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 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 

 
 MARLBOROUGH 
 From a incz::fltint by J. KAHEii, aftey the foytrait by Sir Godfrey K.nkller
 
 FIGHTS 
 FOR THE FLAG 
 
 W. H. FITCHETT 
 
 ("VEDETTE") 
 
 AUTHOU OF " DKEDS THAT WON THE EMPIRE'' 
 
 ll^'/iai is the Jldg of England? Winds of the loorld declare !" 
 
 — Kipling 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS AND PLANS 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1898 
 
 \_All lights reserved]
 
 Printed by Ballajjtvnk, Hanson »^ Co. 
 At the Ballautyne Tress
 
 M 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Blake and the Dutchjikn 
 Maulburough at Ulenhkbi . 
 Lord Anson and the "Centurion" 
 George II. at Dettingen 
 The Battle op Minden 
 
 EODNEY and De GrASSE AT THE BaTTLE OF THE 
 
 Saints ...... 
 
 Lord Howe and the First of June 
 
 Sir John Moore at Corunna 
 
 Wellington at Salamanca . 
 
 The Siege of San Sebastian 
 
 Sir Edward Codrington at Navarino . 
 
 Inkermann ...... 
 
 Famous Cavalry Charges 
 The Men in the Ranks 
 "The Lady with the Lamp" 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 i6 
 33 
 53 
 71 
 
 94 
 114 
 
 134 
 158 
 185 
 215 
 233 
 268 
 294 
 322 
 
 957.181
 
 LIST OF PORTRAITS 
 
 Duke of Marlborough 
 
 Admiral Blake 
 
 Admiral Van Tromp 
 
 Lord Anson 
 
 George II. 
 
 Lord Stair 
 
 Prince Ferdinand . 
 
 Lord Rodney . 
 
 Lord Howe 
 
 Sir John Moore 
 
 Puke of "Wellington 
 
 Sir Augustus Frazer 
 
 Sir George Cathcart 
 
 Sir James Yorkr Scarlett 
 
 The Earl of Cardigan . 
 
 Miss Florence Nightingale 
 
 Frontispiece 
 To face page i 
 
 53 
 71 
 73 
 94 
 114 
 
 134 
 158 
 185 
 
 233 
 
 271 
 284 
 
 ^^22
 
 vm 
 
 LIST OF PLANS 
 
 LIST OF PLANS 
 
 The Battle of Blenheim 
 
 The Battle of Dettingen . 
 
 The Battle of Minden 
 
 The "Western Atlantic 
 
 Rodney and De Grasse, April 12th, 1782 
 
 The Battle of the First of June, 1794 
 
 The Spanish Campaign 
 
 The Battle of Corunna 
 
 The Battle of Salamanca . 
 
 The Battle op San Sebastian 
 
 The Breach at San Sebastian . 
 
 The Battle of Navarino 
 
 The Battlefield of Inkermann . 
 
 PAGE 
 24 
 
 55 
 
 79 
 
 99 
 
 102 
 
 120 
 
 138 
 
 151 
 172 
 189 
 207 
 226 
 237 
 
 FACSIMILE 
 Letter of Marlborough .... Tofaceyage 17
 
 ADMIRAL BLAKE 
 From a mezzoiitit by Thomas Preston '
 
 BLAKE AND THE DUTCHMEN 
 
 February 1652-53 
 
 •* The spirit of your fathers 
 
 Shall start from every wave — 
 For the deck it was their field of fame, 
 
 And Ocean was their grave : 
 Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell 
 
 Your manly hearts shall glow, 
 As you sweep through the deep, 
 
 While the stormy winds do blow ; 
 While the battle rages loud and long. 
 
 And the stormy winds do blow." 
 
 — Campbell. 
 
 A SPECTATOR standing on the wind-blown summit 
 of Beachy Head on the afternoon of May 19, 
 1651-52, would have looked down on a great historic 
 scene. In the famous strait beneath, some sixty great 
 ships were engaged in the fiery wrestle of battle, and the 
 sullen, deep-voiced roar of their guns rolled from the 
 white English cliffs across the strait to the dunes of 
 Calais, faintly visible through the grey haze. But the 
 fleets engaged were in point of numbers strangely ill- 
 matched. Running westward past the Downs before a 
 fresh breeze came a great Dutch fleet of fifty ships 
 under the flag of Van Tromp, tlie most famous of 
 Dutch admirals. Beating up to eastward to meet them 
 was an English fleet of fifteen ships under Blake, who 
 was in no sense a seaman, but who comes next to Nelson 
 
 A
 
 2 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 himself in the greatness of his sea exploits. It is easy 
 to picture the scene — the antique-looldng ships, short- 
 bodied, high-sterned, snub-nosed, the bowsprit thrust 
 up at a sharp angle, and carrying a tiny mast with a 
 square sail at its extremity. A modern seaman would 
 gaze amazed at the spectacle of a seventeenth-century 
 fleet, luffing clumsily into line, or trying to claw to 
 windward. 
 
 And yet the fighting quality of these clumsy fleets 
 was of a very high order. These Dutchmen, heavy- 
 footed, sohd, grim, were in the seventeenth century, 
 to use the phrase of a French writer, " the Phoenicians 
 of the modern world, the waggoners of all seas." They 
 were the commercial heirs of Venice. The fire of their 
 long struggle for freedom had given to the national 
 character the edge and temper of steel. They had 
 swept the Spanish flag from the seas. The carrying 
 trade of the world was in their hands. They fished in 
 all waters, traded in all ports, gathered the wealth of 
 the world under all sides, and, as far as marine qualities 
 were concerned, might almost have been web-footed. 
 Holland to-day is a land without ambition, comfortable, 
 fat, heavy-bottomed. In the middle of the seventeenth 
 century Holland proudly claimed to be the greatest 
 naval power in the world, and by daring seamanship, 
 great fleets, famous admirals, and a world-encompassing 
 trade, it went far to justify that boast. 
 
 Great Britain had just finished her civil war, and 
 the imperial genius of Cromwell was beginning to make 
 itself felt in foreign politics. The stem and disciplined 
 valour of his Ironsides, that triumphed at Naseby and 
 Worcester, was bein2: translated into the terms of sea-
 
 BLAKE AND THE DUTCHMEN 3 
 
 mansliip. The Commonwealth, served by Cromwell's 
 sword, and Milton's pen, and Blake's seamanship, was 
 not likely to fail in vigour by sea or land. But there is 
 always a flavour of sea-salt in English blood, an instinc- 
 tive claim to sea supremacy in the English imagination. 
 England in 1652, released from civil strife, was feeling 
 afresh that historic impulse, and was challenging the 
 Dutch naval supremacy. The Commonwealth claimed 
 to inherit that ancient patrimony of English kings — the 
 sovereignty of the narrow seas, and the right in these 
 waters to compel all foreign ships to strike the flag or 
 lower the topsail in the presence of a British ship. Be- 
 hind that question of sea etiquette lay the whole claim 
 to naval supremacy and the trade of the world. That 
 fight ofi' Dungeness on that May afternoon nearly 250 
 years ago was really the beginning of the struggle be- 
 twixt the two maritime republics for the mistress-ship 
 of the seas. To quote Hannay, "the greatest naval 
 power of the day, and the greatest naval power of the 
 future," were measuring their forces in the tossing lists 
 of the narrow seas. 
 
 In this his first great naval fight Blake showed an 
 individual daring like that of Collingwood when he bore 
 down, far ahead of his column, on Villeneuve's far- 
 stretching line at Trafalgar. In his ship — the James — 
 that is, he outsailed his squadron, and met alone Van 
 Tromp's compact line, with its swift-following jets of 
 flame and blasts of thunder as each ship in turn bore up 
 to rake the British admiral. But Nelson himself never 
 showed swifter decision or cooler daring as a leader than 
 did Blake when he unhesitatingly led his fifteen ships to 
 meet Van Tromp's fifty. It is true that a British squadron
 
 4 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 of nine ships under Bourne, a gallant sailor, was lying in 
 the Downs ; and Blake, no doubt, calculated that the 
 mere thunder of the engagement would quickly call up 
 Bourne's ships to fall on Van Tromp's rear. This is 
 exactly what happened ; but this does not make any 
 less splendid the courage with which Blake, with fifteen 
 ships, faced the Dutch fleet of more than twice his own 
 numbers, and led by an admiral of Van Tromp's fame 
 and genius. For four hours the thunder of the battle 
 rolled over the floor of the sea. Dutchman and English- 
 man fought and died with stubborn courage under the 
 drifting smoke clouds ; and the two fleets, a jungle of 
 swaying masts and shot- torn sails, with all the tumult of 
 their battle, drifted slowly westwards. Even in that 
 early day, however, the British gunnery had those 
 qualities of speed and fierceness which, somehow, seem 
 to belong to it by right of nature ; and, as night fell, the 
 stubborn Dutch gaA'e up their attempt to force the 
 strait, and, leaving two of their ships as prizes, stood 
 over to the Flemish coast ; while the British, their flag- 
 ship dismasted and with shot-battered sides, slowly bore 
 up to Dover. It is characteristic, however, of the tireless 
 and silent energy of Blake that, as war had now broken 
 out, he instantly commenced to sweep Dutch traders off" 
 the seas. From every quarter of the compass Dutch 
 ships, richly laden, Avere creeping homeward, unconscious 
 that war had broken out ; and Blake's frigates, instantly 
 taking possession of all the trade routes, sent them as 
 prizes up the Thames in scores. The British, in a word, 
 showed themselves both nimbler-witted and nimbler- 
 footed than the Dutch. 
 
 In his famous l}Tic Campbell links Blake with
 
 BLAKE AND THE DUTCHMEN 5 
 
 " mighty Nelson " ; and in point of fame and character 
 Blake is not unworthy to stand beside him whom 
 Tennyson calls — 
 
 " The greatest sailor since the world began." 
 
 And yet Blake was not, in any technical sense, a sailor. He 
 was fifty years of age before he put foot on a man-of-war, 
 and he stepped without an interval from being colonel of 
 foot to being admiral of the fleet. Early in 1649 Parlia- 
 ment undertook to reorganise the fleet, and it issued a 
 commission to three colonels — of whom Blake was one — 
 to be " admirals and generals of the fleet now at sea," An 
 admiral in topboots and spurs seems sufliciently absurd 
 to the modern imagination ; but in the sea tactics of the 
 seventeenth century the men who fought the ship, and 
 the men who sailed it, were totally distinct. 
 
 Of the sea-going qualities of the British sailors of that 
 day there is no room to doubt. They were the descendants 
 of Drake, of Frobisher, of Hawkins ; as much at home on 
 the sea as an aquatic bird ; familiar with surf and storm ; 
 familiar, too, with perils of battle as with perils of tempest 
 and rock. The British seaman of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury mixed battle with trade. He fought with French 
 privateers in the narrow seas, with Sallee rovers in the 
 Strait of Gibraltar, with Algerine pirates all through 
 the Mediterranean, with Dutchmen oft" the Spice Islands, 
 Portuguese in the Eastern seas, and Spaniards every- 
 where. He was half bagman, half buccaneer, and, to 
 quote Hannay, "carried a sample of woollen goods in 
 one hand and a boarding-pike in the other." Macaulay 
 says of the fleet of that period that "the gentlemen 
 were not sailors, and the sailors were not gentlemen."
 
 6 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 No doubt the British seaman of 1650 was a rough- 
 looking figure, with tarry hands and weather-battered 
 face. But he had a touch of the simpHcity of a child 
 behind his rou2:hness ; and in resource, in fortitude, and 
 in practical seamanship he has never been surpassed. 
 NoAV an infantry colonel, or a major of horse, suddenly, 
 by a drop of official ink, transmuted into an admiral, he 
 had, no doubt, some absurd limitations. He had to 
 direct manoeuvres of fleets when he scarcely knew " lar- 
 board" from "starboard." He did not know the very 
 alphabet of sea dialect. It is said that Monck, who was 
 another " admiral in spurs," in the middle of an action 
 sent a shout of laughter round his own decks by giving 
 the order, " Wheel to the left ! " 
 
 But these Commonwealth veterans, suddenly sent 
 afloat, were hardy, daring, and, in some cases, brilliant 
 soldiers; and they soon learnt to manoeuvre fleets as 
 they used to deploy battalions. They brought indeed 
 some useful soldierly traditions into marine use — order, 
 discipline, close fighting, hard hitting. A French writer, 
 less than twenty years afterwards, wrote, " Nothing equals 
 the beautiful order of the English at sea. Never was a 
 line drawn straighter than that formed by their ships ; 
 thus they bring all their fire to bear upon those who 
 draw near them. They fight like a line of cavalry which 
 is handled according to rule, whereas the Dutch advance 
 like cavalry whose squadrons leave their ranks and come 
 separately to the charge." It can hardly be doubted 
 that Cromwell's soldier-admirals carried something of 
 the steadiest discipline and terrible fighting power of 
 the famous Ironsides into the naval tactics of their 
 day.
 
 BLAKE AND THE DUTCHMEN 7 
 
 Certainly Blake had all the moral and intellectual 
 endowments of a great commander, either by sea or 
 land. A little man, broad-faced, deep-eyed, chary of 
 speech, melancholy of temper, he yielded no outward 
 gleam of brilliance. Yet British history scarcely shows 
 a nobler character. He was loyal, unselfish, humane. 
 He possessed the indefinable art that makes the true 
 leader — a spell that made his men trust him, believe he 
 could never fail, and be willing to charge with him 
 against any odds. He was a strange compound of the 
 prudence which calculates all the odds, and the daring 
 which scorns them. Courage in him spoke with gentle 
 accents, and looked through quiet eyes ; and yet it was 
 as swift as Nelson's, as heroic as Ney's, as cool as 
 Wellington's. And the keynote of Blake's character 
 was that magnificent word duty, which Nelson spelt out 
 with many-coloured flags to his fleet on the morning 
 of Trafalgar, and which Henry Lawrence chose as his 
 epitaph at Lucknow. The story of Blake's deeds is worth 
 telling, if only for the sake of showing British youths 
 from Avhat a stock they are sprung, and what great 
 traditions they inherit. 
 
 There is no time to tell of Blake's career as a soldier, 
 though his defence of Taunton was perhaps the most 
 brilliant single episode, on the Parliamentary side, in 
 the great civil war. Of his sea exploits only the most 
 picturesque and striking can be briefly sketched. He 
 met Van Tromp again at desperate odds, with desperate 
 courage and somewhat desperate fortune, off Dungeness, 
 on November 29, 1652. The Dutchman had some eighty 
 ships, Blake less than forty. Blake had discovered the 
 secret which Nelson rediscovered afterwards, that the
 
 8 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 British sailor fights to best advantage at close quarters. 
 While the Dutch, like the French in the revolutionary 
 war, fired at the masts of their enemv, Blake taught his 
 men, as Hawke and Nelson taught theirs, to fire at the 
 hull. In the wrestle off Dungeness, therefore, the 
 Dutch suftered more damage than the British, but 
 won the triumph that belongs to overwhelming num- 
 bers ; and it was after this combat that, according to 
 a popular but utterly unfounded tradition. Van Tromp 
 sailed through the narrow seas with a broom at his 
 masthead. 
 
 Blake and Van Tromp had their final trial of strength 
 in the famous three days' battle otf Portland in February 
 1653. Van Tromp, with a fleet of seventy-three men-of- 
 war, was convoying some 200 merchant ships to Dutch 
 ports. Blake, with about seventy men-of-war, sighted 
 them coming up the Channel before a strong wind, a 
 far-stretching continent of swaying masts and bellying 
 sails. Blake, with the red squadron, lay directly in the 
 enemy's path ; Penn, with the blue squadron, was five 
 miles to the south ; Monck, with the white squadron, 
 was nearly ten miles to leeward. Blake, however, with 
 his twelve ships, bore steadily up to the attack; and 
 round this tiny cluster of British ships Van Tromp's 
 great vessels closed as a pack of wolves might gather 
 round a handful of sheep. There was nothing sheep- 
 like, however, in Blake's squadron. The roar of their 
 guns rolled in one sullen sustained wave of sound over 
 the sea ; and, fast as the Dutchmen shot, still faster and 
 more fiercely did Blake's men reply. Monck and Penn, 
 who saw their commander-in-cliief apparently swallowed 
 up in the mass of hostile ships, beat furiously up to join
 
 Luiitenaiit AdmirafLi^'SLnHoilajnid. 
 
 ADMIRAL VAN TROMP 
 From an engraving by J. Houbraken, after the portrait by Lievens
 
 BLAKE AND THE DUTCHMEN 9 
 
 in tlie figlit. The close and desperate fighting told sorely 
 on both sides; loo men were killed or wounded on the 
 British admiral's flagship, its masts were gone, its hull 
 little more than a wreck, and other ships of his squadron 
 were in little better condition. But of the Dutch ships 
 one Avas burnt, one blown up, and seven taken or 
 sunk. 
 
 Night by this time had fallen. Van Tromp sAvcpt 
 past the British line, and, a fine tactician, threw his own 
 fleet into a half-moon formation, with the huge convoy 
 hold in its embrace, and steadily drifted, a great island 
 of canvas, along the French coast. But at daybreak the 
 English, bringing the wind with them, were thundering 
 on the Dutch rear, and striving flercely to pierce their 
 line. All day long the fleet ran, with the tumult and 
 roar of battle, eastwards. The advantage was slightly 
 with the British, and the Dutch rear-admiral's ship was 
 captured. A Dutchman, however, according to Penn, is 
 never so dangerous as when he is desperate, and never 
 was sterner fighting than on that historic Saturday. 
 When the next day da^vned, Tromp, still holding his 
 steadfast half-moon formation, was bearing up for the 
 shallows off Calais, the inexorable Blake, with loud- 
 bellowing guns, thundering on his rear. One Dutch 
 captain, grappled on each side by an English ship, set 
 fire to his own vessel that the three miijht sink tosfether. 
 The British, however, drew off, and left the Dutchman 
 to blow up in solitude. At last Penn, with a cluster of 
 his faster ships, broke through the stubborn line of the 
 Dutchmen, and when Sunday night fell, the British 
 frigates were ravaging like wolves amongst the helpless 
 merchantmen. During the night Van Tromp gave his
 
 lO FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 captains orders to scatter, and when day broke again 
 the Dutch ships had disappeared, or were discoverable 
 only as tips of vanishing sails on the sea rim. That 
 great three days' fight off Portland — a " stupendous 
 action," as Clarendon calls it— was the turning-point in 
 the long duel for the sovereignty of the seas betwixt 
 Great Britain and Holland. 
 
 In 1654-55 Blake sailed with a powerful fleet for 
 the Mediterranean. Cromwell had demanded from Spain 
 the right of trade with America, and the exemption of 
 Englishmen from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. 
 " My master," said the Spanish ambassador in reply, 
 " has but two eyes, and you ask him for both ! " Drake, 
 some eighty years before, had " smged the King of Spain's 
 beard," and Blake was now despatched to put out one 
 or both of the King of Spain's eyes ! For Cromwell's 
 foreign politics were of a daring temper. " I will make 
 the name of Enghshman," he said, " to be as much 
 dreaded as ever was the name of civis Roinanus." 
 Blake's commission was, in general terms, "to see that 
 the foreigners do not fool us." Blake extracted from 
 the Duke of Tuscany, and even from his Holiness the 
 Pope, solid sums in compensation for wrongs done to 
 British commerce. He visited Tunis, then, as in Lord 
 Exmouth's time, the torment and scandal of the civilised 
 world, and his performance anticipates and outshines 
 even Exmouth's great deed at Algiers a hundred and 
 fifty years later. 
 
 Finding negotiation useless, Blake, on April 4, led 
 in his ships, anchored within half musket-shot of the 
 Dey's batteries, and opened a terrific fire on them. Nine 
 great ships of war lay within the harbour. When the
 
 BLAKE AND THE DUTCHMEN II 
 
 cannonade was at its lieiglit Blake lowered his boats, 
 manned each with a picked crew, and sent them in to 
 fire the Dey's ships. The British boats rowed coolly, but 
 at speed, through the eddying smoke, fell upon the 
 enemy's ships, and fired them. The flames leaped up 
 the masts, and spread from ship to ship, and when night 
 fell the skies above Tunis shone, as bright almost as at 
 noonday, with the flames of the burning ships and bat- 
 teries. Taking warning by the fate of Tunis, Algiers 
 hastened to surrender its Christian captives. Blake's 
 cruise in the Mediterranean was epoch-making. 
 
 Clarendon, speaking of the fight at Tunis, says that 
 Blake " first taught British sailors to despise castles 
 on shore " ; and that is true. But Blake first carried the 
 British flag, as a symbol of terror and power, round the 
 Mediterranean ports, and established in the great mid- 
 land sea a supremacy Avhich has never been lost since. 
 His cruise, indeed, marks that assumption of what may 
 be called the police of the seas which Great Britain has 
 ever since maintained. i 
 
 Blake's object, next, was to strike at the Spanish plate- 
 ships. The great galleons creeping eastward to Spain, 
 "with their freight of sugar and dye-wood, of quicksilver 
 and precious stones, of gold and silver and pearls, fed 
 the financial strength of Spain. To cut them off was to 
 snap all the sinews of its strength at a stroke. Blake, 
 through most of 1655-56, was blockading Cadiz, and 
 watching for the plate-ships to heave in sight from Santa 
 Cruz. For a great fleet to keep the sea through the 
 winter was, at that period, a thing undreamed of. Yet, 
 practically for twenty-seven months, in spite of scurvy 
 and tempest, Blake maintained his iron blockade of Cadiz.
 
 12 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Every few days a storm would blow liis ships across the 
 foam-edged horizon ; but when the storm had blown 
 itself out the British topsails surely hove in sight again. 
 The ships' hulls grew thick with barnacles and sea grass, 
 their rigging rotted, their supplies were exhausted, and 
 scurvy raged through the crews. The men, for two 
 months, ate their vegetables boiled in sea water. " Our 
 ships," wrote Blake, " are extremely foul, our stores fail- 
 ing, our men fallen sick through badness of drink. Our 
 only comfort is that we have a God to lean upon, although 
 we walk in darkness and see no light." And 3'et Blake's 
 iron will kept the ships for nearly two years on their 
 watch outside Cadiz. Nelson's long watch off Toulon, 
 or Collingwood's off Cadiz in the year previous to Tra- 
 falgar, is not so wonderful as Blake's blockade in the 
 seventeenth century. 
 
 Then came that amazing dash at Santa Cruz, 
 ■which formed the last and greatest of Blake's exploits. 
 Stayner had intercepted one squadron of treasure-ships 
 immediately off' Cadiz. With three ships he had 
 attacked six, sunk some, and captured the rest. They 
 were a magnificent prize, no less than ;i^6oo,ooo being 
 found in one ship alone. But the largest squadron of 
 plate-ships lay at Santa Cruz, under the great peak 
 of Tencriffe, kept by the terror of Blake's name from 
 attempting to reach the Spanish coast, and upon these 
 Blake made his famous dash. 
 
 Santa Cruz is a deep and narrow bay, guarded by 
 heavy batteries, with a difficult approach. Owing to 
 the high land a fleet might easily be becalmed under 
 the heavy guns of the batteries and so be destroyed ; 
 cr if the wind carried the ships into the bay, while
 
 BLAKE AND THE DUTCHMEN 1 3 
 
 it prevailed there was no chance of escaping out of 
 it. It was at Santa Cruz that Nelson suffered his 
 one defeat and lost his arm. It is not the least of 
 Blake's titles to fame that he succeeded where Nelson 
 failed. 
 
 On the morning of April 20, Blake, with his 
 squadron, appeared off the bay. A fleet of sixteen 
 great galleons was drawn across the bottom of the bay, 
 and Blake's swift soldierly glance told him in a moment 
 that these ships would act as a screen betwixt his own 
 squadron and the great Spanish batteries on the shore. 
 Blake led into the attack with the same licrhtninsj-like 
 decision Nelson showed at the Nile. The British fleet 
 ran, with all sail spread, but in grim silence, past the 
 batteries at the entrance to the bay. The fire was 
 loud and fierce, but the Spanish markmanship bad. 
 His leading ships, under his favourite officer, Stayner, 
 Blake launched at the galleons, but with the remainder 
 of the squadron Blake himself rounded on the flank of 
 the batteries, covering Stayner from their fire. For 
 four hours the 700 guns of ships and batteries sent 
 their tremendous waves of sound up the slopes of 
 Teneriffe. The Spaniards fought with great courage, 
 but Blake's fire, by its speed and deadliness, was over- 
 whelming. At two o'clock the fleet of galleons was in 
 flames ; by three o'clock nothing was left of them but 
 half-a-dozen drifting blackened wrecks. Then came a 
 sudden change of wind, and Blake's ships ran safely 
 past the forts again to the open sea. They had done 
 their work. They had not merely " singed the King 
 of Spain's beard " ; they had emptied his pockets and 
 broken his strength. " The whole action," says Claren-
 
 14 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 don, " was so miraculous tliat all men who knew the 
 place concluded that no sober man, with what courage 
 soever endued, would ever undertake it." Yet Blake 
 did this "miraculous" thing, and the daring that 
 inspired the exploit is not so wonderful as the genius 
 which kept this scurvy-wasted, barnacle-covered fleet 
 in the heroic temper which made it eager to accomplish 
 whatever Blake planned. 
 
 Nothing is more pathetic than the story of Blake's 
 home-coming. On an August afternoon in 1657 the 
 fleet — the battered flagship, the George, leading — was 
 in sight of Plymouth. The green hills of Devonshire, 
 the spires and roofs of the smoky city, the masts of the 
 ships were in full view. The piers and shores were 
 crowded with thousands waiting to welcome the greatest 
 sailor of his generation back to England. All the 
 church bells in Plymouth were ringing. But at that 
 moment Blake lay dying in his cabin. His captains, 
 with those rare and reluctant tears that brave men 
 weep running down their weather-beaten faces, were 
 standing round his bed bidding farewell to their great 
 chief. Just as the slow-moving George dropped her 
 anchor Blake breathed his last. Never has England 
 had a braver, a less selfish, a more simply and nobly 
 loyal servant. His corpse was rowed by his sailors up 
 the Thames, carried in state to AVestminster Abbey, and 
 laid in Henry VII.'s chapel — the noblest bit of human 
 dust in even that mausoleum of kings. It is one of the 
 things to be remembered against Charles II. that, after 
 the Restoration, he had Blake's bones dragged from 
 their resting-place and cast into some nameless grave. 
 The English monarch, however, who sold Dunkirk and
 
 BLAKE AND THE DUTCHMEN 1 5 
 
 filled his pockets "witli Frencli gold could liardly be 
 expected to respect, or even to understand, Blake's 
 fame. Perhaps, indeed, the fame of the noblest and 
 bravest of English sailors was a secret sting to the 
 conscience of the worst of English kings.
 
 MARLBOROUGH AT BLENHEIM 
 
 August 13, 1704 
 
 " ' It was the English,' Kaspar cried, 
 
 ' Who put the French to rout ; '^ 
 
 But what they fought each other for, ^ 
 
 I could not well make out. ^ 
 
 Eut everybody said,' quoth he, 
 * That 'twas a famous victory.' " 
 
 — SOUTHEY. 
 
 AMONG the historical treasures of Blenheim House 
 L is a slip of paper on which are scribbled a dozen 
 lines in pencil. Those lines were written by the Duke 
 of Marlborough at the close of the fierce death-wrestle 
 at Blenheim. The tumult of battle was rolling west- 
 ward, where French and Bavarians were in disordered 
 retreat, with Marlborough's cavalry riding fiercely on 
 their rear. The smoke of the great fight yet hung 
 black in the heavens. The slopes of the hills' to the 
 right, Avhere Prince Eugene had four times over made 
 his fiery onset, and the marshy plain in the centre 
 where Marlborough himself, by a cavalry charge worthy 
 of Murat — 8000 cavalry joined in one furious onset of 
 galloping hoofs — had broken through the French centre, 
 Avere strewn with nearly 30,000 killed and wounded. 
 But Marlborough, with the rapture of the great fight 
 still dancing in his blood, pulled up his horse on one 
 of the little rustic bridges across the Schwanbuch, and
 
 5 =q 
 
 o 
 
 "=5 i: 
 ^-2 
 
 -a ^
 
 MARLBOROUGH AT BLENHEIM 1 7 
 
 scribbled these dozen lines to his imperious and bitter- 
 tempered wife in London, to tell her of the great event. 
 Marlborough, apparently, borrowed the scrap of 
 paper from some member of his staff, for on the 
 back of it are the faded items of a tavern bill. He 
 used the parapet of the bridge for a writing-desk ; he 
 had been seventeen hours in the saddle, most of that 
 time riding in the very heart of one of the greatest 
 battles in all history; yet the firm shape of the letters 
 is a curious testimony to that serenely unshakable 
 temperament which was Marlborough's most striking 
 characteristic. This scrap of paper, tavern bill on one 
 side, martial despatch on the other, with its few lines 
 scribbled on the parapet of a German bridge, is the 
 record of one of the greatest victories in British history 
 —a victory which has profoundly aflfected the develop- 
 ment of the British Empire. Southey, it is true, affects 
 to doubt whether Blenheim has any genuine historical 
 value : — 
 
 " ' With fire and sword, the country round 
 
 Was wasted far and wide ; 
 And many a childing mother then, 
 
 And new-born baby died ; 
 But things like that, you know, must be 
 
 At every famous victory. 
 
 ' And everybody praised the duke, 
 
 Who this great fight did win.' 
 ' But what good came of it at last ?' 
 
 Quoth little Peterkin. 
 * Wliy, that I cannot tell,' said he, 
 
 But 'twas a famous victory.'" 
 
 But then Southey's politics coloured his poetrj^ Creasy, 
 
 B
 
 10 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 with justice, places Blenheim amongst the fifteen de- 
 cisive battles of the world. It was a battle in the 
 seventeenth century, which, for a time at least, destroyed 
 the military fame and power of France almost as com- 
 pletely as Sedan did in the nineteenth century. "A 
 hundred victories since Rocroi," says Green the historian, 
 " had taught the world to regard the French army as 
 invincible, when Blenheim, and the surrender of the 
 flower of the French soldiery, broke the spell." But 
 this was the least result of Blenheim. Its great merit 
 is that it shattered absolutely and finally the attempt of 
 Louis XIV. to establish a sort of universal empire. 
 Louis XIV. is looked at to-day through the lens of 
 his defeated and inglorious old age, and the true scale 
 of his intellect, and of his ambition, is not realised. 
 But in the qualities of an imperious will, a masterful 
 intellect, and an ambition which vexed the peace and 
 threatened the freedom of the world, Louis XIV. comes 
 nearer Napoleon than not merely any other character 
 in French history, but any other character in modern 
 European history. " To concentrate Europe in France, 
 France in Paris, and Paris in himself," was the ideal of 
 Louis XIV., exactly as it was of Napoleon. The two 
 best-remembered epigrams of Louis — " L'etat, c'est moi," 
 and "There are no longer any Pyrenees" — perfectly 
 express the temper of his intellect and the daring of 
 his schemes. And he came almost as near achieving 
 success as Napoleon did. The great Bourbon had forty 
 years of nearly unbroken triumph. He had at least 
 one faculty of genius, that of choosing fit instruments. 
 Louvois organised his finances, Vauban built his fortifi- 
 cations, Turenne and Villars and Berwick led his armies.
 
 MARLBOROUGH AT BLENHEIM 1 9 
 
 Louis' ambition was not less perilous to the world, 
 because through it ran a leaven of religious intolerance. 
 His revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove 400,000 of 
 the best citizens of France into exile, while another 
 100,000 perished of hardship, or of imprisonment, or 
 on the scaffold. When his grandson ascended the 
 throne of Spain and the Indies, it seemed as if the 
 French King's dream of a world monarchy was about 
 to be realised. The " Spain " of that date, it must be 
 remembered, included the Netherlands, Sicily, Naples, 
 Milan, half Italy, in a word, and more than half America. 
 Here, then, was the menace of an empire which in scale 
 exceeded that of Ca3sar, and in temper was inspired by 
 the policy which drove the Huguenots into exile, and 
 would have kept the Stuarts, as French pensioners, on 
 the throne of England. As Alison puts it, " Spain had 
 threatened the liberties of Europe at the end of the 
 sixteenth century; France had all but overthrown 
 them in the close of the seventeenth." Wliat hope 
 was there for the world if the Spain that launched the 
 Armada against England, and the France which drove 
 the Huguenots into exile, were united under a monarch 
 hke Louis XIV., with his motto, " L'etat, c'est moi " ? 
 
 Our own William III. headed, with much ill 
 fortune, but with quenchless courage, the confederacy 
 of England, Holland, Austria, and the other independent 
 powers against the ambition of Louis XIV. When he 
 died, Marlborough brought to the same great task a 
 happier fortune, and yet more splendid abilities; and 
 Blenheim is the victory which changed the face of 
 history, turned to thinnest air the ambitious dreams of 
 Louis XIV., saved Protestantism throughout Europe,
 
 20 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 and secured for the English-speaking race that freedom 
 of development it could never have found under a 
 Stuart dynasty, and which has made possible the 
 British Empire of to-day. 
 
 In 1703 Bavaria joined France as an ally, and 
 opened the door for the French generals into the very 
 heart of Germany. At the beginning of 1 704 Louis had 
 no less than eight separate armies on foot, and his field 
 of war stretched from Portugal to Italy. But Louis 
 himself shaped the lines of a campaign which, in 
 boldness of conception, is worthy to stand beside almost 
 any of Napoleon's. One French army was already 
 wintering in Bavaria in combination with the army of 
 the Elector there. Louis' plan was to wage a purely 
 defensive war at all other points ; a second French 
 army, under Marshal Tallard, on the Upper Rhine, was 
 to march through the Black Forest into Bavaria; 
 Villeroy, with forty battalions and thirty-nine squad- 
 rons, was to move from Flanders on the Moselle, and 
 thence to the Danube; Vendome, with the army of 
 Italy, was to penetrate through the Tyrol to Salzburg. 
 Thus four great armies were to converge to a given 
 point in the valley of the Danube, and march upon 
 Vienna, and there finally overthrow the Confederacy. 
 
 Marlborough penetrated this design. To be waging 
 a few more or less ingflorious sies^es in Flanders, while 
 the French erenerals were marching^ on Vienna, was, he 
 clearly saw, to suffer hopeless and final defeat. He met 
 Louis' strategy by a great counter-stroke : a march from 
 Flanders through the rough country of the Upper 
 Rhine to the Danube, gathering as he went reinforce- 
 ments from every side. But the British general had to
 
 MARLBOROUGH AT BLENHEIM 21 
 
 win a victory in half-a-dozen Cabinets before he could 
 put a single soldier on the march. He had to persuade 
 Dutch deputies, English ministers, and Imperial states- 
 men to consent to his strategy, and he obtained that 
 consent by concealing its real scale from them almost 
 as completely as he did from Louis XIV. himself. 
 Only, perhaps, to Prince Eugene, a soldier of like spirit 
 to himself, now in command of the Austrian armies, to 
 Heinsius, his faithful ally in Holland, and to Godolphin, 
 his brother-in-law at the English Treasury, did Marl- 
 borough unfold his complete design. The Dutch Avould 
 never have consented to fight the French on the remote 
 Danube ; but they were lured into the scheme of a 
 march to Coblentz, for the purpose of a campaign on 
 the Moselle. 
 
 Marlborough's movements curiously puzzled the 
 French generals. When he reached Coblentz, every- 
 body believed he was going to fight on the Moselle. 
 When he reached Mayence it was guessed that he was 
 about to attack Alsace. But when he crossed the 
 Neckar, and kept on his steadfast march through 
 'Wurtemberg, his plan stood disclosed. There was 
 wrath in Holland, alarm in Paris, and much agitated 
 riding to and fro betwixt the head-quarters of the 
 various French armies ; but it was too late for the 
 Dutch to object, and also too late for the French 
 generals to intercept his movement, and it was clear 
 that the combination of three French armies under 
 Tallard, Marsin, and the Bavarian Elector, Max 
 Emanuel, on the Danube, would be met by a counter 
 concentration of three armies under Marlborousrh, 
 Prince Eugene, and the Margrave Louis.
 
 22 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Marlborough's march to the Danube was a grand 
 scheme grandly executed. Part of the route crossed 
 the great chain of rugged hills in Wiirtemberg known 
 by the name of the Rauhe Alp — the rugged Alps — but 
 through Avild passes, across swift rivers, and, in spite of 
 tempestuous weather, the steadfast Englishman pressed 
 on. The strength of Marlborough's force consisted of 
 16,000 British, sturdy infantry, equal in endurance and 
 warlike temper to Wellington's Light Division in the 
 Peninsula, or to the foot guards who held the Sandbag 
 battery at Inkermann. Amongst the British cavalry 
 was a regiment of Scots Greys and another of Royal 
 Dragoons, equal in valour to those who, more than a 
 century afterwards, charged across the sunken road 
 upon the French cuirassiers at Waterloo. Their officers 
 were men like Cutts and Rowe and Kane and Ingoldsby, 
 not, perhaps, great generals, but soldiers who, in fight- 
 ing quality, in the stubborn bulldog pluck that never 
 recognises defeat, were equal to the Pictons, and Crau- 
 furds, and Colin Campbells of a later date. 
 
 Marlborough crossed the Rhine on May 26 ; on 
 June 10, at Mondelsheim, he met Prince Eugene, and 
 began one of the most loyal and memorable friendships 
 in military history. Three days later the junction with 
 Margrave Louis was effected at Grossheppach. 
 
 The tree still stands under which, nearly two hun- 
 dred years ago, the three conmianders sat and planned 
 the campaign which ended at Blenheim. Of that 
 historic three the Englishman was, no doubt, intel- 
 lectually the greatest, and certainly stands highest in 
 fame. He was fifty-four 3^ears of age; he had won no 
 first-class battle yet, but during the next seven years
 
 MARLBOROUGH AT BLENHEIM 23 
 
 he was to win a series of the greatest victories in British 
 history. He lacked, perhaps, Wellington's fighting 
 impulse. Marlborough, during ten campaigns, fought 
 only ten pitched battles ; Wellington, in seven, fought 
 fifteen. But Marlborough never fought a battle he did 
 not win, nor besieged a fortress he did not take, and in 
 many respects he is the greatest military genius the 
 British race has produced. 
 
 The Margrave Louis of Baden owed his place in the 
 group under the historic tree at Grossheppach rather to 
 his rank than to his military skill ; but Prince Eugene 
 of Savoy was in every respect a great soldier. As 
 Stanhope puts it, he Avas an Italian by descent, a 
 Frenchman by training, and a German by adoption ; 
 and in his signature, " Eugenie von Savoye," he used 
 to combine the three languages. A little man, black- 
 haired, black-complexioned, with lips curiously pen- 
 dulous, and mouth semi-open; but with eyes through 
 which looked a great and daring spirit. Eugene was 
 a soldier as daring as Ney or Murat, and with their 
 delight in the rapture of the onfall, the thunder of 
 galloping hoofs, and the loud challenge of the cannon. 
 But he was also one of the most loyal and generous of 
 men, and if Marlborough was the brain of the great 
 campaign just beginning, Eugene was its sword. 
 
 There is no space to dwell on the intermediate 
 movements, nor even on the desperate fight round the 
 Schellenberg, and the stern courage with which the 
 British at last carried it, but carried it at a loss of 
 nearly one-third their number. On August 11, 1704, 
 the two great armies confronted each other at 
 Blenheim.
 
 24 
 
 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Blenheim is a little village on the bank of the 
 Danube ; a stream called the Nebel, gathering its 
 sources from the roots of the wooded hills to the west, 
 runs in its front, and, curving round, so that its course 
 is almost from north to south, falls into the Danube. 
 From Lutzingen, on the lower slope of the hills, to 
 
 tattle of 
 BLENHEIM 
 
 13th Aug 1704 
 
 o^V-i t'0^»Ti.'^ 
 
 
 ScaJes. 
 ; lopo gcp o il ilty. Paces 
 
 ^ Yi I English Mile 
 
 I^B Allies under Marlborough 
 
 and Prince Eugene. 
 
 ; 1 Bavarians & French under 
 
 Pr, Maximilian & Marshals 
 TallarU & Marsin. 
 
 Cavalry 
 
 Morris' 'Age of Audb." 
 
 iyaU;£i-(rBoHtaUsc 
 
 Blenheim on the Danube is a distance of four and a 
 half miles. Blenheim formed the right wing of the 
 French, and in it Tallard had packed nearly 16,000 
 infantry, the flower of his troops, fortifying the village 
 with strong palisades. Lutzingen, on the extreme left, 
 was held by Marsin and the Bavarian Elector, and, 
 from the nature of the ground, was almost impregnable.
 
 MARLBOROUGH AT BLENHEIM 25 
 
 Betwixt these two positions was a marsliy plain tlirougli 
 which the Nebel flowed ; in the middle of it stood a 
 village called Oberglaiih, held by fourteen battalions, 
 amongst which were three Irish regiments destined 
 to play a great part in the fight. Tallard covered his 
 centre by a long screen of cavalry, strengthened by two 
 brigades of infantry. His position thus was of great 
 strength at either extremity, but his centre, though 
 covered by the Nebel, and strengthened by the village of 
 Oberglauh, was of fatal weakness, and through it Marl- 
 borough burst late in the fight, winning his great victory 
 by a stupendous cavalry charge. It is curious, however, 
 that Marlborough, though he had a military glance of 
 singular keenness, did not discover the flaw in his oppo- 
 nent's line till the battle had been raging some hours. 
 
 Eugene, with 18,000 men, was to attack Tallard's 
 left ; Marlborough himself, with his best troops, nearly 
 30,000 strong — 9000 of them being British — was to 
 attack Blenheim and try and turn the French right. 
 His cavalry was to menace the centre. Tallard had 
 under his command 60,000 men, with ninety guns ; 
 Marlborough had 56,000 men and sixty-six guns, 
 Marlborough's weakness lay in the strangely composite 
 character of his forces. The battle, in this respect, has 
 scarcely any parallel in history. To quote the historian 
 Green, " The whole of the Teutonic race was represented 
 in the strange medley of Englishmen, Dutchmen, 
 Hanoverians, Danes, AViirtembergers, and Austrians 
 who followed Marlborough and Eugene." Nothing less 
 than the warlike genius and masterful will of Marl- 
 borough could have wielded into eflcctiveness an army 
 made up of such diverse elements.
 
 26 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Day broke on August 1 3 heavy with mist ; and 
 under its cover the alHed forces moved forward to the 
 attack. Tallard was quite unprepared for an engage- 
 ment, when the fog, Hfting for a moment, showed the 
 whole landscape before him peopled with moving 
 battalions and fretted with the gleam of steel. Marl- 
 borough waited till Eugene could launch his assault 
 on the left wing of the French, and so difficult was the 
 ground that not till nearly twelve o'clock did an aide-de- 
 camp, galloping at speed, announce that the Prince 
 was ready to engage. The fighting on the wooded 
 ridges round Lutzingen was of the fiercest. Four times 
 Eugene launched his troops in furious onset on the 
 enemy, but such was the strength of the position held 
 by the French and Bavarians, and with such steady 
 valour did they tight, that Eugene's assaults were all 
 repulsed, and he himself was only saved from disaster 
 by the iron steadfastness of the Prussian infantry, on 
 whose disciplined ranks the Bavarian cavalry flung 
 themselves in vain. 
 
 The chief interest of the fight belongs to the left 
 wing and centre, where Marlborough commanded in 
 person. He first attempted to turn Tallard's right by 
 assailing Blenheim. He launched against it a great 
 infantry attack, consisting of five British battalions, with 
 one Hessian battalion, under Roavc, supported by eleven 
 battalions and fifteen squadrons under Cutts. 
 
 Nothing could be finer than the onfall of the British. 
 They carried with a single rush some mills, which acted 
 as a sort of outpost to Blenheim ; then, dressing their 
 ranks afresh, they moved coolly forward to attack the 
 broad front of palisades which covered Blenheim. The
 
 MARLBOROUGH AT BLENHEIM 27 
 
 village was crowded with 16,000 of Tallard's best troops, 
 behind the palisades knelt long lines of infantry, while a 
 second line standing erect fired over the heads of their 
 kneeling comrades. 
 
 The broad red column, its general, Rowe, leading, 
 came on with iron steadiness, the tramp of the dis- 
 ciplined battalions every moment sounded nearer and 
 more menacing. When the British were within thirty 
 yards the French fired. The long front of palisades 
 sparkled with flame, a furious whirlwind of white smoke 
 covered the whole front, and this was pierced again, and 
 yet again, by the darting flames of new volleys. The 
 British front seemed to crumble under that tempest of 
 shot ; yet it never swerved or faltered. On through 
 smoke and flame it came. Rowe led it, moving straight 
 forward, till he struck the palisades with his sword, and 
 bade his men fire. The whole British front broke at 
 the word into flame. Then the men, their ofiicers lead- 
 ing, tried to carry the palisades with the bayonet. The 
 great breach at Badajos did not witness a more fiery 
 valour; but Blenheim was held by a force double in 
 strength to that attacking it, with every advantage of 
 position, and a front of fire more than double that of 
 the British, and the attempt was hopeless from the 
 outset. Rowe fell badly wounded; the two officers in 
 succession who took command after he fell were slain. 
 The men, under the whirling smoke, and scorched with 
 the flames of incessant volleys, were trying to tear up 
 the palisades with their hands, or clamber over them by 
 mounting on each other's shoulders. 
 
 Suddenly through the smoke on their left came the 
 thunder of galloping hoofs, and with a long-sustained
 
 28 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 crasli twenty squadrons of French horse broke in on the 
 British flank. The men fought in broken clusters and 
 with desperate courage, but Rowe's regiment was almost 
 destroyed, and its colours fell into the enemy's hands. 
 Cutts, however — nicknamed by his men " the Salaman- 
 der," from his lust of fighting, and habit of always being 
 found where the fire was hottest — had brought up the 
 second line, and the French cavalry recoiled before the 
 stern valour with which the infantry fought. As they 
 recoiled, some squadrons under Lumley came upon them 
 in a gallop, recaptured the colours of Rowe's regiment, 
 and drove the Frenchmen in disorder back to their lines. 
 
 Marlborough watched the furious strife around Blen- 
 heim with steady eye, and was satisfied that in Blenheim 
 itself Tallard was impregnable. He withdrew his troops 
 from the attack, the men falling sullenly back, full of 
 unsatisfied eagerness for a new assault ; but Marlborough 
 had discovered the flaw in Tallard's centre. He kept up 
 the feint of an attack on Blenheim, but commenced to 
 push his cavalry and some battalions of infantry through 
 the marshy ground and across the Nebel which covered 
 Tallard's centre. 
 
 It was a difficult feat. Tracks through the marshy 
 bottom had to be made with fascines and planks, and 
 along these the mud-splashed cavalry crept, in single 
 file, and floundered through the Nebel, or crossed by 
 temporary bridges. Tallard committed the fatal mis- 
 take of not charging them till they had crossed in great 
 numbers ; then, while they were busy re-forming, he 
 flung his squadrons upon them. But Marlborough had 
 stiffened his cavalry with some battalions of infantry, 
 and while the French and Bavarian cavalry broke in
 
 MARLBOROUGH AT BLENHEIM 29 
 
 furious waves of assault upon tliem, these stood, like 
 steadfast islets ringed with steel and fire, with exactly 
 the same immovable valour the British squares showed 
 at Waterloo more than a century afterwards. Tallard's 
 horse recoiled, Marlborough's squadrons re-formed, and 
 the moment for the great cavalry assault, which was to 
 break the French centre and win Blenheim, came. 
 
 First, however, the village of Oberglauh, which stood 
 as a sort of rocky barrier in the line of the coming 
 charge, and was strongly held by an infantry force, had 
 to be carried. Marlborough launched the Prince of 
 Holstein-Beck, with eleven battalions of Hanoverians, 
 against the village ; but part of the force which held the 
 village consisted of the celebrated Irish Brigade, the 
 last survivors of the gallant and ill-fated battalions who 
 followed Sarsfield into France. Their departure was 
 long remembered in Ireland itself as " the flight of the 
 wild geese," but the Irish regiments played a brilliant 
 part in continental battles. After Fontenoy, where the 
 Irish regiments alone proved equal to the task of arrest- 
 ing the terrible British column, George II. is reported to 
 have said, " Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such 
 subjects." And at Blenheim the Irish regiments seemed 
 likely, at one moment, to play a part as great as at 
 Fontenoy. They broke from Oberglauh upon the Prince 
 of Holstein's colunm, tumbled it into ruin, took the 
 Prince himself a prisoner, and hurled his men a mere 
 wreck down the slope. For the moment Marlborough's 
 centre was broken by that wild charge. 
 
 The Irish, with characteristic recklessness, were pur- 
 suing the routed Hanoverians, when Marlborous^h broke 
 upon theh flank with some squadrons of British cavalry.
 
 30 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 The Hanoverians themselves, a mere tumult of flying 
 men, swept round the flank of a line of steady British 
 foot, drawn across the line of their retreat, and this, too, 
 opened a close and deadly fire on the Irish brigade as, 
 breathless and disordered, it came down the slope. 
 With horsemen on its flank, and unbroken infantry 
 scourging it with fire in front, the Irish brigade was 
 flung back in defeat to Oberglauh. Then came the 
 great cavalry charge which decided the fight. 
 
 Marlborough resembled Hannibal in his use of cavalry 
 for the deciding stroke in a great battle, and he had 
 now no less than 8000 horse, a long line of nodding 
 plumes and gleaming swords, ready to launch on 
 Tallard's centre. Behind were steady battalions of 
 inftmtry, under the cover of whose fire the horsemen 
 might re-form if the attack failed. In front was the 
 long slope, soft with grass and elastic to the stroke of 
 the galloping hoofs, an ideal field for a great cavalry 
 charge. Tallard had drawn up his cavalry in two lines 
 and had interlaced them with batteries of artillery and 
 squares of infantry. These were drawn up slightly 
 below the crest of the ridge, so as to exactly cover the 
 summit with their fire. 
 
 At five o'clock Marlborough launched the great 
 attack. Slowly at first, but gathering momentum as 
 they advanced, the long lines of horsemen came on. 
 The air Avas full of the clangour of scabbard on stirrup, 
 the squadrons were just stretching themselves out into 
 a galloj), as they reached the summit of the ridge, when 
 they were smitten by the fire of the French infantry and 
 artillery. So deadly and close was the volley that the 
 leading squadrons went down before it, and for a few
 
 MARLBOROUGH AT BLENHEIM 3 1 
 
 wild minutes, under the canopy of whirling smoke, 
 Marlborough's horsemen were in fierce confusion. That 
 was the moment for a counter-stroke ! Tallard saw it, 
 and gave the word to his cavalry to charge. They were 
 more numerous than the British, yet they faltered. " I 
 saw an instant," wrote the unfortunate Tallard after- 
 wards, " in which the battle was gained if " his 
 
 cavalry, in brief, had charged ! But it failed to charge. 
 The moment of possible victory vanished, and over the 
 crest, with bent heads and wind-blown crests, the gleam 
 of a thousand swords and the thunder of innumerable 
 galloping hoofs, came the British cavalry. 
 
 Tallard's centre was broken as with the stroke of a 
 thunderbolt ! His infantry was swept into ruin, his 
 cavalry hurled into disordered flight, and his army 
 fairly cut in twain. His left wing fell back, fighting 
 desperately ; but his right, the dite of his army, was 
 hopelessly shut up in Blenheim itself As night fell 
 Marlborough drew his lines closely round the village. 
 Webb, with the Queen's regiment, blocked one avenue 
 of escape, a cavalry force — one regiment of which con- 
 sisted of Scots Greys — guarded the other. The French 
 general in command of Blenheim, believing the situation 
 to bo desperate, ignobly abandoned his men and tried to 
 swim his horse across the Danube, and was very properly 
 drowned in the attempt. For a time the fight round 
 Blenheim was furious. Part of the village took fire, and 
 in the light of the red flames Frenchmen and Englishmen 
 fought hand to hand with fiery valour. But with the 
 centre destroyed, and the left wing in full retreat, the 
 condition of Tallard's right, shut up in Blenheim, was 
 hopeless, and 1 1 ,000 French infantry laid down their
 
 32 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 arms as prisoners of war. The great French army, 
 60,000 strong, composed in the main of veterans and 
 familiar with victory, practically ceased to exist. 
 
 That battle changed the course of history. It 
 destroyed the dream of a universal empire which Louis 
 XIV. had cherished so long ; it secured for the Anglo- 
 Saxon race that opportunity of free development which 
 has made the Empire of to-day possible.
 
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 LORD AXSOX 
 
 From a mezzotint hy J. M'Ardeli., after the portrait by Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds, P.R.A.
 
 LORD ANSON AND THE "CENTURION" 
 
 1740-44 
 
 "Anson could not himself settle the Spanish war ; but he did, on his own 
 score, a series of things, ending in beautiful finish of the Acapulco ship, 
 which were of considerable detriment, and of highly considerable dis- 
 grace, to Spain ; and were, and are long likely to be, memorable among 
 the sea-heroisms of the world. Giving proof that real captains, taciturn 
 sons of Anak, are still born in England ; and sea-kings, equal to any that 
 were. . . . That memorable A^oyage of his is a real poem in its kind, or 
 romance all fact ; one of the pleasantest little books in the world's library 
 at this date. Anson sheds some tincture of heroic beauty over that other- 
 wise altogether hideous puddle of mismanagement, platitude, and disaster ; 
 and vindicates, in a pathetically potential way, the honour of this poor 
 nation a little." — Carlyle. 
 
 IN one of the wards of Greenwich Hospital there stood 
 until the year 1870 a huge lion rampant, carved in 
 wood, at least sixteen feet high. It was, from the artist's 
 point of view, a very bold and spirited figure ; but the 
 contours were blurred, the finer lines of the 'graver's chisel 
 were almost obliterated by the sea-winds of many years. 
 It was the figure-head of the Centurion, a ship scarcely 
 inferior in fame to Drake's Golden Hind, in which 
 Anson, one of the great sailors of our race, made his 
 immortal voyage round the world in 1 740-44. In 1 870 
 it was transferred to the playground of the hospital 
 school, and fell to pieces from decay in 1873. That 
 fierce, bold lion's head, that for four stormy years groped 
 its way round the globe — before it the waste seas of the 
 
 33 C
 
 34 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 New World, behind it such a freight at once of perishing 
 lives and of heroic hearts as before or since, perhaps, the 
 sea-winds never blew upon — might well have been pre- 
 served. It was one of the most honourable relics of 
 British history. On no other bit of carved wood had 
 fiercer tempest blown, or a wilder smoke of battle 
 eddied. The one surviving fragment of Drake's Royal 
 Hind, it will be remembered, is in the shape of a chair 
 in Oxford University, and to it Cowley addressed the 
 fine and oft-quoted lines : — 
 
 " To this great ship, which round the world has run, 
 And matched in race the chariot of the sun, 
 This Pythagorean ship (for it may claim, 
 Without presumption, so deserved a name, 
 By knowledge once, and transformation now). 
 In her new shape, this sacred jjort allow. 
 Drake and his ship could not have wished from Fate 
 A more blest station, or more blest estate, 
 For, lo ! a seat of endless rest is given 
 To her in Oxford, to him in heaven." 
 
 The figure-head of the Centurion was threatened for 
 a while with a more ignoble fate. When the famous 
 ship, after a cruising and fighting career of thirty years, 
 was broken up, the figure-head was sent to George III. 
 His prosaic German brain discovered no charm in a relic 
 so wooden and so big, and he passed it on to the Duke 
 of Richmond, then Master-General of the Ordnance, 
 who allowed it to be turned into the sign of a public- 
 house on his estate. William IV. was sailor enough to 
 value this memorial of one of the most famous ships 
 that ever flew the British flag ; he begged the figure- 
 head from the duke, and placed it at the head of the 
 grand staircase in Windsor Castle. And for years, be-
 
 LORD ANSON AND THE 'CENTURION 35 
 
 neath the grim lion's head that had looked out so long 
 on tempest and battle, flowed the dainty and idle figures 
 that people a court. Presently the superfine taste of 
 some gentleman-in-waiting quarrelled with this storm- 
 beaten relic, and it was conveyed, like other sea-battered 
 hulks, to Greenwich Hospital. It stood for many years 
 in what is called the Anson Ward, lifting its warlike 
 head high above the beds tenanted by many an old salt. 
 On its pedestal were inscribed some lines plainly sug- 
 gested by Cowley's : — 
 
 " Stay, traveller, awhile, and view 
 One who has travell'd more than you : 
 Quite round the globe, through each degree, 
 Anson and I have plough'd the sea ; 
 Torrid and frigid zones have past, 
 And — safe ashore arrived at last — 
 In ease with dignity appear. 
 He in the House of Lords, I here." 
 
 Whoever desires to read a story which illustrates all 
 the finest qualities of the English sailor — his cool forti- 
 tude, his bulldog tenacity of purpose, his magnificent 
 fighting energy — which have made the British flag the 
 supreme symbol of power in every sea, cannot do better 
 than listen while, in the briefest fashion, the story of 
 Anson's immortal voyage and his capture of the great 
 Mexican galleon is told afresh. 
 
 Anson, born in 1697, was a lawyer by descent, but a 
 sailor by some imperative necessity In his very blood. 
 He was a sailor, however, not in the least of Nelson's or 
 of Dundonald's type — dazzling, brilliant, with a gleam 
 of genius running through his imagination like a thread 
 of gold through rough canvas. He was a sailor of the 
 school of Howe and of Collingwood ; plain, sagacious.
 
 36 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 homely, dogged : to whom seamanship Avas a sort of sea- 
 bird's instinct, and downright hard-fighting courage as 
 natural as breathing — the stufif out of which the finest 
 sailors and the most terrible fighters in history are 
 made. Anson was an almost absolutely inarticulate 
 man. Scarcely a letter is in existence written by his 
 hand. He sat for years in the House of Lords, yet 
 never made a speech. A familiar epigram says of him 
 that he went round the Avorld, but was never in it. 
 Although he filled one of the greatest posts in the State 
 — he was Vice- Admiral of Great Britain, and First Lord 
 of the Admiralty during the Seven Years' War — he had 
 none of the arts of the courtier, and no touch of the 
 politician's adroit pliability. He was as much out of 
 place in the gaieties of society as a seagull would have 
 been in a cage of canaries. 
 
 J3ut he was a great administrator as Avell as a great 
 sailor. He stamped the impress of his practical seaman- 
 ship on the navy of Great Britain. He formed, Avithout 
 the least intending it, a distinct school of British sailors ; 
 and the men he trained — Howe, Saunders, Byron, Hyde, 
 Parker, Keppel, &c. — won many glories for the British 
 flag. " The lieutenants and midshipmen of his ship and 
 squadron," says Barrow, " Avere the admirals of the Seven 
 Years' and the American Wars." Anson, too, Avas modest, 
 humane, simple-minded, Avith an heroic standard of dut}'. 
 His life is rich in the record of stirring deeds, but no 
 chapter is more dramatic and stirring, or more charac- 
 teristic of the qualities Avhich have built up the British 
 Empire, than that Avhich tells the story of his famous 
 voyage round the world and his capture of the great 
 galleon.
 
 LORD ANSON AND THE "CENTURION 37 
 
 Anson, thougli parted by two centuries from Drake, 
 is, in reality, Drake's lineal successor, and the Centurion 
 was the second British ship that circumnavigated the 
 world. Anson, too, curiously repeated Drake's fortunes. 
 Drake sailed from Plymouth at the end of 1577 with 
 five ships, the largest of 100 tons, the smallest of 1 5 tons 
 burden. He returned in a little less than three years, 
 rich in treasure, but with only a single ship, and two 
 men out of every three who sailed with him had perished. 
 Anson sailed from Spithead, September 18, 1740, with 
 six vessels, the Centurion, of sixty guns, being his flag- 
 ship ; his voyage lasted nearly four years ; he came back, 
 like Drake, rich in treasure won from the great foe of 
 the British flag of that day — the Spaniard; but, like 
 Drake, he brought back only one ship of his squadron 
 and the losses amongst his crews were even more tragical 
 than in the expedition of Drake. 
 
 The despatch of Anson's squadron was one of the 
 direct results of the storm of passion awakened in Eng- 
 land by the familiar story of "Jenkins's ear." The 
 expedition was designed to round the Horn, carry 
 battle and reprisal along the Spanish coasts in the 
 South Sea, ravage, for example, the coast of Peru, make 
 a dash at Callao, capture the great Acapulco galleon 
 conveying the annual tribute of gold from Mexico to 
 Spain, and return to England by the way of China. 
 The squadron was to be strengthened by Bland's regi- 
 ment of foot, and three independent companies of 
 infantry, each 100 strong. From the outset, however, 
 the same almost incredible stupidity of administration 
 which afterwards destroyed the Walcheren expedition, 
 and produced the tragedy of the Crimea, did its evil
 
 38 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 best to wreck Anson's squadron. It was delayed until 
 winter had made the passage round the Horn perilous. 
 The news of the expedition Avas allowed to filter through 
 to Spain, and a strong squadron under Admiral Pizarro 
 was despatched to lie in wait for the British ships. 
 Anson could not get seamen for his crews ; and, instead 
 of Bland's regiment and the independent companies of 
 foot, 500 invalids, out-pensioners of Chelsea Hospital, 
 were detailed for the squadron. Anson's remonstrances 
 were vain. Only 259 of these unfortunate invalids, it is 
 true, were actually got on board, for " all those who 
 had limbs, and strength to walk out of Portsmouth, 
 deserted " ; and never was seen such a collection of 
 cripples as that which the astonished crews of Anson's 
 squadron saw emptied upon them. Many of them were 
 over seventy years of age ; many were blind ; nearly all 
 were bent with sickness, twisted with rheumatism, &c. 
 
 The ships, in brief, intended for a long and desperate 
 expedition, were, by way of preliminary, turned into 
 floating infirmaries ! Not one of these unfortunate 
 invalids, it may be added, lived to return to England ! 
 To supply the place of the 240 more vigorous invalids 
 who had hobbled off in alarm, an equal number of newly 
 recruited marines — most of them boys who had never 
 fired a shot or worn a uniform — were drafted on board. 
 Thus laden with sickness and infirmity at the very 
 outset, Anson's squadron set out on its ill-fated yet 
 splendid voyage. 
 
 Anson's squadron consisted of the Centurion, of 60 
 guns, the Gloucester and the Severn, of 50 guns each, 
 the Wager, of 28 guns, and the Try at, a sloop of 8 guns, 
 with a couple of victualler;: — ships intended to follow
 
 LORD ANSON AND THE "CENTURION 39 
 
 the squadron with supplies during the early stages of 
 the voyage. The Wager is the ship whose wreck con- 
 stitutes one of the best-remembered tragedies of the 
 British navy. The squadron took forty days to reach 
 Madeira, and sailed thence, on November 3, for St. 
 Jago, one of the Cape Verde islands being appointed as 
 a rendezvous. The weather continued fine, but already 
 scurvy had broken out in the squadron, and Anson 
 commenced to cut air-scuttles in all the ships to 
 sweeten, if possible, the gloomy, unlit, evil-smelling 
 decks where his unfortunate invalids were already be- 
 ginning to die like sheep in pestilence. Anson's ships, 
 it must be remembered, were of the old type — short- 
 bodied, hityh-sterned, with bluff bows and low deck, and 
 square yards on their jib-booms — ships almost as un- 
 sinkable as a bottle, but about as weatherly and as well- 
 ventilated as so many corked bottles. 
 
