Combat

“ I will make the blood to stream from their joints, when the sculls of the warriors leap from the blow of my sword. How many chiefs, when they see me eager in the fight, throw away their arms, and save themselves by flight! I am the bold one. As to [85] the fire of war, I kindle it, and hurl the tribes into punishments and death. Death, in the direful combat, fears me, when the battle-dust rises; and the sand-cloud is like a blazing fire. My joy is in the encounter of heroes, when spears and swords clash in my grasp. How many battle-dusts have I dived into, fearless of calamities! ”

“ The illuminators are never tired of representing battles and sieges; and the general impression which we gather from them is that a mediæval combat must have presented to the lookers-on a confused melée of rushing horses and armoured men in violent action, with a forest of weapons overhead—great swords, and falchions, and axes, and spears, with pennons fluttering aloft here and there in the breeze of the combat. ”

“ War may have been well enough in the days when it was a game for heroes, but now it sweeps into the combat everything and every man within a nation. The unknown soldier stands for us as symbol of this blind and far-reaching fury of modern conflict. ”

“ I heard two eminent war-correspondents lecture recently, and I noticed that those passages where fights were described were applauded to the echo. The more ferocious the combat the more vigorous the cheers. ”

“ On the eve of a combat which promises to be so violent, when all these mortal enemies confront one another, the needs of the fight itself and of finding effective weapons will certainly give me the unexpected jolt which will strike out the sparks which will show me the truth. ”

“ After a combat nobly sustained—a combat which would have excited the respect and sympathy of a generous enemy—my fate has been to become a prisoner, to the eternal disgrace of those who gave the orders. ”

“ And, in return for your exhortation of me, I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict. ”

“ Those who array themselves as foes to smite us, O Indra, be they kin or be they strangers,- Strike thou their manly strength that it be feeble, and drive in headlong flight our foemen backward. 4. With strength of limb the hero slays the hero, when bright in arms they range them for the combat. When two opposing hosts contend in battle for seed and offspring, waters, kine, or corn-lands. 5. Yet no strong man hath conquered thee, no hero, no brave, no warrior trusting in his valour. ”

“ Mayst thou unbrace thy corslet, nor lay by
Thy sword; nor yet, O Freedom! close thy lids
In slumber; for thine enemy never sleeps,
And thou must watch and combat till the day
Of the new earth and heaven. ”

“ And the combat that took place between them, O king, was fierce in the extreme, for unable to vanquish each other, they mangled each other terribly. And thus in that general engagement thousands of single combats took place between men on cars, warriors on elephants and horsemen, and foot-soldiers, of their side and thine. ”

“ So shall he strive, in changeful hue,
Field, feast, and combat, to renew,
And loves, and arms, and harpers’ glee, 191
And all the pomp of chivalry. ”

“ We have already said that every strategic act can be referred to the idea of a combat, because it is an employment of the military force, and at the root of that there always lies the idea of fighting. ”

“ Come, then, let us go to battle, wounded as we are, from necessity. There, then, let us ourselves approach the combat, out [of the reach] of weapons, lest any one receive wound upon wound; and, encouraging others, we will urge them on, who hitherto, gratifying their souls, have stood apart, nor fought. ”

“ A challenge or a combat a l'outrance, to extremity, was a fix'd term in the law of arms, used when the combatants engaged with an odium internecinum, an intention to destroy each other, in opposition to trials of skill at festivals, or on other occasions, where the contest was only for reputation or a prize. ”

“ A protracted war, including many battles, may be a stubborn contest. Combat, originally a hostile encounter between individuals, is now used also for extensive engagements. A skirmish is between small detachments or scattered troops. ”

“ A fight is begun, then, for the sake of shining, for the glory of victory, for the love of fame. A close ring is made around the combatants, and excited and eager eyes follow the glitter of the knives which do not cease to move. ”

