Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places

A >> Archibald Forbes >> Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

Part of this I learn from my friend as we drive to the station; part I
gather afterwards from other sources. The station for which we are bound
is Elgin, the county town of Morayshire. Between Elgin and Inverness, it
is true, we shall see but few of the great sheep-farmers and flock-masters
of the west country, who converge on the annual tryst from other points of
the compass and by various routes--by the Skye railway, by that portion of
the Highland line which extends north of Inverness, through Ross into
Sutherland, by the Caledonian Canal, etc. But it is promised to me that I
shall see many of the notable agriculturists of Moray land, who go to the
market as buyers; and a contingent of sheep-breeders are sure to join us
at Forres, coming down the Highland line from the Inverness-shire
Highlands on Upper Strathspey. There is quite an exceptional throng on the
platform of the Elgin station, of farmers, factors, lawyers, and
ex-coffee-planters--all very plentiful in Elgin; tanners bound for
investments in prospective pelts; and men of no avocation yet as much
bound to visit Inverness to-day as if they meant to invest thousands. In a
corner towers the mighty form of Paterson of Mulben, famous among breeders
of polls with his tribe of "Mayflowers." From beneath a kilt peep out the
brawny limbs of Willie Brown of Linkwood and Morriston, nephew of stout
old Sir George who commanded the light division at the Alma, son to a
factor whose word in his day was as the laws of the Medes and Persians
over a wide territory, and himself the feeder of the leviathan cross red
ox and the beautiful gray heifer which took honours so high at one of the
recent Smithfield Christmas Shows. There is the white beard and hearty
face of Mr. Collie, late of Ardgay, owner erstwhile of "Fair Maid of
Perth" and breeder of "Zarah." Here, too, is a fresh, sprightly gentleman
in a kilt whom his companions designate "the Bourach." Requesting an
explanation of the term I am told that "Bourach" is the Gaelic for
"through-other," which again is the Scottish synonym for a kind of amalgam
of addled and harum-scarum. A jolly tanner observes: "I'll get a
compartment to oursels." The reason of the desire for this exclusive
accommodation is apparent as soon as we start. A "deck" of cards is
produced and a quartette betake themselves to whist with half-crown stakes
on the rubber and sixpenny points. This was mild speculation to that which
was engaged in on the homeward journey after the market, when a Strathspey
sheep-farmer won L8 between Dalvey and Forres. As my friends shuffle and
deal, I look out of window at the warm gray towers of the cathedral,
beautiful still spite of the desecrating hand of the "Wolf of Badenoch."
Our road lies through the fertile "Laigh of Moray," one of the richest
wheat districts in the Empire and as beautiful as fertile. At Alves we
pick up a fresh, hale gentleman, who is described to me as "the laird of
three properties," bought for more than L100,000 by a man who began life
as the son of a hillside crofter. We pass the picturesque ruins of Kinloss
Abbey and draw up at Forres station, whose platform is thronged with noted
agriculturists bound for the "Character" Fair. Here is that spirited
Englishman Mr. Harris of Earnhill, whose great cross ox took the cup at
the Agricultural Hall seven or eight years ago; and the brothers Bruce--he
of Newton Struthers, whose marvellous polled cow beat everything in
Bingley Hall at the '71 Christmas Show and but for "foot and mouth" would
have repeated the performance at the Smithfield Show; and he of Burnside
who likewise has stamped his mark pretty deeply in the latter arena. At
Forres we first hear Gaelic; for a train from Carr Bridge and Grantown in
Upper Strathspey has come down the Highland Railway to join ours, and the
red-haired Grants around the Rock of Craigellachie--where a man whose name
is not Grant is regarded as a _lusus naturae_--are Gaelic speakers to a
man. No witches accost us, and speaking personally I feel no "pricking of
the thumbs" as we skirt the blasted heath on which Macbeth met the witches;
the most graphic modern description of which on record was given to Henry
Dixon in the following quaint form of Shakespearean annotation: "It's just
a sort of eminence; all firs and ploughed land now; you paid a toll near
it. I'm thinking, it's just a mile wast from Brodie Station."

