3. When cavalry are deployed as skirmishers, as a curtain to hide our movements, they should be _in considerable number_, with small intervals, and should make as much noise, and smoke, and dust as possible. When the charge is sounded, the skirmishers wait and fall in with the rest. 4. The great rule in cavalry combats is to _cover our own flanks_, and _gain the enemy's_; for these are his and our weakest points. 5. When the enemy's cavalry is already in full charge on our infantry, it is too late for our cavalry to charge it with much prospect of success. In such a case, it would be better to defer our own charge till the moment that the enemy's _is completed_; for our success then would be certain. 6. Cavalry attacks cavalry _in line_, in order to have the more sabres, and, if possible, to outflank the enemy. 7. If we can manoeuvre so as to attack the enemy's cavalry _in flank_, our success will be certain. Military history affords hundreds of instances in proof of this proposition. At one of the battles in Spain, for example, in 1809, fifteen hundred French horse, by charging four thousand Spanish cavalry in flank, completely cut it in pieces. 8. Cavalry _never waits in position_ to be charged by cavalry. Its only safety is in meeting the charge with a violent gallop; it would otherwise be sure to be overthrown. When hostile cavalries thus meet each other, there is usually but small loss on either side. A certain number of troopers are usually dismounted; but the colliding masses somehow ride through each other, allowing but little time for the exchange of points and cuts. Thus cavalry can defend itself against cavalry only by attacking; which it must do even when inferior to the enemy in number. 9. To attack artillery, cavalry should be in _three detachments_; one-fourth to seize the guns; one-half to charge the supports; and the other fourth as a reserve. The first party attacks in dispersed order, as foragers, trying to gain the flanks of the battery. The second party should manoeuvre to gain the flanks of the supports. 10. Where a cavalry attack can be masked, so as to operate _as a surprise_, a battery may be taken by charging it in front. The formidable Spanish battery in the Pass of Somosierra, was finally carried by a dash of Napoleon's Polish Lancers upon it, suddenly profiting of a temporary fog or mist. But, in ordinary cases, when cavalry has to charge a battery in front, its fire should be drawn by our own guns or infantry, immediately before the charge begins. 11. In an attack on an _intrenchment_, the office of cavalry can rarely be any thing else than to repulse sorties from the work, and to cut off the enemy's retreat from it. VII.--Its Charge. 1. As cavalry acts effectively on the field of battle only by its charge, good cavalry of the line can be formed in no other way than by being _exercised in this_, its special and peculiar function.