Chapter XV (2)

If there were real grievances in India as regards our rule, it must have been common in all the Presidencies. But in Madras there was only unrest, never real danger. In Bombay, save in one case, at Kolapore, the same conditions obtained; but the whole region of the Ganges between Lower Bengal and the Punjaub was the scene of general revolt, general massacre in most instances of the European troops. There were more than forty military stations where revolt occurred. In many of them the European army speedily regained the ascendancy. But three centres stand out among the dreadful details of the dismal story--Cawnpore, Lucknow, and Delhi; and the last was, as far as there was a centre at all, the focus of the whole Mutiny. The insurrection was without plan, and was a complete surprise. Had it been otherwise, had the mutineers made common cause, had less delay been given to the British to concentrate their strength in India, from other neighbouring colonies and from home, the end might have been more distant, the struggle more prolonged, but the final result would have been none the less assured.

Fortunately, the great semi-independent states remained either quiescent, or offered active help; on the other hand, the method first adopted of disbanding the mutinous regiments, and therefore instigating them in one sense to reinforce the Delhi centre, where arms were numerous, only strengthened the insurrection. Stronger men in the beginning, like Napoleon’s “whiff of grape shot,” might have nipped the whole thing in the bud. If the few mutineers had been shot down first, and then told, as far as the rest went, to lay down their arms, “the beginning of wisdom” might have grown somewhat more rapidly into the souls of those who, influenced by example, hysteria, religious mania, and drugs, also began to think of revolt. Nothing is more catching than such epidemics. When, at one time, sundry British soldiers thought it would be an out-of-the-common act to shoot their officers on parade, the stupid, wicked idea spread, until the authorities were wise enough to put the hysteria down by the summary method of speedy trial and death.

Of the three most important places, that of Cawnpore is of chief interest, from its sentimental side. The fugitive survivors of the rising at Futtyghur fled down the Ganges as far as Cawnpore, where they were confined in the Assembly Rooms, by the order of Nana Sahib of Bithoor, who commanded the rebels there. The garrison of Cawnpore, at no time strong in Europeans, had been denuded of some of the white troops to reinforce Lucknow. There were but 150 European soldiers all told, including detachments of the 32nd, 84th, and Madras Fusiliers, when the storm burst. A rude entrenchment had been formed round the hospital barracks and the soldiers’ church, and was defended by eight guns. Opposed to this handful were at least three revolted battalions, besides all the ruffians of the city, supported by a number of 24-pounders. In such a case the end could not be long coming, though it delayed for twenty-two days.

Though the greatest bravery was shown, such as when Captain John Moore of the 32nd, though severely wounded, made a sortie with twenty-five men, and spiked some of the enemy’s guns, the buildings were soon so riddled with shot as to afford little protection, and a portion of the hospital had been fired by shells and burnt. So the capitulation was made, on the solemn oath of Nana Sahib, that no life should be taken. Needless to say, that promise was not kept. On reaching the river bank, the massacre began, and culminated in the shooting or bayoneting of the whole of the white men, and the temporary confinement of the surviving women and children with their unfortunate fellow-sufferers from Futtyghur in the Assembly Rooms at Cawnpore. Here they were all massacred.

The army of relief was approaching, but it was too late to arrest the awful conclusion to the defence of Cawnpore. Havelock advanced from Allahabad with but 1300 men, including the 64th, 78th, and 1st Madras Fusiliers, and after four severe skirmishes at Futtehpore and elsewhere, during which the 64th and 78th carried a battery of guns, and “went on with sloped arms like a wall till within a hundred yards and not a shot was fired,” while, “At the word ‘Charge!’ they broke like a pack of eager hounds, and the village was taken in an instant.” When the column had reached Cawnpore, it had marched 126 miles in eight days and captured 24 guns!

Ample vengeance was taken for the massacre. The sight alone of the room where it had taken place inflamed the men beyond expression. Old soldiers wept, others divided locks of the hair of their murdered countrywomen and vowed revenge. There was little quarter given by Havelock’s column from that time forward.

