THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL

OF MILITARY HISTORY

Flying Over
the Hump
Opium Wars
Hot Day at
Monmouth,
1778

AUTUMN 2016

HistoryNet.com

NAPOLEON LOST

PARIS
How his army melted away
at Laon, March 1814

YOU CAN
SCARCELY
IMAGINE THE
BEAUTY AND
MAGNIFICENCE
OF THE PALACES
WE BURNT.
IT MADE ONES
HEART SORE.
British captain
Charles Gordon,
Second Opium
War, 1860
page 68

AUTUMN 2016
VOLUME 29, NUMBER 1

The Battle of Laon presented

Napoleon with the last opportunity
to change the course of the war by
defeating his Prussian nemesis.

26
FEATURES
26 How Napoleon
Lost Paris, 1814
Autumn 2016

by Michael V. Leggiere
At Laon, he was outmaneuvered
by Field Marshal Gebhard von
Blchers Allied army

36 Death in the
Afternoon
by Mark Edward Lender and
Garry Wheeler Stone
In the Battle of Monmouth,
Washington struck a inal blow
against Clintons redcoats

MHQ Autumn 2016

44 Over the Hump

by Stephan Wilkinson
World War IIs pioneering
airlit operation over the rugged
mountain barriers of Burma
in myth and reality

52 Kearnys
California Trek
by Anthony Brandt
How the general who would
become known as the father of
the U.S. Cavalry won the West
with an all-but-bloodless war

60 Weapons
as Objets dArt
PORTFOLIO
hroughout history, the tools of
war have oten been beautiied

68 Kickin the Gong

by David Silbey
Britains push for free trade
created drug addicts by the
millions in China and triggered
two Opium Wars

36
60

44
76 The Spoiling
of the World
by Michael S. Sweeney
South Sudan won independence
in 2011 ater decades of civil
war, but the new nation hasnt
been able to rid itself of ighting

SUBSCRIBER BONUS
98 Third-Century
Crisis
by James Lacey
Long-lost passages reveal new
details of the Roman Empires
near-death experience

68
DEPARTMENTS
4 Flashback
10 Comments
13 At the Front
14 Laws of War
16 Battle Schemes
18 Experience
20 Behind the Lines
23 Weapons Check
25 Letter From MHQ

85 Culture of War
86 Classic Dispatches
88 Artist
91 Poetry
92 Reviews
Paul Andrew Huttons ambitious
Apache Wars; top military
scholars reexamine the Battle
of the Somme; and the role of
New York City and Hudson
River Valley colonists in the
American Revolution

76
On the Cover
Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of
Francehere in Jacques-Louis
Davids heroic portraitenjoyed
political and military careers that
were meteoric and matchless. In 52
years, he fought in 50 battles and
won mostbut not all: His loss at
Laon (page 26), led to exile on Elba.
(Photo RMN-Grand Palais/Art
Resource, NY)
OPPOSITE: ERNEST CROFTS/CHRISTIES IMAGES/
BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: NORTH WIND
PICTURE ARCHIVES/THE IMAGE WORKS; PRESIDENT
AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, PEABODY MUSEUM
OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY, PM#91-6-70-/5059
(DIGITAL FILE #60741982); HARRISON NGETHI/AFP/GETTY
IMAGES; DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/GRANGER, NYC; WILLIAM
VANDIVERT/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

96 Drawn & Quartered

MHQ Autumn 2016

FLASHBACK

TAY NINH, SOUTH VIETNAM, MARCH 1965

Hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine-gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of
South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh,
northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border. TODAY: President Barack Obama announces
that the United States will fully lift the longstanding U.S. embargo on sales of lethal military
equipment to Vietnama decision, he says, that is based on our desire to complete what has
been a lengthy process of moving toward normalization with Vietnam.

MHQ Autumn 2016

MHQ Autumn 2016

HORST FAAS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

FLASHBACK
SHUSHA, ARMENIA, MARCH 1920
Azerbaijani armed forces turn the Armenian boroughs of Shusha into an inferno,
destroying some 2,000 buildings and wiping out the citys Armenian population.
Ghazanchetsots Cathedral (background, center) is defaced but left standing.
TODAY: With the roots of their conflict reaching back nearly 100 years, Armenians
and Azerbaijanis still heavily dispute the territorial ownership of the NagornoKarabakh region, threatening a breakdown of a fragile 1994 truce agreement.

MHQ Autumn 2016

MHQ Autumn 2016

U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION

FLASHBACK

MHQ Autumn 2016

HAITI, 1915

U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION

U.S. Marines land in Haiti on the orders of President Woodrow

Wilson, beginning a 19-year occupation during which, with
the assistance of local guides, they methodically hunt down the
rebelswhom they call Cacosthat resist the occupation.
TODAY: A photograph of Alix Idrache, a Haitian-born cadet
at West Point, that shows him crying as he graduates quickly
goes viral. Idrache writes on his Facebook page: Thank you
for giving me a shot at the American Dream and may God bless
America, the greatest country on earth.

MHQ Autumn 2016

10

MHQ Autumn 2016

COMMENTS

OUR MAN IN ANZIO

GEORGE SILK/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

I am writing regarding MHQ

Summer 2016, Volume 28,
No. 4. he cover photo is my
father, Carl E. Gallion Sr., of
Jenkins, Kentucky. He is still
living and will be 93 years old
in December 2016.Although
he is nonambulatory, he is still
intellectually cognizant and
his memory is intact. If you
would like to follow up on
the Anzio story, he is willing
to provide information, since
he was serving with the 45th
Infantry for the entire Anzio
campaign. He thoroughly enjoyed the cover of your magazine. It made his day!
Carl Gallion Jr.
Berea, Kentucky
EDITORS RESPONSE:
We did contact Carl Gallion
Jr., and with his thoughtful
assistance conducted an
interview with his father,
who was indeed the subject
of MHQs Summer issue
cover photograph by George
Silk. Carl Gallion Sr. was
thoroughly responsive to
our questions about his four
months at Anzio, where he
spent a great deal of time in
what he referred to as that
cotton-pickin foxhole, where
he appears in the photograph.
Gallion, who was
wounded near Anzio, participated in nearly the entire
war with the 45th Division
in the European heater. He

was also in the amphibious

operation at Salerno prior
to Anzio; ater Anzio he
landed in southern France
with Operation Dragoon in
August 1944, and then fought
through France and into
Germany. Anzio, he said,
was my toughest time in the
army. We were under shellire
the whole time.
A complete version of the
interview with Carl Gallion
Sr. will appear in the Winter
issue of MHQ.

take Rome early by demonstrating the German way of

rapid response to contain
unexpected breaches. In other
words, though Anzio was a
messy afair, it would have
been worse if the small Allied
landing force tried to spearhead a dash to Rome. he
Allies probably would have
been cut to pieces by the rapidly mobilized German units.
Clif Culpeper
San Francisco, California

I consider myself decently

read up on World War II histories, but I have neglected
the Italian campaigns, thinking they were not that interesting. Robert Citinos Last
Ride at Anzio was a great
succinct article on the Anzio
campaignwithout my needing to buy and read a whole
book. Well done.
Also, though one must
beware of Hollywoods versions of history, I remember
a scene from the 1970 movie
Patton in which the German
generals are looking at captured Allied footage of the
Anzio landing and saying that
they had been taken by surprise and the road to Rome
was all clear for the Allies, if
only they didnt stop to fortify the beachhead. Citinos
article disabuses any notion
of a failed opportunity to

ASK MHQ
Cavalry in Africa
As far as I can tell, the peoples
of Sub-Saharan Africa never
developed horse cavalry. I
have always wondered why.
Were no animals in Africa
zebras, for examplesuitable
to be used as cavalry, or is it a
matter of environment, technology, culture, or something
else? Or did the Africans in
fact develop a cavalry culture?
MichaelR. Heydenburg
Jersey City, New Jersey
Zebras are not as easy to train
as horses, and the terrain in
equatorial Africa is not as
hospitable for horses as it is
in the north. While the Arab
conquests spread the horse
throughout northern Africa,
where it was adopted by

desert tribesmen and the

empires of Ghana, Mali, and
Songhai, southern Africans
had little exposure to horses
until the Afrikaners made
their Great Trek in the mid1830s. Even then, relatively
few horses made their way
into African hands, though
a handful did appear in the
Zulu armed forces (izimpi)
in 1879. hese were ridden
by princes, senior oicers
(izinduna), and special units
within some of the regiments
(amabutho). During the Battle
of Hlobane, for example,
British troops trying to escape
the mountain trap had
encounters with some equestrian warriors of the uMcijo
regiment, whose small detachment operated as both scouts
and mounted infantry. hey
used their horses to range
farther and faster than the
already swit-moving Zulu
infantry but on contact with
the enemy dismounted and
fought in the usual manner.
Jon Guttman, HistoryNets research director, is
the author of many military
histories.
Something about military
history youve always
wanted to know? Send your
questions to MHQeditor@
historynet.com, and well
have an expert answer it.

In World War II, on Anzios small beachhead, GIs like Carl E.

Gallion (left) sought cover in trenches, dugouts, and caves.
MHQ Autumn 2016

11

MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER

DAVID STEINHAFEL ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL

OF MILITARY HISTORY
AUTUMN 2016 VOL. 29, NO. 1

MICHAEL W. ROBBINS EDITOR

BILL HOGAN SENIOR EDITOR
ELIZABETH G. HOWARD MANAGING EDITOR
JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR
DAVID T. ZABECKI CHIEF MILITARY HISTORIAN

Can You Hear Me?

Long before the telegraph,
telephone, and radio, the ancients
relied on a variety of methods
to exert battleield command
and control.
By James Lacey

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MHQ Autumn 2016

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AT
THE
FRONT
LAWS OF WAR 14

ROBERT HUNT LIBRARY/WINDMILL BOOKS/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES

BATTLE SCHEMES 16
EXPERIENCE 18
BEHIND THE LINES 20
WEAPONS CHECK 23

A medic tends to a wounded

soldier in the trenches in this
still photograph taken from a
silent movie shot at the bloody
Battle of the Somme (see page
18), which on its opening day
in 1916 claimed the lives of
20,000 British troops.

MHQ Autumn 2016

13

LAWS OF WAR

THE COURT-MARTIAL OF
COLONEL BILLY MITCHELL, 1925

By Marc G. DeSantis

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Returning from
Europe in 1919,
Brigadier General
William Mitchell
championed the
innovative airpower
techniques and
organization hed
seen the British use
in World War I.

14

MHQ Autumn 2016

American aviator William Billy Mitchell was born in Nice,

France, in 1879, and grew up speaking French as well as he
spoke English. He joined the U.S. Army on the outbreak of
the Spanish-American War in 1898 and as a second lieutenant
saw action against the guerrillas of Emilio Aguinaldo in the
Philippines. Ater the war he led a pathinding mission for a
telegraph cable route across the Alaskan wilderness. While
journeying across the territorys vast expanses, he developed
a keen interest in aviation, then a brand-new technology. He
worked as an intelligence oicer for the U.S. Army General
Staf in 1912 and learned to ly in 1915.
Ater the United States entered World War I on the side
of the Allies in April 1917, Mitchell, by then a colonel, was
appointed commander of the Armys Air Service in France.
He was from the start an innovator in the use of airpower, and
deployed his aircrat in large-scale bombing attacks against
German targets in addition to their more usual roles of reconnaissance and ighting enemy warplanes. Ater the war Mitchell loudly criticized the hidebound army and navy oicers who
did not share his vision of airpower and refused to inance
their aviators in the cash-strapped postwar era.
Back in the United States, as assistant chief of the Air Service, Brigadier General Mitchell had a knack for ruling the
feathers of those in the upper echelons of the armed forces.
He also threatened their cherished notions of how war should
be fought. In 1921 he and his aviators conducted a series of
bombing tests against several target ships, including the heavily armored German dreadnought Ostfriesland, which they
sank with a series of 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs dropped
from Martin and Handley-Page bombers. he tests and results were controversial, but they proved that aircrat could
sink great warships. he navy was not grateful for this lesson.
Mitchell became a celebrity proponent of airpower, continually scolding the army and navy for failing to back the creation
of an independent air force and to buy modern aircrat. He
was especially concerned about Japan, which he thought was
ahead of the United States in airpower at the time, and predicted that one day the Japanese would launch an air attack in
the early morning against Hawaiis Pearl Harbor.
Mitchells strident tone worried other sympathetic oicers,
who thought he was going too far with his condemnations of
the generals and admirals. Billy, take it easy, warned Major
Henry Hap Arnold, the future chief of the U.S. Armys Air
Forces in World War II. Airpower is coming. But Mitchell
could not silently stand by, claiming that his aviators were going to die in the old laming coins that they had to ly in the
absence of more modern aircrat. When senior oicers wont
see the facts, he replied to Arnold, youve got to do something unorthodox, perhaps an explosion.
Mitchell was eventually forced out of his job as assistant
chief of the Air Service. He was reduced to his permanent rank
of colonel, but he remained in the army in an out-of-the-way
posting in San Antonio, Texas. he loss of the navy airship
USS Shenandoah, which had crashed on September 3, 1925,
marked the beginning of the end of his army career. he ship
had run into a squall while on a nonmilitary mission to visit
state fairs in the Midwest, and 14 men, including the dirigibles

captain, had perished. hree navy seaplanes had also recently

been lost in a separate series of accidents. Mitchells opinions
on the disasters were sought by the press, and on September 5,
Mitchell told reporters that the calamities were the result of
the incompetency, the criminal negligence, and the almost
treasonable negligence of our national defense by the Navy
and the War Departments.
Mitchell seemed to be spoiling for a showdown. On September 9, Mitchell made another incendiary statement to
the press in which he deplored the disgraceful condition of
American military aviation and argued that what he had said
about the national defense hurts the bureaucrats in Washingtonbecause its the truth. He even welcomed a court-martial
where he might air his views. His outright challenge could not
be ignored. Mitchell had his explosion, and it pushed the infuriated American brass over the edge.
By early November 1925 Mitchell was in Washington, D.C.,
standing before a court-martial held to investigate his alleged
violation of the 96th Article of War, a catchall provision of
military law that allowed an oicer to be tried for just about
any action deemed to be of a nature to bring discredit upon
the military service. he charges were that he had conducted
himself in a manner to the prejudice of good order and military discipline; that his statements about the Shenandoah and
the loss of the navys seaplanes were insubordinate; and that he
had been highly contemptuous and disrespectful of the War
Department and the navy.
he trial before a panel of generals, including Douglas
MacArthur, electriied the American people, who closely
followed the arguments in the nations newspapers. Mitchell
pleaded not guilty and argued that his statements had been
true and that he had no choice but to step forward and tell the
nation about the state of its air defenses, since he could get
nowhere through the normal channels. Such aviation notables
as World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker and future American
generals Hap Arnold and Major Carl Tooey Spaatz testiied
on his behalf. On December 17, 1925, ater seven weeks of testimony, the generals found Mitchell guilty of all charges, the
accuracy of his statements being immaterial.
Mitchells punishment was surprisingly light on account
of his ine war record. He was suspended from duty and forfeited all pay and allowances for ive years. Mitchell then
tendered his resignation. hough he died in 1936 of heart
problems and inluenza, his ideas ultimately triumphed in the
dispute over American aviation: During World War II, airpower would play a hugely important role, as he had foreseen,
and shortly ater the end of that conlict, a completely independent U.S. Air Force would be established, as Mitchell had
so fervently wished. His inluence was long felt by the aviators
he let behind. We obeyed him the rest of our lives, one oicer who knew him during his army days said. And long ater
he was dead. MHQ
Attorney Marc G. DeSantis is a frequent contributor to
MHQ. His book Rome Seizes the Trident: he Defeat of
Carthaginian Seapower and the Forging of the Roman Empire
was published in May.
MHQ Autumn 2016

15

1
2

5
16

MHQ Autumn 2016

BATTLE SCHEMES

1848: EUROPE
IN REVOLT ALL
OVER THE MAP
By Peter Harrington

For much of 1848 and 1849 Europe was convulsed by revolutions, especially in the Austrian Empire. Made up of multi-ethnic groups
ranging from Poles, Slovaks, Hungarians, and
Slovenes to Italians, Croats, and Slavs, it was a
hotbed of independence movements eager to
break free from Vienna. he uprisings spread
quickly, but by late 1849 they had been brutally suppressed and many of their ringleaders
executed. he creator of this picture map, published in Prague, has highlighted the regions
of the empire and incorporated vignettes of
the various revolts. he large uncolored region
delineated by the orange boundary is Hungary
with its capital Budapest (Ofen Pest) astride
the Danube (1). he city is surrounded by
scenes of ighting and of cheering volunteers
interspersed with small images of gibbets (2)
signifying the brutality of the imperial forces.
In Romania, shaded green, revolutionaries
march behind a banner (3) calling for freedom, while in Bohemia, colored pink, troops
march to put down the student uprising in
Prague (4); above them, two men cling to a
liberty tree. On the periphery of the map sit
Pope Pius IX (5), frustrated by the bloodshed,
and even a skeleton (6) representing the cholera epidemic approaching from Russia. MHQ
Peter Harrington is curator of the Anne
S. K. Brown Military Collection at Brown
University. he lithographed map Europe in
the Fith Decade of the 19th Century is in
the collections paintings, drawings, and
watercolors series.

ANNE S.K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION/BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

MHQ Autumn 2016

17

EXPERIENCE

WOUNDEDAND WHAT
HAPPENS AFTERWARD
One hundred years ago, on July 1, 1916, British scout Bert Payne,
of the 1st City Battalion of the 18th Manchesters, went over the top at
the Somme and was machine-gunned within minutes. He survived.

Bert Payne was bright and unlappable, with a reputation for

good old common sense, so he was soon promoted and made a
scout. Scouts were the eyes and ears of the battalion, on whose
work lives depended. Payne was good at his jobso good, in
fact, that he shot a British oicer out for a walk in no mans
land through the hat when the oicer failed to respond to his
hail. By the time of the Battle of the Somme, Payne had already
saved hundreds of lives. Historian Emily Mayhew used oral
histories and interviews with the Payne family to reconstruct
his experiences at the battle.

rders inally came through. hey were to take the

right-hand lank around the village of Montauban.
he target was a small ridge, plain for everyone to see
as Payne pointed it out. hen came the shriek of the
whistles, and Payne led his men over the top. hey
somehow made it to the irst line of enemy trenches
and continued to the next one. he practical Payne realized that
the Germans must have been preparing themselves for weeks, to
appear so quickly in front of them with their equipment set up
and ready. Riles, he just had time to think, were no good; only
machine guns were any good. hen he was cut down, a spray of
bullets lying across his face. Falling forward into a shell hole,
he saw his teeth fall out of his mouth and hit the ground before
he did. All around him, he saw men falling, dead or wounded.
hey crumpled down around himone shot through the eyes,
another cut open from his jaw to his throat. hen he blacked out.
When he came to in the shell hole, the sky above him was
still blue and the sound of the ofensive had moved some way
of, leaving an eerie silence in the wet mud and among the
human debris. Payne gathered himself. He could hear a rasping, guttural sound, like a blocked drainin-out, in-out. He
realized it was his own breathing. hat was good, he thought.
He must be all right if he could breathe. When he managed
to raise himself up on one arm, he couldnt see with his let
eye, but the right one was working ine. He got out his ield
dressing and clamped it down over the closed-up eye, winding the bandage ends around his head. hen he looked at his
watch and saw that it was almost 4 oclock. He had been lying
unconscious for seven hours. He sat up and looked around.
It hurt him to move his head, but he needed to know where

18

MHQ Autumn 2016

he was. hen his eyes met a human face staring back at him,
frozen but alive. It was that of his friend Bill Brock, who had
been wounded in the foot and was unable to move. He had
lain there for hours, waiting for someone else in the shell hole
to wake up. He had been watching Payne bleed and twitch,
fearful that he would die. hey were the only survivors.
Payne crawled over to Brock and told him, through his ragged
lips and cheeks, that they would be heading back. Brock tried to
shake of the horrible sight of Paynes face and pointed to his foot:
a tattered little shock of pink and bloody lesh in the brown mud.
It had all but been shot of and, although he had managed to get
his boot of to relieve the pain, there was no way he could walk.
Payne was having none of it. He took his friends ield dressing
and tied the foot up as best he could. hen he slowly put Brocks
boot back on, quietly reassuring him when the other man cried
out in pain and begged him to stop. Payne laced the boot up to
support Brocks foot and then looked around for a spare rile to
use as a crutch. If they didnt leave now, they would die in the
shell hole. Brock knew it was useless to argue with the scout, so
he scrambled up somehow and leaned on the rile.
Together they clambered out of the craterone man limping, trying to ind a painless way to walk, leaning on a dead
mans rile; the other with his bandaged eye and ragged face
willing each other on, to a chorus of distant gunire: the halfblind leading the lame.
here werent any stretcher-bearers. So many had been killed in
the irst few hours of the ofensive that medical oicers at the
aid posts refused to let any more out on to the ield. Payne and
Brock were on their own among the dead, struggling to make
their way out. A few hundred yards further on they stopped to
rest in a shell hole, where they found a man almost blown to
pieces but somehow still alive. He was gasping for air, sobbing
and calling out for someone called Annie. Payne could see at a
glance that there was no hope for the man: He was bound to die
ater hours of lonely agony. Payne took up the rile Brock was
using as a crutch and shot the soldier. hen he and Brock moved
on in silence. He deserved a Victoria Cross, Payne thought, for
the courage that spared a man such a horrible death.
When they inally reached their own lines it was hard to recognize the organized trench network they had let that morn-

ROBERT HUNT LIBRARY/WINDMILL BOOKS/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Stretcher-bearers, aid stations, and field hospitals were

overwhelmed by the 57,000 British casualties, including some
20,000 dead, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

ing. Instead they found chaos, with trenches full of wounded

or confused men and abandoned equipment. Climbing down
into one trench, they found it full of German POWs, bound
and guarded by sentries. Brock was in so much pain that he
was sobbing, tears running down his cheeks. But there was no
one to help him here. One of the sentries pointed to a place in
the distance where he believed there was a medical post.
When they inally got to the place, they found not only a
medical post but a horse-drawn ambulance preparing to leave.
It was full up with injured POWs, but by that time Payne
no longer cared. He tipped enough men of their stretchers
to make space for his wounded friend, leaving them on the
roadside calling for help. hen he loaded up Brock and called
for the driver to set out. Shortly aterward he found another
ambulance and got on himself. As it bumped along, Payne
watched walking wounded and carts full of dead moving in
one direction and reinforcements rushing the other way. he
ambulance inally stopped at a medical station at Abbeville,
where Payne was helped down and onto a stretcher.
he next day was worse. Where there had been numbness in
his face, there was now horrible pain. His cheeks and tongue had
swollen up so that he could no longer make himself understood.
Payne, who had always prided himself on his initiative and independence, had become helpless. He was moved inside the post,

and as the day passed he watched the doctors and bearers struggle with the hundreds of wounded and dying men. he whole
medical system had collapsed under the weight of the Sommes
casualties and pinned him to the spot. But at least he wouldnt get
typhus or tetanus: He had been inoculated three times that day.
Each time an orderly came forward with a syringe he had tried
to tell him that he had already had the shot, but the man couldnt
understand him and gave him another injection.
So he lay and waited, the pain growing along with a terrible thirst. Hed had nothing since breakfast cofee in the forward
trenches the previous day, and now he couldnt ask for a drink.
Even if he could, the orderly would have been hard-pressed to
get liquid past the rags of his face. His dressings were changed
a couple of times but nothing more. hen he felt his stretcher
bump and rise. An exhausted bearer appeared over him and told
him he was being moved to the train station and that he was
going home. Payne was too tired and diminished to care. MHQ
Emily Mayhew is a research associate at Imperial College,
London, and an examiner at the Imperial College School of
Medicine. Excerpted from Wounded: A New History of the
Western Front in the World War I, by Emily Mayhew with
permission from Oxford University Press. Copyright 2014
by Emily Mayhew.
MHQ Autumn 2016

19

BEHIND THE LINES

ANTWERP, 1914

Britain goes to warbut where?

By David T. Zabecki

Whoever controlled the Belgian coast controlled the English

Channel and whoever controlled the Channel threatened the
maritime perimeter of the British Isles. hat was the center
of gravity in the United Kingdoms national security strategy
during the era when capital warships were the worlds ultimate global-weapons system. Yet ships of the line, and later
the Dreadnought-class battleships, were not invulnerable.
hey depended on secure ports, reliable fueling and provisioning stations, and secure coastlines in narrow waterways. If a
friendly or neutral power controlled the Belgian coastand
in 1914 Belgium was neutralthe Channel was relatively secure. But if a hostile power threatened to occupy Belgium, the
United Kingdoms only recourse, in the opinion of generations
of British policymakers, was war.
hat threat materialized on August 3, 1914, when Germany
declared war on France. he next day German troops, following
the Schliefen Plan, moved into Belgium, intending to sweep
through northwestern France and envelop Paris. Since Belgian
neutrality had been guaranteed by the 1839 Treaty of London, to
which Germany and almost all other European countries were
parties, Britain declared war that same day. But although the
Royal Navy was the greatest leet in the world, Britains small
army of one cavalry and six infantry divisions was little more than
a colonial police force. Eventually, the British Expeditionary
Force would grow to some 60
divisions, but that was several
years in the future. he immediate problem was where on the
Continentor even whether
to deploy the few ground forces
Britain had available.

