Battle of Flodden

“ This depends mainly on the relative [5] strength that can be brought into the field. To which side will the consequences of defeat be most serious? This depends mainly on the position of the two armies in the theatre of war. James IV. of Scotland, when the battle of Flodden was fought, had allowed Surrey to get between him and Scotland: here a defeat meant destruction. Henry V. was in a similar strait before Agincourt, but in this case victory in the field extricated him from danger. Obviously one of two combatants may begin with very inferior strength to his opponent ”

“ See Armies Stanley, Sir E., at Flodden, 126 Steamers in Crimean war, 270 Steinkirk, battle of, 154 Stirling, importance of its position, 42 — siege by Bruce, 46 Stow-on-the-Wold, battle of, 144 Strategy, definition of, 4 — little understood in middle ages, 69 — of Surrey before Flodden, 124 Suffolk, E. of, at Orleans, 94 Supplies, when regularly furnished to armies, 152 — Marlborough careful about, 158 — to Wellington in Peninsula by sea, 199, 228 — Wellington anxious about, before Waterloo, 241 Surajah Dowlah takes Calcutta, 296 — defeated at Plassy, 299 Surrey, E. of, at Flodden, 120 sqq. ”

“ They also turn the points of their spears towards the assailant, and deliberately point their sword against the pursuer; and they generally fling their lances behind their back, being more skilled at conquering by flight than by fighting. Hence, when you fancy that the victory is yours, then is the moment of danger. But Frode was wary and not rash in his pursuit of the foe who fled so treacherously, and he routed Kerwil (Cearbal) , the leader of the nation, in battle. ”

“ The German troops that were to have raided the French terminus, and then poured into England, under the protection of the guns of Fort Warden, already seized by their advance guard, had not arrived, and could not now approach to aid their countrymen. Movements of foreign warships and transports were hourly reported by telegraph and wireless messages, but the British Fleet had by this time formed a deadly barrier of iron and steel around the coast line of Kent and Sussex. ”

“ Presently up out of the little valley where Floing is located came the Germans, deploying just on the rim of the plateau a very heavy skirmish-line, supported by a line of battle at close distance. When these skirmishers appeared, the French infantry had withdrawn within its intrenched lines, but a strong body of their cavalry, already formed in a depression to the right of the Floing road, now rode at the Germans in gallant style, going clear through the dispersed skirmishers to the main line of battle. ”

“ Flossie told herself that she was not unreasonable. She had been quite ready to make allowances. Alarming things, she knew, had happened close at hand. Impudent foreigners had seized Fort Warden by stealth. The ceaseless boom of the big guns disturbed the current of existence in the bungalow. Things were tiresome; indeed, quite worrying when they kept on like that! It was dreadful, that Englishmen, her father's soldier-friends, should be killed by foreigners—killed in England too, only ten miles away; usually they were only killed a long way off, and that seemed different. ”

“ What shot and shell and bayonet had failed to do, he, single-handed, had achieved. The episode was all the more tragic and impressive by reason of its great simplicity. A method was known to Major Wardlaw, as the designer, by which he could flood the Fort. The enemy would be drowned like so many rats in a gigantic trap. The master-key was in his hands, and though—high honour be to them—there were other volunteers for the fatal work, he had steadfastly refused to let another British soldier lose his life in that prolonged and dreadful struggle. ”

“ Up to the time of Frederick II, armies remained indivisible during operations; they are like mathematical points on the huge theatres of operations in Central Europe. It is not possible to grasp, to squeeze, or even to push back on some obstacle, an enemy who refuses battle, and retires laterally as well as backwards. There is no end to the pursuit. ”

“ For the Germans not to have won through, against an enemy thrown into confusion by a foul and diabolical surprise and out-gunned from start to finish, is in itself a defeat. Their failure to blast their way through to the sea, which was their objective as the battle developed for them with such unexpected success, must be counted a signal triumph for the Allies—not only for the British troops that held the salient, but also for the gallant [Pg 52] French, whose counter-attacks were instrumental in delaying the onrush of the German hordes down the western bank of the canal. ”

“ Besides, in the face of modern arms traditional tactics are out of date. They survive only in popular tradition, and in the criticism based upon it.
The only way on the Allied side at once to secure and eventually and fully to reap the advantages won at the Battle of the Marne was to complete and to solidify the military envelopment which would render the whole of this gigantic force of invaders for all the purposes of the invasion impotent. It was plain, too, that the immediate purpose of the Germans was now to straighten out their front across France. ”

“ The news! good or bad!"
"As I entered," said Flocon, "the house trembled with the jar of a train of heavy ordnance, attended by tumbrels and artillery caissons, and escorted by a regiment of horse, which rolled along the pavement of the Champs Elysées."
"Good!" answered Marrast, with enthusiasm.
"All night," continued Flocon, eagerly, "through darkness and storm, whole regiments of infantry have thronged the line of boulevards which stretch from the Tuileries to Vincennes, and each soldier bears upon his knapsack, in addition to all his arms, an axe to demolish barricades. ”

“ Looking at the battle after this length of time, it is clear that William only gained the day by desperate exertions, and that more than once success hung in the balance. Had the English army possessed a proportion of archers the day would have been Harold’s. It has been pointed out that not even a great fleet saved England from an attack by an invader prepared to take the risk of destruction. But it should be remembered that Harold’s flotilla was not a properly organized force, and cannot be compared to a modern fleet able to keep the sea for several months at a time. ”

“ He soon saw active service, and, young as he was, wrote a manual on partisan warfare, the manuscript of which passed with Folard’s other papers to Marshal Belleisle on the author’s death. In 1702 he became a captain, and aide-de-camp to the duke of Vendôme, then in command of the French forces in Italy. In 1705, while serving under Vendôme’s brother, the Grand Prior, Folard won the cross of St Louis for a gallant feat of arms, and in the same year he distinguished himself at the battle of Cassano, where he was severely wounded. ”

