hose of South Africa, but this is
mainly accounted for by the fact that, operations being generally in the
northern hemisphere, the change of climate was never so severe.
Tactically, they suffered, like the Austrians and Prussians, from the
absence of any conception of the Napoleonic strategy amongst their
principal leaders. As it was not known where the great blow was to fall,
they were distributed along the whole line, and thus became habituated
to the idea of operating in relatively small bodies. This is the worst
school for the cavalry soldier, because it is only when working in
masses of forty to sixty squadrons that the cumulative consequences of
small errors of detail become so apparent as to convince all ranks of
the necessity of conforming accurately to established prescriptions.
Nevertheless, they still retained the practice of charging at a gallop,
and as a whole were by far the most efficient body of horsemen who
survived at the close of the great wars.

Later 19th century.

In the reaction that then ensued all over Europe, cavalry practically
ceased to exist. The financial and agricultural exhaustion of all
countries, and of Prussia in particular, was so complete that money was
nowhere to be found for the great concentrations and manoeuvre practices
which are more essential to the efficiency of the cavalry than to that
of the other arms. Hence a whole generation of officers grew up in
ignorance of the fundamental principles which govern the employment of
their arm. It was not till 1848 that the Prussians began again to unite
whole cavalry divisions for drill and manoeuvre, and the soldiers of the
older generation had not yet passed away when the campaigns of 1866 and
1870 brought up again the realities of the battle-field. Meanwhile the
introduction of long-range artillery and small arms had entirely
destroyed the tactical relation of the three arms on which the
Napoleonic tactics and strategy had been based, and the idea gained
ground that the battle-field would no longer afford the same
opportunities to cavalry as before. The experiences gained by the
Americans in the Civil War helped to confirm this preconception. If in
battles waged between infantries armed only with muzzle-loading rifles,
cavalry could find no opportunity to repeat past exploits, it was argued
that its chances could not fail to be still further reduced by the
breech-loader. But this reasoning ignored the principal factors of
form