he would, hand to hand perhaps, have encountered no unworthy competitor. But Charles Edward was unequal to such an undertaking; he retired when he should have advanced, forsook the cause on the first turn of fortune, and abandoned his devoted followers, without even offering his own worthless life in ransom for their blood, to the savage cruelty of a conqueror, whose defeats were less disgraceful than his triumph, whose brows victory crowned with asphodels instead of laurel, and whose name will be handed down to posterity as the exterminator of an erring and misguided race, distinguished for a degree of gallantry and of devoted attachment to their ancient line of kings, that would have ensured for them the generous forgiveness and admiration of all who had either the head to appreciate or the heart to feel the value of such rare and noble qualities.

Trusting to the reader's indulgence for this short digression, we return to the thread of our subject, and proceed to bring forward other proofs of the weakness of modern infantry, as by tactics established.

*

It is well known that till within these few years the Russians never ventured, unless when covered by chevaux-de-frise, to await the sword-in-hand onsets of the Turks. As soon as the turbaned warriors had been brought up by the iron spikes of the firm-footed Friezelanders, and had inhaled a little sobriety from the well-plied muskets ranged behind, then the victory was complete, the Faithful went to the right about, and leaving tents, guns, Pashas, and Viziers alike in the lurch, every man betook himself, for that year at least, to his own home. If on the other hand they broke in among the forefinger tacticians, which but for the chevaux-de-frise could hardly fail to happen, then the scymetar raged quick, fierce, and masterly, till checked only by the want of victims, or by the excess of the very fury that brought it into action.

In the war of 1778 two scenes of this kind took place near Chotzin, in the first of which three Russian regiments were completely destroyed before they could be supported, though forming one of the centre squares of the army; and in the second, the second battalion of the grenadiers of St. Petersburgh were cut up to a man by a similar swordin-hand onset, and with a degree of celerity that was not the least astonishing part of the whole transaction. We are indebted for a knowledge of these facts to the memoirs of Prussian officers sent on one or two occasions by Frederick II. to accompany the Russian armies: for the Russians themselves never mentioned these "untoward events," a sufficient reason perhaps for our not having a longer list of them, as the Turks, to whom the trouble of fighting was enough, never wrote bulletins till they lately took up the science as part of the European system of tactics; forgetting, unfortunately, that a good blow of a scymetar is worth at least nine-tenths of la grande science. It was during the same war that the celebrated Hassan Pascha raised the siege of

* For the manner in which the chevaux-de-frise were carried, put together, and actually manœuvred, see Manstein's Memoirs; for the Russians, with characteristic ingratitude, never mentioned the services of these useful allies. As to the general fact that most of the Russian and Austrian victories were owing, not to their tactics, but to their chevaux-de-frise, it may be gathered even from the writings of our own countrymen Bruce and Crawford.

the castle of Lemnos in such a gallant manner.

He crossed over from the Troad in open boats during the night, and landed on a retired part of the island with only 1500 men, few of whom had even pistols in addition to their swords. Having set his skiffs adrift, he told his followers that victory was their only resource, and immediately led them against the well-disciplined Russians, men who had fought with success against the armies of Frederick himself; but who were here so completely routed by the superior courage and energetic mode of fighting of a handful of desperadoes, that those who escaped the scymetar, owed their safety less to tactics and science, than to the speed of their ignominious flight, and the vicinity of the boats of their fleet consisting of seven sail of the line besides transports and other vessels.

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The affair of Dubitza is still more striking, and is thus related in Bushen's Memorabilia (Merkwürdigen Welthändel) of modern times: "A breach in the strong rampart that forms the only defence of Dubitza having been effected, the assault was attempted. But the Turks, making at the same moment a sortie, and also forcing their way sword-in-hand through the breach, inflicted so heavy a loss on the Imperial army, that the latter, owing also to the appearance of another party of Turks who showed themselves at a distance, were forced to raise the siege and retire from before the place. The history of Polybius records the only other instance of similar daring to be met with in the annals of war." What Marshal Lascy says of the Turks and their mode of fighting, is too much to the purpose to be here passed over. "The Turks," says he, are proud, most of them are also personally brave, and their very principles (grundsatze) make them hate their enemies. From this it results, that the actions fought against them are generally very sharp; their great skill consists in the dexterous use of the sword, so that whenever they are successful they invariably kill and wound a vast number of men.' Against such a mode of fighting, the Field Marshal, himself one of the founders of the present school of tactics, knows no remedy but to cover his battalions with chevauxde-frise. It is only behind the iron spikes of these faithful allies that cuirassiers and bayoneteers, the pink and pride of modern tactics, are deemed safe from the simple scymetars of the bold and the resolute. Might not the Marshal's own words serve as a funeral oration for his science; and can its utter insufficiency be more strongly illustrated.

