an engineer.—mining.—sappers.—gunners.—the surveillante.—loss in the british army.—furlough.—muster-roll.—punishment.—poor jack sent aloft.—captain hall on naval punishments.—instance of injustice to a seaman.—the captain proved to be in the wrong.—tribute to the brave.—letter of a private soldier.—the tenth and the imperial guards.
“now, uncle, you will please to tell us what an engineer is?”
“an engineer, boys, is one who has a knowledge of warlike engines, and who directs the attack or defence of a fortification, building or repairing according to the circumstances of the case, such works 113as have been injured by the enemy. it takes a wise man, and one of quick apprehension, to make a good engineer; he should have resources always, as we say, ‘at his finger ends.’ he ought to possess much practical knowledge, and a readiness and ability to apply it instantaneously. when buonaparte made his attack on jean d’acre, the handful of brave fellows under sir sidney smith never would have been able to withstand him had they not been ably assisted by the talents of phillipeaux, the engineer. a good engineer will make a weak place strong; enable a few to withstand many, and obtain a victory where nothing is expected but defeat.”
“bravery will never do without knowledge and skill, it seems.”
“not, at least, in a case where the attacking party is so strong as that at the siege of acre. an engineer should be well acquainted with mining, or the art of blowing up rocks and fortifications with gunpowder, and this he cannot be unless he can ascertain with correctness the heights, depths, breadth, and resistance of the materials he has to displace.”
“what a many things are necessary to be known by soldiers and sailors!”
“sappers are men who work at the trenches, or ditches. if a brigade of eight men are employed at any point of the works, you will see half of them working away at the sap, or trench, 114while the others are busily occupied in supplying gabions, fascines, and such other things as may be wanted.”
“why, there is no place safe in time of war, for what with the cannon and riflemen above ground, and the miners and sappers below, you are always in danger.”
“a soldier’s life is a life of danger, and every one should do his duty; but, for all that, no sapper should undermine the reputation of his comrades, and no rifleman should aim at a lower mark than honour. gunnery is the art of determining the motions of bodies, whether they are projected from cannon, mortars, or howitzers. without a knowledge of gunnery an attack or a defence would be very feeble. the power of well-charged and well-directed cannon is very great. a good gunner never sends a ball on an useless errand.
“in the battle between lord hawke and the french, the gallant admiral, finding so much to depend on the capture of the french admiral’s ship, the soleil royale, desired to be laid alongside her; but the pilot hesitatingly replied, that he feared to do so, from the rocky shoals of the coast off which the battle raged. hawke, however, was not to be dissuaded, and bore down upon her, with every gun double-shotted. the captain of a french seventy-four gun ship, the surveillante, aware of hawke’s design, gallantly threw his ship between hawke and the french 115admiral, in time to receive lord hawke’s fire, which saved the french admiral, but sent the surveillante and every soul on board to the bottom.”
“then, the surveillante was sent down with a single broadside?”
“she was. and a well-managed and effective battery will make a breach in the strongest wall that ever was built, in a very short time. war is a dreadful weapon, and it ought never to be wielded in a bad cause.”
“what thousands and thousands of englishmen must have been killed by gunpowder!”
“ay, there have indeed; but soldiers say, ‘every bullet has its billet.’ the english army, from the time lord wellington was appointed commander in portugal, to the peace, is supposed to have sustained the following loss.
in 1808 fell, officers 69 men 1015
1809 243 4688
1810 7 924
1811 459 7384
1812 816 11030
1813 1025 14966
1814 400 4791
1815 717 9485
3807 54283
“this account does not include the brunswickers, hanoverians, portuguese, nor spaniards.”
116“it seems a wonder there were no more killed. one would expect half the soldiers and sailors that went into battle would be killed.”
“no, that is not the case. at salamanca there was one soldier in ninety killed; at vittoria, one in seventy-four; and at the battle of waterloo, one in forty. at the battle of the nile there was one sailor killed in thirty-six; at trafalgar, one in forty-one, and at copenhagen one in thirty-nine.”
“how often do soldiers get leave to go home and see their friends?”
