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The Cambridge Manuals of Science and 
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 MILITARY HISTORY 
 
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MILITARY HISTORY 
 
 LECTURES DELIVERED AT 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 BY 
 
 The Hon.J.W.FORTESCUE 
 
 Cambridge : 
 at the University Press 
 
" \ 
 
 Cambritigr : 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
PREFACE 
 
 npHERE is little in these lectures, or at any rate in 
 three out of four of them, which I have not 
 written at greater length in other volumes. I there- 
 fore publish them unwillingly, and in deference only 
 to the wishes of some of my audience, whose good 
 opinion I greatly value, and whose kindly sympathy 
 I shall never forget. If this Uttle volume should set 
 but one student thinking seriously as to the meaning 
 of military history, its object will be fully ac- 
 complished. 
 
 The spelling of Indian names has been, as usual, 
 a stumbling-block. No doubt I shall be asked why 
 I have used the form Narbada for the more familiar 
 Nerbuddha, and yet written Hyder Ali instead of 
 Haidar Ali. I can only say that when the form 
 Kalkdta (or whatever may be the Hunterian spelling) 
 is substituted for Calcutta, I shall be prepared to 
 plead guilty to inconsistency. 
 
 J. W. F. 
 
 March 1914. 
 
 c\c\n. /< "^ f\ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECT PAGE 
 
 Preface ....... v 
 
 I. Military History : its scope and definition 1 
 
 II. British Military History .... 46 
 
 III. British colonial campaigns .... 99 
 
 IV. British campaigns in india .... 150 
 Index . . .* 201 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 MILITARY HISTORY ! ITS SCOPE AND DEFINITION 
 
 When in the spring of the year 1913 my old 
 College did me the honour to appoint me its first 
 lecturer in Military History, I was obliged for the 
 first time to ask myself seriously, What is military 
 history ? I confess that I have found it very diffi- 
 cult to furnish a satisfactory answer. Some would 
 reply with a light heart that military history is the 
 history of wars and warring. But what, in its turn, 
 is war ? It has been defined as an instrument of 
 policy for the imposition of the wiU of one community 
 upon another by force of arms. The definition is 
 not a bad one. But force of arms is a very vague 
 term, and must not be taken necessarily to imply an 
 armed force in the ordinary acceptation of the words. 
 You wiU remember that after the French fleet had 
 been swept by us from the seas in 1805, Napoleon, 
 unable to attack England by any other means, 
 decreed the exclusion of British manufactures from 
 the Continent, and endeavoured to ruin her by shut- 
 ting her out of her markets. This he was able to do 
 
 F. M. H. 1 
 
2 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 because his previous conquests had placed the control 
 of many of the principal ports on the Continent in his 
 hands. But though he strove thus to inflict his will 
 upon England by might of arms, the armed men neces- 
 sary for enforcing it were nothing more formidable 
 than a smaU body of Custom-house officers. No doubt 
 these functionaries, or some of them, carried weapons 
 and in case of need were prepared to use them ; 
 but they cannot be considered as a military body. 
 None the less as an act of war the Continental System 
 was a bitter and deadly stroke, which nearly proved 
 successful. 
 
 Is the history of the Continental System, there- 
 fore, military history ? So far as concerns the in- 
 vasion of Spain, Portugal and Russia to coerce those 
 countries into the acceptance of it, undoubtedly it is. 
 But as regards England, the power at which it was 
 reaUy aimed, what are we to say of it ? How did we 
 endeavour to combat it ? How does any country 
 invariably combat the commercial restrictions of any 
 other ? First by imposing retaliatory restrictions 
 of her own, or engaging in a war of blockades or 
 tarijffs, which may be called regular commercial 
 warfare ; secondly, by the practice of smuggling, 
 which may be called irregular commercial warfare. 
 Is the history of a war of tariffs, then, military 
 history ? If we answer in the affirmative there is 
 no escape from the logical conclusion that the never- 
 
I] COMMERCIAL WARFARE 3 
 
 ceasing contest between smugglers and revenue- 
 officers in all countries is military history. More- 
 over, since revenue -officers are only departmental 
 police, it follows that the external struggle between 
 the breakers and the upholders of the law at large — 
 between criminals and the police — is also military 
 history. But this is to say that the history of social 
 communities generally is military history ; and I can- 
 not think this to have been in the mind of the generous 
 founder of the lecturership which I have the honour 
 to hold. 
 
 But can we then lay down the general proposition 
 that the breach — the forcible breach — of commercial 
 regulations is not military history ? I do not think 
 we can, if we bear in mind how Spain, in virtue of 
 a Papal bull, excluded all other nations from com- 
 merce with the new world, and how successive 
 Englishmen for many generations insisted upon 
 flouting her. Nor can we say that in many cases the 
 conflict between supporters and breakers of the law 
 is not military history. It is merely a question of 
 degree. A fight between three drunken men and 
 the police is a scuffle. A fight between three hundred 
 men and the police is a riot. A fight between three 
 hundred thousand and the police is civil war ; and we 
 cannot exclude civil war from military history, for 
 it would mean the sacrifice, among the EngHsh- 
 speaking race alone, of the campaigns of Cromwell, 
 
 1—2 
 
4 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 George Washington and Robert Lee. Altogether I 
 think that we must abandon the attempt to define 
 military history as the history of wars and warring. 
 I feel tempted to ask in despair not " What is military 
 history ? " but rather " What is not military history?" 
 since all history is but the record of the strife of men 
 for the subsistence of their bodies or the prevalence 
 of their opinions. But we must be patient for yet a 
 little while, and try once more. 
 
 Let us begin, then, by laying it down provisionally 
 that military history is the history of the strife of 
 communities. This is not enough ; for communities 
 have been known before now to fight with anathemas, 
 and such a conflict belongs rather to the domain of 
 religious than of military history. Shall we say then 
 that it is the history of the strife of communities for 
 self-preservation or expansion 1 This is open to the 
 obvious criticism that communities have fought and 
 will fight again for many other objects than the two 
 above-mentioned — for a woman, for a creed, for a 
 principle moral or political, or even for nothing at aU 
 but from sheer force of habit. So it will be wiser 
 for us to avoid any specification of the objects of 
 strife, or we may find ourselves in trouble. It may 
 be true in a sense to say that a tantrum of Madame 
 de Pompadour cost the French their empire in North 
 America and in India ; but it is not the whole truth, 
 nor nearly the whole truth. Even the best and 
 
I] A DEFINITION 5 
 
 greatest of historians are but gropers in a thick 
 darkness, and epigrams are the most deceitful of 
 will-o'-the-wisps. 
 
 Let us now, as we needs must, strengthen our 
 definition a Httle, and say that military history is the 
 history of the strife of communities expressed through 
 the conflict of organised bands of armed men. I am 
 obliged to say hands of armed men so as to exclude 
 such a case as a duel between two or more chosen 
 champions of quarrelling communities ; and I add 
 the word organised so as to indicate that, below a 
 certain stage of civilisation, there can be no military 
 history. This is a second definition, but still imper- 
 fect ; and I am afraid that I cannot yet improve it. 
 It leaves a vast field for the survey of a lecturer, 
 far vaster than I have the knowledge to cover ; and, 
 if Trinity should endure for another ten centuries, 
 my successors will never want material for inter- 
 esting and instructive lectures. And let no man 
 persuade you that the subject is trivial or un- 
 important — that the study of war is the study of 
 a relic of barbarism to be eschewed by the serious, 
 the devout and the humane. I am not denying that 
 war is a terrible — from some points of view even 
 a hideous — thing. Since its object is to compel fa 
 number of people to do what they do not wish, by 
 making their lives a burden to them, it must some- 
 times be a hideous thing. But, after all, the system 
 
6 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 of forcing people to observe a certain line of con- 
 duct under penalties is that upon which all human 
 society is founded. We are all subject to it at this 
 moment, and have been from the beginning of our 
 lives. You remember the mother in Punch — 
 " Go and see what baby is doing, and tell her she 
 mustn't." " Thou shalt not " is the basis of four- 
 fifths of the ancient code of law which is most 
 famiUar to us, and of all other codes since. But 
 in every community there are a certain number of 
 individuals who answer " Thou shalt not " with 
 a resolute '' I will " ; and these we ostracise, or 
 imprison, or hang. We call such people lunatics 
 or criminals, accordingly as we consider them 
 responsible or not responsible for their actions, 
 and we treat them as we think that they deserve ; 
 but, if by chance their opinions should later pre- 
 vail even for a time, we proclaim them apostles or 
 martyrs. There is, in fact, always the danger 
 that, when we think ourselves to be merely punish- 
 ing a criminal, we may really be torturing a great 
 reformer. Hence a certain proportion of folks 
 among us shrink from this system of coercion, 
 and would have no government at all. Others 
 again, looking upon the existence of private pro- 
 perty as the main reason for the existence of the 
 policeman, would have communities share all things 
 in common. I mention these facts to show vou 
 
I] „ LAW AND FORCE 7 
 
 that the employment of force receives from some 
 thinkers equal condemnation, whether to impose 
 the will of a community upon its own citizens, or 
 upon those of some other community. 
 
 But no one on that account has ventured to 
 stigmatize the study of penal codes, and of the 
 organisation for putting them into force, as ignoble 
 or unprofitable. The sheriff, for instance, and his 
 functions are approached with respect, by some 
 historians even with awe. " Ah," say the de- 
 spisers of military history, '' but the sheriff is an 
 instrument for compelling obedience to the law, 
 not the leader of a host whose business it is to 
 slaughter and destroy." The law ! and what is 
 the law but the formulated will which some section 
 of the community, possibly a majority, but always 
 in former days and frequently, even at present, a 
 minority, seeks to impose upon the whole ? And 
 if breakers of the law resist the sheriff or police- 
 man, will he not if necessary slaughter them, and 
 destroy any shelter in which they may have taken 
 refuge ? Of course he will, and " the law " will 
 uphold him for so doing. " But," reply the ob- 
 jectors, " you forget that civil law is not always 
 a mere ordinance of man ; it may have the sanction 
 of divine authority." I speak here with all rever- 
 ence, but how many are the armies and the leaders 
 that have claimed that theirs was the cause of God, 
 
8 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 and have fared forth to war in His name ? I am not 
 speaking now of modern armies, though they too 
 LQvariably invoke the help of the God of Battles, 
 and call him to witness that their cause is just. 
 Look at the Crusades on one side, look on the 
 other at the mighty and overwhelming conquests 
 of Islam. Look at the extinction of Christianity in 
 North Africa ; look at the eight centuries of conflict 
 which banished the Mohammedan faith from Spain. 
 Look at the religious wars of Christians in Europe ; 
 and not least at our own Puritans. Look finally 
 at the bitter struggles of Hindu and Mohammedan 
 in India. There was not one of these parties that 
 did not claim, that did not for the most part heartily 
 believe, that it was fighting to uphold the law of 
 God. 
 
 No ! in its essence there is no difference between 
 the force that imposes the will of a man upon his 
 neighbour, and that which imposes his will upon 
 his enemy. In the more primitive days of England 
 the duties of the sheriff and his posse comitatus ex- 
 tended to foreign enemies on English soil as weU as 
 to domestic law-breakers. Do we not to this day 
 speak of those guilty of acts of violence as breakers 
 of the King's Peace ; men, that is, who seek to bring 
 about a state of war and must be suppressed by the 
 methods of war — taken prisoners, wounded or un- 
 wounded, and in the last resort killed ? What was 
 
I] POLICE AND SOLDIERS 9 
 
 the origin of our own standing army ? It was 
 formed, as you doubtless know, out of a remnant 
 of the victorious army of the Parliament which had 
 overthrown the monarchy, a remnant which was 
 saved from disbandment in order to overawe the 
 turbulent of London, or in other words to serve as 
 a body of police. It continued to be the only 
 efficient instrument for imposing the will of the 
 Government upon the people until 1829, when the 
 present police-force was established. And the 
 police are a standing army, neither more or less. 
 The only essential difference between police and 
 soldiers is that the former are employed mainly in 
 the coercion of subjects of the State which levies 
 them, while the function of the latter is to coerce 
 the subjects of foreign states. It would not be 
 inaccurate to say that police are soldiers against 
 domestic enemies, and an army police against 
 foreign enemies. 
 
 And now observe that we have found a second 
 definition of military history. It is the history of 
 the external police of communities and nations. 
 But external police, you may object, imphes the 
 existence of something which, for want of a better 
 word, we must call external law. Is there such a 
 thing as external law ? There is a thing called the 
 law of nations or international law, which is con- 
 cerned chiefly, though not exclusively, with the 
 
10 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 relations between belligerents and neutrals, but 
 which is simply custom, and should not be called 
 law, because there is no international police to enforce 
 it. Any nation may defy it, if she thinks it worth 
 while, and a great many have defied it in the past 
 and will defy it in the future, not necessarily with 
 any damage to themselves. The same may be said 
 of the International Tribunal of Arbitration at the 
 Hague. Its decrees and decisions may be excellent, 
 and nations may bind themselves beforehand to 
 accept them ; but nations are not remarkable for 
 the observance of inconvenient agreements, where 
 there is no penalty for violating them. It is a pain- 
 ful fact, but in its relations to its neighbours every 
 community is a law unto itself , the nature of that law 
 being principally determined by the community's 
 powers of enforcement. Police first, law afterwards, 
 is the rule between nation and nation — a formula 
 which may be rendered more tersely stiU by the 
 phrase. Might is Right. In a sense, therefore, 
 though not in the sense generally attached to the 
 words, military history is the history of the law of 
 nations, which is the law of force ; or, if you prefer 
 it, of the law of force which is the law of nations. 
 
 A revolting thought, perhaps some of you will 
 say ! Have aU the efforts of countless generations 
 of good and holy men to seek peace and ensue it, 
 resulted in no greater success than this ? Let us 
 
I] SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 11 
 
 have the courage to face facts and answer boldly, 
 Yes ; for be very sure that no piety of aspiration 
 can dignify nor excuse the moral cowardice that 
 seeks to evade them. You know that late in the 
 17th century a company of worthy and excellent 
 men formed the settlement of Pennsylvania in 
 North America. They were members of the Society 
 of Friends, who would have nothing to do with 
 war, and consequently bought their lands from the 
 Indians instead of taking them by force or fraud. 
 Frugal, thrifty and industrious, they soon grew 
 wealthy, and extended their borders further and 
 further, until they came into collision with other 
 tribes of Indians, who one day fell upon the out- 
 Ijdng settlers with fire and sword. In utter dismay 
 the sufferers appealed to the Government of the 
 province for protection ; but the Colonial Assembly 
 would not do violence to their tenets and ignored 
 the appeal, leaving their unhappy and inoffensive 
 frontiersmen to be massacred. At length, goaded 
 to desperation, the settlers came down to Phila- 
 delphia with their arms in their hands, and 
 threatened violence unless the Assembly voted 
 money, for supply of ammunition, and other measures 
 of defence forthwith. Thereupon the Assembly 
 yielded, but still they would not openly pass a vote 
 for the purchase of gunpowder. To save their 
 conscience they voted money only for the purchase 
 
12 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 of corn or other grain, which, as gunpowder is made 
 up of grains, was sufficient warrant for the acquisi- 
 tion of the necessary but unspeakable article. To 
 such contemptible subterfuge are men driven who 
 refuse to face facts. I understand the feelings of 
 those who deplore that the government of human 
 society should rest ultimately upon force, but I 
 have no patience with those who pretend that it 
 jdoes not. It can profit no man to be obliged so to 
 shape the actions of his life that they may square 
 with a fundamental lie. 
 
 Accepting then the fact — for such I believe it to 
 be — that the law of nations is the law of force, let 
 us waste no time in lamentations. In the first 
 place they are useless ; and in the second they seem 
 to me highly presumptuous ; for what are we, or 
 what is our knowledge, that we should aspire to 
 correct the course of this world's governance ? 
 Let us rather consider what is meant by the word 
 force, as an element in the conflict of communities. 
 Force, in the human creature, is of two kinds, 
 moral and physical ; and in war, as Napoleon him- 
 self said, the moral is to the physical as four to one. 
 What is this moral force ? It is an indefinable con- 
 sciousness of superiority. And whence does it arise ? 
 I must summon a poet to help me with my answer. 
 
 " Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
 These three alone lead life to sovereign power.'* 
 
I] MORAL FORCE 13 
 
 Self -reverence, which can be based only upon high 
 aspirations and high ideals ; self-knowledge, which 
 combines the courage to face facts, the patience to 
 accept them, the constancy to turn them to good 
 account ; self-control, the offspring of self-denial 
 and self -discipline. We are too much inchned to 
 think of war as a matter of combats, demanding 
 above all things physical courage. It is really a 
 matter of fasting and thirsting ; of toiling and 
 waking ; of lacking and enduring ; which demands 
 above all things moral courage. Yet let us hasten 
 to add that, without bodily soundness and strength 
 to resist privation, hardship and fatigue, an army 
 is naught. And here we strike the peculiarity 
 which makes war the true touch-stone of nations. 
 It is the supreme test of their merits and demerits 
 both moral and physical. By a community's art, 
 literature, science and philosophy you may take the 
 measure of its intellectual attainments ; through 
 its administrative institutions and laws you may 
 form some judgment of its political intelligence ; 
 from the bodily structure and condition of its 
 citizens you may form conclusions as to its physical 
 fitness ; but of the general soundness of the body 
 politic, of the capacity of its leaders, of the devotion 
 of their followers, of the moral force which inspires 
 all ages and both sexes to endure hardship and 
 sorrow with cheerfulness, and to meet adversity 
 
14 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 with confidence unshaken and with courage un- 
 daunted — for all this the trial of aU trials is war. 
 
 Military history is the history of these trials. 
 Does it seem to you a small, or ignoble, or unpro- 
 fitable thing ? But, it may be objected, this is an 
 unfair way of putting the matter. No doubt it 
 may be profitable to compare the political institu- 
 tions of some effete community with those of the 
 young, virile and vigorous communities which swept 
 it out of existence. But the details of fire and sword, 
 of massacre and devastation, of the blood of men 
 and the tears of women, are they profitable ? And 
 the elaborate principles of strategy and tactics — 
 that is to say the bringing of the armed force up to 
 the field of decision, and the handling of it to the 
 best advantage when there ; with their ancillary 
 sciences of fortification and poliorketics, that is to 
 say, of setting up strong places and knocking them 
 down again — are they profitable ? What are the 
 art of war and the science of military organisation 
 but the art and science of destruction ? Can the 
 study of these be profitable ? 
 
 Let us clear our minds of cant. What is the 
 economy of this world, so far as we have eyes to see 
 and intellects to understand it, but destruction and 
 renewal, destruction and renewal ? And it is really 
 impossible, except by our petty human standards, 
 to distinguish the one from the other. I have seen 
 
I] DESTRUCTION AND RENEWAL 15 
 
 — and perhaps some of you may have seen the like — 
 what we call a desert, of a thousand square miles of 
 pumice-stone. This pumice-stone is a layer which 
 varies from six to fifteen feet in depth ; and below 
 it lie the trunks of gigantic trees, all black and 
 charred, which were scathed and overthrown by the 
 same terrific volcanic explosion which afterwards 
 buried them in pumice. The soil must have been 
 fertile to raise such trees ; and men lament the 
 destruction which has made so large an area into 
 a waste. But what they mean by destruction and 
 waste is simply the change which has rendered it 
 useless, so far as they can see, for purposes of 
 producing food and exchangeable commodities im- 
 mediately to the profit of men — that and nothing 
 more. Whether it be destruction or renewal in 
 the scheme of nature we cannot tell. But let us 
 pass to the works of man, the great destroyer. 
 What does a field of corn mean but that the plants 
 which originally grew there have been ruthlessly 
 destroyed to make way for those that better suit 
 the purposes of man, and that an unknown quantity 
 of animal life, dependent upon the plants so de- 
 stroyed, has perished with them ? What does a 
 herd of cattle in a field mean but the destruction 
 of all wild cattle, till these became tame enough to 
 await their turn of destruction for the service of 
 man ? And as with plants and the inferior animals, 
 
16 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 so does man deal with man. He endeavours to 
 destroy those that do not suit his purpose, and to 
 replace them by others. And this he does by many 
 other methods besides those which we group under 
 the name of war. Within the memory of living 
 men there were many excellent but simple gentle- 
 men who thought that what is called Free Trade 
 would soon be adopted by every civilised country 
 in the world, and that then wars would cease. The 
 prediction has not been verified, nor can I see that 
 the world would be very much the better if it had 
 been. For commerce is not, as is generally sup- 
 posed, a peaceful pursuit. What does successful 
 commerce mean ? The under-selling of competi- 
 tors ; which means in turn cheaper production than 
 is possible to competitors. But cheap production, 
 other things being equal, depends in these days 
 chiefly upon two things — cheap labour, which 
 means low wages, and the best of machinery. Who 
 can tell how many lives have been sacrificed to low 
 wages in the winning of any commercial competi- 
 tion ; or how many men, women and children have 
 been starved when machinery, either absolutely or 
 practically new, has driven a mass of bread-winners 
 out of employment ? And these are the casualties 
 only on the victorious side. What have they been 
 on the beaten side, when whole industries have been 
 ruined ? If we could arrive at a just estimate of the 
 
I] COMPETITION AND WAR 17 
 
 casualty lists filled by commerce, I doubt greatly 
 if they would be lower than those filled by war. 
 Improved machinery, in the case of a great many 
 manufactures, is as truly an engine of destruction 
 as a torpedo or a heavy gun. It is meant to <iestroy 
 other competing machinery and to drive its work- 
 men from it, just as a torpedo is meant to destroy 
 a ship and send its crew to the bottom. A town 
 deserted and falling to ruin owing to loss of trade 
 and consequent loss of population, is as truly de- 
 stroyed as if it had been battered to pieces by shot 
 and shell. 
 
 This, it may be said, is an unkind way of stating 
 the matter. The superior machinery supplants 
 and replaces the inferior. Quite so. There is in 
 a general way renewal as well as destruction ; but 
 the superior machinery does not replace the men 
 who have perished in assuring its triumph on the 
 one side, or in succumbing to that triumph on the 
 other. And after all what is the general purport 
 of war but to replace what is inferior by what is 
 superior ? What are the rise and fall of civilisa- 
 tions, empires, states, nations and communities, 
 but the process of supplanting the inferior by the 
 superior, or at any rate the subjection of the inferior 
 to the superior ? Military history is the history of that 
 process, and it is no more the history of destruction 
 than any other kind of history. I do not suppose 
 
 F. M. H. 2 
 
18 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 that the most tender-hearted member of the Society 
 of Friends would take exception to the study of 
 the legislative enactments whereby, quite apart 
 from warlike measures, we wrested their former 
 commercial superiority from the Dutch. He would 
 not call it a history of destruction, and yet it was 
 so — to the Dutch. In the case of a military war 
 the casualty lists are published, and everyone says 
 " How shocking." In the case of a commercial 
 war it is announced that such and such a firm has 
 closed its works through bankruptcy ; and few, 
 unless they chance to be share-holders, think more 
 about the matter. There may be some hundreds 
 of people deprived of their livelihood, but few 
 consider that. Military victors feed their prisoners 
 of war : commercial victors leave them to starve. 
 And yet commerce is held to be humane, and war 
 very much the contrary ; while captains of industry 
 are held in honour by men to whom the fame of a 
 captain in war gives sincere and conscientious 
 affliction. 
 
 Thus you see how futile, however well-intended, 
 are peace-societies and similar institutions, inasmuch 
 as they recognise only one description — the mili- 
 tary — of war. It is terrible to think how true- is 
 the saying of Erasmus, Homo homini lupus. We 
 like to be successful ourselves, and we like our 
 friends to be successful also, but we seldom reflect 
 
I] HOMO HOMINI LUPUS 19 
 
 that every success is won at the cost of another's 
 failure. Even here in Cambridge, and among those 
 merriest of mortals, undergraduates, the stern 
 inexorable law asserts itself. For one whom a class- 
 list makes happy, how many does it make miserable ? 
 For one to whom it offers the prospect of food and 
 warmth, to how many does it threaten cold and 
 want ? Homo Tiomini lupus, that is individual 
 history. Gentes gentibus lupi, that is universal 
 history. 
 
 But to return to a question which I have still 
 left unanswered, wherein lies the profit for men 
 not of the military profession, of studying the 
 principles and the history of war, with the terrible 
 details in which the history abounds so frequently ? 
 One chief profit, as I take it, is to learn the nature 
 of the supreme test to which a nation may be sub- 
 jected, so that she may equip herself morally and 
 physically to pass through the ordeal with success. 
 Let me repeat to j^ou that war is less a matter of 
 courage than of endurance. Of really brave men, men 
 who from sheer love of fighting cannot be kept out 
 of fire, the proportion is about one in a thousand. 
 Of real cowards, men who literally cannot be induced 
 to face fire in any circumstances, the proportion is 
 about the same. The remainder can by training 
 and discipline be brought to do their duty with 
 more or less bravery, which is sufficient — or at any 
 
 2—2 
 
20 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 rate must be considered sufficient — for the purpose. 
 Such training and discipline are a purely military 
 matter, to which I shall presently return. But 
 endurance depends upon moral and physical attri- 
 butes which, though a great leader or regimental pride 
 may do much to enhance them, are principally 
 the concern of the statesman. Let us deal first 
 with the physical requirements of a soldier. 
 
 First and foremost he must be mature, a man 
 and not a boy ; otherwise, no matter how great his 
 pluck, he will never be able to withstand the hard 
 work of a campaign. There is hardly a country 
 which has not again and again filled up its muster- 
 rolls with children, and deceived itself into the 
 belief that it was enlarging its armies, instead of 
 filling up its military hospitals and graveyards. 
 Boys can of course do the work of garrisons within 
 certain limits ; but it is (to speak brutally) cheaper 
 to knock them on the head at once and bury them 
 at home than to send them upon active service in 
 the field. On the other hand, men must not be too 
 old, otherwise they succumb to rheumatic complaints 
 in consequence of exposure to cold and wet. For 
 the rest, the soundness of the feet, in order that men 
 may be able to march ; of the eyes, so that they may 
 be able to see ; and of the teeth, are of the greatest 
 importance. An enormous proportion of men on 
 active service die of dysentery or enteric fever, due 
 
I] FEEDING AN ARMY 21 
 
 to bad and ill-cooked food ; and want of teeth to 
 masticate that food aggravates the evil immensely. 
 Bad sight and bad teeth are very common in the 
 inhabitants of large towns, as also of course is 
 inferior physique generally. Such defects weaken 
 a nation for war ; and a wise government will not 
 let them continue without endeavouring to arrest 
 them. 
 
 But, apart from this, much may often be done 
 by care and foresight to abate the hardships of a 
 campaign. It is often inevitable that the men's 
 clothing should be in rags, and their feet almost if 
 not quite shoeless for a time ; as also that they 
 should be scantily fed and then not on the best of 
 food ; but, if this be borne in mind, and measures 
 taken to keep abundant supplies of everything at 
 the seat of war, together with transport to convey 
 such supplies to the front, privation and suffering 
 may be greatly lessened, and sickness propor- 
 tionately decreased. People who have never 
 studied military history do not reaHse that a 
 campaign is a gigantic picnic, and that, unless 
 careful arrangement be made long beforehand for 
 every detail of food, forage, clothing and carriage, 
 an army may perish before it can reach its enemy. 
 Such arrangement involves a nicety of organisa- 
 tion of which the ordinary civilian never dreams. 
 One great lesson therefore that all may learn from 
 
22 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 the study of military history is, that the casualties 
 through lead and steel are a trifle to those from 
 hardship and the resultant sickness ; and that 
 these last may be very appreciably diminished by 
 experience, forethought and organisation. 
 
 So much for the purely physical side of an army. 
 The question of inspiring it with moral force could 
 easily lead me into an endless disquisition upon the 
 merits of different forms of civil government and 
 different systems of education. I shall not be so 
 foohsh as to attempt anything of the kind ; but I 
 shaU content myself with stating that the great 
 secret of an army's moral force is that (in Cromwell's 
 words) all ranks shall " know what they are fighting 
 for, and love what they know." The most power- 
 ful of all purely moral forces is undoubtedly religious 
 fanaticism, of which many instances wiU at once occur 
 to you ; but I question if among all its countless 
 manifestations there are any quite so thorough as are 
 found in the hosts of Islam. There are many 
 instajices of desperate courage and devotion among 
 all races and all creeds, but I do not know where 
 you will find a parallel, except in the annals of 
 Mohammedan warfare, to the attack of the hordes 
 of the Khalifa at Omdurman. 
 
 Another great moral force is political fanaticism ; 
 but as a rule there underlies all combative fanaticism, 
 either consciously or unconsciously, that less exalted 
 
I] FANATICISM 23 
 
 element of human nature which is known as greed. 
 Greed of course is of many kinds. It may arise from 
 honest hunger and poverty ; or from the less honour- 
 able, though hardly less cogent, persuasion that 
 those who have are the legitimate prey of those 
 who have not. But its manifestations are uni- 
 formly the same, though they are often embellished 
 by titles of honour. People who would not dream 
 of robbing their neighbours, if the process were 
 described to them in as many words, will take 
 credit to themselves for spoiling the heathen or the 
 Amalekites. Primitive tribes and clans, which have 
 outgrown or exhausted the territory that at one 
 time sufficed for their support, are not always so 
 squeamish. They see a w^eak and prosperous neigh- 
 bour, fall upon him without more ado, and eat 
 him up. Christian nations and Mohammedans have 
 frequently extinguished aboriginal tribes as heretics 
 and unbelievers. We ourselves used to excuse our 
 predatory excursions against the Spaniards upon 
 the ground that Popish idolators deserved nothing 
 better. Turn now to a case which is generally ad- 
 duced as an example of an army inspired by political 
 fanaticism — the levies which burst out from France 
 against her neighbours on aU sides in 1792 and 1793. 
 They came, as they proclaimed, to carry the gospel 
 of liberty, equality and fraternity into all lands ; 
 their evangel was to be for the healing of the nations ; 
 
24 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 they menaced war only to the nobleman's castle : 
 they brought peace to the poor man's cottage. 
 Were they reaUy inspired by any such exalted senti- 
 ments ? A few enthusiasts may have been ; but 
 not many. Did their faith in their new creed 
 suffice to make them die for it cheerfully ? Not 
 in the least ; for they ran away like sheep, until 
 habit and discipline inured them to war. Did they 
 conduct themselves, where successful, according to 
 their noble professions ? Not in the least. They 
 plundered all classes impartially, and were loathed 
 by all impartially. The truth is that their real 
 object was not to preach a gospel at all, but to 
 gather plunder. France had been ruined by the 
 incredible folHes of the Revolution ; her resources 
 were exhausted ; and there was nothing for her 
 but to rob her neighbours or perish. Her robberies 
 prospered ; a soldier of fortune rose up to take 
 command of her armies ; and under his leadership 
 the principle of robbery was indefinitely extended. 
 As Wellington put it with his usual shrewd insight, 
 war to Napoleon was a financial resource. 
 
 Must hope of plunder then be reckoned as a 
 great moral force in war ? The question is ex- 
 tremely difficult to answer. Astonishing military 
 successes have been achieved under no other stimu- 
 lating influence than this — I would instance the 
 sack of Rome by Charles of Bourbon in 1527 — but 
 
I] PLUNDER 25 
 
 plunder, speaking generally, demoralises both the 
 army and the nation that lives by it, for it leads 
 to jealousy and divisions. You will remember at 
 once, when I recall it to you, the story in the Old 
 Testament of Saul's preservation of flocks, herds 
 and prisoners in the face of Samuel's order that 
 they should be annihilated. I strongly suspect 
 that Samuel's motive for commanding the destruc- 
 tion of the plunder was apprehension lest the King, 
 by offering to his followers a reward for their ser- 
 vices, should steal away the hearts of the people 
 and undermine the authority of the priesthood. 
 On the other hand Saul may perhaps have been 
 justified in supposing that his men would not fight 
 the Amalekites without the assurance of a share in 
 the spoil, and had consequently promised them a 
 share beforehand. At any rate, it is certain that 
 the incident so far estranged the ecclesiastical from 
 the civil authorities that the former put forward a 
 rival to oust Saul from the Kingship. This is a 
 curious instance of an entire community being 
 driven into civil war by a dispute as to plunder. Of 
 its demoralising influence on an army the examples 
 are endless, but I may mention to you the furious 
 combats of the Spaniards and Germans over the 
 spoil of Rome, which they had combined to capture 
 and sack ; the practical dissolution for a time of 
 Wellington's troops after the storm of Badajoz, 
 
26 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 and the insubordination and disunion of Napoleon's 
 armies in Spain, when nearly every officer of rank 
 was seeking to enrich himself, and employing his 
 men to enrich him, instead of using them in the 
 legitimate operations of war. 
 
 Nevertheless men wiU not go a-fighting con- 
 tinuously unless there is plunder, or some composi- 
 tion in lieu thereof, to stimulate them to constant 
 exertion. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
 the military profession was very nearly a mercantile 
 affair, pure and simple. Capitalists formed com- 
 panies of soldiers for hire, and sought to indemnify 
 themselves by plunder for their venture, very much 
 after the fashion of a privateer or private man-of- 
 war. The " purchase-system " under which, when 
 I was a boy, British officers still purchased their 
 commissions for a sum of money, was a relic of the 
 old practice of buying shares in a military company. 
 In many of our wars there was no individual plunder, 
 but all captures were lumped together, sold, and 
 divided in due proportion between all ranks of the 
 army engaged. The army which stormed Seringa- 
 patam in 1799 divided £1,300,000 in this way ; and 
 beyond all doubt the hope of large profits was a 
 great incentive to the men to endure many things 
 and fight hard. Soldiers are almost invariably 
 ill- paid. Very often their health is permanently 
 impaired by the hardship and privation which they 
 
I] PATRIOTISM 27 
 
 undergo ; and they demand, not unreasonably, 
 some compensation for all their sufferings and peril. 
 This is a fact which no statesman can afford to over- 
 look. Even in the middle of the late South African 
 war it was necessary to give to every private five 
 pounds, and to every non-commissioned officer and 
 officer stiU larger sums, according to their rank, as 
 prize money in lieu of plunder. 
 
