Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/570

566 will probably be the site of an important field fortress, the posts in rear being held by small garrisons. All of the places named must be healthy in comparison with Suakin; and the difficulties with regard to water-supply, which we suspect were exaggerated in order to excuse the no-action of our Government, will disappear pari passu with the construction of the railway. Osman Digma's powers to interfere with the work must be crushed decisively; and we trust that in undertaking this necessary task, we shall hear nothing more of the employment of those massive squares in battle, which have occasioned at least three-fourths of our losses in the past, and on three occasions came near producing serious disaster. It is to be hoped that the lamented General Earle's brilliant tactics at Kirbekan will mark a return to the old fighting traditions of our army, and that it will no longer be thought necessary to huddle up our troops, for the sake of safety, in a cramped formation in which they can neither move nor fight with effect, and in which only one rifle out of four can fire to the front; or dangerous to trust them against savage warriors in the "unconquerable red line." At Kirbekan the same brave enemy, whose attack in the open it was not previously thought prudent to meet except in a massive square formation, occupied a strongly intrenched position, with numbers estimated at about 2000, armed mostly with Remingtons. General Earle, with 8 companies of the Royal Staffords and 6 companies of the Black Watch – 1000 infantry in all – with 2 guns, after five hours' hard fighting, turned the enemy out of all his defences, one of them being a fort on the summit of a hill 400 feet high, only to be reached by climbing on hands and knees; the result being a larger comparative loss to the enemy than in any of the previous battles, with what must be considered numerically as a very slight loss to ourselves.

Recent experience has entirely justified the opinion we expressed in our number of last May, that the massive square is an unintelligent and dangerous formation, perfectly inexcusable except where it can await attack on its own ground as at Ulundi, and then only when the firearms in the hands of the enemy are small in number and inferior in quality, – a formation which neutralises all the advantages of superior training and weapons on the part of the soldier, and of superior science on the part of the general, The one lesson the British army, for its comfort, may derive from the recent battles, is, that a line of British infantry, two deep, defended by steady breech-loading fire, is unapproachable in front by any number of savages, however devoted. The sole condition of success for such a line is that its flanks are protected; and all the tactical instruction imparted at our military schools and garrison classes must be pronounced worthless, if 4300 British troops, in their traditional two-deep line, provided with cavalry and artillery, as at Tamai, and whose fire in line would defend a front of more than a mile in extent, are not able to protect their flanks and rear by manœuvring against 10,000 savages. At Abu Klea the odds of 10,000 men against 1400 were perhaps too great to justify a line formation on open ground; but we hold it as certain that a series of independent small squares, which can be formed in a moment from column of march, and which could afford each other flanking defence,