CHAPTER II.
STORMING OF SAN SEBASTIAN.
To assault the breaches without having destroyed1813. August. the enemy’s defences or established a lodgment on the horn-work, was, notwithstanding the increased fire and great facilities of the besiegers, obviously a repetition of the former fatal error. And the same generals who had before so indiscreetly made their disapproval of such operations public, now even more freely and imprudently dealt out censures, which not ill-founded in themselves were most ill-timed, since there is much danger when doubts come down from the commanders to the soldiers. Lord Wellington thought the fifth division had been thus discouraged, and incensed at the cause, demanded fifty volunteers from each of the fifteen regiments composing the first, fourth, and light divisions, “men who could shew other troops how to mount a breach.” This was the phrase employed, and seven hundred and fifty gallant soldiers instantly marched to San Sebastian in answer to the appeal. Colonel Cooke and major Robertson led the guards and Germans of the first division, major Rose commanded the men of the fourth division, and colonel Hunt, a daring officer who had already won his promotion at former assaults, was at the head of the fierce rugged veterans of the light division, yet there were good officers and brave soldiers in the fifth division.
It being at first supposed that lord Wellington merely designed a simple lodgment on the great breach, the volunteers and one brigade of the fifth division only were ordered to be ready; but in a council held at night major Smith maintained that the orders were misunderstood, as no lodgment could be formed unless the high curtain was gained. General Oswald being called to the council was of the same opinion, whereupon the remainder of the fifth division was brought to the trenches, and general Bradford having offered the services of his Portuguese brigade, was told he might ford the Urumea and assail the farthest breach if he judged it advisable.
Sir James Leith had resumed the command of the fifth division, and being assisted by general Oswald directed the attack from the isthmus. He was extremely offended by the arrival of the volunteers and would not suffer them to lead the assault; some he spread along the trenches to keep down the fire of the horn-work, the remainder were held as a reserve along with general Hay’s British and Sprye’s Portuguese brigades of the fifth division. To general Robinson’s brigade the assault was confided. It was formed in two columns, one to assault the old breach between the towers, the other to storm the bastion of St. John and the end of the high curtain. The small breach on the extreme right was left for general Bradford’s Portuguese who were drawn up on the Chofre hills; some large boats filled with troops, were directed to make a demonstration against the sea-line of the Monte Orgullo, and sir Thomas Graham overlooked the whole operations from the right bank of the river.
The morning of the 31st broke heavily, a thick fog hid every object, and the besiegers’ batteries could not open until eight o’clock. From that hour a constant shower of heavy missiles was poured upon the besieged until eleven, when Robinson’s brigade getting out of the trenches passed through the openings in the sea-wall and was launched bodily against the breaches. While the head of the column was still gathering on the strand, about thirty yards from the salient angle of the horn-work, twelve men, commanded by a serjeant whose heroic death has not sufficed to preserve his name, running violently forward leaped upon the covered way with intent to cut the sausage of the enemy’s mines. The French startled by this sudden assault fired the train prematurely, and though the serjeant and his brave followers were all destroyed and the high sea-wall was thrown with a dreadful crash upon the head of the advancing column, not more than forty men were crushed by the ruins and the rush of the troops was scarcely checked. The forlorn hope had already passed beyond the play of the mine, and now speeded along the strand amidst a shower of grape and shells, the leader lieutenant Macguire of the fourth regiment, conspicuous from his longMemoirs of Captain Cooke. white plume his fine figure and his swiftness, bounded far ahead of his men in all the pride of youthful strength and courage, but at the foot of the great breach he fell dead, and the stormers went sweeping like a dark surge over his body; many died however with him and the trickling of wounded men to the rear was incessant.
This time there was a broad strand left by the retreating tide and the sun had dried the rocks, yet they disturbed the order and closeness of the formation, the distance to the main breach was still nearly two hundred yards, and the French, seeing the first mass of assailants pass the horn-work regardless of its broken bastion, immediately abandoned the front and crowding on the river face of that work, poured their musketry into the flank of the second column as it rushed along a few yards below them; but the soldiers still running forward towards the breach returned this fire without slackening their speed. The batteries of the Monte Orgullo and the St. Elmo now sent their showers of shot and shells, the two pieces on the cavalier swept the face of the breach in the bastion of St. John, and the four-pounder in the horn-work being suddenly mounted on the broken bastion poured grape-shot into their rear.