 I come next to patriotism as a moral force. We 
 are apt to take it for granted that it always exists 
 in every country ; but this is not so, as the earlier 
 wars of the French Revolution most plainly prove. 
 Nor is it sufficient to say that the countries over 
 which the French armies rode rough-shod were 
 autocratically governed, while France enjoyed a 
 freer form of government, for a democracy can, and 
 very frequently does, govern quite as abominably 
 as any autocrat or oligarchy. If a large proportion 
 of a community be discontented with its condition 
 it wiU feel no patriotism, and will do little or nothing 
 towards defence of its country. It sees no object 
 in fighting to maintain a state of things which it 
 disapproves, and will not do so. Then, in case Ox 
 invasion it will submit quietly and without an effort 
 to the enemy's will, and allow him to take peaceful 
 possession of its territory. If, on the contrary, the 
 war be not defensive but offensive, the malcontents 
 will lay themselves out to embarrass the ruling 
 
28 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 authorities as much as possible, in order to secure 
 political changes which they conceive to be political 
 advantages. So long as the seat of operations is at 
 a distance, the behaviour of the malcontents is 
 always the same, whether they are of the highest 
 or of the lowest class, whether the government 
 under which they live be popular or despotic. 
 Thus during the American War of Independence a 
 considerable section of the English aristocracy 
 threw the whole weight of its power and influence 
 in favour of the revolting colonies, and to all intents 
 assured their triumph. Thus also in the recent 
 war between Russia and Japan a large section of 
 the educated classes in Russia spared no efforts to 
 stir up internal trouble, and crippled their country 
 at the very moment when she bade fair to redeem 
 all past failures and enter upon a successful cam- 
 paign. In both cases the disaffected parties claimed 
 to be the truest patriots, inasmuch as they had 
 acted in the best interests of their country ; though 
 whether such a claim can be justified is a matter 
 upon which men will differ until the end of time. 
 It may, however, be doubted whether men can, 
 unless in most exceptional circumstances, benefit 
 their country by seconding their country's enemies ; 
 and it is probable that, when they profess to do so, 
 they are animated rather by an intense desire to 
 injure and humiliate their rulers than by any 
 
I] THE MAJORITY'S WILL 29 
 
 principle of well-doing towards any one. If the 
 war were brought home to their own hearths, they 
 would in all likelihood make a stubborn fight for 
 their defence ; either from dread lest their neigh- 
 bours should hang them ; or, as it is more reasonable 
 to suppose, from honest jealousy for their country 
 and indignation against the invader. But because 
 the scene of fighting is at a distance, they think that 
 they may legitimately play fast and loose with their 
 country's fortunes. 
 
 Now I cannot help thinking that if those who 
 aspire to govern men, and even to lay claim to the 
 title of statesmen, were to study military history, 
 they might learn enough about the moral force of 
 nations and armies to set them thinking very 
 seriously. It is a force that is very difficult to 
 build up and not very difficult to destroy ; and yet 
 politicians of all parties trifle with it as though it 
 were an insignificant matter. It is impossible to 
 devise a form of Government or to collect an ad- 
 ministration which will satisfy all men ; but, though 
 everyone recognises the fact in theory, few make 
 allowances for it in practice. It is sufficient for 
 politicians of all ways of thinking in these days to 
 say solemnly that the will of the majority must 
 prevail. But why must it prevail ? Because the 
 majority is more likely to be right than the minority ? 
 Far from it : if we could believe that this were the 
 
30 MILITARY HISTORY [lect, 
 
 rule, the government of the world would be much 
 easier than it is. No, the will of the majority must 
 prevail because it can be enforced on the minority, 
 which is only another way of saying that Might is 
 Right. See how in this world of cant the terrible 
 maxim, which men think applicable to war only, is 
 daily in force all round us. Wise men therefore will 
 be always moderate in their dealing with honest 
 and respectable minorities, whether they differ 
 from the majority in matters of religious, political 
 or social faith, provided always that their dissent 
 is not merely a cloak for evading the obligations 
 of ordinary morality. Yet such moderation, though 
 of the last importance towards amity and good under- 
 standing in a community and therefore towards its 
 moral force in the event of war, is little more common 
 to-day than at other periods of human history. There 
 is really only one political or social principle which 
 has any permanent worth, and it is expressed in 
 the homely proverb " Give and take." 
 
 What is the civic form of this proverb ? It is 
 this, No rights without duties, no duties without 
 rights. In England I am afraid — though I may be 
 wrong — that for some time past there has been too 
 much prating of rights, and too little reflection upon 
 duties ; though the commonwealth depends for its 
 stability upon the equal recognition of both. What, 
 you may ask, do you owe to the State ? Well, you 
 
I] RIGHTS AND DUTIES 31 
 
 owe to it gratitude for the fact that you can for the 
 most part walk about decently clad and purse in 
 pocket without danger of being knocked on the 
 head ; and that you can pursue your lawful avoca- 
 tion in peace. But how if your clothes are in rags 
 and you have no purse ? Well then, apart from all 
 possible benefits from the poor law, you at least 
 enjoy immunity from being knocked on the head 
 as an unprofitable member of the tribe. The great 
 difference between primitive and civilised societies is 
 that the civilised recognise misfortune as a pallia- 
 tive to inefficiency, which the primitive cannot 
 afford to do. We have still a right to say that a 
 criminal is an inefficient citizen, but no longer that 
 an inefficient citizen is a criminal ; and this, for 
 some of us, is a considerable gain. Even if the 
 State gave us no more than this, we are everyone 
 of us debtors for more than we can repay. But, in 
 the most highly organised states of the present 
 time, the tendency is that the community at large 
 shall contribute more and more towards making 
 men physically and mentally into efficient citizens 
 and towards saving them from the consequences of 
 misfortune, but in return shall claim from them more 
 exacting duties. It would perhaps be historically 
 more accurate to say that in some cases the duties 
 came first and the benefits afterwards ; but the 
 point is that the principle of rights for duties and 
 
32 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 duties for rights has been faithfully observed. 
 Thus in Germany the State has set up machinery 
 for education, for insurance against misfortune, 
 for provision against old age, claiming in return 
 from able-bodied citizens two years of military 
 training, with liability to be recalled to the colours 
 up to a certain age in the event of war. There 
 are other states in which the same or less is given 
 or claimed ; but there are few of importance in 
 Europe in which free education is not the right, 
 and military training the countervailing duty. 
 And this system has been adopted in every case, 
 not only from bitter experience of disastrous defeat 
 in war, but because foreign statesmen read military 
 history. The bond of a common duty, impartially 
 imposed upon all classes from the highest to the 
 lowest, tends to soften minor dijBferences and dis- 
 contents, and constitutes in itself a great moral 
 force. 
 
 So much for the moral force that can be instiUed 
 into a community by its statesmen : I come now to 
 that which can be inspired only by the soldier, the 
 unity, artificial but incomparably strong, which is 
 bound up with the name of discipline. Military 
 discipline — how some people loathe and others 
 worship it ; and how little the majority of both 
 have really thought about it ! What is its principle ? 
 The organised abnegation of the individual self in 
 
I] MILITARY DISCIPLINE 33 
 
 favour of the corporate self. What is its object ? 
 That tens of thousands may act together as one 
 under the guidance of a single will. What are its 
 methods ? Immediate and unquestioning obe- 
 dience to superior command. Immediate and 
 unquestioning obedience — that is what is the 
 stumbhng block, the skandalon to so many. There 
 are of course a certain number of people who can 
 obey no one, but must always be a law — and an 
 exceedingly erratic law — unto themselves. The 
 name of the poet SheUey wiU probably occur to 
 some of you, but I am not thinking of such as 
 Shelley. I have in my mind rather those excellent 
 but generally unthinking persons who shrink with 
 horror from the idea of a man's abdicating his civil 
 rights. " What," they say, " a man must obey 
 even an unjust command, under pain it may be of 
 death ! It is monstrous ! " For purposes of civil 
 life it might be monstrous, but not for purposes of 
 implicit obedience, which is the thing that matters 
 in an army. Let there be justice as far as possible 
 by all means ; but, as a general principle, it is better 
 for an army that an injustice should be done than 
 that an order should be disobeyed. This, however, 
 is an argument that cannot appeal to our imaginary 
 objector, because he has read no military history. 
 
 Then there is the unpleasant fact that im- 
 mediate and unquestioning obedience is a thing not 
 
 F. M. H. 3 
 
34 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 easily acquired even with the best of good will. 
 Careful and often tedious training is necessary 
 before the obedience becomes instinctive and a 
 second nature ; and the process is not always a 
 pleasant one. In the first place tyrannical teachers 
 are always to be found, who make the lesson as 
 odious as possible ; and in the second there are 
 some natures to which nothing is so revolting 
 as order and method in the minutest detail. The 
 temperament that calls itself artistic is particularly 
 impatient of this description of discipline, and 
 attaches to it the name of soul-destroying ; but I 
 have noticed that persons who claim to possess 
 that particular temperament discover equal mis- 
 chief to their souls in the punctual keeping of their 
 appointments, the faithful fulfilment of their con- 
 tracts, and the regular payment of their debts. 
 In fact a little drill and discipline is the very thing 
 that they most require. However, the school of 
 implicit obedience is no doubt a hard one, and 
 sometimes even distressing. There is much that 
 seems — perhaps even a little that may actually 
 be — unnecessary and pedantic in the instruction ; 
 and in time of peace the necessity for this is not 
 obvious. It is inexpressibly galling to some char- 
 acters to find the question Why answered unchange- 
 ably by the formula " Because orders must be 
 obeyed." They chafe against the compression of 
 
I] THE JESUITS 35 
 
 all natures into the same mould ; and the con- 
 version of one, who flatters himself (not always 
 with reason) that he is an intelligent mortal, into 
 a machine. 
 
 I shall deal with the weak side of military 
 discipline presently. Meanwhile observe that its 
 moral force is founded on one of the noblest of 
 human, I might say of Christian, virtues. I have 
 styled it organised self-abnegation — organised self- 
 surrender of the individual for the sake of the 
 general ; — only possible through arduous training 
 in self-denial, self-restraint and self-control. 
 Observe that, although many religious orders have 
 taken for their governance the vows of poverty, 
 chastity and obedience, the most formidable of all 
 was that founded by an old soldier, who organised 
 it upon a military model and gave its chief the title 
 of General. The name of the Jesuits does not 
 smell sweet in English nostrils, and yet its members 
 have perhaps outdone all the world in self-sacrifice. 
 " Go," the General said from time to time to some 
 young Jesuit in the 17th century, "Go out to the 
 wilds of North America ; spread the gospel among 
 the Red Indians ; search out the land and take it 
 into possession for the most Christian king." 
 Without a word the command was obeyed. The 
 missionary went forth, alone or with a comrade, 
 undaunted by the prospect of being tied up to 
 
 3—2 
 
36 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 roast before a slow fire, or have his fingers bitten 
 off one by one ; he dwelt among savage men, lived 
 their lives, subsisted on their food, and, without 
 counting the risk of being lost or starved, found 
 his way down the great rivers from the Upper Lakes 
 to the Gulf of Florida. You know the great ex- 
 amples of heroism in our own army. You know 
 the story of the Birkenhead ; and you may perhaps 
 realise that it is this story which has inspired all 
 English men and English women to show courage 
 in a shipwreck. But I shall add just one story, a 
 very short one, of the wreck of the Warreri Hastings , 
 which was carrying four companies of the King's 
 Royal Rifle Corps and as many of the York and 
 Lancaster Regiment, on the island of Reunion in 
 1897. When the ship struck, sentries of the Rifles 
 were at once posted at various points on the lower 
 deck, to guard the access to the spirit-room and 
 such like ; and there they remained while the boats 
 were lowered to take the battalion ashore. The 
 water rose steadily upon them inch by inch, and 
 had reached their chests, when at last an officer 
 came to summon them also, last of all, to take their 
 place in the boats. He collected them aU, as he 
 thought, but in the noise and darkness he missed 
 one man and left him behind. The man saw his 
 comrades disappear up the ladder, and the officer 
 about to follow them, and not till then did he ask, 
 
I] THE WARREN HASTINGS 37 
 
 without quitting his post, " Beg pardon, sir, may I 
 come too ? " If ever you hear any man speak 
 lightly of military discipline, tell him that story, 
 for that Rifleman is worthy to be placed alongside 
 the Roman sentry at Pompeii. 
 
 Yet it is very necessary that the working of 
 military discipline should be most carefully studied 
 in military history, in order that its defects, weak- 
 nesses and limitations may be thoroughly ascertained 
 and realised. There is no greater mistake than to 
 say that disciplined men are machines. They are 
 nothing of the kind : they are flesh and blood ; 
 and it is most dangerous to treat them as anything 
 else. Yet nothing is more common than for people 
 to suppose that anything is good enough for soldiers 
 because discipline forbids them to complain. Poli- 
 ticians in particular often appear to think that a 
 soldier, in virtue of his discipline, can march all 
 day and all night, dispense with food and drink, 
 and lie out in cold and rain with no particular 
 mischief to himself. I can assure you that in former 
 days, within the memory of Hving men, English 
 soldiers were housed in buildings and sent to sea 
 in vessels that would have been thought too bad 
 for valuable cattle. Tradesmen and contractors Uke- 
 wise presume upon the soldiers' enforced patience, 
 and mobs will insult and pelt them, secure in 
 the knowledge that the soldiers will not retaliate 
 
38 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 without orders. This indeed, albeit infinitely mean 
 and cowardly, is an unconscious tribute to discipline, 
 but may easily strain it beyond endurance. The fact 
 is that discipline which rests wholly upon fear is 
 not the strongest. Inelastic and unsympathetic 
 severity, even though it may not actually amount 
 to injustice, can produce only a passive and dis- 
 contented obedience, which speedily gives way to 
 sulky insubordination under any unusual trial. 
 It is when officers are not in touch with their men 
 and do not consider them, that the hearts of soldiers 
 are stolen away by agitators and malcontents. And 
 then follows mutiny, which if begun in some choice 
 corps may spread to a whole army, as in the French 
 Revolution, and bring a dynasty and the traditions 
 of centuries to the ground. The iU- treatment of 
 men was common enough in old days, when the 
 gaps between social classes were wide and the dis- 
 tinction between them carefully marked, but you 
 will never find an instance of a successful army in 
 which the officers did not share the hardships of 
 the men. Hannibal, for one, frequently slept on 
 the ground with his outposts. 
 
 It is when, as in most modern armies, the officers 
 put their men before anything else in the world, 
 that military discipline shines at its brightest. This 
 does not mean leniency to irregularity or towards 
 insubordination — a weak or indulgent officer is 
 
I] ESPRIT DE CORPS 39 
 
 neither loved nor respected — but the treatment of 
 men as men instead of as children, attention to 
 their .wants, consideration for their feelings, zeal 
 for their well-being, cultivation of their seK-respect, 
 forethought to train them to meet every exigency, 
 endless endeavour to deserve their confidence. 
 Then there arises in regiments that mysterious 
 power which is called esprit de corps, when every 
 soul in them from the colonel to the drummer feels 
 that his own honour is bound up with the honour 
 of the regiment, and that the honour of the regiment 
 is the greatest thing in the world. And so you 
 find — for one instance out of many thousand — 
 such a battalion as that of the Fifty-seventh at 
 Albuera, with two men in every three struck down, 
 yet conscious of nothing in the dense smoke but of 
 closing in to the colours and unquestioning resolution 
 to die where they stood, rather than give way. So 
 too you find a simple solitary private, in the story 
 that I have already told you, content to go down 
 alone in a sinking ship for the honour of the Sixtieth. 
 Without knowledge of military history men are really 
 unconscious of the existence of that most wonderful 
 of moral forces, esprit de corps ; and it is not a thing 
 of which anyone can afford to be ignorant. 
 
 Lastly military history gives us insight into 
 the character and intellectual powers of some of 
 the most remarkable men who ever lived. I shall 
 
40 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 be told perhaps that the career of an Alexander or 
 of a Caesar is but a paltry study compared with 
 that of a Luther or a Franyois Xavier. Be it so. 
 Different characters attract different students, and 
 great leaders of men, whether saints or soldiers, 
 are always worthy of study. Moreover, it is a 
 most important thing to realise that military history 
 means the survey of administrative in at least as 
 great a degree as strategical and tactical genius. 
 You will all of you recall the happy phrase that 
 was applied to Carnot — the organiser of victory ; 
 and Carnot was only one of many who have deserved 
 the epithet. No man perhaps ever merited it better 
 than Moses, if only through his standing order 
 (which you wiU find in the book of Deuteronomy 
 xxiii. 12-14) that when an army was in the field 
 there should be appointed places for latrines out- 
 side the camp, and that all foul matter should be 
 instantly buried. The regulation is justified by a 
 noble precept, which in its essence is true for all 
 time. " The Lord thy God walketh in the midst 
 of thy camp to deliver thee and to give up thine 
 enemies before thee ; therefore shall thy camp be 
 holy, that he see no unclean thing in thee and turn 
 away from thee." Foul camps mean enteric fever 
 and dysentery, and these diseases mean the destruc- 
 tion of the host. To this day it may be said that 
 the sanitary regulations of Moses have never been 
 
I] GREAT SOLDIERS 41 
 
 superseded. How many Jewish victories may have 
 been due to the observance of them we can only 
 conjecture ; how many hundred millions of lives 
 have been sacrificed to the neglect of them — for 
 it is only latterly that their value has been fully 
 recognised — the Omniscient alone can know. 
 
 Turn from Palestine to Greece and look at the 
 military constitution of Sparta founded by Lycurgus. 
 Make a huge stride over the ages, and look at Chaka, 
 the man of genius whose military organisation and 
 training of his people would have made the Zulus 
 masters of South Africa, had not the boundless 
 resources of the British Empire dashed his work — 
 though not without difficulty and defeat — at last 
 to the ground. Look at the great men of modern 
 times, whose names will be more familiar to you, 
 Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Wellington, and 
 take note that from the very beginning of history 
 the greatest generals have almost invariably been 
 in the very first rank not merely of military but of 
 civil administrators. It may seem heretical to say 
 so, but I personally am inclined to think that 
 Napoleon's work as a civil Governor transcends 
 even in its own kind the greatest of his military 
 achievements. I, even as many other men, have 
 gone through most of the thirty-six volumes of his 
 correspondence ; and I confess that his reorganisa- 
 tion of France in the first months of the Consulate — 
 
42 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 crude and hasty as in many respects it was, owing 
 to the urgency of the case and the desperate nature 
 of the circumstances — appears to me the greatest 
 thing that ever he did. But all three of these men 
 are remarkable chiefly for the astonishing results 
 which they achieved with small means. Frederick, 
 in spite of terrible defeats and latterly an almost 
 total failure of resources, contrived somehow to 
 carry the Seven Years War to a successful end, and 
 at its close to revive an exhausted Prussia. Napo- 
 leon took over a France demoralised by ten years 
 of misrule, and sunk financially to a hopeless depth 
 of bankruptcy, yet by squandering men in lieu of 
 money he carried his eagles victoriously from end 
 to end of Europe. Wellington had so few men that 
 he could not squander them, and so little money 
 that, owing to the general lack of specie, he was 
 obUged to carry on the Peninsular War upon credit, 
 and incidentally to administer the government of 
 Portugal as well as direct the operations in the 
 field, lest that credit should absolutely fail him. 
 Yet by sheer administrative ability, patience and 
 tenacity, he prevailed. 
 
 I have of design left the question of the technical 
 study of strategy and tactics until the last. Strategy 
 may, I think, be defined as the art of bringing armies 
 up to the battle-field by the right way, in the right 
 strength, at the right time ; tactics as the art of 
 
i] STRATEGIC GEOGRAPHY 43 
 
 handling them on the battle-field to the best ad- 
 vantage. Of what profit is the study of these two 
 arts to the citizen at large ? WeU, in the first 
 place he will learn what may be termed his strate- 
 gical geography, and why battles are constantly 
 fought century after century in or about the same 
 places. He will understand why, for instance, end- 
 less great actions for the mastery of India have been 
 fought within fifty miles of lielhi ; the significance 
 of Stirling on the map of Scotland, and of Acre 
 on the coast of Syria. He will perceive why, owing 
 to changes in transport and armament, places whose 
 names constantly occur in old diplomatic records 
 have ceased to be of great account and are now 
 seldom mentioned, whereas others, as I have said, 
 retain their importance through endless generations. 
 He will realise, further, how far strategic considera- 
 tions enter into political arrangements of all kinds, 
 as for instance that Bismarck the civilian was 
 against the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine as 
 tending to perpetuate the hostility of France, but 
 was overruled by Moltke because the new frontier 
 was worth 100,000 men. In fact it is not too much 
 to say that knowledge of miUtary history is essential 
 to the right understanding not only of domestic 
 and foreign poHtics, but of the whole story, written 
 and unwritten, of the human race — which is mainly 
 a story of fighting. 
 
44 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 The interest of tactics is chiefly for professional 
 men ; but it is worth while to notice its main prin- 
 ciples, which are simple. All fighting is, and has 
 always been, of two kinds, hand-to-hand or shock 
 action, at a distance or missile action. Goliath 
 challenged the Israelites to shock action, and David 
 kiUed him by missile action ; and I dare say that 
 the Philistines thought it unfair. Now, whether for 
 shock or for missile action, it is very obvious that 
 if you can overmatch your enemy in numbers — 
 other things being equal — you are likely to get the 
 better of him ; and that if you are on higher ground 
 than he is you can see him better than he can see 
 you to throw things at him, and can charge him 
 with greater impetus down hill than he can meet 
 you with, uphill. It may be said broadly that the 
 art of tactics is the art of bringing stronger numbers 
 to bear at some given point, and taking or acquiring 
 superiority of position. This is the physical side 
 of tactics. The moral side (apart from discipline) 
 lies chiefly in those two eternal and undying re- 
 sources, known as the ambush and the surprise. 
 Here the leader tries to upset an enemy's physical 
 advantage of numbers and position by taking him 
 unawares. There is no flner example of a surprise 
 in the world than that of Gideon. Think of it — 
 the silent march of 300 picked men in three com- 
 panies through the darkness, each with his trumpet 
 
I] SURPRISE AND PANIC 45 
 
 and his torch hidden in a pitcher, the silent sur- 
 rounding of the hostile camp just before dawn, 
 when human vitality is at its lowest ; and then the 
 silence broken by the crash of three hundred pitchers, 
 the sudden flare of the torches, the braying of three 
 hundred trumpets as if in signal to a host of thou- 
 sands unseen in the night ; and the simultaneous 
 yell " For the Lord and for Gideon." There was 
 a wild panic in the Midianite camp, and no wonder. 
 In the darkness they took to fighting each other, 
 " every man's sword against his fellow." Of course 
 they did. Exactly the same result was seen many 
 times over during our last war in South Africa, and 
 has been seen in every panic from Gideon's age to 
 our own. Gideon was a man who studied moral 
 force. 
 
 Thus we come back to the point from which 
 we began. Military history is not the history of 
 physical but of moral force, perhaps almost of the 
 triumph of moral over purely physical force. Let 
 no man say that such a subject is unworthy of our 
 attention. It is unfortunately impossible to study 
 deeply any department of the afi^airs of men without 
 encountering much that is infinitely vile and base 
 and sordid ; and military history is no exception 
 to this rule. But it is rich also in noble and heroic 
 deeds, not of valour only but of patience, self- 
 sacrifice and endurance. I may be wrong, but I 
 
46 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 think that I see in it grander and more frequent 
 examples of devotion to duty than in any other 
 branch of history. The opportunities, you wiU 
 say, are greater ; and there may be some truth in 
 this ; but I would add that the training to self- 
 abnegation counts also for very much. It will harm 
 none of us to know well this story of duty done for 
 duty's sake ; and it may be that, as the example of 
 the Birkenhead has nerved all our race to face with 
 calmness the utmost perils of the sea, so the re- 
 membrance of the proud history of our soldiers 
 may brace each one of us, no matter how humble 
 his sphere, to discipline himself in the self-denial 
 and self-control which triumph over adversity. 
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 BRITISH MILITARY HISTORY 
 
 In my last lecture I attempted to deal with 
 the broad subject of military history at large. To- 
 day I shall treat of the narrower subject of British 
 military history. There is nothing arbitrary or 
 capricious in this ; for British military history is, 
 owing to our insular position, a thing apart. 
 
 Foreign nations, indeed, would say that a country 
 which has never in the whole course of her existence 
 put fifty thousand of her own children in line upon 
 any battle-field and very rarely so many even as 
 
II] OUR MILITARY HISTORY 47 
 
 thirty thousand, can have no military history ; but 
 none the less we have one, which is in many ways 
 remarkable and worthy of study. 
 
 Note in the first place that for five hundred years 
 after the Conquest England was not a purely insular 
 power. She had troublesome neighbours in Wales 
 and Scotland, and her kings had possessions, and 
 consequently troublesome neighbours, in France. 
 Remember that it was not until 1558 that we lost 
 Calais, and that, as long as we possessed it, we had 
 so to speak a bridge-head which enabled us to enter 
 France practically at any moment. This was a sad 
 temptation towards foolish expeditions and waste of 
 strength ; and it was a great blessing to us really 
 when the capture of Calais removed it for ever. 
 
 Elizabeth, therefore, was our first purely insular 
 sovereign. What manner of military force did she 
 find at her accession, and what manner of organisa- 
 tion for creating and maintaining it ? The sovereign 
 was empowered, as he still is, to call out every able- 
 bodied man for the defence of the country ; and upon 
 the different classes of freemen was imposed by an 
 Act of 1558, which was based upon an older Act of 
 1285, the duty of providing themselves with arms 
 according to their means. Long before 1558 fire- 
 arms had been brought to such efficiency that a 
 complete system of tactics had been founded for 
 their use by the ablest soldiers on the Continent ; 
 
48 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 but in England the Statute still professed content- 
 ment with the weapons of three centuries earlier, 
 bows and bills ; and there were remarkably few fire- 
 arms in the country at all. There were, however, 
 great traditions derived in part from Saxon times, 
 but strengthened, developed and enlarged by the 
 victories of Edward the Third, his son Edward, 
 Prince of Wales, and king Harry the Fifth, in France 
 and in Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries. 
 
 I told you in my last lecture that all fighting, 
 from the earliest times to the present, is in the 
 ultimate resort of two kinds — hand-to-hand or shock 
 action, at a distance or missile action. In the hands 
 of the English a very old missile weapon, the bow, 
 had become, in the form of the long bow, the most 
 deadly and formidable of its time. Every English 
 boy was trained to the use of it, and was taught to 
 bring every muscle of his body to bear upon it, just 
 as in rowing you are taught not to row with your 
 arms only, but with your legs also and with all the 
 weight of your body. " My father taught me to lay 
 my body to the bow," says Bishop Hugh Latimer. 
 The result was that their arrows were discharged 
 with great rapidity and accuracy, and with such 
 strength that they were effective in the matt-er of 
 penetration at an astonishingly long range. The 
 shock action of mediaeval times, as you know. 
 
II] ENGLISH INFANTRY 49 
 
 was confined chiefly to mounted men-at-arms, clad 
 in armour from head to foot, and furnished with 
 lances, who moved in dense masses at very moderate 
 speed, and trampled down everything that stood in 
 their way. How did the English archers deal with 
 them ? They aimed mainly at their horses, which, 
 maddened by the pain, ran away with their riders, 
 and carried confusion everywhere ; but being ac- 
 curate shots, the archers aimed also at the joints of 
 the harness — at the intervals between gorget and 
 breast-plate, between breast-plate, or back-plate, 
 and thigh-pieces, which were exposed by the swaying 
 of the body, and above all the arm-pit when the arm 
 was raised to strike. But how about the English 
 men-at-arms, you will ask ? Why did not the enemy 
 shoot their horses with arrows, and make them un- 
 manageable also ? Here we come to the English 
 peculiarity. The English men-at-arms always dis- 
 mounted to fight, broke off their lances to a length 
 that could be easily handled and, ranked together 
 in a dense mass, used them as pikes. So here there 
 was the tradition of a missile infantry, so to speak, 
 steady and deadly shots ; and of a shock infantry 
 which could not be broken and, moreover, after 
 winning a victory could mount and pursue on 
 horseback. 
 
 The new tactics of the Continent, which the 
 English had to learn, had taken much the same 
 
 F. M. H. 4 
 
50 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 direction. The Swiss, in order to keep mounted 
 men-at-arms at a distance, had bethought them 
 of ranging their infantry into dense masses, armed 
 with pikes fourteen feet long, and this they had done 
 with such success that they had vindicated the 
 position of infantry as the most important element 
 on the battle-field. Other nations took up the idea, 
 either for mercenaries or national troops ; and, 
 with the improvement of fire-arms, missile infantry 
 developed into musketeers, or "shot" as they were 
 called, who fought entirely as skirmishers, while shock 
 infantry was represented by dense masses of pikemen. 
 Simultaneously the cavalry became a missile force. 
 Unable to make any impression against a bristling 
 wall of pikes, they gave up their lances and provided 
 themselves with pistols, so as to shoot the pikemen 
 down from a distance. Hence it was customary 
 to cover the pikemen with heavy armour on breast 
 and thighs, which prevented them from moving very 
 fast. The fate of the battle, however, was determined 
 by them. Musketeers and cavaliers worried each 
 other and the pikemen for as long as they dared, 
 but the ultimate issue was decided when pike met 
 pike. The chief reason for this was the system 
 adopted for maintaining a continuous fire. This 
 was to range the musketeers in ten ranks, and let 
 these ranks fire in succession, the first rank filing to 
 the rear as soon as its weapons were discharged, in 
 
II] MUSKET AND PIKE 51 
 
 order to reload, and leaving the second rank to do 
 likewise, and so on. In theory the system was 
 ingenious ; but in practice it was found that men 
 thought a great deal more about filing to the rear 
 rapidly, than about firing steadily and accurately* 
 Of course if heavy artiUery could be brought within 
 range of a square of pikemen, it might blast them 
 off the field ; but cannon were too cumbrous and 
 difficult to move for this to be often possible ; and 
 thus the decision of the day was left, as it still is, 
 to cold steel. You will see wonderful pictures of 
 combats of pikemen, just as you see the like repre- 
 sentations of fights with the bayonet. I doubt 
 greatly if they ever occurred. Both sides approached 
 each other with the pike or bayonet no doubt ; but 
 before they closed one side turned and ran away. All 
 nations boast of their prowess with the bayonet, 
 our own among others, but few men really enjoy a 
 hand-to-hand fight with the bayonet, however much 
 they may enjoy a hand-to-hand pursuit. You 
 remember that the Homeric heroes, after a certain 
 amount of close combat, invariably threw stones at 
 each other ; and the practice has never died out. 
 English and French both talk much of the bayonet ; 
 but in Egypt in 1801 they threw stones at each other 
 when their ammunition was exhausted, and one 
 English sergeant was kiUed by a stone. At Inker man 
 again the British threw stones at the Russians, not 
 
62 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 without effect ; and I am told upon good authority 
 that the Russians and Japanese, both of whom 
 profess to love the bayonet, threw stones at each 
 other, rather than close, even in this twentieth 
 century. 
 
 To this stage, then, had the art of war advanced 
 at Elizabeth's accession, but no effort was made to 
 train the national forces according to the latest 
 methods. A few foreign mercenaries were imported 
 from time to time, and a great many English went 
 abroad, and served either in the armies of Spain — 
 which were the most efficient of their day — or in 
 those of the revolted Dutch which, under the Princes 
 of the House of Nassau, were rapidly improving upon 
 the Spanish methods. Thus some ideas of foreign 
 practice crept into England, and a great deal of 
 foreign nomenclature, which still remains with us. 
 Nearly all of our military terms are foreign, drawn 
 mostly from the French, the Italian or the Spanish. 
 Regiment, battalion, colonel, sergeant-major, captain, 
 lieutenant, ensign, cornet, corporal, centinel — all 
 are words borrowed from Latin sources, and one 
 could multiply the number of instances. Pistol and 
 howitzer are Bohemian, relics of John Zizka. For- 
 lorn hope (which has nothing to do with the English 
 word Jwpe) is Dutch. Even Shakespeare speaks 
 twice of recruits by the Spanish name bisono, 
 corrupted into Bezonian. 
 
II] MUSKETRY PLATOONS 53 
 
 Little progress was made in Elizabeth's time, 
 and no more in the reign of James I ; but meanwhile 
 a great military reformer arose in the person of 
 Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who recognised that 
 missile action was that which must triumph in the 
 future, and set himself to improve the firing tactics 
 of infantry. This he did by reducing the depth of 
 the infantry to three ranks, and forming the mus- 
 keteers shoulder to shoulder, the front rank kneehng. 
 He then distributed the whole of his battalions into 
 sections, or platoons, of twenty to thirty men each, 
 and introduced the system of firing by volleys of 
 platoons ; the usual method being that the first, 
 third, fifth, seventh and ninth platoons fired first in 
 rapid succession, and then the second, fourth, sixth, 
 eighth and tenth, by which time the odd-numbered 
 platoons had reloaded and were prepared to begin 
 again. Thus a continuous fire was maintained 
 without unsteadiness or disorder ; and the system 
 was so good that it lasted until the introduction 
 of breech-loaders. There being many Scots — even- 
 whole regiments — and a good many English in the 
 Swedish service, the drill and tactics of Gustavus 
 became known to a number of people in both 
 kingdoms. 
 
 Now followed the Civil War, wherein the armies 
 on both sides were ridiculously inefficient until 
 Cromwell, recognising that the King had most of 
 
54 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 the gentlemen — that is to say the more efficient 
 amateurs — upon his side, decided that he must train 
 professional soldiers to beat them. So he raised 
 his famous regiment of horse, and for the first time 
 since the days of Harry the Fifth brought true 
 military discipline to bear upon English soldiers. 
 In 1645 the Parliament perceived that a whole army 
 trained upon the new principle would mean the 
 difference between triumph and defeat, and there- 
 upon organised the famous host called the New 
 Model Army, consisting of twelve regiments of foot, 
 eleven regiments of horse and a train of artillery. 
 The effect was immediate. The Royalist cause was 
 utterly overthrown, whether upheld by English, 
 Scots or Irish ; the irresistible army displaced the 
 Long Parliament and took from it its usurped 
 authority ; and Cromwell during five years of unrest 
 and uneasiness kept the peace in the three kingdoms 
 by means of regular troops and an armed constabu- 
 lary. Never before or since have we been kept in 
 such order. Scottish Highlanders, Irish Tories, 
 English colliers — as lawless a people as the other 
 two — were hammered and cowed into obedience. 
 Some north-country colliers attempted a strike ; 
 "they would neither work themselves nor suffer 
 others," said the newspapers. The Lord Protector 
 sent a regiment of horse to the spot, and nothing 
 more was heard of the strike. Nor was it onlv within 
 
II] CROMWELL'S WORK 55 
 
 the British Isles that he was feared, for, in virtue of 
 his army, he was dreaded throughout Europe. His 
 reign was brief, but he contrived within his five short 
 years to strike a fatal blow at Dutch commercial 
 supremacy, to ensure by his regulations as to trade 
 and navigation that it should pass to England, and 
 to call representatives from an United Kingdom to 
 a single Assembly at Westminster. 
 
