would have been preferable to one unwieldy square, able to move only at a snail's, pace. The losses recently sustained by our troops supply a sufficient condemnation of the latest innovation on common-sense and military science. At Tamai, 107 were killed and 116 wounded out of 4300; at Abu Klea, 85 were killed, 92 wounded, out of 1400. These losses were due to fighting in square. At Tel-el-Kebir we lost only 76 killed; and at Kirbekan, where our troops attacked a strongly intrenched position, only 10 of all ranks out of 1000 were killed, after five hours' fighting. Although both at Tamai and Abu Klea we narrowly escaped a serious disaster, the battle of Gubat was the most risky of all, where our troops for five hours presented the helpless mark of a dense square to the enemy's riflemen, who were almost entirely secure from our return fire; and if they had been commanded by any one who knew his business, their spearmen, by only threatening to charge, instead of attempting to do so in reality, would have kept our men under a fire which they would not have been able to return, during the whole subsequent march to the Nile. Fortunately, however, they did charge in earnest. None of them reached within thirty yards of our muzzles, and the discouragement occasioned by their heavy loss caused their whole force to break up.
From many private letters written by officers who were present, it seems probable that a considerable part of our loss at Abu Klea was occasioned by our own fire. An officer of the mounted infantry writes: –
"Our skirmishers just got home in front of the enemy, and that was all. The latter had risen from a mass in the ditch under their flags, and came on more like a torrent of water than anything else, quite silently. What told against us was our own men coming back, and so preventing our firing till they were among us: then came a scene I pray God I may never see again. They started first against our side of the square, but our fire turned them on to the Heavies' corner, where they broke in. I was on No. 2 face: the enemy killed a great many of the Heavies, but we still went on firing with our backs to No. 1 face, so they could not get at us well on account of the camels. By degrees they began to waver, and, thank God, they began to fall back, when, between ourselves, I thought it was all up."
Nothing could possibly be finer than the behaviour of our men in the boats, in their trying marches through the desert (before Abu Klea they had marched fifty-two miles without water), and in battle; but we regret to observe there has been a disposition on the part of certain writers, for the purpose of discrediting short service, to attribute our heavy loss of officers to the fact that the men, as young soldiers, were not to be trusted. The insinuation is a calumny. The fighting of our men at Tamai and Abu Klea, where they were heavily handicapped by the formation adopted – jammed together in frightful confusion, with hundreds of Arab spearmen pouring like water through one open side of the square – could not have been beaten by any soldiers either of ancient or modern days.
"No thought was there of dastard flight;
Linked in the serried phalanx tight,
Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,
As fearlessly and well."
Among other consequences resulting from the fall of Khartoum, there is every reason to believe that Russia has been encouraged in her present aggressive attitude,
