Detachment

“ I think, since you permit me to express my opinion, sir, that the detachment is in far less danger from the inclemency of the weather than from Ensign Raymond’s inexperience. A judicious officer would have faced about at once and returned to the fort before he could be blockaded, with the drifts filling the mountain defiles. ”

“ So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them. ”

“ Sometimes a detachment, having imprudently ventured into some thorny thicket to attack a village perched on a rocky summit, would experience a reverse, and would with great difficulty regain the main body of troops, after having lost three-fourths of its men. ”

“ While the men under Falkins were being misled and trapped, another detachment had slipped fortuitously upon a scouting party of the enemy, and, being less fatigued by reason of an easier course, they were stealing through the bosque with unabated caution, and not one of that scouting party escaped alive except two who were captured. The detachment rejoined the platoon, and in view of the spirit in which the main command received these prisoners, they finally laid aside their show of sullen stubbornness and talked volubly. ”

“ If, however, the defenders obstinately refuse to be drawn, and the leading detachment has shouted itself hoarse to no effect, it is relieved by a second, or even a third, until the siege is abandoned for the day. ”

“ The dangers to which the elements expose them here are too well known, and the greater dangers to which they would be exposed at home, were any general calamity to involve their whole fleet. They can attack us by detachment only; and it will suffice to make ourselves equal to what they may detach. ”

“ Few men in the regiment had better prospects—a common mind might have regained in a great measure its equilibrium; but how often is it the case, that when a mind of sensibility and genius errs, ‘it falls, like Lucifer, never to rise again.’
CHAPTER X. DETACHMENT. In the course of duty, I was one of a detachment sent to a village about twenty miles from head-quarters, where the inhabitants were in a disturbed state. ”

“ After a considerable amount of trials we decided that a man or a detachment shall be considered to be isolated when there is less than half its number of its own side within a move of it. Now, in actual civilised warfare small detached bodies do not sell their lives dearly; a considerably larger force is able to make them prisoners without difficulty. ”

“ Small detachments, consisting of active, spirited young men, headed by intelligent and enterprising officers, are sent forward to take possession of the different defiles, woods, passes, and to post themselves close to an enemy’s post, for the purpose of blocking it up until the whole of the army has marched by. ”

“ Upon the stronger fortresses direct assaults were rare, but when the attacking party felt themselves to be superior, the Vu-ni-valu issued orders for a general advance, specifying the detachment which was to have the honour of leading. There is nothing impetuous in the manner of attack. ”

“ Therefore in war, according to Clausewitz, concentration, concentration, concentration, and every division or detachment is an evil which can only be justified by urgent necessity. Here again we find a simple truth, which, however, the history of all wars shows us to be very difficult to carry out. Hence the value147 of keeping such an imperative maxim always in our minds. ”

“ By the flight of the Coolies, intimation of our design is soon conveyed to the Candian government, and the necessary orders immediately issued for calling out the inhabitants, which orders are punctually complied with, as well from the dread of the punishment of disobedience, as from the people being interested in the defence of their country. Long before our detachments can be equipped, the enemy is arrayed in force ready to receive them. ”

“ Those in the middle will march straight against them, and the other two divisions will surround them on the right and on the left. When the middle detachment begins to walk toward them, they will think that we are all there, and so they will leap forward. ”

“ If enemies have reached the portage at all, a thing by no means probable, as our scouts are abroad, they will surely be found skirting the column, where scalps abound the most. The route of the detachment is known, while ours, having been determined within the hour, must still be secret. ”

“ Should you be able to gain certain intelligence of the time of their intended embarkation, so that you may be able to take advantage of it, and fall upon the rear of the enemy in the act of withdrawing, it will be a very desirable event; but this will be a matter of no small difficulty, and will require the greatest caution and prudence in the execution. Any deception or precipitation may be attended with the most disastrous consequences. You will remember that your detachment is a very valuable one, and that any accident happening to it would be a severe blow, to this army ”

