THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
14.5 
THE 
DEVELOPMENT OF ARTILLERY TACTICS 
IN COMBINATION WITH THE OTHER ARMS. 
A Lecture delivered at the Prince Consort's Library, Aldershot, on the 21th March, 1872, 
BY 
CAPTAIN FOX STRANGWAYS, R.H.A. 
In now submitting this paper to a larger number of my brother officers, I 
have thought it better to leave out certain portions of merely local applica¬ 
tion. There may still be some illustrations which are hardly intelligible 
without plans to those unacquainted with the ground, but to have altogether 
omitted them would have left the paper very bare of illustration, and have 
considerably altered its bearing and scope. 
I propose in discussing the subject I have chosen, to dwell mainly on the 
tactics of field artillery, as they have been and must be further modified by 
recent changes in arms, to consider the probable direction of changes in 
tactics in the immediate future, to ascertain how far our own practice is based 
on true principles, and where there may seem to be errors, how they may best 
be corrected. 
I shall illustrate what 1 have to say from the action of artillery in recent 
campaigns, but chiefly from the manoeuvres of last autumn, and the ground 
round the camp. There are various reasons for this. In the first place, it is 
very difficult to get minute reliable details of the employment of artillery in 
the field. Contemporary writers treat the subject either from the picturesque 
or from the strategic point of view. The wars of 1866 and 1870 have given 
us a rich harvest of newspaper correspondence admirable for its particular 
purpose, and inestimable as material for the future historian, whilst there 
have been also works of all sizes and pretensions throwing a flood of light 
upon the general operations of the campaigns, and even the larger tactics; but 
the actual disposition and handling of the troops in combat, so far as I can 
ascertain, has been lightly touched by these numerous writers. Of all arms 
the artillery has been the worst used in this respect, and thus it comes to pass 
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