At first sight the proposition may appear startling and indeed absurd;
yet hard facts, I venture to believe, will enforce the conviction on
unprejudiced minds that the warfare of the present when contrasted with
the warfare of the past is dilatory, ineffective, and inconclusive.
Present, or contemporary warfare may be taken to date from the general
adoption of rifled firearms; the warfare of the past may fairly be
limited for purposes of comparison or contrast, to the smooth-bore era;
indeed, for those purposes there is no need to go outside the present
century. Roughly speaking the first five and a half decades of the
century were smooth-bore decades; the three and a half later decades
have been rifled decades, of which about two and a half decades
constitute the breechloading period. Considering the extraordinary
advances since the end of the smooth-bore era in everything tending to
promote celerity and decisiveness in the result of campaigns--the
revolution in swiftness of shooting and length of range of firearms,
the development in the science of gunnery, the increased devotion to
military study, the vast additions to the military strength of the
nations, looking to the facilities for rapid conveyance of troops and
transportation of supplies afforded by railways and steam
water-carriage, to the intensified artillery fire that can now be
brought to bear on fortresses, to the manifold advantages afforded by
the electric telegraph, and to the crushing cost of warfare, urging
vigorous exertions toward the speedy decision of campaigns--reviewing,
I say, the thousand and one circumstances encouraging to short, sharp,
and decisive action in contemporary warfare, it is a strange and
bewildering fact that the wars of the smooth-bore era were for the most
part, shorter, sharper, and more decisive. Spite of inferiority of
weapons the battles of that period were bloodier than those of the
present, and it is a mathematically demonstrable proposition that the
heavier the slaughter of combatants the nearer must be the end of a
war. There is no pursuit now after victory won and the vanquished draws
off shaken but not broken; in the smooth-bore era a vigorous pursuit
scattered him to the four winds. When Wellington in the Peninsula
wanted a fortress and being in a hurry could not wait the result of a
formal siege or a starvation blockade, he carried it by storm. No
fortress is ever stormed now, no matter how urgent the need for its
reduction, no matter how obsolete its defences. The Germans in 1871 did
attempt to carry by assault an outwork of Belfort, but failed utterly.
It would almost seem that in the matter of forlorn hopes the Caucasian
is played out.
Assertions are easy, but they go for little unless they can be proved;
some examples, therefore, may be cited in support of the contentions
advanced above. The Prussians are proud and with justice, of what is
known as the "Seven Weeks' War of 1866" although as a matter of fact
the contest with Austria did not last so long, for Prince Frederick
Charles crossed the Bohemian frontier on the 23rd of June and the
armistice which ended hostilities was signed at Nikolsburg on the 26th
of July. The Prussian armies were stronger than their opponents by more
than one-fourth and they were armed with the needle-gun against the
Austrian muzzle-loading rifle. When the armistice was signed the
Prussians lay on the Marchfeld within dim sight of the
Stephanien-Thurm, it is true; but with the strong and strongly armed
and held lines of Florisdorf, the Danube, and the army of the Archduke
Albrecht between them and the Austrian capital. On the 9th of October
1806 Napoleon crossed the Saale. On the 14th at Jena he smashed
Hohenlohe's Prussian army, the contending hosts being about equal
strength; on the same day Davoust at Auerstadt with 27,000 men routed
Brunswick's command over 50,000 strong. On the 25th of October Napoleon
entered Berlin, the war virtually over and all Prussia at his feet with
the exception of a few fortresses, the last of which fell on the 8th of
November. Which was the swifter, the more brilliant, and the more
decisive--the campaign of 1866, or the campaign of 1806?