General Neill was left in charge of the station, and ruled with an iron and a merciless hand.[65] His orders were: “Whenever a rebel is caught, he is to be instantly tried, and unless he can prove a defence, he is to be sentenced to be hanged at once; but the chief rebels or ringleaders I make first clean up a certain portion of the pool of blood, still two inches deep, in the street where the fearful murder and mutilation of women took place. To touch blood is most abhorrent to the high-caste natives; they think by doing so they doom their souls to perdition. Let them think so! My object is to inflict a fearful punishment for a revolting, cowardly, and barbarous deed, and to strike _terror_ into these rebels. The first caught was a subadar, or native officer, a high-caste Brahmin, who tried to resist my order to clean up the very blood he had helped to shed. But I made the provost-marshal do his duty, and a few lashes soon made the miscreant accomplish his task. When done, he was taken out and immediately hanged, and buried in a ditch at the roadside. No one who has witnessed the scenes of murder, mutilation, and massacre can even listen to the word ‘mercy’ as applied to these fiends.”

Havelock, meanwhile, was “pacifying” the neighbourhood with his handful of men. He destroyed Nana’s palace at Bithoor, he beat the rebels at Oonao, at Busserut Gunge, and Zaithpore, he attempted to relieve Lucknow; and though there was some desperate fighting, in which the British were locally successful, his force was too weak to reach the besieged, and he fell back, still fighting, to Cawnpore, reduced to but 800 men. He moved out again four days later, 1300 strong, to defeat the enemy at Bithoor again and return. But reinforcements were long in coming, for at Dinapore the regiments had mutinied and impeded communication with the south. Outram from Persia then assembled at Allahabad a column of 1500 men, including the 5th and 90th, and joined Havelock at Cawnpore. The most striking and noteworthy thing in all these operations is the exceeding smallness of the insignificant armies which were hastily assembled to crush the insurrection.

Cawnpore itself was now safe, and it was around Lucknow, therefore, that the main interest centred till the suppression of the revolt. It was the last important point in the war, for Delhi was taken before Lucknow; and this is how Delhi fell.

There had been, at first, only a native garrison in the cantonments near the capital of the Great Mogul. There was a contingent of European residents and a few officers, but no white troops. Practically, therefore, no resistance could be offered to the rising of the mutineers and to their brutality and bloodshed. Willoughby, with six other men, held the insurgents at bay long enough to blow up the great magazine, and when he fled, not a white was left alive in Delhi. Wilson, with the 60th and the Carbiniers from Meerut, commanded the advanced guard, and first engaged the enemy about fifteen miles from Delhi. The entire relieving force was under General Barnard, and contained detachments of the 9th Lancers and Carbiniers, and the 60th, 75th, 1st and 2nd Bengal Fusiliers, and some Ghoorkas, besides guns. Further resistance was experienced outside Delhi, and then Barnard sat down before the town. He seems to have been too weak for the work he had to do. Prolonged resistance only increased the morale of the mutineers, and gave them confidence. It is possible, therefore, that though the enemy fought throughout with the desperation of despair, an assault might have been successful, and the moral effect of victory at this juncture more than valuable. On the other hand, defeat would have been disastrous, and in Delhi were collected the largest, best organised, and most complete army the insurgents possessed. So the attack partook of the nature of a siege, without a complete investment of the fortress. The enemy were vigorous, and made frequent sorties, once even making an attack on the rear of the camp by a wide detour. On this day, the anniversary of Plassy, the fighting lasted for fifteen hours. The heat was terrific; the men were exhausted by long marches, little food, and incessant fighting. The generalship was of no high order. Neither Barnard nor Reid, his second in command, were equal to the occasion. In June the total force of Europeans numbered but 3000, with three battalions of Sikhs, Guides, and Ghoorkas, comparatively new levies.

