FROM
Robert Jackson was born in Scotland in 1750 and trained in medicine at Edinburgh—with vacations as a medical aide on a Greenland whaler. He then practiced medicine in the West Indies, joined the British army in New York after the outbreak of the Revolution as an assistant surgeon, and was captured. He returned to England on parole in 1782 and then wandered around Europe before rejoining the army in 1794. He served in Europe and the West Indies, revisited the United States, and was appointed inspector-general of hospitals at the beginning of the Peninsular War.
He published a report on maladministration in the army medical services, his own medical qualifications were called into question, and he assaulted one of his opponents—for which he was jailed for six months. After release he again took up a medical appointment in the West Indies and returned to England in 1815. Thereafter little is known about his career but he spent some time traveling in Europe, studying local conditions. He died in Scotland in 1827.
Jackson's view of war, as an army doctor, spans the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic Wars, in which he served.
Though not daring in close combat, they were not without courage. It was a courage of circumstance, the direct combat: front to front, was supported with resolution, the retrograde was precipitate when the flanks were turned, when the design of turning them was discovered, or when a front attack was threatened by the bayonet. This seemed to the writer to be the leading feature of the American military character during the revolutionary war; and, as it is in some measure a feature of circumstance, it is reasonable to believe that it resulted from habits engendered by mode of life.
Robert Jackson
The value of the American people as soldiers consists in skill in the use of fire-arms. That skill, it is presumed, arises from the practice of firing at birds and wild beasts in the rivers, ponds, and woods, of an extensive continent. Accustomed to circumvent, and to shoot from behind cover, the Americans were themselves afraid of being circumvented; and, impressed perhaps with the idea of circumvention, they moved off precipitately at the appearance of suspicious manoeuvres being practised against them: they had not, as a soldier ought to have, a face for flank and rear. The prey which the Americans were accustomed to pursue being a timid prey—to be entrapped rather than combatted by force, courage to face the enemy boldly was not acquired by the exercise of hunting: it was rather perhaps diminished by the habit of caution engendered by the practice of circumvention.
If the military merit of the American people, as it appeared during the revolutionary war, be estimated fairly, it does not stand high even in partizan war. The Americans were soldiers from necessity—not from genius or inclination. They did not proceed to the combat with a mind inflamed with ideas of national glory. They had little of military enterprize in the constitution originally; and they made little scientific progress in the military art during the continuance of the contest. They advanced boldly to action in several instances; they maintained no combat obstinately. The cover of a bank, a tree, or a fence, was necessary to give them confidence to look at their antagonist. They exercised the firelock with effect while they were under cover; they retired when the enemy approached near, that is, they split and squandered, according to the cant phrase, to rally at an assigned point in the rear.
If the attainment of superiority in the actual conflict of battle be the object of military training, the temper and energy of individuals ought, in the just reason of things, to be estimated so as to be known correctly to the full extent of their value. The exact order of external uniformity, according to which separate parts are arranged in the military fabric in the present time, is only a secondary object in the true meaning of things. Correspondence in power, not uniformity in the coup d'oeil , is the base of true military organization.
As it is in the temper of the parts, not in the uniformity of the coup d'oeil that the value of the military instrument consists, it is, or ought to be, the main object of the tactician, as frequently said, to arrange the parts in the ranks according to power and temper, rather than according to size and external resemblance. But it happens here, as it happens in many other things, that the ingenuity, or rather the presumption, of man counteracts his own design. Ignorant, or regardless of internal relations, he acts on the information of the eye, and thus gives a garb of order and dressing to the materials of the fabric which, as not resting on the true base, detracts from union, vigour, and consistency in the execution of function.
