Battles of English History

32

The name was derived from Bernard Count of Armagnac, the duke's father-in-law, who gave the party most of its energy.

33

Henry V. Act iv. Scene 3. Shakespeare has introduced the incidents told by the English authors with much accuracy, but has gone quite wrong as to the persons concerned. The wish was expressed by Sir W. Hungerford, not by the earl of Westmoreland, who was in England. Henry's chaplain makes the king's words more pious, if less poetical; and the piety was certainly in keeping with his character.

34

Comparatively recent plantations slightly obscure the ground, making minute accuracy impossible: but the general character of the field, and its main details, are quite clearly to be seen.

35

The numbers of Henry's original force can be closely computed from original documents; and there exists also part of a list of the gentlemen present at Agincourt, with the numbers of their contingents. Estimating from the latter, the total number of combatants was far below 10,000.

36

Boulevard is the technical name for a kind of earthwork used in the early days of cannon. It was a sort of terrace, protected by a parapet, on which cannon could be planted as an outer defence to a fortress, and might be of any shape. The technical name for the small forts which the English gradually erected round Orleans is bastide.

37

The formation of a fortified post by means of the camp-waggons was a fundamental part of the tactics of John Zisca, the long successful leader of the Bohemian insurrection a few years earlier. The lager which is a feature now well known of African warfare, is the same thing in principle.

38

This is of course not the first instance of a siege approximating to the modern type. The siege of Harfleur already mentioned was in fact more like a modern siege than that of Orleans.

39

Sir Edward Creasy goes so far as to place the relief of Orleans among the fifteen Decisive Battles of the World.

40

The Beauforts had been duly legitimated by Parliament, but Henry IV., in confirming this to his half-brothers, had inserted words in his charter which barred their succession to the throne. The strict legality of the latter act can hardly be maintained: but it is plain that no one dreamed of preferring the Beauforts to the house of York.

41

In Chapter II. I abstained from giving the numbers at Hastings, because there seem to me to be no adequate materials for forming a trustworthy estimate: but it is scarcely possible that the armies which fought at Hastings can have been within many thousands of the total given by chroniclers for Towton.

42

It is possible that the numbers are exaggerated, but there is no reason for thinking so except the smallness of the battle-field; and if so the exaggeration was on both sides alike, for it is certain that the Lancastrian numbers preponderated. The Yorkist force is given at 49,000 by the authorities who put the Lancastrians at 60,000, both totals being given before any fighting had taken place. What losses had been incurred at Ferrybridge we are not told, and we can only guess at the strength of the Yorkist rearguard: but the numbers with which the battle began cannot have been very far from seven to four.

43

Sir John Ramsay, in his generally valuable work, Lancaster and York, places Warwick's line along the high-road, where there is every reason to believe that there was no hedge at all in the fifteenth century, for the amazing reason that "from that position he could take the king's troops in detail as they came out of the narrow street of Barnet," which ended in the open heath half-a-mile off. It is true that he adds, "but Edward always laughed at Warwick's strategy," by which presumably he means tactics. Since all that Edward knew of Warwick's tactics was that he had inspired, or at least shared in directing, the bold and skilful tactics of Towton, he must have been very easily amused.

44

This fact alone is sufficient to disprove the Yorkist falsehood that while Warwick had 30,000 men, Edward had but 9000.

45

The numbers are not very clearly given, but the accounts seem to indicate no great disparity, with the advantage, if any, to the Lancastrians.

46

Sir John Ramsay must have seen the ground in winter, if he was able to obtain a view of the whole position. In summer the trees, which are none of them ancient, intercept a great deal. I should be inclined to think that the Lancastrian line faced nearly south instead of parallel to the modern road, as he places it: otherwise he seems to me to have worked out the topographical details very well.

47

Curiously enough the earliest cannon seem to have been breechloading. This mode of construction was however abandoned after a time, either because the movable pieces did not fit properly, or because they could not be made strong enough to stand the strain when gunpowder came to be thoroughly explosive, in favour of muzzle-loading. In modern warfare, until after the Crimean War, cannon were mere metal tubes, with a touch-hole by which they were fired. Things have moved fast since then. Of the millions of men now under military service, how many have a clear idea of what "spiking a gun" meant?

