Читать книгу The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte - Charles Downer Hazen, Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - Страница 54
ОглавлениеMAXIM XLIX.
The practice of mixing small bodies of infantry and cavalry together is a bad one, and attended with many inconveniences. The cavalry loses its power of action. It becomes fettered in all its movements. Its energy is destroyed; even the infantry itself is compromised, for on the first movement of the cavalry it is left without support. The best mode of protecting cavalry is to cover its flank.
NOTE.
This also was the opinion of Marshal Saxe. “The weakness of the above formation,” says he, “is sufficient in itself to intimidate the platoons of infantry, because they must be lost if the cavalry is beaten.”
The cavalry, also, which depends on the infantry for succor, is disconcerted the moment a brisk forward movement carries them out of sight of their supports. Marshal Turenne, and the generals of his time, sometimes employed this order of formation; but that does not, in my opinion, justify a modern author for recommending it in an essay, entitled “Considerations sur l’Art de la Guerre.” In fact, this formation has long been abandoned; and, since the introduction of light artillery, it appears to me almost ridiculous to propose it.
