it is not different from that deducible from later facts. It is when he comes to the arrangements of the battlefield on the grand scale that he appears to err, from taking as the basis of all his calculations less a complete investigation into the duties and the importance of each rank than his own partial experience. It is one proof amongst a thousand of the errors which arise from a confusion between the duties of the witness and those of the jury. Captain May claims that we should accept his conclusions as inevitably correct, because he has himself evidence of value to bring forward. In practice it is when he steps from the witness-box to that of the jury, and still claims to speak with the authority of a witness, that he commits the blunders that have been exposed by his no less experienced critic; so at least Colonel Schellendorf appears to have felt.

It will be necessary, therefore, to consider further some of this more recent evidence before drawing out absolutely the conclusion to which, as I believe, a proper examination of May's brilliant pictures of events would lead us, just as a study of the later facts also does.

All writers who have seen anything of recent fighting appear to be agreed that an attack in column is a thing no longer possible. On this one point we do, moreover, possess the best of all possible evidencethe practice of the generals who have most successfully applied modern arms to warfare. For the order

issued after the attack on St Privat la Montagne was not founded on any possible anticipation of the feeble resistance which the Prussian troops were subsequently to meet with, but on direct experience of the loss sustained in that attack.* Some mystery, no doubt, hangs over the exact circumstances of the disaster. "Some one," pretty obviously, "had blundered ;" but the details, whatever they may have been, cannot affect the significance of the prompt action taken at headquarters.

An attack in rigid line, except for short distances, never was possible against properly-posted enemies.† Attacks never can now, except under the rarest circumstances, be restricted to short distances. The change which has come over fighting in this respect is in fact due to three main causes: first, to the new necessity for bringing out the efficiency of the weapon in offence; secondly, to the impossibility of facing modern fire in any close formation whatever ; ‡

* The abandonment by the Prussians of the special form best known in England of even their company columns (see 'Was enthält,' &c., p. 5) points in the same direction, showing, as the Duke of Wurtemberg also does, p. 29, that even small columns, as such, cannot advance now against a position. German General and Boguslawski so assume always.

+ Operations of War, p. 378; Von Moltke, p. 15.

The following letter from a staff officer who was present at the incident described, was recently read by Captain H. Brackenbury at the United Service Institution :

"Le 16 Août, vers une heure à la bataille de Rezonville, le Commandant du 6 Corps révenant de la droite qui occupait St Marcel vers la gauche qui s'appuyait à la route de Verdun, à quelques centaines de

thirdly, to this, that the development of the power of weapons would demand for line-attacks a perfection in drill unattainable by the best troops at a moment when it has quite ceased to be possible to restrict the training of troops to drill. At all events, other questions apart, I think that conclusion must be forced upon all who study Count Moltke's criticisms on the advance on the Alma. That in some form or other, therefore, if an army is to retain the

mètres en avant de Rezonville, vit de l'autre côté de la route, un mouvement de retraite s'operer dans le 2o Corps et un mouvement d'attaque se prononcer par l'infanterie Prussienne sur le hameau de Flavigny. II prescrivit aussitôt au 94° de ligne de se porter sur Flavigny, puis autant pour soutenir le moral de ses troupes en presence de la retraite des troupes voisines que pour aider à arréter le mouvement de l'infanterie Prussienne sur Flavigny il porta en avant deux bataillons déployés du 93° que précédaient des tirailleurs à 3 ou 400 metres. Masqués jusqu'à ce moment par un pli de terrain, ces deux bataillons à peine découverts, furent en but à un feu d'artillerie tel, qu'ils purent à peine franchir quelques centaines de mètres et qu'ils fléchirent sous le feu qui les écrasait, et avait en quelques minutes, mis plusieurs centaines d'hommes hors de combat. Ce feu provenait de la grande batterie établi par l'ennemi en arrière et au sud de Vionville, c'est à dire à plus de 3000 m. de nous, et qui, suspendant son feu sur Flavigny l'avait concentré sur les bataillons, au moment où leur mouvement en avant avait été distingué. Cette batterie était forte de 24 pièces suivant les uns, de 36 suivant les autres; une partie des pièces étaient couvertes par un épaulement. En ce moment l'infanterie Prussienne était environ à 2000 m. de nous entre Vionville et Flavigny et son feu ne nous causait aucun mal. Les bataillons du 93° qui prirent part à ce mouvement comptaient un grand nombre de jeunes soldats, puisque l'avant-veille de la bataille ce regiment avait reçu à Metz un contingent de 900 hommes qui n'avaient jamais touché un chassepôt. Neanmoins ces bataillons ne reculirent pas sous le feu, mais fléchirent sur eux-mêmes, et je doute qui des troupes plus vieilles aient pu prolonger leur mouvement en avant beaucoup plus longtemps que nos jeunes soldats, qu'entrainait lui-même notre commandant de corps d'armée."

power of attack at all, it must nowadays attack in skirmishing order, with a proper system of supports and reserves, seems scarcely to admit of a doubt.

Now the very fact of skirmishing implies an increase in the space of ground occupied by a given number of men. Nor is this the only cause which tends to make the space covered by specific numbers much greater than it was formerly. No doubt it is easy to lay too much stress on the evidence afforded by the extreme extension of the German formations during the later period of the war. It is impossible, however, to ignore the assertions of a recent writer, who combines singular modesty of statement with indisputable ability, and who has had exceptional opportunities of observation. The Duke of Wurtemberg maintains that the space taken up throughout the recent campaign by small bodies of Prussians was by no means due merely to their contempt for their adversaries, but that, on the contrary, the very severity of fire induced men instinctively to spread in order to pass off towards those points where fire was least intense. This spreading appears to have been both localsmall bodies extending out towards the parts of a position which proved to be weakest-and also, on the larger scale, to have taken the form of a constant tendency to those flank-attacks which were so marked a feature of the larger tactical movements of the campaign.

It inevitably follows, that as the space covered by

each hundred men is greatly increased, it becomes impossible for one officer to bring the same number under his eye as formerly. At the same time, the necessity for local adaptation to ground renders it no longer possible to keep men in formations in which they can at all moments see and attend to the immediate command of a distant officer. Yet rapidity of action has become more than ever essential, since a few minutes lost in conveying an order may sometimes now imply the destruction of thousands. To this it must be added that the horrible noise of breech-loader fire prevents distant orders from being heard, and that the intensity of each man's personal absorption in the work immediately before him under the new conditions tends to the same result.*

Yet the whole army, and each section of it, will be exposed far more than formerly to dangers not dependent merely upon the local circumstances to which the attention of subordinate officers is necessarily restricted. That Jomini's well-known argument as to the uselessness of getting a comparatively small body on the flank of a large army will be much less invariably applicable than it was formerly, is at least suggested by more than one incident of the late war. Nor is it difficult to see why this should be so. A small number of men who are able

* Boguslawski, p. 71; Trans., p. 77.

+ In Truppen Führung, ii. 25, there are some excellent remarks on the subject, though deduced only from '66 experience.