1. Cavalry and Modern Appliances 2. Cavalry Against Cavalry 3. Cavalry Against Infantry 4. Armor and Armament IV ARTILLERY V COMMAND, GENERAL STAFF AND ADMINISTRATION VI SOCIAL AND MILITARY INSTITUTIONS; NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS APPENDICES I MEMORANDUM ON INFANTRY FIRE 1. Introduction 2. Succinct History of the Development of Small Arms, from the Arquebus to Our Rifle 3. Progressive Introduction of Fire-Arms Into the Armament of the Infantryman 4. The Classes of Fire Employed with Each Weapon 5. Methods of Fire Used in the Presence of the Enemy; Methods Recommended or Ordered but Impractical 6. Fire at Will--Its Efficacy 7. Fire by Rank Is a Fire to Occupy the Men in Ranks 8. The Deadly Fire Is the Fire of Skirmishers 9. The Absolute Impossibility of Fire at Command II HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS 1. Cavalry (An Extract from Xenophon) 2. Marius Against the Cimbrians (Extract from Plutarch's "Life of Marius") 3. The Battle of The Alma (Extract from the Correspondence of Colonel Ardant du Picq) 4. The Battle of the Alma (Extract from the Correspondence of Colonel Ardant du Picq) 5. The Battle of Inkermann (Extract from the Correspondence of Colonel Ardant du Picq) 6. The Battle of Magenta (Extract from the Correspondence of Colonel Ardant du Picq) 7. The Battle of Solferino (Extract from the Correspondence of Colonel Ardant du Picq) 8. Mentana (Extract from the Correspondence of Colonel Ardant du Picq) BATTLE STUDIES A MILITARY THINKER Near Longeville-les-Metz on the morning of August 15, 1870, a stray projectile from a Prussian gun mortally wounded the Colonel of the 10th Regiment of the Line. The obscure gunner never knew that he had done away with one of the most intelligent officers of our army, one of the most forceful writers, one of the most clear-sighted philosophers whom sovereign genius had ever created. Ardant du Picq, according to the Annual Register, commanded but a regiment. He was fitted for the first rank of the most exalted. He fell at the hour when France was thrown into frightful chaos, when all that he had foreseen, predicted and dreaded, was being terribly fulfilled. New ideas, of which he was the unknown trustee and unacknowledged prophet, triumphed then at our expense. The disaster that carried with it his sincere and revivifying spirit, left in the tomb of our decimated divisions an evidence of the necessity for reform. When our warlike institutions were perishing from the lack of thought, he represented in all its greatness the true type of military thinker. The virile thought of a military thinker alone brings forth successes and maintains victorious nations. Fatal indolence brought about the invasion, the loss of two provinces, the bog of moral miseries and social evils which beset vanquished States.