WAR AND THE WEATHER 605 



storm, which began during the afternoon, drove three of the transports 

 ashore on Governor's Island. The rain fell in torrents. There was no 

 abatement of the storm on the following morning (March 6), there 

 being a furious gale from the southeast which caused such a surf on the 

 Dorchester shore that "an attempt to land (on the part of the British) 

 must have proved fatal." The Americans continued to fortify in spite 

 of the storm, and when the weather had improved sufficiently for the 

 British to attack, they realized that the American position was too 

 strong. By night of March 6 the evacuation had been decided on. 

 General Washington wrote on March 14 : "A very heavy storm of wind 

 and rain frustrated their design." The terrible winter retreat of Na- 

 poleon's Grand Army from Moscow furnishes a tragic but wonderfully 

 vivid illustration of the strength of Eussia's two invincible generals, 

 January and February, who, if the scene of the present war should be 

 transferred into Eussia during the winter, would again be found fight- 

 ing on the side of the Czar. We may note, in passing, that the French 

 Eevolution was precipitated by a severe winter, and that the " Boxer " 

 outbreak in China, in 1900, was brought on by a scarcity of rain in the 

 preceding autumn, leading to famine and destitution, and driving the 

 people to robbery and pillage. 



History is full of examples of individual engagements in which 

 weather played an important, if not actually decisive part. Heavy rains, 

 making the roads muddy and the movements of troops and of guns 

 difficult, had a marked effect upon the plans of the commanding officers 

 in the battle of Waterloo (1815), the battle itself being postponed for 

 this reason. In our own civil war the list of weather controls is a long 

 one. Of one of General Grant's campaigns in Virginia it is reported 

 that the country was densely wooded and the ground swampy — the 

 troops waded in mud above their ankles, horses sank to their bellies and 

 wagons threatened to disappear altogether. The men began to feel 

 that if any one in after years should ask them if they had been through 

 Virginia, they could say, "Yes, in a number of places." Dense fog 

 favored the northern forces in the battle of the Wilderness. Deep mud 

 and impassable roads were, at least in part, responsible for General 

 McClellan's delays, which caused so much anxiety and indignation in 

 Washington. During the fighting around Tientsin in 1900 the situa- 

 tion of the allied troops was very critical, when a torrential rainfall 

 compelled the Chinese to retire. Cold and snows have time and time 

 again been potent factors in warfare. In the last Eusso-Turkish war 

 thousands of men died of the cold, and the sufferings of the troops at 

 Plevna were terrible. The siege of Sebastopol furnishes another illus- 

 tration of the sufferings which a severe winter inevitably produces. In 

 the Eusso-Japanese war fighting continued in the severe cold of the 

 Manchurian winter. Frozen rivers or lakes may make it very easy for 