 And now pause for a moment to look at the 
 portentous changes that had come over England in 
 the hundred years between the accession of Elizabeth 
 in 1558 and the death of Cromwell in 1658. In the 
 first place England, as I have said, had been jfinally 
 cut off from the Continent ; in the second she had 
 become mistress in her own house, for, though 
 Scotland was not administratively joined to her, 
 the two crowns had been united upon one head and 
 closer union was only a question of time ; while 
 Ireland had been subjected to so stern a discipline 
 that she still chafes at the remembrance of it. In- 
 sular therefore the British Isles were as never before 
 in their history : and yet in the earlier half of the 
 seventeenth century there had been laid by private 
 adventurers under Royal Charter the foundations of 
 a colonial empire in North America and the West 
 Indies, that is to say in the temperate and in the 
 torrid zone, as also of a great agency for foreign trade 
 in India. Moreover Britain's powerful neighbour, 
 
56 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 France, had almost simultaneously formed settle- 
 ments or trading establishments precisely in the 
 three same quarters. Almost at the instant there- 
 fore when the British were relieved of the perils and 
 anxieties of a land frontier at home, they began to 
 acquire such a frontier over seas. Lastly they had 
 evolved, in what may be called its perfected state, 
 a scheme of commercial policy which was not likely 
 to make for peace with their neighbours. Mean- 
 while, owing to the accidental circumstance of a 
 civil war and the happy advent of a man of genius, 
 they had produced quite casually the very thing 
 that was needed for the new conditions, a regular 
 army subject to proper military discipline. 
 
 When Charles II was restored, the intention was 
 to disband the entire army of the Commonwealth, 
 or to keep at most a regiment of foot-guards, which 
 had fought against the forces of the Commonwealth 
 in Flanders, and a regiment of horse-guards, com- 
 posed of Royalist gentlemen. But as these showed 
 themselves inefficient in dealing with the London 
 mob, two of the Parliamentary regiments were also 
 retained, Monk's of infantry — now the Coldstream 
 Guards — and a composite body of horse, which we 
 now know as the Blues. This sufficed for domestic 
 poUce ; but soon there arose the question of colonial 
 garrisons, for Katharine of Bragan^a, Queen of 
 Charles II, had brought to him as a dowry Tangier 
 
II] FIRST STANDING ARMY 57 
 
 and Bombay ; and there were other places, notably 
 New York and St Kitts, where the close neighbour- 
 hood of the French made a little protection very 
 desirable. How were these to be provided ? It was 
 a time-honoured custom in England that all fortified 
 places should have a smaU permanent garrison 
 indissolubly attached to them, rather to keep the 
 buildings in order than to provide for their defence ; 
 and this custom was now extended. A few com- 
 panies were raised for New York and St Kitts, and 
 two regiments of foot and one of dragoons for 
 Tangier ; but even so it was necessary to send the 
 Guards abroad from London to quell a rebeUion in 
 Virginia, and to give further assistance at Tangier. 
 In India the East India Company pursued the same 
 policy, keeping some companies of white troops 
 at Bombay and Madras, and forming also companies 
 of natives, the number of which was constantly 
 increased, for defence of their factories. 
 
 James II who succeeded his brother in 1685 was 
 a trained soldier and sailor who had seen much active 
 service, and an admirable departmental adminis- 
 trator. He made a pretext of Monmouth's rebellion 
 to augment the standing army considerably ; and, if 
 more time had been given to him, he would probably 
 have established an efficient War Office and laid the 
 foundations of a sound military system. Further, 
 noticing the danger to the American colonies from 
 
58 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 their constant divisions and quarrels in the presence 
 of the smaller but perfectly united and organised 
 French settlements, he remodelled the governments 
 of many of them, grouping them together under 
 English Governors, who were also soldiers, so that 
 in time of danger there might be harmonious action 
 and efficient defence. These changes, principally, 
 cost him his throne. 
 
 During all these years the English had never 
 ceased to chafe at the continued existence of a 
 standing army. The country gentlemen, who had 
 made the Revolution of 1642, had the terror of Oliver 
 Cromwell before their eyes, and dreaded lest the 
 Stuarts might emulate his summary and efficient 
 methods. They professed, some of them no doubt 
 conscientiously, solicitude for the liberties of England, 
 forgetting that their forerunners of the Long Parlia- 
 ment had abolished the Monarchy and the House 
 of Lords and erected themselves into a permanent 
 committee of tyrants. They protested that a 
 standing army was unknown to the Constitution of 
 England, but they had not awaked to the fact that 
 there was a British Empire in the making, and that 
 such an Empire requires police. They could not, 
 or at any rate did not, look one inch before their 
 noses except at one principal object, namely the 
 supplanting of the monarchy, in substance if not 
 in fact, by an oligarchy of their noble selves. They 
 
II] KING WILLIAM'S ARMY 59 
 
 therefore encouraged sedition and discontent with 
 the new arrangements in the colonies, and invited 
 William of Orange to come with an armed force and 
 accept the Crown from them. It suited William's 
 policy exactly to have in his hands the resources of 
 England for his desperate struggle against France; 
 and he came, bringing with him the certainty of 
 a great war. 
 
 It has been my fate to study the departmental 
 administration of England at various periods, but 
 I have never found it quite so corrupt and inefficient 
 as in the early years of King William's reign. James 
 had improved it amazingly in his three years of 
 power ; but his men were of course displaced in 
 favour of the Whig magnates and their nominees, 
 naturally with bad results. The administrative 
 reforms of James in the American colonies were 
 likewise upset by the Revolution ; and this folly 
 brought us within measurable distance of the loss 
 of North America, besides taking the resources of 
 England to defend people who ought to have been 
 able to defend themselves. However there the 
 matter was. It was necessary to raise a number 
 of regiments and improvise an army for the pacifi- 
 cation of Ireland, which was, I think, the very worst 
 force ever put together under the English flag. 
 After many disgraceful episodes Ireland was re- 
 conquered ; and then the army, which was by this 
 
60 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 time beginning to improve, was transported over to 
 Flanders for operations there. It fought in many 
 severe actions with credit but mostly without 
 success, for William III was not a great general. 
 However, it learned a great deal, particularly in the 
 matter of sieges, of which it had known very little, 
 and being thrown into company with some good 
 troops and into opposition against others, it was 
 roused to emulation of the high standard of 
 French and Dutch efficiency. In 1697 the war 
 came to an end through the exhaustion of both 
 parties. 
 
 Of the solid improvements effected by the 
 incidents of this war, the first was the passing of 
 the Mutiny Act, in consequence of the mutiny of a 
 regiment which was faithful to King James. This 
 Act empowered the king to punish military crimes, 
 for which the civil law provided no penalty. A 
 standing army being unknown to the Constitution 
 of England, the Act was passed for twelve months 
 only, a ridiculous piece of pedantry which is still 
 perpetuated in the Annual Army Act. The next 
 reform was the adoption of the bayonet, a recent 
 invention, which united the pike and the musket 
 into a single weapon, and made an end of the 
 distinction between shock infantry and missile 
 infantry. A third was the gradual disuse of the 
 pistol by cavalry ; the discarding more and more of 
 
II] PEACE OF RYSWICK 61 
 
 its defensive armour and the reversion to shock 
 action by the charge at high speed. 
 
 Immediately upon the conclusion of the peace 
 there was a howl in the Commons for the reduction 
 of the Army ; and it was carried that the English 
 establishment should be fixed at no more than 
 seven thousand men, though the much poorer island 
 of Ireland had been permanently charged by an 
 earlier act with an establishment of twelve thousand. 
 I must explain that until 1708 there were three 
 separate military establishments for England, Scot- 
 land and Ireland, and after 1708 two for Great 
 Britain and Ireland until the Act of Union in 1800. 
 Moreover, you must remember that even within 
 the memory of living men the infantry and cavalry 
 were under the War Office, the artillery and engineers 
 under the Office of Ordnance, and the commissariat 
 and transport under the Treasury, so that, while the 
 three kingdoms were disunited, there were nine offices 
 concerned with the administration of the Army ; 
 and the colonels, who were responsible for the 
 clothing, made a tenth authority. Hence it was 
 no easy task to get the Army under way for any duty ; 
 while the creation of any new force was a most be- 
 wildering labour. The Commons, however, cared 
 for none of these things. France was evidently only 
 taking breath for another spring ; but that they 
 ignored, and, as I have said, cut down the Army to 
 
62 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 the ridiculous figure of nineteen thousand men. 
 WiUiam very nearly abdicated the throne of England 
 in disgust at their conduct. 
 
 Here then we must notice the first flagrant 
 instance of a besetting sin, which, practically from 
 the very beginning up to the present time, has 
 afflicted and still afflicts the House of Commons. 
 No sooner is the country at peace than it raises a 
 cry for the reduction of the Army. In the eighteenth 
 century this cry was very much a matter of faction. 
 The Whigs had always bitterly opposed a standing 
 army under the Stuarts, when they thought it adverse 
 to their interests ; and the Tories naturally con- 
 ceived a mortal detestation of it after it had become 
 a weapon in the hands of the Whigs. Thus both 
 parties were committed to general discouragement 
 of the force ; and any member who desired to pose 
 as a champion of liberty could do so effectively by 
 denouncing the evils of a standing army. It has 
 been my hard fate to wade through a prodigious 
 number of speeches upon this subject, and I have 
 been absolutely nauseated by their hoUowness and 
 cant. It is of course possible for a man to object 
 sincerely and conscientiously to any description of 
 army ; but I have never met with such a one in the 
 Parliamentary debates of the eighteenth century. 
 Their abuse of standing armies, in which was generally 
 mixed some vituperation of the military profession 
 
II] SKELETON REGIMENTS 63 
 
 at large, was simply hypocrisy and cant, most 
 mischievous and dangerous, inasmuch as it brought 
 the calling of a soldier into contempt, and kindled 
 the entire civil population into hostility with the 
 military. 
 
 Compelled to reduce the Army to a mere handful 
 of men, William sought to turn this handful to the 
 best account by keeping the skeletons of a great 
 many regiments, which might on emergency be filled 
 out with additional men, rather than a very few 
 complete regiments ready to take the field at once. 
 He was quite right ; and his example has repeatedly 
 been followed down to our own days ; but the system 
 of skeleton regiments means always unreadiness for 
 war. In the haste and urgency of the first hostilities 
 all the trained men are swept into a few battalions, 
 so as to fill up their empty ranks ; those few bat- 
 talions are sent into action ; in six months they are 
 so much reduced by losses as to be ineffective ; and 
 you are left with nothing but recruits who need two 
 or three years to convert them into soldiers. This 
 has happened again and again, and the first instance 
 of it came in 1701. In November 1700 the accept- 
 ance of the throne of Spain for his grandson by 
 Louis XIV roused all Europe to arms ; and Louis 
 to secure his object invaded Spanish Flanders, 
 surrounded several towns which were occupied, 
 under the Treaty of 1697, by Dutch troops, and so 
 
64 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 cut off fifteen thousand of WiUiam's best men. 
 Under a former treaty of alliance with Holland 
 England was bound to furnish to her ten thousand 
 men, and both Houses of Parliament prepared 
 faithfully to fulfil the obligation. Twelve battahons 
 were accordingly ordered to the Low Countries 
 from Ireland, eked out of course by a great many 
 young soldiers, but with a fair leaven of old ones; and 
 the country flattered itself that it would escape with 
 no further burden. But, as usual. Parliament had 
 forgotten the Empire. Bad news came just at the 
 same moment from the West Indies, and it was 
 imperative to send two thousand more men to that 
 quarter. Thus at one fell swoop the garrison of 
 Ireland was snatched away, and it was necessary to 
 raise at once ten thousand new recruits and four new 
 battalions. Before the end of the year Louis XIV 
 recognised the son of James II as King of England ; 
 and Parliament, at last roused to indignation, 
 agreed to furnish a contingent of forty thousand 
 men — eighteen thousand British, and the rest 
 foreigners. Thereupon orders were issued for the 
 raising of fifteen more new regiments, at enormous 
 expense ; for, in consequence of the ill-treatment 
 of the army by Parliament at the close of the 
 last war, men could not be tempted to enlist except 
 by large bounties. In 1703 the English share in 
 the contest extended to the Spanish Peninsula, and 
 
li] JOHN CHURCHILL 65 
 
 eight new regiments were raised for the purpose. In 
 1704 the capture of Gibraltar and other operations 
 demanded the levying of six more regiments ; in 
 1706 thirteen new regiments were added ; and to 
 make a long story short, before the war ended in 
 1713 sixty -nine new corps of horse and foot had been 
 formed to carry on the war. 
 
 But we must not leave that war without a sketch 
 of the greatest of English generals who conducted 
 it. John Churchill was born, you remember, in 
 1650, received his first commission in the Guards in 
 1667, saw active service against the Moors in Tangier 
 a year or two later, and serious warfare in 1672 
 against the United Provinces under Conde, Turenne 
 and Luxemburg, continuing to serve them under the 
 colours of Louis XIV, as was not uncommon at the 
 time, until 1677. In the course of those five years 
 he learned his work under the great master Turenne, 
 while fighting another great master, Montecuculi, 
 In 1689 he commanded a small contingent of 
 British troops against the French once more in 
 Flanders ; besides which, saving a httle work in 
 Ireland, he was employed no more by WiUiam 
 until 1698 ; being suspected, I fear with justice, of 
 treasonable relations with the exiled King James II. 
 Finally in 1702 he was appointed to the command 
 of the Allied Forces in the Low Countries, thus 
 finding himself for the first time a general-in-chief 
 
 F. M, H. 6 
 
66 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 at the age of fifty- two. In those days of bad roads 
 there were few districts where armies could keep 
 the field, owing to the difficulty of feeding them ; 
 for a campaign, as I told you in my first lecture, is 
 a picnic. The delta of the Rhine and Meuse was 
 a cock-pit because it was in the first place rich in 
 food, and in the second traversed by navigable 
 rivers and canals, which made the transport of 
 victuals, of heavy guns, and of ammunition com- 
 paratively easy. But being a cock-pit, its water- 
 ways were studded with innumerable fortresses, 
 constructed to prevent ingress into France from 
 the north, and into what we now call Belgium but 
 which in Marlborough's time was known as the 
 Austrian Netherlands, from the south. Hence it 
 naturally followed that a war in that quarter signified 
 a war of sieges ; and the French Court was fond of 
 sieges, because it could attend them in state and 
 take charge of the operations with much glory and 
 httle discomfort or danger. It must be added that 
 incessant warfare in that unfortunate country had 
 made every feature in it so familiar, that the ordinary 
 tactical and strategical movements in it were as well 
 known as the moves on a chess-board. 
 
 It was a mark of Marlborough's originality of 
 mind that on this familiar ground he contrived 
 always to do something unexpected. Had he not 
 been hampered by disloyal Dutch Generals and 
 
II] MARCH TO BLENHEIM 67 
 
 timid Dutch deputies, who controlled the Dutch 
 contingent of his army and therefore the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief also, he would have driven the 
 French out of Flanders in two campaigns. As it 
 was, these so-called allies deliberately foiled him 
 again and again ; and, since the French arms had 
 been uniformly successful against the Imperial 
 troops on the Upper Rhine and Danube, the way 
 to Vienna was by the year 1704 practically open 
 to the French armies. Then it was that Marl- 
 borough, seeing that the case was desperate, con- 
 ceived the magnificent idea of a march of some 
 three hundred miles from the Low Countries to 
 join the Imperial army on the Danube. The 
 difficulties were immense. In the first place he 
 had to gain permission from numbers of petty 
 princes to pass through their territory ; in the 
 second he had to provide magazines of food and 
 clothing for his army all along the line of march, 
 as weU as money to pay them with ; and all this 
 he had to do with secrecy and circumspection for, 
 in the third place, it was essential that the French 
 armies should gain no inkling of his intentions, 
 but should be absolutely deceived by his movements 
 until he was so far advanced upon his way that he 
 could not be caught. It seems impossible that 
 such a thing could have been done ; but done it 
 was ; and the two victories of the Schellenberg 
 
 5—2 
 
68 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 and of Blenheim were the result. Moreover, this 
 campaign, though the most celebrated because of 
 its extreme originality and boldness, by no means 
 stands alone as an example of Marlborough's sur- 
 passing skill in the field. You may go through 
 the whole of the campaigns that he fought in 
 Flanders, ten in all ; and in every one you will find 
 some salient feature which betrays the master. 
 The forcing of the French lines on the Geete in 
 1705 ; the feint which beguiled Vendome into a 
 fatal blunder at Ramillies in 1700 ; the wonderful 
 march before Oudenarde in 1708 ; the investment 
 of Toumay in 1709 ; the amazing wiles by which 
 he turned the lines of La Bassee in 1711 — any one 
 of these achievements would suffice to make the 
 fortune of an ordinary general. 
 
 What then were the qualities which made 
 Marlborough so astonishingly successful in the 
 field — and not in the field only — ^for you must 
 remember that he was no less great as a diploma- 
 tist than as a general ? First I should say what 
 Wellington t-ermed his strong cool common-sense. 
 This sounds perhaps a small matter to you ; but 
 what after all is common-sense ? It is above aU 
 the faculty of seeing things as they are, and of 
 framing your action accordingly. The faculty of 
 seeing things as they are, swift, true and penetrat- 
 ing insight into the heart of things, undistracted 
 
II] COURAGE AND INSIGHT 69 
 
 by their outward semblance — this, whether it be 
 the attribute of statesman, general, poet or painter, 
 is genius. And to frame your actions, as a man 
 of action, upon real insight, what does that mean ? 
 It means transcendent moral courage, the courage 
 of faith in one's own judgement, the courage to 
 depart from beaten tracks, the courage to brave 
 the disapprobation of those who cannot do without 
 such tracks, the courage, in a good sense ^ to take 
 liberties. It is the union of courage with insight 
 which makes a man original. And there was 
 another form of genius which Marlborough pos- 
 sessed in a supreme degree, the faculty of taking 
 infinite pains. When his army started for the 
 Danube not a man knew whither he was bound ; 
 yet at every stage food was ready for all, and at 
 certain points shoes to replace those worn out on 
 the march, and money to provide the troops with 
 pay. For, as Marlborough well knew, soldiers 
 who have not what they need will help themselves, 
 and plunder means indiscipline, and indiscipline 
 turns an army into a rabble. Any officer can flog 
 and shoot and punish, and say that he enforces 
 discipline ; but a good officer prefers to enforce it 
 by removing all temptation to indiscipline. Next, 
 Marlborough possessed in a transcendent degree 
 the divine gift of patience — patience which 
 conquers all things. His temper was almost 
 
70 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 miraculously placid and calm. Time aft^r time 
 the Dutch deputies thwarted his shrewdest strokes 
 and most briUiant combmations ; and time after 
 time he endured their maddening mischief without 
 a murmur, without even a semblance of displeasure, 
 waiting for better times, and preferring to bear 
 almost any mortification rather than endanger 
 the common cause. There are few things greater 
 in Marlborough than this. " I would not have 
 that man's temper for the world,'' he is reported 
 to have remarked when watching a groom who was 
 fighting his horse in the saddle. So strongly 
 marked was this characteristic that when once, 
 in order to deceive his enemy, he grew from day 
 to day more cantankerous and pretended at last 
 to lose all self-control, his army declared sorrow- 
 fully that Corporal John had lost his wits. And 
 this epithet — Corporal John — brings me to the last 
 great gift of Marlborough, his extraordinary personal 
 charm. It nowhere appears that he laid himself 
 out particularly to attract his feUow-creatures ; 
 but not one of them could resist him. His men 
 adored him. It was not only that he enjoyed their 
 confidence as a successful leader ; but that he 
 commanded their affection. And others shared 
 this feeling as strongly as the soldiers. In 1705 
 he narrowly escaped capture by a maraudmg party 
 of French. On his arrival at the Hague after the 
 
II] CORPORAL JOHN 71 
 
 incident the whole population, high and low, turned 
 out to welcome him, the poor crowding round him 
 with tears of joy and kissing even his horse and his 
 boots. Of course there is a dark side to his char- 
 acter, and much has been made of his avarice and 
 his treachery. But I have noticed that men who 
 begin with nothing and rise to great estate, as did 
 Marlborough, are apt to be careful of sixpences to 
 the very end ; and I do not know that it is to their 
 discredit. It is certain too that he declined even 
 to look at an enormous bribe offered by Louis XIV 
 to obtain an advantageous peace. Moreover, you 
 will find that at all times and in all countries while 
 the issue of a struggle between two dynasties is 
 still doubtful, men tend to keep upon friendly 
 terms with both. I do not say that this trait is 
 a beautiful or an honourable one ; but that it is 
 the rule and not the exception is beyond doubt ; 
 and we must take poor human nature as we find it. 
 Fortunate are we when we find this weakness 
 redeemed by such great quaUties as were possessed 
 by Marlborough. 
 
 The Peace of Utrecht which brought the war 
 to an end was, as you remember, the work of the 
 Tories, who had succeeded in ousting the Whigs 
 and disgracing Marlborough. Before the Treaty 
 had been signed, they had reduced the British 
 establishment to twenty-two thousand men ; and, 
 
72 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 when the Whigs returned to power upon the acces- 
 sion of George I in 1714, they continued the evil 
 work which the Tories had begun. By 1719 the 
 estabHshment had been reduced to twelve thousand 
 men, making with the same number in Ireland a 
 nominal total of twenty-four thousand. Yet the 
 Treaty had added to the Empire Gibraltar, Minorca, 
 Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, all of which required 
 garrisons ; there was no police in the British Isles ; 
 the organisation of the Militia was so antiquated 
 that the force was absolutely useless ; and there 
 was always danger, as the country experienced in 
 1715, of a Jacobite rising in Scotland. Moreover, 
 the original system of defence in the West Indies 
 was rapidly becoming obsolete ; and it was pretty 
 evident that the burden must shortly be trans- 
 ferred to the Imperial forces. No consideration 
 could move the British Parliament to accept the 
 Army as a necessary institution. Walpole in 1722 
 at last insisted that the British Establishment 
 should be raised permanently to eighteen thousand 
 men ; but even so it would have been impossible 
 to collect ten thousand for any emergency without 
 leaving the royal palaces and strong places un- 
 guarded. Yet Parliament, not content with 
 keeping an inadequate army, insisted also that it 
 should be inefficient. In Ireland, from want of 
 billeting accommodation, barracks had been built 
 
II] A CANTING PHRASE 73 
 
 for the troops ; but nothing could persuade ParUa- 
 ment to extend the same system to England. No ! 
 the regiments must be broken up and scattered 
 among ale-houses, '' in order that the people might 
 feel the burden that lay upon them." Moreover, 
 hon. members conceived that ale-houses grew as 
 abundantly at Gibraltar, Nova Scotia and New- 
 foundland as in England ; and could hardly be 
 brought to house the garrisons of these places 
 adequately. Scores of men died in all these spots 
 from exposure — and why ? Because the nation 
 had laid itself in bondage to a canting phrase. This 
 ill-treatment of the soldiers, joined to perpetual 
 reviling of the military profession, of course made 
 the Army unpopular. Men were unwilling to enlist 
 and very ready to desert, which led in turn to high 
 bounties to tempt recruits ; and this again led to 
 fraudulent enlistment and hideous waste of money. 
 Of all the cant that ever was canted in this canting 
 world none is so cantful as the assertion that neglect 
 of miHtary precaution is economy. Yet the British 
 people after two centuries' experience of its false- 
 hood still hugs the notion passionately to its 
 bosom. 
 
 The peace was broken in 1739 by a sudden 
 outburst of national cupidity for the wealth of 
 Spain ; but from this point, where the struggle 
 for Empire becomes acute, I shall in this lecture 
 
74 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 confine myself to our wars in Europe only, leaving 
 those in the Colonies and in India for two future 
 lectures. Before the quarrel with Spain was fairly 
 ended, we found ourselves entangled in the War 
 of the Austrian Succession, with an obligation to 
 furnish sixteen thousand men to uphold the cause 
 of Maria Theresa. British and French, by a curious 
 fiction, were engaged at the outset only as auxili- 
 aries upon either side ; and they actually fought 
 the battle of Dettingen before war had been formally 
 declared between them. From the spring of 1744, 
 however, they met as principals and, since the 
 French had been triumphantly driven from Ger- 
 many at the end of 1743, on the familiar ground of 
 the Austrian Netherlands. The British contingent 
 was increased from sixteen thousand men in 1743 to 
 twenty-five thousand in 1745, the balance of the 
 force being composed of Dutch and Austrians ; 
 but this strength in the field, trifling though it was, 
 was only attained by reducing the garrisons of Great 
 Britain to fifteen thousand men, mostly raw recruits. 
 The Duke of Cumberland on the 11th of May, 1745, 
 fought and lost a murderous battle at Fontenoy ; 
 and in July there came the astounding news that 
 Prince Charles Edward had landed in Scotland and 
 was gathering the Highland clans about him. In 
 the whole of North Britain there were only three 
 thousand untrained men who wore the red coat ; 
 
II] THE FORTY FIVE 75 
 
 and bold action combined with good fortune on 
 the part of Prince Charles soon filled these with 
 the spirit of panic. Within little more than two 
 months he was at Edinburgh and, but for the garri- 
 sons of the Castle of Stirling and one or two lesser 
 strongholds, master of the country. Urgent mes- 
 sengers were sent to Cumberland in Flanders for 
 reinforcements ; and not EngUsh troops only, but 
 Dutch and Hessians, were hurried across the German 
 Ocean to save the throne of the Guelphs. There 
 was every reason to dread lest the remnant of the 
 army in Flanders, reduced to utter weakness by the 
 loss of these detachments, should be overwhelmed 
 by the French ; but fortunately the enemy took 
 no advantage of their opportunity. Meanwhile 
 Charles by skiKul manoeuvring evaded the troops 
 opposed to him and reached Derby ; and there now 
 seemed to be nothing to prevent him from entering 
 London. Fearing, however, the closing in of the 
 British forces in his rear, and hearing that French 
 troops had landed at Montrose to join him, he 
 retired once more to Scotland ; nor was it until 
 he had won two or three further small actions, that 
 he was finally and hopelessly defeated at CuUoden. 
 By that time, though he had landed originally with 
 but seven companions and had never commanded 
 more than seven or eight thousand mostly undisci- 
 plined men, he had kept the bulk of the British Army 
 
76 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 employed for over nine months, and had beaten 
 several detachments of it handsomely. The episode 
 is generally treated as a romantic adventure ; but 
 it is reaUy one of the most discreditable to be found 
 in our history ; and it was due entirely to the fanatics, 
 both Whig and Tory, who were always clamouring 
 against a standing army. 
 
 After the defeat of the insurgents the war was 
 continued in the Low Countries, where the Allies 
 sustained two more defeats, until in 1748, owing to 
 the exhaustion of all parties, it was closed by the 
 Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, leaving the French and 
 English at the end very much as they had been at 
 the beginning. In a way it might seem that the 
 British had been dragged into the contest mainly 
 on account of the Kingdom of Hanover, but, as 
 we shall see in a future lecture, the war resolved 
 itself into a continuation of the struggle with France 
 for the possession of the new world. That struggle 
 in fact never ceased over the seas, both east and 
 west, and early in 1756 it came to an issue in open 
 war. As usual England was unready. German 
 troops were actually imported for the defence of the 
 realm ; Minorca was taken by the French ; every- 
 thing went wrong in America ; and the state of affairs 
 seemed to be desperate. At last a competent 
 Minister, William Pitt the elder, was raised to power 
 and from that moment things began to improve. 
 
II] MINDEN AND WARBURG 77 
 
 The foreign troops were sent back to Germany ; 
 their place was taken by Militia ; and an immense 
 levy of recruits was begun for the increase of the 
 regular Army. In the year 1756 France, Austria, 
 Russia and Sweden leagued themselves together 
 to crush Frederick the Great ; and Pitt, perceiving 
 that America might be conquered in Germany, 
 decided to send a contingent of British troops, 
 together with Hanoverians and Hessians, to Frede- 
 rick's assistance. Moreover, as we had no competent 
 general of our own, he asked Frederick to provide 
 one ; and thus for the first time British troops were 
 placed under the command of a foreign general for 
 service on the Continent. Few people know anything 
 of the campaigns of Ferdinand of Brunswick, though 
 they are distinguished by two of the finest per- 
 formances of the British soldier : of the infantry 
 at Minden, and of the cavalry at Warburg. And 
 the reason of this is that, as I have said, the expe- 
 dition, so far as England was concerned, was a 
 diversion to help her to the conquest of the Empire. 
 That conquest proceeded apace during the years 
 1759 to 1762, and by the end of the latter year we 
 had expelled the French from Canada, India and 
 the West Indies, besides depriving the Spaniards 
 of Havana and Manila. The process demanded 
 a great number of troops, for seventy-five per 
 cent, of the men in the West Indies died or were 
 
78 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 incapacitated for further service, and it is here that 
 we strike the weak point of Pitt's military adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 The great Minister saw the importance of re- 
 organising the Militia, though as a matter of fact 
 he never enforced his own scheme 'of passing all 
 able-bodied men through the ranks — or in other 
 words of instituting national service. But he 
 never matured nor even considered (so far as we 
 can discover) any sound scheme for maintaining 
 the voluntary army that was serving abroad. His 
 only plan was to name a certain sum for bounty, 
 and scatter broadcast commissions to any individuals 
 who would undertake to raise independent companies 
 or regiments. In this way the nominal strength of 
 the Army was brought up to one hundred and fifty 
 battalions of infantry and thirty-two of cavalry, 
 the numbered regiments of infantry being as many 
 as one hundred and twenty-four. Comparatively 
 few of these new regiments survived, because they 
 had been formed simply and solely to be broken 
 up immediately and drafted into other battaUons. 
 But what did this mean ? It meant in the first 
 place that hundreds of officers went about the 
 country trying to make money out of the recruiting 
 business by obtaining recruits for less than the pre- 
 scribed bounty, and pocketing the difference. It 
 meant secondly that crimps arose by the score who 
 
II] PITT'S BLUNDER 79 
 
 contracted to supply recruits to these officers, of 
 course at a considerable projfit to themselves, and 
 that thus there were so to speak two middlemen 
 to be paid out of the bounty as well as the recruit. 
 The inevitable result was that the country paid 
 vast sums to obtain worn-out old men, half-witted 
 lads and weedy boys, who were absolutely useless 
 in the field, and served only to fill graves and hos- 
 pitals. Moreover, it was saddled with the obhgation 
 of giving half-pay to field-officers, captains and even 
 subalterns, who had gained their rank by the simple 
 process of a bargain with the crimps. Meanwhile 
 the recruits, being enlisted not for some old corps 
 with a regimental history and a regimental pride 
 of its own, but for some ephemeral battalion which 
 was dispersed as soon as formed, felt no sentiment 
 of honour in their calling and deserted right and 
 left. One consequence of this exceedingly wasteful 
 system was that the resources of England both in 
 money and men were exhausted before peace was 
 made, and that the war could not have been carried 
 on for another twelve months even if it had been 
 necessary. But yet more fatal than this was the 
 misfortune that the system, owing to its supposed 
 success, received consecration from the great name 
 of Pitt. In the bitter struggle with France which 
 began in 1793 and ended at Waterloo I have 
 said that France squandered men to save money, 
 
80 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 and that England squandered money to save men. 
 The elder Pitt squandered both money and men. 
 
 The conclusion of peace in 1763 found England 
 in possession of Gibraltar and Minorca in Europe ; 
 Bermuda, the Bahamas, several West Indian Islands 
 and practically the entire continent of North America 
 east of the Rocky Mountains from the mouth of the 
 St Lawrence in the north to the Lower Mississippi 
 in the south. I omit the name of India, for that 
 is a subject to be treated separately. The military 
 establishment of England and Ireland for the defence 
 of this vast Empire was fixed at about forty-five 
 thousand men, two-thirds of them roughly speaking 
 at home, and one -third abroad. This was neither 
 more nor less than madness ; yet nevertheless many 
 were found, so great a man as Burke among them, 
 to condemn the " huge increase " as they called it 
 of the Army. But this was not the worst. Prices 
 generally had risen and the pay of the soldier was 
 too small for his subsistence ; wherefore recruits 
 could hardly be obtained by any shift, and the ranks 
 of regiments were miserably empty. Reeling under 
 the burden of the debts bequeathed by the late war, 
 England proposed to the Colonies that they should 
 share that burden with her. The North American 
 provinces admitted the justice of the claim but 
 made no effort to meet it ; whereupon the British 
 Government, after exhausting all expedients for 
 
II] THE AMERICAN REBELLION 81 
 
 obtaining a contribution from them, fell back upon 
 the only possible solution of the problem — impartial 
 taxation of all the Colonies by Act of the Imperial 
 Parliament, with a special provision that every 
 penny of the money so raised should be spent in 
 the Colonies themselves. A faction in the Colonies 
 raised a loud outcry over this ; and the question, 
 owing to mismanagement in England and to the 
 provocative violence of the American agitators, 
 finally issued in war between Mother-country and 
 Colonies. 
 
