Elements of Military Art and Science eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 486 pages of information about Elements of Military Art and Science.

Elements of Military Art and Science eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 486 pages of information about Elements of Military Art and Science.

Nor was there much practice in this war in the use of military bridges, for, with the exception of the Rio Grande, our armies had no important rivers to cross.  We must not, however, omit to note the important fact that General Taylor was unable to take advantage of the victories of Palo Alto and Resacade La Palma to pursue and destroy the army of Arista, because he had no pontoon equipage to enable him to follow them across the Rio Grande.  It should also be remarked that even a very small bridge equipage would have been of very great use in crossing other streams and ravines during the operations of this war.  One of our cavalry officers writes:—­

“On our march from Matamaras to Victoria and Tampico, in 1846 and 1847, we had infinite difficulty in bridging boggy streams (there being no suitable timber), and in crossing ravines with vertical banks; a few ways of the Birago trestles would have saved us many days and a vast amount of labor.  In the operations in the valley of Mexico, our movements, checked as they so often were by impassable wet ditches and sometimes by dry ravines, would have been rendered so much more free and rapid by the use of the Birago trestles, that our successes could have been gained at far less cost, and probably with more rapidity than they were.”

With regard to military reconnaissance, the splendid achievements of Lee and others connected with the operations of General Scott, proved the value and importance of this particular branch of field engineering.

But field engineering, as a branch or arm of the military service, received its greatest development and most brilliant application in the Crimean war, particularly in the siege of Sebastopol, and the measures resorted to by General Todtleben to defend that place against the attack of superior forces.

A brief sketch of these defensive works may be of interest to the reader:—­

When the allies reached Balaklava, Sebastopol was defended on the south side only by a loop-holed wall about four feet and a half thick, and from eighteen to twenty feet high, and a semicircular redoubt with two stories of loop-holes, and five guns in barbette.  These works would have afforded some protection against a coup-de-main by infantry and cavalry, but could have offered no very considerable obstacle to a combined attack of these arms with artillery.

The Russian engineer commenced his operations for strengthening this position by occupying the most important points in his line of defence with detached field works of sufficient relief to resist an assault, and generally closed at the gorge.  These works were afterwards connected by re-entering lines of a weaker profile, which served to enfilade the ravines and to flank the advanced works.  The old wall was strengthened with earth, and rifle-pits for sharpshooters were constructed at a considerable distance in front.

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Elements of Military Art and Science from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.