Throughout all India, even those parts not then affected by the storm, panic began to spread. Calcutta was in terror, though the 37th and 53rd were there, and the Sepoys at Barrackpore had been disarmed. Elsewhere risings were common, sometimes suppressed by the bravery of a few; in other and more numerous cases, resulting in the death, with or without torture, of the mass of the European residents.

Thus the siege of Delhi drew to a conclusion, and the illness of the two leaders left General Wilson in charge of the operation. He was reinforced by Nicholson with 1000 Europeans and 1500 Sikhs. Small still as the army was, it was now able to take the offensive, and no more dashing officer than John Nicholson could have been selected for the duty. A force, some 7000 men strong, had left Delhi, to threaten the rear and communications of the army, and against this he moved with a mixed force, in which were the 9th, 61st, and 1st Fusiliers. The enemy was dispersed by the gallantry of the European troops who formed the first line, flanked by horse artillery batteries, and Nicholson retraced his steps to Delhi. It was the last of the sorties. By this time the siege train from Ferozepore had arrived, and with it a welcome reinforcement of a wing of the 8th Foot, a Belooch battalion, and detachments of the 9th and 60th, besides other native levies. By the 14th September two breaches had been made, and the assault was made in four columns. Of these, the first, under Jones, was directed on the Water Bastion, whence they were to move towards the Cashmere Gate, but he missed his way at first, and hence caused delay, but eventually he got in and pushed towards the Cabul Gate; the second, under Nicholson himself, carried the breach near the Cashmere Gate, and its leader fell mortally wounded near the Lahore Gate; the third, under Reid, attempted the Lahore Gate, but was repulsed with heavy loss; the 4th, under Campbell, had the difficult task of carrying the Cashmere Gate, which was blown in by a party consisting of Lieutenants Home and Salkeld, Sergeants Smith and Carmichael, and Corporal Burgess of the Engineers, Bugler Hawthorne of the 52nd, and 24 native sappers, though with severe loss. Through the gap charged the storming column of the Oxford Light Infantry, and by night the whole outer fringe of the city, from the Water Bastion to the Cabul Gate, was in the possession of the assailants, though the rest of the city was still in rebel hands. But not for long. The heart of the resistance was broken, and the 21st September 1857 saw the capture of the puppet king, and the death of his son and grandson, by the hands of Hodson of “Hodson’s Horse.”

Only Lucknow now remained in hostile hands. The fire was fast dying out in all parts of the empire, and therefore the operations could be conducted on a more consistent and deliberate plan. Lucknow had been in severe straits. Early in June a large force of rebels had assembled there and laid siege to the Residency, held by Lawrence with the 32nd, commanded by Inglis, and some 500 loyal natives. The details of that remarkable defence are such that it would be impossible in a brief space to enumerate the acts of heroism that accompanied the defence of Lucknow or the scientific skill with which the defenders, of whom Napier of Magdala was one, conducted the desperate contest.

At first it was hoped that relief would come in a fortnight, but eighty-seven weary days passed before the first help came. Then Havelock attempted it alone, with some 1300 troops, as has been already pointed out, but though unsuccessful, his advance had relieved the pressure on the beleaguered garrison, and enabled them by a bold sortie to reprovision the Residency, where provisions had run short.

His next effort was after Outram had been appointed to the chief command; but the latter magnanimously refused to take the work off Havelock’s hands, and offered to accompany him simply as “Chief Commissioner of Oudh.” The army, 2500 strong, in two brigades, in which served the 5th, 64th, 84th, and 1st Madras Fusiliers, the 78th and 90th, starting from Cawnpore, crossed the Ganges by a pontoon bridge, and so brought about the first real assistance to the garrison of Lucknow. The march was opposed from the outset. There was severe fighting at the Alumbagh, “the garden of the Lady Alum, or beauty of the world,” four miles from the Residency; but the British attack was irresistible, and five guns were taken. The next stand made was at the Charbagh, or “Four gardens,” but Outram with the Fusiliers, 5th, 6th, and 84th, carried the line of palisaded guns with a cheer, and Havelock, with the 78th and 90th, dashed into the town, carrying everything before them, though every inch of ground was disputed. Obstacles had been created on all sides, and the houses prepared for defence and loopholed, were occupied. But the “petticoated devils,” as the mutineers termed the Highlanders they met in battle for the first time, drove everything before them until the Residency was reached. It was only just in time, for the mutineers had driven mines beneath the defending walls, and soon all would have been over. In the assault some four hundred men had fallen, and among them the gallant General Neill. But the “relief” was a reinforcement only. The combined garrison was too weak to force its way through the still overwhelming masses of the enemy, with so many non-combatants to guard. So Havelock and Outram were, like Inglis, besieged in their turn for nearly fifty days.