Thus scourged with fire from all sides, the stormers, their array broken alike by the shot and by the rocks they passed over, reached their destinations, and the head of the first column gained the top of the great breach; but the unexpected gulf below could only be passed at a few places where meagre parcels of the burned houses were still attached to the rampart, and the deadly clatter of the French musquets from the loop-holed wall beyond soon strewed the narrow crest of the ruins with dead. In vain the following multitude covered the ascent seeking an entrance at every part; to advance was impossible and the mass of assailants, slowly sinking downwards remained stubborn and immoveable on the lower part of the breach. Here they were covered from the musquetry in front, but from several isolated points, especially the tower of Las Hornos under which the great mine was placed, the French still smote them with small arms, and the artillery from the Monte Orgullo poured shells and grape without intermission.
Such was the state of affairs at the great breach, and at the half bastion of St. John it was even worse. The access to the top of the high curtain being quite practicable, the efforts to force a way were more persevering and constant, and the slaughter was in proportion; for the traverse on the flank, cutting it off from the cavalier, was defended by French grenadiers who would not yield; the two pieces on the cavalier itself swept along the front face of the opening, and the four-pounder and the musquetry from the horn-work, swept in like manner along the river face. In the midst of this destruction some sappers and a working party attached to the assaulting columns endeavoured to form a lodgement, but no artificial materials had been provided, and most of the labourers were killed before they could raise the loose rocky fragments into a cover.
During this time the besiegers’ artillery kept up a constant counter-fire which killed many of the French, and the reserve brigades of the fifth division were pushed on by degrees to feed the attack until the left wing of the ninth regiment only remained in the trenches. The volunteers also who had been with difficulty restrained in the trenches, “calling out to know, why they had been brought there if they were not to lead the assault,” these men, whose presence had given such offence to general Leith that he would have kept them altogether from the assault, being now let loose went like a whirlwind to the breaches, and again the crowded masses swarmed up the face of the ruins, but reaching the crest line they came down like a falling wall; crowd after crowd were seen to mount, to totter, and to sink, the deadly French fire was unabated, the smoke floated away, and the crest of the breach bore no living man.
Sir Thomas Graham, standing on the nearest of the Chofre batteries, beheld this frightful destruction with a stern resolution to win at any cost; and he was a man to have put himself at the head of the last company and died sword in hand upon the breach rather than sustain a second defeat, but neither his confidence nor his resources were yet exhausted. He directed an attempt to be made on the horn-work, and turned all the Chofre batteries and one on the Isthmus, that is to say the concentrated fire of fifty heavy pieces upon the high curtain. The shot ranged over the heads of the troops who now were gathered at the foot of the breach, and the stream of missiles thus poured along the upper surface of the high curtain broke down the traverses, and in its fearful course shattering all things strewed the rampart with the mangled limbs of the defenders. When this flight of bullets firstManuscript Memoir by colonel Hunt. swept over the heads of the soldiers a cry arose, from some inexperienced people, “to retire because the batteries were firing on the stormers;” but the veterans of the light division under Hunt being at that point were not to be so disturbed, and in the very heat and fury of the cannonade effected a solid lodgement in some ruins of houses actually within the rampart on the right of the great breach.
For half an hour this horrid tempest smote upon the works and the houses behind, and then suddenly ceasing the small clatter of the French musquets shewed that the assailants were again in activity; and at the same time the thirteenth Portuguese regiment led by Major Snodgrass and followed by a detachment of the twenty-fourth under colonel Macbean entered the river from the Chofres. The ford was deep the water rose above the waist, and when the soldiers reached the middle of the stream which was two hundred yards wide, a heavy gun struck on the head of the column with a shower of grape; the havoc was fearful but the survivors closed and moved on. A second discharge from the same piece tore the ranks from front to rear, still the regiment moved on, and amidst a confused fire of musquetry from the ramparts, and of artillery from St. Elmo, from the castle, and from the Mirador, landed on the left bank and rushed against the third breach. Macbean’s men who had followed with equal bravery then reinforced the great breach, about eighty yards to the left of the other although the line of ruins seemed to extend the whole way. The fighting now became fierce and obstinate again at all the breaches, but the French musquetry still rolled with deadly effect, the heaps of slain increased, and once more the great mass of stormers sunk to the foot of the ruins unable to win; the living sheltered themselves as they could, but the dead and wounded lay so thickly that hardly could it be judged whether the hurt or unhurt were most numerous.
