A military dictionary

by William Duane

PULWAR, Ind. a light boat for dispatches.

PUMICE-stone, a spongy, light crumbling stone which is cast out of mount Ætna, and other burning mountains. It is used in graving, polishing, &c.

PUMMEL. See [Pommel].

PUMP, (Pompe, Fr.) a well known engine used in the elevation of water.

PUNCH, (Poincon, Fr.) an instrument for making holes. Every serjeant of a company, at least, and indeed every corporal of a squad, should be provided with a punch, as there is frequent occasion to fit on the cross belts, &c.

PUNCTO. The point in fencing.

PUNISHMENT, in the army, in general, signifies the execution of a sentence pronounced by a court martial upon any delinquent. There are various methods in different countries which have been adopted for the punishment of officers and soldiers, without ultimately depriving the public of their services. Those in the British are simple, and in general very summary, especially with regard to officers. In some foreign services it is usual to send an officer from his regiment to do duty in a garrison town, during which period he loses all the advantages of promotion. Hence être envoyé en garnison, to be sent into garrison, implies a species of military chastisement. Perhaps the method which is adopted in the British navy, of putting an officer at the bottom of the list of his own rank, might be beneficial in the army. The barbarous and self-defeating punishment or whipping remains a disgrace to the British code, and we lament to say to the American also.

PUNITIONS corporelles, Fr. corporeal punishment. In the old French service, military punishments or chastisements, which were not of a capital nature, were of two kinds. The picket was for the cavalry, and the gauntelope, or passing through the rods, for the infantry. The rods, or baguettes, which properly means small sticks, or switches, were generally osier or willow twigs. Previous to the execution of the sentence, a corporal with two privates of the company, to which the culprit belonged, were sent to get the rods. These they brought in a bundle to the guard-house, or to any place of security which was near the spot where the punishment was to be inflicted. The criminal, under an escort of two serjeants and four grenadiers, with fixed bayonets, went for the bundle, and as he passed through the interval of the line which was faced inwards, each soldier drew out one twig. The grenadiers at the head of the line took off their slings, which they used instead of rods. When the culprit reached the end of the line, he undressed himself naked to the waist. The right and left openings of the double line faced inwards were closed by the grenadiers that had escorted the prisoner, viz. two with one serjeant at the head of the right, and two with ditto at the head of the left. It sometimes happened, that a serjeant or corporal marched backwards in ordinary time; keeping the point of his pike directed at the chest of the man who received the lashes. The culprit was, however, generally allowed to make the most of his legs. Whilst he was receiving his punishment, the drummers of the regiment, who were equally divided and stationed behind the grenadiers that had formed the escort, beat the charge. If a French soldier was convicted of theft, or any flagrant dishonorable practice that injured the military character, he not only underwent this punishment, but he was conducted in the most ignominious manner, to the outward gate of a frontier town; there expelled the country, and cautioned, never to be found within its limits under pain of suffering death. The nicety of military honor and reputation, among French soldiers, is proverbial. They never survive a blow, even among themselves, nor would a private soldier exist under the disgrace of having been struck by an officer.

When a girl of the town, or a notorious prostitute, was taken up, and ordered to be punished in a camp or garrison, she went through the same process; the drums beating the marionnetes, a sort of rogue’s march, during the execution of the sentence.

In offering a Military Dictionary to the American public, the editor cannot withhold his protest against the barbarous method of whipping, as not only inconsistent with every maxim adapted to military institution, but incompatible with the republican institutions of America, as well as those of ancient Rome. The subjection to such odious punishment is a fatal blow to the American militia, and one of the greatest obstacles to its respectability and efficiency; since in service the punishments must necessarily be and ought to be uniformly the same. A man who has been once punished by whipping, as practised in the military service in England, must be totally lost to every sentiment of feeling reconcilable with military spirit, or that sense of honor which can never exist but where there is self-respect. There can be no confidence between officers that flog and men that are flogged, and thus the fundamental spirit of all military institution is undermined, that is confidence reciprocal and earnest through every grade. It is sometimes said that discipline cannot be enforced without it; all Europe conquered at this moment, by an army in which even blows are not permitted, is a melancholy lesson contrasted with the brutal discipline of the cane and other ignominious practices, in the armies of Prussia, Austria, Russia, and England. Those who cannot enforce discipline without treating their fellow men as brutes, should distrust their own faculties or fitness, and examine into their own false pride, their petulance, perhaps too often their unacquaintance with the first principle of military discipline, that is a knowlege of mankind, or of the human mind; the springs by which the human character is most easily and effectually led on to acts of voluntary heroism and intrepidity, are never produced by the lash; but always to be commanded by generosity, by a kindness that costs nothing, and which if it were to cost something, if done with discrimination, is always repaid ten thousand fold by the affection, the gratitude, the attachment, and the devotion of the soldier. It is said that there are men who are not to be overcome by generosity, nor subdued even by the lash; then such men should be held up as an example for better men; they should not be suffered to mess, nor to associate with men of better temper; the good men should be noticed and those neglected, and if these courses failed, the public service would be benefitted by their discharge, more than by their continuance.