Battle Studies; Ancient and Modern Battle Part 29

[Footnote 29: In troops without cohesion, this movement begins at fifty leagues from the enemy. Numbers enter the hospitals without any other complaint than the lack of morale, which very quickly becomes a real disease. A Draconian discipline no longer exists; cohesion alone can replace it.]

[Footnote 30: It is a troublesome matter to attack men who shoot six to eight shots a minute, no matter how badly aimed. Will he have the last word then, who has the last cartridge, who knows best how to make the enemy use his cartridges without using his own?

The reasoning is always the same. With arrows: Let us use up their arrows. With the club: Let us break their clubs. But how? That is always the question. In matters of war, above all, precept is easy; accomplishment is difficult.]

[Footnote 31: The more one imagines he is isolated, the more has he need of morale.]

[Footnote 32: Are not naval battles above all the battles of captains? All captains endeavor to promote a feeling of solidarity which will cause them all to fight unitedly on the day of action. Trafalgar--Lissa.

In 1588, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, preparing for a naval engagement, sent three commanders on light vessels to the advance-guard and three to the rearguard, with executioners, and ordered them to have every captain hanged who abandoned the post that had been a.s.signed to him for the battle.

In 1702, the English Admiral Benbow, a courageous man, was left almost alone by his captains during three days of fighting. With an amputated leg and arm, before dying, he had four brought to trial. One was acquitted, three were hanged; and from that instant dates the inflexible English severity towards commanders of fleets and vessels, a severity necessary in order to force them to fight effectively.

Our commanders of battalions, our captains, our men, once under fire, are more at sea than these commanders of vessels.]

[Footnote 33: The effect of surprise would certainly not last long to-day.

However, to-day wars are quickly decided.]

[Footnote 34: See Appendix VI. (Historical doc.u.ments). (Editor's note).]

[Footnote 35: See Appendix VI. (Historical doc.u.ments). (Editor's note).]

[Footnote 36: See Appendix VI. (Historical doc.u.ments). (Editor's note).]

[Footnote 37: See Appendix VI. (Historical doc.u.ments). (Editor's note).]

[Footnote 38: See Appendix VI. (Historical doc.u.ments). (Editor's note).]

[Footnote 39: It is true that such measures are recommended in camps of instruction and in publications. But in maneuvers they are neglected in the mania for alignment, and in that other mad desire of generals to mix in details which do not concern them.]

[Footnote 40: See Appendix VI. (Historical doc.u.ments.) (Editor's note.)]

[Footnote 41: See Appendix VI. (Historical doc.u.ments.) (Editor's note.)]

[Footnote 42: See Appendix II. (Historical doc.u.ments.) (Editor's note.)]

[Footnote 43: A propos of gaps: At the battle of Sempach thirteen hundred badly armed Swiss opposed three thousand Lorraine knights in phalanxes. The attack of the Swiss in a formation was ineffective, and they were threatened with envelopment. But Arnold von Winkelried created a gap; the Swiss penetrated and the ma.s.sacre followed.]

[Footnote 44: See Appendix II. (Historical doc.u.ments.) (Editor's note.)]

[Footnote 45: See Appendix II. (Historical doc.u.ments.) (Editor's note.)]

[Footnote 46: See Appendix II. (Historical doc.u.ments.) (Editor's note.)]

[Footnote 47: It is hard to determine what method of fire, at command or at will, was used. But what we find in the works of the best military authorities, from Montecuculli to Marshal Saxe, is general opposition to the replacement of the pike by the rifle. All predicted the abandonment of the rifle for the pike, and the future always proved them wrong. They ignored experience. They could not understand that stronger than all logic is the instinct of man, who prefers long range to close fighting, and who, having the rifle would not let it go, but continually improved it.]

[Footnote 48: The danger arising from this kind of fire, led to proposals to put the smallest men in the front rank, the tallest in the rear rank.]

[Footnote 49: Nothing is more difficult than to estimate range; in nothing is the eye more easily deceived. Practice and the use of instruments cannot make a man infallible. At Sebastopol, for two months, a distance of one thousand to twelve hundred meters could not be determined by the rifle, due to inability to see the shots. For three months it was impossible to measure by ranging shots, although all ranges were followed through, the distance to a certain battery which was only five hundred meters away, but higher and separated from us by a ravine. One day, after three months, two shots at five hundred meters were observed in the target. This distance was estimated by everybody as over one thousand meters; it was only five hundred. The village taken and the point of observation changed, the truth became evident.]

[Footnote 50: His war instructions prove this. His best generals, Zieten, Warnery, knew of such methods, saw nothing practicable in them and guarded against them in war as indeed he did himself. But Europe believed him, tried to imitate his maneuvers on the field of battle, and aligned her troops to be beaten by him. This is what he was after.

He even deceived the Prussians. But they came back to sound methods after 1808, in 1813 and afterwards.]

[Footnote 51: It is noted here that French uniforms are of an absurd color, serving only to take the eye at a review. So the cha.s.seurs, in black, are seen much further than a rifleman of the line in his gray coat.

The red trousers are seen further than the gray--thus gray ought to be the basic color of the infantry uniform, above all that of skirmishers.

At night fall the Russians came up to our trenches without being seen by any one, thanks to their partridge-gray coats.]