Battle of Plassey

“ Here the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company have a yard, containing marine stores, coals, and other requisites. The superintendent resides close by, in a very neat and classic building.
Fort William, which next demands our atten [Pg 476] tion, was projected by Lord Clive soon after the Battle of Plassey, in 1757; but it was not finished till the year 1773. It mounts 619 guns, and is said to have cost, from first to last, £2,000,000 sterling, half of which sum was paid by Mir Jaffier, whom the British seated on the throne of Moorshedabad, after the Battle of Plassey. ”

“ During the century which elapsed between the victory of Plassey and the outbreak at Meerut, the East India company relied mainly on native troops with a stiffening of British soldiers—especially artillery—for the successful Disaffection in the Native Army. conduct of its wars. The warlike Hindu and Mahommedan races supplied excellent fighting material, when led by British officers, and the sepoy army took a distinguished part in every Indian battle, from Assaye to Gujarat. ”

“ The campaign of Plassey is less a study of military skill than of the iron will and unshaken nerve that could lead three thousand men against a host of unknown strength, and hold them undaunted, a single slender line, within a ring of fifty thousand enemies. ”

“ The over-tasked force had often to fight all day and to watch all night. The enemy used his superiority of numbers by continual harassing attacks, in front, in flank, and at last in the rear. The day was a remarkable one which passed without fighting. In six weeks, twenty combats were counted. On the 23rd of June, the Centenary of Plassey, a particularly formidable assault was made, and repulsed after a long day's fighting, to the discouragement of the Sepoys, whom false prophecies had led to believe that this date was to be fatal to us. ”

“ He pointed to a rising ground, a bluff of the forest ridge, to which a battalion of sharpshooters were hastening; it had seemed destitute of defence, and the sharpshooters were already beginning to scramble up its sides; when on the instant a large body of the enemy which had been covered by the forest, rushed upon its summit with a shout, and poured down a general volley. The whole Prussian line returned it by one tremendous discharge. The drums and trumpets struck up, the battalions and squadrons advanced, singing their national hymn. The skirmishers poured forward and the battle began. ”

“ For us to bar the retreat of Johnston's demoralized men, safely intrenched within the house, might be possible, provided artillery was not resorted to. Even with my small force I might hold them back for an hour, but to attempt such a feat against the veterans of Chambers, was simply a sentence to death. These men, fresh, undefeated, eager for battle, would turn and crush us as though we were some stinging insect. Thirty men pitted against a division! ”

“ The blaze from the tar-barrels showed a long extent of the Downs, with the troops scattered and galloping among them on all sides. Long ridges of light were thrown over the waters, while, immediately below me, the flashes of the smugglers' muskets and the soldiers' pistols were incessant. It was a battle on a minor scale.
But it is dangerous to be in the way of bullets even as an amateur; for, as I stood gazing down, I felt a sudden stroke like a shock of electricity. I staggered, and was on the point of rolling over the cliff, when Grapnel darted towards me. ”

“ On the morning of the 22nd, the field of battle, and the roads for some miles in the rear, exhibited an appearance it seldom falls within human fortune to witness. There lay the wreck of a mighty army; while plunder, accumulated during the French successes, and wrung from every part of Spain with unsparing rapacity, was recklessly abandoned to any who chose to seize it. Cannon and caissons, carriages and tumbrels, waggons of every description, were overturned or deserted—and a stranger mélange could not be imagined, than that which these enormous convoys presented to the eye. ”

“ As soon as our empty muskets could be loaded the men would take a quick aim at a flash in the woods and let drive. The enemy did the same. In no battle that I was in, did the bullets sing about my head as they did here. No doubt this came from the aim drawn on the flash of my musket. This steady, rapid firing continued till it ceased from the woods, and we concluded that we were victors.
Barlow then directed that the sound men take to the rear those alive, but wounded so that they could not help themselves. ”

“ The battle became a mêlée in front of the Hindenburg line; a free-for-all, in and out of burrows and craters; their general must trust his men to fight in the spirit in which he had trained them; and thus they did fight. Plunging machine-gun fire and hand-grenades sought out the wounded in folds of the ground and pits, while bullets whistled overhead. No platoon knew to a certainty what its neighbor was doing. Some bold man sprang out of shell-craters to seek close quarters or to try to reach a machine-gun, only to fall back dead into his companion's arms. ”

“ From our position on the brow of the hill, it was open ground for a distance and gently sloped off to the woods. Time after time the enemy formed for the purpose of making a charge on us, but no sooner did they appear than this immense line of artillery opened fire, which no troops in the world could withstand. In aid of the artillery fire, the infantry posted so as to have a chance, poured in volley after volley. Col. Barlow practiced here that which I never saw before or after in battle—volley firing by ranks. ”

“ Every thing was prepared for a mighty struggle. The whole guns were mounted on batteries four hundred paces from each other; the infantry was drawn up in a single line along the intrenchment, and filled up the whole interval between the artillery; the cavalry were arranged in two lines, seven hundred paces in rear of the foot-soldiers. It seemed another Malplaquet, in which the relative position of the two armies was reversed, and the French were to storm the intrenched position of the Allies. Every man in both armies fully expected a decisive battle ”

“ No one would have dreamed it to be a battle-line. The fires crackled gayly, while the men lounged about them, smoking or eating. There was no sound save the gentle rustling of leaves overhead, or the light laughter of some group of story-tellers. Horses munched their grain just at our rear, and now and then some careful trooper sauntered back to make sure his mount was not neglected. One or two of the men were cleaning their revolvers, and an old corporal was polishing his sabre where a spot of rust disfigured its gleaming blade. ”

