BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. xliii 



sergeant of Rifles, ours a private of the Grenadiers. The private was naturally nervous, shooting 

 against a crack sergeant of a crack regiment of good shots, and he shot below Yds form, but he 

 beat the sergeant and won the prize. The Rifles are first-rate troops ; they and the Guards are 

 the only two corps who have preserved any of the old esprit which, born in tlie Peninsula, 

 has done so much to make our regiments so excellent. Esprit de corps is the first essential 

 in a regiment ; and yet every thing done in England tends to destroy it, and to make one regiment 

 like another. The utter want of a just appreciation of the value of esprit de corps was shown 

 at the attack upon the Redan. Detachments of 100 men from each regiment were formed into 

 the assaulting columns, and no disgrace attached to any particular regiment if it failed. But 

 enough ; the people at home are fools, babes, sucklings upon military subjects. We received the 

 notification of the ' New Order ' that was expected with shouts. There is such complete want of 

 confidence in the home authorities upon all military subjects that this new decoration creates 

 little pleasure, though much ridicule. It is universally styled ' the Order of the Gladiator.' 

 We all feel so certain that it will be grossly jobbed, given to undeserving men, like the ' Bath,' 

 or given upon the outcry of a newspaper, and not to real merit, that no one looks forward to it. 

 The principles that are to guide English troops to victory are less stern now than in former days 

 — ' Glory.' ' La gloire ' is a word common with the English army, and has almost entirely 

 replaced that of ' Duty.' It was a boast of an Englishman that the Great Duke never used 

 the word glory in any of his despatches or general orders. The fact of a man doing his duty 

 now-a-days is not sufficient reward — he must have a bit of sky-blue or pea-green ribbon to 

 mark him. As Indians are estimated by scalps, so are our troops by the number of ribbons 

 they can show. Of the two I would have a soldier being made to wear the scalp of the man 

 he killed in preference to his wearing a star. In that there could be no mistake." 



The review of the 'Land Transport Corps' caused him to break out thus: — " Absurdity 

 was stamped upon every thing connected with it: the dress, the staff", the carts, all were 

 ludicrous and ridiculous. The proverbially enormous baggage-train of an Oriental army 

 sinks by comparison into insignificance when compared with what we should have had had the 

 war continued. It would be impossible to move encumbered by such a host of carts and 

 material. We should, it is true, lose three fourths of them in the first fifty miles' march, and so 

 be delivered ; that would have been some consolation. A. is an impostor, theoretically clever, 

 practically a fool, like B. ; but, lest I should wax personal, I must stop." 



He draws, in another letter, an amusing picture of the marked difference in subjects of 

 discussion which ruled in the camp and those which were in vogue some time previously. 

 " Then the arguments waxed hot and ferocious as to the flash of 13-inch shells, their maximum 

 velocity with a given charge of powder, the area of explosion, &c. &c. ; now the conversation 



