inevitably to damage the fortunes of the attack. Under cover of a bank
of smoke the soldiers hurrying on to feed the fighting line are fairly
hidden from aimed hostile fire. It may be argued that their aim is thus
reciprocally hindered; but the reply is that their anxiety is not so
much to be shooting during their reinforcing advance as to get forward
into the fighting line, where the atmosphere is not so greatly
obscured. Smokeless powder will no doubt advantage the defence.

It need not be remarked that a battle is a physical impossibility while
both sides adhere to the passive defensive; and experience proves that
battles are rare in which both sides are committed to the active
offensive, whether by preference or necessity. Mars-la-Tour (16th
August 1870) was the only contest of this nature in the Franco-German
War. Bazaine had to be on the offensive because he was ordered to get
away towards Verdun; Alvensleben took it because it was the only means
whereby he could hinder Bazaine from accomplishing his purpose. But for
the most part one side in battle is on the offensive; the other on the
defensive. The invader is habitually the offensive person, just for the
reason that the native force commonly acts on the defensive; the latter
is anxious to hinder further penetration into the bowels of its land;
the former's desire is to effect that penetration. The defensive of the
native army need not, however, be the passive defensive; indeed, unless
the position be exceptionally strong that is according to present
tenets to be avoided. When, always with an underlying purpose of
defence, its chief resorts to the offensive for reasons that he regards
as good, his strategy or his tactics as the case may be, are expressed
by the term "defensive-offensive."

It says a good deal for the peaceful predilections of the nations, that
there has been no fairly balanced experience affording the material for
decision as to the relative advantage of the offensive and the
defensive under modern conditions. In 1866 the Prussians, opposing the
needle-gun to the Austrian muzzle-loader, naturally utilised this
pre-eminence by adopting uniformly the offensive and traditions of the
Great Frederick doubtless seconded the needle-gun. After Sadowa
controversy ran high as to the proper system of tactics when
breech-loader should oppose breech-loader. A strong party maintained
that "the defensive had now become so strong that true science lay in
forcing the adversary to attack. Let him come on, and then one might
fairly rely on victory." As Boguslawski observes--"This conception of
tactics would paralyse the offensive, for how can an army advance if it
has always to wait till an enemy attacks?" After much exercitation the
Germans determined to adhere to the offensive. In the recent modest
language of Baron von der Goltz: [Footnote: _The Nation in Arms_, by
Lieutenant-Colonel Baron von der Goltz. (Allen.)] "Our modern German
mode of battle aims at being entirely a final struggle, which we
conceive of as being inseparable from an unsparing offensive.
Temporising, waiting, and a calm defensive are very unsympathetic to
our nature. Everything with us is action. Our strength lies in great
decisions on the battlefield." Perhaps also the guileless Germans were
quite alert to the fact that Marshal Niel had shattered the French
army's tradition of the offensive, and gone counter to the French
soldier's nature by enjoining the defensive in the latest official
instructions. Had the Teutons suborned him the Marshal could not have
done them a better turn.

Their offensive tactics against an enemy unnaturally lashed to the
stake of the defensive stood the Germans in excellent stead in 1870. On
every occasion they resorted to the offensive against an enemy in the
field; strictly refraining, however, from that expedient when it was a
fortress and not soldiers _en vive force_ that stood in the way. At St.
Privat their offensive would probably have been worsted if Canrobert
had been reinforced or even if a supply of ammunition had reached him;
and a loss there of one-third of the combatants of the Guard Corps
without result caused them to change for the better the method of their
attack. But in every battle from Weissenburg to Sedan with the
exception of the confused _mêlée_ of Mars-la-Tour, the French, besides
being bewildered and discouraged, were in inferior strength; after
Sedan the French levies in the field were scarcely soldiers. There was
no fair testing of the relative advantages of defence and offence in
the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78; and so it remains that in an actual
and practical sense no firm decision has yet been established. All
civilised nations are, however, assiduously practising the methods of
the offensive.

It may nevertheless be anticipated that in future warfare between
evenly matched combatants the offensive will get the worst of it at the
hands of the defensive. The word "anticipate" is used in preference to
"apprehend," because one's sympathy is naturally for the invaded state
unless it has been wantonly aggressive and insolent. The invaded army,
if the term may be used, having familiar knowledge of the terrain will
take up a position in the fair-way of the invader; affording strong
flank _appui_ and a far-stretching clear range in front and on flanks.
It will throw up several lines, or still better, tiers of shallow
trenches along its front and flanks, with emplacements for artillery
and machine guns. The invader must attack; he cannot turn the enemy's
position and expose his communications to that enemy. He takes the
offensive, doing so, as is the received practice, in front and on a
flank. From the outset he will find the offensive a sterner ordeal than
in the Franco-German War days. He will have to break into loose order
at a greater distance, because of the longer range of small arms, and
the further scope, the greater accuracy, and the quicker fire of the
new artillery. He too possesses those weapons, but he cannot use them
with so great effect. His field batteries suffer from the hostile
cannon fire as they move forward to take up a position. His infantry
cannot fire on the run; when they drop after a rush the aim of panting
and breathless men cannot be of the best. And their target is fairly
protected and at least partially hidden. The defenders behind their low
épaulement do not pant; their marksmen only at first are allowed to
fire; these make things unpleasant for the massed gunners out yonder,
who share their attentions with the spraying-out infantry-men. The
quick-firing cannon of the defence are getting in their work
methodically. Neither its gunners nor its infantry need be nervous as
to expending ammunition freely since plenteous supplies are promptly
available, a convenience which does not infallibly come to either guns
or rifles of the attack. The Germans report as their experience in the
capacity of assailants that the rapidity and excitement of the advance,
the stir of strife, the turmoil, exhilarate the soldiers, and that
patriotism and fire-discipline in combination enforce a cool steady
maintenance of fire; that in view of the ominous spectacle of the swift
and confident advance, under torture of the storm of shell-fire and the
hail of bullets which they have to endure in immobility, the defenders,
previously shaken by the assailants' artillery preparation, become
nervous, waver, and finally break when the cheers of the final
concentrated rush strike on their ears. That this was scarcely true as
regarded French regulars the annals of every battle of the
Franco-German War up to and including Sedan conclusively show. It is
true, however, that the French nature is intolerant of inactivity and
in 1870 suffered under the deprivation of its _métier;_ but how often
the Germans recoiled from the shelter trenches of the Spicheren and
gave ground all along the line from St. Privat to the Bois de Vaux, men
who witnessed those desperate struggles cannot forget while they live.
Warriors of greater equanimity than the French soldier possesses might
perhaps stand on the defensive in calm self-confidence with simple
breech-loaders as their weapons, if simple breech-loaders were also
weapons of the assailants. But in his magazine rifle the soldier of the
future can keep the defensive not only with self-confidence, but with
high elation, for in it he will possess a weapon against which it seems
improbable that the attack (although armed too with a magazine or
repeating rifle) can prevail.

The assailants fall fast as their advance pushes forward, thinned down
by the rifle fire, the mitraille, and the shrapnel of the defence. But
they are gallant men and while life lasts they will not be denied. The
long bloody advance is all but over; the survivors of it who have
attained thus far are lying down getting their wind for the final
concentration and rush. Meanwhile, since after they once again stand up
they will use no more rifle fire till they have conquered or are
beaten, they are pouring forth against the defence their reserve of
bullets in or attached to their rifle-butts. The defenders take this
punishment, like Colonel Quagg, lying down, courting the protection of
their earth-bank. The hail of the assailants' bullets ceases; already
the artillery of the attack has desisted lest it should injure friend
as well as foe. The word runs along the line and the clumps of men
lying prostrate there out in the open. The officers spring to their
feet, wave their swords, and cheer loudly. The men are up in an
instant, and the swift rush focussing toward a point begins. The
distance to be traversed before the attackers are _aux prises_ with the
defenders is about one hundred and fifty yards.

It is no mere storm of missiles which meets fair in the face those
charging heroes; no, it is a moving wall of metal against which they
rush to their ruin. For the infantry of the defence are emptying their
magazines now at point-blank range. Emptied magazine yields to full
one; the Maxims are pumping, not bullets, but veritable streams of
death, with calm, devilish swiftness. The quick-firing guns are
spouting radiating torrents of case. The attackers are mown down as
corn falls, not before the sickle but the scythe. Not a man has
reached, or can reach, the little earth-bank behind which the defenders
keep their ground. The attack has failed; and failed from no lack of
valour, of methodised effort, of punctilious compliance with every
instruction; but simply because the defence--the defence of the future
in warfare--has been too strong for the attack. One will not occupy
space by recounting how in the very nick of time the staunch defence
flashes out into the counter-offensive; nor need one enlarge on the
sure results to the invader as the unassailed flank of the defence
throws forward the shoulder and takes in flank the dislocated masses of
aggressors.

One or two such experiences will definitively settle the point as to
the relative advantage of the offensive and the defensive. Soldiers
will not submit themselves to re-trial on re-trial of a _res judicata_.
Grant, dogged though he was, had to accept that lesson in the shambles
of Cold Harbour. For the bravest sane man will rather live than die. No
man burns to become cannon-fodder. The Turk, who is supposed to court
death in battle for religious reasons of a somewhat material kind, can
run away even when the alternative is immediate removal to a Paradise
of unlimited houris and copious sherbet. There are no braver men than
Russian soldiers; but going into action against the Turks tried their
nerves, not because they feared the Turks as antagonists, but because
they knew too well that a petty wound disabling from retreat meant not
alone death but unspeakable mutilation before that release.

It is obvious that if, as is here anticipated, the offensive proves
impossible in the battle of the future, an exaggerated phase of the
stalemate which Boguslawski so pathetically deprecates will occur. The
world need not greatly concern itself regarding this issue; the
situation will almost invariably be in favour of the invaded and will
probably present itself near his frontier line. He can afford to wait
until the invader tires of inaction and goes home.

Magazine and machine guns would seem to sound the knell of possible
employment of cavalry in battle. No matter how dislocated are the
infantry ridden at so long as they are not quite demoralised, however
_rusé_ the cavalry leader--however favourable to sudden unexpected
onslaught is the ground, the quick-firing arms of the future must
apparently stall off the most enterprising horsemen. Probably if the
writer were arguing the point with a German, the famous experiences of
von Bredow might be adduced in bar of this contention. In the combat of
Tobitschau in 1866 Bredow led his cuirassier regiment straight at three
Austrian batteries in action, captured the eighteen guns and everybody
and everything belonging to them, with the loss to himself of but ten
men and eight horses. It is true, says the honest official account,
that the ground favoured the charge and that the shells fired by the
usually skilled Austrian gunners flew high. But during the last 100
yards grape was substituted for shell, and Bredow deserved all the
credit he got. Still stronger against my argument was Bredow's
memorable work at Mars-la-Tour, when at the head of six squadrons he
charged across 1000 yards of open plain, rode over and through two
separate lines of French infantry, carried a line of cannon numbering
nine batteries, rode 1000 yards farther into the very heart of the
French army, and came back with a loss of not quite one half of his
strength. The _Todtenritt_, as the Germans call it, was a wonderful
exploit, a second Balaclava charge and a bloodier one; and there was
this distinction that it had a purpose and that that purpose was
achieved. For Bredow's charge in effect wrecked France. It arrested the
French advance which would else have swept Alvensleben aside; and to
its timely effect is traceable the sequence of events that ended in the
capitulation of Metz. The fact that although from the beginning of his
charge until he struck the front of the first French infantry line
Bredow took the rifle-fire of a whole French division yet did not lose
above fifty men, has been a notable weapon in the hands of those who
argue that good cavalry can charge home on unshaken infantry. But never
more will French infantry shoot from the hip as Lafont's conscripts at
Mars-la-Tour shot in the vague direction of Bredow's squadrons. French
cavalry never got within yards of German infantry even in loose order;
and the magazine or repeating rifle held reasonably straight will stop
the most thrusting cavalry that ever heard the "charge" sound.

Fortifications of the future will differ curiously from those of the
present. The latter, with their towering scarps, their massive
_enceintes_, their "portentous ditches," will remain as monuments of a
vicious system, except where, as in the cases of Vienna, Cologne,
Sedan, etc., the dwellers in the cities they encircle shall procure
their demolition for the sake of elbow-room, or until modern howitzer
shells or missiles charged with high explosives shall pulverise their
naked expanses of masonry. In the fortification of the future the
defender will no longer be "enclosed in the toils imposed by the
engineer" with the inevitable disabilities they entail, while the
besieger enjoys the advantage of free mobility. Plevna has killed the
castellated fortress. With free communications the full results
attainable by fortress artillery intelligently used, will at length
come to be realised. Unless in rare cases and for exceptional reasons
towns will gradually cease to be fortified even by an encirclement of
detached forts. Where the latter are availed of, practical experience
will infallibly condemn the expensive and complex cupola-surmounted
construction of which General Brialmont is the champion. "A work,"
trenchantly argues Major Sydenham Clarke, "designed on the principles
of the Roman catacombs is suited only for the dead, in a literal or in
a military sense. The vast system of subterranean chambers and passages
is capable of entombing a brigade, but denies all necessary tactical
freedom of action to a battalion."