Nairn is that town by the citation of a peculiarity of which King Jamie
put to shame the boastings of the Southrons as to the superior magnitude
of English towns. "I have a town," quoth the sapient James, "in my ancient
kingdom of Scotland, whilk is sae lang that at ane end of it a different
language is spoken from that whilk prevails at the other." To this day the
monarch's words are true; one end of Nairn is Gaelic, the other Sassenach.
Here we obtain a considerable accession of strength. The attributes of one
kilted chieftain are described to me in curious scraps of illustrative
patchwork. "A great litigant, an enthusiastic agriculturist, a dealer in
Hielan' nowt--something of a Hielan' nowt himself, a semi-auctioneer, a
great hand as chairman at an agricultural dinner, a visitor to the Baker
Street Bazaar when the Smithfield Shows were held there and where the
Cockneys mistook him for one of the exhibits and began pinching and
punching him." Stewart of Duntalloch swings his stalwart form into our
carriage--a noted breeder of Highland cattle and as fine a specimen of a
Highlander as can be seen from Reay to Pitlochrie. "Culloden! Culloden!"
chant the porters in that curious sing-song peculiar to the Scotch
platform porter. The whistle of the engine and the talk about turnips and
cattle contrast harshly with that bleak, lonely, moorland swell yonder--
the patches of green among the brown heather telling where moulders the
dust of the chivalrous clansmen. It is but little longer than a century
and a quarter ago since Charles Stuart and Cumberland confronted each
other over against us there; and here are the descendants of the men that
fought in their tartans for the "King over the Water," who are discussing
the right proportion of phosphates in artificial manures and of whom one
asks me confidentially for my opinion on the Leger favourite.

Here we are at Inverness at length; that city of the Clachnacudden stone.
There is quite a crowd in the spacious station of business people who have
been awaiting the arrival of the train from the east, and the buyers and
sellers whom it has conveyed find themselves at once among eager friends.
Hurried announcements are made as to the conditions and prospects of the
market. The card-players have plunged suddenly _in medias res_ of
bargaining. The man who had volunteered to stand me a seltzer and sherry
has forgotten all about his offer, and is talking energetically about clad
scores and the price of lambs. I quit the station and walk up Union Street
through a gradually thickening throng, till I reach Church Street and
shoulder my way to the front of the Caledonian Hotel. I am now in "the
heart of the market," standing as I am on the plain-stones in front of the
Caledonian Hotel and looking up and down along the crowded street. What
physique, what broad shoulders, what stalwart limbs, what wiry red beards
and high cheek-bones there are everywhere! You have the kilt at every
turn, in every tartan, and often in no tartan at all. Other men wear
whole-coloured suits of inconceivably shaggy tweed, and the breadth of the
bonnets is only equalled by that of the accents. Every second man has a
mighty plaid over his shoulder. It may serve as a sample of his wool, for
invariably it is home made. Some carry long twisted crooks such as we see
in old pastoral prints; others have massive gnarled sticks grasped in vast
sinewy hands on the back of which the wiry red hairs stand out like
prickles. There is falling what in the south we should reckon as a very
respectable pelt of rain, but the Inverness Wool Fair heeds rain no more
than thistledown. Hardly a man has thought it worth his pains to envelop
his shoulders in his plaid, but stands and lets the rain take its chance.
There is a perfect babel of tongues; no bawling or shouting, however, but
a perpetual gruff _susurrus_ of broad guttural conversation accentuated
every now and then by a louder exclamation in Gaelic. Quite half of the
throng are discoursing in this language. It is possible to note the
difference in the character of the Celt and Teuton. The former
gesticulates, splutters out a perfect torrent of alternately shrill,
guttural, and intoned Gaelic; he shrugs his shoulders, he throws his arms
about, he thrills with vivacity. The Teuton expresses quiet, sententious
canniness in every gesture and every utterance; he is a cold-blooded man
and keeps his breath to cool his porridge.

