The Sun.
London, England, 1839-05-17 00:00:00

PHYSICAL FORCE-MILITARY

SCIENCE.

(From the Monmouthshire Merlin)
At the present moment, agitated as the public mind
unfortunately is, by the tempest of folly and sedition
that has lately passed over the country, it may be
useful for those persons who, seduced by the wild
harangues of the apostles of strife, are absurd enough
to think that by an imposing array of physical force,
they would be able successfully to oppose the consti-
tuted authorities of the country, to " mark, learn, and
inwardly digest" the sentiments of a man—himself a
Chartist, of much notoriety, but one who knows
the hopelessness of a popular struggle, and therefore
raises his warning voice against it. We allude to
Alexander Somerville, late a private in the Scotch
Greys, who, the readers of the Merlin well recollect,

came under the infliction of-Martial law, at the time
of the passing of the Reform Bill, for introducing
publications obnoxious to his commanding officer,
into the barrack room. Somerville was immediately

afterwards discharged, and has since been in Spain,
and highly distinguished himself in the Auxiliary
Legion, under General Evans. In politics be is a de-
cided Chartist, and has, •it is said, considerable influ-
ence in the " London Democratic Association." He
can have no object to mislead, but, on the contrary, if
his opinions coincided with some of the wild Democrats
around him, he, from his military experience, would be
exalted into the highest rank among them. This is
Somerville's view of the result of Physical Force Agi-
tation :
" Much is heard of the manufacture of pikes. This
weapon is, I suppose, intended as a substitute for the
bayonet. Miserable delusion I From the Ist Life Guards
to the last battalion of Marines, there irnot one arm of war
so innocent of blood as this harmless, though famous wea-
pon, the bayonet. And what, I would seriously ask, would
even hundreds of thousands of pikemen do against such
arms of war? If the question of Colonel Mitchell, • where
is the living witness who has yet come forward to say that
he, John Thompson, or Richard Johnson, witnessed a
bayonet combat?'—if this question cannot be answered,
and if the bayonet is, therefore, proved to have been, even
on the muzzle of a loaded musket, so harmless, what is a
pike to he on the end of a staff? Then, suppose every man
had a rifle or a musket, and a bayonet to each, what could
they do? A large army might be collected together ;
they might burn mills and burn cotton warehouses, and
these being a plentiful and an easily kindled feel, they
might lay the whole midland counties in ashes, their own
miserable dwellings amongst them : but what could they
do against the quantity of artillery which would, from a
distance, to which they could not return a fire of musketry,
mow them down as the ripe harvest: * * The
Major-General commanding the district, having found
the troops driven back in every quarter by the vast num-
bers and determined resolution of the insurgents, would
concentrate them as nearly as he could to one point, in
order that he might inflict summary chastisement—re-
inspirit his troops—and dispirit the disagreeable enemy
which he now found to be possessed of energies far beyond
what the silly newspaper flatterers of the aristrocracy had
represented, and what he had believed. He would lead
or send on his troops. The cavalry would make some
impression ; but posted behind walls, ditches, and houses,
the insurgents would give them a good peppering.
The horsemen would retreat. The cheering shout of first
success would stimulate the mighty
,tuasses. They might
not, however, have made a movement to their front, when
some companies of infantry would come on, npparently
determined to charge them. A few of these men would
be brought down with the rifles, and the remainder would
right-about-face and retreat. The shouts, now louder
than even the death thunder, and the breasts of the pike-
men, heaving with strong courage, would inspirit the
whole to the charge. Onwards they would rush, high in
the hope of future, as they were strong in the assurance of
present success, To follow up the advantage every man's
courage would lead him on, an independent hero in himself.
But, ah I bow well fulfilled the scheme on the part of the
regulars,and how slaughterously succceful ! The infantryhay.
ing drawn them out, the cavalry, led on at the gallop, would
meet the insurgents in front and on the flanks ! All would
be disaster Where or bow could the square be formed?
No battalion could have been organised into divisions, with
those told off into subdivisions—sections—right and left
files ; or if they had been told off, every man must have
either forgotten what be was, or where his place should be.
And if that was even recollected, which it is not in man-
kind to recollect without incessant practice at daily drill,
the confusion would be such, that divisions could not be re-
formed froM the mingled atoms of their composition. At
this awful moment, with no cavalry to intercept with a
counter-charge ; no artillery to pour ball and shell-shot
over the devoted heads of the reckless pikemen to stop the
assailants, and no pivot men of sections to face and mark
those points for wheeling into square in that mathematical
precision so indispensable at such a moment, what could he
done ? where would be the use of the miserable pikes ? All
battle history and experience tell that such unformed infantry 1
area ready prey to cavalry, even though they might have
loaded muskets ands bayonets on them, which at such a
moment would give a reception to a horseman of a very
different kind from a mere pike ! Then if so, what would
become of the wretched pikemen at this crisis, when
