It was mad, dashing, glorious and ultimately pointless, and has gone down as an epochal moment in the annals of British military history.
On September 7, 1914, British and German cavalry troops faced each other in the last lance-on-lance action of the war. It did not last long, just a quarter of an hour or so, but in that time the Germans were routed, the British commander, who as an amateur jockey had won the Grand National, was wounded, and a tradition of warfare that had lasted for centuries ended forever.
The action, which is being remembered tomorrow in a ceremony in France attended by the Duke of York, took place at the village of Montcel-Frétoy in the Battle of the Marne.
Lieutenant-Colonel David Campbell was leading two troops of the 9th Lancers when they were charged by a squadron of German lancers.
By all accounts, German lancers charged at a more sedate pace, at around half the speed of the British cavalry’s 30mph. The result was that the Germans did not stand a chance.
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Frederic Coleman, an American journalist, spotted the Prussian Dragoons first. “Magnificent in the morning sun they rode, a solid line rising and falling with regular cadences as though mechanically propelled,” he wrote.
Then he saw the 9th Lancers, Colonel Campbell leading the charge, while behind him came “a scattered scurrying bunch . . . riding like mad, full tilt at the ranks of German pride and might bearing down upon them.”
Colonel Campbell, a supremely talented horseman who had won many races as an amateur — including the 1896 Grand National on the Soarer, the horse from which he gained his nickname — was wounded, and had to dismount.
Afterwards, the medical officer of the 4th Dragoon Guards, Captain Arthur Osburn, found him sprawled in a field of clover and treated him for “a revolver wound in his leg, a lance wound in his shoulder, and a sword wound in his arm”. Despite this, the colonel told the doctor: “I’ve just had the best quarter of an hour I’ve ever had in my life!”
On the British side, only four men were killed and eight wounded. One of the fatalities was Lieutenant F de V Allfrey who had been in charge of the machinegun and was on foot when killed. Later, the commanding officer of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, General Sir Henry de Beauvoir de Lisle, came across one of Colonel Campbell’s men trying to straighten his lance. “Well, you got it in all right,” the general told him.
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“Yes, sir, right through him,” the sergeant replied. “And look, there is even blood on me ’and.”
Terrifying though it may have been to face a cavalry charge with lances, in the age of the machinegun the death knell had been sounded for such an outmoded form of warfare.
Captain Francis Grenfell, of the 9th Lancers, a recipient of the Victoria Cross, wrote a few weeks later: “I am afraid all the cavalry traditions are for ever ended, and we have become mounted infantry pure and simple, with very little mounted about it.”
The lances may no longer be used in battle, but they still make ceremonial appearances.
“It is a great spectacle to see the regiment marching with lances,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Slack, current commanding officer of the 9th/12th Royal Lancers.
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“On Sunday that is what we are going to be doing. It is an immensely proud day for the regiment.”