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Updated: May 20, 2025
"No; we must learn, however, on the first opportunity," said I. "It would be very convenient, and very likely useful. If the captain had not known it, we should probably have been caught by the enemy's fleet when we got among them." The puzzle was now to settle how to manage with these prisoners. As we had only seven effectives, and they had more than forty, it was no slight task.
When the necessary business was disposed of, the conversation became more general. General Schofield inquired what was the number of officers and men to be paroled. Johnston replied that he could hardly be definite as he would like to be: his morning report of "effectives" gave only the men answering to their names with arms in their hands in the line of battle.
These terms have been variously criticised: Melas has been blamed for cowardice in surrendering the many strongholds, including Genoa, which his men firmly held. Yet it must be remembered that he now had at Alessandria less than 20,000 effectives, and that 30,000 Austrians in isolated bodies were practically at the mercy of the French between Savona and Brescia.
Their two chief arrays, that led by the Czar and by General Barclay de Tolly, some 125,000 strong north of Vilna, and that of Prince Bagration mustering now about 45,000 effectives, in the province of Volhynia, were labouring to carry out the strategy devised by Phull.
On the 22d of May Grant delivered the second assault, in which about three fourths of his whole effective force of 43,000 of all arms were engaged. The full corps of Sherman and McPherson, comprising six divisions, were repulsed by four brigades of the garrison, numbering probably 13,000 effectives. In this second assault Grant's loss was 3,199.
The new units brought into line for the counterattacks, and subjected in connection with these to an incessant bombardment, lost fifty per cent of their effectives, if not more. Hence it would be hardly overstating the case to set down 140,000 men as the sum of the German losses in Champagne.
Of these, during the siege, 88 officers and 732 men were killed or wounded; but sickness and want of food had so far further reduced the numbers that on the day of relief there were of effectives only 403 officers and 9,761 men, and of these it was significantly added that "they are the only troops fit to do even a two-miles march."
More likely, finding themselves getting weaker as the months drew on, and terrible losses reduced their fighting effectives, the Kaiser and his war lords were determined to risk all in one mighty effort an effort which should break through the French line at Verdun, thus bringing kudos to the armies of Prussia, and at the same time demoralizing the French soldiers. Who knows?
We tumbled forward in silence, forty effectives in all, with a couple dozen native converts behind us, who had been provided with some of the captured rifles and swords. As soon as we were clear, Captain A , who was a tiny man, even among a tiny race, drew a little sword, and pointing to the enemy's barricades now looming up very close, ordered his bugler to sound the charge once more.
Montgomery and Arnold had about the same total number of men. Sometimes there were more, sometimes less. But what made the real difference, and what really turned the scale, was that the Americans had hardly any regulars and that their effectives rarely averaged three-quarters of their total strength. The balance was also against them in the matter of armament.
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