Scenes from the Daily Routine of the Old Army - Cavalry - Attack

Even before the outbreak of the First World War, the majority of the military assumed the traditional role of the cavalry in any prospective war.

For this reason, attacks against cavalry or against infantry or artillery were practiced and formed part of the scene of the great imperial maneuvers in peacetime.

The Drill Regulations for the Cavalry of 03.04.1909 (Berlin 1909) comment on this on pp. 73 ff.

If a regiment acted alone, it generally attacked in line, with or without echelon. In attacks against infantry, the charges were not to follow one another at too great a distance.

In the event that cavalry attacked an artillery position, an interval between charges was to observe the depth effect of a single shrapnel round (300 m).

Regarding this practice, which stood in obvious contrast to advancing military technology, the following can be read in Siegfried Fiedler, Kriegswesen und Kriegsführung im Zeitalter der Millionenheere, Bonn 1993, pp. 58 ff.:

"Even between 1905 and 1913 the cavalry increased by a further 17 regiments to 110, even though its significance in future warfare had to appear questionable and the army had many other needs to satisfy. The conservative majority of the cavalry commanders, however, remained firmly convinced that they could intervene in the course of operations through independent actions. They still counted on real chances for attacks against the flank and rear of a surprised or shaken enemy. Lines of thought already refuted by the war of 1870/71. In battle, given the enormously increased range and effect of all firearms, there was no longer any opportunity for a mass attack of large cavalry formations. At best, fighting on horseback was still conceivable in cases where smaller units suddenly encountered enemy mounted detachments or could fall upon disordered infantry or artillery elements or intact supply columns. How was the army cavalry, which the 1909 Drill Regulations named as the most important opponent (Nos. 389 and 392), to fare in the field when there existed absolutely certain means to smash any cavalry attack...."

Those with progressive views, who in any case did not believe in its practicability, saw the main task as tactical and operational reconnaissance, and the exclusive mode of combat for large cavalry bodies as fighting on foot. This, of course, was practiced, and the troops equipped with a fully effective firearm (Karabiner 98) were hardly behind the infantry in training, yet the regulatory provisions assigned only a subsidiary role here (No. 389). From 1888 even the cuirassiers, and subsequently the dragoons and hussars, were armed with the steel-tube lance; this was meant not only to emphasize the character of a unified cavalry but also to prioritize mounted combat. It corresponded to a later recognition of the importance of fighting on foot that, at the outbreak of war, each cavalry division was assigned a jäger battalion. However, during the advance to the Marne German superiority did not come into play. Combat power was insufficient because the accompanying jägers could not keep up, and the light ammunition column with its heavy farm horses could not either, aside from the reduction caused by the led horses....

"Moreover, the development of German cavalry before 1914 formed no exception. The proud arm still carried its traditional weight in all European armies. It placed its emphasis either on the attack or on fighting on foot; it still hoped to decide the campaign by pursuit and, out of chivalric instinct, preferred the fight from the back of the horse to the annihilating power of the rising technical war."

"At the great imperial maneuvers, which were always at the center of public interest, during the 'Schlieffen era' the grand cavalry battles served both the monarch's military self-realization and the representative purpose of edifying the public. To the sorrow of all practical troop officers in the officer corps, however, utopian battle scenes were presented as parade-like theatrical spectacles. 'Here his (Schlieffen's) successor set in reform and gave the peacetime activity of the German army a decisive turn toward realism' (Storz, Kriegsbild und Realismus, p. 115)."