Britains
small army
was little
more than a
colonial police
force

France and Britain had been

bitter enemies for centuries, an
enmity that reached its climax
at Waterloo in 1815. Following
the consequent Congress of Vienna, the United Kingdom adopted a strategic policy of acting
as the fulcrum for the European balance of power. hus, the
Crimean War of 18531856 found Britain and France for the
irst time in many years ighting on the same side, in this case
supporting the Ottoman Empire against the Russian Empire.
Yet the British and the French continued to keep each other at
arms length for most of the next half century. he 1904 Entente Cordiale between Britain and France marked the major
turning point ater nearly 1,000 years of smoldering animosity

20

MHQ Autumn 2016

between the two countries. hey were nudged even closer together the following year by the First Moroccan Crisis, when
Kaiser Wilhelm II tried to encroach on French inluence in
North Africa. In 1907 Russia joined with France and Britain to
form the Triple Entente, an alliance designed as a counterweight to the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary,
and Italy. he Triple Entente, however, was not a solidly deined military alliance; it was an ambiguous document of
friendship, understanding, and agreement. Many British military and political leaders believed that in the case of war, Britains support of France would be primarily maritime.
General Sir John Grierson, Britains director of military operations, concluded as early as 1905 that the Germans would
attack France through Belgium. He therefore argued for deploying a British expeditionary force to Belgium on the outbreak of any war. A base in neutral Antwerp, he reasoned,
would provide a secure and direct maritime link to Britain. A
small British force positioned to threaten the German right
lank would exert an inluence disproportionate to its size. Of
equal importance, a deployment in Belgium would leave the
British command independent of the French.
Griersons plan, however, failed to take into consideration
several crucial strategic facts. For one thing, an Antwerp base
would not necessarily be a secure maritime link. he port lay at
the end of the long Scheldt estuary, and an enemy force on either bank could efectively choke it of. (he Allies would learn
that lesson the hard way in early September 1944.) he fact that
the mouth of the Scheldt was completely in Dutch territory also
compounded the problem, because the Netherlands remained
neutral. It was German policy to keep Holland that way, so it
could serve as Germanys windpipe to world trade in the event
of a British embargo. he inal problem was that deploying on
the Belgian right rather than the French let would leave a significant gap in the Allied main line of resistance.
Over the next several years, the British General Staf began
to lean toward deploying instead on the French let. Major
General Sir Henry Wilson, who became director of military
operations in 1910, was a staunch advocate of the continental
strategy over the maritime strategy, and he also supported deploying with the French. A devoted Francophile, Wilson had
no objections to subordinating a small British Expeditionary
Force to the operational control of the French army. When he
had been commandant of the British Army Staf College at
Camberly between 1907 and 1910, Wilson had established a
close relationship with General Ferdinand Foch, then the
commandant of the cole Suprieure de la Guerre.

UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES/UIG/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Double-decker London Transport busesstill with open upper

decksare used to evacuate citizens as advancing German
forces bombard the Belgian city of Antwerp in October 1914.
Wilson decided that France, rather than Belgium, would be
the foundation for general staf planning, but that commitment
was far from unanimous among the British senior military and
political leadership. In the wake of the Second Moroccan Crisis
of 1911, the Committee of Imperial Defence met all day on August 23 to deliberate the military strategy of the empire. Wilson
argued forcefully for the continental strategy, with the BEF deploying on the French let wing in the vicinity of Le Cateau, Hirson, and Maubeuge. Perhaps the decisive factor in favor of the
French option was the position of the Belgian government itself,
which insisted on maintaining its neutrality. hus, if the BEF
tried to go in through Antwerp without the speciic invitation of
the government, Britain would be as guilty of violating the Treaty
of London as the Germans had been. Wilsons arguments carried
the day for the continental strategy. hough the British government remained reluctant to commit to any detailed deployment
planning, the British General Staf worked up tentative plans.
Based on continuing informal staf talks, the French centered
their own planning on the assumption that the British would
deploy on their let.

By the time the war broke out, almost everyone had accepted
the continental strategy, but not necessarily the French option.
Field Marshal Sir John French, the commander-designate of the
BEF, resurrected the Belgian option. An old-school cavalry oicer who had never been through the British Armys Staf College,
French harbored a deep distrust of trained general staf oicers,
especially of Wilson. And despite his last name, French was
something of a Francophobe. So on August 5, two days ater the
declaration of war, when an ad hoc war council met to decide
what to do, French continued to push the Belgian option. hat
made little sense, because no plans existed for an Antwerp deployment, while there were at least tentative plans and agreements for a deployment into northern France. he issue was
decided when the foreign secretary, Lord Edward Grey, said that
both Belgian and Dutch neutrality ruled out the Antwerp option, and the new irst lord of the admiralty, Winston Churchill,
pointed out the operational diiculty of penetrating the Scheldt.
On August 6, three days into the war, the newly appointed
secretary of state for war, Lord Herbert Kitchener, complicated
the decisions, when he announced that only four of the six exMHQ Autumn 2016

21

ANTWERP, 1914

HOLLAND
North Sea

Antwerp
Boulogne

BELGIUM

English
Channel

Mons
Maubeuge

Le Cateau
Amiens

Hirson

Paris

GERMANY
LUX.

FRANCE

Following Germanys invasion of neutral Belgium in August

1914, British troops are dispatched to assist Belgian forces in
the defense of Antwerp (top). Belgium was the first battleground in Germanys plan for the invasion of France (bottom).

In the 1930s former prime minister David Lloyd George

dredged up the strategic debate in those early days of war when
he published his multivolume War Memoirs. As chancellor of
the exchequer in 1911, he had been a strong supporter of the
Antwerp option. He later served as minister of munitions from
1915 to 1916, and even his severest critics credit him with a
brilliant performance in rationalizing Britains industrial output during the war. But he was a dilettante regarding military
strategy and steadfastly believed that his own intuition was far
more reliable than the professional judgment of any British
general oicer. Lloyd George continued to believe that Germany could have been defeated had Britain attacked it in some
peripheral theater, rather than going head-to-head on the
Western Front. Virtually no British general supported his strategic concept, nor did any French general.
Lloyd George had endured a great deal of criticism during
the war and even more ater it, when he was accused of trading
knighthoods and peerages for hety political contributions. It
was as a means of self-vindication that he started publishing
his War Memoirs, which were a major factor in establishing the
popular conception that the generals of World War Iespecially the British generalswere butchers and incompetent
bunglers who caused the unnecessary deaths of so many young
men. he August 1914 decision to deploy the BEF to northern
France rather than Antwerp was the opening salvo in Lloyd
Georges war ater the war.
But if the BEF had not been on the French let in September 1914 and had not been thrust into the gap between the
German First and Second Armies, the Germans probably
would have enveloped the French lank at the Marne, and
1914 might have turned into a rerun of 1870. Writing in 1936
German general Georg Wetzell, who had served as General
Erich Ludendorf s chief operations oicer in 1917 and 1918,
observed about the Battle of the Marne, Without any doubt,
if the British Army had not been there, it would have been
terrible for the French. If the British had gone with the Antwerp option, they would not have been. MHQ
David T. Zabecki is HistoryNets chief military historian.

22

MHQ Autumn 2016

SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; INFOGRAPHIC: BRIAN WALKER

isting infantry divisions of the British Army, plus its single cavalry division, would deploy initially, with the ith division to
follow shortly and the sixth division to remain in Britain for
homeland defense. With Kitcheners support, BEF commander
French now pushed for concentrating his force in the vicinity of
Amiens, arguing that Maubeuge was too far forward and would
leave the BEF too exposed. Wilson continued to lobby for
Maubeuge, since any last-minute changes would seriously disrupt French war plans, based on Maubeuge. Although the BEF
started deployment on August 9, the question of where to deploy was not settled inally until August 12, when Kitchener
bowed to French pressure. he rapid German advance also
made it imperative to stick with the original plan, and the BEF
inally inished landing at Boulogne on August 14.

WEAPONS CHECK

ROMAN BALLISTA
By Chris McNab

he ballista was essentially the long-range artillery piece of the

Roman army. Developed from earlier Greek models of boltand stone-iring artillery during the second century bc, the
ballista sat at the smaller end of a family of torsion-powered
weapons. It was essentially a massive, wood- and metal-framed
crossbow operated by a small team of men. Like the Greek
weapons, it could ire either heavy bolts or large stones. Launch
power came from its bow arms, which were driven by unleashing the tension stored in twisted ropes of leather, sinew,
or hair. Although bad weather could profoundly weaken the
performance of the ballista, under good conditions it was a
fearsome tool. Some of the largest versions had bolt ranges

The Roman
ballista had
two vertically
mounted torsion
springs made
from dozens
of strands of
braided leather,
sinew, or hair.

exceeding 500 yards, and the thunderous missiles had the velocity and mass to punch through contemporary armor and
even several men at once. Hety rocks, in some cases weighing
more than 100 pounds, could smash fortiications and walls.
he Roman ballistae remained in service beyond the end of
the Western Roman empire in the sixth century ad but were
progressively replaced by simpler and less-expensive catapults
and counterweight siege weapons. MHQ
Chris McNab is a military historian based in the United
Kingdom. His latest work is Dreadnought Battleship: Dreadnought and Super dreadnought (190616).

When the weapon was

cocked, the wooden arms
were held under the tension
of the spring unit.

The bolt or stone was

propelled by a wooden slider
(chelonium) that ran on a
groove centrally through the
frame and torsion springs.

MARK CARTWRIGHT/ANCIENT HISTORY ENCYCLOPEDIA LTD.

The bow string

was pulled back
by a clawand-trigger
block attached
to a windlass
(carchesium)
mechanism.

The ballista typically had a wooden frame, reinforced

with metal plates and held together with iron nails.
MHQ Autumn 2016

23

HERITAGE AUCTIONS

THE HARDEE HAT, also known as the Model 1858 Dress

Hat, was the regulation dress hat for enlisted men in the
Union Army during the Civil War, though it also was worn
by Confederate soldiers. It is said to have been designed by
William Joseph Hardee, who was a career officer in the U.S.
Army from 1838 until 1861, when he resigned his commission
in advance of joining the Confederate States Army. The hat
below, which bears the insignia of the 1st Cavalry Regiment,
is identical to those worn by men who served in Brigadier
General Stephen Watts Kearnys Army of the West (page 52).

24

MHQ Autumn 2016

THE GREAT OUTDOORS

ars are fought outdoors. hat simple fact brings

with it conditions that never have been controlled by the hand of man: night and day and
the weather. he title of one history book, A
World Lit Only by Fire, by William Manchester,
is a reminder of the many millennia in which
little could be done to improve human visibilityfor outdoor activities including warfareonce the sun went down.
he limits set by the weather on human activity are nearly as
implacable as darkness. To fully understand the decisions,
actions, and outcomes of much of military history, one must
consider the inluences of weather.

Well-known instances of foul weather afecting the outcomes of battles and even wars must include both Napoleons and Hitlers encounters with winter in Russia, the fatal
encounters by both sides in World War I with the winters in
the Carpathian Mountains and the Dolomite Alps, the United
Nations forces experience with subzero days in North Korea
in 1950and many more.
Of course, no human action can stay the rain or snow, or
raise or lower the ambient temperature. One has to adapt to
the weather, as military liers have known irsthand for over a
century of aerial combat.

It is the failure to recognize and prepare for those immutable conditions that makes the diference. Ater all, there are
few surprises in seasonal weather; one has to wonder why the
Wehrmacht fought into the Russian winter in 19411942 wearing summer-weight uniforms. Similarly, the weight of uniforms and packs was surely a factor in the many heat-related
casualties in the 1778 Battle of Monmouth (page 36). But a
torrid August aternoon in New Jersey is hardly a novelty.
he impacts of weather conditions can be subtler but no
less important to understanding a major battle: At Laon,
France, in 1814, Napoleon divided his forces into two separate
columns. he smaller detachment of some 9,500 efectives
under Marshal Auguste-Frdric de Marmont then came
under heavy Allied pressure on the aternoon and evening of
March 9, culminating in a surprise night attack that destroyed
Marmonts forces. Napoleon, positioned 12 kilometers upwind of Marmont, never heard the sounds of that deadly
battle, thanks to a strong westerly wind that howled through
the night. Having planned for an envelopment of the Allied
position, the emperor learned too late of Marmonts debacle.
At that point, the battle was lost in the wind.
Michael W. Robbins
MHQeditor@historynet.com

MHQ Autumn 2016

25

HOW NAPOLEON
LOST PARIS, 1814

In the spring of 1814 Emperor Napoleon, here at

Fontainebleau, faced a powerful invasion of France by the
Allied Coalitions forcesa direct threat to Paris.

26

MHQ Autumn 2016

DEA/M. SEEMULLER/GRANGER, NYC

At Laon in early March, Napoleon was

outmaneuvered by Field Marshal Gebhard
von Blchers Allied army, leaving the capital
unprotected By Michael V. Leggiere

MHQ Autumn 2016

27

n early November 1813, several weeks ater his crushing

defeat at Leipzig, Napoleon led fewer than 60,000 soldiers back into France and then continued on to Paris to
oversee the mobilization of a new army. Meanwhile, his
shattered marshals prepared to defend Frances Rhine
frontier against a looming Allied invasion. hey did not
have to wait long. On December 20 the Grand Army of Bohemia, led by Field-Marshal Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg, crossed the Upper Rhine at Basel. Twelve days later, a
smaller Allied force, Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von
Blchers Army of Silesia, crossed the Rhine near Mainz.
Schwarzenberg and Blcher had planned to reach their respective objectives of Langres and Metz by January 15.
he Allies ultimate target, of course, was Paris, though the
speciics of such an ofensive were let unsettled. Longstanding
diferences had become enmities among the members of Napoleons Coalition as they considered whether France should be
invaded and whether Napoleon, in turn, should be dethroned.
he Austrians did not want to invade France and desperately
hoped to reach a diplomatic settlement that would keep Napoleon on the throne to counter Russias growing power. Tsar Alexander I of Russia wanted to be rid of Napoleon altogether.
Napoleon made his irst appearance in the ield on January
29, just in time to strike the rear of Blchers army at Brienne in
northeast France. Each side sustained 3,000 or so casualties;
each claimed victory. hree days later Blcher, now joined by
Schwarzenbergs forces, handed Napoleon a humiliating defeat
at La Rothire about eight kilometers south of Brienne. Although Napoleon lost just 6,000 of his 45,000 combatants, he
was forced to retreat in the face of the Coalitions overwhelming
numbers. he Allies might have ended the war with a general
pursuit, but Blcher lacked fresh reserves and Schwarzenbergs
rearward units remained too distant to participate. Nonetheless,
as long as their armies stayed together, a victory for Napoleon
seemed impossible.
Unbelievably, the two Coalition armies separated. In the aftermath of the victory at La Rothire, the Allies decided that the
march on Paris should commence, with Blchers army advancing along the Marne River and Schwarzenbergs down the Seine.
hat decision gave Napoleon an opening to mask the slow-moving Schwarzenberg and launch what would become known as
the Six Days Campaign against Blcher. Beginning on February 9, he defeated Blchers Prussians and Russians in four battles. Fortunately for Blcher, however, Schwarzenbergs crossing

28

MHQ Autumn 2016

of the Seine prompted Napoleon to disengage and head south to

contend with the Army of Bohemia. Ater reorganizing and receiving reinforcements, Blcher had the Army of Silesia marching in just two days to answer Schwarzenbergs call for help. As
things would turn out, failing to inish of Blchers army
amounted to a catastrophic error on Napoleons part.
On February 17, Napoleon, with 55,000 men under his
command, stopped the advance of Schwarzenbergs 120,000
men at Mormant, less than 50 kilometers southeast of Paris.
Ater learning of Blchers crushing defeat, Allied commanders ordered a general retreat 100 kilometers southeast to
Troyes. Over the next few days, Napoleon gathered his forces
at Nogent-sur-Seine. Meanwhile, Schwarzenberg reassembled
the Army of Bohemia at Troyes and Blcher reached Mrysur-Seine in a lank position that deterred Napoleon from advancing. Nonetheless, in the face of unrelenting pressure from
Napoleon, Schwarzenberg decided that he should retreat another 120 kilometers southeast to Langres and Blcher nearly
200 kilometers east to Nancy. On learning of Schwarzenbergs
decision, however, Blcher feared a withdrawal across the
Rhine would come next. Consequently, he requested permission for the Army of Silesia to march north, cross the Marne,
and unite with two corps from the Army of North Germany
for another advance on Paris. Schwarzenberg approved and
decided that for the moment the Army of Bohemia would retreat only 50 kilometers east to Bar-sur-Aube.
Schwarzenberg commenced his withdrawal on February 23,
and the following day Blcher began his advance. On February
25, Napoleon took the bait and furiously drove his men ater
Blcher. Reaching the Marne on March 1, Napoleon found himself at a crossroads: Should he continue pursuing Blcher or did
he need to contend with Schwarzenberg? His plan for defeating
the Army of Bohemia entailed the operation that Schwarzenberg
feared most. I am prepared to transfer the war to Lorraine, he
informed his brother Joseph, where I will rally my troops that
are in my fortresses on the Meuse and the Rhine. hus, the master planned his famous manoeuvre sur les derrires to turn
Schwarzenbergs right lank and operate against his rear.
Had Napoleon implemented this plan immediately, Schwarzenberg undoubtedly would have retreated headlong to the
Rhine. he evidence to support this assumption is clear. With
Blcher north of the Marne, Schwarzenberg would have seen an
envelopment of the Army of Bohemias right wing, along with
Napoleons appearance on the Rhine, as a monumental calamity.

FROM TOP: ULLSTEIN BILD/GRANGER, NYC; PRISMA ARCHIVO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

BATTLE OF LAON, 1814

The small villages surrounding Laon northeast of Paris (above)

changed hands several times as Napoleons outnumbered
infantry traded attacks with the Prussian forces of Field
Marshal Gebhard von Blcher (on white horse).

But instead of terrorizing Schwarzenberg, whose retreat eventually would have forced Blcher to renounce his own operations,
Napoleon changed his mind, opting to continue his pursuit of the
Army of Silesia. He based this decision on his overwhelming concern for Paris and the threat posed to it by Blchers army. Napoleon thus hounded Blcher, who led further north to the Aisne
River. here, he united with the two corps from the Army of
North Germany, whose commanders had convinced the French
to surrender Soissons and its bridge over the Aisne on March 3.
Using the citys stone bridge as
well as its own pontoons, the
Army of Silesia miraculously
escaped across the Aisne with
Napoleon closing fast.
Ater Napoleon defeated
Blchers Russians at Craonne
on March 7, the Prussian commander concentrated his army
at Laon, a French city situated
on a high, steep-sided hill. By
taking Laon, Napoleon aimed
to sever the enemys line of operation and secure Paris by driving of the aggressive Blcher.
He could then rally the garrisons of his northeastern fortresses
and, thus reinforced, fall on Schwarzenberg, who no doubt
would be retreating ater learning of Blchers latest setback.
On March 8, believing he would ind only a rearguard at Laon,
Napoleon decided to approach the city in two widely separated
columnsan extremely risky operation because the distance
as well as the rough and broken terrain between his two columns ruled out mutual support. Nevertheless, Napoleon led

Ney unleashed
a powerful
counterattack
that forced
the Russians
back

30

MHQ Autumn 2016

his main body of 37,000 men northeast from Soissons toward

Laon while Marshal Auguste-Frdric de Marmont marched
northwest on the Reims highway with some 9,500 men. Between
them stood Blcher with nearly 100,000 men and 600 cannons.
General Ferdinand von Wintzingerodes Russian corps, with
25,200 men, formed Blchers right wing and rested on the village of hierret, where its vanguard took position with forward
posts extending southwest. Lieutenant General Friedrich Wilhelm von Blows Prussian III Corps, with 16,900 men, held
Blchers center and received the task of defending the city. General Hans David von Yorcks Prussian I Corps, with 13,500 men,
and Lieutenant General Friedrich Heinrich von Kleists Prussian
II Corps, with10,600 men, provided the let wing, which was
slightly echeloned to the northeast and faced the roads leading to
Athies and Reims. Two additional Russian corps commanded by
Generals Louis Alexandre de Langeron and Fabian Gottlieb von
der Osten-Sacken, with nearly 38,000 men between them, remained in reserve north of the Laon height. Blcher, sufering
from fever and eye inlammation, ordered his commanders to
maintain a strict defensive posture until Napoleon deployed his
forces. As soon as Napoleon revealed his intentions, Blcher
planned to launch a crushing counterattack.
Napoleon opened his attack on the evening of March 8 by having Marshal Michel Neys Young Guard corps drive the Russians from touvelles. Two hours ater midnight, Ney pressed
the attack, gaining Chivy and, by daybreak, had pushed the
Russians to Semilly. Heavy snow had fallen throughout the
night, and by dawn a thick mist veiled the whole countryside.
Around 7 a.m., Ney directed Major General Pierre Boyers brigade east against Semilly, while a division led by Brigadier

PICTORIAL PRESS LTD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; CHRONICLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; THOMAS LAWRENCE/ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Coalition commanders Blcher (left) and Carl Philip, Prince

Schwarzenberg (right) clashed repeatedly with Napoleon in early
1814 in the Six Days Campaign. With Blcher at Laon,
Napoleon divided his forces and handed the smaller to Marshal
August-Frdric-Louis Viesse de Marmont (center).

WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Despite inferior numbers, Napoleon sought to engage Blchers

army on the open plainassuming the latter would pursue
Marmont. But Blcher stood fast in his strong defensive position
at Laon, leaving Napoleon (above) no option but to retreat.

General Paul Jean-Baptiste Poret de Morvan marched northeast from Leuilly toward Blchers center at Ardon. Preceded
by a considerable cannonade, Boyer opened his assault on Semilly at 9 a.m., but the Prussian defenders, commanded by
Lieutenant-Colonel Friedrich von Clausewitz, repulsed several attacks. Meanwhile, Poret de Morvans men took advantage of the poor visibility to surprise the Prussians at Ardon
and drive them back some 1,000 meters to the foot of the Laon
height. A counterattack pushed the French back to Ardon,
which Poret de Morvans men held.
By 11 a.m. the pale winter sun had burned of the mist. From
his vantage point on the ramparts at the foot of a bastion called
Madame Eve, Blcher surveyed the thin French battalions deployed before Laon and contemplated his adversarys next
move. Refusing to believe that Napoleon would attack with
such a small force, he became concerned that the actual attack
would come from another direction. At noon Blcher learned
that a strong French column was approaching from Festieux, 12
kilometers north of Craonne, where the two armies had engaged on March 7. He assumed that the Festieux column probably made up the majority of Napoleons army and would
deliver the main blow. Consequently, the linchpin of the French
position seemed to be the village of Ardon. Believing that Napoleons main attack would be against the let wing, Blcher
cautiously decided to retake Ardon and probe the intentions of
the enemy force opposite his right.
On the morning of March 9, Wintzingerodes 12th Infantry
Division attacked the French let between Clacy and Semilly.
At the same time, four hussar regiments, numerous Cossack
squadrons, and some light artillery batteries from Sackens
corps moved around Blchers right to menace Neys extreme

let and rear. Ater Wintzingerode forced the French out of

Clacy, the Russians attempted to debouch west toward
Mons-en-Laonnais, but Ney unleashed a powerful counterattack that forced the Russians back into Clacy. Ater Poret de
Morvan was mortally wounded, Blows 6th Brigade drove the
two French Guard battalions occupying Ardon to Leuilly. At
this moment, Napoleon inally arrived in Chavignon, some 14
kilometers southwest of Laon.
As soon as 6th Brigade had secured Ardon, Blcher planned
to send Blows entire Reserve Cavalry south through Ardon to
Cornelle to envelop Neys right. Yet fresh doubts seized him.
Blcher knew enough about Napoleons art of war to question
whether he would leave his two wings so widely separated without a middle column to connect them. his thought raised concerns that a third column would soon appear at Bruyres, some
six kilometers south-southeast of Laon. Consequently, until the
road through Bruyres could be reconnoitered, and the strength
and intentions of the Festieux ascertained, Blcher refused to
order a general attack and so recalled Blows 6th Brigade and
Reserve Cavalry. Soon Ardon again fell to a counterattack led by
Mortier. In addition, around 3 p.m., Blcher received a second
report that reinforced the idea that the Festieux column would
deliver the main attack. As a result, Blcher moved Sacken and
Langeron to the let wing, as reserve for Yorck and Kleist, and
ordered the two Prussian corps commanders to attack the enemy as soon as possible. To have the maximum number of cavalry regiments available for use on the open terrain to his let, he
recalled Sackens cavalry, which by then had reached Neys rear.
hroughout the day, numerous couriers had been dispatched with orders for Marmont to accelerate his march, but
all had been captured or driven of by the Cossacks. For his
MHQ Autumn 2016

31

Laon
Paris

FRANCE

The Battle of Laon was

the second showdown
between Napoleon
Bonapartes French army
and an Allied coalition
led by Prince Gebhardt
von Blchers Prussian
army. Blcher had
mobilized his 85,000
troops around Laon,
situated on the summit of
a scarped hill, because it
provided a superb
defensive position, with
the villages of Ardon
and Smilly serving as
bastions. Napoleon,
with only 37,000 men,
launched a series of
attacks. Blcher badly
underestimated
Napoleons strength
and at first held back.
But Blchers powerful
counterattacks compelled
Napoleon to retreat to
Soissons, ending the
battle and the emperors
chances for victory.

