dical warfare is but the judicious application of strength, looked with pity upon the illusion of those who regarded the want of a regular army as a favourable circumstance, and who estimated the peasant the safest defender of the kingdom.

He knew

that it was the veterans of Arcole and of Marengo, and not the republicans of Valmy, who fixed the destinies of the French revolution."

Already, at the commencement of this chapter, we expressed our opinion as regards the importance of the part attributed to the guerillas during the Spanish war. That war, we admitted, is the one most frequently invoked, and, perhaps, with the most appearance of reason, in favour of the volunteer system. Nevertheless, despite all the authority of General Sir Howard Douglas,* we are of the opinion that the sole circumstance which rendered possible the permanency of the Spanish partidas, was the physical conformation of the Peninsula, which allowed them to find safety and refuge in flight. As regards the guerillas properly called, that is to say, presenting the semblance of organization, which it is always endeavoured to give to irregular troops, as soon, says General Lamarque, as the French troops had crossed the Pyrenees, "those bands dispersed as if by enchantment." There remained, so to say, a few isolated bandits who fought on their own account. Without contesting the great feats of Sanchez, Porlier, and Renovalle, mentioned. by Sir Howard Douglas, we do not believe that these chieftains ever did anything else than to bother and impede the victor.

The most competent authority on Spanish affairs, General Napier says: "The Spaniards made no grand and general effort, or, at least, they did not show firmness and consistency in battle. * * *The

peasant, turned into a soldier, fled on the first attack, threw away his arms, and returned home, where, enticed by the licence of the partidas, he joined bands of men, nothing else than bandits, who were more feared by their own countrymen than by the enemy. Those guerilla bands would soon have been exterminated by the French, had not the latter been close pressed by Wellington's battalions, and obliged to keep together in masses. Such is the secret of Spanish consistency. The abundant support sent by England, and the valour of the Anglo-Portuguese troops, alone sustained the war." Wellington, in a letter to Colonel Trant, expresses himself in the same terms respecting the troops and half-disciplined bands which constituted the Spanish army.

"I was apprehensive," he says, "that the Spaniards in Alentejo would suffer. There is nothing so foolish as to push these half-disciplined troops forward; for the certain consequence must be, either their early and precipitate retreat, if the enemy should advance, or their certain destruction." +

In another letter addressed to Lord Castlereagh, after dwelling upon the fact that the whole instruction of the Spanish infantry consisted in knowing how to march past on parade and shoulder a

* "Naval, Littoral, and Internal Defence of England," by General Sir Howard Douglas.

+ Letter from Wellington, 6th August, 1808.

musket, the English Commander-in-Chief returns again to the subject, and proves by striking examples that it does not suffice to carry a weapon and wear a uniform to become a soldier, and that any body of men (volunteers or others) badly disciplined or incompletely instructed, are rather an embarrassment than a help to a regular

army.

"The Spanish cavalry," writes Wellington, "are in general well clothed, armed, and accoutred, and remarkably well mounted, and their horses in good condition. But I have never heard anybody pretend that in any one instance they have behaved as soldiers ought to do in presence of an enemy. This practice of running away, and throwing off arms, accoutrements, and clothing, is fatal to everything. * ** Nearly 2,000 Spaniards ran off on the evening of the 27th from the battle of Talavera (not 100 yards from the place where I was standing), who were neither attacked nor threatened with an attack, and who were frightened only by the noise of their own fire." *

66

66

According to the late Duke, the battle of Albuera, which cost the English so dearly, would have been a complete victory for them, and without any important loss, if the Spaniards had known how to manœuvre, but, unfortunately," says Wellington, they cannot." We shall confine ourselves to these few testimonies from eminent English and French officers, although we could corroborate them from the writings of Spanish generals. †

These quotations will, we think, suffice to show that the volunteers in Spain as in America, were not the liberators of their country. To the troops, and to the tried troops of England, to whom the partidas only offered a very small support, is due the glory of that enfranchisement.

