“Quot homines tot sententiae.”
Armament also figures largely amongst conditions of success.... There can certainly never be complete disparity between the armament and the moral of an army, since the latter includes intelligence which takes care to provide good weapons. The want of good armament immediately reacts upon the confidence of the soldier. Defeat would thus appear excusable, and success cannot have a worse enemy than this feeling.—Von der Goltz, Nation in Arms, p. 147.
The many changes through which regiments of cavalry go in this respect are hardly credible, although in our case allowance must be made for the many different enemies which a British cavalry regiment meets. The lance will be adopted instead of or in addition to the sword, and six or seven years later the sword alone, or perhaps even rifle alone, will be carried.8 It may be regarded as a certainty now that for some years to come, as in the past, the Germans will arm both ranks with the lance. One has hardly written this before one reads that the bayonet may be substituted for the sword in the armament of German cavalry regiments, for use in11 night attacks and in the attack of unturnable small positions, or when occasion may arise.
The bayonet on trial is straight, 14 inches long, with one cutting edge, the back being flat. All under-officers and one-tenth of the troops will carry a bayonet furnished with a saw edge.
History repeats itself. In 1805, Napoleon organized dragoons who carried a bayonet as well as a sword. There may have been a reason for this, as their usual fate was to be dismounted and their horses given to remount more highly-trained cavalry.
Von Bernhardi9 sums up the question of this new armament of the German cavalry as follows: “The hand-to-hand fight on foot must be exceptional. To injure the efficiency of the troops for their daily r?le for the sake of such isolated occurrences I hold to be a great mistake,” etc.
When we come to the pattern of swords, the purely cutting sword has its strenuous advocates, whilst as many more will beseech one to trust to no personal weapon except the pointing sword. Authoritative quotations will be given from well-known leaders advocating one or other form of sword.
It seems to be allowed that a scimitar or tulwar pattern, with its curved blade, is unsuitable for pointing,10 and also that the best patterns of rapier-pointing sword are difficult to cut with. One may read in Sir Montague Gerard’s book how he killed several Afghans. He says:—
12
“One had but to make a feint of employing the obsolete cut No. 7, and up would fly their guard over the face, when dropping your point you went clean through your man.... The fourth man I tackled fired at me just as I closed, and I felt a blow on my side, but next moment my sword went through something hard, and the weapon was twisted out of my hand and hung by the sword-knot. The blade, which was a straight rapier, one by Wilkinson, got a slight but permanent wave in it, and I can only account for receiving such a wrench by having taken my opponent through the headpiece as he crouched and tried to stab the horse from below.”
Pages 255–256: “We counted sixty odd bodies, whilst our casualties amounted to six men and seven horses.” And on page 257 he adds: “The lance giving our Sowars a preponderating advantage.”11
Perhaps of all those who have given their opinion on this subject, that one to whom we would give most credence is a swordsman of the 11th Hussars of Marlborough’s time, who fought many duels and lived by his prowess with the sword. His final dictum is: “One point with the smallsword is as deadly as forty cuts with the broadsword.”
Verdy du Vernois12 says: “Experience has proved that a sword-cut seldom, but a point with the sword always, throws a man off his horse. The latter should therefore be chiefly practised at sword drill.”
From the bolas of the South American to the tomahawk of the Red Indian or the revolver of the cowboy every weapon has had its advocates.
13 Royal Artillery Mounted Rifles were seen charging on horseback with fixed bayonets13 a few days after joining a South African column; thus imitating the Australian contingent in the column, who invariably did so—and very formidable they looked.
A conclusion which experience forces upon us, as regards both the armament and tactics of horsemen, is that when they attain a high standard of horsemanship or when they are good horsemen from youth, such as many Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, and Canadians undoubtedly are, a short training will bring them almost level with the regular cavalry and enable them to employ shock tactics. Then they should be armed in addition to their rifle with sword or lance, as the rifle and bayonet are not the best weapons for this purpose. As trained cavalry thus armed they are equal in value to twice if not three times their number of mounted rifles on the battlefield, if they have trained troop, squadron, and regimental leaders in command of them.
The oft-advanced theory that it is not the nature of such and such a race to use the point is quite unfounded. It has been conclusively proved that a recruit who has been allowed only to point with a sword, can hardly be induced to cut, even if a good opportunity offers.
The lance is undoubtedly the “queen of weapons,” but it has its drawbacks. But first its great advantage is that it is formidable, and so much so that lancers claim that regiments armed with the sword14 will not face those armed with the lance. It is undoubtedly easier to use against crouching men on foot. The Inniskilling Dragoons after a charge at Zulus, who crouched down under their shields, sent for all available tent-pegging spears.