MHQ Autumn 2016

ALEXANDER KEITH JOHNSTON/THE STAPLETON COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

33

part, Marmont made no efort to establish communication

with Napoleon. Assuming that Marmont was nearby, Napoleon ordered an attack on Blchers right to induce him to
transfer reinforcements from his let. He hoped that this diversion would give Marmont the element of surprise against
Blcher. Around 4 p.m. the battle again became heated. On
Napoleons order, the lead division of General Henri Franois
Charpentiers corps, supported by one of Neys divisions, succeeded in driving the Russians out of Clacy, yet Blows 6th
Brigade recaptured Ardon.
Marmonts vanguard had cleared Festieux just ater 10 a.m., but
the corps halted there until noon rather than march to the
sound of Napoleons guns. Around 3 p.m. his lead column approached Athies. An hour later, Major General Jean-Toussaint
Arrighi de Casanova led an attack that drove the two Prussian
battalions from Athies. Ater Marmont deployed his cavalry
against the let lank of the Allied army, Yorck and Kleist sent
their combined cavalry under
General Friedrich Wilhelm von
Zieten southeast through Chambry toward Athies and a position
facing Marmonts right flank.
With four Allied corps in his immediate front and a large cavalry
mass threatening his right, Marmont had enough sense not to
engage such superior forces. He
ordered his soldiersmany of
them teenagers or sailors who
knew little about ield service
to bivouac on the ield. he marshal passed the night at the
Eppes chteau, six kilometers southeast of Athies.
While Blcher could see the ight at Athies from Laon, a
strong westerly wind muted the sound of the guns. Napoleon,
who was farther away, could not hear the guns at all, and the
smoke and topography prevented him from seeing Marmonts
attack. Knowing nothing of Marmonts movements, and with
the light of day quickly fading, Napoleon decided to break of
combat around 5 p.m.
By nightfall, Blcher, with the beneit of enough reports
from the ield, no longer feared the approach of a third enemy
column from Bruyres. Moreover, the Festieux column was estimated at fewer than 10,000 men. Statements from prisoners
conirmed that Napoleon had joined Neys forces. Based on this
news, Blcher ordered a surprise attack to destroy Marmont.
It was a dark night, with the only light provided by the smoldering ruins of Athies. At 6:30 p.m., six Prussian battalions followed by the rest of Yorcks I Corps advanced against Marmonts
center. he Prussians entered Athies without iring a shot, surprising and dispersing Brigadier General Edme-Aim Lucottes
brigade of Arrighis division. To the right of Yorck, Kleists II
Corps marched across the ields between Athies and the Reims

Blcher
ordered a
surprise
attack to
destroy
Marmont

34

MHQ Autumn 2016

highway to smash Marmonts let. Zieten, commanding some

7,000 sabers, now charged through the woods of Salmoucy on
Marmonts right and ravaged the bivouac of the 2,000 troops of
I Cavalry Corps just as they were mounting their steeds. he
French resisted with great courage, and in the darkness bitter
hand-to-hand struggle ensued. Marmonts VI Corps soon led.
he Prussian infantry halted at Aippes while the cavalry
pursued Marmont, who briely resisted at Festieux before retreating further. Only the cavalry and a few battalions crossed
the Festieux deile to pursue the enemy on the other side. Almost all of the Prussian infantry returned to Athies with detachments holding Festieux and Aippes. At 2 a.m., some seven
hours ater the surprise attack, Marmont reported to the emperor: We still have not been able to restore order among the
troop units, which are all mixed together and are incapable of
making a movement; it is impossible for them to perform any
service, and, since a considerable number of men are marching to Berry-au-Bac, I see myself forced to proceed there to
reorganize. Marmont had lost more than 3,500 men, including 2,000 who had been taken as prisoners, as well as 45 guns
and 131 caissons. he Prussians had lost 850 or so men.
With wind howling throughout the night of March 9, Napoleons outposts did not hear the combat at Athies. Consequently, the emperor made plans for a double envelopment of
Blchers position the following morning. His staf had already
issued the orders when, around 1 a.m., news arrived of Marmonts debacle. At irst, Napoleon refused to believe it; then he
received a report from a dragoon post at Nouvion-le-Vineux,
written at 2:30 a.m., stating that VI Corps had been completely
defeated at around 7 p.m. Assuming that Blcher would pursue Marmont, he decided to remain before Laon and attempt
to catch Blchers columns debouching from their positions.
On the open plain, Napoleon reasoned, his superior skills
would compensate for his inferior numbers.
On March 10, pleased by the apparent victory, Blcher issued orders for the entire army to pursue the French. Yet at
daybreak, just as his army started to march, Blcher was astonished to see that Napoleon had not only maintained his old
position but had arranged his troops for a new attack. Blcher
immediately ordered all corps to return to their previous positions; only Wintzingerode would take the ofensive. At around
9 a.m., the corps of Ney, Charpentier, and Mortier formed for
the defense of Clacy; Pierre Boyers division occupied the
brickworks of Semilly, while the right wing extended to
Leuilly. Wintzingerodes Russians launched repeated attacks
but could not achieve decisive results. Consequently, Blcher
ordered Blow to shit some battalions from the center to assist the Russians. Observing Blows movement and concluding that Blcher had inally accepted battle, Napoleon ordered
the division holding Clacy to assault the Russians; Ney led two
divisions in a failed efort to take Semilly and Ardon.
Finally convinced that Blcher did not intend to move, Napoleon ordered the retreat to Soissons to commence at 6 p.m.

FROM TOP: HORACE VERNET/AKG-IMAGES; WILLIAM ELMES/ANNE S. K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION/BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY; MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

BATTLE OF LAON, 1814

After the surrender of Paris to the Coalition forces, Napoleon

abdicated to face exile on Elba, bidding farewell to his guard at
Fontainebleau (top). The jubliant Allies celebrated with
cartoons showing Britain (John Bull) punishing the emperor
and Blcher ridding Europe of the Corsican Blood Hound.

On March 11 a weak rearguard of two battalions, 300 cavalry,

and two guns abandoned Clacy only an hour before daybreak.
With Blcher ailing, the Army of Silesia did not pursue Napoleon, allowing him to slip away with 24,000 men.
While exacting some 4,000 Allied casualties, Napoleon had
lost 6,000 men in addition to Marmonts 3,500. It was clear that
he could not sustain the losses in men, matriel, and morale.
Unfortunately, the Young Guard is melting like snow, he informed his brother Joseph. he Old Guard maintains its
strength. Yet the Guard Cavalry is also shrinking considerably.
he battle of Laon presented Napoleon with the last opportunity to change the course of the war by defeating Blcheran
event that most certainly would have prompted Schwarzenberg
to retreat. Feeling that the war had taken a turn for the worse,
concern for Paris mastered him. [Blchers] army is much
more dangerous to Paris than Schwarzenbergs, he wrote. For
all circumstances, I am going to move closer to Soissons in order to be closer to Paris; but until I have been able to engage this
army in a battle, threaten it anew, it is very diicult for me to
turn elsewhere.
On March 11, Napoleon instructed his brother to build redoubts on the hills that overlooked Paris, especially Montmartre. Joseph also received orders to implement a leve-en-masse
of the National Guard to raise and arm 30,000 men from the
refugees who had led to Paris and the citys unemployed.
hese measures, however, caused overwhelming panic and
political agitation that ultimately led to his political demise.
Although he would win minor victories at Reims on 13 March
and St. Dizier on March 26, the master was out of time. By
chasing Blcher to Laon, Napoleon had granted Schwarzenberg one too many reprieves. By failing to inlict serious losses
on the Army of Silesia, he had lost the best opportunity to inluence Schwarzenbergs operations.
It did not help that Napoleons own intransigence had led
the Allies to conclude that a diplomatic settlement was unattainable. While Napoleon was operating against Blcher,
Schwarzenberg had resumed the ofensive. With the Army of
Bohemia closing on Paris, Napoleon no longer had time to
transfer the war to Lorraine. Any attempt to go east and turn
Schwarzenbergs right lank could result in the Allies reaching
Paris before they could feel the efects of his manoeuvre sur les
derrires. Unable to smash Schwarzenbergs rearguard at Arcissur-Aube on March 2021, Napoleon found the two enemy
armies between himself and his capital.
he end came quickly. On March 31, Marmont surrendered
Paris; Napoleon unconditionally abdicated six days later. MHQ
Michael V. Leggiere is professor of history and deputy
director of the Military History Center at the University of
North Texas. He is the award-winning author of ive books
on the Napoleonic Wars including a biography of the
Prussian ield marshal Prince Blcher and monographs on
Napoleons campaigns in 1813 and 1814.
MHQ Autumn 2016

35

DEATH IN THE
AFTERNOON

General George Washington, his army renewed after a winter of

training, aimed to interceptand hobblethe crack army
commanded by British lieutenant general Sir Henry Clinton.

36

MHQ Autumn 2016

SAMUEL KING/CHATEAU BLERANCOURT, PICARDIE, FRANCE/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

In the hard-fought Battle of Monmouth in

1778, a relentless Washington struck a final
surprise blow against Clintons redcoats
By Mark Edward Lender and Garry
Wheeler Stone

MHQ Autumn 2016

37

MONMOUTH

During a hot spell in late June 1778, British lieutenant general

Sir Henry Clinton was moving his army from Philadelphia
to New York City. General George Washington, spoiling for a
ight, his army renewed ater a winter of training, meant to
intercept the redcoats in New Jersey. Washington, overriding
the cautions of many of his generals, attacked Clintons column.
Once engaged, the two armies slugged it out in a cauldron
of deadly heat, dust, and confusion in the farm ields near
Monmouth. his was the wars longest single-day battle and
both sides claimed victory, as Clinton withdrew toward New
York with his vital supply train intact and Washingtons
Continentals retained command of the ield. Essentially a
hard-fought draw, the ight had major strategic and political
implications for the Americans.
In Fatal Sunday, their fresh, deeply researched, and detailed
account of the Battle of Monmouth and its consequences,
historians Mark Edward Lender and Garry Wheeler Stone
have disentangled one of the Revolutionary Wars most
confusing battles. his excerpt illustrates Washingtons
relentless desire to damage Clintons crack army, even at the
very end of a bloody, exhausting battle.

ieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton felt that he could

pull back with mission accomplished and honor intact.
here was no point in staying on the ield longer. Accordingly, he issued orders for a general withdrawal
toward the town of Freehold west of Monmouth. It
should have been a relatively simple retrograde. Yet as
if to demonstrate that even the veteran British Army could
botch a routine maneuver, the withdrawal misired. Clinton
wanted a phased withdrawal: the grenadier battalions were to
stay in position near the hedgerow until the 3rd Brigade and
light troops were completely out of danger. Instead, as the general later explained, from my instructions not being properly
understood, or some other cause, all units but the 1st Grenadiers Battalion got out right away. he premature departure
posed an immediate danger by leaving the still retreating 3rd
Brigade farther forward than Clintons main body and lagging
behind on the British right. It also let the 1st Grenadiers isolated near the north end of the hedgerow. Here General George
Washington may have seen an opportunity.
With Colonel Joseph Cilleys 1st New Hampshire men still
engaged and emboldened by their apparent success, the patriot commanding general looked for another opportunity.
he view from Perrines Hill allowed only glimpses of British
troop movements, but it was clear enough that the redcoats
had retreated on the rebel let, and patriots certainly knew that
the enemy artillery had pulled out. Were the British vulnerable near the hedgerow? Despite his lack of any solid intelligence, Washington ordered another limited advance. hrough

38

MHQ Autumn 2016

Major General William AlexanderLord Stirling, as he preferredhe ordered Brigadier General Anthony Wayne to lead
a detachment of Pennsylvanians back over the West Morass
bridge west of Monmouth Courthouse. here is no reason
to believe the commander in chief had any speciic target in
mind, and Waynes instructions probably were as general as
Cilleys. If soand to paraphrase Cilleys ordersthey were as
simple as: Go and see what you can do with any British you
can ind across the morass. hat is, Wayne was to advance
from the Continental center and pursue any opportunity.
his time, however, it was the turn of the patriots to make
a hash of things. Wayne had intended to take with him a command considerably larger than Cilleys. In fact, he wanted
three Pennsylvania brigades, which would have given him
more than 1,300 men. In his view, this was strength enough to
close with the British and then to improve the advantage in
the event of success. But the mission sufered from confusion
at the outset. Waynes fellow Pennsylvanian, Major General
Arthur St. Clair, then serving as an aide to Washington, overheard the request for the three brigades. St. Clair promptly ordered the three brigades not to advance and allowed only one
brigade to join Wayne. he two generals were not friends, and
Wayne (in a letter intended for Washington) later put down St.
Clairs action to either ignorance or envy. As an aide to the
commander in chief, the major general actually had no place
in the chain of command. As far as Wayne knew, St. Clair was
not acting on any instructions from Washington but merely
pulled rank to deny the brigadier his requested number of
troops. Furious, the aggressive Pennsylvanian never forgave
St. Clair, but he had no time to argue the matter at present.
If Wayne was disappointed in the size of his strike force,
his ire was misdirected. St. Clair was no geniushis military career, which stretched well beyond the Revolution, was
checkeredbut he would not have intervened in an operation
Washington had initiated without suicient cause. And the
suicient cause was almost certainly the commander in chief.
In ordering the new advance, Washington was not courting a
major action or the possibility of damage to a substantial part
of his army. he modest size of Cilleys party was more indicative of the generals thinking. An attack by three brigades was
something else, quite contrary to an efort to strike Clinton
without incurring unnecessary risk to the Continentals. An
assault in such strength would have invited a major response,
with Wayne too far forward for Washington to support adequately even if, as the brigadier put it, there was an advantage to improve. In all likelihood St. Clair did nothing more
than act on instructions from Washington. Wayne evidently
realized as much ater the fact because he never sent the letter
in which he vented his spleen at his fellow Pennsylvanian.
Making the best of what he considered a bad situation, it

CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Other than some return fire from enemy pickets, the only
opposition Washingtons troops met as they moved forward were
a few bursting shells from British 5.5-inch howitzers.

seems Wayne took only the 3rd Pennsylvania Brigade and put
it on the road toward the bridge. he brigade was made up of
the 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 12th Pennsylvania Regiments (or at least
elements of them) as well as Colonel Oliver Spencers and Colonel William Malcolms Additional Continental Regiments.
Both Additionals were brigaded with the Pennsylvanians;
Malcolms, composed mostly of Pennsylvanians, was commanded this day by Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Burr. Spencers
troops were mostly Jerseymen, and Spencer led them personally. In all, Waynes force was not much larger than Cilleys,
probably around 400 men of all ranksfar fewer than the
force he wanted.
Wayne was his aggressive self even with only a brigade. He
marched about 5:15 p.m., just ater Cilley stopped pursuing the
Highlanders. His men were relatively fresh and their advance
was swit, although at this point the exact movements of the
Continental troops are conjectural. Without question, they
crossed the West Morass bridge unopposed. Wayne probably
let his men marching east on the road while he, his dragoon

escort, and a fellow oicer or two rode ahead to reconnoiter. As

they moved up the hill, they found a battalion of British grenadiers marching south, heading for the Middle Morass causeways. No other enemy unit was west of the Middle Morass.
he 1st and 2nd Battalions of Grenadiers had remained,
hunkered down, in the hay meadow along the Middle Brook.
here they were safe from the guns of Brevet Lieutenant Colonel homas Antoine, chevalier de Mauduit du Plessis, a French
volunteer, and could cover the retreat of Brigadier General Sir
William Erskines detachment and the 3rd Brigade. Ater Major General Charles Greys rear unit was safely on the road to
the courthouse, the 2nd Battalion of the Grenadiers followed.
In the hayield Lieutenant Colonel William Meadows held his
1st Grenadiers, either to give the lengthy column time to escape or (as noted earlier) from a misunderstanding of Clintons orders. hen the battalion began to move south, probably
along the lane to young Peter Wikof s house. Meadowss intention may have been to join and withdraw with the troops of
the 4th Brigade. If so, he never reached them.
MHQ Autumn 2016

39

BRIDGE

Wayne With 3rd

Pennsylvania Brigade

HE

DG

ER

OW

AR
FR TI
O M LLE
S U RY
TF FIR
IN E
FA
RM

Malcolm

33rd Regiment

BARN

L AN
WIK E TO
H O O FF S
USE

DWELLING

Spencer

AR
T
FR ILLE
O M RY
CO FIR
MB E
SH
ILL

3rd Pa.
1st Grenadiers
500 FT

Before Colonel Meadowss grenadiers could turn east toward the ravine, Waynes men were upon them. he grenadiers were slow to recognize their danger, probably assuming
that the smaller Continental unit was merely shadowing them
of the battleield. But Wayne wanted blood, and he led his
detachment of Pennsylvanians straight into the grenadiers,
perhaps before they could
form. In the irst minute or so,
the rebels ired three volleys
into the British. he battalion,
badly shot up earlier in the day,
was now unsupported. he
2nd Grenadiers had marched
of, and the Royal Artillery
had withdrawn, leaving only
a single 6-pounder. (In fact,
one grenadier oicer was convinced that the departure of
the artillery had triggered the
American attackuntrue, but a reasonable assumption from
the British perspective.) he 1st Grenadiers rallied and fought
back gamely, but patriot ire began to tell. his brave corps,
Clinton wrote of the battalion, began losing men very fast.
Sir Henry had not anticipated the Continental movement.
Quickly, he sized up the new threat: he Americans had come
over the bridge in great force, he noted, and their advance
found him alarmed for the safety of Meadows. he 1st Grenadiers formedprobably along one of the fences paralleling the
laneand held their ground, taking their losses from Waynes
ire. Meadows was a tough and experienced oicer, a gren-

This brave
corps, Clinton
wrote of the
battalion,
began losing
men very fast

40

MHQ Autumn 2016

adier with a superb combat record and whose performance

won him an assignment as a military aide to George III by the
end of the year. Riding close to the scene, Clinton realized that
his orderly withdrawal was threatened, and he saw no alternative but to stand and ight.
Anxiously searching the ield for potential reinforcements,
the general spotted the 33rd Foot moving up. Luckily, the 33rd
was a unit with an excellent reputation; its colonel was none
other than Lieutenant General Charles Earl Cornwallis. he
regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel James Webster,
apparently was heading for the sound of the guns on his own
initiative. he 33rd pressed on, and a relieved Clinton sent
Websters troops immediately into the fray. he subsequent
action may have been the bitterest of the day. he numbers,
though, were against the Continentals; Wayne was now facing
some 1,000 redcoats. he grenadier battalion had a prebattle
muster roll of approximately 760 men, and even ater losses
from the heat and the ighting earlier in the day, there were
probably still some 650 to 700 Grenadiers in the ield to go after Wayne. he 33rd Foot probably added another 300 to 350
men to British strength.
Wayne was in his glory. Having had a taste of combat earlier, he was now in a classic showdown with some of the best
soldiers in the British Army. Quickly, however, the larger
numbers and spirit of the grenadiers began to tell. Formed in
semi-open order, their line threatened to lank Waynes, and
the Americans began backing up. (North of young Wikof s
house today, a scatter of impacted musket balls has helped
locate the action. One ball from a British grenadiers musket
bears the impression of coarse linen fabric from a Pennsylva-

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH/NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY U.K./BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; INFOGRAPHIC BY BRIAN WALKER

Clinton, realizing that Washingtons Continentals threatened

his orderly withdrawal, called on the 33rd Regiment, led by
Lieutenant General Charles Earl Cornwallis (left), to protect
the 1st Grenadiers, which had formed the main British column.

HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/THE IMAGE WORKS

Major General Arthur St. Clair (left), an aide to Washington,

angered Brigadier General Anthony Wayne by overruling his
request for three Pennsylvania brigades, but he undoubtedly
was acting on instructions from the commander in chief.

nians pack.) In a vivid recollection of the action, Pennsylvania

lieutenant Alexander Dow saw men in his own company and
in other units go down around him. hese included some important oicers. In the 3rd Pennsylvania, Lieutenant Colonel
Rudolph Bunner took a lethal hit; he was the highest-ranking
rebel fatality at Monmouth. One of Washingtons favorite junior oicers, former schoolteacher Lieutenant Colonel Francis
Barber, was wounded in the side. Late of the 3rd New Jersey
and a talented light infantryman, Barber was serving as Stirlings adjutant general; his own impetuosity, not any requirements of his oice, brought him to the front line. Aaron Burr
tumbled to the ground with his horse shot from under him.
According to traditional accounts, as the British advance
gathered momentum, Wayne remained cool. Watching the
developing enemy charge, he told his men, or at least those
near enough to hear him, to hold their ire. He wanted the
grenadiers and the 33rd to get within range of a sure kill,
then have the Continentals go for the enemy oicers. Steady,
steady, the general called down this line, wait for the word,
then pick out the King birds.
Lieutenant Dow, on the Continental let, may or may not
have heard Wayne, as he had a more immediate concern.
he lieutenant had three of his men killed and found his platoon close pressed as the enemy closed in. It was terrifying.
hrough the smoke, Dow reported, he saw a mounted British
oicera man he mistakenly took to be Lieutenant Colonel
Henry Moncktonshouting com on my brave boyes for the
honour of Great Britain. Dow feared that the horseman was
actually going to ride him down. Ordering his platoon to aim
at the rider and the men with him, the Pennsylvanian gave

the order to ire. he volley crashed and the target droped,

shot dead, or so Dow believed. British casualty reports, however, listed no senior King birds lost in the late aternoons
ighting, and no one knows who the platoon brought down, if
anyone. he smoke and confusion easily could have let Dow
mistaken; he certainly was mistaken regarding Monckton. he
most likely casualty of the volley was the oicers horse. Dow,
grateful to be alive, saw the British charge slowed, and Colonel
Spencer ordered him to fall back.
Slowed, the redcoats nevertheless maintained their advance. Pushed back through the hedgerow, Waynes formation began to disintegrate as Continental units hurried to take
cover in the buildings and enclosures of the parsonage farm.
As they fell back, an enemy ball tore through the throat of Adjutant Peter Taulman. Bleeding and dazed, he crawled behind
the barn thinking that he had but moments to live. Two soldiers came to his aid. hey were carrying him farther back
when a musket ball blew the hat of of one of them; he led.
he other remained and helped Taulman of the battleield.
he grenadiers pursuing Dow and Taulman were sheltered
from the Continental artillery by the ridge to their let and the
Americans in front of them, but they had no shelter from the
Continentals who had taken refuge in the parsonage buildings
and yards. Behind fences and walls, Malcolms and Spencers
men were safe from a bayonet charge. A grenadier oicer reported that his men lost Considerable from a Firing from a
Barn & a House. Just to the south, the 3rd Pennsylvania, moving toward the safety of the parsonage apple orchard, slowed
to get over a rail fence. he pursuing grenadiers knew better
than to let the men take cover behind it. Before the ContiMHQ Autumn 2016

41

MONMOUTH
nentals could re-form, the British were on them, loading and
iring, forcing Colonel homas Craigs troops back into the orchard. Now it was the grenadiers who had the advantage, but
it was short lived.
Indeed, the British advance came to a quick and deadly halt.
A round of case shot landed just short of the fence corner, scattering 1.5-ounce iron shot along the edge of the orchard. It was
the irst of many such rounds. Caught in front of the parsonage
on open ground, the redcoats were now sitting ducks for patriot
artillery on Combs Hill to their let. Du Plessis sent a withering
rain of shot ripping through the British let lank. It is worth considering what the grenadiers and the 33rd faced. Du Plessis had
four guns. Based on the smallsize iron case shot they were
iring, the guns were most likely
3- or 4-pounders. With excellent crews, they could ire two
or three aimed rounds a minute.
A 4-pounder case round using
1.5-ounce iron shot contained
about 44 shots; a canister of
lead musket balls would contain
many more. With all four guns
iring at three rounds a minute,
at any given minute over 500
pieces of hot metal were hurtling downrange. Aimed at formed
infantry in enilade (that is, from the side), multiple hits were
as likely as not. One unlikely tale had a round shot traveling the
length of a platoon line, knocking the muskets from the grip of
every soldier without doing further harm. Reality was much
worse. he storm of artillery staggered the redcoats, who were
powerless to reply. he American guns quailed them so much,
one Continental recorded, that the enemy simply had to withdraw. Virtually every account of this action, American and British, bore testimony to the terrible efectiveness of the ire from
Combs Hill. he British attack was over almost immediately.
he grenadiers Run Back, the Continental wrote, and once east
of the hedgerow, the vegetation and topography hid them from
du Plessiss gunners. As the gap between Waynes and Clintons
men opened, the gunners on the Perrine and neighboring Sutin
farms may have been able to ire a few solid shot at the retreating
troops before they disappeared from view.
In a technical sense, Clinton had won the ight with Wayne
the Americans had retreatedbut his grenadiers and the 33rd
Foot were licking their wounds as they moved out. he weary
troops withdrew just over a mile to high ground near William Kers house. hey arrived shortly before 7 p.m. for some
much-needed rest, safe from the galling rebel artillery. he
British withdrawal from the parsonage area marked the end of
the days longest period of sustained infantry action.

