MODERN WAR IN ITS CHILDHOOD.

"WHEN," said the great apostle, "I was a child, I spake as a child, and thought as a child; when I became a man, I put away childish things. The history of modern war appropriates this as its motto; and, although the art is now in its manhood, it does not require a long look backward to find the days of its childish thought, speech, and action.

In modern Europe, war did not become a trade, so to speak, until the Crusades, which, among their many influences upon the world, introduced standing armies into Europe. There was great need of these armies afterwards, for from the days of the Crusades foreign wars, involving many nations, began: wars in Italy, begun by the ambition of Charles of Anjou; wars in Germany, the legitimate inheritance of the Hapsburgs; wars between England and France. But why enumerate?-wars everywhere made men of war necessary. Under the receding feudal system, vassals had been sufficient for internal wars and baronial feuds; but for foreign and distant wars, armies must be organized and equipped.

First, monarchs hired troops, who were called mercenaries; and Switzerland, from her sterility and health together, furnished strong and adventurous men, who played for a long time the principal part in the battles of Europe, endeavoring to realize the words of Tiberius Gracchus, that "it was better to have the conquest of the world before them than a few sterile acres at home." But they were mutinous; they turned their arms treacherously to those who paid best; and so, in self-defence, as the necessity grew stronger, princes, disgusted with the free companions and condottieri of the mercenary system, began to maintain their own armies, and to glory in the number and excellence of their troops. Many, indeed, verified the apothegm of Montesquieu, that "a prince who has a million of subjects cannot, without destroying himself, maintain more than ten thousand troops; only great nations can have armies;" and thus there were military spendthrifts who wasted their fortunes, not in riotous living, but in tall grenadiers and brilliant regiments, and in work that was made without justice expressly to employ them. On this account, the militia in different countries were put in training; and, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, the army of England consisted of enrolled militia, with difficulty gotten together, in peaceful times once a year for a general enrolment, and for training of the individuals four times a year, two days at each time. This word militia, which is derived from miles, a soldier, indicated the great force of a nation, to be used only in emergencies; and these militia, outnumbering any standing army, must, after all,

in time of invasion, be the bulwark of the country. As late as the fifteenth century, few men learned war professionally, and even these few limited their knowledge to a campaign under Peterborough, or Eugene, or Marlborough, or whatever great general might be in the field; and so very often it was the ignorance of the enemy rather than the knowledge of the general which led to his success. There were indeed great military geniuses, whom the soldier must always regard with admiration; but they stood isolated, the exceptions to the rule. The old system, with its great generals, among whom must be mentioned Marlborough and Eugene, Montecuculi and Frederick, was in its training and progress under the first, and found its full perfection under the last. Their strategy was limited in scope, and to the plainest lines; their greatest claim was to be considered tacticians. The new system is the Napoleonic system, founded, established, perfected, by Napoleon the Great, who was a double incarnation of European democracy and of the military art,— his strategy so perfect that you hesitate to compare it with his tactics, his battles so beautiful that you forget his strategy in reading them.

Look for a moment at the old system,-the system of routine, of punctilio, of fighting a little and waiting a little, of going into winter-quarters at the approach of autumn: it was a glorious system for comfort, and war was truly a most gentlemanlike profession.

Was it a campaign in Flanders? Louis XIV. leads it in person against the allies: nec pluribus impar is his haughty motto. Gallant gentlemen, powdered and ruffled, in velvet and silk, have their magnificent equipage, with the army; SaintSimon, the charming author of the Memoirs, is in company, with thirty-five horses and sumpter mules; the princesses of the blood, surrounded by high-born ladies, accompany the king, and Louis gives them a grand review, the like of which has scarcely since been seen in Europe: "one hundred and twenty thousand of the finest troops in the world drawn up in a line eight miles long." The spectacle lasted a summer-day. This force besieges Namur: in eight days it is taken; for it is in great straits, and the exploit is sufficient for months of inaction. Well might the titled Frenchmen cry, "Vive la guerre!" We shall see how this was altered in the new system.

At Fontenoy, one of Marshal Saxe's famous battles, fought in 1745, when the terrible English column had advanced to within fifty paces from the French guards, it is recorded that the English officers saluted the French, taking off their chapeaux; this salute the French officers returned very gracefully. My Lord Charles Hai, captain in the English Guards, cried out, "Messieurs des Gardes Françaises, nous attendons votre feu!" (Gentlemen of the French Guards, we wait for your

fire). The Count de Haute Roche answered, in a loud voice, "Gentlemen, we never fire first; be good enough to fire yourselves." Truly polite, the English fired, and with what terrible execution history has informed us.

Nor was England exempt from the feebleness and military torpor which pervaded Continental arms under this system. In 1485, Henry VII. had a body-guard of only fifty men, half bowmen and half musketeers.

When the Spanish Armada was absolutely on its voyage to invade England, there was great consternation: the wealthy fled from the shore in confusion; the statesmen and soldiers were divided in opinion whether they should undertake to defend the coast or whether they should let the Spaniards land and then treat with them. Essex, Burleigh, and Raleigh were against fighting, and Raleigh,-think of it!-Raleigh said, "In a battle the invader can only lose men, but the defender may lose a kingdom." All were at fault except Queen Bess, who, mounted on horseback, marshalled her troops, applauding the brave, reproving her senators and chiefs, and we are sorry to say, but history so records-swearing like a trooper at all cowards and unpatriotic people. She was in this respect arrogating the rights of some other great generals of whom later history informs us. A great spur in the art military was given to the English nation by that unfortunate and lamentable event called the civil wars, a great evil to produce a great good. Conducive as they were, through much blood and suffering and national degeneracy, to civil liberty, they were also conducive to the instruction of the English in the military art and teaching her her own strength and resources.

