WEATHER IN WAR. It is not very flattering to that glory-loving, | But for that storm Athens would have been battle-seeking creature, Man, that his best- taken and destroyed, the Persians having an arranged schemes for the destruction of his fel- especial grudge against the Athenians because lows should often be made to fail by the con- of their part in the taking and burning of Sardition of the weather. More or less have the dis; and Athens was destined to become Greece greatest of generals been "servile to all the for all after-time, so that her as yet dim light skyey influences." Upon the state of the at- could not have been quenched without darkenmosphere frequently depends the ability of mening the whole world. to fight, and military hopes rise and fall with the rising and falling of the metal in the thermometer's tube. Mercury governs Mars. A hero is stripped of his plumes by a tempest, and his laurels fly away on the invisible wings of the wind, and are seen no more for-ever. Empires fall because of a heavy fall of snow. Storms of rain have more than once caused monarchs to cease to reign. A hard frost, a sudden thaw, a contrary wind, a long drought, a storm of sand- all these things have had their part in deciding the destinies of dynasties, the fortunes of races, and the fate of nations. Leave the weather out of history, and it is as if night were left out of the day, and winter out of the year' Americans have fretted a little because their "Grand Army" could not advance through mud that came up to the horses' shoulders, and in which even the seven-league boots would have stuck, though they had been worn as deftly as Ariel could have worn them. They talked as if no such thing had ever before been known to stay the march of armies; whereas all military operations have, to a greater or a lesser extent, depended for their issue upon the softening or the hardening of the earth, or upon the clearing or the clouding of the sky. The elements have fought against this or that conqueror, or would-be conqueror, as the stars in their courses fought against Sisera; and the Kishon is not the only river that has through its rise put an end to the hopes of a tyrant. The melting of the snows of the Pyrenees, causing a great rise of the rivers of Northern Spain, came nigh bringing ruin upon Julius Cæsar himself; and nothing but the feeble character of the opposing general saved him from destruction. The preservation of Greece, with all its incalculable consequences, must be credited to the weather. The first attempt to conquer that country, made by the Persians, failed because of a storm that disabled their fleet. Mardonius crossed the Hellespont twelve or thirteen years before that feat was accomplished by Xerxes, and he purposed marching as far as Athens. His army was not unsuccessful, but off Mount Athos the Persian fleet was overtaken by a storm, which destroyed three hundred ships and twenty thousand men. This compelled him to retreat, and the Greeks gained time to prepare for the coming of their enemy. When Xerxes himself entered Europe, and was apparently about to convert Hellas into a satrapy, it was a storm, or a brace of storms, that saved that country from so sad a fate, and preserved it for the welfare of all after generations of men, The Great King, in the hope of escaping "the unseen atmospheric enemies which howl around that formidable promontory," had caused Mount Athos to be cut through, but, as the historian observes, "the work of destruction to his fleet was only transferred to the opposite side of the intervening Thracian sea." That fleet was anchored on the Magnesian coast, when a hurricane came upon it, known o the people of the country as the "Hellespontias," and which blew right upon the shore. For three days this wind continued to blow, and the Persians lost four hundred warships, many transports and provision craft, myriads of men, and an enormous amount of matériel. The Grecian fleet, which had fled before that of Persia, now retraced its course, believing that the latter was destroyed, and would have fled again but for the arts and influence of Themistocles. The sea-fights of Artemisium followed, in which the advantage was, though not decisively, with the Greeks; and that they finally retreated was owing to the success of the Persians at Thermopyla. Between the first and second battle of Artemisium the Persians suffered from another storm, which inflicted great losses upon them. These disasters to the enemy greatly encouraged the Greeks, who believed that they came directly from the gods; and they made it possible for them to fight the naval battle of Salamis, and to win it. So great was the alarm of Xerxes, who thought that the victors would sail to the Hellespont, and destroy the bridge he had thrown over that strait, that he ordered his still powerful fleet to hasten to its protection. He himself fled by land, but on his arrival at the Hellespont he found that the bridge had been destroyed by a storm; and he must have been impressed as deeply as Napoleon was in his century, that the elements had leagued themselves with his mortal enemies. After his flight, and the withdrawal of his fleet from the war, the Persians had not a chance left, and the defeat of his lieutenant Mardonius, at Platea. was of the nature of a foregone conclusion. It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of the assistance which the Greeks received from the storms mentioned, and it is not strange that they were lavish in their thanks and offerings to Poseidon the