The fortress of the future will probably be in the nature of an
intrenched camp. The interior of the position will provide casemate
accommodation for an army of considerable strength. Its defences will
consist of a circle at intervals of about 2500 yards, of permanent
redoubts which shall be invisible at moderate ranges for infantry and
machine guns, the garrison of each redoubt to consist of a half
battalion. Such a work was in 1886 constructed at Chatham in thirty-one
working days, to hold a garrison of 200 men housed in casemates built
in concrete, for less than £3000, and experiments proved that it would
require a "prohibitory expenditure" of ammunition to cause it serious
damage by artillery fire. The supporting defensive armament will
consist of a powerful artillery rendered mobile by means of tram-roads,
this defence supplemented by a field force carrying on outpost duties
and manning field works guarding the intervals between the redoubts.
Advanced defences and exterior obstacles of as formidable a character
as possible will be the complement of what in effect will be an
immensely elaborated Plevna, which, properly armed and fully organised,
will "fulfil all the requirements of defence" while possessing
important potentialities of offence.

An illustration is pertinent of the pre-eminent utility of such
fortified and strongly held positions, of whose characteristics the
above is the merest outline. In the event of a future Franco-German
War, the immensely expensive cordon of fortresses with which the French
have lined their frontier, efficiently equipped, duly garrisoned and
well commanded, will unquestionably present a serious obstacle to the
invading armies. The Germans talk of _vive force_--shell heavily and
then storm; the latter resort one for which they have in the past
displayed no predilection. Whether by storm or interpenetration, they
will probably break the cordon, but they cannot advance without masking
all the principal fortresses. This will employ a considerable portion
of their strength, and the invasion will proceed in less force, which
will be an advantage to the defenders. But if instead of those
multitudinous fortresses the French had constructed, say, three such
intrenched-camp fortresses as have been sketched, each quartering
50,000 men, it would appear that they would have done better for
themselves at far less cost. Each intrenched position containing a
field army 50,000 strong would engross a beleaguering host of 100,000
men. The positions of the type outlined are claimed to be impregnable;
they could contain supplies and munitions for at least a year,
detaining around them for that period 300,000 of the enemy. No European
power except Russia has soldiers enough to spare so long such a mass of
troops standing fast, and simultaneously to prosecute the invasion of a
first-rate power with approximately equal numbers. France at the cost
of 150,000 men would be holding supine on her frontier double the
number of Germans--surely no disadvantageous transaction.

In conclusion, it may be worth while to point out that the current
impression that the maintenance by states of "bloated armaments" is a
keen incentive to war, is fallacious. How often do we hear, "There must
be a big war soon; the powers cannot long stand the cost of standing
looking at each other, all armed to the teeth!" War is infinitely more
costly than the costliest preparedness. But this is not all. The
country gentleman for once in a way brings his family to town for the
season, pledging himself privily to strict economy when the term of
dissipation ends, in order to restore the balance. But for a State, as
the sequel to a season of war there is no such potentiality of economy.
Rather there is the grim certainty of heavier and yet heavier
expenditure after the war, in the still obligatory character of the
armed man keeping his house. Therefore it is that potentates are
reluctant to draw the sword, and rather bear the ills they have than
fly to other evils inevitably worse still. Whether the final outcome
will be universal national bankruptcy or the millennium, is a problem
as yet insoluble.

GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST

[Footnote: _Bandobast_ is an Indian word, which, like many others, has
been all but formally incorporated into Anglo-Indian English. The
meaning is, plan, scheme, organised arrangement.]

George Martell was an indigo-planter in Western Tirhoot, a fine tract
of Bengal stretching from the Ganges to the Nepaul Terai, and roughly
bounded on the west by the Gunduck, on the east by the Kussi.
Planter-life in Tirhoot is very pleasant to a man in robust health, who
possesses some resources within himself. In many respects it more
resembles active rural life at home than does any other life led by
Anglo-Indians. The joys of a planter's life have been enthusiastically
sung by a planter-poet; and the frank genial hospitality of the
planter's bungalow stands out pre-eminent, even amidst the universal
hospitality of India. The planter's bungalow is open to all comers. The
established formula for the arriving stranger is first to call for
brandy-and-soda, then to order a bath, and finally to inquire the name
of the occupant his host. The laws of hospitality are as the laws of
the Medes and Persians. Once in the famine time a stranger in a palki
reached a planter's bungalow in an outlying district, and sent in his
card. The planter sent him out a drink but did not bid him enter. The
stranger remained in the veranda till sundown, had another drink, and
then went on his way. This breach of statute law became known. There
was much excuse for the planter, for the traveller was a missionary and
in other respects was a _persona ingrata_. But the credit of
planterhood was at stake; and so strong was the force of public opinion
that the planter who had been a defaulter in hospitality had to abandon
the profession and quit the district. It was on this occasion laid down
as a guiding illustration, that if Judas Iscariot, when travelling
around looking for an eligible tree on which to hang himself, had
claimed the hospitality of a planter's bungalow, the dweller therein
would have been bound to accord him that hospitality. Not even
newspaper correspondents were to be sent empty away.

The indigo-planter is "up in the morning early" and away at a swinging
canter on his "waler" nag, out into the _dahaut_ to visit the _zillahs_
on which his crop is growing. He returns when the sun is getting high
with a famous appetite for a breakfast which is more than half
luncheon. After his siesta he may look in upon a neighbour--all Tirhoot
are neighbours and within a radius of thirty miles is considered next
door. He would ride that distance any day to spend an hour or two in a
house brightened by the presence of womanhood. His anxious period is
_mahaye_ time, when the indigo is in the vats and the quantity and
quality of the yield depend so much on care and skill. But except at
_mahaye_ time he is always ready for relaxation, whether it takes the
form of a polo match, a pig-sticking expedition, or a race-meeting at
Sonepoor, Muzzufferpore, or Chumparun. These race-meetings last for
several days on end, there being racing and hunting on alternate days
with a ball every second night. It used to be worth a journey to India
to see Jimmy Macleod cram a cross-grained "waler" over an awkward
fence, and squeeze the last ounce out of the brute in the run home on
the flat. The Tirhoot ladies are in all respects charming; and it must
remain a moot point with the discriminating observer whether they are
more delightful in the genial home-circles of which they are the
centres and ornaments, or in the more exciting stir and whirl of the
ballroom. After every gathering hecatombs of slain male victims
mournfully cumber the ground; and one all-conquering fair one, now
herself conquered by matrimony and motherhood, wrung from those her
charms had blighted the title of "the destroying angel."

George Martell was an honest sort of a clod. He stood well with the
ryots, and the mark of his factory always brought out keen bidding at
Thomas's auction-mart in Mission Row and was held in respect in the
Commission Sale Rooms in Mincing Lane. He was a good shikaree and could
hold his own either at polo or at billiards; but being somewhat shy and
not a little clumsy he did not frequent race-balls nor throw himself in
the way of "destroying angels." He had been over a dozen years in the
district and had not been known to propose once, so that he had come to
be set down as a misogynist. Among his chief allies was a neighbouring
planter called Mactavish. Mactavish in some incomprehensible way--he
being a gaunt, uncouth, bristly Scot, whose Highland accent was as
strong as the whisky with which he had coloured his nose--had contrived
to woo and win a bonny, baby-faced girl, the ripple of whose laughter
and the dancing sheen of whose auburn curls filled the Mactavish
bungalow with glad bright sunshine. When Mac first brought home this
winsome fairy Martell had sheepishly shunned the residence of his
friend, till one fine morning when he came in from the _dahaut_ he
found Minnie Mactavish quite at home among the pipes, empty soda-water
bottles, and broken chairs that constituted the principal articles of
furniture in his bachelor sitting-room. Minnie had come to fetch her
husband's friend and in her dainty imperious way would take no denial.
So George had his bath, got a fresh horse saddled, nearly chucked
Minnie over the other side as he clumsily helped her to mount her pony,
and rode away with her a willing if somewhat clownish captive. Arriving
at the bungalow Mactavish, honest George was bewildered by the
transformation it had undergone. Flowers were where the spirit-case
used to stand. There was a drawing-room with actually a piano in it;
the _World_ lay on the table instead of the _Sporting Times_, and the
servants wore a quiet, tasteful livery. Mac himself had been trimmed
and titivated almost out of recognition. He who had been wont to lounge
half the day in his _pyjamas_ was now almost smartly dressed; his beard
was cropped, and his bristly poll brushed and oiled. If George had a
weak spot in him it was for a simple song well sung. Mrs. Mac,
accompanying herself on the piano, sang to him "The Land o' the Leal"
and brewed him a mild peg with her own fair hands. George by bedtime
did not know whether he was on his head or his heels.

He lay awake all night thinking over all he had seen. Mactavish now was
clearly a better man than ever he had been before. He had told George
he was living more cheaply as a married man than ever he had done as a
bachelor; and in the matter of happiness there was no comparison.
George rose early to go home; but early as it was Mrs. Mac was up too,
and arrayed in a killing morning _négligé_ that fairly made poor George
stammer, gave him his _chota hazri_ and stroked his horse's head as he
mounted. About half-way home George suddenly shouted, "D----d if I
don't do it too!" and brought his hand down on his thigh with a smack
that set his horse buck-jumping.

In effect, George Martell had determined to get married. But where to
find a Mrs. Martell? Mrs. Mactavish had told him she had no sisters and
that her only relative was a maiden grand-aunt, whom George thought
must be a little too old to marry unless in the last resort. If he took
the field at the next race-meeting the fellows would chaff the life out
of him; and besides, he scarcely felt himself man enough to face a
"destroying angel." As he pondered, riding slowly homeward, a thought
occurred to him. When he had been at home a dozen years ago his two
girl-sisters had been at school, and their great playmate had been a
girl of eleven, by name Laura Davidson. Laura was a pretty child. He
had taken occasional notice of her; had once kissed her after having
been severely scratched in the struggle; and had taken her and his
sisters to the local theatre. What if Laura Davidson--now some
three-and-twenty--were still single? What if she were pretty and nice?
He remembered that the colour of her hair was not unlike Mrs. Mac's,
and was in ringlets too. And what if she were willing to come out and
make lonely George Martell as happy a man as was that lucky old Mac?

It was mail-day, and George, taking time by the forelock, sat down and
wrote to his sister what had come into his head. By the return mail he
had her reply: Laura Davidson was single; she was nice; she was pretty;
she had fair ringlets; she had a hazy memory of George and the kissing
episode, and was willing to come out and marry him and try to make him
happy. But she could not well come alone; could George suggest any
method of _chaperonage_ on the voyage?

In the district of Champarun, which in essentials is part of Tirhoot,
lies the quaint little cavalry cantonment of Segowlie. It is the last
relic of the old Nepaul war, which caused the erection of a chain of
cantonments along the frontier all of which save Segowlie, are now
abandoned. There is just room for one native cavalry regiment at
Segowlie, and the soldiers like the station because of excellent sport
and the good comradeship of the planters. At Segowlie at the time I am
writing of there happened to be quartered a certain Major Freeze, whose
wife, after a couple of years at home, was about returning to India.
George had some acquaintance with the Major and a far-off profound
respect for his wife, who was an admirable and stately lady. It
occurred to him to try whether it could not be managed that she should
bring out the future Mrs. Martell. He saw the Major, who was only too
delighted at the prospect of a new lady in the district, and the affair
was soon arranged. Mrs. Freeze wrote that she and Miss Davidson were
leaving by such-and-such a mail; and knowing that Martell was rather
lumpy when a lady was in the case, she thoughtfully suggested that he
should go down to Bombay and meet them so as to get over the initial
awkwardness by making himself useful and gain his intended's respect by
swearing at the niggers.

All went well. But George Martell was not quite his own master, he was
only part of a "concern" and was bound to do his best for his partners.
It happened, just about the time the P. and O. steamer was due at
Bombay, that the most ticklish period of the indigo-planters' year was
upon Martell. The juice had begun to flow from the vats. He had no
assistant and he did not dare to leave the work, so he telegraphed to
Bombay to explain this to Mrs. Freeze, and added that he would meet her
and her companion at Bankipore where their long railway journey would
end. Miss Davidson did not understand much about the absorbing crisis
of indigo production, and she had a spice of romance in her
composition; so that poor Martell did not rise in her estimation by his
default at Bombay. When the ladies reached Bankipore there was still no
Martell, but only a _chuprassee_ with a note to say that the juice was
still running, and that Martell sahib could not leave the factory but
would be waiting for them at Segowlie. At this even Mrs. Freeze almost
lost her temper.

They have a "State Railway" now in Tirhoot, but at the time I am
writing of there was only one _pukha_ road in all the district. The
ladies travelled in palanquins, or palkis, as they are more familiarly
called. It is a long journey from Bankipore to Segowlie, and three
nights were spent in travelling. Bluff old Minden Wilson stood on the
bank above the ghât to welcome Mrs. Freeze across the Ganges. One day
was spent at young Spudd's factory, the second at the residence of a
genial planter rejoicing in the quaint name of Hong Kong Scribbens; on
the third morning they reached Segowlie. But still no Martell; only a
_chit_ to say that that plaguy juice was still running but that he
hoped to be able to drive over to dinner. Miss Davidson went to bed in
a huff; and Major Freeze was temporarily inclined to think that her
home-trip had impaired his good lady's amiability of character.

Martell did turn up at dinner-time. But he was hardly a man at any time
to create much of an impression, and on this occasion he appeared to
exceptional disadvantage. He was stutteringly nervous; and there were
some evidences that he had been ineffectually striving to mitigate his
nervousness by the consumption of his namesake. He wore a new
dress-coat which had not the remotest pretensions to fit him, and the
bear's-grease which he had freely used gave unpleasant token of
rancidity. The dinner was an unsatisfactory performance. Miss Davidson
was extremely _distraite_, while Martell became more and more nervous
as the meal progressed and was manifestly relieved when the ladies
retired. Soon after they had done so the Major was sent for from the
drawing-room. He found Miss Davidson sobbing on his wife's bosom. He
asked what was the matter. The girl, with many sobbing interruptions,
gasped out--

"He's the wrong man! O Heavens, I never saw _him_ before! The man I
remember who gave me sweets when I was a child had black hair; _he_ has
red! Oh, what shall I do? Oh, please send that man away and let me go
home!"