 One piece of good fortune at this early stage of the 
 voyage befell Anson. The Spanish squadron under 
 Pizarro, despatched to intercept Anson's ships, had 
 cruised for some days off Madeira; then, being seized 
 with a sudden spasm of prudence, had sailed for Cape 
 Horn, Pizarro having resolved to wait for Anson in the 
 South Seas— if he ever reached those waters. Anson 
 would, no doubt, have fallen with bulldog courage on 
 Pizarro if the squadrons had met off Madeira, and, 
 though the Spanish ships were more heavily armed and 
 strongly manned than his own, would have sunk or 
 captured them. But the mere business of clearing for 
 action would have required Anson to jettison half the 
 provisions with which his ships were packed, and his 
 voyage must have been sacrificed — a disaster for which
 
 40 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 victory would have been a poor compensation. The 
 Spanish ships, however, had effaced themselves, and 
 unmercifid disaster followed them so fast and so 
 furiously that the story of Pizarro's squadron is more 
 tragical than even that of Anson's. One Spanish ship 
 foundered at sea, a second was wrecked on the coast of 
 Brazil. Famine stalked, gaunt and hungry, betwixt the 
 decks of the Spanish ships, and mutiny followed hard 
 on the heels of famine. A tiny chistcr of Indians, eleven 
 in all, being cruelly treated on board the Spanish flag- 
 ship, the Asia, suddenly seized that ship one night off 
 Buenos Ayres, slew many of the crew and officers, and 
 there was witnessed the amazing spectacle of a ship 
 carrying 66 guns and 500 men being held by eleven 
 Indians. The Spanish admiral barricaded himself in 
 his cabin for safety, part of the crew in wild terror 
 escaped into the tops, and the rest were battened 
 down between decks. For two hours the Indians held 
 possession of the ship, but, their chief being shot, the rest 
 jumped overboard. Pizarro, with this single surviving 
 ship, reached Spain early in 1 746, having spent nearly five 
 years in distracted and tragical wanderings, and bringing 
 back a single ship out of a squadron, and less than 100 sur- 
 vivors out of crews which originally numbered over 3000 ! 
 Anson's ships, meanwhile, with scurvy fermenting in 
 the blood of every second man in the crews, were 
 running down the Strait of Le Maire. Scarcely had 
 they cleared the Strait, when the wildest weather of 
 which the gloomy latitudes of Cape Horn are capable 
 broke upon the unfortunate squadron. Never were 
 fiercer seas or blacker skies, or gales more cruelly edged 
 with sleet and ice. The very sails were frozen. The
 
 LORD ANSON AND THE "CENTURION ' 4 1 
 
 risffing was turned into mere ladders of ice. The decks 
 were slippery as glass, and the great seas dashed in- 
 cessantly over them. The groaning and overstrained 
 ships let in water in every seam, and for over fifty days 
 each furious gale was followed by one yet more furious. 
 The Centurion's courses were actually kept reefed for 
 fifty-eight days ! The squadron was scattered, the Severn 
 and Pearl never rejoining. On May 8, Anson himself 
 was off the island of Socorro, and for a fortnight he hung 
 there in the hope that some other ship of the squadron 
 would make its appearance. 
 
 It was the wildest of scenes. Fierce westerly gales 
 raged. The coast, a line of jagged precipices, was one 
 mad tumult of foam. When the low, black skies were 
 for a moment rent asunder, they only revealed the 
 Cordilleras of the Andes, gaunt peaks white with snow, 
 and torn with scuffling winds. All this time, too, Anson's 
 crew was perishing fast with scurvy of the most malig- 
 nant type. The body of a poor scurvy-smitten wretch 
 was mottled wdth black spots. Limbs and gums were 
 swollen to an enormous size, and broke into putrid 
 eruptions. Old wounds broke out afresh. Bones that 
 had been fractured, and had set firmly again for years, 
 parted, the new bone dissolving into mere fluid. On 
 the body of one veteran, who had been Avounded fifty 
 years before at the battle of the Boyne, the wounds 
 gaped bloody-red, as though just inflicted. The men 
 died so fast, or sickened so hopelessly, that by the 
 middle of June from the Centurion alone more than 
 2CO corpses had been thrown overboard, and, to quote 
 the chaplain's record, " we could not at last muster more 
 than six foremast men in a watch capable of duty." On
 
 42 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 May 22, a new gale broke on the sorely buffeted Cen- 
 turion, in which the fury of all the tempests that ever 
 blew seemed to be concentrated. The Centurion sur- 
 vived, and, a lonely, half- wrecked ship, full of sick and 
 dying men, bore up for Juan Fernandez. 
 
 In practical seamanship Anson and his officers were 
 unsurpassed among the sailors of all ages and of all seas ; 
 but the appliances of navigation in 1740 were rude, and 
 the science of it imperfectly understood. Anson intended 
 " to hit the island on a meridian," and, believing himself 
 to be on the required parallel, on May 28 he ran it 
 down, until, at the exact moment, when they expected 
 to see Juan Fernandez, there broke upon his look-outs 
 the vision of the snow-clad summits of the Cordilleras 
 of Chili ! Anson, in a word, had missed the island, and 
 it took him nine days to claw back to the westward and 
 come in sight of Juan Fernandez. And during those 
 nine days his men died so fast that "out of two hundred 
 and odd men which remained alive we could not, taking 
 all our watches together, muster hands enough to work 
 the ship on an emergency, though we included the 
 officers, their servants, and their boys." The next day 
 the Tryal made its appearance ; out of her crew of 100 
 men, 34 had died. Only the captain, heutenant, and 
 three men were able to stand by the sails. On June 21 
 the Gloucester hove in sight of the rendezvous. On 
 that unhappy ship two-thirds of the crew had already 
 perished ; only the officers and their servants were cap- 
 able of duty. Anson sent off provisions and men to her ; 
 but the wind was unfavourable, the Gloucester little 
 better than a wreck, and she actually hung in sight of 
 Juan Fernandez for a month without being able to make
 
 LORD ANSON AND THE "CENTURION 43 
 
 the anchorage, alternately flitting ghost-like beyond the 
 sea-rim, and then reappearing ! It seemed likely, indeed, 
 that she would be left at last to drift a mere ship of the 
 dead on the sea. When at last the sorely tried ship 
 dropped its anchor, out of its original crew of 300 men 
 only 80 remained alive. 
 
 Anson's squadron was now reduced to a couple of 
 shattered, half-manned cruisers and a sloop, and Anson 
 devoted himself to refitting his ships, and restoring the 
 health of his men. The Pearl and the Severn had been 
 driven back to the coast of Brazil, and had given up the 
 expedition. The Wager had been wrecked; and the 
 story of the tragedy, with its mingled heroism and 
 horror, is told in the familiar narrative by one of its 
 two midshipmen, afterwards Admiral Byron, and the 
 grandfather of Lord Byron, the poet. 
 
 Anson remained for over a hundred days at Juan 
 Fernandez. The three ships with him had crews 
 amounting to 961 men when they sailed from England, 
 and of these already 626 were dead ! There remained 
 of his squadron only three shattered vessels, with 335 
 men and boys divided betwixt them. How could he 
 hope with these to face Pizarro's squadron, to attack 
 any of the Spanish possessions, or to capture the great 
 Acapulco galleon ? Anson, however, was of that stub- 
 born and resolute courage which only hardens under 
 the impact of disaster. He despatched the Tryal to 
 cruise off Valparaiso, and the Gloucester off Paita, while 
 the Centurion cruised betwixt the two points. Some 
 valuable prizes were captured, and then Anson with his 
 three ships made a dash at Paita itself, a gallant feat 
 worthy of Drake or of Hawkins.
 
 44 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Paita was respectably fortified, and held by a con- 
 siderable garrison. Anson despatched three boats and 
 fifty - eight men, under Lieutenant Brett, against the 
 town, keeping his ships out of sight of land. Brett 
 pulled with cool daring through the dark night, and 
 almost reached the fort before the alarm was given. 
 Then lights flashed through the awakening town, the 
 church bells rang, the garrison ran to arms, the guns of 
 the fort flashed redly through the darkness over the 
 boats. But Brett, pulling with silent speed across the 
 bay, leaped ashore, carried the fort with a rush, the 
 governor and the garrison fleeing; and sixty British 
 sailors remained in undisputed possession of the town, 
 only one man of the attacking party being killed and 
 two wounded ! Anson's ships by daybreak were off the 
 town, and more than ;if 30,000 in coined silver was car- 
 ried on board from the public treasury, and the whole 
 town was burnt, though no injury was offered to the 
 inhabitants. 
 
 Anson next proceeded to lay a trap for the Acapulco 
 ship, scattering his tiny squadron in a semicircle — but 
 out of sight of land — off Acapulco. The Spaniards, 
 however, somehow caught a gleam of the white top- 
 sails of one of his ships over the edge of the horizon, 
 and at that signal of terror the sailing of the galleon 
 was postponed for a year! Anson, discovering this, 
 turned the stems of his vessels to the wide and lonely 
 Pacific. He would cruise off the coast of California, 
 and intercept the Manilla galleon, on its voyage to Aca- 
 pulco, He destroyed all his prizes, and began his voyage 
 with two ships, the Centurion and the Gloucester. 
 Scurvy broke out afresh. A furious gale smote the
 
 LORD ANSON AND THE CENTURION 45 
 
 two English ships. On July 26, the captain of the 
 Gloucester hailed the Centurion, and reported that his 
 mainmast was sprung, and discovered to be completely 
 rotten ; he had seven feet of water in the hold ; only 
 ninety-seven of the crew, including officers and boys, 
 remained, and out of this whole number only sixteen 
 men and eleven boys were capable of keeping the 
 deck. 
 
 Anson's dogged purpose never swerved. He trans- 
 shipped to the Centurion the Gloucester s crew and 
 part of her stores, and then set fire to her. Anson's 
 squadron of five ships was thus reduced to a single 
 vessel, a floating speck on the tossing floor of the wide 
 and empty Pacific. The men, too, were dying at the 
 rate of ten or twelve a day. The ship was leak}'. 
 Provisions Avere bad, and the supply of water almost 
 exhausted. Still Anson kept steadfastly on his course, 
 and on August 28 sighted Tinian, one of the Ladrone 
 islands. Twenty-one of the crew died after the island 
 came in sight, and before the sick could be landed; 
 but the pure water and fresh fruits of Tinian arrested 
 the raging scurvy as if by magic. Anson himself was 
 dowTi with scurvy amongst the sick on the island, 
 when, on September 23, a furious tempest tore the 
 Centurion from her anchorage, and she vanished over 
 the horizon, amidst raging seas and driving rain. An- 
 son seemed to be abandoned utterly, without resources 
 or help. His steadfast courage, however remained un- 
 shaken. He crept from his tent with the poison of 
 scurvy still in his blood, and set the men to work to 
 lengthen a tiny twelve-foot boat they had. He would 
 sail m it across the 600 lea'^ues of trackless sea, without
 
 4^ FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 compass or chart, to Macao ! On October 1 1 , however, 
 the storm-rent canvas of the Centurion was visible once 
 more over the sky-line, and she crept back slowly to her 
 anchorage. 
 
 Anson refitted his ship, sailed from Tinia-n on 
 October 21* and reached Macao on November 12. It 
 was two years since he left Spithead — two years into 
 which had been packed as much of suffering and hard- 
 ship, of tempest, and plague, and death, and of the 
 heroism, which not tempest, nor plague, nor death 
 itself could shake, as can be found, perhaps, in any 
 other sea story extant. 
 
 Anson remained at Macao till April 19, 1743 ; then, 
 with ship refitted, though not remanned, and stores 
 renewed, he set sail ostensibly for Batavia, and thence 
 to England. But when out of sight of land he called 
 his men aft, told them there must be two galleons 
 sailing from Acapulco this year, and he intended to 
 capture them both ! Each galleon, it might be added 
 was double in weight of artillery and fighting force to 
 the Centurion ; but that circumstance Anson regarded 
 as an irrelevant detail, to be dismissed without further 
 consideration ! Anson's men, hardened by suffering, and 
 careless of peril, and full of confidence in their silent, 
 much-enduring captain, welcomed the announcement 
 with a shout, and the stem of the Centurion was turned 
 towards the Philippine Islands, one of the way-marks in 
 the course of the gold-ships of Spain. Anson's crew, at 
 that moment, consisted of 201 hands, including officers, 
 idlers, and boys ; he had only forty-five able seamen. 
 Each galleon, on the other hand, carried a crew of about 
 600 men. Anson warned his crew that the galleons
 
 LORD ANSON AND THE "CENTURION 47 
 
 were " stout ships and fully manned " ; but Jack Tar's 
 arithmetic, when applied to the business of reckoning 
 up an enemy's force, is of curious quality ; and Anson's 
 men felt as cheerfully confident of capturing the wealth 
 of the Spanish treasure-ships as though the yellow gold 
 were already in their breeches' pockets ! Anson's chaplain, 
 indeed, tells an amusing story in proof of this. A few 
 Chinese sheep were on board, intended for the officers' 
 table, but for some days no mutton made its appearance 
 there. The ship's butcher, on being interrogated, ex- 
 plained that only two sheep were left, and he was 
 reserving those for the entertainment of " the generals 
 of the galleons " after they were captured ! 
 
 On May 30, the Centurion reached the desired 
 cruising ground off Cape Espiritu Santo, and day by 
 day, during all the month of June, the sky-line was 
 searched by keen look-outs from the mastheads of the 
 Centurion. The days went tamely by, and offered only 
 the same spectacle of azure sea and azure sky, and a 
 horizon broken by no gleam of white sail. On June 20, 
 however, a quick-eyed middy, at the main topmast of 
 the Centurion, caught a point of gleaming silver on 
 the sky-line too steady for a seagull's wing. The news 
 ran through the ship. It was early dawn, and soon in 
 the glittering sunlight — a little south of where the day 
 was breaking — the long-looked-for sail was visible. 
 Only one ship, however, was in sight. Where was its 
 consort? At half-past seven the galleon fired a gun, 
 and took in her topgallant sails ; this surely was a signal 
 to her consort, still out of sight ! And it shows the 
 amazing audacity of Anson that he bore steadily down 
 to attack two ships, each of which was double his own
 
 48 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG. 
 
 in strength. As a matter of fact, however, there was 
 only a sohtary galleon before him — a great ship with 
 heavy guns, huge quarter-deck galleries, and a crew of 
 over six hundred men. Its captain, a gallant Spaniard, 
 bore steadily down, the standard of Spain flying at the 
 masthead, and at noon, being about a league distant 
 from the Centurion, brought to under topsails, and 
 waited resolutely for the Centurion to begin the fight. 
 
 Anson stood on in perfect fighting rig. He had 
 placed thirty of his best marksmen in his tops, and 
 expected with them to scourge the Spaniard's decks 
 with fire and drive the men from their guns. He had 
 not one-fourth the number of hands necessary to work 
 his broadside, and he detailed two men to each mm, 
 whose sole business it was to load it ; the rest he divided 
 into gangs of ten, whose business it was to pass from 
 gun to gun as it was loaded, run it out, aim, and dis- 
 charge it. He thus kept up a constant fire of single 
 guns, instead of firing whole broadsides ; and his method 
 had an unsuspected advantage. " It is common with 
 the Spaniards," writes his chaplain, " to fall down upon 
 the decks when they see a broadside preparing, and to 
 continue in that posture until it is given ; after which 
 they rise again, and, presuming the danger to be for 
 some time over, work their guns, and fire with great 
 briskness, till another broadside is ready." Anson's plan 
 of a continuous fire of single well-aimed guns, however, 
 quite spoiled these Spanish tactics and abated their 
 " briskness." 
 
 A squall of wind and rain broke over the two ships 
 as they neared each other, and Anson could see through 
 the driving rain that his antagonist was caught unpre-
 
 LORD ANSON AND THE " CENTURION " 49 
 
 pcared. The Spaniards were still busy tlirowing over- 
 board cattle and lumber to clear their decks for the 
 fight. Anson's original plan was to engage at pistol- 
 shot distance, but he at once opened fire, in order to 
 increase the confusion of his enemy. Steadily the 
 Centurion came on, till, through the smoke, its lion's 
 head could be seen gliding menacingly past the 
 Spaniard's broadside. Then, having overreached the 
 galleon, Anson swung into the wind, across his enemy's 
 bows, and raked the Spaniard with a deadly fire. The 
 galleon had not only hoisted her boarding netting, 
 to prevent the English boarding, but, in addition, had 
 stuffed the netting with mats, as a protection against 
 musketry. But Anson was engaging so closely that the 
 flame of his guns — or their burning wads — set fire to 
 the mats, and these broke into a fire which blazed up 
 half as high as the mizzen-top, and Anson slackened 
 the fury of his guns, lest his prize should be destroyed. 
 The Spaniards then cut their netting adrift, and the 
 whole flaming mass fell into the sea. 
 
 Anson's marksmen in the Centurion's tops had, 
 meanwhile, shot down their immediate antagonists in 
 the tops of the galleon, and were, by this time, pouring 
 a deadly fire on the galleon's upper deck. Only one 
 Spanish officer, in fact, remained unhurt on the galleon's 
 quarter-deck. The Centurion, however, had lost her 
 advantage of position on the galleon's bows, and the two 
 ships, lying broadside to broadside, at half pistol-shot 
 distance, pelted each other with heavy shot for a full 
 hour. But the trained skill and obstinate courage of 
 the English proved irresistible. The ships had drifted 
 so near that the Spanish officers could be seen running 
 
 D
 
 50 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 about with brandished swords trying to keep their men 
 from deserting their guns. At last the great yellow flag 
 of Spain fluttered sullenly down, through the smoke, 
 from the masthead of the galleon, and Anson stepped 
 on to the blood-stained deck of his prize. 
 
 Just at that moment one of the Centurion's lieuten- 
 ants Avhispered in his ear that the Centurion was dan- 
 gerously on fire near the powder-room. At the same 
 moment, too, the galleon, with no steersman at its 
 wheel, rolled heavily on the starboard quarter of the 
 Centurion, and the crash shook both the ships from 
 stem to stern. It was a crisis to shake the nerves of 
 the bravest men, but Anson's coolness was above proof 
 The galleon was quickly got under control ; a few quick, 
 calm orders mastered the fire, and Anson's victory was 
 secure. His prize had lost nearly a hundred and fifty 
 men, killed and wounded. Her masts were splintered 
 stumps ; one hundred and fifty shot had passed through 
 her hull — a sufficient testimony to the deadly quality 
 of the British fire. Only fifteen shot, on the other hand, 
 had pierced the hull of the Centurion, and its killed 
 and wounded numbered only thirty-one. Anson's diffi- 
 culties, in a sense, were increased by his very success. 
 He had, with his handful of men, to navigate two large 
 ships through dangerous and unknown seas, and to 
 keep guard over four hundred and ninety-two prisoners. 
 His prisoners, too, were restive, when they saw how 
 slender was the crew of the Centurion, and how many 
 of them were mere striplings. They became furious 
 with shame at having been beaten, as they said, by " a 
 handful of boys " ! At any moment, too, for aught 
 Anson knew, the sister galleon might heave in sight. 
 
 1
 
 LORD ANSON AND THE 'CENTURION 5 1 
 
 Anson, however, took his measures coolly. He j^iit 
 his lieutenant, Saiimarez, in charge of the prize, trans- 
 ferred the bulk of the prisoners to the Centurion, and 
 bore up for Canton, guarding his hatchways with swivel- 
 guns loaded with musket bullets, a sentry with a lighted 
 match standing day and night beside each gun. Every 
 English officer, meanwhile, remained on constant guard, 
 lying down, when his turn came, for a brief sleep, 
 dressed, and with a weapon by his side. Thus guarding 
 his prize, Anson reached Canton on June 30. There he 
 liberated his prisoners, and started on his voyage homo 
 by the Cape of Good Hope, casting anchor at Spithcad 
 on June 15, 1744. 
 
 The last incident of the voyage Avas perhaps as 
 dramatic as any during its whole course. War had 
 been declared betwixt France and England, and a 
 French fleet was cruising in the chops of the Channel. 
 When the much-buffeted Centurion, however, crossed 
 their cruising-ground, a thick grey fog lay on the 
 Channel ; and, all unconscious of his peril, and catching 
 from time to time the faint muffled sound of bells from 
 unseen ships, Anson moved on his course and reached 
 Spithead in safety, thus completing a voyage more 
 amazing in its incidents than that of Drake two cen- 
 turies before. 
 
 The galleon, of course, was a very rich prize. In its 
 strong-room were 1,313,843 pieces of eight, and more 
 than 35,000 ounces of silver plate, or of virgin silver. 
 Drake's expedition had its profitable commercial side. 
 The British sailor of that period was, in fact, an odd 
 compound of bagman and of buccaneer ; and the Golden 
 Hind expedition paid a dividend of .^47 for every ;^i
 
 52 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 invested in it. There are some very golden patches 
 of prize-money in British naval history. In 1799, 
 for example, the EtJudion captured the Thetis, with 
 1,400,000 dollars on board. The Naiad and Triton 
 captured the Santa Brigida, with an equal amount 
 of treasure. Each captain received as his share of the 
 prize-money ^^"40,731, i8s., each lieutenant ^^5091, 7s. 3d., 
 and each seaman i^i82, 4s. 9d. ! Yet earlier, in 1762, 
 the treasure-ship Herinione was captured off Cadiz 
 by the Actcwn, of 28 guns, and the Favourite, of 18 
 guns. Each captain, in this case, received ;^65,ooo as 
 prize-money, each lieutenant ^13,000, each petty officer 
 ^2000, and each seaman ^500 ! Anson's galleon, how- 
 ever, shines resplendent in even such golden records as 
 these. Yet the gold won by the Centurion was its least 
 precious gain. The voyage of the great ship added 
 enduring fame to the British flag, and its record remains 
 as a shining example of the fortitude and the valour 
 which have built up the British Empire.
 
 GEORGE II. 
 From an engraving by J. C. Armvtage
 
 GEORGE II. AT DETTINGEN 
 
 June 27, i 743 
 
 TOWARDS tlie close of the month of June 1743, a 
 great army of 40,000 gallant men, under a British 
 general, Lord Stair, lay bewildered and helpless in the 
 narrow valley, some eight miles long, betwixt Dettingen 
 and Aschaffenburg. It seemed a doomed army. In 
 the judgment of their exultant enemies, at least, the 
 shadow of swift-coming surrender and captivity lay 
 upon it. In that German valley, the tragedy of the 
 Caudine Forks, they thought, was to be translated into 
 modern terms at British cost ! An English king, too, 
 the last crowned British monarch who commanded an 
 army in actual battle, was in that imperilled host. And 
 to the light-tripping French imagination there had 
 already arisen the golden vision of a captive English 
 king, with his subjugated troops, being led in triumph 
 through the streets of Paris ; thus compensating dis- 
 tressed French pride for the disasters of Crecy and 
 of Poitiers, and the promenade of John I. as a captive 
 through London ! 
 
 France, it is to be noted, has enjoyed few " con- 
 solations" of this character. Great Britain is not 
 generally looked upon as a " military " nation ; her 
 true field is the sea. Yet, to quote Alison : — 
 
 " She has inflicted far greater land disasters on her 
 
 53
 
 54 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 redoubtable neighbour, France, tlian all the military 
 monarchies of Europe put together. English armies, 
 for one hundred and twenty years, ravaged France, 
 while England has not seen the fires of a French camp 
 since the battle of Hastings. English troops have twice 
 taken the French capital ; an English king Avas crowned 
 at Paris ; a French king rode captive through London ; 
 a French emperor died in English captivity, and his 
 remains were surrendered by English generosity. Twice 
 the English horse marched from Calais to the Pyrenees; 
 once from the Pyrenees to Calais; the monuments of 
 Napoleon in the French capital at this moment owe 
 their preservation from German revenge to an English 
 general. All the great disasters and days of mourning 
 for France since the battle of Hastings — Tenchcbray, 
 Crecy, Poitiers, Azincour, Verneuil, Crevant, Blenheim, 
 Oudenarde, Ramillies, Malplaquet, Minden, Dettingen, 
 Quebec, Egypt, Talavera, Salamanca, Yittoria, the 
 Pyrenees, Orthes, Waterloo — were gained by English 
 generals, and won, for the most part, by English soldiers. 
 Even at Fontenoy, the greatest victory of which France 
 , can boast since Hastings, every regiment in the French 
 army was, on their own admission, routed by the ter- 
 rible English column, and victory was snatched from 
 its grasp solely from want of support on the part 
 of the Dutch and Austrians. No coalition against 
 France has ever been successful in which England 
 did not take a prominent part ; none in the end has 
 failed of gaining its objects, in which she stood fore- 
 most in the fight." — Alison's "Life of Marlborough," 
 ii. 432. 
 
 By all the known and ordinary rules of war, the
 
 GEORGE II. AT DETTINGEN ^^ 
 
 position of the allied army at Dettingen was hopeless. 
 To the north rose, steep and trackless, and black with 
 pines, the Spessart hills. To the south — its banks here 
 and there liquefying into a sour morass — flowed the 
 river Maine. The strip of valley betwixt river and 
 hills averagfed not more than half a mile in width ; and 
 
 ' Historical Atlas." 
 
 // 'aacrCrUoutall sc 
 
 PLAN OP IiKTTINGKN. 
 
 on tlie high southern bank of the Maine, which com- 
 manded, as the broadside of a frigate might command 
 a yacht, the low and narrow valley, wet and treacherous 
 with bogs, where the British were stranded, was a great 
 French army, 70,000 strong, under the most famous 
 of living French generals, the Marshal de Noailles. A
 
 ^6 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 master of the art of war, De Noailles had thrust a strong 
 force over the bridges at Aschaffenburg across the van 
 of the alhed army, barring its marcli. He had drawn 
 23,000 men across the Maine at Dettingen, cutting Lord 
 Stair from his base at Hanau, And from Dettingen 
 to Aschaffenburg French batteries, perched on the high 
 southern bank of the Maine, stood ready to scourge 
 witlt -fir^ the narrow valley opposite, crowded with a 
 ^stranded and starving army. 
 
 The most serious feature in the position of the 
 allied army Avas the fact that its communications were 
 cut, and its supplies exhausted. An army, according 
 to Frederick the Great, " moves on its stomach," and 
 the British stomach, in that strait little valley north 
 of the Maine, had got past the marching stage. There 
 was a scanty supply of unripe rye for the horses, 
 and a yet scantier supply of unnutritious ammunition 
 bread for the men ; but the interval betwixt that host 
 of 40,000 hungry soldiers and mere famine was measur- 
 able by hours. De Noailles, in a word, was applying, 
 in 1743, to the British army he had caught in so pretty 
 a trap, the very treatment which Bismarck applied to 
 Paris in 1 870. He was allowing it to " stew in its own 
 juice," and was superintending the process with a dainty 
 ingenuity which, from the abstract military point of 
 view, was altogether admirable. 
 
 Of that imperilled 40,000 only 16,000 were pure 
 British ; the rest were Hanoverians, Hessians, &c., hired 
 and nourished by British gold. But the experiment 
 of trying to starve into tame surrender 40,000 soldiers 
 of British or German stock, with muskets in their 
 hands, is a somewhat perilous business for even the
 
 GEORGE II. AT DETTINGEN 57 
 
 most adroit of military artists. Soldiers of British or 
 kindred blood, their native courage edged and made 
 dour by hunger, are very apt, in such straits, to turn 
 on their tormentors, and, in violation of all the rules 
 of war, tumble them into ruin. As Carlyle puts it, 
 "40,000 enraged people of English and other Platt- 
 Teutsch type would have been very difficult to pin 
 up into captivity or death, instead of breakfast. . . . 
 The hungry Baresarks, their blood fairly up, would 
 find or make a way through somehow." And the story 
 of the battle of Dettingen is the tale of how those 
 16,000 hungry and angry British soldiers — for they 
 did most of the fighting — with all generalship and 
 all the advantages of ground against them, by sheer, 
 dogged, unscientific, and what their enemies complained 
 was mere " stupid " fighting — the fighting of the rank 
 and file, the actual push of reddened bayonets, and 
 the blast of volleys delivered so close that they seemed 
 to scorch the very flesh of their enemies — burst through 
 De Noailles' toils, tumbled that insrenious sreneral in 
 mere ruin across the Maine, and turned starvation into 
 victory. 
 
 The unhistorical reader may wonder how it came 
 to pass that in 1743 a British army, with a British 
 monarch at its head, was running the risk of capture 
 in Central Germany, and under the shadow of the 
 Bavarian hills. Carlyle somewhat unkindly pictures 
 the typical modern Englishman demanding of the 
 universe in mere amazement, "Battle of Dettingen, 
 Battle , of Fontenoy — what in the devil's name were 
 we doing there ? " He adds that the only ansAver is, 
 "Fit of insanity, delirium tremens, perhaps furens.
 
 58 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Don't think of it ! " An educated man is expected to 
 know " who commanded at Aigos-Potamoi, and wrecked 
 the Peloponnesian War. But of Dettingen and Fon- 
 tenoy, where is the Uving Enghshman that has the least 
 notion, or seeks for any ? " With one consent we have 
 tumbled the Austrian succession war into the dustbin, 
 and are cheerfully content that it should lie there. 
 It belongs to those wars which may be described as 
 "mere futile transitory dust whirlwinds, stilled in 
 blood ; " spasms of pure distracted lunacy on a national 
 scale. " The poor human memory," Carlyle adds, " has 
 an alchemy against such horrors. It forgets them ! " 
 
 But this is only an example of Carlyle's too energetic 
 rhetoric, and his own more sober judgment may bo 
 quoted against his swift and sword-edged epithets. In 
 the war with Spain, picturesquely labelled from " Jen- 
 kins's ear," the statesmanship of England was on one 
 side ; the dim, inarticulate instinct of its common people 
 was on the other. And the people were wiser than 
 the statesmen ! Walpole was forced into war against 
 his will ; and, as ho listened to the bells of St. Paul's 
 ringing in exultation when war broke out, he said, 
 bitterly, " They may ring their bells now ; before long 
 they will be wringing their hands ! " Yet, if ever war 
 was justifiable, that against Spain in 1739 was. 
 
 Spain claimed to be mistress, by decree of the Pope, 
 of all the seas and continents covered by the vague 
 title of " the Spanish main " ; and so for two centuries, 
 whatever was the case in Europe, perpetual war raged 
 in the Tropics. South of the line the British trader 
 was driven by stress of necessity to become a buccaneer, 
 and from the days of Drake the unfortunate Pope's
 
 GEORGE II. AT DETTINGEN 59 
 
 decree had been slashed with cutlasses and rent with 
 sea-cannon till it became a thing of rags. The claim 
 of Spain to keep half the world locked up, from the 
 common life of the race, under an ecclesiastical seal, 
 was a menace to civilisation. " To lie like a dog in 
 the manger over South America," reflects Carlyle, and 
 say, snarling, ' None of you shall trade here, though 
 I cannot,' what Pope, or body of Popes, can sanction 
 such a procedure ? . . . Dogs have doors for their 
 hutches, but to pretend barring the Tropic of Cancer — 
 that is too big a door for any dog ! " 
 
 By the Assiento treaty the British were alloAved to 
 despatch one ship, not exceeding 600 tons, to the 
 Spanish main each year ; but what parchment skin 
 of treaties could keep the volume of the world's trade 
 flowing through such a petty squirt ! Illegal traders 
 in the Spanish main abounded, and Spanish guarda 
 costas were not gentle in their method of suppressing 
 them. Captain Jenkins, with his vessel the Rebecca, 
 sailing from Jamaica to London, was stopped and 
 searched off the coast of Havanna, by a Spanish revenue 
 cutter. Jenkins was slashed over the head with a 
 cutlass, and his left ear half chopped off. A Spanish 
 ofiicer then tore oft' the bleedinsf ear, fluni^ it in its 
 owner's face, and bade him " carry it home to his king, 
 and tell him what had been done." The story of how 
 that little morsel of brown, withered human flesh turned 
 out a spark which kindled the inarticulate slow-burning 
 wrath of the English nation into a flame, and swept 
 England itself into war, is told in the following chapter. 
 Carlyle himself says : — 
 
 " The ' Jenkins's ear ' question, which once looked so
 
 6o FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 mad, was sane enough, and covered tremendous issues. 
 Half tlie world lay hidden in embryo under it. ' Colonial 
 Empire ' — whose is it to be ? Shall half the world be 
 England's for industrial purposes, which is innocent, 
 laudable, conformable to the multiplication table, at 
 least, and other plain laws ? Or shall it be Spain's, for 
 arrogant, torpid, sham-devotional purposes, contradic- 
 tory to every law ? The incalculable ' Yankee nation ' 
 itself, biggest phenomenon (once thought beautifullest) 
 of these ao;es, — this, too, little as careless readers on 
 either side of the sea now know it, lay involved. Shall 
 there be a Yankee nation, shall there not be ? Shall 
 the new world be of Spanish type, shall it be of English ? « 
 Issues which we may call immense ! Among the then 
 extant sons of Adam, where was he who could in the 
 faintest degree surmise what issues lay in the Jenkins's 
 ear question ? And it is curious to consider now, with 
 what fierce, deep-breathed doggedness, the poor English 
 nation, drawn by their instincts, held fast upon it, and 
 would take no denial, as if they had surmised and seen. 
 For the instincts of simple, guileless persons (liable to 
 be counted stupid by the unwary) are sometimes of pro- 
 phetic nature, and spring from the deep places of this 
 universe." 
 
 But to the " Jenkins's ear " question was added yet 
 another, of scale almost as huge. In 1733 the Bourbon 
 houses of Paris and Madrid framed betwixt themselves 
 the famous " Family Compact," one of a series of such 
 compacts which Burke has described as " the most 
 odious and formidable of all conspiracies against the 
 liberties of Europe that have ever been framed." By 
 this " Compact " the foreign policy of two great nations,
 
 GEORGE 11. AT DETTINGEN 6 1 
 
 it was agreed, should be " guided exclusively by the 
 interests of the House." France was to aid Spain with 
 all her forces by land and sea, whenever Spain chose to 
 warn England absolutely off the Spanish main. The 
 two branches of the Bourbons, in a word, were secretly 
 pledged as allies in a policy which threatened the free- 
 dom of Europe in general ; and England, as the chief 
 Protestant and freedom -loving Power, was sj^ecially 
 menaced. Its maritime supremacy was to be ruined. 
 The attack on the Austrian succession was but an 
 attempt to carry out the hateful principles of the 
 " Family Compact." Frederick of Prussia, bribed by 
 the hope of Silesia, had joined France and Spain. 
 France claimed the Netherlands, Spain half Italy, and 
 Gibraltar was to be wrested from Great Britain. In 
 wise self-defence England was aiding with purse and 
 musket the gallant fight Maria Theresa was making 
 for the patrimony of her child. Yet nominally there 
 was no war betwixt England and France when the 
 battle of Dettingen Avas fought ; and this explains 
 Horace Walpole's famous epigram, " We had the name 
 of war with Spain without the thing, and war with 
 France without the name." 
 
 On June 19, 1743, George II., with his son the Duke 
 of Cumberland, who won an evil fame afterwards as 
 " the butcher of Culloden," rode into Lord Stair's camp 
 at Aschaffenburg. Roj^al father and son, betwixt them, 
 had not military intelligence enough to make up a 
 twentieth-rate general ; but both had an abundant 
 stock of that primary element in a soldier, mere fighting 
 courage. George II. Carlyle describes grimly enough 
 as " a mere courageous Wooden Pole with cocked hat
 
 62 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 on top " ; while of his son, the Duke of Cumberland, ho 
 declares that he " knew little more of war than did the 
 White Horse of Hanover." But the quality of bulldog 
 courage has been the attribute of the Welf race since 
 the days of Henry the Lion, and both father and son 
 possessed this in a shining degree. The second George, 
 it is true, had not many other titles to human respect. 
 Thackeray describes him as " a dull little man of low 
 tastes." He had neither dignity, learning, morals, nor 
 wit. He was " a little red-faced, staring kinglet " ; there 
 was no external signature of roj'alty upon him. Biel- 
 feld, quoted by Carlyle, has drawn a curious little pen 
 picture of this second of the Georges : a little man, of 
 violent red complexion, with eyebrows ashy-blonde, and 
 parboiled blue eyes, flush with his face, nay, even stand- 
 ing in relief from it, " after the manner of a fish " ! 
 George had the manners of a clown, and the morals of 
 a " Avelcher." Every one remembers how, when his dying 
 wife bade him marry again, this remarkable monarch 
 replied, through his sobs, " No, no ! I will have mis- 
 tresses " ! The Duke of Cumberland, morally, was, no 
 doubt, an improvement on his father. At least, he had 
 that rudimentary sense of honour which teaches a man 
 to scorn a lie. But he was "of dim, poor head," and 
 had not the faintest vestige of military skill. But 
 he was " as brave as a Welf lion." Both father and 
 son, indeed, would have shone as hard-swearing, hard- 
 fighting, red-faced privates. 
 
 And yet it may be doubted whether father and son 
 were not, on the whole, exactly the leaders which the 
 desperate task before the allied army needed. Neither 
 had military science enough to know how desperate
 
 GEORGE II. AT DETTINGEN 63 
 
 tlie situation was. A better general might have tried 
 manoeuvres, and De Noailles, with all his advantages of 
 numbers and position, would have beaten him hopelessly. 
 The case was one which needed not so much brains as 
 hard-pushing bayonets, " In Teuton populations," sa^^s 
 Carlyle, " on that side of the Channel, or on this, there 
 is generally to be found, when you apply for it, an un- 
 conscious substratum of taciturn inexpugnability, with 
 depths of potential rage almost unquenchable. Which 
 quality is, perhaps, strengthened by their 'stupidity' 
 itself — what neighbours call their 'stupidity' — want of 
 idle imagining, idle flurrying ; nay, want even of know- 
 ing." For mere fierce, dogged, hard-thrusting, close- 
 pressing combat — the business in which lay the one 
 hope of the allied army — George II. and his ' martial Fat 
 Boy,' the Duke of Cumberland, were not unfit leaders." 
 
 For the rest, the British troops at Dettingen were of 
 fine fighting quality. The mere names of the regiments 
 stir one like the rolling cadences of a passage from 
 Homer : " Ligionier's Horse," " Onslow's Foot," " Cope's 
 Dragoons," " the Horse Guards Blue," " the Scots Greys." 
 " the Grenadier Guards," " the King's Regiment," " the 
 Scotch Fusiliers," " the Welsh Fusiliers," &c. The Earl 
 of Stair himself was a Scottish veteran, familiar with 
 battles, though not a "lucky" soldier. Perhaps the 
 finest soldier amoncjst the British was Lisronier, who 
 had played a gallant part in Marlborough's campaigns. 
 In the battle of Malplaquet, he had twenty-three bullets 
 through his clothes, and was unhurt ! But Ligonier 
 had a genius for discipline, and he did for what is now 
 the 7th (Princess Royal's) Dragoon Guards, what Sir 
 John Moore did for the Licfht Division — he made it
 
 64 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 a fighting instrument of singular power. He became 
 its colonel wlien it was on the Irish establishment 
 and was known as the 8th, or " Black Horse " ; after- 
 wards it Avas called Ligonier's Horse, then the 4th 
 Irish Horse, and now the 7th Dragoon Guards. 
 Under Ligonier it was composed almost exclusively of 
 Irishmen, and he so tempered and shaped it by disci- 
 pline that it became, perhaps, the finest single regiment 
 of horse in Europe. 
 
 Carlyle says, somewhat unkindly, that at Dettingen 
 the English otticers " behaved in the usual way, without 
 knowledge of war, and without fear of death ; cheering 
 their men, and keeping them steady upon the throats 
 of the French." But that may be fairly described as 
 the whole duty of a British officer in such a fight as 
 that of Mindcn ! 
 
 The logic of hunger compelled the British leaders to 
 come to prompt and resolute decision. Hanau was their 
 base of supplies, and they determined to fall back upon 
 it through Dettingen. George believed that when this 
 movement was detected, De Noailles would fall with 
 his utmost force upon his rear, so he kept his British 
 regiments as a rearguard, and took command of them 
 himself. On June 27, the allied forces began a slow 
 and sullen retreat. But De Noailles had thrust his 
 nephew, the Due de Grammont, with 23,000 men, across 
 the bridges at Seligenstadt, and seized Dettingen, thus 
 barring George's retreat. 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine a stronger position 
 than that held by De Grammont. The village of Det- 
 tingen stands in a defile; it is crossed in front by a 
 stream, with treacherous and marshy banks; this, in
 
 GEORGE II. AT DETTINGEN 65 
 
 turn, is covered by a morass. De Grammont had under 
 him the dite of De Noailles' army, with strict orders not 
 to move from his position, but to hold it to the death. 
 The British must straggle through the morass, and 
 flounder across the brook to reach the hollow way barred 
 by the village, and held by 23,000 of the choicest troops 
 of France, with a cross-fire of artillery covering their 
 front. The valley, in a word, was a bottle, of which 
 Dettingen was the cork ! 
 
 As soon as George II. discovered that, to save his 
 army, way must be won with steel and bullet through 
 Dettingen, he changed the formation of his forces, and 
 brought the British and Hanoverians to the front. The 
 process took four hours, or from eight o'clock to twelve 
 o'clock, to accomplish, and for the whole of that period 
 the moving troops were scourged with fire from the 
 French guns on the high southern bank of the Maine, 
 a fire against which the British cavalry, drawn out in a 
 long and slender line, formed a human screen of very 
 penetrable quality. " Our regiment," wrote an officer 
 in Bland's Dragoons, "' was cannonaded for nearly three 
 hours by batteries in front, flank, and rear ; and then," 
 he adds, "our three broken squadrons had to charge 
 nine or eleven squadrons of the French Household 
 Guards." The relief of charging anybody, however, after 
 standing so long to be helplessly shot at, was so great to 
 Bland's Dragoons, that they dashed through the splendid 
 French Guards, as through a brush fence, " though," 
 adds the officer we have quoted, " it is a miracle one of 
 us escaped ! " 
 
 By noon George had got his front in fighting shape. 
 He had religiously put on the coat and hat he had worn 
 
 E
 
 66 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 at Oudenarde, tliirty-five years before, when he had per- 
 sonally led a brilliant cavalry charge ; and the solemn 
 encasing of his stumpy little body in that old-fashioned, 
 powder-stained uniform, with its faded tints, Avas a touch 
 of sentiment quite unusual in George's prosaic and sulky 
 nature. Just at this moment came the one French 
 blunder which gave to the British a magnificent oppor- 
 tunity, De Grammont was little better than a rash and 
 gallant youth, and there rode beside him French nobles 
 as daring and as reckless as himself. French genius, as 
 a thousand battles prove, lies rather in attackmg than 
 in waiting to be attacked. De Grammont had watched 
 for four intolerable hours the allied forces slowly form- 
 ing before him, till he could watch the business no 
 longer. He sallied out from his stronghold, crossed the 
 stream, picked his uncertain way through the morass, 
 and came charging doAvn to sweep the British off the 
 face of the earth ! Had he moved earlier while George 
 II. was laboriously changing his formation, the stroke 
 might have succeeded. But the British were now 
 ranked in order of battle. They formed the spearhead 
 of the long column of 40,000 men, straggling over six 
 miles, of which the other troops were but the wooden 
 staff. 
 
 They were, too, in grim fighting mood, hungry and 
 wrathful. The French batteries had opened fiercely on 
 the British lines, the balls falling thick round the post 
 where George stood, and he was entreated to " go out of 
 danoer." " Don't tell me of danger," he said, " I'll be 
 even with them ! " His horse, alarmed by the tumult 
 and the crash of shot, bolted. George succeeded in 
 stopping it, and then dismounted; he would fight on
 
 GEORGE II. AT DETTINGEN 67 
 
 foot, " he could, trust liis legs," he said, " not to run away 
 with him ! " 
 
 The Duke of Cumberland, with General Clayton and 
 General Sommerfeldt, led the first line ; the second was 
 led by the Earl of Dunmore and the Earl of Rothes ; 
 Ligonier and Honeywood commanded the first line of 
 horse, Cope and Hawley led the second. 
 
 The French line came on swiftly and with confused 
 tumult. The British moved forward with dogged slow- 
 ness, but with the air of men who did not propose to go 
 back. When within some sixty yards of the enemy they 
 halted for a moment, that the lines might be dressed, 
 and then there broke from the steady ranks that sudden 
 shout, deep-throated and challenging — what Napier de- 
 scribes as the most menacing sound ever heard in war 
 —the hurrah of the British soldier as he meets his foes 
 in battle — " a thunder-OTOwl edfjed with melodious ire in 
 alt," as Carlyle put it ! From the French lines there 
 came a tumult of shrill sounds ; but after the fight was 
 over, prisoners declared that the volume, the angry, 
 challenging menace of that deep shout from the steadily 
 movinoi' British, shook the French lines as no blast of 
 musketry could have shaken them ! 
 
 The leading squadrons of cavalry on both sides 
 dashed through the intervals of infantry; and, with 
 one long, sustained, and crackling sound of crashing 
 blades under which rolled like some deep bass the 
 shouts of the contending horsemen, the squadrons met 
 in full charge betwixt the moving lines of infantry. At 
 first the French horse prevailed by mere dint of num- 
 bers and the speed of their charge, and the broken 
 English squadrons were driven back on the infantry.
 
 68 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 These wheeled quickly to let the broken horse through, 
 and formed up again. 
 
 On came the steady infantry line, the tramp of dis- 
 ciplined feet sounding louder and yet louder. The 
 French opened fire first, and from a distance ; but the 
 British strode doggedly forward, not firing a shot. An 
 officer in the Welsh Fusiliers says, " Our people, march- 
 ing in close order, as firm as a wall, did not fire till we 
 came within sixty paces, and still kept advancing." 
 The men, as a matter of fact, never halted, or broke 
 step while they reloaded, but marched and fired with 
 such resolute swiftness on their foes, that, as the officer 
 wo quoted wrote, " When the smoke blew off a little, 
 instead of being among their living, we found the dead 
 in heaps by us," " It was the regiment of Navarre that 
 we met, one of their prime regiments ; but our second 
 fire turned them to the right about, and upon a long 
 trot. We engaged two other regiments afterwards, one 
 after the other, who stood but one fire each, and their 
 blue French footguards gave way without firing a shot." 
 This officer notes that other British regiments who 
 opened fire at a greater distance, sustained more loss 
 than did the Fusiliers ; " for," he adds, " the French will 
 stand fire at a distance, though it is plain they cannot 
 look an enemy in the face. What preserved us was 
 keeping close order, and advancing near the enemy ere 
 we fired." 
 
 It was the dogged oncoming of the British infantry, 
 without pause or falter, resistless as fate, with one 
 far-running ceaseless spray of flame, and the roll of 
 unceasing musketry — before which the first French line 
 was simply shattered to atoms. And still on, ever on.
 
 GEORGE IT. AT DETTINGEN 69 
 
 came that astonislaing infantry. Through the eddying 
 white smoke the French caught glimpses of a moving 
 human wall, that never wavered or halted, but, with 
 perpetual roll of musketry, moved steadily and grimly 
 forward. 
 
 Upon that wide front of footmen, De Grammont, as 
 his only hope, launched his whole force of cavalry in 
 one furious charge. And more gallant cavalry never, 
 perhaps, joined in the shock of battle than those squad- 
 rons which, through the white smoke, broke on the long 
 front of British infantry. The Black Musketeers were 
 there, the Gendarmes, with breastplates and backpieces 
 of steel, and long, cutting swords; the Maison du Roi, 
 &c. With gleaming helmets, and thunder of galloping 
 hoofs, and long line of tossing horse-heads and wind- 
 blown manes, the French cavalry burst through the 
 white smoke on the British footmen, and, by the mere 
 impact, the slender red line was instantly broken. But 
 every human atom of it thrust and shot as doggedly as 
 ever, as the fierce horseman rode past him or over him ! 
 On to the second line, but with diminished impact, the 
 French cavalry rode. But it was like riding into the 
 flames of a furnace. The ceaseless musketry scorched 
 them on every side. The English lines might be 
 broken, but they fought as fiercely in fragments as they 
 did in battalions. The second and third British lines, 
 in fact, in the very climax of the tumult and thunder 
 of the struggle, fell swiftly into a formation which 
 speaks volumes for their resource, and discipline, and 
 coolness, and which proved fatal to the rushing squad- 
 rons of French horse. They fell into "lanes," down 
 which — merely because they offered an opening — the
 
 70 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 galloping squadrons of tlie Frencli cavalry swept as 
 with the fury of a sea-tide. 
 
 But each side of the " lane " was a front of perfectly 
 steady and swiftly firing infantry ; and on that comb- 
 like formation, steady and of unshaken valour to its 
 least unit, the French cavalry charge exhausted itself. 
 Back, out of smoke and tumult, and the thunder of 
 unceasing volleys, the French cavalry came — riderless 
 horses, solitary flying horsemen, or broken, desperately- 
 fighting, clusters, still striking, perhaps, with their long 
 swords across the muskets at the British infantry, but 
 falling as they struck. 
 
 De Noailles had watched with astonished wrath his 
 nephew abandon the impregnable post he was ordered 
 to hold, and sally out to meet the British in the open. 
 " Grammont," he exclaimed, " has ruined all my plans ; " 
 and he hurried to the scene of action to remedy 
 the blunder. But it was too late ! Before the ad- 
 vance of the British lines, with their ceaseless blast 
 of flame - edged musketry, De Grammont's force 
 was simply wrecked. The stately, resonant sentences, 
 indeed, in which Napier, more than seventy years after- 
 wards, described the charge of the Fusiliers at Albuera, 
 might be applied, without varying the tint of an adjec- 
 tive, to the men who fought at Dettingen : " Nothing 
 
 could stop that astonishing infantry Their 
 
 flashing eyes were bent on the dark columns in front; 
 their measured tread shook the ground ; their dreadful 
 volleys swept away the head of every formation ; their 
 deafening shouts drowned the dissonant cries that 
 broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd." 
 
 The fight lasted four hours, and then the French
 
 LORD STAIR 
 
 From a tneszotint by F. Faber, after the fortrait by A. Ramsav
 
 GEORGE II. AT DETTINGEN 7 1 
 
 regiments broke into mere flying, disordered panic. 
 De Grammont tried to make a flank attack on tlie 
 British with the Gardes Franqaises, but even that dite 
 corps threw away their arms, and, preferring water to 
 fire, pkmged into the river, drowning by whole com- 
 panies. French barrack-room wit named tliem after- 
 wards, "canards du Mein" — "ducks of the Maine!" 
 De Noailles tried to withdraw his forces with some 
 degree of order across the two bridges to the southern 
 bank ; but an army mad with panic, and with discipline 
 temporarily dissolved, cannot be manoeuvred, and, as 
 British mess-room wit afterwards put it, the French 
 that sad June evening "had, in reality, three bridges, 
 one of them not wooden, and carpeted with blue 
 cloth ! " Even a French account describes the regi- 
 ment of Guards as "running with great precipitation 
 into the Maine, when nearly as many were drowned as 
 were killed in the fighting." The French left 6000 
 dead and wounded on the field, and many standards 
 and prisoners were taken by the British, whose loss did 
 not exceed 3000. 
 
 Their victory left the British exhausted. They 
 hurled themselves, indeed, on the French with such 
 overmastering fierceness, chiefly because these stood 
 betwixt the 16,000 hungry Englishmen, Scotchmen, 
 and Irishmen and their dinner ! But they could not 
 pursue the broken French ; and, camping all night on 
 the field of battle, they marched slowly and sullenly, 
 when the next day broke, to Hanau and their supplies. 
 Stair, who was eager to pursue Do Noailles, summed up 
 the battle to a French officer with bitter wit. " You 
 advanced when you ought to have stood, and we stood
 
 72 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 when we ought to have advanced." But " small as was 
 the victory," says Green in his " Short History of the 
 English People," " it produced amazing results." It 
 drove the French out of Germany. It shattered into 
 mere dust the " Family Compact " betwixt the two 
 branches of the Bourbons. And the fight is memorable 
 as showing, once more, how the dogged, all-enduring 
 courage of the British rank and file will, in the last 
 resort, almost compensate for the lack of brains in 
 British generals. " If I blundered," said Wellington, 
 long afterwards, " I could always rely on my soldiers to 
 pull me through." That is an ancient and undying 
 characteristic of the British soldier !
 
 PRINCE FERDINAND 
 
 From a mezzntint bv R. Houston
 
 THE BATTLE OF MINDEN 
 
 August i, 1759 
 
 THE battle of Minden might almost be described as 
 having been won by a blunder, and a blunder about 
 so insignificant a thing as a mere preposition ! Prince 
 Ferdinand, who commanded the allied army, had placed 
 the six regiments of British infantry, who formed the 
 flower of his force, in his centre, and had given orders that 
 they were to move forward in attack " on sound of drum." 
 The British read the order, " with sound of drum." The 
 seventy-five splendid squadrons of horse who formed 
 the French centre were in their immediate front. The 
 British saw their foes before them, line on line of tossing 
 horse -heads and gleaming helmets, of scarlet and steel, 
 and wind-blown crests. What other "signal of battle" 
 was needed ? Obeying the warlike impulse in their blood, 
 they at once moved forward "with sound of drum" — 
 every drummer -boy in the regiments, in fact, plying his 
 drum-sticks with furious energy, and those waves of 
 warlike sound stirred the dogged valour of the British 
 to a yet fiercer daring ! Prince Ferdinand never con- 
 templated such a movement ; it violated all the rules of 
 war. What sane general would have launched 6000 
 infantry in line to attack 10,000 of the finest cavalry in 
 Europe in ranked squadrons ? It is on record that the 
 Hanoverian troops placed in support of the British
 
 74 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 regiments watched with dumb aud amazed alarm the 
 " stupid " British moving serenely forward to a contest 
 so lunatic. But to the confusion of all critics, and to 
 the mingled wrath and shame of the French generals, 
 these astonishing British regiments tumbled Contades' 
 splendid cavalry into mere distracted ruin, and left his 
 wings disconnected military fragments, and won, in the 
 most irregular manner, the great battle of Minden ! 
 
 Minden is, for Englishmen, not the least glorious fight 
 in that long procession of battles we call the Seven 
 Years' War — a war which, from the English standpoint, 
 has much better moral justification than most people 
 suppose. The Seven Years' War itself was but a sort of 
 bloody postscript to the war of the Austrian Succession ; 
 this, in turn, was merely the second act in the great 
 struggle labelled picturesquely from "Jenkins's ear." 
 This, again, was but the final syllable in that long dis- 
 pute, argued with the iron lips of guns and the glittering 
 edges of swords, which runs back to the days of Drake 
 and of Hawkins, and of "the singeing of the King of 
 Spain's beard." Spain claimed, as the gift of the Pope, 
 the exclusive lordship of the New World. One-half the 
 planet, in brief, was shut, with a bit of ecclesiastical 
 sealing- Avax, against everybody but Spaniards ! A British 
 ship found trading in the Spanish Main was treated as a 
 smuggler or a pirate, or as a combination of both. So 
 it came to pass there was " no peace south of the Line." 
 
 But the situation at last grew intolerable. Captain 
 Jenkins, of the good ship Rebecca, sailing innocently, as 
 he declared, from Jamaica to London, was boarded by a 
 guarda costa off Havanna ; his ear was slashed or torn 
 oflf, and thrown in his face, and he was bidden " carry it
 
 THE BATTLE OF MINDEN 75 
 
 home to his king and tell him how British traders in 
 Spanish waters were treated." Jenkins did so, quite 
 literally; and that little bit of amputated sea-going 
 flesh turned out to be the picturesque and concrete 
 symbol about which the slow-beating British imagina- 
 tion kindled to a white fire of wrath. The statesmen 
 of England were against war ; the people were for war ; 
 and no one doubts to-day that the people were wiser 
 than the statesmen. The inarticulate common-sense of 
 the masses divined more truly the real questions at 
 stake than did the wit of politicians. The commercial 
 supremacy of England, its colonial empire, the question 
 whether America was to be developed on the British 
 or on the Spanish type, were amongst the issues in- 
 volved. There might, indeed, have been no United 
 States but for that slash at Captain Jenkins's ear ! 
 The northern half of the great American continent 
 to-day might have been, like the southern half, a 
 cluster of shrewishly wrangling, half Indian, half Latin 
 republics. 
 
 But another dispute poured its gall into the quarrel. 
 The two branches of the Bourbon House in Paris and 
 Madrid were hnked together by the secret and infamous 
 Family Compact, a compact described by Burke as " the 
 most odious and formidable conspiracy against the 
 liberties of Europe'" which history records. It was 
 practically a secret alliance for the partition of Europe 
 in the interests of the Bourbons, and it was certainly 
 fraught with deadly peril to England, whose commercial 
 freedom — whoso very right to exist — it menaced. The 
 Family Compact brought France into the war, first as a 
 tributary, then as a principal : the war of " Jenkins's
 
 76 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 ear " expanded into tlie war of the Austrian Succession ; 
 and England, fighting on the Main or the Weser, was 
 really fighting for her colonies, her trade, her very 
 existence. She was contending, indeed, for the whole 
 future of civilisation, though probably her statesmen 
 very imperfectly understood the real scale of the great 
 drama in which they were taking part. George II. 
 certainly saw Hanover rather than America. The 
 Treasury benches bounded the intellectual horizon of 
 such politicians as Newcastle or Pulteney. Only Pitt, 
 with his kingly brain and piercing vision for the remoter 
 causes and ultimate issues of events, understood the 
 real scale of the great contest in which England was 
 engaged. 
 
 On the French side the contest was planned on great 
 lines, and fought over a very wide area. Belleisle was 
 the French minister of war, and his strategy was almost 
 as spacious and magnificent as that of Napoleon himself. 
 He fed the war in India and America ; he menaced 
 England herself with invasion by the mighty armament 
 he assembled at Brest ; and with 50,000 choice French 
 troops on the Weser, under Contades and Broglie, he 
 threatened to overrun Hanover. Clive in India, Wolfe 
 at Quebec, Hawke off Quiberon, shattered the armies 
 and fleets and hopes of France. On the Continent, 
 however, England had brave troops, but no general. 
 Pitt, who had a great statesman's gift for choosing fit 
 instruments, determined to borrow a commander for the 
 allied forces. He found his man in Prince Ferdinand — 
 a fine soldier, trained in the school of Frederick the 
 Great. Ferdinand had something of Marlborough's 
 miraculous tact in dealing with men, and much, too, of
 
 THE BATTLE OF MINDEN 77 
 
 Prince Eugene's gallant fighting quality. A tough, 
 swift-visioned, cool, and high-minded soldier, of uncon- 
 querable patience and exhaustless resource, and with a 
 true genius for war. Wellington said a general's busi- 
 ness consisted chiefly in guessing " what was happening 
 on the other side of the hill " ; and few soldiers have 
 ever surpassed Ferdinand in the faculty for reading the 
 thoughts and plans of the generals with whom he was 
 contending. How serene and invincible must have been 
 the quality of Ferdinand's patience may be judged by 
 the fact that he achieved the feat of successfully com- 
 manding a miscellaneous host of Austrians, Prussians, 
 Hanoverians, and British. And if the British soldier of 
 1759 had all the fighting qualities of his breed — the 
 headlong daring of the men who swept up the great 
 breach at Badajos, the iron valour of the unconquerable 
 infantry who held the squares at Waterloo — yet he had, 
 in addition, a good many of the troublesome qualities of 
 his race. The British soldier is not very docile to a 
 commander who has the bad taste not to be an Ens^lish- 
 man himself, and who delivers his orders with a foreign 
 accent. 
 
 Carlyle quotes a description, given by Mauvillon, of 
 the British soldier of the last century, as seen through 
 the spectacles of German officers, which shows how 
 enduring are the characteristics of the type. "Braver 
 troops when on the field of battle, and under arms 
 against the enemy," wrote Mauvillon, " you will nowhere 
 find in the world — that is the truth ; and with that the 
 sum of their military merits ends." The British in- 
 fantryman, Mauvillon says, in effect, is sulky and stub- 
 born ; the cavalry private has " such a foolish love for
 
 78 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 his horse " as makes him " astonishingly pkmderous of 
 forage." The British officer was totally unequipped 
 with either knowledge of war or fear of death. " They 
 have," says Mauvillon, " a quiet, natural arrogance which 
 tempts them to despise the enemy as well as the danger; 
 and as they very seldom think of making any surprisal 
 themselves, they generally take it for granted that the 
 enemy will as little." " It is well known," adds Mauvil- 
 lon, " how much these people despise all foreigners " — 
 especially, it may be added, when they are Hanoverians ! 
 Yet Ferdinand managed his British exquisitely. He 
 asked of them only what they could give him, and what 
 a good general most values, magnificent fighting service. 
 Ferdinand subtly flattered them, indeed, by always 
 thrusting them into the place where hard knocks were 
 most abundant. In Contades and Broglie — the "war- 
 god Broglie " of Carlyle, who, thhty years afterwards, 
 flitted briefly and tragically across the smoky sky of the 
 French Revolution — he had opponents of very high 
 quality ; yet Ferdinand out-generalled them as com- 
 pletely in the strife of wits before Minden as his gallant 
 British regiments overthrew them by actual push of 
 pike and bayonet in the battle itself. 
 
 Contades and Brog-lie, whose united forces were a 
 little short of 70,000 men, were threatening Hanover ; 
 Ferdinand, with some 54,000 men, had the task of 
 defending it. Contades had taken up a position of 
 great strength in front of Minden. His right wing was 
 on the Weser, his left was covered by a morass, im- 
 passible to either cavalry or artillery; the Bastau, a 
 black, slow-creeping stream with treacherous banks, 
 served as a sort of natural wet ditch to his front ; and
 
 THE BATTLE OF MINDEN 
 
 79 
 
 here, with 30,000 men and a powerful artillery, Contades 
 sat unassailable, while Broglie, with a force of almost 
 
 BATTLE OF MINDEN 
 August ist. 1759. 
 
 a..3„ French Army behind Mindcn, 
 
 July 3Jst. 
 h.b.Broglic's detachment 
 c.c. The Allied Army, July 31st. 
 d.d.Wangenheim 
 
 e. The Due de Brissac 
 
 f. The Hereditary Prince 
 g.g.Frenvh Army in battle order, 
 
 August Ist. 
 h.h. Allied Army about to attack, 
 
 August 1st. 
 i. Caualry under Sackuille 
 
 LoDijinan's" Frederick Uic Great." 
 
 I'/alkirCrlSoHtall sc. 
 
 equal strength, was in touch on the farther bank of the 
 Weser. Ferdinand could not attack the position held
 
 8o FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 by the French in front of Minden ; he dared not expose 
 his own flank to the counter-stroke of Contades, while 
 he marched off to prevent Broglie overrunning Hano- 
 ver ; it only remained to tempt Contades out of his 
 ring of sheltering morasses. And the story of the cool 
 daring and light-handed skill with which this was done 
 makes a very pretty study in tactics. 
 
 In brief, Ferdinand detached 10,000 men under his 
 nephew, the hereditary Prince of Brunswick, a gallant, 
 hard-hitting soldier, to make a snatch at Gohfeld, ten 
 miles to the rear of Contades, and so cut off his meal 
 waggons, lumbering slowly down from Cassel. Next he 
 thrust out his left wing, under Wangenheim, leaving an 
 apparently careless and fatal gap of three miles betwixt 
 wing and centre. Ferdinand, that is, committed — or 
 seemed to commit, and with ostentation — under the 
 very eyes of the eagerly watching French generals, two 
 unpardonable military blunders. He divided his force 
 in the presence of the enemy by despatching 10,000 
 to attack Gohfeld ; he permitted his left wing to lie 
 Avithin actual stroke of the foe, and left it without 
 support. Contades resembled, in a word, a wary and 
 much experienced trout at the bottom of a deep pool, 
 and Ferdinand's left wing was the fly with which the 
 trout was being daintily tempted to make a dash out. 
 The 10,000 men marching on Gohfeld, of course, gave 
 the impression that the allied army was divided, as 
 well as ill-placed. On the evening of July 31, 1759, 
 Contades held a council of war, and it was determined 
 to attack, suddenly — before dawn — and with the whole 
 strength of the French army. The sound of the tattoo 
 that night was to be the signal for movement. Con-
 
 THE BATTLE OF MINDEN 8 1 
 
 tades' army was to cross the Bastaii by nineteen bridges, 
 already constructed, form into eight columns, and push, 
 like the thrust of a spear, through the apparent gap 
 betwixt Ferdinand's left wing and his centre, Wangen- 
 heim would thus be caught betwixt the main body of 
 the French and the Weser ; and Broglio, marching 
 along the banks of the Weser, was to crush that trun- 
 cated left wing into powder, and then join Contades in 
 a victorious assault on Ferdinand's main body. But 
 Ferdinand divined the plans of the French council of 
 war as accurately as though he had assisted to make 
 them. He guessed, indeed, the very hour and method 
 of the attack. At one o'clock that same night his 
 cavalry was saddled ; and while the stars yet shone in 
 the misty heavens, and while the French, with much 
 confusion and tumult, were pouring across their nineteen 
 bridges, Ferdinand's troops, in perfect silence and order, 
 marching on converging lines, had filled up the apparent 
 gap, and stood in order of battle ready for the fight. 
 
 Day broke, grey and uncertain, with fog, and the 
 French moved stumblingly, and with many halts, across 
 the heath, rough with undergrowth, in front of Minden. 
 Broglie, with the bank of the Weser to guide him, 
 reached Wangenheim's front just as the eastern sky 
 began to whiten with the dawn, but he would not 
 attack until he had seen«jContades' columns marching 
 past Wangenheim's flank. About eight o'clock Con- 
 tades, riding in front of his slowly advancing battalions, 
 mounted the low empty ridge which marked the ap- 
 parent gap in Ferdinand's position, and from which he 
 expected to see Wangenheim's undefended flank, lying 
 open to his stroke. The grey mist, slowly lifting and 
 
 F
 
 82 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 blown into eddies by a faint wind, still stretched over 
 the plain, but through it there broke on Contades' 
 astonished vision the outlines of a great army in stead- 
 fast battle array — far- stretching lines of solid infantry, 
 punctuated with batteries, and edged with ordered 
 squadrons of horse. The " gap " had vanished. Fer- 
 dinand's apparently abandoned left wing on the Weser 
 was knitted by a chain of marshalled battalions to his 
 centre. This was formed of three far-extended lines of 
 British infantry, a long ribbon of steel and scarlet; 
 while yet farther to the right, ranked in menacing 
 squadrons, was the British and Hanoverian cavalry. 
 With a stroke Prince Ferdinand had cancelled all the 
 advantage of position on the part of the French, and 
 drawn them out to meet him in the open. 
 
