Ar first sight the proposition may appear startling and indeed absurd; yet hard facts, I venture to believe, will enforce the conviction on unprejudiced minds that the warfare of the present when contrasted with the warfare of the past is dilatory, ineffective, and inconclusive. Present, or contemporary warfare may be taken to date from the general adoption of rifled firearms; the warfare of the past may fairly be limited, for purposes of comparison or contrast, to the smoothbore era; indeed, for those purposes there is no need to go outside the present century. Roughly speaking, the first five and a half decades of the century were smooth-bore decades; the three and a half later decades have been rifled decades, of which about two and a half decades constitute the breechloading period. Considering the extraordinary advances since the end of the smooth-bore era in everything NEW SERIES.-VOL, LIV., No. 1. 1 tending to promote celerity and decisiveness in the result of campaigns-the revolution in swiftness of shooting and length of range of firearms, the development in the science of gunnery, the increased devotion to military study, the vast additions to the military strength of the nations, looking to the facilities for rapid conveyance of troops and transportation of supplies afforded by railways and steam watercarriage, to the intensified artillery fire that can now be brought to bear fortresses, to the manifold advantages afforded by the electric telegraph, and to the crushing cost of warfare, urging vigorous exertions toward the speedy decision of campaigns-reviewing, I say, the thousand and one circumstances encouraging to short, sharp, and decisive action in contemporary warfare, it is a strange and bewildering fact that the wars of the smooth-bore era were, for the most part, on shorter, sharper, and more decisive. Spite of inferiority of weapons, the battles of that period were bloodier, and it is a mathematically demonstrable proposition that the heavier the slaughter of combatants, the nearer must be the end of a war. There is no pursuit now after victory won, and the vanquished draws off shaken but not broken; in the smooth-bore era a vigorous pursuit scattered him to the four winds. When Wellington in the Peninsula wanted a fortress, and being in a hurry could not wait the result of a formal siege or a starvation blockade, he carried it by storm. No fortress is ever stormed now, no matter how urgent the need for its reduction, no matter how obsolete its defences. The Germans in 1871 did attempt to carry by assault an outwork of Belfort, but failed utterly. It would almost seem that in the matter of forlorn hopes the Caucasian is played out. Assertions are easy, but they go for little unless they can be proved; some examples, therefore, may be cited in support of the contentions advanced above. The Prussians are proud, and with justice, of what is known as the "Seven Weeks War," although as a matter of fact the contest with Austria did not last so long, for Prince Frederick Charles crossed the Bohemian frontier on the 23d of June, and the armistice which ended hostilities was signed at Nikolsburg on the 22d of July. The Prussian armies were stronger than their opponents by more than onefourth, and they were armed with the needle gun against the Austrian muzzleloading rifle. When the armistice was signed, the Prussians lay on the Marchfeld within dim sight of the Stephanien Thurm, it is true, but with the strong and strongly armed and held lines of Florisdorf, the Danube, and the army of the Archduke Albrecht between them and the Austrian capital. On the 9th of October, 1806, Napoleon crossed the Saale. On the 14th at Jena he smashed Hohenlohe's Prussian army, the contending hosts being about equal strength; on the same day Davoust at Auerstadt with 27,000 men routed Brunswick's command over 50,000 strong. On the 25th of October Napoleon entered Berlin, the war virtually over and all Prussia at his feet with the exception of a few fortresses, the last of which fell on the 8th of November. Which was the swifter, the more brilliant, and the more decisive-the campaign of 1866, or the campaign of 1806 ? The Franco-German war is generally regarded as an exceptionally effective performance on the part of the Germans. The first German force entered France on the 4th of August, 1870. Paris was invested on the 21st of September, the German armies having fought five great battles and several serious actions between the frontier and the French capital. An armistice which was not conclusive, since it allowed the siege of Belfort to proceed and Bourbaki's army to be free to attempt raising it, was signed at Versailles on the 28th of January, 1871, but the actual conclusion of hostilities dates from the 16th of February, the day on which Belfort surrendered. The Franco-German war, therefore, lasted six and a half months. The Germans were in full preparedness, except that their rifle was inferior to the French chassepot; they were in overwhelmingly superior numerical strength in every encounter save one with French regular troops, and they had on their banners the prestige of Sadowa. Their adversaries were utterly unready for a great struggle; the French army was in a wretched state in every sense of the word; indeed, after Sedan there remained hardly any regulars able to take the field. In August 1805 Napoleon's Grande Armée was at Boulogne looking across to the British shores. Those inaccessible, he promptly altered his plans and went against Austria. Mack with 84,000 Austrian soldiers was at Ulm, waiting for the expected Russian army of co-operation, and meantime covering the valley of the Danube. Napoleon crossed the Rhine on the 26th of September. Just as in 1870 the Germans on the plaius of Marз la Tour thrust themselves between Bazaine and the rest of France, so Napoleon turned Mack, and from Donauwörth to Ingolstadt stood between him and Austria. Mack capitulated Ulm and his army on the 19th of October, and Napoleon was in Vienna on the 13th of November. Although he possessed the Austrian capital, he was not, however, master of the Austrian empire. The latter result did not fall to him until the 2d of December, when, under the sun of