And then Miss Davidson went off into hysterics.

Here was a pretty state of matters! The Major and his wife could not
see their way clear at all. Consultation followed consultation, with
visits on the Major's part to poor Martell in the dining-room
irregularly interspersed. It was almost morning before affairs arranged
themselves after a fashion. The new basis agreed upon was that the
previously existing arrangement should be regarded as dead, and that a
courtship between Martell and Miss Davidson should be commenced _de
novo_--he to do his best to recommend himself to the lady's affections,
she to learn to love him if she could, red hair and all. And so George
went home, and the Segowlie household went to bed.

Poor George at the best had a very poor idea of courting acceptably;
and surely no man was more heavily handicapped in the enterprise
prescribed him. He had to court to order, and to combat, besides, both
the bad impression made at starting and the misfortune of his red hair.
The poor fellow did his best. He used to come and sit in Mrs. Freeze's
drawing-room hours on end, glowering at Miss Davidson in a silence
broken by spasmodic efforts at forced talk. He brought the girl
presents, gave her a horse, and begged of her to ride with him. But the
great stupid fellow had not thought of a habit and the girl felt a
delicacy in telling him that she had not one. So the horse ate his head
off in idleness, and George's heart went farther and farther down in
the direction of his boots. He had so bothered Mrs. Freeze that she had
washed her hands of him, and had bidden him worry it out on his own
line.

In less than a month the crisis came. Miss Davidson could not bring
herself to think of poor George as affording the makings of a husband.
She told Mrs. Freeze so, and begged, for kindness sake, that the Major
would break this her determination to Mr. Martell and desire him to
give the thing up as hopeless. The Major thought the best course to
pursue was to write to George to this effect. Next morning in the small
hours the poor fellow turned up in the Segowlie veranda in a terribly
bad way. He would not accept his fate at second-hand in this fashion;
he must see Miss Davidson and try to move her to be kind to him. In the
end there was an interview between them, from which George emerged
quiet but very pale. His notable matrimonial bandobast had proved the
deadest of failures; and the poor fellow's lip trembled as he thought
of Mactavish's happy home and his own forlorn bungalow.

But although he had red hair and did not know in the least what to do
with his feet, George Martell was a gentleman. The lady continuing
anxious to go home, he insisted on his right to pay her return passage
as he had done her passage outward, urging rather ruefully that, having
taken a shot at happiness and having missed fire, he must be the sole
sufferer. It is a little surprising that this uncouth chivalry did not
melt the lady, but she was obdurate, although she let him have his way
about the passage money. So in the company of an officer's wife going
home Miss Davidson quitted Segowlie and journeyed to Bombay. Poor old
George, with a very sore heart, was bent on seeing the last of her
before settling down again to the old dull bachelor life. He dodged
down to Bombay in the same train, travelling second class that he might
not annoy the girl by a chance meeting; and stood with a sad face
leaning on the rail of the Apollo Bunder, as he watched the ship
containing his miscarried venture steam out of Bombay harbour on its
voyage to England.

The same night he set out on his return to his plantation. At near
midnight the mail-train from Bombay reaches Eginpoora, at the head of
the famous Bhore ghât. Some refreshment is ordinarily procurable there,
but it is not much of a place. George Martell had had a drink, and was
sauntering moodily up and down the platform waiting for the whistle to
sound. As he passed the second class compartment reserved for ladies he
heard a low, tremulous voice exclaim, "Oh, if I could only make them
understand that I'd give the world for a cup of tea!" George, if
uncouth, was a practical man. His prompt voice rang out, "_Qui hye, ek
pyala chah lao!_" Promptly came the refreshment-room _khitmutghar_,
hurrying with the tea; and George, taking off his hat, begged to know
whether he could be of any further service.

It was a very pleasant face that looked out on him in the moonlight,
and there was more than mere conventionality in the accents in which
the pleasant voice acknowledged his opportune courtesy. Insensibly
George and the lady drifted into conversation. She was very lonely,
poor thing; a friendless girl coming out to be governess in the family
of a _burra sahib_ at Chupra. Now Chupra is only across the Gunduck
from Tirhoot, so George told his new acquaintance they were both going
to nearly the same place, and professed his cordial willingness to
assist her on the journey. He did so, escorting her right into Chupra
before he set his face homeward; and he thenceforth got into a habit of
visiting Chupra very frequently. Need I prolong the story? I happened
to be in Bankipore when the Prince of Wales visited that centre of
famine-wallahs. It fell to my pleasant lot to take Mrs. Martell in to
dinner at the Commissioner's hospitable table. Mrs. Mactavish was
sitting opposite; and I went back to my bedroom-tent in the compound
without having made up my mind whether she or Mrs. Martell was the
prettier and the nicer. So you see George Martell did not make quite so
bad a _bandobast_ after all.

THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY--1879

It was in Cawnpore on my way up country, during the Prince of Wales's
tour through India, that there were shown to me some curious and
interesting mementoes of the siege of Lucknow. The friend in whose
possession they were was near Havelock as he sat before his tent in the
short Indian twilight, a short time before the advance on Lucknow made
by him and Outram in September 1857. Through the gloom of the falling
twilight there came marching towards the General a file of Highlanders
escorting a tall, gaunt Oude man, on whose swarthy face the lamplight
struck as he salaamed before the General Lord Sahib. Then he extracted
from his ear a minute section of quill sealed at both ends. The
General's son opened the strange envelope forwarded by a postal service
so hazardous, and unrolled a morsel of paper which seemed to be covered
with cabalistic signs. The missive had been sent out from Lucknow by
Brigadier Inglis, the commander of the beleaguered garrison of the
Lucknow Residency, and its bearer was the stanch and daring scout,
Ungud. As I write the originals of this communication and of others
which came in the same way lie before me; and two of those missives in
their curious mixture of characters may be found of interest to readers
of to-day.

LUKHNOW, _Septr. 16th._ (Recd. 19th.)

MY DEAR GENERAL--The last letter I recd. from you was dated 24th ult'o,
since when I have rec'd [Greek: no neus] whatever from y'r [Greek:
kamp] or of y'r [Greek: movements] but am now [Greek: dailae expekting]
to receive [Greek: inteligense] of y'r [Greek: advanse] in this [Greek:
direktion]. Since the date of my last letter the enemy have continued
to persevere unceasingly in their efforts against this position & the
firing has never ceased day or night; they have about [Greek: sixten]
guns in position round us--many of them 18 p'rs. On 5th inst. they made
a very determined attack after exploding 2 mines and [Greek: suksaeded]
for a [Greek: moment] in [Greek: almost geting] into one of our [Greek:
bateries], but were eventually repulsed on all sides with heavy loss.
Since the above date they have kept up a cannonade & musketry fire,
occasionally throwing in a shell or two. My [Greek: waeklae loses]
continue very [Greek: hevae] both in [Greek: ophisers] & [Greek: men].
I shall be quite out of [Greek: rum] for the [Greek: men] in [Greek:
eit dais], but we have been [Greek: living] on [Greek: redused rations]
& I hope to be [Greek: able] to [Greek: get] on [Greek: til] about
[Greek: phirst prox]. If you have not [Greek: relieved] us by [Greek:
then] we shall have [Greek: no meat lepht], as I must [Greek: kaep]
some few [Greek: buloks] to [Greek: move] my [Greek: guns] about the
[Greek: positions]. As it is I have had to [Greek: kil] almost all the
[Greek: gun buloks], for my men c'd not [Greek: perphorm] the [Greek:
ard work without animal phood]. There is a report, tho' from a source
on which I cannot implicitly rely, that [Greek: mansing] has just
[Greek: arived] in [Greek: luknow] havg. [Greek: lepht part] of his
[Greek: phors outside] the [Greek: sitae]. It is said that [Greek: he]
is in [Greek: our interest] and that [Greek: he] has [Greek: taken] the
[Greek: above step] at the [Greek: instigation] of B[Greek: riti]sh
[Greek: athoritae]. But I cannot say whether [Greek: su]ch [Greek: be
the kase], as all I have to go upon is [Greek: bazar rumors]. I am
[Greek: most anxious] to [Greek: hear] of yr. [Greek: advanse] to
[Greek: enable mae] to [Greek: rae-asure our native soldiers].
[Footnote: The reader will observe that the words are English, though
the characters are Greek.]--Yours truly,

J. INGLIS, _Brigadier_,

H.M. 32'd Reg't.

To Brig'r Havelock, Commg. Relieving Force.

The other missive is of an earlier date, and was brought out in the
same manner as the first.

_August 16_. (Recd. 23rd August.)

MY DEAR GENERAL--A note from Colonel Tytler to Mr. Gubbins reached last
night, dated "Mungalwar, 4th instant," the latter part of which is as
follows:--"You must [Greek: aid] us in [Greek: everae] way even to
cutting y'r way out if we [Greek: kant phorse our] way in. We have
[Greek: onlae a small phorse]." This has [Greek: kaused mae] much
[Greek: uneasiness], as it is quite [Greek: imposible] with my [Greek:
weak] & [Greek: shatered phorse] that I can [Greek: leave] my [Greek:
dephenses]. You must bear in mind how I am [Greek: hampered], that I
have upwards of [Greek: one undred & twentae-sik wounded], and at the
least [Greek: two undred & twenae women], & about [Greek: two undred] &
[Greek: thirtae children], & no [Greek: kariage] of any [Greek:
deskription], besides [Greek: sakriphising twentae-thrae laks] of
[Greek: treasure] & about [Greek: thirtae guns] of [Greek: sorts]. In
consequence of the news rec'd I shall soon put the [Greek: phorse] on
[Greek: alph rations], unless I [Greek: hear phrom] you. [Greek: Our
provisions] will [Greek: last] us [Greek: then] till [Greek: about] the
[Greek: tenth] [Greek: september]. If you [Greek: hope] to [Greek: save
this no time must] be [Greek: lost] in pushing forward. We are [Greek:
dailae] being [Greek: ataked] by the [Greek: enemae], who are within a
few yards of our [Greek: dephenses]. Their [Greek: mines] have [Greek:
alreadae weakened our post], & I have [Greek: everae] [Greek: reason]
to [Greek: believe] that are carrying on [Greek: others]. Their [Greek:
aeteen] [Greeks: pounders] are within 150 yards of [Greek: some oph our
bateries], & [Greek: phrom] their [Greek: positions & [Greek: our
inabilitae] to [Greek: phorm working] [Greek: parties], we [Greek:
kanot repli] to [Greek: them. Thae damage done ourlae] is very [Greek:
great]. My [Greek: strength] now in [Greek: europeans] is [Greek: thrae
undred] & [Greek: phiphtae], & about [Greek: thrae hundred natives], &
the men [Greek: dreadphulae] [Greek: harassed], & owing to [Greek:
part] of the [Greek: residensae] having been [Greek: brought down] by
[Greek: round shot] are without [Greek: shelter]. Our [Greek: native]
[Greek: phorse] hav'g been [Greek: asured] on Col. Tytler's authority
of y'r [Greek: near] [Greek: aproach some twentae phive dais ago are
naturallae losing konphidense], [Greek: and iph thae leave] us I do not
[Greek: sae how the dephenses] are to be [Greek: manned]. Did you
[Greek: reseive a letter & plan phrom] the [Greek: man] [Greek:
Ungud]?--Kindly answer this question.--Yours truly,

J. INGLIS, _Brigadier_.

Cawnpore is an engrossing theme, and Bithoor alone would furnish
material for an article; but my present subject is Lucknow, and I must
get to it. There is a railway now to Lucknow from Cawnpore, but the
railway bridge across the Ganges is not yet finished and passengers
must cross by the bridge of boats to the Oude side. Behind me, as the
gharry jingles over the wooden platform, is the fort which Havelock
began, which Neill completed, and in which Windham found the shelter
which alone saved him from utter defeat. Before me is the low Gangetic
shore, with the dumpy sand-hills gradually rising from the water's
edge. A few years ago there used to ride at the head of that noble
regiment the 78th Highlanders, a smooth-faced, gaunt, long-legged,
stooping officer on an old white horse. The Colonel had a voice like a
girl and his men irreverently called him the "old squeaker"; but
although you never heard him talk of his deeds he had a habit of going
quietly and steadily to the front, taking fighting and hardship
philosophically as part of the day's work. Those sand-banks were once
the scene of some quiet, unsensational heroism of his. He commanded the
two companies of Highlanders whom Havelock threw on the unknown shore
as the vanguard of his advance into Oude. No prior reconnaissance was
possible. Oude swarmed with an armed and hostile population. The
chances were that an army was hovering but a little way inland, waiting
to attack the head of the column on landing. But it was necessary to
risk all contingencies, and Mackenzie accepted the service as he might
have done an invitation to a glass of grog. In the dead of the night
the boats stood across with the little forlorn hope with which Havelock
essayed to grapple on to Oude. Landing in the rain and darkness, it was
Mackenzie's task to grope for an enemy if there should be one in his
vicinity. There was not; but for four-and-twenty hours his little band
hung on to the Oude bank as it were by their eyelids, detached,
unsupported, and wholly charged with the taking care of themselves
until it was possible to send a reinforcement. The charge of this
vague, uncertain, tentative enterprise, fraught with risks so imminent
and so vast, required a cool, steady-balanced courage of no common
order.

