them and finished the affair
handsomely before they had time to recover. Marye's Heights, again,
may be described as a moral surprise, for no Confederate officer
or man that had witnessed the bloody repulse of Burnside's great
army on the very same ground, but a few weeks before, could have
expected to be called on so soon to meet the swift and triumphant
onset of a single corps of that army. Moreover, Sedgwick's tactical
arrangements were perfect.

The truth is, the insignificant appearance of a line of simple
breastworks has almost always caused those general and staff-officers
especially that viewed them through their field-glasses, with the
diminishing power of a long perspective, to forget that an assault
upon an enemy behind entrenchments is not so much a battle as a
battue, where one side stands to shoot and the other goes out to
be shot, or if he stops to shoot it is in plain sight of an almost
invisible foe. European examples, as usual misapplied or misunderstood,
have contributed largely to the persistency of this fatal illusion,
and Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos have served but as incantations to
confuse many a mind to which these sounding syllables were no more
than names; ignorant, therefore, of the stern necessities that
drove Wellington to these victories, forgetful of their fearful
cost, and above all ignoring or forgetting the axiom, on which
rests the whole art and science of military engineering--that the
highest and stoutest of stone walls must yield at last to the
smallest trench through which a man may creep unseen. Vast, indeed,
is the difference between an assault upon a walled town, delivered
as a last resort after crowning the glacis and opening wide the
breach, and any conceivable movement, though bearing the same name,
made as the first resort, against earthworks of the very kind
whereby walled towns are taken, approached over ground unknown and
perhaps obstructed.

Even so, in the storm of Rodrigo the defenders struck down more
than a third of their own numbers; Badajos was taken by a happy
chance after the main assault had miserably failed; at both places
the losses of the assailants were in proportion less, and in number
but little greater, than at Port Hudson; yet, in the contemplation
of the awful slaughter of Badajos, even the iron firmness of
Wellington broke down in a passion of tears.

(1) "Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant," pp. 530, 532.

CHAPTER XVIII.
UNVEXED TO THE SEA.