LORD LAKE. 4 JUST a hundred years ago Lord Lake died,
worn out with the fatigues of his campaign in India,—a campaign which the great Wellesley-placed among the glories of English military achievement. This book is therefore opportune, and if it did not perform the signal office of directing attention to a memorable Centenary, it would still be welcome, because Lake has hardly come by his due at the hands of the historians. It is a common remark of biographers—a race of hero- worshippers, blest them !—that their subject has been neglected; but it is through no want of a sense of proportion that Colonel Pearse says it of Lake. In the words of the preface, "the rising fame of Wellington swallowed, like Aaron's rod, the reputations of all contemporaneous soldiers." That is the explanation of the neglect. Truly military fame is a perverse zephyr. When great things are being • Memoir of the Life and Military Services of Viscount Lake, Baron' Bakes of Dslhi and Lasictirss, /744480d. By Colonel high reaxat,London: W. Black- wood and Bona. [15a. net] done, when action is maintained ale sr hid- of- inspiration, -superb deeds and mighty conceptions. pass in :the- euck. At 'another time the world's met*• ia filled with the name: of an officer who has conducted with. ordinary compekeese An affair of outposts. Colonel Pearse is a writer who likes reimearch. He tells us something about the history of Lake'e officers, who have been allowed to remain mere- names in most beaks; and in the case of the Irish Rebellion he has consulted French authority, which was well ,worth doing, for the French raid
• was one of the most curious incidents in modern warfare. The whole volume is a compact account of Lake's military life. It is a simple narrative without a suspicion of fine writing—the facts are their own eulogy—and the values of • the different episodes come out as they can only in the work of a soldier who has seen fighting himself:
Gerard Lake joined the Army just after the unaecotentable failure of Lord George Sackville and the corresponding success of Lord Granby in the Seven Years' War. Cblone Pearse shows that it must have been on Lord Granby that Lake modelled himself. Later in life he always attacked, and attacked boldly whatever the circumstances. He believed that the moral qualities of soldiers were greater in attack than in defence, and the rule only failed him once seriously in his whole life. His experience was a very interesting demonstra- tion of a principle for which there is much to be said on the grounds of common-sense and psychology-. -glow, confidence, the feeling of holding the enemy in wholesome disrespect and of having more to gain than to lcise, all belong to the attack. Lake was in the 1st Guards (called the Grenadiers since Waterloo), and he appears" to have cut a dash in the fashion- able world with the best of his brother-officer& It was a matter of regimental pride even it war to "leave a genteel corpse." Dandyism, hard riding, and hard campaigning have often gone together, and they did so to admiration in Lake. Sir George Brown in the Crimea was not a greater stickler for appearances than Lake had been before him ; out of the dirtiest bivouac and among' the most hungry and tattered column Lake would appear every morning carefully stocked, perruqued, powdered, and shaved.
After the Seven Years' War Lake saw service in North America and Holland. We should have been glad if Colonel Pearse had balanced his strictures on the undoubtedly " unpatriotic " sentiments of Fox as to the War of Independence with equally severe strictures on the mad obstinacy of George III. and Lord North. The military stupidity with which the war was pressed on is indeed con- demned; but, after all, Fox had behind him some of the most English Englishmen in England,—men who thought it a lesser national shame to abandon the war than to win it. Lake's sortie from Yorktown was a small but real promise of what he was yet to do as an officer. On his return to England he became a member of the Prince of Wales's staff, and one can only conclude that the Prince did not surround himself exclusively with the worthless Wretches who have given a peculiar character to the Regency.
