavalry, like nearly all the mounted troops engaged in the
operations in question, were completely remounted in June, for the
grand advance from Bloemfontein to Pretoria.
During the succeeding two years of warfare all the mounted troops,
Cavalry included, were several times remounted. So were the Boer
troops, who, of course, had no remount organization at all for
"trained" or untrained horses, and had to be content with anything
they could pick up on the veldt. Yet, besides imposing fire-tactics
on the Cavalry in every type of combat alike, they invaded the
traditional sphere of Cavalry (and were imitated to some extent by our
own Colonials and Mounted Infantry) by developing on their own account
a most formidable type of mounted charge, which during the last year
of the war alone cost us 18 guns and 2,500 men killed, wounded, and
prisoners. These charges were made with little rats of starveling
ponies, whose extreme speed was scarcely that of the slow canter of an
ordinary Cavalry charger.
If Sir J. French were to descend to statistics and facts, he would find
it impossible to trace any causal relation between the efficacy of the
lance and sword and the condition of the horses from time to time.
The phenomena are precisely the same under all conditions from first
to last. Everywhere and always the rifle is supreme. The better the
horse, the better help for the rifle--that is all. In point of fact,
he is quite aware that the principal success of the regular Cavalry
was achieved when the horses were at their worst--that is to say, in
the very period he refers to, when the Cavalry headed off Cronje and
pinned him, purely by fire-action, to the river-bed at Paardeberg.
Another good performance--though it was by no means specially a Cavalry
performance; for mounted riflemen and Infantry were associated with the
Cavalry--was the prolonged screening operations in front of Colesberg
(November to January, 1900). There was no complaint about the horses
then, but the sabre never killed or hurt a Boer. It was only once drawn
from the scabbard, and was speedily resheathed, owing to hostile fire.
I pass to the last and strangest of Sir John French's reasons for
regarding the war as abnormal in the sense that it gave no opportunity
for the use of the lance or sword. It is this: That, "owing to
repeated and wholesale release of prisoners who had been captured and
subsequently appeared in the field against us, we were called upon to
fight, not 86,000 or 87,000 men, but something like double that number
or more, with the additional disadvantage that the enemy possessed on
his second and third appearance against us considerable experience of
our methods and a certain additional seasoned fitness." Here again is
a proposition which alone is sufficient to destroy the case for the
lance and sword. If, as a defence of those weapons, it means anything,
it must mean that the Cavalry, by means of their steel weapons, were
perpetually taking prisoners, to no purpose, because these prisoners
were constantly released. Gradually the enemy learnt "experience of
our methods," that is, of our shock-methods with the lance and sword,
and, armed with this experience and the "seasoned fitness" produced
by successive spells of fighting, they eventually countered or evaded
those shock-methods, with what result we are not told. But such an
interpretation is inadmissible. What Sir John French surely should say
is precisely the reverse of what he does imply--namely, that we started
the war in an ignorance of the Boer methods which cost us scores of
millions of pounds; that we slowly learnt experience of those methods,
and ultimately conquered the Boers and ended the war by imitating those
methods. That is the plain moral of the war, as enforced by every
historian.
Observe that, for the sake of argument, I am accepting as historically
accurate Sir John French's statement about the advantage possessed
by the Boers owing to the release of their prisoners. It is almost
superfluous to add that the statement, in the sense he uses it, has no
historical foundation. The truth is exactly the opposite. The advantage
was immensely on our side. The Boers took many thousands of British
prisoners, but permanently retained none, because they had no means of
retaining them. During the last year of the war prisoners were released
on the spot. A large proportion of these men fought again, some several
times. No Boer prisoner of war--that is, captured in action--was
released. In December, 1900, we had about 15,000 in our possession; in
May, 1902, about 50,000.
It was mainly by this attrition of the Boer forces that we reduced them
to submission. The element of historical truth in Sir John French's
proposition is this: that in 1900, after the fall of Bloemfontein, a
considerable number of Boers surrendered voluntarily, not in action,
and were dismissed to their farms under a pledge not to fight again--a
pledge which they broke, under circumstances into which we need not
enter. There are no exact statistics as to the numbers of these men,
but at an outside estimate they cannot have amounted to more than 5
per cent. of the total number of Boers engaged in the war. In any case,
the point is totally irrelevant to the question of shock-tactics. That
is a question of combat, and in combat, as Sir John French is aware,
the Boers were, nine times out of ten, greatly outnumbered.