 The task of bringing America to submission by 
 force of arms was a military operation beyond the 
 strength of any nation in the world at that time, 
 and very far beyond that of England as she was in 
 1775. No effort was made to augment the Army 
 until hostilities had actually broken out, and con- 
 sequently there were no troops at hand. Recruiting, 
 moreover, was so difficult, owing to the insufficiency 
 of the pay, that the country resorted to the hiring 
 of German mercenaries and to the transfer of Hano- 
 verian battalions to Gibraltar and Minorca, so as 
 to release four British battalions from thence. 
 Faction violently obstructed all military measures 
 until a great disaster to our arms in 1777 made it 
 practically certain that France would declare war ; 
 but then, in spite of all the ravings of the King's 
 enemies at home, patriotic feeling prevailed, and 
 
 W M. H. 6 
 
82 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 fifteen thousand men in new regiments were raised 
 by private subscription alone. Troubles multiplied 
 now on all sides ; troubles in India, in Ireland, in 
 Great Britain, everywhere. France declared war 
 in 1778, Spain in 1779; Holland became an open 
 enemy in 1780 ; and the Northern Powers formed 
 an Armed Neutrahty to curb our pretensions at sea. 
 What with regular troops and embodied militia we had 
 more than one hundred and eighty thousand British 
 soldiers afoot, besides some twenty thousand Ger- 
 mans ; but this was not enough. Our preparations, 
 thanks to Parliament's eternal jealousy of the Army, 
 were made too late. Our military policy was 
 wrong, for we dispersed our forces so as to endeavour 
 to hold every point ; and thus we were everywhere 
 overmatched. The war ended with the loss of 
 America and very nearly of India also ; of Minorca 
 in Europe, of Senegal and Goree in West Africa, 
 and of St Lucia and Tobago in the West Indies. 
 
 It might be supposed that England, after such 
 a disastrous lesson, would have set her military house 
 in order. Nothing was further from the thoughts of 
 the Ministry which governed her after the conclusion 
 of peace. They — Lord North and Mr Fox — were 
 in such a hurry to get rid of the Army that they dis- 
 charged every man that they could, and allowed the 
 garrison of England to sink below seven thousand 
 men. By this time India demanded a garrison of 
 
II] THE YOUNGER PITT 83 
 
 over six thousand men, and the Colonies still left 
 to us, together with Gibraltar, twelve thousand 
 more. Besides these, the estimates allowed for 
 thirty -two thousand men in Great Britain and 
 Ireland ; but not above half of them were forth- 
 coming because recruits would not enhst ; and the 
 reason why they did not enlist was because their 
 pay was insufficient to keep them from starving. 
 William Pitt the younger took over the adminis- 
 tration in 1784, and did admirable service in setting 
 the national finance upon a sound footing, but would 
 do nothing for the Army. A dangerous war in 
 India compelled him to allow some new regiments 
 to be raised at the expense of the East India Com- 
 pany •, but though thrice in seven years the country 
 was on the verge of an European war, he did nothing 
 for the British soldier until 1792 when he grudgingly 
 doled out to him a small pittance. He suffered the 
 mihtia to decay in number and efficiency ; and he 
 almost destroyed the discipline of the regular troops 
 by failing to provide them with a military head. 
 In 1789 the French Revolution broke out, and the 
 course of events in France was in itself enough to 
 demand some increase of our military resources ; 
 but even so late as at the close of 1792 he actually 
 reduced the British establishment. Within a very 
 few months he found himself dragged into a war 
 which to all intents did not end until 1815. 
 
 6—2 
 
84 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 Pitt's idea was to compel France to submission 
 by taking all her Colonies and ruining all her com- 
 merce ; but it was necessary to send troops at short 
 notice to Holland in order to hearten the Dutch to 
 resistance ; and, as there were no others to send, 
 he despatched the Guards. The remainder of the 
 Army, most excellent men but very few in number, 
 he hurried off to the West Indies. This done, he 
 set to work to make the Army, which should have 
 been ready made, according to his father's methods 
 by large bounties and giving commissions to any 
 who would raise companies and regiments. End- 
 less corps of weakly men were thus created, and 
 endless bad officers admitted to the service. The 
 old soldiers in the West Indies did their work admir- 
 ably, but perished almost to a man, as I shaU explain 
 to you in another lecture. In the Low Countries 
 also, where the British were not fairly used by the 
 AUies under whose command they were working, 
 the old soldiers were soon used up ; and we were 
 left without any Army. Even at home, where 
 there was some peril of invasion, Pitt did not pass 
 the nation through the ranks of the Mihtia, as 
 he should have done, but either enlisted soldiers 
 voluntarily for home service only, or permitted the 
 citizens to enrol themselves in innumerable little 
 useless bodies of Volunteers. The operations in 
 the Low Countries ^ded disastrously. In the West 
 
II] THE DUKE OF YORK 85 
 
 Indies practically the whole of the captured islands 
 were recaptured by the French ; and at the close 
 of three years of war Pitt had expended many 
 millions of money, and had nothing to show for it 
 whatever. 
 
 By great exertions and appalling sacrifice of 
 life the lost ground in the West Indies was re- 
 covered by a rabble of young soldiers, who died like 
 flies as soon as the campaign was over ; and once 
 again we were left without an army. The climax 
 came in 1797 when the Navy mutinied, owing to 
 the small pay and ill-treatment meted out to it ; 
 and it was thought safer, when matters were set 
 right, to raise the pay of the Army also. Now at 
 last there appeared a man who began to set things 
 in order. The Duke of York, second son of King 
 George III, took the post of Commander-in-Chief 
 at the Horse Guards ; reorganised, or rather created, 
 a competent staff at head-quarters, set his face 
 steadily against Pitt's vile methods of raising 
 recruits, and restored the discipline of the Army. 
 In 1799 the declining fortunes of France and the 
 successes of a new coalition against her stimulated 
 Pitt to find some new method of recruiting the Army. 
 He resolved to turn to the Militia as a training 
 ground for the regular troops ; and the Duke of 
 York insisted that the soldiers so raised should be 
 formed into second battalions for existing regiments 
 
86 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 instead of being framed into new corps. Thirty-six 
 thousand of them were hurried off to Holland with- 
 out clothing, supplies or transport, and after three 
 or four barren victories and one serious reverse, 
 were thankful to return again under a capitulation. 
 They had been required to do impossibilities and 
 had failed. In the following year the same men, 
 much improved in discipline, were kept idle when 
 they ought to have been fighting as allies with the 
 Austrians in Italy ; and thus Napoleon was enabled 
 to win the victory of Marengo, which made his fortune 
 as First Consul, and allowed him to trouble Europe 
 for another fifteen years. However in 1801 England 
 at last restored her reputation a little by a brilliant 
 campaign in Egypt and the capture of the French 
 army in that country. To all intents this was our 
 one solid success in nine years of fighting. Never 
 was there more gross mismanagement of a war by 
 any Minister. 
 
 After a short truce, war broke out again in 1803, 
 Pitt was not then in power, but was the patron 
 and more or less the adviser of Addington's weak 
 administration. That was the period when Napo- 
 leon made great and serious preparations for an 
 invasion of England ; and it was necessary to take 
 unprecedented measures for home defence. Instead 
 of thinking out some plan for training the entire 
 manhood of the nation to arms, expanding the 
 
II] ADDINGTON'S BLUNDERS 87 
 
 Militia and compelling every man to serve in it, 
 Addington and his colleagues devised a system 
 which was one long tissue of absurdities. They 
 began by instituting a ballot for fifty thousand 
 Militia, but permitted the ballotted men to provide 
 substitutes instead of serving in person. The price 
 of substitutes soon rose to £30, ten times the amount 
 of the bounty offered to recruits for the Regular 
 Army ; and as a natural consequence all the men 
 who should have enlisted in the Army were drawn 
 into the Militia, while the men who should have 
 served in the Militia did not serve at all. Having 
 failed to raise fifty thousand Militia, Ministers 
 asked for twenty-five thousand more on the same 
 terms, which raised the price of substitutes still 
 higher. They then asked for corps of Volunteers 
 upon very favourable conditions, and then ordained 
 that fifty thousand more men should be raised by 
 ballot, once again with substitution permitted, and 
 should be formed into second battalions to the Regular 
 Army. They next passed an Act compelling all 
 able-bodied men to undergo compulsory training, 
 unless a certain proportion came forward as Volun- 
 teers upon less favourable terms than those offered 
 to the first Volunteers. Thus there were three 
 different kinds of ballotted men and two different 
 kinds of Volunteers. The result was that recruiting 
 for the Regular Army was killed, at great expense, 
 
88 . MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 while the whole of the levies were failures ; and 
 the only reason was that the Government had not 
 the courage to insist upon the country's undoubted 
 right to the service of every able-bodied citizen for 
 her defence. 
 
 Addington was swept out of office ; and Pitt 
 came in again. He brought in a bill to form a new 
 army of Reserve, which was an utter failure ; and he 
 then feU back on the old expedient of offering a, 
 bounty to Militiamen to enlist in the Regulars. 
 In this way, which was faithfully followed until 
 the close of the war in 1814, he raised some semblance 
 of an Army ; but he did not know how to use it, 
 and he died in January, 1806, thinking the cause 
 of Europe hopeless. A Ministry which included 
 most of the ablest men in England was formed 
 upon his death ; and they introduced an Act for 
 national training to arms, excellent in principle 
 but not properly worked out in detail, and abolished 
 the Volunteers. This was a step in the right direc- 
 tion, but was taken too late. The Mmistry of All 
 the Talents, as it was caUed, resigned early in 1807 ; 
 and then at last the War Office passed into the 
 hands of a capable man, Lord Castlereagh. He 
 began by taking forty thousand men from the 
 Militia into the Regular Army, and raising as many 
 — ^by extremely drastic methods — to refill the empty 
 ranks of the Militia. He then devised a scheme 
 
II] AN ARMY AT LAST 89 
 
 which unfortunately was not enforced, for making 
 national training a reality ; and finally he established 
 a new Militia called the Local MiUtia of two hundred 
 thousand men for home defence, keeping the old 
 Militia to furnish recruits for the Regular Army. 
 
 Thus for the first time in our history there was 
 a Regular Army of from forty to fifty thousand men, 
 fit to go anywhere and do anything, together with 
 the means of refilling their ranks as fast as they were 
 depleted by active service. 
 
 The number was small but, properly employed, 
 it could be of great use. In 1807 Napoleon had 
 shamelessly and treacherously invaded Spain and 
 Portugal. In 1808 the people of both countries 
 rose against the invaders, and England's one army 
 was sent to support them. I told you in my first 
 lecture that a campaign was like a picnic ; but our 
 European campaigns of any importance had hither- 
 to been confined to the cockpits, where food was 
 abundant and wars so frequent that contractors 
 could always be found to look to the food-supply. 
 The Peninsula is a very different country, com- 
 prehending a few fertile districts only together with 
 a vast deal of barren mountain — a country, accord- 
 ing to a well-known saying, where small armies were 
 beaten and large armies were starved. The French 
 armies in Spain were large armies, amounting to 
 three hundred thousand men, and the Spanish 
 
90 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 troops, badly led and badly organised, could make 
 no stand against them. How could the British hope 
 with forty thousand men or less to combat three 
 hundred thousand ? In this way. The population 
 of the Peninsula was so bitterly hostile to the in- 
 vaders that the French could not be said to have 
 any hold of the country, except of such part of it 
 as was actually occupied b}^ their soldiers. It was 
 therefore to the interest of the French, in order to 
 feed their troops as well as to hold down the 
 Spaniards, that their armies should be scattered 
 as much as possible. The very wise and sagacious 
 soldier. Sir Arthur Wellesley, who was charged with 
 the command of our army, reasoned as follows. 
 We have a port of entry and a base of operations at 
 Lisbon, to which we can send by sea everything 
 that we want. Being also masters at sea we can 
 prevent the French from making any use of it ; and 
 they must bring into Spain by land everything that 
 they want. The roads are very bad, so that this in 
 itself wiU be a heavy task ; and there are so many 
 dangerous defiles to be passed that the Spaniards 
 may always lie in wait to capture French convoys. 
 There is one great advantage for us. 
 
 Now as long as we have forty thousand men at 
 Lisbon, the French must always keep rather more 
 in a compact body to watch us, which means that 
 they must collect fifty or sixty thousand men 
 
II] WELLINGTON'S PLANS 91 
 
 together instead of leaving them dispersed to hold the 
 country down ; which means in its turn that so long 
 as I remain in their front, there must be Spaniards 
 unsubdued and ready to do mischief to their out- 
 lying posts and scattered detachments in their rear. 
 Very weU. But what if the French assemble a very 
 large force, and try to overwhelm me once for all ? 
 They cannot take a very large force by any one 
 route, because they live on the country and the 
 country will not support them ; but if they bring 
 sixty thousand against my forty thousand, I can 
 stop them. Twenty-five miles north of Lisbon is 
 ground that can be made so strong that even Portu- 
 guese Militia could hold it, under good leadership, 
 especially with my army to back them. Moreover 
 the Portuguese have an ancient law that provides 
 for the desertion of all villages, the driving off of all 
 cattle, and the removal of all grain — in fact the 
 laying waste of their country — before an invader. 
 If then the French advance against me in Portugal, 
 I shall retire before them to my fortified lines, 
 leaving the country a waste behind me. If they 
 attack me, all the better. I shall beat them. If 
 they sit down in front of me, I have no objection. 
 I shall have all the resources of the world behind 
 me at Lisbon, while they will onlj^ have a devastated 
 wilderness behind them. They may wait for a time, 
 but they wiU have to send their troops further and 
 
92 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 further afield to scrape together food, and the pea- 
 sants will cut the throats of all stragglers. Sickness 
 will increase among their soldiers for want of proper 
 nourishment ; their numbers will faU lower and 
 lower and lower ; and at last sheer starvation 
 will compel them to retreat. 
 
 And now, mark how I shall get the better of 
 them. I shall provide my army with the means of 
 carrying victuals with it. The task will be extra- 
 ordinarily difficult, for the country is rough and the 
 roads so infamous that we cannot use wheeled 
 vehicles ; but I shall organise a vast train of twelve 
 to fifteen thousand mules to carry everything that 
 we want on their backs. The French, a body of 
 starving men, will have to hurry their retreat, for 
 they have to pass through a devastated country. 
 We, with our bellies full, shall be able to follow them 
 up and cut off thousands of weakly dispirited men. 
 In time they will reach the fortresses which they 
 hold on the Spanish frontier, and there we must 
 stop, while they go back still further to some fertile 
 district where they will find provisions. But their 
 army will be absolutely ruined for the time, weakened 
 by its losses and demoralised by its sufferings. As 
 I advance I shall establish magazines along the route 
 so that I may keep my army fed, and threaten their 
 fortresses. They wiU be obliged to re victual these 
 fortresses from time to time, and to do so in presence 
 
II] WELLINGTON'S PLANS 93 
 
 of my army they will have to collect once more fifty 
 or sixty thousand men, and leave the country be- 
 hind them to the mercy of the Spanish guerilla 
 bands. If I can stop them by fighting a general 
 action in a strong position with good hope of success, 
 I shall do so. If I cannot, I shall faU back once 
 more, burning or emptying my magazines, to play 
 the same game again. But the oftener I lead them 
 over the same country, the more it wiU be exhausted. 
 Their system of living on the country is very waste- 
 ful. The brutahty of their starving soldiers to the 
 peasantry is driving more and more land out of 
 cultivation ; and the time will come when they will 
 be unable to assemble their troops except at harvest, 
 but will be obliged to keep them dispersed all through 
 the winter in order to keep them alive. It will 
 take them three or four weeks to coUect, with 
 enormous difficulty, food and transport enough for 
 even a fortnight's campaign, and I shall use those 
 three or four weeks to make a swift and sudden 
 attack upon their fortresses ; for having the means 
 of feeding my troops, I can do so. They wiU be 
 obliged to look on helplessly until I have taken the 
 strong places; and, when at last they advance, 
 they wiU be unable to retake them, until they have 
 driven me back ; and I shall only retire until they 
 have exhausted their provisions, and shall then 
 advance again. 
 
94 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 From these fortresses I shall penetrate into Spain 
 to threaten other fortresses, rousing the whole 
 country more than ever against the French ; until 
 at last I compel them to loose their hold upon the 
 south of Spain, and concentrate a really gigantic 
 force against me. I shall then retreat as before to 
 Portugal. They will be unable to keep their 
 gigantic force for long together from want of food ; 
 and I shall begin the whole game all over again ; 
 while their men waste away by tens of thousands 
 from fatigue and hardship and incessant petty 
 attacks of the Spanish guerillas. It is only a ques- 
 tion of time before Napoleon is distracted by serious 
 operations outside Spain ; when once he begins to 
 reduce his army in the Peninsula, we shall gradually 
 drive it into France ; and then we shall see how 
 long Frenchmen will allow it to live on their own 
 country as it has lived on Spain. I for my part 
 shaU follow it up, paying punctually for everything 
 that I take, and allowing no plunder ; and we shall 
 see which army gets on the better. 
 
 There in a nutshell is the history of the Pen- 
 insular War. Does it not sound simple after the 
 event ? But think of the sagacity and insight of 
 the man who perceived all these possibilities before 
 the event ; and of the courage and force of character 
 which enabled him to carry his policy into effect. 
 Patience, the great attribute of Marlborough, was 
 
II] A GREAT COMMANDER 95 
 
 the quality which shone above all others in Wel- 
 lington. And remember that he had to subdue not 
 only himself to patience, but his army, and the 
 British nation, and the Spanish nation and the 
 Portuguese nation. Following his difficulties 
 through his correspondence one marvels how ever 
 he overcame them. The British Government, let 
 people sa}' what they will, supported him well in 
 the face of great obstacles and in the teeth of bitter 
 resistance from an unscrupulous Opposition ; but 
 they gained greatly from WelHngton's moral support. 
 Spain and Portugal had practically no government, 
 and such authority as existed was to a great extent 
 distributed among fools and knaves. In truth 
 Wellington really administered the government of 
 Portugal for four years, besides commanding the 
 British and Portuguese armies in the field. Never 
 allow yourselves to be abridged of your pride in 
 Wellington by petty detractors, British or foreign. 
 German and French writers, for some strange reason, 
 unite to decry him as a commander. Do not hsten 
 to them. Not one of them knows anything of any 
 of his campaigns except that of Waterloo. He was 
 a very great commander in every way, and beyond 
 all doubt (at least such is my opinion) the very 
 greatest of his time upon the actual field of battle. 
 He was not a genial character. He had none of 
 Marlborough's irresistible charm, which made even 
 
96 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 the privates call him Corporal John. He was never 
 loved by man nor woman, nor by any but children 
 not his own. By seK-imposed discipline — as I 
 beheve — rather than by nature he was cold, hard, 
 unsympathetic, and inclined to account the indi- 
 vidual man as nothing in comparison with the 
 sanctity of a principle. Hence he broke the heart 
 of more than one good officer who had served him 
 well. But he was incapable of anything common or 
 mean ; he was as hard to himself as to the humblest 
 of his subordinates ; and his conception of duty to 
 Sovereign and Country was so high, and at the same 
 time so spontaneous and natural, that his must 
 always remain the standard by which our public men 
 will be measured. No ! if any one ever presumes to 
 hint to you that Wellington was not a great man, 
 you may ask him if a small man could constrain 
 three nations for four years to patience, and raise 
 the standard of public duty for ever in his own 
 country. This is the centenary of his greatest 
 campaign and most brilliant military achievement ; 
 but long after they are forgotten men will repeat his 
 saying " The King's Government must be carried on." 
 After the twenty-three years of fighting con- 
 cluded at Waterloo people imagined that wars would 
 cease. There was much social and commercial 
 distress in England ; and as usual the British mind 
 fastened itseK upon the reduction of the Army as 
 
II] CRIMEAN WAR 97 
 
 the remedy for all evils. There arose also a political 
 
 sect which preached the inimitably absurd doctrine 
 
 that Free Trade would bring about universal peace. 
 
 The military and naval establishments were cut down 
 
 to a dangerously low figure ; and all the organisation, 
 
 which Wellington had created for the feeding of an 
 
 army, was allowed to decay. At last in 1854 came 
 
 the war in the Crimea ; and there was a repetition of all 
 
 that had happened in 1 792. A small number of very 
 
 fine regiments was with difficulty scraped together, 
 
 and sent to the East with no very definite idea as 
 
 to what they should do, and therefore necessarily 
 
 without preparation of any kind. Eventually the 
 
 troops were landed in the Crimea and marched upon 
 
 Sevastopol. They fought a few magnificent actions, 
 
 and perished of cold, want and exposure within ten 
 
 miles of the sea, of which we had absolute command. 
 
 It was therefore necessary to improvise a new army 
 
 by the old expedients of bounties, hiring foreign 
 
 mercenaries, and so forth. Hundreds of boys 
 
 were sent out to die after the old fashion ; and the 
 
 Militia were employed, with their own consent, to 
 
 take over part of the Mediterranean garrisons, 
 
 and to release the regular troops there for active 
 
 service. By dint of extravagant expenditure an 
 
 efficient army was formed within the space of two 
 
 years, just in time to witness the conclusion of peace. 
 
 That was our last European war. It woke us 
 
 F. M. H. 7 
 
98 • MU^ITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 up a little ; and we were still further roused by the 
 triumph of the Germans over the French in 1870. 
 We took our army more or less in hand, improved 
 the organisation by substituting regiments of two 
 battalions for regiments of one battalion, and intro- 
 duced a system of enlisting men not for twenty-one 
 years with the colours, but for seven with the colours 
 and five in the Reserve. The system worked badly 
 at first, when we had to provide troops for small 
 colonial expeditions ; but the faults were gradually 
 amended ; and the organisation stood the test 
 fairly well in 1899 and 1900 in South Africa. We 
 can now send 150,000 men abroad perfectly equipped, 
 which is more than we could ever do before ; but 
 other nations count their armies by millions, and in 
 reality we are as far behindhand as ever we were. 
 We have no means of replacing those 150,000 within 
 six months, which would be necessary in case of a 
 great war ; much less have we means of expanding 
 their numbers to twice 150,000 and keeping their 
 ranks filled ; and we have no efficient force of any 
 strength, not even the old Militia, for home defence, 
 while our 150,000 are abroad. Do not think that I 
 am "talking politics." I am only stating plain facts. 
 I cannot discuss, nor even propound, the questions 
 which these facts suggest ; but I cannot avoid the 
 assertion of the facts themselves, for they are 
 essential to our understanding of our subject — 
 they are indeed the pith of British military history. 
 
Ill] THE COLONIES 99 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 BRITISH COLONIAL CAMPAIGNS 
 
 I PROPOSE in my present lecture to deal with our 
 colonial campaigns at large. You will recognise at 
 once that a colonial campaign differs from other cam- 
 paigns in one essential point. One does not attempt 
 to form colonies in any but an empty or com- 
 paratively empty country, first because in any other 
 there is no room for colonists, and secondly because 
 a numerous native population may be subdued but 
 cannot be displaced. It is therefore imperative that 
 the indigenous inhabitants of a country, whither 
 settlers propose to emigrate, shall be few ; and it is 
 practically as imperative that, unless their numbers 
 are so scanty as to be negligible, they shall be of 
 inferior civilisation, so that they may not be able to 
 fight the settlers on equal terms. Now what do 
 inferiority of civilisation and paucity of numbers 
 mean, militarily speaking, to the civilised invader ? 
 They mean^ first of all, no roads or at the very best 
 rough tracks, and no bridges over rivers ; they mean 
 further rude cultivation and very small stores, if any, 
 of cereal food. This signifies in its turn that the 
 great problem of the campaign wiU be how to feed your 
 force in the field, or as we now call it the problem of 
 transport (for the campaign will be more than ever a 
 
 7—2 
 
100 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 picnic) and of supply. In the matter of actual com- 
 bat the uncivilised enemy will have the advantage 
 certainly of perfect adaptation to the climate, 
 intimate knowledge of the country, and generally 
 of stronger physical endurance, greater rapidity of 
 movement, and decided superiority in eyesight and 
 hearing. His disadvantages will be inferior organisa- 
 tion, inferior armament, and inexperience of the need 
 for providing a great multitude with food at a 
 distance from its provision-grounds. Speaking 
 generally the sound principle of savage warfare is 
 this — to equip yourself with a good service for 
 transport and supply, march up to your enemy, sit 
 down and fortify yourself in a strong position. 
 Your enemy must then do one of three things : 
 attack you, in which case he is sure to be defeated ; 
 move on ; or starve. He is not likely to attempt 
 attack after a lesson or two, and therefore as a rule 
 he will move on. You then move after him and sit 
 down again, destroying or appropriating his pro- 
 vision-grounds and capturing his cattle, as you find 
 opportunity. By this method you must infallibly 
 bring him to submission. It was thus that George 
 Monk subdued the Highlands. 
 
 It is not, however, by any means always possible 
 to pursue this policy. Your adversaries may be 
 dwellers in forests, such as the Red Indian ; or in 
 wooded mountains, such as the Kaffir and the Carib ; 
 
Ill] SAVAGE WARFARE 101 
 
 or defended in part by an arid wilderness, as are 
 the Soiidanis. Moreover they may be a people of 
 military instincts and organisation, with their own 
 skilful system of tactics, and a sense of honour which 
 prefers death to disgrace. Such were that most 
 gallant race, the Zulus. Or they may be of a magni- 
 ficent strength and stature with a fanatical contempt 
 for death, as the Dervishes. Or they may combine 
 something of the Zulu with their own very elaborate 
 system of fortification, as the Maoris. Each race 
 and country presents its own peculiar features and 
 problems, which need to be considered and solved 
 upon their merits. But speaking generally the 
 difference between the civilised and uncivilised 
 fighter is this, that the one takes care to carry his 
 food with him, whereas the other does not. 
 
 Now what is true of a savage country at the 
 outset usually remains true for some time, indeed for 
 a very long time, after civilised settlement has begun. 
 The supplies of food are small, for a small population 
 cannot grow much produce, and has no occasion to 
 lay in a great store ; roads and means of communica- 
 tion are few and bad ; and there is hardly a bridge 
 to be found. If all the miles of macadamised road 
 existent in the whole of the British Empire at this 
 moment were added together, I doubt if they would 
 equal, or even nearly equal, those of the British 
 Isles alone. Bearing these things in mind, and 
 
102 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 remembering that two centuries ago there were very 
 few paved roads in Europe, and not a single macad- 
 amised road until less than a century ago. let us look 
 for a time at our colonial Military History. 
 
 Our earUest settlements were made in North 
 America and the West Indies ; the latter sUghtly 
 earlier than the former but to all intent contem- 
 poraneously ; and the Dutch and French were there 
 ver}^ nearly as early as we ourselves, at the beginning 
 of the seventeenth century. In North America the 
 settlers naturally established them.selves first on the 
 coast, using the great rivers as water-ways to 
 penetrate into the back country. The Dutch in 
 the first instance chose one of the most important 
 of those rivers, building the town of New Amsterdam 
 at the mouth of the Hudson. The French took 
 perhaps the most important of aU, the St Lawrence, 
 founding Quebec ne^^r its mouth and Montreal a 
 little higher up. La ^tiy the Spaniards held the south 
 and the mouth <i the Mississippi, so far away that 
 they were of small concern either to the French or 
 the English. South of the St La^vrence the Enghsh 
 colonists scattered themselves in the coiu^se of the 
 seventeenth century along more than a thousand 
 miles of coast from the Kennebec to the Savannah. 
 Quebec it.self was captured in 1627 from the French 
 but, in spite of the protests of far-seeing men, was 
 given back under a treaty of peace in 1632. New 
 
in] XORTH AMERICA 103 
 
 Amsterdam was taken from the Dutch in 1664, and 
 retained as Xew York. In their early days most of 
 these settlements came into hostile collision with the 
 Indians at one time or another, but were able to hold 
 their own, for they had brought with them over the 
 ocean the old English principle that all able-bodied 
 men were liable to service for domestic defence. 
 Xew York, however, did even better ; for that Colon}' 
 specially cultivated the friendship of the Five 
 Nations — the most formidable of the Indians — for 
 the sake not only of the fur-trade, but of protection 
 against other Indians and dangerous neighbours on 
 the north. 
 
 Those dangerous neighbours were of course the 
 French. Their colonies on the St Lawrence were 
 strictly military, the settlers being mostly old soldiers 
 who received their grants of land in reward for past 
 and in consideration of future service ; while the 
 government was despotic and centred in a mihtary 
 officer of experience and abiUty. The younger 
 French settlers were always attracted by the free 
 life of the Indians in the forest ; hence every man 
 was a skiKul woodman, a good marksman and 
 a trained canoe-man, in fact a better sportsman 
 and warrior than colonist. Moreover they and the 
 Jesuits, who both ministered to their spiritual needs 
 and laboured to convert and rule the Indians, were 
 enterprising and intrepid explorers. They soon 
 
104 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 wandered through the whole chain of lakes, found 
 the rivers Illinois and Wisconsin running out of 
 Lake Michigan, and followed them down the whole 
 course of the Mississippi to New Orleans, taking 
 possession of the entire country in the name of 
 Louis XIV. This they accomphshed in 1680, five 
 years before the death of King Charles II ; and we 
 ought always to salute the gallant French nation in 
 honour of the brave men who essayed and accom- 
 plished this great feat of exploration. From that 
 moment the French conceived the notion of getting 
 behind us along the entire length of the continent, 
 and confining us to the coast, with the power always 
 of coming down upon our settlements from the rear 
 at any convenient opportunity, and driving us into 
 the sea. It is a very general system with the French, 
 which they have attempted in our own time in West 
 Africa. They always explore and the}^ always make 
 maps, being a practical people, and the result is that 
 they always get the better of us in disputes over 
 boundaries. Their strong points in America in the 
 seventeenth century were their unity and enterprise. 
 Their weak points were their numbers (for they did 
 not exceed twelve thousand) and the fact that they 
 raised no great quantity of food. 
 
 The English settlers on the other hand were 
 agriculturahsts, and each community was distinct, 
 jealous and self-centred. In New York there was 
 
Ill] ENGLISH AND FRENCH 105 
 
 a large trade with the Indians ; and the pious 
 Quakers of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island used to 
 finance pirates who at one time nearly swept our 
 East Indian trade off the seas. But for the most 
 part they quietly tilled the soil, or in the north went 
 fishing ; nor could an}^ power induce even a few of 
 them to unite their forces against the French . They 
 would invade each other, for they were a most 
 cantankerous people, but would never make a 
 combined effort against the common enemy. New 
 York and New England, being nearest to the French, 
 made endeavours from time to time to drive them 
 out, but always failed owing to provincial jealousies, 
 want of discipline, want of organisation, want of 
 efficient leaders. There are two waterways, broken 
 in places by rapids, which, as you know, lead from 
 New York to the St Lawrence ; the one by the 
 Mohawk and Lake Ontario, the other by the Hudson 
 and Lakes George and Champlain ; and these water- 
 ways were the scene of aU the fighting for the mastery 
 of Canada. In 1690 and 1691 New York and New 
 England made a desperate but inefficient attempt to 
 take Quebec. They failed miserably, though New 
 England alone could pit ninety thousand settlers 
 against the French twelve thousand. The French, 
 united and well commanded, took the offensive, 
 broke down the power of the Five Indian Nations 
 — the principal defensive barrier of the English 
 
106 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 settlements — and the Colonies were reduced to 
 shrieking to England for help. 
 
 Queen Anne sent an expedition to the St 
 Lawrence in 1711, which failed owing to the in- 
 competence of the commander ; but none the less 
 at the Peace of Utrecht France ceded to us Nova 
 Scotia. Thereupon the French proceeded to fortify 
 all the commanding points on the lakes (remember 
 that the waterwaj^s were the only ways by which 
 an army could be supplied), and established a naval 
 station on Cape Breton to harass British shipping 
 in future wars. This was the celebrated fortress 
 of Louisburg ; and the building of it was a very 
 costly mistake. Why ? Because it was situated in 
 a barren territory which could raise nothing and 
 support nothing, wherefore Louisburg could only 
 be provisioned from without and from the sea. 
 Without superiority at sea therefore Louisburg must 
 starve ; with superiority at sea it was a superfluity. 
 The rival settlers and their Indians continued to 
 raid each other perpetually along their frontiers 
 until the War of the Austrian Succession brought 
 about overt hostilities ; and then in 1745 the forces 
 of New England, commanded by a lawyer and with 
 the help of a British squadron, besieged and took 
 Louisburg. This was a brilliant feat for amateurs, 
 though of course the most difficult part of the work 
 was done by British sailors ; but upon the peace of 
 
ni] FRENCH ENCROACHMENT 107 
 
 1748 the British Government very wisely restored 
 Louisburg, preferring to keep Madras in the East 
 Indies in its place. On the other hand the British 
 established a military settlement of old soldiers at 
 Halifax. 
 
 The French now began seriously to pursue their 
 policy of estabhshing themselves in rear of the British 
 colonies, by forcibly occupying two British settle- 
 ments on the Ohio, and building a chain of forts to 
 maintain the communications between these, Lake 
 Erie and Montreal, The Governor of Virginia sent 
 a young officer of Militia, named George Washington, 
 to tell them to go, but was answered that the French 
 had no intention of moving. The Colonies with the 
 greatest difficulty were brought to vote a small sum 
 of money for a force to drive the French out ; and 
 Washington advanced again to Ohio, only to be 
 surrounded by superior numbers and forced to sur- 
 render. This might, one would have thought, have 
 roused the Colonies ; but with the exception of 
 New England, which was burning to capture Canada, 
 one and all showed the completest apathy. The 
 Americans had, and stiU have, aU the modern 
 English indifference to national duty and military 
 preparations. To the enduring shame of the Colonies, 
 therefore, application was made to England for 
 help ; and two regiments were sent out under 
 General Braddock, a capable but narrow-minded 
 
108 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 officer, who had no idea of miUtary operations 
 except as carried out in a European cock-pit. His 
 difficulties were great, for his march lay for one 
 hundred miles through dense forests, which pro- 
 vided neither forage for animals nor food for men ; 
 and, when animals have to carry their own food, 
 they have little strength to carry more. The only 
 chance was to move lightly and rapidly ; whereas 
 on the contrary Braddock encumbered himself with 
 waggons which necessitated an advanced party 
 of three hundred axe-men to clear away trees and 
 obstacles. Nor did he make any effort to train his 
 troops to bush-fighting ; and hence when caught at 
 a disadvantage by the enemy on the march, they 
 were seized with panic and cut to pieces. An 
 advance of the local forces of New England towards 
 the St Lawrence was also a failure, owing to the usual 
 indiscipline of the Colonial levies, and the entire 
 campaign ended in disaster. 
 
