soldiers and sailors.—recruiting sergeant, officer and jack-tar.—generals and admirals.—which is the braver, the red coat or the blue jacket?—cavalry and infantry.—engineers, artillery, and marines.—not all sunshine with soldiers and sailors.—the old soldier.—different opinions about war.—when are sailors most steady?—a standing rule for a soldier.
“well, boys, though i am your uncle, so busy has my life been, that i have seen but very little of you. during my present visit we shall become 2better acquainted with each other. you want to hear about soldiers and sailors. you have seen privates on parade, a recruiting sergeant with stripes on his arm, and an officer with epaulettes on his shoulder. you have seen, too, a jolly jack-tar just come home from a cruise, rigged out in his holiday clothes, check shirt, blue jacket, and white trousers. you have read, perhaps, a little about engagements and sea-fights, and remember the names of a few famous generals and admirals, and now you want to hear more about soldiers and sailors. you shall know all that i can tell you; but, mind! let us have no confusion. do not all of you ask me questions at once! speak one at a time, or, if you like it better, let one of you be spokesman for the rest. you shall have all the information that i can give you.”
“thank you!—thank you, uncle! that will be the very thing; for we know that you can tell us a great deal.”
“i am, as you know, neither commander-in-chief of the army, nor lord high admiral of the navy, nor do i see any likelihood at present of my being appointed either the one or the other; but having seen a good deal of the land and sea-service, and noticed the habits and conduct of men, from the raw recruit to the general officer;—from the sailor before the mast to the ‘red flag at the fore,’—i must have been dull indeed to have picked up nothing. it becomes no man to be vain of 3his knowledge, and, therefore, i will not boast of mine; but ask me what you will, and i will answer to the best of my ability.”
“please to tell us which are the bravest men, soldiers or sailors.”
“the bravest! that is a puzzling question, which the seven wise men of greece, were they here, could not answer. never yet did a red-coat go where a blue-jacket was afraid to follow, nor a son of neptune brave a danger that a son of mars would not, willingly, have faced before him. weigh one golden sovereign against another in a pair of scales, and they will not give a more even balance than the bravery of a soldier weighed against that of a sailor.”
“how many kinds of soldiers are there?—for some are very different to others.”
“why, let me see, in the cavalry there are life-guards, horse-guards, dragoon-guards, heavy dragoons, light dragoons, lancers and hussars; and in the infantry there are foot-guards, infantry of the line, light troops, fusiliers, highlanders, riflemen, and the staff-corps. i have said nothing of the engineers and artillery, nor indeed of the marines, who have more to do with the navy than the army.”
“they say that one englishman can beat ten frenchmen. is it true?”
“not a word of truth in it. a brave man is a match for a brave man of the same size all the 4world over, if he have equal skill. it is skill more than strength that enables one man to overcome another, and tactics more than bravery, (though both are necessary,) that enable an army or a fleet to obtain a victory. i will try to make this clear to you before i have done.”
“now do tell us, uncle, all about soldiers and sailors, from the beginning to the end.”
“that would take me a month to do. i mean to give you anecdotes in abundance about military and naval commanders, that you may see the advantage of knowledge and skill; at the same time i will try to mingle with them many details that will be interesting to you, of the navy and the army.”
“yes! that will be a good plan. now for a little about soldiers.”
“if i were giving you my own history, i might be tempted to dwell on my own exploits, but as that is not the case i shall try to keep close to my subject,—soldiers and sailors. when a recruit is enlisted and sworn in before a magistrate he is put into the awkward squad for a time, and then he enters the ranks. he has much to learn before he becomes a thorough soldier, from standing at ease to the charge; from the single file to the battle array.”
“the sergeant must have something to do with the recruits that come from the plough-tail?”
“indeed he has, but he very soon effects a 5change in their appearance. the first thing the recruit has to learn is to stand in a proper position. then come facing, stepping, and marching, filing, wheeling, and with the manual and platoon exercise, forming; and, if in the cavalry, saddling, bridling, mounting, riding, and leaping, with the man?uvres of troops and squadrons, companies, battalions and regiments. what with carbine and pistol exercise, sword exercise and lance exercise, with parade, mounting guard, and keeping accoutrements, and perhaps, a horse in order, a soldier has many duties to perform.”
“and have sailors as much to do as soldiers?”
“ay, that they have, and every change of wind brings them a change of duty. for some time i was in the marines, and saw a good deal of the wooden walls of old england. officers, seamen, ordinary men, servants and boys, were all alive from stem to stern; from keel to sky-scrapers all things were in order. there were no skulkers among the blue-jackets. everything was attended to; the decks were swabbed, the anchor weighed, the yards manned, the sails reefed, and the decks cleared for action.”
“sailors seem to work hard and play hard then, for no people enjoy themselves more when they are away from their ship.”
“true. they work hard, play hard, and fight hard; but, say what you will, it is not all sunshine with soldiers and sailors. a soldier, on 6parade or on a review day, looks like a man of leisure, and in time of peace he is not overdone with his duty; but see him in war, marching through miry roads, panting with heat or numbed with cold, up early and late, sleeping on the bare ground in his wet clothes:—hunger pinches him, fatigue wears him, and the stormy fight with all its dangers awaits him,—yet, on he goes without a murmur.
“neither does honest jack lead a life of ease, or sleep upon roses. see him in the north, when the rigging of his ship is hung with icicles; in the east and west, when the deck is almost as hot as a baker’s oven; holding his weary midnight watch in the calm, and reefing the fluttering sail in the storm.
‘jack never despairs—see, his bosom ne’er quivers
though hurricanes cause every timber to start;
the tempest may rend a proud vessel to shivers,
but nothing can conquer a firm british heart.’
