I 1 2 THE ROYAL ENGINEERS AS FOREST SAPPERS. 



Saxon times, to find ample authority for this ; historians 

 being pretty well unanimous in admitting it. 



Curiously enough our oldest military corps, which still 

 form part of the British army, the scientific corps of 

 Royal Engineers, was first organized as "sappers," 

 furnished with tools and appliances for cutting roads 

 and trails through these great natural forests. The first 

 military engineers are believed to have come over 

 with William the Conqueror in 1066, and Waldivus, 

 who was chief engineer to the Conqueror, may be 

 regarded as the first commanding officer. The Royal 

 Engineers can thus show a longer continuous history 

 than any other branch of the British army; and we 

 are told that 120 years afterwards "When Edward I. 

 conducted the war in Wales in 1287, there were 2000 

 cutters and 'sappers' (Fossatores) employed with the 

 army, and these men were of great service both in 

 making roads, cutting paths through the forests, and 

 assisting in the sieges of the Welsh strongholds." * 



The plentiful rains and water-bearing winds which 

 prevail from the south west, would here (in Western 

 Europe) seem to be the agents which promoted the 

 tree-growth upon the wild lands in former times, except 

 where the sterile and mountainous nature of the country 

 forbids. There heathy moorlands took the places of 

 trees. 



Then the same feature which we have remarked upon 

 in North America recurs in Eastern Europe the open 

 plains or steppes appear in Southern Russia, and continue 

 almost without a break right across Asia to the Great 



* The Army Book for the British Empire, by Lieutenant-Genera 1 

 W. H. Goodenough, R..A. C.B. ; Lieutenant-Colonel J. C. Dalton, R.A., 

 and others, official publication, printed for H.M's Stationery Office, 

 London 1893 Part ii, p. 236 (Article "The Royal Engineers"). 



