The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-16 00:00:00

THE ARMY.

The camp at Browndown has been broken up,
and the troops which have been stationed here for
rifle practice have returned to head-quarters in
Portsmouth garrison. The troops composing the
garrison will be brigaded on Southsea-common as
often as may be practicable during the remainder
of the summer.

The following is the list of the officers and men
who will embark at Custom-house-quay, Gravesend,
to-morrow, on board the chartered East India troop-
ship Conflict, 1,320 tons, for Bengal—viz., Captain
George Bushman, and 39 men of the 2d (the
Queen's) Dragoon Guards, Ensign Rodney S. Rid-
dell, Ensign John R. Collins and 100 noncommis-
sioned officers and men of the 70th Regiment, Lieut.
C. E. Gore Browne and 109 men of the 82d Regi-
ment, and Lieut. Annesley Eyre and 126 men of
all ranks of the 90th Light Infantry, from
Canterbury ; Lieut. 11. Archdall, Lieut. H.
G. Webster, Ensign T. A. Davies, Ensign
Zachary Macaulay, and 69 men of the Ist batta-
lion 20th Regiment, from Chatham ; Lieut. John
Randal Wilmer, Royal Artillery, from Woolwich ;
and Staff Assist.-Surg. J. Alfred Illingworth, from
Buttevant. The Newcastle, 1,137 tons, Capt. C.
Wiltshire, has been ordered to embark the follow-
ing troops at Gravesend, for Calcutta, viz. ;—Capt.
Cecil F. Holder and 45 men of the 6th Dragoon

Up to Saturday morning last there were pro-
bably a great many people who, although rather
priding themselves upon the amount and extent of
their infprmation, yet did not know much about
Chiselhurst, for Chiselhurst is a sweet, retired,
country place, down in Kent, which still enjoys
the now rare advantage of being some three or four
miles distant from the nearest railway station, and
although only twelve miles from the great metro•
polis, is still as green, and as sylvan as if no-
body lived there but Robin Hood and his merry
men, and nobody came there but the occasional
wayfayer with whom the stout outlaw was wont
to have his bout at quarter staff, and whom, hav-
ing first taken from his cudgelling like a gentle-
man, he treated with true greenwood hospi-
tality to the warden pie and malvousie which he
had borrowed from the neighbouring abbey, Chisel-
hurst is only to be approached by steep and narrow
country roads, green at the sides, and brown in the
middle, over which the hawthorn of the marginal
hedges casts a perfume which Mr. Rimmel would
in vain attempt to imitate. Except on the rare occa-
sion of an invasion of volunteers, the only sounds
heard in Chiselhurst are the carol of the birds, and
the loud single voice of the husbandman talking to
his horses or himself in the fields. Here and there
a curious little angular bosky nook breaks the mo-
notonous hedge line, and a cluster of some half
dozen wooden cottages is seen, with trellised win-
dows just like the opening scene in " Love in a
Village," with red-tiled roofs, and a perfect panoply
of blushing roses, which might be taken for so
many younger branches of the large families of
chubby children that sprawled in the gardens, or
shouted at the wickets, or sato upon to shoulders
or clung to the necks of the comely dames who
watched the volunteers with smiling exultation as
they tramped past on Saturday last. On Friday
evening, '‘‘ when the sun was low," Chiselhurst,
with its hill and dale, slope ',tad woodland, was the
typo of rural peace and rustic seclusion. On Satur-
day morning, " when the sun was high," it was a
mimic Hohenlinden, its normally quiet and unfre-
quented nuts sending up clouds of agonised dust,
its still atmosphere, broken by the clang of arms,
the measured tramp of brave men, the strains of
military bands, and the crash of contending omni-
buses, the last named loaded with nervous passen-
gers, whose fears the coachman treated with
the most contemptuous indifference, his every
anxiety being to get backwards and forwards to
the railway station as often as possible before the
commencement of the great business of the day. The
rustics stood at their little gates, wondering as if it
were an' earthquake, the children held up their tiny
hands and shouted, and the very roses on the
cottage fronts seemed as if blushing with a deeper in-
tensity under the excitement of this suddentransition
from perpetual quiet to the noise, hurry, and con-
fusion of warlike movements. It was impossible for
any one, whilst gazing on this sweet picture of
pleasant meadows, which under every breath of the
sumuler breeze revelled in new changes of light and
shade—the rich fields of corn, that were just begin-
ning to be tipped with gold—the smiling hedges,
crossing, and twisting, and intersecting each other
everywhere, like a gay braiding en nature's mantle
—the cottages, and the roses, and the comely women,
and the chuby, shouting children, without making
a sad comparison between the scene we then looked
upon, and what it might become if some fell in-
vader were permitted to pass over it like a simoom,
and, at the bidding of an ambitious despot, to make
another Palatinate of the happy villages and fer-
tile valleys of Kent. The young volunteer, as he
tramped sturdily along the dusty road, must have
felt in looking round that he had. a country worth
fighting for, and even the soberer passengers in the
crazy omnibuses consoled themselves at every re-
curring bit of level road with consolatory reflec-
tions of a somewhat similar character.
