Sir J. W. Fortescue

“ Silent and inexorable the scarlet lines strode on. They came abreast of village and redoubt, and the shot which had hitherto swept away files now swept away ranks. Then the first line passed beyond redoubt and village, and the French cannon took it in reverse. The gaps grew wider and more frequent, the front grew narrower as the men closed up, but still the proud battalions advanced, strewing the sward behind them with scarlet, like some mass of red [115] blossoms that floats down a lazy stream and sheds its petals as it goes. ”

“ The British horse on the left, one regiment in particular burning to wipe out the humiliation of its first failure, pressed the French Household Cavalry harder than ever in front, and the Scots Greys plunging in upon their flank threw them into utter rout. The whole French army now made headlong for the fords and bridges of the Main, the infantry in their panic plunging madly into the stream and perishing by scores if not by hundreds in the water. ”

“ The French marched straight into the ambuscade, where the troops, which Clive had taken over less than a week before as a spiritless, undisciplined rabble, poured in so deadly a fire that within a few minutes they struck down a hundred men. The attack was so unexpected that half of the French force stood rooted to the ground with fear. The commanding officer, with a score more of Europeans, two hundred and fifty Sepoys and two guns were captured, and the remainder, throwing down their arms, rushed away in terror to Chinglapet. Clive resolved to follow them while the panic was still alive. ”

“ The French instantly turned out to man their entrenchments; and Wolfe, having kept them in suspense for a sufficient time, ordered the troops into the boats and directed them to row up and down as if in search of a landing-place. The succeeding days were employed in a series of similar feints, the ships drifting daily up to Cap Rouge with the flood tide and dropping down to Quebec with the ebb, till Bougainville, who followed every movement with increasing anxiety and bewilderment, fairly wore out his troops with incessant marching to and fro. ”

“ When officers flagrantly neglected their duty and civilians deliberately fostered indiscipline, it is hardly astonishing that there should have been much misconduct among the men. It was natural, in the circumstances, that after the Peace of Utrecht the profession of the soldier should have fallen in England into disrepute. The greatest captain of his time, and one of the greatest of all time, had been rewarded for his transcendent services with exile and disgrace. Many officers had quitted the service in disgust, some of them abandoning even regiments which they loved as their own household. ”

“ Austerlitz is a name familiar to thousands who know nothing of the capitulation of Ulm. So Amherst to the majority of Englishmen is but a name: as though it were a small thing for a colonel taken straight from the classic fields of Flanders to cross the Atlantic to a savage wilderness, assume command of disheartened troops and the direction of discordant colonists, and quietly and deliberately to organise victory. He was the greatest military administrator produced by England since the death of Marlborough, and remained the greatest until the rise of Wellington. ”

“ Still silently the columns pushed on through the gloom, and the grenadiers drew closer and closer to the familiar Rock which they had so often stormed; but no sign came from the enemy, until at last, when they were arrived within pistol shot, a challenge and a flash told them that they were discovered. Firing one volley they swarmed up the Rock on three sides at once, while the French, having barely time to snatch up their arms, emptied their muskets in a feeble, irregular fire, and fled hurriedly down to the plain. ”

“ It was the audacity of Holmes and his squadron in running the gauntlet of the batteries of Quebec which first threatened the supplies and communications of the city, and forced Montcalm to weaken his main army by detaching Bougainville. It was the terrible restless energy of the same squadron, ever moving up and down the river, which wore out the limbs of the French soldiers and the nerves of their officers; and to the Navy fully as much as to the Army is due the praise for the movement that finally set Wolfe and his battalions on the heights of Abraham. ”

“ The panic among the French increased. Their chief was dying, his second mortally wounded; and among the terrified mob that fled by the St. Charles there rose a cry to destroy the bridge of boats, lest the English should break into the camp of Beauport. This insane movement, which would have sacrificed the whole of the fugitives who had not yet crossed the river, was checked by one or two officers who still kept their wits about them; but none the less the French were not only beaten but demoralised, and the victory of the British was complete. ”

“ By this time King George and his people in England were thoroughly sick of the war. The British had suffered severely in every action, but had reaped no success except in the fortunate victory of Dettingen. The Dutch had proved themselves useless and contemptible as Allies, their Government feeble and corrupt in council, their troops unstable if not dangerous in action. The Austrians, in spite of lavish subsidies, had never furnished the troops that they had promised, and had invariably obstructed operations through the obstinacy of their Generals and the selfishness of their ends. ”

“ The answer, which has already been hinted at, will occur readily to those who have had the patience to follow me so far, who have seen Guadeloupe worried into submission by a handful of sickly troops, and watched Montreal and Pondicherry drop at last into British hands like fruit ripe for the plucking. Pitt spoke but half the truth when he spoke of conquering America in Germany; it was not only America, but the East and West Indies, in a word the British Empire. The war in Germany was in fact nothing more than a diversion on a grand scale, and it is as such that it must now be followed. ”

“ Moreover, French regular troops behaved quite as ill in Germany during the Seven Years' War as any of the irregulars. Still wanton brutality and outrage, however excused by the custom of war, must remain unpardoned and unpardonable, on the score not only of humanity but of discipline. But though the blot upon Cumberland's name must remain indelible, it should not obscure the fact that, at a time of extreme national peril, the Duke lifted the army in a few weeks, from the lowest depth which it has ever touched of demoralisation and disgrace, to its old height of confidence and self-respect. ”

“ But even if the hasty and masterful temper which estranged them from him be excused, nothing can palliate his two cardinal errors as a soldier; first, the omission to secure Chingleput while yet the capture was easy, and secondly the neglect to enforce discipline among all ranks of his army. Violence without strength, energy without foresight, imperiousness without ascendency—such are not the qualities that go to make a great leader in the field. ”