Such are Sir John French's reasons for the failure of the lance and
sword in South Africa. They constitute an instructive revelation of the
mental attitude of the advocates of those weapons. Is it not plain that
we are dealing here with a matter of faith, not of reason; of dogma,
not of argument; of sentiment, not of technical practice? The simple
technical issue--what happens in combat?--is persistently evaded, and
refuge sought in vague and inaccurate generalizations, which, when
tested, turn out to throw no light upon the controversy.
Sir John French himself manages to demonstrate in this same
Introduction that the question is really one of sentiment. It is a
seemingly incurable delusion with him that the whole campaign on behalf
of the rifle is an attack of a personal nature on the war exploits
of himself and the regular Cavalry, instead of being, what it really
is, an attack on the lances and swords carried by the Cavalry. This
delusion carries him to the strangest lengths of professional egotism.
In the whole of this Introduction there is not a line to indicate that
any British mounted rifleman unprovided with steel weapons took part
in the war, or that the tactics and conduct of these men have the
smallest interest for Englishmen or the smallest bearing on the present
controversy. No one would gather that our Colonial mounted riflemen
led the way in tactical development, and frequently, brief and rough
as their training had been, excelled the Cavalry in efficiency, simply
because they were trained on the right principles with the right weapon.
"Even in South Africa," says Sir John French, "grave though the
disadvantages were under which our Cavalry laboured from short commons
and overwork" [as though these disadvantages were not shared equally by
our mounted riflemen and by the Boers themselves!], "the Boer mounted
riflemen acknowledged on many occasions the moral force of the cold
steel, and gave way before it." Then follows a concrete instance, taken
from the action of Zand River in May, 1900.
Anyone familiar with the history of the war must have felt deep
bewilderment at the General's choice, for purposes of illustration, of
this action, which has not generally been held to have reflected high
credit on the Cavalry.
It is needless to discuss the battle in detail, because the accounts
of it are set forth clearly and accurately enough in the "Official"
and _Times_ Histories, and, _inter alia_, in Mr. Goldman's work, "With
French in South Africa." As a very small and unimportant episode in
the battle, there was certainly a charge by a whole brigade of regular
Cavalry against some Boers whom the _Times_ History describes as a
"party," and whom Mr. Goldman, who was present, estimates at 200 in
number; but it is perfectly clear, from all accounts, (1) that the
casualties resulting from the charge were too few to deserve record;
(2) that the charge had no appreciable effect upon the fortunes of the
day; (3) that the Cavalry on the flank in question suffered serious
checks and losses at the hands of a greatly inferior force; and (4)
that Sir John French's turning force, like General Broadwood's turning
force on the opposite flank, completely failed to perform the supremely
important intercepting mission entrusted to them by Lord Roberts, and
failed through weakness in mobile fire-action.
Sir John French's version of the action teems with inaccuracies. All
the cardinal facts, undisputed facts to be found in any history, upon
which the judgment of the reader as to the efficacy of the steel must
depend, are omitted. There are no figures of relative numbers, no
times, no description of the terrain, no statement of casualties. I
will instance only one, but the greatest, error of fact. He writes that
"the rôle of the Cavalry division was to bring pressure to bear on
the right flank of the Boer army, in order to enable Lord Roberts to
advance across the river and attack the main Boer forces."
This is a highly misleading account of Roberts's tactical scheme for
the battle. Eight thousand Boers, disposed in a chain of scattered
detachments, held no less than twenty-five miles of country along the
north bank of the Zand River, their right resting on the railway,
which ran at right angles to the river. We had 38,000 men, including
12,000 mounted men, of whom 5,000 were regular Cavalry. To have used
the mounted Arm merely to "bring pressure to bear" upon the Boer flanks
would have been a course altogether unworthy of Lord Roberts and
the great army he controlled. He set no such limited aim before the
Cavalry. He planned to surround and destroy the enemy by enveloping
movements on both flanks, and gave explicit orders to that effect.
French, with 4,000 men, had orders to ride round the Boer right
flank, and seize the railway in their rear at Ventersburg Road. The
same objective was given to the turning force under Broadwood, 3,000
strong, on the Boer left. Both enveloping operations failed. To "press"
the Boers into retreat was nothing. They must have retreated anyhow,
in the face of an army five times their superior. The point was to
_prevent_ them from retreating into safety, to cut off their retreat,
and with mounted turning forces together nearly equal to the whole
Boer force this aim was perfectly feasible, given one condition, which
was not fulfilled--that our mounted troops, headed by our premier and
professional mounted troops, the Cavalry, could use their rifles and
horses approximately as well as the Boers.
Now let us come to the heart of the matter.