“not very often. if they could go when they liked the ranks would be rather thinner than they are. a poor widow that i once knew, whose son was a soldier, expected him home on a furlough—day after day passed, and he did not come; at last a soldier entered her dwelling. seeing the uniform, the poor woman sprang forwards: alas! it was not her son, but a comrade who had brought her the news of his death. the commanding-officer can grant a furlough, or leave of absence, to non-commissioned officers and soldiers when he pleases, and as long as he pleases, but he is not frequently applied to. if a furlough is obtained by a soldier from his captain for twenty days, it will be some time before it comes to his turn again, for only two men are allowed to be absent from a troop or company, unless in particular cases, at the same time. the muster-roll is kept with great care.”
117“what is the muster-roll—a list to call over the names of the soldiers?”
“i will tell you. a muster-roll is a list of the officers and men in every regiment or company, by which they are called over, receive their pay, and are otherwise inspected. when you hear of a soldier having lost his name on the muster-roll, it means that he is dead. if an officer makes a false return, such as allowing the name of a soldier to stand on the muster-roll as being with his regiment when he is absent from it, he is liable to be cashiered, that is, dismissed the service.”
“that would be a very severe punishment to an officer, but as the men are punished when they do wrong, the officers ought not to escape.”
“the men are, as you say, punished when they do wrong. i wish that punishments could be safely done away in the army and navy, but when we consider that the men are principally drawn from the lowest and most ignorant classes, it would be too much to expect them to be kept in order if insubordination were not punished. punishment, though it may not make a culprit a better man, may prevent him from repeating the offence, and deter others from committing it; still justice should be tempered with mercy, and i have known cases wherein clemency has had the happiest effect.”
“how are officers and men generally punished?”
“you may remember that the articles of war point out what punishment is due to a crime, 118though oftentimes it is not inflicted. officers who have offended are occasionally put under arrest, and naval officers are entered at the bottom of the list of their own rank. soldiers are imprisoned, and sometimes flogged, and poor jack, instead of having a rope’s end, is, now and then, sent up to the main-top, and kept there in a blow till he is almost hungry enough to gnaw the rigging like a rat.”
“why, poor fellow! he would find nothing else there to gnaw.”
“on the subject of naval punishments captain hall’s opinion is, ‘that if every captain were obliged by positive regulation to adopt the following course, a great diminution in the number of punishments would ensue, that those which were inflicted would be less severe, and that the discipline of the fleet would be essentially improved. his plan is, to make it imperative on officers in command to defer specifying what the amount of any punishment is to be until twenty-four hours have elapsed after the offence has been inquired into. he also considers that great practical advantages would arise from investigating all offences between the hours of nine in the morning and noon, a period when all parties are likely to be free from those exciting causes, which need not be particularly alluded to, but which do often interfere with the course of justice when the inquiry takes place after the men have had their grog, 119the officers their dinner, or the captain his claret. the present regulations of the navy require that twelve hours should elapse between the inquiry and the punishment, but this is scarcely enough. the most salutary check on intemperance of any kind is a night’s rest, and surely, when so serious an affair as corporal punishment is in question, it is not requiring too much of all captains to defer passing sentence till they have consulted their pillow at least once.’”
“captain hall is very much in the right to say what he does.”
“many instances of injustice in hastily awarding punishment in the navy might be given; the following is a striking example of the kind.
“two men-of-war happened to be cruising in company; one of them, a line-of-battle ship, bearing an admiral’s flag; the other, a small frigate. one day, when they were sailing quite close to each other, the signal was made from the large to the small ship to chase in a particular direction, implying that a strange sail was seen in that quarter. the look-out man at the maintop-mast-head of the frigate was instantly called down by the captain, and severely punished on the spot, for not having discovered and reported the stranger before the flag-ship had made the signal to chase. the unhappy sufferer, who was a very young hand, unaccustomed to be aloft, had merely taken his turn at the mast-head with the rest of the 120ship’s company, and could give no explanation of his apparent neglect. before it was too late, however, the officer of the watch ventured to suggest to the captain, that possibly the difference of height between the masts of the two ships might have enabled the look-out man on board the admiral to discover the stranger, when it was physically impossible, owing to the curvature of the earth, that she could have been seen on board the frigate. no attention, however, was paid to this remark, and a punishment due only to crime, or to a manifest breach of discipline, was inflicted.
