R.A.I. PRIZE ESSAY, 1876 . 
447 
application of tlie force to the changing courses of the action. Strong 
reserves of artillery for the defence acquired discredit in the examples 
of Gravelotte and Konigratz. The former case has been already con¬ 
sidered; in the latter it was remarkable that though the powerful 
reserve was massed adjacent to the right wing, where the crisis 
actually occurred, yet it arrived to the spot too late to exercise full 
influence on that event. This is rather a lesson that reserves should 
be disposed in units of convenient size and situation to allow of the 
readiest application; and it must not be forgotten that the same 
reserve, with the cavalry, absolutely saved the army from destruction 
after its defeat. 
The advantages of mobility, extended dispositions, and ultimate con¬ 
centration of effect at the critical place and time, have been the more 
emphasised here that little stress has, as yet, come to be laid on them 
in recognised works on the defence. Up to the commencement of the 
rifled period, the prescriptions for the artillery dispositions of the 
defence were so many and various as to appear rather more devised to 
relieve the conscience of the instructor than to smooth the path of the 
instructed. To post the heaviest guns on those points from which the 
enemy's approach could be commanded to the greatest distance; to 
reserve one's most important pieces to those positions which were not 
liable to the earlier attacks of the enemy; to provide absolutely that 
every portion of the ground in front of the position should be raked by 
batteries to the right and left, as well as swept by a direct fire; to 
combine, in the crisis of the struggle, the case of the artillery with the 
musketry of the infantry; to distribute the guns along the front of a 
position at the rate of one battery to every two battalions*'—these are 
some of the comprehensive and rather conflicting tasks set, in books, 
with much apparent lightness of heart. The three last, indeed, are 
still to be found in works of some note as late as 1873-4; but they can 
only be regarded now as interesting mementos of the conditions which 
ruled during the great by-gone smooth-bore period. 
The duty of the rear guard consists, principally, in securing to its pre¬ 
cedent main body immunity from pursuit, attack, or interruption; and 
is carried out by the employment of every safe means for the retarding 
and misleading of the enemy. The most effective and available method 
is the presentation, to the heads of his columns, of a defensive order of 
battle established in position; which, on his deployment and completion 
of dispositions for attack, withdraws itself, whilst yet uncompromised by 
serious engagement, to repeat the same process at the next suitable 
position. 
Its action—like that of the advanced guard—is devoted to containing 
the enemy and gaining time for its main body; but under this inver¬ 
sion of conditions—that whereas all the time the advanced guard can 
employ necessarily brings its reinforcements nearer, all the delay that 
The device of spotting guns along the front, at regular intervals, to “ mark ” it and its flanks, 
is fairly comparable to the schoolboy’s method of annotating his page of MS. by adding stops to it 
at intervals suitable to the eye and the personal taste. Each system is about equally effective for 
developing the inherent force of the whole* 
