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

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 _melee_
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 _melee_ 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 facade 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 _debris_ 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
chaussee, its front extending from Tournay through Mons and Binche to
Nivelles and Quatre Bras. Of the Prussian army under Bluecher, about
121,000 strong with 312 guns, one corps was at Liege, another near the
Meuse above Namur, a third at Namur, and Ziethen's in advance holding the
line of the Sambre. The mass of Bluecher'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'armee, 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.

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