The Franco-German war is generally regarded as an exceptionally
effective performance on the part of the Germans. The first German
force entered France on the 4th of August 1870. Paris was invested on
the 21st of September, the German armies having fought four great
battles and several serious actions between the frontier and the French
capital. An armistice, which was not conclusive since it allowed the
siege of Belfort to proceed and Bourbaki's army to be free to attempt
raising it, was signed at Versailles on the 28th of January 1871, but
the actual conclusion of hostilities dates from the 16th of February,
the day on which Belfort surrendered. The Franco-German war, therefore,
lasted six and a half months. The Germans were in full preparedness
except that their rifle was inferior to the French _chassepot_; they
were in overwhelmingly superior numerical strength in every encounter
save two with French regular troops, and they had on their banners the
prestige of Sadowa. Their adversaries were utterly unready for a great
struggle; the French army was in a wretched state in every sense of the
word; indeed, after Sedan there remained hardly any regulars able to
take the field. In August 1805 Napoleon's Grande Armée was at Boulogne
looking across to the British shores. Those inaccessible, he promptly
altered his plans and went against Austria. Mack with 84,000 Austrian
soldiers was at Ulm, waiting for the expected Russian army of
co-operation and meantime covering the valley of the Danube. Napoleon
crossed the Rhine on the 26th of September. Just as in 1870 the Germans
on the plain of Mars-la-Tour thrust themselves between Bazaine and the
rest of France, so Napoleon turned Mack and from Aalen to the Tyrol
stood between him and Austria. Mack capitulated Ulm and his army on the
19th of October and Napoleon was in Vienna on the 13th of November.
Although he possessed the Austrian capital, he was not, however, master
of the Austrian empire. The latter result did not fall to him until the
2nd of December, when under "the sun of Austerlitz" he with 73,000 men
defeated the Austro-Russian army 85,000 strong, inflicting on it a loss
of 30,000 men at the cost of 12,000 of his own soldiers _hors de
combat_. It took the Germans in 1870 a month and a half to get from the
frontier to _outside_ Paris; just in the same time, although certainly
not with so severe fighting by the way but nearly twice as long a
march, Napoleon moved from the Rhine to _inside_ Vienna. From the
active commencement to the cessation of hostilities the Franco-German
war lasted six and a half months; reckoning from the crossing of the
Rhine to the evening of Austerlitz Napoleon subjugated Austria in two
and a quarter months. Perhaps, however, his campaign of 1809 against
Austria furnishes a more exact parallel with the campaign of the
Germans in 1870-71. He assumed command on the 17th of April, having
hurried from Spain. He defeated the Austrians five times in as many
days, at Thann, Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmuhl, and Ratisbon; and he was
in Vienna on the 13th of May. Balked at Aspern and Essling, he gained
his point at Wagram on the 5th of July, and hostilities ceased with the
armistice of Znaim on the 11th after having lasted for a period short
of three months by a week.
The Russians have a reputation for good marching, and certainly
Suvaroff made good time in his long march from Russia to Northern Italy
in 1799; almost as good, indeed, as Bagration, Barclay de Tolly, and
Kutusoff made in falling back before Napoleon when he invaded Russia in
1812. But they have not improved either in marching or in fighting at
all commensurately with the improved appliances. In 1877, after
dawdling two months they crossed the Danube on the 21st to the 27th of
June. Osman Pasha at Plevna gave them pause until the 10th of December,
at which date they were not so far into Bulgaria as they had been five
months previously. After the fall of Plevna the Russian armies would
have gone into winter quarters but for a private quasi-ultimatum
communicated to the Tzar from a high source in England, to the effect
that unpleasant consequences could not be guaranteed against if the war
was not finished in one campaign. Alexander, who was quite an astute
man in his way, was temporarily enraged by this restriction, but
recovering his calmness, realised that nowhere in war books is any
particular time specified for the termination or duration of a
campaign. It appeared that so long as an army keeps the field
uninterruptedly a campaign may continue until the Greek kalends. In
less time than that Gourko and Skobeleff undertook to finish the
business; by the vigour with which they forced their way across the
Balkans in the heart of the bitter winter Sophia, Philippopolis, and
Adrianople fell into Russian hands; and the Russian troops had been
halted some time almost in face of Constantinople when the treaty of
San Stephano was signed on the 3rd of March 1878. It had taken the
Russians of 1877-78 eight weary months to cover the distance between
the Danube and the Marmora. But fifty years earlier a Russian general
had marched from the Danube to the Aegean in three and a half months,
nor was his journey by any means a smooth and bloodless one. Diebitch
crossed the Danube in May 1828 and besieged Silistria from the 17th of
May until the 1st of July. Silistria has undergone three resolute
sieges during the century; it succumbed but once, and then to Diebitch.
