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Updated: June 19, 2025
"Bishop," he said, "I thank you for all you propose, but if I go to the trenches at Redan or the camp at Sebastopol, I will go on John Macrae's authority and personality. I have one hundred pounds, that is sufficient. I can learn all the great things you expect me to learn there better among the rankers than the officers. I have known the officers at Edinburgh Castle.
He saw that the rankers leaned on each other; that there was not yet in the peasant faces about him a single separate individual relation to the impending peril. These men might have, seen others fall by the hundreds, but their faith was in the command, their law its law.
The rank and file are not taken into the confidence of the leaders. Policies are decided upon in the secret councils of the Great Ones and handed down to us to adopt. Of course, it is open to any man to criticise, and I am bound to say that the rankers exercise that privilege with considerable zest.
The old fox's den is more than comfortable, Mobray and I have a couple of rankers as servants, one of whom has more or less attached to him a woman who cooks well enough to make even the present ration eatable, and, lastly, though our presence may be something of a handicap, yet in such unsettled times one must tolerate the dogs if they but keep out the wolves.
Gentlemen-rankers are better in their proper place Jail." ... To this small band of "rankers" the accession of the finest boxer, swordsman, and horseman in the corps, was invaluable, and helped them notably in their endeavour to show that there are exceptions to all rules, and that a gentleman can make a first-class trooper.
He thought to escape their vicious attacks by paddling faster, but it was no use; they had come to stay. Trailing after him a long uneven stream, they seemed to take turns in tormenting him, and as the leaders became satiated, they fell back, allowing the rear rankers to buzz forward and renew the attack.
Behind the façade of passive obedience, widespread disillusionment prevails. "Men of science, working men, rankers, and officers," he writes, "begged me to say what they did not dare to utter themselves." When he was arrested and when his book was seized, the manuscript was rescued and was smuggled into Switzerland. By whom? By an official German courier!
Rankers were pushed up to high command, partly by political influence, partly for merit. Jourdan, an old soldier, a shop-keeper, became general of the army of the north, and on the 15th of October defeated Coburg at Wattignies. The brilliant Hoche, ex-corporal of the French guards, was placed at the head of the army of the Moselle. Pichegru, the son of a peasant, took over the army of the Rhine.
First Life Guards." But in the moonlight I could see him smile, whether at my mistake or because it was not a mistake I could not guess. There are many gentlemen rankers in this war. He made a lonely figure in the night, his helmet marking him as conspicuously as a man wearing a high hat in a church.
The men of Rochambeau's army too, had caught the infection, had seen republicanism in war, the brave and capable commanding whatever their station in life; and in that army were many rankers, held down by the Bourbon régime, who were soon to become the victorious generals of the French Republic.
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