But this was Chiselhurst, the bright end of the
diorama, which commenced at London-bridge,
where the picture was as different as one represen-
tative of mundane things could possibly be to
another. The railway authorities had evidently
been taken by surprise, and although Mr. Knight,
the active superintendent of the South-Eastern line,
unexhausted by his exertions at the Agricultural
Show only a few days before, was unwearied and
most successful in his exertions to accommodate and
transmit everybody, the means of transit were ob-
viously unequal to the sudden demand, and the
struggle to get stowed away in any kind of a rail-
way carriage far surpassed anything we had ever
before witnessed during rather an extended expe-
rience of monster gatherings- We have had often to
fight our way to the door of a railway carriage, and
to hold on by the handles at the risk of a broken arm
or of being dragged off the platform,but then we had
to contend only with ordinary crowds, eompressible
civilians like ourselves, and could generally get a
place somehow on the first assault. But on this
occasion the platform was densely packed with
athletic young volunteers, all eager to be in time
on Campdcn-hill, and whenever any one else
attempted to get in with a platoon the only result
was to get his head buried in a forest of Enfield
rifles, long and short, and to feel his companions
scrambling into the carriages in dozens over his
back. The police, who endeavoured to keep the
edge of the platform clear, were swept away like
the mill on the floss, and thus, train after train, had
attempts to be made and disaPpointments to be ex-
perienced, until slowly and tediously an inadequate
noumber of carriages found seats for all the crowd.
The journey down too, although only 12 miles,
took up an hour and a half, so great is the traffic
on the South-Eastern family of lines, and so fre-
quent the stoppages required for passing or crossing
trains. To manage all this with safety to human
life must have required all the vigilance and all the
attention 'of the whole railway staff, and the suc-
cess with which that all-important object was
achieved, both going and returning—the latter in-
finitely the most critical portion of the day's tra-
velling—reflects the utmost credit on the superim
tendent and the whole of his subordinates, on whom
the responsibility rested. As complaints will pro-
bably be made against the South-Eastern Company
for insufficiency of preparation, it is only fair to
them to mention that nothing that had transpired
previous to Saturday respecting the sham fight
in expecting that it would be so great
justified them
a success and sopowerful au attraction for the
'
public as it subsequently turned out to be. Rumours,
too well authenticated, were in circulation of divi-
; sions amongst the volunteer chiefs—how Lord
Grosvenor had refused the attendance of the
Queen's, and how Lord Elcho had determined to
keep back the London Scottish. The attempt at
a volunteer sham fight was considered to be prema-
' ture, and there were not wanting people to assert
that Lord Ranelagh was running a race for tivolun-

As a matter of course the succes'sive delays
arising from the sudden invasion of the London-
bridge platform by compact bodies of 500 or
1,000 men at a time, were totally unknown to those
visitors who got down early, and had taken their
places in the reserved seats by two o'clock in
the afternoon. Their patience was sorely tried, as
the review did not commence until seven, and
even the picturesque beauties of the park had
exhausted their curiosity long before that time.