That the Turks have of late years been constantly the losers in their wars against the Christian powers, has been owing less to their want of tactics, than to their want of organization, method, and subordination: without these all other military qualities are, in the present systematic mode of warfare, perfectly unavailing, and of these the Moslems have been totally destitute. Had they combined these qualities with their former mode of fighting, and known its full value and efficiency, the late bold coup-de-pointe across the Balkan, would probably have been paid for in Russian heads in place of Turkish piasters; for, as far as we can make out, it was an enterprize founded upon no strategical principles whatever: but was merely risking an army, in the real Napoleon style, on the chance of events that fortune might bring about, but which the strength of the invaders could not effectuate. It proved successful; for war, like all other lotteries, has its prizes, whose glittering rewards offer tempting inducement to the leaders, though unfor

tunately the poor soldiers invariably pay the forfeiture of the blanks that in such mere games of chance follow pretty close behind.

To the instances above quoted one of a later date must be added, because it is only by being made to pay for the impressive lessons of experience, that our vanity allows us to profit by them. After the first expedition to the Persian gulf, 500 sepoys, trained and instructed in the European manner and commanded by English officers, were left behind in order to check the marauding propensities of some of the native tribes. This detachment was attacked by a party of Arabs, who sword-in-hand rushed upon them in the real Turkish and highland style, and cut them down almost to a man. We appeal to the officers of the 65th regiment, who were subsequently sent to avenge this insult, whether that gallant corps ever witnessed a more precarious contest than that in which they were engaged with the tribe of BenAli: let them say what the result would have been, if the Arabs, who were far inferior in numbers to the total of the British force, had, instead of opening out from the fire of the 65th regiment, borne straight down upon them, or had been so judiciously led as to arrive unawares on the British line, in the manner in which they came upon the picquets the night after the landing.

But how, it may be asked, does it happen that soldiers regularly trained to war should be inferior to men who have nothing but native daring in their favour? Simply because there is nothing energetic in modern tactics: the men have no skill in the use of the clumsy arm placed in their hands; they are not trained to individual exertion; have, consequently, no confidence in their individual power, and only look to the mass for results; an error amply shared by all modern tacticians, who entirely forget that a mass of men has strength and value only in proportion to the strength of the individuals composing it. Nothing is so easy, therefore, as to account on just principles for the overthrow of the infantry in the cases above cited. We have seen by comparing the number of killed and wounded in modern battles with the number of combatants, that it requires, on an average, more than a day's exertion to enable an infantry soldier to put an enemy hors-decombat or we may say, that it requires 100* musket-shots to produce that effect. At all events the duration of a modern action, and the numbers engaged when compared with the execution done, amply proves how slowly regular infantry perform their work of destruction. On the other hand, men who fight as the Turks and highlanders once fought, perform their work of destruction in a very expeditious manner: they can hardly be exposed during more than a minute to the fire of their enemies; for 250 or 300 yards is the greatest efficient range of musketry-fire, and this is a distance that active men will easily traverse in about a minute without suffering much loss, we may presume, from those who, as we have seen, require a day each before they bring down an adversary. And when they close, what can modern infantry oppose to the bold and spirit-stirring onset of enemies, skilful in the use of an arm whose every blow tells, and whose blows are dealt with a rapidity that soon puts all idea of priming and loading out of the question?

* By some calculations no less than 200 shots are required. We take 100 as the lowest estimate we have seen.

Their bayonets, perhaps,-"risum teneatis amici!" Let any one hold up at arm's length a musket and a bayonet, feel its weight and handiness, and look at its form; he will first see the thick and clumsy butt bending downwards, then the straight line of the barrel with its heavy lock, next the arm of the bayonet standing off at a right angle, and, lastly, the shaking blade itself again slanting away to the right; the entire of the rickety zig-zag instrument measuring from butt to point six feet two inches, projecting, at the position of the charge, about three feet and a half from the soldier's person, and weighing twelve pounds; and this is the sort of thing with which soldiers, totally untrained to its use as an arm of personal combat, are expected to oppose the sword, the handiest and most efficient weapon ever put into the destroying hand of man; and the very wave of which acts as an electrifying power on the spirit of the brave.