It was now evident that the assault must fail unless some accident intervened, for the tide was rising, the reserves all engaged, and no greater effort could be expected from men whose courage had been already pushed to the verge of madness. In this crisis fortune interfered. A number of powder barrels, live shells, and combustible materials which the French had accumulated behind the traverses for their defence caught fire, a bright consuming flame wrapped the whole of the high curtain, a succession of loud explosions were heard, hundreds of the French grenadiers were destroyed, the rest were thrown into confusion, and while the ramparts were still involved with suffocating eddies of smoke the British soldiers broke in at the first traverse. The defenders bewildered by this terrible disaster yielded for a moment, yet soon rallied, and a close desperate struggle took place along the summit of the high curtain, but the fury of the stormers whose numbers increased every moment could not be stemmed. The French colours on the cavalier were torn away by lieutenant Gethin of the eleventh regiment. The horn-work and the land front below the curtain, and the loop-holed wall behind the great breach were all abandoned; the light division soldiers who had already established themselves in the ruins on the French left, immediately penetrated to the streets, and at the same moment the Portuguese at the small breach, mixed with British who had wandered to that point seeking for an entrance, burst in on their side.
Five hours the dreadful battle had lasted at the walls and now the stream of war went pouring into the town. The undaunted governor still disputed the victory for a short time with the aid of his barricades, but several hundreds of his men being cut off and taken in the horn-work, his garrison was so reduced that even to effect a retreat behind the line of defences which separated the town from the Monte Orgullo was difficult. Many of his troops flying from the horn-work along the harbour flank of the town broke through a body of the British who had reached the vicinity of the fortified convent of Santa Téresa before them, and this post was the only one retained by the French in the town. It was thought by some distinguished officers engaged in the action that Monte Orgullo might have been carried on this day, if a commander of sufficient rank to direct the troops had been at hand; but whether from wounds or accident no general entered the place until long after the breach had been won, the commanders of battalions were embarrassed for want of orders, and a thunder-storm, which came down from the mountains with unbounded fury immediately after the place was carried, added to the confusion of the fight.
This storm seemed to be the signal of hell for the perpetration of villainy which would have shamed the most ferocious barbarians of antiquity. At Ciudad Rodrigo intoxication and plunder had been the principal object; at Badajos lust and murder were joined to rapine and drunkenness; but at San Sebastian, the direst, the most revolting cruelty was added to the catalogue of crimes. One atrocity of which a girl of seventeen was the victim, staggers the mind by its enormous, incredible, indescribable barbarity. Some order was at first maintained, but the resolution of the troops to throw off discipline was quickly made manifest. A British staff-officer was pursued with a volley of small arms and escaped with difficulty from men who mistook him for the provost-martial of the fifth division; a Portuguese adjutant, who endeavoured to prevent some atrocity, was put to death in the market-place, not with sudden violence from a single ruffian, but deliberately by a number of English soldiers. Many officers exerted themselves to preserve order, many men were well conducted, but the rapine and violence commenced by villains soon spread, the camp-followers crowded into the place, and the disorder continued until the flames following the steps of the plunderer put an end to his ferocity by destroying the whole town.
Three generals, Leith, Oswald, and Robinson, had been hurt in the trenches, sir Richard Fletcher the chief engineer, a brave man who had served his country honorably was killed, and colonel Burgoyne the next in command of that arm was wounded.
The carnage at the breaches was appalling. The volunteers, although brought late into the action, had nearly half their number struck down, most of the regiments of the fifth division suffered in the same proportion, and the whole loss since the renewal of the siege exceeded two thousand five hundred men and officers.
The town being thus taken, the Monte Orgullo was to be attacked, but it was very steep and difficult to assail. The castle served as a citadel and just below it four batteries connected with masonry stretched across the face of the hill. From the Mirador and Queen’s batteries at the extremities of this line, ramps, protected by redans, led to the convent of Santa Teresa which was the most salient part of the defence. On the side of Santa Clara and behind the mountain were some sea batteries, and if all these works had been of good construction, the troops fresh and well supplied, the siege would have been long and difficult; but the garrison was shattered by the recent assault, most of the engineers and leaders killed, the governor and many others wounded, five hundred men were sick or hurt, the soldiers fit for duty did not exceed thirteen hundred, and they had four hundred prisoners to guard. The castle was small, the bomb-proofs scarcely sufficed to protect the ammunition and provisions, and only ten guns remained in a condition for service, three of which were on the sea line. There was very little water and the troops were forced to lie out on the naked rock exposed to the fire of the besiegers, or only covered by the asperities of ground. General Rey and his brave garrison were however still resolute to fight, and they received nightly by sea supplies of ammunition though in small quantities.