 Contades could not retreat ; to cross those nineteen 
 bridges with Ferdinand thundering on his rear would 
 have been ruinous. He had, after all, great superiority 
 in numbers, and, as quickly as might be, he made his 
 disposition for battle. Contades adopted a very ominous 
 precedent — the formation of Tallard at Blenheim. He 
 placed his cavalry — a magnificent force of 10,000 horse- 
 men — in his centre, covered their front by the fire of his 
 powerful artillery, and formed his infantry on either 
 wing. A small wood screened the British and Hano- 
 verian cavalry on Ferdinand's right; some rough 
 ground served to protect the Hanoverian and Prussian 
 battalions that formed his left. But the centre was 
 clear. Across a narrow interval of heath the crowding 
 squadrons of French horsemen and the steadfast lines of 
 British infantry gazed at each other. Nothing separated 
 them but a few hundred yards of dry heathy soil, across
 
 THE BATTLE OF MINDEN 83 
 
 which, with thunder of galloping hoofs, and the glitter 
 of 10,000 brandished swords, the French cavalry might 
 ride in one mad, breathless, overwhelming charge, which 
 would break through those triple lines of exposed in- 
 fantry as through a screen of bulrushes. In the oppor- 
 tunity for a sublime and apparently resistless cavalry 
 charge, indeed, Minden anticipated Waterloo, and ex- 
 ceeded it ; with this further advantage that the French 
 horsemen had to hurl themselves, not against stubborn 
 and moveless squares, with their double lines of stead- 
 fast bayonets, and flame of musketry fire from four 
 faces. They had before them a long slowly-moving 
 front of infantry in line. For now came the amazing 
 " blunder " which makes the wonder the glory of 
 Minden. This astonishing infantry was advancing, with 
 flags uncased, and loud roll of drums, and steady tread 
 of disciplined feet to attack the cavalry ! 
 
 The six Minden regiments are the 12th (or East 
 Suffolk), the 23rd (or Royal Welsh FusiHers), the 37th, 
 the 20th (or East Devonshire), the 25th, and the 51st. 
 Of these, the three first named, under Colonel Pole, 
 formed the first line ; the last three, under Generals 
 Kingsley and Waldegrave, formed the second line ; they 
 were supported by a Hanoverian brigade of three batta- 
 lions. According to the " Historical Records of the 1 2th 
 Foot," at a later stage in the fight the second line of 
 British foot was formed on the right of the first line, 
 and the Hanoverian brigade on its left, thus making one 
 far-stretching and slender infantry line. But this move- 
 ment is not reported in other accounts of the fight, and 
 must be considered very doubtful. It is always difficult 
 to translate into literary terms the tumult and con-
 
 84 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 fusion, the charges and retreats of a great fight ; but a 
 hundred years ago the art of accurately reporting the 
 movements of a great battle had certainly not been 
 invented, and what took place under the roof of battle- 
 smoke can, as far as details are concerned, be only 
 guessed. On the whole, it must be accepted that 
 Ferdinand's centre, where the decisive struggle took 
 place, consisted of three lines of infantry, of which the 
 first and second were British, and the third Hanoverian. 
 Soon after eight o'clock on the morning of August i, 
 a not too vigorous attack on Hahlen, a hamlet on the 
 extreme left of Contades' position, was made by some 
 Hessian regiments, and Avhile this splutter of fight was 
 still in progress, the British regiments, who formed the 
 centre of the Allied forces, put themselves in movement, 
 and, with all their drums beating loudly, and flags 
 uncased, moved forward to attack the 10,000 gallant 
 cavalry opposed to them, Contades had covered his 
 centre by the cross-fire of some sixty-six guns, and these 
 at once smote the steady British lines with a sleet of 
 iron hail ; the British artillery, moving quickly to the 
 front, opened, with fierce energy, on the French batteries 
 in reply, and for nearly half-an-hour the great artillery 
 duel raged, deep calling unto deep from either line. 
 Presently the English line, steady as if on parade, was 
 visible through the artillery smoke. A gust of wind 
 swept the landscape for a moment clear, and the French 
 cavalry saw before them a stretch of turf, over which a 
 long slender line of infantry was moving coolly forward 
 to attack them. The French cavalry was under the 
 command of Prince Xavier of Saxony, and in its crowded 
 squadrons were some of the finest regiments in the ser-
 
 THE BATTLE OF MINDEN 85 
 
 vice of France — the Carbineers, the Black and Grey and 
 Red Mousquetaires, the Gendarmes — armed like the 
 French Life Guards at Waterloo with steel breastplates 
 and back-pieces. The leading division of French 
 cavalry consisted of the Carbineers and the Black and 
 Grey Mousquetaires ; and, with tossing manes and wind- 
 blown plumes, with the ring of scabbard on stirrup, and 
 the thunder of innumerable hoofs, the Carbineers lead- 
 ing, they swept down on the British line. 
 
 That line halted for a moment, dressed its front 
 daintily, and then, from end to end, ran a darting line 
 of flame. It was covered, as by some stroke of magic, 
 Avitli a foam of grey smoke, rent by quick- following 
 blasts of sound, and shining with glancing points of 
 flame. But from that smoky screen broke a flying 
 spray of lead, through which no cavalry, however dar- 
 ing, could force a way. So deadly was the British fire, 
 that the leading French squadrons went down, man and 
 horse, before it, and what a moment before was a dis- 
 ciplined front of charging cavalry, became one wild 
 mass of fallen horses and slain riders. The squadrons 
 thundering on their rear had to break their order, and 
 swing to right or left to escape the struggling mass in 
 their path. The impact of the charge was thus broken, 
 and the new squadrons, coming fiercely up, but wheel- 
 ing as they rode to clear their fallen comrades, were, in 
 turn, smitten with a cruel flank fire, and fell by scores. 
 No cavalry could break through that front of fire and 
 steel, and the French cavalry fell back shattered and 
 half destroyed. Then the British line coolly resumed 
 its movement and once more moved on. But ere many 
 minutes had passed, through the smoke came a long
 
 86 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 line of tossing horse-heads and bent helmets and flash- 
 ing sword -blades — it was the French cavalry in the 
 unchecked fury of another charge ! Once more the 
 British along their whole front, broke into the flame of 
 musketry volley, so close and deadly that it broke the 
 line of galloping horsemen as though a procession of 
 aerolites had swept through it. Then again the British 
 line resumed its steady, inexorable advance. Some of 
 the veterans of Fontenoy were in the Minden regiments, 
 and the " terrible column " of Fontenoy, which with its 
 "slow inflexibility" broke Saxe's army in two in that 
 great fight, did not surpass in its fierce valour, or its 
 torrent of deadly and continuous fire, the marvellous 
 line of infantry that was now pushing into ruin the 
 gallant French cavalry that formed the centre of Con- 
 tades' line. 
 
 The French horse certainly did not fail in courage. 
 They rallied again and again; six times they hurled 
 themselves in wrathful charge on that steadily moving 
 British front. One gallant regiment, the Mestre-de- 
 Camp, gallantly led, did, according to one version, break 
 through the British line, and through the gap a torrent 
 of galloping horses and exultant men stormed. But 
 the broken line, swinging slightly back, tore the flanks 
 of the galloping squadrons with one deadly volley after 
 another, while the second line coolly, as though on par- 
 ade, scorched its head with the flame of its musketry, 
 and the Mestre-de- Camp, smitten with fire on flank and 
 front, simply shrivelled into ruin. The French infantry 
 opened fire on either extremity of the British line, and 
 men fell fast. But this did not arrest the steady flow of 
 the British battalions, and the blasts of rolling musketry
 
 THE BATTLE OF MINDEN 87 
 
 with which they smote into ruin everything in their 
 path. Contades' seventy-five squadrons of cavalry, in 
 brief, were pushed back, or blown back, in one mad 
 tumult of broken, struggling, swearing horsemen. Con- 
 tades himself describes the scene in an oft-quoted sen- 
 tence, which compresses into its wrathful syllables the 
 whole story of Minden. " I have seen," he wrote, " what 
 I never thought to be possible — a single line of infantry 
 break through three lines of cavalry ranked in order of 
 battle, and tumble them into ruin ! " 
 
 Still moving onward, the British line found itself 
 met by a column of Swiss infantry, hastily brought up 
 to arrest the terrible British advance. The Swiss are 
 gallant soldiers, and their leading files moved steadily 
 up to within forty paces of the British line, and then 
 deployed. But the British fire caught them deploying, 
 and though the steady Swiss, with obstinate courage, 
 maintained the fight for a few minutes — until, indeed, 
 the hostile lines were almost touching — yet the fire 
 from the long British front proved resistless, and the 
 two Swiss brigades in turn were driven into broken and 
 disordered retreat. 
 
 At this moment Ferdinand despatched an aide-de- 
 camp at full gallop to order the cavalry that formed his 
 right wing to charge the broken French centre. Lord 
 George Sackville commanded the cavalry, with the 
 Marquis of Granby as second in command. He had 
 under him a splendid body of British and Hanoverian 
 horse, and an opportunity lay before him such as few 
 battles have ever offered. Contades' whole army, in- 
 deed, lay at his mercy. But Sackville was in no mood 
 for charging. He cavilled at his orders ; he affected to
 
 88 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 misunderstand them. Was he to attack with the " whole 
 cavalry," or with the " British cavalry " ? He discovered 
 offence in the eagerness which marked the bearing of 
 the second aide-de-camp, Colonel Fitzroy, who came up 
 with the urgently repeated order to charge. Fitzroy 
 replied that " galloping had put him out of breath," and 
 added that " it was a glorious opportunity for the British 
 cavalry to distinguish themselves." Thrice an aide-de- 
 camp rode up to Lord Sackville with the order to charge, 
 without inducing him to move. Finally he announced 
 that he would himself ride to Prince Ferdinand and 
 ascertain his wishes. He accordingly rode up to the 
 Prince and asked " how he was to come on," and it is a 
 proof of the exhaustless patience of Prince Ferdinand 
 that he calmly replied, " The opportunity is now past, 
 my lord." Sackville, who never lacked audacity, pre- 
 sented himself with unabashed front that night at the 
 Prince's headquarters and talked as loudly of the battle 
 as any one ; but in his general order on the day follow- 
 ing the battle Prince Ferdinand distilled two sentences 
 that had the corrosive power of gall on Lord George 
 Sackville's head. " If," he said, " he had had the good 
 fortune to have had Lieutenant-General the Marquis of 
 Granby at the head of the cavalry of the right wing, 
 his presence would have greatly contributed to make 
 the success of the battle more complete and brilliant." 
 "His serene highness," the general order further ran, 
 " desires and orders the generals of the army that upon 
 all occasions when orders are brought to them by his 
 aides-de-camp, they be obeyed punctually and without 
 delay." 
 
 Lord George Sackville resigned his command and
 
 THE BATTLE OF MINDEN 89 
 
 returned to London, where he was received with almost 
 as furious and deadly an outburst of popular rage as 
 that which met Byng when he returned after the loss of 
 Minorca. British public opinion can forgive a general 
 many faults, but the sin which in its eyes hath never 
 forgiveness is the fault of being slack to charge when a 
 charge is ordered. If the British infantry had covered 
 themselves with glory at Minden, the British cavalry 
 had made themselves the jest of half Europe, and Sack- 
 ville alone was responsible for an incident which, by its 
 shame, scorched as vnth fire the national self-respect. 
 Lord George Sackville bore himself fiercely, and in sten- 
 torian tones challenged a full investigation. He was 
 dismissed from all his posts as a preliminary, and in 
 February 1760 was tried by court-martial. The six 
 months' delay had, of course, told in his favour, and he 
 bore himself not merely with courage, but with haughty 
 arrogance, as though not he, but his judges, were the 
 true criminals. Sackville's defence was that Prince 
 Ferdinand's orders lacked clearness, and that, as a 
 matter of fact, he used all reasonable dihgence in exe- 
 cuting those orders. Three aides-de-camp — two of them 
 British, Captain Ligonier and Colonel Fitzroy, and one a 
 German officer — brought the order to charge to Lord 
 George, and their evidence was definite and fatal. The 
 commander of one of the British cavalry regiments, 
 Colonel Sloper, gave evidence that he noticed Lord 
 George's reluctance to carry out his orders at the time, 
 and said to Ligonier, " For God's sake repeat your orders 
 to that man, that he may not pretend not to understand 
 them. It is near half an hour since he received orders 
 to advance, yet we are still here. But you see the con-
 
 9© FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 dition that he is in." The court-martial, which consisted 
 of eleven lieutenant-generals and four major-generals, 
 i'ound that Lord George had disobeyed his orders, and 
 was unfit to serve his Majesty in any military capacity 
 whatever. George II. struck the culprit's name, with 
 his own hand, from the list of privy councillors, and 
 directed that the sentence of the court-martial should 
 be " published in the public orders of every regiment, 
 not only in Britain, but in America and every quarter of 
 the globe where British troops happen to be, that officers 
 being convinced that neither high birth nor great em- 
 ployments can shelter offence of such nature, and that, 
 seeing they are subject to censures worse than death to 
 a man who has any sense of honour, they may avoid the 
 fatal consequences arising from disobedience of orders." 
 This sentence might have seemed sufficient to ruin 
 any one; but Horace Walpole, the very day the sen- 
 tence on Lord George was published, wrote to Sir 
 Horace Mann, with characteristic shrewdness, " This is 
 not the last we shall hear of him. Whatever were his 
 deficiencies on the day of battle, he has at least shown 
 no want of spirit either in pushing on his trial or during 
 it. I think without much heroism I could sooner have 
 led up the cavalry to the charge than have gone to 
 Whitehall to be worried as he was ; nay, I should have 
 thought with less danger of my life," Grey, in a letter 
 about the same date, notes that when Lord George 
 Sackville heard his sentence read, " his unembarrassed 
 countenance, the looks of revenge, contempt, and of 
 superiority that he bestowed on his accusers, were the 
 admiration of all." As a matter of fact, it is nothing 
 less than absurd to accuse Lord George Sackville of not
 
 THE BATTLE OF MINDEN 9 1 
 
 possessing the soldier's rudimentary virtue of courage. 
 He led his regiment gallantly into the tempest of fire at 
 Fontenoy, and fell wounded in the breast among the 
 tents of the French camp. He fought more than one 
 desperate duel. He was a man of great and varied 
 abilities, but cursed with a jealous and overbearing 
 temper. He had a distinct genius for quarrelling with 
 everybody. Mr George Coventry wrote an elaborate 
 volume to prove that Lord George was the real author 
 of " The Letters of Junius." Nobody entertains that 
 theory now ; but in the quality of suspicious and malig- 
 nant temper, in the faculty for secreting gall, and then 
 sprinkling it on everybody about him, Lord George 
 Sackville might well have vied with " Junius." He had 
 the gall of that bitter satirist, if not his pen. It is pro- 
 bable that on the morning of Minden, Lord George 
 Sackville was in a ferment of sulky British jealousy 
 
 at being under the command of "a d foreigner" 
 
 like Prince Ferdinand ; and he allowed the gall in his 
 blood to so disorder his reason, that he forgot both his 
 duty as a soldier and his honour as a gentleman. 
 
 What increased the unpopularity of Lord George 
 Sackville, with his arrogant temper and sword-cdged 
 speech, was the contrast betwixt him and his second in 
 command, the Marquis of Granby. Granby was every- 
 thing which a British crowd expects an officer — and 
 especially a cavalry officer — to be. Not too clever, per- 
 haps, but handsome, gallant, generous ; open-handed to 
 his friends, adored by his soldiers, dreaded by his enemies. 
 The portrait of Granby by Reynolds represents him bare- 
 headed and conspicuously bald ; and, as Carlyle reminds 
 us, there is a bit of history behind that patch of bald
 
 92 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 scalp sliown in Reynolds' picture. In the figlit at 
 Warburg in 1760 Ferdinand's advance was faring very 
 badly. Granby, at the head of the Blues, his own 
 regiment, rode at a sharp trot for five miles to join the 
 fight, broke into a gallop when the scene of action was 
 reached, and dashed at speed into the rtiel&e. Granby's 
 hat had blown off, and bareheaded, like Clarke leading 
 the heavy brigade into the fight at Balaclava, Granby 
 rode with his bald head among the helmets and sabres 
 of Warburg. Walpole scarcely burlesques the popular 
 craze when, on the news of Minden reaching London, 
 he wrote : " Lord Granby has entirely defeated the 
 French. The foreign gazettes, I suppose, will give this 
 victory to Prince Ferdinand ; but the mob of London, 
 whom I have this moment left, and who must know 
 best, assure me that it is all their own Marquis's doing." 
 No wonder that the British mob, who were willing to 
 send Lord George Sackville's head to the block, painted 
 the Marquis of Granby's head on innumerable public- 
 house signs. The " Markis o' Granby," the haunt of Mr. 
 Weller senior, owed its title to the hard-riding, hard- 
 fighting cavalry leader who fretted and swore at Minden 
 when his leader delayed to charge. 
 
 But Lord George Sackville survived the court- 
 martial. As Lord George Germain, indeed, he played 
 a great part in the political history of his time. George 
 III. restored him to his place in the Privy Council ; he 
 held the post of Secretary of State for the Colonies in 
 the North Cabinet until its resignation in 1782, and 
 shared in the blunders which cost Great Britain her 
 American colonies. It was fitting, perhaps, that the 
 man whose conduct as a cavalry general marred the
 
 THE BATTLE OF MINDEN 93 
 
 glory of Minclen sliould help by his policy as a minister 
 of the Crown to rob England of her great inheritance in 
 America. Yet George III., when the North Cabinet 
 resigned, raised Lord George to the peerage as Viscount 
 Sackvillc. 
 
 Minden was a great battle. The French lost 8000 
 men, thirty pieces of artillery, and thirteen flags. Their 
 whole campaign in Germany was tumbled into wreck. 
 They were driven back, broken and disordered, to the 
 Rhine. But Minden will always be memorable as 
 affording a supreme proof of the fighting quality of the 
 British private. Its contribution to the glory of British 
 generalship may be judged by the performance of Lord 
 George Sackville.
 
 RODNEY AND DE GRASSE AT THE 
 BATTLE OF THE SAINTS 
 
 April 12, 1782 
 
 ALL through the night of April 7, 1782, a chain of 
 . British frigates was stretched across the thirty 
 miles of sea betwixt Martinique and Santa Lucia, and 
 every half-hour or so a flash of light ran as a signal from 
 end to end of the line. Rodney, in his great flagship, 
 the Formidable, with thirty-five ships of the line, was 
 lying in Gros Hot Bay; De Grasse, with the Ville de 
 Paris, the biggest and most splendid ship of war then 
 afloat, was lying in Fort Royal with thirty-four ships of 
 the line, besides frigates and a convoy of 1 50 merchant 
 vessels. That chain of watchful signalling frigates 
 might be described as a huge living tentacle which the 
 British admiral stretched across the thirty miles of sea, 
 and by Avliich, in spite of the darkness, he felt each 
 move of his great antagonist. 
 
 Morning came, as it comes in the tropics, with glow 
 and splendour, and while the stars were still shining, 
 white and faint, in the sky, the look-outs on the mast- 
 heads of the outermost British frigates, peering into Fort 
 Royal itself, saw that the French ships were dropping 
 their topsails. With stamp of innumerable feet on the 
 resounding decks, and loud distracted clamour of
 
 LORD RODNICV 
 
 From a mezzotint iy J. Watson, a/ta- the portrait by Sir Joshua 
 
 Reynolds. P.R.A.
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS 95 
 
 human voices, 250 ships at once — stately liners and 
 smart frigates, and clumsy merchantmen — were heaving 
 anchor. The French fleet was stirring, and, huge and 
 confused — a forest of masts, acres of white swelling 
 canvas — De Grasse led out his ships to what was his 
 last battle. From masthead to masthead, in a flutter 
 of tiny flags, the news sped down the line of British 
 frigates to Rodney in Gros Hot Bay, and with swift 
 energy, but in characteristic silence, and with the 
 ordered regular movements of a well-drilled regiment 
 deploying, the British came out to what was the greatest 
 sea-battle which, up to that date, the eighteenth 
 century had ^vitnessed. 
 
 The war growing out of the revolt of the British 
 colonies in America was drawing to a close, and for Great 
 Britain it was closing in disaster and gloom. Her 
 troops had known defeat and surrender in America. 
 There had been rebellion in Ireland ; Spain demanded 
 Gibraltar as the price of peace ; France, in the accents 
 of a conqueror, was proposing that Great Britain should 
 give up all her possessions in India save Bengal. Only 
 Rodney's sea victories saved the fame of England. He 
 had relieved Gibraltar. He crushed the Spanish fleet 
 off St. Vincent, and the fire of the pursuit with which, 
 through tempest and darkness, he chased the flying 
 Spaniards into Cadiz, had in it, to quote Hannay, " some- 
 thing of the Quiberon touch." It recalled Hawke's 
 fierce and dashing chase of Conflans thirty years before. 
 
 But the greatest of Rodney's sea victories was that 
 now in sight. De Grasse, with a fleet which represented 
 the utmost naval power of France, and carrying, in 
 addition, 5000 veteran troops, sailed for the West Indies
 
 96 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 to overthrow the British power there. A Spanish fleet of 
 fourteen ships of the line, and 8000 troops, was to join 
 De Grasse otf Hayti. Thus an armada of fifty ships of 
 the line, with 13,000 troops on board, would sweep down 
 upon the British possessions from Barbados to Jamaica, 
 in simply resistless strength. So confident of success 
 were both French and Spaniards, that Don Galvez, who 
 commanded the Spanish contingent, assumed the official 
 title of " Governor of Jamaica " while yet lying in 
 Havana. This was selling the bear's hide before the 
 bear itself had been killed ! Rodney, with Hood as his 
 second in command, and a great fleet of thirty-six ships 
 of the line, had to meet this threatening^ combination, 
 and England at that moment possessed no sailor better 
 fitted for the task. He was now sixty-four years of age, 
 and his naval career had begun when he was a mere 
 child. He was, therefore, as thorough a sailor as any 
 salt in his forecastle, yet he was no mere " tarpaulin." 
 
 A man of brilliant parts, of aristocratic tastes and 
 connections, he had been a member of the House of 
 Commons, Governor of Newfoundland, Master of Green- 
 wich Hospital. He was familiar with great men and 
 great affairs. Few men ever knew more alternations of 
 fortune than Rodney. He had led British fleets to vic- 
 tory, and afterwards himself had to flee before the 
 terrors of a bailiffs warrant to France, and so escape 
 the pursuit of his creditors. A story, which has some 
 evidence in its favour, tells how he was there offered 
 the command of a French fleet if he would take arms 
 against his own country. Rodney replied to the ofier 
 by affecting to think that the bearer of it was tempora- 
 rily insane. The Due de Chartres — infamous afterwards
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS 97 
 
 as Philippe Egalite — asked Rodney what would happen 
 if he met the British fleet off Brest, " In that case," 
 said Rodney, " your Highness will have an opportunity 
 of learning English." The generosity of a French noble- 
 man, the Marechal do Biron, enabled Rodney to settle 
 with his English creditors, and in 1778 he returned to 
 his native country to lead her fleet to the West Indies 
 and destroy, only four years afterwards, the French naval 
 power there. The sum lent by old Do Biron to Rodney 
 was 1000 louis, and that must be pronounced to be, for 
 French interests, the very worst investment of French 
 coin ever made. 
 
 A glance at Rodney's portrait while yet a young man, 
 shows a curious resemblance to the younger Pitt. There 
 are the same curved eyebrows and widely opened eyes, 
 the same angle of forehead, the same challenging and 
 haughty gaze. Rodney expended his life lavishly, drank 
 deeply of what is called "pleasure," grew old quickly, 
 was persecuted with gout, which gave impatient fire to 
 his temper and scribbled his face with the characters of 
 pain. Hence the sharpened gravity shown in his later 
 portraits. Rodney was a man with many faults, but he 
 had a great genius for battle. Green, the historian, 
 describes him as " the greatest of English seamen save 
 Nelson and Blake " ; and it is certain that betAvixt 
 Blake's great defeat of Van Tromp in the Strait and 
 Nelson's Titanic victory at Trafalgar, there is no sea 
 battle which, for scale and far-reaching importance, can 
 compare with Rodney's defeat of De Grasse. 
 
 Rodney, however, had not Blake's mingled simplicity 
 and loftiness of character, and he lacked Nelson's electri- 
 cal fire, and his faculty for knitting his officers to him- 
 
 G
 
 98 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 self with a personal affection which made them, to use 
 Nelson's own phrase, " a band of brothers." Rodney 
 was too much of an aristocrat to try to win where he 
 could command, and if he wrought his fleet into a 
 perfect instrument of battle, flexible through all its 
 parts to his every thought, he did this by mere force 
 of imperious will. " I will be admiral," was his motto. 
 
 There were evil traditions at that moment in the 
 naval service of Great Britain. Byng had been shot on 
 his own quarter-deck for half-heartedness in battle. 
 After Mathews's action oft' Toulon, in 1 744, the admiral 
 himself, his second in command, and eleven captains 
 out of twenty-nine, were court-martialled. Mathews 
 himself was cashiered because he had broken the line — an 
 offence to the prim tactics of that day — and his captains 
 because they did not follow him when he led doAvn on to 
 the enemy. Of the eleven captains, says Mahan, one 
 died, one deserted, seven were dismissed, only two were 
 acquitted. Rodney himself had been cheated of a great 
 victory over Guichen, in 1780, by the deliberate dis- 
 obedience of his own captains ; and the story of how he 
 created a new discipline in his fleet, and a new sense of 
 duty and honour amongst his captains, is very stirring. 
 He drilled his great fleet as a sharp-tempered sergeant 
 drills a squad of recruits. " Every captain in this fleet," 
 he said to a friend, " thinks himself fit to be prime- 
 minister of Great Britain," and Rodney spared no pains 
 to cure them of that delusion. The service, it must be 
 added, was fissured by political divisions. A Wliig cap- 
 tain was capable of remembering his politics even in the 
 flaming stress of battle, and of refusing effective help to 
 another British captain because he was guilty of being a
 
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 NewYork< 
 
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 Wash!ng-toii<^ {t y 
 
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 'Savannah 
 
 
 
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 Bermuda Is. J' 
 
 Guadeloupe \ \ 
 
 Basse Terre' 
 
 Les Saintes 
 
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 jT^ Marie 
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 Dominica 
 
 Martinique 
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 Cros Hot Ba 
 
 THE SCENE OF S^k.LJucia 
 THE FIGHT. <^ J 
 
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 St.Kitts\^ eAnti 
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 Copic'l by pcrmisiii.ii fi.,m r ii,t tin M ili ims work, 
 ■■nie Influence of Sc.i I'.nvcr "n Ih.t.iry." 
 
 iraUer CrBoutall iC.
 
 lOO FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Tory. Rodney cffiiced all this. He put liis fleet througli 
 drill inanoeuYres, scourging tliem into orders with angry 
 signals and public rebukes until the captains of the old 
 school, at least, were half-mad with wrath and per- 
 plexity. But he gave to his fleet that first condition of 
 victory, an iron discipline. 
 
 The field upon which these two great fleets were 
 now to manoeuvre and contend for the next three days 
 is a stretch of water, roughly 150 miles in extent from 
 north to south, with a line of four islands — Guade- 
 loupe. Dominica, Martinique, and Santa Lucia — running 
 through it, of which the three first named were French, 
 and the last English. The actual battle took place in 
 the channel betwixt Guadeloupe and Dominica, some 
 twenty-three miles wide. In the centre, slightly west- 
 ward, is a group of islets called the Saints, which gives 
 its name to the battle. 
 
 Of the four days' manoeuvring which intervened 
 betwixt the morning of April 8 and the great fight of 
 the 1 2th, it is needless here to speak. Fleets in those 
 sad days were governed by what may be called parade 
 tactics, and their combats resembled the thrust and 
 parry and flourish, the doubling, and the disengaging of 
 a ceremonious duel, rather than the close and desperate 
 fighting of Blake with his Dutchmen more than a 
 century before, and of Nelson and his daring school 
 twenty years afterwards. The ideal of an admiral in 
 the early part of the eighteenth century was to keep his 
 line intact, to manoeuvre ingeniously for the advantage 
 of the wind, to graze past his enemy's line from head to 
 rear, each ship exchanging broadsides with each hostile 
 ship as she passed. One fleet, more or less crippled,
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS lOI 
 
 crawls up to windward, the other flutters down to lee- 
 ward, and tlien the battle ceremoniously ends. There 
 was no closing in fiery wrestle, no rush of boarders 
 across the splintered bulwarks, no " ganging down into 
 the middle o' it," to quote the words of the Scotch 
 captain at Camperdown. So all the naval battles of 
 that period were loitering and indecisive. De Grasse 
 was of that school of tactics ; and, though Rodney in the 
 approaching battle was destined to bring this style of 
 fighting to a peremptory close, yet even he had scarcely 
 broken loose from the traditions of the school in which 
 he had been reared. 
 
 For four days the two great fleets manoeuvred and 
 clawed at each other, like two hawks circling round 
 each other in the empyrean Avith screams, and ruffled 
 feathers, and outstretched talons. But on the night of 
 the nth came Rodney's chance. On the night of the 
 lotli the Zde, a clumsy French seventy-four, clumsily 
 managed, clashed into a sister ship, the Jason, and on 
 the morning of the i ith both ships were semi-disabled, 
 De Grasse, who had got rid of his merchant ships, 
 despatched the Jason into Guadeloupe, but the crippled 
 Zde greatly hampered the movements of his fleet, and 
 on the night of the 1 1 th that unfortunate ship managed 
 to get in the track of De Grasse's own flagship, and was 
 still more cruelly battered. De Grasse ordered a frigate, 
 the AsMe — whose captain was the unfortunate La 
 Perouse, who afterwards flitted for a moment, like a 
 ghost, across Australian history — to take the ZHe in toAV. 
 
 But all this delayed the movements of the French 
 fleet, and when the day broke De Grasse's fleet was 
 sprawling over some fifteen miles of sea space, a little to
 
 I02 
 
 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 the westward of tlic Saints, wliile the British fleet, in 
 steadfast order, was on the horizon to windward. Sir 
 Charles Douglas, Rodney's captain, hurried down to his 
 admiral's cabin to report, with pious exultation, that 
 " God had given him his enemy on the lee boAV ! " 
 Rodney was quickly on deck, and a glance from his 
 
 The two fleets at dawn. 
 
 The Saints 
 
 o 
 
 RODNEY & DE GRASSE S^\ 
 April izth. 1782. 
 
 ..English 
 .French 
 
 n" C " P 
 
 - P 
 ' 
 
 y 
 
 How the 
 lines met. 
 
 Breaking the line 
 
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 r 
 
 
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 •"f 
 
 * ^. 
 
 o' 
 
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 r^ 
 
 
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 U 'aU-cr&'Boutallsc. 
 
 Copied by permission from Captain Mahan's work, 
 " The Influence of Sea Power on History." 
 
 keen eyes, showed him that to-day, at least, De Grasse's 
 wary tactics were in vain. To draw the Frenchmen still 
 farther under his lee, Rodney signalled to four of his 
 swiftest ships to make a dash at the unfortimate Zde, 
 straggling like a broken-winged sea-bird on De Grasse's 
 rear. The French admiral could not abandon his 
 crippled ship, and kept away to cover her with his line,
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS IO3 
 
 and this gave Rodney the windward position. The 
 choice of fighting or not fighting lay in his hand. He 
 had thirty-six sail of the hne, inchiding five three- 
 deckers, under his command, and ho flung them with 
 fierce energy into line of battle. 
 
 The wind was light, the sea smooth, and ship after 
 ship of the British fleet glided on, a stately pile of can- 
 vas, each ship a cable's length, or about 200 yards, from 
 her neighbour ; and so perfect was the line, that a bucket 
 dropped from the leading ship might have been picked 
 up by almost every ship that followed. The stately 
 British line had a northerly course ; De Grasse, by this 
 time formed into a somewhat straggling line, was stand- 
 ing to the south-east so as to cross the head of the 
 British line, and, if possible, bar its entrance to the 
 Strait. The two fleets, that is, formed the two moving 
 sides of an obtuse angle. The French ships were the 
 better sailers, and it remained to be seen whether they 
 would scrape past the leading British ship, the Marl- 
 horoufjh, and regain the position to windward. The 
 crippled and lagging ZHe, however, held De Grasse 
 fatally back. 
 
 Eight ships in the French line had crossed the line 
 on which the British were moving, but it was clear that 
 the head of the British column, like the point of a 
 thrusting rapier, would smite the ninth ship — the Brave 
 — in the French line, and the fate of the battle at this 
 stage turned on the question of whether Rodney would 
 push iiis thrust fiercely and resolutely home. If he 
 followed the parade tactics of his day, he would play a 
 game of long bowls ; swing his column round, that is, 
 parallel to the French line at long-shot distance, and
 
 I04 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 fleet go sailing past fleet, with loud bellowing of cannon, 
 and much rending of canvas, and no particular harm to 
 anybody. But Rodney thrust the head of his column 
 up within musket-shot distance of the French line; 
 then his leading ships kept away in turn, and the two 
 lines, moving in opposite directions, drifted sk)wly past 
 each other. Each ship, as it drifted heavily past aft 
 enemy's ship, broke into the thunder of furious broad- 
 sides. 
 
 Nothing can be more dramatic than the pauses and 
 the ear-shattering explosions of a fight of this character. 
 A British ship moving steadily ahead sees through the 
 smoke the tall masts of a French three-decker towering 
 above her. A rift in the eddying smoke shows the 
 black hull so near that the faces of the officers on the 
 quarter-deck are recognisable, the black muzzles of the 
 guns, the eager faces of the gunners behind them. 
 Then comes the swift order to fire. Again, again, and 
 yet again, as the two great ships glide slowly past each 
 other, comes the curving line of flame, the deep-voiced 
 roar of the broadside, the crash of the rending shot, the 
 tumble of the falling spars. But in another minute the 
 vision has faded, the choking smoke is swept away, 
 the ship is crossing the gap in the enemy's line. But, 
 wrapped in a cloud of smoke, comes on yet another 
 huge three-decker, and once more with roar as of 
 tropical thunder, and play of dancing flame as of 
 tropical lightning, and tempest of splintering shot, the 
 two contending ships float past each other. 
 
 The volume of battle-sound grew ever deeper and 
 more terrible as ship after ship of the British line came 
 slowly and majestically up till its bowsprit was almost
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS IO5 
 
 thrust over the quarter of a French ship, then kept 
 away, and added itself to that procession of deep-voiced 
 giants who were thundering far ahead down the French- 
 man's hne. The captain of the Hercules, a gouty, hot- 
 tempered old sailor, had a chair placed for himself in 
 the waist of his ship, and sat there leaning over the 
 bulwarks ironically saluting, it is to be feared with 
 many salt forecastle expletives, the passing enemy. 
 The British ships, in addition to their heavy guns, Avere 
 armed with the ncAvly-invented carronade, a gun very 
 formidable at close quarters. The French ships were 
 crowded with tl'oops intended to capture Jamaica, and 
 the slaughter amongst them was great. 
 
 Rodney, in the Formidable, held the exact centre of 
 the British line, and eighteen British line-of-battle ships 
 were growling and spluttering fire ahead of him down 
 the French line, when he swung round. parallel to a 
 French ship at pistol-shot distance, and added the roar 
 of his broadsides to the tumult of the battle. Eighteen 
 French ships in succession were scorched with the flame 
 of the Formidable s guns as they drifted past, and so 
 menacing was the aspect of the British ship, as, edging 
 ever closer, she broke into thunder and flame on each 
 Frenchman's bow in turn, that, according to the testi- 
 mony of an ofiicer on the British flagship, " we could 
 actually see the Frenchmen running from their guns, 
 in spite of the frantic efforts of their officers to keep 
 them steady." By nine o'clock the tumult of the great 
 fight was at its climax. The two lines were wrapped in 
 smoke and flame throu*di their whole leno:th. 
 
 De Grasse attempted one or two ineftective orders. 
 He first signalled to his captains to Avear in succession,
 
 Io6 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 but this also was impossible. By this time the leading 
 British ships had drifted past the rear ship of the French 
 line. Then came the crisis of the fight. In Hannay's 
 words, " on emerging from the rolling masses of smoke, 
 the captains looked eagerly back for the signals at-the 
 towering masthead of the Formidable. As they looked 
 they saw a great three-decker heading north out of the 
 cloud and the flame. For a moment they thought the 
 French admhal had doubled back on them, but as the 
 three-decker cleared the smoke they saw the cross of 
 St. George, and knew that the Formidable had burst 
 through the French line to Avindward." This is the 
 stroke that made the battle famous. Rodney had 
 broken the Frenchman's line. 
 
 A tempest of controversy has raged round this 
 incident. Did Rodney learn the stroke from Clerk of 
 Eldin, the Scotch laird who supplied Walter Scott with 
 tlie original of Monkbarns in the " Antiquary," and who 
 undertook to teach British admu'als the art of victory ? 
 Or was the famous manoeuvre owing to the SAvift insight 
 and energy of Douglas, Rodney's captain of the fleet ? 
 A flaw in the Avind threatened to take the French aback, 
 and to keep their sails full the French ships had to 
 throAv their heads up into the Avind, so that they formed 
 Avhat is called a " boAV and quarter line." Each ship, 
 that is, drifted past her particular antagonist, not 
 parallel AA^th her, but at an angle from her. At this 
 moment a French ship, the Glorieux, drifted down on 
 the Formidahle, literally knocked out of the line by a 
 broadside from the Duke, a British ninety-eight. The 
 high buhvarks of the Formidable, and the hammocks 
 stacked as a barricade across the break of the quarter-
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS I07 
 
 deck, made it difficult for Rodney to see the French 
 line, c^nd he stepped out on to the starboard gangway, 
 and, leaning over its rail, saw the Gloricux drifting down 
 upon him. 
 
 The drift of the Gloricux, and the flaw in the wind, 
 combined to make a wide gap in the French line. 
 Douglas, with a glance, saw the great opportunity. 
 They might pierce the enemy's line, cut off the French 
 rear, and put each ship betwixt two fires. He ran 
 eagerly, hat in hand, to Rodney, and urged him to steer 
 through the gap. Rodney was not in love with advice 
 from anybody, and he replied, " I will not break my line, 
 Sir Charles." But Douglas was so kindled by the 
 opportunity he saw, that he pressed Rodney again, and 
 even ventured to give the order to the quarter-master at 
 the helm to port, a liberty which Rodney sternly 
 checked. The evidence seems to show that Rodney 
 himself saw the opportunity the gap in the French line 
 offered, and rather resented Douglas's advice as unneces- 
 sary. The decisive step was taken, the wheel of the 
 Formidable was sent flying round to port, the great ship 
 slowly swung her bluff bows to starboard, and swept 
 betwixt the Diaddme and the Glorieux, pouring a 
 tremendous broadside into each vessel as she did so. In 
 breaking the line, says an eye-witness, " the Formidable 
 passed so near the Glorieux that I could see the can- 
 noneers throwing away their sponges and handspikes in 
 order to save themselves by running below." " "We 
 passed," says another officer, " within pistol-shot of the 
 Glorieux, which was so roughly handled that she was 
 shorn of all her- masts, bowsprit, and ensign-stafl"." It 
 was this spectacle^thc Formidable " heading north out
 
 I08 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 of the cloud and the flames," Avhich the captains of the 
 British van, looking back, as they cleared the French 
 rear, beheld. 
 
 But Rodney had no time to signal to the ships 
 following him ; signals, indeed, in the eddying smoke 
 of the great fight were vain, and the question was 
 whether his captains would understand the manoeuvre 
 and imitate it. The Ncfymir, Captain Inglis, was next 
 in the line to the Formidable. Inoflis saw through 
 the smoke the masts of his admiral's ship swing 
 round till they were at right angles to the course, and 
 then the great ship, with fire flashing out from both 
 sides, swept across the enemy's track. The signal to 
 engage to leeward was still flying, but the moment 
 was one to disregard signals. Inglis never hesitated, 
 but followed his admiral through the gap. Cornwallis 
 in the St. Albans, Dumaresq in the Canada, Charrington 
 in the Repulse, Fanshaw in the Ajax in turn came up 
 to the fatal gap, swung to starboard, poured on the 
 Diadhne and the unfortunate Glorieux a destructive 
 broadside, and swept triumphantly on to put the re- 
 maining ships of the French rear betwixt two fires. 
 
 Almost at the same moment Gardner, in the Duke, 
 the ship ahead of Rodney, finding that the stoppage of 
 the Diaddme had thrown the French ships following her 
 into a helpless cluster, ported his helm and passed 
 through the gap just made at this point. In a word, 
 the centre of the French line was hopelessly smashed. 
 The Bedford, seventy-four, farther to rear, almost at the 
 same moment had blundered in the smoke through the 
 French line at the twelfth ship, and was followed through 
 the gap by Hood's whole division of twelve ships. De
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS IO9 
 
 Grasse's line, in brief, was broken into three fragments. 
 The British ships bearing up to windward in a very few 
 minutes were clear of the smoke, and, looking back, saw 
 such a spectacle as, to quote Hannay, " no British sea- 
 man had seen in this war so far." To west and south- 
 west lay the great French fleet, broken into three 
 disconnected fragments. The clusters of ships which 
 had formed De Grasse's rear and van were flying in oppo- 
 site directions ; in the centre towered the lofty masts of 
 the great Ville de Paris, while round her clustered six 
 sorely battered French ships. 
 
 The wind at this moment died away, the sea was 
 calm, and victors and vanquished lay alike helpless for 
 a space under the fierceness of the tropical noon. Han- 
 nay supplies a horrible detail of the scene. " On the 
 surface of the water there was something which was 
 pure horror to all whose eyes were compelled to see it. 
 Shoals of sharks — which alone among God's creatures 
 the sailor tortures without remorse, the loathsome brute 
 which loiters to profit by his misfortune — had collected 
 to feed on the corpses thrown overboard, or the living 
 who had fallen with fragments of rigging. They were 
 leaping over one another and ravening at their prey." 
 
 A little after midday the Avind awoke, and with it 
 reawoke the battle. The unfortunate De Grasse sig- 
 nalled in vain to his scattered squadrons for help, and 
 the British ships, one after another, gathered round the 
 central cluster of the broken French fleet. The Glorieux 
 ({uickly surrendered ; the C^sar, the Hector, and the 
 Ardent in turn struck, and the last was a peculiarly 
 welcome conquest. She was a British ship, captured 
 three years before by the French and Spanish fleet in
 
 no PIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 tlie chops of tlie Channel, and when the white flag of 
 France went fluttering down from her peak, great was 
 the joy through all the British decks. 
 
 De Grasse fought his flagship like a gallant sailor. 
 She was a magnificent vessel, copper-bottomed, carrying 
 106 guns and a crew of 1300 men. She was a present 
 from the City of Paris to Louis XV., and was the 
 proudest and most gallant ship afloat. For a long time 
 the news of her capture in France was received with 
 incredulity. " Not the Avhole British fleet," one distin- 
 guished French oflficial declared, " would capture the 
 Ville de Paris." But the British ships came up 
 slowly, one by one, and gathered round the stately 
 French flagship like dogs round a bull. De Grasse's 
 cartridges were exhausted ; powder barrels had to be 
 hoisted from the hold, and loose powder poured into the 
 guns with a ladle. The light of a tropical sun lay on 
 the sea outside, but so black and thick was the smoke 
 betwixt the French ship's decks, where the crew, amid 
 the wounded and dying, Avere toiling at their guns, that 
 battle lanterns had to be lit to give the men light. 
 
 It was six o'clock, and still De Grasse fought. 
 When the Barjleur, with Hood's flag as rear-admiral 
 flying, came majestically into the fight, De Grasse, with 
 something of the haughty courtesy of a knight in 
 battle, fired a single gun by Avay of salute and challenge 
 to Hood ; Hood, the most gallant of sailors, replied Avith 
 a like salute. Then, laying the Barflewr alongside the 
 French flagship, ho poured upon her a tempest of shot. 
 There Avere but three unAVounded men, of Avhom De 
 Grasse himself Avas one, on the upper deck of the Ville 
 de Paris. Her upper Avorks Avere torn to splinters, her
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS I I I 
 
 sails liimg from tlio broken yards in sliot-torn rags ; 
 more slain or wounded men lay around her guns than 
 through Rodney's Avliole fleet. At six o'clock, with his 
 own hands, the unfortunate De Grassc lowered his flag. 
 A cutter pushed out from the stern of the Barfleur, and 
 pulled to the shot-torn sides of the Ville de Paris, and 
 De Grasse stepped into it a prisoner. He was the first 
 French commander-in-chief, by land or sea, taken in 
 conflict by the British since Marlborough packed 
 Tallard and two other French generals into his coach 
 at Blenheim. 
 
 The battle of the Saints abounds in picturesque 
 incidents which cannot be told here. Thus, when the 
 two giant ships of the battle, the Formidable and the 
 Ville de Paris, were exchanging broadsides with each 
 other at pistol-shot distance, a French shot smashed to 
 pieces a coop of fowls on the British ship's deck. A 
 little bantam cock, released by the shot, fluttered on to 
 the poop railing, and with the roar of every British 
 broadside flapped its wings in triumph, and crowed in 
 notes so shrill as to be heard even through the crowded 
 decks. That intelligent and patriotic foAvl was, by 
 Rodney's solemn orders, kept in fatness and ease till it 
 died a natural death. 
 
 Rodney has been blamed for not pursuing the frag- 
 ments of the broken French fleet with greater vigour. 
 Douglas strongly urged him to pursue, and was rebuffed 
 with the remark that he had offered advice once too 
 often that day already. But the battle had raged 
 thirteen hours with scarcely a moment's interval ; 
 Rodney was old and gouty and weary, and contented 
 with his gains ; and when night fell lie signalled to his
 
 I I 2 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 fleet to lie to. Six Frencli ships were captured ; but 
 Kodney brought only two of his prizes — the Ardent and 
 the Jason — into port. The Glorieux, according to an 
 eye-witness, when boarded, " presented a scene of com- 
 plete horror. The number of killed were so great that 
 the surviving, either from want of leisure or through 
 dismay, had not thrown the bodies of the killed over- 
 board, so that the decks were covered with the bodies 
 and mangled limbs of the dead as well as the wounded 
 and the dying." The Glorieux foundered on its passage 
 home ; so did the Hector, and so did the great prize of 
 the battle, the Ville de Paris. The C^sar had a still 
 more tragical ending. She took fire, by some accident, 
 immediately after her capture, and burned to the water's 
 edge. The English prize-crew perished in her, the lieu- 
 tenant in command being " seen in the stern fighting 
 the fire to the last. No boat dare approach ; the sharks 
 were swarming under the counter, and he staid to die 
 in the flames at his post." 
 
 The French loss is reckoned at 3000 killed, whereas 
 the loss of the British in killed and wounded together 
 was less than 1000. The French refused to believe that 
 the British loss was so slight, and Blane tells the story 
 of how he took an incredulous French officer round the 
 ForTTiidahle and showed him how slight was the damage 
 done by French shot before he could persuade him that 
 the British returns were accurate. The French fire, one 
 of the Formidable's officers wrote, " slackens as we 
 approach, and is totally silent when we are close along- 
 side " ; whereas the British fire was fiercest when the 
 ships were almost touching each other. 
 
 The battle brought great fame to Rodney. " It is
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTS II3 
 
 odd," he wrote to liis wife the day after the battle, " but 
 within two httle years I have talvon two Spanish, one 
 French, and one Dutch admiral. Providence does it all, 
 or how should I escape the shot of thirty-three sail of 
 the line ? " Rodney, it may be added, had taken a 
 French admiral in the midst of the greatest French fleet 
 then in existence, and on board the finest three-decker 
 in the world. " More liners," says Hannay, " had struck 
 to him than to any British admiral of his generation." 
 But the public results of Rodney's great fight were of 
 the highest character. As with the stroke of a thunder- 
 bolt, the whole prestige of French fleets in the New 
 world was shattered. Jamaica was saved. Peace 
 followed, and in the treaty Gibraltar remained a British 
 possession, and the British power in India was acknow- 
 ledged. Rodney's battle, too, stamped its fierce impress 
 on the sea strategy of British ships in all future time 
 " It marked," says Hannay, " the beginning of that fierce 
 and headlong, yet well-calculated style of sea-fighting 
 which led to Trafalgar and made England the imdis- 
 puted mistress of the sea." 
 
 H
 
 LORD HOWE AND THE FIRST OF JUNE 
 
 1794 
 
 " So spake our fathers. Our flag, unfurled, 
 Blew brave to the north and south ; 
 An iron answer we gave the world, 
 For we spoke by the cannon's mouth." 
 
 — Nesbit. 
 
 IN his " Autobiography," Prince Metternich tells how, 
 on May 2, 1794, from the summit of a hill behind 
 Cowes, he watched a great and historic spectacle. More 
 than 400 ships — great three-deckers, smart frigates, 
 bluft-bowed merchantmen — were setting sail at once. 
 Their tall masts and widespread canvas seemed to 
 fill the whole sea horizon. It was the Channel Fleet 
 under Lord Howe, with a huge convoy of merchantmen. 
 " I consider this," wrote Prince Metternich, " the most 
 beautiful sight I have ever seen. I might say, indeed, 
 the most beautiful that human eyes have ever beheld ! 
 At a signal from the admiral's ship the merchantmen 
 unfurled their sails, the fleet for the West Indies turned 
 to the west, the fleet for the East Indies passed to the 
 east side of the island, each accompanied with a portion 
 of the royal fleet. Hundreds of vessels and boats, filled 
 with spectators, covered the two roads as far as the eye 
 could reach, in the midst of which the great ships 
 followed one another, in the same manner as we see 
 great masses of troops moved on the parade ground."
 
 LORD now'i: 
 
 From a iiuzzotini by R. Dinkaktdn, after the portrait by J. S. Copi.r.v, R.A.
 
 LORD HOWE AND THE FIRST OF JUNE II5 
 
 It would have added new and strange colours to that 
 wonderful scene if Prince Metternich had realised that 
 this stately fleet was sailing out to one of the most 
 famous sea battles in history. If he could have looked, 
 in imagination, beyond the sea-rim, and seen, only four 
 weeks afterwards, this same gallant array of ships 
 bearing down on the French line in that mighty combat 
 off Ushant, which lives in British history as " the 
 Glorious First of Juno." In the early days of June 
 Prince Metternich saw that same fleet return to Ports- 
 mouth, with torn canvas and shot-battered sides, and he 
 records how the stately Queen Charlotte, Howe's flagship, 
 " presented the appearance of a ruin." But the British 
 fleet brought with them six great French linc-of-battlc 
 ships as prizes. France had lost her Mediterranean fleet 
 only six weeks before ; Hood had destroyed it at Toulon. 
 And now Howe had broken the strength of her Channel 
 fleet ofl' Ushant; and in the long revolutionary war just 
 besrinnincr, Great Britain had scored the first and decisive 
 success. 
 
 War betwixt Great Britain and Revolutionary France 
 was inevitable. It was not merely that the wild scenes 
 of the Reign of Terror had shocked the imagination and 
 conscience of Great Britain. The French, in the intoxi- 
 cation of their new-found liberty, were eager to " sow 
 the revolution " over the whole area of Europe. " All 
 Governments are our enemies," said the President of 
 the French Convention ; " all peoples are our allies," 
 Great Britain was threatened in common with all other 
 European Powers. French agents nourished rebellion 
 in Ireland, and supplied arms and soldiers to the native 
 princes in India against England. Holland was the ally
 
 I I 6 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 of England ; and. a French army overran the Nether- 
 lands and seized the Scheldt, and England had to face 
 the prospect of seeing a French fleet at Antwerp. In 
 1793 France declared war. 
 
 In France itself the harvest had failed. Famine 
 threatened, and in May 1794 a great American convoy 
 of 160 sail, chiefly laden with flour — its cargoes valued 
 at i^5, 000,000 — was on its way to France, and was most 
 eagerly expected. The French Government despatched 
 a great fleet under its ablest admiral, Villaret-Joyeuse, 
 to bring the merchant ships safely into Brest. The 
 British fleet which Prince Metternich had Avatched on 
 ]\Iay 2 put out from Portsmouth, was intended, first to 
 convoy through the narroAV seas some 148 merchantmen 
 bound to Newfoundland and the Indies, and then to 
 go in pursuit of Villaret-Joyeuse, crush his fleet, and 
 capture the American convoy. 
 
 On May 28 Howe fell in Avith the French fleet in 
 wild Aveather some 400 miles to the AvestAvard of Ushant. 
 It is unnecessary to describe in detail the far-stretching 
 evolutions, the partial combats, the retreats and ad- 
 vances, of the five days Avhich preceded the great fight, 
 though the sea has seldom Avitnessed a more picturesque 
 spectacle. The sea ran high ; a gale blcAv from the 
 south-Avest. Villaret-Joyeuse Avas an admirable tacti- 
 cian ; his ships Avere quicker and more Aveatherly than 
 those of the British, and his aim Avas not to fight HoAve, 
 but to evade him, to decoy him off the line by Avhich 
 the American couA^oy Avas approaching, and so enable it 
 to reach Brest safely — a feat on which, as the French 
 Convention had bluntly Avarned him, depended the 
 safety of his own head. On the tossing floor of that Avild
 
 LORD HOWE AND THE FIRST OF JUNE I 1 7 
 
 sea, scourged Y>'itli angry south-west gales, for five da}-^ 
 these two mighty fleets struck at each other, and circled 
 round each other like two sea-birds contending, with 
 ruffled feathers and slanting wings, in the sky. Villaret- 
 Joyeuse clung to the weather-gage, evaded a general 
 action, and strove to draw his stubborn antagonist off 
 the track of the coming convoy. Howe could not over- 
 take the main body of the French fleet, but with his 
 faster ships he clung desperately to the more laggard 
 sliips in the rear of the French line — clinging, in a 
 word, to Villaret-Joyeuse's tail — and watched every flaw 
 of the wind that might give him the weather-gage. 
 One of the most gallant episodes in naval history is the 
 story of how the Audacious — a stumpy, short-bodied 
 seventy-four, the smallest of her class in Howe's fleet — 
 hung for a long day on the quarter of the Rt^uolution- 
 naire, a huge three-decker of 120 guns, and with the 
 occasional help of the Russell, another seventy -four, 
 actually compelled her giant antagonist to strike — 
 though a dash of the French van for the rescue of the 
 Rivolutionnaire prevented the Audacious from actually 
 putting a prize crew on board the Frenchman. 
 
 On May 30 a dense fog swept over the field of action, 
 and for thirty-six hours the two fleets were absolutely 
 invisible to each other, though the sound of the bells 
 struck on the French ships was distinctly audible to 
 the British. Sometimes through a sudden lane in the 
 fog the huge heavily-rolling black hulls of the hostile 
 ships Avould become for a moment visible ; or a look-out 
 perched on some British topmast would see above the 
 low, drifting fog, like spars thrust through some con- 
 tinent of snoAv, the top-masts of a dozen French battle-
 
 I I 8 FTCxHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 ships. At mid-day on the 31st the fog had cleared, and 
 the French fleet — thirty-two vessels, twenty-six of them 
 line-of-battle ships — was on the lee bow of the British 
 fleet, Howe, that is, by his patient tactics and fine sea- 
 manship, was getting the weather-gage of Villaret- 
 Joyeiise, and would be able to compel an engagement. 
 Night fell, however, and still the French admiral Avas 
 able to evade his stubborn antagonist, and Villaret- 
 Joyeuse, with lights concealed so as to give no clue to 
 his movements, spread every inch of canvas, and 
 pressed on, hoping in the morning to be to windward 
 of his foe. Howe, however, guessed his enemy's tactics. 
 He thrust out his swiftest frigates as tentacles, so as to 
 keep touch Avith the French fleet, and held a westerly 
 course under full sail all night. 
 
 Morning broke clear and dazzlinsr, and full of summer 
 light. It was Sunday. A soft south-west wind blew ; 
 an easy sea was running, and about four miles on the 
 starboard or lee bow, stretched the long line of the 
 French fleets — a procession of giants ! HoAve at last 
 was able to force his adroit antagonist to a fight on 
 something like equal terms. His crcAvs, hoAvever, Avere 
 almost Avorn out Avith the toils of the five stormy days 
 and nights, flavoured Avith intervals of battle, through 
 Avhich they had passed. HoAve himself, nearly seventy 
 years of age, had taken no sleep for that period except 
 in a chair, and Avith cool judgment, before running 
 doAvn to engage, he first sent his fleet to breakfast. The 
 French captains, who expected to see the British ships 
 bear doAvn upon them Avith all sails spread, misunder- 
 stood that pause. Troubridge, Avho afterAvards com- 
 manded the Culloden at the battle of the Nile, Avas, as
 
 LORD HOWE AND THE FIRST OF JUNE II9 
 
 it l^appened, a prisoner of war on board the Sans Pareil. 
 and its captain made some sneering remark to him 
 about the rehictance of the British to engage. " There 
 will be no fight to-day," he said, " your admiral Avill not 
 venture down." Troubridge, however, perfectly under- 
 stood Howe's tactics. " English sailors," ho replied, 
 "never like to fight on empty stomachs. The signal is 
 flying for all hands to breakfast, after which, be quite 
 sure, they will pay you a visit ! " Less than six hours 
 afterwards the captain of the Sans Pareil, with his 
 masts gone by the board, his bulwarks torn to splinters, 
 and one-third of his crew struck down, was inviting 
 Troubridge to pull down the colours of his ship in 
 token of surrender ! 
 
 The two fleets just about to close in the fiery wrestle 
 of battle, made up a stately spectacle. The French 
 admiral's flagship, the Montagne, was, perhaps, the 
 finest battleship then afloat. She carried 1 20 guns and 
 a crew of nearly 1200 men. In addition, Villaret- 
 Joyeuse had under his command two three-deckers of 
 no guns each, four of eighty guns, and nineteen 
 seventy-fours. This formed a fleet of twenty-six 
 line-of-battle ships, which, with some frigates and 
 one fifty-gun ship, brought the total wp to thirty-two 
 vessels. The British had only twenty-five line-of- 
 battlo ships to oppose this force, and no one of them, in 
 tonnage or weight of fire, could compare with the French 
 flagship. The French, in fact, had a decisive, though 
 not an overwhelming, advantage at every point. A 
 French ship of that period had almost invariably a 
 heavier tonnage and Aveight of fire than a British ship 
 of the same class. Thus, the broadside of a British
 
 
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 LORD HOWE AND THE FIRST OF JUNE 121 
 
 ninety-eiglit weighed 958 lbs. ; that of a French second- 
 class eighty-gun ship weighed 1079 lbs. A French 1 10- 
 gim ship thrcAV a broadside of 1278 lbs.; the Queen 
 Charlotte's broadside weighed only 1158 lbs., and the 
 Montagne was 800 tons bigger than the Queen Char- 
 lotte! The French fleet was manned by 20,000 men, 
 the British by about 17,000. 
 
 The advantage was thus with the French at every 
 point, and the French Convention had taken special 
 steps to harden the courage of its admirals and sailors. 
 It had passed a motion directing that every officer 
 should be adjudged a traitor who struck his colours 
 to a superior force until his ship was actually sinking. 
 A member of the Convention, Jean Bon Saint-Andre, 
 was present as commissioner on board the Montagne, to 
 remind the French admirals that defeat would cost 
 them their heads. It is interesting to learn that Jean 
 Bon Saint-Andre, whose business it was to keep the 
 courage of the fleet up to the heroic standard, proved, 
 on actual trial, not to have a stock of courage sufficient 
 for his own consumption ! AVhen the tall masts of the 
 Queen Charlotte threw their menacing shadow over the 
 quarter of the Montagne, and the blast of its terrific 
 broadside swept like a tempest of flame along the decks 
 of that great ship, M. Jean Bon Saint- Andre, with all 
 the authority and heroism of the Convention under his 
 cocked hat, fled in mere terror to the safe and ignoble 
 seclusion of the cockpit, and never emerged till the 
 battle was over. 
 
 Howe's plan of action was simple and bold. He 
 spent some time in changing the order of his ships, so 
 as to pit against each French vessel one of reasonably
 
 122 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 equal strength ; then he signalled to his captains to bear 
 down on the enemy. The two lines were approaching 
 obliquely, and each British captain was directed, on 
 nearing the French line, to put his helm down, run 
 through an interval betwixt two French ships, then bear 
 up and engage his special antagonist to leeward. In 
 this way the line would be pierced simultaneously at 
 twenty points ; the British ships as they passed through 
 the intervals in the French line, would rake the ships to 
 larboard and starboard ; and, fighting to leeward, each 
 ship would make the escape of her crippled antagonist 
 impossible. 
 
 It was a pretty scheme, implying a haughty confi- 
 dence in the superiority of each British ship to each 
 French ship, and involving much hard fighting ; but if 
 successful it meant the destruction of Villaret-Joyeuse's 
 whole force. 
 
 Howe brought his fleet up in perfect order, and, at 
 9.20 A.M., he closed his signal-book with a sigh of 
 relief and satisfaction. His functions as admiral had 
 ceased. Further " tactics " were unnecessary ; nothing 
 remained but that in which British sailors seldom fail 
 — plain, straightforward combat. But Howe closed his 
 signal-book prematurely. Two circumstances suddenly 
 threatened to spoil his whole plan. One was the fact 
 that, in some cases, the intervals betwixt the French 
 ships were too narrow to permit the passage of an 
 English ship. The other was of an uglier quality. The 
 ship that led the British van, the Cccsar, instead of 
 leading boldly on and running down through its 
 assigned interval in the French line, threw its main 
 topsail aback, hauled to the wind, and opened a some-
 
 LORD HOWE AND THE FIRST OF JUNE 1 23 
 
 what useless fire on tlic enemy 500 yards distant. This 
 checked the advance of the British line, and was a 
 conspicuous example of disobedience to orders. The 
 captain of the Cccsar, Molloy, had shown courage in 
 many engagements, but Howe had been dissatisfied 
 Avith him during the sparring betwixt the fleets on the 
 previous days, and proposed to displace the Ccesar from 
 its place of honour at the head of the British line. The 
 captain of the fleet, Sir Roger Curtis, who w\as Molloy's 
 friend, persuaded the admiral to abandon that inten- 
 tion ; but when How^e saw the Ccesar, with her topsails 
 aback, checking the British line, and failing to close 
 with decision on the enemy, he put his hand on his 
 captain's shoulder and said, " Look, Curtis ! there goes 
 your friend. Who is mistaken now ? " It was found 
 afterwards that a French shot had damaged the rudder 
 of the Cccsar and almost rendered her unmanageable ; 
 but Molloy, who himself after the fight demanded a 
 court-martial, w\as dismissed his ship. The truth is, 
 this was the first great naval engagement of the war, 
 and British captains had not developed that habit of 
 fierce and close fighting which Jervis and Nelson after- 
 wards made their characteristic. 
 
 Howe himself, however, moved steadily on his path, 
 grimly silent. He had chosen the French flagship, the 
 huge Montagne, with her 120 guns, as his special 
 antagonist. As the Queen Charlotte, in perfect fighting 
 order, came majestically along the French line, the 
 Vengeicr, a heavy seventy-four-gun ship, smote her with 
 a fierce broadside, to which Howe deigned no answer. 
 Still moving onward, and now approaching very close to 
 the French flagship, the Achille, a sister ship to the
 
 124 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Vengeiir, joined in the tempest of fire being poured on 
 tlie silent Queen Charlotte. Howe blasted that un- 
 fortunate ship with one terrific broadside, then, being 
 within two ship's lengths of the Montague, he swung 
 his ship round and pointed her stem towards the 
 interval betwixt the flagship and the ship to the rear- 
 ward of her in the French line, the Jacobin, a fine vessel 
 of eighty guns. Both the Montagne and the Jacobin 
 tried to cheat Howe of his purpose. The captain of the 
 Montagne threw his sails aback, so that the ship began 
 to drift astern ; the captain of the Jacobin, on the other 
 hand, shook out some of her sails so as to move ahead, 
 and thus close the interval. Howe held on his course 
 unswervingly. The stems of the Jacobin and the Queen 
 Charlotte, and the stern of the Montagne threatened to 
 meet in ruinous collision. 
 
