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 146 CAVALRY but not so the French. The cavalry of the latter nation had, indeed, been much disorgan- ized by the revolution, and in the beginning of the war the new formations proved almost use- less. When their new infantry levies were met by the good cavalry of the English, Prussians, and Austrians, they were, during 1792 and 1793, almost uniformly beaten. The cavalry, quite unable to cope with such opponents, was always kept in reserve until a few years' cam- paigning had improved them. In 1796 and afterward every division of infantry had cav- alry as a support ; still, at Wiirzburg, the whole of the French cavalry was defeated by 59 Aus- trian squadrons (1796). When Napoleon took the direction of affairs in France, he did his best to improve the French cavalry. He found about the worst material that could be met with. As a nation, the French were the worst horsemen of Europe, and their horses, good for draught, were not well adapted for the saddle. He made great improvements, and after the camp of Boulogne his cavalry, in great part mounted on German and Italian horses, was no despicable adversary. The campaigns of 1805 and 1806-'7 allowed his cavalry to absorb almost all the horses of the Austrian and Prussian armies, and moreover reenforced the French army by the excellent cavalry of the confederation of the Rhine and the duchy of Warsaw. Thus were formed those enormous masses of horsemen with which Napoleon acted in 1809, 1812, and the latter part of 1813, which, though generally designated as French, were in great part composed of Ger- mans and Poles. The cuirass, which had been entirely done away with in the French army shortly before the revolution, was restored to a portion of the heavy cavalry by Napoleon. In other respects the organization and equip- ment remained nearly the same, except that with his Polish auxiliaries he received some regiments of light horse, armed with the lance, the costume and equipment of which were soon imitated in other armies. But in the tactical use of cavalry he introduced a complete change. According to the system of composing divisions and army corps of all three arms, a portion of the light cavalry was attached to each division or corps ; but the mass of the arm, and especially all the heavy horse, were held together in reserve lor the purpose of striking at a favorable moment a great decisive blow, or, in case of need, of covering the retreat of the army. These masses of cavalry, suddenly appearing on a given point of the battle field, have often acted decisively; still they never gained such brilliant successes as the horsemen of Frederick the Great. The cause of this is to be looked for partly in the changed tactics of infantry, which, by selecting chiefly broken ground for its operations, and always receiving cavalry in a square, made it more difficult for the latter arm to achieve such great victories as the Prussian horsemen had obtained over the long, thin infantry lines of their opponents. But it is also certain that Napoleon's cavalry was not equal to that of Frederick the Great, and that Napoleon's cavalry tactics were not in every instance an improvement upon those of Frederick. The indifferent riding of the French compelled them to charge at a com- paratively slow pace, at a trot or a collected canter ; there are but few instances where they charged at a gallop. Their great bravery and close ranks made up often enough for the cur- tailed impetus, but still their charge was not what would now be considered good. The old system of receiving hostile cavalry standing, carbine in hand, was in very many cases re- tained by the French cavalry, and in every such instance* were they defeated. The last example of this happened at Danigkow, April 5, 1813, where about 1,200 French cavalry thus awaited a charge of 400 Prussians, and were completely beaten in spite of their num- bers. As to Napoleon's tactics, the use of great masses of cavalry with him became such a fixed rule, that not only was the divisional cavalry weakened so as to be completely use- less, but also in the employment of these mass- es he often neglected that successive engage- ment of his forces which is one of the principal points in modern tactics, and which is even more applicable to cavalry than to infantry. He in- troduced the cavalry charge in column, and even formed whole cavalry corps into one monster column, in such formations that the extrication of a single squadron or regiment became an utter impossibility, and that any attempt at deploying was entirely out of the question. His cavalry generals, too, were not up to the mark, and even the most brilliant of them, Murat, would have cut but a sorry figure if opposed to a Seyd- litz. During the wars of 1813, '14, and '15, cavalry tactics had decidedly improved on the part of Napoleon's opponents. Though to a great extent following Napoleon's system of holding cavalry in reserve in large masses, and therefore very often keeping the greater por- tion of the cavalry entirely out of an action, still in many instances a return to the tactics of Frederick was attempted. In the Prussian army the old spirit was revived. Blucher was the first to use his cavalry more boldly, and generally with success. The ambuscade of Haynau (1813), where 20 Prussian squadrons rode down 8 French battalions and took 18 guns, marks a turning point in the modern his- tory of cavalry, and forms a favorable contrast to the tactics of Lutzen, where the allies hold 18,000 horse entirely in reserve until the battle was lost, although a more favorable cavalry ground could not be found. The English h.-ul never adopted the system of forming large mass- es of cavalry, and had therefore many success- es, although Napier himself admits that their cavalry was not so good at that time as that of the French. At Waterloo, where the French cuirassiers for once charged at full speed, the English cavalry was admirably handled and generally successful, except where it followed