328 ROLE OF HORSE ARTILLERY. 
sense dictates that the proper artillery for any service is the heaviest 
calibre that can be used to carry it out. The destructive effect of guns 
increases in at least the direct ratio of their calibres, and it would there¬ 
fore be madness to persist in employing only 9-pounders where 
16-pounders, or even 40-pounders, could be equally well employed. It 
is owing to forgetfulness of this simple principle, i.e., that the proper 
calibre for any given duty is the heaviest which can be effectively 
employed, that so many errors have been, not only laid down in theory, 
but carried out in practice. Misled by the outcries of a few fanatics, 
such as Monhaupt, Decker, &c., artillery and other officers have 
frequently drifted into the belief that some special and peculiar sphere 
of duties belongs to the horse artillery; that it is incorrect and 
improper to employ other artillery for such duties ; and that in given 
junctures it might be strictly correct to use only horse artillery, 
although it might be possible to drag 40-pounders into the critical 
position at the critical moment. To discuss such a theory would be 
mere waste of time. It is enough to say here, that an officer who 
employed a light where he might employ a heavy calibre, in obedience 
to preconceived theories, would hardly prove an honour to his regiment 
or country. But there are occasions, and these by no means rare ones, 
in which the heavier calibres cannot be brought to the proper point at 
the proper moment; hence the necessity which always has existed, 
which still exists, and which always will exist, as long as the horse is the 
means of artillery draught, for a certain proportion of the lightest 
calibres on the lightest system, to act on such occasions. I cannot 
agree with the theory occasionally expressed that even the lightest 
calibres, equipped on the field battery system, with gun axletree seats, 
should ever take the place of horse artillery. In the first place the gun 
axletree seat system is not the lightest system possible. To work a gun 
properly, at least six men are required, and to bring these six men up 
on the field battery system involves carrying three men on 
the gun limber and two on the axletree seats; in all, three 
men more than are carried by the horse artillery. This is equivalent 
to adding about 36 stone, or 4*5 cwt., permanently to the weight 
behind the team. This might not tell in a battle or in a day; but 
it surely would tell in a week’s marching. But, in the second place, 
it is unscientific and unpractical to reduce the field batteries to the 
horse artillery calibre. ,A gun which is light enough for - the horse 
artillery, i.e., for duties requiring the greatest celerity, is manifestly 
too light for the field batteries, i.e., for duties not requiring the greatest 
celerity. On the other hand, a gun heavy enough for the field batteries 
is as evidently too heavy for the horse artillery. The efficiency of field 
artillery is dependent upon two main principles, which work in opposite 
directions, i.e., mobility and shell-power. The former may be said to 
be represented in a special sense by horse artillery; the latter by field 
batteries. Neither principle, of course, can be sacrificed to the other, 
but of the horse artillery it may be said that—given an amount of shell- 
power sufficient for the efficiency of the system—it must be combined 
with the greatest possible mobility; of the field batteries—given an 