Pressing south immediately, he worsted the Turkish Grand Vizier in the
fierce battle of Kuleutscha and then by diverse routes hurried down
into the great Roumelian valley. Adrianople made no resistance and
although his force was attenuated by hardship and disease, when the
Turkish diplomatists procrastinated the audacious and gallant Diebitch
marched his thin regiments forward toward Constantinople. They had
traversed on a wide front half the distance between Adrianople and the
capital when the dilatory Turkish negotiators saw fit to imitate the
coon and come down. Whether they would have done so had they known the
weakness of Diebitch may be questioned; but again it may be questioned
whether, that weakness unknown, he could not have occupied
Constantinople on the swagger. His master was prepared promptly to
reinforce him; Constantinople was perhaps nearer its fall in 1828 than
in 1878, and certainly Diebitch was much smarter than were the Grand
Duke Nicholas, his fossil Nepokoitschitsky, and his pure theorist
Levitsky.
The contrast between the character of our own contemporary military
operations and that of those of the smooth-bore era is very strongly
marked. In 1838-39 Keane marched an Anglo-Indian army from our frontier
at Ferozepore over Candahar to Cabul without experiencing any serious
check, and with the single important incident of taking Ghuzni by storm
on the way. Our positions at and about Cabul were not seriously
molested until late in 1841, when the paralysis of demoralisation
struck our soldiers because of the crass follies of a wrong-headed
civilian chief and the feebleness of a decrepit general. Nott
throughout held Candahar firmly; the Khyber Pass remained open until
faith was broken with the hillmen; Jellalabad held out until the
"Retribution Column" camped under its walls. But for the awful
catastrophe which befell in the passes the hapless brigade which under
the influence of deplorable pusillanimity and gross mismanagement had
evacuated Cabul, no serious military calamity marked our occupation of
Afghanistan and certainly stubborn resistance had not confronted our
arms. From 1878 to 1880 we were in Afghanistan again, this time with
breech-loading far-ranging rifles, copious artillery of the newest
types, and commanders physically and mentally efficient. All those
advantages availed us not one whit. The Afghans took more liberties
with us than they had done forty years previously. They stood up to us
in fair fight over and over again: at Ali Musjid, at the Pewar Kotul,
at Charasiab, on the Takt-i-Shah and the Asmai heights, at Candahar.
They took the dashing offensive at Ahmed Kheyl and at the
Shutur-gurdan; they drove Dunham Massy's cavalry and took British guns;
they reoccupied Cabul in the face of our arms, they besieged Candahar,
they hemmed Roberts within the Sherpoor cantonments and assailed him
there. They destroyed a British brigade at Maiwand and blocked Gough in
the Jugdulluck Pass. Finally our evacuating army had to macadamise its
unmolested route down the passes by bribes to the hillmen, and the
result of the second Afghan war was about as barren as that of the
first.
It was in the year 1886 that, the resolution having been taken to
dethrone Thebau and annex Upper Burmah, Prendergast began his all but
bloodless movement on Mandalay. The Burmans of today have never
adventured a battle, yet after years of desultory bushwhacking the
pacification of Upper Burmah has still to be fully accomplished. On the
10th of April 1852 an Anglo-Indian expedition commanded by General
Godwin landed at Rangoon. During the next fifteen months it did a good
deal of hard fighting, for the Burmans of that period made a stout
resistance. At midsummer of 1853 Lord Dalhousie proclaimed the war
finished, announced the annexation and pacification of Lower Burmah,
and broke up the army. The cost of the war of which the result was this
fine addition to our Indian Empire, was two millions sterling; almost
from the first the province was self-supporting and uninterrupted peace
has reigned within its borders. We did not dally in those primitive
smooth-bore days. Sir Charles Napier took the field against the Scinde
Ameers on the 16th of February 1843. Next day he fought the battle of
Meanee, entered Hyderabad on the 2Oth, and on the 24th of March won the
decisive victory of Dubba which placed Scinde at his mercy, although
not until June did the old "Lion of Meerpore" succumb to Jacob. But
before then Napier was well forward with his admirable measures for the
peaceful administration of the great province he had added to British
India.