"Onao!" shouts the conductor of the train at the first station from
Cawnpore, and we look out on a few railway bungalows and a large native
village apparently in a ruinous state. All this journey is studded with
battlefields, and this is one of them. If I had time I should like to
make a pilgrimage to the street mouth into which dashed frantically
Private Patrick Cavanagh of the 64th, who, stung to madness by the
hesitation of his fellows, was cut to pieces by the tulwars of the
mutineers. We jog on very slowly; the Oude and Rohilcund Railway is to
India in point of slowness what the Great Eastern used to be to us at
home; but every yard of the ground is interesting. Along that high road
passed in long, strangely diversified procession the people whom Clyde
brought away from Lucknow--the civilians, the women, the children, and
the wounded of the immortal garrison. That swell beyond the mango trees
under which the _nhil gau_ are feeding, is Mungalwar, Havelock's
menacing position. No wonder though the outskirts of this town on the
high road present a ruined appearance. It is Busseerutgunge, the scene
of three of Havelock's battles and victories, fought and won in a
single fortnight. We pass Bunnee, where Havelock and Outram tramping on
to the relief, fired a royal salute in the hope that the sound of it
might reach to the Residency and cheer the hearts of its garrison. And
now we are on the platform of the Lucknow station which has more of an
English look about it than have most Indian stations. There is a
bookstall, although it is not one of Smith's; and there are lots of
English faces in the crowd waiting the arrival of the train. The
natives, one sees at a glance, are of very different physique from the
people of Bengal. The Oude man is tall, square-shouldered, and upright;
he has more hair on his face than has the Bengali, and his carriage is
that of a free man. The railway station of Lucknow is flanked by two
earthwork fortifications of considerable pretensions.

Lucknow is so full of interest and the objects of interest are so
widely spread that one is in doubt where to begin the pilgrimage. But
the Alumbagh is on the railway side of the canal and therefore nearest;
and I drive directly to it before going into the town. From the station
the road to the Alumbagh turns sharp to the left and the two miles'
drive is through beautiful groves and gardens. Then the plain opens up
and there is the detached temple which so long was one of Outram's
outlying pickets; and to the left of it the square-walled enclosure of
the Alumbagh itself with the four corners flanked by earthen bastions.
The top of the wall is everywhere roughly crenelated for musketry fire,
and on two of its faces there are countless tokens that it has been the
target for round shot and bullets. The Alumbagh in the pre-Mutiny
period was a pleasure-garden of one of the princes of Oude. The
enclosed park contained a summer palace and all the surroundings were
pretty and tasteful. It was for the possession of the Alumbagh that
Havelock fought his last battle before the relief; here it was where he
left his baggage and went in; here it was that Clyde halted to organise
the turning movement which achieved the second relief. Hither were
brought from the Dilkoosha the women and children of the garrison prior
to starting on the march for Cawnpore; here Outram lay threatening
Lucknow from Clyde's relief until the latter's ultimate capture of the
city. But these occurrences contribute but trivially to the interest of
the Alumbagh in comparison with the circumstance that within its
enclosure is the grave of Havelock. We enter the great enclosure under
the lofty arch of the castellated gateway. From this a straight avenue
bordered by arbor vitae trees, conducts to a square plot of ground
enclosed by low posts and chains. Inside this there is a little garden
the plants of which a native gardener is watering as we open the
wicket. From the centre of the little garden there rises a shapely
obelisk on a square pedestal and on one side of the pedestal is a long
inscription. "Here lie," it begins, "the mortal remains of Henry
Havelock;" and so, methinks, it might have ended. There is needed no
prolix biographical inscription to tell the reverent pilgrim of the
deeds of the dead man by whose grave he stands--so long as history
lives, so long does it suffice to know that "here lie the mortal
remains of Henry Havelock"--and the text and verse of poetry grate on
one as redundancies. He sickened two days before the evacuation of the
Residency and died on the morning of the 24th of November in his dooly
in a tent of the camp at the Dilkoosha. The life went out of him just
as the march began, and his soldiers conveyed with them, on the litter
on which he had expired, the mortal remains of the chief who had so
often led them on to victory.

On the following morning they buried him here in the Alumbagh, under
the tree which still spreads its branches over the little garden in
which he lies. There stood around the grave-mouth Colin Campbell and
the chivalrous Outram, and stanch old Walter Hamilton, and the
ever-ready Fraser Tytler; and the "boy Harry" to whom the campaign had
brought the gain of fame and the loss of a father; and the devoted
Harwood with "his heart in the coffin there with Caesar;" and the
heroic William Peel; and that "colossal red Celt," the noble, ill-fated
Adrian Hope, sacrificed afterwards to incompetent obstinacy. Behind
stood in a wide circle the soldiers of the Ross-shire Buffs and the
"Blue Caps" who had served the dead chief so stanchly, and had gathered
here now, with many a memory of his ready praise of valour and his
indefatigable regard for the comfort of his men, stirring in their
war-worn hearts--

  Guarded to a soldier's grave
  By the bravest of the brave,
  He hath gained a nobler tomb
  Than in old cathedral gloom.
  Nobler mourners paid the rite,
  Than the crowd that craves a sight;
  England's banners o'er him waved,
  Dead he keeps the name he saved.

The burial-place was being temporarily abandoned, and as the rebels
desecrated all the graves they could discover it was necessary to
obliterate as much as possible the tokens of the interment. A big "H"
was carved into the bark of the tree and a small tin plate fastened to
its trunk, to guide to the subsequent investigation of the spot. Dr.
Russell tells us that when he visited the Alumbagh before his return
home after the mutiny in Oude was stamped out, he found the hero's
grave a muddy trench near the foot of a tree which bore the mark of a
round shot and had carved into its bark the letter "H." The tree is
here still and the dent of the round shot, and faintly too is to be
discerned the carved letter but the bark around it seems to have been
whittled away, perhaps by the sacrilegious knives of relic-seeking
visitors. There is the grave of a young lieutenant in a corner of the
little garden and a few private soldiers lie hard by.

I turn my face now toward the Charbagh bridge, following the route
taken by Havelock's force on the 25th of September--the memorable day
of the relief. There is the field where, as at a table in the open air
Havelock and Outram were studying a map, a round shot from the Sepoy
battery by the Yellow House ricochetted between them. There is the spot
where stood the Yellow House itself, whence after a desperate struggle
Maude's artillerymen drove the Sepoy garrison and its guns. Presently
with a sweep the road comes into a direct line with the Charbagh bridge
over the canal. Now there is not a house in the vicinity; the Charbagh
garden has been thrown into the plain and the steep banks of the canal
are perfectly naked. But then the scene was very different. On the
Lucknow side the native city came close up to the bridge and lined the
canal. The tall houses to right and left of the bridge on the Lucknow
side were full of men with firearms. At that end of the bridge there
was a regular overlapping breastwork, and behind it rose an earthwork
battery solidly constructed and armed with five guns, one a 42-pounder,
all crammed to the muzzle with grape. Let us sit down on the parapet
and try to realise the scene. Outram with the 78th has made a detour to
the right through the Charbagh garden to clear it of the enemy, and,
gaining the canal bank, to bring a flanking fire to bear on its
defenders. There is only room for two of Maude's guns; and there they
stand out in the open on the road trying to answer the fire of the
rebel battery. Thrown forward along the bank to the left of the bridge
is a company of the Madras Fusiliers under Arnold, lying down and
returning the musketry fire from the houses on the other side. Maude's
guns are forward in the straight throat of the road where it leads on
to the bridge close by, but round the bend under cover of the wall the
Madras Fusiliers are lying down. In a bay of the wall of the Charbagh
enclosure General Neill is standing waiting for the effect of Outram's
flank movement to develop, and young Havelock, mounted, is on the other
side of the road somewhat forward. Matters are at a deadlock. It seems
as if Outram had lost his way. Maude's gunners are all down; he has
repeatedly called for volunteers from the infantry behind, and now his
gallant subaltern, Maitland, is doing bombardier's work. Maude calls to
young Havelock that he shall be forced to retire his guns if something
is not done at once; and Havelock rides across through the fire and in
his capacity as assistant adjutant-general urges on Neill the need for
an immediate assault. Neill "is not in command; he cannot take the
responsibility; and General Outram must turn up soon." Havelock turns
and rides away down the road towards the rear. As he passes he speaks
encouragingly to the recumbent Fusiliers, who are getting fidgety at
the long detention under fire. "Come out of that, sir," cried one
soldier, "a chap's just had his head taken off there!" It is a grim
joke that reply which tickles the Fusiliers into laughter: "And what
the devil are we here for but to get our heads taken off?" Young
Havelock is bent on the perpetration of what, under the circumstances,
may be called a pious fraud. His father, who commands the operations,
is behind with the Reserve, and he disappears round the bend on the
make-belief of getting instructions from the chief. The General is far
in the rear but his son comes back at the gallop, rides up to Neill,
and saluting with his sword, says, "You are to carry the bridge at
once, sir." Neill, acquiescing in the superior order, replies, "Get the
regiment together then, and see it formed up." At the word and without
waiting for the regiment to rise and form the gallant and eager Arnold
springs up from his advanced position and dashes on to the bridge,
followed by about a dozen of his nearest skirmishers. Tytler and
Havelock, as eager as Arnold, set spurs to their horses and are by his
side in a moment. The brave and ardent 84th, commanded by Willis,
dashes to the front. Then the hurricane opens. The big gun crammed to
the muzzle with grape, sweeps its iron sleet across the bridge in the
face of the gallant band, and the Sepoy sharpshooters converge their
fire on it. Arnold drops shot through both thighs, Tytler's horse goes
down with a crash, the bridge is swept clear save for young Havelock
erect and unwounded, waving his sword and shouting for the Fusiliers to
come on, and a Fusilier corporal, Jakes by name, who, as he rams a
bullet home into his Enfield, says cheerily to Havelock, "We'll soon
have the ---- out of that, sir!" And corporal Jakes is a true prophet.
Before the big gun can be loaded again the stormers are on the bridge
in a rushing mass. They are across it, they clear the barricade, they
storm the battery, they are bayoneting the Sepoy gunners as they stand.
The Charbagh bridge is won, but with severe loss which continues more
or less all the way to the Residency; and when one comes to know the
ground it becomes more and more obvious that the strategy of Havelock,
overruled by Outram, was wise and prescient, when he counselled a wide
turning movement by the Dilkoosha, over the Goomtee near the
Martinière, and so along its northern bank to the Badshah-bagh, almost
opposite to the Residency and commanding the iron bridge.

I recross the Charbagh bridge and bend away to the left by the byroad
along the canal side by which the 78th Highlanders penetrated to the
front of the Kaiser-bagh. Most of the native houses are now destroyed,
whence was poured so deadly a fire on the advancing Ross-shire men that
three colour-bearers fell in succession, and the colour fell to the
grasp of the gallant Valentine McMaster, the assistant-surgeon of the
regiment. And now I stand in front of the main entrance to the
Kaiser-bagh, hard by the spot where stood the Sepoy battery which the
Highlanders so opportunely took in reverse. Before me on the _maidan_
is the plain monument to Sir Mountstuart Jackson, Captain Orr, and a
sergeant, who were murdered in the Kaiser-bagh when the success of
Campbell's final operations became certain. I enter the great square
enclosure of the Kaiser-bagh and stand in the desolation of what was
once a gay garden where the King of Oude and his women were wont to
disport themselves. The place stands much as Campbell's men left it
after looting its multifarious rich treasures. The dainty little
pavilions are empty and dilapidated, the statues are broken and
tottering. Quitting the Kaiser-bagh, I try to realise the scene of that
informal council of war in one of the outlying courtyards of the
numerous palaces. I want to fix the spot where on his big waler sat
Outram, a splash of blood across his face, and his arm in a sling;
where Havelock, dismounted, walked up and down by Outram's side with
short, nervous strides, halting now and then to give emphasis to the
argument, while all around them were officers, soldiers, guns, natives,
wounded men, bullocks, and a surging tide of disorganisation
momentarily pouring into the square. But the attempt is fruitless. The
whole area has been cleared of buildings right up to the gate of the
Residency, only that hard by the Goomtee there still stands the river
wing of the Chutter Munzil Palace with its fantastic architecture, and
that the palace of the King of Oude is now the station library and
assembly rooms. The Hureen Khana, the Lalbagh, the courts of the Furrut
Bux Palace, the Khas Bazaar, and the Clock Tower have alike been swept
away, and in their place there opens up before the eye trim ornamental
grounds with neat plantations which extend up to the Baileyguard
itself. One archway alone stands--a gaunt commemorative skeleton--a
pedestal for the statue of a noble soldier. It was from a chamber above
the crown of this arch that the sepoy shot Neill as he sat on his horse
urging the confused press of guns and men through the archway. The spot
is memorable for other causes. This archway led into that court which
is world-famous under the name of Dhooly Square. Here it was that the
native bearers abandoned the wounded in the doolies which poor Bensley
Thornhill was trying to guide into the Residency; here it was where
they were butchered and burned as they lay, and here it was where Dr.
Home and a handful of men of the escort did what in them lay to cover
the wounded and defended themselves for a day and a night against
continuous attacks of countless enemies.

