FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG.*
Fights for the Flag is as good as Deeds that Won the Empire. To say more than this in praise of the book before us is un- necessary, for Deeds that Won the Empire was one of the best collections of popular battle studies ever given to the public. Mr. Fitchett shows in Fights for the Flag all the good qualities
which he showed in his first volume. There is the same admir- able clearness of style, the same comprehensive sympathy, the same power to stir the blood and to paint noble deeds in fitting words. We note, too, the same excellent use of telling quotations. Whenever he can Mr. Fitchett gives what the Generals said in their own words, and not a mere
rechauffe of their utterances. Thus Mr. Fitchett's work, though necessarily short and compressed, is never dull. Again, he shows here, as in his former book, the same power of describing localities and for bringing before one the place of battle. No writer ever had more completely the art of
making one realise how opposing forces move both by land and sea.
Perhaps the most interesting of the land-fights described in the present volume are the battles of Dettingen and of Minden. In the account of Dettingen Mr. Fitchett makes one realise with great force the terrible position in which George II. and his army found themselves. Our only criticism is that he gives way rather too much to the conventional view of George IL As a matter of fact, George II. was by no means as stupid a man as he looked or as the Jacobite wits represented him. Remember he called Lord Chesterfield "a little tea-table scoundrel," and Chatham " that trumpet of sedition." Those biting phrases may not have been true, but at any rate they were not coined by a stupid man. We wish, however, to dwell upon Minden rather than on Dettingen. It is thus that Mr. Fitchett opens his description of Minden :—
"The battle of Minden might almost be described as having been won by a blunder, and a blunder about so insignificant a thing as a mere preposition ! Prince Ferdinand, who commanded the allied army, had placed the six regiments of British infantry, who formed the flower of his force, in his centre, and had given orders that they were to move forward in attack 'on sound of drum.' The British read the order, with sound of drum.' The seventy-five splendid squadrons of horse who formed the French centre were in their immediate front. The British saw their foes before them, line on line of tossing horse-heads and gleaming helmets, of scarlet and steel, and wind-blown crests. What other signal of battle' was needed ? Obeying the warlike impulse in their blood, they at once moved forward with sound of drum '— every drummer-boy in the regiments, in fact, plying his drum- sticks with furious energy, and those waves of warlike sound stirred the dogged valour of the British to a yet fiercer daring ! Prince Ferdinand never contemplated such a movement ; it violated all the rules of war. What sane general would have launched 6,000 infantry in line to attack 10,000 of the finest cavalry in Europe in ranked squadrons ? It is on record that the Hanoverian troops placed in support of the British regiments watched with dumb and amazed alarm the 'stupid' British moving serenely forward to a contest so lunatic. But to the . Fight, for the Flag. By W. H. Fitohett (" Vedette "). With 16 Portrait% 13 Plans, and s Faosimile Letter of the Duke of 24.eslberon&h, Louden Smith, Elder, sod Co. Po.]
confusion of all critics, and to the mingled wrath and shame of the French generals, these astonishing British regiments tumbled Contades' splendid cavalry into mere distracted ruin, and left his wings disconnected military fragments, and won, in the most irregular manner, the great battle of Minden !"
It was of this charge that the French commander wrote :- "I have seen what I never thought to be possible—a single line of infantry break through three lines of cavalry ranked in order of battle, and tumble them into ruin !" Minden can never be described without a reference to the trial of Lord George Sackville, and the incident that gave rise to it. Mr. Fitchett, with a really marvellous brevity, manages to touch on this difficult point, and to give us short but vivid pictures of Lord Granby, Lord George Sackville, and Prince Ferdinand.
We had marked a dozen other things to mention in Fights for the Flag, but must content ourselves with a quotation from " Lord Howe and the First of June,"—a quotation which can- not fail to delight every reader :— " The battle abounded in picturesque and even amusing inci- dents. Pakenham, for example, who commanded the Invincible, was a daring but somewhat reckless Irishman. He drifted through the smoke on a French ship, and opened fire upon her with great energy. After a time, the fire of the Frenchman died away, while that of the Invincible grew yet more furious. Pakenham, however, was dissatisfied with the circumstance that the French- man made no reply, and he hailed her to know if she surrendered. The Frenchman replied, energetically, No V whereupon the gallant Irishman inquired in tones of disgust, Then, — you, why don't you fire ! ' Gambier, another of Howe's captains, was the exact opposite of the hare-brained Pakenham ; a fine sailor, a brave fighter, and of sober and puritanic temper. Ilis ship, the Defemce, of seventy-four guns, fought gallantly, and had two of her masts shot away ; when, through the smoke, the tall masts of a French three-decker were visible bearing down upon her. A lieutenant hurried to the quarter-deck and cried to Gambier, 1— my eyes, sir, but here's a whole mountain coming down upon us! What shall we do ' To which the unmoved Gambier answered by asking how his officer dared at such a moment as that to come to him with an oath in his mouth. ' Go down to your guns, sir,' he added, and encourage your men to stick to their guns like British tars V " Our last word in regard to these fascinating studies of battle by land and sea must be a reference to the admirable paper, "The Men in the Ranks." Here are collected a. number of delightful stories showing the way in which the British soldier fights. This section of the book is largely based on the Recollections of Rifleman Harris. But Fights for the Flag is, after all, not all battle-pictures. It closes with a very touching and picturesque essay on "The Lady with the Lamp,"—Mies Florence Nightingale.
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