48

I use this phrase for convenience' sake, to mean the shot discharged by every kind of hand firearms until the introduction of the rifle.

49

This especially held good of the heavy plate armour which was introduced in the fourteenth century, and grew heavier and heavier. There seems to have been hardly any chain mail which a clothyard arrow could not pierce.

50

There had been many Scots in the service of Gustavus: and this fact made the Scottish intervention in the English civil war more weighty than it would otherwise have been.

51

It is significant of the superior importance of the cavalry in the seventeenth century that the lieutenant-general, second in command, led the cavalry, the infantry being under the major-general, third in command.

52

The letter is rather confused, but it can hardly bear this meaning, though it undoubtedly authorised fighting a battle.

53

Switzerland need not be forgotten, but Switzerland could under no circumstances have wielded the European influence exerted by English ideas, backed by the vast power, military, naval and commercial, of the England of Marlborough, and Chatham, and Nelson.

54

Hodgson, an officer who was in the battle, says that Cromwell sent four regiments to circle round the enclosures of Brocksmouth House and fall on the enemy's right flank. Such a manœuvre was hard to work accurately in the dark, but if successful was bound to be decisive. The evidence is good: but this very decisiveness makes me hesitate to believe that Cromwell himself, to say nothing of other narrators, could have described the battle without mentioning so important a fact.

55

Quoted from Cromwell's despatch to the Speaker.

56

The Margrave of Baden helped to drive Marlborough to this extreme haste: he had claimed the chief command on the junction of the armies, and had with difficulty been induced to agree that it should be exercised by himself and Marlborough on alternate days. The Margrave was far too cautious to storm the Schellenberg: Marlborough had therefore to attack that evening or to wait two days, which would have been too late.

57

This devastation is always regarded as a blot on Marlborough's fame, and is in marked contrast to his usual humanity. The practice was dying out, in obedience to the dictates of opinion, but it was not yet, as it would be now, an outrage on international usage.

58

The village which gives its name to the battle is properly called Blindheim: but the spelling in the text has been adopted in English ever since Marlborough's day.

59

The famous lines of Torres Vedras are the only instance in more modern times of such a method of defence proving successful, and they could not, from the nature of the case, be turned, and were never assailed. The system on which the eastern frontier of France is now defended is an instance of the same thing on the greatest possible scale. There the flanks abut on neutral countries, and cannot therefore be turned without violating the neutrality of either Belgium or Switzerland. What it would cost to break through such a line cannot be calculated, for it would depend on the effect, as yet untried, of modern scientific developments in explosives, electric communication and the like: but it can hardly be doubted that it could be done, if the assailant were willing to pay the price.

60

A map in which Marlborough's Belgian campaigns can be followed, will be found at p. 234.

61

The duke of Burgundy was associated with Vendôme, in accordance with the vicious method which Louis XIV. frequently adopted. It was assumed that the young and inexperienced prince would be entirely guided by the veteran general: but it occasionally happened that the prince developed a will of his own, and then the veteran was helpless. How far Burgundy interfered before the battle, how far Vendôme's well-known sluggishness except in action was responsible for the French being thus surprised, is not quite clear: it will be seen that in the actual battle Burgundy, by his alternate hesitation and rashness, largely caused the French defeat.

62

General Webb, who commanded the escort, beat off with great skill and courage a very superior force: Marlborough, who disliked Webb, in his despatches made so very little of this exploit, which in fact sealed the fate of Lille, that it was even said he had wilfully given Webb inadequate numbers, in order to expose him to destruction. Thackeray makes effective use of this in Esmond.

63

This account of Wolfe's death is quoted from Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, on which most interesting work the foregoing narrative is based. There are several versions of Wolfe's dying words, but Parkman, after comparing the evidence, accepts that given above.