Saviour, or that they continued piously to express their gratitude in later days. Mankind at large have reason to be thankful for the occurrence of those storms; for, if they had not happened, Greece must have been conquered, and all that she has been to the world would have been that world's loss. It was not until after the overthrow of the Persians that Athens became the home of science, literature, art, and commerce; and if Athens had been removed from Greece, there would have been little of Hellenic genius left for the delight of future days. Not only was most of that which is known as Greek literature the production of the years that followed the failure of Xerxes, but the success of the Greeks was the means of preserving all of their earlier literature. The Persians were not barbarians, and, had they achieved their purpose, they might have promoted civilization in Europe; but that civilization would have been Asiatic in its character, and it might have been as fleeting as the labours of the Carthaginians in Europe and Africa. Nor would they have felt any interest in the preservation of the works of those Greeks who wrote before the Marathonian time, which they would have regarded with that contempt with which most conquerors look upon the labours of those whom they have enslaved. That most brilliant of ages, the age of Pericles, could never have come to pass under the dominion of Persia; and the Greeks of Europe, when ruled by satraps from Susa, would have been of as little weight in the ancient world as, under that kind of rule, were the Greeks of Ionia. All future history was involved in the decision of the Persian contest, and we may feel grateful that the event was not left for the hands of men to decide, but that the winds and the waves of the Grecian seas so far equalized the power of the combatants as to enable the Greeks, who fought for us as well as for themselves, to roll back the tide of Oriental conquest. We might not have had even the secession war, if there had been no storms in the Thracian seas in a summer the roses of which perished more than two thousand three hundred years ago. The modern contest which most resembles that which was waged between the Greeks and the Persians is that war between England and Spain which came to a crisis in 1588, when the Spanish Armada was destroyed by the tempests of the northern seas, after having been well mauled by the English fleet. The English seamen behaved well, as they always do; but the Spanish loss would not have been irreparable if the weather had remained mild. What men had begun so well storms completed. A contrary wind prevented the Spanish Admiral from pursuing his course in a direction that would have proved favourable to his second object, which was the preservation of his fleet. He was forced to stand to the north, so that he rushed light into the jaws of destruction. He encountered in those remote and almost unknown he waters tempests that were even more merciless than the fighting-ships and fire-ships of the island heretics. Philip II. bore his loss with the same calmness that he bore the victory of Lepanto. As, on hearing of the latter, he merely said, "Don John risked a great deal," so, when tidings came to him that the Invincible Armada had been found vincible, "I sent it out against men, and not against the billows," at Tilbury had been one of the stock pieces of history, and her words of defiance to Parma and to Spain have been ringing through the world ever since they were uttered after the Armada had ceased to threaten her throne. We now know that the common opinion on this subject, like the common opinion respecting some other crises, was all wrong, a delusion and a sham, and based on nothing but plausible lies. Mr. Motley has put men right on this point, as on some others; and it is impossible to read his brilliant and accurate narrative of the events of 1588 without coming to the conclusion that Elizabeth was in the summer of that year in the way to receive punishment for the cowardly butchery which had been perpetrated, in her name, if not by her direct orders. in the great hall of Fotheringay. She was saved by those winds which helped the Dutch to blockade Parma's army, in the first instance, and then by those Orcadian tempests which smote the Armada, and converted its haughty pride into a by-word and a scoffing. The military preparations of England were then of the feeblest character. Parma, who was even an abler diplomatist than soldier-that is, he was the most accomplished liar in an age that was made up of falsehood-had so completely gulled the astute Elizabeth that she was living in the fool's paradise; and so little did she and most of her counseflors expect invasion, that a single Spanish regiment of infantry might, had it then been landed, have driven the whole organized force of England from Sheerness to Bristol. Elizabeth felt every hair of her head curling from terror when she learned how she had been "done" by Philip's lieutenant; and old Burleigh must have thought that his mistress was in the condition of Jockey of Norfolk's master at Bosworth-"bought and sold." Fortunately quietly remarked. Down to the very last year it had been the common, and all but universal opinion, that, if the Spaniards had succeeded in landing in England, they would have been beaten, so resolute were the English in their determination to oppose them, and so extensive were their preparations for resistance. Elizabeth the summer gales of 1588 were adverse to the Spaniards, and protected Old England