MONEY IN THE FIELD.
READY cash is as necessary to an army in the field as to any private traveller, and often as difficult to obtain. Almost the first step taken by Lord Roberts on the occupation of Bloemfontein was to arrange that the Free State National Bank and the Standard Bank of South Africa should cash the cheques of the regimental paymasters, and of the officers, in order that both they and the men might have money in their pockets during their sojourn in the Free State capital and on the march to Pretoria. In return the banks were allowed to resume business south of Bloemfontein. At the same time, it was important to deny to the enemy north of Bloemfontein any such facilities for obtaining coin; and all business in that direction was forbidden. This will make some difference to the Free Staters, but none whatever to the Transvaal. It is not the least unusual feature of this war that the weaker side is able to dip its hands whenever necessary into a perennial stream of bullion. It is probably the only war known in which a nation has paid its daily expenses in cash, and in gold. Ten of the richest gold mines in the world are worked week in and week out for the Transvaal Treasury. Day and night the stamps are crushing the quartz into dust, and the gold-saturated slime runs over the plates, and every week bricks of gold are sent to Pretoria, and minted into coin by foreign work- men trained at Birmingham or Amsterdam.
The Boers in undertaking the campaign placed a proper value on this warlike asset. The great nations of Europe hoard gold for such emergencies. The Boers had their treasure ready in the rock. It is not a century since a victorious English army, which had broken through the Pyrenees under the Duke of Wellington, was almost forced to abandon the cam- paign from utter lack of gold. The Duke warned the Govern- ment that he expected to have to fight for an embarcation from San Sebastian not only against the French, but also the Spanish army. When the gold did come it was in bullion or in guineas; and the French refused to compromise themselves by accepting English coin. They wanted gold Napoleons. The Duke was equal to the emergency. He had no minting machinery, but he had his army. "Knowing," says Napier, "that in a British army a wonderful variety of vocations, good and bad, may be found, he privately caused false coiners and die-sinkers to be sought for among the soldiers, and they, when assured that no ill was designed for them, very readily acknowledged their peculiar talents. With the aid of these men he secretly coined gold Napoleons, carefully preserving their proper fineness and weight, but marked them with a private stamp to enable the French Government, when peace should be established, to call them in again." The last pre- caution shows the finished business sense, so conspicuous in the finance of great commanders. All through the .Peninanlar War Napoleon and Wellington acted as the good and bad genius of military finance, Napoleon making the invaded rations pay, and Wellington endeavouring to meet his liabilities, and each succeeding in his own role. Of emergency finance in the field, as well as of emergency coinage, Mafeking and the resourceful Baden-Powell give the most recent instances. The financing was done by the assumption of personal risks by Colonel Baden-Powell and another officer, Lord Edward Cecil, who, if the accounts are correct, gave their personal security for the immense additional stores accumulated there by the foresight of Mr. Weil, and purchased by them for the Government. The latest reports from Mafeking state that Colonel Baden-Powell has also coined money for use in the siege. This is very possible, for in a siege which may end badly money aceuma•
later in the hands of the few who Bell provisions, and remains there, because there is no other commodity on offer for them to exchange it for. Also, actual cash is hoarded, in case of accidents. As the garrison made a big gun in the railway works, it is highly probable that they have been able to coin money, though this may be only copper " tokens." It is difficult to believe that there is much silver plate, whether teapots or forks, in Mafeking.
