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ROLE of horse artillery. 
centrate upon any point on the shortest notice. Owing to the great 
area over which the cavalry will have to be extended, the horse artillery, 
in order to give due support to every portion of the front, will have to 
act in small units. It will sometimes even be necessary to break up a 
battery into divisions or half-batteries. Tactical knowledge is therefore 
indispensable to the battery officers. The place of the horse artillery 
on the march will naturally be with the cavalry supports or main body. 
Detached b. Detached Force of Cavalry and Horse Artillery .—It is necessary 
Cavalry and that this employment of cavalry and horse artillery be distin- 
h. a. guished from that of the cavalry of the advance, from which it differs 
essentially. It has been shown that it is the duty of the latter force 
to avoid fighting if possible. The former, on the other hand, is 
detached from the main body with the purpose of attaining some 
specific object, which, in the great majority of instances, can be done 
only by fighting. Again, when acting with the cavalry of the advance, 
the horse artillery plays but a subordinate part; but, in this case, it will 
frequently become the principal arm, and will be employed, as pointed 
out in the Royal Artillery Institution Prize Essay for 1876, to attack 
the enemy’s dispositipns under the protection of the cavalry.* 
Some of the objects which such a force may be called upon to 
accomplish are—to seize some important strategical point before the 
enemy can reach it, to put it into a state of defence, and hold it till the 
arrival of the main body; to fasten on a retreating enemy, and to hold 
him till the infantry can come up and attack him, as in the oft- 
quoted case of Mars-la-Tour; to protect the exposed flank of an army 
making a flank march, or vice versa , to attack the exposed flank of an 
enemy under similar circumstances; to check a pursuing or to pursue 
a beaten enemy. (This last case will be considered under the head of 
“ Pursuits and Retreats.”) 
As this force is essentially a fighting force, it will necessarily be 
much stronger in artillery than the cavalry of the advance. This 
artillery will, as a rule, consist of the horse batteries attached to the 
cavalry, and will be supplemented by the whole or a part of the horse 
batteries of the corps artillery. The nature of its duties will almost 
always render mobility of primary importance, and therefore horse 
artillery will be selected; but, should the particular object which it is 
called upon to undertake be one requiring no special display of 
mobility, then the field batteries of the corps artillery may be sent, 
and should even be preferred to horse artillery. 
The great increase in the temporary retaining power of relatively 
small bodies, due to the introduction of breech-loading small-arms, f 
has done much to increase the importance of an independent force of 
cavalry and artillery. By seizing upon some important point, putting it 
into a state of defence, and making use of dismounted troopers as 
infantry, a greatly superior force could be kept at bay for long enough. 
By thus developing the defensive powers of cavalry, such a force might 
Royal Artillery Institution Proceedings, vol. ix. 5 p. 442* 
f Wellington Prize Essay. 