Campden-park is a very pretty country gentleman's
place, with plenty of hill and dale, and some rather
respectable plantations. A little river divides it
from Bickley-park, its neighbour, much better
wooded, but as both slope down to the river they
are admirably adapted to enable people to see a
sham fight going on in one or both, whatever diffi-
culties their steeply undulating surface might op-
pose to the performance of complicated military
evolutions. Cavalry could hardly have made any
very brilliant charges against those steep hills, nor
would artillery have much claim to the epithet
"Flying," in moving about amongst the dense
shrubberies and brushwood, but both cavalry and
artillery had been refused, and this refusal,, more
than anything else, contributed to the triumphant
success of the day. The commanders were obliged
to confine themselves entirely to infantry manoeu-
vres, and the agile volunteers made nothing of
clambering up the hills, or rushing down the val-
leys, leaping the ditches, or even plunging into the
river, a whole company having in one case crossed,
holding their rifles over their heads, and with the
water rising far above their waists. The result was
a most animating sham fight, which everyone could
see, and the manoeuvres of which they could follow
and understand ; and accordingly it was enjoyed,
followed, and applauded to the echo. The prepara-
tory arrangements were of the simplest kind. Two
or three stands-for spectators in the most elevated
positions, and a line of bivouac tents " few and far
between" at the edge of the park, were all the ac-
commodation provided for either spectators or vo-
lunteers ; but the whole surface of the park pre-
sented a succession of amphitheatres, so that people
had only to sit down on the grass, spread out their
napkins, and discuss their luncheons, whilst they
could see all that was going on everywhere around
them. The crowd accumulated very gradually. At
first a thin fringe of people only could be seen on
every ridge, but gradually it swelled, and bright-
ened with gay costumes, until at last there were
perhaps 25,000 persons grouped everywhere over
a park of 600 or 700 acres, waiting patiently or
impatiently, according to their temi•eraynent, for
the arrival of the troops. As for the " Grand
Stands," the occupants soon got heartily tired of
them, and, descending, mixed with the crowd, where
there was much more excitement going on. The
ladies, of course, remained, and would have been
very dull indeed but that the modern discoveries of
science came to their aid, and enabled the gallant
commander, Lord Ranelagh, to send from his distant
encampment an inquiry of " Whether a little music
would be agreeable to the ladies." Professor Wheat-
stone's field telegraph had been laid down, and was
in full work, under the skilful manipulation of Mr.
Holmes, in front of the stand. Of coarse, the other
end was in the battle-field at the service of the
Commander-in-Chief, and the latter availed himself
of it to send the aforesaid polite message. The
answer " most agreeable," of true telegraphic
brevity, was promptly returned, and in due time
Herr Sehallehn with his accomplished artists of the
South Middlesex band took up a position in front
of the grand stand, and discoursed most eloquent
music during the day. But for this judicious com-
bination of knightly courtesy and scientific manipu-
lation, we fear that the fair spectators of the tour-
nament would have felt the time hang heavily on
their hands long before the mimic strife of the
knights began. Previous to this, there was a
dreadful conspiracy of nigger minstrels to drive
every one frantic with the rattle of bones and the
maddening thrum of banjoes, and a persevering
band of little boys, who, with drums and fifes,
seemed to be perfectly übiquitous, kept popping up
everywhere, deluding the expectant company with
the notion that at length the volunteers were com-
ing. Twenty times we could hear the ladies exclaim,
" Hark, here they are," but in a few moments the
now familiar discordance of the never to be finished
" Annie Laurie," was recognised, and a murmur
" Oh, it's only those tiresome little boys," was fol-
lowed by another gloomy collapse into silent ex-
pectation. Later in the day the beer began to tell
slightly on the peripatetic crowd. One gentleman
iu his shirt sleeves planed his back against a tree,
and boldly announced that " Forty policemen
shouldn't stir him from that spot." The crowd
soon gathered round, and when some one asked
" If this was the sham fight," the observa-
tion was accepted as a sally of mild sarcasm on the
military delay, and was received with shouts of
applause. With such incidents as these the time was
whiled away during a long summer's day until 7
o'clock, when the man couvres began in the distant
woods, from which a rattling report and an occa-
sional puff of white smoke proved that "vitiations"
saltpetre" had at last commenced its operations
amid the opposing columns of the volunteers.