The _via dolorosa_, the road of death up which Outram and Havelock
fought their way with Brazier's Sikhs and the Ross-shire Buffs, is now
a pleasant open drive amid clumps of trees, leading on to the
Residency. A strange thrill runs through one's frame as there opens up
before one that reddish-gray crumbling archway spanning the roadway
into the Residency grounds. Its face is dented and splintered with
cannon-shot and pitted all over by musket-bullets. This is none other
than that historic Baileyguard gate which burly Jock Aitken and his
faithful Sepoys kept so stanchly. You may see the marks still of the
earth banked up against it on the interior during the siege. To the
right and left runs the low wall which was the curtain of the defence,
now crumbled so as to be almost indistinguishable. But there still
stands, retired somewhat from the right of the archway, Aitken's
post--the guard-house and treasury, its pillars and façade cut and
dented all over with the marks of bullets fired by "Bob the Nailer" and
his comrades from the Clock Tower which stood over against it. And in
the curtain wall between the archway and the building is still to be
traced the faint outline of the embrasure through which Outram and
Havelock entered on the memorable evening. The turmoil and din and
conflicting emotions of that terrible, glorious day have merged into a
strange serenity of quietude. The scene is solitary, save for a native
woman who is playing with her baby on a spot where once dead bodies lay
in heaps. But the other older scene rises up vividly before the mind's
eye out of the present calm. Havelock and Outram and the staff have
passed through the embrasure here, and now there are rushing in the men
of the ranks, powder-grimed, dusty, bloody; but a minute before raging
with the stern passion of the battle, now full of a woman-like
tenderness. And all around them as they swarm in there crowd a mass of
folk eager to give welcome. There are officers and men of the garrison,
civilians whom the siege has made into soldiers; women, too, weeping
tears of joy down on the faces of the children for whom they had not
dared to hope for aught but death. There are gaunt men, pallid with
loss of blood, whose great eyes shine weirdly amid the torchlight and
whose thin hands tremble with weakness as they grip the sinewy, grimy
hands of the Highlanders. These are the wounded of the long siege who
have crawled out from the hospital up yonder, as many of them as could
compass the exertion, with a welcome to their deliverers. The hearts of
the impulsive Highlanders wax very warm. As they grasp the hands held
out to them they exclaim, "God bless you!" "Why, we expected to have
found only your bones!" "And the children are living too!" and many
other fervid and incoherent ejaculations. The ladies of the garrison
come among the Highlanders, shaking them enthusiastically by the hand;
and the children clasp the shaggy men round the neck, and to say truth,
so do some of the mothers. But Jessie Dunbar and her "Dinna ye hear
it?" in reference to the bagpipe music, are in the category of
melodramatic fictions.

The position which bears and will bear to all time the title of the
Residency of Lucknow, is an elevated plateau of land, irregular in
surface, of which the highest point is occupied by the Residency
building, while the area around was studded irregularly with buildings,
chiefly the houses of the principal civilian officials of the station.
When Campbell brought away the garrison in November 1857 it lapsed into
the hands of the mutineers, who held it till his final occupation of
the city and its surroundings in March of the following year. They
pulled down not a few of the already shattered buildings, and left
their fell imprint on the spot in an atrociously ghastly way by
desecrating the graves in which brave hands had laid our dead
country-people and flinging the exhumed corpses into the Goomtee. When
India once more became settled the Residency, its commemorative
features uninterfered with, was laid out as a garden and flowers and
shrubs now grow on soil once wet with the blood of heroes. The _débris_
has been removed or dispersed; the shattered buildings are prevented
from crumbling farther; tablets bearing the names of the different
positions and places of interest are let into the walls; and it is
possible, by exploring the place map in hand, to identify all the
features of the defence. The avenue from the Baileyguard gate rises
with a steep slope to the Residency building. On either side of the
approach and hard by the gate, are the blistered and shattered remnants
of two large houses; that on the right is the banqueting house which
was used as the hospital during the siege; that on the left was Dr.
Fayrer's house. The banqueting house is a mere shell, riven everywhere
with shot and pitted over by musket-bullets as if it had suffered from
smallpox. The ground-floor has escaped with less damage but the
banqueting hall itself has been wholly wrecked by the persistent fire
which the rebels showered upon it, and to which, notwithstanding the
mattresses and sandbags with which the windows were blocked, several
poor fellows fell victims as they lay wounded on their cots. Dr.
Fayrer's house is equally a battered ruin. In its first floor, roofless
and forlorn, its front torn open by shot and the pillars of its windows
jagged into fantastic fragments, is the veranda in which Sir Henry
Lawrence, 4th July 1857, died, exposed to fire to the very last. At the
top of the slope of the avenue and on the left front of the Residency
building as we approach it--on what, indeed, was once the lawn--has
been raised an artificial mound, its slopes covered with flowering
shrubs, its summit bearing the monumental obelisk on the pedestal of
which is the terse, appropriate inscription: "In memory of
Major-General Sir Henry Lawrence and the brave men who fell in defence
of the Residency. _Si monumentum quaeris Circumspice!_" Beyond this
lies the scathed and blighted ruin of the Residency House, once a large
and imposing structure, now so utterly wrecked and shivered that one
wonders how the crumbling reddish-gray walls are kept erect. The
veranda was battered down and much of the front of the building lies
bodily open, the structure being supported on the battered and
distorted pillars assisted by great balks of wood. Entering by the left
wing I pass down a winding stair into the bowels of the earth till I
reach the spacious and lofty vaults or _tykhana_ under the building.
Here, the place affording comparative safety, lived immured the women
of the garrison, the soldiers' wives, half-caste females, the wives of
the meaner civilians and their children. The poor creatures were seldom
allowed to come up to the surface, lest they should come in the way of
the shot which constantly lacerated the whole area, and few visitors
were allowed access to them. Veritably they were in a dungeon.
Provisions were lowered down to them from the window orifices near the
roof of the vaulting, and there were days when the firing was so heavy
that orders were given to them not even to rise from their beds on the
floor. For shot occasionally found a way even into the _tykhana_; you
may see the holes it made in penetrating. The miserables were billeted
off ten in a room, and there they lived, without sweepers, baths,
dhobies, or any of the comforts which the climate makes necessities.
Here in these dungeons children were born, only for the most part to
die. Ascending another staircase I pass through some rooms in which
lived (and died) some of the ladies of the garrison, and passing from
the left wing by a shattered corridor am able to look up into the room
in which Sir Henry Lawrence received his death-wound. Access to it is
impossible by reason of the tottering condition of the structure; and
turning away I clamber up the worn staircase in the shot-riven tower on
the summit of which still stands the flagstaff on which were hoisted
the signals with which the garrison were wont to communicate with the
Alumbagh. The walls of the staircase and the flat roof of the tower are
scratched and written all over with the names of visitors; many of the
names are those of natives, but more are those of British soldiers, who
have occasionally added a piece of their mind in characteristically
strong language.

I set out on a pilgrimage under the still easily traceable contour of
the intrenchment. Passing "Sam Lawrence's Battery" above what was the
water-gate, I traverse the projecting tongue at the end of which stood
the "Redan Battery" whose fire swept the river face up to the iron
bridge. Returning, and passing the spot where "Evans's Battery" stood,
I find myself in the churchyard in a slight depression of the ground.
Of the church, which was itself a defensive post, not one stone remains
on another and the mutineers hacked to pieces the ground of the
churchyard. The ground is now neatly enclosed and ornamentally planted
and is studded with many monuments, few of which speak the truth when
they profess to cover the dust of those whom they commemorate. There
are the regimental monuments of the 5th Madras Fusiliers, the 84th (360
men besides officers), the Royal Artillery, the 90th (a long list of
officers and 271 men). The monument of the 1st Madras Fusiliers bears
the names of Neill, Stephenson, Renaud, and Arnold, and commemorates a
loss of 352 men. There is a monument to Mr. Polehampton the exemplary
chaplain, and hard by a plain slab bears the inscription, "Here lies
Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty; may the Lord have mercy on
his soul!" words dictated by himself on his deathbed. Other monuments
commemorate Captain Graham of the Bengal Cavalry and two children; Mr.
Fairhurst the Roman Catholic chaplain; Major Banks; Captain Fulton of
the 32nd who earned the title of "Defender of Lucknow;" Lucas, the
travelling Irish gentleman who served as a volunteer and fell in the
last sortie; Captain Becher; Captain Moorsom; poor Bensley Thornhill
and his young daughter; "Mrs. Elizabeth Arne, burnt with a shell-ball
during the siege;" Lieutenant Cunliffe; Mr. Ommaney the Judicial
Commissioner; and others. The nameless hillocks of poor Jack Private
are plentiful, for here were buried many of those who fell in the final
capture; and there are children's graves. Interments take place still.
I saw a freshly-made grave; but only those are entitled to a last
resting-place here who were among the beleaguered during the long
defence. I have seen the medal for the defence of Lucknow on the breast
of a man who was a child in arms at the time of the siege, and such an
one would have the right to claim interment in this doubly hallowed
ground. From the churchyard I pass out along the narrow neck to that
forlorn-hope post, "Innes's Garrison," and along the western face of
the intrenchment by the sides of the sheep-house and the
slaughter-house, to Gubbins's post. The mere foundations of the house
are visible which the stout civilian so gallantly defended, and the
famous tree, gradually pruned to a mere stump by the enemy's fire, is
no longer extant. Along the southern face of the position there are no
buildings which are not ruined. Sikh Square, the Brigade Mess House,
and the Martinière boys' post, are alike represented by fragmentary
gray walls shivered with shot and shored up here and there by beams.
The rooms of the Begum Kothi near the centre of the position, are still
laterally entire but roofless. The walls of this structure are
exceptionally thick and here many of the ladies of the garrison were
quartered. All around the Residency position the native houses which at
the time of the siege crowded close up on the intrenchment, are now
destroyed; and indeed the native town has been curtailed into
comparatively small dimensions and is entirely separated from the area
in which the houses of the station are built.

Quitting the Residency I drive westward by the river side, over the
site of the Captan Bazaar, past also that huge fortified heap the
Muchee Bawn, till I reach the beautiful enclosure in which the great
Imambara stands. This majestic structure--part temple, part convent,
part palace, and now part fortress--dominates the whole _terrain_, and
from its lofty flat roof one looks down on the plain where the weekly
_hât_ or market is being held, on the gardens and mansions across the
river, and southward upon the dense mass of houses which constitute the
native city. Sentries promenade the battlements of the Muchee Bawn, and
the Imambara--an apartment to which for space and height I know none in
Europe comparable--is now used as an arsenal, where are stored the
great siege guns which William Peel plied with so great skill and
gallantry. Just outside the Imambara, on the edge of the _maidan_
between it and the Moosabagh, I come on a little railed churchyard
where rest a few British soldiers who fell during Lord Clyde's final
operations in this direction. Then, with a sweep across the plain to
the south and by a slight ascent, I reach the gate of the city which
opens into the Chowk or principal street--the street traversed in
disguise by the dauntless Kavanagh when he went out from the garrison
to convey information and afford guidance to Sir Colin Campbell on his
first advance. The gatehouse is held by a strong force of native
policemen, armed as if they were soldiers; and as I pass the guard I
stand in the Chowk itself, in the midst of a throng of gaily clad male
pedestrians, women in chintz trousers, laden donkeys, multitudinous
children, and still more multitudinous stinks. All down both sides the
fronts of the lower stories are open, and in the recesses sit merchants
displaying paltry jewelry, slippers, pipes, turban cloths, and
Manchester stuffs of the gaudiest patterns. The main street of Lucknow
has been called "The Street of Silver," but I could find little among
its jewelry either of silver or of gold. The first floors all have
balconies, and on these sit draped, barefooted women of Rahab's
profession. The women of Lucknow are fairer and handsomer, and the men
bolder and more stalwart, than those in Bengal, and it takes no great
penetration to discern that Lucknow is still ruled by fear and not by
love.

It remained for me still to investigate the scenes of the route by
which Lord Clyde came in on both his advances; but to do justice to
these would demand separate articles. Let me begin the hasty sketch at
the Dilkoosha Palace, two miles and more away to the east of the
Residency; for on both occasions the Dilkoosha was Clyde's base. Wajid
Ali's twenty-foot wall has now given place to an earthen embankment
surrounding a beautiful pleasure park, and there are now smooth green
slopes instead of the dense forest through which Clyde's soldiers
marched on their turning movement. On a swell in the midst of the park,
commanding a view of the fantastic architecture of the Martinière down
by the tank, stands the gaunt ruin of the once trim and dainty
Dilkoosha Palace or rather garden-house. From one of the pepper-box
turrets up there Lord Clyde directed the attack on the Martinière on
his ultimate operation; and here it was that, as Dr. Russell tells us,
a round shot dispersed his staff on the adjacent leads. After quietude
was restored the Dilkoosha was the headquarters for a time of Sir Hope
Grant, but now it has been allowed to fall into decay although the
garden in the rear of it is prettily kept up. On the reverse slope
behind the Dilkoosha was the camp in one of the tents of which Havelock
died. We drive down the gentle slope once traversed at a rushing double
by the Black Watch on their way to carry the Martinière, past the great
tank out of the centre of which rises the tall column to the memory of
Claude Martine, and reach the entrance of the fantastic building which
he built, in which he was buried, and which bears his name. We see at
the angle of the northern wing the slope up which the gun was run which
played so heavily on the Dilkoosha up on the wooded knoll there. The
Martinière is now, as it was before the Mutiny, a college for European
boys, and the young fellows are playing on the terraces. Grotesque
stone statues are in niches and along the tops of the balconies; you
may see on them the marks of the bullets which the honest fellows of
the Black Watch fired at them, taking them for Pandies. I go down into
a vault and see the tomb of Claude Martine; but it is empty, for the
mutineers desecrated his grave and scattered his bones to the winds of
heaven. Then I make for the roof, through the dormitories of the boys
and past fantastic stone griffins and lions and Gorgons, till I reach
the top of the tower and touch the flagstaff from which, during the
relief time, was given the answering signal to that hoisted on the
tower of the Residency. I stand in the niches where the mutineer
marksmen used to sit with their hookahs and take pot shots at the
Dilkoosha. I look down to the eastward on the Goomtee, and note the
spot where Outram crossed on that flank movement which would have been
very much more successful than it was had he been permitted to drive it
home. To the north-east beyond the topes is the battle-ground of
Chinhut, where Lawrence received so terrible a reverse at the beginning
of the siege. Due north is the Kookrail viaduct which Outram cleared
with the Rifles and the 79th, and in whose vicinity Jung Bahadour, the
crafty and bloodthirsty generalissimo of Nepaul, "co-operated" by a
demonstration which never became anything more. And to the west there
lie stretched out before me the domes, minarets, and spires of Lucknow,
rising above the foliage in which their bases are hidden, and the
routes of Clyde in the relief and capture. The rays of the afternoon
sun are stirring into colour the dusky gray of the Secunderbagh and of
the Nuddun Rusool, or "Grave of the Prophet," used as a powder magazine
by the rebels. Below me, on the lawn of the Martinière, is the big
gun--one of Claude Martine's casting--which did the rebels so much
service at the other angle of the Martinière and which was spiked at
last by two men of Peel's naval brigade, who swam the Goomtee for the
purpose. That little enclosure slightly to the left surrounds "all that
can die" of that strange mixture of high spirit, cool daring, and weak
principle, the famous chief of Hodson's Horse. By Hodson's side lies
Captain da Costa of the 56th N.I., attached to Brazier's Sikhs. Of this
officer is told that, having lost many relatives in the butchery of
Cawnpore, he joined the regiment likeliest to be in the front of the
Lucknow fighting, and fell by one of the first shots fired in the
assault on the Kaiser-bagh.