64

Had Wellington's base of operations been Cadiz instead of Lisbon, every step in advance would have pushed the French nearer to their base, and therefore would have rendered the conditions of supply, etc., increasingly favourable to them. A successful advance from Portugal on Madrid cut off the whole south from easy communication with France, without which they could not long maintain their ground.

65

He was only created Lord Wellington after the battle of Talavera, but it is convenient to use the familiar title all through.

66

All the quotations in this and the following chapter are from Napier.

67

This is the battle which, in a school-book I once saw, was described as a glorious victory won by 29,000 French over 90,000 English and Spaniards.

68

Maida and Vimiero were real defeats, but the numbers engaged were insignificant. Aspern was a great and bloody battle, in which the French on the whole got the worst of it, but it was hardly a distinct Austrian victory.

69

The exploits of Craufurd, with the light division, acting as Wellington's advanced guard, are the subject of some of Napier's best writing.

70

The disastrous Walcheren expedition, which started while the battle of Talavera was being fought, had wasted a large part of the military strength of England. Sent as it was after Napoleon had forced Austria again to sue for peace, and badly conducted, it was an inevitable failure. This being the case, it is of course true that the men and material would have been more usefully employed in the Peninsula. But it is by no means equally clear that the original idea was faulty. Had even a smaller force, energetically led, been despatched to the same point two months earlier, when Napoleon was still absorbed in remedying his failure at Aspern, the consequences might have been enormous. At the very least it could have ruined Antwerp for purposes of naval construction; and Napoleon deemed Antwerp, "a pistol pointed at the heart of England," so valuable that in 1814, when almost at the last gasp, he broke off negotiations for peace rather than cede Antwerp.

71

King Joseph was indeed declared commander-in-chief in March 1812, but the marshals disputed his authority, and denounced his plans as unwise. Their criticisms were not unreasonable, but "one bad general is better than two good ones."

72

Belgium had been for over twenty years annexed to France. Holland had been entirely under French influence almost as long, and annexed to France for six years. Hence the people were either partisans of the French, or in great dread of them.

73

In fact this proportion is in some sense far too high. Many of the English had never seen a shot fired, and though they stood on the defensive with admirable steadiness, it is at least doubtful whether they would have been effective for manœuvring.

74

During the interval the duke of Wellington attended the famous ball at Brussels given by the duchess of Richmond. It is always a pity to spoil a romantic story; but the idea derived from the beautiful description in 'Childe Harold,' and probably still believed by the majority of those who have not studied the history, that the first intimation of the French advance was given by the sound of distant cannon heard at the ball, is contrary to all the facts. Wellington, having given his orders, went to the ball in order to prevent alarm spreading in Brussels: there was no firing during the night, none in fact, that could have been heard at that distance, till the following afternoon.

75

The duke's father had also been killed in battle against Napoleon, at Jena. After Quatre-Bras the Brunswick troops wore black uniforms with skull and crossbone badges, in token of mourning, until their young duke came of age.

76

This would doubtless have happened if the whole of Ney's nominal command had been united. Napoleon however seems to have expected that Quatre-Bras would not be held by any serious force.

77

The mention of Liège shows how vague the Emperor's ideas were at the moment; it is hard to see how Wellington, known to be moving straight north on Brussels, could take a position to cover Liège.

78

This regiment was commanded by Marbot, whose memoirs attracted so much attention when published in 1891.

79

Those who say that Waterloo was lost by Grouchy's fault have to get over the fact that Napoleon took no steps, till it was far too late, to summon him thither. The emperor knew that Wellington was standing to fight, Grouchy could only guess. Suppose Gneisenau's suspicions had been realised, and Wellington had retreated, and the cannon had been Napoleon attacking Blucher viâ St. Lambert, Grouchy would, by crossing the Dyle, have lost the chance of annihilating the Prussians.