Lake- has been blamed for two things chiefly in Ireland,—for losing the-fight at Castlebar against the French raider Humbert, and for inhuman severity towards the Irish prisoners. There is no real warrant for either charge: the battle at Castlebar was lost by Hutchinson before Lake had arrived; and Colonel Pearse follows Mr. Lecky in believing that the statement that the rebelskilled their prisoners because Lake had banged some of the rebel leaders is an inversion of the facts. As to the French raid; Colonel Pearse admits it to have been a singular feat—the raiders, only a thousand strong, kept the field for seventeen days in a country garrisoned by a large army—and would no doubt allow it a good deal of weight as a lesson for those who dismiss the possibility of foreign raids; but at the same time he perceives more special explanations of the partial success of the raiders, such as the sympathetic co-operation of the [Irish, than Were insisted on by the Military Correspondent of the Times in his interesting papers on this stitieet BOMA tithe ago. Lake's career blossomed' into brilliance when he macho& India. Sindliia and his European coadjutors had brought the Mal:tied& thilitar pdwer to a high pitch, and either that power or the British power had to fall. Colonel- Pears° would have heightened still more the reader's sone, of what Lake achicnied in that • vital steite,gle'if he- had. hi:fasted On t1 extraordinarymachine which Sindhia had at his disposal:: Thie Mahratta army-was really composed of Hiudastanis,—cousins., as it were, to the native troops which fought -with the English; the horsemen alone were perhaps purely Mahrattas, and they were of no great account. At Aligarh, Delhi, Agra, Laswari, - and Bhartpur Lake attacked without delay and furiously. To attack, as we have said, was his sovereign solution. Some of his feats of endurance and audacity are almost incredible. Like Arthnr Wellesley, he always exposed himself unneces- sarily; in his great fights be would open the battle by taking the eavah7 into action, and when the infantry were engaged later, he would leave the tired cavalry and personally lead the infantgy. His troops would do anything for him. He led them always into danger, but his history shows that aoldiers do not mind that; so long as they have a real man to lead them, they are indifferent to the particular degree of risk. , At Laswari the cavalry, after marching forty-two miles ia lees than twenty-four hours were so hotly engaged that the horses could not be watered or fed for twenty hours. And the infantry went into action after covering sixty-five miles iu • forty-eight hours. It is to be remembered that Lake's army was never sufficiently stiffened with Europeans. Lord Wellesley seems to have granted more Regular troops to Arthur Wellesley than to Lake ; but even if Lake did not think there was good reason for this, he at all events never complained. His respect and affection for Wellesley were as , great as Wellealey's admiration for him. Again and again he laid it down that Europeans ought to be mixed with native troops in the proportion of one to six. Experience taught him that without a sufficient number of Europeans a general could not get either quickness or dash. It was at Aligarh, when a furious and successful assault on a fort had been delivered, that Lake turned to Skinner (one of those adventurous Europeans who fought for some time in the Mahratta cause, and of whom Boigne was the great repre- sentative) and asked him his opinion of "a European attack." "No forts in Hindustan can stand against it," was the answer. Perhaps after that confirmation of his theory Lake pursued it more confidently than ever, and it failed him at Bhartpur. But even Bhartpur could do little to dull the lustre of Lake's military contributions to the establishment of British power in India. When Wellesley was recalled to England, the attempts of Lord Cornwallis and that adaptable official, Sir. George Barlow, to abandon most of what had been gained by Lake showed how little the meaning of British dominion in India was understood at home.
The casualties in Lake's army were appalling. One regi- ment, the 76th, returned to England with only two survivors of the originaleoldiers whohad sailed under its colours ! As an instance of the inadequate recognition of -the events of Lake's campaign we must not forget to mention the services of John Smith. Who has ever heard John Smith spoken of as a great cavalry leader, or, indeed, talked of at all P His name just- appears in the records of the Guards as having been in Lake's regiment and been a cavalry officer in India. Yet the two cavalry pursuits by Lake (who himself, of course, hunted llolkar) and Smith were triumphs of management and endurance. One would like to know more of John Smith. What personality sheltered under that name P Was it his real name, or was he the natural son of some great man who had put him into the Guards ancf sent him to India to distinguish ' himself or to die P Lake's own personality is, happily, well enough recorded. He was a disciplinarian, yet he was, as Sir John Malcolm said, "kind almost to weakness," and it is not likely that he committed unnecessary barbarities in Ireland. He died poor, though he must have had opportunities to come by much wealth in India. He had the power to get the utmost out of his men ; and his -brain was at his liveliest and clearest when the urgency was greatest. It was one of those brains, like Clive's, which seemed to clarify in the turmoil a fighting. It was unlike that of poor Monson, who was a gallant fellow, yet for some constitutional reason nerve- less under a great stress. Yet Lake did not pretend to be more than a soldier; he had no ambition -to enter into administrative relations with the Government at home. "Damn your writing—mind your fighting," he used to say. Is there any speeial lesson to be learned from Lake's career P Yes, and it is this. He acted on the belief that to standstill was nearly always to be defeated. He seized hie-first -chance of practising his principle at Lincelles with wonderful success. In India, as we have said, it fail0. Aka lint saw, end lot
as -not forget that he -was .0oxisistently opposing good troops- with a -weak ;force. 33y the time he -reached Bhartpur his little army had been worn away by attri- tion, and he had received no reinforcements. Even then he trusted his principle,—once too often. His one fault was carelessness. This is too bad a fault to condone, yet his career proves what enterprise and pluck can do even unaided by the great penetrating qualities. If Lake had fought in the Boer War he might indeed have failed at Colenso, but he would have walked through the enemy at Spion Kop and Vaal Krautz. A careful Lake would be the ideal general; but as be was Lake was worth a hundred :unenterprising pedants. Such is the meaning to be extracted from Colonel Pearse's most useful book, which might well be read by every Englishman in this centenary year in pious memory -of a very great man.
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