The bayonet may in full truth be termed the grand mystifier of modern tactics. Musket-balls have brought thousands and thousands of men to the ground, because hundreds of thousands of shots are fired on every occasion; round and grape have also helped to irrigate the thirsty earth with the blood of her children; the sabres of the cavalry have occasionally dealt efficient blows, and the spears of the lancers may at times have overtaken some wretched fugitives, who had not sufficient courage to face even so paltry an arm; but the bayonet shines in virgin brightness, hailed as the victor of every field, and yet undimmed by the blood of fighting men: it is the arm, par excellence, of an age whose power of intellect wins battles by mere pressure of a fore-finger and by the bloodless display of this Mesmerian arm, before which the heads of the mighty are bowed to the dust, and the backs of the fierce turned to hasty and ignominious flight.

That men have fled before our bayonet proves nothing. The science of tactics, rendered necessary in order to curb the evil propensities of mankind, can rest with safety on the sad and melancholy power of destruction alone. The effect produced on the imagination can never be relied upon, because the effect produced one day may not follow on the next: the French cavalry generally stood the charge of the British; why then should the infantry always be expected to run away? and what would have been the consequence if in some of the headlong attacks made by British infantry upon vastly superior numbers, they had come against foes provided with efficient arms, well-skilled in their use, and closing as boldly as the French cavalry generally did? If by good fortune this has not yet happened, it may happen, and should, therefore, be provided against; for military history is little more than a succession of delusions that disasters have alone dispelled.

Having seen how far tactics and training qualify the soldier for close fighting, let us next see how he gets on in distant and other occasional modes of combat.

After the unfortunate attack on Rosetta in 1807, three companies of the 78th and some other detachments, whilst attempting to effect their retreat to Alexandria, were defeated and taken by a party of Albanians, who surrounded them, and kept them constantly at long shots, without ever attempting to come to close quarters: it was, on a small scale, an exact renewal of the defeat of Crassus and his legions, without the Roman skill in hand-to-hand combat, could the action have been

brought to that issue. The Albanians, owing to the wretched construction of their long and unwieldy muskets, and to the badness of their ammunition, their balls being invariably cut or hammered into any shape but a round one, are well known to be even worse shots than the trained soldiers of Europe, and their only mode of fighting consists, like that of the Parthians, in keeping their enemies at a distance. Yet before such men was a strong detachment of the proved soldiers of England forced to lay down their arms! Totally unskilled in any mode of individual contest, they sought shelter only in a square, and thus presented an almost infallible mark to the aim of their unskilful enemies: their own fire being at the same time too inefficient to make any impression on their scattered foes, who, it is well known, would not have remained in the open field exposed to much danger; for the Greek revolution war, the heroic struggle par excellence, offers no instance of a Greek or Albanian force ever risking the loss of even fifty men in the open plain as long as the means of flight were in their power. That the Albanians far out-numbered our troops on this occasion is very true, but it is the object of tactics to render the few capable of contending against the many.

Several of the actions, or skirmishes rather, fought during our last American war in Upper Canada, furnish ample proof of the disadvantage under which mere tactical soldiers fight when contending against men who, however inferior in every essential military quality, happen to be individually superior in the use of arms. Owing to our firmness and discipline, we were generally victorious in those actions; but as the actual fighting took place with arms in the use of which we were far, and needlessly inferior, our success was always attended with a greater proportionate loss than what we suffered when contending against the disciplined armies of Europe: a loss much greater too than what should have been experienced from enemies who, however brave and superior in point of numbers, were yet far from being our equals as soldiers.

One of the actions of this ill-conducted war* is too strikingly illustrative of the effects of tactical training to be here omitted.

An American army, that in European warfare would have been called a corps, was surprised by the 49th and 89th regiments, at a place called Stoney Creek. The attack was made by night; the sentinels were cut down before they could give the alarm, and so well was every part of the onset conducted, that the enemy were literally found fast asleep in their tents and bivouacs: the victory was actually gained before a single man had been lost. But the evil genius of modern tactics, "That pagod thing of sabre sway,

With front of brass and feet of clay,"

grants no bloodless victories, and was not to be defrauded by either party of its usual share of slaughter: the men, totally unused to the bayonet as an arm of personal contest, began to fire; the Americans sprang to their arms, a desultory night-action commenced in the woods, all the advantages of the surprise were completely frustrated, and the

Ill-conducted by the English and Canadian Governments. The defence of the immense frontier of Canada by a few weak battalions and untrained provincials, reflects the highest credit on the actual defenders.