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His many claims to acquire maritime supremacy and a World-Empire were either mere bluff or a portentous challenge. Only the good-natured, easy-going British race could so long have clung to the former explanation, thereby leaving the most diffuse, vulnerable, and ill-armed Empire that has ever existed face to face with an Empire that is compact, well-fortified, and armed to the teeth.
Sixteen fortified houses, with or without defenders, are said to have fallen into the hands of the enemy; and the extensive district then called the county of Cornwall was turned to desolation. Massachusetts and Plymouth sent hasty levies of raw men, ill-armed and ill-officered, to the scene of action.
One grows careless and indifferent to danger, and in truth I looked forward to no serious trouble with the Indians upon the morrow's march through the sand-dunes; not that I greatly trusted to those reluctant pledges wrung from the chiefs, but because I felt that if properly handled in that open country our force was of sufficient fighting strength to repel any ordinary attack from ill-armed savages, my long border experience rendering me a bit disdainful of Indian courage and resourcefulness.
The colonel was directed to take a small mixed force into Kordofan and to reconnoitre the enemy's position. If possible, he was to attack and capture Abdullah, whose followers were believed not to exceed 1,000 ill-armed men. The 'Kordofan Field Force, as its officers called it, was formed as follows: Commanding: COLONEL KITCHENER Assistant Adjutant-General: LIEUT.-COLONEL MITFORD
Indeed, so far as can be ascertained, the Vaudois of Dauphiny rarely if ever fought battles. They were too few in number, too much scattered among the mountains, and too poor and ill-armed, to be able to contend against the masses of disciplined soldiery that were occasionally sent into the valleys.
They continued to send slow-sailing brigs and ill-armed sloops-of-war, for the protection of large fleets of merchantmen, with valuable cargoes, while the frigates of the enemy, in search of them, whether in the calm or in the storm, were faster than British seventy-fours, and were equal to British ships of the line in armament.
Dickens has described perfectly this quivering and defenceless dignity. Dickens has described perfectly how ill-armed it is against the coarse humour of real humanity the real humanity which Dickens loved, but which idealists and philanthropists do not love, the humanity of cabmen and costermongers and men singing in a third-class carriage; the humanity of Trabb's boy.
On the 2nd the Government resolved to leave Antwerp, but its departure and the flight of the civilians were postponed by the arrival of Mr. Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, and first a brigade of Royal Marines and then two naval brigades of splendid but raw and ill-armed recruits.
"There is good hope," said the muster-master, "that his excellency will shortly establish such good order for the government and training of our nation, that these weak, bad-furnished, ill-armed, and worse-trained bands, thus rawly left unto him, shall within a few months prove as well armed, trained, complete, gallant companies as shall be found elsewhere in Europe."
These fled for some distance, and then suddenly turning fell on their pursuers. Ill-armed and undisciplined as the levies were, and unable to withstand the attack of such overwhelming numbers, they bore themselves gallantly. One party took possession of a small outlying hill, and with showers of darts and stones they killed or drove off all who attacked them.
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