Napoleon at St. Helena attributed much of his success in the field to the fact that he was not hampered by governments at home. Every modern commander, down certainly to the present moment, must have envied him. Kinglake's mordant pen depicts with felicity and compression the men of Downing Street, who without military experience or definite political aim, thwarted, criticised, over- ruled, tormented, their much-enduring General. We have Aberdeen, deficient in mental clearness and propelling force, by his horror of war bringing war to pass; Gladstone, of too subtle intellect and too lively conscience, "a good man in the worst sense of the term"; Palmerston, above both in keenness of instinct and in strength of will, meaning war from the first, and biding his time to insure it; Newcastle, sanguine to the verge of rashness, loyally adherent to Lord Raglan while governed by his own judgment, distrustful under stress of popular clamour; Panmure, ungenerous, rough-tongued, violent, churlish, yet not malevolent - "a rhinoceros rather than a tiger" - hurried by subservience to the newspaper Press into injustice which he afterwards recognized, yet did but sullenly repair. We see finally that dominant Press itself, personified in the all-powerful Delane, a potentate with convictions atonce flexible and vehement; forceful without spite and merciless without malignity; writing no articles, but evoking, shaping, revising all. The French commanders were not hampered by the muzzled Paris Press, which had long since ceased to utter any but dictated sentiments; they suffered even more disastrously from the imperious interference of the Tuileries. Canrobert's inaction, mutability, sudden alarms, flagrant breaches of faith, were inexplicable until long afterwards, when the fall of the Empire disclosed the secret instructions - disloyal to his allies and ruinous to the campaign - by which Louis Napoleon shackled his unhappy General. In Canrobert's successor, Pelissier, he met his match. For the first time a strong man headed the French army. Short of stature, bull- necked and massive in build, with grey hair, long dark moustache, keen fiery eyes, his coarse rough speech masking tested brain power and high intellectual culture, he brought new life to the benumbed French army, new hope to Lord Raglan. The duel between the resolute general and the enraged Emperor is narrated with a touch comedy. All that Lord Raglan desired, all that the Emperor forbade, Pelissier was stubbornly determined to accomplish; the siege should be pressed at once, the city taken at any cost, the expedition to Kertch resumed. Once only, under torment of the Emperor's reproaches and the Minister at War's remonstrances, his resolution and his nerve gave way; eight days of failing judgment issued in the Karabelnaya defeat, the severest repulse which the two armies had sustained; but the paralysis passed away, he showed himself once more eager to act in concert with the English general; - when the long-borne strain of disappointment and anxiety sapped at last Lord Raglan's vital forces, and the hard fierce Frenchman stood for upwards of an hour beside his dead colleague's bedside, "crying like a child."The lieutenants of Lord Raglan in the Crimea have long since passed away, but in artistic epical presentment they retain their place around him. Airey, his right hand from the first disembarkation at Kalamita Bay, strong-willed, decisive, ardent, thrusting away suspense and doubt, untying every knot, is vindicated by his Chief against the Duke of Newcastle's wordy inculpation in the severestdespatch perhaps everpenned to his official superior by a soldier in the field. Colin Campbell, with glowing face, grey kindling eye, light, stubborn, crisping hair, leads his Highland brigade tip the hill against the Vladimir columns, till "with the sorrowful wail which bursts from the brave Russian infantry when they have to suffer loss," eight battalions of the enemy fall back in retreat. Lord Lucan, tall, lithe, slender, his face glittering and panther- like in moments of strenuous action, wins our hearts as he won Kinglake's, in spite of the mis-aimed cleverness and presumptuous self- confidence which always criticised and sometimes disobeyed the orders of his Chief. General Pennefather, "the grand old boy," his exulting radiant face flashing everywhere through the smoke, his resonant innocuous oaths roaring cheerily down the line, sustains all day the handful of our troops against the tenfold masses of the enemy. Generous and eloquent are the notices of Korniloff and Todleben, the great sailor and the great engineer, the soul and the brain of the Sebastopol defence. The first fell in the siege, the second lived to write its history, to become a valued friend of Kinglake, to explore and interpret in his company long afterwards the scenes of struggle; his book and his personal guidance gave to the historian what would otherwise have been unattainable, a clear knowledge of the conflict as viewed from within the town.
同类推荐
热门推荐
黄克剑论教育·学术·人生
作者自九十年代初开始关注教育,首创“生命化教育”理论,其“成全”、“范本”等诸多独到的教育概念已被教育界广泛应用。本书收入了作者诸多谈教育的精彩文章,其鲜活的思想一定可以走进教育者的生命,进而改变他们看待教育、实践教育的方式。传世兵法
《传世兵法》共分三个部分:《五轮书》、《孙子兵法》、《罗马兵法》。这三部兵法在世界范围内被广泛研究。其中《五轮书》重在提倡一种内外圆融、身心合璧、知行统一的制胜法则。《孙子兵法》则是强调战略战术,在军事对阵中如何运筹帷幄。《罗马兵法》是备受西方学术界推崇的一部古罗马时期的军事著作,包含作者对于军事管理的先进思想,是奠定西方军事理论的基础之作。