Modern Cavalry.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 932, 10 January 1890, Page 9

Modern Cavalry.

o—(Broad Arrow.) There are critics who gravely tell us that in the armies of the future the horseman will be nothing more than a scout, an eclaireur, or a skirmisher ; that the charge of squadrons in line or column waa a thing of toe past ; and that moving masses of mounted m-n would be torn to atoms by modern rifle or artillery fire. This journal has on the contrary, maintained, and our opinions are strongly fortified by the recent German manoeuvres in Hanover, that now more than ever cavalry properly handled will hold its place in future wars. In giving judgment upon the role of the mounted branch, adverse writers too often forget chat it is the misuse and not the emp oyment of cavalry which has invited ms’-t of its recent condemnation. The wide extent of turrein over which modern battles are fought out, the increased masses of infantry in manoeuvre, the terrible effects of repeating rifles, the mitraille of maohino gnus, and, above all, the range of modern artillery, render speed and fine horsemansnip essential beyond everything to the cavalry of the future. The Germans have long realised this fact, and for mauy yearn they have not only trained their horsemen to execute all, or nearly all, their manoeuvres at the gallop, but have spared no expense in getting ‘ pace ’ out of their remounts by the iafusiou of English thoroughbred blood into their German haras. Foreign officers who were fortunate enough to witness the brilliant action of flying skirmisbe s and clouds of massed riders over the hills and valleys of Ranovorduringthe late operations, will agree that ’Dio Reiterm issen snets voraus !’ of Frederick and Seidlitz will be heard again, in spite of rifle tire at long distances, machine guns, and long range artillery. It seems scarcely conceivable that the immense care bestowed upon the development and tactical employment of horsemen in the German, Russian, and Fiench armies should be a quantity ndgligeable in the British service. If we are right in allowing one-third of our miserably small cavalry to be without horses, while borrowing overworked troopers from attenuated squadrons to teach foot soldiers the duties of mounted infantry, then, perhaps, we may allow tha great Continental Powers to be wroog in their present lavish outlay. The German Kaiser, from his ancestor the great Frederick, apparently inherits the ‘Reiter’ instincts in favour of the employment of large masses of horsemen, not only in initial manoeuvres, but judiciously employed during the successive chapters of the fight. And in the closing scenes of a battle, does not the memory of Blncher and his pursuing sabres on the night of Waterloo even now proclaim the value of cavalry in following up a beaten foe ? The Hanover maneeuvres, which were carried out under the most realistic conditions, go far to prove that cavalry in masses may be a factor as important in the present as it was in the days when men got quickly to close quarters, and when hand-to-hand fighting gave victory to the brave and strong. Vast deployments of cavalry and horse artillery on either side, or moving in masses independently in front or od flank of their respective hosts—two entire divisions oi horsemen, thatis to say fifty foursquadrons, with six batteries of horse artillery (thirtysix guns) on either side, an Emperor in chief command, the dlite of military Europe, for a ‘gallery’—furnished forth as interesting a series of field-days as can well be imagined, where real war was stimulated with exacting precision and solid instruction, tempered with the pageantry of display. The German Emperor and his War Minister have not forgotten the maxims of General Von der Goltz who said: * A good and numerous oavalry gives the surest means of getting the upper hand in the opening of a campaign. As in certain games victory will fall to the player who moves quickest and takes the initiative, so in warfare the advantage will aocrue to the army which possesses the better cavalry, can seek out the enemy, can discover his movements, and strike the first blow.’

An important consequence of last week’s manoeuvres will, in all probability, . be a decision in favour of or against the lance as a weapon for the cavalry, opinions pro and con being at present somewhat evenly balanced. Daring the Franco-Prussian war the Germans had twenty-five regiments of Uhlan lancers, and the services they rendered furnish a tolerably sure guarantee of the efficacy of their weapon. Should the lance be more generally adopted in the German army, it will, we believe,, find increased favour with the French military authorities, for many of their best generals, since the days of Marshal Saxe, have expressed belief in its value. Most of the European Powers are going back to this ancient and timehonoured weapon, and even Turkey has decided to arm one or two of her Cavalry regiments with this once Eastern arm. Whether the sabre or the lance is to become the arms blanche of the future is a problem experience and time only can solve, but the mimio campaign of Hanover certainly teaches ns in unmistakable fashion, what in these columns has been predicted, that a new era now dawns upon cavalry as an arm ; for the very destructiveness of modern musketry, and its immense range, the magazine rifle and smokeless powder will involve, and indeed entail, a wider development of the mounted branch. But to render modern cavalry effective where the fire of infantry is so formidable, and where artillery deals death at immensely long range, great speed and consequent mobility, we repeat, are a sine qud non to the horseman, and in Prussia, as far back as 1864, this fact (in reference to the needle-gun) was brought to the notice of the military autbotjties by General Yon Schmidt, since

whefl the gallop has been almost exclusively employed m all cavalry evolutions and manoeuvres of the German army. By mobility and celerity of movement, however, must he understood such movement as is absolutely necessary for, as we husband the resources of a hunter or a racehorse until the supreme moment, so, to get as much as we can o it cf our cavalry, we must avoid all useless dsmonstration until the actual moment fpr action, when the thunder of hoofs and the flas’i of steel have a moral as well as a material effect wbicli no other arm can give.