“ When the officers of the 28th scouted the avenues of approach in order to maneuver their infantry units economically, they found none which would not require that we charge across open and rising ground against an enemy whose strength our men were to learn by "feeling it" in an attack without adequate shields into concentrations of shell- and machine-gun fire which became the more powerful the more ground they gained. ”

“ At close quarters with the enemy we dug in, with machine-gun nests and defensive lines of our own to repulse his counter-attacks, while the message of our own piecemeal attacks, [146] by which we sought to maintain our personal mastery over him, was: "We are only gathering our strength. This is our battle. We are coming at you again—soon." Thus established in our gains, in temporary stalemate, we might withdraw some divisions for rest. This meant fewer mouths to feed, lessening the strain on our transport. Other divisions had rest by the alternate withdrawal of regiments and brigades. ”

“ With steel helmets on and gas masks over our shoulders, we would leave our car at the dead line and set off to "see something," when now the fighting was all hidden in the folds of the ground, or in the woods, or lost on the horizon where the front line of either of these two great armies, with their immense concentration of men and material and roads gorged with transport and thousands of belching guns, was held by a few men with machine guns in shell-craters, their positions sometimes interwoven. Old hands in the Somme battle become shell-wise. ”

“ Thus our [212] guns were silent when the enemy started a counter-attack beyond Cierges; but the vengeful and accurate fire of the infantry soon sent the survivors of the advancing German wave to cover. Later the artillery, having received some ammunition, when it had an aeroplane signal of the Germans massing for another counter-attack, scotched it promptly. If the Germans could not budge us, we could not budge them. Every time we showed our heads in any effort for another gain, we stirred up a hornet's nest of bullets and offered a fresh target for a storm of shell-bursts. ”

“ No need to lay plans too far in advance. Too much can happen in the tick of a second–things that knock plans and the planner into a cocked hat.
Below them now was a far-flung battle of raging intensity. German troops could be seen moving along toward the river, and a little farther inland McGee spotted a long line of infantrymen along a road paralleling the river. But they were moving westward, in the direction of Chateau-Thierry, instead of toward the bridgehead at Dormans. And in addition to the marching men, the road was choked with artillery, caissons, ammunition wagons, and ambulances. ”

“ For the offensive was on—the advance of the Lassans had been turned to a retreat. Along the water's edge, with its back to the sea and the steamers ready to pick up the survivors of the defeat of the last army of man, the last army of man had rallied; rallied and stood as the new lead-tipped shells began to come in and the artillery spouted them at the Lassan fighting-machines, no longer invincible, invulnerable monsters, but hittable and smashable pieces of mechanism. ”

“ At the battle for Passchendaele commenced the last year of the war. In that year we experienced every emotion of victory and defeat. The year opened inauspiciously at Passchendaele where so many fell trying to traverse an infernal area of wire and pits and mud, facing the reinforced machine-gunners, facing the new gas, facing the fire of a vastly increased artillery. Many a cheery boy with muddy uniform and bright morning face stood up for the last time at Passchendaele, and unexpectedly—died for England. You may seek [Pg 130] their bodies in the Flemish earth to-day. ”

“ The night before an attack always had the same oppressive suspense, the same urgency on the part of all hands in trying to be definite under the camouflage of darkness—hazard omnipotent in its grip on every man's thought.
After the attack came the hurry call for artillery fire on points which had checked our advance; the [494] summoning of reserves to add more pressure; the eagerness for exact reports from out of the woods and ravines where our men were struggling; the hurried flight of messengers running the gamut of machine-gun bullets ”

“ The evidences of war, the wreckage of battle, were everywhere. Several times we were compelled to leap the stone walls to permit the passage of marching troops being hurried to some new position; several batteries passed us, rumbling grimly through the night, and a squadron of horse galloped by, the troopers greeting us with shouts of inquiry. The road was deeply rutted by heavy wheels, and littered with all [Pg 298] manner of débris, broken-down wagons, dead horses, accoutrements thrown away, and occasionally the body of a man, overlooked by the burial squad. ”

“ Attack again! Keep on trying! The enemy will break if you try hard enough! The wedge must be driven, whether through woods, over slopes, or through trenches. Again reorganization; [336] again the line re-formed to make the most of gains; again the artillery ordered to concentrate on the woods for an attack at 6 P.M. This time the jumping-off place was so near the woods, that the Germans, when the barrage descended upon them, were as a rule disinclined to wait for the charge. ”

“ With a force of five thousand men and eighteen guns and with only two thousand European troops in his army, Wellesley defeated and utterly cut up an army of over forty thousand men and an artillery force of a hundred guns, and these, too, were the finest native fighting troops in the Peninsula. In less than three hours after the first assault the five thousand had conquered the forty thousand and captured a hundred and two guns and all the stores and ammunition, and it should always be remembered that Assaye was a very different business to Plassey. ”

“ The enemy followed the fleeing column, capturing and wounding many at the town of Ripley. Next morning the Federals made a stand. Again the Phalanx bore the [Pg 362] brunt of the battle, and when finally the troops stampeded, held the confederates in check until the white troops were beyond capture. But this was all they could do, and this was indeed an heroic act.
The confederate says:
"Long before daylight found us moving rapidly to overtake the flying foe. ”

“ On the morning of the 18th the support battalions passed through the front line, and, rushing and outflanking [549] machine-gun nests, in a fight that became a scramble of units, each clearing its way as fast as it could, numbers of our men broke through to the northern edge of the wood. All the while the Germans, instead of holding fast to their positions, were acting on the offensive at every opportunity, infiltrating down the ravines, as they tried to creep around isolated parties, and again charging them. No commander could direct his troops under such conditions. ”