The need of siege coinage is a regular feature of the blockades of isolated towns to-day as it was of all sieges three centuries ago. In Khartoum after six months of siege Gordon had in October only £2,900 in cash, which he supple- mented by £39,000 in paper. In the second week in November he had £831 in cash, and £4,000 in paper, and had negotiated E14,000 in paper in the town. "I call this state of finance not bad, after eight months of blockade," he wrote in his diary. Was this paper ever re- deemed, or were the lenders of the cash murdered when Khartoum was sacked P During the siege of Mooltan in the second Sikh War siege rupees were struck, the earliest emergency coin of this reign. The Oxford coinage of Charles I. made during the war was not siege money at all, though it was emergency coinage, of which the metal was contributed by the Colleges and loyal families in the neigh. bourhood. There had long been a mint at Oxford, which was noted for the beauty of design and finish of the pieces turned out. The siege coinage was far rougher, as might be ex- pected, for the loyalist towns in which it was made were often quite small places, with a modest population and no appliances for the work. Colchester, Carlisle, Newark, and Pontefract all spent their last penny, and had to manufacture cash. Much copper war coinage was also made in Ireland by the Duke of Ormond. All these were honest tokens or good coins ; but there were leaders in English history who were less scrupulous. Henry III. levied a tax for a Crusade, and struck a highly pious Crusade coinage, with a crescent and stars on the re- verse. As this was not the emblem of the Turk till the taking of Constantinople, it is somewhat singular that it should have been adopted as the token on the coinage issued for a Holy War. But the same sign appears on some of John's coins, which are surmised to have been struck when he assumed the character of a Crusader. Why the Duchess of Burgundy should have put on the groats which she caused to be struck for Perkin Warbeck's expedition against England, the legend " Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin," is fairly obvious. Baden-Powell might have impressed the Boers if he had used the same text on his tokens.
It sometimes happens that a war is undertaken in a country which has peculiar notions as to coinage and standard money, and will only take in free exchange the money to which it is accustomed. Some years ago gold coin might not have been welcome tender in the Far East. In the Abyssinian War the only coins which the people would take willingly were the old blaria, Theresa dollars, and these had to be manufactured or collected for the use of the army. Plenty were found in the Mandi's treasury at Khartoum. Emergency finance of the oppressive kind has not been common in the wars of modern Europe. Perhaps the best remembered and most heartily resented was the measure which is known in Mecklenburgh and the North German States as Davonst's Spnr. When Davoust was holding Hamburg during the war following the retreat from Moscow, he " commandeered " all the silver plate, giving the alternative of compensation or ransom. As the two kinds of effects which both citizens and country gentry most valued were their plate and chests of fine linen, they ransomed the former when they could. The receipt was a letter "N," pressed on to the bottom or side of the silver with the spiked and running rowel of a trooper's spur. Though brutal, Davoust's methods were unmistakable. He either took the plate or the money to supply the sinews of war. A policy apparently kinder, but really less honest, was adopted by the Stuarts in Ireland. James IL and his Irish supporters would probably have " settled up" satisfactorily if the war had resulted in victory. As it was, they were left with pewter in place of silver. The belief may not be correctly founded, but the collectors of old pewter now account for the presence of the silver hall-mark on some Irish pewters of the time of the Revolution by the theory
that this was made of the same shape and weight as silver given for the use of the King; and that the silver hall-mark was stamped on it as an acknowledgment that in due time the pewter would be exchanged for its equivalent in silver plate. Paper money for paying troops in the form of "tickets" had proved so unpopular among the seamen during the Dutch War in his brother's time, that James II. may have shrunk from issuing it. But there is only one instance on record of a superfluity of cash in war time in the days of the Stuarts.
That rests on the word of that bold commander, Sir Robert Holmes, Admiral at sea, who vowed that when attacked by a corsair, after he had had a successful cruise, being short of small shot, he loaded his guns with pieces of eight, and with this new form of langrage swept the enemy's decks. An evening's talk between Sir Robert Holmes and Colonel Kirke, both " men of honour " and of practical experience in English enterprise beyond the seas, would probably have suggested some unique expedients in the emergency finance of naval and military com- manders. But they could scarcely have hit upon a more "shady" expedient than one seriously suggested during the early days of the war with France at the end of the last century. The French had issued " assiguats," of the value of £4, really promises to pay on the security of the Church lands confiscated at the Revolution, but which were very properly not forced into the market all at once. It was pro- posed to permit the forgery of assignats in this country in order to discredit them as currency. The idea was not dis- couraged, but the recklessness of the French themselves soon reduced the value of assignata to a level at which they were not worth forging.
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