“ By giving scope to this new stamp of officer Pitt rendered the Army signal service, apart from the spirit which he infused into it, as into every body of Englishmen, of energy and adventure. He was too good a master for men to be willing to return to him, unless they had fulfilled their mission or exhausted every effort to fulfil it. ”

“ It was so strong by nature that it needed little fortification by art; access to the river being barred by a mangrove swamp, across which there were but two narrow approaches, both of them protected by redoubts, palisaded entrenchments, and cannon. None the less Clavering determined to attack. Covered by a heavy fire of artillery the Fourth and Forty-second advanced against the French left, firing by platoons as coolly as if on parade, till the Highlanders drawing their claymores made a rush, and the Fourth dashing forward with the bayonet drove the French from the redoubt. ”

“ The French Guards and the rest of the troops of the French first line had also been rallied, and the task of the British was well-nigh desperate. The Irish brigade, which consisted of six battalions, was made up not of Irish only but of Scots and English also, desperate characters who went into action with a rope round their necks, and would fight like devils. Yet, even in this second attack the British carried their advance as far as in the first, the perfection of their fire-discipline enabling them to beat back even the Irish brigade for a time. ”

“ D'Espréménil finding himself hard pressed made a sortie with four hundred of his garrison, and boldly facing the masses of the enemy's cavalry opened on them so effective a fire from his field-guns that they fled with precipitation, abandoning their camp to the victor. With their own clumsy artillery, not yet advanced beyond the stage attained by European nations in the sixteenth century, the natives thought it good practice if a gun were discharged four times in an hour; and they were utterly confounded and dismayed by the rapidity with which the French pieces were served. ”

“ The British soldier, to put the matter in its least sentimental and most brutally practical light, has always been a most expensive article; no prodigality can be more ruinous than the careless squandering of his life, no economy so false as the grudging of his comfort. But this failing in Pitt, serious though it be, is far outweighed by the profound policy which converted the militia into an efficient force for defence against invasion, thus liberating the regular army for purposes of conquest ”

“ The truth of the matter is, as Lord Cochrane was to prove fifty years later, that sporadic attacks on the French coast are best left to the Navy; for a single frigate under a daring and resolute officer can paralyse more troops than an expedition of ten or fifteen thousand men, with infinitely less risk and expense. Pitt had not yet done with his favourite descents, but his next venture of the kind was to be directed against an island instead of the mainland, when the British fleet could interpose between his handful of battalions and the whole population of France. ”

“ The rest of the Army, thirty-seven regiments in all, but very weak in numbers, was as usual turned over to the Irish Establishment. Efforts were of course made in both Houses of Parliament to cut down the numbers of the Army to a still lower figure, and the antiquated arguments in favour of such a step were repeated as though they had not already done duty a thousand times within the past forty years. Nay, so vigorous is the old age of folly and of faction that men were still found, when the Mutiny Act was brought forward, to urge the needlessness of courts-martial in time of peace. ”

“ At this moment Lord Stair, who had followed the course of operations carefully from England, came forward, like a true pupil of Marlborough, with a new plan of campaign. His advice was that the Allies should turn Saxe's tactics against himself. They should march south to Orchies, between Lille and Tournay, and there encamp, where they would be within reach of half a dozen French fortified towns. The French would not dare to leave the fortresses defenceless; and the garrisons necessary to render them secure would absorb the whole of their force in the field. ”

“ Meanwhile, to divert the British from Trichinopoly, Dupleix had skilfully engaged Lawrence in a campaign of petty, harassing operations on the river Pennar; while the Mahrattas scoured every part of the Carnatic from the Paliar to the Coleroon, insulting even the fortifications of Fort St. David. Lawrence in vain strove to bring the French to action. They were following the tactics of Saxe in the Low Countries, always present and therefore always a danger, but always entrenched to the teeth against attack. ”

“ Cadogan, the Duke's successor, died in 1726, and was laid with his great chief in Henry the Seventh's chapel, not with military pomp, but, by his own express desire, with all possible privacy. It should seem that he shrank above all things from even the semblance of a share in his master's glory. Of the veterans who outlived him, Lord Orkney and the Duke of Argyll were made field-marshals in 1736, while Wade, the kindly administrator of the Highlands, and Lord Stair took their part, as shall be seen, in the next war. Beyond them no one knew whither to look for an English general. ”

“ It is true that the Government was not wholly to blame; it was rather that spirit of carping and meddlesome criticism in the Commons which in these days has led to what is called legislation by reference, with the result that few Acts of Parliament are intelligible without a complete body of the Statutes of the past century to elucidate them. In mortal dread of distasteful discussion of the military estimates, the civil authorities clothed every possible grant of money in the garment of pay for so many men, and made it over to regimental officers to do their best or worst with it. ”

“ The brunt of the fighting fell of course on Granby's troops; but the casualties of the British with him little exceeded four hundred men, while those of the British in other parts of the field did not amount to fifty. The victory was in fact trifling except for its moral effects; but these were sufficient. The French were humbled at the failure of a hundred thousand men against fifty thousand; and Broglie and Soubise, who had left the camp with embraces, returned to it sworn enemies, each bitterly reproaching the other for the loss of the battle. ”

“ The cavalry suffered far more heavily in comparison, though here again the losses of the heroes of the day, the Third Dragoons, were more than twice as great as those of any other regiment: one hundred and fifty men and as many horses forming a terrible proportion of casualties in two squadrons. The most noticeable points in the engagement were the disgraceful behaviour of the French infantry, by no one more severely censured than by Noailles himself, and the deadly accuracy of the British fire. ”