In accordance with the established practice in
the case of sham fights, an order of the day had
previously been published, telling how the battle
was to be won and lost, and enumerating the troops
that were to be engaged; but, inasmuch as this
programme included the operations of cavalry and
artillery, which were not allowed to come, and enu-
merated various metropolitan corps, the leaders of
which thought it wise to stay-away, its publication
here would be very little elucidatory of what really
did occur. It amused the spectators to read it and
grumble over it whilst they waited, but the altera-
tion which subsequently occurred was received in
the best spirit, and the actualloperations withshouts
of acclamation and applause. Previous to the
signal for attack, which was given at seven o'clock,
the first brigade of the second or attacking divi-
sion was formed in a field in the rear of Bickley
Wood, and they formed the left point of the
attack. This brigade was about 1,200 strong,
consisting of three battalions—the first formed of
the West Middlesex, under the command of Ma-
jor Compton, consisting of five companies of the
West Middlesex Rifles, 260 strong. The second
battalion was under the command of Captain Wil-
kinson, consisting of two companies of the 14th
Middlesex (Highgate), two companies of the 29th,
or North Middlesex, commanded by Captains Ross
and Cameron, and consisting of about 100 men ; two
companies of the 20th, or Railway Rifles, about 80
men, under Captain Houghton ; one company of
the lornsey Rifles, 50 men, under Capt. Warner ;
and one company of the Hampstead, under Captain
Whines, about 30 men. The 3d battalion consisted
of the 19th Working Men's College, three compa-
nies, aboutir
130
Edward F. Buxton,men; the 3d Ttwownernmpans
Hamlets,ie
under Sir
or about 60, men; the Rifles,7thSurreyl2o m
under
Major Major Beresford, two companies, about
the 4th Surrey, under Captain Emans, the Bth
Surrey Rifles, Capt.Yeatman ; and the 9th Surrey,
Capt. Hastie. This brigade was under the com-
mand of Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Radstock and
the Marquis of Abercorn. Lord Valletort and
Major Chitty acted as aides-decamp to the com-
mander of this brigade. The second brigade was the
stronger force, and consisted of the South Middlesex,
commanded by Colonel Thorold ; Ist battalion by
Major M'Pherson and Major Burke ; the 2d batta-

I lion by Major Farrell, consisting of the 3d, 4th, Bth,
13th, 18th, 21st, and 34th Kent Rifles ; and
the 3d battalion, commanded by the Hon.
Colonel Lindsay, consisting of the St. George's
Rifles ; Civil Service, Lord Bury ; Padding-
ton Rifles, General Donning ; the Scottish
Rifles, Ist Company ; the Artists, Capt. Phillips ;
and the Barnet Rifles, Capt. Taylor. This brigade
was posted on the right of Bickley Wood, near Mr.
Dell's park, and was under the command-in-chief
cf Lieut.-Col. Hicks. This division, of course, ad-
vanced, from the open country.
.Ihe defending division was commanded by Col.
Hicks-7-Ist and 2d Battalions—Major Close, City.
Brigade. 3d Battalion—Capt. M'l4;on, engineers;
Hou. Capt. Bruce, Six-Feet Guards ; Major Scott,
Ist Kent Rifles ; Capt. Lamborde, 33d Kent Rifles.
The first movement was made by the West Mid-
dlesex advancing through a thick hedge from the
field above mentioned, through the enclosed grounds
of an old farm-house leacling into Bickley Wood on
the right, and the remainder of the battalions of
this brigade debouched by a narrow lane to the left.
After marching some quarter of a mile, a movement
to the right took place up a steep embankment,
which brought the battalions into the middle of the
wood. After advancing some 200 yards along an
exceeding rough but romantic roadway, covered
and surrounded by trees and brushwood, the first
sounds of an enemy being in front became known
from a brisk fire of skirmishers into the wood.
These were the first shots fired, and the first in-
timation that an enemy was in position, and,
as it was believed, in force. Skirmishing
companies of the -West Middlesex took the
initiative in firing from the wood, whilst the 14th
and 29th North_ Middlesex, the 20th and the
Hornsey and Thitentead Were lyin in -anibusliD
' The skirmishers advanced from the wood
beating back those of the enemy, and on a given
signal the whole attacking body made their ap-
pearance through the wood and formed a most
splendid line, and commenced firing iu volleys in
fine order. The army of defence being right under
the hill upon which the great body of the specta-
tors stood, the meaning and object of these preli-
minary movements were at first by no means clear
to civilian comprehension. We could see small red
rows of the Six-feet Guards and their similarly co-
loured comrades skirmishing in the middle of a
field with desperate energy. They peppered the
wood so perseveringly that the internal slaughter
must have been really awful. Then, another field
was covered with heavy columns of infantry
ranged at right angles to the spectator, and we were
for a time very much puzzled as to what business
they had there, and what they were going to do.
