Napier, in his Peninsular War, devotes but some eight or nine lines to an account of the most remarkable recorded incident of this nature, in which Robert Crauford’s celebrated Light Division—consisting of those three distinguished regiments, the 43d, the 52d, and the 95th—were seized and put to flight by an attack of fear so sudden and causeless that the historian makes no attempt whatever to ascribe a reason for it. ‘The Light Division,’ he writes, ‘encamped in a pinewood, where happened one of those extraordinary panics attributed in ancient times to the influence of a god. No enemy was near, no alarm given, when suddenly the troops, as if seized with a frenzy, started from sleep and disappeared in every direction; nor was there any possibility of allaying this strange terror, until some persons called out that the enemy’s cavalry were amongst them, when the soldiers mechanically ran together, and the illusion was dissipated.’ It seems odd that so diffuse a writer should have seen fit to say so little of so extraordinary an occurrence, more especially when we remember that this same Light Division was the flower of the British army in the Peninsula, and that he writes of it not many pages before as ‘composed of three regiments singularly fitted for difficult service. Long and carefully disciplined by Sir John Moore, they came to the field with such a knowledge of arms, that six years of warfare could not detect a flaw in their system, nor were they ever overmatched in courage and skill.’
The public has been made acquainted with a goodly number of panics during the last few years, the military annals of which have been so replete with the warlike operations of the British arms. Many of us have thrown up our hands and sighed over the decadence of the pristine virtue of our soldiers, or prophesied darkly the downfall of the whole British race. The reason why the world nowadays is more familiar with many of the shortcomings and failings of our troops is not very difficult to find. As, before Agamemnon, lived many brave men whose virtues have not been handed down, so too, perhaps, many little indiscretions on the part of the soldiers of Marlborough and Wellington have passed into oblivion through want of a ‘special war correspondent.’ In spite of press censorship on the part of military officers, sooner or later these lynx-eyed gentlemen, being in the midst of the fighting-men, have seen and recorded in the columns of the daily press very many incidents, the seriousness of which has not been lessened in the telling. Amongst soldiers themselves, a natural pride would make them reticent in such matters; and l’esprit de corps has probably caused more than we know of to be buried in the bosoms of the members of some particular corps.
This reminds us of an unrecorded case of ‘panic’ pure and simple, which was communicated to us, years after its occurrence, by an officer in the regiment concerned. When he spoke of it, he did so with the air of a man fearful of breaking a sacred trust, which even then he seemed to feel hardly justified in betraying, though the regiment had changed its title, and scarcely one of the members in it at the time still remained. Suffice it to say that the regiment was a distinguished infantry one, composed almost entirely of veterans, who had added lustre to their former glories by the courage and bravery with which they had behaved throughout the trying times of the Indian Mutiny. It was shortly after this terrible outbreak had been quelled that the regiment in question was marching from the scene of some of the bloodiest outrages to a new station in a comparatively undisturbed portion of India. Then, as now, marches in that country were usually carried out at night, the sun in the hot season rendering exposure to its influence more or less unsafe to Europeans. They had almost reached the spot where they were to halt for the night—which, by-the-bye, was an exceptionally dark one—in fact, the advance-party had already arrived, when suddenly some sort of commotion and press of men from the rear was noticed by the officers. Before they could divine the cause, the confusion increased, and the regiment, without paying any heed to the commands of the officers, broke its ranks, and fled precipitately into the jungle on either side of the road. As usual, the officers, and even the senior non-commissioned officers, had not shared the general terror, and some few of the privates had at first called upon their comrades to remain steady—but all to no avail. They were regularly broken, and scarcely a man remained. Very soon, an explanation was forthcoming. A number of loose horses came galloping down the road. It was the noise of their hoofs over the hard ground, breaking the stillness of the Indian night, that had mysteriously magnified itself into a vague but all-mastering terror. How complete the panic was may be imagined from the fact that many of the men had fled so far into the jungle that they did not return till the following morning. Every inquiry was made by the colonel into the case; but no one was ever made responsible as the originator; and the regiment mutually agreed to keep the whole affair a profound secret. So well did they do so, that it never leaked out till years afterwards, when time had blunted the sting of publicity.
In South Africa, the disaster of Isandlhwana gave the soldiers’ nerves a severe shaking, and it often happened that false alarms at night led to the rousing of whole camps, and sometimes even to a reckless discharge of firearms. In some cases, friendly natives or even comrades were taken by the excited imagination of a sentry for enemies; in others, unoffending cattle, even a bush or a shrub, became the innocent cause of a fusilade sufficient to have dealt widespread destruction to a host of Zulus.
An odd incident, illustrative of the slightness of the cause—or even, perhaps, of the absence of any cause at all—that gives rise to a panic, occurred on the night of Tel-el-Kebir, amidst a small corner of the force that was bivouacking on the battlefield. The narrator had crawled into a marquee in which, with other commissariat stores, were the rum casks from which the troops had received their liquor ration after the fatigues and excitement of the day’s fight and previous night-march. Besides one or two commissariat issuers in charge of the stores, several ‘odds and ends’ of other corps had found their way into the marquee, preferring to rest under its shelter amidst the casks and biscuit-boxes, than under the open sky with the sand for a bed. Suddenly, in the middle of the night when all were sleeping, a noise and commotion began in the bivouac outside. Before the inhabitants of the tent were sufficiently awake to understand its cause, the curtains were thrust aside by a red-coated soldier, who shouted to us to get up: ‘The Arabs are in the camp—they are upon us!’ Then he disappeared as rapidly as he had come. Every one sprang to his arms, and probably experienced that especially uncomfortable sensation that is caused by a vague feeling of an unseen though imminent danger against which one is ignorant how to guard. Outside, every one around was aroused and up, eagerly striving to discover from what quarter attack was to be expected. Nothing, however, more unpleasant occurred than the advent of a staff-officer asking the cause of the confusion. Probably the truth never did reach headquarters. Afterwards, however, a report gained ground—no other or better reason was ever forthcoming—that the alarm arose from the screams of a sleeping soldier, who, overwrought perhaps by the horrors of the day, had been fighting his battle over again in his dreams!
It is perhaps as well that all cases of panic should be brought forward and investigated. Hushing them up may be satisfactory to those who feel that the credit and reputation of their particular regiment or corps are at stake; but, like all undeclared and secret evils, they are best dealt with by being dragged to light. How else can the soldier learn their absurdity—how else learn to recognise them and reason on the moment whether he be in the presence of a causeless panic or a real danger?
One lesson certainly the few lines of Napier quoted above teach us. The cry of some one that the enemy’s cavalry were amongst them caused the Light Division to rally—it was the dissipation of a vague terror by the substitution for it of a substantial danger.
Enough has been said to show that panics will occur. It is easy to see how fatal may be their results, and how detrimental they are to the morale of an army. A recognition of this fact must convince us of the necessity that exists for neglecting no step that may tend to minimise their occurrence, or, if they must occur, to most efficaciously and speedily counteract their effects. Long since, sailors learnt by experience that real or imagined outbreaks of fire on shipboard were too apt to cause panic and confusion, and thereby increase tenfold the horrors of the situation. To provide against this, the fire-alarm is frequently sounded, with a view to accustoming the crew to take up rapidly their allotted posts, when fire actually does occur, with the calmness and despatch bred of familiarity. This system of accustoming men to sudden alarms of attack was practised with success in the Marine Camp round Suakim, and they probably owed the idea in some measure to their naval training. At anyrate, their camp was particularly free from needless night-alarms, and their sentries earned the somewhat rare distinction of never having been forced throughout the whole campaign.