 But the nerve of the captain of the Jacobin at the 
 critical instant failed. The triple lines of silent guns 
 that looked grimly out from the tall sides of the Queen 
 Charlotte wore a very menacing aspect. If they broke 
 into flame across his bows, the Jacobin would be half 
 destroyed at a blow. The Jacobin's captain put down 
 his helm, the bow of his ship fell off, and that vessel 
 shot ahead, and to the leeward of the 3[ontagne. At 
 the same moment the helm of the Queen Charlotte was 
 put hard over, and she swept under the stern of the 
 French flagship. The two ships were so close, indeed, 
 that the French ensign, as it waved from the Montagne s 
 flasfstaff, brushed the main and mizzen shrouds of the 
 Queen Charlotte. Howe had held his fire up to that 
 moment, but just as the French flag was scraping the 
 shrouds of the Queen Charlotte, her fifty guns poured
 
 LORD HOWE AND THE FIRST OF JUNE I 25 
 
 tlieir iron hail througli the sides and across the decks of 
 the Frenchman. A more destructive broadside has, 
 perhaps, seldom been fired. It slew, or struck down, or 
 wounded, more than 300 men, including the captain. 
 The sailors afterwards declared that a coach might have 
 been driven in the huge rent made in the stern of the 
 Montagne by that one broadside ! So staggering was 
 the blow, indeed, that the Montagne did not fire a gun 
 by way of reply. 
 
 Codrington, who afterwards commanded at Navarino, 
 was lieutenant on the Queen Cliarlotte, Howe's flagship, 
 and had charge of seven guns on the lower deck. He 
 tells how the first guns were fired in very realistic 
 fashion. " I," says Codrington, " Avas on the lower deck. 
 The ports were lowered to prevent the sea washing in. 
 On going through the smoke I hauled up a port, and 
 could just see it was a French ship we Avcre passing." 
 Codrington was without orders ; he was a young lieu- 
 tenant in his first battle, but the sight of the French- 
 man's stern was enough for him, and he instantly acted. 
 "I successively hauled up the ports," he says, "and 
 myself fired the whole of my seven weather guns into 
 her ; then ran to leeward and fired the lee guns into the 
 other ship. The weather guns bore first as we went 
 through on a slant, therefore I had time for the lee 
 guns." When the ports were lifted the sea broke in, 
 and as the guns were fired the breechings were, in most 
 instances, carried aAvay. The scene, in brief, was one of 
 the wildest confusion ; but nothing shook Codrington's 
 steady nerve. " In passing under the Montagne s stern," 
 he says, " I myself waited at the bow port till I saw the 
 Frenchman's rudder gims (thirty-two j)ounders, double-
 
 126 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 shotted), and then I pulled the trigger, the same sea 
 splashing us both, and the fly of her ensign brushed our 
 shrouds. I pulled the trigger of the whole seven guns 
 in the same way, as I saw the rudder just above the 
 gun-room ports. On going on deck Bowen (Howe's 
 flag-captain), in answer to my asking if I had done 
 wrong in firing without any immediate orders, said, ' I 
 could have kissed you for it ! ' He added, ' In going 
 through, the helm was hard up, and Ave were thinking 
 we should not clear her, and we quite forgot to send you 
 any orders.' " 
 
 The Queen Clmrlotte should now have rounded the 
 stern of the Montagne and engaged her to starboard, 
 but the Jacobin occupied the exact position the Queen 
 Charlotte desired to take. Howe was about to take 
 his position outside the Jacobin, when his master, 
 Bowen, a cool and quick-eyed sailor, saw that the 
 Jacobins rudder was swinging to port. That ship, in a 
 word, was about herself to move oft' to leeward. In- 
 stantly the helm of the Queen Charlotte was shifted, her 
 stem swung round. So close was she to the Jacobin 
 that her jib-boom was drawn roughly across the mizzen- 
 shrouds of that vessel, and through the narrow lane 
 betwixt the two ships the Queen Charlotte moved, while 
 her guns broke into angry speech along her Avhole 
 length on both sides. 
 
 Had the Jacobin, indeed, kept her position, the 
 Queen Charlotte, with a ship of eighty guns to leeward, 
 and one of 120 guns to windward of her, would have 
 fared ill. She might well have been blown into mere 
 chips ! But the Jacobin had no intention of staying 
 near an antagonist with such a fury and weight of fire,
 
 LORD HOWE AND THE FIRST OF JUNE 1 27 
 
 and she ran down to leeward out of the fight, firing as 
 she went. Howe, meanwhile, was thimderincf on the 
 Montague with broadsides so close and deadly, that the 
 great ship, as though bewildered by strokes that followed 
 each other in such breathless haste, scarcely made any 
 reply. She found a door of escape, however. A chance 
 shot from the Jacobin carried away the Queen Charlotte's 
 fore-topmast, and checked her progress, and the French 
 flagship, moving ahead, passed out of the range of the 
 British ship's fire. But her decks were strewn thick 
 with the dead, many of her guns were dismounted, her 
 stern frame and starboard quarter were wrecked. 
 
 The spectacle of the Jacobin running to leeward, 
 and of the flagship herself quitting the line, moved 
 many of the French ships to imitation. Their line 
 crumbled into shapelessness, and Howe threw out the 
 signal for a general chase. The Queen Charlotte, mean- 
 Avhile, was engaged in fierce duel with a French 
 eighty-four, the Juste, Avhich ship at last struggled out 
 of the whirlwind of fire with which the Queen CJiarlotte 
 encompassed her, in a very wrecked condition, and the 
 Queen Charlotte herself — which by this time could 
 barely keep steerage way — was left to point her battered 
 nose towards some new antagonist. 
 
 The story of the First of June is a catalogue of duels 
 betwixt individual ships under the rival flags, and the 
 most gallant — perhaps the most gallant single fight ever 
 fought at sea — is that betwixt the Vengeur, a French 
 seventy-four, and the Brunswick, a ship of the same 
 class, but with a lighter weight of fire, and a crew of 
 only 600 men against the Vengeur s 700. 
 
 The Brunswick was Lord Howe's second astern, and
 
 128 FIGHTS FOE, THE FLAG 
 
 was to have cut through the line behind the Jacobin, 
 the ship next to the French admiral. Both the Achille 
 and the Vengeur, however — the ships next in succession 
 —moved up and closed the interval, and Harvey, who 
 commanded the Brnnsivick, impatient of further delay, 
 put his helm aport and ran fairly on the Vengeur, the 
 BrmiswicJcs anchors hooking into the Vengeur s fore- 
 shrouds and channels. The master of the Brunswick 
 asked Harvey if he should cut the ship clear of the 
 Vengeur. " No," was the reply ; " we've got her, and 
 we'll keep her ! " and both ships, paying off before the 
 wind, drifted to leeward wrapped in a whirlwind of 
 flame. The crew of the Brunswick were unable to open 
 their lower-deck starboard ports, as the sides of the 
 two ships were grinding together, and they coolly fired 
 through the closed ports : and, as far as the fire from 
 the lower decks was- concerned, the British had all the 
 advantage. As the great ships rolled in the trough of 
 the sea, the British seamen alternately withdrew the 
 coins from their guns, and drove them home ; thus one 
 broadside was fired with muzzles depressed so that the 
 shot pierced through the enemy's hull below the water- 
 line, the next broadside was fired with muzzles elevated 
 so as to rip up the decks. 
 
 On the upper deck, however, the Vengeur had the 
 advantage. She had thirty six-pounder carronades on 
 her poop deck, and with these she swept the poop and 
 forecastle and main deck of the Brunsiuick as with a 
 besom of fire. The gallant Harvey himself was thrice 
 wounded, and carried a dying man off the deck. After 
 this dreadful combat had lasted nearly an hour, a 
 French three-decker, the Achille, was seen bearinsf down
 
 LORD HOWE AND THE FIRST OF JUNE 1 29 
 
 on tlie Brunswick. Her mizzen and main masts were 
 gone, but the foremast still stood. The Brunsivick's 
 larboard broadside was opened on the Achille when that 
 ship Avas within musket-shot distance, with such effect, 
 that her sole remaining mast, Avith its pile of canvas, 
 came tumbling down. She s^nmg round parallel with 
 the Brunswick, and after exchanging half-a-dozen 
 broadsides with that ship, struck her colours ! Thus 
 the Brunswick, while fighting the Vengeur to leeward, 
 compelled the Achille, to windward, to strike. The 
 Brunsivick, hoAvever, still engaged in deadly wrestle 
 with the Ve7}geur, could not launch a boat to take 
 possession of the Achille, and that ship, at last, hoist- 
 ing up a spritsail, crept out of fire with re-hoisted 
 colours. 
 
 At 12.45 P.M. a heavy roll of the tAvo ships tore the 
 Brunswick's anchors loose from the Vengeur, and the 
 dismasted and shattered hulls, still sullenly firing at 
 each other, SAvimg apart. The Ramilies, an English 
 seventy-four, commanded, as it happened, by the 
 brother of the Brunswick's captain, at this moment 
 swept through the zone of smoke Avhich encircled the 
 tAvo ships, in pursuit of the Achille, and fired one 
 deadly broadside as it passed into the stern of the 
 Vengeur. At one o'clock the Vengeur struck, a Union 
 Jack being hung out over her quarter as a sign of 
 surrender; but the Brunsivick Avas in no condition to 
 take possession of her beaten foe. The much-battered 
 Vengeur sank loAvcr and still loAvcr in the sea ; at eacli 
 roll the Avater SAvcpt in through her ports. Late in the 
 afternoon the boats of the Alfred, the Culloden, and of 
 a British cutter, the Rattler, took off the captain and 
 
 I
 
 130 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 crew of the Vengeur, and the great ship, with splintered 
 bulwarks, dismounted guns, and decks splashed red 
 with slaughter, sank. Four hundred of her crew had 
 been taken off by the boats of the British, but some 
 remained. They had broken, it was said, into the spirit- 
 room, and were drunk, and, just as the great ship made 
 her final plunge, a few of them were visible on deck, 
 shouting, in drunken defiance, " Vive la Republique ! " 
 
 By noon the firing had died down. Eleven of the 
 British ships were more or less nearly dismasted, 
 twelve of the French were in yet more evil case, and 
 were drifting helplessly to leeward. Villaret-Joyeuse 
 gathered by signal his uninjured, or slightly injured 
 ships around him, and bore down to cover the shattered, 
 drifting hulks which formed the rest of his fleet. It 
 was a gallant stroke, both of tactics and of seamanship, 
 and actually saved at least five French ships from be- 
 coming prizes. Howe met the attempt by a counter- 
 stroke, and Villaret-Joyeuse drew off, leaving seven 
 great line-of-battle ships to become British prizes. Of 
 these one, the Vengeur, sank ; the other six were carried 
 in triumph into Portsmouth. 
 
 The battle of the First of June, in one sense, failed 
 of its strategic object. The great American convoy was 
 not intercepted ; afterwards, indeed, it crossed the waters 
 where the great fight had raged, and found them strewn 
 with the wrecks of the fight, and reached Brest in safety. 
 Howe, too, has been blamed for not making the most of 
 his victory. He had at least one-third of his fleet in 
 perfect fighting condition, yet he allowed Villaret- 
 Joyeuse to carry off five dismantled ships in safety. 
 The truth is, Howe himself, a man nearly seventy years
 
 LORD HOWE AND THE FIRST OF JUNE I3I 
 
 of age, was physically prostrate with the long strain of 
 the fight and of the manoeuvres of the preceding days ; 
 and he had reason to complain of some of his captains. 
 But the First of June was a great and memorable 
 victory. The total loss of the British in killed and 
 wounded was less than 1200, that of the French was 
 not less than 7000. The moral effect of the victory, 
 too, was immense. It was the first great naval engage- 
 ment of the revolutionary war, and it gave to British 
 fleets a confidence and prestige which powerfully in- 
 fluenced the whole history of that war. 
 
 The battle abounded in picturesque and even amus- 
 ing incidents. Pakenham, for example, who commanded 
 the Invincible, was a daring but somewhat reckless 
 Irishman. He drifted through the smoke on a French 
 ship, and opened fire upon her with great energy. After 
 a time, the fire of the Frenchman died away, while that 
 of the Invincible grew yet more furious. Pakenham, 
 however, was dissatisfied with the circumstance that 
 the Frenchman made no reply, and he hailed her to 
 know if she suiTcndered. The Frenchman replied, 
 energetically, " No ! " whereupon the gallant Irishman 
 
 inquired in tones of disgust, " Then, you, Avhy don't 
 
 you fire ! " Gambler, another of Howe's captains, was 
 the exact opposite of the hare-brained Pakenham ; a 
 fine sailor, a brave fighter, and of sober and puritanic 
 temper. His ship, the Defence, of seventy-four guns, 
 fought gallantly, and had two of her masts shot away ; 
 when, through the smoke, the tall masts of a French 
 three-decker were visible bearing down upon her, A 
 lieutenant hurried to the quarter-deck and cried to 
 Gambler, " my eyes, sir, but here's a whole moun-
 
 132 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 tain coming down upon lis ! What shall we do ? " To 
 Avhicli the unmoved Gambler answered by asking how 
 his officer dared at such a moment as that to come to 
 him with an oath in his mouth. " Go down to your 
 guns, sir," he added, " and encourage your men to stick 
 to their guns like British tars ! " 
 
 Perhaps the most humorous story in connection 
 with the First of June is the amazing fable of the Ven- 
 geur, which is due to the patriotic imagination, unre- 
 strained by any regard for prosaic accuracy, of Barrcre. 
 Barrere rejjorted to the Convention that the Vengeur 
 went down with all her colours flying, scorning to 
 surrender ; " Vive la Ri'publique, and a universal volley 
 from the upper deck being the last sound she made," 
 " Glorieuse affaire du Vengeur " became, for the French, 
 a national myth. It has inspired innumerable French 
 songs. A wooden model of the Vengetir was solemnly 
 consecrated, and placed in the Pantheon. Carlyle em- 
 bodied the story in his " French Revolution." " Lo ! " he 
 wrote, " all flags, streamers, jacks, every rag of tricolour 
 that will yet run on rope flies rustling aloft. The whole 
 crew crowds to the upper deck ; and with universal 
 soul-maddening yell, shouts, ' Vive la Republique,' sink- 
 ing, sinking." Carlyle later on discovered hoAv wild a 
 flight of fiction the whole story was. Barrere was a liar 
 of Titanic scale ; but the Vengeur myth, Carlyle declared, 
 must be pronounced " Barrere's masterpiece ; the largest, 
 most inspiring jiiecc of blague manufactured for some 
 centuries by any man or nation." At the time the Ven- 
 geur went down, the battle had ceased for some hours ; 
 her captain was peacefully getting his lunch in one of 
 the cabins of the Culloden, and some 400 of her crew
 
 LORD HOWE AND THE FIRST OF JUNE 1 33 
 
 had been rescued, mucli to tlieir own satisfaction, by the 
 boats of the various British ships ! 
 
 Howe, the victor of the First of June, does not stand 
 in the first rank of British admirals. He had no touch 
 of Nelson's electric genius for war, or of Jervis's iron will. 
 It may be doubted whether he could have followed an 
 enemy's fleet through tempest and darkness and un- 
 known reefs, with the cool and masterful daring with 
 which Hawke followed ConHans into the tangle of reefs 
 off Quiberon. But Howe belongs to the type of men 
 who are the strength of the State. Unselfish, loyal, 
 single-minded, putting duty before glory and the State 
 before self. He was known as " Black Dick " amongst 
 his crews, from his dark complexion and hair, and ho 
 was loved as few British leaders, by either sea or land, 
 have ever been loved. And the secret of the affection 
 he awakened lay not so much in his patience and 
 gentleness of temper, or his keen regard for the health 
 and comfort of his men — it was found in the crystalline 
 simplicity and sincerity of his character ; his calm in- 
 diiference to either gain or fame ; and his self-forgetting 
 patriotism.
 
 SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA 
 
 January i6, 1S09 
 
 " Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, 
 As his corse to the rampart we hurried ; 
 Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot 
 O'er the grave where our hero we buried. 
 
 We buried him darkly at dead of night, 
 
 The sods with our bayonets turning ; 
 By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, 
 
 And the lantern dimly burning. 
 
 Slowly and sadly we laid him down, 
 
 From the field of his fame fresh and gory ; 
 
 We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone — 
 But we left him alone with his glory." 
 
 — W01.FE. 
 
 AS to the English armies, I will chase them from the 
 I\ Peninsula ! " Into that sentence, spoken to a 
 great assemblage of the notables of Spain at Charmar- 
 tin, Napoleon compressed the wrathful purpose which 
 led to the fierce, swift, sure, and bloody campaign 
 ended at Corunna. 
 
 It may be admitted that, at that particular moment, 
 Napoleon had good reasons for turning in warlike wrath 
 upon the British. Some two months before, in a pro- 
 clamation to his armies, Napoleon wrote : " Soldiers, I 
 have need of you. The hideous presence of the leopard 
 contaminates the Peninsula of Spain and Portugal. In
 
 SIR lOHX MOORE 
 
 From a vtc^zotiiit by CiiAKt.ES Tlknf.r, after the portrait by Sir Thomas 
 I.AWKENCK, P.R..V
 
 SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA 1 35 
 
 terror he must fly before you. Let us bear our trium- 
 phal eagles to the pillars of Hercules ! " In an address, 
 too, published in the Moniteur of October 26, 1808, 
 Napoleon wrote : " In a few days I shall set out to place 
 myself at the head of my army ; shall crown at Madrid 
 the King of Spain, and plant my eagles on the towers 
 of Lisbon," Napoleon, in a word, was determined to 
 grasp "the Spanish nettle." French arms had not 
 prospered in the Peninsula. The Emperor's marshals 
 were in nominal possession of the country; but one 
 French force had been beaten, and had surrendered at 
 Baylen ; and Vimieiro, won by British bayonets, had 
 driven the French eagles out of Portugal. Napoleon, 
 taking advantage of the pause in the great wars of the 
 Continent, Avhich followed the conference at Erfurt, 
 determined to overthrow all opposition in the Peninsula, 
 as with the stroke of a thunderbolt. 
 
 Some 70,000 Spanish soldiers were in arms against 
 him. But they were scattered along the line of the 
 Ebro, over a distance of 200 miles, and under three 
 independent commanders. They were badly armed 
 and Averse drilled. Their generals had no Avarlike 
 knoAvledge, and hated each other almost more than 
 they hated the French. Wild ravines and SAvift and 
 bridgeless rivers broke these forces up into disconnected 
 fragments. Napoleon himself years afterAvards, at St. 
 Helena, in a spasm of bitter frankness, said, " The 
 Spanish ulcer destroyed me " ; and British statesmen, 
 in some dim, blunderinc: fashion, rcalisinLT Avhat an 
 entanglement Spain might prove to Napoleon, had 
 begun to feed the Avar in Spain. But their methods 
 Avcrc of almost incredible stupidity. In the early days
 
 136 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 of November 1 808, there were 30,000 British troops in 
 Spain ; but they were broken up into three independent 
 divisions, separated by nearly a hundred miles from 
 each other, without any common base, and in touch 
 neither with each other nor with the Spanish armies. 
 The three British divisions, in brief, and the three 
 Spanish armies — not 100,000 strong taken altogether 
 — were scattered, like fragments from some exploded 
 planet, across the north of Spain, from the Asturian 
 mountains to Saragossa. No one brain shaped their 
 plans ; no single will controlled them. 
 
 And upon this military chain, of which each link 
 was already broken, Napoleon suddenly poured, like a 
 tempest, the whole warlike strength of France. All 
 through the month of October he was hurrying through 
 the wet passes of the Eastern and Western Pyrenees 
 his choicest troops, the fierce warriors who had struck 
 down one after another the great Powers of the Con- 
 tinent, the veterans of Jena and Austerlitz and Fried- 
 land. The eight corps which formed the army now 
 flowing like a deluge through the Pyrenees were under 
 the command of generals into the syllables of whose 
 very names the echoes of a hundred victories were 
 packed : Soult and Lannes, Mortier and Ney, St. Cyr 
 and Bessieres. And the fiercest and most splendid 
 intellect ever employed in the service of war since the 
 days of Hannibal — that of Napoleon himself — governed 
 the whole movement. For nearly four weeks the road 
 from Bayonne to Vittoria was crowded with infantry 
 and cavalry and guns. The Imperial Guard itself, with 
 the halo of a hundred victories on its bayonets, formed 
 part of the great host pouring southward into Spain.
 
 SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA 1 37 
 
 As the French forces deployed from the passes they 
 formed a mighty host more than 300,000 strong, of 
 whom 40,000 were cavalry, while in equipment, in dis- 
 cipline, in martial ardour, in that gay and reckless 
 valour which is the note of the French character, they 
 formed one of the most terrible fighting instruments 
 known to history. 
 
 There is no space to describe here the sudden and 
 terrible fashion in which the tempestuous strategy of 
 Napoleon struck down the Spanish forces. Napoleon 
 swept over them, in fact, Vv-ith something of the breath- 
 less speed and resistless fury of a tropical whirlwind. 
 The Emperor reached Bayonne on November 3 ; within 
 three weeks three Spanish armies were not so much 
 overthrown as annihilated. They had been smitten at 
 Espinosa, at Burgos, at Tudela ; and scattered fugitives, 
 without artillery, supplies, or ammunition, had taken 
 refuge in the rugged mountains at the head-waters of 
 the Ebro, or amongst the Guadarrama Hills, or behind 
 the walls of Saragossa. On December 2 the cavalry of 
 the French Guard were gathered like a threatening 
 cloud on the hills which overlook Madrid from the 
 north-west ; and on December 4 the French eagles flew 
 over Retire, and Madrid was captured ! 
 
 Spain lay, in a word, at Napoleon's mercy. His 
 cavalry could swoop, almost Avithout check, over the 
 fertile southern provinces. On December 20 the sixth 
 corps under Ney, the Imperial Guard, and the reserve, 
 under the personal command of Napoleon, stood ready 
 to begin that great triumphant march to the south-w^est, 
 Avhich was to end at Lisbon. The Imperial nuistcr-roll 
 showed at that moment that the French forces in Spain
 
 138 
 
 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 numbered more than 330,000 men, with 60,000 horses 
 and 400 guns ; and Spain was, in Sir John Moore's terse 
 phrase, " without generals, without armies, without a 
 government." What human force could arrest a 
 strategy framed by what Napier calls " the mightiest 
 
 ,^y/ A/buera C>. J,, MorcM 
 
 Moron'% Castalta 
 
 C.ir J 
 
 St. Vincent I 
 
 l6° 
 
 Seville/GiJ^' 
 
 Malaga 
 C. Trafalqi 
 
 .Zll 
 
 l^niante 
 
 iGranada 
 
 ^C. Pahs 
 Cartagei 
 
 ina 
 
 ■Gibraltar 
 
 / Map of the 
 
 \Gaia spy^NISH CAMPAIGN. 
 
 English Miles 
 
 020 40 60 *">(:: 100 200 
 
 "Tlie Century Magazine." 
 
 Walkira-Boutalls 
 
 genius of two thousand years," and carried out by more 
 than 300,000 of the finest soldiers of that period, with a 
 glow of victory in their very blood ? 
 
 It is a matter of sober history that the daring 
 resolve of a single British soldier arrested the whole of 
 Napoleon's designs, diverted the march of all his mighty
 
 SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA 1 39 
 
 and crowded battalions, and, in the darkest hour of its 
 fortunes, saved Spain ! "I will sweep the English armies 
 from the Peninsula," said Napoleon, as, from under the 
 walls of Madrid, he set out on what he meant to be 
 the swiftest and most dazzling campaign of his life. 
 Terrible is the irony of history ! As a matter of fact, 
 the British armies chased the French from the Penin- 
 sula, and in turn poured through the passes of the 
 Pyrenees on France ; and defeat in Spain finally over- 
 threw Napoleon's throne, " It was the Spanish ulcer," 
 as he himself said in wrathful anguish, " that destroyed 
 me." But there would have been no " Spanish ulcer " 
 — there might have been no storming of Badajos, no 
 Vittoria, no Salamanca, and perhaps no Waterloo and 
 no St. Helena — if, at the moment when Napoleon was 
 about to set out on his march to Lisbon at the head of 
 what seemed resistless forces, Sir John Moore, with 
 20,000 British soldiers, had not made that famous 
 march — a thrust as with the point of a glittering rapier 
 at Napoleon's flank — which threatened the Emperor's 
 communications. That audacious stroke made him 
 stay his march through Spain — a march never to be 
 resumed — while he swung round to crush the tiny but 
 daring foe that menaced him. 
 
 Moore's strategy was, indeed, of a singularly daring 
 quality. The Spanish armies Avith whom he was 
 directed to co-operate, had simply vanished, like a 
 cluster of eddying wind-driven leaves before a tempest. 
 Napoleon, at the head of an apparently overwhelming 
 force, was about to invade the rich provinces to the 
 south, and the march of his victorious columns would 
 not cease till their feet were wet with the waves of the
 
 140 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Atlantic beyond Lisbon. Moore by this time had 
 partially concentrated the scattered divisions of the 
 British army, but his total force numbered not more 
 than 26,000 men, of which 2000 were cavalry, with 
 sixty guns. Moore's position was in the angle that 
 forms the north-west shoulder, so to speak, of Spain, on 
 Napoleon's right flank. Napoleon never doubted that 
 Moore, when he learned the disasters which had over- 
 taken the Spanish armies, and knew the resistless tide 
 of war which was about to sweep across Spain to Lisbon, 
 would instantly fall back to Corunna, or Vigo, on the 
 sea-coast, and take ship to Lisbon. He would thus 
 pluck his army out of deadly peril, and transport it 
 south in readiness to meet Napoleon in front of Lisbon ; 
 if, indeed, the British Government had the courage to 
 face the French standards there. 
 
 Moore himself, at first, resolved on that plan, but a 
 bolder strategy took shape in his brain. He had the 
 power of striking at Napoleon's communications with 
 France. If he thrust boldly eastward, and menaced 
 Napoleon's communications on the side of Burgos, he 
 made no doubt that the Emperor would instantly swing 
 round upon him, and a force outnumbering his by ten 
 to one, and urged by the fiery genius of the greatest 
 soldier of the century, would be hurled upon him. But 
 Moore believed that he could strike at Napoleon's com- 
 munications sufficiently to arrest the southward march 
 of his columns, and so secure for Spain a breathing 
 space, and yet pluck back his tiny army in safety before 
 Napoleon's counter-stroke could crush it. He would 
 draw, that is, Napoleon's whole power upon himself, 
 would thrust his head, so as to speak, into the lion's
 
 SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA I4I 
 
 very jaws, and yet cheat the lion's fury. As Napier 
 puts it, he saw the peril for his own army. He knew 
 that " it must glide along the edge of a precipice : must 
 cross a gulf on a rotten plank; but he also kncAV the 
 martial quality of his soldiers, felt the pulsation of his 
 oAvn genius; and, the object being worth the deed, he 
 dared essay it even against Napoleon." 
 
 Moore was indeed a great soldier, and with better 
 fortune might have anticipated and outshone even the 
 fame of Wellington. He was of Scottish birth, and Av^as 
 one of the very finest soldiers that martial race has in 
 modern times produced. He had a vivid, commanding 
 personality that made him a sort of king amongst men. 
 His eyes Averc dark and searching, and were set beneath 
 a forehead of singular breadth and aspect of poAver. His 
 mouth had a Avomanly sweetness about it, Avhile the 
 curve of his chin and the general contour of his face 
 gave an extraordinary expression of energy. He lacked, 
 perhaps, that iron quality of blood and Avill Avhich 
 augmented Wellington's capacity as a general, Avhile it 
 Avon for him an unpleasant reputation for cold-blooded- 
 ness as a friend. Moore, in fact, had a strain of gentle- 
 ness in him that made him adored by his oAvn circle. 
 He Avas generous, high-minded, Avith a passionate scorn 
 of base things and of base men — a quality Avhich made 
 mean men hate him, and evil men afraid of him. Of 
 his signal capacity for Avar there is no room to doubt. 
 His ideal of soldiership Avas very noble, and he had the 
 art of stamping it on all those around him. "No man 
 Avith a spark of enthusiasm," says Charles Napier, after- 
 Avards the conqueror of Scinde, "could resist the in- 
 fiuence of Moore's great aspirings, his fine presence, his
 
 142 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 ardent penetrating genius." Moore did more, perhaps, 
 to create the modern British soldier than any other 
 British general that can be named. At Shorncliffe 
 Camj) three regiments — the 43rd, the 52nd, and the 
 Rifles — were under his hands. Up to that point they 
 were commonplace regiments with no gleam of special 
 fame about them. Moore so kindled and fashioned 
 them that afterwards, as Wellington's famous Light 
 Division, they were found to be " soldiers unsurpassable, 
 perhaps never equalled." From the officers of these 
 three regiments, who felt the breath of Moore's quicken- 
 ing genius, there came a longer list of notable men than 
 has ever been yielded by any other three regiments of 
 any service in the world. Napier says that in the list 
 were four who afterwards commanded armies — three 
 being celebrated as conquerors — above ninety who 
 attained the rank of field officer ; sixteen governors of' 
 colonies, many generals who commanded districts, &c. 
 &c. Half-a-dozen Moores, in a word, might well have 
 transmuted to gold the whole clay of the British army ! 
 
 Napoleon himself recognised Moore's genius, when 
 he learnt that the British commander, instead of falling 
 back to the sea-coast, was actually striking at his com- 
 munications. " Moore," he said, " is the only general 
 now fit to contend with me ; I shall advance against 
 him in person. 
 
 Nothing could surpass the speed and energy with 
 which Napoleon instantly changed his plans, arrested 
 the southward march of his columns, and swung round 
 on his daring foe. Moore on December 23 had reached 
 Carrion, purposing to leap on Soult, who held Saldana. 
 To beat Soult, however, was a secondary object. His
 
 Sm JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA 1 43 
 
 real purpose was to draw Napoleon from the south, and, 
 as Napier expresses it, " it behove the man to be alert 
 who interposed between the lion and his prey." On 
 December 19, 60,000 men and 150 gims were reviewed 
 by Napoleon at the gates of Madrid, and were just 
 being launched on that long march which was to end 
 at Lisbon. The French light cavalry were already riding 
 on the borders of Andalusia, the first French corps was 
 holding Toledo. But on December 2 1 , Napoleon heard 
 of Moore's daring march, and within twenty-four hours 
 his southward-moving columns were all arrested ; Avithin 
 forty-eight hours, 50,000 French troops were at the 
 foot of the Guadarrama Hills, the range to the north- 
 west of Madrid, across which Napoleon must lead his 
 troops to cut off Moore from the sea-coast. 
 
 It was winter-time. The passes were choked with 
 snoAv, the cliffs were slippery with ice. Furious tem- 
 pests, heavy with rain or sword-edged with sleet, howled 
 through the ravines. Twelve hours' toil left the half- 
 frozen French columns still on the Madrid side of the 
 mountain range, and the generals reported the passage 
 "impossible." The leader who had crossed the St. 
 Bernard, hoAvever, was not to be stopped by Spanish 
 hills and snows. Napoleon, with his staff, joined the 
 advance-guard, and, with fiery gestures and fiery speech, 
 urged on the soldiers. Many men and many beasts 
 perished; the struggle across the snow-filled passes 
 lasted for two days. But Napoleon's vehemence swept 
 all before it, and on the 24th the army had reached 
 Villacastin, sixty miles from Madrid. On the 26th, 
 Napoleon was at Tordesillas with the Guard, and he 
 wrote to Soult : " Our cavalry scouts are already at
 
 144 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Benavente. If the English pass to-day in their position, 
 they are lost." 
 
 Napoleon, in brief, was paying back Moore with his 
 own tactics. The British general had only to loiter on 
 the Esla for twelve hours longer, and Napoleon would 
 have swept like a whirlwind across his communications ; 
 and, betwixt Soult and Napoleon, the British army 
 would have been crushed like a nut betwixt the ham- 
 mer and the anvil. The speed of Napoleon's march, too, 
 had been little less than marvellous. In the depth of 
 winter he had executed a march of 200 miles with 
 50,000 men, with the energy, and something of the 
 speed, of a thunderbolt. On December 22 he was at 
 Madrid ; on the 28th he was at Villalpando, having 
 performed a march on bad roads, and in wild weather, 
 of 164 miles in six days. 
 
 And yet Moore evaded him ! When Napoleon 
 reached Valdaras, the British were across the Esla; 
 but so nicely did Moore time his movements, and with 
 such daring did he hold on to his position in front of 
 the converging French armies, to the very last moment, 
 that Napoleon only missed his stroke by twelve hours, 
 and the French cavalry scouts cut off some of the 
 British baggage as it crossed the Esla ! 
 
 Nor did Moore, indeed, begin his retreat without a 
 brisk counter-stroke on his too eager pursuers. Thus, 
 at Mayorga, Paget, who commanded the British cavalry, 
 and was watching Soult, was cut off from the main 
 body of the British by a sort of horn of cavalry thrown 
 out from Napoleon's columns. The force falling back 
 before Soult, that is, found solid squadrons of French 
 horse drawn up on a hill, wet with rain, and thick with
 
 SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORtJNNA I45 
 
 snow, on the line of its retreat. Paget led two squadrons 
 of the loth Hussars straight up the hill. It was stiff 
 riding up the wet slope, and Paget halted his squadrons 
 a few yards from the summit to give them breathing 
 time, and then led them furiously at the enemy. With 
 such daring did the Hussars drive their charge home 
 that the French cavalry Avere smitten into fragments, 
 and more than 100 captured. The British cavalry, it 
 may be explained, had been for twelve days in almost 
 hourly combat with the French outposts, and had estab- 
 lished such a superiority over their enemies that they 
 rode cheerfully at any odds, Avith an exultant certainty 
 of success ! 
 
 Napoleon urged his pursuit with amazing vehemence 
 till he reached Astorga on January i. His vehement 
 will carried his troops the whole distance, from Bena- 
 vente to Astorga, a distance of over thirty miles, during 
 the brief span of a single winter's day. An icy rain beat 
 upon the troops during the whole day, and no less than 
 five times the infantry had to strip, and wade through 
 the rain-swollen and snow-chilled streams. And yet 
 they never halted. But, eagerly as Napoleon pressed 
 on, Moore still outmarched and evaded him. At 
 Astorga, Soult joined Napoleon, and 70,000 French 
 infantry, 10,000 cavalry, and 200 guns were thus 
 assembled under one command. It was an amazing 
 proof of Napoleon's energy that, in the brief space of 
 seven days, he should thus have flung on Moore so 
 mighty a force. Napoleon, to quote Napier, "had 
 transported 50,000 men from Madrid to Astorga in 
 less time than a Spanish courier would have taken to 
 travel the same distance." But it Avas also a justifica- 
 
 K
 
 146 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 tion of Moore's strategy that lie liad thus diverted the 
 very flower of Napoleon's forces from their march 
 southward, to the north-west corner of Spain. 
 
 At Astorga, Napoleon was overtaken by a courier 
 with despatches. He was galloping with the advanced 
 posts on Moore's track, when the courier overtook him. 
 He dismounted, ordered a bivouac fire to be lit, and 
 cast himself down on the ground beside it to read his 
 despatches. The snow fell heavily upon him as he read, 
 but left him unmoved. His despatches told the Em- 
 peror that Austria had joined the league of his enemies, 
 and that France was menaced. Napoleon's decision 
 was swift and instant. He left Soult and Ney, with 
 60,000 men, to push Moore back to the sea, and, if 
 possible, destroy him. He turned the faces of the Im- 
 perial Guard once more towards the Pyrenees, and him- 
 self rode at furious speed, and almost without escort, to 
 Paris. 
 
 Soult, the ablest of Napoleon's marshals, pressed 
 hard on Moore's tracks, Ney marching by a parallel 
 route and endeavouring to turn Moore's flank. The 
 three armies, pursuers and pursued, passed through the 
 mountains of Galicia ; but Moore, riding always with 
 his rear-guard, kept a front of steel against his enemies, 
 and continually evaded them. 
 
 His troops were young and inexperienced, and 
 British soldiers, at their best, do not shine in retreat. 
 Discipline is apt to vanish. The men grow sulky and 
 desperate. The ordered battalions, somehow, dissolve 
 into reckless units. And it cannot be denied that in 
 the speed and hardship of Moore's retreat, with in- 
 experienced officers and raw troops, the British army
 
 SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA 1 47 
 
 went sadly to pieces. The rear-guard, it is true, on 
 wliicli perpetual combat acted as a tonic, kept magnifi- 
 cently together. Discipline in it was perfect, and, as a 
 matter of fact, it suffered less loss than the main body. 
 For twelve days, says Napier, these hardy soldiers had 
 covered the retreat, during which time they traversed 
 eighty miles of road in two marches, passed several 
 nights under arms in the snow of the mountains, and 
 were seven times engaged. Yet they lost fewer men than 
 any other division in the army ! At Lugo, on January 
 7, Moore halted, and offered battle to his pursuers, and 
 that gallant challenge, as with a touch of magic, restored 
 discipline and cheerfulness to the British army. The 
 stragglers, as by an electric shock, were transfigured 
 once more into soldiers. Grumbling was silenced ; 
 battalions grow close-packed and orderly. The British 
 soldier, at his worst, grows cheerful at the prospect of 
 a fight, while a retreat is hateful to him. Wellington's 
 veterans, in their famous retreat from Burgos two years 
 afterwards, did no better than Moore's young soldiers. 
 Soult, however, would not accept Moore's challenge of 
 battle, and the retreat was resumed, and the pursuit 
 urged afresh. On January 1 1 Corunna was reached. 
 Moore's plan was to embark at Corunna and carry his 
 troops to Cadiz, there to assist the Spaniards in de- 
 fending the southern provinces. But when the troops 
 reached the summit of the hills that looked down on 
 Corunna the bay was empty ! The transports were 
 wind-bound at Vigo. 
 
 It was a marvellous retreat. Moore's marches, in 
 all, extended over 500 miles. At one time he had no 
 less than two great armies thundering in pursuit of him,
 
 148 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Napoleon himself striking at his flank. Yet the English 
 general never lost a gun, nor suffered his rear-guard to 
 be broken ; and his total losses, in spite of the temporary- 
 breakdown of the discipline of his army, were not more 
 than 4000 men. His retreat, too, was marked with a 
 hundred acts of daring. Again and again he turned on 
 his pursuers, and sent their too eager squadrons stagger- 
 ing back with the vehemence of his counter-stroke. A 
 charge of the loth Hussars broke the Imperial Guard 
 itself, slew 130, and took seventy prisoners, including 
 their commander. General Lefebvre Desnouettes. At 
 Villafranca, the French general, Colbert, one of Napo- 
 leon's favourite officers, was slain and his men roughly 
 overthrown when pressing too sharply on Moore's rear. 
 At Valladolid, Major Otway, with some British dragoons 
 not only overthrew a French cavalry force much superior 
 to his own, but took a colonel and more prisoners than 
 he had men to guard. 
 
 As an example of the soldierly quality of the men who 
 marched and fought under Moore, a single incident may 
 be taken from Napier. At Castro Gonzalo, two privates 
 of the 43rd, John Walton and Richard Jackson, were 
 posted beyond the bridge, with orders that, if a force of 
 the enemy approached, one should fire and run back to 
 give the alarm, the other stand firm. In the grey, bitter 
 dawn, a squadron of French cavalry, who had crept 
 up unperceived, dashed at the two men. Jackson fired 
 and ran, as ordered, to give the alarm. A score of horse- 
 men in a moment were round him, slashing at him as 
 he ran. He received fourteen sabre cuts, but, stagger- 
 ing, and with uniform drenched in blood, he yet ran on 
 and gave the alarm. Walton, in turn, obeying his
 
 SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA 1 49 
 
 orders, stood at his post, a sturdy, red-coated figure, 
 standing steadfast in a whirlwind of galloping horses 
 and gleaming, hissing sword-strokes. Walton parried 
 each flashing stroke as well as he could, and answered 
 them, when possible, with a vengeful bayonet-thrust. 
 The combat lasted for some breathless, desperate 
 minutes ; then, the British infantry coming running up, 
 the French horsemen galloped off, leaving Walton still 
 standing, with iron loyalty, at his post. His cap, his 
 knapsack, his belt and musket were cut in a score of 
 places, his bayonet was- bent double, was bloody to 
 the hilt, and notched like a saw, yet he himself was 
 unhurt ! 
 
 On January 11, as we have said, Moore reached 
 Corunna, and faced swiftly round to meet his pur- 
 suers. He was twelve hours in advance of Soult, and 
 the French general lingered till the i6th before joining 
 in the shock of battle — a delay which was, in part, 
 necessary to allow his straggling rear-guard to close up, 
 but in part, also, it was due to a doubt as to Avhat might 
 be the result of closing on a foe so hardy and stubborn. 
 Moore employed this breathing time in preparing for 
 embarkation. He blew up on the 13th two outlying 
 powder magazines; in one were piled 4000 barrels of 
 powder, and its explosion was like the crash of a volcano. 
 The earth trembled for miles, a tidal wave rolled across 
 the harbour, a column of smoke and dust, with flames 
 leaping from its back flanks, rose slowly into the sky, 
 and then burst, pouring a roaring tempest of stones and 
 earth over a vast area, and destroying many lives. 
 
 Moore next shot all his foundered horses, to the 
 mingled grief and wrath of his cavalry. The 15 th
 
 150 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Hussars alone brought 400 horses into Spain, and took 
 thirty-one back to England ! The horses, it seems, were 
 ruined, not for the want of shoes, but "for want of 
 hammers and nails to put them on," Having embarked 
 his dismounted cavalry, his stores, his wounded, his 
 heavy artillery, and armed his men with new muskets, 
 Moore quietly waited Soult's onfall. His force was only 
 14,000 strong, without cavalry, and with only nine six- 
 pounders, and he could not occupy the true defence of 
 Corunna, the great rocky range which runs at right 
 angles to the Mero. He had to abandon this to the 
 French, and content himself with holding an inferior 
 ridge nearer the town. 
 
 Hope's division held the left of this ridge; Baird's 
 the ris^ht. Paget's division was in reserve, covering^ 
 the valley which curved round the western extremity 
 of the ridge, and ran up to Corunna. Still farther 
 to the west Fraser's division guarded the main road to 
 Corunna. Paget's division thrust forward a battalion 
 to the lower ranges of the hills on the western side of 
 the valley, and then stretched a line of skirmishers 
 across the mouth of the valley itself. Soult thus could 
 only cross the ridge by breaking through Hope's or 
 Baird's division. If he came up the valley he would 
 expose his flank to Baird, and find his march barred by 
 Paget. Moore, as a matter of fact, reckoned on his left 
 and centre repulsing the main attack of the French; 
 then Paget and Fraser would move up the valley and 
 complete the French overthrow. Soult had 20,000 
 veteran troops and a strong artillery; and, with great 
 skill, he planted cloven heavy guns on a rocky eminence 
 on his left, whence they could search the whole right
 
 Niipiur :> i'tiiiiihuLu W ar. 
 
 ll'al>icr<j-eaHlalli<.
 
 152 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 and centre of the British. He launched his attack in 
 three cokimns — the strongest, under Mermet, being 
 intended to carry the village of Elvina, which served as 
 an outpost to the extreme British right, and then to 
 sweep round the right flank of Moore's position. 
 
 The onfall of the French was swift and vehement. 
 The eleven great guns from the crags poured a tempest 
 of shot on the British ridge, the skirmishers of Mermet's 
 column ran forward, and drove back the British pickets 
 with a heavy fire, while the solid column, coming on at 
 the double after them, carried the village. 
 
 Moore, with his swift soldierly glance, instantly saw 
 that this was the pivot of the battle, and he galloped to 
 the spot. The 50th and the 62nd were stationed here, 
 and Charles Napier, who as senior Major commanded 
 the 50th, has left a most vivid word-picture of Moore's 
 bearing on the field of battle : — 
 
 " I stood in front of my left wing on a knoll, from 
 whence the greatest part of the field could be seen, and 
 my pickets Avere fifty yards below, disputing the ground 
 with the French skirmishers, but a heavy French 
 column, which had descended the mountain at a run, 
 was coming on behind with great rapidity, and shouting 
 — ' En avant, tue, tue, en avant, tue ! ' their cannon, at 
 the same time, plunging from above, ploughed the 
 ground, and tore our ranks. Suddenly I heard the 
 gallop of horses, and, turning, saw Moore. He came at 
 speed, and pulled up so sharp and close, he seemed to 
 have alighted from the air, man and horse looking at 
 the approaching foe with an intentness that seemed to 
 concentrate all feeling in their eyes. The sudden stop 
 of the animal — a cream-coloured one, with black tail
 
 SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA 1 53 
 
 and mane — had cast the latter streaming forward, its 
 cars were pushed out like horns, while it eyes flashed 
 fire, and it snorted loudly with expanded nostrils. My 
 first thought was, it will be away like the wind ; but 
 then I looked at the rider, and the horse was forgotten. 
 Thrown on its haunches, the animal came sliding and 
 dashing the dirt up with its fore-feet, thus bending the 
 General forward almost to its neck; but his head was 
 thrown back, and his look more keenly piercing than I 
 ever before saw it. He glanced to the right and left, 
 and then fixed his eyes intently on the enemy's advanc- 
 ing colunm, at the same time grasping the reins with 
 both his hands, and pressing the horse firmly with his 
 knees ; his body thus seemed to deal with the animal 
 while his mind was intent on the enemy, and his aspect 
 was one of searching intenseness beyond the power of 
 words to describe. For a while he looked, and then 
 galloped to the left, without uttering a word ! " 
 
 Moore's tactics were both daring and skilful. He 
 swung round the 4th Regiment, so as to smite with a 
 ilank fire that section of the French column moving with 
 unwise daring round his right. He ordered up Paget, 
 and after him Fraser, so as to make a counter-stroke at 
 the French left, and meanwhile he launched the 42nd 
 and 50th against the French column which had carried 
 the village in the front. Napier, who commanded the 
 50th, has painted a most graphic picture of the struggle. 
 " Clunes," he said to the captain of the Grenadier com- 
 pany, " take your Grenadiers and open the ball !" " He 
 stalked forward alone, like Goliath before the Philistines, 
 for six feet five he was in height, and of proportionate bulk 
 and strength ; and thus the battle began on our side."
 
 154 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Napier sternly forbade any firing, and to prevent it, and 
 to occupy the men's attention, made them slope and 
 carry arms by word of command. " Many of them," he 
 says, " cried out ' Major, let us fire ! ' ' Not yet,' was my 
 answer." The 42nd had checked a short distance from 
 a wall, but Napier led his men right up to the wall, and 
 then said, " Do you see your enemies plainly enough to 
 
 hit them ? " '" Many voices shouted, ' By Ave do !' 
 
 ' Then blaze away,' said I ; and such a rolling fire broke 
 out as I hardly ever heard since." The wall was breast- 
 high. Napier, followed by the officers, leaped over, and 
 called on the men to follow. About a hundred did so 
 at once, and, finding the others not quick enough for 
 his impatience, Napier leaped back, and holding a 
 halberd horizontally pushed the men quickly over. He 
 then leaped over himself, and the instant he did so five 
 French soldiers suddenly rose from the ground, levelled 
 their muskets at him, and fired ! The muskets were so 
 near as to almost touch him, but his orderly sergeant, 
 running at his side, struck them up with his pike, and 
 raved Napier's life. 
 
 Napier dressed his line ; and, as he says, remember- 
 ing the story of how the officers of the English guards 
 at Fontenoy laid their swords over the men's firelocks 
 to prevent them firing too high, he did the same with a 
 halberd — a curious example of how one brave act, across 
 a hundred years, will inspire another. How Napier, 
 Avith the hope of carrying the great battery, afterwards 
 led part of his regiment up a lane lined on either side 
 by French infantry, and so turned into a mere track of 
 fire ; how some unhappy counter-order prevented the 
 50th supporting him, and how Napier himself was
 
 SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA 1 55 
 
 wounded and taken jDrisoner cannot be told here. The 
 story will be found, related with inimitable fire and 
 humour, in Napier's own life. 
 
 Meanwhile, at every point, the British were victorious. 
 The Guards and the Black Watch carried the village ; 
 Baird and Hope drove back with confusion and loss the 
 coluums that assailed them, and Moore, eagerly watching 
 the whole line of battle from the right of his position, 
 was about to hurl Paget, supported by Fraser, on the 
 French left. 
 
 At that moment Moore was struck on the left breast 
 by a cannon-ball, and dashed violently on the ground. 
 It was a dreadful wound. The shoulder was smashed, 
 the arm hung by a piece of skin, the ribs over the heart 
 were stripped of flesh and broken, and the muscles that 
 covered them hung in long rags. But Moore, absorbed 
 in the great struggle before him, sat up in an instant, 
 his eyes still eagerly watching Paget's advance. His 
 staff gathered round him, and he was placed in a 
 blanket, and some soldiers proceeded to carry him from 
 the field. One of his staff, Hardinge, tried to unbuckle 
 his sword, as the hilt was entangled in the strips of flesh 
 hanging from his wound, but the dying soldier stopped 
 him. " I had rather," he said, " it should go out of the 
 field Avith me ! " One of his officers, taking courage 
 from Moore's unshaken countenance, expressed a hope 
 of his recovery. Moore looked steadfastly at his own 
 shattered breast for an instant, and calmly answered, 
 " No, I feel that to be impossible." Again and again, as 
 they carried the dying general from the field, he made 
 his bearers halt, and turn round, that he might watch 
 the fight. It was the scene of Wolfe on the Heights of
 
 156 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Abraham repeated ! And the spectacle was such as 
 might well gladden the eyes of Moore. On the left, and 
 at the centre, the British were everywhere advancing. 
 Paget's column was overthrowing everything before it in 
 the valley. 
 
 Had Fraser's division, as Moore intended, been 
 brought up and frankly thrown into the fight, it can 
 hardly be doubted that Soult would have been not 
 merely overthrown, but destroyed. His ammunition 
 was almost exhausted. His troops were in the mood of 
 retreat. The Mero, a fordless river, crossed by a single 
 bridge, was in his rear. Ho had lost 3000 men ; the 
 British less than 1000 ; and the British, it may be 
 added, were full of proud and eager courage. 
 
 But Moore was dying. Baird was severely wounded. 
 The early winter night was creeping over the field of 
 battle, and Hope, gallant soldier though he was, judged 
 it prudent to stay his hand. Soult had been roughly 
 driven back ; the transports were crowding into the 
 harbour. It was enough to have ended a long retreat 
 with the halo of victory, and to have secured an un- 
 disturbed embarkation. 
 
 Meanwhile Moore had been carried into his quarters 
 at Corunna, A much-attached servant stood with tears 
 running down his face as the dying man Avas carried into 
 the house. " My friend," said Moore, " it is nothing ! " 
 Then, turning to a member of his staff, Colonel Ander- 
 son, he said, " Anderson, you know I have always wished 
 to die in this way. I hope my country will do me justice." 
 Only once his lips quivered, and his voice shook, as he 
 said, " Say to my mother — " and then stopped, while he 
 struggled to regain composure. " Stanhope," he said, as
 
 Sm JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA 1 57 
 
 his eye fell on liis aide-de-camp's face, "remember me 
 to your sister" — the famous Hester Stanhope, Pitt's 
 niece, to whom Moore was engaged. Life was fast and 
 visibly sinking, but he said, " I feel myself so strong, I 
 fear I shall be long dying," 
 
 But he was not : death came swiftly and almost 
 painlessly. Wrapped in a soldier's cloak he was carried 
 by the light of torches to a grave hastily dug in the 
 citadel at Corunna ; and far off to the south, as the 
 sorrowing officers stood round the grave of their dead 
 chief, could be heard from time to time the sound of 
 Soult's guns, yet in sullen retreat. The scene is made 
 immortal in Wolfe's noble lines : — 
 
 " Few and short were the prayers we sajd, 
 And we spoke not a word of sorrow, 
 But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, 
 And we bitterly thought of the morrow. 
 
 "We thought as we hollowed his narrow bed, 
 And smoothed down his lonely pillow, 
 That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, 
 And we far away on the billow." 
 
 Borrow, in his " Bible in SjDain," says that in the 
 Spanish imagination strange legends gather round that 
 lonely tomb. The peasants speak of it with awe. A 
 great soldier of foreign speech and blood lies there. 
 Great treasures, they Avhispcr, were buried in it ! Strange 
 demons keep watch over it ! " Yes, even in Spain, 
 immortality has already crowned the head of Moore — 
 Spain, the land of oblivion, where the Guadalete flows."
 
 WELLINGTON AT SALAMANCA 
 
 July 22, 181 2 
 
 " Salamanca was the first decided victory gained by the allies in the 
 Peninsula. In former actions the French had been repulsed ; here they 
 were driven headlong, as it were, before a mighty wind without help or 
 stay. , . . And the shock, reaching even to Moscow, heaved and shook 
 the colossal structure of Napoleon's power to its very base." — Napier. 
 
 " I saw him [Wellington] late in the evening of that great day, when 
 the advancing flashes of cannon and musketry, stretching as far as the eye 
 could command in the darkness, showed how v/ell the field was won ; he 
 was alone, the flush of victory was on his brow, his eyes were eager and 
 watchful, but his voice was calm and even gentle. More than the rival of 
 Marlborough, for he had defeated greater generals than Marlborough ever 
 encountered, with a prescient pride he seemed only to accept this glory as 
 an earnest of greater things." — Icier)i. 
 
 IT was a French officer who condensed the story of 
 Salamanca into the epigram that it was " the battle 
 in which 40,000 men had been beaten in forty minutes." 
 In an epigram, truth is usually sacrificed to picturesque- 
 ness, and this oft- quoted saying is in open quarrel 
 with fact. The battle of Salamanca lasted, not forty 
 minutes, but six hours. Yet, in dramatic quality, it is 
 one of the most remarkable fights in modern history; 
 and the tactics of the three or four weeks which pre- 
 ceded it — the marches and counter-marches, the tangled 
 manoeuvring, the swift thrust and swifter parry of two 
 great masters in the art of war — are almost as dramatic 
 in their features as the battle itself.
 
 WELLINGTON: 
 Front a iiiezzolint, after the /•orfrait by SiK Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A.
 
 WELLINGTON AT SALAMANCA 1 59 
 
 Salamanca was fought on July 22, 181 2. A little 
 more than a month earlier — on June 13 — Wellington 
 crossed the Portuguese border, and began the move- 
 ment designed to drive the French out of Spain, It 
 was a step of singular daring. Wellington had under 
 his nominal command some 90,000 men, but they were 
 widely scattered, composed of four different nationalities, 
 were ill supplied and worse paid, and the number under 
 his immediate command did not reach 50,000. The 
 French, on the other hand, had 300,000 soldiers in 
 Spain, of one blood and discipline, veterans in war, 
 and led by generals trained in Napoleon's school and 
 familiar with victory. Marmont, who directly con- 
 fronted Wellington on the east, had 70,000 men under 
 his standard ; but the French system of " making war 
 sustain war" — of feeding an army, that is, by supplies 
 taken from the enemy — caused Marmont's troops to bo 
 widely scattered. Yet he had 52,000 present with the 
 eagles. Marmont, too, had Madrid, strongly held by 
 Napoleon's brother Joseph, behind him. Soult, to the 
 south, held Andalusia with 56,000 men ; Souham held 
 the Asturias to the north with 38,000; Suchet had 
 76,000 men in Catalonia and Valencia. 
 
 Wellington's plan was to leap on Salamanca, capture 
 it, and, if possible, crush or defeat Marmont before re- 
 inforcements could reach him. He thrust hard and 
 fiercely, that is, at the French centre, and calculated 
 that the thrust would draw the widely-scattered French 
 armies from the extremities, and so, with one stroke, 
 clear northern and southern Spain. In any case, the 
 march to Salamanca and Madrid must bring Soult 
 hurrying up from the south, as otherwise his com-
 
 l6o FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 munications witli France would be cut off. To advance 
 with 50,000 troops against forces numbering in all 
 300,000 was an act of signal hardihood. Wellington 
 was thrusting his head, in brief, into the lion's mouth ; 
 and if, while engaged in deadly wrestle with Marmont 
 at the centre, the French armies on either flank closed 
 in upon him, he must be destroyed. 
 
 Wellington, however, measured with ice-clear intel- 
 lect, and faced with ice-cool courage, the risks of this 
 daring stategy, and made his historic dash at Sala- 
 manca. There were two circumstances in his favour. 
 First, the French quite misread his strategy. Soult, on 
 March 26, wrote he "was certain Wellington would 
 march upon Andalusia to raise the siege of Cadiz." 
 But Wellington, with more subtle strategy, proposed 
 to raise the siege of Cadiz by striking at Salamanca! 
 The other circumstance in Wellington's favour was 
 the total want of concert betwixt the French generals. 
 Napoleon, whose genius alone could control their fierce 
 jealousies of each other, was far off in Russia. Joseph 
 lacked the skill and daring of a great soldier. His 
 more famous brother had put the crown of Spain upon 
 his head, but he could not put within that head the 
 brains necessary to sustain it ; and his generals were 
 loyal neither to him nor to each other. Napoleon him- 
 self attributed the loss of Salamanca to the " vanity " of 
 Marmont, eager rather to win personal fame than to 
 serve France. But that same flame of restless and 
 selfish vanity burned in the breasts of all the French 
 marshals. They cared more to outshine each other 
 than even to beat the common enemy. 
 
 Wellington reached Salamanca on June 17, and
 
 WELLINGTON AT SALAMANCA l6l 
 
 Marmont, who could assemble only 25,000 troops, fell 
 back before him. But he left Salamanca strongly- 
 fortified. No less than thirteen convents and twenty- 
 two colleges, it was said, had been pulled down to yield 
 material for the French forts ; and these were heavily 
 armed with artillery, while Wellington had only four 
 heavy guns and three 24-pounders, and a very scanty 
 supply of ammunition for even these. Marmont 
 reckoned that the forts would hold out for at least 
 fifteen days ; and in less than that time he would be 
 heavily reinforced from Madrid and from the north, and 
 could then advance and crush Wellington. Welling- 
 ton's attack, hoAvever, was fierce. The men who had 
 stormed Badajos and Ciudad Rodrigo were not to be 
 denied at Salamanca, and the forts would have fallen 
 in five days, but that ammunition faUed and gave the 
 garrison a brief respite. 
 
 Marmont found he must do something to divert the 
 fierceness with which the British pressed on his forts. 
 He was a gallant soldier, a fine tactician, full of French 
 elan, and of a half-scornful eagerness to overthrow the 
 mere " sepoy general " opposed to him, and drive the 
 British into the sea ; and with a force of 30,000 he 
 advanced in very tempestuous fashion against the force 
 covering the attacked forts. Wellington knew that a 
 barren victory would be hardly less disastrous than a 
 defeat, and was determined to fight only when he could 
 destroy his enemy. He was content with barring Mar- 
 mont's advance, day after day, by positions skilfully 
 taken up, until on Juno 29 the forts surrendered. Mar- 
 mont then fell back with shrewish wrath to the Duero, 
 holding the northern bank of it from Tordesillas to 
 
 L
 
 1 62 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Toro — a distance of less than fourteen miles — there to 
 await the reinforcements pressing to join him. AVelling- 
 ton followed him in the expectation that either the 
 difficulties of gathering supplies would compel Marmont 
 to fall back, or his impatient and eager genius would 
 make him attempt some rash stroke. 
 
 Marmont, however, was a tactician of the first order. 
 His troops were hardy and quick of foot. The country, 
 a series of open rolling downs seamed with shallow 
 rivers, lent itself to rapid movements, and was perfectly 
 familiar to him ; and he commenced a series of swift 
 movements in which, again and again, he out-marched 
 and out-generalled Wellington. His aim, in brief, was 
 to march round Wellington's flank, and strike at the 
 Ciudad Rodrigo road on his rear, which formed his only 
 line of retreat to Portugal. And the feints and move- 
 ments on his part to accomplish, and on Wellington's 
 part to prevent, this, form one of the most brilliant 
 chapters of tactics in the history of war. The move- 
 ments of the armies resembled the quick and gleaming 
 thrusts and parries of two accomplished fencers engaged 
 in fierce and close duel ; or, to vary the figure, the 
 armies circled round and dashed at each other with 
 breathless attack and recoil, like two contending hawks 
 in mid-air, swooping on each other in airy curves that 
 grow ever closer. There is no space here to tell the 
 story of this struggle, which lasted more than a week, 
 and in which the weapons were not so much bayonet 
 and sabre, as the brains of the general and the legs of 
 the soldier. But some of the picturesque incidents 
 yielded by that struggle in generalship are worth 
 describing.
 
 WELLINGTON AT SALAMANCA I 63 
 
 Marmont, on July 16, made a show of crossing the 
 Ducro at Toro, and so marching past Wellington's left 
 to Salamanca. Wellington moved to his left to block 
 this road, but yet, as a precaution, left the fourth and 
 light divisions and Anson's cavalry, under Sir Stapleton 
 Cotton, on the Trabancos, so as to guard against any 
 advance past his right from Tordesillas. As soon as 
 Marmont saw the bulk of the British forces drawn to 
 his right, he countermarched his troops, pressed on at 
 the utmost speed back to Tordesillas, crossed the Duero 
 there without pause, and came rushing down past 
 Wellington's right towards Salamanca. Some of his 
 men actually marched forty miles, some fifty, without 
 a halt ! 
 
 It Avas a brilliant stroke of generalship, and on the 
 evening of the 17th, Cotton, with two divisions and some 
 cavalry, was, without support, in the presence of the 
 whole French army. Cotton had the obstinate courage 
 that grows yet more stubborn in actual combat, char- 
 acteristic of his race, and he clung to his position. In 
 the deep folds of the treeless downs the full strength of 
 tlie French was hidden, and Cotton, with cheerful con- 
 fidence, drove back the skirmishers as they crossed the 
 stream. But the columns of the French became denser, 
 their fire heavier; and soon the deep sound of heavy 
 guns was added to the sharp crackle of musketry. 
 
 It was early morning, and the black masses of 
 powder-smoke mingled with the light mists rising from 
 the river. Here is a vivid battle-picture, taken from 
 Napier : — 
 
 " The cannonade became heavy, and the spectacle 
 surprisingly beautiful, for the lighter smoke and mist,
 
 164 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 mingling and curling in fantastic pillars, formed a 
 huge and glittering dome tinged witli many colours by 
 the rising sun; and through the grosser vapour below 
 the restless horsemen were seen or lost, as the fume 
 thickened from the rapid play of the artillery, while 
 the bluff head of land beyond the Trabancos, covered 
 with French troops, appeared by an optical deception 
 close at hand, dilated to the size of a mountain, and 
 crowned with gigantic soldiers, who were continually 
 breaking off and sliding down into the fight. Suddenly 
 a dismounted English cavalry officer stalked from the 
 midst of the smoke towards the line of infantry; his 
 gait was peculiarly rigid, and he appeared to hold a 
 bloody handkerchief to his heart; but that which 
 seemed a cloth was a broad and dreadful wound; a 
 bullet had entirely effaced the flesh from his left 
 shoulder and breast, and carried away part of his ribs, 
 his heart was bared, and its movement plainly discerned. 
 It was a piteous and yet a noble sight ; for his counte- 
 nance, though ghastly, was firm, his step scarcely in- 
 dicated weakness, and his voice never faltered. This 
 unyielding man's name was Williams ; he died a short 
 distance from the field of battle — it was said, in the 
 arms of his son, a youth of fourteen, who had followed 
 his father to the Peninsula in hopes of obtaining a 
 commission, for they were not in affluent circum- 
 stances." 
 
 By seven o'clock Wellington, accompanied by Beres- 
 ford, drawn by the sound of the firing, had reached the 
 scene of the conflict, and was almost at once in great 
 personal peril. 
 
 A couple of squadrons of French cavalry, gallantly
 
 WELLINGTON AT SALAMANCA 1 65 
 
 led by their officer, swept down the farther bank of 
 the river, splashed through the current, and galloped 
 up the steep slope beyond. As they reached the crest, 
 disordered and breathless, they found themselves con- 
 fronted with a squadron of British dragoons. The 
 Frenchmen were heavy cavalry, splendidly mounted, 
 in gay uniform, with high fur caps. Their officer 
 halted his men within a hundred yards of the British 
 cavalry, thrown out in skirmishing order, held his 
 SAvord high in air, and, with a shout of " Vive 
 I'Empereur! En avant, Frangais!" dashed on the Bri- 
 tish, who were carried away in a moment by the rush 
 of the heavier horses of the French. The whole 
 mass, French and British, struggling together, and 
 smiting furiously at each other, went tumbling down 
 the reverse slope. 
 