If we examine the secondary campaigns of Belgium in 1830, and of Piedmont in 1849, the examples could not enlighten us more completely than they afforded to us by the long and great wars of America, of the Republic, and of the Peninsula. Thus we shall be very brief. In Belgium, as in Piedmont, a very short time sufficed to show that the true military superiority was not to be found in popular enthusiasm, and that patriotism soon became powerless, when not supported by regular troops of sufficient strength and tried solidity. Without the support of the French army, the Belgian volunteers, despite their undeniable courage, would have found the tomb of their liberty in the plains of Louvain and Hasselt. Without that support, especially, they would never have entered Antwerp; for, if it is admitted that the volunteers are capable of defending themselves behind ramparts, their warmest advocates have not yet pretended to assert that they could carry by storm a regular fortress.

As regards Piedmont, no one will hesitate to admit that one of the chief causes of its final failure against Austria in 1849, notwithstanding its brilliant commencement, was precisely owing to the mixture of volunteers who joined its regular army from all parts of

*Letter from Wellington to Lord Castlereagh, dated 25th August, 1809.

+ Vide the letters of the Marquis de la Romana, and of General Francisco de Paula Lette

Italy. With a few exceptions these volunteers gave way, and were of no service; and the laxness of discipline which they introduced into the Piedmontese army became the cause of the most serious embarrassment.

As regards the campaign of 1859, and the pretended advantages gained by Garibaldi, about whom such a noise has been made, we may be allowed to entertain the opinion that this Coryphee of volunteers, without the assistance of the French and Piedmontese troops, would have shared precisely the same fate with his Chasseurs of the Alps as his predecessors Manara, Arcioni, Allemandi, Sedabundi, and tutti quanti with their free corps of 1849.*

Enthusiasm may do a good deal, and serve a political movement, and, when the cause is a good one, no objection can be made. History may record these bursts of enthusiasm, but military discipline must not suffer by it.

We maintain that these doctrines are not understood in the organization of the English volunteers, from the moment that they are considered in England, not as an element purely accessory and eventual of defence, but as an effective force and, in a certain degree, permanent,-destined to support the inefficiency of the regular army. The authority of history, as we have already shown, confirms the statements of all experienced officers, when they declare that the volunteers are not equal to such a task.

If the English army, as has been asserted, and into which we purpose examining in a subsequent chapter-is really from its effective strength beneath the task it has to fulfil, at home and abroad, the organization of the volunteers is not a sufficient palliative for the decayed institutions which prevent that effective strength from being raised to the level of what is required.

If, on the contrary, the martial spirit of the English people, and the resources which the institutions place at the disposal of the government are not absolutely opposed to the maintenance of this effective strength, to withdraw from it the smallest fraction to substitute instead no matter what number of volunteers is an error in an economical as well as in a financial point of view.

We have already seen what changes have taken place since the origin of the movement, and the expense which has been incurred. If ever the services of the English volunteers should become necessary, the English would soon learn, as the Americans have done, what an awful expense it is to employ irregular troops.

During the War of Independence the expenses, says one historian, were not under twenty millions of dollars annually, although the number of the troops did not exceed 10,000 to 15,000 men.

It will suffice to read the declaration of Mr. Stevens, President of the Committe of Ways and Means, to be convinced that the American volunteers of the present day are just as costly as their predecessors.

Amongst Garibaldi's feats, we do not allude to his invasion of the kingdom of Naples; the reason is simple: we said that insurgents and volunteers could not beat a regular army, but on the evident condition that the army was not inclined to make common cause with the insurgents. This is what took place in Sicily and Naples.

"The daily expense of the Federal government since the commencement of the present war amounts to 1,250,000 dollars. This represents in the annual budget 450,000,000 dollars. Should peace not soon be declared the finances of America-formerly in a flourishing condition, will be in the worst state of any in the world. How could it be otherwise when we know that in this disastrous struggle each volunteer costs five times as much as a regular soldier, and when it is admitted that a man on service costs £200 sterling per annum.

