Henry Morse Stephens

“ He had perceived with alarm Montcalm's plan for hemming in the progress of the English towards the west, and for uniting the French colonies of Canada and Louisiana. He chose his officers with great care; most of them were young men burning for distinction, of whom Wolfe was the type, but over them he set Amherst, who, though very young, was chiefly distinguished for his absolute self-control. Wolfe, Pitt knew, was half-mad with enthusiasm, and might in a fit of enthusiasm run his army into a very perilous position. ”

“ When the Duke of York returned to England, his successors, General Harcourt and General Walmoden, proved incompetent, and on General Abercromby, who commanded the rear column, fell the real burden of the retreat of the dispirited troops before the impetuous onset of the republican army. Under him Lieutenant-colonel Wellesley commanded the 33rd regiment, and learned his first lesson in the art of war. On his return to England in the beginning of 1795 he was made a knight of the Bath, and, almost to his own surprise, found himself considered his country's greatest general. ”

“ Officers and men stood about looking for their general and waiting for orders, and then rode away from the guns in tens and twenties, in twos and threes. Cardigan had played the part of a hero, but not of a general. Great was the excitement in camp after the charge. Lord Raglan was profoundly displeased; some blamed Lord Lucan, some Cardigan, others General Airey, who had only written the order, and others Captain Nolan. In truth, no blame could be fixed on any one. Cardigan faithfully obeyed the order he had misunderstood. ”

“ He does not appear to have distinguished himself more as a colonial governor than as a soldier, and fell into the hands of a clique at whose bidding he subdued the maroons on the island with such thoroughness that it was called cruelty, and on an outcry being raised in parliament he was recalled from the West Indies in 1814. Major-general Ainslie, for he had been promoted previous to his recall, was now free from any active employment. Nature had designed him for a savant, not a soldier. ”

“ His government had not been brilliant, but it had been just and financially prosperous, and if he had left dangers lurking on the north-west frontier in the power of Scindia and Holkar, and the triumphant rajah of Bhurtpore, he had had the courage to draw back from a chance of great fame, to do his duty. To compensate him for his supersession the king had sent out to Sir George, by Lord Minto, the insignia of the Bath in Oct. 1806, and he was shortly afterwards nominated governor of Madras. ”

“ He formed a regular school of officers, of whom may be mentioned John Moore, John Hope and Robert Anstruther, and James Kempt, his adjutant-general, quartermaster-general, and military secretary in Egypt, Hildebrand Oakes, Thomas Graham, Rowland Hill, Cradock, Doyle, Edward Paget, and his own sons, John and Alexander Abercromby—as goodly a collection of officers as ever were formed by any general. It is more difficult to breathe the spirit of military prowess and military discipline into an army than to win a battle ”

“ Hyder Ali, who had made himself rajah of Mysore, rushed like a whirlwind over the Carnatic, and by his defeat and capture of Colonel Baillie at Parambakam had Madras at his mercy. Warren Hastings at once suspended Governor Whitehill, and despatched Coote with full powers and all the money he could spare to Madras, while he ordered all the troops available to march down the coast under the command of Colonel Pearse. Coote reached Madras on 5 Nov. 1780, and on 17 Jan. 1781 marched northwards from Madras with all the troops he could muster, in order to draw Hyder Ali after him. ”

“ When Abercromby came to the front in the campaign in Flanders, England had not a single great or even tolerable general, unless we except Lord Cornwallis, and her army was in a terrible state of degeneration. When he died, after having served in every important campaign, he left many a worthy successor and an army second to none in everything but equipment. ”

“ Landrecy was closely invested by the Austrian and English armies, when a corps of 10,000 Frenchmen moved from Cæsar's camp to raise the siege. Their march was so rapid that they were close to the allied lines, and on the point of taking the emperor himself prisoner as he was riding along the road almost unattended, when General Otto perceived the danger, and ordered the only cavalry he had at hand, namely, 160 of the 15th light dragoons and 112 Austrian hussars, to charge the French, in order rather to save the emperor than to defeat the enemy. ”

“ In Ireland he displayed no very great political ability, but succeeded very happily in pleasing all parties and making himself extremely popular. In 1756 the seven years' war broke out, and all England demanded that Mr. Pitt should be placed at the head of affairs; he absolutely declined to serve under the Duke of Newcastle, who had been prime minister ever since the death of his brother, Henry Pelham, in 1754, and the influence of the great whig families was strong enough to prevent the king from at once making Pitt prime minister. ”