The expedition for the rescue of General Gordon was tediously boated up
the Nile, with the result that the "desert column" which Sir Herbert
Stewart led so valiantly across the Bayuda reached Gubat just in time
to be too late, and was itself extricated from imminent disaster by the
masterful promptitude of Sir Redvers Buller. Notwithstanding a general
consensus of professional and expert opinion in favour of the
alternative route from Souakin to Berber, 240 miles long and far from
waterless, the adoption of it was condemned as impossible. In June
1801, away back in the primitive days, an Anglo-Indian brigade 5000
strong ordered from Bombay, reached Kosseir on the Red Sea bound for
the Upper Nile at Kenéh thence to join Abercromby's force operating in
Lower Egypt. The distance from Kosseir to Kenéh is 120 miles across a
barren desert with scanty and unfrequent springs. The march was by
regiments, of which the first quitted Kosseir on the 1st of July. The
record of the desert-march of the 10th Foot is now before me. It left
Kosseir on the 20th of July and reached Kenéh on the 29th, marching at
the rate of twelve miles per day. Its loss on the march was one
drummer. The whole brigade was at Kenéh in the early days of August,
the period between its debarkation and its concentration on the Nile
being about five weeks. The march was effected at the very worst season
of the year. It was half the distance of a march from Souakin to
Berber; the latter march by a force of the same strength could well
have been accomplished in three months. The opposition on the march
could not have been so severe as that which Stewart's desert column
encountered. Nevertheless, as I have said, the Souakin-Berber route was
pronounced impossible by the deciding authority.
The comparative feebleness of contemporary warfare is perhaps
exceptionally manifest in relation to the reduction of fortresses.
During the Franco-German War the frequency of announcements of the fall
of French fortresses used to be the subject of casual jeers. The jeers
were misplaced. The French fortresses, labouring under every
conceivable disadvantage, did not do themselves discredit. All of them
were more or less obsolete. Excluding Metz and Paris, neither fortified
to date, their average age was about a century and a half and few had
been amended since their first construction. They were mostly
garrisoned by inferior troops, often almost entirely by Mobiles. Only
in one instance was there an effective director of the defence. That
they uniformly enclosed towns whose civilian population had to endure
bombardment, was an obvious hindrance to desperate resistance. Yet,
setting aside Bitsch which was never taken, the average duration of the
defence of the seventeen fortresses which made other than nominal
resistance was forty-one days. Excluding Paris and Metz which virtually
were intrenched camps, the average period of resistance was
thirty-three days. The Germans used siege artillery in fourteen cases;
although only on two instances, Belfort and Strasburg, were formal
sieges undertaken. "It appears," writes Major Sydenham Clarke in his
recent remarkable work on Fortification [Footnote: _Fortification_. By
Major G. Sydenham Clarke, C.M. G. (London: John Murray).] which ought
to revolutionise that art, "that the average period of resistance of
the (nominally obsolete) French fortresses was the same as that of
besieged fortresses of the Marlborough and Peninsular periods.
Including Paris and Metz, the era of rifled weapons actually shows an
increase of 20 per cent in the time-endurance of permanent
fortifications. Granted that a mere measurement in days affords no
absolute standard of comparison, the striking fact remains that in
spite of every sort of disability the French fortresses, pitted against
guns that were not dreamed of when they were built, acquitted
themselves quite as well as the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the Vauban school
in the days of their glory." Even in the cases of fortresses whose
reduction was urgently needed since they interfered with the German
communications--such as Strasburg, Toul, and Soissons--the quick
_ultima ratio_ of assault was not resorted to by the Germans. And yet
the Germans could not have failed to recognise that but for the
fortresses they would have swept France clear of all organised bodies
of troops within two months of the frontier battles. During the
Peninsular War Wellington made twelve assaults on breached fortresses
of which five were successful; of his twelve attempts to escalade six
succeeded. The Germans in 1870-71 never attempted a breach and their
solitary effort at escalade, on the Basse Perche of Belfort, utterly
failed.
The Russians in 1877 were even less enterprising than had been the
Germans in 1870. They went against three permanently fortified places,
the antediluvian little Matchin which if I remember right blew itself
up; the crumbling Nicopolis which surrendered after one day's fighting;
and Rustchuk which held out till the end of the war. They would not
look at Silistria, ruined, but strong in heroic memories; they avoided
Rasgrad, Schumla, and the Black Sea fortresses; Sophia, Philippopolis,
and Adrianople made no resistance. The earthworks of Plevna, vicious as
they were in many characteristics, they found impregnable. I think
Suvaroff would have carried them; I am sure Skobeleff would if he had
got his way.
The vastly expensive armaments of the present--the rifled
breech-loader, the magazine rifle, the machine guns, the long-range
field-guns, and so forth, are all accepted and paid for by the
respective nations in the frank and naked expectation that these
weapons will perform increased execution on the enemy in war time. This
granted, nor can it be denied, it logically follows that if this
increased execution is not performed nations are entitled to regard it
as a grievance that they do not get blood for their money, and this
they certainly do not have; so that even in this sanguinary particular
the warfare of to-day is a comparative failure. The topic, however, is
rather a ghastly one and I refrain from citing evidence; which,
however, is easily accessible to any one who cares to seek it.
