In the mounted combat against cavalry, every effort must be directed towards falling upon the enemy at full gallop in a serried mass, and thus to overthrow him. It is not sufficient to succeed in coming to blows with the enemy. His tactical formation must be destroyed, and he must be rendered incapable either of evolution or battle. And this must be done without losing cohesion or power of command. The material damage done to the enemy is a matter for the mounted pursuit, which need only be carried out by part of the troops, or, in default of this, by shrapnel. For the conduct of the purely cavalry fight we should, in my opinion, rely upon men like Frederick the Great, Seydlitz, and the prominent Napoleonic cavalry leaders. In the relations of cavalry to cavalry, nothing has altered since their day, and the experiences of these men are, in their lessons, just as applicable to-day as at the time in which they lived. And what do they teach us? It is the serried formation of the attack that is, above all else, to be aimed at. Frederick the Great certainly changed his formation from the three-rank to the two-rank line. This was owing to his desire to render the troops more mobile, and in some way to compensate for the numerical superiority of his opponent. The longer his experience of war, however, the more did the king insist upon close formation in the attack, and to the end that the attack should lead _not_ to a mêlée, but to the breaking up of the enemy by the impact of the solid mass. Napoleon, whose cavalry was not so proficient in the saddle, sought to obtain this result by greater depth, while in the infrequent cavalry fights of the present day it has become thoroughly apparent that cohesion in the shock is the deciding factor. At Mars la Tour the French Hussar Brigade of Montaigu was overthrown by the closely formed 13th Dragoons, after having made an easy prey of the 10th Hussars, while the other attacks only led to long and indecisive mêlées. Frederick the Great, in order to attain the greatest possible cohesion, finally abolished all intervals between the tactical units and required the knee-to-knee riding. As, however, he was perfectly well aware that, in spite of all regulations, the ranks must open out while crossing country, he would never allow the enemy's cavalry to be attacked without a second line following the first, not in échelon, but directly in rear of it, a measure which repeatedly proved itself necessary, if not decisive. Napoleon's cavalry leaders held that a still greater depth was necessary owing to the looser riding of the French squadrons. As far as I know, there is no example of their attacking in large masses without depth of formation. Peace experience teaches us, that riding across country must loosen cohesion, while the modern firearm obliges us to take refuge in broken country, where the closest touch cannot always be kept, and to this end riding stirrup to stirrup has been introduced.