 In the valley below were two guns, covered by some 
 infantry pickets and another squadron of light cavalry ; 
 and without a pause the French officer rode at these, 
 his men following, and swept through them like a 
 whirlwind, the artillerymen stooping, with heads bent, 
 spurring their horses to save their guns, while the 
 Frenchmen slashed at them with their sabres. Wel- 
 lington and Beresford were caught in the meUe ; and 
 Maxwell tolls how he saw the British general as he 
 crossed the ford " with his straight sword drawn, at 
 full speed, and smiling." At this moment a squadron 
 of heavy British dragoons charged the furious French 
 swordsmen, and the latter were destroyed almost to a 
 man ; but " their invincible leader," says Napier, 
 "assaulted by three enemies at once, struck one dead 
 from his horse, and, with surprising exertions, saved
 
 1 66 FIGHTS FOE, THE FLAG 
 
 liimself from tlie other two, though they rode hewing 
 at hun from each side for a quarter of a mile." 
 
 Meanwhile Marmont, having discovered how small 
 was the force opposed to him, crossed the Trabancos, 
 and pushed on straight for the Guarena. If he could 
 throw himself across it before the British, Wellington 
 would be cut off from Salamanca. 
 
 Ten miles of dusty soil had to be crossed under a 
 blazing sun and at high speed. The troops that could 
 march fastest would win. And, urged by their officers 
 to the utmost exertions, the rival columns pressed on. 
 It was one of the strangest scenes ever witnessed in 
 war, and only Napier's resonant prose can do justice 
 to it : — 
 
 " The British retired in three columns, the light 
 division being between the fifth division and the French, 
 close to the latter, the cavalry on the flanks and rear. 
 The air was extremely sultry, the dust rose in clouds, 
 and the close order of the troops was rendered very 
 oppressive by a siroc wind ; but where the light division 
 marched the military spectacle was strange and grand. 
 Hostile columns of infantry, only half musket-shot from 
 each other, were marching impetuously towards a 
 common goal, the officers on each side pointing forward 
 with their swords, or touching their caps and waving 
 their hands in courtesy, while the German cavalry, 
 huge men on huge horses, rode between in a close 
 compact body, as if to prevent a collision : at times the 
 loud tones of command to hasten the march were 
 heard passing from the front to the rear on both sides, 
 and now and then the rush of Fl-ench bullets came
 
 WELLINGTON AT SALAMANCA 1 67 
 
 sweeping over the columns, whose violent pace was 
 continually accelerated. 
 
 " Thus moving for ten miles, yet keeping the most 
 perfect order, both parties approached the Guarena, and 
 the enemy, seeing the light division, although more in 
 their 'power than the others, was yet outstripping them 
 in the march, increased the fire of their guns and 
 menaced an attack with infantry: the German cavalry 
 instantly drew close round, the column plunged sud- 
 denly into a hollow dip of ground on the left, and ten 
 minutes after the head of the division was in the 
 stream of the Guarena between Osmo and Castrillo. 
 The fifth division entered it at the same time higher 
 up on the left, and the fourth division passed on the 
 right. The soldiers of the light division, tormented 
 with thirst, yet long used to their enemy's mode of war- 
 fare, drank as they marched ; those of the fifth division, 
 less experienced, stopped a few moments, and on the 
 instant forty French guns, gathering on the heights 
 above, sent a tempest of bullets amongst them. So 
 nicely timed was the operation." 
 
 Maxwell describes the scene as the river was reached. 
 "A buzz," he says, "ran through the ranks that water 
 was at hand; and the soldiers were impelled for- 
 ward with eyes staring and mouths open; and when 
 within fifty yards of the stream a general rush was 
 made." 
 
 The French general had accomplished much. He 
 had crossed a great river, surprised Wellington's right, 
 and driven it back for ten miles. Nevertheless, a glance 
 at the map shows how Wellington had thwarted the 
 attempt to sweep past his flank and get between liim
 
 1 68 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 and Salamanca. Marmont's troops, too, had been 
 marcliing for two days and niglits, and were exhausted, 
 and a brief pause followed. The tAvo great hosts bivou- 
 acked on the opposite slopes of a narrow valley, and 
 the outposts were placed so near each other that, to 
 quote Maxwell, " the fixed sentinels almost received the 
 secret whispers of each other's watch ! " 
 
 On the morning of the 20th, Marmont was moving 
 again. His light-footed battalions, while the stars were 
 yet burning in the Spanish night skies, were pushing 
 past Wellington's right up the Guarena. Parallel lines 
 of hills, with a very narrow and shallow valley betwixt, 
 run curving to the south-west towards the Tormes, on 
 which river stands Salamanca; and along the crest of 
 the outer range Marmont pushed at fiercest speed. On 
 the inner ridge, and within easy musket-shot, marched 
 the British, the eager columns trying to head each other. 
 Wherever the ground favoured the movement, the guns 
 on either side wheeled round, and smote the hostile 
 flank opposite them with grape and round shot. But 
 the dusty panting soldiers, with sloping muskets and 
 shoulders thrown forward, never halted ; while, to quote 
 Napier, "the officers, like gallant gentlemen, who bore 
 no malice and knew no fear, made their military 
 recognitions, and the horsemen on each side watched 
 with eager eyes for an opening to charge." At one 
 point the swiftly moving lines, for a moment, so to 
 speak, jostled, and two dust -covered brigades on 
 either side clashed fiercely together. The British, 
 however — a brigade of the fourth division — swung 
 round, poured in a deadly volley, charged home with 
 bayonet, dashed their opponents into mere fragments,
 
 WELLIXGTOX AT SALAMANCA 1 69 
 
 then Avlieeled back, and pressed on their scarcely inter- 
 rupted march. 
 
 In this day's operations, however, Marmont won. 
 He outmarched and outflanked the British, and when 
 night fell his dusty and exhausted soldiers held the ford 
 of Huerta on the Tormes. He had nothing to do but to 
 keep that position till his reinforcements reached him, 
 then Salamanca and Wellington's line of retreat to 
 Portugal lay under his stroke. The night set in wild 
 and stormy. Rain fell with tropical violence. The 
 hill-slopes were slippery with a thousand rills ; a fm-ious 
 thunderstorm broke over the valley, where the tired 
 armies, in great confusion, were trying to take up their 
 positions. The peals of thunder were so deep and 
 echoing, that a whole troop of British cavalry horses, 
 familiar with the roar of artillery, broke loose in terror, 
 and galloped riderless into the French camp. Hundreds 
 of frightened horses, too, dashed through the British 
 lines, and were mistaken for charges of French cavalry. 
 Never Avas a wilder scene. But, through it all, the 
 soldiers of the immortal light division "were seen by 
 the fiery gleams to step from the river to the bank, and 
 pursue their march, amid this astounding turmoil, in 
 close and beautiful order, defying alike the storm and 
 the enemy." 
 
 Wellington recognised that in this strife of tactics 
 Marmont had won ; but he clung with iron tenacity to 
 his position, in the hope that the Frenchman, instead of 
 waiting till his reinforcements came up and made a 
 battle hopeless, might attempt a rash stroke on his own 
 account. But he wrote a letter to the Spanish general, 
 Castanos, saying he must retreat. The orderly carrying
 
 170 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 the letter was captured by the French, and his despatch, 
 falling into Marmont's hands, tempted him to his doom. 
 The French insisted afterwards that this letter was a 
 subtle ruse de guerre on Wellington's part. It was 
 written to trick Marmont, not to inform Castanos ; and 
 its capture was part of the trick. The letter, it is quite 
 true, tempted Marmont to make the rash stroke which 
 ruined him ; but it also exactly expressed Wellington's 
 purpose. Retreat was the only course possible to him if 
 Marmont stood on his defence till his reinforcements 
 came up. 
 
 A glance at the map shows that the Tormes forms 
 a great loop north of Salamanca. Marmont, on the 
 night of July 1 8, had seized the ford at Huerta, at the 
 cro^vn of the loop, and could move down either bank 
 of the river to Salamanca. Wellington entrenched his 
 third division on the right bank of the river, opposite 
 the ford of Santa Marta, to bar Marmont's advance, but 
 with the bulk of his army crossed the river, and took 
 up a position perpendicular to its course, his extreme 
 right touching, but not occupying, one of a pair of 
 rugged and isolated hills, called the Arapiles. He thus 
 covered Salamanca against Marmont's advance from 
 Huerta, on the left bank of the river. 
 
 The two wearied armies watched each other for a 
 day and a half; but Wellington had learnt that Mar- 
 mont's reinforcements from the north would reach him 
 on July 22 or 23, and the British general decided that 
 he must retreat. Still, he hung on, hoping for some 
 chance of a dramatic stroke, and this suddenly offered 
 itself. Marmont had crossed to the left bank of the 
 Tormes, and, on the morning of the 22nd, he suddenly
 
 WELLINGTON AT SALAMANCA 17I 
 
 made a leap at tlie outer of the two hills we have 
 named. The hills were about 500 yards apart, and the 
 British, quick to see the French movement, made a dash 
 at the hill near them. The French, vehement and swift- 
 footed, reached the hill on the side first, seized it, and 
 dashed on to the sister hill, which the slower, but more 
 stubborn, British had half climbed. There was a struggle, 
 fierce, short, and bloody; but at its close the French 
 and the British held their respective hills, and these 
 two savage splinters of rock formed, so to speak, the 
 menacing heads, from which two great armies threatened 
 each other. But the capture of the French Arapiles 
 gave Marmont a great advantage. It made his right 
 unassailable, and he could swing round from the hill as 
 from a pivot, and strike at the Ciudad Rodrigo road, 
 along which Wellington must retreat. AVellington met 
 the situation thus created by using the English Arapiles 
 as a fixed point, and swinging round his army till his 
 right rested on Aldea Tejada. What had been his first 
 line facing Huerta, thus became his rear, and the army 
 now looked eastward to meet the wheel of the French 
 left. 
 
 The long summer day crept on, both armies grimly 
 watching each other. Wellington had resolved to fall 
 back as soon as night came. Marmont, on his part, was 
 fretted to fever by the dread that Wellington would slip 
 out of his hands before his reinforcements came up. 
 The English commissariat waggons were already on the 
 road to Ciudad Rodrigo, and the dust, risinsf hicjh in 
 the sky, made Marmont believe that Wellinofton was 
 actually in retreat ; and, taking fire at that thought, he 
 launched his left, consisting of tAvo divisions under
 
 I English lines of March 
 
 I Caualry 
 
 1 French lines of March 
 
 I Caualrj 
 
 Babila fuente 
 
 Battle of 
 
 SALAMANCA 
 
 with operations 
 
 before and after the Action. 
 
 Napier's "Peninsular War " 
 
 ;/ aiAir £r Boiitail !C,
 
 WELLINGTON AT SALAMANCA 1 73 
 
 Maucime, with fifty guns and some light cavalry, along 
 a ridge of low hills which ran in a curve past AVelling- 
 ton's right towards Salamanca. The two armies, in fact, 
 occupied the opposing crests of an oval-shaped amphi- 
 theatre, whose axis, from east to west, was about two 
 udlcs long, the transverse axis, from north to south, 
 being about a mile and a half; and to the northern tip 
 of this natural amphitheatre the two Arapiles acted, so 
 to speak, as gate-posts. 
 
 Marmont's left was now in movement, and its march 
 quickly created a steadily widening gap in the French 
 line of battle. Wellington's keen and soldierly eye 
 instantly detected the flaw in his enemy's tactics. The 
 French left wing was entirely separated from the centre. 
 The fault was flagrant, and, in Napier's terse phrase, 
 Wellington " fixed it with the stroke of a thunderbolt." 
 Croker, in his journal, relates a conversation at Strath- 
 fieldsaye, many years afterwards, in which Alava, while 
 Welhngton was present and listened, and smiled at the 
 story, drew a realistic sketch of the manner in which 
 Marmont's unlucky move was detected by the British 
 general : — 
 
 " He (Wellington) had been very busy all the morn- 
 ing, and had not thought of breakfast, and the staff had 
 grown very hungry ; at last, however, there was a pause 
 (I think he said about two) near a farmyard surrounded 
 by a wall, where a kind of breakfast was spread on the 
 ground, and the staff alighted and fell to. While they 
 were eating, the Duke rode into the enclosure ; he refused 
 to alight, and advised them to make haste ; he seemed 
 anxious and on the look-out. At last they persuaded 
 him to take a bit of bread and the lesx of a cold roast
 
 174 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 fowl, which he was eating without knife from his fingers, 
 when suddenly they saw him throw the leg of the fowl 
 far away over his shoulder, and gallop out of the yard, 
 calling to them to follow him. The fact is, he had been 
 waiting to have the French sighted at a certain gap in the 
 hills, and that was to be the signal of a long-meditated 
 and long-suspended attack. ' I knew,' said Alava, with 
 grave drollery, ' that something " very serious " was 
 about to happen when an article so precious as the leg 
 of a roast fowl was thus thrown away ! ' " 
 
 Wellington, in brief, waited coolly till Marmont's 
 faulty movement was developed past remedy ; then he 
 made his terrible counter-stroke. He fixed Marmont's 
 right to its ground by making a dash at the French 
 Arapiles; he smote the head of Maucune's columns 
 with the third division brought up at the double from 
 Aldea Tejada, and, at the same moment, he launched 
 at their flank the fifth division. How swift and dramatic 
 was the development of Wellington's attack is best told 
 in Napier's vivid sentences : — 
 
 " A few orders issued from his lips like the incanta- 
 tions of a wizard, and suddenly the dark mass of troops 
 which covered the English Arapiles, as if possessed by 
 some mighty spirit, rushed violently down the interior 
 slope of the mountain and entered the great basin, 
 amidst a storm of bullets which seemed to shear away 
 the Avhole surface of the earth over which they moved. 
 The fifth division instantly formed on the right of the 
 fourth, connecting the latter with Bradford's Portuguese, 
 who hastened forward at the same time from the right 
 of the army; and the heavy cavalry, galloping up on 
 the right of Bradford, closed this front of battle."
 
 WELLESTGTON AT SALAMANCA 1 75 
 
 The first and most decisive blow of tlie great figlit 
 was struck by the third division. These were Picton's 
 men; but that brave soldier was absent through sick- 
 ness, and the division was under the command of 
 Pakenham, Wellington's brother-in-law, a soldier of 
 excellent fighting quality. Wellington gave his orders 
 in' person to Pakenham. " Do you see those fellows 
 on the hill, Pakenham ? " he said, pointing to where 
 Maucune's columns were now showing. " Move on with 
 
 your division, and drive them to the d !" Pakenham 
 
 saluted, and there are tAvo versions of his reply. "I will, 
 
 my lord, by G ," is the reply put in his mouth by 
 
 Robinson in his "Life of Picton." Napier's version 
 of the reply is, " Yes, if you will give me a grasp of that 
 all-conquering hand." The first version is needlessly 
 profane, the second is tumid and un-British ; but about 
 the intelligence and fire with which Pakenham carried 
 out his orders there is no doubt. Wellington himself 
 watched the division as it deployed into column and 
 moved fiercely to attack — an attack which was de- 
 scribed by an eye - witness as " not only the most 
 spirited, but the most perfect thing of its kind ever 
 seen." "Did you ever see a man," said Wellington 
 to his staff, "who understood his orders better than 
 Pakenham ? " 
 
 Pakenham's columns, as they drew near the French, 
 swung into line, the companies bringing forward their 
 right shoulders at a run as they marched, and with 
 bent heads and levelled bayonets, but not yet firing a 
 shot, pressed sternly on the French, who, expecting to 
 look down on the Ciudad Rodrigo road crowded with a 
 retreating enemy, instead suddenly found themselves
 
 176 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 threatened by swiftly moving lines of steady infantry, 
 glittering from end to end with shining bayonets at the 
 charge. But the French were hardy veterans, and broke 
 instantly into an angry fire of musketry. Their guns, 
 too, SAvung round and poured a storm of grape on the 
 steady British lines. 
 
 These never wavered or halted. The gaps in their 
 front were filled instantly. On they came, their dis- 
 ciplined tread sounding louder and nearer, till they 
 burst into dreadful and fast-following volleys, and the 
 French were swept away as with the blast of a whirlwind. 
 The French officers were gallant men, and did desperate 
 acts to keep their men steady. The colonel of a French 
 regiment, for example, snatched a musket from a 
 grenadier, ran forward a few yards, and shot Major 
 Murphy, in command of the 88th or Connaught Rangers, 
 who was in advance of his men. One of the 88th in 
 return shot the Frenchman dead; but Murphy's horse 
 galloped wildly across the front of the regiment, dragging 
 his dead rider, whose foot was entangled in the stirrup, 
 with him. 
 
 The sight kindled the 88th to madness. The line 
 began to sway forward with the eager fury of the men ; 
 and Pakenham, who rode near, shouted to Wallace, who 
 commanded the brigade, to "let them loose." The 
 word of command ran down the line, repeated from 
 officer to officer; the bayonets fell as with one impulse 
 to the level; and, "let loose," the men with a sudden 
 shout dashed at the enemy. Amid the smoke of the 
 French line a single officer could be seen lingering to 
 fire the last gun. But, crushed as though smitten with 
 a tempest of aerolites, the French columns broke in
 
 WELLINGTON AT SALAMANCA I 77 
 
 hopeless flight. The French cavahy rode at the flanks 
 of the victorious British, and for a few minutes horse- 
 men and footmen were mingled in desperate fight. 
 The French cavahy, however, was quickly driven off; 
 and, steadily moving on its path, the third division 
 struck with its fire the second line of the French, while 
 the fifth division was pouring its volleys at the same 
 moment into the French flank. 
 
 Then came one of the most memorable cavalry 
 charges on record. The heavy brigade — the 3rd and 
 4th Dragoons, and the 5 th Dragoon Guards — under Le 
 Marchant, and Anson's light cavalry, found the oppor- 
 tunity of a decisive attack. The squadrons were 
 launched at speed: 
 
 "While Pakenham, bearing onward with a conquering 
 violence, was closinaf on their flank, and the fifth division 
 advancing with a storm of fire on their front, the 
 interval between the two attacks was suddenly filled 
 with a whirling cloud of dust, moving swiftly forward 
 and carrying within its womb the trampling sound of a 
 charging multitude. As it passed the left of the third 
 division, Le Marchant's heavy horsemen, flanked by 
 Anson's light cavalry, broke forth from it at full speed, 
 and the next instant I2(X» French infantry, though 
 formed in several lines, were trampled down with a 
 terrible clamour and disturbance. Bewildered and 
 blinded, they cast away their arms and ran through 
 the openings of the British squadrons, stooping and 
 demanding quarter ; while the dragoons, big men on 
 big horses, rode onwards, smiting with their long 
 glittering swords in uncontrollable power ; and the 
 third division followed at speed, shouting as the 
 
 M
 
 178 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 French masses fell in succession before tlie dreadful 
 charge." 
 
 The charging cavalry struck first the 66th Regiment 
 of the French, formed in a sort of column of half 
 battahons, thus presenting six successive lines which 
 broke into a heavy musketry fire as the cavalry dashed 
 on their front. Over these the British horsemen rode 
 at a gallop, simply trampling them out of existence. A 
 second battalion of six hundred was served in the same 
 fashion. Onward swept the eager horsemen. By this 
 time the open trees, under which the British cavalry 
 was galloping, grew closer, and the front of the charging 
 line was greatly broken. A solid French brigade, which 
 stood in the shelter of the trees, poured a stream of fire 
 into the galloping squadrons, and scores of saddles were 
 emptied. Yet the stubborn horsemen kept on, and 
 crushed to fragments this, the third body they had 
 encountered ; and Lord Edward Somerset, with a single 
 squadron seeing beyond him a battery of five guns, 
 pushed on his attack and captured them. This 
 memorable charge destroyed Maucune's three divisions, 
 as a military body, and captured five guns and 2000 
 prisoners. But Le Marchant himself, perhaps the 
 best cavalry leader in the British army, had fallen, and 
 the three regiments of the heavy brigade at nightfall 
 could muster only three squadrons. 
 
 One curious incident marked the cavalry charge. 
 Captain Mackie of the 88th, who acted as aide-de-camp 
 to Wallace, the commander of the brigade, was, about 
 this stage of the battle, reported as " missing." No one 
 had seen him fall, but he had disappeared. Some half- 
 hour later he reappeared through the smoke from the
 
 WELLINGTON AT SALAMANCA I 79 
 
 enemy's front, covered with dust and blood, liis horse 
 stumbling from fatigue, and nothing left of his sword 
 but the hilt. As the English cavalry swept past the 
 88th, on their great charge, Mackie's Highland blood 
 had kindled to flame ; he galloped to the flank of the 
 cavalry, shared in the tumult and rapture of their mad 
 ride, and, when it was over, returned to his regiment in 
 the fashion we have described. 
 
 It was five o'clock when Pakenham attacked, and 
 before six o'clock Marmont had been carried disabled 
 off the field ; his successor, Bonet, was wounded ; the 
 French left had been destroyed as a military body, and 
 had fallen back in tumultuous and disorderly retreat. 
 But two circumstances for a brief space changed the 
 fortunes of the conflict, and seemed to make the final 
 issue doubtful. Clausel, who assumed command of the 
 French when Bonet fell, was a fine soldier, stubborn of 
 courage and fertile in resource. He not only rallied the 
 broken left and shaken centre, but, with the instinct of 
 a valiant soldier, he attempted a daring counterstroke 
 on Wellington's left ; and chance for a moment seemed 
 to offer him a golden opportunity. Wellington assailed 
 the French Arapiles with Pack's Portuguese brigade. 
 Pack's men were 2000 strong, and Pack himself was " a 
 fighting general" of fine courage. The hill, too, was 
 held by a single French battalion, and the success of the 
 attack seemed assured. And yet it failed ! Pack led 
 his men up within thirty yards of the summit in solid 
 column ; then over the crest and round the flank of the 
 hill the French came in a furious charge, pushed home 
 with fiery valour ; and the Portuguese broke. " There 
 was a cloud of smoke, a shout, a stream of fire, and the
 
 l8o FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 side of the hill was covered witli the killed, the wounded, 
 and the flymg Portuguese." French valour in this 
 attack was heightened by contempt of the Portuguese, 
 and Portuguese courage, it may be added, was rebuked 
 by a lurking consciousness of inferiority to the French. 
 But it is not easy to excuse 2000 men for permitting 
 themselves to be routed by less than 600. 
 
 French valour is always most dangerous when the 
 imagination of victory gleams like a flame in it. The 
 4th division of the British had at that moment reached 
 the edge of the southern ridge. Pack's defeat exposed 
 their flank, and Clausel, seizing the critical moment, 
 smote hard on their front with two strong unbroken 
 regiments, and the British were driven in tumult and 
 confusion, but fighting desperately, down the hill. Cole, 
 in command of the division, fell badly wounded. Beres- 
 ford brought up a Portuguese brigade to restore the 
 fight, but the brigade was carried away, and Beresford 
 himself was disabled. The French heavy cavalry was 
 coming on to the attack, and the moment was critical. 
 Wellington, riding quickly to the scene, brought up 
 Clinton's division, which had not yet fired a shot, and 
 the fury and thunder of the fight grew still deeper. 
 
 Night was falling. The dry grass on the slope where 
 the hostile lines were exchanging close and deadly 
 volleys, and making furious rushes with the bayonet, 
 took fire, and ran in crackling flames over the bodies of 
 the wounded, and under the trampling feet of the com- 
 batants. But the stubborn close-fighting valour of the 
 6th overbore the fiery daring of the French, and the 
 changing current of battle set finally in favour of the 
 British. The whole volume of the French retreat flowed
 
 WELLINGTON AT SALAMANCA I 01 
 
 in wild far-reaching tumult along the Alba do Tormes 
 road. Still its rear-guard, however, clinging to every 
 vantage of ground, covered the retreat with sullen and 
 desperate courage, and Foy in command of it shoAved 
 fine skill. The fragments of Maucune's division held 
 the last defensible ridge on the edge of the forest 
 through which the French retreat, with loud clamour^ 
 was flowing. It was night, black and moonless ; and 
 Clinton, scornful of tactics and flank movements, led his 
 division straight up the hill. To those who watched the 
 fight from a little distance, the eddying fortunes of the 
 attack and the defence were written in ever-changing 
 characters of fire on the hill-slopes. 
 
 " In the darkness of the night the fire showed from 
 afar how the battle went. On the English side a sheet 
 of flame was seen, sometimes advancing with an even 
 front, sometimes pricking forth in spear-heads, now 
 falling back in waving lines, anon darting upwards in 
 one vast pyramid, the apex of which often approached 
 yet never gained the actual summit of the mountain; 
 but the French musketry, rapid as lightning, sparkled 
 along the brow of the height with unvarying fulness, 
 and with what destructive effects the dark gaps and 
 changing shapes of the adverse fire showed too plainly : 
 meanwhile Pakenham turned the left, Foy glided into 
 the forest, and, Maucune's task being then completed, 
 the effulgent crest of the ridge became black and silent, 
 and the whole French army vanished as it were in the 
 darkness." 
 
 The French must cross the Tormes in their flight 
 at Alba de Tormes or at Huerta. Wellington had 
 placed a Spanish garrison at the first, and he pushed
 
 I 82 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 on to the second with the light division. If he could 
 seize that, the French army must surrender or be 
 destroyed. The Spanish garrison, however, had aban- 
 doned Alba de Tonnes without reporting the circum- 
 stance to Wellington; and the French army crossed 
 the Tormes at that point in safety, and pushed on their 
 retreat with such speed that, on the day after the fight, 
 Clausel was forty miles from Salamanca. Wellington 
 overtook the French rear-guard with his cavalry a little 
 before noon on the 23rd, and launched the heavy 
 German dragoons and Anson's lis^ht horsemen at them. 
 Then ensued a cavalry exploit of singular brilliancy. 
 Anson's troopers broke the French cavalry; but the 
 Germans, riding fast, with narrow front, up the valley, 
 discovered some solid squares of infantry on the slope 
 above them. The left squadron of the regiment in- 
 stantly swung round and rode at the nearest square. 
 The two front ranks, kneeling, presented a double row 
 of deadly steel; and over their heads, the French in- 
 fantry, standing four deep, poured a stream of fire into 
 the swiftly moving mass of men and horses before them. 
 The Germans, however, gallantly led, pushed their 
 charge up to the very points of the bayonets. A horse 
 struck by a bullet stumbled forward on to the square, 
 and broke for a moment its solid order, and the Ger- 
 mans — big men on huge horses — swept through the 
 gap, and in an instant the battalion was cut down or 
 trampled out of existence. 
 
 Meanwhile the second squadron, taking fire at the 
 exploit of the squadron next to it, also swung round 
 and rode fiercely at the second French square. Its fire 
 was angry and damaging ; but its ranks had been shaken
 
 WELLINGTON AT SALAMANCA I 83 
 
 by the spectacle of the destruction which liad just ridden 
 over the square below it. One or two French infantry- 
 men ran from their places, and in an instant the tempest 
 of galloping horses and furious swordsmen broke over 
 the square. A third square, according to one version, 
 was in like manner destroyed by the triumphant cavalry ; 
 but the remaining square stood firm and succeeded in 
 covering the French retreat. The charge was a mem- 
 orable feat. Three squares were broken and 1400 
 prisoners captured. Yet a great price was paid for this 
 triumph. " The hill of La Serna offered a frightful 
 spectacle of the power of the musket — that queen of 
 weapons — and the track of the Germans was marked 
 by their huge bodies. ... In several places man and 
 horse had died simultaneously, and so suddenly that, 
 falling together on their sides, they appeared still alive, 
 the horse's legs stretched out as in movement, the 
 rider's feet in the stirrup, his bridle in hand, the sword 
 raised to strike, and the large hat fastened under the 
 chin, giving to the grim but undistorted countenance 
 a supernatural and terrible expression.' 
 
 Salamanca is one of the great battles of modern 
 history. The French army was practically destroyed 
 as a military body. " I never saw an army receive such 
 a beating," wrote AVellington, the least exaggerative of 
 men. But the immediate results of Salamanca were 
 its least important consequences. It destroyed the 
 splendid prestige of the French. It delivered Madrid. 
 It raised the siege of Cadiz. It rescued Andalusia and 
 Castile from the French occupation. Napoleon heard 
 the tidings of the defeat the night before Borodino, and 
 it filled him Avith fury — and with reason. He could
 
 184 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 henceforth hope for no reinforcements from Spain; he 
 must drain his strength, indeed, when he most needed 
 it, to feed the war there. " The Spanish ulcer," said 
 Napoleon long afterwards, " destroyed me." But it 
 was Salamanca that made the Spanish ulcer incurable..
 
 s*^|^' 
 
 SIR AUGUSTUS FRAZER, K.C.B.
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN 
 
 1813 
 
 "The siege of San Sebastian, a third-rate fortress, garrisoned only by 
 3000 men, hastily got together during the tumult of defeat which succeeded 
 the battle of Vittoria, cost the allied army 3800 men, 2500 of whom, 
 including 1 7 16 British, were struck down in the final assault, and it 
 detained the army sixty-three days, of which thirty were with open trenches 
 and thirty-three blockade. ... It must be admitted that a stronger proof 
 can hardly be imagined of the vital consequences of fortresses in war, or of 
 the decisive effect which the courageous defence even of an inconsiderable 
 stronghold often has upon the fortunes of a campaign, or the fate of a 
 monarchy." — Alison. 
 
 A RUGGED breach in a long line of parapeted wall, 
 at whose base a river creeps sluggishly to the sea. 
 The breach is black with drifting smoke, and crowded 
 with red-coated soldiers. Many lie dead under the feet 
 of their comrades ; many have crept, with streaming 
 wounds, to either flank. The faces of the soldiers yet 
 on the breach are black "with powder, fierce with the 
 passion of battle. From the walls above them, from a 
 line of higher parapets that sweeps round at right 
 angles, and commands the breach, a hundred streams 
 of fire converge on the swaying mass of red-coated 
 soldiers. They are dying in hundreds. Suddenly, from 
 beyond the stream, and from the iron lips of fifty great 
 guns, a tempest of shot roars above the heads of the 
 
 i8s
 
 I 86 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 British soldiers, and sweeps the edge of the wall where 
 the fiercely triumphant Frenchmen have defied for two 
 separate hours the utmost valour of the British. For 
 twenty minutes the British guns maintain that over- 
 whelming fire above the heads of their own troops — the 
 most brilliant bit of artillery practice on record. The 
 French parapets are swept as with a besom of flame, the 
 traverses are wrecked, the lines of steadfast infantry are 
 rent to fragments. Then, with a flame of passion 
 scarcely less fierce than the flame of the bellowing 
 guns, the British stormers swept in one red wave 
 over the blackened parapets, and San Sebastian is 
 won ! This is the scene which, through the long 
 afternoon of August 31, 18 13, makes the siege of 
 San Sebastian one of the most picturesque in military 
 history. 
 
 Three great sieges — those of Ciudad Rodrigo, of 
 Badajos, and of San Sebastian — stand out like flaming 
 beacons in the stern landscape of the Peninsular war. 
 Each siege has its special characteristic. That of Ciudad 
 Rodrigo was a swift and brilliant stroke of arms ; it 
 resembles, indeed, nothing so much as the flash of a 
 glittering blade in the hands of a great swordsman. 
 That of Badajos is notable for the masterful and furious 
 daring w^ith which the great breach was carried. The 
 capture of San Sebastian is not marked by the swift 
 brilliancy of Ciudad Rodrigo, nor yet by the tempestuous 
 and half-scornful valour of Badajos. Its characteristic 
 consists of the sullen daring, with a note of wrath 
 running through it, which marked the temper of the 
 soldiers. It is the most bloody and tragical of all the 
 Peninsular sieges. Wellington's sieges in the Peninsula,
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN I07 
 
 it may be added, are not sliming examples of scientific 
 Avarfarc. In each of them he was short of guns, of war- 
 like material, and, above all, of time. In each he had 
 to make the blood of his soldiers compensate for the 
 blunders of his engineers, and the well-nigh incred- 
 ible neglect, or equally incredible folly, of the War 
 Office authorities in England. It was, perhaps, the 
 sullen consciousness on the part of the private 
 soldiers, that they had to pay in life and limb for 
 stupidity, or neglect, in the administration of the war, 
 which explains the exasperated temper in the ranks 
 with which the siege of San Sebastian was conducted, 
 and the blast of licence and cruelty with which it was 
 closed. 
 
 San Sebastian, while the French held Central Spain, 
 was a neglected third-rate fortress, with foul wells, dis- 
 mantled batteries, and practically no garrison. But the 
 great defeat of Vittoria made this sandy peninsula, with 
 its steep rocky tip, a place of the first importance to 
 both armies. The French clung to it, as it would be a 
 thorn in Wellington's flank if he advanced through the 
 passes of the Pyrenees. Wellington coveted it, as its 
 harbour would be a new base of supply for him, and 
 he dared not leave unsubdued what might be easily 
 turned into a strong place of arms, as he pushed on the 
 track of the defeated French through the wild mountain 
 defiles which led to France. 
 
 San Sebastian resembles a lion's head thrust out 
 from the coast of the Bay of Biscay, just where the 
 spurs of the Pyrenees run down to the sea. The " neck " 
 of the lion is a flat sandy isthmus, some 350 yards wide ; 
 the lion's head looks to the north, the bay is under its
 
 1 88 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 cliin to tlie west ; on tlae east flows into tlie sea in a wide 
 shallow tidal channel the river Urumea. The seaward 
 tip of the lion's head is a rocky cone, some 400 feet high, 
 called Monte Orgullo, crowned by the castle of La Mota. 
 Across the sandy isthmus ran a high solid curtain with 
 a huge hornwork, shaped like the point of an arrow, at 
 its centre. Betwixt this wall and the base of Monte 
 Orgullo stretched the town, having a population of 
 something like 10,000 people. A line of ramparts ran 
 along the eastern face of the town, betwixt the curtain 
 across the neck of the isthmus and Monte Orgullo. The 
 Urumea washed the foot of this rampart, and the frown- 
 ing heights of Monte Orgullo commanded with their 
 batteries the whole town. 
 
 Fortune gave to the French, in the person of General 
 Rey, a commander for San Sebastian with a singular 
 genius for defensive war. Rey, indeed, in personal 
 appearance was quite unheroic. Fraser, who was second 
 in command of the British artillery at the siege, met 
 Rey after the surrender, and describes him as " a great 
 fat man," in appearance resembling rather a pacific and 
 heavy-bottomed Dutch burgher, than one of the most 
 brilliant soldiers of the Napoleonic wars. Rey was not 
 present at Vittoria ; he left the day before the battle in 
 command of a great convoy. The convoy passed on to 
 France, but Rey, with his escort, entered San Sebastian, 
 and set himself with stern energy, and the genius of a 
 fine soldier, to prepare for the siege which he knew to 
 be inevitable. Part of the wreck of Vittoria a few days 
 afterwards flowed in wild tumult and confusion into the 
 town ; but Roy, with great resolution, swept the town of 
 non-combatants, armed all his batteries, cleared out his
 
 190 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 trenches and wells, turned the convent of San Barto- 
 lomeo, some 600 yards in advance of the curtam 
 crossing the isthmus, into a strong place of arms; 
 and, with all the art of a veteran soldier, set himself 
 to hold San Sebastian against all comers. He had 
 a garrison of some 3000 men; and 10,000 British and 
 Spanish troops, under Sir Thomas Graham, the "hero 
 of Barossa," one of Wellington's most trusted lieuten- 
 ants, were moving down the slope of the Pyrenees to 
 besiege him. 
 
 The Frenchman, however, had many things in his 
 favour. San Sebastian lent itself easily to a stubborn 
 defence. San Bartolomeo formed a strong outwork to 
 the south ; behind this, on the main road which crossed 
 the narrow neck of the isthmus rose a great circular 
 redoubt, formed of casks, and flanked by ruined houses, 
 strongly held. These in turn were covered by the strong 
 rampart which crossed the isthmus, with a powerful 
 hornwork rising high in its centre. Thus, no less than 
 three lines of defence had to be broken through before 
 the town Avas reached. The town itself must be carried 
 by obstinate street-fighting, while Monte Orgullo, with 
 the stroke of its batteries, covered the whole field of 
 combat, and could be held independently after the town 
 itself had been carried. 
 
 The happiest feature for the French was the fact 
 that they had practically an open sea base, and were in 
 daily communication with France. It is an amazing 
 fact that, eight years after Trafalgar, and Avhile Great 
 Britain was absolutely mistress of the sea, Wellington 
 could not secure any adequate naval assistance in the 
 siege of San Sebastian. A single British frigate, the
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN I9I 
 
 Surveillante, represented all the naval help the Admir- 
 alty could afford. Wellington's transports were captured 
 almost daily by French privateers. The French garrison 
 was perpetually fed by supplies sent directly from 
 France. Vainly Wellington appealed to the Admiralty 
 for ships. "Since Great Britain had been a naval 
 power," he wrote bitterly, "a British army had never 
 before been left in such a situation at a most important 
 moment." Wellington's genius, however, was essentially 
 practical. " If the navy of Great Britain," he wrote to 
 Lord Bathurst, "cannot afford more than one frigate 
 and a few brigs and cutters, fit, and used only, to carry 
 despatches, to co-operate with this army in the siege of 
 a maritime place, the possession of which before the 
 bad season commences is important to the army as well 
 as to the navy, I must be satisfied, and do the best I 
 can without such assistance." "We have been obliged," 
 ho says in the same despatch, " to use the harbour 
 boats of Passages, navigated by women, in landing 
 the ordnance and stores, because there was no naval 
 force to supply us with the assistance we require in 
 boats." Wellington, in brief, in this siege of a hostile 
 port, had to leave the aid of British ships out of his 
 calculation. 
 
 But the aid the French derived from the open sea 
 was simply past calculation. Boats came nightly to the 
 garrison from Bayonnc, bringing engineers, artillerymen, 
 supplies of every kind, with news from the outside 
 world, promises from Soult of immediate relief, and 
 decorations, badges of honour, and crosses of the Legion 
 of Honour in profusion to the soldiers who, from day 
 to day, distinguished themselves in the siege. In this
 
 192 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 way the imagination of the besieged French was fed, 
 as well as their material wants supplied. And the sense 
 that a way of escape to the rear was open, that France 
 was watching their defence, and that every act of valour 
 brought an immediate reward in the shape of some 
 " decoration," or of promotion, bred such a spirit of 
 daring and enthusiasm in the garrison that, says Max- 
 well — who was actually a prisoner in San Sebastian — 
 " I believe the garrison, individually or collectively, 
 would not have hesitated attempting any enterprise, 
 however difficult or dangerous." 
 
 The principles of war are changeless, and Welling- 
 ton's engineers adopted the very plan of attack employed 
 by the Duke of Berwick, who besieged San Sebastian in 
 17 19. Strong batteries were erected on the Chofres 
 sandhills, to smite with their fire the comparatively 
 weak eastern wall across the stream of the Urumea. 
 Approaches were simultaneously to be pushed along 
 the isthmus, so as to take in flank the wall which the 
 breaching batteries were smiting in front, and to smash 
 the defences by which the breach, when made, would 
 be guarded. The plan was able, and if it had been 
 carried out the siege would never have attained what 
 Napier calls its " mournful celebrity." Wellington, 
 however, was guarding the passes against Soult, and 
 left the conduct of the siege to Graham ; and Graham 
 allowed the eager spirits about him to over-ride what 
 their impatience regarded as the too formal approaches 
 of the engineers. They inverted, in a word, Vauban's 
 well-known maxim, " Never attempt to carr}'- anything 
 at a siege by open force which may be gained by art 
 and labour." The British leaders at San Sebastian
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN 1 93 
 
 scorned to postpone the bayonet to the spade or the 
 linstock ! So there became visible in the conduct of 
 the siege that " raw haste " which is something more 
 than " half-sister to delay." 
 
 Batteries were marked out on the night of July 
 10, 1813; by the morning of the 14th the guns were 
 thundering across the front of the isthmus on San 
 Bartolomeo; but not till the 20th did the breaching 
 batteries across the Urumea begin to smite with their 
 fire the eastern wall of the town. Even at this early 
 stage in the siege the British began to feel the strength 
 of the defence. Frazer writes in his diary on July 
 19:" The enemy has some good head in the fortress ; 
 wc must feel for it. He fires and takes his measures 
 with judgment." 
 
 Nothing could well surpass the energy with which 
 the siege was pushed. The great breaching battery 
 had ten guns in action, and in fifteen and a half hours 
 of daylight the fire from these averaged 350 rounds a 
 gun ; " such a rate of firing," says Jones in his " Journal," 
 "was probably never equalled at any siege." The, 
 sustained fury of the fire on both sides, indeed, quickly 
 affected the guns in use. The guns fired from the 
 fortress, for example, gave the appearance of two 
 explosions when discharged ; the vent of the gun, 
 in a word, being so enlarged that the flash from 
 it was almost as clear as that from the muzzle ; 
 Avhile in the English batteries, Jones records, that 
 " some of the vents of the guns were so much en- 
 larged that a moderate-sized finger might be put into 
 them." 
 
 The attacks on the two faces of the defence were 
 
 N
 
 194 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 of course part of one scheme, and should have been 
 pushed on with a wise balance of energy. But Graham, 
 apparently, found it impossible to keep the too eager 
 sjiirits of his force in check ; and, as a result, the attack 
 on the isthnuis was urged on with fiery energy, and 
 without any regard to the operations against the eastern 
 front of the town. By the 17th, San Bartolomeo was 
 almost knocked out of shape ; and though the batteries 
 had not yet opened fire against the eastern front it was 
 impossible to cool the impatience of the attack on the 
 southern face. On the 17th the convent was assaulted. 
 From the engineering point of view the attack was pre- 
 mature ; but it was a brilliant and picturesque feat of 
 arms. 
 
 The convent stood upon a steep ridge, and was open 
 to the fire of both besiegers and besieged. From the 
 batteries on the Chofres sandhills, and from the rocky 
 height of Monte Orgullo, the French and British alike 
 eagerly Avatched the fierce struggle for the convent. No 
 less than sixty guns indeed concentrated their fire on 
 the building while the attack raged — the French guns 
 smiting the assailants, the British guns trying to crush 
 the defenders. At ten o'clock the storming party in two 
 columns came over the crest of the hill which looked 
 down on the convent. It consisted of Wilson's Portu- 
 guese, supported by the light company of the 9th British, 
 and three companies of the Royals. Colin Campbell, 
 afterwards Lord Clyde, led the men of the 9th. The 
 Portuguese came on slowly, and the four companies of 
 the British pushed forward with impatient eagerness, 
 carried the redoubt, jumped over the convent wall, and 
 thrust the French fiercely out. The French clung
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN 1 95 
 
 stubbornly to the bouses whicb stretcbed beyond tbo 
 convent towards tbe town, but tbo otber companies of 
 tbc 9tb coming up witb great resokition tbe Frencb 
 were still tbrust back, wbile tbe cbeers of tbe Britisb 
 troops watcbing tbe struggle from tbe fartber bank of 
 the Urumea, could bo beard above tbc tuuuilt of tbc 
 fiirbt. Tbe reckless darino: of tbe Britisb carried tbem 
 too iar ; tbey tried to carry tbe great circular redoubt, 
 wdiicli stood betwixt tbo convent and tbe town. Musket 
 and bayonet were vain, bowever, to carry a work so 
 stronir, and tbe too eagfer soldiers were driven back witb 
 sbarp loss. 
 
 Tbe convent Avas at once turned into batteries against 
 tbe soutbern front of tbe defence, and tbe eastern wall 
 of tbe town began to crumble under tbc stroke of tbo 
 guns from tbe Cbofres bills. A parallel was carried by 
 tbc Britisb across tbe neck of tbe istbmus, and in its 
 course laid bare an ancient aqueduct, a great drain four 
 feet bigb and tbree feet wide. A young otHcer, Reid, of 
 tbc Engineers, crept up tbis drain ; be found it ran for 
 230 yards towards tbe curtain across tbe istbmus. and 
 ended in a door in tbe very counterscarp itself A space 
 of eigbt feet at tbc end of tbc aqueduct was stopped 
 witb sandbags, and tbirty barrels of gunpowder were 
 lodged against it, tbus forming a globe of compres- 
 sion. Tbis was to be fired at tbe moment of tbo 
 assault, and it was boped would blow, as tbrougb a 
 tube, enougb rubbisb over tbe counterscarp as would 
 till tbc ditcb of tbe bornwork, and tbus make a Avay for 
 tbe stormers. 
 
 Meanwhile the eastern wall crumbled fast under tbo 
 tire of tbc batteries across tbe river. On July 23, tbc
 
 196 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 great breach was declared practicable. A day was spent 
 in makincT a second breach a little to the north of the 
 first, and the assault was fixed for the next morning. 
 When the troops, in the grey dawn, however, were wait- 
 ing in the trenches for the signal to attack, the houses 
 behind the great breach broke into flames, and the 
 attack was postponed to the next day — a very unhappy 
 circumstance. 
 
 The proposed attack was in violation of the simplest 
 rules of engineering. A breach was to be stormed, in a 
 word, before the defences which covered it with their fire 
 had been mastered. Rey had made these defences 
 exceedingly powerful. The hornwork, or cavalier, at 
 the centre of the southern front, rose fifteen feet above 
 the other defences, and swept the breach with the fire 
 of its guns. A tower on either side of the breach 
 raked it with a flanking fire; the houses immediately 
 behind the breach were strongly defended. The British, 
 too, could only attack by leaping from the eastern ex- 
 tremity of the trench which crossed the isthmus, and 
 advancing at the double for 300 yards along the 
 slippery strand left at low water betwixt the Urumea 
 and the undestroyed wall of the town, till they reached 
 the breach. For those 300 yards they were under a 
 flank fire of musketry from the wall ; while Rey had 
 piled the parapet with live shells to bo rolled down 
 on the struggling British. The attack was directed 
 by Wellington to take place " in fair daylight," so that 
 the batteries across the Urumea might keep down the 
 fire of the defenders. Unfortunately, the signal for the 
 attack was given whilst the night was still black, and 
 the batteries on the Chofres hills were unable to open
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN 1 97 
 
 fire on the defenders, except at the risk of smiting their 
 own troops. 
 
 The attacking force consisted of 2000 men of the 5 th 
 division : Frazer led a battahon of the Royal Scots 
 against the great breach , the 38th, under Greville, was 
 to attack the more distant breach ; the 9th, under 
 Cameron, supported the Royals, while the forlorn hope 
 consisted of twenty men of the light company of the 
 9th, and the light company of the Royals, with a ladder 
 party, under Colin Campbell. The opening from the 
 trench was too narrow, and the formation of the troops 
 was broken at the very outset. The 300 yards to be 
 traversed was slippery with weeds and rocks, and broken 
 by deep pools of water, while at every step a fierce 
 fire scourged the flank of the broken soldiers. The 
 assault, in a word, from its very first step became the 
 rush of a mob, instead of a disciplined and orderly 
 attack. The globe of compression in the aqueduct, 
 already described, was indeed fired with a blast that 
 filled the surrounding hills with its echoes, and the 
 surprise of it drove the French for a moment from 
 their defences. 
 
 Frazer and the principal engineering officer, Harry 
 Jones, led eagerly on to the great breach, followed by 
 the soldiers immediately about them ; but the mass of 
 the attacking party halted in the dark to fire at a gap in 
 the wall which they mistook for the breach. In a few 
 minutes the halt filled the narrow interval betwixt the 
 Avail and the river with a struggling crowd of soldiers, 
 aflame with the passion of battle, but without order or 
 leaders. Colin Campbell, with a few men, struggled 
 past the flank of the crowd, and climbed the great
 
 198 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 breacli, and a few disconnected parties followed up the 
 roiigli slope. These gallant men reached the broken 
 crest of the breach, but the French had meanwhile 
 recovered from their surprise. Those who reached the 
 crest of the breach saw below them a deep black gulf, 
 beyond which, in a curve of fire, was a wall of flaming 
 houses, and from every quarter a tempest of shot swept 
 the rugged edge of broken stone on Avhich they stood. 
 Frazer of the Royal Scots, leaped down the farther 
 side of the breach, reached the flaming houses, and died 
 there. Greville, Cameron, Campbell, and other gallant 
 officers broke through the tumult of the crowd, climbed 
 the breach, and fell on its crest. Twice Campbell 
 ascended, and twice he was wounded. Meanwhile, the 
 mass of British soldiers below, with the black river — 
 now filling again with the returning tide and climbing 
 the rocks fast — on one side, and the hostile wall, with 
 its perpetual hail of bullets on the other side, swayed to 
 and fro with sullen shouts and angry answering fire of 
 musketr}'. But, with militar}^ cohesion destroyed, and 
 scourged on both flank and front by the fire of the 
 French, the mass crumbled into clusters, and surging 
 backwards, slowly regained the trenches. When day 
 broke, Frazer of the Artillery, watching from the 
 batteries beyond the Urumea, thought that nothing 
 more than a false attack had taken place ; till, in the 
 clearer daylight he could see the rough slope of the 
 great breach mottled with red spots, the fallen bodies of 
 officers and men. 
 
 This bloody and ill-managed assault resulted in a 
 loss to the British, in killed, wounded, or prisoners, of 
 forty-four officers and nearly 500 men. Perhaps the
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAN" SEBASTIAN 1 99 
 
 best account of the attack and its failure, is to be found 
 in a private letter written by Colin Campbell at the 
 time, and published in his life : — 
 
 " It was dark, as you know, when ordered to advance. 
 All before me went willingly enough forward, but in a 
 very straggling order, arising, in the first instance, from 
 the order of formation previous to attack being extended 
 the whole length of the parallel in a front of fours, Avhicli 
 it (the parallel) would admit of by packing when halted, 
 but was not of sufficient width for troops to maintain 
 that front Avhen in movement. We thus debouched 
 from the mouth of the opening made from the parallel, 
 which was not quite so wide as the latter, in twos and 
 threes. The space we had to traverse between this 
 opening and the breach — some 300 yards — was very 
 rough, and broken by large pieces of rocks, which the 
 falling tide had left Avet and exceedingly slippery, 
 sufficient in itself to have loosened and disordered an 
 original dense formation ; and the heavy and uninter- 
 rupted fire to which they were opposed in advance, in- 
 creased this evil — those different causes combining to 
 make our advance look more like one of individuals 
 than that of a well-organised and disciplined military 
 body. 
 
 "On arriving within some thirty or forty yards of the 
 demi-bastion on the left of the main front, I found a 
 check. There appeared to be a crowd of some 200 men 
 immediately before me, opposite the front of this work 
 — those in front of this body returning a tire directed at 
 them from the parapet above, and which was sweeping 
 them down in great numbers, and also from an en- 
 trenchment which the enemy had thrown across the
 
 200 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 main ditch, about a yard or two retired from the open- 
 ing into it. I observed at the same time a heavy firing 
 at the breach ; and as the Larger portion of the right 
 wing appeared to be collected, as I have described, 
 opposite the demi-bastion, it was very manifest that 
 those who had gone forward to the breach were not 
 only weak in numbers for the struggle they had to 
 encounter, but it was apparent they were also un- 
 supported. I endeavoured with the head of my detach- 
 ment to aid some of their own officers in urging and 
 pushing forward this halted body. They had com- 
 menced firing, and there was no moving them. Failing 
 in this, I proposed to Lieutenant Clarke, who was in 
 command of the light company of the Royals, to lead 
 past the right of these people, in the hope that, seeing 
 us passing them, they might possibly cease firing and 
 follow. I had scarcely made this proposition when this 
 fine young man was killed ; and several of my own (9th) 
 detachment, as also many of the light company Royals, 
 were here killed and wounded. In passing this body 
 with the few of my own people and most of the light 
 company Royals, some might have come away, but the 
 bulk remained. Their halting there (opposite the demi- 
 bastion) thus formed a sort of stopping-place between 
 the trenches and the breach, as the men came forward 
 from the former on their way to the latter. . . . On 
 arriving at the breach, I observed the whole lower parts 
 thickly strewed with killed and wounded. There were 
 a few individual officers and men spread on the face of 
 the breach, but nothinof more. These were cheering, 
 and gallantly opposing themselves to the close and 
 destructive fire directed at them from the round tower
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN 20I 
 
 and other defences on each flank of the breach, and to 
 a profusion of hand-grenades which were constantly 
 rolling down. In going up I passed Jones of the 
 Engineers, who was wounded ; and on gaining the top I 
 Avas shot through the right hip, and tumbled to the 
 bottom. The breach, though quite accessible, was steep, 
 particularly towards the top, so that all those who were 
 struck on the upper part of it rolled down, as in my own 
 case, to the bottom. Finding, on rising up, that I was 
 not disabled from moving, and observing two officers of 
 the Royals, who were exerting themselves to lead some 
 of their men from under the line-wall near to the breach, 
 I went to assist their endeavours, and again went up the 
 breach with them, when I was shot through the inside 
 part of the left thigh. 
 
 "About the time of my receiving my second hit. 
 Captain Archimbeau of the Royals arrived near the 
 bottom of the breach, bringing with him some eighty or 
 ninety men, cheering and encouraging them forward in 
 a very brave manner through all the interruptions that 
 Avere offered to his advance by the explosion of the many 
 hand-grenades that were dropped upon them from the 
 top of the wall, and the wounded men retiring in the 
 line of his advance (the narrow space between the river 
 and the bottom of the wall). Seeing, however, that 
 whatever previous efforts had been made had been 
 unsuccessful — that there was no body of men nor sup- 
 port near to him, while all the defences of and around 
 the breach were fully occupied and alive with fire, and 
 the party with him quite unequal in itself — seeing, also, 
 the many discouraging circumstances under which the 
 attempt would have to be made, of forcing its way
 
 202 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 through such opposition — he ordered his party to 
 retire, receiving, when speaking to me, a shot which 
 broke his arm. I came back with him and his party, 
 and on my way met the 38th, whose advance became 
 interrupted by the wounded and others of the Royals 
 returnin;?." 
 
 The attack had thus failed ; and in the British 
 batteries the supply of ammunition was exhausted; 
 Soult Avas coming fiercely on through the passes of the 
 Pyrenees, and Wellington had no choice but to turn the 
 siege into a blockade till fresh suj^plies arrived from 
 England. Thirty days had been spent in open trenches, 
 and thirty days of blockade followed ; days, as far as 
 Wellington, who was coverinaf the sieo'e, was concerned, 
 of desperate and bloody fighting. But Soult's gallant 
 host, at the close of these operations, was sweeping, a 
 broken mass, in wild tumult back to France, with a loss, 
 in killed, wounded, and prisoners, of not less than 20,000 
 men. Then Wellington resumed the siege. On August 
 19, a battering train arrived from England; on the 23rd 
 came a second battering train; but, with a touch of 
 administrative stupidity delightfully characteristic, am- 
 munition for only a single day's consumption was sent 
 out with the guns ! 
 
 On the morning of the 26th, the batteries opened in 
 thunder on the doomed city. No less than 114 guns 
 were in action at once. For four days that tempest of 
 fire was maintained. By August 30 two wide breaches 
 gaped in the eastern wall, the fire of the place was almost 
 silenced, three mines had been run from the southern 
 attack towards the curtain crossing the isthmus, and 
 everything seemed ready for the final assault. The
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN 203 
 
 gallant French commandant, liowever, had spent the 
 thirty days of the blockade in perfecting his defences ; 
 and, Avith a wise prevision of the difficulties before them, 
 Frazer records in his "Diary" on August 22: "This 
 St. Sebastian is destined to be a thorn in our sides, or a 
 feather in our caps." At this stage the " thorn " was 
 more visible than the " feather " ! 
 
 Rey, the French commandant, did not hope to main- 
 tain an equal duel with the furious British batteries ; his 
 plan was to make assault on the l)reach hopeless. He 
 constructed immediately behind the great breach an 
 interior rampart, 1 5 feet high, with outstanding bastions. 
 The apparent breach, therefore, was, in effect, a death- 
 trap. On reaching its crest the storming party would 
 find before it a huge pit, from 20 to 35 feet deep, its 
 bottom strewn with every sort of impediment; and 
 beyond it a new and unbroken rampart, loopholed for 
 nmsket-fire, with traverses at either extremity. A mine 
 charged with 12 cwt. of powder was driven beneath the 
 slope along which the stormers must come; two other 
 mines were designed to blow down part of the sea-wall 
 on the British columns as they passed along it to the 
 attack. Never, in fact, was a more desperate task than 
 that of carrying San Sebastian. And it is to be noted 
 that the engineering blunder which made the first attack 
 a failure was repeated. The defences that covered the 
 breach were left undestroyed. 
 
 On the night of August 29, a false attack was made 
 on the breach, in order to tempt the besieged to spring 
 their mines, and show the direction and scale of the lire 
 they had prepared for the assaulting column. Lieutenant 
 ^lacadam, of the 9th, was ordered, with a handful of
 
 204 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 men nearest liim, to make a pretended attack on tlie 
 breach. Macadam leaped out of the trench, seventeen 
 men of the Royals at the word of command followed 
 him ; and, running forward, reached the foot of the great 
 breach, and in extended order, with loud shouts, and 
 discharging their muskets, proceeded to mount it. 
 They were, of course, flmging their lives away. If the 
 trick had succeeded, these brave men, by their very 
 success, would have been blown into fragments. The 
 French, however, kept their coolness, and shot these 
 brave fellows down, one by one, their leader alone 
 regaining the trenches. 
 
 Meanwhile Wellington, dissatisfied with the conduct 
 of his men in the first attack, called for fifty volunteers 
 from each of the fifteen regiments in the ist, 4th, and 
 light divisions ; " men," the appeal ran, " who could show 
 other troops how to mount a breach." That stinging 
 phrase was felt by the gallant men of the 5th division 
 like the stroke of a whip ; but the response in the other 
 divisions was eager, and even tumultuous. Here is a 
 picturesque little passage from the "Private Journal" 
 of Larpent • — 
 
 " There was nothing but confusion in the two divi- 
 sions here last night (the light and 4th), from the 
 eagerness of the officers to volunteer, and the difficulty 
 of determining who were to be refused and who allowed 
 to go and run their heads into a hole in the wall, full 
 of fire and danger! Major Napier was here quite in 
 misery, because, though he had volunteered first. Lieu- 
 tenant-colonel Hunt of the 52nd, his superior officer, 
 insisted on his right to go. The latter said that Napier 
 had been in the breach at Badajoz, and he had a fair
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN 205 
 
 claim to go now. So it is among the subalterns ; ten 
 have volunteered where two are to be accepted. Hunt, 
 being lieutenant-colonel, has nothing but honour to look 
 to ; as to promotion, he is past that. The men say that 
 they don't know what they are to do, but they are ready 
 to go anywhere." 
 
 The " Historical Record " of the 52nd says that when 
 Wellington's appeal reached that regiment " entire com- 
 panies volunteered, and the captains had a difficult task 
 in selecting the men most fit for such an undertaking, 
 without hurting the feelings of the others ; in many 
 cases lots were resorted to to settle the claims of those 
 gallant fellows who contended for the honour of up- 
 holdino^ the fame of their regiment." When the order 
 was communicated to the 4th division, and volunteers 
 were invited to step to the front, the whole division 
 moved forward ! 
 
 Leith, however, who commanded the 5th division, 
 was much aggrieved at the slight put upon his men, 
 and he placed the 750 volunteers who were to " show 
 other troops how" to mount a breach " in support, and 
 gave the men of the 5th division the post of honour. 
 The men of that division, indeed, were so exasperated 
 with the slight put upon them that there was some 
 risk of them firincf on the volunteers themselves, instead 
 of on the French ! 
 
 The assault was fixed for 1 1 o'clock on the mornincr 
 of August 31. Robinson's brigade was formed in two 
 colunms. One was to storm the eastern end of the 
 curtain that crossed the isthmus, the other was to 
 assail the great breach ; Bradford's Portuguese were to
 
 2o6 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 cross tlie river and assault the smaller and more northerly 
 breach. 
 
 The morning broke gloomy and black. A dense 
 mist drifted down from the high valleys of the Pyrenees, 
 and girdled San Sebastian with a shroud of grey vapour, 
 so dense that the besiegfingf batteries could not fire. As 
 the day advanced, however, the fog lifted, and a tempest 
 of shot was poured for more than two hours on the 
 defences of the city. Eleven o'clock struck ; the bat- 
 teries suddenly ceased. Robinson's men leaped from 
 their trench, and a river of scarlet uniforms swept 
 towards the breach. It was known that heavy mines 
 were in the path of the column; but twelve men led 
 by a sergeant ran forward at speed, and leaped upon 
 the covered way to cut the fuse by which the mine 
 was to be exploded. Startled by their rush, the French 
 hurriedly fired the mine. The sergeant and his brave 
 band were instantly destroyed, and the great sea-wall 
 was thrown, with a terrific crash, upon the flank of the 
 advancing column, crushing some forty men beneath 
 it. Had it been fired some five minutes later it would 
 have slain hundreds. As it was it did not arrest the 
 attack for a moment. Macguire, of the 4th, who led 
 the forlorn hope, " conspicuous," says Napier, " from 
 his long white plume, his fine figure, and his swiftness, 
 bounded far ahead of his men in all the pride of youth- 
 ful strength and courage. But at the foot of the great 
 breach he fell dead, and the stormers went sweeping, 
 like a dark surge, over his body." 
 
 On pressed the stormers. Their array was broken 
 by the slippery rocks, over which they stumbled as 
 they charged, and by the fire which scourged them
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAX SEBASTIAN 207 
 
 from the summit of the wall on tlieir left. But they 
 reached the breach, swept up it without a pause, and 
 gained its narrow crest. They found themselves on 
 
 Retrenched Ruins 
 
 ■ \. Breach between 
 
 „, r >' Towers A & B 
 
 :-# f : j ''■ '" 
 t 
 
 THE liREACIl AT SAN SEBASTIAN. 
 
 the edge of a gulf, barred at its further edge by a 
 frowning rampart, from which flashed incessantly the 
 flame of the French muskets ; while from every side 
 a storm of bullets swept over them. The flow of the 
 eager soldiers up the breach was constant, but there 
 was no living in the deadly fire that played on the 
 crest. The attack on the half bastion of St, John was 
 equally obstinate and bloody, and equally ineffective. 
 The breach was flanked by a traverse held by French 
 grenadiers; it was scourged by guns from every angle. 
 The British could not force their way ; they would not 
 yield, and they fell fast and thick. Still the attack 
 was fed by fresh troops ; but both breaches were barred 
 as by a sword of flame. 
 
 The volunteers from the other divisions had been 
 held back with difliculty so far, and were now calling 
 out to know " why they had been brought there if they 
 were not to lead the assault." They were at last let 
 loose ; and, to quote Napier, " went like a whirlwind to 
 the breaches, and again the crowded masses swarmed 
 up the face of the ruins ; but reaching the crest line 
 they came down again like a falling wall. Crowd
 
 2o8 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 after crowd were seen to mount, to totter, and to 
 sink. The deadly French fire was unabated. The 
 smoke floated away, and the crest of the breach bore 
 no living man." 
 
 This dreadful struggle, with its tumult and blood- 
 shed, the passionate heroism of the attack, the unyield- 
 ing valour of the defence, lasted for two hours. The 
 lesser breach had been assailed by the Portuguese, under 
 Snods^rass, with no better fortune. 
 
 Graham had watched the long struggle from a 
 battery on the farther side of the Urumea. He saw 
 that valour could accomplish no more on the blood- 
 stained breaches, and he resorted to an expedient of 
 singular daring. He turned fifty heavy pieces on the 
 parapet of the high curtain whose fire barred the breach. 
 The British soldiers clung to the slope of the breach 
 only a few feet below the level at which the British 
 guns were firing; but the British gunners, after five 
 days' continuous firing, knew the range precisely, and 
 the practice was perfect. A tempest of shot swept 
 alonof the edge of the hig^h curtain, broke down its 
 traverses, and slew the exultant French infantry that 
 lined it. For thirty minutes, with this whip of flame, 
 the ramparts of the curtain were scourged ; then, sud- 
 denly, a series of explosions ran along the crest of the 
 parapet. All the stores of powder-barrels, live shells, 
 hand-grenades, &c., piled there took Are. The curtain 
 was lost for a moment to sight in a cloud of smoke 
 through which ran the shock, and the wavering flame 
 of the explosion. Three hundred French grenadiers 
 were destroyed in a moment ; then through the smoke, 
 on the staggering French came the British stormers,
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN 209 
 
 mad with the passion of combat, and the rage bred of 
 the long slaughter they had suffered. The French 
 colours on the hornwork were plucked down by Lieu- 
 tenant Gathin of the nth. The French clung to their 
 broken defences with amazing valour, but were thrust 
 back fiercely and triumphantly by the British ; and, 
 after five hours of dreadful combat at the walls, the 
 whirlwind of battle SAvept into the toAvn. 
 
 Frazer, who watched the assault from a battery 
 across the river, describes the spectacle of the assault 
 as "aAvful." He took pencil notes of the assault, from 
 moment to moment, part of Avhich is reproduced here. 
 It gives the great struggle, so to speak, as in the present 
 tense. 
 
