208 CO-OPERATION BETWEEN GUNS AND CAVALRY. 
of flint-locks, and at another earlier stage we may require them to 
utilize almost to the utmost all the powers of the scientific weapons 
with which they are equipped. 
And our difficulties are further complicated by the fact that in the 
decisive combat the capability of one part of our unit has not altered 
very materially during the last hundred-and-twenty years, while that 
the other portion has grown out of all recognition. 
The lance and sword were the weapons of chivalry and are still those 
on which a cavalry soldier relies when he flings the gauntlet down to 
his foe for a combat a I’ owtrance. 
They are no more deadly now than they ever were, nor are the men 
who wield them presumably more powerful or skilful in handling them 
than were those that Seydlitz or Ziethen led.. It is a very different 
matter however where fire-arms are concerned. If Byng’s or Maitland’s. 
Guards could be called upon to-day to fight the battalions Lord Methuen 
commands in London we know to a certainty that a mere massacre would 
ensue. If Ross’s troop of 1815 were to engage its successor, “the 
Chestnut. troop”’. of our-own times, we have no doubt that it would be 
swept away before it could get near enough to put in a round at all. 
We could prove all this to demonstration, but here certainty ends; and, 
although we believe, or at any rate I believe, that our cavalry now are 
to-day, regiment for regiment the best in Hurope, I suggest to you that 
if the Union Brigade, which swept down on D’EHrlon’s Corps on a cer- 
tain 18th of June eighty years ago, had to charge the three magnificent 
regiments which are in England now, the result would be by no means 
the same foregone conclusion as in the other cases which I have cited. 
Indeed I myself often doubt (and I know 1 am supported by opinion in 
Germany) whether the highly trained squadrons of Seydlitz, “ jammed,” 
as he loved to see them “ boot to boot,” would not be at least equal to any 
cavalry which modern Europe can show. The principles which govern 
shock tactics have in fact not altered since before the days of gunpowder, 
and yet in close alliance with them we have to utilize weapons which would 
astonish such comparatively modern Generals as Lord Raglan or Lee. I 
use the word “have” because it is remarkable how strong a tendency 
there is, and has always been, on the part of cavalry to avail themselves 
of fire, even at the expense of velocity, and yet it is a fundamental truth 
that its only hope lies in swift movement and cold steel (applause). From 
Cromwell’s time to Frederick’s the tendency prevailed. The latter set 
to work to stamp it out, and succeeded. But in spite of his teaching 
the heresy seems still to smoulder. To mention a few examples that I 
have come across while looking up this subject lately. I find the 
French cavalry halting to receive our charge with pistol-fire at the 
affair of Aroya-Molinos in 1811;! the Russian cavalry halting and 
firing with a brigade moving straight against them in 1854.? The 
Austrian horsemen, reputed to be the best in Hurope at that time, 
2 At Balaclava. 
3 Vide official.account of the war of 1866, pages 95 and 344. 
