SUBALTERN OFFICERS. 
375 
mere fact of tlieir infantry being armed with the needle gun did not 
enable the Prussians to beat the Austrians in the campaign of 1866.* 
Their victory was rather due to the superior training and education of 
the Prussian soldiers, who wore able to use with success a new and 
delicate weapon, which could never have been trusted in the hands of 
ignorant men. Had any other troops in Europe been armed at that 
time with the breech-loader the result would certainly not have been as 
successful as it was with the Prussian Infantry. Four years later the 
French Infantry fought with a weapon superior in every respect to the 
Prussian needle-gun, yet the contest was never doubtful. We can all 
remember the fears which were openly expressed in England when it 
was first proposed to arm our soldiers with the Snider rifle; but those 
fears were never shared by German Officers. They trusted to the 
intelligence of their men, which they had striven to develop to the 
utmost so as to enable them to make a right use of the breech-loader 
on the field of battle. As the author of the “ Tactical Eetrospect” 
pointed out shortly after the Austrian war, “ the decisive element” in 
battles was no longer brute force, but rather intellect (geist), not only 
on the part of the leader but from him down to the last soldier in the 
army. “ Undoubtedly,” wrote Mr. Gladstone in 1870, “the conduct 
of the campaign on the German side has given a marked triumph to the 
cause of systematic popular education. The mind has now gained a 
point in competition with its material partner.”fi 
4. It was Prince Frederick Charles who gave the first impulse to the 
movement which led to the “individual order” of fighting. In the 
celebrated “ Military Memorial 99 addressed to the officers of the 
Prussian Army, and in which the Prince set himself to answer the 
question, “ How to beat the French,” he laid down three conditions as 
necessary for success; “ (1) to develop the military qualities of each 
individual soldier earnestly in time of peace; (2) to give the army 
leaders who have a thorough acquaintance with the three principal 
arms; (3) to oppose to the French a more varied and elastic form of 
tactics.”J It was to carry out the first and most important of these 
conditions that the energies of Prussian officers were chiefly directed 
from 1860 to 1866. The “Military Memorial” was followed in 1861 
by the issue of a code of “ Tactical Instructions,”§ which were published 
as a guide to regimental officers in carrying’ out the new system of 
tactics. These “ Instructions 99 mark a fresh departure in the military 
history of the German nation. From the date of their issue, officers 
were to cease to confine their own training, and that of their men, to 
* " The individualisation of the fight is not a consequence of the breech-loader, but the 
breech-loader is rather a consequence of the qualities of the Army, which has arrived at 
the degree when the arm became necessary. Breech-loaders have been known for 
centuries, and if they have now been found practical, the reason is to be looked for in the 
fact that the Army has now for the first time shown itself ripe to appreciate their merits 
# # # # In the strife of the individual armies of Europe for the leading place, 
those powers will not gain the day, whose arm can be discharged ten or twenty times a 
minute, but rather those who demonstrate in the most substantial manner the enlightened 
views of the present time.” Tactical Retrospect, 1866. 
+ Edinburgh Review, October, 1870. “ Germany, France, and England.” 
X The Military Memorial: translated from the Frankfort edition of Prince Frederick 
Charles’s Essay, “ How to beat the French,” 1860. 
§“ The Prussian Tactical Instructions for Grand Manoeuvres,” translated by Sir Charles 
Staveley. 