The anticipation is confidently adventured that a great revolution will
be made in warfare by the magazine rifle with its increased range, the
machine gun, and the quick-firing field artillery which will speedily
be introduced into every service. It does not seem likely that
smokeless powder will create any very important change, except in siege
operations. On the battlefield neither artillery nor infantry come into
action out of sight of the enemy. When either arm opens fire within
sight of the enemy its position can be almost invariably detected by
the field-glass, irrespective of the smokelessness or non-smokelessness
of its ammunition. Indeed, the use of smokeless powder would seem
inevitably to damage the fortunes of the attack. Under cover of a bank
of smoke the soldiers hurrying on to feed the fighting line are fairly
hidden from aimed hostile fire. It may be argued that their aim is thus
reciprocally hindered; but the reply is that their anxiety is not so
much to be shooting during their reinforcing advance as to get forward
into the fighting line, where the atmosphere is not so greatly
obscured. Smokeless powder will no doubt advantage the defence.
It need not be remarked that a battle is a physical impossibility while
both sides adhere to the passive defensive; and experience proves that
battles are rare in which both sides are committed to the active
offensive, whether by preference or necessity. Mars-la-Tour (16th
August 1870) was the only contest of this nature in the Franco-German
War. Bazaine had to be on the offensive because he was ordered to get
away towards Verdun; Alvensleben took it because it was the only means
whereby he could hinder Bazaine from accomplishing his purpose. But for
the most part one side in battle is on the offensive; the other on the
defensive. The invader is habitually the offensive person, just for the
reason that the native force commonly acts on the defensive; the latter
is anxious to hinder further penetration into the bowels of its land;
the former's desire is to effect that penetration. The defensive of the
native army need not, however, be the passive defensive; indeed, unless
the position be exceptionally strong that is according to present
tenets to be avoided. When, always with an underlying purpose of
defence, its chief resorts to the offensive for reasons that he regards
as good, his strategy or his tactics as the case may be, are expressed
by the term "defensive-offensive."
It says a good deal for the peaceful predilections of the nations, that
there has been no fairly balanced experience affording the material for
decision as to the relative advantage of the offensive and the
defensive under modern conditions. In 1866 the Prussians, opposing the
needle-gun to the Austrian muzzle-loader, naturally utilised this
pre-eminence by adopting uniformly the offensive and traditions of the
Great Frederick doubtless seconded the needle-gun. After Sadowa
controversy ran high as to the proper system of tactics when
breech-loader should oppose breech-loader. A strong party maintained
that "the defensive had now become so strong that true science lay in
forcing the adversary to attack. Let him come on, and then one might
fairly rely on victory." As Boguslawski observes--"This conception of
tactics would paralyse the offensive, for how can an army advance if it
has always to wait till an enemy attacks?" After much exercitation the
Germans determined to adhere to the offensive. In the recent modest
language of Baron von der Goltz: [Footnote: _The Nation in Arms_, by
Lieutenant-Colonel Baron von der Goltz. (Allen.)] "Our modern German
mode of battle aims at being entirely a final struggle, which we
conceive of as being inseparable from an unsparing offensive.
Temporising, waiting, and a calm defensive are very unsympathetic to
our nature. Everything with us is action. Our strength lies in great
decisions on the battlefield." Perhaps also the guileless Germans were
quite alert to the fact that Marshal Niel had shattered the French
army's tradition of the offensive, and gone counter to the French
soldier's nature by enjoining the defensive in the latest official
instructions. Had the Teutons suborned him the Marshal could not have
done them a better turn.
Their offensive tactics against an enemy unnaturally lashed to the
stake of the defensive stood the Germans in excellent stead in 1870. On
every occasion they resorted to the offensive against an enemy in the
field; strictly refraining, however, from that expedient when it was a
fortress and not soldiers _en vive force_ that stood in the way. At St.
Privat their offensive would probably have been worsted if Canrobert
had been reinforced or even if a supply of ammunition had reached him;
and a loss there of one-third of the combatants of the Guard Corps
without result caused them to change for the better the method of their
attack. But in every battle from Weissenburg to Sedan with the
exception of the confused _mêlée_ of Mars-la-Tour, the French, besides
being bewildered and discouraged, were in inferior strength; after
Sedan the French levies in the field were scarcely soldiers. There was
no fair testing of the relative advantages of defence and offence in
the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78; and so it remains that in an actual
and practical sense no firm decision has yet been established. All
civilised nations are, however, assiduously practising the methods of
the offensive.