We shall not extend this discussion on the English volunters-it is perhaps too long already. A good deal might be said about the anarchy which exists in certain corps, or the spirit of opposition in others, or the right of veto which in certain localities the men have pretended to exercise in the nomination of their officers; finally, on the support which ultra-democratic ideas might one day meet in the arming of the English people. A volume would not suffice for the examination of all these questions.

Our object has been to establish in a military as well as in an economical point of view the value of an institution, about which so much stir has been made, and which has been frankly stated to be directed against France.

Let us (says Lieutenant-Colonel Martin) speak as frankly on our side: the military nations of the continent are not so stupefied as is supposed in England, by the results presented by the volunteers at Wimbledon and at Brighton. Those evolutions and manœuvres will deceive no one as regards their efficiency. The lawyers, merchants, and shopkeepers of London are not the first who have tried to play at soldiers. We have watched the prowess of their predecessors in every country. As far as we ourselves are concerned, enlightened as we are in France by the experience of our national guard,t if we entertained from which God preserve us-those hostile projects so gratuitously attributed to us on the other side of the Channel, we know at least, and to our cost, where lies the weak point of this new armament which our neighbours dazzle before the eyes of Europe.

*Levées en masse, says Napoleon, were always the precursors of civil discord. + When Lyons was declared in a state of siege General Gemeau, who commanded the division, asked, to keep down the population, 10,000 men without the national guard, and 30,000 men with it.

THE PORTSMOUTH FORTIFICATIONS.

AMONG all our great naval establishments, that of Portsmouth has exercised the greatest influence, not only upon its immediate locality, but upon the nation at large. It is the oldest in the kingdom. From the very earliest periods of our naval history, when Alfred the Great defeated the Danes, after he had formed his navy, of which Portsmouth appears to have been the rendezvous, the establishment has been progressing, though of course with fluctuations answering to the times and temper of different monarchs. The grand improvements, however, commenced in the time of Charles the Second, received great additions in the reign of Queen Anne, have been continued ever since, and are now undergoing further alterations.

Nevertheless, the period when Portsmouth became an arsenal of great national importance was at that epoch of our history when the ancient ports of Sandwich, Rye, Winchelsea, and Dover, began to perish for want of water, and were gradually choked with sand and shingle. At that period ships also began to increase in dimensions, for the compass, "navigation's soul," was lending its aid to mariners, who no longer crept timidly on the sea in sight of land, but crossed the broad Atlantic in search of fresh discoveries. The shallow creeks and havens of the Cinque ports, which for ages had been the Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Chatham combined, had played their part and passed away, and there is historical evidence that about this period the magnificent situation of Portsmouth began to attract attention.

The antiquary Leland, who visited this arsenal in the middle of the sixteenth century, says "that the town is walled with mud a furlong from the East tower, armed with timber, on which were pieces of iron and brass ordnance." There is every reason to suppose that the fortifications remained in the simple state described by this quaint old chronicler until the reign of Edward the Sixth, when great improvements were made in them. Charles the Second, after his restoration as before observed, still made further alterations; he raised several forts, and fortified them after the manner of his time. All these works were greatly augmented by James the Second, and since that time the ramparts have received considerable additions, so that Portsmouth is now and has been for a long period the most regular fortress in Great Britain.

In briefly noticing the fortifications that surround our chief naval arsenal, we intend first to describe the state of the Enceinte as it at present exists, and also to give the prevailing opinion of the intention of what the Government means to do with this now useless line of defence. We then propose to describe in detail the second line of defence surrounding Portsmouth, Gosport, and the adjacent towns, and lastly, to take a comprehensive survey of the third or outer line, including all the contemplated new works on Portsdown Hill, the outlying detached forts at Black House, Roome, and Leefarm, and the sea-forts at the Sturbridge Shoal and the Horse Sand.

U. S. MAG., No. 400, MARCH, 1862.

A A