Note 10 — INTRODUCTION

General Chesney, commenting lately on these numbers, remarks that “numbers without discipline are, after a certain point, worse than useless, the men only get in each others’ way. This was especially the case in the battles of old times fought at close quarters.” “The biographers of Sir Charles Napier,” he continues, “have made a great point of the circumstance that at the battle of Meani the British force of less than 3000 men was opposed by 40,000 of the enemy who fought desperately for several hours. Now, the whole British loss in killed and wounded was under 300, so that, assuming every wound to have been inflicted by a separate sword or bullet, it follows that out of the 40,000 desperate fighters, 39,700 contributed nothing to the fighting.” In another passage he points out that an ancient battle was in some respects a much more formidable thing than a modern one. In the battle of old days the absence of noise, except the words of command, the tramp of men, and the clashing of armour, above all the closeness of one’s adversary, must have been of a kind to try the nerves much more than the rattle of musketry, the crashing of shells, and the thunder of the artillery in a modern battle. What we shall never get back to is hand-to-hand fighting at close quarters. It was this that made a battle so decisive in olden days, and caused the tremendous slaughter that used to be the fate of the beaten side. An ancient battle was really a very short affair. After the marshalling of the troops and the preliminary skirmishing of the cavalry and the archery practice of the light troops, in which a good deal of time would be taken up, the business must have been decided in a very few minutes when once the infantry actually engaged. The fact is that when two bodies of men meet with sword or spear, a prolonged contest is from the nature of the case impossible. In modern warfare when a battle is lost, a large part of the defeated army is already at a distance and gets off unharmed. But there was no escape for the man in armour, and when he turned his back his shield was no defence.