Austerlitz," he with 73,000 men defeated the Austro-Russian army 85,000 strong, inflicting on it a loss of 30,000 men at the cost of 12,000 of his own soldiers hors de combat. It took the Germans in 1870 a month and a half to get from the frontier to outside Paris; just in the same time, although certainly not with so severe fighting by the way, but nearly twice as long a march, Napoleon moved from the Rhine to inside Vienna. From the active commencement to the cessation of hostilities the Franco-German war lasted six and a half months; reckoning from the crossing of the Rhine to the evening of Austerlitz, Napoleon subjugated Austria in two and a quarter months. Perhaps, however, his campaign of 1809 against Austria furnishes a more exact parallel with the campaign of the Germans in 1870-71. He assumed command on the 17th of April, having hurried from Spain. He defeated the Austrians four times in as many days, at Thann, Landshut, Eckmuhl and Regensburg; and he was in Vienna on the 13th of May. Baulked at Aspern and Esslingen, he gained his point at Wagram the 5th of July, and hostilities ceased after lasting under his command for a period of two and a half months. The Russians have a reputation for good marching, and certainly Suvaroff made good time in his long march from Russia to Northern Italy in 1799; almost as good, indeed, as Bagration and Barclay de Tolly made in falling back before Napoleon when he invaded Russia in 1812. But they have not improved either in marching or in fighting at all commensurately with the improved appliances. In 1877, after dawdling two months, they crossed the Danube on the 21st to the 27th of June. Osman Pasha, at Plevna, gave them pause until the 10th of December, at which date they were not so far into Bulgaria as they had been five months previously. After the fall of Plevna the Russian armies would have gone into winter quarters, but for a private quasi-ultimatum communicated to the Tzar from a high source in England to the effect that unpleasant consequences could not be guaranteed against, if the war was not finished in one campaign. Alexander, who was quite an astute man in his way, was temporarily enraged by this restriction, but, recovering his calmness, realized that nowhere in war books is any particular time specified for the termination or duration of a campaign. It appeared that so long as an army keeps the field uninterruptedly a campaign may con tinue until the Greek kalends. In less time than that Gourko and Skobeleff undertook to finish the business; by the vigor with which they forced their way across the Balkans in the heart of the bitter winter, Sophia, Philippopolis, and Adrianople fell into Russian hands; and the Russian troops had been halted some time almost in face of Constantinople, when the treaty of San Stephano was signed on the 3d of March, 1878. It had taken the Russians of 1877-78 eight weary months to cover the distance between the Danube and the Marmora. But fifty years earlier a Russian general had marched from the Danube to the Ægean in three and a half months, nor was his journey by any means a smooth and bloodless one. Diebitch crossed the Danube in May 1828, and besieged Silistria from the 17th of May until the 1st of July. Silistria has undergone three resolute sieges during the century; it succumbed but once, and then to Diebitch. Pressing south immediately, he worsted the Turkish Grand Vizier in the fierce battle of Kuleutscha, and then by diverse routes hurried down into the great Roumelian valley. Adrianople made no resistance, and although his force was attenuated by hardship and disease, when the Turkish diplomatists procrastinated the audacious and gallant Diebitch marched his thin regiments forward toward Constantinople. They had traversed on a wide front half the distance between Adrianople and the capital, when the dilatory Turkish negotiators saw fit to imitate the coon and come down. Whether they would have done so had they known the weakness of Diebitch may be questioned; but again it may be questioned whether, that weakness unknown, he could not have occupied Constantinople on the swagger. His master was prepared promptly to reinforce him; Constantinople was, perhaps, nearer its fall in 1828 than in 1878, and certainly Diebitch was much smarter than were the Grand Duke Nicholas, his fossil Nepokoitschitsky, and his pure theorist Levitsky. 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 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 demoralization 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 bad not confronted our arms. From 1878 to 1880 we were in Afghanistan again, this time with breechloading, 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 Shuturgurdan; 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 macadamize 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 seems still far distant. 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, anLounced 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 20th, 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 sands, 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 favor 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 debarka tion 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, laboring 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 entrenched 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* which ought to revolutionize 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 * Fortification. By Major G. Sydenham Clarke, C.M.G. (London: John Murray.) 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'œuvre 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. yet the Germans could not have failed to recognize that but for the fortresses they would have swept France clear of all organized 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. And The Russians in 1878 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, Schumila, 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 breechloader, the magazine rifle, the machine guns, the longrange 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. granted, and it cannot be denied, it logically follows that if this increased execution is not performed, peoples are entitled This |