It may nevertheless be anticipated that in future warfare between
evenly matched combatants the offensive will get the worst of it at the
hands of the defensive. The word "anticipate" is used in preference to
"apprehend," because one's sympathy is naturally for the invaded state
unless it has been wantonly aggressive and insolent. The invaded army,
if the term may be used, having familiar knowledge of the terrain will
take up a position in the fair-way of the invader; affording strong
flank _appui_ and a far-stretching clear range in front and on flanks.
It will throw up several lines, or still better, tiers of shallow
trenches along its front and flanks, with emplacements for artillery
and machine guns. The invader must attack; he cannot turn the enemy's
position and expose his communications to that enemy. He takes the
offensive, doing so, as is the received practice, in front and on a
flank. From the outset he will find the offensive a sterner ordeal than
in the Franco-German War days. He will have to break into loose order
at a greater distance, because of the longer range of small arms, and
the further scope, the greater accuracy, and the quicker fire of the
new artillery. He too possesses those weapons, but he cannot use them
with so great effect. His field batteries suffer from the hostile
cannon fire as they move forward to take up a position. His infantry
cannot fire on the run; when they drop after a rush the aim of panting
and breathless men cannot be of the best. And their target is fairly
protected and at least partially hidden. The defenders behind their low
épaulement do not pant; their marksmen only at first are allowed to
fire; these make things unpleasant for the massed gunners out yonder,
who share their attentions with the spraying-out infantry-men. The
quick-firing cannon of the defence are getting in their work
methodically. Neither its gunners nor its infantry need be nervous as
to expending ammunition freely since plenteous supplies are promptly
available, a convenience which does not infallibly come to either guns
or rifles of the attack. The Germans report as their experience in the
capacity of assailants that the rapidity and excitement of the advance,
the stir of strife, the turmoil, exhilarate the soldiers, and that
patriotism and fire-discipline in combination enforce a cool steady
maintenance of fire; that in view of the ominous spectacle of the swift
and confident advance, under torture of the storm of shell-fire and the
hail of bullets which they have to endure in immobility, the defenders,
previously shaken by the assailants' artillery preparation, become
nervous, waver, and finally break when the cheers of the final
concentrated rush strike on their ears. That this was scarcely true as
regarded French regulars the annals of every battle of the
Franco-German War up to and including Sedan conclusively show. It is
true, however, that the French nature is intolerant of inactivity and
in 1870 suffered under the deprivation of its _métier;_ but how often
the Germans recoiled from the shelter trenches of the Spicheren and
gave ground all along the line from St. Privat to the Bois de Vaux, men
who witnessed those desperate struggles cannot forget while they live.
Warriors of greater equanimity than the French soldier possesses might
perhaps stand on the defensive in calm self-confidence with simple
breech-loaders as their weapons, if simple breech-loaders were also
weapons of the assailants. But in his magazine rifle the soldier of the
future can keep the defensive not only with self-confidence, but with
high elation, for in it he will possess a weapon against which it seems
improbable that the attack (although armed too with a magazine or
repeating rifle) can prevail.
The assailants fall fast as their advance pushes forward, thinned down
by the rifle fire, the mitraille, and the shrapnel of the defence. But
they are gallant men and while life lasts they will not be denied. The
long bloody advance is all but over; the survivors of it who have
attained thus far are lying down getting their wind for the final
concentration and rush. Meanwhile, since after they once again stand up
they will use no more rifle fire till they have conquered or are
beaten, they are pouring forth against the defence their reserve of
bullets in or attached to their rifle-butts. The defenders take this
punishment, like Colonel Quagg, lying down, courting the protection of
their earth-bank. The hail of the assailants' bullets ceases; already
the artillery of the attack has desisted lest it should injure friend
as well as foe. The word runs along the line and the clumps of men
lying prostrate there out in the open. The officers spring to their
feet, wave their swords, and cheer loudly. The men are up in an
instant, and the swift rush focussing toward a point begins. The
distance to be traversed before the attackers are _aux prises_ with the
defenders is about one hundred and fifty yards.