 Minutes taken during the assault of San Sebastian, 
 August 3 1 : — 
 
 "It begins (5 minutes before 11)! They reach the 
 top of the breach. A mine springs, but behind them ! 
 All seems well. They reach the top and halt — if they 
 arc supported it will do. 
 
 " Mirador and St. Elmo do not fire. Men run too much 
 to old breach — too little to junction of demi-bastion and 
 curtain. 11.35: Much firing. Troops do not advance. 
 Bugles sound advance. Head of Portuguese column 
 cross to left in detached columns, men pass creek up to 
 knees ; advance nobly at double quick ; fourteen taken 
 back wounded with grape, about fifty more turn back ; 
 main body advance. Lieutenant Gathin, i ith Regiment, 
 acting engineer, runs to the Portuguese to storm with 
 them. The Portuguese get across at 11.45, but with 
 great loss. At the breaches all is stationary. Another 
 reinforcement runs from trenches to breach. 11.50: 
 
 O
 
 2IO FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 More reinforcements from trenches to breach. Noon : 
 Much grape in all directions from the enemy's batteries. 
 Breaches are filled. . , . 12.10: Fire slackens on all 
 sides. At a quarter-past eleven a letter was brought 
 across the water by Private O'Neil, of the 4th (Portu- 
 guese run from the breach), from Lord Wellington, 
 asking Sir Thomas Graham if he can spare Bradford's 
 brigade, as Soult comes on in force. 12.15: Advancing 
 from breach of retired wall ; smoke prevents clear view. 
 Lodgment apparently secure. Two more mines blown 
 up on curtain. 12.25 • Ditch toward low communication 
 filled with troops. More reinforcements from trenches 
 to breach. 12.30: Troops again try the end of curtain; 
 our own shots strike close over their heads. The place 
 will be taken ! Our men run from the curtain. . . . 
 12.40: Men going down from the old breach into the 
 town. It will do ; they wave their hats from the terre 
 pleine of the curtain. Another reinforcement from 
 trenches. Our men fire from right of right round 
 tower. This bounds our ground to right, i p.m. : More 
 reinforcements from trenches. This duty is well per- 
 formed, whoever may direct it. Men enter the town, 
 principally by the end of old breach next round tower. 
 One man of ist Guards runs alone to the part of the 
 parapet, twenty yards to the right of the right tower, 
 and a sergeant and a few Portuguese by right breach of 
 all. They gain it by getting on the old foundation of 
 Marshal Berwick's wall. The enemy lines the stockade. 
 The enemy runs from the rampart behind that stockade. 
 All goes well, i.io: Two of our shots go through the 
 stockade; the enemy abandons it. One brave French 
 officer and two men alone remain ; they too are gone.
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN 2 1 I 
 
 1 . 1 5 : Enemy still holds end of the curtain next the 
 cavalier ; he should bo forced at that point. The gun 
 at St. Elmo fires. 1.20: And again — it must be silenced. 
 Very heavy fire of musketry in the town. Horn-work 
 decidedly ours. 1.25 : The gun at St. Elmo more and 
 more troublesome. Firing in the town continues and 
 Increases. Few men comparatively on breaches ; chiefly 
 in hollow of retired wall between end of curtain and left 
 tower ; they are now entering the town. The flag was 
 struck on the castle when the assault began. 1.35 : 
 More reinforcements to breach from trenches. No fire 
 or men to be seen on trenches. Wind very high ; sand 
 blows and destroys the view. Many prisoners brought 
 into trenches from the town. Tide has begun to flow. 
 1.45 : Heavy musketry in the town. Our bugles sound 
 the advance in all parts of the town. Our men are 
 pulling prisoners out by the breach. The enemy retire. 
 1.55 : Fire in town slackens. 2 p.m.: Marshal Beresford 
 and Sir Thomas Graham come to the battery. Town 
 seems again on fire near the right breach. 2.5 : New^s 
 of Sir Richard Fletcher's death ! 2. 1 5 : Firing in town 
 continues, but is decreasing. Gabions carrying into 
 town from trenches. 2.48 : Great fire and smoke in 
 centre of town near the square. Two mines explode in 
 the town. The enemy still hold a church and the left 
 part of the town. 3 p.m. : Mules with ammunition 
 going from trenches to town. Three fires in the town. 
 Between rain, and smoke, and black sky, it is very dark. 
 3.30 : Great fire in the town; as dark as it is generally 
 at half-past six. Nothing of the town to be seen from 
 excessive smoke." 
 
 A thunderstorm which had been, gathering round the
 
 212 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 crest of tlie sliaggy summits of the nearest mountains 
 now broke upon the city; and perhaps a wilder scene 
 than that which was now presented has seldom been 
 witnessed. The town was in flames. The streets Avere 
 filled with the crash of musketry volleys, the oaths and 
 shouts of contending men; while overhead rolled the 
 deep voice of thunder, and from the black sky the 
 incessant lightning leaped. The French commandant 
 fell back, fighting with sullen valour, to Monte Orgullo, 
 from which he was only to be driven by a new siege; 
 but the town itself had fallen. Yet at what a price had 
 this victory been won ! The slaughter at the breaches 
 was dreadful. Of the 750 volunteers who were " to show 
 other troops hoAV to mount a breach " every second man 
 had fallen. The total loss of the assault, in killed and 
 wounded, amounted to 2000 men. Many officers of rank 
 fell. The troops, it may be added, Avhen they broke 
 into the town, got completely out of hand; and a 
 shadow which blackens the fame of the splendid and 
 obstinate valour by which the breaches were carried is 
 cast by the scenes of cruelty and license which followed 
 the assault. The men who swept the streets of the 
 unhappy city as that night fell were drunk with the 
 long madness of the fight, and Graham had no fresh 
 troops at hand which he could march into the town to 
 enforce order. 
 
 Frazer, it may be added, gives a realistic picture of 
 the town as seen after the attack : — 
 
 " I have been in the town, and over that part of it 
 which the flames or the enemy will permit to be visited. 
 The scene is dreadful; no words can convey half the 
 horrors which strike the eye at every step. Heaps of
 
 THE SIEGE OF SAN SEBASTIAN 213 
 
 dead in every corner ; English, French, and Portuguese 
 lying wounded on each other ; with such resolution did 
 one side attack and the other defend. The town is not 
 plundered ; it is sacked. Rapine has done her work, 
 nothing is left. I had occasion, in going to General 
 Hay, to go into several houses, some had been elegantly 
 furnished. All Avas ruin ; rich hangings, women's apparel, 
 children's clothes, all scattered in utter confusion. The 
 very few inhabitants I saw said nothing. They were fixed 
 in stupid horror, and seemed to gaze with indifference at 
 all around them, hardly moving when the crash of a 
 fallen house made our men run away. The hospitals 
 present a shocking sight: friends and enemies lying 
 together, all equally neglected." 
 
 Napier says that " the place was won by accident" — 
 the " accident " being the explosion of the powder-barrels 
 and grenades along the high curtain. But that accident 
 was due to Graham's happy use of the British artillery 
 in the very crisis of the assault. Jones in his " Journal," 
 says that " on inspecting the defences it was found that 
 the tremendous enfilade fire on the high curtain, though 
 it lasted only twenty minutes, had dismounted every 
 gun but two. Many of these pieces had their muzzles 
 shot away, and the artillerymen lay mutilated at their 
 stations. The parapet was thickly strewed with headless 
 bodies." But the terrible effects of that cannonade only 
 suggest how gross was the blunder of not making this 
 use of the batteries earlier. It belongs to the alphabet 
 of the engineer's art that the fire Avhich guards a breach 
 should be mastered before the breach itself is assailed. 
 A great siege, however, like a great battle, is usually a 
 catalogue of blunders. In the story of San Sebastian
 
 2 14 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 these blunders are thrown into even blacker relief by 
 the dazzling splendour of the courage shown by both 
 men and officers in that great struggle on the blood- 
 stained breach, and through the blackened streets of the 
 city the French had defended with so much skill and 
 courao-e.
 
 SIR EDWARD CODRINGTON 
 AT NAVARINO 
 
 October 20, 1827 
 
 " Navarino was as honest a victory as was ever gained by the arms of 
 any power from the beginning of the world." — Lord John Russei.l 
 (Speech in the House of Commons). 
 
 " Fast as the flaming beacon which conveyed the news of the fall of 
 Troy to Argos, the joyous tidings were transmitted from mountain to 
 mountain, from crag to crag, from isle to isle, and one throb of exultation 
 and thankfulness was felt in every bosom. Never since the defeat of Has- 
 drubal by the Consul Nero, on the banks of the Metaurus, had such a sen- 
 sation pervaded the heart of a nation. Every one felt as if he himself were 
 delivered from captivity or death. . . . Christendom had come to the 
 rescue ; again, as in the days of the Crusades, the Cross had been trium- 
 phant over the Crescent." — Alison's " History of Europe.''' 
 
 MEMORY has a very limited office in politics. The 
 typical politician is essentially an opportunist, 
 much exercised about to-day, but with no memory of 
 yesterday, and not much thought of to-morrow. Yet it 
 is curious how completely all the editors who have 
 written, and all the orators who have discoursed about 
 the recent struggle betwixt Greece and Turkey, forgot 
 how exactly, as far as the Eastern question is concerned, 
 1897 ^^^ ^ reproduction of 1827. The Greek struggle 
 for Crete which we have just watched is, in all its 
 essential features, the drama of the Greek War of Inde- 
 pendence acted over again, on the same stage, and by 
 the same performers, and with the same passions and
 
 2l6 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 ambitions. There are differences, of course, in tlie two 
 situations. The Turkey of 1 897, considered as a fighting 
 poAver, was immeasurably stronger than the Turkey of 
 1827. France, too, that to-day bears to Russia the 
 rehation that the tail bore to the dog in Lord Dun- 
 dreary's famous apologue, was seventy years ago hostile 
 to Russia by the whole trend of its policy. The dif- 
 ferences betwixt the two periods, in a word, are almost 
 as significant as their agreements. But the most 
 tragical difference is that to-day we have no Navarino. 
 English, French, and Russian admirals in the present 
 struggle have been firing on the wrong side. We have 
 Canea instead of Navarino ! 
 
 The Greek revolt against Turkey broke out in 1 82 1 , 
 and all rischteousness was on its side. The land of 
 Homer and of Plato, of Marathon and of Salamis, was 
 the prey of Turkish pashas. The governing methods of 
 the pashas are described with great plainness in a Greek 
 manifesto of the period. " Any virgin that pleased them 
 they took by force. Any merchant who was making 
 money they beheaded, and seized his goods. Any 
 proprietor of a good estate they slew, and occupied his 
 property. And every drunken vagabond in the streets 
 could murder respectable Greeks and was not punished 
 for it." Armenia makes that statement credible. The 
 Turk of 1897 is the replica of the Turk of 1827. But 
 the national life of Greece was beginning to revive. 
 The trade of the Greek islands brought prosperity ; with 
 prosperity came education, and education made slavery 
 intolerable. When the Greeks revolted, their chances 
 seemed as desperate as those of Holland against Sj)ain 
 under Philip II. A population of less than 2,000,000
 
 SIR EDWARD CODRINGTON AT NAVARINO 217 
 
 plunged into battle against one of 30,000,000 ! The 
 hopes of the Greeks rested at first on the Russian 
 Emperor Alexander. Thrice already Russia had incited 
 the Greeks to revolt; and the immemorial policy of 
 Russia seemed a sufficient pledge of help to a movement 
 which would rob Turkey of one of her provinces. But 
 there was a revolutionary movement throughout 
 Europe ; in Spain, and Naples, and Piedmont, there 
 were risings against despotic government. And much 
 as the Czar hated Turkey, he hated popular movements 
 still more. " I discerned in the troubles of the Pelopon- 
 nesus," he said, " the revolutionary mark. From that 
 moment I kept aloof from them." The Emperor 
 William might have written that sentence to-day. The 
 League of the Three Emperors in 1897, in a word, is but 
 the reproduction, in another form, of the Holy Alliance 
 which governed Europe in 1 8 2 1 . 
 
 Left to themselves, the Greeks fought with magnifi- 
 cent courage. Nothing can well be more striking, in- 
 deed, than the contrast betwixt the resisting power of 
 Greece to-day, and that of seventy years ago. The 
 struggle was a true Seven Years' War. On the part of 
 the Greeks, it was a guerilla war, a war of sudden 
 surprises, of wild onfalls and ambuscades ; while on sea 
 they fought and destroyed Turkish fleets with fire-ships. 
 This style of warfare suited both Greek geography and 
 Greek genius, and army after army, despatched by the 
 exasperated Sultan, perished in the contest. 
 
 That the Avar was marked by terrific savagery goes 
 without saying. The Turk, when his wrath, or his 
 religious fanaticism, is aroused, is the most cruel of 
 human beings; and the Sultan INIahmud, during the
 
 21 8 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 early stages of tlie struggle at least, made stupendous 
 cruelty his deliberate policy. Thus on Easter Sunday 
 in 1 82 1, he hung the Greek patriarch in Constantinople 
 on the lintel of his own gate, with three of his own 
 bishops. A few weeks afterwards, no less than five 
 archbishops and three bishops were hanged in the 
 streets of Constantinople without trial. The tale of 
 massacres in that war almost, if not quite, equals the 
 Turkish performances in Armenia in our own times. 
 Nobody quite knows how many were massacred in 
 Smyrna in 1821 ; but the victims rose in numbers to 
 tens of thousands. Cyprus was almost entirely depopu- 
 lated by a similar massacre. In Scio, to quote Professor 
 Ramsay, " 30,000 people were massacred within two 
 months; 32,000 were made slaves; 30,000 destitute 
 refugees escaped to other lands." The story of Chios is 
 almost more tragical still. " Every corner of the island 
 was ransacked," says Alison ; " every house burned or 
 sacked, every human being that could be found slain or 
 carried off into captivity. Modern Europe has never 
 witnessed such an instance of bloodshed or horror. To 
 find a parallel to it we must go back to the storming of 
 Syracuse or Carthage by the Romans, or to the sack of 
 Bagdad or Aleppo by Timour." It was calculated that 
 25,000 persons were slain, and 45,000 women and 
 children dragged into slavery. A curious feature of 
 that fierce struggle was the enormous number of 
 Christians — mostly women and children — whom the 
 Turks sold as slaves, usually in the Egyptian market. 
 As a postscript to the SmjTna massacre, 10,000 women 
 and children — all Christian — were publicly sold in 
 the market-place of Salonica. After the capture of
 
 SIR EDWARD CODRINGTON AT NAVARINO 219 
 
 Missolonghi, Ibrahim Pasha boasted that he had 
 " collected 3000 heads, and sold 4000 women and 
 children " ! 
 
 The Greeks, it may be frankly admitted, sometimes 
 rivalled the Turks themselves in cruelty. They had 
 suftered 1400 years' bondage, Byzantine or Moham- 
 medan, and they had the vices of slaves. Massacre, too, 
 was answered by massacre — deep calling unto deep. At 
 the beginning of 1821 there was a Mussulman popula- 
 tion of moi'e than 20,000 persons scattered through 
 agricultural Greece, and, says Finlay, " before two 
 months had elapsed the greater part was slain ; men, 
 women, and children were murdered without mercy or 
 remorse " — and all by Greeks ! 
 
 Europe could not watch a struggle at once so heroic, 
 so tragic, and so prolonged, without being profoundly 
 stirred. The pulse of generous sympathy beat strongest, 
 perhaps, in British blood, and — again as in 1897 — not a 
 few English volunteers lent both their swords and their 
 purses to the cause of Greek freedom. A curious degree 
 of ill fortune, hoAvever, attended all attempts of private 
 persons to assist Greece, Hastings, a gallant sailor, fit 
 to have led fleets, lost his life in an inglorious sea- 
 skirmish. Gordon was driven from the Greek service 
 by sheer disgust. The Greeks hired the services of that 
 immortal free-lance of the sea. Lord Cochrane, at a 
 generous rate, paying him ^50,000 to take command of 
 their fleet ; but even the genius and tlaring of Cochrane 
 could achieve nothing in such a warfare. Sir Richard 
 Church, too, was engaged to command the Greek land 
 forces ; but both Church and the Greeks misunderstood 
 each other. The Greeks, to quote Finlay, expected
 
 2 20 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Church to prove a Wellington, with a military chest well 
 supplied from the British treasury ; Church expected 
 the irregulars of Greece to execute his strategy like 
 regiments of the Guards ' The truth is, Greek politics 
 were a chaos, and Greek patriots, though they could 
 fight, could not obey. The National Assembly appointed 
 Church " arch-general," and Cochrane " arch-admiral," 
 giving these unfortunate officers extraordinary titles as 
 a substitute for ordinary power. 
 
 Byron was the most famous ally the Greek cause 
 won. After carrying " the pageant of his bleeding 
 heart " across Europe, this " pilgrim of eternity " — to 
 quote Matthew Arnold — took it to the assistance of 
 Greece. Byron, in a sense, rendered the Greek cause 
 no practical service. He was neither a politician nor 
 a soldier. He hated war, while he regarded politics, 
 according to one of his critics, as the art of cheating the 
 people by concealing one-half of the truth and mis- 
 representing the other ! Byron landed at Missolonghi 
 on January 5, 1824, and died on April 19, thus giving 
 only the last three months of his life to the cause of 
 Greek independence. But his fame, and the pathos of 
 his death, helped to quicken the generous sympathy of 
 Europe on behalf of Greece. Byron, perhaps, served 
 Greece better by dying so promptly than if he had lived 
 longer and actually fought for her. The financiers of 
 Europe rendered as little real help to Greece as its soldiers 
 and sailors and poets. Thus, in 1824, the first Greek loan 
 was floated. It was for ^800,000 at 5 per cent., and 
 each i^ioo stock brought £S9- The Greeks, that is, 
 received ;^28o,ooo, and contracted a debt for ;^8oo,ooo ! 
 A loan of ^2,000,000 was floated next year at only
 
 SIR EDWARD CODRINGTON AT NAVARINO 221 
 
 ;^55, I OS. The money-lenders of Europe were greedy, 
 and it is with not unmixed regret one remembers that 
 they never received either princij)al or interest ! The 
 Greeks had no financial conscience. " They appear to 
 have considered the loan," says one historian, " as a 
 small payment for the debt due by civilised society to 
 the country that produced Homer and Plato " ! 
 
 Meanwhile, though the Greeks still continued to win 
 victories, their cause grew desperate. One-third of the 
 adult population had perished when the war had lasted 
 only two years ; at the end of six campaigns the com- 
 j^lete extermination of the Greek people was an end 
 visibly near. The country was in a state of anarchy. 
 The fields were untilled. The regular troops had prac- 
 tically disbanded. The sailors of the islands Avcre 
 lapsing into piracy as a vocation. At the end of 1 826 
 the Greek Treasury contained only sixteen piastres — 
 about five shillings ! Turkey, too, had found a formid- 
 able ally in Egypt, where Ibrahim Pasha had, like Lord 
 Kitchener to-day, trained and hardened the fellaheen 
 into soldiers of high quality. Pity for Greece grew 
 acute throughout Europe, and the siege of Missolonghi 
 crystallised it into action. The Greeks held that swamp- 
 girdled village against Ibrahim Pasha as the British 
 held the shallow ditches at Cawnpore against Nana 
 Sahib. When food was exhausted, and their last charge 
 of powder had been fired, the inhabitants — men, and 
 women, and children — joined in one reckless, heroic, 
 night assault on the Turkish line, and, for the most 
 part, perished fighting. "The siege," says Finlay, a 
 somewhat grudging critic, " rivals that of Plata^a in the 
 energy and constancy of the besieged ; it wants only a
 
 222 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 liistorian like Thiicydides to secure for it a like immor- 
 tality of fame." 
 
 Europe at last intervened. The Emperor Alexander 
 was dead, and his successor Nicholas hated Turkey even 
 more than he hated " the revolution." Canning has the 
 merit of shaping the policy which delivered Greece. 
 He opened communication with the Greek leaders, 
 and sent the Duke of Wellington to St. Petersburg, 
 nominally to congratulate the Czar on his accession, 
 really to consult on the affairs of Greece. On July 6, 
 1827, what is known as the Treaty of London was signed 
 betwixt England, France, and Russia. The object of 
 the treaty was declared to be " the reconciliation of the 
 Greeks and Turks." An armistice was to be proposed, 
 and, if necessary, enforced. Greece was to be self-gov- 
 erned under the suzerainty of the Sultan, to whom an 
 annual tribute was to be paid. The Sultan, with a 
 paroxysm of wrath, rejected the treaty, but for once the 
 " Concert of Europe " meant business, and was prepared 
 to deliver itself from the iron lips of cannon and the 
 glittering points of bayonets. 
 
 A combined fleet under Sir Edward Codrington made 
 its appearance in Greek waters. It consisted of three 
 English line-of-battle shij^s and four frigates, four French 
 line-of-battle ships and one frigate, and four Russian 
 line-of-battle ships and four frigates. The combined 
 Turkish and Egyptian fleets lay in the bay of Navarino 
 — a great armament of sixty-five sail, with a weight of 
 fire nearly double that of the allied fleet ; and Codring- 
 ton's business was to prevent that great fleet carrying 
 on operations against Greece. In an interview with 
 Ibrahim Pasha, Codrington warned him that any at-
 
 SIR EDWARD CODRINGTON AT NAVARINO 223 
 
 tempt to act in defiance of the treaty would bring on 
 instant attack by the alUed fleet. Ibrahim repUed that 
 ho was a soldier, and must obey orders, and his orders 
 Avere to carry on the war, and this he would do at all 
 costs. Finally, however, he pledged his word of honour 
 to observe the armistice till he received fresh instruc- 
 tions from Constantinople. He broke his word. The 
 smoke of burning villages told of the ravages of his 
 troops. His fleet twice attempted to leave the harbour, 
 and only retired before the grim menace of Codrington's 
 open portholes. To maintain a winter blockade outside 
 Navarino, however, was impossible, and on October 19, 
 Codrington determined to run in to the harbour and 
 anchor his fleet, ship by ship, alongside the Turkish and 
 Egyptian ships. 
 
 Never had a sailor a more difflcult task than Cod- 
 rington. He commanded a mixed fleet — he is the only 
 British admiral, indeed, in history who had a French 
 squadron and a Russian squadron in his line-of-battle. 
 Only eleven years before, it must be remembered, Russian 
 troops had occupied Paris ; the retreat from Moscow was 
 still a recent memory. And one of Codrington's anxieties 
 was lest his French and Russian allies should turn their 
 guns against each other ! Scandal, indeed, has it that, 
 in the battle which followed, the French ships actually 
 fired into the Russian squadrons to " avenge Moscow " ! 
 It is certain that Codrington, in his plan of battle, 
 anxiously interposed the English ships betwixt the 
 Russians and the French, so as to lessen the risk of 
 his allies turning their guns on each other. Navarino, 
 too, was a battle fought without war beino- declared. 
 Codrington, in a word, had to enforce peace by the argu-
 
 224 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 ment of cannon-sliot. He sailed into Navarino as into 
 an ostensibly friendly port. He Vvas cleared for action 
 it is true, but bis lower-deck ports were not bauled flat 
 against tbo sbip's sides, but kept square, as at sea in 
 line weather, as a visible symbol that he did not mean 
 battle. And as the great column of line -of- battle 
 ships — the Asia, Codrington's flag-ship, leading — glided 
 into the harbour before a gentle breeze, nobody knew 
 whether the batteries on either side would open on 
 them or not. 
 
 Never, hoAvever, Avas a sailor better fitted for this 
 difficult task than Codrington. He was not merely a 
 gallant sailor of Nelson's school, a seaman of the utmost 
 skill, familiar with ships and battles since he began his 
 career as a middy of thirteen, more than forty years 
 before Navarino. He was a gentleman to his finger- 
 tips, of crystalline simplicity, and integrity of character; 
 and, to a degree rare even amongst British soldiers or 
 sailors, he combined the faculty for swift decision with 
 the quality of unshakable composure. 
 
 Codrington underwent his "baptism of fire" in Howe's 
 great victory of June i . He was lieutenant on the Queen 
 Charlotte, Howe's flag-ship, and had charge of seven guns 
 on the lower deck. The Queen Cliarlotte, it will be re- 
 membered, broke the French line by suddenly tacking 
 and passing betwixt the stern of the French flag-ship 
 and the next ship following. He commanded the 
 Orion, the fourth ship in Collingwood's column at 
 Trafalgar, and was, perhaps, the coolest and hardest 
 fighter of all Nelson's captains. In that battle of 
 giants he strictly ordered his men to reserve their fire 
 till he could put the ship in the position he desired.
 
 SIR EDWARD CODRINGTON AT NAVARINO 225 
 
 The ships not merely before him, but behind him, 
 were girdled with the thunder of broadsides; but the 
 Orion kept grimly silent. Codrington, indeed, had to 
 hail a British ship near him not to fire into the Orion ! 
 " Passing down as the Orion did," he wrote afterwards, 
 " through the whole group of those ships whose fortune 
 it was to be placed foremost in the attack, and who then 
 were all engaged with their various opponents, without 
 firing a single gun to impede my view, although the 
 ship next astern, as well as all those ahead of us, were 
 firing broadside after broadside, I had an opportunity of 
 seeing more of what was doing than perhaps any other 
 captain in the whole fleet. I suppose no man ever be- 
 fore saw such a sight as I did, or, rather, as we did ; for 
 I called all my lieutenants up to see it. So grand, so 
 awful, so tremendous was the scene before me that the 
 impression will ever be fresh in my mind." The cool- 
 ness which made Codrington reserve his fire so long in 
 such a scene, was linked to a skill which made his fire, 
 when he did deliver it, effective in the highest degree. 
 He chose as his antagonist the Swiftsure, a ship bigger 
 than his own, rounded under her stern, and poured in 
 one blast of darting flame and tempest of flying shot, 
 a broadside so overwhelming that it carried away the 
 three masts of the Frenchman, and made the unfortu- 
 nate ship strike without waiting for a second discharge ! 
 A sailor of this quality was, plainly, admirably qualified 
 for leading the allied fleet into the bay of Navarino. 
 
 The Turkish and Egyptian fleets had spent some 
 three days, under the direction of a French naval officer 
 of great skill in the Turkish service, in preparing for 
 Codrington's approach. The fleet formed, in brief, a
 
 226 
 
 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 huge crescent, the lighter ships fihing up the gaps in 
 the first line occupied by the heavier ships. A cluster 
 of fire-ships formed either tip of the crescent. Navarino 
 is only a tiny bay, about three miles long by two broad, 
 and as the tips of the crescent almost touched the 
 batteries on either headland of the entrance, the allied 
 
 ' Battles of the Nineteenth Century, 
 Cassell & Co, 
 
 ll'al ker &• Boiitatlsc. 
 
 fleet, entering the harbour in a long and straggling 
 column, would be met by the converging fire of the 
 2O0O and odd guns of the Turkish and Egyptian fleets, 
 to say nothing of the headland batteries. Ibrahim 
 Pasha, however, allowed Codrington to enter Avithout 
 firing a shot. He calculated that the allied fleet would 
 anchor betwixt the horns, so to speak, of the crescent ;
 
 SIR EDWARD CODRINGTON AT NAVARINO 227 
 
 then, wlien night fell, the fire-ships from either tip of 
 the crescent would be launched on the allied fleet, 
 the whole crescent would break into a tremendous con- 
 verging fire, and the allied fleet, he did not doubt, 
 would be destroyed. 
 
 This ingenious plan was spoiled by Codrington's 
 adi-oitness. With a quick, sure glance he read Ibrahim's 
 purpose directly he saw the crescent-shaped formation 
 of his fleet. The Asia was a noble example of the 
 wooden three-decker now extinct, a stately ship of about 
 3500 tons burden, quick and weatherly, and making, 
 with her triple pyramids of sails, a singularly noble 
 and stately spectacle, as about three o'clock on the 
 afternoon of October 20, 1827, she came through the 
 headlands of the bay of Navarino ; and, ship after ship 
 following in perfect order, moved across the crescent we 
 have described, straight for a huge 84-gun ship flying 
 the flag of the Turkish admiral. Next to it was the 
 Egyptian flag-ship under Moharrem Bey. Nothing could 
 be more impressive than the silent, menacing fashion 
 in which the British flag- ship came on, passed close to 
 the ship of Moharrem Bey, where the men were all at 
 quarters, clewed up her topsails, rounded to, and dropped 
 anchor with the most beautiful accuracy alongside the 
 Turkish flagship. Ship after ship of the allied fleet 
 came up in succession and anchored alongside an 
 enemy's vessel, the French squadron taking the south- 
 east curve of the crescent, the Russian the opposite 
 curve. The corvettes and brigs of the fleet under 
 Captain Fellows, of the Dartmouth, were detailed to 
 "attend" to the enemy's fire-ships. Cocbington had 
 given the strictest orders that not a gun was to be
 
 22 8 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 fired without liis orders ; but if any ship fired on the 
 allied fleet she was to be instantly destroyed. 
 
 It may easily be imagined that the Turkish captains 
 watched the cool, steady, silent approach of Codrington's 
 ships with very mingled feelings. Their men were at 
 quarters ; the guns were run out, loaded to the muzzles 
 with shot, broken bars, rusty iron, &c. But whether a 
 battle was to take place, or when, or at what signal, no- 
 body exactly loiew. But the signal for battle quickly 
 came. The Dartmouth sent a boat — or boats — to the 
 fire-ships requesting they would " move a little farther 
 off." One of the fire-ships discharged a musketry volley 
 into one of the Dartmouth's boats, killing the lieutenant 
 in charge with part of the crew ; the Dartmouth in- 
 stantly fired on the fire-ship ; the Sirdne, the French 
 flag-ship near by, also fired, but used only muskets. 
 Then one of the Egyptian ships discharged a round 
 shot at the Sir^ne; and, with a deep, intermittent, 
 broken roar that ran — sometimes pausing but then 
 leaping forward again — round the whole crescent of the 
 Turldsh and Egyptian fleet, the battle began. 
 
 For four hours the tumult of it never ceased. High 
 above the eddying thunder of the combat broke, in 
 quick-following blasts of sound, deep, distinct, and lion- 
 like, the roar of the Asia's broadsides. For three-quar- 
 ters of an hour Codrington poured a tempest of fire on 
 the Turkish flagship ; at the same time no less than five 
 ships were pouring their fire into the Asia, two of them 
 delivering a raking fire across her stern. In three- 
 quarters of an hour, however, the Turkish flagship was 
 a wreck, had cut its cables, and was drifting mastless 
 out of the line of battle, having lost 650 men out of a
 
 Sm EDWARD CODRINGTON AT NAVARINO 229 
 
 crew of 850! The Egyptian flagship at first did not 
 fire ; Moharrem Bey, indeed, sent a boat to say he did 
 not intend to fire. But on Codrington's sending a boat 
 in return with the assurance that he would not, in that 
 case, fire on Moharrem Bey, the boat was fired into, the 
 ofiicer in charge killed, and the Egyptian flag-ship 
 opened its guns on the Asia. Codrington instantly 
 broke into fire, by way of reply, and so swift and de- 
 structive were his broadsides that in ten minutes 
 Moharrem Bey's ship was a wreck ! The coolness and 
 deadly precision of the Asia's fire satisfied even Cod- 
 rington's fastidious taste. His son, who was a middy 
 on board, wrote to his brother, " How astonished I was 
 at the coolness and intrepidity shown by all the men 
 during the action ! For my part, I was hopping about 
 here and there and everywhere, hurrying them on, for I 
 had not that cool way at all ; but devil a bit would they 
 hurry, and they went on in a way that actually made 
 me stare. My father says that he never saw any ship's 
 fire equal to ours from our main and lower decks in 
 precision and steadiness." 
 
 Evening fell on the sea. The crescent of Turkish and 
 Egyptian ships was a jagged curve of blackened or flam- 
 ing wrecks. The Turks, too, as each ship in turn was 
 overcome, abandoned it, first setting it on fire. Ship 
 after ship in this way broke into flames, and ended its 
 existence with the blast of an explosion. " Wc have 
 had," wrote Codrington himself the next day, "some 
 thirty-seven beautiful explosions ! All through the 
 niglit the hills round Navarino shone with the light of 
 burning ships, or shook to the blast of their explosions. 
 The white fires of the stars in the Eastern night-sky
 
 230 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 above grew faint in the red glow of so many conflagra- 
 tions. When morning dawned the Turkish fleet had 
 vanished, or floated as mere blackened fragments on the 
 surface of the bay. A tiny cluster of transports, a few 
 brigs and schooners, alone survived. More than sixty 
 ships had been destroyed, with a loss to the vanquished 
 of more than 7000 lives. 
 
 Nothing could surpass the skill and courage shown 
 by the allied fleet. English and French and Russian 
 vied with each other in daring and energy. A great 
 fight has always its humours, and the amusing element 
 in the great drama of Navarino is supplied by the Hind, 
 a little cutter of 1 50 tons, which served as tender to the 
 Asia. She had been despatched on some errand a day 
 or two before, and came in sight of the allied fleet just 
 as the leading ship had disappeared Avithin the headland 
 of Navarino. Its commander, a quite youthful lieuten- 
 ant, felt bound to " support " his admiral, and he did so 
 by running down to the battle-line, and placing his tiny 
 craft on the inshore side — the exposed side, that is — of 
 the flagship ! In this position the tiny Hind was struck 
 with no less than twenty-three round shot, half its crew 
 were killed, its two midshipmen each lost a leg, and on 
 one occasion the very surgeon had to leave his patients 
 and join in the business of repelling boarders. The 
 Hind afterwards was known through the fleet as '•' His 
 Majesty's line-of-battle cutter " ! 
 
 Of Codrington's own cool courage it is almost un- 
 necessary to speak. Almost every one about him was 
 shot down, and at one time he stood the only uninjured 
 man on his own quarter-deck. His hat was shot 
 through, his watch was crushed by a bullet, his coat
 
 SIR EDWARD CODRINGTON AT NAVAJIINO 23 1 
 
 was pierced. Tahir Paslia, tlie Turkish vice-admiral, 
 told afterwards how, as he watched Codrington — 
 " tall as a mast," to use his own words — on the quarter- 
 deck of the Asia, he drew up a company of riflemen and 
 told them the only hope of victory lay in shooting that 
 tall Englishman, and the riflemen flred repeated volleys 
 at him, but somehow failed to hit him. It will give 
 some idea of the tumult and distraction of a great fight 
 to read Codrington's description of the noise, of the 
 smoke which was so thick that the men could not see 
 the ships at which they were firing, &c. ; and how, at 
 last, when the Turkish flagship had vanished, " in my 
 anxiety to ascertain that we were not firing into each 
 other, I tried to make the general signal to cease firing ; 
 but as fast as the flags could be attempted to be shown, 
 either the men hoisting them were killed, or the means 
 by which the signals were to be displayed were shot 
 away. I then tried to despatch a boat with this object, 
 when it was found that we had no boat that would 
 swim ; an attempt by hailing to get one from the Genoa 
 was equally unsuccessful, and I was obliged to give up 
 the attempt, and leave things to take their course." 
 
 Navarino was the first and last battle in which the 
 Asia took part. For forty years she has been lying in 
 Portsmouth Harbour as a reserve guardship. Imagina- 
 tion is not a strong feature of the British character, or 
 a ship which has played a part in history so great and 
 noble would not be dismissed to forgetfulness, or allowed 
 to go to decay with such amazing indifference. England 
 might easily place in the chief port of each of her 
 colonies some ship like the Asia, or the Victory, which 
 might be a perpetual object-lesson in national pride.
 
 232 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Certainly the Asia made a great contribution to tlie 
 world's history. The fight in Navarino Bay on 20th 
 October 1827, won freedom for Greece, and added a 
 new Christian State to Europe. The exploding Turkish 
 wrecks in that Syrian bay all througli that wild night 
 were the symbols of a perishing despotism. On the 
 night of Navarino, to quote Alison, " Hellas rose from 
 the grave of nations, scorched by fire, riddled by shot, 
 baptized in blood." Yet was it a true resurrection ? All 
 this surely is a tale to be remembered to-day, when 
 Greece and Turkey have met in battle once more, with 
 ill-fortune to Greece, and no Navarino, alas ! to save 
 her.
 
 THE HON. SIR GEORGE CATHCART, G.CB. 
 
 Frcni an a7ithcntic portrait, fainted in 1852, hy Captain Goodrich, 0/ the 
 Cape Mounted Rijies
 
 INKERMANN 
 
 November. 5, 1854 
 
 "Scarce could they hear or see their foes, 
 Until at weapon point they close — 
 They close in clouds of smoke and dust, 
 With sword-sway and with lance's thrust ; 
 
 And such a yell was there 
 Of sudden and portentous birth, 
 As if men fought upon the earth 
 And fiends in upper air." 
 
 — Scott. 
 
 INKERMANN is emphatically "a soldier's battle." 
 The bayonet of the private counted for everything 
 in it, the brains of the general for almost nothing. It 
 is simply one of the most distracted, planless, muddle- 
 headed, yet magnificent battles in British history ; and 
 as an illustration of the chivalrous daring of the British 
 officer, and the dogged, unconquerable fighting quality 
 of the British private, Inkermann has scarcely a rival 
 in the long roll of famous battles. There are some 
 scenes in the military history of our race the recollec- 
 tion of which always stirs the blood — the steadfast, 
 long-enduring patience of the infantry squares at 
 Waterloo ; the stern valour of the Fusiliers at Albuera ; 
 the wild daring of the stormers of Badajoz. But none 
 of these surpasses, as an example of the fighting quality 
 
 of the British soldier, the strife that, for nine hours on 
 
 233
 
 234 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 that November Sunday in 1854, raged amidst fog and 
 rain on the rugged slopes of Inkermann. It was on 
 the British side, at least, in the truest sense of the 
 word, an Homeric fight — a long succession of single 
 combats ; of desperate charges undertaken by tiny 
 clusters of men, with leaders evolved by mere supre- 
 macy of fighting power at the moment. Generalship 
 was non-existent ; tactics were forgotten ; regiments 
 were broken up into unrelated fragments, and fought 
 like Hal o' the Wynd for their own hand. 
 
 The general physiognomy of the battle may be 
 described in a dozen sentences. The scene of the 
 fight was a long and narrow spine, rising from steep 
 and wooded ravines. Some 40,000 grey-coated Rus- 
 sians, with more than 100 guns, were being thrust into 
 the flank of the British camp. They formed a river 
 of dingy-grey overcoats, closely-cropped bullet heads, 
 broad, high-boned, pasty-looking faces. Across the 
 ridge was drawn a knotted, irregular line of British 
 soldiery — for the first three hours of the fight not 
 exceeding 3000 in number — men of all regiments, 
 mixed together, many of them pickets who had been 
 on duty for twenty-four hours, and without food for 
 twelve. The ground was heavy with rain, thick with 
 scrub, broken with rocks, a mist lay heavy on it, and 
 the red flash of the guns had the strangest effect as it 
 flamed and vanished through the eddying masses of 
 vapour. The steadfast red wall, edged Avith fire, and 
 fretted with the gleaming bayonets, which we expect 
 in a British line of battle, had no existence here. But 
 that knotted, irregular, and swaying line of British 
 soldiery which kept back the huge Russian masses was
 
 INKERMANN 235 
 
 unpierceable. To quote Hamley, it was made up of 
 " scanty numbers, but impenetrable ranks." " Colonels 
 of regiments," lie adds, " led on small parties and fouglit 
 like subalterns, captains like privates. Every man was 
 bis own general." Nobody could see many yards from 
 the point where lie stood and fought or died. When 
 at any given point the huge grey mass of the Russians 
 swayed upwards, a cluster of British — sometimes a 
 single officer leading, sometimes a sergeant, a corporal, 
 or a private soldier of exceptional daring — would run 
 forward fiercely with bayonets at the charge; and 
 always the few thrust back the many. About the 
 combatants eddied the thick, white fog. Above them 
 rolled incessantly the sullen thunder of the Russian 
 guns, and over the crest to which the swaying line of 
 the British clung so stubbornly rushed incessantly the 
 tempest of Russian shot. 
 
 No one can adequately tell the story of Inkermami. 
 If translated into the language of tactics, it is the 
 coldest and shortest of tales. If written as a pure 
 chapter of adventure, it overwhelms both writer and 
 reader by its wealth of detail. Ivinglake devotes an 
 entire volume to Inkermann ; and, in patches, his story 
 is of amazing brilliancy. It is, in fact, a sort of dithy- 
 rambic hymn of praise in honour of the British private. 
 But no one will form any clear mental picture of the 
 great fight from Kinglake. His landscape is too wide 
 and crowded. You cannot see the forest for the trees ! 
 
 Inkermann represents on the part of the Russians 
 an effort of daring generalship. The allied forces, num- 
 bering 65,000 men — not including Turkish auxiliaries 
 — were besieging a gn-eat stronghold, fortified by the
 
 236 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 genius of Todleben, and defended by forces numbering 
 120,000 men. The allies, moreover, were spread along 
 an exterior line of twenty miles ; tlie Russians held 
 interior lines only four miles long. The Russians had 
 already attacked Balaclava at one extremity of the 
 allied position ; Inkermann was a daring, well-planned, 
 and powerful effort to pierce the other extremity of 
 that position. 
 
 The scene of the fight, surveyed from the British 
 camp, is a tiny and steep plateau, shaped like the butt- 
 end of a musket or the letter L turned the wrong way. 
 The post-road from Sebastopol bisects the cross-ridge, 
 which runs east and west, and at its rear was the camp 
 of the Second Division. The crest lent itself perfectly 
 to defensive uses. On the east it fell by a steep ravine 
 to the Tchernaya; on the north, the "fore ridge," as 
 the upright part of the letter L was called, sank into 
 the Quarry Ravine ; to the west the gloomy depths of 
 the Careenage Ravine protected the crest. A few 
 entrenchments and a dozen guns in position would 
 have made the hill impregnable. But not a battery 
 had been erected, not a trench dug, not a square yard 
 of scrub cleared ! Such was British generalship ! On 
 the tip of the Fore Ridge, or half-way down its slope, 
 stood what was called the Sandbag Battery. It was 
 without guns, and so badly constructed that the soldiers 
 who undertook to hold it against the enemy found 
 themselves in a death-trap. The parapet from the 
 inside Avas so high that they could not see over it or 
 shoot over it. Sandbag Battery had no relation to the 
 defence of the ridge, and it is an illustration of the 
 distracted quality of the battle that round this useless
 
 Kinglake's'lnvasion of the Crimea." 
 
 irul/.cr(~L...Ullsc
 
 238 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 point the most desperate fighting of the day took place. 
 Guards and Russians fought round it muzzle to muzzle 
 and breast to breast till the dead lay on the blood-wet 
 ground literally in strata. More than 1 100 dead bodies 
 were counted after the fight round the Sandbag 
 Battery. It was as though two football teams in a 
 great match forgot football, umpire, and goals, and 
 fought to the point of exhaustion over a bit of orange- 
 peel ! 
 
 The Russian plan was that a column of 19,000 men and 
 38 guns, under General Soimonoff, should advance before 
 daybreak, seize Shell Hill — a summit to north of the 
 crest of Inkermann, and commanding it — plant its guns 
 there, and crush the scanty British regiments holding 
 the crest with its fire. Another force of 19,000 men 
 and 96 guns, under General Pauloif, was to cross the 
 harbour head, climb up the Quarry Ravine, join hands 
 with Soimonoff, and together break through the British 
 defence. Prince Gortschakoff, with another force of 
 20,000 men and 88 guns moving from Balaclava, was 
 to add himself to the attack, or, at all events, detain the 
 French by feints from moving to the British help. As 
 a further distraction a powerful sally was to be made 
 on the French siege-works from Sebastopol itself. The 
 British force holding Inkermann was only 3000 strong ; 
 the Russians calculated that they would brush this force 
 aside, roll up the British lines to the south, and 60,000 
 victorious Russian soldiers would compel the allied forces 
 to abandon the siege, or even themselves surrender. It 
 was able strategy ; and, in its earlier stages, ably carried 
 out. 
 
 Soimonoff moved from the city in the blackness of
 
 INKERMANN 239 
 
 the winter morning, while the stars yet shone keenly in 
 the sky. His gun-wheels were muffled, the sternest 
 silence was enforced in the ranks, and, without alarming 
 a British outpost, he climbed the West Sappers' Road, 
 as it was called, and moved on towards Shell Hill. It 
 Avas a great feat to move 20,000 infantry with guns and 
 tumbrils through the darkness to within 1300 yards of 
 the British position undetected. But the silent grey 
 line of Russian battle stole on, and no murmur of 
 human voices, no sharp clang of steel, no rumble of 
 tumbril or gun, broke through the fog and the darkness 
 to the listening — or, perhaps, the dozing — British sen- 
 tries. At last a sentry of the 41st, on the northern slope 
 of Shell Hill, saw the dim outlines of a huge gliding 
 column mounting from the ravine. He called his 
 officer, who, satisfied as to the character of the ap- 
 proaching body, opened fire upon it with his tiny picket, 
 and clung to his position with almost ludicrous obsti- 
 nacy — a handful opposing an army. The sound of their 
 muskets rang loudly across the ravines, and the British 
 sprang everywhere to arms. But Soimonoff's men 
 pushed forward, his guns swung round from the crest 
 of Shell Hill, and opened their tempest of shot on the 
 very tents of the Second Division, and many men and 
 officers, running out at the sound, were slain before they 
 knew that the enemy was within striking distance. 
 
 The Russian generals had thus carried out part of 
 their scheme. Almost without discovery, and with no 
 other resistance than a few shots from an obstinate 
 picket, they had made themselves masters of three- 
 fourths of Inkermann, and were pouring an overwhelm- 
 ing fire into the very tents of the British camp. Pauloff's
 
 240 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 men, too, were by tliis time moving up the Quarry 
 Ravine from the east. It was possible now to throw 
 some 40,000 men, with over 100 guns, upon the 3000 
 British soldiers who formed the Second Division. The 
 Guards, 1 300 strong, were half a mile to the south ; a 
 brigade of the Light Division, 1400 strong, was a mile 
 and a half distant to the west ! 
 
 Now the character of the resistance offered by the 
 British was determined partly by accident, and partly 
 by, not so much the military skill as the fighting temper 
 of the British general, Pennefather, who temporarily 
 commanded the Second Division. De Lacy Evans, its 
 general, a war-wise and experienced soldier, had his 
 own plan for the defence of the crest. He would have 
 allowed his pickets to fall back, and the Russian columns 
 to climb the ridge and come along the narrow front of 
 800 yards, covered by the fire of his field batteries. 
 Thus he would concentrate his own forces, cover them 
 with the fire of his field batteries, and with a minimum 
 of loss he calculated he could crush the Russian attack. 
 But De Lacy Evans was lying ill on board a ship in 
 Balaclava Harbour, and Pennefather was left to take 
 counsel of nothing but the effervescing and warlike 
 blood in his own veins. He was a type of soldier fami- 
 liar enough, and valued enough, in the British army: 
 an Irishman, who borrowed his tactics from Donny- 
 brook; of obstinate and combative temper, loud of 
 speech, cheerful of face, an ideal leader for a forlorn 
 hope. Pennefather's expletives were the jest of the 
 camp. Years afterwards he was appointed to the com- 
 mand at Aldershot, and the Queen on chancing to ask, 
 " Has the new general taken up his command yet ? " was
 
 INKERMANN 24 1 
 
 told, with a toucli of sly humour, wliicli mocked the 
 royal ear, "Yes, your Majesty, he swore himself in 
 yesterday " ! 
 
 Now Pennefather's senses were stirred, and his 
 fighting temper delighted, by the obstinacy with which 
 his pickets on the lower slopes of the ravines held their 
 ground against the Russian advance. Kinglake says he 
 was "enchanted" with the tenacity of their resistance. 
 The sound of the exploding muskets coming up through 
 the fog drew him on as with a magic spell. He would 
 "feed" his pickets — he would make the Russian fight 
 for every foot of ground he gained ; so he commenced 
 to push forward in succession, company after company, 
 wing after wing. The mist, the brushwood, the huge 
 rocks which pierced the sloping hillside, broke these up 
 into yet tinier fragments under independent leaders. 
 
 The men and officers, it must be admitted, enjoyed 
 this method of fighting. It gave play to personal 
 courage and to individual qualities of leadership. The 
 starch of discipline melted in the heat of such a 
 struggle; the natural fighting man emerged. But in 
 this piecemeal fashion nearly Pennefather's whole com- 
 mand was by-and-by fighting in fragments at the out- 
 posts, and beyond the control of any single commanding 
 brain or will. And the fortunes of these clusters of 
 unrelated fighting men, all in the highest mood of 
 battle, were sometimes very extraordinary. 
 
 Soimonoflf was so tormented by the fire of the 
 obstinate British pickets that he determined to movo 
 without waiting for the arrival of Pauloffs forces, and 
 a mass of 9000 men moved down the slope of Shell 
 Hill and across the valley towards the centre and left 
 
 Q
 
 242 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 flank of tlie Britisli position. The extreme left was 
 held by a wing of the 49th, under Major Grant, and 
 through the mist the British could hear the multi- 
 tudinous hum of thousands of voices, the massive and 
 regulated tread of thousands of feet, as the enemy came 
 on. The moving acres of flat-capped Russian heads 
 now became visible, and Grant's four companies — 245 
 men facing 9000 — fell slowly back, firing as they went 
 fiercely. At the same moment 6000 men of Pauloif s 
 command came into action on the English right. 
 Some of their battalions, spreading out to their own 
 right, stumbled across the Sandbag Battery, held at 
 that moment by six men under a sergeant, and with a 
 rush seized it. Here were 15,000 men attacking the 
 British front at either extremity, while the great bat- 
 teries from Shell Hill thundered on its centre. 
 
 Some five companies of the Connaught Rangers, 
 with To-vvnsend's battery of six guns, had by this time 
 found their way up from the Light Division, and 
 stumbled full upon the advancing Russian battalions 
 on the left. The British gunners delivered one hasty 
 shot when the Russians were within ten yards of the 
 guns, and were then submerged. Miller, in command 
 of the battery, bade his gunners draw swords and 
 charge, and himself rode straight into the Russian 
 ranks, while the artillerymen, in a tempest of rage, 
 fought with swords and rammers, and even with 
 naked fists, for their guns. It was an heroic, but vain 
 struggle. Three of the guns were captured, and the 
 Russian column moved steadily on. 
 
 They were next struck by four companies of the 
 77th, under Colonel Egerton. This particular Russian
 
 INKERMANN 243 
 
 column, indeed, winding like some gigantic and many- 
 jointed reptile up the Careenage ravine, had passed the 
 point occupied by the 77th ; its head was debouching 
 on the plateau. A lieutenant named Clifford stood at 
 the extreme left of the 77th : he shouted to the men 
 nearest him, " Come on, boys, and charge with me ! " 
 and flung himself upon the flank of the great Russian 
 column. Scarcely more than fifty men heard his cry 
 or grasped his meaning, but these instantly followed, 
 and this gallant rush actually broke through, and, so to 
 speak, fractured the spine of the long Russian column. 
 The files at its head, actually within sight of the tents 
 of the Second Division, hearing the tumult of the fight 
 behind them, believed themselves cut off, and came 
 tumbling back in panic. A picket of Grenadier 
 Guards, on a post on the shoulder of the hill overlook- 
 ing the Careenage Ravine, had by this time discovered 
 the huge gliding column of the enemy beneath, and 
 opened fire upon it, with the effect that the column 
 halted, seemed to sway to and fro, and then fell back. 
 The fire of a picket, and the sudden dash upon its flank 
 of less than fifty men, that is, actually thrust back 
 Soimonoff's whole right column at the very moment 
 when it seemed at the point of success ! 
 
 Soimonoff himself, however, was personally leading 
 his second, or left, column — nearly 8000 strong — up 
 the slopes of Saddletop Ridge on the British front, 
 Grant's four companies doggedly trying to bridle its 
 advance. Colonel Egerton,, with his four companies of 
 the 77th still advancing, found himself on the flank of 
 the great mass, and, without pause, he fired a volley 
 and charged. The great Russian mass, as Kinglake
 
 244 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 describes tlie scene, heard the British words of com- 
 mand, saw the long Hne of British muskets fall 
 suddenly to the level and break into flame, then the 
 bristling edge of bayonets moved swiftly towards them. 
 They saw here and there, moving in dimness, the 
 shadowy form of a rider, the naked gleam of a sword, 
 and to the Russian imagination the two or three com- 
 pany officers who happened to be mounted, became the 
 leaders of a cavalry charge, terrible as that which, only 
 ten days before, had ridden up the Valley of Death! 
 The long stretch of grey-coated battalions seemed to 
 quiver and shrink, and before the line of moving steel 
 points smote it, it broke, and the men of the 77th 
 tumbled through the disordered mass, and pushed it, 
 with shouts, and oaths, and shocks of angry steel, down 
 the hillside. Many Russians flung themselves down on 
 the ground till the slender British line swept over 
 them, then they rose and followed their retreating com- 
 rades, and these grew so numerous that the 77th, an 
 irregular line not 300 strong, had a mass of " resurrec- 
 tion boys" — as, with grim humour, they were called — 
 behind them treble themselves in number. The British, 
 however, treated them with grim good-humour, as 
 beaten men, and allowed them to run past their flank 
 without harm and join the main body. General Soi- 
 monoff himself perished in that fierce charge of the 
 77th. 
 
 Farther east, part of General Pauloffs force, 6000 
 strong, was advancing, and two Borodino battalions, in 
 particular, were moving along the post-road, crossed, 
 half-way dowoi the ravine, by a rough stone wall called 
 " The Barrier." This point of the British lino was held
 
 INKERMANN 245 
 
 by 200 men of the 30th, under Colonel Mauleverer. 
 The 30th tried to open fire on the Russian advance, but 
 their pieces were damp, and the exasperated men found 
 themselves practically without the power to fire a shot. 
 Mauleverer, a cool and daring soldier, took his men 
 forward at the double to " The Barrier," and made 
 them lie down behind it. He waited till the multi- 
 tudinous tread of the Russians showed they were within 
 a yard or two of the other side of the Barrier, then, with 
 a shout, he himself and a couple of officers sprang upon 
 the summit of the wall, and leaped down almost upon 
 the Russian bayonets. How the 30th followed their 
 oflScers may be imagined ! The astonished Russians 
 beheld a sudden swarm of British tumbling over the 
 wall and running upon them with levelled bayonets. 
 The officers who leaped over the wall first were shot or 
 stabbed, but the men of the 30th were by this time 
 tearing their way through the yielding mass of the 
 Russians, and here was seen the amazing spectacle of 
 the slender line of the 30th, not 200 strong, driving a 
 broken mass of Russians ten times their own number 
 across the Quarry Ravine and up the slopes of Shell 
 Hill! The 41st, under General Adams, by a like 
 brilliant charge, drove off the section of Russians 
 holding the Sandbag Battery. 
 
 It was not yet half-past seven o'clock, and yet the 
 first assault of the Russians had been defeated, and 
 defeated too, with much slaughter. The Russians had 
 attacked with 25,000 men and 38 guns, and of this 
 number 15,000 had been thrust forward into actual 
 and desperate conflict with the British, who, up to this 
 stage, had less than 4,000 men in their fighting line.
 
 246 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 But the individual courage displayed on the part of 
 the British, the close and deadly quality of their 
 fire, and the resolute daring with which clusters of 
 men numbering a few score threw themselves, again 
 and again, on massed battalions to be counted by the 
 thousand, had given a tiny few the victory over the 
 many. 
 
 Soimonoffs attack was delivered simultaneously on 
 the British front and left; General Dannenberg, who 
 now took the command, attacked almost at the same 
 moment the British right, at the Sandbag Battery, 
 and its centre, and the story of each attack makes 
 a marvellous tale. The Russian general had 19,000 
 troops supported by 90 guns; Pennefather, to resist 
 this force, had in hand scarcely 1400 men, with some 
 18 guns; but 1200 men of the Guards, and 2000 
 under Cathcart, from the Fourth Division, were rapidly 
 coming up to the line of battle. 
 
 The Guards moved to the extreme British right ; 
 where Adams at the Sandbag Battery, with 700 men, 
 principally of the 41st and 49th, was trying to bar the 
 march of 10,000 fresh troops. The fighting at this 
 point was desperate, and often hand to hand. In the 
 tangle of the brushwood, and the bewilderment of the 
 fog, it was impossible to keep regular formation, and 
 the British line really consisted of irregular and swa}dng 
 clusters of desperately fighting men. One instance tells 
 the mood into which men were kindled. Four officers 
 of the 41st — all of them young, one of them desperately 
 wounded — challenged each other by name, ran in on 
 their own account upon the Russian mass, and all died 
 desperately fighting. Adams himself, who commanded
 
 INKERMANN 247 
 
 at this part of the line, fell mortally wounded, and just 
 at this stage the Grenadier Guards and the Scots 
 Fusiliers, 700 strong, came into the fight, marching 
 straight upon the huge Russian mass over 7000 strong 
 in front of them. 
 
 When within a few yards of the enemy the Grenadiers 
 flung forward their muskets and tried to fire, but only a 
 snapping of caps followed. The rifles were damp, and 
 from the long line of bearskins rolled up a curious 
 growl of wrath. The bayonet remained, however, and 
 the men went forward at a run, smashed in upon the 
 Russian front, and flung it, broken and disordered, 
 over the crest of the ravine, the Scots Fusiliers on the 
 left of the Grenadiers performing a similar feat on the 
 masses opposed to them. Again and again the Russian 
 battalions, rallied by their officers, re-formed under the 
 shelter of the ridge, and came over its crest, always to 
 be hurled back again by the Guards, who, however, 
 steadily dwindled in numbers, and whose cartridges 
 had begun to fail. Some of the men, in default of 
 better missiles, actually picked up the loose stones 
 lying underneath their feet, and hurled them at the 
 Russians. At this critical moment, through the smoke, 
 another line of bearskins could be seen advancing — it 
 was the Coldstreams, whose fire soon swelled the thunder 
 and tumult of the fight. 
 
 The Russians ignite slowly, but by this time they 
 were kindled to a flame of valour. They came on, 
 repeatedly, with the utmost resolution, a cluster of 
 officers with swords gleaming high in air leading them. 
 One Russian officer, little more than a lad, clambered, 
 with a single private at his side, to the summit of the
 
 248 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Sandbag Battery, and actually leaped down upon the 
 British Guardsmen who held it ! 
 
 But fierce as was the oft-repeated advance of the 
 Russian battalions, the tough and knotted line of 
 British soldiers never broke. The trouble was to keep 
 the men, after they had flung the broken Russians over 
 the crest, from following them down the ravine. The 
 ardour of the attack and the pursuit threatened to carry 
 them completely away. At last, indeed, the restraining 
 power of the officers failed, and after one particularly 
 stubborn assault, and specially fiery repulse, of a Russian 
 column, a cluster of the Coldstreams, in one hot rush, 
 went with the broken enemy down the slope. At that 
 moment, Cathcart, with some 400 men of the 68th and 
 46th, came up. It was intended that he should fill the 
 gap on the edge of the plateau betwixt the Sandbag 
 Battery and the Barrier on the post-road ; but Cathcart 
 thought he saw the opportunity of following the pursuing 
 Coldstreams down the slope, and striking the yet un- 
 broken Russian battalions on the flank. 
 
 This was a fatal movement! It was a movement, 
 for one thing, which carried with it nearly the whole 
 line of Guardsmen. Cathcart's lads, as they ran out at 
 the double, sent a pulse of flame along the whole British 
 front. The men holding the Sandbag Battery poured 
 out ; at various points of the line officers and privates 
 charged forward, and a score of desperate duels betwixt 
 slowly retiring Russians and fiercely pursuing English- 
 men were fought. Kinglake tells at length the story 
 of thirteen Grenadiers, headed by Captain Burnaby, who 
 ran upon the Russian mass, pierced it deep with desperate 
 fighting, and sent it staggering backwards. One private
 
 INKERMANN 249 
 
 named Pullen stopped coolly, almost within touch of the 
 Russian line, swore he would " shoot nothing less than a 
 general," adjusted the sight of his rifle, while men panted 
 and stabbed and wrestled on all sides of him, and brought 
 down the only mounted officer within sight ! Another 
 private named Bancroft was assailed first by two Russians, 
 then by three simultaneously, and with bayonet, and 
 fist, and boot, slew all five ! 
 
 Bancroft's feat is described at length by Sir Evelyn 
 Wood. As, following his officer, he leaped out of the 
 Sandbag battery, a cluster of Russians charged at him. 
 He killed one by a bayonet thrust in the chest, but at 
 the same moment had a Russian bayonet thrust through 
 his open jaw. He staggered back, and was again wounded 
 by a second assailant. Bancroft kept his eye fixed on 
 the man who had stabbed him in the face, and shot him 
 dead ; his third assailant he thrust through the body 
 with his bayonet. Two Russians then charged him with 
 levelled bayonets, and he fell wounded once more, but 
 leaped up, drove his bayonet through one of the two 
 attacking him, who fell, and, only slightly wounded, 
 clutched the Englishman by the legs. Bancroft himself, 
 bleeding from half-a-dozen wounds, and with a fallen 
 Russian pulling at his legs, had to meet in an upstanding 
 fight the one assailant remaining. Him he stabbed, and 
 at the same time freed his feet from the fallen Russian 
 by violently kicking him ; a performance which, being 
 observed by his sergeant, brought on Bancroft a loud 
 rebuke for " kicking a man when he was down " ! 
 
 The sight of these little fighting groups and their 
 performances carried the Guardsmen out of all control ; 
 the Duke of Cambridge shouted himself voiceless trying
 
 250 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 to hold his line back. He kept in hand, perhaps, a 
 hundred men immediately in his own neighbourhood, 
 but the rest, in one furious, overmastering charge, 
 sent the Russian battalions immediately before them 
 tumblmg down the ravine, and followed them with 
 triumphant shouts, slaying as they ran. It was a mag- 
 nificent but fatal charge ! Another huge grey column 
 of Russian infantry, separated from the torrent of pur- 
 suers and pursued by a shoulder of the hill, moved 
 up, thrust itself through the gap which Cathcart should 
 have filled, and formed on the crest the Guards had 
 just abandoned. 
 
 The Duke of Cambridge, with the flags of the Guards, 
 and 100 men formed a group on one side of this new 
 body of the enemy ; Cathcart's men, with the disordered 
 Fusiliers and Grenadiers, were in broken fragments 
 on the other. The panting Guardsmen below looked 
 up, and through the eddying mist and smoke-charged 
 air, saw the crest they had left barred by the solid 
 and threatening masses of the enemy. Some of the 
 broken Guardsmen worked round the flank both of the 
 hill and of the enemy, and regained the British position, 
 but the gallant line that went in a tumult of victory 
 down the slope but a few minutes before had ceased to 
 exist as a military force. 
 
 Cathcart's men were overtaken with fatal disaster. 
 Scourged by the fire of the column above them they yet 
 plunged into the column on their flank, a few of the 
 20th actually piercing their way across it. Cathcart 
 himself, standing on the slope of the hill, within a few 
 yards of the Russian column, gathered some fifty men 
 of the 20th, and sent them back under Maitland to
 
 INKERMANN 25 1 
 
 attack the force on tlie crest. It was fifty men climbing 
 uphill to attack 700 ; but some, at least, of those gallant 
 fifty actually tore their way through the Russian mass. 
 Others died in its midst ; yet others were flung back 
 wounded and breathless down the slope. Cathcart then 
 sent Maitland down the slope to try and bring up any 
 scattered men he might find, but before Maitland could 
 return Cathcart himself fell, shot dead. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Duke of Cambridge, with 100 
 Guardsmen and the colours, found himself with one 
 powerful Russian battalion in his rear and two in his 
 front, 2CXD0 in all. He turned, and charged uphill on 
 the force in his rear, and succeeded in forcing his way 
 past its flank. The last regimental colour in the tumult 
 was at one time surrounded by not more than a dozen 
 Guardsmen ; but some one shouted " Carry the colours 
 high ! " and, borne still more proudly aloft through 
 the battle-smoke and the hail of bullets, the gallant 
 group brought their colours safely through. 
 
