Sir John French: An Authentic Biography

ief in

unted Infantry-A Plea for the Lance-The C

n engagement. The man who would conduct this imagined spectacle satisfactorily would therefore be dependent rather on the timely uprush of the spirit than on the mechanical certainty of the mind. He would need to act by inspiration and impulse, rather than by col

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duality raises him in a moment out of the ruck of mere cavalry experts-of both sorts. On the one hand he is not a competent machine working out other people's ideas in the field of battle: on the other he is no blundering theorist whose ideas crumple into ineffectual dust under the stress of actual warfare. He can carry out with the ardour of the soldier the schemes which he has formul

ons as to future wars, he uttered a memorable retort. "All wars are abnormal," he observed, "because there is no such thing as normal war."[16] There we have one of the axioms both of his theory and of his practice. There can be no fixed conditions, and

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harge before Kimberley: "It appears to have been one of the very few occasions during the campaign when that obsolete and absurd weapon the sword was anything but a dead weight to its bearer." And again: "The war has been a cruel one for the cavalry.... It is difficult to say that cavalry, as cavalry, have justified their existence. In the opinion of many the tendency of the future will be to convert the whole forces into mounted infantry.... A little training in taking c

as a case in point. Obviously all the elements of disaster were there. Only a brilliant use of the traditional cavalry attack saved the situation-and Kimber

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ist[18] views as to the abolition of the cavalry spirit. "One or two distinguished foreign soldiers who have publicly commented upon that campaign have said that what is termed the 'Cavalry Spirit' is opposed to the idea of dismounted action. They hold that the cavalry disdain to dismount, and they see in riding the end instead of the means. They consi

at the Cavalry Spirit is, and may be encouraged to the utmost, without in the least degree prejudicing either training in dismounted duties or

ed? I challenge any Cavalry officer, British or foreign, to deny the principle that Cavalry, acting as

r?le by the defeat of the hostile Cavalry. 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 r?le of Divisional Cavalry, which they appear to have

d-Marshal, for instance, when he ordered the famous charge which won him the way to Kimberley, would certainly have been regarded as fatal at official man?uvres. It is absurd, he

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wn extraordinary valour, but to the absence of opposition on the part of the French. Von Moltke made a similar criticism (which Sir John French approves) on the Prussian cavalry after the war of 1866. "Our cavalry failed," he wrote, "perhaps not so much in a

my's cavalry is overthrown, the work of the mounted infantryman cannot begin. So long as opposing countri

arms in battle, and at the same time to develop the highest qualities and the special attributes of each branch. The particular spirit which we seek to encourage is different for each arm. Were we to seek to endow cavalry with the tenacity and stiffness of infantry, or to take from the mounted arm the mobility and the cult of the offensive

e r?le of reconnaissance will have been rendered easier. In the r?les of deception and support, such an immense and fruitful field of usefulness and enterprise is laid open to a cavalry division which has thought out and practised these r?les in its peace

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army and the strategical r?le of the cavalry is no more. The mounted arm will almost certainly now be confined to screening operations and to shock tactics, after the opposing armies have come into touch with one another. History, therefore, has obviously just

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neral von Bernhardi. By permission of Messrs. H

Arthur Conan Doyle. By permiss

ry in Future Wars, by General von Bernh

lry, by General F. von Bernhardi, by permission

lry, by General F. von Bernhardi, by permission