pierced by the impetuous lance—slashed by the unopposed
sword, and trampled to the earth by the horse-hoof, they
found no defence in their inrioxious weapons ? Yes; what
would become of them ? The cr,valry would, if properly
commanded—and no doubt it would be in good hands—
the cavalry would charge the flanks, cut otl" retreat, and
beyond what they killed of the foremost and tile bravest
—they would hem in some hundreds of prisoners, who,
being taken with izrms in their hands, would be hung
as the Canadians ate, without the Lord Mayor and
merchants of London interposing a prayer for mercy
to prisoners, as they have recently done in the
case of Spain. No 1 this humanity, which is shocked
at the horrors of Van Haien and Cabrera, does not
interpose a prayer to arrest executions of the identical same
kind in Canada, and will not, when these begin in Eng-
land, see any blot on cur portion of the map of Europe.
The battle of the first day may be supposed to have termi-
nated, or it may not: but whichever way, ,I hate no doubt
but the insurgents would keep manfully to the positions
which they first took up; and from suburban houses and
garden walls of the town, which might be the centre of
these operations. they would issue a plentiful discharge of
musketry which would effectually oppose either cavalry or
infantry. I question not but they might fight a hard day
without sustaining a reverse—should they be more prudent
in the exhibition of their valour than supposed. But give
them every advantage that can be suppositively al-
lowed; let them oppose successfully or even defeat
the Royal troops on the second day, if no artillery
should have arrived from Weedon, the nearest ordnance
depot,—and let them muster two hundred thousand
men, if they will, on the third, which, however, I
could clearly demonstrate as impossible, even though
the names of half a million swelled the muster roll, but
supposing their numbers so great, and allowing them their
due quantity of courage, deducting nothing for probable
incapacity in some of their chiefs—nothing for impru-
dence among the men, nothing for drunkards, plun-
derers, and all those casualties, which I must take the li-
berty of saying wouldpsiake a muster a most difficult task on
the morning of any of these days; but deducting nothing
for such contingencies—supposing that :200,000 men bore
pikes and rifles in some district of Lancashire and MI
pieces of artillery came from Woolwich—and be it known
ten times as much could be sent down—but allowing fifty
field pieces with 5,000 regulars, infantry and cavalry,
to cover the guns,—the 200,000 pike and rifle men
would be mingled in the pile of ruin of the rickety
brick buildings. The insurgents would either come on to the
attack in their vastness of number and boldness of spirit, or
they would entrench themselves in ditches, behind walls, in
gardens and houses, firing from the windows of the latter,
should anything to go within their reach to fire at. But
if they made the attack, the most slaughterous showers of
grape and canister shot would batter down their front;
while shell after shell, rocket on rocket, would drop among
them without intermission. And if, instead of making the
attack they took up positions to defend themselves, the artil-
lery would throw shells and.spherical casesameng them,a bile
the cavalry and infantry would cover these from the sallies
of the desperate. Neither pike, nor pistol, nor rifle, nor
wisdom, nor courage, nor the most virtuous devotion to
their cause, would now avail the insurgents more than if
they sat quietly down to be killed. For, besides the fact
that these pieces of artillery need never go nearer than
barely within rifle shot, and often not so near, because of the
distance from which they can operate, is another, that would
frustrate all zeal and valour on the part of the rifle and
pikemen, viz., that one discharge of spherical case shot
would destroy as many men as five hundred riflemen,
though all the latter had a common good view of their
object ; and again, this shot can be thrown so as to drop
and explode behind the houses—into windows—in short,
to any given point, and its guns can be charged and dis-
charged much faster than a rifle—even as fast as a common
musket. Now, when we take into account that the strength
of the insurgents can only depend on their vast numbers,
we see that the more easily will they become a prey to
those implements of slaughter against which they have none
to compete."

MARKET DRAYTON THEATRE.—An acci-
dent took place on Wednesday last, in the theatre, Market
Drayton, now open under the management of Mr. Ridyard,
which has caused a great sensation in the neighbourhood.
The talented actor, Mr. IL Betty (son of the celebrated
Mr. Henry West Betty, so well known as " the
Young Roscius"), having entered into a short en-
gagement at Drayton, made his second appear-
ance on that evening as Norval, to a crowded
house. During the afterpicce, the Pilot, a percus-
sion gun, used by one of the performers in the piece,
was accidentally dropped, when it went off, and the muzzle
at the time of its exploding, beirg only a few inches from
the breast of a boy,named John Merrill, he was shot to the
heart by the wadding, and instantly expired. The wadding
was found in the left ventricle of the heart. Mr. Betty
was leaning over the boy at the time of the fatal occur-
rence. The shrieks of the mother, on learning the fact,
were heart-rending. The occurrence was purely acciden-
' tal. Salop/cut Journal.
SERIOUS AFFRAY.—An affray of a serious
description occurred on that part of the- Manchester and
Birmingham Railway which is comprised in contracts No.
1 and 2, in Fairfield-street, Manchester, on Wednesday
evening last, originating in a turn-out on the Manchester
and Leeds Railway,