It is no mere storm of missiles which meets fair in the face those
charging heroes; no, it is a moving wall of metal against which they
rush to their ruin. For the infantry of the defence are emptying their
magazines now at point-blank range. Emptied magazine yields to full
one; the Maxims are pumping, not bullets, but veritable streams of
death, with calm, devilish swiftness. The quick-firing guns are
spouting radiating torrents of case. The attackers are mown down as
corn falls, not before the sickle but the scythe. Not a man has
reached, or can reach, the little earth-bank behind which the defenders
keep their ground. The attack has failed; and failed from no lack of
valour, of methodised effort, of punctilious compliance with every
instruction; but simply because the defence--the defence of the future
in warfare--has been too strong for the attack. One will not occupy
space by recounting how in the very nick of time the staunch defence
flashes out into the counter-offensive; nor need one enlarge on the
sure results to the invader as the unassailed flank of the defence
throws forward the shoulder and takes in flank the dislocated masses of
aggressors.
One or two such experiences will definitively settle the point as to
the relative advantage of the offensive and the defensive. Soldiers
will not submit themselves to re-trial on re-trial of a _res judicata_.
Grant, dogged though he was, had to accept that lesson in the shambles
of Cold Harbour. For the bravest sane man will rather live than die. No
man burns to become cannon-fodder. The Turk, who is supposed to court
death in battle for religious reasons of a somewhat material kind, can
run away even when the alternative is immediate removal to a Paradise
of unlimited houris and copious sherbet. There are no braver men than
Russian soldiers; but going into action against the Turks tried their
nerves, not because they feared the Turks as antagonists, but because
they knew too well that a petty wound disabling from retreat meant not
alone death but unspeakable mutilation before that release.
It is obvious that if, as is here anticipated, the offensive proves
impossible in the battle of the future, an exaggerated phase of the
stalemate which Boguslawski so pathetically deprecates will occur. The
world need not greatly concern itself regarding this issue; the
situation will almost invariably be in favour of the invaded and will
probably present itself near his frontier line. He can afford to wait
until the invader tires of inaction and goes home.
Magazine and machine guns would seem to sound the knell of possible
employment of cavalry in battle. No matter how dislocated are the
infantry ridden at so long as they are not quite demoralised, however
_rusé_ the cavalry leader--however favourable to sudden unexpected
onslaught is the ground, the quick-firing arms of the future must
apparently stall off the most enterprising horsemen. Probably if the
writer were arguing the point with a German, the famous experiences of
von Bredow might be adduced in bar of this contention. In the combat of
Tobitschau in 1866 Bredow led his cuirassier regiment straight at three
Austrian batteries in action, captured the eighteen guns and everybody
and everything belonging to them, with the loss to himself of but ten
men and eight horses. It is true, says the honest official account,
that the ground favoured the charge and that the shells fired by the
usually skilled Austrian gunners flew high. But during the last 100
yards grape was substituted for shell, and Bredow deserved all the
credit he got. Still stronger against my argument was Bredow's
memorable work at Mars-la-Tour, when at the head of six squadrons he
charged across 1000 yards of open plain, rode over and through two
separate lines of French infantry, carried a line of cannon numbering
nine batteries, rode 1000 yards farther into the very heart of the
French army, and came back with a loss of not quite one half of his
strength. The _Todtenritt_, as the Germans call it, was a wonderful
exploit, a second Balaclava charge and a bloodier one; and there was
this distinction that it had a purpose and that that purpose was
achieved. For Bredow's charge in effect wrecked France. It arrested the
French advance which would else have swept Alvensleben aside; and to
its timely effect is traceable the sequence of events that ended in the
capitulation of Metz. The fact that although from the beginning of his
charge until he struck the front of the first French infantry line
Bredow took the rifle-fire of a whole French division yet did not lose
above fifty men, has been a notable weapon in the hands of those who
argue that good cavalry can charge home on unshaken infantry. But never
more will French infantry shoot from the hip as Lafont's conscripts at
Mars-la-Tour shot in the vague direction of Bredow's squadrons. French
cavalry never got within yards of German infantry even in loose order;
and the magazine or repeating rifle held reasonably straight will stop
the most thrusting cavalry that ever heard the "charge" sound.