 A few more troops were sent from England in 
 the following year, 1756, together with a new general ; 
 but he could accomplish little, having inadequate 
 forces and being unable to persuade the Colonists to 
 provide more. The conduct of campaigns by New 
 England lawyers was in fact most wasteful and 
 inefficient. In 1757, as we have seen, Pitt came to 
 the head of affairs ; but he had not time to make 
 provision for a more effective management of the 
 
Ill] CANADA CONQUERED 109 
 
 war in America ; and all the successes of the year 
 were on the side of the French. At last in 1758 a 
 new commander-in-chief, General Jeffery Amherst, 
 was appointed ; the regular soldiers were increased 
 to the number of twenty-six thousand ; and Pitt 
 undertook to clothe, equip, feed and arm twenty-five 
 thousand Colonial troops, leaving to the Colonies only 
 the expense of paying them. Louisburg was be- 
 sieged and taken by Amherst, and the French were 
 driven from the Ohio ; but an advance of sixteen 
 thousand men towards the St Lawrence was checked 
 by a disgraceful reverse, owing to the incapacity of 
 the British commander. Amherst took personal 
 command on this side in the following year, leaving 
 Wolfe to attack Quebec ; and in 1760 the resistance 
 of the French entirely collapsed. It needed only 
 careful organisation and endless pains in the trouble- 
 some work of bringing forward food for the troops 
 to render success certain ; and yet the Americans 
 could not do it. Beyond all question there were 
 brains in America fuUy equal to the business of 
 divining exactly what would be wanted ; indeed 
 Benjamin Franklin had to do with the organisation 
 of Braddock's expedition ; but there were no disci- 
 plined men who could be trusted to do exactly what 
 they were told. The British soldiers were no doubt, 
 to the Colonial mind, helpless and unhandy beyond 
 expression ; but they knew how to obey. If told 
 
110 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 to do a thing to-day at ten o'clock, they did not wait 
 till to-morrow at three — which is the Colonial way — 
 and it is only by punctuality that a campaign can 
 be even begun. Selfishness, jealousy and indiscipline 
 were the causes why the Americans, notwithstanding 
 their huge superiority in number of population, were 
 unable to conquer the French in Canada without a 
 British army to help them. Had the position of the 
 two nations been reversed, the French would have 
 driven us from Canada in twelve months. 
 
 The result of our exertions in behalf of the Colonies 
 is well known. Having delivered them from a 
 dangerous neighbour, we asked them to share with 
 us the burden of Imperial defence. They admitted 
 the justice of the claim, but declined to satisfy it. 
 When we endeavoured to solve the problem by 
 means of the Imperial Parliament, they resented it 
 with furious violence. EngUsh politicians, too many 
 of them from factious spite, but a few from higher 
 motives, supported and encouraged them. The 
 question of Imperial defence was lost sight of. 
 There was mismanagement on our side, gross pro- 
 vocation on the side of the Colonists ; and the 
 quarrel finally issued in war. The Americans took 
 the offensive and made a dash upon Canada, whence 
 they were with some difficulty repulsed. We re- 
 captured New York ; and then, by extraordinary 
 blundering at home. General Burgoyne was ordered 
 
Ill] SARATOGA 111 
 
 to advance south from Canada upon the supposition 
 that General Howe would advance northward to 
 meet him from New York ; instead of which Howe 
 sailed to the Delaware and captured Philadelphia. 
 Burgoyne meanwhile endeavoured to do as he was 
 bidden ; but from want of land-transport found that 
 continued progress through the forest was impossible. 
 His only chance was, if he could, to capture one of 
 the enemy's magazines by surprise ; and it was the 
 miscarriage of an attempt to do this which first 
 entangled him in serious danger. He plunged deeper 
 and deeper into a circle of enemies, and was sur- 
 rounded and compelled to surrender ; but his 
 campaign was in reality wrecked by the difficulty of 
 transport and supply in a wild country. In one 
 space of twenty miles, for instance, he was obliged 
 to fell trees and build forty bridges over rivers and 
 creeks, with the result that he took precisely twenty 
 days to traverse the distance. Invasion on such 
 terms, when the whole population of a country is 
 hostile, is almost impossible of success. Yet 
 strangely enough the whole object of the movement 
 from north and south along the line of the Hudson 
 was to secure the line of the river, and cut ofi^ the 
 colonies to the east from the colonies on the west of 
 it. For the cereal supplies of the American army 
 were on the west bank, and the meat supplies on the 
 east ; and to deprive them of either would force them 
 
112 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 to fight or to disband themselves. Thus, you see, 
 the question of subsistence was at the root of the 
 whole matter. 
 
 The disaster at Saratoga brought the French as 
 allies to the Americans ; and it was the supremacy 
 of the French fleet on the coast at a critical moment 
 which decided the issue of the war. There was 
 fighting, and hard fighting, in the southern colonies ; 
 but the Americans would never have beaten us 
 without the help of the French. Had they been 
 really in earnest they could have driven us from the 
 country in twelve months, but they were not in 
 earnest. They wanted other people to do their 
 fighting for them, whether they were contending 
 against France in 1757 or England in 1780 ; and 
 by great good fortune they found such other people 
 ready to their hand. A few noble and patriotic men 
 did indeed their utmost duty to their country ; but 
 the}^ were very few. The rest were unwilling to 
 make the sacrifice demanded of them by service in 
 the field and submission to discipline. Hence their 
 Government was driven to cruelty and double- 
 dealing of every kind to force their British prisoners 
 to enter the American ranks, so as to save selfi.sh 
 citizens from risking their worthless skins. In fact 
 when one compares the resistance of the three 
 million Americans in 1776-1781 with that of the 
 few hundred thousand Boers in 1899-1902, it is 
 
Ill] WAR OF 1812 113 
 
 impossible to regard the American rebellion with 
 any great respect. 
 
 In 1812 we were again embroiled with America 
 chiefly owing to the intrigues of Napoleon, but in 
 great measure also through the hostility of two of 
 the Presidents. As usual, these two officials and 
 their supporters counted upon Napoleon to fight 
 their battles for them, and made no preparations 
 for war, thinking that they would be able to take 
 Canada with ease from us, who had the great 
 Emperor and all his forces upon our hands. They 
 were egregiously undeceived. Their naval officers and 
 sailors acquitted themselves admirably, though their 
 ships were too few to make head against us in the 
 open sea. Their troops were for long beneath con- 
 tempt, owing to want of training and discipline. We 
 had so much upon our hands that we could spare 
 few soldiers to meet them ; but the Americans never 
 succeeded, in spite of greatly superior numbers, 
 in taking Canada ; and at last they were glad to 
 make peace without gaining any of the objects 
 for which they had fought, being absolutely ex- 
 hausted and ruined by our naval blockade. But it 
 is to be noticed that, as usual, transport and supply 
 were the great difficulties on both sides and that, 
 setting aside some raids on our part which were not 
 always successful, the main fighting took place on 
 the waterway of the great lakes, simply because that 
 
 F. M. H. 8 
 
114 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 was the only quarter in which either side could feed 
 even a small army. In fact it was impossible, for 
 want of decent roads, to bring forward supplies except 
 by water ; and success or faitoe to either party 
 depended wholly upon naval supremacy on the lakes. 
 When we held it we beat the Americans, when the 
 Americans held it they beat us ; so that practically 
 this was a naval war albeit fought inland. 
 
 Let us pass next to the West Indies. Where 
 islands are concerned, of course naval superiority 
 is essential to every successful campaign, otherwise 
 you cannot bring either troops or stores to the scene 
 of action. The Antilles are for the most part of 
 volcanic formation, mountainous, if a height of three 
 to four thousand feet may be said to make a moun- 
 tain, rugged, and in the majority of cases covered 
 with forest, cultivation generally being confined to 
 the lower hiUs and valleys. Situated between the 
 10th and 23rd degrees of North latitude, they lie 
 well within the Tropic of Cancer ; and the climate 
 is consequently such that white men cannot breed 
 and thrive there. Roads in the great majority of 
 the islands are few, and such as there are frequently 
 traverse ground so steep that they are paved and 
 not macadamised, lest the surface should be washed 
 away by the heavy tropical rains. By far the greater 
 number of such roads (I except the island of Bar- 
 bados) are mere tracks, narrow, rough and unfit for 
 
Ill] WEST INDIES 115 
 
 vehicles. Bridges are even fewer than roads, 
 though the islands with which we are chiefly con- 
 cerned are furrowed by torrents, which have cut 
 deep ravines and valleys in their rush from the 
 mountains down to the sea. Hence what with 
 forests, streams, hills and valleys as steep as those 
 of the Highlands, it is not easy to move about most 
 of the islands. All labour was formerly done by 
 negro slaves imported from West Africa, whose 
 descendants — ^now for three generations free — still 
 form the mass of the population. These negroes 
 to a certain extent cultivate provision-grounds for 
 themselves ; but the islands are none of them self- 
 supporting in the matter of food ; and for fuU two 
 centuries they have been supplied with flour, maize, 
 salt fish and salt pork from America. Strategically 
 they fall into two groups : the Windward, comprising 
 the chain of islets which runs for some six hundred 
 miles north and westward from Trinidad to St 
 Thomas ; and the Leeward, consisting of the far 
 larger islands of Porto Rico, St Domingo, Jamaica 
 and Cuba, which run nearly due west from St Thomas. 
 Everything in the West Indies is windward or 
 leeward, that is to say is considered in respect of 
 its situation towards the south-easterly trade- wind, 
 which in the days of sailing ships was a very im- 
 portant matter. Say, for instance, that the General 
 in Jamaica asked for reinforcements from the General 
 
 8—2 
 
116 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 at Barbados, the most leewardly from the most wind- 
 wardly of our possessions ; the General in Barbados 
 had to think twice before sending them because, 
 though they would probably reach Jamaica in a 
 week, they could not be sure of beating back in 
 three months. In fact no captain in old days would 
 have attempted such a thing, for it would have been 
 quite as speedy and far less exhausting to saU back 
 to England by a circuitous course and make a fresh 
 start for Barbados from thence. So too between any 
 two islands the same question of windward and lee- 
 ward was equaUy cogent. Martinique, the French 
 head- quarters in the Windward group, is little over 
 one hundred miles from Barbados, the English head- 
 quarters ; but while you may sail from Barbados to 
 Martinique in twelve hours, you will not beat back 
 in less than three or four days. 
 
 The Spaniards, as you know, were the first in 
 the West Indies, but they troubled themselves little 
 about the Windward islets, occupying by preference 
 the great islands of Porto Rico, St Domingo, Cuba 
 and Jamaica. We and the French, however, began 
 at much the same time to occup}^ the islets to wind- 
 ward, which are all of about the size of the Isle of 
 Wight, and we did a good deal of petty squabbling 
 over them. These Uttle places very soon became 
 enormously rich. Sugar, indigo and spices, produced 
 by servile labour, brought in enormous profits ; 
 
Ill] THE CARIB WAR 117 
 
 while incidentally the contract for providing the 
 Spanish islands with slaves — known as the Assiento — 
 which we held for a great many years, was highly 
 lucrative. Even in the reign of Charles II a Jamaican 
 planter Avith an income of £12,000 a year — worth 
 say £50,000 in these days — was not considered extra- 
 ordinarily wealthy ; and for nearly two centuries the 
 West Indian was the most powerful mercantile 
 interest in the British islands. 
 
 With aboriginal inhabitants, or Caribs, we never 
 had any very serious trouble, for they were few in 
 the islands which we occupied ; and in fact though, 
 when incited by our European enemies, they gave 
 occasional annoyance, they were never the subject 
 of any serious military expedition until 1772, when 
 a hybrid race, bred of yellow Carib and African 
 negro, both brave and vigorous, became rebellious 
 in St Vincent. There were only fifteen hundred 
 of them, men, women, and children ; but it took 
 three thousand soldiers and marines, backed by two 
 or three ships of war, five entire months to force 
 them to submission, so formidable were the diffi- 
 culties of feeding the troops in the thick forest and 
 deep ravines of the interior. Few horses and mules 
 were bred in the Windward islands, so that all the 
 supplies were carried on the heads of negroes. Had 
 the Caribs, therefore, been a really formidable fight- 
 ing race, it would have taken us long to conquer 
 
118 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 the West Indies. As things were, we imported the 
 negroes, who bred fast and soon outnumbered the 
 aborigines ; and thus we either compelled the Caribs 
 to move, or agreed to let them have some patch of 
 territory for their own. Of course the slaves were 
 not quite an element of safety, and the whole of the 
 West Indies Uved in constant dread of a servile war. 
 Hence a little garrison was generally kept by every 
 nation in every island ; and at least one fort was 
 erected, as a rule, for defence of the capital and its 
 harbour against both foreign and domestic enemies, 
 while smaller works covered less important towns. 
 
 An expedition to the West Indies therefore meant 
 almost certainly something in the nature of a siege 
 until the fort and town were captured ; and, when 
 that was accomplished, the conquest, so far as white 
 men were concerned, was complete. For in a small 
 island it was inevitable that the capital should be 
 situated by the best harbour ; and, when this har- 
 bour was in an invader's hands, he could land as 
 many troops as he wished with ease, while he was 
 also master of all supplies of food, which naturally 
 were stored in the town. The operations, however, 
 though short were sure to be arduous owing to the 
 heat of the climate and the ruggedness of the ground ; 
 and therefore it was important that they should be 
 undertaken in the cool season, that is to say between 
 November and May, in which latter month the heat 
 
Ill] CROMWELL'S EXPEDITION 119 
 
 and the rains begin to increase and the climate 
 becomes, or at any rate became, unhealthy. The 
 confinement of operations to this season is the more 
 imperative, since between May and October there 
 is always the danger of hurricanes, and the harbours 
 in which a ship can lie with safety during a hurri- 
 cane in the West Indies are not many. You must 
 remember that a hurricane is not a mere storm — it 
 is a devoui'ing devastation before which no tree and 
 none but the stoutest houses, carefully equipped for 
 resistance, can hope to stand. 
 
 Our first serious state-directed expedition to the 
 West Indies was that despatched by CromweU to 
 St Domingo in 1654. We were not at war with Spain 
 at the time, and the enterprise was simply a piece 
 of piracy ; but it was equipped on a great scale, 
 the fleet numbering sixty-five sail and the troops 
 six thousand men. It was intended that the West 
 Indian and American colonies should furnish con- 
 tingents of soldiers ; and, when St Domingo had been 
 taken, to use it as a base of attack against all the 
 Spanish possessions in the South Atlantic. The ex- 
 pedition, from want of experience, was ill-equipped ; 
 the men, hastily raised levies, were of poor quality ; 
 and the armament did not sail until the end of 
 December, two months too late. The descent upon 
 St Domingo was a disgraceful and disastrous failure ; 
 fleet and army quarrelled violently ; and the only 
 
120 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 result of the enterprise was the bloodless capture 
 of Jamaica, after which fleet and army returned 
 home, leaving a garrison behind them. Yellow fever 
 broke out immediately and the garrison was almost 
 annihilated. In October, 1655, reinforcements ar- 
 rived, and began at once to die at the rate of twenty 
 men a day. Fresh reinforcements followed in 1656, 
 and in a few months two -thirds of these were dead. 
 At last the sickness abated. An attempt of the 
 Spaniards to recapture the island in 1658 was beaten 
 off, and Jamaica has remained under the Enghsh 
 flag ever since. 
 
 Here was a warning for all time as to the conduct 
 of expeditions to the West Indies. Care must be 
 taken for good understanding between army and 
 navy ; and the fleet must sail from England at latest 
 in October. We shall see how far this warning has 
 been observed. The next important expedition to 
 the West Indies was sent by King WiUiam in 1695 
 to root out the French who had established them- 
 selves at the western end of St Donjingo, now called 
 Haiti, and who were threatening Jamaica from 
 thence. This armament did not sail till January, 
 three months too late, and consequently did not 
 begin operations till May. In four months over a 
 thousand out of the thirteen hundred soldiers had 
 died ; while the quarrels between the naval and mili- 
 tary commanders banished all hope of solid success. 
 
Ill] CARTHAGENA 121 
 
 The next great tropical expedition undertaken 
 was that of 1740-1 against Carthagena on the 
 Spanish main, but little outside the beat of our West 
 Indian squadrons. The enterprise was prompted 
 by sheer greed of gain ; the troops were young and 
 raw recruits (for of course we had no old soldiers) 
 and numbered six thousand ; American levies to the 
 number of four thousand were sent from Jamaica 
 to join them ; the whole were shamefully ill- 
 equipped ; and finally the armament sailed four 
 months too late. It was exactly the story of St 
 Domingo over again. The military commander died 
 on the voyage, and his successor, a feeble creature, 
 was treated with the greatest contempt by the naval 
 officers. However, the force reached Carthagena, 
 and the troops were landed ; but the General, 
 mistrusting himself and his men, was so slow and 
 dilatory in his movements that he delayed the 
 decisive attack until late in April, and was then 
 repulsed. Sickness, lead and steel had already 
 reduced his force from nine thousand to little over 
 six thousand effectives, and on the night of the 
 defeat the yellow fever fell upon the unhappy army 
 in earnest. In three days — think of this appalling 
 visitation — in three days the effective men had sunk 
 from sixty-six hundred to thirty-two hundred ; and 
 in ten days more only a thousand were fit to be landed 
 against an enemy. Reduced to a mere shadow, the 
 
122 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 expedition returned to Jamaica, but the yeUow fever 
 went with it ; and, within twelve months of the 
 arrival of the original armament in the tropics, its 
 numbers had shrunk from nine thousand to fewer 
 than three hundred fit for duty. At the beginning 
 of 1742 these were joined by a reinforcement of 
 three thousand men. Within a month a thousand 
 of these were sick or dead. A thousand more died 
 before October, and at last the force practically 
 disappeared. Of the four thousand Americans only 
 three hundred Uved to return home ; of the nine 
 thousand British a bare one in ten survived. This 
 on the whole is the most terrible story that I know 
 in British military history ; but perhaps I am led 
 to think so by Smollett's vivid picture of its horrors 
 in Roderick Random. I remember that I read that 
 book for the first time when I was an undergraduate 
 at Trinity, little thinking that I should live to pro- 
 claim the fact to a Trinity audience. Every one of 
 you ought to read it if you have not already done so, 
 to learn at first hand what was meant by naval and 
 military service in the eighteenth century. 
 
 Here was another warning to strengthen the first. 
 But meanwhile the West Indies grew and grew in 
 wealth, and were more andmore coveted by all nations. 
 Hence the great William Pitt himseK was eager to 
 appropriate as many islands as possible, setting thus 
 a very evil example to his son. At the end of 1758 
 
Ill] HAVANA 123 
 
 six battalions were sent out to capture Guadeloupe, 
 which they duly did, being handled with great skill 
 by General Barrington, before the hurricane season 
 began. Three of the six battalions were left there as 
 a garrison, and, before the year was out, about half 
 of them had died. In 1762 Pitt's successor, acting 
 upon his designs, sent eight thousand men to capture 
 the remaining French islands ; and, this being ac- 
 complished, not without heavy loss from sickness, 
 the remnant of the force joined a detachment of 
 troops under Lord Albemarle in the siege of Havana. 
 Twelve thousand men were employed in this siege, 
 which lasted two months, and was one of the most 
 deadly in which British soldiers were ever engaged. 
 Before its close one brigade of four battalions was 
 reduced to twenty men fit for duty. Over five 
 thousand men were buried in Cuba alone in four 
 months, while hundreds more perished both there 
 and in North America, whither they had been trans- 
 ported in the hope of saving their lives. 
 
 Several French islands passed into our possession 
 at the Peace of Paris, all of course demanding garri- 
 sons which required to be totally renewed every two 
 years ; but Guadeloupe, Martinique and St Lucia 
 were left to the French ; and it was in order to gain 
 a safe harbour in St Lucia, commanding the French 
 naval base at Martinique close by, that a descent 
 was made upon it in 1778 by five thousand British 
 
124 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 troops from America. The operations were con- 
 ducted in a masterly fashion both by sea and land ; 
 and the capture of the island atoned in some measure 
 for that of sundry British islands by the French. 
 But the virulence of yellow fever was everywhere 
 terrible ; and the usual mortality was heightened in 
 1780 by a hurricane of peculiar violence. In Bar- 
 bados four thousand human beings, nine thousand 
 cattle and horses, and smaller stock without number 
 were destroyed in a few hours. Still, by laying the 
 forest flat and thus destroying the harbour for 
 mosquitoes, the hurricane abated the sickness in 
 St Lucia. 
 
 And now we come to the war of the French 
 Revolution, when Pitt thought to compel France 
 to submission by taking all her colonies and de- 
 priving her of aU colonial produce, whether as a 
 luxury or as a source of revenue. France had but 
 three islands to windward, Martinique, Guadeloupe 
 and St Lucia and to leeward the western end of 
 St Domingo, called Haiti ; but all were flourishing 
 settlements ; and Haiti was considered the richest 
 possession in the world, its produce being valued 
 at four millions annually. All three had been 
 shaken, and Haiti half -ruined, by the doctrines of 
 the National Assembly, which had not only abolished 
 slavery, but preached the doctrine of equahty among 
 all men to such effect that the negroes had risen and 
 
Ill] JERVIS AND GREY 125 
 
 either massacred or driven out two-thirds of the 
 whites. In the hope of restoring order and regaining 
 their wealth the remainder of the whites invited the 
 General at Jamaica to occupy their territory, an offer 
 at which that officer grasped eagerly, knowing by 
 reputation the wealth of the place. Shortly after- 
 wards at the end of 1793, but two months too late, 
 Pitt sent seven thousand troops under General Grey 
 and a fleet under Sir John Jervis, better known as 
 Lord St Vincent, to capture the French Windward 
 islands. The two commanders were excellent men in 
 their professions, and on affectionate terms with 
 each other. Their operations prospered. The three 
 islands were taken after two months hard work ; 
 and then with the coming of the unhealthy season 
 the men began to die. Emissaries, one of them a 
 West Indian mulatto of great energy and ability, 
 arrived from France with arms and reinforcements, 
 proclaimed the equality of all men, and stirred up 
 the negroes to root the English out. The negroes 
 responded ; and not in the French islands only, 
 but in aU that had ever been French, they rose in 
 insurrection against the whites. Meanwhile Pitt 
 had sent the British regiments no reinforcements, 
 no stores, no clothing ; and they had now a most 
 formidable task before them. It was no longer a 
 case of meeting white men of like weakness and dis- 
 abilities with themselves, but of contending with 
 
126 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 black men to whom the climate was favourable and 
 who knew every inch of the country. 
 
 By the end of the year 1794 five out of seven 
 thousand of Grey's men had died, and Guadeloupe 
 had been recaptured by the French. By the summer 
 of 1795 St Lucia had also been recaptured ; and 
 the British even in their own islands of St Vincent 
 and Grenada had been dispossessed of all but 
 the two forts and capitals. Scattered regiments of 
 boys sent out by Pitt sufficed only to fiU the grave- 
 yards, for they could not stand the active work 
 of the campaign ; and at last Pitt was obliged to 
 despatch a fresh army of seventeen thousand men 
 to recover the lost ground. The expedition, owing 
 to the usual blundering, started too late, and the 
 troops were of the worst quality, young, untrained 
 and of poor physique. However, thanks to their 
 commander, Sir Ralph Abercromby, they managed 
 to recapture the lost islands, which by that time had 
 been reduced to desolation by the insurgent negroes ; 
 and then of course they died hke flies. Meanwhile 
 ever since 1793 Haiti had swallowed up more and 
 more troops, the black insurgents opposing the 
 British most gallantly but proving far less deadly 
 than the yellow fever. Year after year reinforce- 
 ments arrived to complete the work of conquest, 
 and year after year the army was reduced to a shadow 
 before it could accomplish its task. But Pitt, still 
 
Ill] BRITISH LOSSES 127 
 
 insatiable, sent Abercromby out a second time in 
 1797 to capture Trinidad and Porto Rico, which 
 latter island by great good fortune was too strong 
 for him. It was not until 1798 that the bickering 
 over these miserable islands ceased, and even then 
 by no fault of Pitt's. It was a military officer who 
 decided on his own responsibility to evacuate Haiti, 
 against the wishes of the Government, but none too 
 soon. By that time Pitt's military policy, so called, 
 had cost us 100,000 men, but had not contributed 
 in the slightest degree to check the aggression of 
 Revolutionary France. 
 
 After this awful lesson the Government began to 
 train black soldiers to take the place of white in 
 future West Indian expeditions ; while the white 
 garrisons were largely composed of foreigners and 
 battaHons of convicts. But while struggling to 
 create an army at home by the mistaken methods 
 which I have already described to you, Addington 
 opened the second part of the war by capturing 
 St Lucia, Tobago and Dutch Guiana, thus multi- 
 plying unhealthy stations which ate steadily into 
 our own strength without diminishing that of the 
 enemy. Ultimately a series of expeditions, exceed- 
 ingly well managed, swept the whole of the West 
 Indies, excepting the Spanish, into our net, and put 
 an end to aU warfare in that quarter for the remainder 
 of the war. By the peace of 1814 Martinique and 
 
128 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 Guadeloupe were restored to France, but were 
 recaptured by us in 1815 during the Hundred Days, 
 and then finally given back to be captured no more. 
 The sequel is melancholy enough. For about a 
 quarter of a century after Waterloo our miserable 
 pittance of an army was hidden away in great 
 measure in the Islands ; and then suddenly the 
 British nation in one of those fits of conscientiousness 
 to which it is occasionally subject, decided practi- 
 cally to destroy these possessions by abolishing 
 slavery and repealing the duties which protected 
 their produce. The abolition of slavery was no 
 doubt a good thing, but as it extended at first to the 
 English islands only, its immediate effect was to 
 give a tremendous impulse to the slave trade, with 
 all its horrors, in the French, Dutch and Spanish 
 islands. To all intent it penalised our own islands 
 to the advantage of the Spanish islands, and favoured 
 our few negroes to the prejudice of ten times their 
 number of others. This evil after some years passed 
 away, as the abolition of slavery was accepted by 
 other countries ; but the West Indies have never 
 recovered from the shock of the double blow. More- 
 over, apart from these two legislative enactments, 
 Pitt's policy of ruining France by taking her colonies 
 has resulted in the ruin of the colonies for the benefit 
 of France. For, being deprived of all colonial pro- 
 duce, French men of science sought out the means 
 
Ill] WEST INDIAN RUINS 129 
 
 of growing some of that produce in France itself ; 
 and hence arose the manufacture of sugar from the 
 root of the beet, and an immense industry not in 
 France only but all over Europe, which drives the 
 best West Indian sugar out of the market. So little 
 can even great men foresee the consequences of their 
 actions. 
 
 Thus the West Indies have fallen for ever from 
 their high estate ; and it is only by an actual visit 
 to them that we can divine what they once were. 
 Ruined forts, ruined barracks, ruined store-houses, 
 old guns slowly mouldering away, pyramids of round 
 shot so welded together by rust that they cannot be 
 moved — these are the more visible tokens of past 
 greatness. But a searching enquirer will turn his 
 steps to the desolate graveyards, and tearing his 
 way through rank herbage and tropical scrub wiU 
 approach the crumbling head-stones, and there he 
 may read — or at least I could read thirty years ago — 
 what a visitation of yellow fever meant in the old 
 days. Field-officers, captains, lieutenants, ensigns, 
 sergeants, corporals, drummers, rank and j&le of 
 battalion after battalion lie there in row upon row, 
 as if on parade, while the land-crabs hurry from 
 grave to grave, and deadly snakes lie coiled upon 
 the heaps of crumbling stones which once were monu- 
 ments. I know no more melancholy sight than 
 this. How many British soldiers and sailors lie in 
 
 F. M. H. 9 
 
130 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 these and other unknown graves in the Caribbean 
 Islands ? I know not ; but the lowest figure that 
 I should suggest would be three hundred thousand, 
 and the highest perhaps half a million. And the 
 pity of it is that the value of the islands disappeared 
 just when the means of economising life began to 
 be perfected. The formation of negro regiments, 
 though bitterly opposed by the planters, who 
 dreaded the slightest emergence of the black race 
 from the status of servitude, was a great and 
 courageous act of statesmanship — courageous be- 
 cause formerly the West Indian interest could muster 
 a solid phalanx of eighty votes in the House of 
 Commons, and was thus able to overset a Govern- 
 ment. Now too in these later days yellow fever 
 has yielded up its secrets to science, and can be 
 disarmed of its terrors. But it is too late. No one 
 cares for the West Indies nowadays. No one re- 
 members that at one time Cuba was deemed more 
 valuable than Madras. The whole of the Antilles 
 are now entrusted to the protection of one white 
 battalion; one black battalion, and two companies 
 of artillery ; and the great bulk of these men are kept 
 there not for the sake of the once wealthy sugar 
 islands, but to ensure the safety of the naval station 
 of Bermuda. One could contemplate such a change 
 with equanimity but for the recollection of perhaps 
 half a million lives sacrificed to no purpose. 
 
Ill] SOUTH AFRICA 131 
 
 I turn now to the seat of the most difficult of all 
 of our colonial wars, South Africa ; the most diffi- 
 cult because it is of vast extent, inhabited by warhke 
 natives for the most part, and without waterways. 
 Our first attack upon it in 1795, when we were 
 opposed by Dutch troops and Boers only, is remark- 
 able as an example of a campaign conducted by 
 three thousand white soldiers without any transport 
 whatever, and without even gun-teams. The dis- 
 tance from the base, Simonstown, to the objective, 
 Capetown, was only twelve miles, nearly all through 
 deep sand ; but the enemy were as strong as the 
 invaders ; and, when everything has to be dragged 
 by white men's arms or carried upon white men's 
 backs, the difficulties of movement are so great — 
 especially if the march be opposed at every step — 
 as to be almost insuperable. However, a large pro- 
 portion of the force was turned into beasts of burden, 
 and their numbers were supplemented by blue- 
 jackets and marines ; the general having wisely 
 decided that both Services should share ahke in the 
 drudgery of transport and in the more congenial 
 work of fighting. Thus Capetown, by a tremendous 
 effort, was taken for the first time. When we at- 
 tacked it again in 1806 we disembarked at a different 
 point ; and the enemy's general was obliging 
 enough to come out to meet us at once, and to be 
 beaten. Thus our force, about six thousand strong, 
 
 9—2 
 
132 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 was enabled to victual itself from the fleet at the 
 end of the first day's advance, and to march into 
 Capetown at the end of the second. 
 
 Since then we have fought many wars in South 
 Africa against both natives and Dutch colonists ; 
 and in all of them the main difficulty has been that 
 of feeding the troops. There is of course the 
 country-transport which is familiar to us — the huge 
 tilted waggons with their eight yoke of oxen, each in 
 the charge of two skilled natives — of which we heard 
 so much twelve years ago. Of its kind it is good. 
 But such large vehicles and teams are very unwieldy ; 
 they must be left in charge of natives who cannot be 
 trusted (and small blame to them) not to run away 
 in moments of danger ; and lastly the ox, though 
 patient, plucky and persevering to an uncommon 
 degree, has his defects as a draft animal. He is very 
 slow and he must not be hurried ; he needs time to 
 chew the cud after feeding ; and he cannot work 
 with the fuU power of the sun beating upon his back. 
 In fact he has his times and seasons which must be 
 carefully observed, or he will die ; and he is sensitive 
 not only to sun, but also to cold and wet. The enemy, 
 being fully aware of his limitations, can foresee their 
 effect upon the movements of the force opposed to 
 them, and can lay their plans accordingly. Another 
 disadvantage to European troops in South Africa 
 is that European horses do not naturally take to 
 
Ill] KAFFIR WARS 133 
 
 South African pasture, and that there are poisonous 
 plants to be found in it which native horses have 
 learned to avoid, but which European horses will 
 innocently devour. Hence forage becomes a great 
 difficulty also ; and on the veldt there is the further 
 drawback that no wood for fuel exists. As in most 
 new lands, the roads are mere tracks, and all the 
 innumerable rivers must be crossed by fords, for 
 there are few bridges ; while the extent of the territory 
 that may be covered by military operations in so 
 vast a continent is appalling. 
 
 In one of our earliest Kaffir wars — that of 1835 — 
 Sir Harry Smith described himself as having only 
 twelve hundred men, eight hundred horses and four 
 guns, with which to act in a theatre of war of four 
 thousand square miles ; and he added, " It takes just 
 two hours for a commissariat train to arrive, from the 
 moving off of the first waggon to the arrival of the 
 last, when the road is good. When the column is 
 stretched out along the road it looks as if each soldier 
 had a waggon to himself at least." Yet on one occa- 
 sion with a smaU force he marched eighty-four miles 
 in three days ; and he covered nearly two hundred and 
 twenty miles in a rugged and mountainous country, 
 much broken by deep rivers, in seven days and a half. 
 In the more serious war of 1850-53 the hostile tribes 
 could not put into the field more than three thousand 
 fighting men ; but by betaking themselves to their 
 
134 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 fastnesses of mountain and forest they prolonged 
 their resistance for nearly three years. The British 
 soldier was at every disadvantage in bush-fighting, 
 and the Kaffirs were far too cunning to encounter 
 him in the open ; yet by dint of hard work and per- 
 severance this brave and wary enemy was at last 
 worn down. He might have been subdued much 
 earher but for the constant and insane reductions 
 of the Army ever since Waterloo. It is actually a 
 fact that at this time the military power of England 
 was strained almost to breaking point by three 
 thousand naked savages. 
 
 The next war — that of 1877 — came at a time 
 when our Army, owing to the recent introduction of 
 short service, was in a state of transition, and taught 
 us a very severe lesson. We were engaged in war 
 with the Zulus, a very formidable tribe, which had 
 been organised into a great military power by a 
 chief who, in his own way, was a genius. One of his 
 armies came upon a British force of something over 
 a thousand troops at a disadvantage, and after a 
 desperate fight destroyed them almost to a man. 
 But for the determined resistance of a small post of 
 eighty or ninety men at a ford of the Tugela, the 
 Zulus would probably have overrun Natal to the 
 sea, and extinguished the white inhabitants of that 
 Colony. There was great agitation in England, and 
 several battalions were hurried out to the Cape with 
 
Ill] ZULU WAR 135 
 
 no special regard to their condition or quality. It had 
 been forgotten that the old long-service-soldier had 
 become extinct ; and that the old single-battalion- 
 regiments were also in course of extinction, to give 
 place to regiments of two battalions, whereof one 
 was always to be at home and the other abroad. 
 The Army and the nation had not taken kindly to 
 the change ; and the immediate result was that the 
 battalions at home had become merely assemblies 
 of boys who, as soon as they approached manhood, 
 were drafted off to feed the battalions abroad. Some 
 of these groups of boys, raw and half-trained, were 
 shipped out to South Africa in the expectation that 
 they would be as strong and as steady as the old 
 battalions composed of men who counted ten to 
 twenty years' service. Of course they were not. 
 They were very sickly, very ill-disciplined, and very 
 far from well-conducted. However, the war was 
 ended, and the power of the Zulus was broken with- 
 out further serious mishap ; and we learned by this 
 experience the lesson that a force of seasoned soldiers 
 must at all times be held ready for what is called the 
 police- work of the Empire. 
 