Lord Wellington arrived the day after the assault.September. Regular approaches could not be carried up the steep naked rock, he doubted the power of vertical fire, and ordered batteries to be formed on the captured works of the town, intending to breach the enemy’s remaining lines of defence and then storm the Orgullo. And as the convent of Santa Teresa would enable the French to sally by the rampart on the left of the allies’ position in the town, he composed his first line with a few troops strongly barricaded, placing a supporting body in the market-place, and strong reserves on the high curtain and flank ramparts. Meanwhile from the convent, which being actually in the town might have been easily taken at first, the enemy killed many of the besiegers, and when after several days it was assaulted, they set the lower parts on fire and retired by a communication made from the roof to a ramp on the hill behind. All this time the flames were destroying the town, and the Orgullo was overwhelmed with shells shot upward from the besiegers’ batteries.
On the 3d of September, the governor being summoned to surrender demanded terms inadmissible, his resolution was not to be shaken, and the vertical fire was therefore continued day and night, though the British prisoners suffered as well as the enemy; for the officer commanding in the castle, irritated byJones’ Sieges. the misery of the garrison cruelly refused to let the unfortunate captives make trenches to cover themselves. The French on the other hand complainBellas’ Sieges. that their wounded and sick men, although placed in an empty magazine with a black flag flying, were fired upon by the besiegers, although the English prisoners in their red uniforms were placed around it to strengthen the claim of humanity.
The new breaching batteries were now commenced, one for three pieces on the isthmus, the other for seventeen pieces on the land front of the horn-work. These guns were brought from the Chofres at low water across the Urumea, at first in the night, but the difficulty of labouring in the water during darkness induced the artillery officers to transport the remainder in daylight, and within reach of the enemy’s batteries, which did not fire a shot. In the town the besiegers’ labours were impeded by the flaming houses, but near the foot of the hill the ruins furnished shelter for the musqueteers employed to gall the garrison, and the guns on the island of Santa Clara being reinforced were actively worked by the seamen. The besieged replied but little, their ammunition was scarce and the horrible vertical fire subdued their energy. In this manner the action was prolonged until the 8th of September when fifty-nine heavy battering pieces opened at once from the island the isthmus the horn-work and the Chofres. In two hours both the Mirador and the Queen’s battery were broken, the fire of the besieged was entirely extinguished, and the summit and face of the hill torn and furrowed in a frightful manner; the bread-ovens were destroyed, a magazine exploded, and the castle, small and crowded with men, was overlaid with the descending shells. Then the governor proudly bending to his fate surrendered. On the 9th this brave man and his heroic garrison, reduced to one-third of their original number and leaving five hundred wounded behind them in the hospital, marched out with the honours of war. The Spanish flag was hoisted under a salute of twenty-one guns, and the siege terminated after sixty-three days open trenches, precisely when the tempestuous season, beginning to vex the coast, would have rendered a continuance of the sea blockade impossible.
OBSERVATIONS.
1º. San Sebastian a third-rate fortress and in bad condition when first invested, resisted a besieging army, possessing an enormous battering train, for sixty-three days. This is to be attributed partly to the errors of the besiegers, principally to obstructions extraneous to the military operations. Amongst the last are to be reckoned the misconduct of the Admiralty, and the negligence of the government relative to the battering train and supply of ammunition; the latter retarded the second siege for sixteen days; the former enabled the garrison to keep up and even increase its means as the siege proceeded.
Next, in order and importance, was the failure of the Spanish authorities, who neglected to supply carts and boats from the country, and even refused the use of their public buildings for hospitals. Thus between the sea and the shore, receiving aid from neither, lord Wellington had to conduct an operation of war which more than any other depends for success upon labour and provident care. It was probably the first time that an important siege was maintained by women’s exertions; the stores of the besiegers were landed from boats rowed by Spanish girls!
Another impediment was Soult’s advance towards Pampeluna, but the positive effect of this was slight since the want of ammunition would have equally delayed the attack. The true measure of the English government’s negligence is thus obtained. It was more mischievous than the operations of sixty thousand men under a great general.
