Mighty Men at Arms
Great Captains Unveiled. By Captain Liddell Hart. (Black. wood. 12s. 6d.) Tam new volume of Captain. Hart's, who bears the reputation of being one of the foremost military thinkers of the day, contains studies of six great soldiers—of two Orientals, Jenghiz Khan and Sabutai, " two amazing, if ahnost unknown, figures " ; of Gustavus Adolphus, " the Father of Civilized Warfare " ; of Wallenstein, that dark enigma, " a many- sided genius, compound of Julius Caesar, Bismarck and x— an unknown quantity " ; and of Marshal Saxe, whose Reveries on the. Art of War display a breadth and depth of vision into problems which condition the battlefields even of to-day. First of all we must devote a few lines to a ,careful examination of some of the details in the last essay, on " General Wolfe, Grandsire of the United States." It is not, to begin with, apparent how Captain Hart's title in chief, Great Captains Unveiled, applies in the case of Wolfee for his presentation of that, potentially great soldier unveils nothing that is not already known, though it is eminently worth while again to call attention to some of Wolfe's military ideas—to the huge importance which he attached ,to mobility, decisiveness of fire-power (as exemplified in the final throw for Quebec), and the respective uses of column and line. C'est convenu ; but we think that Captain gad himself will agree on the importance in a military historian of absolute accuracy in details. On accuracy of detail the fate of military operations themselves depends and we are entitled to expect it from the writer who seeks to appraise them. This impeccable accuracy we do not find in this part of Captain Hart's book. By a mere accident our eye first lit on the name of " Sir Henry Stuart Allanton " (p. 215). There is no such person ; tir Henry Steuart of Allanton is obviously meant. A trifle doubtless and admittedly so, but further examination reveals more, and the aggregate engenders an uneasy feeling as to Captain Hart's factual reliability. His geographical account of the surroundings of Louisburg is a little misleading : he states that Wolfe landed at Freshwater Cove in Gabarus Bay, " while the other two brigadiers feinted to land on points nearer the fortress," and somebody else landed " farther west." All the three landed in Gabarus Bay, and no one landed west of Wolfe. The expedition against Quebec is stated to have sailed from Louisburg " by 1 June." It was June 6th when the last of Admiral Saunders's fleet left Louisburg harbour. Wolfe, when before Quebec, " had tried in vain [we read] to discover a practicable ford " over the Montmorency above the falls, but Wolfe was perfectly aware of the fact that there was such a ford, since early in July a force of Indians had crossed the river by a well-known ford, and had attacked Townshend's and Murray's brigades which were entrenched on the. left bank. Moreover, on August 29th, Wolfe had written to his three Brigadiers suggesting a plan which involved the fording of the Mont- morency some eight miles above its mouth. In the same letter to the Brigadiers Wolfe did not suggest, as stated by Captain Hart, " three possible variations of the Mont- morency plan " ; one of his three suggestions was an attack on the Beauport front—a very different thing. When the final attack on the Heights of Abraham was decided on, it was not " a single lantern " (p. 268), but two that gave the signal for the boat-flotilla to push off.
Admitted that all these points are trifles, and dull trifles, yet Captain Hart owes it to his justly high reputation to prune his work of any excrescences of the sort. Done with fault-finding, let us turn to what we can wholly praise. Captain Hart's discussion of Gustavus Adolphus is nothing short of masterly. The paper on Marshal Saxe is as able as it is amusing ; that.original General, having treated of the science " which furnishes us with the means for the destruction of the human race," then proposed " methods towards facilitating the propagation of it " I But the most interesting paper in the book is certainly the first, dealing with those wonderful Mongol leaders, Jenghiz and his captain Sabutai, who nearly conquered the whole mediaeval world. From a stripling of thirteen, Jenghiz had command of armies. but it was only when he was fifty that the great dreams of Empire which he nourished in that strange heart of his, found their fulfilment.
In 1213 he overran the Kin Empire in China, and subsequently defeated the great Karismian Empire (Persia) by a masterly concentric movement of three armies, riding in with a dash across the desert of Kizyl Kum, and taking Bokhara in rear. Captain Hart describes most brilliantly the spinning of the " Nemesis-like web in which are trapped the doomed armies of the Shah " : it is a campaign that all students of strategy
should mark, for it is modern in its emphasis on surprise and mobility.
Jenghiz devoted the remaining years of his life to con- solidating his mighty Empire, which was distinguished by complete religious tolerance. Christians, pagans, Mohamme- dans, and Buddhists were found amongst its councillors. The prejudice of the historians of the Mediaeval West and of India in regard to the Mongols should be fairly obvious to us, yet the impression is still generally prevalent that these nomads were ruthless barbarians and that they won their victories by force of numbers. The opposite is true. The Mongols were generally in a minority, but they had superior mobility, greater courage, wider imagination, and simpler organization. The " Scourge of Asia " may have been more of a blessing than a curse.
Did every trooper, as Captain Hart says, carry "a complete set of tools, an individual camp kettle and iron ration " as well as a mussack for crossing rivers, a lance, a cut and thrust sabre, two bows, three quivers and a change of clothes ? Such impedimenta might well overweight a dragoon, let alone a light cavalryman on a pony. But perhaps the equipment was carried by a ragged retinue of pack animals, such as possessed by the old Silladar cavalry of India, which was the descen- dant of the Mongol horsemen. However this may be, there can be no question of the great mobility of the Mongols. Sabutai, who invaded Hungary twenty years after Jenghiz's death, marched 400 miles, fought two decisive battles, took four cities, and, conquered Poland and Silesia from the Vistula to the borders of Saxony, all within the space of a month. The moral is plain. Europe has no prerogative of military genius : " The Japanese have reminded us that courageous and disciplined fighting troops can come from the Orient, but the Mongol campaigns reveal to us that Asia has also pro- duced consummate military leaders who in strategical ability may vie with any in history. What she has done in the past, it is possible for her to do again." These are words we may well ponder over.
The Mongols were modern in their organization as well as their strategy. They had some system of signalling whereby, for instance, news was flashed 500 miles within twenty- four hours from Liegnitz to Gran, enabling Sabutai to throw in all his weight at the decisive point at the decisive moment. If there is to be a war of the future, which God forbid, the heirs of the horsemen of Jenghiz may well be the light cater- pillar tanks which we are now experimenting with. Europe may or may not have progressed beyond the crude and cruel arbitrament of force, but we shall do well to remember that Europe is not all the world.
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