 Our last experience of war in South Africa is 
 too recent for me to presume to say much about it, 
 except that in many respects it bore a singular re- 
 semblance to the American War of Independence . The 
 operations of the latter war embraced at least eleven 
 
136 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 hundred miles of coast-line, as the crow flies, and in 
 places penetrated inland as far as a hundred and fifty 
 miles from the sea. Only facilities of water-carriage 
 enabled armies to be moved at all over this vast 
 tract ; and it was rare for bodies even of ten thousand 
 men to remain for long united. The theatre of war 
 in South Africa was quite as vast. Our two prin- 
 cipal bases of operations were nearly a thousand miles 
 apart — as far, say, as Antwerp is from Lisbon, with 
 the enemy's capital situated at Warsaw. But for 
 the existence of a few railways the conquest of this 
 enormous tract might have taken thirty years, for 
 there are no waterways and the country produces 
 little wheat. As things were, it was accomplished 
 more or less in three ; and a force of three to four 
 hundred thousand men was fed with a regularity 
 highly creditable to the officers responsible for that 
 duty. But the expense was terrific ; and although 
 it was possible by great exertions to bring up food 
 for the men, there were moments when it was im- 
 possible to provide sufficient forage for the animals. 
 Hence the waste of horses in the cavalry and artillery 
 was enormous, for they could not live on the African 
 pasture as did the horses of the enemy. In fact a 
 community with a more or less empty continent at 
 its back can, with good management, prolong resist- 
 ance for an almost indefinite time ; for the chances 
 are that the invader will be more quickly exhausted 
 
Ill] NEW ZEALAND 137 
 
 than the invaded, while the former is always subject 
 to troubles and diversions at home which may 
 weaken him at a critical moment. That is the 
 secret of the power of Russia and of the United 
 States. It is impossible to hurt them seriously, for 
 the further you penetrate into their country the 
 weaker you are. Little countries, such as our own, 
 may be pierced to the heart at the first thrust. 
 Space in fact means time where war is concerned ; 
 and time is the most powerful of all allies. The 
 Americans themselves discovered that when they 
 invaded Canada in 1812. 
 
 There is another description of colonial war of 
 which we have had experience, and which from 
 the extreme peculiarity of the country and people 
 deserves special notice. I speak of New Zealand. 
 Roughly speaking the two main islands of New 
 Zealand exactly correspond to Italy in our own 
 hemisphere ; and if you suppose the sea to close 
 round the northern frontier of the Alps and to cut 
 the peninsula in two by washing a channel through 
 it somewhere about Rome, you will find the actual 
 shape of New Zealand very closely reproduced. 
 Both countries consist of a backbone of volcanic 
 mountains, with a broad margin to east and a narrow 
 margin to west ; and in each there is a wide 
 fertile plain made up of debris washed down from the 
 mountains and furrowed by rivers flowing from the 
 
138 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 glaciers. This great plain, however, is in the south 
 island of New Zealand ; and all of our wars were 
 in the north island, corresponding in the southern 
 hemisphere to the southern portion of Italy. The 
 north island, which contains several active volcanoes, 
 is for the most part mountainous and w^as to a vast 
 extent covered with dense forest, with a strong 
 undergrowth of vines — known as supple-jacks — and 
 of fern, very like our own bracken, which grows 
 higher than a man's head. The inhabitants were 
 themselves invaders from the North Pacific, or 
 possibly from some part of the American continent, 
 and, according to their own traditions, must have 
 occupied the country at about the time of our own 
 Norman Conquest. They were called, as of course 
 you know, by the name of Maoris, and were split 
 up into a number of tribes which passed their 
 time in continual warfare with each other, and 
 hence possessed some degree of military organisation. 
 Their weapons and tools were made of stone, the 
 best of them of jade. With such tools they had skill 
 to build canoes and art to ornament both prow and 
 paddle w4th not unbeautiful carving. They were 
 cannibals, for the simple reason that they could get 
 no other meat ; for until the white man came there 
 were no four-footed creatures in the two islands — 
 nothing but birds. They caught and dried fish, 
 however, and had little provision-grounds of potatoes. 
 
Ill] THE MAORIS 139 
 
 But their chief business, as I have said, was fighting ; 
 and they were a fine athletic and high-spirited race. 
 For the rest thej^ had a natural gift of fortification. 
 They needed no great talent to select good positions 
 in so hilly a country where natural strongholds 
 abound ; but they showed great skill in throwing 
 up tiers of earth-works and erecting stockades of 
 trees a foot in diameter, tightly bound together with 
 supple-jacks. 
 
 The first white men came to them in the form of 
 whaling skippers, who initiated them into the use 
 of fire-arms, and sold such weapons as they could 
 spare to one or two chiefs. The remaining tribes soon 
 discovered that, if they were to escape extermination, 
 they must obtain fire-arms also ; and thus there 
 grew up a large trade in arms and ammunition for 
 which the Maoris paid in native flax — phormium 
 tenax — laboriously scraped with shells till only the 
 tough fibre was left, and of supreme excellence 
 from this careful method of curing. Two-barrelled 
 fowling pieces — tuparas as they called them — were 
 the favourite weapon, and the Maoris soon became 
 expert in their use ; adding thereupon rifle-pits and 
 covered trenches to their fortifications to meet 
 attack with the new weapon. Incidentally this 
 natural craze for fire-arms materially injured the 
 race, for, in order to scrape flax enough to pay for 
 them, the whole tribe was obliged to come down 
 
140 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 from the hill-tops and live by the swamps where the 
 phormium tenax grows and abounds. 
 
 How we came into collision with the Maoris, who 
 had frequently received white men — deserting sailors 
 and such like — into their tribes with much friendli- 
 ness, is not a pretty story ; being only one of the 
 many variations on the old theme of the white man's 
 greed for the black man's property. Of course it 
 was necessary to send troops out ; and our comman- 
 ders, hearing of the fortifications or jpas erected by 
 the Maoris, thought that such works could not have 
 been thrown up except to defend something, and 
 that it would be desirable to capture them. They 
 therefore brought up a gun or two with infinite 
 labour, and after firing a certain number of rounds, 
 let loose their assaulting columns to the attack. 
 Now as a matter of fact the Maoris built their pas 
 upon no such principle ; and the loss of a pa was 
 nothing to them so long as no life was lost with it. 
 They therefore continued to build ^a5 in the hope that 
 the white men would ram their heads against them ; 
 and they did so with considerable cunning, erecting 
 their first pa close to the edge of the forest, retiring 
 from that to a second further within the woods, 
 so as to lure the English deeper and deeper into 
 disadvantageous ground, and from that in turn to 
 a third. By the time the third was reached the 
 English were unable to bring their food any further, 
 
Ill] MAORI TACTICS 141 
 
 and, having lost heavily in their assaults, were fain 
 to retire and await reinforcements. 
 
 The chief difficulty, as in all savage campaigns, 
 lay of course in transport and supply. There were 
 no roads or bridges, and few animals, whether horses, 
 mules or cattle ; but as all the settlements were on 
 the sea, the Maoris had built their pas in the vicinity, 
 so as to be ready to attack the whites at any moment. 
 Still, even when the difficulty of transport and supply 
 was overcome, our commanders were greatly puzzled 
 how to injure the Maoris. So powerfully were the 
 tree-trunks of a stockade laced together, that even 
 when broken bj^ a shot they did not fall, but remained 
 suspended, a nasty if not impossible obstacle, by 
 the binders of supple-jack. Thus assaults were 
 always costly, and somehow the Maori garrison 
 always contrived to escape. Again and again a 
 pa was surrounded, but there was always a ravine or 
 a watercourse by which the Maoris slipped away ; 
 and when the British column, maddened by heavy 
 losses, broke into the earth-works, it was to find 
 no one there. Once two British columns stormed 
 a jpa, enduring heavy fire until they reached the 
 summit, when the Maoris dived down into their 
 subterranean galleries. The British soldiers, rushing 
 in from opposite sides, met at the top, and poured 
 a staggering volley into each other, whereupon up 
 came the Maoris from underground, and sent the 
 
142 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 assailants flying down again in panic. Altogether 
 the problem of the jpa seemed to be insoluble, for the 
 galleries and rifle-pits of the Maoris were so cunning- 
 ly constructed that a bombardment inflicted only 
 trifling damage on them. Critics at a distance wrote 
 that every success (for such the capture of a pa 
 was deemed to be) should be followed by a rapid 
 advance into the forest. But deep ravines and 
 gullies covered either with a network of supple-jacks, 
 or with fallen logs and trees hidden in bracken six 
 or seven feet high, is not ground over which men 
 can advance rapidly. I know it because I have tried 
 it ; and the unhappy soldiers, who had also tried 
 it, waxed furious over the ignorant presumption of 
 those who talked such nonsense. 
 
 At last it occurred to a British officer that the 
 Maoris wished their pas to be assaulted, and that 
 they considered it a victory when several scores of 
 British fell in an attack upon a worthless stronghold, 
 while the defenders quietly retired with at most two 
 or three casualties. And this was the fact. Having 
 grasped this truth the officer determined not to 
 attack them ; but marched up to the vicinity of a 
 pa, sat down in front of it, and entrenched himself 
 and his guns before it. This did not suit the Maoris 
 at all. They saw that they would be obliged to 
 go back sooner or later, without the satisfaction of 
 killing fifty or sixty of the enemy, and they did not 
 
Ill] MAORIS SUBDUED 143 
 
 see where the process might end. In desperation 
 they attempted several attacks against the English 
 earth-works, but were repulsed with heavy loss, and 
 were fain to draw back to another jpa further within 
 the forest. The British followed, and went through 
 the same performance again, with the same result. 
 In a few weeks these particular Maoris gave in, for 
 they saw no prospect of emerging from the forest 
 again ; and though they might have kept themselves 
 alive on fern-root, they knew that their warriors 
 would soon lose all physical strength upon such a 
 diet. The Maori wars lasted in one way or another 
 for nearly twenty years in a desultory fashion, 
 partly owing to mismanagement, partly, I fear, 
 because so many contractors in the colonial towns 
 made money out of them that people were unwilling 
 to let them come to an end. When the Imperial 
 troops and money were withdrawn, and the colonists 
 were left to finish the job for themselves, the trouble 
 with the Maoris soon ceased. 
 
 Lastly we come to those expeditions which even 
 in these days tend to be most dangerous and costly, 
 I mean those to such fever-stricken coasts as the 
 Gold Coast and the Delta of the Congo, where all 
 supplies and stores must be carried on the heads of 
 men and women, and where even the strictest care 
 may fail to avert deadly sickness. Twice within 
 forty years has a British force marched to Coomassie ; 
 
144 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 but the wise tendency nowadays is to entrust such 
 work almost exclusively to native troops who do 
 not suffer from the climate. The number of these 
 troops has increased enormously of late years with 
 the extension of our rule in Africa ; and we are 
 accustomed to treat the fact as a matter of course, 
 without a thought for the man who has made these 
 foreign levies what they are, and without whom they 
 are nothing — the British officer. 
 
 I have sketched for you very briefly the rise of 
 the Empire, and now at the close of this third lecture 
 I am going to say a word for the man who has had 
 the chief share in winning it — the British regimental 
 officer. It is the fashion in some circles to behttle 
 him ; and the press, in the plenitude of its ignorance, 
 took occasion during the South African War to cover 
 him with vulgar abase, reproaching him for his 
 ignorance of his profession and various other short- 
 comings. As a matter of fact he was the one man 
 in South Africa who understood his business, and 
 it was he who brought the war to a successful con- 
 clusion. In these days of democracy, so-called, it is 
 common to vituperate, concurrently with the officer, 
 the English public schools where he obtained his 
 education. Neither officers nor public schools make 
 any reply to such criticisms ; and they are quite 
 right, for the British Empire is a sufficient reply to 
 the critics, who are fonder of framing theories than 
 
Ill] THE BRITISH OFFICER 145 
 
 of studying hard facts. I am not saying that our 
 pubHc schools are perfect, for in many respects they 
 seem to me very faulty ; nor shall I contend that the 
 men who spring from them are, in the ordinary sense 
 of the term, educated, for they are not. The German 
 gymnasium and French Lycee undoubtedly produce 
 men who are better schooled to the study of books, 
 and more amply filled with a certain description of 
 facts. But at any rate the pupils from our pubUc 
 schools become men who, after a certain amount 
 of military training, do not shrink from command, 
 and are willing to take responsibility. In brief, 
 they are formed in character if not cultivated in 
 intellect ; they are not ignorant of men, whatever 
 they may be of books ; and they are willing to under- 
 take the government of men, not from mere lust 
 of power, but from instinctive delight in the task. 
 
 It is curious how often people complain of the 
 ignorance and narrowness of young officers, saying 
 that they can think of nothing outside their regi- 
 ments, unless it be polo or some other game in 
 which the regiment is interested. No doubt it is 
 better for men of any profession to know something, 
 and the more the better, of subjects outside that 
 profession ; and yet what could more profitably 
 occupy an officer's thoughts than the men and 
 horses under his charge ? Military routine can have 
 no doubt a somewhat straitening and deadening 
 
 F. M. H. 10 
 
146 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 effect upon officers, even as academic routine may 
 injuriously affect the minds of schoolmasters and 
 professors ; and no doubt there are officers who chafe 
 under it. But the majority find more than sufficient 
 interest in the study of their men, in the selection 
 of the promising for promotion, the encouragement 
 of the good, the improvement, suppression and elim- 
 ination of the bad, the bringing on of the backward, 
 and above all in honest endeavour to enter into the 
 tlwuglits of their men — a task so difficult that not 
 one in ten thousand succeeds in mastering it. For 
 they know that it is their business to lead men and 
 not drive them to discipline, and to inspire such 
 confidence between commanded and commander that 
 even in the most desperate situation he may be able 
 to say, / can depend upon my men. 
 
 But even those who tire of military routine in 
 time of peace change their opinion when they go 
 upon active service. In England they cannot see 
 why all kinds of tiresome details should not be left 
 to the sergeants, but in the field they soon discover 
 that the men will listen to and trust no one but 
 an officer. The non-commissioned officer does not 
 suffice for them. He may be a veteran of eighteen 
 years' service ; but the men will follow a commis- 
 sioned boy of eighteen fresh from Eton infinitely 
 more readily than they will the non-commissioned 
 veteran. It is a very remarkable fact, and to those 
 
Ill] THE BRITISH OFFICER 147 
 
 who hold that all men are equal it is extremely 
 unpalatable ; but a fact beyond question it is, and 
 not difficult of explanation. Men who by the fortune 
 of their birth are exempted from the bitterness of 
 the struggle for existence, trust their fellows because 
 they have no reason to dread their competition ; 
 men who have been brought up in the thick of the 
 fight with none but themselves to help them, see a 
 possible competitor — it may be even a dangerous 
 enemy — in every neighbour, and trust no one. 
 
 Yet active service is by no means necessary to 
 cure the officer who is bored with military service 
 at home. Send him away to some outlandish corner 
 of the Empire, and entrust him with the training and 
 command of a few hundred black soldiers, and he 
 will find exile, hardship and discomfort more con- 
 genial to him in such company than the softest of 
 lives at home. He realises that everything, so far 
 as those few hundred men are concerned, depends 
 upon himself ; and he delights in the sensation. 
 There are hundreds of such officers in remote places 
 quietly doing what some consider the dirty work, 
 but what they themselves know to be the most 
 honourable work, of the Empire. The officers of the 
 Indian Army are in precisely the same case. Few 
 of us realise how much we owe to them, and to how 
 great an extent the Empire is dependent upon them. 
 Operatives in our huge over-grown towns, who exhaust 
 
 10—2 
 
148 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 themselves in condemnation of everything military, 
 never reflect that, but for this handful of officers, 
 their comrades of the Indian Army, and the disci- 
 plined men, Indian too, but above all British, who 
 serve under them, millions of themselves who subsist 
 upon our trade with India would be in a state of 
 starvation. Happily the officers, and therefore the 
 men who serve under them, do their duty patiently 
 and quietly without regarding the volumes of chatter 
 which flow unceasingly from the north country ; 
 for they know that empires are won and governed 
 not by talk but by action. 
 
 This, I think, is a thing that we should aU do 
 well to remember from time to time. Exaggerated 
 esteem for our ParUamentary institutions has led us 
 to attach too much importance to speeches. Their 
 original purpose was to persuade men to a common 
 course of action ; but they have never been very 
 efficacious, and in this country have long been super- 
 seded by political organisation or, in plain English, 
 wire-pulling. People have a strange notion that, 
 without much chatter, there can be no liberty. But 
 liberty (whatever liberty may be) is a smaU thing to 
 a nation compared with discipline ; and in fact 
 liberty of any kind is impossible without discipline. 
 If I am to judge of a nation it is useless to tell me of 
 its political institutions, for the best of them will 
 work badly and the worst of them well according 
 
m] SPEECH AND ACTION 149 
 
 to the honesty of the men whose business it is to 
 apply them. Let me know what is the state* of its 
 discipline, parental, social, national, and with what 
 spirit that discipline is borne. Let me know what 
 are its military institutions, and how far they are 
 supported or ignored ; whether the citizens come 
 forward with cheerfulness to fulfil a national duty, 
 or whether they are reckless, self-indulgent shirkers 
 who try to impose on a few the service that is common 
 to all, and take refuge in cant to disguise their 
 cowardice. Then I will tell you without reading a 
 single speech whether the nation is sound at heart 
 or rotten. If the text of all the speeches ever de- 
 livered in Parliament were destroyed to-morrow, the 
 world would lose remarkably little. Great men are 
 best studied in their letters and their actions, whether 
 they were great speakers or not ; and by no means 
 the worst way of appreciating the actions of very 
 many of them, both civilians and soldiers, is to 
 read military history. 
 
150 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 BRITISH CAMPAIGNS IN INDIA 
 
 To-day I propose to speak to you upon a very 
 great and most intractable subject — British Military 
 History in India. It is difficult to do so without 
 saying something of the history of India itself ; yet 
 the subject is so immense that I must compress the 
 whole of that vast story into one or two sentences. 
 
 Let me begin then by reminding you that what 
 we call India is divided into a northern portion, 
 which extends from the Himalayas southward to 
 the Narbada river and the Vindhya Mountains and 
 is called Hindostan ; and a southern portion called 
 the Dekhan which stretches from those boundaries 
 southward to Cape Comorin. This division is less 
 arbitrary than a glance at the map would lead you 
 to suppose ; for between these two huge territories 
 there lies a belt of barren and mountainous country, 
 through which, before the days of railways, there 
 was practically but one passage, famous in Indian 
 military history as the Ajanta Pass. The earh'est 
 invaders of whom we have any knowledge came by 
 sea, and landing in the extreme south worked their 
 way from thence to the northern boundary of the 
 Dekhan. The people of the Dekhan still speak the 
 language of these invaders, which is unknown in 
 Hindostan. The next invaders, the Aryans, came 
 
IV] INDIA 151 
 
 through the passes of Afghanistan from the north- 
 west, bringmg with them the reUgious and social 
 institutions which are known to us as Hinduism, 
 Brahminism and caste, and which still govern the 
 lives of most of the millions who now inhabit Hindo- 
 stan. They penetrated, however, only into one 
 corner of the Dekhan — the north-west — where the 
 Aryan language, Marathi, betrays their presence. 
 
 I pass over the innumerable tides of invasion 
 which swept over Hindostan from the north-west, 
 until we come to the first formidable inroad of 
 Mohammedan Arabs in 999 a.d. The great 
 champions of Hinduism against Islam were the 
 Rajputs, whose nobles still represent the highest 
 aristocracy and the bluest blood in India. For a 
 long time they combated desperately and with 
 success; but in 1193 the Mohammedans captured 
 Delhi, and within another twenty years they de- 
 finitely overthrew the Rajputs and established 
 themselves as potential masters of India. For 
 Delhi, though the maps do not show it, is a great 
 strategical position, marking the centre of a kind 
 of pass, where the access to India from the north- 
 west is narrowed to a tract, not above one hundred 
 miles broad, between the mountains on the north 
 and a desert on the south. Hence all the decisive 
 battles of India against invaders from the north- 
 west have been fought within fifty miles of Delhi. 
 
152 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 In the fifteenth century a new set of Moham- 
 medan invaders — the Turkis or Tartars — came down 
 upon the Arabs, and after more than a hundred 
 years of raiding, invaded Hindostan in good earnest 
 under a great leader, Baber. In 1526 they became 
 masters of Delhi. Then for two hundred years 
 strong man succeeded strong man, and there was 
 consolidated what is called the Mogul Empire. 
 Akbar, one of the great men of all time, reigned 
 from 1556 until 1605 — almost exactly the period of 
 our own Elizabeth — and gathered all India north of 
 the Narbada, from Kandahar to the Bay of Bengal, 
 into a single Empire. His successors strove hard, 
 though with indifferent results, to subjugate the 
 Dekhan ; but by the middle of the seventeenth 
 century signs of decay were evident among the 
 Moguls. The Hindus, whether warriors as the 
 Rajputs, or meek and submissive, as the BengaUs, 
 have an amazing power of silently and gradually 
 absorbing all alien races into themselves. At this 
 moment a sharp line divides Mohammedans from 
 Hindus ; and yet the Mohammedans have already 
 caught the system of caste from the Hindus, and 
 as centuries roll on will doubtless be more and more 
 drawn into the hkeness of the Hindus, until the 
 two races are indistinguishable. Intermarriage con- 
 tributes greatly to this ; and it was intermarriage 
 with Hindu women, and the consequent dilution 
 
IV] SIKHS AND MARATHAS 153 
 
 of the stern Tartar blood, which weakened and 
 ruined the Mogul Emperors. 
 
 The last eminent man of the line, Aurungzib, 
 perhaps inspired by the deterioration of his country- 
 men, was a rabid Mohammedan fanatic, so relent- 
 less in his persecutions that he raised up a host of 
 enemies and brought about the ruin of the Mogul 
 Empire. The Rajputs reappeared as the champions 
 of Hinduism, but there also came forward two new 
 defenders. The first may be described as a Puritan 
 sect, the Sikhs. They were at the outset only 
 martyrs, but later, when a man of genius was bom 
 among them, they became in the nineteenth century 
 a great military power. The second and more im- 
 portant were the Marat has, the followers of Sivaji 
 Bonsla, a petty chief from the hills above Bombay, 
 who being a fine miUtary leader, wore out the armies 
 of Aurungzib by what we call gueriUa tactics. What 
 the Marathas were no one can say. They were not 
 a caste, nor a sect, nor a nation ; but they were a 
 homogeneous body, and they would, but for us 
 English, have become the masters of India. 
 
 Our own start in India was humble ; but the 
 East India Company began in the early years of 
 the seventeenth century to establish factories, or 
 trading depots, at various points on the coast, in- 
 cluding one at Madras in 1640 and on the Hugli in 
 1651. Bombay, which was part of the dowry of 
 
154 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 Katharine of Bragan9a, was leased to the Company 
 in 1661, and Calcutta was founded in 1690. But 
 all the factories suffered much during the incessant 
 fighting between Sivaji and Aurungzib ; and the 
 Company in 1686 declared its intention of making 
 reprisals. It had already formed the nuclei of 
 European armies in Madras in 1644 and in Bombay 
 in 1668 ; and had begun to enlist native troops 
 in 1683. But meanwhile another European power, 
 the French, had established factories in Madras 
 at Pondicherry and in Bengal at Chandernagore 
 in the year 1674 ; and the progress of events was 
 such as to offer great temptation to foreign adven- 
 turers. Aurungzib died in 1707, and with the 
 passing of the last strong man the realm of the 
 Moguls crumbled rapidly away. The viceroy of 
 the Dekhan set himself up as an independent 
 sovereign at Haiderabad ; a Hindu dynasty was 
 founded at Tan j ore ; another imperial official seized 
 Oude ; one adventurer laid hold of Bengal ; an- 
 other of Rohilkhand ; countless soldiers of fortune 
 planted themselves as petty chieftains in hill-fort- 
 resses ; a Persian invader sacked Delhi ; and an 
 Afghan chieftain conquered the whole of the western 
 Punjab. India had never been in a more appalling 
 welter of confusion and chaos than in the midst of 
 the eighteenth century. 
 
 Just at this period the English and French for 
 
IV] FRENCH AND ENGLISH 155 
 
 the first time came to blows in the Peninsula, the 
 pretext being the war of the Austrian Succession. 
 The French, represented at Pondicherry by a very 
 able agent, Dupleix, had initiated a policy of diplo- 
 matic interference in the affairs of the neighbouring 
 states, having an army of seven thousand Sepoys to 
 back them. The British on the other hand stuck 
 to their trading, and, as usual, were unprepared for 
 any attack. The French therefore besieged and 
 took Madras in 1746 ; but, being reinforced in time, 
 the British in turn besieged but did not take 
 Pondicherry. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle followed, 
 which put an end to hostihties ; and Madras was 
 restored to us in exchange for Louisburg. The 
 most significant incident of the war, however, was 
 that the Nawab of the Carnatic, the nominal suze- 
 rain of both the English and the French on the 
 Coromandel coast, had attempted to keep the peace 
 between them ; and that his raw levies, to the 
 number of ten thousand, had been swept off the 
 field in five minutes by two hundred and fifty 
 French soldiers and thrice that number of trained 
 Sepoys. This showed that a handful of disciplined 
 European soldiers could suffice to rout any primitive 
 Oriental host. Another important matter was that 
 the operations against the French had revealed a 
 remarkable leader in the British ranks, namely 
 Major Stringer Lawrence, a simple man who could 
 
156 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 hardly write his name, but a fine soldier and a judge 
 of men. For he selected from the counting-house 
 of the Company a young clerk named Robert Clive, 
 took his military education in hand, and to all 
 intents adopted him as his son. 
 
 Meanwhile the death of the Nawab of the Camatic 
 and of the Viceroy of the Dekhan almost simul- 
 taneously gave Dupleix an opportunity, which he 
 did not neglect, of making French influence para- 
 mount at both Courts. The succession, as almost 
 invariably happens in the East, was disputed ; and 
 Dupleix, by supporting in each case one candidate, 
 saw^ his way to making him a puppet and himself 
 the actual ruler. The Enghsh of course supported 
 the rival candidates ; and thus, though France and 
 England were at peace, the representatives of both 
 nations in India were at war as auxiliaries of native 
 princes. Stringer Lawrence being at home on leave, 
 EngUsh military affairs went sadly wrong ; and at 
 one moment the situation was so desperate that 
 it was only saved by a diversion against Arcot, the 
 capital of the Carnatic, by the young but not 
 uninstructed volunteer Clive. However in 1752 
 Lawrence returned, and in that and the following 
 year he gained victory after victory over the French. 
 The centre of the fighting, by a singular chain of 
 accidents, was the city of Trichinopoly ; and in the 
 plain before it Lawrence, with forces ranging from 
 
IV] STRINGER LAWRENCE 157 
 
 eight hundred to three thousand regular troops, two- 
 thirds of them Sepoys, against superior numbers of 
 French, fought a series of beautiful little actions, 
 out-manoeuvring his enemy on the open ground by 
 what would now be called parade movements, but 
 which were then the finest achievements of training 
 and discipline. In 1754 Dupleix was recalled to 
 France to answer for misconduct, and the struggle 
 was closed by a suspension of arms. The interest 
 of these few years, 1748 to 1754, is that, France and 
 England being at peace, their fleets could not inter- 
 vene in the contest ; otherwise the power which 
 enjoyed supremacy at sea was bound to win, being 
 always able to bring out her own reinforcements and 
 exclude those of the enemy. When the fight was 
 resumed, the influence of superiority at sea was very 
 clearly seen ; but meanwhile the year 1753 had wit- 
 nessed a new departure in British policy in India, 
 namely the arrival of a king's regiment, the 39th 
 Dorsetshire, which still bears the motto Primus in 
 Indis. Henceforward the rivalry in the great 
 peninsula was not to be between trading companies 
 but between nations. 
 
 And now you will ask what manner of campaigns 
 were these ? I must answer that generally speaking 
 they were extremely comfortable. The theatre of 
 war, which extended along about two hundred miles 
 of the east coast from Madras to the River Cavery, 
 
158 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 and about fifty miles inland, is mostly easy country, 
 cultivated and full of supplies, with abundance of 
 old fortified places to serve for depots and maga- 
 zines. Thus the sea could be used for the conveyance 
 of troops and heavy stores along the coast (though 
 the ports are unsafe during the monsoon) ; while 
 inland there was abundance of native carts and of 
 bullocks, which, though small and weakly, could 
 travel at the rate of two miles an hour. The army 
 was, as always in India, accompanied b}^ a vast 
 number of followers — in those days about ten 
 followers to one fighting man, though the proportion 
 has now been greatly reduced. In fact an army on 
 the march had much the appearance of a moving 
 city, every kind of trade, profession and calling being 
 represented, with speculators, in particular, in great 
 strength. On the march the officers were for the 
 most part carried in palanquins, and they were of 
 course attended by the full strength of their native 
 households, with every appliance for their comfort. 
 The men marched, the British, so far as one can 
 gather, in full European costume and with no special 
 protection from the sun ; though it is difficult to be 
 certain about the matter, for it is quite likely that 
 they were equipped very much according to the 
 notions of their officers. They too had plenty of 
 followers to look after them. The Sepoys, so far 
 as uniform went, were dressed in a short red jacket, 
 
IV] OLD INDIAN CAMPAIGNS 159 
 
 a curious semi-oriental, semi-European black head- 
 dress, very short little white drawers barely reaching 
 mid-thigh, and native shoes. The Madrassi is not 
 a fighting man — indeed Lord Roberts went so far 
 as to disband most of the true Madras infantry — 
 and it is almost certain that the sepoys who fought 
 with La^vrence, Clive, Coote, and Wellesley were 
 adventurers from aU parts of India, including many 
 from the fighting races of the north. The British 
 in column of route marched two abreast, the Sepoys 
 three abreast, for though well disciplined their drill 
 was primitive ; and, so far as I can gather, they 
 knew few words of command (apart from the manual 
 and firing exercise) except " Right turn " and '' Left 
 turn," which sufficed to bring them from line into 
 column and from column into line, the British in 
 two ranks, the Sepoys in three. It must be added 
 that the Company's troops, being accustomed to 
 march from place to place to relieve each other in 
 various garrisons, always kept a respectable amount 
 of transport with them, and hence could enter upon 
 a campaign ready mobilised. But at all times the 
 number of the followers was, and still is, a great 
 encumbrance, and, when supplies and forage were 
 scanty, an appalling difficulty. 
 
 So much for Madras ; but Madras was only one 
 of three presidencies, which were practically as far 
 from each other as England is from Portugal. From 
 
160 MILITARY HI:<TORY [lect. 
 
 Calcutta to Madras is a goad eight hundred miles 
 bv -■' ' . and by land the journey was almost im- 
 }'. :ble owing to the numbt-r of great rivers 
 
 that cross the Une oi march. Fr*.>m t^'iu'ca} to the 
 British settlements on the Malabar ooa.^t is another 
 eight hundred miJe^ by sea. and to Madras itself. 
 going round Ceylon, over two thousand miles. Fron\ 
 Cideutta to Bomba\ L'serland is a thousand miles as 
 the crow flies, thougli part of the distance could be 
 travers<Hi by river, and by sea at lca^t two thousand 
 live hundred miles. Moreover there was until 177:> 
 no Governor-General ; but the three presidencies 
 of Bombay. Bengal and Madras were co-equal, and 
 divided moreover by jealousies ami self-importance. 
 The opening of the Seven Years' War in 1756 
 brought about a renew al of hostilities : but it began 
 with an miexpected disaster in the capture of Cal- 
 cutta, through a sudden flt of jealousy, by Siraj-ud- 
 Daula. the Xawab of Bengal. Upon this disaster 
 followed the tragedy of the Black Hole. It was 
 necessary to send troops up from Madras under 
 Clive to recover the city with all haste, for French 
 reinforcements were expected at Pondicherry. and 
 there was no fleet to stop them. Having but a 
 handful of men. Clive contrived to detach one of 
 the Xawab ^ principal ofticers from him. and by 
 the man's treacherous a^istance defeated Siraj-ud- 
 Ihiula at Plassej, This done, he installed Mir 
 
IV] LALLY TOLLEXDAL 161 
 
 Jaffier, the officer aforesaid., in the Xawab's place, 
 and left a young clerk named Warren Hastings to 
 keep him in order. 
 
 Meanwhile a very able French officer, one de 
 Bussy, had contrived by consummate skill and 
 daring tx) restore French influence with the Vice- 
 roy of the Dekhan, but, having little military force 
 at his command, was unable to effect much, while 
 the British themselves were too weak greatly to 
 harm their enemies. In the spring of 1758 the 
 French reinforcements arrived, and the commander, 
 Count Lally Tollendal, was able to take the field 
 with twenty-five hundred Europeans — an enormous 
 force in those days — and half as many Sepoys. He 
 captured several minor places in the first few months, 
 but, finding himself short of money, turned south- 
 ward to take some from the rich Rajah of Mysore. 
 Persecuting and bullying wherever he went, he 
 soon turned all the natives against him. All cattle 
 were driven ofi, all food was hidden away ; and, when 
 Tan j ore was reached, he found himself opposed not 
 only by natives but by part of the British garrison 
 of Trichinopoly, which the British commandant had 
 sent to their assistance. After heavy loss and much 
 suffering he returned to Pondicherry, where he 
 learned that after a sharp action the French fleet 
 had been driven from the coast by a British fleet of 
 inferior numbers ; and, what with one trouble and 
 
 F. M. H. 11 
 
162 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 another, it was December before he could lay siege 
 to Madras. He stayed before the city for two 
 months, when the appearance of the British fleet, 
 which had been refitted after the recent engagement, 
 compelled him to retreat. Meanwhile Clive in 
 Bengal had detached a small force, as a diversion, 
 by sea against the French settlements in the Northern 
 Sirkars, about two hundred miles north of Madras ; 
 where the commander. Colonel Forde of the Thirty- 
 ninth, fought a brilliant campaign against superior 
 numbers, and by his success not only extinguished 
 the French power in that quarter but banished 
 French influence in favour of English at the court 
 of the Viceroy of the Dekhan. The tide now tiu-ned. 
 Fresh reinforcements arrived from England together 
 with a new commander. Colonel Eyre Coote, to take 
 the place of Lawrence whose health had given way. 
 The Dutch in Batavia, always jealous of the British, 
 fitted out an expedition to attack their rivals in 
 Bengal while the bulk of British troops were in 
 Madras ; but it was useless. CHve detached Forde 
 with orders to fight them immediately. Forde did 
 so, overthrowing their superior numbers in half an 
 hour, and capturing their army almost to a man. 
 Three months later Coote met Lally at Wandewash 
 upon equal terms and completel}^ defeated him, thus 
 destroying for ever the French competition for the 
 mastery of India. 
 