Descending from the Martinière tower I traverse the park to the
westward passing the grave of Captain Otway Mayne, cross the dry canal
along which are still visible the heaps of earth which mark the
stupendous first line of the rebels' defences, and bending to the left
reach the Secunderbagh. This famous place was a pleasure garden
surrounded with a lofty wall with turrets at the angles and a
castellated gateway. The interior garden is now waste and forlorn, the
rank grass growing breast-high in the corners where the slaughter was
heaviest. Here in this little enclosure, not half the size of the
garden of Bedford Square, 2000 Sepoys died the death at the hands of
the 93rd, the 53rd, and the 4th Punjaubees. Their common grave is under
the low mound on the other side of the road. The loopholes stand as
they were left by the mutineers when our fellows came bursting in
through the ragged breach made in the reverse side from the main
entrance by Peel's guns. Farther on--that is, nearer to the
Residency--I come to the Shah Nujeef, with its strong exterior wall
enclosing the domed temple in its centre. It is still easy to trace the
marks of the breach made in the angle in the wall by Peel's battering
guns, and the tree is still standing up which Salmon, Southwell, and
Harrison climbed in response to his proffer of the Victoria Cross.
Opposite the Shah Nujeef white girls are playing on the lawn of that
castellated building, for the Koorsheyd Munzil, on the top of which
there was hoisted the British flag in the face of a _feu d'enfer_, is
now a seminary for the daughters of Europeans. A little beyond, on the
plain in front of the Motee Mahal, is the spot where Campbell met
Outram and Havelock--a spot which, methinks, might well be marked by a
monument; and after this I lose my reckoning by reason of the extent of
the demolition, and am forced to resort to guesswork as to the precise
localities.

THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY

Writing of the late Alexander III. of Russia, a foreign author has
recently permitted himself to observe: "Marvellous personal courage is
not a striking characteristic of the dynasty of the Romanoffs as it was
of the English Tudors." It will be conceded that periods materially
govern the conditions under which sovereigns and their royal relatives
have found opportunities for proving their personal courage. The Tudor
dynasty had ended before the Romanoff dynasty began. It is true,
indeed, that the ending of the former with the death of Elizabeth in
1603 occurred only a few years before the foundation of the latter by
the election to the Tzarship of Michael Feodorovitz Romanoff in 1612.
But of the five sovereigns of the Tudor dynasty it happened that only
one, Henry VII., the first monarch of that dynasty, found or made an
opportunity for the display of marked--scarcely perhaps of
"marvellous"--personal courage; and thus the selection of the Tudor
dynasty by the writer referred to as furnishing a contrasting
illustration in the matter of personal courage to that of the Romanoffs
was not particularly fortunate. Henry VIII. was only once in action; he
shared in the skirmish known as the "Battle of the Spurs," because of
the precipitate flight of the French horse. Edward VI. died at the age
of sixteen, and the two remaining sovereigns of the dynasty were women,
of whom it is true that Elizabeth was a strong and vigorous ruler, but
in the nature of things had no opportunity for showing "marvellous
personal courage." Henry VII. literally found his crown in the heart of
the _mêlée_ on Bosworth field, it matters not which of the alternative
stories is correct, that he himself killed Richard, or that Richard was
killed in the act of striking him a desperate blow. But Henry at
Bosworth in 1485 still belonged to the days of chivalry--to an era in
which monarchs were also armour-clad knights, who headed charges in
person and gave and took with spear, sword, and battle-axe. Long before
Peter the Great, more than two centuries after Bosworth, foamed at the
mouth with rage and hacked with his sword at his panicstricken troops
fleeing from the field of Narva on that winter day of 1700, the face of
warfare had altered and the _métier_ of the commander, were he
sovereign or were he subject, had undergone a radical change.

Of a family of the human race it is not rationally possible to
predicate a typical generic characteristic of mind. A physical trait
will endure down the generations, as witness the Hapsburg lip and the
swarthy complexion of the Finch-Hattons, in the face of alliances from
outside the races; but, save as regards one exception, there is no
assurance of a continuous inheritance of mental attributes. What a
contrast is there between Frederick the Great and his father; between
George III. and his successor; between the present Emperor of Austria
and his hapless son; between the genial, wistful, and well-intentioned
Alexander II. of Russia and the not less well-intentioned but
narrow-minded and despotic sovereign who succeeded him! But there may
be reserved one exception to the absence of assurance of inherited
mental attributes--one mental feature in which identity takes the place
of dissimilarity, and even of actual contrast. And that feature--that
inherited characteristic of a race whose progenitors happily possessed
it--is personal courage.

Take, for example, the Hohenzollerns. One need not hark back to
Carlyle's original Conrad, the seeker of his fortune who tramped down
from the ancestral cliff-castle on his way to take service under
Barbarossa. Before and since the "Grosse Kurfurst" there has been no
Hohenzollern who has not been a brave man. He himself was the hero of
Fehrbellin. His son, the first king of the line, Carlyle's "Expensive
Herr," was "valiant in action" during the third war of Louis XIV. The
rugged Frederick William, father of Frederick the Great, had his own
tough piece of war against the volcanic Charles XII. of Sweden and did
a stout stroke of hard fighting at Malplaquet. Of Fritz himself the
world has full note. Bad, sensual, debauched Hohenzollern as was his
successor, Frederick the Fat, he had fought stoutly in his youth-time
under his illustrious uncle. His son, Frederick William III.,
overthrown by Napoleon who called him a "corporal," did good soldierly
work in the "War of Liberation" and fought his way to Paris in 1814.
His eldest son, Frederick William IV., the vague, benevolent dreamer
whom _Punch_ used to call "King Clicquot" and who died of softening of
the brain, even he, too, as a lad had distinguished himself in the "War
of Liberation" and in the fighting during the subsequent advance on
Paris. As for grand old William I., the real maker of the German Empire
on the _quid facit per alium facit per se_ axiom, he died a veteran of
many wars. He was not seventeen when he won the Iron Cross by a service
of conspicuous gallantry under heavy fire. He took his chances in the
bullet and shell fire at Königgrätz, and again on the afternoon of
Gravelotte. Not a Hohenzollern of them all but shared as became their
race in the dangers of the great war of 1870-71; even Prince George,
the music composer, the only non-soldier of the family, took the field.
William's noble son, whose premature death neither Germany nor England
has yet ceased to deplore, took the lead of one army; his nephew Prince
Frederick Charles, a great commander and a brilliant soldier, was the
leader of another. One of his brothers, Prince Albert the elder, made
the campaign as cavalry chief; whose son, Prince Albert junior, now a
veteran Field-Marshal, commanded a brigade of guard-cavalry with a
skill and daring not wholly devoid of recklessness. Another brother,
Prince Charles, the father of the "Red Prince," made the campaign with
the royal headquarters; Prince Adalbert, a cousin of the sovereign and
head of the Prussian Navy, had his horse shot under him on the
battlefield of Gravelotte.

The trait of personal courage has markedly characterised the House of
Hanover. As King of England George I. did no fighting, but before he
reached that position he had distinguished himself in war not a little;
against the Danes and Swedes in 1700 and in high command in the war of
the Spanish succession from 1701 to 1709. His successor, while yet
young, had displayed conspicuous valour in the battle of Oudenarde, and
later in life at Dettingen; and he was the last British monarch who
took part in actual warfare. Cumberland had no meritorious attribute
save that of personal courage, but that virtue in him was undeniable.
At Dettingen he was wounded in the forefront of the battle; at Fontenoy
the "martial boy" was ever in the heart of the fiercest fire, fighting
at "a spiritual white heat." His grand-nephew the Duke of York was an
unfortunate soldier, but his personal courage was unquestioned. In the
present reign a cousin and a son of the sovereign have done good
service in the field; and that venerable lady herself in situations of
personal danger has consistently maintained the calm courage of her
race.

The foreign author has written that "marvellous personal courage is not
the striking characteristic of the dynasty of the Romanoffs." He makes
an exception to this quasi-indictment in favour of the Emperor
Nicholas, who, he admits, "was absolutely ignorant of fear, and could
face a band of insurgents with the calm self-possession of a shepherd
surveying his bleating sheep." The monarch who at the moment of his
accession illustrated the dominant force of his character by
confronting amid the bullet fire the ferocious mutiny of half an army
corps, and who crushed the bloodthirsty _émeute_ with dauntless
resolution and iron hand; the man who, facing the populace of St.
Petersburg crazed with terror of the cholera and red with the blood of
slaughtered physicians, quelled its panic-fury by commanding the people
in the sternest tones of his sonorous voice to kneel in the dust and
propitiate by prayers the wrath of the Almighty--such a man is
scarcely, perhaps, adequately characterised by the expressions which
have been quoted. But setting aside this instance of the fearlessness
of Nicholas, facts appear to refute pretty conclusively reflections on
the personal courage of the Romanoffs. No purpose can be served by
cumbering the record by going back into the period of Russia's
semi-civilisation; illustrations from three generations may reasonably
suffice. At Austerlitz Alexander I. was close up to the fighting line
in the Pratzen section of that great battle, and so recklessly did he
expose himself that the report spread rearward that he had fallen. He
was riding with Moreau in the heart of the bloody turmoil before
Dresden when a French cannon-ball mortally wounded the renegade French
general, and he was splashed by the latter's blood. Moreau had insisted
on riding on the outside, else the ball which caused his death would
certainly have struck Alexander. That monarch participated actively and
forwardly in most of the battles of the campaign of 1814 which
culminated in the allied occupation of Paris. Marmont's bullets were
still flying when he rode on to the hill of Belleville and looked down
through the smoke of battle on the French capital. The captious foreign
writer has admitted that Nicholas, the successor of Alexander, was
"absolutely ignorant of fear," and I have cited a convincing instance
of his "marvellous personal courage." Two of his sons--the Grand Dukes
Nicholas and Michael--were under fire in the battle of Inkerman and
shared for some time the perils of the siege of Sevastopol. Alexander
II. was certainly a man of real, although quiet and undemonstrative,
personal courage. But for his disregard of the precautions by which the
police sought to surround him he probably would have been alive to-day.
The Third Section was wholly unrepresented in Bulgaria and His
Majesty's protection on campaign consisted merely of a handful of
Cossacks. No cordon of sentries surrounded his simple camp; his tent at
Pavlo and the dilapidated Turkish house which for weeks was his
residence at Gorni Studen were alike destitute of any guards. The
imperial Court of Russia is said to be the most punctiliously
ceremonious of all courts; in the field the Tzar absolutely dispensed
with any sort of ceremony. He dined with his suite and staff at a
frugal table in a spare hospital marquee; his guests, the foreign
attachés and any passing officers or strangers who happened to be in
camp. When he drove out his escort consisted of a couple of Cossacks.
In the woods about Biela at the beginning of the war there still
remained some forlorn bivouacs of Turkish families; he would alight and
visit those, his sole companion the aide-de-camp on duty; and would
fearlessly venture among the sullen Turks all of whom were armed with
deadly weapons, try to persuade them to return to their homes, and,
unmoved by their refusal, promise to send them food and medicine.
Dispensing with all etiquette he would see without delay any one coming
in with tidings from fighting points, were he officer, civilian, or war
correspondent. During the September attack on Plevna he was continually
in the field while daylight lasted, looking out on the slaughter from
an eminence within range of the Turkish cannon-fire, and manifestly
enduring keen anguish at the spectacle of the losses sustained by his
brave, patient troops. Later, during the investment of Plevna, his
point of observation was a redoubt on the Radischevo ridge still closer
to the Turkish front of fire, and it was thence he witnessed the
surrender of Osman's army on the memorable 10th December 1877. If
Alexander was fearless alike in camp and in the field on campaign, he
was certainly not less so in St. Petersburg, when he returned thither
after the fall of Plevna.

