Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places by Archibald Forbes

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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.

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