During this time, Greathed, with the 84th, some of the 9th Lancers, and the 3rd Bengal Infantry, afterwards the 107th Regiment of the line, had cleared the country about Alighur and Agra; and Sir Hope Grant had reached Cawnpore with a column, and moved to Alumbagh, defeating the rebels at Canouj on the way. Here he was joined by Sir Colin Campbell, and the final relief of Lucknow was begun with Peel’s Naval Brigade, a strong force of artillery, and the 9th Lancers, 8th, 53rd, 75th, and 93rd Regiments of the line, which, with other troops, made a total of about 3500 men, to which were soon added detachments of the 23rd, 82nd, etc., and others of the 5th, 64th, and 78th.

The route chosen was by way of the Secunderabagh, “Alexander’s garden,” where the first severe skirmish took place, and here some 2000 of the enemy perished by the bayonet alone. Small wonder that with the recent remembrance of “Cawnpore,” no quarter was asked or given. It was too late for mercy. The fighting continued from building to building and from garden to garden, till on the 17th, Outram and Havelock met Sir Colin Campbell, who had begun his soldier’s career far back in the Peninsular days, when he carried the colours of the 9th Foot at Corunna, outside the battered walls so long and so gallantly held. The cost to the relieving force had been 467 officers and men killed and wounded. Even now it was impossible to remain and continue the contest. Occupying the Alumbagh with a brigade under Outram, the Lucknow garrison evacuated the blood-stained ruins of the Residency. There too Havelock died.

“The retreat was admirably executed, and was a perfect lesson in such combinations. Each exterior line came gradually retiring through its supports, till at length nothing remained but the last line of infantry and guns, with which I remained myself, to crush the enemy, had he dared to follow up the pickets. The only line of retreat lay through a long and tortuous lane, and all these precautions were absolutely necessary to ensure the safety of the force.”

An instance of the fury which characterised the fighting at the Secunderabagh is admirably told in Forbes Mitchell’s _Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny_. The hero of the story, around whose private history there was evidently more romance than usually falls to most men, bore the name of Quaker Wallace, the final name being fictitious, the first a nickname; and when the signal for the assault was given, he “went into the Secunderabagh like one of the furies, plainly seeking death, but not meeting it, and quoting the 116th Psalm, Scotch version, in metre, beginning at the first verse--

‘I love the Lord, because my voice
And prayers He did hear.
I, while I live, will call on Him,
Who bow’d me to His ear.’

And thus he plunged into the Secunderabagh, quoting the next verse at every shot fired from his rifle and at each thrust given by his bayonet--

‘I’ll of salvation take the cup,
On God’s name will I call:
I’ll pay my vows now to the Lord
Before His people all.’

“It was generally reported in the company that Quaker Wallace, single-handed, killed twenty men;” but be that as it may, the quaint religious fervour of this gallant soldier of the 93rd is a quaint survival of the same stern fanaticism of the Cameronians who fought and suffered in many a skirmish besides Bothwell Brig.

