ABSTRACT
An article written in the pages of a provincial newspaper, the Belfast News dated 17 February 1881, encapsulated the surprise of the nation in relation to the defeats of the Transvaal Rebellion. The newspaper noted scathingly that ‘the Boers are just now giving us an unpleasant illustration of the efficiency of mounted infantry’. 1 If the enemy could field expert mounted infantry, then for British military the Transvaal Rebellion had exposed both the inadequacy of its own mounted forces in South Africa and the frailties of the emergency ad hoc system for configuring Mounted Infantry. Hence, the Army’s commendable response was to reconsider the whole question of Mounted Infantry in the form of a précis collated and written by the Intelligence Division in 1881. 2 In this document, the prospects and options for a future regular Mounted Infantry movement were assessed. Briefly, the précis considered three important issues of debate, namely the question of the Mounted Infantry’s permanence or otherwise, the relationship between informal doctrine and military role and, importantly, the Mounted Infantry’s interface with the cavalry. The principal topic regarding the thorny issue of organisational permanence will be examined in this chapter. The conclusions drawn from the 1881 précis laid the foundations for the Mounted Infantry and remained fundamental to its organisation, doctrine and deployment over the next three decades.