Now it was
the grenadiers
who had the
advantage,
but it was
short lived

For Washington, however, the day was not over. Clintons retrograde invited a response, and he laid plans to strike a inal

42

MHQ Autumn 2016

blow. Around 6 p.m. the commander in chief sent a rider to

the reserve with orders for Major General Friedrich Wilhelm
von Steuben to send what troops he could from Englishtown.
Major General Charles Lees men were assembled there, although they were in questionable condition ater their long
day in the sun; the timely arrival of Brigadier General John
Paterson had augmented the reserve with four more fresh brigades (Patersons, Brigadier General Peter Muhlenbergs, Brigadier General George Weedons, and the 2nd Maryland)a
large force of over 2,200 menand the inspector general personally organized and led these units toward the front. hey
arrived too late to do anything on Sunday but were at hand if
ighting resumed the following day. Simultaneously, elements
of the Pennsylvania units that had fought near the parsonage
held their position; the gore of the ighting lay all around them
as they looked out over the now quiet ield. he British, sheltering at Kers, knew Wayne was still around the parsonage,
but the royal army was not looking for another ight.
But across the West Morass, Washington was doing just that.
Shortly before 7 p.m. the general ordered two detachments to
go ater Clintons lanks. he irst was under Brigadier General
Enoch Poor of New Hampshire, who took his own brigade and
a picked body of light infantry. Also along was a detachment
of North Carolinians under Colonel homas Clark. Poor had
done well at Saratoga the year before, but he had shared Lees
caution about any major confrontation with the British in New
Jersey. He had a reputation as a steady oicer, however, and
had been part of Stirlings let wing during the earlier ighting
that day. he general was to follow the road across the morass
bridge to go ater Clintons right. Moving in concert with Poor
would be the small Virginia Brigade of Brigadier General William Woodford, whose men had been with Greene and had
supported the guns on Combs Hill. Now he would advance
from the hill and try for the British let. Knox limbered guns to
accompany Poor and gall the enemys front.
he two forces moved at about the same time. Poor crossed
the bridge and let the road. He moved carefully through ields
and patches of woods, seeking to conceal his advance toward the
British let. Woodford picked his way through the boggy terrain
at the base of Combs Hill, going for the enemy right. Once across
the West Morass bridge, the artillery, with a small supporting detachment, kept to the road. Unsure of how far they could go before the British saw them or what the redcoats would do if they
did, caution ruled the patriot approach. In fact, the pace was too
slow. Soon sunset made a continued advance impractical, and
Washington called of the efort before either Poor or Woodford
closed. He had these advanced troops lie on their arms near the
Wikof house, close enough to keep an eye on the enemy at Kers.
Behind Poor and Woodford, Stirlings brigades from the Perrine
farm also moved up and took position, perhaps near the hedgerow, the troops lying down on the ield amongst the dead. On
Perrines Hill, the fresh troops Steuben brought from Englishtown replaced Stirlings men. Washington, who fully intended to

STOCK MONTAGE/GETTY IMAGES; QUINT & LOX/AKG-IMAGES

renew the ighting on Monday morning, slept under an oak on a

cloak he shared with Lafayette.
he infantry of the two armies rested within a mile of each
other, but their only contact during the evening was when Colonel Parker sent a company of his picked men to disturb the
royal armys sleep. he Virginians probed forward until they
found an enemy picket, ired three volleys, and returned unscathed. Other than return ire from the pickets, the only opposition Washingtons troops met as they moved forward were
a few bursting shells from British 5.5-inch howitzers. In an ineffectual efort to keep the Continentals at a distance, Clinton had
his artillerists randomly ire at the ground he had abandoned.
he British commander had no intention of staying to ight on
the 29th. here was no reason. He had ensured the escape of his
baggage train, and with no prospect of inlicting a major wound
on the rebels, he saw his job as the completion of his planned
evacuation to New York. Clinton let his exhausted units rest for
the time being, secure in their temporary camp. But about 11
p.m. the general began preparations to move out. His intention
was to join Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen, who
by 6 p.m. had marched the baggage train and its escorts to a defensible encampment at Nut Swamp, some three miles from Middletown. Around midnight, Clinton quietly broke camp, slipped
into the night, and let the battleield to Washington.
Poors men never heard him go. In fact, the withdrawal was
skillful and eicient (every bit as good as Washingtons escape
from Cornwallis ater the Second Battle of Trenton), but the
exhausted and sleeping rebels could have done little to stop
him had they noticed his departure. Not all the redcoats let.
he wounded were brought into Freehold, Major John Andr noted, and those whose cases would admit of it, brought
away when the Division marched. But some men were too
badly injured to move; Clinton let four wounded oicers and
40 men in the village. As their comrades marched away, they
remained under the care of several surgeons and medical personnel who volunteered to stay behind. It was gallingmortifying, in the view of one oicerto leave the wounded to
the Americans, but there was nothing else to be done; even
if the men were in condition to travel, there were not enough
wagons to carry them. Clinton trusted, rightly, to their humane treatment by Washington. MHQ

Owing to his fiery personality, Wayne (top) was known as

Mad Anthony, and he was in his glory at Monmouth. While
Clinton (bottom) may have won the fight with Wayne, his forces
were so weakened that they left the battlefield to Washington.

Mark Edward Lender is professor emeritus of history at

Kean University in Union, New Jersey, and the coauthor
of A Respectable Army: he Military Origins of the Republic
and Citizen Soldier: he Revolutionary War Journal of Joseph
Bloomield. Garry Wheeler Stone is retired as regional
historian for the New Jersey State Park Service and historian
for the Monmouth Battleield State Park with the New Jersey
Department of Environmental Protection. Excerpt from Fatal
Sunday: George Washington, the Monmouth Campaign, and the
Politics of Battle, by Mark Edward Lender and Garry Wheeler
Stone. Copyright 2016, University of Oklahoma Press.
MHQ Autumn 2016

43

OVER THE HUMP

WILLIAM VANDIVERT/TIME & LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES

World War IIs pioneering airlift

operationin myth and reality
By Stephan Wilkinson

44

MHQ Autumn 2016

In 1942, the U.S. Army Air Forces brand-new Air Transport

Command began running the most audacious airlift of World
War II: flying the Hump over the foothills of the Himalayas.

MHQ Autumn 2016

45

n August 2, 1943, CBS war correspondent Eric Sevareid and a small group of American diplomats and
Chinese army oicers climbed aboard a Curtiss C-46
Commando transport plane at a U.S. Army Air
Forces base in Chabua, India. Sevareid wanted to report irsthand on an ongoing mission to get gasoline
and other supplies to China in support of Chiang Kai-shek,
whose forces were ighting the Japanese. he USAAFs brandnew Air Transport Command had been struggling to run the
most audacious and dangerous airlit operation ever attemptedlying the Hump, over the foothills of the Himalayasand Sevareid wanted to report on the operation.
China had gone to war with Japan in 1937, but by the time
the United States entered the Paciic War, Japan had sealed of
China from any source of supply. Its ports had been conquered, and the last rail connection with the Soviet Union, a
distant and pitiful lifeline, had been closed in 1941 by a SovietJapanese neutrality treaty. he infamous Burma Road lasted a
while longer, but when the Japanese captured the port of Rangoon, the Burma Road was let with no supplies to carry.
Flying over Burma (today, Myanmar)a 261,000-squaremile swath of mostly mountainous terrain the size of Texas
was the only way.
As the C-46 climbed high above the Patkoi Range, the aircrat that pilots had dubbed the lying coin suddenly lost its
let engine, and it soon became clear that the plane was going
to crash. I stood in the open door of that miserable Commando and declared, Well, if nobody else is going to jump, Ill
jump, John Paton Davies, one of the American diplomats,
later wrote. Somebody had to break the ice.
Sevareid followed Davies, but only ater grabbing a bottle of
Carews gin. He and 19 other men landed in the junglethe
C-46s copilot did not survivenear a village that was home to
a notorious tribe of headhunters, the Nagas, who, amazingly,
hosted and fed them until help arrived 22 days later.
Most likely because of the VIPs aboard the light, intensive
search-and-rescue eforts were mounted, including parachuting
a light surgeon to the marooned party. hat was the beginning
of serious search and rescue along the Hump routes. Before the
Sevareid light, crews and occasional passengers were pretty
much on their own in the Burmese jungles and mountains.
On their 80-mile trek back to civilization, a native guide
explained the Hump to Sevareid in a way that perfectly encapsulated its astonishing expanse: India there, he said, pointing
in one direction, and then, pointing in the other, China there.

46

MHQ Autumn 2016

he Second Sino-Japanese War occupied the attention of

1,250,000 Japanese troops stationed in Southeast Asia and
China itself. It was a huge commitment by the Japanese, but
they faced a Chinese force of more than three million. hat
Chinese army did littlethe war had essentially become a
stalematebut was nonetheless a threat, and that meant those
million and a quarter Japanese soldiers couldnt be sent to
Guadalcanal or anywhere else in the South Paciic. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt decided that Chiang Kai-shek, the supreme commander of most of Chinas armyMao Zedong led
the restwas his guy, and Chiang needed American support.
Roosevelt imagined a superpower role for China ater the
war, and he wanted to be on good terms with the generalissimo. Chiang kept demanding more supplies, and Roosevelt
kept sending them, at least until he became increasingly disenchanted with the Chinese Nationalist dictator.
But was that really the reason for lying some 500 to 560
miles over the Hump? To supply the Chinese and keep them
in the war, thus pinning down all those Japanese troops? hat
has been the popular explanation for decades, but it is far from
the whole story.
he Hump was a myth in many ways. Even the description
over the Himalayas stretches the truth, for none of the several
Hump routes overlew mountains that were technically part of
the Himalayas. Yes, some of them crossed the Patkai and Santung Ranges, which forced a minimum cruising altitude of
15,000 feet, especially when lying by instruments in poor visibility, and that let no margin in the event of an engine failure
in a twin-engine C-46 Commando or Douglas C-47 Skytrain
or even a four-engine Consolidated C-87/C-109 Liberator Express. he Himalayas, though, were part of what percolated the
extreme weather and jetstream-strength winds that were the
routes severest challenges.
he lood of memoirs, war stories, and reminiscences from
members of the Hump Pilots Association (some 5,000 at its
peak) was unequaled among such postwar alumni groups, and
its annual conventions seemed to increase the signiicance of the
feats they reported. Every time we meet, one former Hump
pilot recalled, the Himalaya Mountains get higher, the weather
gets worse, and there are more Japanese ighters in the sky than
there were in the whole leet.
he men who lew the Hump were near the bottom of the
Army Air Force food chain; indeed, ATC, the abbreviation for
Air Transport Command, was oten said to mean Allergic to
Combat or Army of Terriied Copilots. hose terriied copilots

WILLIAM VANDIVERT/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

THE HUMP

A twin-engine Curtiss C-46 Commando flies over the rugged

mountain barriers of Burma, moving military supplies from
India to China as part of a 24-hour-a-day aerial supply line.
MHQ Autumn 2016

47

Hump Airfields

Chinese troops board Douglas C-53s (above); each plane could

carry 28 soldiers in full combat gear. Opposite page, from top:
CBS war correspondent Eric Sevareid (with hat) jumped for his
life from a Hump flight and spent 22 days in the Burmese
jungles. Chinese soliders wait to board a Hump flight in 1944.
Chinas Chiang Kai-shek got nearly everything he asked for,
including wine, Ping-Pong tables, and condoms. General
Henry Hap Arnold came to dislike the Nationalist leader,
writing that all that mattered to him was aid to China.

48

MHQ Autumn 2016

got little respect during the war but made sure the world heard
about their exploits aterward. Inevitably, some of what they
broadcast was myth and much was exaggeration. hat said, they
operated overloaded airplanes, some of them mechanically
lawed and poorly maintained with no source of spares, and did
it in the worlds worst instrument-lying weather.
Westerly winds sometimes reached 150 miles an hour (typically inlated by pilots in later years to 200 and even 250), and
115 miles an hour was not unusual. A trip in a C-47 from China
back to India could see groundspeeds of 30 miles an hour, according to some Hump reminiscences, and pilots cruising at
16,000 feet might ind their aircrat carried uncontrollably to
28,000 feet, then suddenly back down to 6,000. he weather was
at its worst from February to April, with ierce thunderstorms
and heavy icing. May to September was monsoon season with
even worse thunderstorms. October and November meant good
weather, which brought out Japanese ighter planes, and December and January brought heavy winds, turbulence, and icing.
It didnt help that Hump route charts were outdated and inaccurate, with many exaggerated height callouts. Some Hump
pilots went to their graves believing they had seen a mysterious
mountain taller than Everesta peak of 32,000 feet looming far
above them when they suddenly broke out of clouds into the
clear. Sometimes the media were responsible for the exaggeration, for journalists everywhere knew that if they needed colorful copy, all they had to do was sign on for a Hump run.
In the earliest days of the Hump, before Pearl Harbor, the
route was lown not by the U.S. military but by an airline:
CNAC, the China National Aviation Corporation, a cooperative endeavor between the Chinese government and Pan
American Airways. Its pilotsmostly expatriate Americans
and Brits lying Douglas DC-3s, some of them U.S.-provided
were the best mountain pilots in the Far East, and their skill
and experience showed when the Army Air Force Ferry Command (ATCs predecessor) began to ly the route in 1942.
CNAC aircrat oten carried more than double the tonnage
that their Army Air Forces partners felt safe hauling aboard
identical aircrat. he experienced CNAC pilots initially made
lying the Hump look easy, but nobody yet realized that future
operations would be lown by ill-trained newbies with no
mountain- or weather-lying hours.
he Ferry Commands early pilots were also skillful, though
they lacked relevant experience lying over such terrain or in
such weather. he irst 100 were airline pilots who held AAF
Reserve commissions. But when Hump tonnage began to
build and a substantial leet of cargo planes had arrived in India, the demand for pilots grew rapidly. AAF light schools
churned out as many as they could, but the best of them chose
to ly ighters and fast medium bombers; for a new aviator in
his early 20s, glory lay in combat, not in lying freight.
Despite the occasional presence of Japanese ighters, the
Hump was oicially declared a noncombat operation, with

FROM TOP: MARTIN WALZ, PEGMOTIONS GROUP (3); ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; OPPOSITE FROM TOP: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; MONDADORI PORTFOLIO/GETTY IMAGES; 504 COLLECTION/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

THE HUMP

lower pay scales and more demanding rotation-home criteria.

he Hump transports were easy but only occasional prey, since
Japanese ighters would have to spend time, efort, and gas to
ind one airplane at a time. In October 1943, the Japanese stationed a swarm of Nakajima Ki-43 Oscars at Myitkyina (pronounced Mitchinaw) in northern Burma, tasked to interdict
the Hump routes. his worked brielyfour Hump transports
were downeduntil Lieutenant General Claire Chennault,
commander of the famous Flying Tigers, proposed launching
a small group of up-gunned B-24s along one route. he Oscars
found the Liberators and casually attacked, thinking they were
unarmed C-87s, and eight of the Ki-43s were shot down.
Air Transport Command got the least capable light students
from the training classes; many arrived in India with minimal
instrument-lying skills, some without multi-engine training.
When possible, they were paired for training with airline pilots, many of whom were stunned by their lack of competence.
By the end of 1942, 35 percent of the Hump operations new
pilots showed up in India with just 27 weeks of light training.
During spring 1943, nearly a third of the AAF pilots force-fed to
the China-Burma-India heater were only single-engine rated.
Even experienced crews got into trouble over the Hump.
General Henry Hap Arnold was lying the Hump with a handpicked crew aboard his personal Boeing B-17 in February 1943
when they turned a two-and-a-half-hour trip into a six-hour
epic. Befuddled by lack of oxygen, the crew made enough navigation errors to put themselves over Japanese-held territory.
One small category of service pilots, however, were happy to
log hours lying modiied civilian airliners. Ater the war they
would be at the head of the line leading to the door marked
Airline Captain, even then a glamorous and well-paid job.
In the Humps early daysfrom its inception in early 1942
through the spring of 1943the U.S.-run operation was what
some likened to a civilian lying club run by its pilots. hey
decided when they would ly, what route theyd take, and how
much cargo theyd carry. hey were their own schedulers, dispatchers, and weather forecasters, and, not surprisingly, lights
were oten canceled because of bad weather or the threat of
Japanese interception. hat lasted until the arrival of Brigadier
General homas Hardin, a former TWA vice president who
took over the Hump command in August 1943. From now on,
there is no weather over the Hump, he immediately decreed,
telling the lying club pilots to suck it up or join the infantry.
Hardin lew the Hump, sometimes solo and regardless of
the weather, in a worn-out North American B-25 medium
bomber that he had somehow appropriated, and he arrived unannounced at the various ATC bases in India and China with
his hair on ire, sacking and reassigning oicers whenever he
found laxity and incompetence. Hardin came to be feared and
respected by the most aggressive of his pilots and hated by the
malingerers. He asked more of his aircrat, maintainers, and
crews than anyone had imagined was possible, and he was reMHQ Autumn 2016

49

THE HUMP

The giant C-46 Commandos that flew the Hump from India to
China carried all manner of cargofrom heavy equipment to
drums of gasoline. Indian crews were often used to hoist the
drums aboard one by one, though elephants seemed to get the
job done more easily.

50

MHQ Autumn 2016

he Hump missions operated with an imperfect mix of aircrat. Initially there was the indomitable Douglas C-47/C-53,
the two military versions of the DC-3. Pilots called it the
rocking chair of the air because it was so easy to operate, but
the early-1930s design had limitations. It was diicult to load
with bulky cargo, struggled to reach operational Hump altitudes, and carried a relatively small load.
Along came the Curtiss C-46 Commando, a whale of an airplane that carried 70 percent more cargo than a C-47 and boasted two of the inest and most powerful piston aircrat engines
ever produced: 2,000-horsepower Pratt & Whitney R2800 radials. he C-46 could munch mountains for breakfast, but it was
deeply lawed. Still under development as a pressurized airliner,
the military Commando was hastily sent to India when it should
remained in testing. At one point, a group of early C-46s was
returned with a list of more than 700 major and minor glitches
that needed correcting before further production.
he C-46s biggest fault was tiny leaks in wing fuel tanks and
lines. Such leaks werent unusual among complex multi-engine
airplanes, but in the Commando, they were fatal. Curtiss had
failed to vent the juncture between wing and fuselage, so the
gasoline pooled there instead of quickly evaporating. Random
fuel-pump sparks caused 20 percent of all Hump C-46s to explode in light. (Wing roots werent vented until ater the war.)
In an attempt to turn a bomber into a cargo plane for the
Hump routes, Consolidated Aircrat put a lat loor in its B-24,
removed the guns and bomb racks, and called the result the C-87
Liberator Express. But the B-24 had been designed to carry a stable load in a small area on the airplanes center of gravity: bombs

U.S. ARMY AIR FORCE PHOTO/ASSOCIATED PRESS (3)

sponsible for demanding and getting record tonnage delivered

to Chinairst 10,000 tons a month, then almost 24,000.
Hardin was also responsible for a terrible Hump safety record; he admitted that setting new tonnage-delivered records
was more important than bothersome safety procedures.
During just one seven-month stretch during his tenure, there
were 135 major accidents and 168 crew fatalities, half of them
night-lying crashes. Hardin had initiated ater-dark lying
over the Hump, saying airplanes dont need to sleep. At one
point, every thousand tons lown into China cost three American lives. Hardin lasted just 13 months and was replaced by
another brigadier general, William Tunner. Tunner would become famous as the orchestrator of the 1949 Berlin Airlit.
Under Hardin, Hump pilots were allowed to rotate home after logging 650 hours. A typical light took about three hours in
good weather, and some crews lew three missions a day in order
to build hours as fast as they could, lying some 2,000 demanding hours a yeartwice the amount that the Federal Aviation
Administration today allows airline pilots to log annually. And,
not surprisingly, tired crews crashed. Tunner changed the deal to
750 hours and a minimum of 10 months in theater. Morale suffered some, since living in fetid accommodations at bases in India for almost a year was a cruel sentence, but safety improved.

in ixed, vertical bomb racks. When Hump crews lew C-87s randomly loaded with a variety of cargoes, few ever found a sweet
spot where the airplane felt comfortable, stable, and in trim.
he army also tried to turn the B-24 into a Hump tanker,
dubbed the C-109, with big lexible bags full of gasoline in the
hold. It was diicult to land at the 6,000-foot-high airields in
China and soon acquired the name Cee-One-Oh-Boom. One
C-109 blew a tire on landing, exploded, and wiped out three
other Liberator Expresses. In his book Flying the Hump,
ex-China-Burma-India pilot Otha C. Spencer wrote, All the
pilots on the base wished [it] had wrecked the whole leet.
It was the arrival of the Douglas C-54 Skymaster in February 1944 that turned the Hump operation into the largest,
most eicient airline in the world. he Skymaster was the militarized version of the DC-4, the irst large, four-engine American airliner, and it had the cargo volume of a railroad boxcar.
he C-54 didnt have the high-altitude performance to ly the
High Hump routes, but in May 1944 British and American
forces captured the Japanese ighter strip at Myitkyina, thus
eliminating any opportunity for the Japanese to interdict the
less extreme Low Hump routes. he C-54 did quite nicely at
12,000 feet and carried far more cargo per trip than even the
porky Curtiss Commando. It was also safer than its four-engine
predecessor, the Liberator Express, and its tanker version,
whose accident rate was 500 percent higher than the C-54s.
By early 1943, U.S. brass hats, including AAF chief Hap Arnold, were beginning to doubt the value of the Hump operation.
Arnold felt the airlit could certainly be ramped up to accomplish
what it had set out to do, but he saw little point in spending lives,
material, and efort simply to sustain the will of the Chinese.
Many felt that Chiang was husbanding his acquired supplies for
use against Mao, not the Japanese.
hat was a turning point for the Hump operation. Under
the cover of aiding China, the ATC program quickly changed
course to become the major source of supplies for the Twentieth Air Force, which was planning to bomb Japan with its
B-29s from Chinese airbases. China had now become a launch
pad, no longer of interest as a postwar partner. But ultimately,
the Twentieth lew just nine Boeing B-29 missions from China
against the Home Islands before it moved to huge airields in
the Marianas. he postwar Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that those few missions did little to hasten the Japanese
surrender or justify the lavish expenditures poured out on their
behalf through a fantastically uneconomic and barely workable
supply system. For every four gallons of avgas delivered to the
Twentieth, Hump transports burned three and a half.
Still, during 1944 the Hump lights grew exponentially in
terms of tonnage, organization, and operational sophistication.
hey became quite simply the worlds biggest international airline750 aircrat and more than 4,400 pilots. Between August
1944 and October 1945, the Hump delivered almost 500,000
tons of material from India to China. Chiang got less than
20,000 tons of itthree pounds of every 100 that crossed the

Hump. he Twentieth Air Force got gasoline and ordnance;

Chiang all too oten got wine, decorative shrubbery for his
house, Ping-Pong tables, oice supplies, condoms, and such.
Roosevelt died in April 1945, and his successor, Harry Truman, shared little of his warmth toward Chiang; nor did Truman believe that Nationalist China would play an important
postwar role. China quickly became a decidedly minor player
in Allied strategy.
he Hump operation showed that a substantial amount of
cargo could be airlited anywhere, under the worst lying conditions, as long as those in charge were willing to pay the price
in men, aircrat, and money. What it didnt prove was that such
an undertaking was useful.
As a logistics operation, the
Hump lights were a failure.
he cost in aircrat and crews
was enormous. Loss estimates
vary between 468 and 600plus airplanes (the AAF did
not record every crash), but
the best one seems to be 590
aircrat lost with 1,314 crewmen. General George C. Marshall felt the Hump had
negative value: he overthe-Hump airline has been bleeding us white in transport airplanes....he efort over the mountains of Burma bids fair to
cost us an extra winter in the main theater of war. Historian
Barbara Tuchman has written that the Joint Chiefs seriously
considered abandoning the project but decided that the United
States couldnt aford the implied defeat or the loss of Chinas
sycophancy. She too believed that the Hump cost an extra winter of war in Europe.
It is hard to take seriously the claim that 650,000 tons of
supplies over four years did much to support an army of three
million Chinese, particularly when Chiang squirreled away
most of it for future battles against the Communists.
Moreover, basing heavy bombers at Chinese airields that had
to be air-supplied was a baling logistical decision. When a single
bombing mission burned 700,000 gallons of avgas and required
1,000 tons of bombs, it only made sense to base B-29s on islands
that could be supplied by ocean freighters and tankers.
In the end, though, the Hump had much to do with establishing the United States as the worlds airline leader. he War
Department bought over 1,000 C-54s, 3,000 C-46s, and 10,000
C-47sand many of them were sold as surplus to become
American airliners ater hostilities ended. he United States
began the postwar period with the airplanes, the pilots, and the
air-transport management skills to build a worldwide airline
system, all developed at least in part by lying the Hump. MHQ

U.S. brass hats

were beginning
to doubt the
value of
the Hump
operation

Stephan Wilkinson is a longtime automotive and aviation

writer and a frequent contributor to HistoryNet magazines.
MHQ Autumn 2016

51

How the father of the U.S. Cavalry won

the West with an all-but-bloodless war
By Anthony Brandt
52

MHQ Autumn 2016

COL. CHARLES WOODHOUSE, USMCR/MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT COMMAND MUSEUM

GENERAL
KEARNYS
CALIFORNIA
TREK, 1846

The Battle of San Pasqual near San Diego, December 67,

1846, was the last and most formidable challenge for Brigadier
General Stephen Watts Kearnys column from the Army of the West
as it paved the way for U.S. expansion to the Pacific. Exhausted
and depleted after the 2,000-mile trek from Kansas, Kearnys
forces fell to Mexican lancers, and Kearny barely escaped alive.
MHQ Autumn 2016