To illustrate this. Just before the civil war, no wadding being yet used, the shot could only be delivered breast-high, for fear it will roll out at the muzzle: the citizen-soldier, or rather the unsoldierly citizen, did wonders when he had accustomed himself to the recoil, and did not shut both eyes at the flash of the powder in the pan. The pike was sixteen feet long, and was an awkward weapon without long practice. How such facts rob history of its romance!

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When the civil wars were over, the rifle, which had been introduced in the Thirty Years' War, was brought to England; ballcartridges for muskets and pistols were in common use. forms which had been mostly, although not quite, Fallstaffian, or a ridiculous and slow transition from the time of chivalry, began to exert their unquestionable influence, and in the reign of Queen Anne the red coat with blue facings came into history as the mark of an English soldier. In the time of William IV. a work was begun in London at the Horse-Guards, and has since been continued, giving the full history of every regiment in the English service, with a succession of its field officers, and fine

colored plates, illustrating every change in the uniform,—a very pretty book for an enthusiastic youngster. But, to go back a moment to the civil wars, we are told that Cromwell's regiment of horse fought so well because they prayed so well. So might it be; earnestness is an element of enthusiasm, and there were in the Puritan ranks men who displayed their faith in the constant superintendence of Providence by constant prayer. I doubt not that a praying Puritan was a dangerous man to meet.

"Come, boys, my brave boys," said Major Shippon; "let us pray heartily and fight heartily, and God will bless us." But had the Cavaliers nothing to fight for and nothing to pray for, and were there no men of prayer among them? We may be sure that many a devoted subject of the erring king held sincere converse with Heaven in his behalf, and, if he lived to see the restoration of his son, died like that most glorious old hero of Woodstock, Sir Harry Lee, of Ditchley, with the nunc dimittis on his lips.

Sir Jacob Astley, a gallant gentleman, and-charity compels us to think-a reverent man, prayed in this quaint style :-"0 Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget thee, do not thou forget me. March on, boys!" We grant the errors of Charles I. and the flagrant crimes of Charles II.; but the Cavaliers of the civil wars have been strangely misconceived and misrepresented in history.

Nor was this dearth of military force in England prior to the civil wars due in any degree to the want of individual prowess or ambition; for Gustavus Adolphus had with him in the Thirty Years' War four lieutenant-generals, twenty colonels, and a great number of inferior officers, among whom was Major Dugald Dalgetty the ritt-master,-all natives of England or Scotland. Indeed, England's insular station, while it kept her much out of the politics of the continent, caused her to lag behind in the art of war.

If now we turn to the English navy at the time England was threatened by the immense force of the Armada, we shall be more astonished at her day of small things,-the very little power with which Britannia began to rule the waves. It needed indeed such menaces as this and Van Tromp's broom at the mast-head to rouse the goddess to a proper self-respect.

The Armada consisted of one hundred and fifty vessels, twenty thousand troops, designed to join thirty-four thousand which were awaiting them, under the Duke of Parma, in the Netherlands. This immense fleet was fully victualled for six months, manned by eight thousand sailors, had two thousand six hundred and fifty guns, and equipments to correspond. Among the troops were two thousand volunteers from the best Spanish families. It was called the Invincible Armada, and its coming was terrible. Now, what available force had England to cope

with this force or resist its irruption? Thirty ships of war only; but a few public-spirited citizens who raised others; a few great admirals,-Howard, Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, -and these, in flying attacks, were sufficient to check them until God blew upon them with his breath, and they were scattered. Well might Queen Elizabeth put just such a motto on the medals she issued to her brave defenders:-Afflavit Deus, et dissipantur!

We might thus trace the progress of the military element in Spain, and its decline under such lying, treachery, cruelty, and imbecility as marked its monarchs after Charles V. It would be most interesting to consider the splendid history of the military art in France, making the French people in name, as they are in geographic position, the most military nation on the globe; but we must forbear, with the single remark that in the science of war France is now in advance of all other nations, her military periodicals, and her aide-mémoires for every arm, being the vade-mecum to officers of every service. Of her practical excellence let the history of her recent campaign in the Crimea and Italy tell.

And now let us take for the remainder of the article a campaign from modern history, which we have chosen also as an illustration of the new system, that of Napoleon, because it contains at once a campaign, a battle, and a siege, and thus unites all the military elements of a land war. It is only to its strategy that we can refer; its tactics alone would take hours to read.

Shutting our eyes to Napoleon's political greatness and his mission in history, he comes like an apparition upon the military world, like a marine volcano in a summer sea. A young man, not twenty-seven years old, shoots like a comet from Paris, beats the great German captains before they even see him, fights battles in December, re-establishes old Roman republics on the Po, on the Mediterranean, subverts all the old rules of war, declares of systems of war, as he declares of revolutionary constitutions, "There are no systems, but hold! I will make both;" displays a knowledge of strategy involving every mountain-spur and rivulet in Europe, and every detail of tactics, grand and little, the result of intuition as much as study, and gives such an impetus to the art of war that, alas! many, dazzled by its glories, esteem it a just and splendid thing, and la gloire has led the French where la patrie et la religion sternly forbade. Napoleon was the god of his army and the idol of France.

But we shall limit ourselves to the illustration we have proposed: it is the strategy of the campaign of Marengo. It involves the movements of three armies: that of Moreau, on the Danube, which we shall not touch; of Massena, on the Mediterranean, ending in the siege and reduction of Genoa;