R.l.I. PRIZE ESSAY, 1876 . 
489 
arm is capable, whilst their moral working will be enhanced in propor¬ 
tion to the impossibility of reply. 
The force of this comparison becomes abated in one of its particulars 
under one condition only :* as the range diminishes, so does the 
greater need of good gunnery to direct fire disappear; but a nature of 
fire whose admitted inferiority is only then least manifested when the 
ranges are of the shortest and the gunnery is of the most insignificant, 
cannot be supposed to exhibit fairly the peculiar advantages of rifled 
artillery. 
In flanking fire, then, dwells the most incontestible ascendency. 
This has indeed never yet been questioned, only somewhat lost to 
mind, amongst the successful exhibitions of the new powers of the arm 
in direct fire, well as these very powers pointed ont the more im¬ 
portant direction which its development might take. 
Of the infinite gradations between, or combinations of, these two 
kinds of fire, cross fire—partaking, according to its degree, of the 
nature of flanking fire, and inflicting, by its distracting and discon¬ 
certing action, a peculiar moral disorganisation—may be regarded as a 
very appropriate application of the special functions of the new field 
guns. 
There must further be considered the question, How is the necessary 
position for such action to be attained ? Obviously by manoeuvre— 
opportune, adapted to the movements of the enemy, not in place only, 
but equally in time. “What is the use,” said May, reviewing the 
war of 1866, “of an artillery that makes capital practice indeed, but 
which is never in the right place ?” “ At the right moment,” must 
be added, if we would reap the advantages due to flanking and cross 
fire. Flanks are withdrawn, or covered, fronts are changed, the battle 
moves bodily on, unless the critical moment is seized by the most 
ready, unless the long line taken “ flagrante delicto ” in its unwieldy 
deployment be crushed where it stands by more apt and mobile bat¬ 
teries, and rendered incapable of the farther prosecution of its purpose. 
Ham-ley has defined manoeuvres to be “the quick, orderly change of 
highly trained and flexible masses from one kind of formation to 
another; or their transference from point to point of a battle-field, 
for purposes which become suddenly feasible in the changing course of 
the action.” And there can be little doubt that very decisive artillery 
purposes will become suddenly feasible upon the prematurely developed 
gun-display of the enemy, if we be ready for it, with hig’hly trained 
and flexible masses. 
In order to be thus ready, it will be necessary, not to imitate the 
prescribed precipitation of all available guns on the front, but, on the 
contrary, to hold the force of artillery (whatever its proportions, pro¬ 
vided it be all destined to forward one and the same operation), prepared 
to act in at least two parts—one of them, by engaging the enemy 
without too deeply compromising itself, to force him to deploy and 
declare his force and dispositions; the other to await, unseen if it may 
* Excepting, of course, in the case of deep columns, which mav hardly be expected on the 
battle-field for the future, 