Fortifications of the future will differ curiously from those of the
present. The latter, with their towering scarps, their massive
_enceintes_, their "portentous ditches," will remain as monuments of a
vicious system, except where, as in the cases of Vienna, Cologne,
Sedan, etc., the dwellers in the cities they encircle shall procure
their demolition for the sake of elbow-room, or until modern howitzer
shells or missiles charged with high explosives shall pulverise their
naked expanses of masonry. In the fortification of the future the
defender will no longer be "enclosed in the toils imposed by the
engineer" with the inevitable disabilities they entail, while the
besieger enjoys the advantage of free mobility. Plevna has killed the
castellated fortress. With free communications the full results
attainable by fortress artillery intelligently used, will at length
come to be realised. Unless in rare cases and for exceptional reasons
towns will gradually cease to be fortified even by an encirclement of
detached forts. Where the latter are availed of, practical experience
will infallibly condemn the expensive and complex cupola-surmounted
construction of which General Brialmont is the champion. "A work,"
trenchantly argues Major Sydenham Clarke, "designed on the principles
of the Roman catacombs is suited only for the dead, in a literal or in
a military sense. The vast system of subterranean chambers and passages
is capable of entombing a brigade, but denies all necessary tactical
freedom of action to a battalion."
The fortress of the future will probably be in the nature of an
intrenched camp. The interior of the position will provide casemate
accommodation for an army of considerable strength. Its defences will
consist of a circle at intervals of about 2500 yards, of permanent
redoubts which shall be invisible at moderate ranges for infantry and
machine guns, the garrison of each redoubt to consist of a half
battalion. Such a work was in 1886 constructed at Chatham in thirty-one
working days, to hold a garrison of 200 men housed in casemates built
in concrete, for less than £3000, and experiments proved that it would
require a "prohibitory expenditure" of ammunition to cause it serious
damage by artillery fire. The supporting defensive armament will
consist of a powerful artillery rendered mobile by means of tram-roads,
this defence supplemented by a field force carrying on outpost duties
and manning field works guarding the intervals between the redoubts.
Advanced defences and exterior obstacles of as formidable a character
as possible will be the complement of what in effect will be an
immensely elaborated Plevna, which, properly armed and fully organised,
will "fulfil all the requirements of defence" while possessing
important potentialities of offence.
An illustration is pertinent of the pre-eminent utility of such
fortified and strongly held positions, of whose characteristics the
above is the merest outline. In the event of a future Franco-German
War, the immensely expensive cordon of fortresses with which the French
have lined their frontier, efficiently equipped, duly garrisoned and
well commanded, will unquestionably present a serious obstacle to the
invading armies. The Germans talk of _vive force_--shell heavily and
then storm; the latter resort one for which they have in the past
displayed no predilection. Whether by storm or interpenetration, they
will probably break the cordon, but they cannot advance without masking
all the principal fortresses. This will employ a considerable portion
of their strength, and the invasion will proceed in less force, which
will be an advantage to the defenders. But if instead of those
multitudinous fortresses the French had constructed, say, three such
intrenched-camp fortresses as have been sketched, each quartering
50,000 men, it would appear that they would have done better for
themselves at far less cost. Each intrenched position containing a
field army 50,000 strong would engross a beleaguering host of 100,000
men. The positions of the type outlined are claimed to be impregnable;
they could contain supplies and munitions for at least a year,
detaining around them for that period 300,000 of the enemy. No European
power except Russia has soldiers enough to spare so long such a mass of
troops standing fast, and simultaneously to prosecute the invasion of a
first-rate power with approximately equal numbers. France at the cost
of 150,000 men would be holding supine on her frontier double the
number of Germans--surely no disadvantageous transaction.
In conclusion, it may be worth while to point out that the current
impression that the maintenance by states of "bloated armaments" is a
keen incentive to war, is fallacious. How often do we hear, "There must
be a big war soon; the powers cannot long stand the cost of standing
looking at each other, all armed to the teeth!" War is infinitely more
costly than the costliest preparedness. But this is not all. The
country gentleman for once in a way brings his family to town for the
season, pledging himself privily to strict economy when the term of
dissipation ends, in order to restore the balance. But for a State, as
the sequel to a season of war there is no such potentiality of economy.
Rather there is the grim certainty of heavier and yet heavier
expenditure after the war, in the still obligatory character of the
armed man keeping his house. Therefore it is that potentates are
reluctant to draw the sword, and rather bear the ills they have than
fly to other evils inevitably worse still. Whether the final outcome
will be universal national bankruptcy or the millennium, is a problem
as yet insoluble.