IV] BAD TIMES 163 
 
 While the British power was thus growing, that 
 of the Marathas had increased hkewise ; and they 
 had organised themselves into a confederacy of 
 five co-eqnal parts under five principal chiefs. In 
 1758 their success ran so high that they laid hold 
 upon Delhi itself ; but this was too much for the 
 Mohammedan Afghans. They came down in their 
 wrath ; and in 1761 a great battle was fought at 
 Panipat in which the Marathas were utterly defeated. 
 Had the Afghans followed up their success, the 
 Marathas would have taken long to recover from 
 the blow ; but the victors were obliged to look to 
 their own western frontier which was threatened 
 by the Persians ; and the only result of the fight 
 was to exhaust two of the possible masters of 
 northern India and leave the country in greater 
 confusion than ever. Most unfortunately, too, Clive, 
 the representative of the third possible master, 
 went home on leave at this time ; and the supreme 
 power in Bengal passed into the hands of the Com- 
 pany's clerks. Having no high standard before 
 their eyes and being miserably paid, these clerks 
 saw the chance of enriching themselves by selling 
 the use of the Company's troops to any potentate 
 or adventurer who might offer to buy ; and, by 
 setting up and throwing down the Nawabs of Bengal 
 as best suited their pockets, they involved the 
 Company in most perilous and soon disastrous 
 
 11—2 
 
164 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 wars. From the worst of their difficulties they 
 were extricated by the military genius of Major 
 Thomas Adams, who though deficient alike in men, 
 arms and supplies, contrived by three victories at 
 Katwa, Suti and Undwa Nala in July, August and 
 September, 1763, to maintain the terror of the 
 British arms. But the titular Emperor of Delhi 
 of the Mogul dynasty also entered the fray, and 
 strove with the help of the Nawab of Oudh to re- 
 establish his former sovereignty over Bengal ; and 
 to make matters worse at this critical moment there 
 was a mutiny among the Sepoys of the Bengal 
 Presidency. The mutiny, however, was sternly 
 repressed by Major Hector Munro, who then led 
 his army against the Emperor and utterly defeated 
 him at Buxar on the 23rd of Februar^^, 1764. This 
 victory opened the way to Oudh, and the British 
 captured in succession the great cities of Allahabad 
 and Lucknow ; when at this moment Clive returned 
 and stopped further annexation. He had no wish 
 to have for neighbours the adventurers who had 
 sprung up at Delhi, Agra, Bhurtpore and in Rohil- 
 khand. He therefore restored Oudh to its Nawab, 
 so as to keep it a buffer-state between Bengal and 
 the rest of Hindostan. 
 
 In Madras likewise the British officials had 
 lost their heads. They were threatened by two 
 dangerous enemies, the Marathas, and Hyder Ali, 
 
IV] WARREN HASTINGS 165 
 
 a Mohammedan soldier who by sheer mihtary genius 
 had acquired the sovereignty of Mysore, and from 
 that base was threatening the territory ahke of the 
 Marathas, the Nizam, and the British in southern 
 India. The British might have played off their 
 rivals against each other, but they contrived instead 
 to make enemies of both ; and Hyder AH was a 
 formidable opponent. Happily there was a British 
 officer, Colonel Joseph Smith, who was more than 
 his equal, and before whom Hyder trembled in 
 the field. But the Council of Madras displaced 
 Smith to make room for a creature of their own ; 
 and the consequence was that in 1769 H3^der Ali 
 advanced to within five miles of Madras itself, and 
 forced the Council to an humiliating peace. Even 
 so, however, though they obtained the mercy, they 
 did not obtain the forgiveness of the ruler of Mysore. 
 In 1773 the British Parliament passed an Act 
 which, among other reforms, made the Governor 
 of Bengal the Governor-General of all three pro- 
 vinces, but most foolishly omitted to make him 
 supreme in his own Council, leaving him instead at 
 the mercy of the majority. Warren Hastings was 
 the first Governor-General, and well for us it is that 
 he was so ; for no smaller man would have sufficed 
 to preserve our dominion in India against the folly 
 and malignity of the adverse faction in his Council. 
 He made of his own will but one war, against the 
 
166 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 predatory Rohillas, whom he compelled to pay 
 due obedience to their suzerain the Nawab of Oudh. 
 This action was afterwards distorted by the ma- 
 li'gnit}^ of his enemies into a crime. But the Govern- 
 ment of Bombay, like those of Madras and Bengal, 
 had through greed of territory entangled itself in 
 a war with the Marathas ; and Hastings, while 
 utterly disapproving its policy, found it imperative 
 to send assistance. Moreover, he had the courage 
 to order the reinforcements to march overland from 
 the frontier of Oudh to Bombay, a thing which 
 hitherto had never been dreamed of ; and indeed 
 the passage of six battalions of Sepoys across 
 Hindostan over a vast extent of territory which no 
 Englishman knew and where no one could say 
 whether they would be welcomed or fired upon, is 
 a sufficiently striking episode. Unfortunately the 
 commander allowed himself to be tempted to do a 
 little fighting for some petty potentates on the way ; 
 and this delay caused Hastings's heroic determina- 
 tion to be in great measure fruitless. The Bombay 
 Government too managed its military affairs so ill 
 that no operations of their designing could prosper ; 
 and finally it was necessary to patch up a hasty and 
 discreditable peace with the Marathas in the north- 
 west in view of a far more formidable danger else- 
 where. 
 
 For in 1778, as wiU be remembered, the French 
 
IV] HYDER ALI 167 
 
 declared war upon us in consequence of our disasters 
 in America ; and in 1780 Hyder AH, the southern 
 Marathas and the Nizam formed a confederacy to 
 expel the British from India. In June of that year 
 Hyder descended from Mysore upon Madras with 
 ninety thousand men, including four hundred French, 
 and fifteen thousand Sepoys trained and disciplined 
 after the European manner. The wretched Council of 
 Madras had nothing ready, neither men, nor stores, 
 nor supplies ; and unfortunately Hector Munro of 
 Buxar, who held the command of such troops as 
 there were, managed his affairs badly and divided 
 his force. One detachment of three thousand men 
 was cut to pieces ; and matters were so serious 
 that Hastings sent Sir Eyre Coote down to take 
 command in the Carnatic, with every soldier that 
 could be spared from Bengal. A superior French 
 fleet was on the coast, and Hyder conceived the 
 bold notion of capturing or destroying all supplies 
 that Coote might use ashore, while the French cut 
 off all that might arrive by sea. Happily the French 
 admiral left the coast in the nick of time to save 
 Coote, who averted all immediate danger by the 
 victory of Porto Novo ; but in the campaign that 
 followed the British general was so much hampered 
 by Hyder's light troops that he could hardly keep 
 the field from want of transport and supplies. 
 Another mishap then occurred ; and a detachment 
 
168 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 of a thousand British troops was surprised and cut 
 to pieces ; while a succession of naval actions left 
 the French fleet practically supreme on the coast. 
 Hyder Ali died early in 1782, and Eyre Coote soon 
 followed him, but Hyder's son Tippoo was an abler 
 man than Coote's successor. In 1783 the crisis 
 came. A detachment of a thousand men from 
 Bombay, which had been sent to make a diversion 
 on the west side of Mysore, was cut off and captured 
 by Tippoo ; and a month later a formidable French 
 force landed at Cuddalore (Gadalur) on the east 
 coast, and fought a severe though indecisive action 
 against the British under General Stuart. Three 
 daj^s later the French squadron on the coast under 
 Admiral Suffren drove off the British ships and 
 landed yet more reinforcements, which gave them 
 a decided superiority over the British. The fate 
 of British supremacy in India hung in the balance 
 for seven anxious days, when in the nick of time 
 news came that peace had been concluded between 
 France and England in Europe. So nearly were 
 all the victories of Lawrence, Clive and Eyre Coote 
 neutralised by incompetent administration at Bom- 
 bay and Madras. The one able man among Indian 
 officials, Warren Hastings, went home to be shame- 
 fully persecuted under the form of a judicial trial by 
 a clique of vindictive politicians. They succeeded 
 in ruining him financially by sheer blackguardly 
 
IV] TIPPOO SAHIB 169 
 
 cunning ; but they couid not damage his great 
 name, which will never be forgotten in India while 
 British rule endures. 
 
 Parliament now amended the government of 
 India by giving the Governor- General absolute and 
 supreme power, and making the chief officials re- 
 sponsible to Parliament instead of to the Company. 
 These were good and useful reforms ; but extreme 
 anxiety to check the levying of war for purposes of 
 gain led English statesmen to enact further that 
 the Governor-General should not make war at all 
 except for defence, thus leaving to his enemies 
 practically the undisputed power of taking the 
 initiative in hostilities. Lord Cornwallis, a good 
 soldier, was the first Governor-General under the 
 new system ; and Tippoo Sahib at once took ad- 
 vantage of it to make a raid into the Carnatic. 
 Cornwallis accordingly took the field against him 
 in 1791, and invaded Mysore from the east, while 
 a detachment from Bombay invaded it from the 
 west. The enterprise was most difficult, for it was 
 certain that, as soon as the British arrived on the 
 table-land of Mysore, Tippoo would draw a ring of 
 devastation about them, destroying all food and 
 forage. With enormous difficulty Cornwallis reached 
 Seringapatam, Tippoo's capital city, and laid siege 
 to it ; but, strive as he would, he could not provide 
 transport for more than twenty days' supplies, and 
 
170 MILITAEY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 he could only bring forward his ammunition by 
 paying the women and boys among the followers to 
 carry each a cannon-shot or two. Before he reached 
 the city nearly all of his animals were dead, and not 
 only his guns but all the public conveyances of the 
 army were dragged by the troops. Ultimately he 
 was obliged to destroy the whole of his siege-train 
 and retreat, his camp being poisoned by the bodies 
 of starved followers and cattle, and his troops 
 weakened by want of food. He must not be blamed. 
 It is not easy to take an army, even without a mass 
 of followers, for a hundred miles through a country 
 where there is neither food nor forage. 
 
 In the next year, 1792, Cornwallis decided to try 
 again, having meanwhile captured several strong 
 forts which would serve him as advanced bases 
 and magazines. The whole force from Bengal and 
 Bombay exceeded thirty thousand men ; and, as 
 he advanced, Tippoo as usual burned the whole 
 country on his line of march. But the previous 
 year's operations had given CornwaUis secure bases 
 within little more than fifty miles of Seringapatam ; 
 and four marches sufficed to bring his force before 
 the walls. Even so, if Tippoo had left a garrison 
 in the capital and used the rest of his force to harass 
 the British communications from end to end, Corn- 
 waUis would have had much ado to keep his army 
 in sufficient strength before the walls ; but Tippoo 
 
IV] SIKHS AND MARATHAS 171 
 
 was proud of his disciplined infantry and of his 
 fortifications, and preferred to meet the British with 
 their weapons instead of with his own. The result 
 was that Cornwallis stormed Seringapatam out of 
 hand within forty-eight hours, and compelled Tippoo 
 to sign a treaty which deprived him of half of his 
 territory and resources. 
 
 Now came the war of the French Revolution, a 
 war above all of French intrigues with every people, 
 nation and language that might bear England a 
 grudge. During the ten years which followed the 
 peace of 1783 there had been little peril to the British 
 in Hindostan ow'ng to the gathering strength of the 
 Sikhs, who in 1785 had mastered the whole of the 
 eastern Punjab from the Jhelum to the Sutlej, 
 where they formed at once a barrier against any 
 invasion from the passes on the north-west, and a 
 dam against the rising flood of the Marathas from 
 the south. The Marathas had by this time thrown 
 off the authority of the Peshwa, and broken up 
 into five practically independent states ; and the 
 most powerful of their chiefs, Scindia of GwaHor, 
 had reoccupied Delhi and Agra and had actually 
 called upon the East India Companj^ to pay tribute 
 for Bengal to him, as the holder of the old Mogul 
 capital. A contest between British and Marathas for 
 the mastery of India was therefore certain, sooner 
 or later ; but meanwhile the various members 
 
172 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 of the late confederacy fought indiscriminately 
 against each other. The whole country was over- 
 run with mercenary bands, eager to sell themselves 
 to the highest bidder ; and adventurers of all nations 
 were to be found among them, not the least remark- 
 able of such being an Irish sailor, who became for a 
 time a reigning prince with an army of ten thousand 
 men. Luckily for us these adventurers prevailed 
 upon many of the chiefs to train their armies after 
 the European model, which was a fatal error for 
 them ; for, choosing to fight the British with their 
 own weapons, they were bound to deliver themselves 
 into their enemies' hands. 
 
 Cornwallis left India in 1793, and was succeeded 
 by Sir John Shore. This well-meaning but feeble 
 gentleman allowed both the Marathas and Tippoo 
 to increase their strength at the expense of the 
 Nizam, the ally of the British, and by his weakness 
 encouraged Tippoo to cultivate relations with the 
 French. In 1798 he was succeeded by a very 
 different kind of man. Lord Mornington, better 
 known as Marquess WeUesley, who speedily made 
 up his mind that the anarchy outside the British 
 dominions must cease, and that to this end British 
 authority must become paramount in India. Tippoo 
 Sahib, being the open ally of the French, was the 
 first enemy to be attacked ; and the command of 
 the expedition was entrusted to General Harris 
 
IV] FALL OF SERINGAPATAM 173 
 
 with Colonel Arthur Wellesley, Mornington's younger 
 brother, for one of his brigadiers. Harris, knowing 
 Tippoo's trick of devastating his country before an 
 invading army, had to think out some method of 
 neutralising it, for his difficulties of transport and 
 supply were frightful. In all he had 120,000 bullocks 
 to draw supplies and stores for his army, and those 
 bullocks must be fed, or the campaign would go for 
 nothing. To protect them he was obliged to advance 
 in a hollow square, two miles broad and seven miles 
 deep, an extremely cumbersome formation ; and yet 
 his onty resource was to make feints of an advance 
 in one direction so that Tippoo should destroy the 
 country in that quarter, and then swerve away to 
 a district which Tippoo had spared. This device was 
 successful. By much zig-zagging Harris reached 
 Seringapatam in thirty-two days without mishap, 
 and after a month's siege stormed the city for the 
 last time. Tippoo was killed ; Tan j ore and the 
 Carnatic were annexed to the British dominions ; 
 and Mysore was restored to the Hindu dynasty which 
 had formerly ruled it. Arthur Wellesley was mean- 
 while left in civil and military command of the 
 province, and during the next two years did 
 excellent service in restoring order in southern 
 India. In particular he took note of the superiority, 
 for purpose of transport, of the Mysore bullocks, 
 which can trot six miles an hour. 
 
174 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 Momington's next step was to endeavour to 
 restore the authority of the Peshwa, so as to keep 
 the Maratha chiefs from fighting with their neigh- 
 bours ; but two of those chiefs, Scindia and Holkar, 
 evaded all British overtures ; and accordingly an 
 army under General Gerard Lake was sent against 
 Scindia's dominions in the north, and another under 
 General Arthur Wellesley against those in the south. 
 Scindia had a vast number of guns cast under Euro- 
 pean direction, and twenty thousand infantry trained 
 by European officers ; but WeUesley had thought 
 out the means of beating him whether he should 
 adopt European tactics or the old guerilla warfare — 
 always worrying and never fighting — which was 
 traditional with the Marathas. He would make 
 his campaign in the rainy season, and always attack 
 the enemy when on the march and not when in 
 position, for the Maratha chiefs had the gift of 
 choosing very strong positions. This he could 
 ensure by organising his transport, his supply- 
 service and his pontoon-train to perfection. The 
 rivers being in flood he could always cross them 
 with his pontoons, whereas the Marathas would 
 be stopped by them, so that he could catch his 
 enemy wherever he liked. Moreover, since the 
 Marathas lived on the country, whereas he carried 
 his food with him, he could alwavs wait until 
 hunger drove them from any position they might 
 
IV] GREAT MARATHA WAR 175 
 
 have occupied, and then follow them up. This plan 
 seems very simple when you know it, but it needs a 
 great general to think out the details of a campaign 
 in this way. Matters did not turn out exactly as 
 Wellesley had arranged ; but he beat the Marathas 
 in a first desperate action at Assay e, where only his 
 own skill and coolness in the presence of tremendous 
 odds saved the day ; and in a second action at 
 Argaum, which victory being crowned by the storm 
 of the almost inaccessible fortress of Gawilghur 
 crushed the Maratha power in the south. In the 
 north Lake Hkewise stormed Aligarh, captured Agra, 
 won one victory at Delhi, and then by a second 
 most desperate action at Laswari broke the might 
 of Scindia in the north. With Holkar however, who 
 pursued guerilla tactics, Lake was less successful. 
 Holkar almost annihilated one of his detachments 
 under Colonel Monson, though this same Monson 
 shortly afterwards beat him handsomely at Deig. 
 Lake himself stormed Deig a little later, but failed 
 with heavy loss in four several assaults upon Bhurt- 
 pore, and was obliged to abandon the attempt and 
 take up the chase of Holkar, whom he hunted almost 
 to the Indus before he brought him to terms after 
 three years of hard warfare. Peace left the British 
 in possession of Delhi and Agra with the contiguous 
 tracts on both sides of the Jumna, the whole of the 
 country between the Jumna and the Ganges, and 
 
176 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 the province of Cuttack, or in other words with a 
 continuous length of territory from Bengal north 
 and westward to the Upper Jumna, and southward 
 to the Presidency of Madras. Mornington further 
 instituted the principle that native states under 
 British influence should keep no regular troops but 
 those hired from the Anglo-Indian Government, 
 should refer all disputes with their neighbours to 
 British arbitration, and should enter into no negotia- 
 tions with foreign powers. 
 
 Hereby Mornington made himself the re-founder, 
 if the phrase may be used, of our British Empire in 
 the East ; but his wars had been costly, and his 
 temper was too imperious to commend itself either 
 to the Directors of the East India Company or to the 
 Board of Control which represented the Imperial 
 Government's authority in India. He was there- 
 fore recalled, and was succeeded first by Lord 
 Cornwall is — who died almost immediately — and then 
 for a time by Sir George Barlow, the senior member 
 of the Council. • 
 
 Meanwhile there suddenly burst upon British 
 India an unsuspected and appalling danger. Owing 
 to injudicious interference by officers of the King's 
 service who held high command in the Madras Army, 
 regulations were introduced which ignored the caste 
 marks of the Sepoys. Silently but effectually cor- 
 respondence was established between the Company's 
 
IV] MUTINY OF VELLORE 177 
 
 battalions all over the Presidency ; and a general 
 insurrection was concerted for the autumn of 1806. 
 Favourable circumstances caused the garrison at 
 Vellore to rise prematurely ; when eighteen hundred 
 Sepoys made a general attack upon all the Europeans 
 in the fort, murdered several, and were within an 
 ace of complete success. The situation was saved 
 by Colonel Gillespie of the Nineteenth Light Dra- 
 goons, who galloped to the spot with his regiment 
 and two guns, forced an entrance into the fort, 
 rallied the Europeans and destroyed the mutineers 
 almost to a man. They had already succeeded 
 in killing and wounding over two hundred British 
 soldiers, so no mercy was shown to them. The 
 service rendered by Gillespie upon this occasion 
 was beyond estimation great ; and it was a matter 
 of extreme good fortune that such a man — ready, 
 energetic and of almost incredible courage — should 
 have been within reach at such a crisis. But for 
 his bravery and promptitude the entire native army 
 of Madras might have mutinied, and the evil might 
 have spread until it threatened the actual existence 
 of the British in India. With her resources strained 
 to the utmost by the struggle with Napoleon England 
 would have found reconquest a difficult matter ; 
 and in short, but for Gillespie, the mutiny of VeUore 
 might have altered the whole course of European as 
 well as Indian history. 
 
 F. M. H. 12 
 
178 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 Hardly was this peril passed away, when a 
 trouble, almost incredibly strange and formidable, 
 followed upon it. As the Directors had complained 
 of extravagance and expensive wars. Sir George 
 Barlow thought fit, in a true English spirit, to cut 
 down above all things military expenditure ; and 
 this he did mainly hy reducing certain allowances 
 to the officers of the Company's army. Now the 
 discipline of the British officers of that army was 
 in a very bad state. For the King's army the King 
 himself was the fountain of honour, and rewards for 
 good service took the form of the Royal approbation 
 publicly signified, of titles of honour, or of the thanks 
 of both Houses of Parliament. The Company's 
 army (except in rare instances) received only the 
 thanks of the Directors — a parcel of merchants in 
 Leadenhall Street — which were naturally little valued ; 
 except so far as they were supplemented b}^ grants 
 of money, of which the officers, condemned to long 
 exile in an unhealthy climate, were very justly 
 tenacious. Hence they had instituted the practice 
 of passing votes of appreciation and approbation of 
 each other, which was most pernicious to discipline. 
 This might rightly have been put down with a strong 
 hand ; but the reduction of pecuniary allowances 
 was a real grievance ; and the officers met it with 
 a number of absurd and insubordinate resolutions. 
 Barlow was a strong and determined man, but he 
 
IV] THE OFFICERS' MUTINY 179 
 
 hated soldiers ; and, instead of appealing to the 
 better feelings of the officers and using tact as weU 
 as firmness, he sent spies among them, suspended 
 them arbitrarily right and left without trial, and 
 employed emissaries to wean the devotion of the 
 Sepoys from their regimental officers — this last an 
 inconceivably dangerous measure. To be brief, 
 in 1809 he succeeded in driving the officers into 
 open mutiny, which was not suppressed without 
 bloodshed ; and in fact the trouble was only ended 
 by the advent of his successor, Lord Minto ; the 
 officers yielding readily to him but declining alto- 
 gether to submit to Sir George Barlow. The ill- 
 feeling bred by this mutiny lasted for thirty years, 
 and was not without its effect upon the greater 
 Mutiny of 1857. 
 
 To return to more general matters, the policy 
 of the Directors in holding aloof from affairs outside 
 their own territory produced the worst consequences. 
 
 Lord Minto, equally with Barlow, shrank from 
 any imitation of Lord Wellesley's masterful keeping 
 of the peace. The result was that Central India 
 became the resort of large bands of free-booters, 
 who ultimately rallied themselves, thirty thousand 
 strong, under the name of Pindaris, with a single 
 leader Amir Khan, and bade fair to destroy the 
 Rajputs, who were our friends, altogether. The 
 danger was the greater, inasmuch as the beaten 
 
 12 2 
 
180 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 Maratha leaders were chafing under their defeat, and 
 were likely to use the Pindaris as allies. Central 
 India in fact was in a most deplorable condition, 
 when Minto was succeeded in 1814 by Lord Moira, 
 better known as Marquess Hastings, a very able 
 soldier and a resolute man, who realised at once 
 that anarchy must be stopped in Hindostan, other- 
 wise something worse than anarchy might result 
 from it. His first trouble was with the Nepalis or 
 Gurkhas, who were encroaching upon British lands 
 in Bengal and in 1814 actually seized two districts. 
 Hastings at once resolved upon war, and sent an 
 army to penetrate the passes into the mountains. 
 The expedition is noteworthy, for it was the first 
 of our many invasions into the great hill ranges 
 which surround the north of India. The operations 
 were not easy ; and it was necessary to invade the 
 frontier in four different columns, varying in strength 
 from four to eight thousand men. One of these 
 was thrice repulsed in attacks upon a hill-fort ; and 
 Gillespie, its commander, was killed. There were 
 slight reverses in other parts also, for some of the 
 British officers showed anything but ability ; but 
 all was redeemed by the brilliant conduct of General 
 David Ochterlony, commanding the most westerly 
 of the four divisions, who broke through the whole 
 of the Gurkha defences before him, and forced 
 them in the summer of 1815 to sue for peace. 
 
IV] THE PINDARI WAR 181 
 
 Hostilities were renewed, however, the next year, 
 when Ochterlony, now in supreme command, by 
 further operations drove the Gurkhas to submission. 
 They ceded to us a long tract of the Lower Hima- 
 layas, and thus our frontier was brought up to that 
 of the Chinese Empire. Since then there has been 
 unbroken friendship between England and Nepal ; 
 and there are no more loyal, efficient and gallant 
 troops in the Imperial service than the Gurkhas. 
 Meanwhile the situation in Central India had 
 grown worse and worse ; and the Pindaris, secretly 
 abetted by the Maratha chiefs, made inroads upon 
 British territory within Bengal and Madras. The 
 Rajputs implored the help of Hastings, who in 1817 
 set over one hundred thousand men in motion, 
 more than forty thousand from the Dekhan, and 
 more, than sixty thousand from Hindostan. The 
 occasion was worthy of so large a force, for three 
 of the Maratha chiefs, Peshwa, Holkar and Bonsla, 
 had thrown in their lot with the Pindaris. The 
 Marathas were speedily weakened by three defeats 
 at Kirki, Sitabaldi and Mahidpur ; and part of the 
 armies were then turned upon the Pindaris in con- 
 verging columns, so as to break them up completely. 
 Defeat after defeat of these free-booters followed, 
 for every man's hand was against them. For years, 
 owing to the timidity of Minto, they had ridden 
 roughshod over the unhappy villagers with murder. 
 
182 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 torture and rapine, but now their time was come. 
 This campaign is the second instance of the employ- 
 ment of the British cavalry in marches of astonishing 
 length and swiftness to exterminate bands of 
 brigands. Arthur Wellesley had set the example in 
 1800, and it was worthily foUowed now. Very 
 soon but one formidable band of Pindaris was left 
 under a leader named Chitu, who was hunted for 
 days and weeks until he was driven at last into the 
 jungle and killed by a tiger. The remnant of the 
 Peshwa's Marathas was again defeated at Korigaon ; 
 his strongholds fell one after another ; and at length 
 in March, 1819, the war was brought to an end. 
 The boundaries of the Maratha states were care- 
 fully defined ; their predatory system was utterly 
 abolished ; and their territories were made subject 
 to WeUesley's principle with regard to troops, 
 disputes with neighbours and relations with foreign 
 powers. Then for the first time for nearly two 
 centuries there was peace in Central India. 
 
 There were now but two points of disturbance 
 on the British frontier : in the north-west, where the 
 genius of Ran jit Singh had united the Sikhs into 
 a single powerful and essentially military nation by 
 conquest ; and in the north-east, where the Burmese 
 armies had carried aggression so far as to invade 
 border-states under British protection. The ill- 
 deeds of these last caused Lord Amherst, the 
 
IV] FIRST BURMESE WAR 183 
 
 Governor-General, to send in 1 824 a formidable force 
 of eleven thousand men against them. Few expedi- 
 tions have been undertaken with more fatuous 
 contempt of information and enquiry than this one. 
 The army was sent by sea to Rangoon with orders 
 to ascend the Irrawadi by water, capturing all the 
 principal cities which lie upon its banks, and so 
 penetrating to Ava. As the province of Pegu, in 
 which Rangoon stands, was a comparatively recent 
 conquest of the Burmese, it was assumed that the 
 inhabitants would be friendly and native supplies 
 plentiful. On the contrary the troops found Ran- 
 goon deserted, no boats, no native pilots, no supplies, 
 and were obliged to remain in and about the city, 
 eating such salted and preserved provisions as they 
 had brought with them, until a fresh supply could 
 be brought from India. This accordingly they 
 did, only making occasional sorties to prevent the 
 Burmese from hemming them in altogether. These 
 were costly little operations, for the Burmese threw 
 up stockades with astonishing skill and swiftness, 
 and these required to be stormed. On several occa- 
 sions attacks upon them were repulsed with loss. 
 Having arrived at the beginning of the rainy season 
 in order to have plenty of water to ascend the river, 
 the British had to endure all the misery and un- 
 healthiness of the rains, aggravated by bad food, with 
 the result that sickness made havoc of the troops and 
 
184 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 reduced their effective numbers at one moment to 
 three thousand men. The Burmese closed in upon 
 them in force; but in December, 1824, were driven 
 back by a general attack upon their whole line. 
 
 When the news of the situation reached Calcutta 
 the Government sent out two additional expeditions 
 to invade the province of Ava overland, one from 
 Manipur, the other from Chittagong. The first 
 route was found impracticable, owing to the density 
 of the forest ; the second force, eleven thousand 
 strong, advanced upon Aracan and captured it, but 
 failed, from neglect of sound geographical infor- 
 mation, to find a way to the army on the Irrawadi, 
 which it had been intended to join, and remained 
 helpless and stationary. One fourth of the men died 
 during the rainy season of 1825, and half of the 
 survivors were in hospital. The main army mean- 
 while advanced up the Irrawadi into the interior, 
 captured Prome, and after several smart actions 
 arrived within sixty miles of Ava, when the Burmese 
 at the beginning of 1826 met them and made 
 submission. Assam, Aracan and Tennasserim were 
 ceded to the British, and thus some compensation 
 was gained for a very costly and destructive 
 campaign. The casual fashion in which war had 
 been begun in a region of continuous marsh and 
 forest at the beginning of the rainy season, when 
 the whole country was inundated, was thoroughly 
 
IV] SIEGE OF BHURTPORE 185 
 
 English and most condemnable. Thousands of 
 lives were sacrificed which might have been saved, 
 and it was fortunate that matters feU out no worse 
 than they did. Meanwhile the eternal assault of 
 stockades was very trying to the troops, and gave 
 opportunities, which were abundantly taken, for 
 brilliant displays of valour. 
 
 While this was going on, the throne of Bhurtpore 
 became vacant through the death of the Rajah, 
 and was usurped by a pretender. This was a direct 
 menace to the peace of India ; and Sir David 
 Ochterlony, who was the Resident at Delhi, at once 
 assembled a force to drive out the usurper. So little, 
 however, did the Governor-General know his duty, 
 that he countermanded the project and publicly cen- 
 sured Ochterlony in terms of extravagant harshness. 
 The veteran General resigned, but was so much 
 affected by Amherst's foolish policy and by the slight 
 put upon himself that he died soon afterwards. Then 
 of course Amherst was obliged to do at last what he 
 should have done at first, and Sir Stapleton Cotton 
 was sent with twenty thousand men to besiege the 
 famous fortress which had foiled the eager impetu- 
 osity of Lake. Its strength may be imagined by 
 the statistics that its circuit is five miles in extent, 
 that the ditch of the citadel was fifty yards wide 
 and fifty feet deep, and that the ramparts generally, 
 besides being of great height and thickness, were 
 
186 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 built of clay which refused to crumble away under 
 the battering of round shot. A bastion was there- 
 fore undermined and blown up, and the place was 
 stormed out of hand. 
 
 Lord Amherst was succeeded in 1828 by Lord 
 William Bentinck, a man who. having had Macaulay 
 to write his epitaph, enjoys a reputation far above 
 his deserts. He was mediocre alike as soldier and 
 statesman, and had an extraordinary knack of doing 
 foolish things. While Governor-General his only 
 idea was to save money for the Directors — he even 
 tried to sell the Taj Mahal, the gem of Mohammedan 
 architecture in India ; — but he neglected to keep the 
 peace ; he reduced the allowances of the European 
 officers, in direct breach of agreement ; and finally, 
 to curry favour with the humanitarians, he, in the 
 face of all advice from British and native soldiers, 
 abolished the punishment of the lash in the native 
 regiments. The mischief which he thus did was 
 incalculable ; for he lowered the officers in the eyes 
 of the natives, and so ruined the discipline of the 
 Sepoys that beyond doubt he was the greatest of 
 aU contributors to the Mutiny of 1857. The Duke 
 of Wellington, and all who knew India, were furious 
 with him ; but being a sentimental Whig, which is 
 synonymous with a man of good intentions and bad 
 judgement, he found and still finds many admirers 
 at home. Let me beg you not to be carried away by 
 
IV] FIRST AFGHAN WAR 187 
 
 their admiration. Bentinck certainly did some good 
 work, but an Indian administrator who ruins the 
 discipline of the army — and Bentinck undoubtedly 
 did so — is not only no statesman, but a foolish and 
 mischievous person. 
 
 Bentinck was succeeded by Lord Auckland, 
 whose name, unfortunately for him, is bound up 
 with the greatest of our military disasters in India. 
 Since the fall of Napoleon Russia had steadily 
 pursued her advance eastwards, and by 1828 had 
 not only appropriated some of the western territory 
 of Persia but had gained paramount influence in 
 that country. Thus we found ourselves confronted 
 with the probability that we should presently have 
 an European Power of colossal strength for our 
 neighbour ; and the question was how she should 
 be kept at arm's length. The Government resolved 
 that a barrier must be formed in Afghanistan. That 
 country had lately passed out of the line of the 
 creator of the Afghan kingdom into the hands of 
 a strong and competent usurper. Since Persia 
 threatened to indemnify herself for the territory lost 
 to Russia by encroachment upon Afghanistan, this 
 usurper, Dost Mohammed, was anxious for the 
 English alliance. Lord Auckland on the contrary 
 preferred to support the legitimate sovereign, Shah 
 Shuja, who was an exile in the Punjab, and decided 
 to replace him on the throne by an armed force, on 
 
188 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 the assumption that such an ally would be surer than 
 Dost Mohammed. The operation was one of extreme 
 danger, for the British and Afghan boundaries were 
 hundreds of miles apart. Our base of operations was 
 Scinde, a foreign state under rulers unfriendly to 
 us ; and full upon our flank, able at any moment 
 to cut us off from India, lay the Sikhs, equally a 
 foreign state, nominally amicable but really very 
 jealous, and in possession of a powerful army. 
 