“ Mr. Lally received information, that the detachment had been paraded, and suspected the service for which it had been intended. Such a proof of the opinion which the English army entertained of their own superiority, convinced him that it would soon be followed by some real blow of equal detriment, if they were not immediately convinced, that his own was capable of more than acting on the defensive. He resolved to attack their camp by surprize on the night of the 4th, and his dispositions were made with much skill and sagacity. ”

“ If the enemy, observes the same writer, has his camp-ovens on the right or left, and you are covered by a small rivulet, you may make a flank disposition, and by that manœuvre, suddenly return and detach ten or twelve thousand men to demolish his ovens; and whilst you are protected by the main body of the army which is ordered to support the first detachment, you may seize upon all his flour, &c. ”

“ Whenever the enemy assembled in force, detachments were sent against them; if weaker than these, they would retreat; if stronger, assault and harass, or destroy them. Defenceless villages were suddenly attacked, the houses burned, and the men, women and children killed, or carried into captivity. ”

“ In the times in which we now live men are quick enough to discover excuses for changing their saddles. This despatch contains all our secrets: where we are strong, where we are weak, where we want to assume the offensive, where we are obliged to stand on the defensive. Such a despatch would be worth 200,000 florins to the enemy at the very least.'
"'I can assure you, General, that neither I nor this lady will betray it.'
"'You couldn't if you would, for the whole despatch is in cipher. ”

“ There is a briar rose smashed to death; there is grass uprooted and a teazle crushed aside, a farmer’s drain pipe snapped and the edge of the pathway broken down. Destruction! So they are doing all over the world, all over the order and decency the world of men has made. Trampling on all things. ”

“ One would think that if obliged to pronounce such a doom upon any, he would do it with tears—that he would retire into his closet, and throw ashes upon his head, and come forth in sackcloth, overwhelmed at the hard necessity which compelled the stern decree. ”

“ But while the physical desolation of the land is that which is primarily set forth in this brief opening section of the chapter, there is also contained in it, if not directly, at least indirectly, an announcement of a destructive judgment of the people, " inasmuch as the desolation of the land also involves the destruction of the people living in it." ”

“ But they are not the questions with which I am at present concerned. The decadence respecting which I wish to put questions is not literary or artistic, it is political and national. It is the decadence which attacks, or is alleged to attack, great communities and historic civilisations: which [Pg 7] is to societies of men what senility is to man, and is often, like senility, the precursor and the cause of final dissolution. ”

“ If we are looking only for a single thing—the hand which lit the conflagration—and not for the profounder and more permanent causes and origins of the trouble, we can at once dismiss several of these suspects from the dock. ”

“ For that reason, we urge the publication of these truths, that the struggle may no longer be waged in ignorance and doubt and confusion.”
“Does ‘massed forces of destructive purpose’ imply some combination, or co-operation, or co-ordination, among disintegrating forces?” Mary K. was asked, at another time.
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“Yes, they combine every appealing force, as we do. One man may answer to doubt, fear, cupidity, and envy. Another to malice, doubt, and lust. Any forces that can reach him mass themselves in attack and call on their purposes in him to respond.” ”

“ When it became evident, from the menacing cries and groans of the multitude, that danger, if not destruction, was meditated to the harmless and inoffensive inmates, a flag of truce appeared, and an appeal was made in their behalf, by the principal, to every sentiment of humanity which these beings might possess,—a vain appeal! Whatever human feeling had ever, if ever, filled these souls was utterly drowned and washed away in the tide of rapine and blood in which they had been steeping themselves. ”

“ Like a flood that slowly undermines a bank, and which the proprietor regards not when he sees so tiny a current dribbling and oozing through, and scarcely bowing the grass between which it trickles, so came the Destroyer—slowly and almost imperceptibly undermining the current of life, and eating out the foundations, until there needed but one mighty rush, and all was over beyond recovery, and the work of destruction was completed. ”