Alexander II. literally sacrificed his life to his self-regardless
concern for the suffering. After the first bomb had burst on the
Alexandra Canal Road, striking down civilians and Cossacks of the
following escort but leaving the Emperor unhurt, his coachman begged to
be allowed to dash forward and get clear of danger. But Alexander
forbade him with the words, "No, no! I must alight and see to the
wounded;" and as he was carrying out his heroic and benign intention,
the second bomb exploded and wrought his death.

As did the men of the Hohenzollern house in 1870, so in 1877 the adult
male Romanoffs went to the war with scarce an exception. The Grand Duke
Nicholas, brother of the Emperor and Commander-in-Chief of the Russian
armies in Europe, was neither a great general nor an honest man; but
there could be no question as to his personal courage. That attribute
he evinced with utter recklessness when arriving, as was his wont, too
late for a deliberate and careful survey, he galloped round the Turkish
positions on the morning on which began the September bombardment of
Plevna, in proximity to Turkish cannon-fire so dangerous that his staff
remonstrated, and that even the sedate American historian of the war
speaks of him as having "exposed himself imprudently to the Turkish
pickets." His son, the Grand Duke Nicholas, jun., in 1877 scarcely of
age, was nevertheless a keen practical soldier, imbued with the wisdom
of getting to close quarters and staying there. He was among the first
to cross the Danube at Sistova under the Turkish fire, and he fought
with great gallantry under Mirsky in the Schipka Pass. The brothers,
Prince Nicholas and Prince Eugene of Leuchtenberg, members of the
imperial house, commanded each a cavalry brigade in Gourko's dashing
raid across the Balkans at the beginning of the campaign, and both were
conspicuous for soldierly skill and personal gallantry in the desperate
fighting in the Tundja Valley. The Grand Duke Vladimir, the second
brother of Alexander III., headed the infantry advance in the direction
of Rustchuk, and served with marked distinction in command of one of
the corps in the army of the Lom. A younger brother, the Grand Duke
Alexis, the nautical member of the imperial family, had charge of the
torpedo and subaqueous mining operations on the Danube, and was held to
have shown practical skill, assiduity, and vigour. Prince Serge of
Leuchtenberg, younger brother of the Leuchtenbergs previously
mentioned, was shot dead by a bullet through the head in the course of
his duty as a staff officer at the front of a reconnaissance in force
made against the Turkish force in Jovan-Tchiflik in October of the war.
He was a soldier of great promise and had frequently distinguished
himself. No unworthy record, it is submitted, earned in war by the
members of a family of which, according to the foreign author,
"personal courage is not the striking characteristic."

That writer may be warranted in stating that the late Tzar had been
frequently accused of cowardice--an indictment to which, it must be
admitted, many undeniable facts lent a strong colouring of probability;
and he further tells of "the Emperor's aversion to ride on horseback,
and of his dread of a horse even when the animal was harnessed to a
vehicle." There is something, however, of inconsistency in his
observation that Alexander III. might well have been a contrast to his
grandfather without deserving the epithet craven-hearted. The
melancholy explanation of the strange apparent change between the
Tzarewitch of 1877 and the Tzar of 1894 may lie in the statement that
"Alexander's nerves had been undoubtedly shaken by the terrible events
in which he had been a spectator or actor." In 1877, when in campaign
in Bulgaria, Alexander did not know what "nerves" meant. He was then a
man of strong, if slow, mental force, stolid, peremptory, reactionary;
the possessor of dull but firm resolution. He had a strong though
clumsy seat on horseback and was no infrequent rider. He had two ruling
dislikes: one was war, the other was officers of German extraction. The
latter he got rid of; the former he regarded as a necessary evil of the
hour; he longed for its ending, but while it lasted he did his sturdy
and loyal best to wage it to the advantage of the Russian arms. And in
this he succeeded, stanchly fulfilling the particular duty which was
laid upon him, that of protecting the Russian left flank from the
Danube to the foothills of the Balkans. He had good troops, the
subordinate commands were fairly well filled, and his headquarter staff
was efficient--General Dochtouroff, its _sous-chef_, was certainly the
ablest staff-officer in the Russian army. But Alexander was no puppet
of his staff; he understood his business as the commander of the army
of the Lom, performed his functions in a firm, quiet fashion, and
withal was the trusty and successful warden of the eastern marches. His
force never amounted to 50,000 men, and his enemy was in considerably
greater strength. He had successes and he sustained reverses, but he
was equal to either fortune; always resolute in his steadfast, dogged
manner, and never whining for reinforcements when things went against
him, but doing his best with the means to his hand. They used to speak
of him in the principal headquarter as the only commander who never
gave them any bother. So highly was he thought of there that when,
after the unsuccessful attempt on Plevna in the September of the war,
the Guard Corps was arriving from Russia and there was the temporary
intention to use it with other troops in an immediate offensive
movement across the Balkans, he was named to take the command of the
enterprise. But this intention having been presently departed from, and
the reinforcements being ordered instead to the Plevna section of the
theatre of war, the Tzarewitch retained his command on the left flank,
and thus in mid-December had the opportunity of inflicting a severe
defeat on Suleiman Pasha, just as in September he had worsted Mehemet
Ali in the battle of Carkova. It is sad to be told that a man once so
resolute and masterful should later have been the victim of shattered
nerves; it is sadder still to learn that he was a mark for accusations
of cowardice. He never was a gracious, far less a lovable man; but, as
I can testify from personal knowledge, he was a cool and brave soldier
in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877.

PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES

1875

On a Sunday morning in early June, just before the church bells begin
to ring, there is wont to be held the annual general parade and
inspection of the Corps of Commissionaires, on the enclosed grass plot
by the margin of the ornamental water in St. James's Park. On the
ground, and accompanying the inspecting officer on his tour through the
opened ranks, there are always not a few veteran officers, glad by
their presence on such an occasion to countenance and recognise their
humbler comrades in arms in bygone war-dramas enacted elsewhere than
within hearing of London Sunday bells. No scene could be imagined
presenting a more practical confutation of the ignorant calumny that
the British army is composed of the froth and the dregs of the British
nation, and that there exists no cordial feeling between British
soldiers and British officers. It is good to see how the face kindles
of the veteran guardsman at the sight and the kindly greeting of Sir
Charles Russell. Doubtless the honest private's thoughts go back to
that misty morning on the slopes of Inkerman, when officer and private
stood shoulder to shoulder in the fierce press, and there rang again in
his ears the cheer with which the Guards greeted the act of valour by
the performance of which the baronet won the Victoria Cross. There is a
feeling deeper than a mere formality in the half-dozen words that pass
between Sir William Codrington and the old soldier of the 7th Royal
Fusiliers, to whom the gallant general showed the way up to the Russian
front, through the shot-torn vineyards on the slopes of the Alma. When
one feeble old ex-warrior is smitten suddenly on parade with a palsied
faintness, it is on the yet stalwart arm of his old chief that he
totters out of the ranks, and the twain do not part till the superior
has exacted a pledge that his humble ex-subordinate shall call upon him
on the morrow, with a view to medical advice and strengthening comforts.

Notwithstanding that in the true old martial spirit it shows what in
the Service is known as a good front, it is not a very athletic or
puissant cohort this, that stands on parade here on the grass within
hearing of the church bells. The grizzled old soldiers, sooth to say,
look rather the worse for wear. There is a decided shortcoming among
them of the proper complement of limbs, and one at least, in speaking
of the battlefields he had seen, might with truth echo the old soldier
in Burns's _Jolly Beggars_--

  And there I left for witness a leg and an arm.

They carry no weapons; to some may belong the knowledge only of the
obsolete "Brown Bess" manual exercise; and not many have been so
recently on active service as to have learnt the handling of the modern
breech-loader. On the whole, a battered, fossil, maimed army of
superannuated fighting men, scarcely fitted to shine in the new tactics
of the "swarm-attack" by which the battles of the future are to be won
or lost. But you cannot jibe at the worn old soldiers as "lean and
slippered pantaloons." Look how truly, with what instinctive intuition,
the dressing is taken up at the word of command; note how the old
martial carriage comes back to the most dilapidated when the adjutant
calls his command to "attention." Age and wounds have not quenched the
fighting spirit of the old soldiers; there is not a man of them but
would, did the need arise, "clatter on his stumps to the sound of the
drum." There are few breasts in those ranks that are not decorated with
medals. In very truth the parade is a record of British campaigns for
the last thirty years. Among the thicket of medals on the bosom of this
broken old light dragoon note the one bearing the legend, "Cabul 1842"
within the laurel wreath. Its wearer was a trooper in the famous
"rescue" column. The skeletons of Elphinstone's hapless force littered
the slopes of the Tezeen Valley, up which the squadron in which he rode
charged straight for the tent of the splendid demon Akbar Khan. He rode
behind Campbell at the battle of Punniar, and won there that star of
silver and bronze which hangs from the famous "rainbow" ribbon.
"Sutlej" is the legend on another of his medals, and he could recount
to you the memorable story of Thackwell's cavalry operations against
the Sikh field works, and how that division of seasoned horsemen
reduced outpost duty to a methodical science. "Punjab" medals for
Gough's campaign of 1848-49 are scattered up and down in the ranks. The
sword-cut athwart this wiry old trooper's cheek he got in the hot
_mêlée_ of Ramhuggur, where a certain Brigadier Colin Campbell whom men
knew afterwards as Lord Clyde, found it hard work to hold his own, and
where gallant Cureton and the veteran William Havelock fell at the head
of their light horsemen as they crashed into the heart of 4000 Sikhs.
His neighbour took part in the storm of Mooltan, and saw stout,
calm-pulsed Sergeant John Bennet of the 1st Bombay Fusiliers plant the
British ensign on the crest of the breach and quietly stand by it
there, supporting it in the tempest of shot and shell till the storming
party had made the breach their own. This old soldier of the 24th can
tell you of the butchery of his regiment at Chillianwallah; how Brooks
went down between the Sikh guns, how Brigadier Pennycuick was killed
out to the front, and how his son, a beardless ensign, maddened at the
sight of the mangling of his father's body, rushed out and fought
against all comers over the corpse till the lad fell dead on his dead
father; how on that terrible day the loss of the 24th was 13 officers
killed, 10 wounded, and 497 men killed and wounded; and how the issue
of the bloody combat might have been very different but for the
display, on the part of Colin Campbell, of "that steady coolness and
military decision for which he was so remarkable." Scarcely a great
show on a troop-horse would this bent and gnarled old 12th Lancer make
to-day, but he and his fellows rode right well on the day for which he
wears this "Cape" medal, with the blue and orange ribbon and the lion
and mimosa bush on the reverse. Because of its prickles the Boers call
the mimosa the "wait-a-bit" thorn, but there was no thought of waiting
a bit among the 12th Lancers at the Berea, when they charged the savage
Basutos and captured their chief Moshesh. This one-armed veteran of the
Royal Fusiliers was left lying wounded in the Great Redoubt on the
Russian slope of the Alma, when the terrible fire of grape and musketry
forced Codrington's brigade of the Light Division temporarily to give
ground after it had struggled so valiantly up the rugged broken banks,
and through the hailstorm of fire that swept through the vineyards.
This still stalwart man was one of the nineteen sergeants of the
33rd--the Duke of Wellington's Own--who were either killed or wounded
in defence of the colours on the same bloody but glorious day. A few
files farther down the line stands an old 93rd man. The veteran
Sutherland Highlander was one of that "thin red line" which disdained
to form square when the Russian squadrons rode with seeming heart at
the kilted men on Balaclava day. He heard Colin Campbell's stern
repressive rebuke--"Ninety-third, ninety-third, damn all that
eagerness!" when the hotter spirits of the regiment would fain have
broken ranks and met the Russians half-way with the cold steel; he saw
the Scotch wife chastise the fugitive Turks with her tongue and her
frying-pan. Speak to his tall, shaggy neighbour of the "bonny Jocks,"
and you will call up a flush of pleasure on the harsh-featured Scottish
face; for he was a trooper in the Greys on that self-same Balaclava day
when the avalanche of Russian horsemen thundered down upon the heavy
brigade. He was among those who heard, and with sternly rapturous
anticipation obeyed Scarlet's calm-pitched, far-sounding order, "Left
wheel into line!" He was among those who, when the trumpets had sounded
the charge, strove in vain by dint of spur to overtake the gallant old
chief with the long white moustache, as he rode foremost on the foe
with the dashing Elliot and the burly Shegog on either flank of him; he
was among those who, as they hewed and hacked their way through the
press, heard already from the far side of the _mêlée_ the stentorian
adjuration of big Adjutant Miller, as standing up in his stirrups the
burly Scot shouted, "Rally, rally on me, ye muckle ----!" Mightily
knocked about has been this man with the empty sleeve, but he does not
belie the familiar sobriquet of his old regiment; he was one of the
"Diehards," a title well earned by the 57th on the bloody height of
Albuera, and it was under their colours that he lost his arm on
Inkerman morning. There is quite a little regiment of men who were
wounded in the "trenches" or about the Redan. There is no "19" now on
the buttons of this scarred veteran, but the number was there when he
followed Massy and Molesworth over the parapet of the Redan on the day
when so much good English blood was wasted. Shoulder to shoulder now,
as oft of yore, stand two old soldiers of the Buffs both of whom went
down in the same assault; and an umwhile bugler of the Perthshire
Grey-breeks "minds the day" well also by reason of the wound that has
crippled him for life. As he stands on parade this calm Sabbath
morning, that maimed man of the 60th Rifles can remember another and a
very different Sabbath--the 10th of May 1857 in Meerut--day and place
of the first outburst of the Mutiny; a fell Sabbath of burning,
slaughter, and dismay, of disregard of sex, age, and rank, of fierce
brutality and of nameless agony. He was one of the rifles whose fire in
the assault of Delhi covered the desperate duty of blowing open the
Cashmere Gate, performed with so methodical calmness by Home, Salkeld,
and Burgess; and his comrade hero with the maimed limb, when the hour
had come for a rush to close quarters, followed Reid and Muter over the
breastwork at the end of the serai of Kissengunge. Proud, yet their
pride dashed by sadness, must be the soldiering memories of this stout
northman, erstwhile a front rank man in the old Ross-shire Buffs, a
regiment ever true to its noble Celtic motto of _Cuidichn Rhi_. At
Kooshab, in the short, but brilliant Persian War, he fought in the same
field where Malcolmson earned the Victoria Cross by one of the most
gallant acts for which that guerdon of valour ever has been accorded.
He was in Mackenzie's company at Cawnpore when the Highlanders, stirred
by the wild strains of the war-pibroch, rushed upon the Nana's battery
at the angle of the mango tope with the irresistible fury of one of
their own mountain torrents in spate. And next day he was among those
who, with drawn ghastly faces and scared eyes, looked into that fearful
well, filled to the lip with the mangled corpses of British women and
children. He was one of those who, standing by that well, pledged the
oath administered by the bareheaded Ross-shire sergeant over the long,
heavy tress of auburn hair which a demon's tulwar had severed from the
head of an Englishwoman, that while strong arm and trusty steel lasted
to no living thing of the accursed race should quarter be accorded. And
he was one of those who, having battled their way over the Charbagh
Bridge, having threaded the bullet-torn path to the Kaiser-bagh, and
having forced for themselves a passage up to the embrasures by the
Baileyguard Gate, melted from the stern fierceness of the fray when the
siege-worn women and children in the residency of Lucknow sobbed out
upon their necks blessings for the deliverance. His rear-rank man is an
ex-Bengal Fusilier, wounded once at Sabraon, again at Pegu, and a third
time at Delhi. He will not be offended if you hail him as one of the
"old Dirty-shirts;" for it was in honourable disregard of appearances
as they toiled night and day in the trenches of Delhi that the
regiment, which now in the Queen's service is numbered 101, gained the
nickname. Time and space fail one to tell a tithe of the stories of
valour and hardship linked in the medals and wounds borne by men on
this unostentatious parade--a parade the members of which have shed
their blood on the soil of every quarter of the globe. The minutest
military annals scarcely name some of the obscure combats in which men
here to-day have fought and bled. This man desperately wounded at
Najou, near Shanghai; that one wounded in two places at Owna, in
Persia; this one with a sleeve emptied at Aroga, in Abyssinia--who
among us remember aught, if, indeed, we have ever heard, of Najou,
Owna, or Aroga? On the breast of this bent, hoary old man, note these
strange emblems, the Cross of San Fernando and the Order of the Tower
and Sword. Their wearer is a relic of the British Legion in the Carlist
War of 1837, and they were won under brave old De Lacy Evans at the
siege of Bilbao.