We know not whence the wind cometh nor whither it goeth, but we know that its blows have often been given with effect on human affairs; and it never blew with more usefulness, since the time when it used up the ships of Xerxes, than when it sent the ships of Philip to join "the treasures that old Ocean hoards." Had England then been conquered by Spain, though but temporarily, Protestant England would have ceased to exist, and the current of history would have been as emphatically changed as was the current of the Euphrates under the labours of the soldiers of Cyrus. We should have had no Shakespeare, or a very different Shakespeare from the one that we have; and the Elizabethan age would have presented to after centuries an appearance altogether unlike that which now so impressively strikes the mind. As that was the time out of which all that is great and good in England and America has proceeded, in letters and in arms, in religion and in politics, we can easily understand how vast must have been the change, had not the winds of the north been so unpropitious to the purposes of the King of the South. its proper reward, when French folly ruined everything. The French overtook the English on the 24th of October, and by judicious action might have destroyed them, for they were by far the more numerous-though most English authorities grossly exaggerate the inequality of numbers that really did exist between the two armies. On the night of the 24th the rain fell heavily, making the ground quite unfit for the operations of heavy cavalry, in which the strength of the French consisted, while the English had their incomparable archers, the worthy predecessors of the English infantry of to-day, one of whom was calculated to do more efficient service than could have been expected, as the circumstances of the field were, from ten knights We English are very proud of the victories cumbered with bulky mail. Sir Harris Nicolas, of Crécy and Agincourt, as well we may be; the most candid historian of the battle, and who for, though gained in the course of as unjust prepared a very useful, but unreadable volume and unprovoked and cruel wars as ever were concerning it, after speaking of the bad arwaged, they are as splendid specimens of rangements adopted by the French, proceeds slaughter-work as can be found in the history to say-"The inconveniences under which the of "the devil's code of honour." But we owe French laboured were much increased by the them both to the weather, which favoured our state of the ground, which was not only soft ancestors, and was as unfavourable to the an- from heavy rains, but was broken up by their cestors of the French. At Crécy the Italian horses during the preceding night, the weather cross-bow men in the French army not only having obliged the valets and pages to keep came into the field worn down by a long march them in motion. Thus the statement of French on a hot day in August, but immediately after historians may readily be credited, that, from their arrival they were exposed to a terrible the ponderous armour with which the men-atthunder-storm, in which the rain fell in absolute arms were enveloped, and the softness of the torrents, wetting the strings of their bows, and ground, it was with the utmost difficulty they rendering them unserviceable. The English could either move or lift their weapons, notarchers, who carried the far-more-useful long-withstanding their lances had been shortened bow, kept their bows in their cases until the to enable them to fight closely-that the horses rain ceased, and then took them out dry, and at every step sunk so deeply into the mud, that in perfect condition; besides which, even if the it required great exertion to extricate themstrings of the long-bows had been wetted, they and that the narrowness of the place caused could not have been materially injured, as they their archers to be so crowded as to prevent were thin and pliable, while those of the cross- them from drawing their bows." Michelet's bows were so thick and unpliable that they description of the day is the best that can be could not be tightened or slackened at pleasure. read, and he tells us, that, when the signal of In after-days this defect in the cross-bow was battle was given by Sir Thomas Frpingham, removed, but it existed in full force in 1346. the English shouted, but "the French army, to When the battle began, the Italian quarrel was their great astonishment, remained motionless. found to be worthless, because of the strings of Horses and knights appeared to be enchanted, the arbalists having absorbed so much moisture, or struck dead in their armour. The fact was, while the English arrows came upon the poor that their large battle-steeds, weighed down Genoese in frightful showers, throwing them with their heavy riders and lumbering caparisons into a panic, and inaugurating disaster to the of iron, had all their feet completely sunk in French at the very beginning of the action. The the deep wet clay; they were fixed there, and day was lost from that moment, and there was could only struggle out to crawl on a few steps not a leader among the French capable of at a walk." Upon this mass of chivalry, all restoring it. stuck in the mud, the cloth-yard shafts of the English yeomen fell like hailstones upon the summer corn. Some few of the French made mad efforts to charge, but were annihilated before they could reach the English line. The English advanced upon the "mountain of men and horses mixed together." The French fell into a panic, and