“the very next day the same officer whose remonstrance had proved so ineffectual, saw the look-out man at the flag-ship’s mast-head again, pointing out a strange sail. the frigate chanced to be placed nearly in the direction indicated; consequently she must have been somewhat nearer to the stranger than the line-of-battle ship was. but the man stationed at the frigate’s mast-head declared he could distinguish nothing of any stranger. upon which the officer of the watch sent up the captain of the main-top, an experienced and quick-sighted seaman, who, having for some minutes looked in vain in every direction, asserted positively that there was nothing in sight from that elevation. it was thus rendered certain, or, at all events, highly probable, that the precipitate sentence of the day before had been unjust; for, under circumstances precisely similar, or even less 121favourable, it appeared that the poor fellow could not by possibility have seen the stranger, for not first detecting which he was punished!”
“that hasty captain ought to have been ashamed of himself. if he had only considered the matter, the man would not have been punished.”
“an officer, like a good sword, should be well-tempered, whether he belong to the army or navy.”
“you have never described to us a soldier’s burial! the funeral of a general must be grand and solemn.”
“some other time! some other time! when a soldier, fighting for plunder and empty glory, dies, he merits little sympathy; but when in a good cause, and in a battle that cannot be avoided, he draws his sword, falling on the field not for idle renown but in the defence of the weak and oppressed, and for the preservation of his country, then the words of the poet appear more suitable to him—
“there is a tear for all that die,
a mourner o’er the humblest grave;
but nations swell the funeral cry,
and triumph sweeps above the brave.
“for then is sorrow’s purest sigh
o’er ocean’s heaving bosom sent;
in vain their bones unburied lie,
all earth becomes their monument.
“a tomb is theirs on every page;
an epitaph on every tongue;
the present hours, the future age,
for them bewail, to them belong.”
122“it is my intention to give you a short sketch of the battle of waterloo, but not now. if you would like to hear it, however, i will read to you what a private soldier says of it in a letter to his parents.”
“yes, let us hear it, if you please. was he a horse-soldier?”
“he was in the cavalry.”
“he thus describes an attack made on the french guards:—‘our brigade was then formed into three lines, each regiment composing its own line, which was the 10th, 18th, and a regiment of german legion hussars; my own regiment forming the first line. wellington then came in front of the line, and spoke in the following manner:—
“‘tenth,’ says he, ‘you know what you are going to do, and you know what is expected of you, and i am well assured it will be done. i shall, therefore, say no more, only wish you success,’ and with that he gave the order for us to advance. i am not ashamed to say, that well knowing what we were going to do, i offered up a prayer to the almighty that, for the sake of my children and the partner of my bosom, he would protect me, and give me strength and courage to overcome all that opposed me; and with a firm mind i went, leaving all that was dear to me to the mercy of that great ruler who has so often, in the midst of peril and danger, protected me. 123after advancing about a hundred yards, we struck into a charge as fast as our horses would go, keeping up a loud and continued cheering, and soon we were among the imperial guards of france; the 18th also charging as soon as we got among them, which so galled them, that we slew and overcame them like so many children, although they rode in armour, and carried lances ten feet long; but so briskly did our lads lay the english steel about them, that they threw off their armour and pikes, and those that could get away flew in all directions; but still we had not done, for there were two great and solid squares of infantry, who had hurt us much with their fire whilst we were advancing, and still continued to do so whilst we were forming again. in short they were all around us; we therefore formed as well as we could, and at them we went.
“in spite of their fixed bayonets we got into their columns, and like birds they fell to the ground, and were thrown into confusion; and it run like wild-fire among their troops that their guards were beaten and panic-struck,—they flew in all directions. but still we had not done our part, and left those to pursue who had seen the onset. we took sixteen guns at our charge, and many prisoners, but we could see no longer, it was so dark; and at length we assembled what few we had got together of the regiment, and the general of the brigade formed us in close column, so that we might all hear him, and he addressed us in the following 124manner:—‘now, tenth,’ he said, ‘you have not disappointed me; you are just what i thought you were; you were the first regiment that broke their lines, and to you it is that we are indebted for turning the fate of the day, and depend upon it that your prince shall know it, for nothing but the bravery and discipline of the regiment could have completed such a work.’ we then gave him three cheers, and since that he has given us at a great length in our orderly books, his thanks and praise for our conduct.”