On the other hand, the lance’s shaft is difficult to withdraw from the body of a man, and a lancer may have to leave it there. Then he will draw his sword. But that entails another weapon. In a close mêlée the lance is a clumsy weapon.14 In the mêlées which occur after a charge, men and horses are so intermingled that even the use of the sword is difficult. But obviously the cure for this is to teach the men to rally instantaneously and not to indulge in mêlées. The officers of the 9th Lancers in the Afghan War had a short spike put into the hilt of their swords, so that a blow from the hilt in the face was decisive.
The weapon which (1) entails least weight and is easiest to carry, and (2) is deadly, and (3) is most likely to be useful on all occasions, is the straight sword or rapier.
But this obviously must be made of the best steel, whereas a quite serviceable cutting sword can be made of inferior iron. That the cutting sword has been so much used is most probably because good steel was difficult to obtain. Napier says to arm cavalry sepoys with heavy English swords of one weight, one length, one shape is a mistake. The cutting sword is not a deadly weapon, often it does not penetrate15 clothes or accoutrements. The mamelukes, formidable antagonists to Napoleon’s regular cavalry in Egypt, 1798–1801, carried a cutting sword very considerably curved back, with which weapon they are said to have inflicted terrible wounds; in addition they carried a poniard and two pistols in their sash and another pair of pistols in their holsters. A syce carrying a lance for them followed on foot.
In the Peninsular War, whereas the English cavalry used the sword almost exclusively as a cutting weapon, the French dragoons on the contrary used only the point, which, with their straight sword, nearly always caused a mortal wound. This made the English cavalry say that the French fighting “was not fair.”
Some amateurs talk of the revolver as a weapon with which to arm the ranks in place of a sword or lance. They appear to ignore the fact that a bullet once fired off in a mêlée may hit friend or foe. Very fine horsemen, such as Arizona cowboys, who break the insulators of the telegraph wire as they gallop along with a weapon, which they have been accustomed to handle from their youth up, would probably do well in a pursuit with such a weapon, but it is not, we believe, seriously contemplated by any nation as a weapon for use in the ranks. For officers, scouts, farriers, trumpeters, and possibly others it is most useful, as it takes the place of a rifle and is light.
If any particular personal weapon is carried habitually, that weapon should be adopted; but failing that, there must be a long apprenticeship to16 lance or sword. Perhaps the point to which most attention should be given is that the man must be taught to have implicit confidence in his weapon; this can be attained best with the lance or with the pointing sword. A man appreciates the fact that with either of these weapons the point goes through easily; whilst with the cutting sword only the most expert can make any impression on, say, a leg of mutton covered with a sack and a leather strap or two.
In the German cavalry, stress is laid on teaching the trooper that the sight of the lance is sure to make the enemy turn and fly. In our own cavalry greater attention is now paid to practising the man in riding at a gallop at a rebounding dummy, offering resistance equal to the weight of a man. Without such practice the men sprain their wrists and lose their grip of the sword, and do not understand how simple it is to run a man through.
The Rifle
Both French and German cavalry have, during the last few years, been repeatedly urged by eminent writers on cavalry to bring themselves to a better knowledge of the use of the rifle and fire tactics. The new weapon issued to the German cavalry has been the signal for some of this literature. Calling to mind that it is but a few short years since German cavalry were armed with an out-of-date carbine, and carried only some twenty rounds of17 ammunition, and further reading between the lines of the latest addition to cavalry literature by General von Bernhardi, these exhortations cannot be considered as uncalled for. But to make them a text on which to lecture our regular cavalry only exposes ignorance of their present training, and makes one wonder if one is awaking from far back in the middle of the last century, when a gallant lancer regiment, on being first armed with carbines, gravely piled them on the stable-barrows and wheeled them to the manure-heap. Our British regular cavalry are at least ten, if not fifteen, years ahead of any continental cavalry in rifle shooting, fire discipline, and the knowledge of when and how to resort to fire tactics.
There are probably few of the more senior who have not come to a conclusion formed from experience that the following quotation15 is as suitable in many respects to cavalry as it is to infantry:—
Volley firing, and limiting the range against infantry to 500 yards at most, are the surest means of providing against the want of ammunition at the supreme moment. And the sooner it is recognized that long range fire is a special weapon to be used only on special occasions, the better for the efficiency of our infantry in general.