“ The reason of choosing such situations is stated to be in order that they may more readily escape by passing underneath their houses, and through the defile, in the event of any disagreement and hostile attack in reference to other rulers or neighbours. ”

“ We are destructive, or rather, accurately speaking, we should like to be destructive--only we aren't. That was a bad miss of mine. But if we like to destroy, you women love to annex. Witness that pile of seaweed and shells beside you. ”

“ The only Danger I apprehend of Obstruction to your March, is from Ambuscades of Indians, who by constant Practice are dextrous in laying & executing them. And the slender Line, near four Miles long, which your Army must make, may expose it to be attack’d by Surprise in its Flanks, and to be cut like a Thread into several Pieces, which from their Distance cannot come up in time to support each other. ”

“ Here we find expressed the all-important principles of distraction on the one hand and concentration on the other; to fix the enemy's attention and to strike where and when he least anticipates the blow. ”

“ The Enemies of the present Establishment have shown sufficiently that they perfectly understand the shortest way to our infallible Destruction, when they bend their principle Force at dividing us into Parties, and keeping those parties at the utmost variance. ”

“ The captive’s chains shall be broken, whether they bind more directly the body or the soul, although the ancient political organizations of Europe, and the more recent fabrics of America, should be torn asunder and tossed away in the process, as foam is tossed from the crest of a wave upon the shore. ”

“ Is desertion rare and much abhorred? Or so common that men are no longer shot for it now? So you may go on enumerating until it strikes you that you are simply drifting into an inventory of all the details of the enemy's wartime life, in the field and at home. ”

“ The principle of modern defences, therefore, is necessarily no longer a complete enceinte, as in old days, by which the place to be protected was surrounded by a cunningly devised system of ramparts and ditches, so arranged as that the various parts mutually supported each other ”

“ No one expected an attack in so open, exposed and unsheltered a place, yet it was the very one selected for such a purpose. The wily savages knew that we would be upon our guard in passing a defile, a thick wood, or a rocky canon ”

“ Every step and stage in decadence belonged to the process of conquest, of confiscation, of subjection of foreign races, who were made to pay for the vast machinery that kept them subject till they were unfit for self-defence. ”

“ Destruction is multi-faceted. Even the simplest system has a structure and performs functions. If the spatial continuity or arrangement of an entity's structure is severed or substantially transformed - its functions are usually adversely affected. ”

“ Bleeding in the feet, for example, so rarely practised in better times, is now among the fashionable follies of the day. That gentle, civilized system of evacuation, which prevailed under my auspices, is subverted by the reign of anarchy and emetics, of quackery and poison. In short, chaos is come again! Every one orders what seems good in his own eyes; there is no deference to the authority of ancient wisdom; our masters are laid upon the shelf, and their axioms not one tittle the more regarded for being delivered in languages as defunct as the subjects of their application. ”

“ The political incident of the deposition is sketched with extraordinary knowledge of the world;—the ebb of fortune, on the one hand, and on the other, the swelling tide, which carries every thing along with it. ”

“ Destruction is upon them already; all will be destroyed, as the circumstances stand, before the master acts to avert peril. Something must be destroyed at all events. The only volition to be exercised is, Shall the destruction be anticipated as to part, to procure the rescue of the rest? ”

“ Treason they feel to be their crime; each individual carter feels himself under the ban of confiscation and attainder: his blood is attainted through six generations, and nothing is wanting but the headsman and his axe, the block and the sawdust, to close up the vista of his horrors. ”

“ While Vergli, Fortunatus, or Vulnar Remain at large, destruction threatens us. Destroy this trinity and dangerous force 95 Of Will, and thought, and optimistic hope, And all will flow serenely once again. The torpid languour of the working men Will soon return to lull them all to sleep, As in the good old days gone by, when I Ruled o’er the roost in undisputed sway. ”