On the plain-stones there are a number of benches on which men sit down to
gossip and chaffer. Scraps of dialogue float about in the moist air. If
you care to be an eavesdropper you must have a knowledge of Gaelic to be
one effectively. "It's to be a stout market," remarks stalwart Macrae of
Invershiel, come of a fine old West Highland stock and himself a very
large sheep-farmer. "Sixteen shillings is my price. I'll come down a
little if you like," says the tenant of Belmaduthy to keen-faced Mr.
Mackenzie of Liverpool, one of the largest wool-dealers and sheep-buyers
visiting the market. "You'll petter juist pe coming down to it at once."
"I could not meet you at all." "I'm afraid I'll pe doing what they'll pe
laughing at me for." "We can't agree at all," are the words as a couple
separate, probably to come together again later in the day. "An do reic
thu na 'h'uainn fhathast, Coignasgailean?" "Cha neil fios again'm lieil
thusa air son tavigse thoirtorra, Cnocnangraisheag?" "Thig gus ain fluich
sin ambarfan." Perhaps I had better translate. Two sheep-farmers are in
colloquy, and address each other by the names of their farms, as is all
but universal in the north. Cnocnangraisheag asks Coignasgailean, "Have
you sold your lambs?" The cautious reply is, "I don't know; are you
inclined to give me an offer?" and the proposal ensues, "Come and let us
take a drink on the transaction." Let us follow the two worthies into the
Caledonian. Jostling goes for nothing here and you may shove as much in
reason as you choose, taking your chance of reprisals from the sons of
Anak. The lobbies of the Caledonian are full of men drinking and
bargaining with books in hand. There is no sitting-room in all the house
and we follow the Cnocnangraisheag and his friend into the billiard-room,
where we are promptly served standing. What keenness of
business-discussion mingled with what galore of whisky there is
everywhere! The whisky seems to make no more impression than if it were
ginger-beer; and yet it is over-proof Talisker, as my throat and eyes find
to their cost when I recklessly attempt to imitate Coignasgailean and take
a dram neat. As I pass the bar going out Willie Brown is bawling for soda
with something in it, and Donald Murray of Geanies, one of the ablest men
in the north of Scotland, brushes by with quick decisive step. In the
doorway stands the sturdy square-built form of Macdonald of Balranald, the
largest breeder of Highland cattle in the country. Over the heathery
pasture-land of North Uist 1500 head and more of horned newt of his range
in half-wild freedom. The Mundells and the Mitchells seem ubiquitous. The
ancestors of both families came from England as shepherds when the
Sutherland clearances were made toward the end of last century, and
between them they now hold probably the largest acreage--or rather
mileage, of sheep-farming territory in all Scotland.

It is a "very dour market," that all admit. Everybody is holding back, for
it is obvious prices are to be "desperate high" and everybody wants to get
the full benefit of the rise. The predetermination of the Southern dealers
to "buy out" freely at big prices had been rashly revealed over-night by
one of the fraternity at the after-dinner toddy-symposium in the
Caledonian. He had been sedulously plied with drink by "Charlie Mitchell"
and some others of the Ross and Sutherland sheep-farmers, till reticence
had departed from his tongue. Ultimately he had leaped on the table,
breaking any quantity of glass-ware in the saltatory feat, and had
asserted with free swearing his readiness to give 50s. all round for every
three-year-old wedder in the north of Scotland. His horror-stricken
partners rushed upon him and bundled him downstairs in hot haste, but the
murder was out and the "dour market" was accounted for. Fancy 50s. a head
for beasts that do not weigh 60 lb. apiece as they come off the hill! No
wonder that we townsmen have to pay dear for our mutton.