“ That such men should turn encounters with an enemy into trials of skill, subject to certain rules of fairness and courtesy, though conducted with sharp weapons and in deadly earnest, is also natural. [384] And thus we are introduced to a whole series of military exercises and encounters, from the mere holiday pageant in which the swords are of parchment and the spears headless, to the wager of battle, in which the combatants are clad in linen, while their weapons are such as will lop off a limb, and the gallows awaits the vanquished. ”

“ I sent you them both at the same time, and the combat ceased for want of combatants. ”

“ In this effort we see, therefore, the FIRST immediate purpose in the combat, and one which is quite universal. No combat is imaginable in which this effort, either in its double or single form, is not to go hand182 in hand with the plain and simple stroke of force. ”

“ But there is in all strong natures the primitive combative instinct,—the let-us-see-which-is-the-stronger, which delights in contests, which is undismayed by opposition, and which grows firmer through the warfare of the soul. ”

“ This state of war foments in every individual a ferocious spirit. The practice of attacking, and of defending themselves, creates in them an inflexible courage that [Pg 86] delights in perpetual combats, and glories in a contempt of life. ”

“ There are some battles, also, which claim our attention, independently of the moral worth of the combatants, on account of their enduring importance, and by reason of the practical influence on our own social and political condition, which we can trace up to the results of those engagements. They have for us an abiding and actual interest, both while we investigate the chain of causes and effects, by which they have helped to make us what we are ”

“ It is true, my lords, that I find combats of two natures authorized, how justly I will not dispute as to the latter of them. The one, when upon the approaches of armies in the face one of the other, particular persons have made challenges for trial of valors in the field upon the public quarrel. ”

“ Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him. ”

“ That general engagement then, in which the warriors encountered one another with swords and scimitars and lances and battle-axes, became exceedingly dreadful. The heroic combatants caused a river there, that ran its course towards the regions of the dead. The blood of elephants and steeds and human beings formed its current. Weapons formed its fish in profusion. ”

“ Strength exhausted, arrows spent, bow-strings snapped, swords shattered, the two armies fall upon one another in the supreme struggle for life or death. To yield is to become the barbarian's slave: to fight is to mingle our bones with the desert sand... ”

“ And to resent with arms all injuries, Or snares and pit-falls for a neighbor lay, Absurd he deems, as it would be, upon The field, surrounded by the enemy, The foe forgetting, bitter war With one’s own friends to wage, And in the hottest of the fight, With cruel and misguided sword, One’s fellow soldiers put to flight. ”

“ Where I can fight for liberty and Thee.
Give others, God, the glory; mine the right
To stand beside my comrades in the fight,
To die, if need be, in some foreign land—
Absolved and solaced by a soldier's hand.
O Lord, my God, pray barken to my prayer
And keep me ever humble, keep me where
The fight is thickest, where, 'midst steel and flame,
Thy sons give battle, calling on Thy name. ”

“ A Match in Strength, in Courage, and in Age, And with keen Weapons Arm’d, alike engage Each other they assault with furious Beaks, And their twin’d Plumes distain with Bloody streaks, Each nimble Warrior from the Mat-ment bounds, And wing’d with death, their heels deal ghastly Wounds By turns they take, by turns fierce stroaks they give, And with like Hopes, and Fears for Conquest strive. ”

“ The battle is not yours; it is not in your own strength, not for your own cause, that you engage; the battle is God's: he does and will, as you have desired, interest himself in the cause." 3. He gives them intelligence of the motions of the enemy, and orders them to march towards them, with particular directions where they should find them. ”

“ Our gracious Lord hath gathered here in one,
For all your foes and his assembled are,
That one day’s fight may end seven years of war.
XV
“This fight shall bring us many victories,
The danger none, the labor will be small,
Let not the number of your enemies
Dismay your hearts, grant fear no place at all;
For strife and discord through their army flies,
Their bands ill ranked themselves entangle shall,
And few of them to strike or fight shall come,
For some want strength, some heart, some elbow-room. ”