Cawnpore had in the meantime been again attacked, and thither Sir Colin, with the rest of the force, including the non-combatants, moved, reaching their destination on the 28th November. His arrival was most opportune. The Gwalior contingent had appeared before the town, and Wyndham, who commanded, had led out against them some 2000 men of the 64th, 82nd, 88th, and 34th Regiments. But the enemy were too strong. The rebels, 14,000 strong, with 40 guns, were reinforced by the relics of Nana Sahib’s army. Forcing back the weak British army, they held the outskirts of the city, capturing the mess plate of four regiments, together with the Arroyo des Molinos trophies of the 34th, and the wearied soldiery, having suffered terrible losses, were in sore straits. It was then that Campbell, cool and resolute, arrived; and when on the 1st December reinforcements came from Allahabad, the end was near. Cawnpore was bombarded for the last time, and the rebels retreated by the Calpee road, pursued first by Sir Colin Campbell, and then by Sir Hope Grant, with terrible effect. Guns and stores were captured, and the broken remains of the Gwalior contingent fled to join the mutineers who still held Lucknow, but who were watched and checked by Outram in his strongly defended position at Alumbagh.

Much good work was done elsewhere, to which only brief reference can be made--by Colonel Seaton about Pattialah, where he was afterwards reinforced by Sir Colin Campbell, in which the 6th Dragoon Guards took part; by Colonel Raines in Rajpootana, with the 95th; by Sir Hugh Rae in Central India, with the 42nd, when Roohea was unsuccessfully assaulted; and by General Roberts, also in Rajpootana, with the 8th Hussars and 72nd, 83rd, and 95th line Regiments at the storming of Kotah: but the Mutiny was practically crushed, and only the Lucknow force remained as a serious organised body of the enemy to be dealt with.

While the dying embers of the Mutiny were elsewhere, as already referred to, being stamped out by daily increasing forces, and with increasing determination and success, Outram still held at bay the 50,000 men who faced him at Alumbagh. That they did not do more than they did is proof positive that they knew already that the game was up, and that the rebellion had collapsed. Outram’s communications with his chief at Cawnpore were never, as heretofore, seriously endangered. Brigadier Franks had given one or two outside bands a lesson at Chanda which was effective, before he joined the army headquarters before Lucknow.

Sir Colin Campbell had marched from Cawnpore on the 28th February 1858, and out of his army of 30,000 men nearly 20,000 were Europeans, with 100 guns, and this without Franks’ contingent, and the handy force of Ghoorkas under Jung Bahadoor. England had played her usual careless game. Surprised at first, the innate courage of her fighting men had pulled her through her political and military difficulty. When the national spirit was aroused, real armies were created, and the end was certain.

In the final attack on the city, nothing is more curious than to note the strong feeling of military camaraderie between the Sikhs and the Highlanders. It is not enough to say that they showed a gallant feeling of emulation. They fraternised. Both regiments advanced equally, “stalking on in grim silence,” and without firing, till the bayonet came into use. The Highlanders stormed a building at the Secunderabagh by tearing the tiles off the roof, at Sir Colin’s own suggestion, and dropping into the building that way.

So, stage by stage, Lucknow was taken. The rebels were utterly routed, and never seriously afterwards did the rebellion raise head again. But many valuable lives had been lost in doing their duty; and among them was Major Hodson, who had had the courage, when Delhi was carried, to kill, with his own hand, the last scions of the Mogul Empire. Dreadful the deed, but dire the necessity. Whatever may be thought of him, he lived the life of a gallant soldier, and like one fell. Victoria Crosses were issued to eight officers for their bravery during these campaigns, and there were very many others who were equally deserving. No war, of which there is record, contains such numerous and continuous instances of self-denying heroism as does the Mutiny. Never were individual men more placed in the position of doing their duty and displaying the most magnificent heroism. As far as the “Story of the Army” goes, it may be recorded that the following regiments bear war honours on their colours for the good work they did in saving our Empire in India from utter destruction. “Lucknow” is borne on the colours and appointments of the 7th Hussars and 9th Lancers, and of the 5th, 8th, 10th, 20th, 23rd, 26th, 32nd, 34th, 38th, 42nd, 53rd, 64th, 75th, 78th, 79th, 82nd, 84th, 90th, 93rd, 97th, 101st, 102nd, and the Rifle Brigade. “Delhi” is carried by the 6th Dragoon Guards and 9th Lancers, and by the 8th, 52nd, 60th, 61st, 75th, and 104th Regiments of the line. The name “Central India” is worn by the 8th Hussars, 12th Lancers, 14th Hussars, and 17th Lancers, with the 27th, 38th, 71st, 72nd, 86th, 88th, and 95th Regiments.