I push my way out of the heart of the market to find the outlying
neighbourhood studded all over with conversing groups. There is an
all-pervading smell of whisky, and yet I see no man who has "turned a
hair" by reason of the strength of the Talisker. A town-crier ringing a
bell passes me. He halts, and the burden of his cry is, "There is a large
supply of fresh haddies in the market!" The walls are placarded with
advertisements of sheep smearing and dipping substances; the leading
ingredients of which appear to be tar and butter. A recruiting sergeant of
the Scots Fusilier Guards is standing by the Clachnacudden Stone,
apparently in some dejection owing to the little business doing in his
line. Men don't come to the "Character" Fair to 'list. It strikes me that
quite three-fourths of the shops of Inverness are devoted to the sale of
articles of Highland costume. Their fronts are hidden by hangings of
tartan cloth; the windows are decked with sporrans, dirks, cairngorm
plaid-brooches, ram's-head snuff-boxes, bullocks' horns and skean dhus. If
I chose I might enter the emporium of Messrs. Macdougall in my Sassenach
garb and re-emerge in ten minutes outwardly a full-blown Highland chief,
from the eagle's feather in my bonnet to the buckles on my brogues.
Turning down High Street I reach the quay on the Ness bank, where I find
in full blast a horse fair of a very miscellaneous description, and
totally destitute of the features that have earned for the wool market the
title of "Character" Fair. There are blood colts running chiefly to
stomach, splints and bog spavins; ponies with shaggy manes, trim barrels,
and clean legs; and slack-jointed cart-horses nearly asleep--for "ginger"
is an institution which does not seem to have come so far north as
Inverness. Business is lively here, the chronic "dourness" of a market
being discounted by the scarcity of horseflesh.

At four o'clock we sit down to the market ordinary in the great room of
the Caledonian. A member of Parliament occupies the chair, one of the
croupiers is a baronet, the other the chief of the clan Mackintosh. There
is a great collection of north-country notabilities, and tables upon
tables of sheep-farmers and sheep-dealers. We have a considerable
_cacoethes_ of speech-making, among the orators being Professor Blackie of
Edinburgh, whose quaint comicalities convulse his audience. It is pretty
late when the Professor rises to speak, and the whisky has been flowing
free. Some one interjects a whiskyfied interruption into the Professor's
speech, who at once in stentorian tones orders that the disturber of the
harmony of the evening shall be summarily consigned to the lunatic asylum.
I see him ejected with something like the force of a stone from a catapult
and have no reasonable doubt that he will spend the night an inmate of
"Craig Duncan." The speeches over bargaining recommences moistened by
toddy, which fluid appears to exercise an appreciable softening influence
on the "dourness" of the market. Till long after midnight seasoned vessels
are talking and dealing, booking sales while they sip their tenth tumbler.

I have to leave on the Saturday morning, but I make no doubt that the
skeleton programme given at the beginning of this paper will have its
bones duly clothed with flesh.

THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE

At first sight the proposition may appear startling and indeed absurd; yet
hard facts, I venture to believe, will enforce the conviction on
unprejudiced minds that the warfare of the present when contrasted with
the warfare of the past is dilatory, ineffective, and inconclusive.

Present, or contemporary warfare may be taken to date from the general
adoption of rifled firearms; the warfare of the past may fairly be limited
for purposes of comparison or contrast, to the smooth-bore era; indeed,
for those purposes there is no need to go outside the present century.
Roughly speaking the first five and a half decades of the century were
smooth-bore decades; the three and a half later decades have been rifled
decades, of which about two and a half decades constitute the
breechloading period. Considering the extraordinary advances since the end
of the smooth-bore era in everything tending to promote celerity and
decisiveness in the result of campaigns--the revolution in swiftness of
shooting and length of range of firearms, the development in the science
of gunnery, the increased devotion to military study, the vast additions
to the military strength of the nations, looking to the facilities for
rapid conveyance of troops and transportation of supplies afforded by
railways and steam water-carriage, to the intensified artillery fire that
can now be brought to bear on fortresses, to the manifold advantages
afforded by the electric telegraph, and to the crushing cost of warfare,
urging vigorous exertions toward the speedy decision of campaigns--
reviewing, I say, the thousand and one circumstances encouraging to short,
sharp, and decisive action in contemporary warfare, it is a strange and
bewildering fact that the wars of the smooth-bore era were for the most
part, shorter, sharper, and more decisive. Spite of inferiority of weapons
the battles of that period were bloodier than those of the present, and it
is a mathematically demonstrable proposition that the heavier the
slaughter of combatants the nearer must be the end of a war. There is no
pursuit now after victory won and the vanquished draws off shaken but not
broken; in the smooth-bore era a vigorous pursuit scattered him to the
four winds. When Wellington in the Peninsula wanted a fortress and being
in a hurry could not wait the result of a formal siege or a starvation
blockade, he carried it by storm. No fortress is ever stormed now, no
matter how urgent the need for its reduction, no matter how obsolete its
defences. The Germans in 1871 did attempt to carry by assault an outwork
of Belfort, but failed utterly. It would almost seem that in the matter of
forlorn hopes the Caucasian is played out.