“waves may dash and lightnings flash, but jack flinches not from his duty. aloft, below, at the mast-head or in the cockpit, he endures dangers and pain, and stands by his gun in the roar of the battle!”
“a great deal may be said about soldiers and sailors?”
“yes,—and they have generally a great deal to say about themselves: the one fighting his battles over again, and the other spinning his yarns 7about cruises and privateering, and cutting out ships, and the winds blowing great guns in the bay of biscay. soldiers are soldiers everywhere, and sailors keep up their character for courage, whether on the sea or in harbour, in a storm or a calm, in a battle or a breeze.”
“what was it that made you list for a soldier?”
“a thoughtless prank, my lads. in my youthful days i was fond of reading of knights armed cap-à-piè, mounted on fiery steeds,—lance in the rest, helmet on the head, vambrace on the arm, cuirass on the breast, cuisses on the thighs, greaves on the legs, and sabatynes on the feet. i loved to read, too, of ancient arms, clubs and slings, bows and arrows, swords, falchions, javelins, maces, battle-axes and battering-rams; and the portable arms when gunpowder came into use,—hand-gun, arquebus, haquebut, wheel-lock, caliver, petronel, dag, dragon and hand-mortar;—and these things led me on to a soldier’s life.”
“ay, ay! like us, you wanted to know everything.”
“very true. my curiosity was excited, and i wished to hear all i could about modern arms, from the poniard to the pike, from the cutlass to the carbine, from the hand-grenade to the congreve rocket, from the six-pounder to the big brass cannon at bejapoor in hindoostan, and from the horse-pistol in the houlster of a dragoon to the monster mortar used at the siege of antwerp.”
8“and we wish to hear all about these things, too.”
“there was another circumstance, too, that did much towards leading me into the army. i chanced to form an acquaintance with an old soldier who knew everything about fortification, engineering, and gunnery. he had had his share of sieges and storming-parties, and seemed as familiar with trenches, ditches, fascines and scaling-ladders, as a schoolboy is with his peg-top and his kite. he used to describe to me the whole affair, from first breaking ground to the taking of a garrison, the glacis, scarps, and counter-scarps, ramparts, lunettes, bastions, batteries and citadel.”
“no wonder that you should listen to a man like him.”
“he was, indeed, wondrously interesting, and we talked together by the hour of soldiers and sailors. ‘forward,’ and ‘off she goes,’ were our mottoes. we advanced in double quick time with the red-coats, and only halted in a case of necessity. we shared the birth of honest jack when buffeted on the billows, nor left him till he put into harbour, mingled his prize-money with his pig-tail tobacco, and sang ‘britannia rules the waves.’”
“did the old soldier describe a battle to you?”
“he did, and many of them, too. the plan of an engagement was unknown to me, and i had formed strange notions of one army attacking another. 9he explained to me the movements of the advanced guard, the main body, the wings, the reserve, and the artillery; and discoursed freely of sentinels, vedettes, patrols, piquets, and the general arrangements of an army in the field.”
“he would be quite at home there!”
“such conversation as this led me to read of celebrated military and naval commanders, with the battles they had fought, and the victories they had won. of frederick the great, of prussia; charles of sweden; peter the great, of russia; buonaparte of france; and marlborough and wellington of england; with hawkins, drake, frobisher, rodney, howe, duncan and nelson. at that time i knew nothing, or next to nothing, of a sea-fight, of the order of battle, of ships taking their stations, of signals, and the several duties of officers and men during the action; and of broadsides, raking, and boarding; but since then i have picked up some information on most of these points.”
“that old soldier must have known a great deal!”
“he did know a great deal, for he had mingled among sailors as well as soldiers, so that he could talk freely of actions, attacks, and attempts, battles, blockades, and bombardments, descents and defeats, engagements and expeditions, invasions, reductions, sea-fights and storms, sieges, surprises, skirmishes, repulses, and explosions.”
10“we do not wonder at your having entered the army, but a battle must be a terrible thing.”
“that is true, sure enough. it is one thing to hear or to read of a battle, and another to fight in the ranks. war is no child’s play, as every one knows who has seen service. there are different opinions about war: one man sees in it nothing but what is honourable and glorious; another maintains that it is in no case to be justified. it is not for me to decide between the two, seeing that i agree with neither, for while on the one hand i hold it wrong to plunge into war on light grounds when it can be avoided, or when it inflicts a greater evil than it undertakes to remove; on the other, i cannot see how war can be always evaded. if to oppress others be wrong, to allow ourselves to be oppressed can hardly be right; and though conquest and national glory will not justify those who draw the sword, yet, as a nation, we must be other than we are before we could give up what is dearer than life without an effort to defend it. however, my object is not to turn your heads with false notions of honour and glory, that you may long to become wellingtons and nelsons, but simply to give, according to your desire, what information i can about soldiers and sailors, and to explain to you the way in which they carry on war.”
“ay, those are the very things! we want to know everything about them. we saw a sailor 11yesterday; and the road seemed hardly broad enough for him, he reeled about so much from one side to the other.”
“jack-tars too often fall into this error; they are too often half-seas-over before they are out of port, and they are usually the most steady when being tossed about on the ocean.”
“that sounds comical, however.”
“perhaps it does, but i wish to be pointed in my remarks, that there may be some likelihood of your remembering what i say. the army, from the commander-in-chief to the men in the ranks, should aim at respectability. a general should never be without a good private character, and a private should be generally acknowledged as a man of courage and sobriety. as a standing rule, a soldier under arms should not be above doing his duty: though he wears a red coat he must be a true blue, and peacefully preserve, in every situation, the articles of war.”