Lucknow was practically the closing scene of the great struggle. There were still insurgent bands, no longer armies, to suppress; notorious rebel leaders to seek for and oftentimes never find; disturbed districts to settle down; all these things had to be done before peace passed over the land. Peace that was problematical then, even after the war of vengeance that was only righteous because of the hideous cruelties which caused it; peace that must always be superficial and doubtful. Youths yet unborn, if patriotic Indians, as were many of their ancestors at this time, however misguided in the course of action they adopted, may yet turn back to the burning history of the past, and may rise to avenge past conquest, and what may seem then, as earlier, present wrong.

The Romans governed England well, and raised it from savagery to civilisation. They introduced the higher arts of peace, founded our system of municipal government, created the first lighthouse on an English coast. But they came as aliens and left as strangers yet. Within but a few years, all traces of their holding of Magna Britannia had ceased to be, save in ruined homes, wrecked villas, grass-grown, unused roads, and abandoned towns. They conquered Britain by the sword and held it by the sword, so long as their military hand was strong enough to use and grasp the weapon. When their military power ceased, other and stronger and possibly less scrupulous nations took the lead in this our land. So it may be in India yet. Justice may be admired, but is rarely loved, so long as it is administered by foreign hands. Herein lies the strength and power and possibly the future hope of Russia. The Anglo-Saxon colonises and replaces peoples, the Slav absorbs. He has absorbed Central Asian khanates as we never have Indian native states; and yet his rule anywhere will not compare in any one degree with ours as regards justice, development, and care. None of these things matter when the human _ego_ has to be taken into account. That personal equation, the man himself, is left out of the question with the dominant Saxon. The less dominant, because more receptive and absorbing, Russian, whose blood runs in many a branch of the races that go to make up India, acts otherwise, and his chance of ultimate success, when the trouble of the future comes, is greater than that of the Saxon, who now rules with every good intent in the place of Mogul emperors and Hindu kings.

The Mutiny was one of those rare wars which were based on pure political reasons, that is, reasons based on conditions other than mere military considerations or those of conquest. It was unlike many of our other struggles, in the past, and recently, which were begun for reasons of policy. Policy and politics are not synonymous terms, though they are spelt much the same way. This serious contest grew up internally, from internal disagreement and disease which might have been diagnosed. Many of our other campaigns were based on a desire for conquest, a dread of the possible action of neighbouring powers which it might be to our interest to forestall, or to that natural expansion of empire which all colonising nations are subject to; and which means the subjection or destruction, for purely colonial or commercial reasons, of the races who stand in the way of what enterprising colonial empires think their national right. Whether their antagonists recognise it is “another story.”

One great result of the troubled time through which the nation passed during 1858 was that it led to a further and considerable increase to the army. In March of that year second battalions were added to the twenty-four regiments of the line after the 1st Royals, whose second battalion, created earlier, had remained in existence, and a fresh regiment, the 100th, or “Royal Canadians,” was raised in Canada and added to the _Army List_. The 5th Dragoons were restored as Lancers, and the 18th Hussars were raised at Leeds; while, when the Indian army was incorporated with the national forces, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd European Bengal Cavalry became the 19th, 20th, and 21st Hussars; and the European fusilier battalions of the Bengal, Madras, and Bombay armies were placed on the _Army List_ as the 101st, 102nd, 103rd, 104th, 105th, 106th, 107th, 108th, and 109th Regiments of the line, dating their seniority from 1861. To this increase, a permanent one, not one man raised an objection, a marked contrast to the times that had been. The dread of the standing army was at last as “dead as Queen Anne.”

