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 as 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, while 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
admiral, 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.”
“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.”
“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, though 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,
the 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 ship’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 favourable, 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.”
“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. After 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
manner:—‘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.”
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