2º. The errors of execution having been before touched upon need no further illustration. The greatest difference between the first and second part of the siege preceding the assaults, was that in the latter, the approaches near the isthmus being carried further on and openings made in the sea-wall, the troops more easily and rapidly extricated themselves from the trenches, the distance to the breach was shortened, and the French fire bearing on the fronts of attack was somewhat less powerful. These advantages were considerable, but not proportionate to the enormous increase of the besiegers’ means; and it is quite clear from the terrible effects of the cannonade during the assault, that the whole of the defences might have been ruined, even those of the castle, if this overwhelming fire had in compliance with the rules of art been first employed to silence the enemy’s fire. A lodgement in the horn-work could then have been made with little difficulty, and the breach attacked without much danger.
3º. As the faults leading to failure in the first part of the siege were repeated in the second, while the enemy’s resources had increased by the gain of time, and because his intercourse with France by sea never was cut off, it follows that there was no reasonable security for success; not even to make a lodgement on the breach, since no artificial materials were prepared and the workmen failed to effect that object. But the first arrangement and the change adopted in the council of war, the option given to general Bradford, the remarkable fact, that the simultaneous attack on the horn-work was only thought of when the first efforts against the breach had failed, all prove, that the enemy’s defensive means were underrated, and the extent of the success exceeded the preparations to obtain it.
The place was won by accident. For first the explosion of the great mine under the tower of Los Hornos, was only prevented by a happy shot which cut the sausage of the train during the fight, and this was followed by the ignition of the French powder-barrels and shells along the high curtain, which alone opened the way into the town. Sir Thomas Graham’s firmness and perseverance in the assault, and the judicious usage of his artillery against the high curtain during the action, an operation however which only belonged to daylight, were no mean helps to the victory. It was on such sudden occasions that his prompt genius shone conspicuously, yet it was nothing wonderful that heavy guns at short distances, the range being perfectly known, should strike with certainty along a line of rampart more than twenty-seven feet above the heads of the troops. Such practice was to be expected from British artillery, and Graham’s genius was more evinced by the promptness of the thought and the trust he put in the valour of his soldiers. It was far more extraordinary that the stormers did not relinquish their attack when thus exposed to their own guns, for it is a mistake to say that no mischief occurred; a serjeant of the ninth regiment was killed by the batteries close to his commanding officer, and it is probable that other casualties also had place.
4º. The explosion on the ramparts is generally supposed to have been caused by the cannonade from the Chofre batteries, yet a cool and careful observer, whose account I have adopted, because he was aCaptain Cooke, forty-third regiment. Vide his Memoirs. spectator in perfect safety and undisturbed by having to give or receive orders, affirms that the cannonade ceased before colonel Snodgrass forded the river, whereas the great explosion did not happen until half an hour after that event. By some persons that intrepid exploit of the Portuguese was thought one of the principal causes of success, and it appears certain that an entrance was made at the small breach by several soldiers, British and Portuguese, many of the former having wandered from the great breach and got mixed with the latter, before the explosion happened on the high curtain. Whether those men would have been followed by greater numbers is doubtful, but the lodgement made by the light division volunteers within the great breach was solid and could have been maintained. The French call the Portuguese attack a feint. SirBellas. Thomas Graham certainly did not found much upon it. He gave general Bradford the option to attack or remain tranquil, and colonel M‘Bean actually received counter-orders when his column was already in the river and too far advanced to be withdrawn.
5º. When the destruction of San Sebastian became known, it was used by the anti-British party at Cadiz to excite the people against England. The political chief of Guipuscoa publicly accused sir Thomas Graham, “that he sacked and burned the place because it had formerly traded entirely with France,” his generals were said to have excited the furious soldiers to the horrid work, and his inferior officers to have boasted of it afterwards. A newspaper, edited by an agent of the Spanish government, repeating these accusations, called upon the people to avenge the injury upon the British army, and the Spanish minister of war, designated by lord Wellington as the abettor and even the writer of this and other malignant libels published at Cadiz, officially demanded explanations.
Lord Wellington addressed a letter of indignant denial and remonstrance to sir Henry Wellesley. “It was absurd,” he said, “to suppose the officers of the army would have risked the loss of all their labours and gallantry, by encouraging the dispersion of the men while the enemy still held the castle. To him the town was of the utmost value as a secure place for magazines and hospitals. He had refused to bombard it when advised to do so, as he had previously refused to bombard Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos, because the injury would fall on the inhabitants and not upon the enemy; yet nothing could have been more easy, or less suspicious than this method of destroying the town if he had been so minded. It was the enemy who set fire to the houses, it was part of the defence; the British officers strove to extinguish the flames, some in doing so lost their lives by the French musquetry from the castle, and the difficulty of communicating and working through the fire was so great, that he had been on the point of withdrawing the troops altogether. He admitted the plunder, observing, that he knew not whether that or the libels made him most angry; he had taken measures to stop it, but when two-thirds of the officers had been killed or wounded in the action, and when many of the inhabitants taking part with the enemy fired upon the troops, to prevent it was impossible. Moreover he was for several days unable from other circumstances to send fresh men to replace the stormers.”
