313 
THE ROLE OF HORSE ARTILLERY 
IN A CAMPAIGN; 
THE R.A, INSTITUTION PRIZE ESSAY OF 1878. 
BY 
Lieut. J. K. TROTTER, R.H.A. 
“ Taliessin is our fullest throat of song*, 
And one hath sung, and all the dumb will sing.” 
When the history of military error comes to he written, an important introduction, 
chapter will he occupied by the theories of horse artillery and cavalry, 
put forward chiefly by Germans, between the Seven Years’ War and the 
middle of the present century. The great egg question in Lilliput was 
nothing to the dispute which agitated the field artillery world for a 
century. Six revolutions attested the unwillingness of a large portion 
of the people of Lilliput to obey the law forbidding the breaking of 
the larger end of eggs, and at various periods no less than 11,000 
persons suffered death rather than break the smaller end. But 
although the two factions which distracted this unfortunate empire 
were unable to agree as to the use of an egg, they freely admitted that 
an egg was an egg, and nothing else. In the artillery controversy, 
however, not only were the disputants divided as to the use of horse 
artillery; they were not agreed as to the nature of horse artillery. 
Horse artillery, said one faction, is not artillery at all; it is cavalry. 
A division of cavalry and its horse artillery could only be regarded as a 
single inseparable whole; * and this horse artillery should never be 
removed from its cavalry, “ even though it may have to remain 
inactive at first.” f The fundamental principle of the field batteries 
was rest; that of the horse artillery was motion. J The only hope, 
therefore, for the horse artillery was its immediate and complete 
* “Un seul tout inseparable.” “ Tactique de l’Artillerie h cheval avec la Cavalerie.” Par le 
Gen. Monhaupt. Translated into French by Baron de Pesetsdorf. P. 12. 
f Decker’s “Cavalry and Horse Artillery.” Translated by Begbie. P. 260. 
j “Das element der Fuss Artillerie ist der Stand, das der Reitenden die Bewegung.” 
Monhaupt, “ Die Reitende Artillerie, was Sie ist, &c.,” p. 13. 
40 
