In the year 1793, a scientific committee was formed in Paris with this object, when it was suggested that balloons should be used both for attack and defence, and for ascertaining the movement of armies in the field, and to get at the strength of fortified places.
Here was a clear and comprehensive plan for a new departure in military science which the leading nations of Europe have been slow in imitating.
A great deal of doubt and ridicule have been cast upon those (myself included), who, in different countries had the courage of their convictions to urge such a movement upon the attention of those in power.
Austria, whose forces first faced a war balloon at the battle of Fleurus, directed her government not to neglect a bird’s-eye view of the enemy.
Russia took up the idea pretty early.
Italy followed suit.
Germany was slow to move in the air, but has been steady and scientific in carrying out her projects.
Old England, proverbially averse to new fangled notions, resisted all overtures even from an experienced aëronaut for many years, pooh-poohing this kind of feather-brained mode of strategy as at that period imagined.
At last, after experiments had been made by Colonel Beaumont and myself at Aldershot and Woolwich, a balloon corps was formed and permitted to try their hand with calico balloons.
This new force, however, ignoring the first instructors most persistently, ventured to teach the British army without recognized balloonists to aid them; but one day, in an unfortunate hour, a war balloon, while taking a preliminary canter, not, of course, in an official capacity, dashed off on a dark December evening to sea, with an enterprising and much lamented member of Parliament, who knew no fear, but had a poor chance of being rescued from a watery grave.