those of their number who could run away did so. It was the story of Poitiers over again, in one respect; for the Black Prince owed his victory to a panic that befell a body of sixteen thousand French, who scattered and fled without having struck a blow. Agincourt was fought on St. Crispin's day, and At Agincourt the circumstances were very different, but quite as fatal to the French. That battle was fought on the 25th of October, 1415, and the French should have won it according to all the rules of war-but they did not win it, because they had too much valour and too little sense. A cautious coward makes a better soldier than a valiant fool, and the boiling bravery of the French has lost them more battles than any other people have lost through timidity. Henry V.'s invasion of France was the most wicked attack that ever was made on ing nation, and it was meeting with ar a precious strapping the French got. The English found that there was "nothing like leather." It was the last battle in which the oriflamme was displayed; and well it might be; for, red as it was, it must have blushed a deeper red over the folly of the French commanders. Half the blood which there was spent was Edward IV., it would seem, was especially The greatest battle ever fought on British favoured by the powers of the air; for, if he ground, with the exceptions of Hastings and owed victory at Towton to wind and snow, he Bannockburn (and greater even than Hastings, owed it to a mist at Barnet. This last action if numbers are allowed to count), was that of was fought on the 14th of April, 1471, and the Towton, the chief action in the Wars of the prevalence of the mist, which was very thick, Roses; and its decision was due to the effect of enabled Edward so to order his military work as the weather on the defeated army. It was to counter-balance the enemy's superiority in fought on the 29th of March, 1461, which was numbers. The mist was attributed to the arts of the Palm-Sunday of that year. Edward, Earl Friar Bungay, a famous and most rascally "niof March, eldest son of the Duke of York, gromancer.' The mistake made by Warwick's having made himself King of England, ad- men, when they thought Oxford's cognizance, a vanced to the North to meet the Lancastrian star paled with rays, was that of Edward, which army. That army was sixty thousand strong, was a sun in full glory (the White Rose en while Edward IV. was at the head of less than soliel), and so assailed their own friends, and forty-nine thousand. After some preliminary created a panic, was in part attributable to the fighting, battle was joined on a plain between mist, which prevented them from seeing clearly; the villages of Saxton and Towton, in Yorkshire, and this mistake was the immediate occasion of and raged for ten hours. Palm-Sunday was a the overthrow of the army of the Red Rose. dark and tempestuous day, with the snow That Edward was enabled to fight the Battle falling heavily. At first the wind was favourable of Barnet with any hope of success to the Lancastrians, but it suddenly changed, also owing to the weather. Margaret of Anand blew the snow right into their faces. This jou had assembled a force in France, Louis XI. was bad enough, but it was not the worst, for supporting her cause, and this force was ready the snow slackened their bow-strings, causing to sail in February, and by its presence in their arrows to fall short of the Yorkists', who England victory would unquestionably have took them from the ground, and sent them back been secured for the Lancastrians. But the with fatal effect. The Lancastrian leaders then elements opposed themselves to her purpose sought closer conflict, but the Yorkists had with so much pertinacity and consistency that already achieved those advantages which, under it is not strange that men should have seen a good general, are sure to prepare the way to therein the visible hand of Providence. Three victory. It was as if the snow had resolved to times did she embark, but only to be driven give success to the pale rose. That which Ed-back by the wind, and to suffer loss. Some of ward had won he was resolved to increase, and his dispositions were of the highest military excellence; but it is asserted that he would have been beaten, because of the superiority of the enemy in men, but for the coming up, at the eleventh hour, of the Duke of Norfolk, who was the Joseph Johnston of 1461, doing for Edward what the Secessionist Johnston did for Beauregard in 1861. The Lancastrians then gave way, and retreated, at first in orderly fashion, but finally falling into a panic, when they were cut down by thousands. They lost twenty-eight thousand men, and the Yorkists eight thousand. This was a fine piece of work for the beginning of Passion-Week, bloody laurels gained in civil conflict being substituted for palm-branches! No such battle was ever fought by Englishmen in foreign lands. This was the day when "Wharfe ran red with slaughter, She sailed a her party sought to persuade her to abandon soon after the Battle of Long Island must be attributed to the foggy weather of the 29th of August, 1776. But for the successful retreat of Washington's army from Long Island, on the night of the 29th-30th, the Declaration of Independence would have been made waste paper in "sixty days" after its adoption; and that retreat could not have been made, had there not been a dense fog under cover of which to make it, and to deter the enemy from action. Washington and his whole army would have been slain or captured, could