379 
RUSSIAN ARTILLERY TACTICS DURING THE LATE 
CAMPAIGN. 
BY 
LIEUT. A. M. MURRAY, R.A, 
The insignificant part played by the Russian artillery in all the 
earlier battles of tRe late war lias caused many people to lose all faith 
in the arm as an effective weapon of modern warfare. Forgetting the 
astounding successes achieved by the German artillery in the campaign 
of 1870-1, and looking only at the failure of the Russian artillery in 
the combats round Plevna and in Asia, most of the writers about the 
late war, without investigating the causes of that failure, have raised an 
outcry against modern artillery in general, and sought to discredit its 
value on the field of battle. We are told, for instance, that “the effect 
of modern artillery and its value have been greatly over-estimated ;” 
that the material effect of shell fire is “ very slight,” while “ upon good 
troops its moral effect is nearly lost •” that “ in the wars of Napoleon 
artillery was a far more effective arm on the field of battle than modern 
artillery, with all its improvements and much more to the same pur¬ 
pose.* Nor do the critics who write thus forget to remind us that 
the distinguished author of the “Operations of War”—an artillery 
officer of high rank, whose name will never be mentioned in this Insti¬ 
tution but with respect—writing after the Franco-German war, laid it 
down as a new principle of tactics that the comparative effect of the 
smooth-bore on the field of battle was greater than that of the rifled 
* “Daily Hews” correspondence of the war between Russia and Turkey. The chapter which 
contains this sweeping condemnation of artillery is, I believe, from the pen of the late 
Mr. MacGahan. I have quoted the above passages as an example of the sort of criticism to which 
artillery has been subjected since the war. Air. MacGahan is unfortunately not our only critic. 
Even so generally well-informed a paper as the “ Army and Navy Gazette” joins in this dead set 
made at artillery. Thus we are told that “ artillerymen ale striving hard to prove that their arm 
is far more formidable than the experience of the Russo-Turkish war would lead those who study 
the subject to suppose.We maintain, however, that it is by no means so indis¬ 
pensable an adjunct to infantry as infantry officers have hitherto thought, and as artillery officers 
still assert it is .”—Army and Navy Gazette, 7th September, 1878 . 
Adverse 
criticism of 
artillery 
due to its 
failure 
during the 
Russo- 
Turkish 
campaign. 
