THK MAIN FIGHT, 225 'Kifles;' and presenting the battalion to Penue- chap. father as a force that could be trusted to ' do any- '. — ' thinff,' he asked where its service was needed. „. °' His con- Pennefather, olowiner with the excitement of a versatioii ' o r> with Pcuiie fight after his own heart, answered simply ' Every- ^^^^'^'^■ ' where ! ' and the corps, with its modest strength of only 278 men, was soon split into two. Coupled with the expedient of thus subdividing a body already so small, that one -worded answer of Pennefather's may be taken as showing the as- pect under which he regarded the battle, and will also account for the way in which Catlicart scat- tered his troops. Owing partly to the mist, and the nature of the ground, but in part perhaps also to the peculiarity of our insular mind (which com- monly abhors an integral and busies itself with the fractions), neither Pennefather nor his people had consciously felt, as an aggregate, the whole united weight of their 40,000 assailants ; but they believed that here, there, and there — in many places at once — there was some special emergency, an emergency sufficiently grave, but still of such kind that it could be met at each spot by so few as 200, or even 150 men. Their labour, as understood by themselves, was that of men anxiously stopping a number of troublesome leaks. Yet, the problem really in hand was noth- ing less than to dam back a torrent.*
- I cannot prove that there was any copy of the ' Novum
' Organum ' in Pennefather's tent, but some minds will find an analogy between his way of fighting a battle and the Baconian or ' Empirical ' philosophy. VOL. VL P