 Some score of the broken 20th drew together on 
 the slope, the regimental surgeon being one. Nature 
 meant the doctor for a soldier ; he was carrying, at the 
 moment, not a lancet, but a firelock. " Fix bayonets," 
 he shouted to the men, " and keep up the hill." And 
 the daring group actually ran upon the massed bat- 
 talion of their foes, and rent their way through it ! 
 The Russian battalions, however, pressed hard upon the 
 broken Guardsmen. The men were mad, partly with 
 battle fury, and partly with fanatical religious passion, 
 and as the mass came on, Kinglake says, there could be 
 heard above the tumult of the fight the multitudinous 
 strains of a hymn roaring up from its depths ! Burnaby
 
 252 FIGHTS FOE, THE FLAG 
 
 tliouglit if tlie colours were to be saved this formidable 
 mass must be checked. He gathered round him some 
 score of men — Guardsmen and men of the line — and 
 asked them " if they would follow him." " I thought it 
 perfectly useless," said one of the brave little group after- 
 wards, " a few of us trying to resist such a tremendous 
 lot. But for all that I did so." The twenty men, in 
 fact, ran in upon the advancing mass of Russians, and 
 kindled a fight in its ranks which actually drew the 
 whole battalion to a pause, though only seven of the 
 twenty survived. The sight of a French battalion, 
 visible through the smoke, yet further served to stay 
 the Russian movement. After a sort of bewildered 
 pause, the battalion, with the stormy chorus of its hymn 
 suddenly fallen dumb, fell back ; but round the colours 
 of the Guards stood only 150 men, gathered from all 
 quarters, and from various regiments, smoke-begrimed, 
 breathless, many of them wounded. 
 
 The last to join was a little cluster of the No. i 
 Company of the Fusilier Guards, under Ensign Lindsay, 
 afterwards known as Lord Wantage, V.C. This com- 
 pany had been on picket all night, and was relieved at 
 5.30 A.M. When the firing broke out on the outpost 
 line, Lindsay led his men at the double towards the 
 sound of the firing, took part in the confused fighting 
 at the outposts, held his place in the knotted line by 
 the Sandbag Battery, and shared in the fatal rush on 
 the broken Russians down the hill. When they found 
 themselves cut off by the Russians on the crest, Lindsay 
 consulted for a moment with his colour-sergeant, then 
 led his men at the run, with levelled bayonets, on to the 
 Russian line. Lindsay himself ran at the Russian officer,
 
 INKERMANN 253 
 
 who stood in front of his own men, ran him through 
 the throat, plunged into the mass behind, and broke 
 through, Hving to report, as an interesting detail, that 
 the close-packed Russian ranks exuded a peculiar odour, 
 pungent, leather-like, and overpowering ! His colour- 
 sergeant following Lindsay bravely, was killed, but most 
 of his men broke through. 
 
 A strong Russian column had meanwhile climbed 
 from the Quarry Ravine, and attacked the British centre. 
 Colonel Mauleverer, with 200 men of the 30tli, held 
 the post here, and this resolute handful of men, by 
 steady firing till their ammunition was expended, and 
 incessant bayonet charges till the men w-ere worn out, 
 kept back the ever-repeated waves of Russian infantry 
 climbing the narrow ridge. When at last the men fell 
 back to the crest, and had a short breathing-space, they 
 dropped, with smoke-blackened faces, and muskets hot 
 from firing, on the ground, and, while their officers 
 watched, and the clamour of the battlefield thundered 
 above them, the men actually slept ! Presently the stern 
 call, " Up, 30th," told them the enemy was coming on 
 again, when the men instantly started up, fell swiftly 
 into line, and resolutely charged the advancing Rus- 
 sians. 
 
 Pcnnefather himself held the centre, and Kinoflake's 
 picture of the temper in which he carried on the fight 
 is unconsciously amusing. He rode to and fro, noisy, 
 wrathful, exultant, enraptured with the tumult and 
 passion of the fight. The soldiers would see, moving 
 through the fog and smoke, a horseman with vehement 
 gestures, and, as some favourite and well-known oath 
 roared cheerily through the smoke, they knew it was
 
 2 54 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 " old Pennef'atlier," and with a grim laugh gave them- 
 selves anew to the fight. Of leadership, in any other 
 sense than an example of cool, quenchless, and dogged 
 courage, there was none. Steevens, in his " Crimean 
 Campaign," says that the four companies of the Con- 
 naught Rangers, who played a gallant part in the fight, 
 caught a glimpse of General Pennefather once when 
 going into the fray, but no other general officer or staff- 
 officer came near them till long after the battle was 
 over. 
 
 Steevens adds that Colonel Shirley, who, from the 
 British trenches, was watching the fight, and could see 
 the Russian reserves, apparently some 10,000 strong, on 
 a hill about two miles distant, was approached about 
 this time by some forty sailors, armed with ships' cut- 
 lasses only, who requested that he would lead them to 
 attack that huge mass of Russians ! These forty tars 
 belonged to the Naval Brigade, and, as the fight was 
 going on, they wanted to join in, and were ready to take 
 in hand as their share the entire Russian reserves ! 
 
 Just at this time yet another Russian column climbed 
 from the gloomy depth of Quarry Ravine, swung slightly 
 to the left, so as to avoid the stubborn resistance offered 
 by the 30th, and moved up betwixt the post-road and 
 the Sandbag battery. It was met by a wing of the 
 20th, counting 180 men, under Colonel Horn. The 
 20th instantly advanced, firing. The Russian line im- 
 mediately in front of them seemed to crumble under 
 their fierce volleys, but the flanks were obstinate, and 
 the mass seemed to thrust out huge lateral claws, so to 
 speak, along the flanks of the 20th, so that they found 
 themselves in a concave of fire. At that moment their
 
 INKERMANN 255 
 
 own ammunition gave out ! Nothing throughout this 
 Homeric fight, however, is more wonderful than the 
 eager promptitude with which the British — no matter 
 with what inferiority of numbers — would fling them- 
 in a bayonet charge on the foe. The 20th cherish a 
 particularly hideous yell, known as the " Minden yell " 
 — it having been, apparently, evolved originally in that 
 bloody fight. Somebody in the ranks of the 20th raised 
 the " Minden yell " ; it ran a wave of ear-splitting sound 
 doAvn the front of the regiment, and the men instantly 
 leaped forward with the bayonet, cleft the mass before 
 them in twain, and drove it, confused and broken, down 
 the hiUside ! 
 
 The right battalion of the Russian column, however, 
 stiU stood, massive and undestroyed, higher up on the 
 shoulder of the ridge, and against this moved a wing of 
 the 57th, 200 strong, who had just come into the fight, 
 led by their captain, Stanley. The 57th was one of the 
 famous " fighting regiments " of the Peninsular War ; it 
 won the name of " the Die-hards " at Albuera ; and 
 Stanley turned the warlike traditions of the regiment to 
 useful purpose. Just as the bayonets fell to the charging 
 level, he shouted, " Men ! remember Albuera ! " Stanley 
 himself fell mortally wounded, but the impulse of his 
 shout sent the line of the 57th forward in a charge which 
 finally cleared the whole of what was called the Home 
 Ridge. Where else in the history of battles can we find 
 such amazing examples of the overthrow of the many 
 by the few ? 
 
 The truth is, however, that the extraordinary state 
 of the atmosphere in which Inkermann was fought — 
 the chnging, smoke-thickened fog which hung about
 
 256 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 the combatants — told, on tlie whole, in favour of the 
 British. The Russians could not see how slender was 
 the line of gleaming bayonets charging on them, and 
 they resisted less stubbornly on that account. On the 
 other hand, the British could not see the real scale and 
 depth of the mighty battalions upon which they flung 
 themselves, and so they charged with a degree of con- 
 fident daring which otherwise would have been im- 
 possible. 
 
 It was now half-past eight, the fight had raged for 
 nearly three hours, and during that period a force of 
 British infantry, numbering a little over 4000, had re- 
 sisted the assaults of 40,000 Russians, aided by the fire 
 of nearly 100 guns! It was a marvellous feat! But 
 the battle was not yet over. The Russian general had 
 still 17,000 untouched troops, sustained by the fire of 
 100 guns, which he could throw into the fight, and he 
 had only to show himself in possession of the English 
 crest to bring Prince Gortchakoft''s 20,000 men into the 
 fight. The resisting power of the British, too, was 
 steadily shrinking. Many of the men Avere utterly 
 exhausted; they had been on duty for the previous 
 twenty-four hours. The number of killed and wounded, 
 too, was dreadful. " All the field," says Hamley, " was 
 strewn with the dead and wounded. But the space in 
 front of the two-gun battery, where the Guards fought, 
 bore terrible pre-eminence in slaughter. The sides of 
 the hill up to and around the battery were literally 
 heaped with bodies. It was painful to see the noble 
 Guardsmen with their large forms and fine faces lying 
 amidst the dogged, low-browed Russians." It is true 
 that on an average four Russians had fallen for every
 
 INKERMANN 257 
 
 Englisliman wlio was killed, a result due largely to the 
 superior penetrating power of the Minie' rifle, with which 
 the British were armed. But how could this fight 
 against overpowering odds be longer maintained ? 
 
 The scene of the fight, let it be remembered, is a 
 ridge, thrust out like the horn of a rhinoceros to the 
 north ; the ground sinking in deep and gloomy ravines 
 on three sides. A dense fog brooded over the whole 
 ridge, reddened incessantly with the flash of the guns 
 and the sparkle of nuisketry. The cannonade was like 
 the deep- voiced roar of the surf on a rocky coast ; and 
 through fog and smoke the figures of the charging lines 
 and the wrestling groups flitted ghostlike. A knotted 
 irregular fringe of British infantry ckmg to the edge of 
 the slopes of the ridge on its three sides. Every few 
 minutes up from the blackness of one of the ravines — 
 east, west, or north — a huge, flat-capped, grey-coated 
 mass of Russians thrust itself, and the nearest cluster 
 of British soldiers — an ofiicer, a sergeant, sometimes a 
 private leading — flung itself at the mass, and never 
 failed to thrust it back into the ravine. The slaughter 
 was dreadful, the valour sublime, the battle a chain of 
 swaying, desperate Homeric combats of the few against 
 the many, the few always winning, but growing swiftly 
 and tragically ever fewer. As has been already ex- 
 plained, the daring of the British was greatly sustained 
 by the fact that the whirhng mist forbade their seeing 
 the real weight and power of the masses by whom they 
 were attacked. Thus, when battalions of Russian in- 
 fantry, 6000 strong, were thrusting themselves against 
 the Sandbag Battery, a soldier of the Grenadier Guards 
 
 was heard to shout in delighted accents, "I am d d 
 
 K
 
 258 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 if there ain't scores of 'em ! " As a matter of fact, there 
 were thousands; but that particular British soldier 
 could see only scores, and he exulted in the number of 
 possible victims he saw before him. " That man, multi- 
 plied by the number of English bayonets in action," as 
 Kinglake argues, is the central explanation of the 
 amazing failure of the Russians at Inkermann. 
 
 By half-past eight, however — the close of what Evelyn 
 Wood calls the Fourth Attack, or Kinglake's " Second 
 Period " — nearly one half of Pennefather's unconquerable 
 infantry — only 4700 in all, counting all the reinforce- 
 ments that had come up — were struck down ; ammuni- 
 tion had begun to fail ; the men who were still fighting 
 were exhausted with fatigue and want of food. And the 
 awful strain of the unequal combat was affecting the 
 imagination of many of the British officers. They fought 
 with cool and sustained fury, but with none of that care- 
 less delight in fighting which so often marks the British 
 soldier. The men who were carried back wounded were 
 often like men broken-hearted by mere grief, the grief 
 of brave men who felt that bravery was vain. "Ben- 
 tinck," says Russell, "as he went from the Sandbag 
 Battery towards the camp with a shot through his arm, 
 was like a dying man — and a man dying in despair and 
 grief. Sir George Brown, with head uncovered, was 
 carried past me on a litter, so white and wan that I 
 thought he was dead, till he waved his uninjured arm 
 in recognition of my salute, for I took off my cap as the 
 soldiers bore him by. In answer to my inquiry if he 
 was badly wounded, he said, ' I don't know — nor care. 
 Our men are overpowered — that's all! You'll have a 
 bad story to tell if you live to tell it.' The towering
 
 INKERMANN 259 
 
 figure of Adams, blood streaming from liis boot, was 
 propped on his horse, on the shoulder of which he leant, 
 bowed with pain. His countenance was anxious. ' Unless 
 wo are helped,' he said, ' and that very soon, my brigade 
 will be destroyed. Your old friends of the 41st and 47 th 
 are suffering terribly. Good-bye.' " 
 
 At this moment, it must be remembered, Dannenberg 
 was scourging the narrow British front with the fire of 
 many guns, and was preparing to launch upon it 17,000 
 infantry, 9000 of which were fresh troops. Ho was op- 
 posed, in all, by 3300 British infantry, and 1600 French 
 troops, who had just come up, and thirty-eight guns. 
 The air, too, at this time grew clearer, and the fire of the 
 Russian guns more deadly. The Russian attacks, more- 
 over, were sent home Avith greater daring and confidence 
 than at any other period of the fight. 
 
 The grey-coated columns broke over the crest of the 
 ridge at half-a-dozen points, the first and most daring 
 rush being made on the western edge of the Home Ridge. 
 The massive whirling column swept over a half-battery 
 of British guns. Two British gunners, named Henry 
 and Taylor, drawing their short artillery swords, fought 
 Avith desperate valour against the mass for their gun. 
 They received, in an instant, a dozen bayonet thrusts ; 
 Henry, in particular, received in his chest the upthrust 
 of a bayonet delivered with such strength as to lift him 
 from the ground. Taylor was killed, Henry, with twelve 
 bayonet wounds in his body, survived ; but the guns 
 were lost for a brief space. They were recaptured a few 
 minutes afterwards by a charge of some men of the 63rd 
 and 2ist, aided by a little body of sixty French Zouaves, 
 who, of their own accord, and drawn by the mere lust of
 
 26o FIGHTS FOE THE FLAG 
 
 battle, had wandered down to the fightmg line. A little 
 farther along the ridge, however, the endless Russian 
 battalions were forcing their eager way upward, and, as 
 it happened, no tiniest thread of British infantry covered 
 the gap through which they came. The fighting else- 
 where was too fierce to allow of this particular irruption 
 of the enemy to be, for a moment, so much as seen. 
 
 As it happened, a French battalion, the 7th Leger, 
 had just moved into the gap, along which the Russians 
 were coming. The Russian advance, as the red caps of 
 the French gleamed through the grey mist, paused, and 
 the French moved forward a few paces. Then a curious 
 tremor ran along their front, and a murmur rose in the 
 ranks. The men, apparently, were protesting against an 
 advance in line — one quite opposed to French traditions. 
 A British staff officer galloped to the front of the line, 
 and, with loud shouts, urged the mass forward. Slowly 
 the onward movement was resumed, but the British 
 officer, struck by a bullet, fell, and the French once 
 more paused ; the formation began to crumble, the line 
 swayed backward. Lord Raglan and his staff were 
 watching the scene, and it is said that at this moment 
 alone, during the Avhole fight, Lord Raglan's face lost 
 for an instant its cheerful calm. He had sent an aide- 
 de-camp to Pennefather to ask how the fight was going 
 on in the part of the line he commanded. That officer, 
 in all the rapture of a desperate fight, sent back the 
 cheerful message that everything was going on well, the 
 enemy's infantry showed symptoms of retiring, and if a 
 few more troops could be sent to him he would follow 
 
 the enemy up and lick them to the d ! " The blast 
 
 of that courasfeous messao^e stirred the blood of the some-
 
 INKERMANN 26 1 
 
 what despondent staff" like the note of a bugle ; Can- 
 robei't in j^a-i'ticular breaking out into exclamations, 
 " Ah ! quel brave gar9on, quel brave homme ; quel bon 
 general ! " 
 
 At this moment some 200 men of the 77th, led by 
 Colonel Egerton, came up by fours, and at the double. 
 The men brushed roughly against the flank of the retir- 
 ing French battalion. One of Egerton's captains remon- 
 strated with a French officer, whom he found retreating, 
 and aided his remonstrance by taking the French officer 
 by the collar. " Mais, monsieur," said the unhappy 
 Frenchman, pointing to the formidable Russian front, 
 " there are the Russians ! " The French still continued 
 to fall back, but Egerton's men falling swiftly into line, 
 opened a steady Are on the Russian front. 
 
 The decisive check to the Russian column, however, 
 was given by a small body of the 55 th, 100 strong, 
 who took the column on its flank, poured a close fire 
 into it at a distance so close that the flame of the 
 muskets seemed to scorch the grey mass, and then tore 
 their way into its entrails at the point of the bayonet. 
 The 7th Leger, too, had been rallied, thrown into the 
 formation of column familiar to it, and came forward 
 with great resolution, and the Russian attack on the 
 western crest fell back shattered. 
 
 But meanwhile the great trunk column of the 
 Russian attack, 2000 strong, with a dense fringe of 
 skirmishers running before it, was moving up from the 
 Quarry Ravine, and to oppose it were some 250 men, 
 the wrecks of several regiments — the 55tli, 57th, and 
 77th — and less than 1000 Frenchmen — the 7th Leger. 
 The French troops were young, and of uncertain quality.
 
 262 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 In one niood they deployed across tlic front of the 
 advancing Russians with a swift coohiess altogether 
 admirable, and maintained a fire so close and sure that 
 the slaughter in the Russian ranks w^as dreadful. But 
 in the interval between the volleys, when busy reloading, 
 the young French soldiers were apparently seized by 
 the thought that the Russian line, already so close, 
 might deliver a bayonet charge, and the mass began to 
 change its structure, to shrink back, and then to fall 
 back ! Their officers made gallant attempts to rally 
 them. Pennefather, with his staff, galloped down to 
 them, and in energetic British-French, punctuated, it is 
 to be feared, by many oaths, exhorted them to stand. 
 A French officer, his sword high in air, a mere youth, 
 ran out several paces in the front, a British officer ran 
 to his side, a third and a fourth joined the group. 
 Some voice called out in French, " Drums to the front," 
 and drummers and buglers ran out, and sounded and 
 screamed the pas de charge ; and still the great bat- 
 talion swayed to and fro, undecided between an heroic 
 rush on the enemy or mere ignoble flight. 
 
 Here, again, as so often throughout the battle, the 
 audacious and almost absurd daring of a cluster of 
 British infantry changed the fortunes of the day. 
 Colonel Daubeny found himself with thirty men of the 
 55 th, on the flank of the Russian column. The second 
 Russian battalion was at quarter-distance in the rear of 
 the leading battalion ; it was in the act of deploying to 
 its right, Avhen Daubeny, with his thirty men, charged 
 into the gap between the two battalions ! The jam 
 Avas fierce — so close, indeed, that shot or bayonet-thrust 
 for a few seconds became impossible, and Daubeny was
 
 INKERMANN 263 
 
 cool enough to exchange a half-laughing nod with a 
 Russian officer close to him, and pinioned, like him, with 
 the weight of the mass. But the British infantry, by- 
 sheer streni^th — sometimes with stroke of list, sometimes 
 Avith a murderous clutch at an enemy's throat — made 
 space for themselves, and the heroic thirty actually 
 fought their way through tliis body of 600 men, from 
 flank to flank, half of them dying in the effort. And it 
 was that heroic dash of thirty British soldiers through 
 what may be called the spine of the great Russian 
 column, which broke its strength, and froze into power- 
 lessness the attack at its head. The 7th Leger by this 
 time coming bravely on again, the great trunk column 
 swung back, broken and demoralised. 
 
 Another Russian attack on the north-east shoulder 
 of the ridge had, in the meanwhile, been gallantly met 
 and defeated by the 21st Fusiliers and some comjDanies 
 of the 63rd. Both regiments Avcre Irish — the Fusiliers 
 a regiment of veterans ; the companies of the 63rd in 
 the main raw recruits from Dublin. Drawn up in line, 
 these troops maintained a Are so flerce and cruel that 
 the Russian masses halted, and fell in huge and bloody 
 heaps. Then a line of Celtic Are swept through 
 Fusiliers and 63rd alike ! With a fierce shout they ran 
 forward. The scrub and rocks broke their ranks ; many 
 a gallant- soldier fell ; but the rush was irresistible. 
 On swept the charge, down the slope, across the post- 
 road, far in advance of the British front, down into the 
 jaws of the Quarry Ravine, into which a stream of 
 broken Russian battalions was by this time flowing. 
 Thus, if the enduring valour of the general British line 
 defeated the innumerable attacks of the Russians, it was
 
 264 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 the 6lan and daring of these two Irish regiments which 
 carried the decisive counter-attack deep into the heart 
 of the Russian army. 
 
 All through the day the Russians had an over- 
 powering superiority in artillery fire, and the roar of 
 their 100 guns never ceased. To this the British replied 
 with the fire of 38 guns, mostly of lighter calibre than 
 the Russian guns ; but at this stage Lord Raglan drew 
 two 1 8-pounder guns into the fight. The huge pieces, 
 each weighing 42 cwt., were dragged with ropes into 
 position, 150 men toiling at the task, while man after 
 man fell under the enemy's fire. The guns were 
 dragged into a commanding position, and opened fire on 
 the Russian batteries. The answering fire was fierce 
 and cruel, and, of the men working the guns, one in ten 
 was struck down within the first few minutes. But the 
 two great guns, laid with cool and deadly accuracy, and 
 worked with almost incredible speed, wrought great 
 mischief, and in less than half an hour obtained a 
 complete ascendancy over the Russian batteries on 
 Shell Hill. Some French guns of heavy calibre, too, 
 came up, and it was plain that the dominion of the 
 Russian guns was ended. It was equally plain, more- 
 over, that the strength of the Russian attack was 
 broken ; and from this time the Russians, as a matter 
 of fact, commenced to fall back in slow and sullen 
 retreat. 
 
 At most points of the battle-line, the exhausted 
 British could only stand where they had fought ; but at 
 some points there was still energy enough to assume 
 the offensive. Thus Lieutenant Acton, in command of 
 some sixty men of the 77th, was ordered to gather
 
 INKERMANN 265 
 
 under bis command two other tiny British companies 
 close at liand, and attack the most western Russian 
 battery on Shell Hill. Both Sir Evelyn Wood and 
 Kinglake tell the story in detail, and a very remarkable 
 story it is. 
 
 Acton drew the three companies into line fronting 
 the battery, some 800 yards distant. He explained to 
 the officers his orders, and said he would lead his 
 detachment on the battery front, if the other two 
 companies would attack on either flank. The other 
 officers refused to join in the attack, saying the force 
 was too hopelessly small. " If you won't come," said 
 Acton, " I will attack with my own men ; " and, turning 
 to them, said, " Forward, lads." But the men had 
 heard the dispute between the officers, and refused to 
 move. To undertake wdth one company what was 
 pronounced a task too desperate for the three com- 
 panies seemed mere madness, "Then," said Acton, 
 "I'll go by myself!" Turning his face towards the 
 battery he marched off, single-handed, to attack it ! 
 But it is not the way of British soldiers to forsake their 
 officers. Acton had advanced some fifty yards, when a 
 private of the 77th, named Tyrrel, ran out of the ranks 
 after him, reached his side, and said, " Sir, I'll stand by 
 you ! " From one of the other companies a second man 
 ran up, and the three brave men clambered up the 
 slope to attack the battery thundering round-shot over 
 their heads. Great, however, is the magic of a brave 
 example. The 77tli could not see their lieutenant with 
 only two followers moving up unsupported to attack a 
 battery ; and, with a shout, they ran out, an eager 
 crowd, caught up to him, and fell into rank behind him.
 
 266 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 He divided his sixty men into tliree groups, sent twenty 
 under the command of a sergeant against either flank, 
 and himself led another twenty on the battery front. 
 The other two companies, in the meanwhile, were 
 coming up fast, and the Russian gunners, after a few 
 hasty discharges, wheeled round their guns and 
 made off! 
 
 By one o'clock the fight was practically over, and the 
 victory won ; and there is no more astonishing victory 
 in the history of war. Todlebcn afterwards explained 
 the Russian defeat to Russell by saying, "You were 
 hidden by the fog, and you had a thin front ; but your 
 fire into our dense masses was deadly. Then, again, our 
 men fancied that they had all the siege guns playing on 
 them. Every little obstacle appeared to be a fort or a 
 battery," &c. The mist and the uncertainty of the fight, 
 in a word, only hardened the courage of the British : 
 they stirred with a ferment of alarmed uneasiness the 
 imagination of the Russians. 
 
 The slaughter was great. On the three-quarters of 
 a mile front, along which the battle raged, lay nearly 
 1 4,000 dead or wounded men. The British loss amounted 
 to 3258 killed or wounded; the French lost less than 
 1000; the Russian killed and wounded, according to 
 their own published figures, reached nearly 1 1 ,oco. It 
 is suspected to have been much greater. This huge 
 slaughter amongst the Russians is explained by the fact 
 that they were crowded together on a narrow neck of 
 ground, they attacked in solid masses, the firing was 
 close, and the hard-hittino: Minie bullets often would 
 pass through half-a-dozen men. The British losses, 
 however, in proportion to their numbers, were of startling
 
 INKERMANN 267 
 
 severity. Thus, at the close of the day, no fewer than 
 eight British generals were lying on the field, while of 
 the Guards 594 men Avere killed and wounded out of 
 1098 in the sf)ace of a single hour ! 
 
 It was a great and memorable victory ; but what 
 arithmetic can measure the price at which it was 
 bought ! Here is a pen picture of the scene the 
 day after the fight: — "Parties of men busy at work. 
 Groups along the hillside, forty or fifty yards apart. 
 You find them around a yawning trench, 30 feet in 
 length by 20 feet in breadth and 6 feet in depth. At 
 the bottom lie, packed with exceeding art, some forty 
 or fifty corpses. The gravediggers stand chatting, 
 waiting for arrivals to complete the number. They 
 speculate on the appearance of the body which is 
 
 being borne towards them. ' It's Corporal , of the 
 
 — th, I think,' says one. 'No; it's my rear-rank man. 
 I can see his red hair plain enough,' and so on. They 
 discuss the merits or demerits of dead sergeants or 
 comrades. ' Well, he was a hard man. Many's the 
 time I was belted through liim ! ' or ' Poor Mick ! he 
 had fifteen years' service — a better fellow never stepped.' 
 At last the number in the trench is completed. The 
 bodies are packed as closely as possible. Some have 
 still upraised arms, in the attitude of taking aim ; their 
 legs stick up through the mould ; others are bent and 
 twisted like fantoccini. Inch after inch the earth rises 
 upon them, and they arc left ' alone in their glory.' 
 No, not alone ; for the hope and affections of hundreds 
 of human hearts lie buried with them."
 
 FAMOUS CAVALRY CHARGES 
 
 " Then down went helm and lance, 
 Down were the eagle-banners sent, 
 
 Down reeling steeds and riders went, 
 Corslets were pierced, and pennons rent ; 
 
 And to augment the fray ; 
 Wheel'd full against their staggering flanks, 
 The English horsemen's foaming ranks 
 
 Forced their resistless way." 
 
 — Scott. 
 
 NO rational man to-day cares to reflect much on 
 tliat historical tragedy known as the Crimean 
 War. In that war Great Britain expended the hves 
 of 24,000 brave men, and added ^^4 1,000,000 to her 
 national debt, with no other result than that of securing 
 to " the unspeakable Turk " a new oj^portunity of mis- 
 governing some of the fairest lands in the Avorld — an 
 opportunity which made possible the Armenian horrors. 
 As a matter of fact, the Crimean War only secured a 
 truce of some twenty-two years in the secular quarrel 
 between Russia and Turkey, and it was scarcely worth 
 while spending so much for so little. 
 
 But this war, begun for an inadequate end, was also 
 one of the worst-managed wars known to history. It 
 deserves to stand beside the famous Walcheren ex- 
 pedition as an example of colossal blundering. Lord 
 AVolseley has described one particular incident in the
 
 FAMOUS CAVALEY CHARGES 269 
 
 war — the assault on tlio Redan — as " crazy, ignorant, 
 and childish," and those adjectives might bo extended 
 to the strategy and tactics of the whole campaign. 
 The generalship was contemptible ; the transport broke 
 down ; the commissariat fell into mere helpless bank- 
 ruptcy ; the state of the hospitals, at one stage, would 
 have made a Turk blush. Great Britain was mistress 
 of the seas, yet through the bitter winter of 1854 her 
 brave soldiers, on the frozen upland above Sebastopol, 
 died of mere hunger and cold, with a port crowded with 
 British ships within eight miles. The camp was wasted 
 with scurvy while an illimitable supply of fruits and 
 vegetables lay within a day's sail. The feats of non- 
 intelligence performed by the British commissariat 
 would sound incredible even in a burlesque. Steevens 
 in his " Crimean Campaign " relates how, while the 
 camp hospitals had neither medicine nor candles, yet 
 wooden legs at the rate of fovu' per man were laboriously 
 sent out from England ! This may be a mere flight of 
 camp humour, but it is historic that a large consign- 
 ment of boots, on being opened, was found to consist 
 exclusively of boots for the left foot ! The troops were 
 thoughtfully provided with coffee, but it was with 
 green coffee-beans ; and the fireless soldier who had 
 to extract coffee from a combination of cold water and 
 green coffee-beans naturally expended much theological 
 language on the authorities who were amusing them- 
 selves at his expense. In January 1855, the sick cases 
 in the British camp reached the appalling number of 
 23,076. For every man killed by bullet or sword in the 
 Crimean campaign, eight died from sickness, cold, or 
 hvmgcr.
 
 270 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 In the black sky of that mismanaged war there 
 gleams only one star. History can shoAV nothing to 
 exceed, and not much to equal, the quenchless forti- 
 tude, the steadfast loyalty to the flag, the heroic daring 
 of the men and ofiicers Avho kept watch in the trenches 
 round Sebastopol. The Crimean War created only one 
 military reputation — that of Todleben, the great Russian 
 engineer Avho defended Sebastopol — but it has enriched 
 British military history with some deeds, the memory 
 of which will endure as long as the race itself. Two of 
 these are the great cavalry charges, which took place on 
 the same day on the open plains just above Balaclava, 
 and the story of " Scarlett's Three Hundred," and of 
 the yet better known charge of the Light Brigade, are , 
 well worth telling afresh to a new generation. , I
 
 SIR JAMES YORKE SCARLETT 
 
 Front a litlu^gyapii, after titc /•ortrait by E. Ha\'ELL
 
 FAMOUS CAVALRY CHARGES 27 1 
 
 I. "SCARLETT'S THREE HUNDRED." 
 
 " The charge of the gallant three hundred — the Heavy Ilrigade ! 
 Down the hill, down the hill, thousands of Russians, 
 Thousands of horsemen, drew to the valley — and stayed ; 
 For Scarlett and Scarlett's three hundred were riding by 
 When the points of the Russian lances arose in the sky ; 
 And he called, "Left wheel into line!" and they Avheeled and 
 obeyed. 
 
 And we turned to each other, whispering, all dismayed, 
 
 " Lost are the gallant three hundred of Scarlett's Brigade ! " 
 
 " Lost one and all" were the words 
 
 Muttered in our dismay ; 
 
 But they rode like Victors and Lords 
 
 Through the forest of lances and swords 
 
 In the heart of the Russian hordes. " 
 
 — Tennyson. 
 
 In the cold grey dawn of October 25, 1854, a 
 British cavalry general and three of his staff were 
 ridincf towards Canrobert's Hill, the extreme eastern 
 outpost held by the allied armies. A quick-eyed aide- 
 de-camp saw that above the redoubt two flags were 
 flying instead of one. " What does that mean ? " asked 
 one. " Why," was the answer, " that is the arranged 
 signal that the enemy is advancing" ; and, as he spoke, 
 there broke from the redoubt the sullen roar of a gun 
 fired at some unseen object to the east. The Russians 
 were, indeed, advancing. Balaclava, the base of supplies 
 for the British army, lay temptingly open to a Russian 
 assault, and the open valley that led to it was guarded 
 by nothing better than six redoubts held by Turks, over 
 which a donkey might have scrambled, one battery of
 
 272 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 liorse artillery, part of the 93rd Highlanders, and the 
 Light and Heavy Cavalry Brigades, numbering about 
 1 500 swords. 
 
 And on these scanty forces in the chilly dawn of that 
 October day were marching 25,000 Russian infantry, 34 
 squadrons of Russian cavalry, and 78 pieces of field artil- 
 lery. Lord Raglan had been warned by spies the previous 
 day of the coming attack, but took no steps to meet it. 
 News that the attack had actually begun was carried to 
 the tent of the sleeping English general at 7.30 a.m., but 
 he did not turn out till past eight o'clock, nor did he get 
 a single British regiment on to the threatened ground 
 before ten o'clock. Lord Raglan certainly could not be 
 accused of the sin of " raw haste " ! Meanwhile the 
 Russians were coming on with more than usual decision. 
 
 Balaclava is a plain about three miles long and two 
 broad, girdled with hills from 300 feet to 1000 feet high, 
 while a sort of spine of low hills called the " Causeway 
 Heights," runs from east to west across it. The vaUey is 
 thus divided into two parts, the North Valley, the scene 
 of the famous Light Cavalry charge, and the South Valley, 
 where the charge of the Heavy Brigade took place. 
 Canrobert's Hill, or No. i Redoubt, stood in the eastern 
 throat of the South Valley, and five other redoubts 
 known as Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 — all held by Turks — were 
 scattered along the Causeway Heights. The unfortunate 
 Turks in No. i Redoubt — only 500 strong — on the dawn 
 of that historic day, saw an entire Russian army march- 
 ing upon them ! The 93rd Highlanders were two miles 
 to their rear, guarding the immediate approach to 
 Balaclava ; at a distance as great, at the western root of 
 the Causeway Heights, whence they project like an ex-
 
 FAMOUS CAVALRY CHARGES 273 
 
 tended lance across tlie valley, stood two brigades of 
 British horse. Turks behind an earthwork can fight 
 stubbornly, but when the tiny cluster of Turks in No. i 
 Redoubt saw 1 1,000 Russian infantry and t,S guns march- 
 ing straight upon them, with no support in sight, they 
 might be forgiven if their nerve failed. As a matter of 
 fact they returned with then five guns the fire of thirty- 
 eight guns, and held their ground until one-fourth of 
 their number were killed. Then, as the grey-coated 
 Russian battalions came tumbling clumsily, but in 
 resistless masses, over their earthwork, the Turks fled. 
 The solid column of Russian cavalry opened like a fan, 
 long sprays of galloping skirmishers shot out, and soon 
 Cossacks and lancers were busy slaying amongst the 
 flying red fezes. 
 
 At that spectacle, and at the steady advance of the 
 masses of Russians, the Turks in each of the other re- 
 doubts in succession fled, and Lord Raglan and his staff, 
 who just then rode on to the crest of the hills — which 
 overlooked the green floor of the valley, as the upper 
 seats of an amphitheatre overlook its arena — beheld this 
 disconcerting spectacle. A Russian army — horse, foot, 
 and artillery — was moving swiftly to attack the most 
 vital point in the British lines, its arsenal and base of 
 supplies. The early sun, to quote Russell, shone on 
 "acres of bayonets, forests of sword- blades and lance- 
 points, gloomy-looking blocks of man and horse." The 
 Turks were in full retreat; their guns were in the 
 enemy's hands — nothing stood between the British ships 
 in Balaclava and the Russian guns but some 1 100 
 marines, the immediate garrison of the port, 400 men 
 of the 93rd Highlanders, with 100 invalids on their
 
 a 74 I'IGHTS TOR THE FLAG 
 
 way to hospital, a battery of light field-pieces, and the 
 British cavalry, apparently withdrawn from the fight 
 altogether. 
 
 Liprandi had, iip to this, shown a high degree of 
 resolution, and it cannot be doubted that if he had 
 thrust resolutely forward with his full force, he must 
 have reached Balaclava. Just at this point, however, 
 some spasm of doubt seems to have crossed his mind, 
 and his huge grey battalions halted in their march. 
 Perhaps the cluster of generals — British and French — 
 with their staffs and escorts showing against the sky-line 
 on the crest of the western hills, gave him pause. But 
 the Russian cavalry continued its advance, a dense mass, 
 squadron after squadron deploying on a front that 
 widened till it threatened to fill the whole space of the 
 valley, and all flowing steadily forward. The advance 
 guard of the Russian cavalry, looo strong, swung over 
 the Causeway Ridge into the South Valley. Nothing 
 seemed to be between them and Balaclava but the 
 famous " thin red line " of the 93rd — by this time in- 
 creased to 550 men, with a battalion of Turks on either 
 flank — who, at the sight of the Russian lancers, dissolved 
 into mere fugitives. To the spectators — and that a 
 British general and his staff could be mere spectators in 
 such a scene is very wonderful — it seemed as if that 
 great mass of ordered cavalry could brush aside the red 
 fence of men that barred its path. The Highlanders, as 
 it happened, were at that particular moment in a mood 
 of Homeric laughter. As the flying Turks swept through 
 the tents of the Highland camp an angry Scotch wife 
 appeared on the scene, stick in hand, and commenced 
 to belabour the fugitives, while her voice, in strident
 
 FAMOUS CAVALRY CHARGES 275 
 
 Glassrow tones, ransr clear in the morning^ air. One 
 gigantic Turk in particular she captured, and thumped 
 with masculine energy, and loud laughter rose in the 
 Highland ranks at this spectacle. 
 
 But the horsemen were coming on fast, and a grim 
 silence fell on the Highlanders. Then, as the beat of 
 the hostile troojas sounded deeper and louder, a curious 
 quiver ran down the long two-deep line of the 93rd. 
 The men were eager to run forward and charge. " 93rd, 
 93rd," rang out the fierce voice of Sir Colin Campbell, 
 
 " d all that eagerness ! " He liad previously ridden 
 
 down the line and told his soldiers, " Remember, there 
 is no retreat from here, men. You must die where you 
 stand." And from the kilted privates came the cheer- 
 ful answer, "Ay, ay. Sir Colin; we'll do that." The 
 Russians were now within range, and the fire of the 
 Highlanders rang out sudden and sharp. A few horses 
 and men came tumbling down, and the Russian cavalry 
 wheeled instantly to the left, threatening the right flank 
 of the Highlanders. Campbell, a cool and keen soldier, 
 saw the skill of this movement. " Shadwell," he said, 
 turning to his aide-de-camp, " that man understands his 
 business." So, too, did Campbell ; who instantly de- 
 flected his line so as to protect his right, and met the 
 advance with a destructive volley, before Avhich the 
 Russian horsemen at once fell back. 
 
 At that moment an ofticer rode at a breakneck pace 
 down the hill from Lord Raglan to where the British 
 cavalry were drawn up on the base of the hills below, 
 surveying the whole field as mere benevolent spectators. 
 It had occurred to Lord Raglan that his cavalry mio^ht 
 be used to assist his infantry, and eight squadrons of
 
 276 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 the Heavy Brigade were ordered to move off to support 
 the Highlanders. The squadrons moved off" promptly 
 under General Scarlett, having the Causeway Heights 
 on the left. The men were picking their wa}^ across 
 the encumbrances of their own camp when Scarlett's 
 aide-de-camp, Elliot, happened to cast his eyes to the 
 ridge 600 yards distant to his left, and saw its top fretted 
 with lances, and the whole sky-line broken by moving 
 squadrons. These 600 British troopers, in a word, were 
 moving across the front of a body of Russian cavalry 
 3000 strong, and had not the least idea of the circum- 
 stance until the enemy's squadrons looked down on 
 their flank within striking distance ! Kinglake, who 
 was an actual spectator of the fight, says that the huge 
 mass of hostile cavalry, as, at the sound of trumpet, 
 with all the weight of its thousands, it began to descend 
 the hillside, " showed acreage rather than numbers." 
 The Russians were clothed, as a rule, in long grey over- 
 coats, and grey, by its mere mass — as is seen in sky or 
 sea — has almost the effect of blackness. And across 
 this black, threatening, steadily-moving mass was draAvn, 
 in the valley below, at a distance of some 600 yards, 
 the vivid crimson line of the English cavalry — the 
 Greys, with their white horses and bearskin caps, the 
 Inniskillings with gleaming helmets. Scarlett was a 
 white- whiskered, red-faced soldier, fifty-five years old, a 
 delightfully simple-minded warrior, who had never 
 heard a shot fired in anger. But as he looked up and 
 saw that huge, threatening mass on his flank, with the 
 instinct of a brave man he took the one possible course. 
 "Left wheel into line," he shouted. The men swung 
 round instantly, faced the Russian front, and quietly
 
 FAMOUS CAVALRY CHARGES 277 
 
 moved forward, two squadrons of Greys and one of 
 Inniskillings forming the front line. 
 
 The ground was rough with the debris of a camp; 
 part of the British cavahy, too, liad to cross the site of 
 an old vineyard, bristling with vine-stumps, and girdled 
 by a ditch. By the time they cleared all this, the ranks 
 were somewhat disordered, and the company officers 
 commenced to " dress " their line. This was a dainty 
 process for 300 cavalry, with a huge mass nearly ten 
 times their strength, 600 yards otf, and hanging like a 
 threatening cloud on the hill above them, ready to 
 burst in overAvhelming tempest. The Russians moved 
 steadily down to within 400 yards of Scarlett's line, and 
 then a spasm of doubt seemed to run through the mass. 
 It halted. The beat of trampling hoofs died away. The 
 officers of the Greys were still, with their backs turned 
 coolly to the enemy, daintily " dressing " the lines of 
 their men, and under that treatment the men's tempers 
 were growing slightly volcanic. The Inniskillings had a 
 clear stretch of grass before them, and the passion to 
 charge thrilled in the men so fiercely that Scarlett 
 could only restrain the line by waving it back with his 
 sword. The troop resembled a high-bred horse, chafing 
 at the curb for a start. 
 
 Scarlett saw the hus^e mass above him, and out- 
 flanking him so enormously, draw to a halt, just as the 
 dressing of his own lines was completed. His trumpeter 
 rang out stern and clear the signal to "charge," and 
 Scarlett himself, mounted on a horse of great speed and 
 size, led against the enemy at a trot, which after a few 
 yards quickened to a gallop. His troops, still hindered 
 by broken ground, could not come on so SAviftly, and
 
 278 FIGHTS FOE, THE FLAG 
 
 there was tlie amazing spectacle presented of a red-faced 
 British general galloping headlong and alone into a 
 gigantic mass of Russian cavalry, his aide-de-camp, 
 trumpeter, and orderly following hard on his rear, and 
 more than fifty yards behind some 300 Greys and 
 Inniskillings just getting into their stride. A horse 
 sixteen hands high going at full speed with a white- 
 whiskered British general on its back, is a somewhat 
 discomposing object as it approaches, and as Scarlett 
 smashed in on the Russian front he saw the nearest of 
 the hostile cavalry drop promptly off their horses for 
 safety. Scarlett himself, flourishing his sword, drove 
 deep into the Russian mass ; Elliot, his aide-de-camp, a 
 splendid swordsman, came next, and a Russian officer, 
 sitting on his horse a few paces in the front of the line, 
 struck furiously at him as he swept up. Elliot parried 
 the cut, dropped his sword point to the thrust, drove it 
 through the body of his antagonist, and, as the rush of 
 his horse carried him onward, the Russian was literally 
 turned round in his saddle by the leverage of the sword 
 thrust clean through him. Then, as his sword was 
 released, with a flash of the crimson blade, Elliot, too, 
 broke through the Russian line. 
 
 How eagerly the three squadrons following were, by 
 this time, riding, may be imagined. The Inniskillings 
 on the right, as the Russian line came within sword- 
 stroke, broke into a shout, sudden, loud, and menacing. 
 The Greys, according to Kinglake, broke out into what 
 he somewhat absurdly calls " a fierce moan of rapture." 
 Grey and Inniskilling had not ridden side by side since 
 the great charge at Waterloo, and the men of 1854 
 were as gallant as the men of 181 5. When before.
 
 FAMOUS CAVALRY CHARGES 279 
 
 indeed, was ever seen a spectacle of 300 men galloping 
 up hill to charge 3000 ! As the squadrons loosened in 
 the gallop the men in the second line seized the oppor- 
 tunity afforded by every interval to add themselves to 
 the first line, and, largely, it was in a single line that 
 Scarlett's 300 flung themselves on a mass of cavalry of 
 almost unknown depth. Colonel Dairy mple White, 
 who led the Inniskillings, was the next man after 
 Scarlett and his little group to pierce the enemy's line ; 
 Major Clarke, who led the Greys on the enemy's flank, 
 was the next man in. He rode a horse with a satanic 
 temper, who, driven temporarily mad by the rapture of 
 galloping, plunged so fiercely as to displace his rider's 
 bearskin, and, bare-headed, Clarke rode under that 
 gleaming roof of Russian swords. Then with one sus- 
 tained and swelling roar of sounds, the lines clashed 
 together, the Russians "accepting the files," as it is 
 called — shrinking aside, that is — to yield a passage to 
 their enemies, so that, in a few seconds, the 300 Greys 
 and Inniskillings were simply buried in the black mass 
 of the Russians, and became, to the excited onlookers 
 who hung over the combat from the heights, mere 
 eddying specks of grey and red, of black bearskin and 
 gleaming and plumed helmet, in the gloomy mass of 
 the Russian squadrons. 
 
 The British, it must be remembered, were heavy 
 cavalry — big men on big horses; they broke into the 
 Russians in the full rapture of a galloping charge ; 
 fiercer blood beat in their veins than in the more stolid 
 Russians. And from the very instant of actual contact 
 the British established a curious mastery over their 
 enemies. The fight was fought on a sloping floor
 
 2 8o FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 of elastic turf; there was no explosion of fire-arms, 
 nothinsf but the ring: of steel on steel, and the shouts 
 of the combatants. The Russians everywhere were on 
 the defensive, with crouching heads, the gleam of white 
 teeth, and one long-sustained and hissing " zizz," which, 
 to quote Kingslake, resembled the buzz of a thousand 
 factory- wheels. In the tumult and squeeze of this meUe 
 the tall British horsemen bore themselves with an air 
 of assured mastery. The thick greatcoats of the Rus- 
 sians served almost the purposes of a coat of armour; 
 the sword-stroke sometimes rebounded from it as 
 though the stroke had been that of a cudgel, and in 
 more than one instance the sword thrust fiercely at 
 the body of a Russian was bent, as though it had been 
 lead, against the thick fold of the wearer's coat. In 
 the passion of the fight a British soldier, while he cut 
 down a Russian with his right hand, would often clutch 
 another Russian by the throat, and drag him from the 
 saddle. Clarke was cut cruelly across his bare head 
 with the stroke of a Russian sabre, and the rush of 
 crimson blood turned face and neck to the colour of 
 his red coat; yet Clarke himself, in the exaltation of 
 the fight, knew nothing of his wound ! Elliot, familiar 
 with war in India, and a fine swordsman, played a 
 great part in the fight; but, overreaching himself for 
 a moment in a thrust, four Russian swords simultane- 
 ously struck him on head and face. He received the 
 point of one enemy in the forehead, the blade of a second 
 divided his face transversely by a furious slash, a third 
 smote him behind the ear, a fourth cut clean through 
 his cocked hat. Elliot received in all fourteen sword 
 wounds, yet kept his scat and his sword through them all !
 
 FAMOUS CAVALRY CHARGES 28 I 
 
 The Russian cavalry formed a huge and solid oblong, 
 but the two front lines were extended considerably 
 beyond the true width of the oblong, so as to greatly 
 prolong the front ; and the prolongations on either 
 extremity served as a kind of antenniB. They could 
 be s^ning back so as to protect the flanks of the mass, 
 or swung forward so as to enclose, as within the claws 
 of a crab, a body attacking in front. At this stage of 
 the fight these two " horns," so to speak, wheeled for- 
 ward, and shut round on the Russian front so as to 
 completely swallow up the tiny squadrons that had 
 followed Scarlett. 
 
 What, meanwhile, was Scarlett's second line doinsf ? 
 It was a soldierly impulse on the part of Scarlett which 
 made him instantly swing round, and charge with the 
 three squadrons he had in hand, tlie huge bulk of 
 Russian cavalry which suddenly appeared on the hill 
 above him. But it was a slur on his generalship that 
 he had not discovered the presence of so formid- 
 able a force within striking distance earlier ; it was a 
 still further blunder that, instead of striking the enemy 
 Avith hLs whole force, his men were left to expend 
 themselves in no fewer than five separate and un- 
 related attacks. 
 
 The 4th Dragoon Guards were moving in the rear 
 of Scarlett's first line when they saw at almost the 
 same moment the dusky mass of the Russians, Scarlett 
 himself, his white whiskers visible beneath his glitter- 
 ing helmet, in their midst flourishinfr his sword, and 
 the first line at full gallop just crasliing on the Russian 
 front. The 4th Dragoons were advancing in leisurely 
 fashion, but, at that spectacle, the men without orders
 
 2 62 FIGHTS FOE, THE FLAG 
 
 instinctively drew their swords, and their colonel, 
 Hodge, said to his second in command, " Foster, I am 
 going on with the left squadron ; as soon as your squa- 
 dron gets clear of the vineyard, front form, and charge." 
 Hodge was a good soldier ; he went at the gallop past 
 the Russian front on its right flank, brought up his left 
 shoulder — still at the gallop — crashed in upon the un- 
 protected Russian flank, and hewed his way at the 
 sword's edge clean from flank to flank of the mass. 
 The Royals had received no orders at all, but the 
 shouts of the combat had set them moving. They 
 came over a ridge of the hill in time to see the right 
 arm of the Russian front fold round on the Greys. That 
 spectacle set the Royals on flame. Some voice cried 
 
 out, " By G , the Greys are cut oif ! Gallop ! 
 
 Gallop ! " The men broke into a cheer, the blast of 
 a trumpet pealed out, and, trying to form line as they 
 moved, the Royals galloped up, and smote the wheeling 
 Russian line on its rear, and broke it to fragments. 
 
 Still farther to the right were the 5 th Dragoon Guards, 
 who also sprang forward, like hounds unleashed, at the 
 sight of the meUe. Some stray troopers off duty joined 
 them — a man or two from the Light Brigade drawn 
 by pure love of fighting, the two regimental butchers 
 in their shirt sleeves. The 5 th Dragoons came up at 
 a gallop, and also caught the wheeling Russian line in 
 the rear. A second squadron of the Inniskillings, still 
 farther to the right, was the only one which Scarlett, 
 before he started on his charge, had summoned to 
 follow him. It had a clear field for the gallop ; the 
 men came on at full charging pace, shot clear through 
 the Russian left wing — which it also caught trying to
 
 FAMOUS CAVALRY CHARGES 283 
 
 wheel in on Scarlett and his men — and drove it with 
 their fiery onset in ruins upon the main body. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Greys in the centre of the swaying 
 mass had been rallying round their adjutant, a big 
 man, on a gigantic steed, with a voice famous for its 
 range, who, holding up erect in the air a sword that 
 from point to hilt dripped with blood, shouted, " The 
 Greys ! Eally ! Rally ! " Tormented at its centre by 
 Greys and Inniskillings, rent from flank to flank by the 
 4tli Dragoons, smitten with shock after shock by the 
 charge of the Royals and the first squadron of Innis- 
 kilhngs, what could the Russians do ? They swayed to 
 and fro ! the clamour of shouting, the stamp of hoofs, 
 the clash of sword on sword grew ever fiercer, till at last 
 the many yielded to the fcAv ! The huge bulk broke 
 asunder, and a mere tumbled wreck of squadrons swept 
 in flight over the crest of the hill, down which not many 
 minutes before, in such a threatening shape, it had 
 moved in order so majestic. 
 
 The 93rd had watched the sight, and as the Rus- 
 sians broke they cheered madly, while Sir Colin Camp- 
 bell, with head bare, galloped up to the Greys, his 
 war-battered face shining. " Greys, gallant Greys ! " 
 he ^aid, " I am sixty-one years old, but if I were a lad 
 again I would be proud to join your ranks." "That," 
 said one of the French generals who watched the scene, 
 " is the most <?lorious thincj I ever saw."
 
 2 8jL fights for the FLAG 
 
 II. THE SIX HUNDRED. 
 
 " I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips 
 Straining upon the start. The game's afoot : 
 Follow your spirit, and upon this charge ; 
 Cry — ' God for Harry ! England, and Saint George ! ' " 
 
 — Henry V. 
 
 " Flash'd all their sabres bare, 
 Flash'd as they turned in air, 
 Sabring the gunners there. 
 Charging an army, while 
 
 All the world wondered." 
 
 — Tennyson. 
 
 Ah tlic Russians swept back in confusion, tliey passed 
 right across the front of the Light Cavalry Brigade, seven 
 splendid squadrons brought to Avhite-heat by the gallant 
 fight of the Heavy Brigade, which they had watched as 
 mere spectators. Lord Cardigan, their commander, had 
 received two orders — (i) To "defend the position" he 
 occupied; and (2) "To strike at anything that came 
 within distance " of him. He forgot the second clause 
 of his orders, and remembered only the first. Lord 
 Cardigan was a brave man, but a bad soldier. Nature, 
 in fact, intended him for a lawyer of the old hair-splitting 
 type, and an unkind fate had made him a cavalry officer, 
 and put him in command of seven squadrons of the 
 finest horsemen in the world. All through the fight of 
 Scarlett's men the officers nearest him heard Cardigan 
 explode at short intervals into the sentence, " D— — 
 those Heavies ! They have the laugh of us this day." 
 But when the disordered Russians swept past him Lord
 
 THE EARL OF CARDIGAN' 
 
 Frajii (in enf^yavin^, after a />!io;oj;>a/>h l\v John Watkins
 
 FAMOUS CAVALRY CHARGES 285 
 
 Cardigan's opportunity came. Ho had amongst his 
 officers one at least — Morris of the 17 th Lancers — who 
 had taken part in great battles in India, and he implored 
 Cardigan to strike with the full force of his brigade the 
 flanks of the flying Russians, or, at least, to allow him to 
 charge them with his own two squadrons. But Cardigan 
 had a brain as narroAV and as impenetral^le as his own 
 sword. He was a precisian, capable of quarrelling despe- 
 rately about trifles. He had fought two deadly duels 
 when a young man — one about the colour of a bottle, 
 another about the size of a tea-cup. He could easily 
 become the prisoner of a phrase. His orders, too, 
 were to " defend " his position, and Cardigan so little 
 understood his business as a soldier that he thought an 
 order to " defend '' meant a prohibition to attack. And 
 to the derision of military mankind, and the wrath of 
 every man in his own brigade, Cardigan flung away 
 his chance. 
 
 But the testing hour of the Light Brigade came 
 quickly. About eleven o'clock, as the British yet remained 
 absolutely passive, Liprandi began to remove the guns 
 from the redoubts he had captured. Now, to see British 
 guns carried off under the eyes of a British army was a 
 spectacle that pricked even Lord Raglan's lethargic 
 spirit into anger, and he sent an order to Lord Lucan, 
 who commanded the British cavalry, to advance and 
 recover the Causeway Heights, and added that he would 
 be " supported by infantry." Lucan, however, made no 
 sign of movement. It turned out he was waiting for 
 the infantry which Lord Raglan had somehow failed to 
 provide. After a pause of nearly three-quarters of an 
 hour, Lord Raglan sent a second order, peremptory im
 
 286 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 tone but vague in expression, directing the cavalry to 
 " advance raj)idly to the front " and try to " prevent the 
 enemy carrying away the guns." The order was carried 
 by the ill-fated Nolan, a splendid horseman and sabreur, 
 but a man of vehement temper, Lucan, like Cardigan 
 was an obstinate and contentious man, who must first 
 criticise an order before he obeyed it. " Attack, sir ! ' 
 said Lucan to Nolan, " Attack what ? What guns, sir ? ' 
 Nolan, with a gesture, pointed up the valley, and said 
 " There, my lord, is your enemy ; there are your guns ! ' 
 Lucan had from the first fatally misunderstood Lord 
 Raglan's order, and by this time he was in a white 
 heat of passion, and not in a mood to understand any- 
 thing. 
 
 Kinglake, very haj^pily, likens the position of the 
 Russians to the four outspread fingers of the human 
 hand. The little finger represents the Causeway Heights, 
 the fore-finger the parallel range called the Fedioukine 
 Hills. Betwixt these ran the North Valley, up which 
 the Russian cavalry and guns — representing the second 
 and third fingers — had advanced. But the charge of the 
 Heavy Brigade had flung this force back; the valley 
 was empty, the two central fingers, so to speak, being 
 doubled back. But there remained the parallel heights 
 crowned by Russian batteries, corresponding to the 
 outer fingers of the hand, while the position of the 
 "knuckles" of the reverted fingers was occupied by a 
 battery of eighteen guns, with at least 400 cavalry drawn 
 up in their rear as a support. Raglan meant the cavalry 
 to attack the tip of the little finger. Lucan understood 
 him to mean that the cavalry was to be launched down 
 a mile and a quarter of level turf, under the cross-fire of
 
 FAMOUS CAVALRY CHABGES 287 
 
 tlie hills the whole way, on the eighteen guns at the 
 eastern end of the parallelogram. This was a simply 
 lunatic performance, but Lucan considered he had no 
 choice but to undertake it. 
 
 He rode to Cardigan, told him what was to be done, 
 and that the Light Cavalry must lead. Cardigan brought 
 down his sword in salute, said, " Certainly, sir ; but the 
 Russians have a battery in our front, and riflemen and 
 batteries on both flanks." Lucan shrugged his shoulders, 
 and said, " We have no choice but to obey " ; whereupon 
 Cardigan turned quietly to his men and said, " The 
 brigade will advance," and set oft" on the ride which has 
 become immortal, saying to himself, as he moved off, 
 " Here goes the last of the Brudenells." 
 
 The brigade numbered a little over 600 men, seven 
 dainty glittering squadrons, the perfection of military 
 splendour. When the brigade was in full movement 
 the 17 th Lancers and the 13 th Light Dragoons formed 
 the first line, the 8th and 1 1 th Hussars and 4th Light 
 Dragoons the second Ime, under the command of Lord 
 George Paget. Lord Cardigan, quite alone, led. Nolan 
 joined in the charge, but before the brigade had moved 
 a hundred paces he galloped across its head from left to 
 right, shoutinsr and waving^ his sword. To Cardigan's 
 martinet soul this was an indecorous performance, which 
 kindled in him a flame of anger that lasted at white- 
 heat through the whole fatal charge ; but Nolan had, as a 
 matter of fact, discovered the tragical mistake that was 
 being made, and tried to divert the brigade to the true 
 point of attack, the Causeway Heights. That moment 
 a Russian shell — the first fired — exploded in front of 
 Nolan, and instantly killed him. His horse, freed from
 
 ^8 8 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 the rider's hand, wheeled and galloped back on the front 
 of the brigade, Nolan, though dead, sitting erect in the 
 saddle, with sword uplifted, his death-cry still ringing 
 in the air. 
 
 Meanwhile from the heights above, the spectators, to 
 their horror, saw the double lines of Ensrlish horsemen 
 turn their heads straight up the fatal valley, and begin 
 their famous ride " into the mouth of hell." The heisfhts 
 on either side broke into a blast of flame, the white 
 smoke swept across the valley, and within that wall of 
 drifting smoke the gallant lines vanished, their trail 
 already marked by fallen men and horses. Cardigan 
 led magnificently. He chose the flash of the central 
 gun in the battery across the head of the valley, and 
 rode steadily, and without looking back, upon it. The 
 galloping lines behind him quickened as the scourging 
 of the cross-fire became more deadly, but Cardigan put 
 his sword across the breast of the ofiicer who led the 
 Lancers, and bade him not to ride before the leader of 
 his brigade. Fast rode the lines, and fast fell the men, 
 and the iron bands of discipline began to relax. The 
 eager troopers could not be restrained from darting 
 forward in front of their oflicers, the racing spirit broke 
 out, the thunder of hoofs behind Cardigan pressed ever 
 closer. He could not keep down the pace, but he would 
 not let it outrun him, and his own stride grew swifter, 
 until the thoroughbred he rode was at full speed. When 
 within eighty yards of the great battery, it fired its final 
 blast. Half of the British line went down ; not more 
 than sixty horsemen were left untouched, and, with 
 Cardigan still leading, they drove thundering through 
 the smoke upon guns and gunners. They saw the brass
 
 FAMOUS CAVALRY CHARGES 289 
 
 cannon gleam before them, their mouths hot with the 
 flame of the last discharge. 
 
 Cardigan dashed betwixt two of the pieces, his men 
 broke over them, and fiercely hewed down the artillery- 
 men. Morris, who led the Lancers, took the survivors 
 of his squadron — some twenty horsemen — forward with 
 a rush past the battery, full upon the cavalry behind. 
 Morris himself drove his sword to the very hilt through 
 the officer who stood in front of the Russian squadrons, 
 and the Russian tumbled from his horse. Morris could 
 not disengage his sword, and was dragged with his slain 
 antagonist to the ground, Avhere the lances of a dozen 
 Cossacks were fiercely thrust into him. He was cruelly 
 wounded, but not killed, and had to surrender, though 
 afterwards he broke away and escaped. His twenty 
 Lancers meanwhile smote the Russian squadrons before 
 them with such fury that they fairly broke them. 
 Cardigan himself raced past the guns to ^vithin twenty 
 yards of the Russian cavalry, close enough, indeed, to 
 recognise in one of its officers an acquaintance he had 
 met in London drawing-rooms. 
 
 But Cardigan was alone ; he turned his horse's head 
 round, and rode back to the captured battery. L^p the 
 valley he saw some remnants of the 13th and 17th in 
 retreat, but through the whirls of eddying smoke there 
 were no other men wearing the British uniform in sight. 
 Cardigan concluded that the little cluster of troopers in 
 retreat were the sole survivors of his brigade, and he 
 rode off, and joined them, actually leaving his second 
 line and the survivors of the 17th Lancers still in full 
 conflict. The astonished spectators at the other end of 
 the valley presently saw the leader of the Light Cavalry
 
 290 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 Brigade emerge alone from the smoke, returning without 
 his brigade. 
 
 Meanwhile the second line, led by Lord George 
 Paget, rode as gallantly as the first, but with even worse 
 fortune. They had to ride over the bodies of their 
 comrades who had fallen from the squadrons before 
 them. The riderless horses from those squadrons, too, 
 were a source of confusion. A horse in the horror of a 
 great charge, suddenly finding itself riderless, goes half- 
 mad Avitli terror, and dashes, for mere company's sake, 
 into the moving ranks of the squadrons. Paget, who 
 rode in advance of his line, had at one time no fewer 
 than five riderless horses galloping beside him and 
 squeezing up against him. The officers strove steadily 
 to keep down the pace, and hold the squadrons steady, 
 but they were riding in a perfect hail of fire. Still the 
 gallant lines swept onward in good formation, till, 
 suddenly, through the grey smoke, gleamed the brazen 
 mouths of the Russian guns. Then some officer put his 
 hand to his mouth, and delivered a shrill " Tally-ho ! " 
 The lines instantly broke into a tumult of galloping 
 horsemen, and over the guns broke the British ! 
 
 The I ith Hussars swept past the flank of the battery, 
 and dashed at the cavalry drawn up in the rear. The 
 nth, from their cherry-coloured overalls, are familiarly 
 known as the " Cherubims," and here, says Lord George 
 Paget, " was witnessed the astonishing spectacle of forty 
 Cherubims assaulting the entire Russian cavalry — in- 
 deed, the Russian army!" There were now some 230 
 British horsemen — all military order gone, but each 
 man in the highest mood of warlike fury — hewing 
 fiercely at the Russian gunners or the Russian cavalry,
 
 FAMOUS CAVALRY CHARGES 29 1 
 
 and it is an amazing fact that before that fiery onset 
 the great body of cavalry fell back and back until the 
 mass was practically rent asunder ; and then were visible 
 behind them battalions of infantry, falling hastily into 
 square, as though they expected these terrible British 
 horsemen to sweep over them in turn ! 
 
 The British officers, however, knew that their bolt 
 was shot. They rallied their men, held brief consulta- 
 tion with each other, tried to discover the whereabouts 
 of their first line, and asked one another, " Where's Lord 
 Cardigan ? " That surprising officer was at that moment 
 safely back in the British lines. The survivors of the 
 heroic brigade turned their heads back, up the fatal 
 valley, and found a line of Russian cavalry drawn be- 
 tAvixt them and safety ! The guns, too, were re-manned 
 behind them, and they were caught betwixt the flame of 
 a Russian battery and the lances of Russian cavalry. 
 They never hesitated, however. The cavalry that barred 
 their path was broken through like a hedge of bul- 
 rushes, and " back from the crates of death " and from 
 the "jaAvs of hell" they rode — but "not the Six 
 Hundred ! " 
 
 There is no time to tell how the French had, mean- 
 while, by a gallant attack of Chasseurs d'Afrique, doubled 
 up the batteries on one flank ; and, in units, or in 
 scattered clusters, bloody with wounds, and spent with 
 riding, the Avreck of the brigade came out of the smoke, 
 and regained the British lines. As each survivor, or 
 cluster of survivors, appeared, a cheer broke from the 
 slope of the hills, and eager faces and friendly hands 
 welcomed them. Lord George Paget was almost the last 
 man to appear, and amongst the officers who welcomed
 
 292 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 liim was Lord Cardigan, composed and formal as ever. 
 " Hullo ! Lord Cardigan/' said Paget, " weren't you 
 there ? " When the broken fragments of the squadrons 
 were re-forming, Cardigan looked at them, and broke 
 out, " Men, it's a mad-brained trick, but it's no fault of 
 mine." And it tells the temper of the men that they 
 answered him, " Never mind, my lord, we're ready to go 
 again ! " 
 
 Of that mad but heroic charge a hundred incidents 
 are preserved — thrilling, humorous, shocking. A man 
 of the 17 th Lancers, for example, was heard to shout, 
 just as they raced in upon the guns, a quotation from 
 Shakespeare — " Who is there here would ask more men 
 from England?" The regimental butcher of the 17th 
 Lancers was engaged in killing a sheep when he heard 
 the trumpets sound for the charge. He leaped on a 
 horse; in shirt-sleeves, with bare arms and pipe in 
 mouth, rode through the whole charge, slew, it is said, 
 six men with his own hand, and came back again, pipe 
 still in mouth ! A private of the i ith was under arrest 
 for drunkenness when the charge began ; but he broke 
 out, followed his troop on a spare horse, picked up a 
 sword as he rode, and shared in the rapture and perils 
 of the charge. The charge lasted twenty minutes ; and 
 was ever before such daring or such suffering packed 
 into a space so brief! The squadrons rode into the 
 fight, numbering 6"]^ horsemen ; their mounted strength, 
 when the fight was over, was exactly 195. 
 