Assertions are easy, but they go for little unless they can be proved;
some examples, therefore, may be cited in support of the contentions
advanced above. The Prussians are proud and with justice, of what is known
as the "Seven Weeks' War of 1866" although as a matter of fact the contest
with Austria did not last so long, for Prince Frederick Charles crossed
the Bohemian frontier on the 23rd of June and the armistice which ended
hostilities was signed at Nikolsburg on the 26th of July. The Prussian
armies were stronger than their opponents by more than one-fourth and they
were armed with the needle-gun against the Austrian muzzle-loading rifle.
When the armistice was signed the Prussians lay on the Marchfeld within
dim sight of the Stephanien-Thurm, it is true; but with the strong and
strongly armed and held lines of Florisdorf, the Danube, and the army of
the Archduke Albrecht between them and the Austrian capital. On the 9th of
October 1806 Napoleon crossed the Saale. On the 14th at Jena he smashed
Hohenlohe's Prussian army, the contending hosts being about equal strength;
on the same day Davoust at Auerstadt with 27,000 men routed Brunswick's
command over 50,000 strong. On the 25th of October Napoleon entered
Berlin, the war virtually over and all Prussia at his feet with the
exception of a few fortresses, the last of which fell on the 8th of
November. Which was the swifter, the more brilliant, and the more
decisive--the campaign of 1866, or the campaign of 1806?

The Franco-German war is generally regarded as an exceptionally effective
performance on the part of the Germans. The first German force entered
France on the 4th of August 1870. Paris was invested on the 21st of
September, the German armies having fought four great battles and several
serious actions between the frontier and the French capital. An armistice,
which was not conclusive since it allowed the siege of Belfort to proceed
and Bourbaki's army to be free to attempt raising it, was signed at
Versailles on the 28th of January 1871, but the actual conclusion of
hostilities dates from the 16th of February, the day on which Belfort
surrendered. The Franco-German war, therefore, lasted six and a half
months. The Germans were in full preparedness except that their rifle was
inferior to the French _chassepot_; they were in overwhelmingly superior
numerical strength in every encounter save two with French regular troops,
and they had on their banners the prestige of Sadowa. Their adversaries
were utterly unready for a great struggle; the French army was in a
wretched state in every sense of the word; indeed, after Sedan there
remained hardly any regulars able to take the field. In August 1805
Napoleon's Grande Armee was at Boulogne looking across to the British
shores. Those inaccessible, he promptly altered his plans and went against
Austria. Mack with 84,000 Austrian soldiers was at Ulm, waiting for the
expected Russian army of co-operation and meantime covering the valley of
the Danube. Napoleon crossed the Rhine on the 26th of September. Just as
in 1870 the Germans on the plain of Mars-la-Tour thrust themselves between
Bazaine and the rest of France, so Napoleon turned Mack and from Aalen to
the Tyrol stood between him and Austria. Mack capitulated Ulm and his army
on the 19th of October and Napoleon was in Vienna on the 13th of November.
Although he possessed the Austrian capital, he was not, however, master of
the Austrian empire. The latter result did not fall to him until the 2nd
of December, when under "the sun of Austerlitz" he with 73,000 men
defeated the Austro-Russian army 85,000 strong, inflicting on it a loss of
30,000 men at the cost of 12,000 of his own soldiers _hors de combat_. It
took the Germans in 1870 a month and a half to get from the frontier to
_outside_ Paris; just in the same time, although certainly not with so
severe fighting by the way but nearly twice as long a march, Napoleon
moved from the Rhine to _inside_ Vienna. From the active commencement to
the cessation of hostilities the Franco-German war lasted six and a half
months; reckoning from the crossing of the Rhine to the evening of
Austerlitz Napoleon subjugated Austria in two and a quarter months.
Perhaps, however, his campaign of 1809 against Austria furnishes a more
exact parallel with the campaign of the Germans in 1870-71. He assumed
command on the 17th of April, having hurried from Spain. He defeated the
Austrians five times in as many days, at Thann, Abensberg, Landshut,
Eckmuhl, and Ratisbon; and he was in Vienna on the 13th of May. Balked at
Aspern and Essling, he gained his point at Wagram on the 5th of July, and
hostilities ceased with the armistice of Znaim on the 11th after having
lasted for a period short of three months by a week.

