ABSTRACT
The Royal Artillery rearmed completely in the wake of the South African War. Quick-firing artillery was one of the main technological innovations of the post-war years. The principle of quick-firing had been perfected in the late nineteenth century. In January 1900, within one month of the British disasters at Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso, Sir Henry Brackenbury, the Director-General of Ordnance, pressed the cabinet for a ‘complete’ rearmament of the Horse and Field Artillery. The new Field Artillery gun was also a genuine quick-firer; it had a maximum effective range of 6,500 yards and remained as light in draught as any comparable weapon. As Brackenbury admitted, pre-war Artillery tactics had reflected the writings of Prince Kraft von Hohenlohe Ingelfingen, based upon the Prussian success in 1870 when ‘long range firing was entirely discounted’. The Artillery required the whole inter-war period to revise its tactical doctrine.