 It was all a blunder ; but it evoked a heroism which 
 made the blunder itself magnificent. And long as brave 
 deeds can thrill the imagination of men the story will 
 be remembered of how —
 
 FAMOUS CAVALRY CHARGES 293 
 
 " Stormed at with shot and shell, 
 Boldly they rode and well, 
 
 Into the jaws of death, 
 Into the mouth of hell ; 
 
 Noble Six Hundred." 
 
 Fate and the poets have been somewhat unkind to 
 Scarlett's Three Hundred. Tennyson's lines on them 
 have not the lilt which makes them live in the ear of a 
 people, though there is an echo of trampling hoofs in 
 some of the stanzas — 
 
 "The trumpet, the gallop, the charge, and the might of the 
 fight. 
 
 Four amid thousands ! And up the hill, up the hill, 
 Galloped the gallant Three Hundred, the Heavy Brigade." 
 
 But the stanzas which tell the story of Cardigan's 
 men are as immortal as the deed itself: — ■ 
 
 " Half a league, half a league, 
 
 Half a league onward, 
 All in the valley of death 
 
 Rode the Six Hundred. 
 ' Forward the Light Brigade ! 
 Charge for the guns ! ' he said. 
 Into the valley of death 
 
 Rode the Six Hundred. 
 
 When can their glory fade ? 
 Oh the wild charge they made, 
 
 All the world wondered. 
 Honour the charge they made, 
 Honour the Light Brigade, 
 
 Noble Six Hundred ! "
 
 THE MEN IN THE RANKS 
 
 THE story of a great figlit, on one side at least, and 
 as far as tlie commanders are concerned, is a 
 contest, not of bullets, but of brains. Strategy is 
 pitted against strategy, and the general wins who, in 
 Wellington's phrase, guesses most successfully "what 
 is happening on the other side of the hill." The fate 
 of a campaign, indeed, may be decided before a shot 
 is fired, and by purely intellectual forces ; by a blunder 
 in calculations on one side, or a failure of imagination, 
 or an infinitesimal waste of time on the other. It is 
 settled, that is, by the relative energy of brain-waves 
 in two heads, adorned with cocked hats, perhaps a 
 score of miles distant from each other ! And literature 
 reserves all its honours for what may be called the 
 intellectual side of battle — the wrestle of rival strategies. 
 Even when the actual incidents of a battle have to be 
 described, it is all lost in a vapour of generalities. The 
 unit is nothing, the mass is everything. We are bidden 
 to watch the march of the many-coloured, steel-edged 
 columns, urged by the impulse of some solitary and plan- 
 ning brain ; but history is too dignified to take notice of 
 the men in the ranks, of the dusty faces, the stumbling 
 feet, the gasping breath — of the stragglers who limp, 
 sore-footed, in the rear — of the men who drop, as though
 
 THE MEN IN THE RANKS 295 
 
 shot, killed witli mere fatigue. A battle translated 
 into literary terms is a haze of impersonal generalities. 
 The batteries thunder along a front of miles; the 
 attacking bodies are made up of "divisions" ; the victory 
 consists in driving back this or that " wing " of the 
 opposing army, or in severing, as with the flourish of 
 some unseen sword, its "communications." A fight 
 treated in this fashion is a game of chess, with regi- 
 ments for pawns, cavalry brigades for knights, and 
 " corps d'armee " for castles. The personal element 
 vanishes. The play of human passions in the long 
 lines of fighting men — of terror and of valour, of 
 despair or of triumph — is overlooked. The men in 
 the ranks are treated as bloodless abstractions, mere 
 symbols in a passionless arithmetic. The story of 
 Waterloo itself, thus treated, becomes as colourless, as 
 completely exhausted of human incident as, say, the 
 demonstration of a theorem in Euclid. 
 
 But a battle has, as far as the men in the ranks 
 are concerned, quite another side. It is a tussle of 
 bayonets, a wager of life against life ; a wrestle of hot- 
 blooded human beings in an atmosphere of passion, 
 fought under the shadow of death, and with all human 
 emotions at their highest pitch. And this, the human 
 side of a battle, which historic literature usually treats 
 as non-existent, is really that over which the average 
 man is tempted to linger with wide-eyed and awe- 
 smitten curiosity. He hungers to know how the men 
 in the battle-line feel ; how they bear themselves ; 
 what aspect the faces of their opponents wear. What 
 are the emotions and thoughts that race through the 
 brain-cells of the ordinary private, as he stands a
 
 296 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 panting — perhaps a swearing — unit in tlie swaying 
 human hne, transfigured by discipUne into a chain of 
 steel ? What expression does his face wear as he loads 
 and fires amid the drifting battle smoke ? What thrill 
 of passion kindles in him as, through the smoke-fiUed 
 air, he sees the bent heads and sparkling bayonet-points 
 of the hostile line coming on in fiercest charge ? This 
 is what every one wants to know, but which no one is 
 able to tell. Literature contains no adequate picture 
 of a great battle as seen through the eyes of the private 
 in the ranks. The men who make history, unfortu- 
 nately, cannot write it. Yet what human document 
 would be more thrilling than one which gave us the 
 landscape of a battle-field as De Foe painted the inci- 
 dents of the Great Plague of London ; or which did for 
 the fighting line of the regiments at Albuera what Dana 
 did for the forecastle-life of a merchant ship ? 
 
 But no such " document " exists ; probably none ever 
 will exist. The average soldier belongs to the inarticu- 
 late class. It is not that, like the " needy knife-grinder " 
 of Canning's squib, he has " no story to tell " ; he cannot 
 tell it. 
 
 It is worth while, however, to try and give some 
 account of the personal side of a battle, and one of the 
 best examples of what may be called the literature of 
 the private soldier is found in a book, long since gone 
 out of print, entitled " Recollections of Kifleman Harris, 
 of the old 95th." Harris was a soldier of the Peninsula 
 days, a fair sample of the men who stormed Badajoz, 
 who kept the hill of Busaco against ]\Iassena, and out- 
 marched and out-fought Marmont at Salamanca. His 
 experiences range from Vimieiro to the tragical Walcheren
 
 THE MEN IN THE EANKS 297 
 
 expedition. His book is quite structureless. It is inno- 
 cent of chronology. Clear metliod or orderly description 
 is quite unknown to it. It is a mere tangle of con- 
 fused incidents and blurred recollections. But Harris 
 had a gleam of untaught literary genius. Every now 
 and again there peeps out from his page a tiny battle 
 vignette of curiously vivid colouring. Odd paragraphs 
 in his book tingle as with the actual clash of bayonets. 
 His story, say, of the horrors of the retreat to Corunna — 
 or rather to Vigo — is, in patches, as vividly realistic as 
 a page of Defoe. Whatever the British soldier of that 
 day suffered or dared, Harris knew by personal experi- 
 ence. And as a picture of a private in the Peninsula, 
 with his hardihood, his drunkenness, his oaths, his 
 splendid fighting gifts, his hatred of retreats, his scorn 
 of all Frenchmen, his childlike trust in his officers, 
 "Rifleman Harris' Recollections" are of much greater 
 value than whole volumes of starched and erudite 
 histories. 
 
 Harris was born on the downs of Blandford, in Dorset- 
 shire, and his earliest occupation was to help his father, 
 who was a shepherd. In 1802 he was drawn as a 
 soldier of the Reserve, and afterwards drafted into the 
 66th, leaving his father, an old man, " with hair growing 
 as white as the sleet of our downs, and his face becoming 
 as furrowed as the ploughed fields around." The 66th 
 was stationed in Ireland, and there Harris, attracted by 
 the smart, dashing look of a detachment of the 95tli 
 Rifles, volunteered into that regiment. Six months 
 afterwards the regiment sailed with the expedition to 
 Denmark. The troops, some 30,000 strong, were landed 
 at Scarlet Island, near Copenhagen, and as the men
 
 298 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 leaped from the boats asliore, tlieir warlike temper 
 broke out. " The wliole force," says Harris, " set up one 
 simultaneous and tremendous cheer, a sound I cannot 
 describe, it seemed so overwhelming." Harris heard 
 afterwards on many battlefields that deep, stern, menac- 
 ing wave of sound — the shout of the British soldier in 
 the presence of the enemy. 
 
 In his first engagement Harris met with his first and 
 only example of cowardice in a British regiment. His 
 front-rank man, a tall fellow named Johnson, was visibly 
 shaken by the rolling volleys of the enemy. He hung 
 back, and twice turned clean round, with his back to 
 the hostile lines, as though disposed to bolt, " I was a 
 rear-rank man," says Harris, "and porting my piece in 
 the excitement of the moment, I swore that if he did 
 not keep his ground I would shoot him dead on the 
 spot." Harris had an amusing dislike to tall men — a 
 circumstance perhaps explained by the fact that Harris 
 himself was only a " little fellow of five feet seven inches." 
 All his villains were over six feet high, and he records 
 that in the horrors of the retreat to Vigo, the tall men 
 were the greatest grumblers, the greatest eaters, and the 
 worst fighters in the regiment. " The tall men," he says, 
 " bore fatigue much worse than the short ones." With a 
 regiment of undersized men it is plain Harris would have 
 cheerfully charged at least two regiments of Friedrich 
 Wilhelm's Potsdam giants ! 
 
 The soldier of that day was cruelly over-weighted. 
 He hated his knapsack almost as much as he hated the 
 halberds, and with excellent reason. " I marched," says 
 Harris, "under a weight sufficient to impede the free 
 motion of a donkey." He carried in addition to his
 
 THE MEN IN THE RANKS 299 
 
 rations and a well-filled kit, a greatcoat rolled into tlie 
 shape of a sausage, a blanket and camp kettle, a canteen 
 filled with water, a hatchet, rifle, and eighty rounds of ball 
 cartridge. As Harris was the cobbler of his company 
 he bore in addition " a haversack stuffed full of leather, 
 a set of tools, and a lapstone " ! It is no wonder that 
 sometimes under this load men on a long march would 
 drop dead in the ranks from sheer fatigue. " Our knap- 
 sacks," says Harris, in his account of the retreat to Vigo, 
 " were a bitter enemy on this prolonged march. Many 
 a man died, I am convinced, who would have borne up 
 Avell to the end of the retreat, but for the infernal load 
 we carried on our backs. My own knapsack Avas my 
 bitterest enemy ; I felt it press me to the earth almost 
 at times, and more than once felt as if I should die 
 under its deadly embrace." 
 
 At Koliea the Rifles first came into conflict with the 
 French, and fared badly. The numbers of)posed to them 
 were overwhelming, but the skirmishers of the Rifles, 
 scattered an irregular line in the grass, kept up a dili- 
 gent fire. " The barrel of my piece," says Harris, " was 
 so hot from continual firing that I could hardly bear to 
 touch it, and was obliged to grasp the stock beneath the 
 iron as I continued to blaze away," His right-hand 
 comrade kept pushing in advance, in his eagerness to 
 get near the enemy, and was repeatedly ordered to 
 " keep back " by his officer. Presently a French bullet 
 slew the too daring soldier, and Harris, creeping uj) to 
 his dead body, made it a rest for his rifle, picking off 
 one Frenchman after another with great coolness and 
 enjoyment. The French galled the Rifles cruelly from 
 a couple of houses on a small rise of ground, until the
 
 300 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 exasperated men, in Harris's phrase, " would not stand it 
 any longer." " One of the skirmishers, jumping up, 
 rushed forward, crying, ' Over, boys ! — over ! over ! ' when 
 instantly the Avhole line responded to the cry, ' Over ! 
 over ! over ! ' They ran along the grass like wildfire, 
 and dashed at the rise, fixing their sword - bayonets 
 as they ran. The French light bobs could not stand 
 the sight, but turned about and fled; and, getting 
 possession of their ground, we were soon inside the 
 buildings." 
 
 Harris tells the tale of a comrade's fate in this fight. 
 " Joseph Cochan was by my side loading and firing very 
 industriously about this period of the day. Thirsting 
 with heat and action, he lifted his canteen to his mouth; 
 'Here's to you, old boy,' he said, as he took a pull at 
 its contents. As he did so a bullet went through the 
 canteen, and perforating his brain, killed him in a 
 moment." After the fight Harris led the dead soldier's 
 wife to the scene of her husband's death. The body lay 
 contorted and rigid. "After contemplating his dis- 
 figured face for some minutes, with hands clasped, and 
 tears streaming down her cheeks, she took a prayer- 
 book from her pocket, and kneeling down, repeated the 
 service for the dead over the body." 
 
 Harris, it is to be noted, tried to comfort the bereaved 
 woman by offering to make her his wife; but she declined, 
 with emphasis, " ever to think of another soldier " ! 
 
 Harris' next fight was at Vimieiro. The French came 
 on in solid mass, the British guns playing on them; 
 and, says Harris, " I saw regular lanes torn through 
 their ranks as they advanced, which were immediately 
 filled up again as they marched steadily on. Wlienever
 
 THE MEN IN THE RANKS 3OI 
 
 we saw a round shot thus go through the mass," ho 
 adds, with a visible chuckle, " we raised a shout of 
 delight," From the enemy Harris looked round upon 
 his comrades. He says : — 
 
 "As I looked about me, Avhilst staudinsr enranked, 
 and just before the commencement of the battle, I 
 thought it the most imposing sight the world could pro- 
 duce. Our lines glittering with bright arms ; the stern 
 features of the men, as they stood with their eyes fixed 
 unalterably upon the enemy, the proud colours of Eng- 
 land floating over the heads of the different battalions, 
 and the dark cannon on the rising ground, and all in 
 readiness to commence the awful work of death, with 
 a noise that would deafen the whole multitude. Alto- 
 gether, the sight had a singular and terrible effect upon 
 the feelings of a youth, Avho, a few short months before, 
 had been a solitary shepherd upon the downs of Dorset- 
 shire, and had never contemplated any other sort of life 
 than the peaceful occupation of watching the innocent 
 sheep as they fed upon the grassy turf," 
 
 The first British cannon shot fired was a bad miss, 
 whereupon a brother gunner — " a red-haired man," as 
 Harris records with De Foe-like gravity — rushed at the 
 fellow who had fired, and knocked him head over heels 
 with his fist. " You fool," he said, " what sort of a shot 
 do you call that ! let me take the gun ; " which he did, 
 and plied it with deadly effect. 
 
 Harris himself was soon busy in the skirmishing line. 
 " I was," he says, " so enveloped in the smoke I created, 
 and the cloud which hung about me from the continued 
 fire of my comrades, that I could see nothing for a few 
 minutes but the red flash of my own piece amongst the
 
 302 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 white vapour clinging to my very clothes." A gust of 
 wind blew the smoke for a moment off, and he saw the 
 enemy advancing, the sun gleaming on their arms, and 
 tipping them as with gold. Again the smoke blotted out 
 the landscape ; it grew yet more dense. " Often," says 
 Harris, " I was obliged to stop firing and dash it aside 
 from my face, and try in vain to get a sight of what 
 was going on, whilst groans and shouts, and a noise of 
 cannon and musketry appeared almost to shake the very 
 ground." He records a droll dialogue under these con- 
 ditions with his next comrade. " Harris, you humbug," 
 said this cheerful veteran, " I think this will be your 
 last field-day, old boy," &c. When the wind blew 
 the field for a moment clear of smoke, Harris was 
 able to see the charge of the 50th, of which Napier 
 was Major : — 
 
 " They dashed upon the enemy like a torrent break- 
 ing bounds, and the French, unable even to bear the 
 sight of them, turned and fled. Methinks at this 
 moment I can hear the cheer of the British soldiers 
 in the charge, and the clatter of the Frenchmen's 
 accoutrements, as they turned in an instant and went 
 off, hard as they could run for it. I remember, too, our 
 feeling towards the enemy on that occasion was the 
 north side of friendly ; for they had been .firing upon 
 us Rifles very sharply, greatly outnumbering our skir- 
 mishers, and appearing inclined to drive us off the face 
 of the earth. Their lights, and grenadiers, I, for the 
 first time, particularly remarked on that day. The 
 grenadiers (the 70th, I think) our men seemed to know 
 well. They were all fine-looking men, wearing red 
 shoulder - knots and tremendous - looking moustaches.
 
 THE MEN IX THE RANKS 303 
 
 As they came swarming upon us tliey rained a perfect 
 shower of balls, which we returned quite as sharply, 
 Whenever one of them was knocked over, our men 
 called out, " There goes another of Boney's Invincibles.' " 
 
 The Rifles, thrown out in skirmishing order, suffered 
 greatly from the immense superiority of the French in 
 numbers, and at last they fell back, firing and retiring. 
 The regiments standing in line near had watched the 
 unequal duel with steadily rising wrath, and when the 
 Rifles began to fall back Harris reports that they cried 
 
 out as with one voice to charge. " ' them,' they 
 
 roared, ' charge ! charge ! ' " General Fane, who was in 
 command, checked his too eager troops. " ' Don't be too 
 eager, men,' he said, as coolly as if he were on a drill- 
 parade in old England ; ' I don't want you to advance 
 just yet. Well done, 95 th ! ' he called out, as he galloped 
 up and down the line; 'well done 43rd, 52nd, and well 
 done all. I'll not forget, if I live, to report your conduct 
 to-day. They shall hear of it in England, my lads ! ' " 
 Harris adds : — 
 
 "A man named Brotherwood, of the 95th, at this 
 moment rushed up to the general, and presented him 
 with a green feather, which he had torn out of the cap 
 of a French light-infantry soldier he had killed. ' God 
 bless you, general ! ' he said ; ' wear this for the sake of 
 the 95th.' I saw the general take the feather and stick 
 it in his cocked hat. The next minute he gave the word 
 to charge, and down came the whole line, through a 
 tremendous fire of cannon and musketry, — and dreadful 
 was the slaughter as they rushed onwards. As they 
 came up with us, wo sprang to our feet, gave one hearty 
 cheer, and charged along with them, treading over our
 
 304 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 own dead and wounded, who lay in the front. The 50th 
 were next us as we went, and I recollect the firmness of 
 that regiment in the charge. They appeared like a wall 
 of iron. The enemy turned and fled, the cavalry dash- 
 ing upon them as they went off." 
 
 One Kifleman, as the French turned and went oflp, 
 found himself without a bullet in his pouch ; whereupon 
 he "grabbed a razor from his haversack, rammed it 
 down, and fired it after them " ! 
 
 The British soldier of that day, it is somewhat dis- 
 quieting to find, was not above plundering his enemy 
 after he had slain him. Harris himself was an expert 
 and diligent investigator of the knapsacks of dead 
 Frenchmen, and it was to that circumstance, mainly, 
 he owed the surprising fact that he emerged from his 
 campaigns with no less a sum than ;^200 in his pockets ! 
 Here is one of his adventures while engaged in plunder- 
 ing the fallen bodies on the field of battle : — 
 
 " After the battle, I strolled about the field, in order 
 to see if there was anything to be found worth picking 
 up amongst the dead. The first thing I saw was a 
 three-pronged silver fork, which, as it lay by itself, had 
 most likely been dropped by some person who had been 
 on the look-out before me. A little farther on I saw a 
 French soldier sitting against a small rise in the ground 
 or bank. He was wounded in the throat, and appeared 
 very faint, the bosom of his coat being saturated with 
 the blood which had flowed down. By his side lay his 
 cap, and close to that was a bundle containing a quantity 
 of gold and silver crosses, which I concluded he had 
 plundered from some convent or church. He looked 
 the picture of a sacrilegious thief, dying hopelessly, and
 
 THE MEN IN THE EANKS 305 
 
 overtaken by Divine wratli. I kicked over his cap, 
 which was also full of plunder, but I declined taking 
 anything from him. I felt fearful of incurring the wrath 
 of Heaven for the like offence, so I left him, and passed 
 on. A little farther off lay an officer of the 50th Regi- 
 ment. I knew him by sight, and recognised him as he 
 lay. He was quite dead, and lying on his back. He 
 had been plundered, and his clothes were torn open. 
 Three bullet-holes were close together in the pit of his 
 stomach ; beside him lay an empty pocket-book, and 
 his epaulette had been pulled from his shoulder. 
 
 " I had moved on but a few paces, when I recollected 
 that perhaps the officer's shoes might serve me, my own 
 being considerably the worse for wear, so I returned 
 again, went back, pulled one of his shoes off, and knelt 
 down on one knee to try it on. It was not much better 
 than my own ; however, I determined on the exchange, 
 and proceeded to take off its fellow. As I did so I was 
 startled by the sharp report of a firelock, and, at the 
 same moment, a bullet whistled close by my head. 
 Instantly starting up, I turned, and looked in the direc- 
 tion whence the shot had come. There was no person 
 near me in this part of the field. The dead and the 
 dying lay thickly all around ; but nothing else could I 
 see. I looked to the priming of my rifle, and again 
 turned to the dead officer of the 50th. It was evident 
 that some plundering scoundrel had taken a shot at 
 me, and the fact of his doing so proclaimed him one of 
 the enemy. To distinguish him amongst the bodies 
 strewn about was impossible ; perhaps he might him- 
 self be one of the wounded. Hardly had I effected the 
 exchange, put on the dead officer's shoes, and resumed 
 
 U
 
 306 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 my rifle, when another shot took place, and the second 
 ball whistled past me. This time I was ready, and 
 turning quickly, I saw my man ; he was just about to 
 squat down behind a small mound, about twenty paces 
 from me. I took a haphazard shot at him, and instantly 
 knocked him over. I immediately ran up to him ; he 
 had fallen on his face, and I heaved him over on his 
 back, bestrode his body, and drew my sword-bayonet. 
 There was, however, no occasion for the precaution, as 
 he was even then in the agonies of death, 
 
 " It was a relief to me to find that I had not been 
 mistaken. He was a French light-infantry man, and I 
 therefore took it quite in the way of business — he had 
 attempted my life, and lost his own. It was the fortune 
 of war, so, stooping down, with my sword I cut the 
 green string that sustained his calabash, and took a 
 hearty pull to quench my thirst." 
 
 One of the dreadful incidental vignettes of a battle 
 scene flashed across Harris's vision at this stage : " I 
 had rambled some distance," he says, " when I saw a 
 French ofiicer running towards me with all his might, 
 pursued by at least half-a-dozen horsemen. The 
 Frenchman was a tall, handsome-looking man, dressed 
 in a blue uniform ; he ran as swiftly as a wild Indian, 
 turning and doubling like a hare. I held up my hand 
 and called to his pursuers not to hurt him. One of 
 the horsemen, however, cut him down with a desperate 
 blow, when close beside me, and the next wheeling 
 round, as he leaned from his saddle, passed his sword 
 through the body." The actors in this shameful scene, 
 it may be added, were Portuguese, not British. 
 
 Harris took part in the tremendous marches which
 
 THE MEN IN THE RANKS 307 
 
 preceded the battle of Salamanca. The army, as the 
 campaign began, was in the most splendid order. " I 
 love to remember the appearance of that army," says 
 Harris, " as we moved along at this time. It was a 
 glorious sight to see our colours spread on these fields, 
 the men seemed invincible ; nothing, I thought, could 
 have beaten them." The dreadful marches against the 
 light-footed French, urged by Marinont's vehement 
 strategy, which followed, sorely tried the endurance of 
 the British regiments. " The load we carried," says 
 Harris, "was too great, and we staggered on, lookins^ 
 neither to the right nor to the left." Harris himself fell 
 as the exhausted Rifles reached the streets of Zamora ; 
 " the sight left my eyes, my brain reeled, and I came 
 down like a dead man." 
 
 The sternest experience of Avar, however, which Harris 
 had, occurred when the 95tli were caught in the back- 
 ward rush of Sir John Moore's retreat on Corunna. 
 The detachment joined Moore's forces at Sahagun. 
 The 95 th had seen much service in the south, and 
 when they marched into the camp of Moore's fresh- 
 faced regiments, they were gaunt, ragged, sunburnt ; 
 many of them were shoeless ; there was not an ounce 
 of superfluous flesh in the whole detachment. The 
 grim, war-hardened veterans, it may be added, were 
 welcomed with a tempest of cheers by their comrades. 
 Two da}s afterwards these four companies joined the 
 headquarters of their regiment, which had come with 
 Moore from England, and were made pets and heroes 
 of at once. 
 
 Moore, it will be remembered, had pushed forward 
 on Napoleon's flank, pricking his communications to
 
 308 • FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 tlie quick, until the Frencli Emperor, arresting his 
 southward march, s-\vung round in tempestuous energy 
 upon the tiny force threatening his flank. Moore in- 
 stantly fell back, and then commenced the terrible 
 retreat which ended at Corunna. Harris marks, with 
 his usual minuteness, the exact moment when the 
 retreat began. " General Craufurd was in command of 
 the brigade, a-nd riding in front, when I observed a 
 dragoon come spurring furiously along the road to 
 meet us. He delivered a letter to the General, who 
 turned round in his saddle the moment he had read a 
 few lines, and thundered out the word ' Halt ! ' A few 
 minutes more, and we were all turned to the right 
 about, and retracing our steps of the night before ; — 
 the contents of that epistle serving to furnish our 
 men with many a surmise during the retrograde move- 
 ment." 
 
 There Avas no pause nor rest in that march. Napo- 
 leon, with an overwhelming host, was thundering on 
 their rear : great mountain-ranges, snow-capped, wind- 
 swept, desolate, and seamed with a hundred angry 
 mountain torrents, lay betwixt the British and their 
 ships, and the retreat was urged with iron resolution. 
 The close of the first day's march brought the British 
 again into Sahagun, but there was no rest possible. 
 
 " We remained enranked in the convent's apart- 
 ments and passages, no man being allowed to quit his 
 arms or lie doAvn. We stood leaning upon the muzzles 
 of our rifles, and dozed as we stood. After remaining 
 thus for about an hour, we were then ordered out of 
 the convent, and the word was again given to march. 
 There was a sort of thaw on this day, and the rain fell
 
 THE MEN IN THE RANKS 309 
 
 fast. As we passed the walls of the convent, I observed 
 our General (Craufurd), as he sat upon his horse, look- 
 ing at us on the march, and remarked the peculiar 
 sternness of his features ; he did not like to see us 
 going rearwards at all ; and many of us judged there 
 must be something wrong, by his severe look and 
 scowling eye. 
 
 " ' Keep your ranks there, men ! ' he said, spurring 
 his horse towards some Riflemen who were avoiding a 
 small rivulet. ' Keep your ranks and move on, — no 
 straggling from the main body.' " 
 
 ■ All that day the tiny army pushed on. The com- 
 missariat waggons were abandoned. " A sergeant of 
 the 92nd Highlanders, just about this time, fell dead 
 with fatigue, and no one stopped, as we passed, to offer 
 him any assistance. Night came down upon us, with- 
 out our having tasted food, or halted — I speak for 
 myself, and those around me — and all night long we 
 continued this dreadful march. Men besfan to look 
 into each other's faces, and ask the question, ' Are we 
 ever to be halted again ? ' and many of the weaker sort 
 were now seen to stagger, make a few desperate efforts, 
 and then fall, perhaps to rise no more. Most of us 
 had devoured all we carried in our haversacks, and 
 endeavoured to catch up anything we could snatch 
 from hut or cottage in our route. Many, even at 
 this period, would have straggled from the ranks, and 
 perished, had not Craufurd held them together with a 
 firm rein." 
 
 For four days the force marched at this terrific rate, 
 the men being in total ignorance of their goal. " Where 
 are you taking us to ? " a Rifleman asked his officer.
 
 3IO FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 " To England," was the answer, " if we can get there." 
 The soldiers then learned for the first time the real 
 reason of their terrific marches, and, says Harris, " the 
 men began to murmur at not being permitted to turn 
 and stand at bay, — cursing the French, and swearing 
 they would rather die ten thousand deaths, with their 
 rifles in their hands in opposition, than endure the 
 present toil." 
 
 But the march was pushed relentlessly on. Some- 
 times the tumult of the pursuing French would sound 
 so near that it seemed as if a fight was inevitable; 
 " then, indeed," says Harris, " every poor fellow clutched 
 his rifle more firmly, and wished for a sight of the 
 enemy." Craufurd, who commanded the rearguard, 
 and maintained an iron discipline over it, shared to 
 the full the fighting eagerness of his men. When 
 the distant clamour became more distinct, says Harris, 
 " his face would turn towards the sound, and seem to 
 become less stern ; " a gleam of delight swept over his 
 rugged features. But the business of the English was 
 not to fight, but to march; and march they did, as 
 perhaps no soldiers ever marched before or since. 
 Sometimes the hard-riding French cavalry overtook 
 the doefCTcd British rearc^uard, and then there was a 
 fiery wrestle of horsemen and footmen. Here is a 
 sample of one of these rearguard fights :— 
 
 " The enemy's cavalry were on our skirts that night ; 
 and as we rushed out of a small village, the name of 
 which I cannot now recollect, we turned to bay. Behind 
 broken-down carts and tumbrils, huge trunks of trees, 
 and everything we could scrape together, the Rifles lay 
 and blazed away at the advancing cavalry.
 
 THE MEN IN THE RANKS 3 1 I 
 
 "We passed the night thus engaged, holding our 
 own as well as we could. Towards morning we moved 
 down towards a small bridge, still followed by the 
 enemy, whom, however, we had sharply galled, and 
 obliged to be more wary in their efforts. The rain was 
 pouring down in torrents on this morning, I recollect, 
 and we remained many hours with our arms ported, 
 standing, in this manner, and staring the French 
 cavalry in the face, the water actually running out of 
 the muzzles of our rifles. I do not recollect seeinof a 
 single regiment of infantry amongst the French force 
 on this day; it seemed to me a tremendous body of 
 cavalry — some said nine or ten thousand strong — com- 
 manded, as I heard, by General Lefebvre. 
 
 " Whilst we stood thus, face to face, I remember the 
 horsemen of the enemy sat watching us very intently, 
 as if waiting for a favourable moment to dash upon us 
 like beasts of prey; and every now and then their 
 trumpets would ring out a lively strain of music, as if 
 to encourage them." 
 
 Once a party of British cavalry — some squadrons of 
 the 15 th Dragoons, the loth Hussars, and the German 
 Legion — charged the French cavalry with furious 
 valour. 
 
 "The shock of that encounter was tremendous to 
 look upon, and we stood for some time enranked, 
 watching the combatants. The horsemen had it all to 
 themselves ; our Dragoons fought like tigers, and, al- 
 though greatly overmatched, drove the enemy back 
 like a torrent, and forced them again into the rear. 
 A private of the loth Hussars — his name, I think, was 
 Franklin — dashed into the stream after their general
 
 312 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 (Lefebvre), assailed him, sword in hand in the water, 
 captured, and brought him a prisoner on shore again. 
 If I remember rightly, Franklin, or whatever else was 
 his name, was made a sergeant on the spot. The 
 French general was delivered into our custody on that 
 occasion, and we cheered the loth men heartily as we 
 received him." 
 
 Harris marched next day close to the unfortunate 
 French cavalry general, and enjoyed his chapfallen and 
 dejected look, as he rode along in the midst of the green 
 jackets. How wild was the mountainous country across 
 which the British were now pushing their march can 
 hardly be described. 
 
 " We came to the edge of a deep ravine, the descent 
 so steep and precipitous that it was impossible to keep 
 our feet in getting down, and we were sometimes obliged 
 to sit, and slide along on our backs ; whilst before us 
 rose a ridge of mountains quite as steep and difficult of 
 ascent. There was, however, no pause in our exertions, 
 but, slinging our rifles round our necks, down the hill 
 we went; whilst mules, with the baggage on their backs, 
 wearied, and urged beyond their strength, were seen 
 rolling from top to bottom ; many of them breaking 
 their necks with the fall, and the baggage crushed, 
 smashed, and abandoned. 
 
 "I remember, as I descended this hill, remarking 
 the extraordinary sight afforded by the thousands of 
 our red-coats, who were creeping like snails, and toiling 
 up the ascent before us, their muskets slung round their 
 necks, and clambering with both hands as they hauled 
 themselves up. As soon as we ourselves had gained the 
 ascent we were halted for a few minutes, in order to
 
 THE MEN IN THE RANKS 313 
 
 give us breath for another effort, and then onwards we 
 moved again." 
 
 Through difficulties of this sort the exhausted 
 British regiments, now almost foodless and shoeless, 
 toiled. " The long day," says Harris, " found us still 
 pushing on, and the night caused us no halt." Snow 
 now fell heavily ; tempests edged with hail scuffled 
 and shrieked in the mountain passes, and through 
 the pauses of the tempest the British could sometimes 
 hear, coming down the wind as they marched, the 
 sound of the trumpets of their enemies. There were 
 women and children with the British troops, adding a 
 new and terrible pathos to the sufferings of the wild 
 days and starless nights. " Towards the evening of this 
 day," writes Harris, " I remember passing a man and 
 woman lying clasped in each other's arms, and dying in 
 the snow. I knew them both, but it was impossible to 
 help them. They belonged to the Rifles, and were 
 man and wife." These soldiers' wives, however, were 
 of amazing hardihood and endurance. A woman, for 
 example, one wild day towards evening stepped aside 
 from the march and sank do^vn in the snow, and her 
 husband remained with her. The enemy were near; 
 night was falling. " To remain behind the column of 
 march in such weather," says Harris, "was to perish, 
 and we accordingly soon forgot all about them. To 
 my surprise, however, I, some little time afterwards 
 (being myself then in the rear of our party), again 
 saw the woman. She was hurrying, with her husband 
 after us, and in her arms she carried the babe she had 
 just given birth to. Her husband and herself, between 
 them, managed to carry that infant to the end of the
 
 314 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 retreat, where we embarked. God tempers tlie wind, it 
 is said, to the shorn lamb ; and many years after I saw 
 that boy, a strong, healthy lad." 
 
 The force with which the Rifles marched was no 
 longer under Sir John Moore ; its retreat was directed 
 to Vigo, and Craufurd was in command. His stern 
 nature and fiery will held the suffering and almost 
 exhausted troops in steadfast control. Craufurd, indeed, 
 is the hero of Harris's story, and he never wearies of 
 singing his praises. " He was," he says, " apparently 
 created for command during such dreadful scenes as 
 we were familiar with in this retreat. He seemed an 
 iron man. Nothing daunted him, nothing turned him 
 from his purpose. He was stern and pale," adds Harris, 
 " and the very j^icture of a warrior, I shall never forget 
 Craufurd if I live to a hundred years," Men in that 
 retreat caught courage from his stern eye and gallant 
 bearing, "I do not think the world ever saw a more 
 perfect soldier than General Craufurd," is Harris's 
 summary, 
 
 Craufurd knew that everything in this retreat de- 
 pended on the maintenance of discipline, and he 
 enforced this with a will of iron. The Rifles adored 
 him, but dreaded him. He, on his side, cherished a 
 sort of angry and shrewish affection for the Rifles, and 
 showed it by punishing them more sternly than any 
 other regiments ! " You think because you are Rifle- 
 men you may do everj^thing you think proper," said 
 he one day to the miserable and savage-looking crew 
 around him ; " but I will teach you the difference 
 before I have done with you," 
 
 One evening:, as nioht was falling, Craufurd detected
 
 THE MEN IN THE RANKS 315 
 
 two men straying from the main body. He knew that 
 if straggling were permitted the rearguard would quickly 
 dissolve. Ho halted the brigade with a voice of thunder, 
 ordered a drum-head court-martial on the instant, and 
 they were sentenced to a hundred apiece. Whilst this 
 hasty trial was taking place, Craufurd dismounted from 
 his horse, stood in the midst, looking stern and angry as 
 a worried bulldog. 
 
 The whole brigade was sore and exasperated, and 
 some one in the ranks near muttered that " the general 
 had nuich better try to get us something to eat and 
 drink than harass us in this way." Craufurd heard the 
 whisper, turned round, seized the rifle from a soldier's 
 hands, and felled him to the earth with the butt-end. 
 But ho had knocked down the wrong man ! The real 
 culprit, a man named HoAvans, said, " I am the man 
 who spoke." " Very well," returned Craufurd, " then I 
 will try you, sir." But the march could not be inter- 
 rupted even for a court-martial. 
 
 " Craufurd gave the word for the brigade to move 
 on. He marched all that night on foot; and Avhen 
 the morning dawned, I remember that, like the rest of 
 us, his hair, beard, and eyebrows were covered with 
 frost, as if he had grown white with age. We Avere, 
 indeed, all of us in the same condition. Scarcely had 
 I time to notice the appearance of the morning before 
 the general once more called a halt — we were then on 
 the hills. Ordering a square to be formed, he spoke 
 to the brigade, after having ordered the three before- 
 named men of the 95tli to bo brought into the 
 square : — 
 
 " ' Although,' said he, ' I should obtain the crood-will
 
 3l6 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 neither of the officers nor the men of the brigade 
 here by so doing, I am resolved to punish these 
 three men according to the sentence awarded, even 
 though the French are at our heels. Begin with 
 Daniel Ho wans.' " 
 
 This was, indeed, no time to be lax in discipline, 
 and the general knew it. The men, as I said, were, 
 some of them, becoming careless and ruffianly in their 
 demeanour; whilst others, again, I saw with tears fall- 
 ing down their cheeks from the agony of their bleeding 
 feet, and many were ill with dysentery from the effects 
 of the bad food they had got hold of and devoured on 
 the road." 
 
 Halting at intervals Craufurd carried through his 
 court-martials and flogged, sometimes in spite of the 
 remonstrances of the officers, every man who straggled. 
 Harris declares that from the point of view of the 
 private soldier this was wise conduct. "No man but 
 one formed of stuff like General Craufurd could have 
 saved the brigade from perishing altogether; and, if 
 he flogged two, he saved hundreds from death by his 
 management." 
 
 But if Craufurd was severe with the men, he was also 
 considerate. When the soldiers were fording a deep 
 and icy stream Craufurd was " as busy as a shepherd 
 with his flock, riding in and out of the water to keep 
 his wearied band from being drowned as they crossed 
 over." At this moment he discovered an officer who 
 was ridine: across the stream on the back of a soldier. 
 The indignant general came plunging and splashing 
 down upon the pair, and ordered the soldier to drop his 
 officer into the stream. " Keturn back, sir," said Crau-
 
 THE MEN IN THE RANKS 317 
 
 furd to the unhappy captain, " and go through the water 
 like the others. I will not allow the officers to ride 
 upon the men's backs through the rivers." 
 
 Craufurd established an almost wizardlike authority 
 over the Rifles. Says Harris : — 
 
 " The Rifles being always at his heels, he seemed to 
 think them his familiars. If he stopped his horse, and 
 halted to deliver one of his stern reprimands, you would 
 see half-a-dozen lean, unshaven, shoeless, and savage 
 Riflemen, standing for the moment leaning upon their 
 weapons, and scowling up in his face as he scolded ; and 
 when he dashed the spurs into his reeking horse, they 
 would throw up their rifles upon their shoulders, and 
 hobble after him again." 
 
 The severities of the march grew yet more terrible. 
 At last Harris himself fell exhausted on the snow. 
 " Let him die quietly," said his captain to the sergeant, 
 " I know him well ; he is not the man to lie here if he 
 could get on," and the ranks moved on, leaving Harris 
 to his fate. After a while Harris staggered to his feet. 
 " On the road behind me," he says, " I saw men, women, 
 mules, and horses dead or dying, whilst far away in front 
 I could just discern the enfeebled army crawling out of 
 sight." He found shelter in a Spanish hut, and the 
 next morning crept on the tracks of the army, passing 
 clusters of exhausted soldiers and women sitting huddled 
 together in the road, their heads drooping forward, ap- 
 parently patiently waiting their end. A party of the 
 42nd was sweeping up all stragglers who could walk, 
 much as a drover would keep together a flock of tired 
 sheep. " Many of them had thrown away their weapons, 
 and were linked together, arm-in-arm, in order to sup-
 
 31 8 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 port each other, Uke a party of drunkards. These were, 
 I saw, composed of various regiments; many were 
 bare-headed, and without shoes; and some with their 
 heads tied up in old rags and fragments of handker- 
 chiefs." 
 
 At last from the head of the long straggling column 
 came a faint shout. From the top of the hill the sea 
 was visible, and the tall masts of many transports. 
 "Harris," said a rifleman notorious for his foulness of 
 language, " if it pleases God to let me reach those ships, I 
 swear never to utter a bad or discontented word again," 
 and the tears ran down his haggard cheeks as he spoke. 
 Harris was the very last man who embarked at Vigo. 
 He crawled on to the beach just as the last boat was 
 pushing off, almost totally blind with mere fatigue. The 
 boat put back for him, and he lived to reach Spithead ; 
 where, he says, " our poor bare feet once more touched 
 English ground." Never was such a gaunt, ragged, 
 hunger-bitten, war-wasted, shoeless collection of scare- 
 crows as those that landed at Spithead. The Rifles at 
 the beginning of the retreat numbered 900 men in the 
 highest state of efiiciency ; Avhen they landed at Spit- 
 head they paraded some 300 ragged invalids. Harris's 
 company consisted of exactly three men. 
 
 Harris took part afterwards in the unhappy Walcheren 
 expedition, one of the worst-managed and most tragical 
 enterprises in the whole Napoleonic war. The forces 
 employed numbered 30,000; in fighting quality they 
 were equal to the men of the Peninsula. " It was as fine 
 an expedition," says Harris, " as ever I looked at, and the 
 army seemed to stretch the whole distance from Hythe 
 to Deal." The expedition was ruined by bad general-
 
 THE MEN IN THE RANKS 319 
 
 ship and the ague, and it may be doubted whetlier the 
 generalship was not the more deadly of these two 
 mischiefs. The Walcheren sickness, it may be added, 
 was of a very dreadful and mysterious character. 
 The victims seized by it were shaken as with an 
 exaggerated palsy; their bodies were swollen up like 
 barrels ; thc}^ died like flies in a frost. Harris him- 
 self, in spite of his constitution tempered to the hard- 
 ness of steel by three campaigns, was seized, and lying 
 in a ward of the hospital which held eleven beds, he 
 saw these emptied and filled ten times in succession, 
 each batch of patients in turn being carried out to 
 the grave. Harris survived, but his fighting days were 
 ended. 
 
 It will be seen that the experiences of this particular 
 soldier were of a verj^ distressing character. He shared 
 the twin horrors of Sir John Moore's retreat and of the 
 Walcheren expedition. And yet there is not a whining 
 note in Harris's " Recollections." He is proud of his flag, 
 of his comrades, of his officers, of his country. Naturally 
 Harris thinks his particular regiment is the finest in the 
 world. " There never Avere such a set of devil-may-care 
 fellows, and so completely up to their business," he says, 
 "as the 95th. It would be invidious to make a distinc- 
 tion, or talk of any one regiment being better, or more 
 serviceable, than another ; but the Rifles were generally 
 in the mess before the others began, and also the last to 
 leave oK" 
 
 The tales he tells of the daring of his comrades are 
 sometimes quaint, sometimes thrilling, sometimes ab- 
 surd. At Vimieiro his lieutenant had to check, with
 
 320 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 angry energy, not imflavoured with oaths, the eagerness 
 of his men : — 
 
 '"D — n you!' he said to them, 'keep back, and get 
 under cover. Do you think you are fighting here with 
 your fists, that you are running into the teeth of the 
 French ? ' " 
 
 As another example of the daring of the individual 
 soldier, Harris says : — 
 
 " I remember a fellow, named Jackman, getting close 
 up to the walls at Flushing, and working a hole in the 
 earth with his sword, into which he laid himself, and 
 remained there alone, spite of all the efforts of the 
 enemy and their various missiles to dislodge him. He 
 was known, thus earthed, to have killed, with the utmost 
 coolness and deliberation, eleven of the French artillery- 
 men, as they worked at their guns. As fast as they 
 relieved each fallen comrade did Jackman pick them 
 off; after which he took to his heels, and got safe back 
 to his comrades." 
 
 But Harris's soldierly pride is not confined to his own 
 regiment. He held that the French officers, man for 
 man, were far behind the British officers. " The French 
 army had nothing to show in the shape of officers who 
 could at all compare with ours. There was a noble 
 bearing in our leaders, which they on the French side 
 (as far as I was capable of observing) had not." 
 
 Of British soldiers, as a whole, Harris says : — 
 
 " The field of death and slaughter, the march, the 
 bivouac, and the retreat, are no bad places in which to 
 judge of men. I have had some opportunities of judging 
 them in all these situations, and I should say that the
 
 THE MEN IN THE RANKS 32 1 
 
 British are amongst the most splendid soldiers in the 
 world. Give them fair-play, and they are unconquer- 
 able." 
 
 There is, happily, no reason to think that the quality 
 of the British soldier has fallen off since those words 
 were written.
 
 "THE LADY WITH THE LAMP" 
 
 " Thus thought I, as by night I read 
 Of the great army of the dead, 
 
 The trenches cold and damp, 
 The starved and frozen camp, — 
 
 The wounded from the battle plain, 
 In dreary hospitals of pain, 
 
 The cheerless corridors, 
 
 The cold and stony floors. 
 
 Lo ! in that house of misery 
 A lady with a lamp I see 
 
 Pass through the glimmering gloom, 
 
 And flit from room to room. 
 
 And slow, as in a dream of bliss, 
 The speechless sufferer turns to kiss 
 
 Her shadow, as it falls 
 
 Upon the darkening walls." 
 
 — Longfellow. 
 
 TWO figures emerge with a nimbus of glory from 
 the tragedy of the Crimean War. One is that 
 of the great Russian engineer, Todleben, with powerful 
 brow, and face of iron sternness, and eyes that flash as 
 with the keen sparkle of a sword. The other is the 
 slender, modest figure of an English lady, with down- 
 cast eyes and pensive brow, and the dress of a nurse. 
 It is Florence Nightingale, who*:"^ woman's brain and 
 hand added an element so graci. . to the memory of 
 those sad days. And of these two figures, who will
 
 MISS iLOREN'CI-: NIGHTIXGALE 
 From a photograph by The London Stereoscopic Co)u(>any
 
 ''the lady with the lamp 323 
 
 doubt that " the angel of the hospitals," as she was 
 called, won a finer and more enduring fame than the 
 hero of the trenches ? 
 
 What a passion of mingled wrath and pity was 
 kindled in Great Britain when the story was known of 
 the brave men dying untended in the hospitals at 
 Scutari or Kululi, or perishing of cold and hunger in 
 the trenches about Sebastopol, can be easily imagined. 
 There were over 13,000 sick in the hospitals. The 
 death-rate at Scutari was forty-two per cent., in the 
 Kululi Hospital it rose to fifty-two per cent. Four 
 patients out of every five who underwent amputation 
 died of hospital gangrene. The doctors showed all the 
 devotion the world has learned to expect from them 
 when face to face with human suffering ; but they were 
 few in number, were denied the common appliances of 
 the sick-room, and were bound as with iron fetters by a 
 brainless routine. Pen pictures of scenes in the British 
 hospitals might be selected from Russell's " Letters 
 to the Times," which, for their graphic horror, are 
 almost without parallel in literature. They picture 
 scenes which recall the circles of Dante's Inferno. 
 Medicines and medical appliances lay wasted on the 
 beach at Varna, or forgotten in the holds of vessels in 
 Balaclava Harbour, while wounded British soldiers in 
 the great hospital of Scutari were perishing with wounds 
 undressed, and amidst filth which would have dissrraced 
 a tribe of savages. 
 
 A wave of amazed pity, flavoured with generous 
 wrath, swept over Great Britain when all this was 
 realised. Money was poured into the Patriotic Fund 
 till it rose to more than a million sterling. Medical
 
 324 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 stores were sent out by the ton. The medical staff 
 was multiphed till there was one doctor for every 
 ninety-five soldiers in the entire British force. The 
 trouble, however, had never arisen from a deficiency 
 of supplies, but only from a bankruptcy of brains and 
 method in their use. The army was being strangled 
 by a system which was omnipotent for mischief, but 
 well-nigh helpless for any useful service. But the 
 sufferings of the British sick, and the insanitary hell 
 into which the British hospitals had sunk, thrilled the 
 hearts of all women in the three kingdoms with a half- 
 fierce pity, and to Mr. Sidney Herbert belongs the dis- 
 tinction of turning the fine element of that pity into a 
 useful force, which wrought in a fcAV brief months one 
 of the most beneficent miracles recorded in the history 
 of army nursing. He saw that what the hospitals 
 needed was woman's quick wit, swift pity, and faculty 
 of patient service. Offers to go out and nurse the dying 
 British soldiers were poured in upon the War Office 
 from tender-hearted women of every rank of life. 
 
 Pity, however, had to be organised and wisely led, 
 and Sidney Herbert turned to Florence Nightingale, 
 asking her if she would go to the East, carrying the 
 resources of Great Britain in the palm of her woman's 
 hand, and organise a nursing service in the great 
 hospital at Scutari. A letter from Florence Nightingale 
 offering her services, crossed Mr. Herbert's letter asking 
 if she would give them. 
 
 Florence Nightingale was the daughter of a wealthy 
 English household, but born in Florence, and taking her 
 name from that city. In St. Thomas's Hospital, London, 
 stands her statue. She wears the dress of a nurse, and
 
 "the lady with the lamp 325 
 
 carries in licr hand a nurse's night-lamp. The figure is 
 tall and slender, not to say fragile ; the lace is refined, 
 with a look of reserve upon it — " a veiled and silent 
 woman" she has been called. The living face, however, 
 would kindle with a strange luminousness in conversa- 
 tion, and the dark and steady eyes took Avhat a keen 
 observer has described as a " star-like brightness." 
 That Florence Nightingale was a Avoman of fine intellect, 
 clear judgment, and heroic quality of Avill cannot be 
 doubted. Dean Stanley, indeed — not given to cheap 
 praise — has called her "a woman of commanding genius," 
 and her accomplishments tell how swift and penetrating 
 was her intelligence. She spoke French, German, 
 Italian, was a good classic, and had all the social gifts of 
 her order. But all her genius ran in womanly channels. 
 She proved herself, in the Crimea, it is true, to have 
 great powers of administration. Her intelligence had a 
 certain crystalline quality which, Avithin a certain range, 
 made questions that puzzled statesuien easy to her. She 
 hated shallowness and pretence. Although she widened 
 indefinitely the area of woman's Avork, she did not in 
 the least belong to the order of " ncAv Avomen." To her 
 OAvn sex she Avrote, " If you are called to man's Avork, 
 do not exact a Avoman's privileges — the privilege of 
 inaccuracy, of Aveakuess. Ye muddle-heads ! Submit 
 yourselves to the rules of business as men do, by Avhicli 
 alone you can make God's business succeed ; for He lias 
 ncA'cr said that He A\-ill s^dve His success and His blessiuG: 
 to inefiicicncy, to sketchy and unfinished Avork." 
 
 But it Avas into the channel of nursing that Florence 
 Nightingale poured the full strength of her nature. 
 Every Avoman, she said, has sooner or later some other
 
 326 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 human life dependent wpon her skill as a nurse ; and 
 nursing, she insisted, was an art, nay, one of the finest of 
 all arts. Here is her version of the matter : — 
 
 " Nursing is an art, and if it is to be made an art, it 
 requires as exclusive a devotion, as hard a preparation, 
 as any painter's or sculptor's work ; for what is having 
 to do with dead canvas or cold marble compared with 
 having to do with the living body — the temple of God's 
 Spirit ? It is one of the Fine Arts. I had almost said 
 the finest of the fine arts." 
 
 Florence Nightingale practised what she preached. 
 Born to the ease and luxury of a rich woman's life, she 
 yet turned aside and spent ten years studying nursing 
 as an art, first at the great Moravian Hospital at Kaiser- 
 worth, next with the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul in 
 Paris. Then she organised a Home for Sick Governesses 
 in London. Then came the opportunity of her life in 
 the call to the East. 
 
 On October 21, 1854, she sailed with a band of 
 thirty-eight nurses — of whom ten were Roman Catholic 
 Sisters of Mercy, and fourteen members of an Anglican 
 sisterhood — for Scutari. "I am naturally a very shy 
 person," she says : certainly she had a keen horror of 
 parade, and she started with her gallant band without 
 public notice or farewell. At Boulogne, however, it 
 became known that this company of ladies, with their 
 uniform dark dress, were nurses on their way to the 
 Crimea, and the ivhite-capped fisherwomen of the place 
 thronged round them, and carried their luggage to the 
 railway station, scornfully refusing to let a man so much 
 as touch an article ! The band of heroines reached 
 Scutari on November 5, the very day of Inkermann!
 
 THE LADY WITH THE LAMP 327 
 
 The great barrack hospital there was a huge quadrangle, 
 a quarter of a mile on each face ; its corridors, rising 
 storey above storey, had a linear extent of four miles. 
 The hospital when the nurses landed held 2300 patients; 
 no less than two miles, that is, of sick-beds — beds foul 
 with every kind of vileness. The mattresses Avere strewn 
 two deep in the corridors, the wards were rank with 
 fever and cholera, and the odour of undressed wounds. 
 And to this great army of the sick and the dying, the 
 wounded from Inkermann in a few hours were added, 
 bringing the number up to 5000. Into what Russell 
 calls "the hell" of this great temple of pain and foulness 
 moved the slight and delicate form of this English lady, 
 with her band of nurses. 
 
 Instantly a new intelligence, instinct with pity, 
 aflame with energy, fertile with womanly invention, 
 swept through the hospital. Clumsy male devices were 
 dismissed, almost with a gesture, into space. Dirt be- 
 came a crime, fresh air, and clean linen, sweet food, and 
 soft hands a piety. A great kitchen Avas organised 
 which provided Avell-cooked food for a thousand men. 
 Washing was a lost art in the hospital ; but this band 
 of women created, as with a breath, a great laundry, and 
 a strange cleanliness crept along the walls and beds of 
 the hospital. In their warfare with disease and pain 
 these women showed a resolution as high as the men of 
 their race showed against the grey-coated battalions of 
 Inkermann, or in the frozen trenches before Scbastopol. 
 Muddle-headed male routine was swept ruthlessly aside. 
 If the commissariat failed to supply requisites, Florence 
 Nightingale, who had great funds at her disposal, in- 
 stantly provided them herself, and the heavy-footed
 
 328 riGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 officials found the swift feet of these Avomen outrunning 
 them in every path of help and pity. Only one flash of 
 anger is reported to have broken the serene calm which 
 served as a mask for the steel-like and resolute will of 
 Florence Nicrhtingale. Some stores had arrived from 
 England ; sick men were languishing for them. But 
 routine required that they should be " inspected " by a 
 board before being issued, and the board, moving with 
 heavy-footed slowness, had not completed its work when 
 night fell. The stores were, therefore, with official 
 phlegm, locked up, and their use denied to the sick. 
 Between the needs of hundreds of sick men, that is, and 
 the comforts they required was the locked door, the 
 symbol of red tape. Florence Nightingale called a 
 couple of orderlies, walked to the door, and quietly 
 ordered them to burst it open, and the stores to be 
 distributed ! 
 
 It is not to be w^onderod at that she swiftly estab- 
 lished a sort of quiet and feminine despotism, before 
 which all official heads bowed, and to which all clumsy 
 masculine Avills proved pliant. In that sad realm of 
 pain it was fitting that woman — and such a woman ! — 
 should be queen. Florence Nightingale, moreover, was 
 strong in official support. She had the whole War 
 Office, with its new head, behind her. She had an even 
 mightier force with her — the sympathy and conscience 
 of the whole nation. In the slender figure and gentle 
 face of this one woman, as she moved with tireless feet 
 through the gloomy wards of that great hospital, the 
 pity of England for her dying sons took, so to speak, 
 concrete shape. Woe to the official who had ventured 
 to thwart her !
 
 "the lady with the lamp'*' 329 
 
 It thrills one still to read of the strange passion of 
 half-worshipping loyalty this gentlewoman aroused in 
 every one about her. A little ring of English gentle- 
 men gathered round the hospital to do her behest. 
 One young fellow, not long from Eton, made himself 
 her " fag." Orderlies and attendants ran at her whisper, 
 and were somehow lifted to a mood of chivalry by the 
 process. As for the patients, they almost worshipped 
 her. Macdonald, who administered the fund the Times 
 had raised for the service of the sick and wounded, 
 draAvs a picture of Florence Nightingale in Scutari : — 
 " As her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, 
 every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the 
 sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired 
 for the night, and silence and darkness have settled 
 down upon milos of prostrate sick, she may be observed 
 alone with a little lamp in her hand, making her 
 solitary rounds." It is on this picture — the jjitying 
 woman carrying her nurse's lamp through the long 
 corridors where 5000 sick and wounded are lying — that 
 the imao^ination of LonrrfelloAv has fastened : — 
 
 " As if a door in heaven should l)e 
 Opened, and then closed suddenly, 
 The vision came and went, 
 The light shone and was spent. 
 
 On England's annals, through the long 
 Hereafter of her si)eech and song, 
 
 That light its rays shall cast 
 
 From portals of the past. 
 
 A Lady with a Lamp shall stand 
 In the great history of the land, 
 
 A noble type of good 
 
 Heroic womanhood."
 
 330 FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 It was, perhaps, in the operating-rooin that Florence 
 Nightingale showed in its highest form the mastery she 
 obtained over the spirits of her soldier patients. This 
 fragile English lady was known, many times, to toil for 
 twenty hours continuously amid her band of nurses and 
 her miles of patients: yet a still sorer tax upon her 
 strength must have been to stand in the dreaded and 
 blood-stained room where the surgeon's knife was busy. 
 But the poor soldier, stretched upon the table, as he 
 looked at the slender figure of the lady nurse — standing 
 with clasped hands but steadfast eyes and pitying smile, 
 enduring the pain of witnessing his pain — drew fortitude 
 from the sight. A soldier told Sidney Herbert that the 
 men watched for her coming into the ward, and though 
 she could not speak to all, " we could kiss her shadow as 
 she passed ! " 
 
 Nor was the devotion on the part of the men con- 
 fined to Florence Nightingale. Every member of her 
 band of nurses, and of the band which Miss Stanley 
 afterwards led to the hospital at Therapia, kindled it in 
 a greater or lesser degree. " Oh," said one poor dying 
 soldier to the nurse he saw bending over his pallet, 
 " you are taking me on the way to heaven ; don't forsake 
 me now ! " The soldiers kept, in a sense, their warlike 
 temper — they were hungry for news from the front. 
 Dying men would ask, " Has Sebastopol fallen ? I would 
 like to have been in it at the last." But the presence of 
 the nurses had a strange refining influence over all the 
 inmates of that huge temple of pain and of death. At 
 Scutari men ceased to swear, and forgot to grumble. 
 "Never," said Florence Nightingale, "came from any 
 one of them any word or any look which a gentleman
 
 "the lady with the lamp 331 
 
 would not have used. The tears come into my 
 eyes," she wrote afterwards, " as I think how, amid 
 scenes of loathsome disease and death, there rose above 
 it all the innate dignity, gentleness, and chivalry of 
 the men." 
 
 The miracle wrought by this band of nurses — this 
 entrance of woman into the hell of British hospitals in 
 the East — is capable of being expressed in cold statistics. 
 They found the death-rate in the great hospital at 
 Scutari 5 2 per cent. ; they brought it down to 2 per 
 cent. ! 
 
 Kinglake says that the part played by male ofHcials 
 and by Florence Nightingale's band of nurses in the 
 hospitals of the Crimea constituted an interesting trial 
 of both brain power and speed betAveen the two sexes ; 
 and he is inclined to pronounce, with emphasis, that in 
 this duel of wits the feminine brain comes out best. 
 Women supplied exactly that " agile brain power, that 
 organising or governing faculty " which the state needed, 
 but which its male officials at the moment failed to 
 supply. " The males at that time in England," he says, 
 "suffered from a curious lameness in the use of brain 
 power." They had lost the faculty of initiative, and 
 were slaves to custom. 
 
 There is truth in all this, no doubt; but the real 
 secret of the triumph woman won in this contest is 
 found in the fact that the field of battle was a sick 
 chamber, and the foes were pain, fever, and foulness. 
 In that realm woman is queen by right divine. The 
 male officials of the period saw only their " system," and 
 were intent on working it. The nurses at Scutari cared 
 nothing for that abstraction, a " system " ; they saw only
 
 33'^ FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG 
 
 their patients and were resolute to save them. Kinglake, 
 as an example of the male way of treating the problem, 
 dwells on the medical commission which the Duke of 
 Newcastle sent out to report on the hospitals in the East. 
 Some 10,000 sick and wounded were perishing from 
 mingled neglect and stupidity, and three doctors were 
 sent out to " report " on the situation to the department 
 in London — a process which would occupy three months, 
 during Avhich period half, at least, of this great army of 
 sufferers would perish ! Women went out not to explore 
 or to "report," but to scrub floors, cook food, admin- 
 ister medicines, turn chaos into order, and filth into 
 cleanliness. So while the men were " reporting " on 
 the evil, the swift pity and practical genius of woman 
 mended it. 
 
 Florence Nightingale remained in the Crimea till the 
 last British soldier had left its shores. She stole back 
 to England as silently as she had left it. But the public 
 gratitude found her out and broke upon her in a generous 
 tempest, A Memorial Fund of ;^5o,ooo was raised : she 
 would not take a penny of it, but devoted it to founding 
 schools for the training of nurses in the great London 
 hospitals. To-day as the ships sail past the cliffs of 
 Balaclava, Avhere once three nations met in battle, a 
 gigantic cross shows clear against the sky on the summit 
 of one of the hills. The cross bears the inscription, 
 " Lord, have mercy upon us," and was erected by Florence 
 Nightingale herself as the only memorial she wished 
 of her labours. But Florence Nightingale needs no 
 memorial. She founded, to quote Kinglake, " a gracious 
 dynasty that still reigns supreme in the wards where 
 sufferers lie." The Geneva Convention was held within
 
 "the lady AVlTil THE LAMP 333 
 
 ten years of Florence Nightingale's labours in the East, 
 and now its red cross, gleaming on every modern battle- 
 field since, is, in a sense, Florence Nightingale's monu- 
 ment. She still lives, a white-haired invalid, well-nigh 
 eighty years old, and when her gentle life ends, one of 
 the noblest careers lived by a woman in modern history 
 will come to a close. 
 
 THE END 
 
 rrillted by BALLANTVNr, HANSON 6^ Co. 
 Eilinljuit;li i!;-^ ],oiidoii
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Adopted as a Prize-Book by the Scfwol Board for London. 
 
 CHOSEN FOR HOLIDAY READING AT HARROW AND WINCHESTER. 
 
 SEVENTH EDITION. Croicn Svo, 6s. 
 With Sixteen Portraits and Eleven Plans, 
 
 DEEDS THAT WON THE EMPIRE. 
 
 HISTORIC BATTLE SCENES. 
 
 Extract from Author's Preface. 
 
 The tales here told are written, not to glorify wnr, but to nourish patriotism. 
 They represent an effort to renew in popular memory the great traditions of the 
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 found to be historically accurate. 
 
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 1. PAULINE : and SORDELLO. 
 
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 AND KING CHARLES: THE RE- 
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 COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY: and MEN 
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 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 
 
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 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWAN- 
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 COUNTRY : and THE INN ALBUM. 
 
 13. ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY, in- 
 
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 the Last Adventure of Balaustioii : and 
 THE AGAMEMNON OF yESCHYLUS 
 
 14. PACCHIAROTTO, and How he 
 
 Worked in Distemper : with other Poems : 
 LA SAISIAZ: and THE TWO POETS 
 OF CROISIC. 
 
 15. DRAMATIC IDYLS, First Series 
 
 DRAMATIC IDYLS, Second Series : and 
 JOCOSERIA. 
 
 16. FERISHTAH'S FANCIES : and PAR 
 
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 BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL 
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 KATE GRENVILLE. 
 
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