53

he Mexican War of 18461848 has always had a nasty

smell to it. No one doubts that the U.S. government,
under President James K. Polk, deliberately manufactured the incident that started the war. hat it was a
land grab, pure and simple, has always been obvious
as well. he war came at a time when the Mexican
government was unstable, with faction pitted against faction;
one of those factions was even scheming in secret with Polk to
deliver California and New Mexico to the United States for
cash in return for help seizing power in Mexico City. Opposition to the war in the United States was strong in the North,
partly on the moral grounds that adding territory in the
Southwest would lead to the extension of slavery there. In
Boston the Reverend heodore Parker declared that aggressive war is a sin....It is a national inidelity, a denial of Christianity and of God. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David
horeau echoed his sentiments. In his essay Civil Disobedience, horeau drew inspiration from a night he spent in jail for
refusing to pay his poll tax to support the war.
Nevertheless, Polk had his war to fulill the nations manifest
destinya phrase coined by the Eastern newspaper editor John
OSullivan in 1845. Polk was at the same time negotiating with
Great Britain for the U.S. share of the Oregon Territory. Parts of
the nation were screaming 54-40 or ight, calling for war with
Britain to have it all, even to 40 minutes north of the 54th parallelwell above todays Edmonton, Alberta.
In 1818 the two countries had agreed to share the region,
but what is now the state of Oregon was beginning to ill with
American settlers. By 1846 the British were amenable to splitting Oregon between them, and so was Polk, although he prolonged negotiations to placate his more belligerent followers.
In June 1846 the Oregon Territory was divided along the 49th
parallel, todays border with Canada.
Polk knew he could not ight two wars at once; he was hard
put to ight even one. Relecting the long-term fear of standing
armies that was etched in the American psyche, his regular
army was limited by law to 6,000 men, and they were widely
scattered. Until the Civil War, American armies were made up
mostly of local militias called up for the occasion.
he United States could easily have lost the Mexican war if
Mexico had not been on the edge of bankruptcy, riven by conspiracies, and deeply dysfunctionalless a nation than a collection of provinces. So the war was fought in three separate
areas at once. he casus belli was a border dispute. Texas had

achieved its independence from Mexico in 1836; in 1845 the

United States annexed Texas at its request, and the Texas border with Mexico became the U.S. border with Mexico.
But that border remained uncertain. According to Mexico,
it fell on a line some miles north of the Rio Grande. he United
States established the Rio Grande as the border. Under orders
from Polk, Brevet Brigadier General Zachary Taylor, who had
won the nickname Old Rough and Ready in the Second
Seminole War (18351842), brought his army to the mouth of
the Rio Grande at Brownsville, Texas, just across the river
from Matamoros on the Mexican side. Skirmishes ensued. he
United States was at war. Congress signed on in May 1846.
Taylor won battles in Mexican townsa major one at
Buena Vista, a smaller at a place called Resaca de la Palma, and
then at the city of Monterrey, which had been pronounced
impregnable but proved to be quite porous. In March 1847
Winield Scott, the highest ranking general in the U.S. Army,
borrowed most of Taylors army to take Vera Cruz. He then
marched toward Mexico City, winning yet more battles on the
way, and against large odds. In September 1847 he captured
Mexico City. All of Mexico could have been his.
But Polk did not want it, nor, for the most part, did the
American people. he United States wanted not Mexico but
New Mexicoparticularly Santa Fe, the thriving center of
trade in the Southwest. hen there was California, which was
almost totally unmapped, and therefore unknown. Although
more and more Americans were settling there every year, it
was not well populated. hese areas, only loosely tied to Mexico itself, had troublesome Indian tribes, sprawling deserts,
and dangerous mountains.
Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny was the obvious
choice to lead the so-called Army of the West to Santa Fe. A
career oicer who did not attend West Pointthe usual route
to a successful army careerhe was assigned to duty in the
West ater the War of 1812 and in 1826 was named second in
command of the Jeferson Barracks, 10 miles south of St.
Louis. Ater that he became the irst commander of the U.S.
Regiment of Dragoons, later renamed the First Cavalry Regiment. Kearny is thus known as the father of the U.S. Cavalry.
Already a Western explorer, he had been part of an expedition
to the mouth of the Yellowstone River, had known William
Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and in the ield had
dealt with many of the major Indian tribes of the Plains. Ke-

President James K. Polk (lower right) sent Colonel Zachary Taylor (lower left) to launch his
expansionist war. Stephen Watts Kearny (upper left) led the Army of the West; he forced
John Charles Frmont (upper right) to cede command of California to him. Kearny relied on
Kit Carson (middle right) as a guide and Lieutenant William Emory (center) as mapmaker.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: NEW MEXICO PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS PHOTO ARCHIVES; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (3); ANNE S.K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION/BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY; SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

STEPHEN WATTS KEARNY

STEPHEN WATTS KEARNY

arny had also commanded army units sent west with emigrant
trains to protect them from Indian attacks. He was known to
be a tough and highly capable leader.
To call it the Army of the West makes it sound more
grandiose than it actually was. he secretary of war called on
the state of Missouri to raise 1,000 men in May 1846, ostensibly to march on New Mexico and protect traders but in fact to
take possession of New Mexico. hey gathered that spring at
Fort Leavenworth, on the Kansas border, and proceeded to
do what militias did then: train, elect their oicers, and equip
themselves. Because Polk had neglected to prepare for the
war he wanted, equipment for the militia was in short supply,
and remained so. he 900 miles from Fort Leavenworth to
Santa Fe, now just a two-day drive, was then a long, diicult
trek across the High Plains. Food depended on the movements of bufalo herds. Water was scarce and so alkaline that
it was nearly undrinkable. With little irewood on the plains,
lower echelon personnel had to pick up bufalo chips to use as
fuel for campires. For the horses and mules, grass was not
always available. Scurvy, usually associated with sea voyages,
can also occur on long treks across barren land, and the Army
of the West sufered cases of scurvy on this trek. Of course the
regular army men, like Kearnys dragoons, were better prepared and equipped, and much more used to diicult conditions, than the militia.
In his classic account of the war, he Year of Decision: 1846,
historian Bernard DeVoto calls the U.S. military system of the
time the worst possible, and the country had scant experience
managing a war. Supply trains
lagged well behind on the route.
he logistics were daunting:
he reader should hazard
some guess about the resources
and organization required to
equip, transport, supply, and
maintain armies not only invading Mexico from three directions at distances of several
thousand miles but also, in several columns, traversing the
wilderness of the Great American Desert, wrote DeVoto. He should think of the thousands of
wagons, the many more thousands of drat animals, whole
herds of beef cattle, plus light artillery, small arms, ammunition,
the needs of a hospital, blankets and tents and myriad other
things necessary to ight a war. he militia were undisciplined,
every man an individualist, oten making the march chaotic.
Kearny was patient and diplomatic, but he was also old-school
army. He imposed order and for the most part got it. he Army
of the West was fortunate to have him in charge.
In late June 1846 the army got underway piecemeal, with
the Dragoon Regiment forming the heart of it and the men
from the relatively new Corps of Topographical Engineers

Horses gave
out; wagon
wheels dried,
shrank, and
collapsed in
the heat

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MHQ Autumn 2016

forming a small but signiicant section. hese were mapmakers, 14 men in a separate unit, commanded by a red-headed
and bearded oicer from Maryland, Lieutenant William Emory. Emory was a master horseman and well connected. He
had grown up with Jeferson Davis, later president of the Confederacy, and in 1822, when Emory was 11, Secretary of War
John C. Calhoun reserved him an appointment to West Point.
Emory became a serious scientist. He had already been
involved in mapping Texas, when that job entailed more than
cartography. he task was to describe the country, its resources, climate, lora and fauna, and settlement patterns
everything worthy of notice. For example, Emory discovered
that New Mexico was too dry and its soil too poor for conventional agriculture, stating in his report that for Southern
planters to bring slaves into the area for growing cotton or
tobacco would be a losing proposition.
Kearnys column amounted to a lot of people on 900 miles
of rough trail. Animals died by the hundreds; horses gave out;
wagon wheels dried, shrank, and collapsed in the heat and
aridity. Men broke down and had to be sent back. Impure water caused dysentery. Food ran low and the men had to exist
on half-rations or less. It was exceedingly hot during the day,
cold to the freezing point at night. he wind blew up dust
storms, and the dust ended up in eyes, ears, and mouths.
he regular soldiers could handle these conditions, for the
most part, while the militia, many of them straight of farms,
found it hard going. People whom Kearnys scouts picked up
along the waymostly stray Mexican soldiers and traders
heading northkept warning Kearny that while he might ind
Santa Fe undefended, he could face a Mexican army near
Santa Fe, the size of which kept growing in the telling2,000
men, or 5,000, or even 10,000.
By the time the U.S. forces reached Bents Fort, one of the
Wests oldest trading posts, 530 miles from Fort Leavenworth,
it was late July. More than 400 wagons pulled up to the fort,
and unit ater unit straggled in. Kearny stayed there long
enough to refresh his menmany of them swam in the river,
the Arkansasand organize his supply train. he sick and
unit were weeded out. Some men had died and been buried
along the trail. hen came the long climb to Raton Pass,
which divides what is now Colorado from New Mexico. From
there the Army of the West descended the far side of the
mountains to the town of Las Vegas. Kearny met no opposition there. He climbed to the roof of a building on the town
square and declared to the assembled citizens that the town
was now the property of the United States and that they
would henceforth be subject to its laws as well as its protections from the depredations of the Apache and the Navajo.
hen he climbed back down, and the dragoons drew their
swords and rode of to a rendezvous with the Mexican army,
commanded by Manuel Armijo, the governor of New Mexico, who was supposed to be waiting for them in a nearby
canyon. hey charged inand found no one.

The Anzio fight placed heavy demands on foot soldiers; no man

missed a chance for a smoke (above). Engineers (right) were vital
in shaping the battlefield, building roadblocks, and laying mines.

ANNE S.K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION/BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

U.S. Dragoonsmounted infantry that usually fought on

footare shown cutting their way through a Mexican ambush.
Three U.S. Army dragoon regiments served in the Mexico war.

he real ight was set then for another canyon, this one
called Apache Canyon, outside Santa Fe. Armijo fortiied the
canyon by putting log barriers across its narrowest point and
setting up some small cannons. He then told his army, about
3,000 men, almost all of them peasants with no military experience, that defense was hopeless. Accompanied by his personal bodyguard, he let for Mexico. Someone who encountered
him on the trail south called him a mountain of fat. However
heavy he was, at least he could count himself alive. As a military action, it must be listed as one of the biggest anticlimaxes
in American history. Not a shot had been ired. But New Mexico now belonged to the United States.
Kearnys orders were, once he had taken Santa Fe, to spread the
news around the territory and pacify it, if necessary. Ater that
he was to move on to Southern Californiaand conquer it.
Meanwhile, Emory was told to map New Mexico and follow Kearny. He had enough men, 14, to split his unit in two
and assign one half to map the territory, a task more diicult

than it appeared. he mapmakers faced constant danger because New Mexico was indeed Apache and Navajo territory.
Before he let, Kearny had gathered some Apache and Navajo
chiefs and lectured them on the necessity of stopping their
warfare with each other and other tribes.
his had been U.S. Army policy from the beginning; tribes
were promised protection and trade advantages if they stopped
ighting each other and punishment if they didnt. It never
worked. Chiefs would smoke the peace pipes, agree to behave
themselves, and go right back to doing what they had been
doing from time immemorial: raiding others settlements and
ighting among themselves. For them it was a way of life, a
source of pride, and a means of selecting leaders. Chiefship
among most tribes was not dynastic; it was achieved by
demonstrated leadership and courage in war.
Emorys second unit produced a map of New Mexico so
authoritative that it was still in use a hundred years later. So
was Emorys overall map of the entire Southwest, drawn while
he accompanied Kearny on his march to San Diego. Kearny
MHQ Autumn 2016

57

had split his forces, too. He let a large body of troops behind
to maintain order in Santa Fe and environs, while sending another group of men to parallel his march farther south in order
to ind a route west that could be used by wagons. He continued west with only a handpicked group of his own dragoons,
some 300 men. In wild country a lean force was more lexible,
easier to maneuver, and had few logistical needs. Besides, the
notion that a Mexican army might be waiting for them hardly
seemed likely ater what they
found in Santa Fe.
Kearnys small force proceeded to the Rio Grande,
traveled upriver for a space,
then cut over to the valley of
the Gila River, which ran to the
Colorado. Early on they came
across Christopher Houston
Kit Carson, an American
lieutenant traveling east to
Washington with news from
California. A force of U.S. sailors, perhaps 400, along with Lieutenant Colonel John Charles
Frmonts small ad hoc army, had already taken the territory
by themselves, without help from Kearny. Carson spoke too
soon, as it happened, but Kearny immediately drated him as
a guide and dispatched someone else to Washington.
Ater sending 200 dragoons back to Santa Fe, Kearny
marched on with the remaining 100 men, including Emory.
As they traversed what is now southern Arizona, they came
upon ancient pueblo ruins where they were entertained in
style by Pima and Maricopa Indians who farmed the area.
Emory was astounded. To us it was a rare sight to be thrown

The result
was classic
hand-to-hand
combat
an absolute
melee

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in the midst of a large nation of what is termed wild Indians,

surpassing many of the Christian nations in agriculture, little
behind them in the useful arts, and immeasurably before them
in honesty and virtue, he wrote.
Meanwhile, the Mexicans had taken back their territory, or
at least the area around Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, and a
force of several hundred Mexican lancers was waiting for the
Americans outside the village of San Pasqual, near San Diego.
he result was classic hand-to-hand combat, lancers and muskets against cavalry swords, an absolute melee. he Mexicans
had the advantage of superior numbers. Several American oficers were killed; Kearny himself was wounded in his buttocks and an arm and would have died if Emory had not saved
him by killing the lancer who was about to dispatch him. By
the time it was over, 18 Americans were dead and 13 more
wounded, while the Mexicans, who sufered only two deaths,
had unaccountably withdrawn from the battle.
But the dragoons remained surrounded, without food and
with only the water they carried. It took Kit Carson and an
Indian scout crawling through Mexican lines to reach San Diego, some 30 miles away, to bring reinforcements: 180 sailors
and marines. he Mexicans withdrew for good this time, and
shortly thereater Kearny reached San Diego. Emory remembered standing there staring at the Paciic Ocean while one of
the mountain men, who had served as scouts, beside him exclaimed, Lord! here is a great prairie without a tree!
here was a comic opera aspect to the U.S. victory in California. Frmont, himself a member of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, had been sent with a small number of men to
Oregon Territory to make maps. But once there he took it
upon himself to get involved in a budding rebellion among

GRANGER, NYC; INFOGRAPHIC: BRIAN WALKER

Moving southwest from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, with his

1,700-man Army of the West, General Kearny entered Santa
Fe and claimed the New Mexico Territory for the United States
(left) without a shot being fired. Kearny then set out with 300
of his men for California, with orders to conquer it.

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON LIBRARY; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Americans from all walks of life eagerly gathered in public

places to reador hearthe latest war news from Mexico.
Major General Winfield Scott leads his forces into Mexico City
(right), marking the final blow in the Mexican-American War.

American settlersthe Bear Flag Revoltthat was trying to

liberate the territory from the Mexicans. Mexican control was
very light. Garrisons were not well fortiied, and those who
manned them were hardly fervid patriots. Frmont was hungry for glory, and he kept looking for it. He seized every opportunity to take lightly armed communities with his own
little force, perhaps a hundred men all together, a mix of his
own soldiers and settler volunteers. He got chased out of one
area by a larger, better-armed Mexican force and took refuge
on a mountain. To escape with his life, he had to agree to leave
California and go back to Oregon.
President Polk, meanwhile, had convinced himself that
Great Britain would seize the opportunity the war presented
to take over California. It had no such intentions, but Polk
sent American warships to Californias main ports anyway. As
soon as Frmont learned of this, he raced back to the scene,
still seeking the elusive glory that would complement his outsize ego. But it was actually the U.S. Navy that conquered, if
thats the word, California.
he serious war was fought in Mexico, by Major General Winield Scott. He came late to the conlict and was the best, most experienced general oicer in the army, but Polk had been reluctant
to use him. Scott was a Whig, Polk a Democrat, and the idea of
relying on a Whig to win his war grated on Polk. But Zachary
Taylor was a Whig too, and already running for president, so Scott
got the job. He brought an American army to Vera Cruz, far down
the Mexican coast, took the city against a real Mexican army, and
then slowly worked his way inland toward Mexico City, pausing
ater every successful battle in hopes the Mexicans would sue for
peace. Not until he broke into Mexico City and captured the capital did that happen, and the war came to an end.
And what of Stephen Watts Kearny far away in California?

Polk soon sent word that he was to command U.S. forces in

California and govern the territory. Kearny had the satisfaction of relieving Frmont from that rolewhich he had assumed on his ownand sending him back to Washington,
where he was court-martialed for disobeying orders. Frmont
ran for president in 1856, the irst candidate of the newly
formed Republican Party, but lost.
As for glory, most of that went to Kearny. New Jersey and
Arizona both named a town for him, New Mexico a canyon,
Kansas a county, Nebraska a whole region on the Platte River.
In the history books he remains a man of honor, and for good
reason. Once, looking at the poor peasants who made up the
bulk of an opposing Mexican force, Kearny remarked to Emory that he would be ashamed the rest of his life if he had to
ire a round of grapeshot into their ragged midst. He died soon
ater the war ended, at age 54.
In 1853, half a decade ater the war was over, the United
States negotiated the Gadsden Purchase with Mexico, paying
$10 million for the piece of utterly lat land south of the Gila
River that Emorys men had noticed when they took that route
in search of a wagon road parallel to Kearnys marchan ideal
bed for a railroad. Jeferson Davis, then secretary of war, urged
the purchase, even though the whole area was populated with
Navajos and Apaches. Ater the Civil War it became the route
taken by the Southern Paciic Railroad. General Poririo Daz,
who became dictator of Mexico ater an 1876 military coup,
was let to formulate the countrys catchphrase: Poor Mexico,
so far from God, so close to the United States! MHQ
Anthony Brandt is a frequent contributor to MHQ. His
most recent book is he Man Who Ate His Boots: he Tragic
History of the Search for the Northwest Passage.
MHQ Autumn 2016

59

WEAPONS AS
OBJETS DART
A
weapons failure during battle can mean death. Its no surprise, then, that
weapons have been carefully crated and highly valued. But throughout history,
people in nearly all cultures and of all social statuses have also painstakingly
decorated and embellished weaponsfar beyond what is necessary to ensure
their efectiveness and to a far greater extent than tools for farming or cooking.
What compels humans to transform implements of war into objects of surprising
beauty? To explore answers to this question, the curators at Harvards Peabody Museum of
Archaeology and Ethnology have studied artifacts from around the world and assembled
more than 150 of them into the exhibit Arts of War: Artistry in Weapons Across Cultures,
on display through October 2017.

Stone Mace Head, Peru

Within the ancient civilizations that developed in the northern
Andean coast and highlands of Peruthe Cupisnique, Salinar,
and Chavn culturesclose combat with clubs and maces was
oten the norm. In prehistoric Peru the mace became a symbol of
power, and many such weapons survive because they were
regularly buried with warriors or leaders. (9 x 7.8 x 8.5 cm)

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MHQ Autumn 2016

PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, PEABODY MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY, PM#58-51-30/8164 (DIGITAL FILE #98540057)

Throughout history, the tools of war

have often been beautified

MHQ Autumn 2016

61

ARTS OF WAR

Knife With Sheath, Japan

he Ainu, Japans indigenous people, have struggled over
centuries to retain their traditional way of life in Hokkaido
and the Kuril Islands. his knife, with its wooden sheath and
bear maxillary, probably had a ceremonial or shamanistic
role as well as self-protective one. (26.7 x 2.8 x 1.2 cm)

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MHQ Autumn 2016

War Club, British Columbia, Canada

Men in the Nisgaa tribes of Northwestern British Columbia
wielded spears, clubs, harpoons, bows, and slings. his
specimen, collected by George hornton Emmons, U.S.N., an
ethnographer who befriended the Tlingit Indians, is carved,
painted, and embellished with whale teeth. (62 x 17 x 6.5 cm)

FROM TOP: GIFT OF LT. GEORGE THORNTON EMMONS, PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, PEABODY MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY, PM#14-27-10/85889 (DIGITAL FILE
#60741316); GIFT OF MRS. N. E. BAYLIES, PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, PEABODY MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY, PM#96-3-6-/47866.1 (DIGITAL FILE #99310031)

MHQ Autumn 2016

63

ARTS OF WAR

Archers Shield, Papua New Guinea

he Elema people of southeastern Papua New Guinea
made wooden shields that were notched in the top and
slung by a cane loop over one shoulder, leaving the arm
free to hold a bow. his shield (shown sideways) was
carved in low relief with stylized facial features and painted
to identify its bearers tribe. (116 x 42 x 10 cm)

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MHQ Autumn 2016

Wahaika, New Zealand

he Wahaika (mouth of the ish) is a traditional onehanded weapon of the Mori, the indigenous people of New
Zealand, to be used in close-quarter ighting. his club was
made from whalebone, waxed, and decorated with pua
(abalone). It has a notch on one side to catch an opponents
weapon. (31.2 x 11.2 x 1.9 cm)

FROM TOP: PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, PEABODY MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY, PM#91-6-70-/5059 (DIGITAL FILE #60741982);
PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, PEABODY MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY, PM#47-54-70/2605 (DIGITAL FILE #99310014)

MHQ Autumn 2016

65

ARTS OF WAR

Decorated Revolver, Eastern Europe

his revolver, probably made in Austria but used in the
Balkans, was intended to advertise the wealth and status of its
owner. Because handgrips protrude from the holster, they
could be ornately decorated and individualizedin this case
with silver and intricate inlays. (33 x 19.3 x 5.1 cm)

Executioners Sword, Congo

he ngulu was not so much a weapon of war as an instrument of terror. It was carried as a status symbol and used
primarily for ceremonial executions of slaves. Manufactured
by the Ngombe tribe, ngulus were traded to many diferent
tribes in the Congo. (65.4 x 18.7 x 6.3 cm)

Shark-Tooth Sword, Kiribati

his four-pronged sword, made by natives of Kiribati,
a Paciic island nation, owes its fearsome appearance to
more than 100 shark teeth, which were painstakingly
matched, drilled with holes, and fastened to the wooden
shat with coconut-iber twine. (66.1 x 5.9 x 3.4 cm)

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MHQ Autumn 2016

FROM TOP: PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, PEABODY MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY,
PM#981-9-40/9120 (DIGITAL FILE #46410034); PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, PEABODY MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY
AND ETHNOLOGY, PM#14-9-50/85403 (DIGITAL FILE #99310030); GIFT OF DR. ALFRED M. TOZZER, PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF
HARVARD COLLEGE, PEABODY MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY, PM#36-45-70/333 (DIGITAL FILE #36470042)

MHQ Autumn 2016

67

KICKIN
THE GONG

The British exported opium to China in quantities sufficient to

counterbalance its imports of tea, and the Second Opium War
removed the final restraint on its drug trade. By 1880, China
was importing more than 6,500 tons of opium a year.

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KACHELHOFFER CLEMENT/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

The Opium Wars, 18391860

By David Silbey

MHQ Autumn 2016

69

What kind of thing from India greatly victimized China?

Opium. from a 1901 Chinese textbook

n July 1840 Lieutenant Charles Cameron of Her Majestys 26th Regiment of Foot (the Cameronians) found
himself part of a British military expedition of Zhoushan Island near the central coast of China. His job that
month was to take part in a series of military eforts
against the Chinese and, more speciically, to help capture a number of their most important trading ports. he Chinese had enraged the British over the issue of opium importation,
and now the British were keen to demonstrate their superiority.
he British forces near Zhoushan had little doubt about
who was the stronger power, and neither did the local Chinese. Cameron later recounted the story of how the Chinese
admiral, on being summoned to surrender, replied, If I do I
shall lose my head; if I ight I am not certain to be killed.
he Chinese did not quite surrender the island, but they
barely resisted. he initial barrage and landing came on July 5.
As the British ships launched their assault, the defenders returned a brisk but inefective ire, one that lasted for ive or six
rounds. hen, before the British soldiers actually landed, the
defenders led. When the smoke blew of, Cameron recalled,
every Chinese had disappeared. He saw no real combat that
day, and his worst problem came from his own soldiers. In the
meantime the soldiersdiscovered large quantities of [alcohol]
and, as usual, numbers got drunk, he wrote. hen ensued the
usual scene of breaking in houses and destroying everything in
their way. When they occupied the abandoned capital of the
island the next day, Cameron found himself and his men living
in an empty stable, short of food.
he anticlimax that Cameron experienced on Zhoushan is
a itting example of events in both of the Opium Wars, especially the irst one. What seemed to promise an epic clash between China, the dominant power in Asia, and Britain, the
most powerful empire in the world, turned instead into onesided beatings of China. he wars showed the fragility of Chinese powerand the reach of Britains.
China had an awful 19th century. It was marked by a nearunbroken string of defeats at the hands of foreign powers. he
Qing Dynasty, ruling China since 1644, had previously managed to fend of foreign intervention and trade, limiting access

to Chinas markets and to China itself. What trade there was

worked to Chinas advantage. Britains unshakable demand for
tea brought a copious low of hard currency into Chinas economy, just the sort of monetary boost the country could use to
industrialize rapidly and catch up with the Western powers, as
Japan would do later. It was not to be. he British, ever wary of
their imperial inances, cast around for something to even out
the trade balance and settled on opium. he plant grew prolifically in Indian climes and, once processed, traveled well. In
China, opium already seemed to be an exotic and fashionable
drug. Late in the 18th century, the British pounced on the
business opportunity and began exporting opium to China
in quantities suicient to counterbalance the tea trade. hey
did so on the backs of millions of Chinese addicts, but in that
imperial world such was perceived as the inevitable way of
things. Opium, ater all, was not even illegal in Britain.
he opium trade presented the Daoguang Emperor, then the
Qing ruler of China, with a twofold problem. First, millions of
his subjects were becoming addicted to opium, with all the ensuing societal consequences, and second, the tidy inlow of silver
from the tea trade was now being ofset by a sustained outlow of
that same silver. By 1838 nearly a thousand tons of Indian opium
was being imported into China, and by some estimates the number of addicts topped 10 million. Daoguang cracked down,
sending a hardline enforcer, Lin Zexu, to Guangzhou (Canton),
the hub of opium trading, to break the importation.
his Lin did, quite efectively. He arrested local oicials and
confronted foreign merchants in their opium warehouses,
eventually forcing their surrender along with their stocks of
opium. He went so far as to write a letter to Queen Victoria,
justifying Chinas actions, which he sent back to England in
the pocket of an English trader. Suppose that foreigners came
from another country and brought opium into England, he
wrote, and seduced the people of your country to smoke it,
would not you, the sovereign of the said honorable country,
look upon such procedure with anger, and in your just indignation endeavor to get rid of it? he logic of Lins point was
hard to overlook. But the British did so anyway.
What resulted in Guangzhou in the summer and fall of 1839
was an escalating series of confrontations between the British and
the Chinese, somewhat mediated by Lin Zexu and by the British
plenipotentiary there, Charles Elliott. he largest of these was an
open naval battle on November 3, 1839, between the British frig-

Opposite: Opium balls are stockpiled in a factory of the East India Company in Patna, India,
before being packed in cardboard boxes and loaded on ships bound for China. Chinese militia,
armed with wicker shields and outdated weapons, during the Second Opium War. Chinese customs
officials board a British merchant ship, the Arrow, in October 1856 and arrest the entire crew as
pirates, sparking the war. Opium is transferred to scrambling dragonsoar- powered junks,
operated by Chinese rivermen, that could slip in among the local shipping unobserved.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: W. S. SHERWELL/PICTURES FROM HISTORY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY/EVERETT COLLECTION; LOOK AND LEARN/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

OPIUM WARS, 18391860

OPIUM WARS, 18391860

Above: British ships destroy an enemy fleet in Canton in

1841 during the First Opium War. Opposite page, clockwise
from top: Seeing millions of his subjects becoming addicted
to opium, the Daoguang Emperor cracked down on the drug
trade but suffered catastrophic defeat in the First Opium War.
His son, the Xianfeng Emperor, decided to renew the fight
with the British. Lord Elgin, who commanded the British
forces, retaliated against the Chinese by burning the Summer
Palaces. Sir Charles Elliot, a British diplomat, couldnt drive
a hard bargain with the Chinese and was recalled as a result.
Lin Zexu, Elliots counterpart, won the battle as a hardline
enforcer but, in the end, couldnt claim victory.