The Age of Reason
Hence it is that military education becomes vain, the effect comparatively void, or the reverse of good. Unless order be engrafted on the properties of the material with such care and discernment, that no part of the constitutional power and native spirit be marred or shackled by the artificial arrangement, the instinctive sagacity of the barbarian prevails over the science of the refined tactician. The fact is illustrated by the military history of semi-barbarous nations; who, though inferior in military arrangement, in the exterior forms of discipline, and greatly inferior in arms and military apparatus, not unfrequently defeat the armies of scientific, polished, and refined masters in the art of war.
The examples are numerous in the history of mankind; and even in recent times, the untaught peasantry of the poorer cantons of Switzerland, and of some part of Tyrol, gave more trouble to the troops of France than the regular armies of the great monarchs, which were exact in their movements as a machine of mechanical construction. Great Britain herself can speak to the fact. She sustained greater injury to her military reputation by the people of the town and district of Buenos Ayres and New Orleans, than from all the regular armies she encountered in the field during the late war.
The energy of spirit which leads to military enterprize is a quality of the early stage of society. It vanishes from nations in proportion as they become polished and refined; at least, it is not supported in a progressive course, unless by scientific study and a judicious application of such causes as, acting on human organism, maintain the machine in a state of activity to a forward point prominent in the view of all.
The exercises with the firelock, or common drillings of the European infantry, are not of a nature to interest the simple soldier. The purpose of them, as connected with utility, is not fully comprehended by him. He goes to the field as an automaton, to act and to be acted upon by mechanical powers, ignorant of the principle on which he acts, and the purpose for which he is constrained to act.
The mind is not interested by routine forms of duty; and, as it is important to success that the mind should be interested, it is useful, or may be supposed to be useful, to endeavour to give a new cast, consequently a new force of impression, to military exercises and military forms of evolution, without changing the principles of such practices as are laid on a basis of truth. New modes of military exercise interest the individual by their novelty; they even not infrequently communicate an animating energy to the arm of the actor, which goes beyond the limits of ordinary calculation: they seldom fail to intimidate the enemy as striking him by surprise. If this be so, it belongs to military genius to change the appearances of things, with a view to animate one part and to intimidate another. But, while this is
Robert Jackson
done, especial care is to be taken that the fundamental principles of military tactic be not rashly violated.
The Shrapnel shell, as a means of extending the range of missile force, is an invention of science; and it may be considered as an important one in modifying the character of a military action. The Congreve rocket may surprise the inexperienced: it is a child's plaything in the field, rather than an instrument in war: it may be employed with advantage in sieges. The Polish lance, with which hussars have lately been armed, has had advantage on some occasions as an arm of offence; but it is chiefly to novelty that the unexpected effect is to be ascribed.
The broad-sword and target of the Scotch Highlander is perhaps inferior, in a correct estimate of the power of weapons, to the firelock and bayonet; it was notwithstanding formidable, and made a striking impression on British troops in the year 1745. The British soldier was armed in the year 1745 with the firelock and bayonet. He was a trained soldier, and moreover a soldier not unacquainted with the practice of war. The Highlander was rude, and unskilled in military tactic. If he carried a carbine into the field, he did not much rely on it. His chief trust was in the broadsword. It was his national arm, and it was to him a talisman which gave confidence, even an idea of invincibility. With this arm and armour he discomfited the experienced troops of Great Britain, presumptively through surprise at the unknown mode of attack.
The Highlanders who fought on the continent of Europe, and in America in the war 1756, seemed to have acted on the French by a similar form of impression, as they had acted on the British at Prestonpans and Falkirk. Even so late as the American revolutionary war, the Highlanders, probably from the impression which the peculiarity of dress &c., made upon the peasant militia, were more dreaded than other British soldiers.
It is sufficiently proved in history that rude and semi-barbarous nations, ill armed and with little of what is called discipline, often discomfit the systematic armies of scientific tacticians and accomplished generals.
IV
THE
REVOLUTION
What a change from 1785 to 1824! In two thousand years of recorded history, so sharp a revolution in the customs, ideas and beliefs has never occurred before.
Stendhal