80

Wellington is said to have told the story of his midnight ride about twenty years afterwards, à propos of his famous horse Copenhagen. He was not the kind of man to invent such a story, and his well-known reticence about Waterloo would fully account for the incident remaining unknown. On the other hand its intrinsic improbability is so great, that it can hardly be accepted without cogent evidence. The testimony however is altogether at second-hand, though quite precise enough to warrant belief in an ordinary way; but it is obviously reasonable to require something more for a story which would sound scarcely credible if told of any commander-in-chief, and is specially at variance with Wellington's cool and prudent disposition.

81

This was entirely untrue in fact, as we have seen, but if the troops at Hal had been on the field it would have been nearly true. Napoleon could only have guessed, as the ground concealed a great part of Wellington's army: this is not one of the deliberate falsehoods of which he was only too commonly guilty.

82

It is impossible to conjecture what put this idea into Ney's mind, as the English army had bivouacked in very nearly the order of battle, and had therefore not moved in the morning.

83

It must be remembered that the range of the musket was very short, so that the bullets could hardly do mischief in neighbouring squares if they missed the cavalry.

84

Readers who are curious in mendacity should read in Napoleon's Correspondence the bulletin dated Lâon, June 20, 1815, in which the battles of Ligny and Waterloo are reported.

85

Napoleon's Egyptian expedition is no real exception: it reached its destination, but the battle of the Nile rendered it a total failure.

86

It was said that Captain Nolan, the aide-de-camp who bore the order, and who was well known from his writings to be a firm believer in the power of cavalry to perform the most impossible feats, answered Lord Lucan's objections by putting on the written words an interpretation which Lord Raglan did not intend, and that Lord Lucan was stung by implied imputation on his courage. Nolan however was shot dead at the first moment of the charge, and there was consequently no means of knowing what he could have said in his own defence.

87

On the other side of the Tchernaya are some conspicuous remains of ancient walls known as the ruins of Inkerman: from these the allies, who found it convenient to have names for all portions of the ground they were concerned with, named the opposite portion of the plateau Mount Inkerman.

88

It is not suggested that the French general at the outset, or later, evaded his due share of the common duty: it is one of the evils of a divided command that if a mistake is made in such a matter, as may easily happen from imperfect information, obstacles to remedying it arise from motives on both sides which are in themselves perfectly reasonable.

89

Decisive Battles of India.

90

Englishmen in India made many mistakes at one time or another, but there was always some one at hand to redeem the blunder, or else they were saved by the reputation for audacity and invincibility due to previous successes. They were guilty of many wrongful acts, but the sufferers were the native princes whom they dispossessed: it is probably no exaggeration to say that the rule of the English at its worst was better than the best government of any native princes.

91

Colonel Malleson, in his Decisive Battles of India, gives a very clear account of this remarkable feat, as well as of other similar battles, which must be here passed over.

92

In memory of this great victory the 39th bears on its colours the motto "Primus in Indis."

93

Sindia, Holkar, Bhonslay, are family appellations, but they serve to identify three of the chief Mahratta states better than the individual names of the successive rulers.

94

It is said that Wellesley had no information that the Kaitna was fordable there, but that he inferred it from the fact of there being another village opposite Assye, and no sort of bridge.

95

The parallel is singularly exact between the conduct of the three great Mahratta princes in 1803-4 and that of Austria, Russia and Prussia in 1805-6. The two former made war on Napoleon, trying in vain to induce Prussia to join them: after they had been decisively defeated at Austerlitz, Prussia alone attacked the conqueror, with the natural result of being still worse beaten at Jena.

96

This method of attack in oblique order, or in échelon, is by some writers treated as a great discovery, attributed to Frederick the Great of Prussia. He certainly won by these tactics his most conspicuous victory, Rossbach: but the method itself is in the nature of things, as soon as generals begin to use their brains; it is but one way of bringing superior force to bear on a vital point.

97

There is a story that Major George Lawrence, then a prisoner, communicated to his brother, and so to the commander-in-chief, the surprise which the Sikh officers had expressed to him at the small use made of the English artillery in previous battles. This may be true, but there is no need to suppose that this influenced the battle of Gujerat: any officer of ordinary judgment would have done at all times what Gough did only in his last battle.