 A treaty was made with the Amirs of Scinde 
 whereby we obtained the right to use the navigation 
 of the Indus. With enormous difficulty transport 
 and supplies were brought up to feed the armies 
 during the march through the barren passes of 
 Afghanistan ; and, after frightful losses of animals 
 and no small peril of starvation, some fifteen thou- 
 sand men and twenty thousand followers marched 
 by the Bolan and Khojak passes to Kandahar, 
 opened the way from thence to the capital by the 
 storm of Ghazni ; and in August, 1839, escorted 
 Shah Shuja into Kabul. Then the difficulties began. 
 It was very soon evident that, without a British 
 force. Shah Shuja's reign would be short ; so one 
 division of infantry and a little cavalry and artillery 
 were left to occupy the country, and the rest of the 
 army marched for India. Honours were lavished 
 on the commanders, and everyone flattered himself 
 that the work was done. Signs of insurrection, 
 
IV] A GREAT DISASTER 189 
 
 however, soon showed themselves ; and the British 
 troops scattered about between Kabul, Ghazni, 
 Kandahar and Jelalabad were incessantly employed 
 in putting down tribal risings. By the autumn of 
 1840 the commander of the army of occupation was 
 crying out for reinforcements. The winter of 1840-1 
 passed away fairly quietly, and not until the following 
 November did the final insurrection at Kabul occur. 
 The general in command there was weak and in- 
 competent ; and the Whole of his division was cut 
 to pieces. Ghazni and various small forts were 
 captured ; and, though Jelalabad and Kandahar were 
 stoutly held, all communication with India was hope- 
 lessly cut off. It was necessary to send practically 
 a fresh army to relieve the beleaguered garrisons ; 
 but the Indian Government was at first so panic- 
 stricken as to lose all thought of anything but the 
 immediate withdrawal of the army of occupation. 
 The Governor-General, Lord Ellenborough, who had 
 succeeded Auckland, later bethought him that such 
 a timid retreat would endanger our whole Empire in 
 India, but had not courage to order a new advance 
 upon Kabul. Happily the generals took the responsi- 
 bility which their superiors feared to incur. They 
 did not withdraw their armies until they had forced 
 their way triumphantly, the one by the Khyber 
 Pass and Jelalabad, the other from Kandahar, to 
 Kabul. Then and not till then did they evacuate 
 
190 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 Afghanistan, having shown that the British were 
 stiQ unconquerable. Even so the principle upon 
 which the operations were conducted was open to 
 much criticism, though everything was redeemed 
 by the gallant behaviour of the troops. 
 
 While withdrawing from Afghanistan, however. 
 Lord Ellenborough was anxious to retain our hold 
 upon the lower Indus with the fort of Karachi, 
 which had been occupied temporarily as our base for 
 the late operations. Sir Charles Napier was therefore 
 sent out to Scinde with a small force to press upon 
 the Amirs a treaty to that effect. The Amirs very 
 naturally resented the demand ; whereupon Napier 
 instantly struck the first blow. His campaign is 
 one which every Englishman should know, and which 
 none has any excuse for not knowing ; for its history 
 was written by William Napier. Charles Napier 
 began by making a raid with five hundred and fifty 
 men mounted on camels across many miles of desert 
 to a stronghold of the Amirs, and blowing up the fort 
 with gunpowder. On this march he carried not only 
 provisions but water for the whole force, animals 
 and men. Then returning to the Indus he marched 
 south upon Hyderabad with twenty-eight hundred 
 men ; and on the 17th of March, 1843, attacked 
 between twenty and thirty thousand of the enemy 
 at Miani, in a strong position above the bed of a 
 dry river. There followed one of the greatest and 
 
IV] CONQUEST OF SCINDE 191 
 
 most marvellous battles ever fought by the British ; 
 and at the close of three hours the enemy was hope- 
 lessly routed with a loss of five thousand men. 
 Again the Baluchis managed to coUect twenty 
 thousand men ; and Napier, having been reinforced 
 to a strength of five thousand men, defeated them 
 in a second action of much the same kind at Dubba ; 
 after which he with little more trouble completed 
 the subjection of the Amirs. Scinde was then 
 annexed ; and Napier as its first Governor showed 
 himself not less capable as an administrator than as 
 a general. 
 
 By this time trouble had arisen in the dominions 
 of Scindia owing to the death of the Maharaja 
 without issue ; and an armed insurrection broke out 
 against the authority of the Regent accepted by the 
 British Government. The matter was one which 
 at ordinary times might have been adjusted by 
 patience ; but the attitude of the Sikhs, which I 
 shall describe immediately, was such that there 
 could be no trifling. The Maratha armies had been 
 assembled, some thirty thousand strong, including 
 between them twenty-two thousand men trained 
 by European officers ; and, with a disputed suc- 
 cession in train, it was impossible to say what 
 mischief their leaders might work. Ellenborough 
 therefore ordered a strong force to enter Scindia' s 
 dominions in two columns, and the war was ended 
 
192 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 in one day — 29th of Dec. 1843 — by the simultaneous 
 victories of Sir Hugh Gough at Maharajpore, and 
 of General Grey at Punniar. These were the last of 
 our battles with the Marathas. They have never 
 to this day forgiven us for depriving them of the 
 mastery of India ; and in 1843, in consequence of 
 our defeats in Afghanistan, they had been stirring 
 up hostility against us in every court of the East. 
 The double defeat therefore gave them a salutary 
 lesson. 
 
 Lord Ellenborough was now recalled ; and 
 Sir Henry Hardinge, one of Wellington's veterans 
 and a highly accompUshed soldier, came out as 
 Governor-General in his stead. The condition of 
 the Punjab was most critical. Ranjit Singh, the 
 great leader and ruler of the Sikhs, had died in 1839, 
 leaving no strong man to succeed him. The suc- 
 cession was of course disputed ; and a course of 
 risings, mutinies and assassinations showed that the 
 great Sikh state was sinking into anarchy. All 
 power had passed into the hands of committees of 
 regimental officers, who were in turn partly controlled 
 by the passions of their men. The nominal ruler 
 could think of no better resource than to turn the 
 unruly host across the Sutlej to fight the Enghsh, 
 for which some recent frontier disputes furnished 
 sufficient pretext. Lord Hardinge, who had seen 
 what was coming, was ready for them, and some 
 
IV] FIRST SIKH WAR 193 
 
 twelve thousand men under Sir Hugh Gough ad- 
 vanced to meet them. Sir Hugh was a very brave 
 man but a very bad commander, who could not see 
 a wall without dashing his head against it. In the 
 first action, Moodkee, he hurried his troops into the 
 fight with every disadvantage, and though victorious 
 lost nine hundred men. In the second action three 
 days later at Ferozeshah, he launched about sixteen 
 thousand British and Sepoys against fifty thousand 
 Sikhs in a very strong position, and was practically 
 beaten at the close of the first day's fighting, though 
 he recovered himself on the second. In this affair 
 he threw away twenty-five hundred men ; and on 
 the night after the first engagement the British 
 Empire in India rocked for some hours on the verge 
 of ruin. A month later a far more telHng and 
 scientific victory was won by Sir Harry Smith with 
 a detachment of the army at Aliwal ; and then 
 Gough made a final blundering attack upon the 
 Sikhs in a strongly entrenched position at Sobraon, 
 where, though the valour of his troops and the 
 devotion of his divisional generals won a decisive 
 victory, it was at a cost once more of nearly twenty- 
 five hundred men. 
 
 Sobraon brought the war for the moment to a 
 close ; but the government temporarily established 
 by us in the Punjab was weak and inefficient ; and 
 early in 1848 a general insurrection brought about 
 
 F. M. H. 13 
 
194 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 a reassembling of the Sikh army to try conclusions 
 with the British once more. Lord Dalhousie, the 
 new Governor-General, at once took up the challenge ; 
 and Gough again was in command of the army. He 
 began as usual by knocking his head against a very 
 strong position of the Sikhs at Ramnuggar, and was 
 repulsed. He did precisely the same thing a few 
 weeks later at Chillian walla, once more lost nearly 
 twenty-five hundred men, and fought at best a 
 drawn battle. Finally a month later he fought a 
 third action at Gujerat on the 21st of February, 1849, 
 showed for once (he or his officers for him) some 
 tactical skill, and won a great and decisive victory 
 with comparatively small loss. The Punjab was 
 then annexed to the British dominions by Dalhousie, 
 and the frontier thus carried to the foot of the moun- 
 tains of Afghanistan. But the struggle had been 
 very severe, for the Sikhs were most valiant men, 
 very skilful gunners, and masters of the art of 
 choosing strong positions, whereas Gough was a hot- 
 headed Irishman, of splendid bravery, but wholly 
 unfit to command anything larger than a battalion 
 in action. 
 
 But still there was no rest for the British Army. 
 Doubtless under the speU of our disasters in Afghan- 
 istan, the Burmese Government had been buUying 
 and maltreating British merchants at Rangoon in 
 violation of the treaty of 1826 ; and its only response 
 
IV] SECOND BURMESE WAR 195 
 
 to Dalhousie's protests was contemptuous insult 
 to his envoys. An expedition was therefore des- 
 patched to Rangoon in 1852, which first and last 
 numbered some twenty thousand men ; but on 
 this occasion the campaign was properly thought 
 out. A few towns only, which commanded the 
 mouth of the Irrawadi, were captured so as to cut 
 off all external trade, and within eighteen months 
 the Court of Ava was obliged to sue for peace. 
 The fighting was of slight importance, indeed the 
 sharpest was against dacoits or patriot banditti, 
 some of whom were very formidable. However, 
 the Government at Calcutta took care to provide 
 land-transport, in case an inland advance should be 
 necessary, elephants in particular being employed 
 in very large numbers. The province of Pegu 
 was annexed to the British dominions, and there- 
 upon followed a brief period of peace, during which 
 Dalhousie annexed also three Maratha states, in 
 default of direct heirs, and the Kingdom of Oudh. 
 
 It was this period of peace, signifying practically 
 the pacification of all India, that brought about 
 the mutiny of the Sepoys of the Bengal Army. 
 There were various contributory causes, most notably 
 the steady decay of its discipline, partly through 
 the employment of the best officers in political 
 work, and the making of political services the best 
 channel to advancement, partly owing to the steady 
 
 13—2 
 
196 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 discouragement of the officers in favour of the men 
 which had marked the mistaken poUcy of Bentinck. 
 The Sepoys were so continually flattered that they 
 imagined themselves to have conquered India, 
 whereas without European battahons an Indian 
 army is like a spear without a point. They there- 
 fore broke out into mutiny, and for a time extin- 
 guished British rule in certain districts. Thereupon 
 reappeared all the old animosities of past centuries, 
 Mohammedan and Hindu fighting each other more 
 fiercely than the English ; while adventurers joy- 
 fully gathered bands of their own kind around them 
 for the gay business of free-booting. Great part of 
 the country settled down to a hearty enjoyment 
 of anarchy ; and nearly two years were needed 
 to restore order. Two regiments indeed, the 
 Central India Horse, were raised on purpose to hunt 
 down banditti in Central India, and are still always 
 the first troops to be sent into the field wherever 
 there is serious police-duty to be done. 
 
 In 1858 the East India Company was swept out 
 of existence, and the Crown took over all its forces 
 and the entire business of administration in India. 
 With a frontier conterminous with the highlands 
 from which warlike tribes have from time immemorial 
 descended to raid the plains, we have since been 
 obliged to make endless expeditions to punish the 
 raiders, all very difficult operations and some of 
 
IV] LATER WARS 197 
 
 them very costly. Umbeyla, Bhotan, Beluchistan, 
 Tirah, Chitral, Tibet are names which recall some of 
 these campaigns; and in 1878 the exclusion of a 
 British mission from Afghanistan while a Russian 
 mission was received at Kabul brought on a second 
 and serious Afghan War. As in 1838, Kabul was 
 reached with little difficulty ; and the battle only 
 began, after peace had been made, with an insurrec- 
 tion in the capital. There was no such disaster as 
 in 1841, for we captured Kabul and Kandahar at 
 once ; yet we were absolutely powerless to subdue 
 and pacify the whole country. We suffered one 
 serious reverse ; and our difficulties would have 
 been endless had there not been at hand a strong 
 man whom we installed as ruler of the country, 
 and under whose iron hand the most refractory 
 tribesmen trembled and were still. Lastly in 1885 
 the Burmese having again insulted us, an expedition 
 was sent which made its way without difficulty to 
 Mandalay. Upper Burma was annexed to the 
 British dominions, and there followed two weary 
 years spent in suppressing marauding bands and 
 free-booters. The operations of these two years 
 have been called the subalterns' war, for they were 
 conducted mainly by very small parties under the 
 leadership of subalterns, who made their way with 
 indomitable perseverance through the jungle by 
 native paths, and, being generally at the head of 
 
198 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. 
 
 the column, were lamentably often picked off by 
 the shot of an unseen enemy. 
 
 Altogether the exploits of the British in the 
 conquest of India form a very remarkable story, 
 though it is by no means unchequered by follies, 
 failures and misconduct. We very early learned 
 that we must never retreat before Orientals, but 
 must always attack, no matter what the odds against 
 us ; and by following this rule we have under able 
 commanders achieved most astonishing feats of 
 war. In particular is the record of the British regi- 
 ments remarkable. The East Indian European Arm}^ 
 was enlisted for short service, though it contained 
 many old soldiers in its ranks ; but the British 
 soldier of the King's regiments was enlisted for at 
 least twenty-one years, if not for life, and his prowess 
 is amazing. You know of course that it is rare for 
 a battalion of any army to be fit for much, after 
 suffering severe loss in action, until its ranks 
 have been refilled. But the British battalions, led 
 by Lake, Wellesley and Gough, though they rarely 
 took the field more than six hundred strong, would 
 lose one hundred and fifty men in a fight on Monday, 
 two hundred more in another fight on Thursday, 
 and over one hundred more in a third fight on 
 Thursday fortnight. Nothing seemed to have power 
 to stop them, at any rate in India. Time after time 
 in the assault of hill-fortresses in the south the 
 
IV] OLD BRITISH SOLDIERS 199 
 
 Sepoys failed, and a few companies of British were 
 brought forward to show them how to do the work. 
 No losses seemed to daunt them. Individual men 
 served in storming party after storming party, and 
 would not wait to be healed of wounds received in 
 a first assault before they volunteered to risk almost 
 certain death in a second. 
 
 Still, as I have said, there are records of many 
 failures and we are too fond of passing over our 
 weak points and dwelling on the strong. In the 
 case of the Mutiny we recall with pride the deeds of 
 Nicholson and Havelock, and are never weary of 
 the old stories of the siege of Delhi and the relief 
 of Lucknow. All honour to those who quitted 
 themselves like men ; but I am afraid there are 
 many episodes of the Mutiny which are little credit- 
 able to the British, whether civilians or soldiers. A 
 great many individuals were found unequal to the 
 occasion ; and this is true of every war and probably 
 of the majority of actions. There was certainly 
 one instance of misbehaviour at Trafalgar, one ship 
 did not respond to Nelson's famous signal ; and 
 Colling wood spoke his mind about it at the time, 
 though few people know it. We must therefore 
 never be satisfied with the fame of our fore-runners, 
 and suppose that it suffices for us. Let us by all 
 means be kindled by their example to the utmost 
 fulfilment of our duty ; but let us know also when 
 
200 MILITARY HISTORY [lect. iv 
 
 and where and why they failed. Let us study 
 their defeats as weU as their victories ; let us ask 
 ourselves whether some of the failings which brought 
 about those defeats may not still be present among 
 us. If we can truly and conscientiously say that 
 they are not, then we may — but always with 
 caution — presume to criticise and even to censure ; 
 always remembering that it is not enough for us 
 to emulate the deeds of our ancestors. If we are 
 not to fall below them, we must endeavour to 
 surpass them, for there is no such thing as a 
 stationary Empire. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abercromby, Sir Ralph, in the 
 
 W. Indies, 126-7 
 Acre, mentioned, 43 
 Adams, Major Thos., in India, 164 
 Addington, Henry, mentioned, 
 
 86-8, 127 
 Afghanistan, mentioned, 163 ; 
 
 campaigns in, 187-90, 197 
 Africa, South, early wars in, 131- 
 
 5 ; Zulus in, 41 ; last war, 27, 
 
 45, 98, 112 
 Africa, West, fighting in, 143-4 
 Agra, capture of, 175 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Peace of, 76, 155 
 Akbar, the Emperor, 152 
 Albemarle, Lord, in the W Indies, 
 
 123 
 Albuera, battle of, 39 
 Alexander the Great, mentioned, 
 
 40 
 Aligarh, capture of, 175 
 Aliwal, battle of, 193 
 Allahabad, capture of, 164 
 Alsace, mentioned, 43 
 America, War of Independence, 
 
 28, 80-2, 110-12, 135: the 
 
 British in N., 55, 59, 76, 80, 
 
 102-5 ; character of settlers, 
 
 104-5, 107, 109-12; war of 
 
 1812, 113 ; and see under 
 
 Canada 
 Amherst, Gen. Jeffery, in Canada, 
 
 109 
 
 Amherst, Lord, in India, 183^ 
 186 
 
 Amir Khan, mentioned, 179 
 
 Anne, Queen, mentioned, 109 
 
 AracaUj capture of, 184 
 
 Arcot, 156 
 
 Argaum, battle of, 175 
 
 Army, the British, foreign nomen- 
 clature in, 52 ; reductions in, 
 58. 61-2, 72, 96, 134 ; under 
 Ch. II, 56-7 ; under Will.^III, 
 59-63 ; under Anne, 65 ; under 
 Geo. I, 72 ; under Geo. II, 74- 
 9 ; under Geo. Ill, 80. 82-3 ; in 
 the 19tli cent., 97-8 ; confused 
 organisation of, 61 ; ill-treat- 
 ment of, 73, 83 ; introduction 
 of short service, 134-5 ; wea- 
 pons of, 48-50, 60; apprecia- 
 tion of officers, 144-9 ; early 
 organisation of, 47-9, 54 ; the 
 New Model, 54 
 
 Assam, capture of, 184 
 
 Assay e, battle of, 175 
 
 Assiento, Treaty, 117 
 
 Auckland, Lord, in India, 187 
 
 Aurungzib, the Emperor, 153-4 
 
 Austrian Succession, War of, 74, 
 106, 155 
 
 Ava, British at, 183-4 
 
 Badajoz, capture of, 25 
 Bahama Is., 80 
 
202 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Barbados, 116, 124 
 
 Barlow, Sir George, in India. 176 
 
 178-9 
 Barrington, General, in W. Indies, 
 
 123 
 Bentinck, Lord Wm., in India, 
 
 186-7 
 Bermuda, 80, 130 
 Bhurtpore, assaults on, 175, 185 
 Birkenhead, the, mentioned, 36, 
 
 46 
 Bismarck, 43 
 Blenheim, battle of, 68 
 Blues, Regt. of, their origin, 56 
 Bombay, mentioned, 56, 153, 
 
 166, 168 
 Bonsla, mentioned, 181 
 Braddock, General, inN. America, 
 
 107-9 
 Burgoyne, General, in N. Ameri- 
 ca, 110-11 
 Burke, Edmund, 80 
 Burma, campaigns in, 182-5, 
 
 194-5, 197 ; annexed, 197 
 Bussy, de, in India, 161 
 Buxar, battle of, 164 
 
 Caesar, Julius, 40 
 
 Calais, 47 
 
 Calcutta, 154, 160 
 
 Canada, French in, 102 ; fighting 
 in, 104-5, 109 ; American in- 
 vasion of, 110, 113, 137 ; and 
 see America 
 
 Capetown, capture of, 131 
 
 Caribs, the, fighting with, 117-8 
 
 Carnot, mentioned, 40 
 
 Carthagena, expedition to, 121-2 
 
 Castlereagh, Lord, at the War 
 Office, 88 
 
 Chaka, king of Zulus, 41 
 
 Chandernagore, 154 
 
 Charles 11^ mentioned, 56, 117 
 
 Charles of Bourbon, 24 
 
 Charles Ed, Stuart, in Scotland, 
 74-6 
 
 Chillian walla, action at, 194 
 
 Chitu, 182 
 
 Clive, Robert, in India, 156 159, 
 160-4 
 
 Coldstream Guards, origin of, 56 
 
 Colonies, character of campaigns 
 in, 99-102 
 
 Commerce, in war, 1-3 ; its 
 cruelty, 16-18 
 
 Conde, Prince of, 65 
 
 Continental System, the, 2 
 
 Coomassie, British at, 143 
 
 Coote, Sir Eyre, in India, 159, 
 162, 167-8 
 
 Cornwallis, Lord, in India. 169- 
 172, 176 
 
 Cotton, Sir Stapleton. in India, 
 185 
 
 Crimea, war of, 97 
 
 Cromwell, O., mentioned, 3, 22, 
 58 ; reforms of, 53-4 ; expedi- 
 tion to the W. Indies, 119-20 
 
 Cuba, mentioned, 115-6, 123, 130 
 
 Cuddalore, action at, 168 
 
 Culloden, battle of, 75 
 
 Dalhousie, Lord, in India, 194-5 
 Danube R., campaign on, 67 
 David, king of Israel. 44 
 Deig, battle of, 175 
 Delhi, mentioned, 43, 151-2, 171, 
 
 175, 199 
 Dettingen, battle of, 74 
 Dost Mohammed, 187-8 
 Dubba, action at, 191 
 Dupleix, Joseph, in India, 155-7 
 
 East India Co., its troops, 57, 83, 
 154, 178, 186, 198 ; mentioned, 
 153, 171, 176. 196 
 
INDEX 
 
 203 
 
 Edward III, 48 
 
 Egypt, mentioned, 51, 86 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, mentioned, 47, 
 
 52 
 Ellenborough, Lord, in India, 
 
 189-92 
 England, military backwardness, 
 
 48 ; growth of empire, 55-6, 
 
 58, 77 ; position in 1660, 55 ; 
 
 projected invasion of, 86 
 
 Ferdinand of Brunswick, 77 
 Ferozeshah, battle of, 193 
 Flanders, wars in, 60, 63, 65, 75 ; 
 
 and see Netherlands 
 Fontenoy, battle of, 74 
 Forde, Col., 162 
 France, the Revolutionary War. 
 23-4, 27, 38, 41-2, 83-4 ; her 
 colonies, 56, 58, 76-7, 102-4, 
 107, 123-4, 128; French in 
 India, 154-62 ; our connection 
 with, 47, 55 ; as ally of Ameri- 
 ca, 112-3 ; aids the Stuarts, 75 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 109 
 Frederick the Great, mentioned, 
 
 41-2, 77 
 Frederick, Duke of York, 85 
 
 Gawilghur, capture of, 175 
 
 Geete R., 68 
 
 George I, 72 
 
 Germany, mercenaries in British 
 
 pay, 75-7, 81-2 ; mentioned, 
 
 25, 32, 74, 77 
 Ghurkha war, 180 
 Ghazni, 188-9 
 Gibraltar, mentioned, 65, 72-3, 
 
 80-1 
 Gideon, his tactics, 44-5 
 Gillespie, Col. RoUo, in India, 
 
 177, 180 
 Goliath, 44 
 
 Goree, 82 
 
 Gough, Sir Hugh, in India 192-4, 
 
 198 
 Grenada, 126 
 Grey, General W., in the W. 
 
 Indies, 125-6 ; General H., in 
 
 India, 192 
 Guadeloupe, mentioned, 123, 126. 
 
 128 
 Guiana, Dutch, capture of, 127 
 Gujerat, action at, 194 
 Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, 
 
 his military reforms, 53 
 
 Haiti, mentioned. 120, 124, 126 
 Halifax, British at, 107 
 Hannibal, 38 
 Hardinge, Sir Henry, in India, 
 
 192-3 
 Harris, General, in India, 173 
 Hastings, Warren, in India. 161, 
 
 165-9 
 Hastings, Marquis of, in India, 
 
 180-1 
 Havana; siege of, 123 ; men- 
 tioned, 77 
 Henry V, mentioned, 48, 54 
 History. Military, definition of, 
 
 1-14, 45 ; use of, 19-22, 29, 
 
 39, 43 
 Holkar, mentioned, 174-5, 181 
 Holland, soldiers of, 52, 60 ; 
 
 commerce of, 18, 55 ; wars in, 
 
 64, 67, 84, 86; colonies of, 
 
 102-3, 162 
 Howe, General, 111 
 Hyder Ali. mentioned, 164-5, 
 
 167-8 
 
 India, mentioned, 43, 57, 77 ; 
 military history of, 150-200 ; 
 adventurers in, 154, 171, 179, 
 196 ; campaigning in, 157-8 ; 
 
204 
 
 INDEX 
 
 the presidencies, 160 ; ad- 
 ministrative reforms in, 165, 
 169, 176, 196 ; the Mutiny, 
 195-6, 199 
 
 Indies, the West, British in, 55, 
 72, 77, 80, 84-5 ; character 
 of country, 114-6, 118; ruin 
 of, 128-9 ; Cromwell's expedi- 
 tion to, 119-20 ; later expedi- 
 tions, 120-2, 124-8; the 
 French in, 116, 123, 128 
 
 Inkermann, 51 
 
 Ireland, mentioned. 54, 59. 61, 
 64-5, 72 
 
 Italy, the French in, 86 
 
 Jamaica, mentioned, 115-6 ; cap- 
 ture of, 120 
 James II, mentioned, 57-59, 
 
 64-5 
 Japan, mentioned, 28, 52 
 Jelalabad, mentioned, 189 
 Jesuits, the, as colonists, 35, 103 
 
 Kabul, British at, 188-9, 197 
 Kaffir wars, 133-4 
 Kandahar, British at, 188-9, 197 
 Karachi, 190 
 
 Katharine of Bragan9a, men- 
 tioned, 56, 154 
 Katwa, battle of, 164 
 Kirkee, battle of, 181 
 Korigaon, battle of, 182 
 
 La Bassee, 68 
 
 Lake, General Gerard, in India, 
 
 174r-5, 185, 198 
 LaUy Tollendal, count, in India, 
 
 161-2 
 Laswari, battle of, 175 
 Latimer, Hugh, 48 
 Lawrence, Major Stringer, in 
 
 India, 155-6, 162 
 
 Lee, Robert, 4 
 
 Lisbon, Wellesley at, 90-1 
 
 Lorraine, mentioned, 43 
 
 Louis XIV, mentioned, 63-5, 71. 
 
 104 
 Louisburg, French at, 106-7 ; 
 
 capture of, 109, 155 
 Lucknow, 164, 199 
 Luther, Martin, 40 
 Luxemburg, Francis Henry, 
 
 Duke of, 65 
 Lycurgus, 41 
 
 Madras, French at, 155 ; mutiny 
 in, 176-8 ; bad administration^ 
 164-5, 167-8 ; mentioned. 
 107, 130, 153 
 
 Maharajpore, battle of, 192 
 
 Mahidpur, battle of, 181 
 
 Mandalay, British at, 197 
 
 Manila, 77 
 
 Maoris, the, wars with, 101, 138-43 
 
 Marathas, the, their origin, 153 ; 
 their growth, 163, 171 ; British 
 wars with, 166, 174-5, 181, 
 191-2 ; mentioned, 195 
 
 Marengo, battle of, 86 
 
 Maria Theresa, the Empress, 74 
 
 MarlboTough, John, Duke of, 
 appreciation of, 65-71 ; men- 
 tioned, 94-5 
 
 Martinique, mentioned. 116, 123- 
 5, 128 
 
 Miani, battle of, 190-1 
 
 Militia, the, Pitt's Bill, 78 ; as 
 recruiting-ground, 85, 88 ; 
 under Addington, 87 ; the 
 Local, 89 ; mentioned, 72, 83. 
 85, 89 
 
 Minden, battle of, 77 
 
 Minorca, mentioned, 72, 76, 80-2 
 
 Minto, Gilbert, 1st Earl of, in 
 India, 178-81 
 
INDEX 
 
 205 
 
 Mir Jaffier, 160-1 
 Mogul Empire, 152-4 
 Moltke, General, 43 
 Monk. George, 56, 100 
 Monmouth James, Duke of, 57 
 Monson, Colonel, in India, 175 
 Montecuculi. Raimondo, Conte 
 
 de, 65 
 Moodkee. battle of, 193 
 Mornington, Lord, see under 
 
 Wellesley, Marquis of 
 Moses, mentioned, 40 
 Munro, Major Hector, in India, 
 
 164, 167 
 Mutiny Act, 60 
 Mysore, fighting in, 165, 167, 
 
 169, 173 
 
 Napier, Sir Charles, in Scinde, 
 
 190-1 
 Napoleon mentioned. 1, 12, 24, 
 
 41-2, 86, 89, 94, 187 
 Navy, the British, mutiny in, 
 
 85; inwarof 1812, 113-4 
 Nepal, fighting in, 180-1 
 Netherlands, the Austrian, fight- 
 ing in, 66, 74 
 Newfoundland, 72-3 
 New York, settlers of, 104-5 ; 
 
 mentioned, 57, 102-3, 110 
 New Zealand, war in, 137-43 
 Nizam, the, mentioned, 165, 167, 
 
 172 
 Nova Scotia, mentioned, 72-3, 
 
 106 
 
 Oohterlony, Sir David, in India, 
 
 180-1, 185 
 Omdurman, battle of, 22 
 Oudenarde, battle of, 68 
 Oudh, annexation of, 195 
 
 Panipat, battle of, 163 
 
 Pegu, annexation of, 195 
 Peninsular War, the, mentioned, 
 
 42 ; summary of, 89-95 
 Peimsylvania, Quakers in, 11-12 
 Persia, 187 
 Peshwa, 181-2 
 Philadelphia, capture of, 111 
 Pindaris, the, fighting with, 179- 
 
 82 
 Pitt, Earl of Chatham, William, 
 
 war policy, 76-80 ; mentioned, 
 
 108, 122 
 Pitt, William, military policy, 
 
 83-8 ; W. Indian policy, 
 
 125-8 
 Plassey, battle of, 160 
 Police, the, connection with 
 
 Army, 9, 54, 56, 72 
 Pompadour, Mme de, 4 
 Pondicherry, French at, 154-5, 
 
 160-1 
 Porto Novo, battle of, 167 
 Porto Rico, mentioned, 115-6, 
 
 127 
 Portugal, British in, 90-1 ; men- 
 tioned, 42 
 Prome, capture of, 184 
 Punjab, the, annexation of, 194 
 Punniar, battle of, 192 
 
 Quebec, mentioned, 102, 105, 109 
 
 Ramillies, battle of, 68 
 Ramnuggar, action at, 194 
 Rangoon, British at, 183, 195 
 Ranjit Singh, mentioned, 182, 
 
 192 
 Reunion, Is. of, 36 
 Roberts, F.M., Earl, mentioned, 
 
 159 
 Rohilla War, 166 
 Rome, sack of, 24—5 
 Russia, mentioned, 28, 51-2, 187 
 
206 
 
 INDEX 
 
 St Domingo, mentioned, 115-6 ; 
 
 expedition to, 119-20 
 StKitts, 57 
 St Lawrence R., French colonies 
 
 on, 102-3 ; expedition to, 106 
 St Lucia, mentioned, 82, 123, 
 
 126-7 
 St Thomas, 115 
 
 St Vincent, fighting in, 117, 126 
 St Vincent, John Jervis, Earl, 
 
 in the W. Indies, 125 
 Saratoga, defeat at, 112 
 Saul, King of Israel, 25 
 Schellenberg, battle of the, 68 
 Scinde, operations in, 188, 190-1 
 Scindia, mentioned, 171. 174-5, 
 
 191 
 Scotland, rebellion in, 72, 74-6 
 Senegal, 82 
 Seringapatam, sieges of, 26, 169- 
 
 71, 173 
 Shah Shuja, 187-8 
 Shakespeare, William, 52 
 Shelley, P. B., mentioned, 33 
 Shore, Sir John, in India, 172 
 Sikhs, the, their growth, 171, 
 
 182, 188 ; war with, 191-4 
 Simonstown, 131 
 Siraj-ud-Daula, 160 
 Sitabaldi, battle of, 181 
 Sivaji Bonsla, mentioned; 153-4 
 Smith, Sir Harrv, in S. Africa, 
 
 133 ; in India^ 193 
 Smith, Col. Joseph, in India, 
 
 165 
 Smollett, Tobias, 122 
 Sobraon, battle of, 193 
 Spain, her wars, 8, 23, 25, 52, 82 ; 
 
 colonies, 116, 120 ; mentioned, 
 
 63, 73, 89, 102 
 Spanish Succession, War of the, 
 
 64-8 
 Sparta, 41 
 
 Stirling, mentioned, 43, 75 
 Strategy, definition of, 42-3 
 Stuart, General James, 168 
 Suffren, Admiral, 168 
 Suti, battle of, 164 
 Swiss, the, as soldiers, 50 
 
 Tactics, definition of, 43-4 ; 
 
 changes in, 47-50, 60 
 Talents, Ministry of All the, 
 
 88 
 Tangier, mentioned, 56-7; 65 
 Tennasserim, capture of, 184 
 Tippoo Sahib, mentioned, 168- 
 
 73 
 Tobago, mentioned, 82, 127 
 Tournay, fighting at, 68 
 Trafalgar, 199 
 Trichinopoly, fighting at, 156. 
 
 161 
 Trinidad, 115. 127 
 Tugela R., fighting on the, 134 
 
 Undwa Nala, battle of, 164 
 Utrecht, Peace of, 71, 106 
 
 Vellore, mutiny at, 176-7 
 Vendome, Louis Joseph, Duke of, 
 
 mentioned, 68 
 Vienna, mentioned, 67 
 Virginia, 57 
 Volunteers, the, under Adding- 
 
 ton, 87-8 
 
 Walpole, Sir Robert, 72 
 Wandewash, battle of, 162 
 Warburg, battle of, 77 
 Warren Hastings, the troop-ship, 
 
 36-7 
 Washington, George, 4, 107 
 Waterloo, battle of, 79, 95 
 Wellesley, Richard, Marquis, in 
 
 India, 172, 174, 176, 179 
 
INDEX 
 
 207 
 
 Wellington, Arthur, Duke of, 
 character of, 95-6; in India, 
 173-5 ; his scheme for the 
 Peninsular War, 90-5; men- 
 tioned, 25, 41-2, 68, 159, 182, 
 186, 198 
 
 William III, the army under, 59; 
 W. Indian expedition, 120 
 
 William, Duke of Cumberland, 
 mentioned, 74-5 
 
 Wolfe, General James, men- 
 tioned, 109 
 
 Xavier. Fran9ois, mentioned, 40 
 
 York, Frederick, Duke of, 85 
 
 Zizka, John, mentioned. 52 
 Zulus, the, wars with, 134-5 
 
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