Over the modest portals of the Commissionaire Barracks in the Strand
might well be inscribed the legend, "To all the military glories of
Britain." But just as we have not long ago seen the pride of a palace
in another land on whose façade is a kindred inscription, abased by the
occupation of a foreign conqueror, so there was a time when the living
emblems of Britain's military glory were wont to undergo much
humiliation and adversity when their career of soldiering had come to
an end. Germany recompenses her veterans by according them, as a right,
reputable civil employ when they have served their time as soldiers;
the custom of Britain, on the contrary, has been too commonly to leave
her scarred and war-worn soldiers to their own resources, or to a
pension on which to live is impossible. We were always ready enough to
feel a glow at the achievements of our arms; but till lately we were
prone to reckon the individual soldier as a social pariah, and to
regard the fact of a man's having served in the ranks as a brand of
discredit. To this estimate, it must be allowed, the ex-soldier himself
very often contributed not a little. Destitute of a future, and often
debarred by wounds or by broken health from any laborious industrial
employment, he made the most of the present; and his idea of making the
most of the future not unfrequently took the form of beer and
shiftlessness. Recognising the disadvantages that bore so hard on the
deserving old soldier, recognising too, in the words of the late Sir
John Burgoyne, that "there are many qualities peculiar to the soldier
and sailor, and imbibed by him in the ordinary course of his service,
which, added to good character and conduct, may render such men more
eligible than others for various services in civil life," Captain
Edward Walter founded the Corps of Commissionaires. That organisation,
beginning with seven men, has now a strength of several hundreds, and
its ranks are still open to all the eligible recruits who choose to
come forward. The Commissionaire is no recipient of charity; what
Captain Walter has done is simply to show him how he may earn an honest
and comfortable livelihood, and to provide him, if he desires it, with
a home of a kind which the ex-militaire naturally most appreciates. The
advantages are open to him of a savings-bank and of a sick and burial
fund, and when the evil days come when he can no longer earn his own
bread, the "Retiring Fund" guarantees the thrifty and steady
Commissionaire against the prospect of ending his days in the
workhouse. Among the fruits of Captain Walter's devoted and gratuitous
services in this cause has been a wholesome change in the bias of
popular opinion as to the worth of old soldiers. No longer are they
regarded as the mere chaff and _débris_ of the cannon fodder--"no
account men," as Bret Harte has it; he has furnished them with
opportunity to prove, and they have proved, that they can so live and
so work as to win the respect and trust of their brethren of the
civilian world. The man who has done this thing deserves well, not
alone of the British army, but of the British nation. He has brought it
about that the time has come when most men think with Sir Roger de
Coverley. "You must know," says Sir Roger, "I never make use of anybody
to row me that has not lost either a leg or an arm. I would rather bate
him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man that has
been wounded in the Queen's service. If I was a lord or a bishop ... I
would not put a fellow in my livery that had not a wooden leg."

THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN

The actual fighting phase of this memorable campaign was confined to
the four days from the 15th to the 18th of June, both days inclusive.
The literature concerning itself with that period would make a library
of itself. Scarcely a military writer of any European nation but has
delivered himself on the subject, from Clausewitz to General Maurice,
from Berton to Brialmont. Thiers, Alison, and Hooper may be cited of
the host of civilian writers whom the theme has enticed to description
and criticism. There is scarcely a point in the brief vivid drama that
has not furnished a topic for warm and sustained controversy; and the
cult of the Waterloo campaign is more assiduous to-day than when the
participators in the great strife were testifying to their own
experiences.

Quite recently an important work dealing chiefly with the inner history
of the campaign has come to us from the other side of the Atlantic.
[Footnote: _The Campaign of Waterloo: a Military History_. By John
Codman Ropes. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. February 1893.] Its
author, Mr. John Ropes, is a civilian gentleman of Boston, who has
devoted his life to military study. He has given years to the
elucidation of the problems of the Waterloo campaign, has trodden every
foot of its ground, and has burrowed for recondite matter in the
military archives of divers nations. A citizen of the American
Republic, he is free alike from national prejudices and national
prepossessions; if he is perhaps not uniformly correct in his
inferences, his rigorous impartiality is always conspicuous. By his
research and acute perception he has let light in upon not a few
obscurities; and it may be pertinent briefly to summarise the inner
history of the campaign, giving what may seem their due weight to the
arguments and representations of the American writer.

The following were the respective positions on the 14th of
June:--Wellington's heterogeneous army, about 94,000 strong with 196
guns, lay widely dispersed in cantonments from the Scheldt to the
Charleroi-Brussels chaussée, its front extending from Tournay through
Mons and Binche to Nivelles and Quatre Bras. Of the Prussian army under
Blücher, about 121,000 strong with 312 guns, one corps was at Liège,
another near the Meuse above Namur, a third at Namur, and Ziethen's in
advance holding the line of the Sambre. The mass of Blücher's command
had already seen service and, with the exception of the Saxons, was
full of zeal; the corps were well commanded, and their chief, although
he had his limits, was a thorough soldier. The French army, consisting
of five corps d'armée, the Guard, four cavalry corps and 344
guns--total fighting strength 124,500--Napoleon had succeeded in
assembling with wonderful celerity and secrecy south of the Sambre
within an easy march of Charleroi. Its officers and soldiers were alike
veterans but its organisation was somewhat defective. Napoleon scarcely
preserved the phenomenal force of earlier years; but, in Mr. Ropes's
words, he disclosed "no conspicuous lack of energy and activity." Soult
was far from being an ideal chief of staff. Ney, to whom was assigned
the command of the left wing, only reached the army on the 15th, and
without a staff; Grouchy, to whom on the 16th was suddenly given the
command of the right wing, was not a man of high military capacity.

Napoleon's plan of campaign was founded on the circumstance that the
bases of the allied armies lay in opposite directions--the English base
on the German Ocean, the Prussian through Liège and Maestricht to the
Rhine. The military probability was that if either army was forced to
retreat, it would retreat towards its base; and to do this would be to
march away from its ally. Napoleon was in no situation to manoeuvre
leisurely, with all Europe on the march against him. His engrossing aim
was to gain immediate victory over his adversaries in Belgium before
the Russians and Austrians should close in around him. His expectation
was that Blücher would offer battle about Fleurus and be overwhelmed
before the Anglo-Dutch army could come to the support of its Prussian
ally. To make sure of preventing that junction the Emperor's intention
was to detail Ney with the left wing to reach and hold Quatre Bras. The
Prussians thoroughly beaten, drifting rearward toward their base, and
reduced to a condition of comparative inoffensiveness, he would then
turn on Wellington and force him to give battle.

Mr. Ropes refutes the contention maintained by a great array of
authorities, that Napoleon's design was to "wedge himself into the
interval between the allied armies" by seizing simultaneously Sombreffe
and Quatre Bras, in order to cut the communication between the two
armies and then defeat them in succession. Against this view he
successfully marshals Napoleon himself, Wellington by the mouth of Lord
Ellesmere, and the great German strategist Clausewitz. It will suffice
to quote Napoleon:--

  The Emperor's intention was that his advance should
  occupy Fleurus, the mass concealed behind this town;
  he took good care ... above all things not to occupy
  Sombreffe. To have done so would have caused the
  failure of all his dispositions, for then the battle of Ligny
  would not have been fought, and Blücher would have had
  to make Wavre the concentration-point for his army.

Wellington alludes pointedly to the obvious danger to the French army
of the suggested wedge position in what the Germans call _die taktische
Mitte_, where, instead of being able to defeat the allies in
succession, it would itself be liable to be crushed between the upper
and the nether millstone.

At daybreak of the 15th Napoleon took the offensive, driving in Ziethen
on and through Charleroi although not without sharp fighting. On that
evening three French corps, the Guard, and most of the cavalry, were
concentrated about Charleroi and forward toward Fleurus, ready to
attack Blücher next day. Controversy has been very keen on the question
whether or not on the afternoon of the 15th Napoleon gave Ney verbal
orders to occupy Quatre Bras the same evening. Mr. Ropes holds it
"almost certain" that the order was given. From Napoleon's bulletin
despatched on the evening of the 15th, which is the only piece of
strictly contemporary evidence, he quotes: "Le Prince de la Moskowa
(Ney) a eu le soir son quartier général aux Quatres-Chemins;" and he
remarks that this must have been the belief in the headquarter "unless
we gratuitously invent an intention to deceive the public." There is no
need for Mr. Ropes to put that strain on himself, since the main
purport of Napoleon's bulletins notoriously was to deceive the public.
But if Napoleon had not intended that Ney should occupy Quatre Bras on
the night of the 15th, the statement that this had been done would have
been a purposeless futility; and if he had intended that Ney should do
so it is unlikely that he should have omitted to give him instructions
to that effect. Grouchy claims to have heard Napoleon censure Ney for
his omission to occupy Quatre Bras; an omission which had its
importance, for the reason, among others, that it was ominous of the
Marshal's infinitely more harmful disobedience of orders next day.

All writers agree that Blücher ordered the concentration of his army in
the fighting position previously chosen in the event of the French
advancing by Charleroi, "without," in Mr. Ropes's words, "any definite
agreement or undertaking with Wellington that he was to have English
aid in the impending battle." He was content to take his risk of the
English general's possible inability for sundry obvious reasons, to
come to his support. And while the Prussian army with the unfortunate
exception of Bülow's corps, was on the 15th moving toward the chosen
position of Ligny, where its right was to be on St. Amand, its centre
on and behind Ligny, and its left about Balâtre, what was happening in
the Anglo-Dutch army lying spread out westward of the
Charleroi--Brussels chaussée?

Wellington was at Brussels expecting the French invasion by or west of
the Mons-Brussels road, to meet which he considered his army very well
placed, but could expect no Prussian cooperation. His courier service,
with his forces so dispersed, should have been well organised and
alert, but it was neither; and Napoleon's secrecy and suddenness in
taking the offensive were worthy of his best days. It has been freely
imputed to Wellington that he was thereby in a measure surprised. There
is the strange and probably mythical story in the work professing to be
Fouché's _Memoirs_ to the effect that Wellington was relying on him for
information of Napoleon's plans, and that he--Fouché--played the
English commander false. "On the very day of Napoleon's departure from
Paris," say the _Memoirs_, "I despatched Madame D----, furnished with
notes in cipher, narrating the whole plan of the campaign. But at the
same time I privately sent orders for such obstacles at the frontier,
where she was to pass, that she could not reach Wellington's