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In early 1840, the British decided to make an even more concerted efort to put the Chinese in their place. In a letter, Lord
Palmerston, the foreign minister, spelled things out in no uncertain terms: he British Government has learnt with much
regret, and with extreme surprise, that during the last year certain oicers, acting under the Authority of he Emperor of
China, have committed violent outrages against the British Residents at Canton, who were living peaceably in that City.
his would not do, the British felt. China had to be shown that
it could not keep the British out. he declaration of war, on January 31, 1840, came not from London but from India, as did the
forces to wage it: more warships and several regiments of infantry.
his was imperial power at its height, waging war from one
part of empire to assert Britains power elsewhere. here were
those who disagreed, including members of the expedition,
one of whom wrote home that the poor Chinesemust submit to be poisoned, or must be massacred by the thousand, for
supporting their own laws in their own land.
British forcesregiments including the 18th Royal Irish, the
49th Bengal Volunteers, and the 26th Cameroniansshowed
up in June 1840 of the mouth of the Zhu Jiang (Pearl River)
downstream of Guangzhou. he naval ships were commanded
by Rear Admiral Sir George Elliott, the brother of Charles Elliott; the land forces by General Hugh Gough, a veteran not only
of empire, but also of the Napoleonic Wars. hey quickly captured Hong Kong to serve as a base and blockaded Guangzhou.
he campaign was an odd combination of warfare and negotiating; Charles Elliott continually made agreements with the
Chinese even as his own side continued the ighting. One angry
British oicer of the 26th Regiment wrote home: We have been
playing at war, instead of waging it. Elliott would have settled for
a limited victory, and that was relected in the Convention of
Chuenpee, a fairly modest treaty signed in January 1841. But neither government was really pleased with the results. he British,
in response, recalled Elliott and sent a replacement in mid-1841
to continue the discussions with a new set of Chinese negotiators.
In the meantime, British military forces continued a series of
successful campaigns, capturing or cutting of major trade cities
such as Shanghai. In addition, they inally occupied Guangzhou
itself. his damaged Chinese trade and, by blocking the mouth of
the Yangzi Jiang (Yangtze River), limited inland Chinas access to
the ocean. he Chinese found themselves unable to stop the British, losing battle ater battle. A Chinese account of the war from
mid-1841 held that the enemy was now at our gates; our soldiers
were routed, the people lying, and we had no arms. he British
soldiers were more efective, their weapons were better, and the
Royal Navy gave them a mobility that allowed them easy movement. In fact, the British lost more soldiers to disease than to

MAP: MARTIN WALZ, PEGMOTIONS GROUP; DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/GRANGER, NYC; OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: PICTURES FROM HISTORY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES (2); SSPL/GETTY IMAGES; PICTURES FROM HISTORY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; PETER HORREE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

ates Volage and Hyacinth and 29 Chinese vessels blockading

Guangzhou. Several Chinese vessels were sunk, including a junk
that was hit by a Congreve rocket and exploded. he First Battle
of Chuenpee, as the encounter came to be known, showed Britains advantage in both the technology and skill of its navy.

combat. Five hundred of the 560 men in the Madras Native Infantry, for example, sufered from dysentery and other diseases in
June 1841. China could still inlict casualties, even if its military
could not, but disease would not keep the British out.
Finally, in the spring of 1842, the British moved up the
Yangzi Jiang. At the Battle of Zhenjiang on July 21, Gough captured the conluence of the Yangzi and the Grand Canal, the
main north-south artery of trade and the route by which tax
payments made it to Beijing. Zhenjiang fell despite a most
obstinate resistance, as one British narrative of the war described it, by the defenders when British forces blew open the
western gate of the city, stormed through, and used ladders to
scale the northeast corner.
he emperor had had enough, and the resulting Treaty of
Nanjing irmly established the British victory. he Chinese
agreed to open ive major ports to trade, pay millions of
pounds in indemnity, allow free trade, and cede Hong Kong to
the British in perpetuity.
he war was a reckoning for the dynasty. he Qing had
long believed that they were the military betters of the Western powers, and that belief backed up their determined eforts
to limit foreign access to China. he First Opium War shattered that belief. It was such a catastrophic defeat that more
than a decade later U.S. Navy commodore Matthew Perry, in
Tokyo Bay to open up a similarly inaccessible Japan, not only
threatened the Japanese with American military power but
also warned them that if they did not negotiate with him, the
British would show up and treat the Japanese the same way.
he Second Opium War (or the Arrow War) was a dispiriting
rerun of the irst and occurred in the middle of near-total societal breakdown in China. In 1850 an apocalyptic Chinese
cult called the Taipings revolted against the government. he
resulting civil war lasted from 1850 to 1864 and cost the lives
of about 20 million Chinese.
In the middle of this disaster, the Xianfang Emperor (the son
of the Daoguang Emperor) tried again to limit foreign trade.
Since the First Opium War there had been an explosion of
opium use. As one Western missionary put it, he poppy, like
a noxious weed, has been running over the whole land. he
Western powers, keen to Chinas vulnerability, needed the barest excuse to go to war and that excuse came in October 1856,
when a Chinese customs oicial boarded a merchant ship, the
Arrow, and arrested the entire crew (except for the Irish master,
who was breakfasting with friends ashore). he ship, while
Chinese-owned, was registered with the British in Hong Kong.
Worse, the local consul, Harry Parkes, believed that the Chinese
had hauled down the Union Jack lying over the ship. Taking
down the lag, he warned, was an insult of a very grave character and required substantial redress. War loomed.
he Chinese government did not handle things well. he
Xianfang Emperor probably should have apologized to the British so he could focus on the Taipings, but instead he decided to
ight. Chinas forces were again hopelessly overmatched by BritMHQ Autumn 2016

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OPIUM WARS, 18391860

ains. If anything, the situation was worse in 1856 than it had
been two decades earlier. he British now had a well-established
naval base in Hong Kong and, just to ensure their overwhelming advantage, reached out to France, Russia, and the United
States to form an anti-Chinese alliance. While Russia and the
United States remained largely neutral, the French joined up.
he war was delayed by the outbreak of the Sepoy Rebellion
in India, which the British suppressed with some brutality. British forces, commanded by James Bruce, the 8th Earl of Elgin,
then began gathering in Hong Kong late in 1857. he initial
campaign, which started in mid-June, followed that of the previous one. British naval forces swept the Zhu Jiang of the Chinese navy, and then the land forces captured Guangzhou. he
local Chinese decided not to defend Guangzhou, sensing the
hopelessness of their task. Ater Guangzhou, however, the
Anglo-French forces headed immediately to northern China.
his time, they would pressure the emperor directly. In May
1858, without much of a ight, the British and French captured
the Dagu (Taku) Forts at the head of the Bai He (now called the
Hai River) near Tianjin, opening access to Beijing itself.
For a moment, the Xianfeng Emperor demonstrated something like good sense. Rather than try to suppress a cataclysmic rebellion and ight of the Western powers at the same
time, the emperor agreed to the Treaty of Tianjin with the
British and French, which conceded more open ports, a substantial indemnity, the presence of diplomats in Beijing itself,
and the right for foreigners to travel in the interior of China. It
was not a good result for the Chinese, but it gave them breathing room to ight the Taipings.
Unfortunately, common sense failed the dynasty almost
immediately thereater. Perhaps it would be better to say that
the internal politics of the court and the vulnerability of a
weak emperor could not sustain such concessions, and so
Xianfeng quickly broke the treaties and began the war again.
his time, he sent one of his best generals, the Manchu Sengge
Rinchen, to run the campaign.
Sengge Rinchens irst line of defense was the Dagu Forts,
returned to the Chinese as part of the Tianjin treaty. he irst
clash occurred when a small Anglo-French force approached in
June 1859, carrying the new Western envoys to Beijing. Sengge
Rinchen said that he would allow the envoys to pass but not
their military escort. Sir James Hope, in military command of
the expedition, refused the restriction and on June 24 and 25
attacked the forts. Hope blundered in his approach, sending his
ships to bombard the forts and planning to land his troops close
by. But Sengge Rinchen handled his forces efectively, pummeling the British ships with sustained artillery ire, while the British guns could not penetrate the stone walls of the forts. Hopes
ships took substantial damagebad enough that the British
were forced to retreat out of range. He did so with the unexpected help of an American warship, there as a neutral observer.
he American commodore, Josiah Tattnall, decided that blood
was thicker than water, disobeyed his orders, and laid down a
covering ire on the Dagu Forts to cover the British withdrawal.

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During the Second Opium War, British and French forces

at first failed to penetrate the stone walls of the Dagu Forts
but then, moving in substantial gun batteries, subdued the
fortsincluding Pehtang Fort (top)and forced the Chinese
forces there to surrender. Two months later, Anglo-French forces
stormed into Beijing through the Tchio Yant gate (bottom).

FROM TOP: FELICE BEATO/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; TALLANDIER/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Despite this display of imperial comity, the attack was a severe defeat for the British, and it encouraged the Chinese court
to continue its resistance. he British, stung, decided to make
sure they had suicient forces for their next efort, building up
11,000 of their own soldiers plus roughly 7,000 French for a
campaign in the summer of 1860. he overall commander was
again Lord Elgin. he military commanders, the British general
James Grant and the French general Charles Cousin-Montauban,
were two of the most efective imperial oicers that their respective countries could muster.
Grant and Cousin-Montauban did not repeat Hopes mistake of trying to take the Dagu Forts from the sea. Instead, in
mid-August 1860, they landed their main forces a few miles
north of the forts and marched south to attack them from the
land side. his they did, clinically. First, on August 20, the
Anglo-French forces established substantial gun batteries
within range of the forts. he next morning, the batteries pummeled the Chinese artillery into submission, ater which two
columnsone British, one Frenchassaulted the larger fort
north of the river. he main gate proved impossible to get in,
so the assault resorted to ladders to climb the walls. he irst
man into the fort swam the moat and then, standing on a bayonet stabbed into the wall and held by his companions, crawled
through a gap made by British artillery. He was shot as he did
so, but he kept ighting long enough for more British soldiers
to enter. Once the main fort was captured, the British subdued
the second northern fort. his made holding the two southern
forts impossible for the Chinese, and they surrendered.
Now that the Anglo-French base of operation was secure,
the Western powers marched on Beijing. Again, negotiations
went on even as the forces marched, the main efort being carried out by representatives of the emperor and a Western
group headed by Harry Parkes, the diplomat whose actions
around the Arrow had helped trigger the war. Parkes, perhaps
proving that diplomacy was not his forte, quickly ran into
troubles with the negotiations. He and the Chinese got into an
argument, and the Chinese, ignoring the lag of truce, arrested
the entire party, some of whom were tortured and executed.
he failure of these negotiations ensured that there would
be no immediate peaceful solution to the campaign, and the
Anglo-French force continued advancing on Beijing, skirmishing with Sengge Rinchens forces as they did. On September 21, the Anglo-French forces encountered the main body of
the Chinese defenders at the Baliqiao (Eight Mile Bridge). he
Chinese defenders had anchored the northern end of their
line against the river at the Baliqiao and used village buildings
as strongpoints stretching south. It was an advantageous position, if the Chinese could hold it.
hey could not. A combined British and French assault on
September 21, with the French attacking along the side of the
river and British forces lanking to the south, completely unhinged the Chinese defensive lines. he main problem was, as
before, that while the Chinese had the weaponry to inlict heavy
casualties on the Western assaults, any Chinese counterattacks

were cut to pieces by British and French irepower. Sengge

Rinchens prize Mongol cavalry was slaughtered as they tried to
push back the Western attackers. Worse for the Chinese, the only
avenue of retreat was to cross the bridges over the rivereasy
pickings for the British and French soldiers on the riverbanks.
he Chinese sufered several thousand casualties, while combined Anglo-French casualties numbered fewer than a hundred.
he battle was an utter rout, and it let Beijing ripe for capture.
his the Anglo-French forces did in early October, and
there they found Harry Parkes, emaciated but alive. he emperor had led, but in revenge for
how Parkes had been treated, Elgin burned the imperial familys
Old Summer Palace to the
ground. You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magniicence
of the palaces we burnt, Charles
Gordon, a British captain, wrote
in a letter home. It made ones
heart sore.
No ones heart was sorer,
though, than Xianfengs, whose
reign had been one catastrophe
ater another. he agreement to end the war, the Convention
of Beijing, committed him to handing over more land and inluence to the Western powers, including Jiulong (Kowloon)
Harbor near Hong Kong to the British. he emperor did not
long survive the treaty, dying at age 30 the next year. His early
demise seems a death knell for imperial China. he dynasty
would never really recover.
he Opium Wars were critical moments in Chinese history,
clear statements that China could no longer keep foreign powers at bay. he consequences played out in China well into the
20th century, with a range of imperial powers extracting more
and more from the supine body of the Heavenly Kingdom.
To Britain or France or Russia or Japan or the United States,
China was a source of wealth and power rather than a nation,
and not until decades of civil war and the racking of World War
II did the Chinese manage to establish themselves again. he
rise of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists, whatever
else they did, ended Chinas period as a plaything of the imperial powers.
For those imperial powers, the Opium Wars were like many
19th-century wars: conlicts needing only a low commitment
of resources but enabling the powers to spread their inluence
across the globe. Whether in China or India or Africa, the imperial wars of the 19th century created the empires that dominated the world for decades. Not until those powers ruined
themselves in the sanguinary ights of the world wars did their
control crumble, and their empires as well. MHQ

The battle
was an utter
rout, and it
left Beijing
ripe for
capture

David Silbey is a military historian who writes oten about

modern wars. His most recent book is he Boxer Rebellion
and the Great Game in China, 1900 (Hill and Wang, 2012).
MHQ Autumn 2016

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MHQ Autumn 2016

HARRISON NGETHI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

A soldier with the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army patrols a

troubled area in 2014, three years after South Sudan separated
from Sudan. A fleeting peace followed but ended in tribal warfare
that has killed 50,000 and left some two million homeless.

THE SPOILING
OF THE WORLD
In South Sudan decades of civil war led
to independenceand yet more war
By Michael S. Sweeney
MHQ Autumn 2016

77

SUDANS CIVIL WARS

December 10, 2015: John Prendergast, the founding director of

he Enough Project, an anti-genocide organization, tells the
U.S. Congress that the new nation of South Sudan has become
a violent kleptocracy that requires international oversight.
Tribal violence, widespread corruption, famine, and national
politics have turned South Sudan into a failed state. But the
roots of that failure lay in the deep past.

he biblical Book of Isaiah told of the land that became

Sudan, calling it KushHebrew for black or dark.
he word applied to the inhabitants, but their homeland was also something of a dark void on the map.
Soldier-explorers dispatched by Roman emperor Nero
in the irst century with orders to trace the source of
the Nile encountered a vast marshland known as the Sudd, a
word derived from the Arabic for barrier. hey turned back
at the prospect of its crocodiles, hippopotamuses, mosquitoes,
and 120-degree heat. he upper Nile region, including Ethiopia,
lay almost undisturbed by outsiders for centuries, except for the
occasional Arab slave trader and Portuguese missionary. By the
16th century, Muslims spreading Islam controlled everything
from the Mediterranean Sea to the Sudd. hey named the territory to its south Bilad al-Sudan (Land of the Blacks).
In the irst decade of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire
under the rule of Muhammad Ali Pasha, the founder of modern
Egypt, brought an administration to North Africa that created
new interest in trade with the land beyond the Sudd. Arab troops
on horseback pushed their way through the marshes to the modern site of Juba in 1839. On the far side, they found tribes who
counted wealth in cattle and wives. he invaders raided villages
and undertook a slave trade that drew buyers to Khartoum from
Greece and northern Sudan. he Dinka, the largest tribe below
the Sudd, call that time the spoiling of the world.
By the 1870s Britain had established an economic foothold in
Egypt and Sudan and pressured their ally, the Egyptian ruler
Ismail, to halt the slave traic. To no avail. Even the charismatic
British general George Chinese Gordon could not bring an
end to the slave trade when he ventured up the Nile in 1874.

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MHQ Autumn 2016

When he returned in 1884, it was at the head of a detachment

of soldiers. What they found there was a spiritualist named
Muhammad Ahmadcalling himself the Mahdi, or Expected
Onewho, with his many followers, aimed to erase TurkishEgyptian-British authority and unify Sudan under Islam. At
irst the southern ethnic groups approved as these new masters
took power in the north, but they soon realized they had exchanged one taskmaster for another. hey did not embrace Islam, inding it complicated and its demands for prayer and
meditation at speciic times an interference with farming and
raising livestock. hey became alarmed as the Mahdis forces
destroyed Gordons armiesand beheaded the general.
Followers of the Mahdi ruled Sudan until 1898, when they fell
before British machine guns. Military victory gave the British
control of Sudan, and they ruled it as a condominium with
Egypts Ottomans. he charade of shared governance ended with
World War I, leaving Britain, and its nominal partner, Egypt, in
control. Ater the war, Britain determined to cut ties between the
Muslim northern half of Sudan and the southern half, with its
mix of religions. he Permits and Passports Ordinancea law
that aimed to reduce the spread of tropical diseases and halt slave
raidsachieved politically what the Sudd had done geographically: It severed access between Sudans north and south. Britain
allowed Christian missionaries to go south, however, and they
shored up resistance to Islam and introduced Western education.
As for Western technology, southern tribes had no enthusiasm for it. A Dinka legend holds that in the beginning, God
ofered them a choice between a marvelous animal, the cow,
and a second git that God refused to reveal. he Dinka chose
the cow; they believe God may have given the secret git to the
West. Cut of by law, lack of technology, and geographical barriers, southern Sudan remained nearly isolated. And happy for it.
Ater World War II, as Britain began to pull out of its colonies,
Sudan became a candidate for self-governance. Muslims in the
north complained that Christian missionaries blocked what
they saw as the inevitable hegemony of Islam and that Britain
had divided a land they hoped to dominate. In February 1953
Britain agreed to grant independence to Sudan in three years.
Self-governance faced major challenges. At nearly 966,000
square miles, Sudan was Africas largest nation. Its 10 million inhabitants at the time, split among 572 tribes, spoke 114 languages.
Northern Arabs made up the largest group, giving them a plurality in government and efective control, as long as southerners
remained splintered. In the south the Dinka formed the largest
tribe; today they comprise a third of South Sudans population
and the Nuer people a sixth. hey and other tribes are ruled by

FROM TOP: LYNSEY ADDARIO/EDIT BY GETTY IMAGES; REUTERS/THOMAS MUKOYA

July 9, 2011: housands gather in Juba, on the banks of the

White Nile, to celebrate Independence Day by chanting,
banging drums, and waving the new national lag. he
excitement was really palpable, says Susan Page, the irst U.S.
ambassador to South Sudan, a landlocked, oil-rich expanse of
east-central Africa whose people had spent decades ighting for
autonomy from Arab-dominated Sudan.

Victim of a war that wont end, an SPLA soldier lies dead after
ethnic fighting in May 2014. In July 2011 joyful crowds in Juba
celebrated the creation of their nation, still the worlds youngest.

MHQ Autumn 2016

79

clan ailiation. he south, now as then, remains primarily rural,

organized around small villages isolated by a lack of roads. he
largest city is Juba, the capital, with a population of nearly 400,000.
Before independence, the south feared that the north would
renege on promises to allow near-autonomy. In August 1955
southern Sudanese in the state of Equatoria rose in revolt. Calling themselves the Anyanya, a local word meaning viper
venom, they sought independence and touched of Sudans irst
civil war, Anyanya I. he Anyanya raided government convoys
for weapons and attacked police stations and armories, notably in the town of Wau in
1962. Israel gave the rebels
more weapons, and by 1971 the
war had spread: 10,000 Anyanya rebels were ighting across
what were then the three states
of southern SudanEquatoria,
Upper Nile, and Bahr el Ghazal.
While their arms had expanded
to include mines, mortars, and
automatic riles, their military
power remained limited because of internal friction among
tribal factions and a lack of central command.
General Ibrahim Abboud, a veteran of World War II and a
champion of Islamization, had tried to pacify and unite Sudan
ater seizing power in 1958. But his clumsy authoritarian rule
only added to the Anyanyas determination. Under his direction, the National Assembly focused on an Arab agenda, declaring the Islamic sabbath a national day of rest. he assembly
exacted heavy taxes but spent little in the south on muchneeded schools, hospitals, and roads. It expelled Christian missionaries and built mosques in southern villages. Southern
tribes fought these changes, sometimes by killing northern settlers sent to Arabize the region, and the government responded by burning towns identiied as rebel strongholds. In
July 1965, ater an uprising ousted Abboud, government-backed
pro-Arab militias targeted large numbers of civilians, killing
about 1,400 in the streets of Juba. An additional 76 victims,
many of them government oicials, were encircled by northern
soldiers and slaughtered while celebrating a wedding in Wau.
A irm hand took control in the north in 1969, when Colonel Gaafar Muhammad Numeiry led a socialist-communist
coup. Numeiry struck down the multiparty system, but while
vowing Sudan would remain united, he acknowledged that
southern Sudan might someday gain local rule. During the
early 1970s his government pressed attacks in the south while
seeking a pathway to peace through political concessions,
such as ofering to spend more government money in the
south, returning a measure of power to the states, and allowing guerrillas a place in the nations army on the condition that
they disarm. he southern tribes did not trust Numeiry and
continued to ight, shelling Juba and mining all main roads in

The marginal
cost of
rebellion in
the South
became very
small

80

MHQ Autumn 2016

Equatoria in 1970. In a coordinated attack, the rebels captured

the strategic town of Morta, now Lainya. he north fought
back with ground forces backed by Soviet-supplied MiG 17s
and helicopters. Ater two months in which Morta changed
hands several times with heavy losses on both sides, the rebels
claimed it for good on October 20, 1970. hey got another
boost in 1971 when a former army oicer, Joseph Lagu,
brought all of the rebels into the Southern Sudan Liberation
Movement, achieving a uniied command structure.
he All Africa Conference of Churches and the World
Council of Churches sought to end the civil war, and secret
peace talks began in May 1971 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Nine
months later, delegations from the north and south agreed
that southern Sudanroughly all the lands below the 10th
parallelwould receive full autonomy while remaining part
of a federal republic. A constitution was drated and ratiied,
and the socialist Republic of Sudan came into being in May
1973. he government declared Islam the state religion but
also legalized Christianity.
Anyanya I had killed a half-million people, four-iths of
them civilians. Ater the ighting ended in 1972, Sudan remained relatively peaceful until 1983, the longest stretch of
tranquility since the mid-1800s.
New hope for southern development appeared in 1978
when Chevron geologists discovered large oil deposits near
the town of Bentiu at the northern border of what would become South Sudan. In the next few years, more deposits were
discovered in the region, bringing the Sudanese oilields potential to an estimated two billion barrels, with a substantial
fraction deemed recoverable.
Unsurprisingly, the oil became a bone of contention. First
the national government redrew internal borders to place the
oilields in a new state, Unity, outside the lands traditionally
designated as southern. hen Chevron and the Sudanese government agreed to form a corporation to build an 870-mile
pipeline to the Red Sea, but they excluded southern representatives on the board. (Chevron would soon sell its interests in
the pipeline.) Work on the pipeline began in April 1998 and
was completed about a year later.
Southerners were outraged over what they saw as Numeirys
blatant grab for resources. Some northern Sudanese army units
joined in, decrying corruption and ineptitude in the Numeiry
government; riots over gasoline shortages erupted.
In 1983 Numeiry insisted that military units from the south
serve in the north and vice versaa serious miscalculation:
Many southern rebel soldiers had enrolled in the Sudanese
army ater the end of Anyanya I. hey recoiled at the prospect
of leaving their families for long periods and at having northern soldiers stationed outside their villages. In Bor, one of the
few major towns in the south, soldiers from southern tribes
rose in revolt, refusing to cede their positions to northern replacements. Small battles broke out, resulting in scores of

FROM TOP: REUTERS/MOHAMED NURELDIN ABDALH; REUTERS/ZOHRA BENSEMRA; LEFT: REUTERS/ANTONY NJUGUNA AN/AA; RIGHT: ASHLEY HAMER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; ZACHARIAS ABUBEKER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

