446 
R.A.I. PRIZE ESSAY, 1876 , 
advance and its separation into small and mobile units, will find in the 
latter but an unsatisfactory target for its practice-distant, moving, 
now extending, now concentrating behind cover, now winding round 
undulations, now darting forward, and again lying flat on the earth. 
It will be better not to rely on effecting anything essential during this 
period, but to occupy the attention of the enemy and to prepare for the 
critical moment; to which latter purpose, now that the points aimed at 
by the attack are becoming more distinctly evident, a considerable 
force of artillery, hitherto uncommitted in action and retained for dis¬ 
posal according to circumstances, will be brought up into convenient 
supporting proximity. As the hostile artillery endeavours to take up 
its final and decisive positions, and the head of the infantry advance, 
coming fairly under the increasing influence of the musketry fire of the 
defence, begins to exhibit more break in its order, more check in its 
pace, and more anxiety for its supports and main body to come up 
with it, the opportunity of the defence is arrived. From every 
eminence, from retired flanks,* from batteries which hitherto have 
neither seen, nor been seen from, the distance, but which have measured 
the ranges and watched the convenient spots where the batteries of the 
attack must desire to come into action, or where its infantry will be 
driven to rally together—from all these points, to supplement the 
already staggering effect of the musketry defence, a sudden and close 
artillery fire, rapid, and, on account of the small distance, unerring, 
steady and well regulated because little opposed by artillery or dis¬ 
turbed by random musketry, delivered from front, from flanks, and 
crossways, must arrest the assailant in the most difficult crisis of his 
progress, and, having once stopped him, must scatter his dispositions 
to the winds. Such disjointed fragments of the attack as may be 
thrown up by the throes of the struggle to the position of the 
defenders, can hardly be expected to cause much embarrassment. 
Should the superiority of force of the assailant be very pronounced, 
it will be desirable that the flanks of the defence be strong, by nature 
or art, and difficult to circumvent. The general disposition of the 
troops must be deep, with freedom for manoeuvre, to be ready to meet 
those attempts on the flanks which must now become so frequent in 
warfare, owing to the enhancement of the difficulties of frontal attack; 
and for this purpose, of meeting the unforeseen assaults of the enemy, 
wherever and whenever he may try to deliver them, and of quickly 
reinforcing the threatened points, it will be absolutely necessary to 
have in hand, available without the subtraction of any strength from 
the already engaged front, and freely applicable to the purpose of the 
moment, a strong force of artillery. The partisans of the arithmetical 
theory of the employment of artillery may object to this force being 
called “ reserve/' 5 It would not be difficult to devise other names, but 
this one seems not unfit, if it be not supposed to prevent the readiest 
* Positions somewhat retired from the general line of the infantry defence, but affording some¬ 
thing of a flanking fire to the ground in front of the same, whilst protected by it from the musketry 
fire of the attack—filling something of the place of the flanks in the bastion system—often avail- 
able, enable a calm and regular fire to be exactly delivered at the most decisively effective ranges, 