The half-civil, half-military instruction of the army aspirant, the Sandhurst cadet, began to partake more of the latter character than the former; and was to be changed still more in another decade or thereabout. The utter failure of the staff in the Crimea had pointed out, what all foreign nations had already recognised, that a special training for some, if not all, of the staff officers of the future was advisable. So the Staff College came into being in 1858, and first established, more fully than the old “Senior Department” of the Royal Military College of Sandhurst, the principle that the work of the staff in the future can only be learned by studying the mistakes and successes of the past; that the art of war is by no means conjectural, but that he who knows what has been done can learn from that teaching how to do it again and do it better. The age of the “heaven-born soldier,” a rarity even greater than the black swan, was a thing of the past. To pitchfork unknown or untried men into the most difficult of all duties, that of working the machinery that makes or mars an army--its staff work--belonged to an earlier age than now.

But another great movement arose, the end of which no man can foresee, save that it has saved the nation from the dire evils of conscription. No really free nation ever has or ever will accept the fetters of compulsory service unless it feels there is a real reason for it. Nothing but actual invasion would ever make free Englishmen accept conscription as a principle, though they accepted in the long war what was almost worse. The pressgang, compulsory service in its worst, most one-sided, and most cruel form, was endured, but hated. But when, however, our late ally, France, irritated by the fact that our free political institutions did not admit of our handing over to her tender mercies men who, however ruffianly, had threatened the life of the Emperor Napoleon on political grounds only, and when the colonels of her army asked in the intensity of their sycophancy (for, as after events proved, the third Napoleon had no great hold on the affections of his people) to be led against “_la perfide Albion_,” the old spirit rose.

The spirit of individual help towards the national defence had been clearly shown as that of boyhood when the century was yet in its teens; in 1853 it had its second stage of youth; and finally in our time was to grow into first adolescence, and then vigorous manhood.

With all her pride, and its consequent self-sufficiency, with all her natural self-respect and self-belief, there is no nation really less military, at the heart of her, than Great Britain. Always a fighting race, it may be that this is why she is reluctant to fight, and is therefore always unready. She began the Crimean War with her usual curious sort of half-reluctant enthusiasm, and with an army of about the Peninsular type. She finished the war, the only nation then prepared and anxious to fight on, and, stronger than before, to push it to a successful termination when her allies were somewhat more than half-exhausted. But this very reluctance makes her serious when roused. And the uncalled for insult that she, of all nations in the world, was open to invasion at the call of French colonels called out all that curious innate fearlessness of battle which has helped British soldiers in many a hard-fought field to victory. Never were the English people more at peace, and more anxious to be. Never did they more willingly throw that feeling to the winds than when a body of French colonels insulted the whole English race.

So for a third time the civilian laid aside his mufti and clutched the uniform and rifle. By the middle of 1859 there were six thousand men armed and willing to fight. It is not necessary here to enter into the controversy of the merits or demerits of this force. It began one way, it has finished another. It began, helped by a fulsome praise that can only be called hysteric; for the first idea it had was to reduce or abolish the army for the sake of a force of _not_ soldiers, but merely men in arms, and which was for a time the laughing-stock of all Europe! Anything more ludicrous, and from a military point of view contemptible, than the early days of these willing and patriotic enthusiasts cannot be imagined. They played at soldiers in the most absolute way, and though much improved, they are very far from perfect now.

At first they were designed merely as local corps of varying strength, and were to have merely a company organisation. A separate manual even, the “Drill and Rifle Instruction for Corps of Rifle Volunteers,” was compiled with the specific purpose of minimising the amount of instructions to be given. This could, it was considered, be imparted in six lessons, and Sir Charles Napier in his “Letter on the Defence of England” strongly advises the new soldiery not to “let anyone persuade you to learn _more_.” Of course all this has long changed, and now the volunteer undergoes the same training as the soldier or the militiaman, but without that continuity that alone can make it of first value. Discipline and drill, if not synonymous terms, run hand in hand. The former naturally follows on the latter if it be continuous and sustained.