Some high continental military authorities have of late years proclaimed that British soldiers are incapable, or next to incapable, of acting as light infantry. Than this announcement there never was a clearer illustration of the golden maxim, “Assertions are not proofs.” If our censors had taken the trouble to search for evidence, southern and western Europe would have told them, that in these portions of the civilized world there have not been known, in the middle and modern ages, light troops superior to those of Britain. In archers, the light infantry of “the olden time,” by what nation in the world was England surpassed? Her troops of this class, the direct forefathers of a large proportion of our present soldiery, gained for themselves a name that might, one would think, have sounded even to the shores of the Baltic, which at least has rung upon every ear familiar with the tales of Poictiers, Cressy, and Agincourt. All of these, as described by foreign pens,^[2] were won mainly by the skill and conduct of the British bowmen. At Cressy 12,000 Genoese, then the most renowned light troops of continental Europe, were driven like chaff before unerring cloth-yard shafts from the tough old English yew.^[3]

Had our critics inquired concerning more modern warfare, their Hessian neighbours would have told them that in the North American revolutionary contest, in that six years’ war of surprises, skirmishes, and ambuscades, among unequalled woods and wildernesses, the British soldier in himself was more than a match for the skirmisher-bred American woodsman; and, to say the least, as alert and intelligent at the outposts as his well-trained German fellow-combatants. The struggle, indeed, ended unsuccessfully to Britain; but, let the blame rest where it may, it cannot be thrown upon the British soldier; he never came short of his duty.

In the protracted and astonishing conquest of Hindoostan, which had some European inimical spectators, the flank companies of battalions did three-fourths of the work; not only concentrated at the breach and escalade, but also, when necessity required it, extended in the jungle.

And to come to those contests which offer the fairest estimate of the British soldier as he now is, and with which all civilized military critics may be expected to have become acquainted, the European campaigns of the Duke of Wellington; it is not sounding an empty boast, but a note of most sober and honest truth to say, that, than the British light troops of his army, better never guarded a camp or fought in a skirmish. In a fluctuating war of eight campaigns, over many hundred miles of varying country, opposed to the bravest and most intelligent soldiers of the continent, none were ever more constantly conquerors in action or more successfully vigilant on outpost duty.

It is true, indeed, that the British light infantry man has a practical system in some important particulars peculiar to himself; and in none more so than that, under all circumstances, he continues the well-disciplined soldier, never systematically assuming the character of the loose, lawless, free-corps freebooter. From this last peculiarity may have arisen the incorrect impressions of our foreign contemporaries. We, however, glory in the difference, and affirm that stern discipline and high soldier-like principle must form the basis of thorough military efficiency to the full as much in the light and extended services, as in those of a more concentrated description.

Free corps originate in long internal wars. Happily for Britain, she of late has not been distinguished for such nurseries of irregular military skill; but when her territories were desolated by them, there were not wanting bodies of this description as active, intelligent, and enterprising as any that ever graced the continent of Europe.

To assist in keeping up the remembrance of the essentials of the practical system of the modern British light infantry man, in that important branch of his duty, skirmishing; in order that foreigners, whatever be their theories, may continue to receive, when necessity requires it, practical evidence that British soldiers can act as light infantry, is the principal object of the Author in submitting to the army the following observations.

1837.