“ Fort Warden, the great outcome of the Major's career, the splendid achievement on the strength of which he had retired from active service, thus stood justified beyond all cavil or dispute.
Yet, as he gazed towards the work of his hands, Wardlaw's heart was full of grief and bitterness. There stood the Fort in all its pride and strength; around it lay the victims of its fury; within it less than three hundred foreigners still defied thousands of British troops on British soil. Above it floated, so far, in victory, two foreign Eagles—the flags of Germany and the United States. ”

“ Against the part of the German line they were told off to attack the guns had not done the work thoroughly. The enemy's mass of entanglements here followed a dip in the ground; and the shells had mostly missed.
Let it here be said that an accident of this kind is always liable to happen. It does not of necessity imply remissness on the part of the gunners, and involve blame. Difficulties like this will crop up in carrying out the best scheme of tactics. Indeed no great battle has ever yet been fought in which the unexpected has not been encountered, and had on the instant to be provided for. ”

“ Their ardor and pluck were of no avail, however, for the Germans, growing stronger every minute by the accession of troops from Floing, met the fourth attack in such large force that, even before coming in contact with their adversaries, the French broke and retreated to the protection of the intrenchments, where, from the beginning of the combat, had been lying plenty of idle infantry, some of which at least, it seemed plain to me, ought to have been thrown into the fight. ”

“ It was a counter-stroke with which the enemy had not reckoned; a danger which the invader was wholly unable to avert. As the waters of the Red Sea overwhelmed the Egyptian Warriors; as that ancient river, the [Pg 151] river Kishon swept away the foes of the armies of Israel, so, in a new and terrible way, the water floods had destroyed the invaders of England.
With a dull, elemental roar, with a suddenness that allowed of no flight, and a force that admitted of no resistance, ton after ton of water poured into the interior of the Fort. ”

“ Between the cavalry attacks the bowmen poured in their volleys, shooting with a high trajectory so that the arrows were not wasted on the shield-wall, but made havoc in the heart of the dense mass. The device had terrible success. The picked warriors of England fell fast before the pitiless rain to which they could not reply. For the most part they could but suffer. Once or twice it seems that small bodies tried to charge out; now and again desperate warriors sprang forth to contend hand-to-hand with the Norman knights, but they only hastened their end. ”

“ Of British bayonet work these German troops had already seen enough. There was a scene, as they endeavoured to rally, of mad rage and confusion; the shouts and curses of their officers mingling with the roar of conflict, and the clash of steel on steel in the savage work of thrust and parry. German reinforcements were hurried up. The line of fighting men, their own troops in retreat, the British pressing on the rear, met the reinforcements as they advanced. With this fresh mass to deal with, the British troops in turn were forced backwards. ”

“ Harold, meanwhile, was organizing for defence. His only standing force consisted of the Hus-Carles, or royal household troops—4,000 men at the utmost. They were, unquestionably, a magnificent body of men, fully equal in quality to William’s knighthood, equipped like them with helmet and mail-shirt, kite-shaped shield, and armed with the terrible battle-axe, which England had adopted from Denmark. Unfortunately, however, though they habitually used183 horses on the march, they had no experience of, or training in, fighting on horseback—a fatal defect. ”

“ Broady called the officers around him and informed them in his Swedish brogue, that it was anticipated that the enemy would charge our position, which we were to hold as long as there was a man left of us, and that if we should give way and fall back we would be fired into by our men, who held a second and third line. ”

“ The invaders would, and must, hold the Fort till their last gasp—not because they in themselves could hope for ultimate triumph over the increasing forces that now surrounded them, but because to them time was everything—time for their countrymen to develop elsewhere the work of conquest; time for the American and German combined squadrons to [Pg 124] land troops at unprotected spots of Great Britain and Ireland, while they, the daring three hundred, monopolised the attention of the flower of England's troops. ”

“ The second battle of Flanders ought rather to be compared to the battle on the Somme, the real consequences of which were not completely visible till the German recoil on the Siegfried line took place in March, 1917. While the first battle of Flanders had closed the gates of Dunkirk and Calais against the Germans, and marked the end of their invasion, the second one drove a wedge at Ypres into the German strength, made formidable by three years' daily efforts, secured the Flemish heights, pushed the enemy back into the bog land, and threatened Bruges. ”

“ The rebel position was of extraordinary strength, well chosen, well fortified by abattis and other obstacles, and strongly manned. The British troops did all that men could do, with everything—numbers, climate, and tropical rain—against them; but they were compelled to retreat with the loss of 100 killed and wounded. Fédon then brought out his prisoners and cut the throat of every one. ”

“ As examples of the importance of field fortifications and of the manner of organizing them, the reader is referred to the celebrated battle of Fontenoy, in 1745, where the carefully-arranged intrenchments of Marshal Saxe enabled the French to repel, with immense destruction, the attacks of greatly superior numbers; to the battle of Fleurus, in 1690, where the Prince of Waldeck exposed himself to a most disastrous defeat "by neglecting the resources of fortification and other indispensable precautions;" ”

“ Thus recruited, Halfdene again took the offensive, and fourteen days after Aescdune was able to fight Aethelred at Basing, this time with success. Still no decisive victory had been gained, and two months later the armies are found confronting one another at Marden, near Hungerford. Evidently the Northmen were still confined to the neighbourhood of Reading. The army of Wessex was formed in two divisions as at Aescdune, and for a great part of the day had the advantage, but in the end the Northmen were victorious. ”