“ As, at the moment of battle, the general, motionless on a height which commands a view of his army, hastens, orders, scolds his scattered battalions, absent and yet everywhere, animating with his own inspiration the warlike masses, and exciting them with the excitement of his own soul, he invokes victory, and victory replies, “Behold me!” ”

“ And the kings stand by for battle,
And twixt these two is the fighting.
Bent on war the face of each is,
Ever moving or encamping,
Yet no swords are drawn in warfare,
For a war of thoughts their war is. ”

“ A battle offers the spectacle of, say, a hundred thousand men lifted up suddenly and simultaneously into a mood of intensest passion—heroic or diabolical—eager to kill and willing to be killed; a mood in which death and wounds count for nothing and victory for everything. ”

“ A deserter now, when, in our little rectory corps, I see the hands that grasp the sword growing weaker, and the hands that uphold the sword-bearer’s growing frailer, and when, in eyes keen to pierce the Enemy’s darkness, I read the growing peace prophetic of the battle over? ”

“ To destroy the young and aged,
To out-root his race and kingdom;
Conjures men with broadswords girded,
For the war he fashions heroes,
Fashions youth with spears adjusted,
Bearing axes on their shoulders,
Conjures thus a mighty army,
Hastens to begin a battle,
Bring a war upon his brother. ”

“ Who then fears to draw the sword, And fight the battle of the Lord? Who then dreads the violent, Or fears the man of pride? Or shall I flee from two or three If He be by my side? Who then fears to draw the sword, And fight the battle of the Lord! ”

“ We read of grand strategic combinations, of masterly plans of attack and admirable counter-strokes of defense. On the battlefield we hear of gallant charges, superb rushes of cavalry, indomitable resistance. Our military historians largely give us the impression of man in battle as in the exercise of his highest powers, and war as something glorious in the experience and heart-thrilling in the contemplation. ”

“ And from afar there comes a sound like the confused din of battle,—muffled roaring of cannon, the clatter of fire-arms, the rumble of the earth beneath the hoofs of raging horses,—prayers for the dying can be heard, beseeching pleas to the guider of battles, the chaos and the anguish and the wrath of the fight move farther and farther away ”

“ You ride ruthlessly through the plans of battle and campaign my textbooks show, and make sixes and sevens of them. At sight of you the heaviest lines of battle dissolve into thin air and into mist the fastest fortress falls. At the coming thought of you brigades and armies melt away, and your face stands out a radiant evangel of peace, the very thought even of wars and turbulences dispelling.... What am I to do? I cannot chain myself to study the science of strife when this heavenly vision is calling me—and it is ever calling—to love and love only.... ”

“ The young soldier who in his first battle tastes the bitterness of defeat and endures the hardships of the hurried march, the wakeful rest under arms, the wretched food, the dirt and worse than dirt, the continual strain upon the nerves, and all things else which are the portion of the conquered, will see war divested of all its seeming glory ”

“ Prepare war; muster up all your strength; wake up the mighty men; call them into your service; excite them to vigilance and resolution; let all the men of war draw near. Let them come and enter the lists with Omnipotence if they dare; let them not complain for want of weapons, but let them beat their ploughshares into swords and their pruning-hooks into spears. ”

“ Flamed from his martial eye;
He who seemed a soldier born,
He should have the helmet worn,
All friends to fend, all foes defy,
Fronting foes of God and man,
Frowning down the evil-doer,
Battling for the weak and poor. ”

“ For all fighting, whether at long range or at close quarters, is very much alike, from schoolboys’ games to the most elaborate military operations; and all the advice of the world may be summed up in the eternal law of attack and defence, which is stated in these four words:—cunning, caution, energy, audacity. ”

“ Hence it is that in martial discipline, the uniformity and lustre of our habit, the regularity of our figures and motions, with all the pomp and majesty of war, encourage ourselves and allies; while the same objects in the enemy strike terror into us, though agreeable and beautiful in themselves. ”