“ Through the Queensberry influence he was appointed by the crown to be professor of civil law in the university of Edinburgh about 1698, but in 1710, when the Duke of Queensberry was out of favour with the other whig leaders, the magistrates of Edinburgh asserted their ancient right and ousted Cunningham from the professorship to make way for their own nominee. He then left Scotland, and established himself at the Hague, where he lived on a handsome pension granted him by the Duke of Queensberry, devoting himself to chess and the study of the classical authors and of civil law. ”

“ When Evans took command of the legion at San Sebastian in August 1835, he found the result of this disapprobation in the utter unfitness of many of the men for service, and he declared at a later period that 2,300 of the 9,600 men whom he had under his command were so crippled by disease and infirmity that they never appeared in the field. The Spanish government utterly neglected the legion, and Evans rendered great services in Spain at the head of a corps which was at no time adequately equipped with either munitions or the necessaries of life. ”

“ As a man of sense and education he can never have expected his plot to succeed. According to the evidence given at his trial by spies, Despard's idea was to win over some of the soldiers of the guards, and with their help to seize the Tower and the Bank of England, assassinate the king on his way to open parliament, and stop the mails going out of London. The whole plan is so ridiculous that it cannot be regarded seriously; but the government arrested Despard and forty labouring men and soldiers, who were mostly Irish, at the Oakley Arms, Lambeth, on 16 Nov. ”

“ Colonel Wilks, in his ‘Historical Sketches of the South of India,’ thus shortly describes the character of Coote, under whom he served: ‘Nature had given to Colonel Coote all that nature can confer in the formation of a soldier; and the regular study of every branch of his profession, and experience in most of them, had formed an accomplished officer. A bodily frame of unusual vigour and activity, and mental energy always awake, were restrained from excessive action by a patience and temper which never allowed the spirit of enterprise to outmarch the dictates of prudence. ”

“ After the revolution broke out in 1789 Craufurd was impelled by his friendship with the royal family to assist them in their schemes of escape from Paris. His name is mentioned in the memoirs of the time as being deeply concerned in all the plans of the royal family, and he was one of the chief assistants in the famous flight from Paris, which was cut short at Varennes. In this scheme he was more nearly concerned than any one in Paris but Count Fersen, for he it was who was entrusted with the money which the king was to have at his disposal when he was safe across the French frontier. ”

“ His conduct must be judged by the opinion held as to the functions of a quarter-master-general on active service. If he is to be the left hand of the commander of the forces, as the adjutant-general is his right hand, and is to make arrangements for encampments, marches, and formation of troop in the field, while the adjutant-general looks after discipline, the roster for picket duty, and the personal conduct of the troops, Colonel Airey fulfilled his duties to perfection. He was the strongest man on the staff. ”

“ Lord Brougham in the House of Lords went nearly as far, and deliberately called him to his face ‘the illustrious duke—illustrious only by courtesy.’ William IV did not hesitate to insult his brother also, and in 1833, full of reforming ardour, he granted a liberal constitution to his Hanoverian dominions, which was drawn up by Professor Dahlmann. This constitution was submitted by the king to his brothers, the Duke of Sussex and the Duke of Cambridge, who was governing Hanover as viceroy, but it was not even laid before Cumberland, the heir presumptive to the throne of Hanover. ”

“ Captain Cosby was himself a distinguished officer, who after serving in the Duke of Montagu's regiment, and on the staff in Germany and Minorca, went on half-pay, and was sent to India by the directors of the East India Company in 1753 with a special mission to reorganise the company's troops. He first served as second in command to Major Stringer Lawrence in the Madras presidency, and was then transferred to Bombay, where he acted as second in command at the taking of Surat in 1759, of which important city he was appointed commandant, and where he died soon afterwards. ”

“ The reasonable object of ambition to a man is to have his name transmitted to posterity for eminent services rendered to his country and to mankind. Nobody asks or cares whether Hampden, Marlborough, Pelham, or Wolfe were knights of the Garter. Of all things at present I am most anxious to hear about you. The packet that was coming to us overland, and that left England in July, was cut off by the wild Arabs between Aleppo and Bussora' (ib. i. 236) .
The outbreak of the third Mysore war for a time stopped the progress of Cornwallis's peaceful reform in Bengal. ”