the days of close-order infantry assault were coming to an end. For a time, up to the turn of the 19th century, armies tried to circumvent the problem by moving into range in dispersed formations and charging only the last metres, as the French did in the Second Italian War of Independence (1859), the Prussians in the Austro-Prussian War (1866), or the Germans against the French in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). The advent of the machine gun and the adoption of hydraulic-recoil artillery was a further setback for close order. The showing of the Boers against the British in the Boer War (1899-1902) fanned an enthusiasm for "Boer tactics": open order tactics reliant more on achieving fire superiority and moving quickly when enemy fire was ineffective than on positioning oneself for the final bayonet charge. World War I assault tactics In the first part of the war, the standard assault on a trench line consisted of a lengthy artillery barrage all along the line, attempting to smash the enemy positions, followed by a rush forward of infantry in massed lines to overwhelm any remaining defenders. This process either failed, or at most gained only a short distance, while incurring enormous casualties, and the armies settled into trench warfare. Development of tactics The first experimental pioneer assault unit of the German army formed in the spring of 1915, founded by Major Calsow and later commanded and refined by Hauptmann Willy Rohr. These methods further evolved war tactics originally developed by the Prussians, to form the basis of German infiltration tactics. The troops involved were identified as (literally: "thrust-troops"), and the term was translated as "storm troops" in English. Allied versions of infiltration tactics were first formally proposed by French Army captain . In 1915 Laffargue published a pamphlet, "The attack in trench warfare", based upon his experiences in combat that same year. He advocated that the first wave of an attack identify hard-to-defeat defenses but not attack them; subsequent waves would do this. The French published his pamphlet "for information", but did not implement it. The British Empire armies did not translate the pamphlet, and the British Army continued to emphasise fire power, although Laffargue's proposals were gradually adopted informally, first by the Canadian Corps. The U.S. Infantry Journal published a translation in 1916. The Germans captured copies of Laffargue's pamphlet in 1916, translating and issuing it to units, but by