Let us waive all criticism of the accuracy and completeness of Sir John
French's narrative, and test the grounds of his belief that it was
owing to their fear of the sword that the Boers gave way when Dickson's
brigade charged. The Cavalry carried firearms as well as swords, and
outnumbered the party charged by at least five to one. We cannot apply
the test of casualties, because there were so few. The only test we
can apply is that of analogy from other combats. Conditions similar
to those of Zand River were repeated, on a smaller or larger scale,
thousands of times. Do we find that steel-armed mounted troops had
greater moral effect upon the enemy than troops armed only with the
rifle? Did the presence of the lance and sword on the field of combat
make any difference to the result? The answer, of course, is that it
made no difference at all. Anyone can decide this question himself. We
know precisely what troops were present, and how they were armed, in
all the combats of the war.
We can detect many different factors at work, psychological, technical,
tactical, topographical; but there is one factor which we can eliminate
as wholly negligible, and that is the presence of the lance and sword.
The same phenomena reappear whether those weapons are there or not. For
example, during Buller's campaign for the conquest of Northern Natal
(May to June, 1900) very little use was made of regular Cavalry. During
the first phase, the advance over the Biggarsberg, the six regiments
of Cavalry at Buller's disposal were left behind at Ladysmith. The
mounted work throughout was done mainly by irregulars. Was it of a
less aggressive and vigorous character on that account, by analogy,
say, with the mounted operations during the advance of Roberts from
Bloemfontein to Pretoria? We find, on the contrary, that the results
were better. The total relative numbers on the Boer side and our side
were about the same: we were about four to one. But while Roberts had
12,000 mounted men, of whom 5,000 were Cavalry, Buller had only 5,500
mounted men, of whom 2,500 were Cavalry. Do we find that when the
steelless irregulars mounted their horses, as Dickson's brigade mounted
their horses, and made a rapid aggressive advance--"charged," that
is--the Boers were any less inclined to retreat? On the contrary, they
were more inclined to do so. Witness, for instance, Dundonald's long
and vigorous pursuit with his irregular brigade over the Biggarsberg on
May 14.
Or take the Bloemfontein-Pretoria advance, in which Zand River itself
was an incident. Can we trace any further this alleged "terror of
the cold steel"? Allowance must be made for the brief and inadequate
training of the Mounted Infantry and Colonials; but, even with this
allowance, a study of the facts shows that they did as well as the
Cavalry, and sometimes better. The only effective local pursuit was
made by Hutton's Australians at Klipfontein (May 30), where a gun was
captured. These men had no steel weapons, yet they charged, and rode
down their enemy.
Take Plumer's brilliant defence of Rhodesia with mounted riflemen. Take
the relief of Mafeking, one of the most arduous and finely-executed
undertakings of the war. Did the 900 troopers of the Imperial Light
Horse who carried it out suffer from the lack of swords and lances?
They would not have taken them at a gift. Did their work compare
unfavourably with that of the Cavalry Division, 6,000 strong, in the
relief of Kimberley? On the contrary, when we contrast the numbers
employed, the opposition met with and the distance covered (251 miles
in eighteen days), we shall conclude that the achievement of the
irregulars was by far the more admirable of the two.
An infinity of illustrations might be cited to prove the same point,
but, in truth, it is a point which stands in no need of detailed proof.
The _onus probandi_ lies on those who defend weapons which palpably
failed. It is the Cavalryman's fixed idea that "mounted action,"
as the phrase goes, is associated solely with steel weapons; that
soldiers in the saddle are only formidable because they carry those
weapons. Mounted riflemen are pictured as dismounted, stationary, or as
employing their horses only for purposes of flight. These fictions were
blown to pieces by the South African War, and the irony of the case is
that Sir John French gratuitously brings ridicule on the Cavalry by
reviving them. If they are not fictions, the Cavalry stand condemned
by their own pitifully trivial record of work done with the steel.
But this is to slander the Cavalry. They do not stand condemned; their
steel weapons stand condemned. They themselves, like all other mounted
troops, did well precisely in proportion to their skill in and reliance
on the rifle and horse combined. Their lances were soon returned
to store; their swords, after rusting in the scabbards for another
year, were also, in the case of nearly all regiments, abandoned; a
good Infantry rifle replaced the weak carbine, and the Cavalry became
definitely recognized as mounted riflemen.
No one has ever regarded Sir John French himself as otherwise than
a leader of conspicuous energy and resource. But, so far from owing
anything to the lance and sword, he suffered heavily from the almost
exclusive education of his troops to those weapons, and from the
inadequacy of their firearm.