Note 446 — Chapter IX · THE MUTUAL GUARANTEE. MÆGBURH. TITHING. HUNDRED.

Weight and momentum combined are the secret of modern tactics, and morally speaking (i. e. the appearance in superior force on certain points), of modern strategics also. Cavalry charging in successive echelons would always break infantry but for the check which man and horse experience in their speed from the file-firing of the squares: the mere weight of the horse falling dead into the first rank would break it if he reached it. If the weight of the advancing body be greater than that of the resisting, the latter is destroyed. A successful charge of cavalry won the battle of Marengo, an unsuccessful one lost that of Waterloo. Modern warfare was more changed by the substitution of iron for wooden ramrods, by which the momentum of musket-balls was increased, than by almost any other mere change of detail. Steam-carriages and scythe-chariots, the Macedonian phalanx—nay, even squadrons of horse, are only larger bullets, which may be launched with more or less success: all these are mechanical discoveries consequent upon the fact that the individuals of which armies are composed are lower in the scale of moral dignity than of old. Once group men in masses, and they become subject, more or less, according as discipline has destroyed their individuality, to the mechanical laws which govern the relations of all masses. No doubt a stone wall will turn any charge of cavalry; and so will a regiment of infantry, in exact proportion as you teach it to stand like a stone wall, that is, as you destroy the individual action of each soldier. The Romans stood above two feet apart; our men touch each other at the elbows. Our armies are fitter perhaps for aggressive movements. The Germans probably charged tumultuously; but the scyldburh, or wall of shields, was hardly less capable of receiving a charge than our own squares.