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Updated: July 27, 2025
According to the Turkish accounts of the Battle of Ctesiphon, which emanated from Constantinople, the British had 170,000 men in action, and their losses exceeded 5,000. This estimate of General Townshend's strength was far from the truth. At no time did the British commander's troops number more than 25,000, and 16,000 men would be a liberal estimate of his striking force.
Matters had developed so rapidly that, in a very short time, they were behind Townshend's retreating parties, round which the enemy were swarming; and when the retirement became a rapid retreat, they dropped farther behind. Small detached parties soon became aware of their position, and attacked them.
It is impossible for a human creature to speak well for three hours and a half; I question even if Belial, who, according to Milton, was the orator of the fallen angels, ever spoke so long at a time. There must have been, a trick in Charles Townshend's speaking for the Preliminaries; for he is infinitely above having an opinion.
About the middle of October, 1915, General Townshend received some reenforcements who had fought their way along the river, constantly harassed by Bedouins and hostile tribesmen, reaching the British position in a thoroughly exhausted condition. Even with the arrival of the reenforcements General Townshend's force numbered little more than a complete division, and a small reserve.
The episode, trivial in itself, gains a kind of gravity by the illustration it affords of Townshend's character all through Townshend's short career. The impossibility of restraining an incorrigible tongue, and the unreadiness to follow out the course of action to which his words would seem to have committed him, were the distinguishing marks of Townshend's political existence.
Townshend's speeches, like the 'Satires' of Pope, had a thousand times more sense and meaning than the majestic blank verse of Pitt; and yet the latter, like Milton, stalked with a conscious dignity of pre-eminence, and fascinated his audience with that respect which always attends the pompous but often hollow idea of the sublime."
Wolfe, though already suffering from more than his chronic ill-health, was ubiquitous and indefatigable; now behind Monckton's guns at Point Lévis, now with Townshend's batteries at Montmorency, now up the river, ranging with his glass those miles of forbidding cliffs which he may already have begun to think he should one day have to climb.
His Montmorency batteries seemed to be pitching their shells very thickly into the French, and his three brigades of infantry were all ready to act together at the right time. Accordingly, for the hottest hours of that scorching day, Monckton's men grilled in the boats while Townshend's and Murray's waited in camp. At four the tide was low and Wolfe ordered the landing to begin.
It is impossible for a human creature to speak well for three hours and a half; I question even if Belial, who, according to Milton, was the orator of the fallen angels, ever spoke so long at a time. There must have been, a trick in Charles Townshend's speaking for the Preliminaries; for he is infinitely above having an opinion.
Their right was protected by the Mahmudiyeh Canal which ran from the Tigris to the Euphrates, and their main position consisted of two strongly fortified lines on the eastern bank of the Tigris. Townshend's attack on the 22nd resembled his attack on Kut, and after hard fighting the first line was carried.
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