the British forces have had clear weather in which to operate. "The fog which prevailed all this time," says Irving, "seemed almost Providential. While it movements of the Americans, the atmosphere was clear on the New York side of the river. The adverse wind, too, died away, the river became so smooth that the row-boats could be laden almost to the gunwale; and a favouring breeze sprung up for the sail-boats. The whole embarkation of troops, ammunition, provisions, cattle, horses, and carts, was happily effected, and by daybreak the greater part had safely reached the city-thanks to the aid of Glover's Marblehead men. Scarcely anything was abandoned to the enemy, excepting a few heavy pieces of artillery. At a proper time, Mifflin with his covering party left the lines, and effected a slight retreat to the ferry. Washington, though repeatedly entreated, refused to enter a boat until all the troops were embarked, and crossed the river with the last." Americans should ever regard a fog with a certain reverence, for a fog saved their country in 1776. In justice to the memory of a monarch to whom justice has never been done, it should be remarked, in passing, that Edward IV. deserved the favours of Fortune, if talent for war insures success in war. He was so far as success goes, one of the greatest soldiers that ever lived. He never fought a battle that he did not win, and he never won a battle without annihilating his foe. He was not yet nineteen when he commanded at Towton, at the head of almost fifty thousand men; and two months before he had gained the Battle of Mortimer's Cross, under circumstances that showed skilful generalship. No similar instance of precocity is to be found in the military history of mankind. His victories have been attributed to Warwick, but it is no-hung over Long Island, and concealed the ticeable that he was as successful over Warwick as he had been over the Lancastrians, against whom Warwick originally fought. Barnet was, with fewer combatants, as remarkable an action as Towton; and at Mortimer's Cross Warwick | was not present, while he fought and lost the second battle of St. Alban's seventeen days after Edward had won his first victory. Warwick was not a general, but a magnificent paladin, resembling much Cœur de Lion, and most decidedly out of place in the England of the last half of the fifteenth century. What is peculiarly remarkable in Edward's case is this: he had received no military training beyond that which was common to all high-born youths in that age. The French wars had long been over, and what had happened in the early years of the Roses' quarrel was certainly not calculated to make generals out of children. In this respect Edward stands quite alone in the list of great commanders. Alexander, Hannibal, the first Scipio Africanus, Pompeius, Don John of Austria, Condé, Charles XII., Napoleon, and some other young soldiers of the highest eminence, were either all regularly instructed in the military art, or succeeded to the command of veteran armies, or were advised and assisted by old and skilful generals. Besides, they were all older than Edward when they first had independent command. Gaston de Foix approaches nearest to the Yorkist king, but he gained only one battle, was older at Ravenna than Edward was at Towton, and perished in the hour of victory. Clive, perhaps, may be considered as equalling the Plantagenet king in original genius for war, but the scene of his actions, and the materials with which he wrought, were so very different from those of other youthful commanders, that no just comparison can be made between him and anyone of their number. It has been asserted that the Battle of Falkirk, in 1746, was lost in consequence of the severity of a snow-storm that took place when they went into action, a strong wind blowing the snow straight into their faces; and one of the causes of the defeat of the Highlanders at Culloden, three months later, was another fall of snow, which was accompanied by wind that then blew into their faces. Fortune was impartial, and made the one storm to balance the other. That the American army was not destroyed That Poland was not restored to national rank by Napoleon I. was in some measure owing to the weather of the latter days of 1806. Those of the French officers who marched through the better portions of that country were for its restoration, but others who waded through its terrible mud took different ground in every sense. Hence there was a serious difference of opinion in the French councils on this vitally important subject, which had its influence on Napoleon's mind. The severe winter-weather of 1806-7, by preventing the Emperor from destroying the Russians, which he was on the point of doing, was prejudicial to the interests of Poland; for the ultimate effect was to compel France to treat with Russia as equal with equal, notwithstanding the crowning victory of Friedland. This done, there was no present hope of Polish restoration, as Alexander frankly told the French Emperor that the world would not be large enough for them both, if he should seek to renew Poland's rank as a nation. So far as the failure of the French in 1812 is chargeable upon the weather, the weather must be considered as having been again the enemy of Poland; for Napoleon would have restored that country had he succeeded in his Russian campaign. But it was not the weather of Russia that caused the French failure of 1812. That failure was all but complete before the invaders of Russia had experienced any very |