The Times Great Military Lives: Leadership and Courage – from Waterloo to the Falklands in Obituaries. Ian Brunskill
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СКАЧАТЬ from taking up arms again against the Government of the United States until properly discharged.’ Lee, on the 9th, met Grant near Appomattox Court-house, and the terms of surrender were agreed upon. The list of paroled prisoners was 27,805, but of these barely one third had any arms, there being only 10,000 muskets and 30 cannon found. All the rest of Lee’s army had been killed or captured, or had deserted during the operations around Richmond and Petersburg.

      Thus ended the great civil war, and Grant became a hero of world-wide renown.

      Grant was himself partly responsible for confusion over his names. Christened Hiram Ulysses, he wished to avoid being nick-named ‘Hug’ and so reversed the sequence on his application for West Point, but the congressman through whom the application passed mistakenly entered him as Ulysses Simpson. A fine horseman since boyhood, it was his hope to join the cavalry, in which he would doubtless have done well, as his understanding of manoeuvre and pursuit during the Civil War was to demonstrate, but lack of a cavalry vacancy resulted in him being commissioned into the 4th Infantry. His reason for leaving the army in 1854 is attributed to a rebuke for heavy drinking, through boredom, while in command of a small isolated fort on the California frontier.

      There are indications of some intellectual laziness, not only in his failed business ventures but also in his conduct of set-piece battles where much careful thought is required. In fluid warfare, opportunities to exploit the enemy’s situation suggest themselves, so long as the commander has a working grasp of the ground, but frontal attacks such as he made at Corinth in 1862 and against Lee in Richmond in 1864 brought only a terrible ‘butcher’s bill’ of casualties to the Union Army. His slow and deliberate speech was consistent with his real military strength as a strategist, as was his lack of outward concern for the losses his mistakes incurred, a concern usually associated with the thinking of a tactician.

      The American Civil War was the first fought in a nation-wide industrial context and Grant appreciated that from well before he became commander-in-chief of the Union armies. His strategies were designed to destroy the Confederate capability and will to continue the struggle, although the idea of Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’ devastating the wheatlands of Georgia, came from Sherman. Grant was initially opposed to the plan and even as complete success was in prospect, urged Sherman to caution. A straight comparison between Grant and his Confederate opponent Robert E. Lee is complicated by their different troop strengths and politico-strategic objectives. Given an even contest, Lee would probably have won.

       LEE

       American soldier: ‘one of the noblest soldiers who have ever drawn a sword in a cause which they believed just.’

      12 OCTOBER 1870

      EVEN AMID THE turmoil of the great European struggle the intelligence from America announcing that General Robert E. Lee is dead will bs received with deep sorrow by many in this country, as well as by his followers and fellow-soldiers in America. It is but a few years since Robert Lee ranked among the great men of the present Time. He was the able soldier of the Southern Confederacy, the bulwark of her northern frontier, the obstacle to the advance of the Federal armies and the leader who twice threatened by the capture of Washington, to turn the tide of success, and to accomplish a revolution which would have changed the destiny of the United States.

      Six years passed by, and then we heard that he was dying at an obscure town in Virgina where since the collapse of the Confederacy, he had seen acting as a schoolmaster. When at the head of the last 8,000 of his valiant army – the remnants which battle, sickness, and famine had left him – he delivered up his sword to General Grant at Appomattox Court House, his public career ended; he passed away from men’s thoughts; and few in Europe cared to inquire the fate of the General whose exploits had aroused the wonder of neutrals and belligerents, and whose noble character had excited the admiration of even the most bitter of his political enemies. If, however, success is not always to be accounted as the sole foundation of renown, General Lee’s life and career deserve to he held in reverence by all who admire the talents of a General and the noblest qualities of a soldier.

      His family were well known in Virginia. Descended from the Cavaliers who first colonized that State, they had produced more than one man who fought with distinction for their country. They were allied by marriage to Washington, and previous to the present war were possessed of much wealth; General, then Colonel Robert Lee residing, when not employed with his regiment, at Arlington Heights, one of the most beautiful places in the neighbourhood of Washington.

      When the civil war first broke out he was a colonel in the United States’ army, who had served with distinction in Mexico, and was recounted among the best of the American officers. To him, as to others, the difficult choice presented itself whether to take the side of his State, which had joined in the secession of the South, or to support the Central Government. It is said that Lee debated the matter with General Scott, then commander-in-chief, that both agreed that their first duty lay with their State, but that the former only put in practice what each held in theory. It was not until the second year of the war that Lee came prominently forward, when, at the indecisive battle of Fairoaks, in front of Richmond, General Johnston having been wounded, he took command of the army; and subsequently drove McClennan, with great loss, to the banks of the James river. From that time he became the recognized leader of the Confederate army of Virginia.

      He repulsed wave after wave of invasion, army after army being hurled against him only to be thrown back beaten and in disorder. The Government at Washington were kept in constant alarm by the near vicinity of his troops, and witnessed more than once the entry into their entrenchments of a defeated and disorganized rabble which a few days previous had left there a confident host. Twice he entered the Northern States at the head of a successful army, and twice indecisive battles alone preserved from destruction the Confederate Government and turned the fortune of the war.

      He impressed his character on those who acted under him. Ambition for him had no charms; duty alone was his guide. His simplicity of life checked luxury and display among his officers, while his disregard of hardships silenced the murmurs of his harassed soldiery. By the troops he was loved as a father as well as admired as a general; and his deeply religious character impressed itself on all who were brought in contact with him and made itself felt through the ranks of the Virginian army. It is said. that during four years of war he never slept in a house, but in winter and summer shared the hardships of his soldiers. Such was the man who in mature age, at a period of life when few generals have acquired renown, fought against overwhelming odds for the cause which he believed just. He saw many of his bravest generals and dearest friends fall around him, but although constantly exposed to fire, escaped without a wound.

      The battles which prolonged and finally decided the issue of the contest are now little more than names. Atnietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg are forgotten in Europe by all excepting those who study recent wars as lessons for the future and would collect from the deeds of other armies experience which they may apply to their own. To them the boldness of Lee’s tactics at Chancellorsville will ever be a subject of admiration; while even those who least sympathize with his cause will feel for the General who saw the repulse of Long-street’s charge at Gettysburg, and beheld the failure of an attempt to convert a defensive war into one of attack, together with the consequent abandonment of the bold stroke which he had hoped would terminate the contest.

      Quietly he rallied the broken troops; taking all the blame on himself, he encouraged the officers dispirited by the reverse, and in person formed up the scattered detachments. Again, when fortune had turned against the Confederacy, when overwhelming forces from all sides pressed back her defenders, Lee for a year held his ground with a constantly diminishing army, fighting battle after battle in the forests and swamps around Richmond. No reverses seemed to dispirit him, no misfortune appeared to СКАЧАТЬ