In selecting new grounds for the habitations of human families, whether in large or limited numbers, particular care must always be observed, especially in warm climes, or where malarial influences are known to prevail. In the selection of places for the encampment of troops, the problem is still more difficult to treat, on account of the general dyscrasial condition of the soldier; and oftentimes far more skill and prudence are required than in the choosing of a field for battle.
How many a noble regiment have we seen impaired in its effective strength, and robbed of its glorious future, by the injudicious encampment, where vain and ignorant officers have sacrificed the health and morale of their men to please their fanciful ideas as to military etiquette—the form of shelter, the position, and the regularity of the prescribed lines of encampment!
In one of the last campaigns of Europe, when all the resources which modern wealth could afford were lavished with unsparing hand, there was a useless and preventible loss of life, that recalled the most disastrous epidemics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
War is one of the natural laws for the demolition of the human race, and we see the spirit of destruction silently at work among friends as well as foes. The supreme commands seem mysteriously to be placed in the hands of men who can cause the greatest devastation and sacrifice of life; who march their columns steadily to the deadly and murderous assault when there is no occasion for it; who encamp their troops in pestilential lowlands, when the healthy heights offer safer and better accommodations.
“Nobilitas cum plebe perit, lateque vagatur ensis.”
II.
It is a melancholy fact, attested by the distinguished Marshal Saxe, that the military men of modern times are far less informed than the great generals of antiquity in the profound knowledge of public hygiene, and especially of that which relates to the economy of armies. We can admire, but hardly improve, the physical education imposed upon the volunteers of Sparta and the legionaries of Rome; and we have not surpassed their scientific, yet rude alimentation, by which they marched over immense distances with rapidity, and preserved their vigor and morale. From the extant documents of the ancients, from Xenophon or Vegetius, it is shown that their acquaintance with whatever related to clothing, encampment, food, the graduation of exercises, and the employ of forces, was of the highest character.
The effects of high and low lands, of good and bad water, on the diseases, energy, character, and intellect of man, have been sketched in a masterly manner by Hippocrates.
The exposure of a few hours to malignant influences may impair the strength of an army to such a degree as to thwart the most skilful plans, the wisest combinations for vigorous campaigns, as, for instance, the Walcheren expedition of the English, the Neapolitan campaign of France, when her army was reduced from twenty-eight thousand to four thousand effective men, in one hundred hours, from an injudicious encampment at Baie, or when Orloff lost his army in Paros, or, still later, the disaster to the splendid division of the French army under Espinasse, in the fatal Dobrutscha.
Armies have been lost, the fate of empires decided, by the violation or neglect of the simple rules of hygiene; and all through the blood-stained pages of military history do we observe examples, from the time when Scipio lost the battle of Trebbia, or when Bajazet threw away his vast empire on the plains of Angora, down to Kunersdorf, when the impetuosity of Frederick the Great would not allow rest to his men or horses.