SUDANS CIVIL WARS

From top: Sudans president Omar al-Bashir on a 2009 visit

to Western Darfur, where his government is accused of genocide;
al-Bashir wore traditional dress in 2009 meetings with southern
Sudanese. SPLA leader John Garang (in gold suit) arrives for a
rally in southern Sudan, 2004. Embattled current president of
South Sudan, Salva Kiir (waving), is part of the Dinka ethnic
majority; rebel leader Riek Machar (bottom), is a rival Nuer.
deaths, and Numeiry grew more reactionary. He stopped wearing a military uniform and donned a turban and robe, then
declared strict Islamic sharia law throughout the country,
threatening public amputations for ofenders. Unrest spread as
Christian groups outside Sudan protested sharia as an attack
on religious freedom; students in Khartoum and across the
Nile in Omdurman protested social conditions ater electrical
power outages in the summer of 1983; and the nations 2,000
doctors went on strike six months later to protest low pay.
Amid this crisis John Garang, a former rebel soldier,
emerged as an opposition leader, taking control of the newly
formed Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army. A Dinka with a
masters degree in agricultural economics from Iowa State, he
pushed for reforms and economic development. At irst he
sought relatively modest accommodation, but as the ighting
grew into an outright civil war, Anyanya II, Garang cast his lot
with the SPLA and its political branch, the Southern Peoples
Liberation Movement (SPLM). he SPLA indoctrinated its
soldiers into a culture of violence. Many recruits were boys as
young as 12; the SPLA taught them to chant, Even my father,
I will give him a bullet. Growing in strength, the SPLM openly
called for the end of Numeirys government in March 1984.
In May 1984 a Tupolev-22 warplane identiied as part of
the Libyan air force bombed a government radio station in the
northern metropolis of Omdurman. Five people died, and
Numeiry declared that the sortie had originated from, and returned to, southern Sudan. He imposed a state of emergency,
giving northern soldiers and police oicers carte blanche to
search homes, open mail, and make arrests. Scattered ighting
erupted in southern Sudan, with small units of the SPLA attacking government oices and military outposts. SPLA soldiers kidnapped and killed three Chevron workers and
attacked oilields, causing Chevron to suspend operations.
SPLA violence also halted work on construction of a major
canal through the Sudd, intended to divert water for northern
irrigation. In retaliation, army units from the north shelled
southern villages and stole cattle, the lifeblood of the tribal
economies. Complicating matters, widespread drought led to
starvation, and hungry refugees from the south and west
crowded the streets of Khartoum.
Despite superior irepower, the northern army was unable
to suppress the rebellion. In March 1985, on the eve of a visit
by Vice President George H. W. Bush, Numeiry declared a
cease-ire, hoping to impress the West with his willingness to
seek a diplomatic solution.
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SUDANS CIVIL WARS

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MHQ Autumn 2016

as most young women had died in the attacks, escaped, or been

captured to be raped, enslaved, or sold into marriage.)
Hundreds of thousands of these refugees walked hundreds
of miles to camps in Ethiopia and Kenya; many died along the
way. About 3,700, including 89 girls, eventually resettled in the
United States.
he SPLA split into rival factions in August 1991. Riek Machar,
of the Nuer tribe, broke away over what he perceived as Garangs autocratic style and his heavy Dinka inluence on the
SPLA. he factional armed violence caused more civilian casualties; Amnesty International put the death toll at 2,000 civilians. Cadres of autonomous armed militants raided and
looted villages and systematically stole food, including emergency relief rations from the United Nations and other international agencies. Economic chaos swelled the ranks of the
rogue units. Speaking as the economist he was, Garang noted,
he marginal cost of rebellion in the South became very
small, zero to negative; that is, in the South it pays to rebel.
Over the next decade, negotiations for a cease-ire gradually began to bear fruit. Christian groups gained the ear of
President George W. Bush, casting Sudans sharia law as an attack on religious freedom. In 2001 Bush named former U.S.
Senator John Danforth of Missouri as a special envoy to Sudan, tasking him with ending the war. he SPLA and Khartoum signed the Machakos Protocol, halting conlict
throughout Sudan and limiting sharia to northern Sudan.
In January 2005 the SPLA and the northern government
signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, ending Anyanya
II and opening the road to independence. Garang became Su-

MAPS: MARTIN WALZ, PEGMOTIONS GROUP; FROM TOP: REUTERS/CORINNE DUFKA; FABIO BUCCIARELLI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

But Numeiry was out of time. Southern violence escalated to

its highest levels in early 1985, sending even more refugees north.
Fed up with war, famine, and government ineptitude, northern
trade unions, students, and professional organizations reached
out to clandestine anti-Numeiry units in the army and the police
to form an alliance. Huge demonstrations in northern cities led to
a general strike in April 1985. hat month, while Numeiry visited
the United States, the Sudanese army seized power and imposed
a less restrictive state of emergency. he most extreme sharia
courts closed, and the junta restored political parties. he army
announced it would hold multiparty elections in spring 1986,
with the proviso that many southern regions would be denied the
vote because of the ongoing opposition.
When the vote created a coalition government, the SPLA denounced it as inadequately representing the south. Opposition
again turned violent, as the SPLA shelled a government garrison
in Malakal and government planes bombed rebels in Rumbek.
he SPLA sank a steamship on the Nile and downed a commercial airplane and a troop transport. It also managed to hold large
swaths of rural southern territory, interdicting the delivery of
food to government-held towns. In Wau, the northern army and
tribal militias massacred hundreds of civilians, mostly Dinkas, to
retaliate for a rebel attack and as part of a strategy to divide the
southern tribes through a campaign of terror.
he northern army conducted bombing raids and widespread night attacks on southern villages in the late 1980s and
early 1990s. hese, combined with famine, drove some two
million inhabitants from their southern homes. he adolescent
boys who survived became the Lost Boys, named for the
parentless children of Peter Pan. (here were few Lost Girls,

After a 1998 attack on their village by Khartoum-supported militia, these southern Sudanese joined the
legions of homeless, hoping that SPLA soldiers could offer some protection. By 2013 the SPLA itself had split
into factions, with fighters like those below remaining loyal to the government and others joining rebels.

MHQ Autumn 2016

83

dans vice president under President Omar al-Bashir, as the nation began six years of interim government. he arrangement
gave half the oil revenues to Khartoum and half to the south.
he SPLA found itself awash in money, most of it going into the
pockets of the elite. By then, a second Sudanese civil war, between the Khartoum government and non-Arab rebels in Darfur, had weakened the governments ability to ight in the south.
In July 2005 Garang was returning from a trip to Uganda
when his helicopter crashed mysteriously. His death may have
erased southern Sudans best chance for success. As the southern leader with the most credibility in the West, Garang had a
clear path to the presidency of an independent South Sudan.
In Garangs absence, a fellow Dinka, Salva Kiir, took control of
Garangs organization, which soon devolved into widespread
corruption. Southern elites stole openly from the public budget, placed friends and family in government jobs, and doled
out money to soldiers to promote loyalty. Estimates of money
stolen from the national treasury since 2005 start at $4 billion.
Nearly 99 percent of voters endorsed independence in a January 2011 election in southern Sudan, and al-Bashir accepted
the result. Kiir became South Sudans irst president in July, and
Machar, from the rival Nuer, became vice president. Under the
new constitution Kiir could dismiss parliament yet not be dismissed himself. Kiir and other highly placed oicials continued
to hand out money and jobs to build personal loyalty.
he good times (for the elites) seemed likely to last as long
as the oil did. Ater independence, all of the oil revenue of
South Sudan returned to the government, efectively doubling
the opportunities for grat. Oil production accounted for 98
percent of the budget, which meant trouble when Sudan
closed South Sudans oil pipeline for 13 months in 20122013
in a dispute over fees.
Amid economic chaos, local military commanders learned
the proit of mutiny: If they caused a big enough revolt, they
forced the government to haggle over the price of paciication.
Civil war broke out again in December 2013. And again civil-

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ians were massacred and raped. Famine compounded the violence; the United Nations declared South Sudans food crisis to
be the worlds worst.
In March 2013 Machar and two other members of the SPLM
announced they would seek the presidency in 2015. Kiir ired
Machar and most of the cabinet; in December 2013 Kiir accused
Machar of plotting a coup, and conlict erupted between Dinka
and Nuer in the presidential guard and spread throughout Juba.
Kiir loyalists searched door to door for Machar supporters. One
survivor told he Guardian that an armed intruder asked, in
Dinka, What is your name? Failure to answer in Dinka usually
meant execution, and an estimated 5,000 people died in Juba in
one week.
he violence touched of reprisal ater reprisalin towns
and villages throughout the south and mostly along ethnic lines.
It also opened opportunities for personal and tribal inancial
gain, as combatants fought for control of the oil regions. he
town of Malakal in the oil-rich state of Upper Nile changed
hands three times before falling to the SPLAby then, it had
become the South Sudanese armyin late January 2014.
By the end of 2015 eight cease-ire accords had been signed
and broken. What could possibly bring peace? In a 2014 interview with USA Today, Ambassador Susan Page ofered no
clear guidelines but pinned hopes on young people. he
youthare the largest tribe in South Sudan, she said. Not
the Dinka, not the Nuer, not the Bari, but the youth. hat is the
potential of South Sudan. But South Sudans oil ields are expected to run dry within a decade or so. If civil strife continues, it is uncertain whether there will be anything let for
South Sudans youth to inherit. MHQ
Michael S. Sweeney is a historian and author of God Grew
Tired of Us, with Sudanese Lost Boy Jon Bul Dau. His Secrets
of Victory was named 2001 Book of the Year by the American
Journalism Historians Association.

REUTERS/ALBERT GONZALEZ FARRAN/UNAMID/HANDOUT; SAMIR BOL/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

Steady diet of war: A Darfurian child holds bullets he found on

the ground in his village. Right, boy soldiers wait to be disarmed
and demobilized at a UNICEF ceremony in South Sudan, 2015.

CULTURE
OF
WAR
CLASSIC DISPATCHES 86

WRIGHT MUSEUM OF WWII/NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MUSEUM

ARTISTS 88
POETRY 91
REVIEWS 92
DRAWN &
QUARTERED 96

The exhibit Infamy: December 7,

1941 marks the 75th anniversary of
a seminal event in American history:
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
In this photograph, taken several
months after the attack (possibly on
Memorial Day 1942), sailors from
Kaneohe Bay Naval Air Station
place Hawaiian leis on the graves
of 15 comrades who were buried
along the shore of the Pacific Ocean
on December 8, 1942. Diamond
Head can be seen in the background.
Wright Museum of World War II,
Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, through
October 24

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85

CLASSIC DISPATCHES

FIGHTING AT LONG RANGE

By Jack London

Jack London boarded the SSSiberiain San Francisco on

January 7, 1904, as ominous war clouds hovered over Japan
and Russia. London had vaulted to worldwide acclaim the
previous year with the publication of his third novel, he Call
of the Wild, and now was embarking on his irst assignment
as a war correspondent for William Randolph Hearsts San
Francisco Examiner, which had outbid four other news
organizations for his services. London would step of the ship
in Yokohama, Japan, as a 28-year-old reporter determined
to cover the as yet undeclared war on his own termsan
approach that at one point landed him behind bars on suspicion
of being a Russian spy. He was to ile more dispatches on the
Russo-Japanese conlict than any of his fellow correspondents,
including the legendary Frederick Palmer of the New York
Globe. Ive wasted ive months of my life in this war, London
told a colleague, but in truth his reporting was incisive and
insightful, as this 1905 dispatch
from Korea demonstrates.

The Russians
do not wish to
be killed, so
they prepare
to kill the
Japanese

WIJU, April 30Long-range

ighting is all very well. It is a
splendid example of the extent
to which man has risen above
his natural powers and of the
knowledge he has gained in
linging missiles through the air.
It is a far cry from the sling with
which David went into battle to
the modern ield gun; and yet,
such is the paradox, the sling and hand-wielded weapons of Davids time, expenditure of energy being taken into consideration,
were a hundred or so times more deadly than are the civilized
weapons of today. hat is to say, the hand-wielded weapons of
that ancient day more simply and immediately accomplished the
purposes they were made to serve than do the weapons of to-day.
Which is to say, in turn, irst, that the hand-wielded weapons
killed more men, and, second, that they killed more men with
far less expenditure ofstrength, time and thought. To kill men
today requires harder work, harder thinking, harder inventing
and longer time. he triumph of civilization would seem to be,
not that Cain no longer kills, but that Cain has to sit up nights
scheming how he is to kill.

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Take the present situation on the Yalu. On one side of a river

winding through a smiling valley are a lot of Russians. On the
other side are a lot more Japanese. he Japanese wish to cross.
hey wish to cross in order to kill the Russians on the other side.
he Russians do not wish to be killed, so they prepare to kill
the Japanese when they attempt to cross. It is quite impersonal.
hey rarely see each other. To the right, on the north bank, are
some Russians who are hammering away at long distance at
some Japanese who are hammering back from the islands in the
river. A Japanese battery on the south bank, to the right, begins
linging shrapnel into the Russians. Some four miles away to the
let, at a diagonal course across the river, a Russian battery shells
this Japanese battery with an enilading ire. his will never do.
From the Japanese center a battery shells the Russian battery.
Nor will this do, either. From the Russian center a battery begins
hurling shells clear over a high mountain at the battery on the
Japanese center. he Japanese battery on the right ceases shelling the infantry on the Russian side. And so it goes, Russian
let battery changing its ire to Japanese center, Russian center
changing its ire to Japanese right battery.
he net result of all this, measured in terms of killing, is
practically nil.
Of course, on the other hand, a tactical advantage may have
been gained by the Japanese which strengthened their strategic movement. Now, what is a strategic movement? A strategic
movement, I take it, is the manipulation of men and war machinery in such a way as to make the enemys position untenable.
An untenable position is one wherein the enemy must either
surrender or be all killed. But no commander, unless he blunders, remains in an untenable position. He promptly gets out
and hunts a position which is tenable. With much strategical labor he may be driven out of this, when he seeks a third. his continues, not indeinitely, but until he is cornered in the last of all
tenable positions possible for him to occupy. hen the original
proposition is made to him: Surrender or be killed. Of course, he
surrenders. It is the same old time-worn proposition of the highwayman, Money or your life. A traveler so addressed is usually
in an untenable position, and very naturally yields up his money.
A nation, when its army is inally caught in an untenable position, does just the same thing, yielding up either fat provinces,
commercial privileges or a money indemnity.
At least, this is modern warfare to the mind of this layman.

EVERETT COLLECTION INC.

Jack London had already achieved worldwide fame and

amassed a considerable fortune as a fiction writer when,
at the relatively tender age of 28, he forged a new path as
a war correspondent. Five major news organizations bid for
his services in the run-up to the Russo-Japanese War.

Whether it be with small bodies of men, large armies or groups

of armies, the strategic end is the same, namely, to get men and
war machinery in an untenable position, where all will be destroyed if all is not surrendered. Here, for instance, on the Yalu,
are two armies opposing each other. he Japanese army, by
good strategy, may make the position of the Russian army untenable and compel it to fall back. On the other hand, a second
Japanese army may land to the westward, somewhere on the
gulf of Liao Tung, render untenable the position of a second
Russian army, which it mightencounter thereabouts, and thus,
being on the lank of the Russian army on the Yalu, render the
position of that army untenable.
But it is the long-range ighting which makes modern warfare so diferent from ancient warfare. In Davids time a General did not know that his position was untenable till both sides
got together with the hand-wielded weapons, and then it was
too late to retire, for the killing had commenced. he only men
killed in twentieth century warfare, supposing a General to be
neither a fool nor a blunderer, are those killed by accident. Accident is used advisedly. Bullets have their billets, but very few
bullets have the billets intended for them, and very few soldiers
see the proper billets when they are iring their bullets. he theory seems to be to pump lead at the landscape in such quantities that there are bound to be some lucky accidents. While so
far as shell and shrapnel ire goes, it is the sheerest accident that
a man is killed by such means.
Certainly, if men remained in the open, they would be
killed. So would they be killed if they stood up and emptied
their riles at each other at ive hundred yards. When shrapnel
begins to ly they seek the reverse slopes, where they are quite
safe.he ratio, in warfare, of men killed to energy expended is
far, far smaller than that of men killed in house burglaries and
holdups, the prize ring or the football ield.
When warfare was simple and weapons were crude, the killing was on a large scale. he men got together at close range in
those days, and the battles were decisive. Even up to nearly the
close of the nineteenth century decisive battles were still possible. As late as the Civil War the enemy could be got on the run
and chased of the battleield. But that is not likely to happen in
future yearsat least in battles between civilized peoples. he
beaten army will merely retire, and the victorious army will
occupy the ield at about the same rate of speed. It will have
dislodged the enemy by long-range ighting, and the enemy,
by the same long-range ighting, will prevent it from sweeping
the ield and making the defeat a crushing defeat. he beaten
armys position will have been rendered untenable, and it will
retire to take up another and tenable position. Killing decided
ancient warfare; the possibility of being killed decides modern
warfare. In short, the marvelous and awful machinery of warfare of today, defeats its own end. Made pre-eminently to kill,
its chief efect is to make killing quite the unusual thing.
When the machinery of warfare becomes just about perfect,
there wont be any killing at all. When one army gets the drop
the other army will throw up its hands and deliver the valuables of which it is custodian. And in that day, the soldier boys
farewell to his mother will be just about the same as his farewell
today when he goes of for his summer vacation. MHQ
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ARTISTS

KEARSARGE VS. ALABAMA

douard Manet paints a naval battle of the American Civil War (1864)
By Peter Harrington

cherbourg, sunday, 12.10 p.m.

he Alabama let this morning, and is now engaged
with the Kearsarge. A brisk cannonade is heard.
1.40 p.m.
he Kearsarge has just sunk the Alabama. An English
yacht has saved the crew.
he Alabama had been built for the Confederacy at John
Laird and Sons shipyard in Birkenhead, England, across the
River Mersey from Liverpool. he Confederacy had no navy
to defend itself against the Federal blockade that was choking
its trade, of cotton especially. To hit back at the Union, Confederate leaders decided to commission a series of cruisers
from British shipbuilders in order to attack and disrupt Federal commerce. Although disguised as a merchant ship named

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Enrica when it sailed down the Mersey on July 29, 1862, the
Alabama had been designed as a fast, armed vessel. hese efforts did not escape the notice of spies working for the Union:
he U.S. Navy was well aware of such attempts to create a Confederate leet and did all it could to thwart them. Union ships
were dispatched to shadow the Confederate commerce raiders
and if possible bring them to battle.
he commander of the Alabama, Captain Raphael Semmes,
sailed the ship to the Azores, where weapons and coal were
loaded. For the next 22 months under the Confederate lag,
the Alabama sank 65 Federal vessels in raids that ranged from
South America to the Gulf of Mexico to South Africa and the
Indian Ocean. On June 11, 1864, Semmes obtained permission from France, oicially a neutral country, to anchor at the
entrance to Cherbourg harbor.
he task of monitoring CSS Alabama had fallen to the
Union screw sloop-of-war, USS Kearsarge, built in 1862. he
Kearsarge, commanded by Captain John Ancrum Winslow,
appeared at the Cherbourg harbor entrance two days later. A
battle was now inevitable, and Semmes was determined to
ight Winslow. On Sunday morning, June 19, the Alabama
sailed out of Cherbourg followed by a French naval vessel, the
Couronne, and a British yacht, the Deerhound; the Couronne
returned to the harbor shortly thereater. Some distance ofshore but under the gaze of thousands of spectators, the Alabama opened ire. he Kearsarge responded and the vessels
steamed in interlocking circles several times, all the while
bombarding each other. Finally, the damaged Confederate
ship sank, and the Kearsarge returned to anchor of Cherbourg.
he event caused a great stir in France and Britain and was
covered extensively in the press. Within a few weeks of the
engagement, engravings began to appear in newspapers on
both sides of the Channel. Manet, who had not witnessed the
ight (despite assumptions to the contrary), read the reports
and must have seen the engravings, which inspired him to
render the scene in oils. Within 26 days of the event, his painting of the battle went on exhibition.
Although it is unclear why Manet chose to paint the engagement, it was a subject that would have appealed to his

JOHN G. JOHNSON COLLECTION/PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART

In any discussion of mid-19th century French art, the name

of douard Manet (18321883) stands prominently. One of
the leading French artists of modern life, he is considered a
major igure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. Few, however, would associate him with the American
Civil War, although contemporary military events did appear
in his oeuvre.
he events unfolding in the United States between 1861
and 1865 captivated Europeans, many of whom sympathized
and identiied with the struggle of the Confederacy. Britains
allegiance was an economic consideration driven by the need
to obtain cotton from the Southern states to feed its burgeoning textile industry. Across the English Channel, French emperor Napoleon III also had leanings toward the Southern
cause. hough the European press covered the battles in great
detail, and the illustrated papers contained many wood engravings dramatizing the events, it was nonetheless a distant
conlict that had little direct efect on the French people. But
when a major incident of the war took place in their own
backyard, their fascination was piqued.
On Monday, June 24, 1864, a headline in the Times of London read latest intelligence: the sinking of the alabama and was accompanied by a telegram sent six days before
by a Lloyds shipping agent writing from the scene of the action:

douard Manet did not witness the battle between the Kearsarge
and the Alabama, but he accurately painted the naval action.
Shot below the waterline, the Alabama (center, background)
sinks stern first, while a small French pilot boat rescues some of
its men. The better-armed and -armored Kearsarge (hidden by
smoke) withstood the Alabamas heavier but less accurate fire.
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DOUARD MANET

Although a gifted artist from a young age, Manet first set out to
be a sailor. A yearlong training voyage across the Atlantic honed
his ability to observe and draw the play of light on sea and sky.

A few weeks ater the battleand ater Manet had completed

his paintingthe Kearsarge sailed to Boulogne. here, the artist saw it for the irst time and may have gone onboard as a
visitor. Manet sketched and painted the ship at least two more
times, once as a watercolor and again as a large oil, he Kearsarge at Boulogne. In that painting the dark outline of the ship
is silhouetted against a cloudy sky and anchored on the horizon of a blue-green sea similar to that in his battle-scene
painting. Once again, the foreground is occupied by a single
vessel. Other, smaller boats cluster around to get a better view,
many of them carrying paying passengers who wanted to
glimpse the American ship.
Manets vibrant contemporary history painting of the naval
engagement of Cherbourg received considerable praise during the artists lifetime. In 1872 the French writer Jules Barbey
dAurevilly said that the canvas was a magniicent piece of
marine painting and suggested that the choppy sea was more
frightening than the actual battle. Because of the signiicance
of both paintings to American history in general and to the
naval campaigns of the Civil War in particular, they were acquired by American collectors and today hang in museums in
Philadelphia and New York. MHQ
Peter Harrington, a frequent contributor to MHQ, is
curator of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection at
Brown University. He writes and teaches on military art
and artists.

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JOHN G. JOHNSON COLLECTION/PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART

imagination. He had always wanted to go to sea, and at age 18

he spent nearly a year on a ship sailing across the Atlantic to
Brazil. He failed the examination for the naval oicers school,
but he retained a love of the sea that was relected in his many
seascapes. He was also aware of the French school of naval
painting from the battle canvases he had seen in the Louvre
and at Versailles.
Manets picture was accurate in its presentation of the naval action, focusing on several incidents. he point of view
gives the impression that the observer is on a boat looking
across a vast expanse of open sea. Against a backdrop of the
blue and green ocean that occupies three-quarters of the canvas, a small French pilot boat, Les Deux Jeunes Soeurs, lying
the regulation white lag of a neutral, occupies the let foreground, moving to rescue some men from the stricken Alabama. In the top right of the painting, the Deerhound, lying
the red ensign of the Royal Mersey Yacht Club, readies itself
to pick up other survivorsincluding Semmesand take
them to safety in England. In the center of the painting on the
horizon, the two protagonists can be seen, one behind the
other. In the front, the Alabama is sinking stern irst. Crewmen try to lee the ship by jumping into a small wave-tossed
boat. he Kearsarge is obscured by smoke from both ships,
possibly because the artist did not have a clear idea of its details. Indeed, in a letter to a friend he noted that he had made
a pretty good guess.

POETRY

BATTLE LINES
By George S. Patton

Although biographers have speculated that World War II

general George S. Patton Jr. was dyslexic, partly because he
still could not read at age 11, he let a remarkable legacy
of words, both written and spoken. he most famous of
Pattons compositions, of course, was the profanity-laden
speech he delivered extemporaneously many times in
1944with variations in each iterationto troops of the
hird Army, before the Allied invasion of France. Less well
known is Pattons poetry. As a child, he oten memorized
lengthy passages of poetry and recited them at the dinner
table, and he wrote poems throughout his life. Some 89 of
them survive, including this one, written in 1920.

FEAR
I am that dreadful, blighting thing.
Like rat-holes in the lood,
Like rust that gnaws the faultless blade
Like microbes in the blood.
I know no mercy and no truth,
he young I blight, the old I slay.
Regret stalks darkly in my wake
And Ignominy dogs my way.

GEORGE SILK/LIFE MAGAZINE/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

Sometimes in virtuous garb I rove,

With facile talk of easier way,
Seducing, where I dare not rape
Young manhood from its honors sway.
Again in awesome guise I rush
Stupendous, through the ranks of war,
Turning to water with my gaze
Hearts that before no foe could awe.
he maiden who has strayed from right,
To me must pay the mead of shame,
he patriot who betrayed his trust,
To me must own his tarnished name.
I spare no class, or cult, or creed,
My course is endless through the year.
I bow all heads, and break all hearts,
All owe me homageI am FEAR!
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Though Geronimo was not

counted a chief among the
Apache, he was a legendary
fighterand the target of a
relentless manhunt by the
U.S. military.

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REVIEWS

ATTITUDES AND OUTCOMES

The Apache Wars

The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid,
and the Captive Boy Who Started the
Longest War in American History

H. WYMAN/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

By Paul Andrew Hutton. 544 pages.

Crown, 2016. $30. Reviewed by Ron Soodalter

To say that a single volume dedicated to the Apache Wars of the

late 19th century is ambitious would be to seriously understate
the case. Yet that is precisely what Paul Andrew Hutton, a distinguished professor of history at the University of New Mexico, has undertaken to accomplish. And, to a large extent, he
has succeeded.
he author presents an intriguingly revisionist picture of
some of the major igures in the conlict. Geronimo, who
today is seen as selless and noble, comes across as ego-driven,
petulant, and devious. Hutton, in a recent interview, described
him as always only about Geronimo, never about the people.
Other Apache leaders, such as Mangas Coloradas and Victorio, are shown as more deserving of our admiration. Brigadier
General Nelson Miles, whom it has become fashionable to
portray as a deceitful narcissist (as in the factually challenged
1993 ilm Geronimo: An American Legend), is here presented
as a competent, responsible oicer. Brigadier General George
Crooktraditionally shown as empathetic to the plight of the
Apacheis depicted as stunningly arrogant, callously oblivious to either the needs or the customs of his foe.
Chronologically, the book is seamless, tracing the conlict
from its eminently avoidable beginnings to its ultimately tragic
conclusion. It is no surprise that the Apaches lost, their warriors killed or shipped of to Florida with their familiesfor
many, an exile tantamount to a death sentence. Since Dee
Browns Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee painted a depressing
but detailed picture of the treatment of the Indians from the
time of the irst Anglo settlements. In Apache Wars, Hutton
takes it a step further, detailing the tragic saga of a peoples desperate, doomed struggle to retain their homeland and some
semblance of their way of life.

