During the retreat from Madrid, in the grey of the morning, after having been harassed through the greater part of the day before by impudent dashes of the French light cavalry, a Spanish cavalry patrol was fired upon, under the very natural impression that they were Frenchmen, re-commencing their previous practice.
After this, while engaged in the pursuit of a beaten enemy through a mountainous and intricate country, the battalion was compelled, as a matter of reasonable prudence, to scale a rocky hill, in order to take up a position of defence against three battalions in blue, which had just appeared as if moving to intercept the line of retreat. When a quarter of an hour had been wasted, they also turned out to be Spaniards.
On a subsequent occasion, in following up a charge in line, from the thick smoke that still hung on the enemy’s infantry a body of horsemen, of which some evidently were cuirassiers, broke furiously upon the front. It had all the appearance of an effort of the French cavalry to cover the retreat, and the whole fire was for a moment concentrated upon it, until some of the headmost horsemen, falling almost upon the bayonets, were perceived to be English light dragoons.
These are a few, and only a very few, of the evils which have already arisen from indistinctness in uniform. If, then, the mischief was so great in connexion with the limited and uncertain power of the old musquet, what will it not be with the distant and accurate fire of the long range rifle? A group of your own staff officers, a patrol of your own cavalry, or a battalion in blue of your own infantry, eight hundred yards off, might be almost destroyed before it could be possible to correct the mistake; while bodies of the enemy might, from your uncertainty, pass and repass with corresponding impunity.
Whatever uniforms, therefore, we adopt or maintain, it is evident that, for cavalry as well as infantry, broad NATIONAL DISTINCTIVENESS should be a most predominant consideration.
There is another immense advantage in distinctive uniforms for troops who can and will do their duty—the mighty moral effect which such distinctiveness carries with it. Like the mere
“Blast of Roderic’s bugle horn,”
it “is worth” in itself, in a stout struggle, the support of
“A thousand men.”
Many a time has the distinctive red coat sounded a retreat to the enemy, which he would have been slow to adopt if any doubt had existed about the real character of the troops he had fallen in with.