Suddenly the bugle sounded the advance, and each
column, as if turning on a pivot, wheeled slowly
round, and formed a magnificent line extending the
whole length of the field. This manoeuvre was
beautifully executed, and elicited shouts of applause.
They were the invading army, and they were about
to annihilate the devoted garrison of the wood.
Now, the plot began to thicken, the smoke to rise
more densely, and the understanding of the lookers
on to be .more and more confused. We could see
Alderman Rose on a white charger riding daunt-
lessly up and down in the thickest of the fire,
and Lord Ranelagh and Colonel Hicks, like King
William and the great French Marshal, imparting
confidence to their men, and expressing them-
selves in the most reckless manner. The time for
skirmishing had now evidently ceased, and the
pickets had all been driven, or celled in. Fresh
forces marched up from the road, or emerged
in heavy columns from the woods, and the smart
file firing which we had so much admired became
changed into rattling vollies, the closeness and
regularity of which perfectly astonished every one
who heard them. The spectators, men, women, and
children, elated with the strife, had by this time
crowded down the hill, and were quite close up
to the defending army, whom they encouraged by
their plaudits. To their surprise, however, the
moment came when their champions must give way,
and perhaps a more singular sight was never wit-
nessed than the retreat up the hill, the volunteers
retiring with their faces to the enemy, their confused
ranks mixed up with groups of ladies and children,
all laughing and enjoying the fun, making nothing
of the rattle of musketry by which they were sur-
rounded, the smell of powder, or the gun wadding
which was flying about their heads in showers.
But our brave engineers, our stalwart guards,
showed not the slightest symptom of fatigue. They
" dressed up" with the accuracy of a parade, and
fixing their terrible sword-bayonets prepared for
the final stand. We could hear the word " Charge!"
and in a moment down they went upon their
assailants. Hand to hand they struggled for a
short period, but at last, again defeated, they were
again driven up the hill, and the ladies and the
children and the crowd and the reporters along
with them. It was decidedly the most interest.
ing and the most intelligible scene of the
day's spectacle. Now, Hicks and his engineers
had it ; now, Thorold seemed to gain ground,
and lookers-on shouted with excitement, as if
they saw a real battle. There was directly opposite
the reserved seats a piece of table land at the top of
the hill. a corner of which was enclosed with hur-
dles. -Within this little enclosure stood Gen. Eyre,
Col. Knox, and several other experienced military
men, and they looked on with perfect delight
and astonishment at what was being done on the
plateau before them. At one side the attack formed
a magnificent line, and at the other the-defenders
stood to their arms, sullen and resolute, as the Spar-
tans may have done at Thermopylae. The deadly
Enfield went to work on both sides, and the steadi-
ness and intensity Of the fire were perfectly mar-
vellous. No desultory "pop, pop," as one might
have expected from such forces, but a fierce,
regulated incessant rattle, whilst a thousand tongues
of flame came rushing from the guns in the twi-
light with the regularity of long rows of gas gets.
A most experienced military man, who looked on,
said he had never seen a more deadly or steady fire,
and, what was better, as he forcibly expressed it,
the men who after three months' drill could fire that
way in play, would fire twice as well in earnest.
The steadiness of the lines, the terrible certainty of
the fire, as indicated by the measured andrapid
roll of the reports and the exact order of the
flashes, the advance " like a wall" of the conque-
rors, and the tardy retreat of the vanquished—
all made the illusion so complete that we felt
quite a sensation of relief.when the sight of a flag
I of truce announced the cessation of hostilities.

Then did those late combatants forget all their
feuds and all their fatigues, and march gaily off in
search of the bivouacs which had been promised, but
which their commanders, like the Austrian generals
at Solferino, had quite forgotten to supply with
creature comforts. Captain Grant was to have been
there with his much lauded cooking apparatus; but
there was alas ! neither the cook nor the cooking
apparatus, nor anything to cook. Feeling our•
selves, some slight interest in this question, we
could fully sympathise with the disappointment of
the brave volunteers ; but they bore it without
grumbling, like gentlemen as they were, formed
again and marched off four miles to the railway
station, making up for their inability to fill their
stomachs by filling the air with their merry, manly
songs as they tramped along the road.