This was a solid reply to the scandalous libels circulated, but the broad facts remained. San Sebastian was a heap of smoking ruins, and atrocities degrading to human nature had been perpetrated by the troops. Of these crimes, the municipal and ecclesiastic bodies the consuls and principal persons of San Sebastian, afterwards published a detailed statement, solemnly affirming the truth of each case; and if Spanish declarations on this occasion are not to be heeded, four-fifths of the excesses attributed to the French armies must be effaced as resting on a like foundation. That the town was first set on fire behind the breaches during the operations, and that it spread in the tumult following the assault is undoubted; yet it is not improbable that plunderers, to forward their own views increased it, and certainly the great destruction did not befall until long after the town was in possession of the allies. I have been assured by a surgeon, that he was lodged the third day after the assault at a house well furnished, and in a street then untouched by fire or plunderers, but house and street were afterwards plundered and burned. The inhabitants could only have fired upon the allies the first day, and it might well have been in self-defence for they were barbarously treated. The abhorrent case alluded to was notorious, so were many others. I have myself heard around the picquet fires, when soldiers as every experienced officer knows, speak without reserve of their past deeds and feelings, the abominable actions mentioned by the municipality related with little variation long before that narrative was published; told however with sorrow for the sufferers and indignation against the perpetrators, for these last were not so numerous as might be supposed from the extent of the calamities they inflicted.
It is a common but shallow and mischievous notion, that a villain makes never the worse soldier for an assault, because the appetite for plunder supplies the place of honour; as if the compatability of vice and bravery rendered the union of virtue and courage unnecessary in warlike matters. In all the host which stormed San Sebastian there was not a man who being sane would for plunder only have encountered the danger of that assault, yet under the spell of discipline all rushed eagerly to meet it. Discipline however has its root in patriotism, or how could armed men be controuled at all, and it would be wise and far from difficult to graft moderation and humanity upon such a noble stock. The modern soldier is not necessarily the stern bloody-handed man the ancient soldier was, there is as much difference between them as between the sportsman and the butcher; the ancient warrior, fighting with the sword and reaping his harvest of death when the enemy was in flight, became habituated to the act of slaying. The modern soldier seldom uses his bayonet, sees not his peculiar victim fall, and exults not over mangled limbs as proofs of personal prowess. Hence preserving his original feelings, his natural abhorrence of murder and crimes of violence, he differs not from other men unless often engaged in the assault of towns, where rapacity, lust, and inebriety, unchecked by the restraints of discipline, are excited by temptation. It is said that no soldier can be restrained after storming a town, and a British soldier least of all, because he is brutish and insensible to honor! Shame on such calumnies! What makes the British soldier fight as no other soldier ever fights? His pay! Soldiers of all nations receive pay. At the period of this assault, a serjeant of the twenty-eighth regiment, namedColonel Cadell’s Memoirs. Ball, had been sent with a party to the coast from Roncesvalles, to make purchases for his officers. He placed the money he was entrusted with, two thousand dollars, in the hands of a commissary and having secured a receipt persuaded his party to join in the storm. He survived, reclaimed the money, made his purchases, and returned to his regiment. And these are the men, these the spirits who are called too brutish to work upon except by fear. It is precisely fear to which they are most insensible.
Undoubtedly if soldiers hear and read, that it is impossible to restrain their violence they will not be restrained. But let the plunder of a town after an assault, be expressly made criminal by the articles of war, with a due punishment attached; let it be constantly impressed upon the troops that such conduct is as much opposed to military honour and discipline as it is to morality; let a select permanent body of men receiving higher pay form a part of the army, and be charged to follow storming columns to aid in preserving order, and with power to inflict instantaneous punishment, death if it be necessary. Finally, as reward for extraordinary valour should keep pace with chastisement for crimes committed under such temptation, it would be fitting that money, apportioned to the danger and importance of the service, should be insured to the successful troops and always paid without delay. This money might be taken as ransom from enemies, but if the inhabitants are friends, or too poor, government should furnish the amount. With such regulations the storming of towns would not produce more military disorders than the gaining of battles in the field.