The Russians have a reputation for good marching, and certainly Suvaroff
made good time in his long march from Russia to Northern Italy in 1799;
almost as good, indeed, as Bagration, Barclay de Tolly, and Kutusoff made
in falling back before Napoleon when he invaded Russia in 1812. But they
have not improved either in marching or in fighting at all commensurately
with the improved appliances. In 1877, after dawdling two months they
crossed the Danube on the 21st to the 27th of June. Osman Pasha at Plevna
gave them pause until the 10th of December, at which date they were not so
far into Bulgaria as they had been five months previously. After the fall
of Plevna the Russian armies would have gone into winter quarters but for
a private quasi-ultimatum communicated to the Tzar from a high source in
England, to the effect that unpleasant consequences could not be
guaranteed against if the war was not finished in one campaign. Alexander,
who was quite an astute man in his way, was temporarily enraged by this
restriction, but recovering his calmness, realised that nowhere in war
books is any particular time specified for the termination or duration of
a campaign. It appeared that so long as an army keeps the field
uninterruptedly a campaign may continue until the Greek kalends. In less
time than that Gourko and Skobeleff undertook to finish the business; by
the vigour with which they forced their way across the Balkans in the
heart of the bitter winter Sophia, Philippopolis, and Adrianople fell into
Russian hands; and the Russian troops had been halted some time almost in
face of Constantinople when the treaty of San Stephano was signed on the
3rd of March 1878. It had taken the Russians of 1877-78 eight weary months
to cover the distance between the Danube and the Marmora. But fifty years
earlier a Russian general had marched from the Danube to the Aegean in
three and a half months, nor was his journey by any means a smooth and
bloodless one. Diebitch crossed the Danube in May 1828 and besieged
Silistria from the 17th of May until the 1st of July. Silistria has
undergone three resolute sieges during the century; it succumbed but once,
and then to Diebitch. Pressing south immediately, he worsted the Turkish
Grand Vizier in the fierce battle of Kuleutscha and then by diverse routes
hurried down into the great Roumelian valley. Adrianople made no
resistance and although his force was attenuated by hardship and disease,
when the Turkish diplomatists procrastinated the audacious and gallant
Diebitch marched his thin regiments forward toward Constantinople. They
had traversed on a wide front half the distance between Adrianople and the
capital when the dilatory Turkish negotiators saw fit to imitate the coon
and come down. Whether they would have done so had they known the weakness
of Diebitch may be questioned; but again it may be questioned whether,
that weakness unknown, he could not have occupied Constantinople on the
swagger. His master was prepared promptly to reinforce him; Constantinople
was perhaps nearer its fall in 1828 than in 1878, and certainly Diebitch
was much smarter than were the Grand Duke Nicholas, his fossil
Nepokoitschitsky, and his pure theorist Levitsky.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21