Although their cause was worthy, the Indians werent above

resorting to tactics that still engender chills and disgust. Indeed,
the U.S. militarys brutal subjugation of a people and their
no-holds-barred resolve to resist conquest do not make for
genteel reading. To his credit, Hutton manages to keep his
descriptions of frontier depredations well-balancedthorough but not excessively graphic.
he book is not without its issues. While the layman might
be perfectly willing to accept Huttons quotations and facts
without suicient annotation, the historian is not so sanguine.
he author chooses not to cite these individually, instead listing
general page references at the end of the book. he result is that
many purported statements of fact go unsubstantiated. For
example, in detailing the ight in which Captain Emmet Crawford is killed, Hutton describes a bemused Geronimo, along
with various other leaders, watchingand laughingfrom a
nearby promontory. Without crediting any sources, it is impossible to know how Hutton comes to place Geronimo on that
hillside or has him uncharacteristically laughing at his enemies
plight. While it makes for a good story, it begs the question,
How do we know?
Some of the sources Hutton does cite raise serious questions. Tom Horn, who served as chief of scouts and witnessed
Geronimos inal surrender, wrote his autobiography while
awaiting execution for murder. While Horn may have been a
legendary igure of the West, he was also a prodigious liar,
more concerned with his legacy than the truth. As most Western historians are aware, much of his personal account is questionable at best. Yet Hutton repeatedly uses it without qualiication, and at such crucial points as the capture of Geronimo.
Finally, Hutton has chosen as the central igure of his opus a
half-Mexican, half-Irish orphan captive of the Apache. Although
Felix Ward, called Mickey Free, certainly played a part in the
long and bitter struggle, some historians might question
whether he warrants a place of such eminence in the book.
Flaws aside, this is a book well worth reading. Hutton is a
superb storyteller, and his account of the Apache Wars is skillfully crated. It is the long-overdue chronicle of a shameful
period in our expansionist history, and one that, for a century
and a quarter, has been in desperate need of telling.
Ron Soodalter, a frequent MHQ contributor, has written
for the New York Times, Military History, Wild West, and
Smithsonian. His most recent book is he Slave Next Door.
MHQ Summer 2016

93

The Battle
of the Somme
Edited by Matthias
Strohn. 288 pages.
Osprey, 2016. $35.
Reviewed by
David T. Zabecki

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MHQ Autumn 2016

he Battle of the Somme was

one of the three great human
carnages of World War I. For
the French, Verdun was the
wars deining battle. For the
British, it was the Somme
even though the French also
fought on the Somme. One of
the main reasons the Somme
continues to haunt the British
consciousness is that on the
irst day of the battle (July 1,
1916), the British casualty
count totaled a horrendous
57,740, of which 19,240 were
killed and 2,152 went missing.
Some historians identify that
precise date as the point where
the British psyche snapped
and the British Empire started
its long, 40-year decline.
For well over 50 years, perceptions of the Battle of the
Somme were shaped largely
by the memories of the survivors who fought there, and of
the civiliansBritish, French,

and Germanwhose lives it

touched, frequently in permanent and traumatic ways.
But now it no longer lies
within the memory of living
man. he Battle of the Somme,
edited by Matthias Strohn,
takes a fresh look at that
apocalyptic battle. Strohn, a
Bundeswehr reserve oicer
and a senior lecturer in the
Department of War Studies at
the Royal Military Academy,
Sandhurst, has assembled an
international team of A-list
military history scholars as
contributors. he result is
an objective and compelling
analysis from all angles.
he book makes a noteworthy efort to correct many
widely held but not quite
accurate beliefs about the
Somme. Although the battle today is identiied almost
exclusively with the British,
the French were involved in

no small measure. he excellent chapters by Jonathan

Krause, Michael Neiberg,
and Georges-Henri Soutou
analyze the French side; and
those by Colonel Gerhard
Gross, Lieutenant Colonel
Christian Stachelbeck, and
Strohn examine the German.
During the 141 days of the
battle, the British sufered an
estimated 420,000 casualties,
the French 250,000, and the
Germans 500,000.
he Somme is widely
viewed as an attack aimed at
relieving the pressure on the
French at Verdun. By and
large it did accomplish that,
but that was not the original
intent. Initially conceived at
the Allied Chantilly Conference in December 1915, the
attack on the Somme was
supposed to be one of a coordinated series against the Germans from all sides. But when

PAUL POPPER/POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES

British soldiers go over

the top in the Battle of the
Sommeone of the three
great human carnages of
World War I.

GL ARCHIVE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

the Germans launched their

own attack at Verdun that
February, the French were
forced to scale down their
commitment to the Somme,
and the weight of the main
efort passed to the British.
On the British side
especially, the Somme is
remembered for the rigid,
mechanical, and thoroughly
unimaginative infantry tactics that got so many young
men killed. But as Stuart
Mitchell, Lieutenant Colonel
Christopher Pugsley, and Bill
Michinson each make clear
in their respective chapters,
this was anything but the
case. Assuredly, some British
commanders tried to advance
across no mans land in lockstep, but many were far more
innovative. he true picture
is not nearly as uniform and
simplistic as it has been represented for so many years.
In the inal chapter Major
General Mungo Melvin
ofers an important analysis
of the long shadows of the
Sommehow we think of the
battle today (and why) and
how it inluences the ways
the British, and the rest of
the world, see warfare in the
21st century. he plans and
actions of many of the senior
British commanders of World
War II were direct products
of their experiences as subalterns on the Somme in 1916.
he Battle of the Somme is
a must-read book for anyone
interested in military history.
David T. Zabecki is the
author of several books on
military history, including
Chief of Staf: he Principal
Staf Oicers behind Historys
Great Commanders.

Revolution on
the Hudson
New York City
and the Hudson
River Valley in the
War of American
Independence
By George Daughan.
432 pages.
W. W. Norton &
Company, 2016.
$28.95. Reviewed by
Joseph F. Callo
At the beginning of his
wide-ranging account of the
American Revolution, George
Daughan identiies the strategy established by Britains
king George III to bring the
war to a favorable conclusion
for his country. he basic idea
was that one British force
would drive south along the
lake and river system leading
from Quebec to Albany. A
second force would drive up
the Hudson River to Albany
from New York City. he king
believed the simultaneous
campaigns would detach New
England and New York from
the middle and southern colonies. As Daughan puts it,
It looked to George III and
his advisers that by seizing
the passageway connecting
Manhattan with Canada they
could isolate New Englands
radicals, destroy them, and
end the rebellion in a single
campaign season.
he king assumed that
once New Englands Loyalists
saw Britains awesome power
they would lock to his banner,
as would political fence sitters,
while rebels would be cowed.
Inherent in the kings strategy was a contemptuous attitude toward the American

King George III of

England had a simple
strategy: crush the colonists

colonists that typically gets

only passing attentionif
that. As one of the kings most
inluential ministers, irst lord
of the Admiralty, the Earl of
Sandwich, famously declared
in 1755, the colonials were
cowards who would soon
submit.
For their part, the rebels
believed that they were pursuing the cause of liberty, and
they felt strongly that their
government was treating them
unfairly. In a letter to a member of the Continental Congress, John Paul Jones, who
captured the idea of liberty
before he captured a single
British ship, put it this way:
he situation of America is
new in the annals of history,
her afairs cry haste, and speed
must answer them.
As the rebellion continued,
the colonists increasingly
resented being treated as scurrilous traitors; that unity was

an importantpossibly the
most importantfactor that
ofset the military shortcomings and political incoherence
of the nascent United States.
Within the extraordinary
detail of Revolution on the
Hudson is a message: Warfare
involves a lot more than blowing up bridges, turning the
enemys lank, and making
forced marches to launch surprise attacks. War also is a matter of intangibles, such as the
deep-seated attitudes driving
the antagonists. hats nourishing food for thought concerning our national behavior
in a troubled world. MHQ
Joseph Callo, who writes on
national defense and military
history subjects, served for
32 years in the U.S. Navys
Reserve Component, retiring
as a rear admiral.

MHQ Autumn 2016

95

DRAWN & QUARTERED

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MHQ Autumn 2016

WARREN BERNARD COLLECTION

JAPAN DEFENDS ASIA AGAINST THE WEST

Published in 1937 in a Japanese book celebrating the 70th anniversary of the
Meiji Restoration, which returned Japan to imperial rule, this cartoon depicts
international relations after the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Japan protects
the baby Korea and the sick man of China from the Imperial Russian Navy
(center). The European powers (top and bottom left) look on with interest, while
the United States cheers Japan from a bench. Japan came out of the RussoJapanese War as a military force on par with some of the Western powers, with
which it shared imperialist desires in Asia.

EXTRA ROUND
Subscriber bonus section, pages 97-104

BRAUNSCHWEIGISCHES LANDESMUSEUM

Sixteen years ago, metal-detector hobbyists

found some unusual pieces of metal while
searching for a medieval fortress between
the German towns of Kalefeld and Bad
Gandersheim. As it turned out, they had
stumbled on the site of the Battle at the
Harzhorn, where Germanic and Roman
troops clashed in the early third century.
In properly excavating the battlefield
since the initial discovery, archaeologists
have unearthed numerous iron bolt heads
fired from Roman ballistae (see page 23),
including those shown here.

MHQ Autumn 2016

97

THIRDCENTURY
CRISIS

Among those eroding Romes perimeters was Zenobia, queen of

Palmyra. But her invasion of Egypt in AD 270 coincided with the
rise of Emperor Aurelian, who sacked the region and captured her.

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HERBERT GUSTAVE SCHMALZ/ART GALLERY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

The Roman Empires near-death

experience By James Lacey

MHQ Autumn 2016

99

ROMES THIRD-CENTURY CRISIS

Wars continue to be even more frequent, death and famine
heighten disquiet, ghastly illnesses ravage mens health, the
human race is devastated by rampaging pestilence.
Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, ca. ad 250

ter easily pushing through Roman defenses and

laying waste to much of hrace and Macedonia in
the middle of the third century ad, Gothic invaders
felt conident enough to assault the walled city of
hessalonica. Attacking in close-packed bands,
they hoped to overwhelm a section of the wall before the defenders could ready themselves. But those on the
walls defended themselves valiantly, warding of the battle columns with the assistance of many hands. hen, abandoning
their siege, the Goths marched south for the ininitely easier
pickings around Athens because they had learned that the region was wealthy with gold and silver votive oferings and the
many processional goods in the Greek sanctuaries.
To their surprise, however, a hastily assembled Greek army
was fortifying the famed pass at hermopylae. Athens was
spared, as hermopylaes defenders, some carrying small
spears, others axes, others wooden pikes overlaid with bronze
and with iron tips, or whatever
each man could arm himself
with, matched the valor and
exceeded the staying power of
their illustrious Spartan predecessors, who had held of Xerxess army in 480 bc.
his additional battle of
hermopylae in ad 261 became known following the
translation, in 2015, of passages
(quoted above) from the Greek
general Dexippuss Scythica,
which today survives merely in fragments. he new passages,
discovered in 2007 underneath some writing in an 11th-century codex preserved in the Austrian National Library in Vienna, are now helping historians peer deeper into a historic
period long shrouded in times mists. hey have sparked a renewed interest in the third-century ad turmoil, when civil war,
plague, barbarian invasions, and the rising Sassanid Empire all
converged to bring Rome to its knees. Although these newly
found fragments contain only a few hundred words, they reveal
much about the afairs of the Roman Empire during a period
when its armies could no longer maintain control and order.
By the time of this later Battle of hermopylae, Romes
hird-Century Crisis was well underway. Starting in 235 with
the assassination of Severus Alexander, the last of the Severan
line, the empire endured some 50 years of political turmoil; by
some counts, more than 50 people claimed the title of emperor
in that periodmore than half of them conirmed by the Senate. he political disorder, marked by exhausting civil wars,

Fewer but
substantially
more powerful
tribes began
to line up
against Rome

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was fueled by the growth of external enemies of greater power

and aggressiveness than any Rome had faced since the wars
with Carthage half a millennium before. For the irst decades
of this crisis, these enemies rarely struck at the same time. But
from 253 on, the empire oten found itself engaged in multiple
simultaneous conlicts, forcing it to strip entire regions of imperial protection, as its troops marched away to defend distant
frontiers. hese pressures set the stage for the fall of the empire.
Since its defeat at Teutoburger Wald in ad 9, Rome had maintained peace through gits (essentially bribes), trade, and the
occasional military intervention. his, however, had the unintended efect of upending German tribal societies, as new
sources of wealth created elites capable of maintaining fulltime armed retinues. Romes favored allied tribes thus acquired immense power, including the capacity to intimidate,
conquer, or destroy their rivals. As a result, by the third century, fewer but substantially more powerful tribes began to
line up against Rome.
When these tribes joined forces and advanced on the empires frontiers, they easily matched in numbers all but the most
powerful Roman ield army. Moreover, the tribal marauders
soon discovered that once the Roman frontier defenses were
broken, there was nothing to stop them from ravaging deep
into the empire. More oten than not, most Barbarian incursions ended when the emperor or some other Roman oicial
bought them of.
Such barbarian incursions might have been easier to contain if Rome had been able to focus on them, but greater trouble was then brewing in the east. here, the inefectual Arsacid
Dynasty was overthrown by Ardashir I, who established his
own militarily savvy Sassanid Dynasty atop the defunct Parthian Empire. Ardashir put in place a code of royal conduct
that mirrored that of the Persian conqueror Cyrus the Great,
requiring a king to lead armies in person and to gain victories.
Ardashirs son, Shapur I (some accounts call him Sapor), adopted this code and claimed that his Sassanid Empire, by natural right, encompassed all of the lands conquered by Cyrus,
which included much of Romes Eastern Empire.
Shapur made war against Rome with a vengeance. If the
Sassanids lacked the administrative and economic capacity
to sustain their territorial gains against Romes concentrated
might, they did have enough power to severely damage a distracted adversary whose military forces were spread too thin.
Shapur captured many border fortresses, penetrated Syria as
far as the great city of Antioch, and devastated rich Roman
lands deep into Anatolia. In the process, he defeated the many
Roman armies sent against him, including one stunning defeat, in 260, of a large but plague-depleted army led by Valerianwho had the unfortunate distinction of becoming the
irst Roman emperor ever captured in battle. his was the
high-water mark of Shapurs reign. Later, local military forces
organized by a Roman iscal oicer, Macrianus, with a major

Beginning in 247 AD, Barbarians repeatedly attacked Roman

troops in Dacia. Rome later abandoned the province of Dacia
altogethera strategic move that ultimately saved the empire.

NICOLAS BEATRIZET/THE MURIEL AND PHILIP BERMAN GIFT/PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART

assist from Odenathus, lord of Palmyra, counterattacked and

retook most of what Shapur had gained.
By the time of the events related in the newly discovered Dexippus fragments, the empire was on the verge of dissolution.
In the wake of the Valerian disaster and lacking imperial support against massive Frankish and Alemanni incursions, Postumus, a general of the western legions, broke from Rome and
created his own Gallic Empire in 260. He was an able administrator and soldier, and he defeated the Franks and their allies
so decisively at Empel, near the North Sea, in the early 260s
that no major barbarian force dared cross the Rhine for nearly
a decade. Postumuss Gallic Empire was organized to replicate
the Roman Empires institutional structures. he major diference, of course, was that Postumus, not Rome, now issued the
imperial orders.
At almost the same time, another breakaway empire was
forming in the east. Odenathus, ater repelling Shapurs army,
declared himself King of Kings and took over efective control
of Roman Syria, Mesopotamia, and much of Anatolia. Odenathus remained on good terms with the new Roman emperor, Valerians son Gallienus, pledging his loyalty to Rome
and to continued inclusion within the empire.
When Odenathus was assassinated in 267, any pretense of
the eastern territories remaining within the empire fell away.

Odenathus was replaced by his son Vaballathus, whose mother,

Queen Zenobia, took control as regent. For a time, Zenobia
paid lip service to Roman authority, just as her husband had.
But in 270, with a reported 70,000 troops under her command,
Zenobia invaded Egypt. he following year she had Vaballathus
declared Augustus, giving rise to the short-lived Palmyran Empire ranging along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.
When the Goths, in Dexippuss account, invaded the Balkans
in 262, few thought the Roman Empire could long survive. But
even as Romes emperors focused much of their energies on
gaining and holding power against myriad rivals, some regions
and localities began inding ways to defend themselves. he
crucial element of this adaptation was the rise of local strongmen who, with plenty of weapons and large numbers of men
ready for employment as soldiers, were able to create their own
defense forces. he Dexippus fragment gives us a glimpse of
this process, as it lists three such strongmenPhilostratus,
Marianus, and Dexippus himselfwho were selected to take
a local force north to meet advancing Goths. Apparently both
the Greek governing council (probably the Panhellenion) that
made these selections and the troops defending hermopylae
were independent of Roman imperial structures. Moreover,
as parts of the Dexippus fragments attest, these local governments and military forces created command structures capaMHQ Autumn 2016

101

ble of cooperating with imperial authorities. During the great

Gothic invasion of 268, which saw Corinth, Athens, and Sparta
sacked, the Greeks were able to muster suicient resources
and manpower to build a wall across the Isthmus of Corinth
and dispatch several thousand troops to harry the invading
force. In 269 these forces joined with a counterattacking imperial ield army and, at the Battle of Naissus, in modern Serbia,
broke Gothic power there for over two generations.
he Dexippus fragment alludes to another adaptation that
likely saved the empire but was to have grievous long-term consequences: the fortiication of cities. For nearly two centuries
Romes frontiers had been guarded, in the words of Edward
Gibbon, by soldiers of ancient renown and disciplined valor.
Accordingly, the empires cities had long entrusted their safety
to the legions, avoiding the expense of building walls. By the
early 250s city-dwellers began to see the necessity of fortiications, and the next two decades witnessed frantic engineering
activities as cities throughout the empire constructed great
wallsincluding Rome, which built the massive Aurelian walls.
As the Dexippus fragment demonstrates in its reference
to the defense of hessalonica, barbarian forces found these
walls to be all but impenetrable. he long-term negative consequence of these walled cities was to reinforce the power
of local strongmen. Further, a breakdown of internal trade
within the empire forced many local communities to be more
self-reliant. As a result, when the great barbarian invasions,
heralding the end of the Western Empire, arrived in the ith
century, many communities no longer looked to Rome for
support, accelerating the fragmentation of the empire.
At Romes nadir in the middle of the third century, Emperor
Gallienus, the son of Valerian, undertook the task of salvaging
the empire. Gallienus was not well regarded in the histories of
the ancient Roman writers, but he was an intelligent and cou-

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rageous leader. Without his reforms and battleield prowess,

the empire surely would have been lost.
Realizing that he did not have the power to resist all the
forces splintering the empire, Gallienus focused on remaking
the Roman army and deploying it to secure the parts of the
empire that he still controlled: Italy, the Balkans, northern and
western Anatolia, and North Africa.
In 260 Gallienus started his reign in a diicult position, coping with a fragmented empire, his fathers loss of a
large Roman ield army to Shapur, multiple challenges from
would-be usurpers, and major barbarian invasions, including
one by a massive force of Heruli, who launched a naval attack
out of the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. To meet these
challenges, Gallienus needed a much stronger military. He
began by greatly accelerating the removal of members of the
senatorial class from military positions. he efect was apparently large and positive, as suddenly the gateway to military
advancement was opened to talent over birth.
As a result, the Roman army developed cadres of longserving professionals, with many of them attaining high legionary rank. he cadres were crucial in maintaining the discipline,
training, and professionalism of an army that was, of necessity,
recruiting increasing numbers of barbarians into its ranks.
It was during the era of Valerian and Gallienus that the irst
stirrings of the multiple forces that would later transition into
the permanent ield armies of the fourth century became evident. As the Valerian disaster and the fragmentation of the
empire had created a manpower crisis, building a permanent
standing army called for extreme measures: For the irst time,
Rome militarily retreated from and later abandoned one of
its provincesDaciain order to conserve manpower. In
doing so, Gallienus added most of the cohorts of two legions
(V Macedonia and XIII Germania) to his ield army. When
even this proved insuicient, he withdrew many of the troops

FROM LEFT: DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; DEA/A. DAGLI ORTI/GRANGER, NYC; PRISMA ARCHIVO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY/G. NIMATALLAH/BRIDGEMAN IMAGESS

The capture of Valerian (second from right) and the assassination

of Severus Alexander (far right) began an era of turmoil. But
Gallienus (center) and Diocletian (far left) restored order with
military innovations such as permanent field armies.

ROMES THIRD-CENTURY CRISIS

guarding the limes, Romes border defenses, ending two centuries of Romes preclusive security strategypreempting invasions with military action outside its bordersand opening
pathways for further barbarian invasions.
Gallienus also strengthened the role of the cavalry. He increased the number of horsemen in each legion from 120 to
726 and created new cavalry formations, building a substantial body of cavalry that could be deployed independently of
the legions. He also created a new body of troopsthe comitatusthat was kept separate from the established legionary
system. his force combined infantry and cavalry, had its own
command structure, and was designed to move rapidly to any
threatened point. With this elite, highly mobile strategic reserve, emperors now had a ready force with which to meet
emergencies.
Still, the legions remained the premier battle force; only
they could defeat a major barbarian invasion. So what was the
true value of these costly cavalry and elite infantry formations?
While there is no record in the ancient sources as to how they
were deployed, their efects can be seen in the historical record: From this time until just before the inal collapse of the
Roman Empire, barbarian incursions were routinely crushed.
Together, the cavalry and comitatus could arrive rapidly at
any threatened point and begin confronting the barbarian invaders, forcing them to remain concentrated and limiting the
scope of their destruction. Finally, once the legions engaged,
the cavalry oten made a decisive contribution to the battle.
But none of the cavalrys contributions meant much if the
legions, once engaged, could not win a decisive battle. Fortunately for Rome, throughout this period there seems to have
been no falling of in the combat efectiveness of the legionary forces. What did change was how they fought: Legions of
the principate era were shock forces designed to destroy their
opponents through the ferocity of a close engagement; by Gallienuss time, the legions were smaller (and thus nimbler) and
relied much more on irepower than shock.
Gone were the days when legionaries would advance
slowly and silently, throw their pila, and then charge. he
single pila volley was replaced with a much longer barrage of
spears, darts, and arrows loosed by archers increasingly found
in close support of the legions. Only when every spear, dart,
and arrow had been expended would the infantry advance to
close combat against the beleaguered foe.
It was not let to Gallienus to use his reformed military to restore the Roman Empire. He was murdered in 268 while putting down a revolt of another usurper. His successor, Claudius
II, used the army bequeathed to him to defeat the Goths decisively at Naissus in September of 269 and just months later
the Alemanni at the Battle of Lake Benacus, in northern Italy.
Soon thereater, Claudius was struck down by plague, and ater
his brother Quintillus was defeated and killed, Aurelian was
acclaimed emperor by the legions. hroughout 270, Aurelian
was occupied by securing his control of the stunted empire he

had inherited. Although the Danube front was quiet for a time,
several barbarian tribes had occupied sections of northern Italy. hese Aurelian quickly eliminated, also thwarting several
attempts to usurp the imperial purple. Ater defeating another
Alemanni invasion and destroying what was let of Gothic
power south of the Danube, Aurelian prepared his army for
the great prize: reuniting the empire.
He irst marched on Queen Zenobia and the Palmyran
Empire. In 272 Aurelian led his army into Asia Minor, quickly
subduing and sacking any city that resisted him. For unknown
reasons, however, he spared the city of Tyana, in modern
Turkey. hereater, every major city hoping for similar treatment switched its allegiance on his armys approach. Within
six months the Danubian legions were before the walls of
Palmyra. Zenobia tried to lee
to the Sassanid Empire, but
was captured and later led in
golden chains at the head of
Aurelians Roman triumph.
Aterward she was mercifully
allowed to marry a rich Roman
nobleman and retire to a life of
quiet luxury. Aurelian let Palmyra but in 273 was forced to
return when the city rebelled.
his time Aurelian gave the city over to a sack from which it
never recovered.
In 274 Aurelian turned his attention to the Gallic Empire.
By this time Postumus had been dead nearly six years and Tetricus now ruled. Ancient writers credited Aurelian with having
won this campaign largely through diplomacy. Most modern
historians discount this version of events. More likely, Tetricus
was maneuvered into a weak position where his forces proved
no match for Aurelians hardened veterans, who made short
work of them in 274 in a battle that became known as the Catalaunian Catastrophe.
No matter how the battle was won, the efect was the same:
he empire was made whole. Aurelian, forgiven for the inal
abandonment of Dacia, was heralded as the Restorer of the
World. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to enjoy the
accolades for his achievements, as he too was murdered while
leading his army back to Syria for an invasion of the Sassanid
Empire.
At Aurelians death the empire was restored, but much hard
ighting remained before Rome regained its ascendency over
Persia and settled the Rhine-Danube frontiers. It took Diocletian 20 years of campaigning before the stability was fully restored and the hird-Century Crisis was inally over. MHQ

Aurelian
prepared his
army for the
great prize:
reuniting the
empire

James Lacey is professor of strategic studies at the Marine

Corps War College. His most recent book, with coauthor
Williamson Murray, is Moment of Battle: he Twenty Clashes
hat Changed the World (Bantam, 2013).
MHQ Autumn 2016

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EXTRA ROUND
BASTOGNE FOREST, 1944

PFC. DONALD ORNITZ/INTERIM ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES

Returning from the

front lines two days after
Christmas, an American
soldier walks through a quiet
section of a forest near the
Belgian town of Bastogne.

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