Besides, had the British possessed a pontoon train they might have destroyed all the enemy's boats, and prevented him from crossing, except at fords, which are few and often imperfectly known. But it is not every one who is gifted with the genius of a Wellington; at the battle of Assaye his Grace sent some staff-officers to find a ford at a place where there was a village on each side of the river; and when a ford was found, he remarked: "I thought it probable that the people would not have built villages there unless a ford existed." The want of a pontoon train caused a complete stand-still of the whole army at Ramnuggur. The artillery, cavalry, and infantry might be said to have been immovable, and therefore, useless, because they could not cross an ordinary river. Let us consider how they act on the continent of Europe. Windischgrätz crossed the Danube to Vienna, with 150,000 men, by means of a pontoon train. The French army have a special corps of pontoniers. The Russian guards have a movable force of 50,000 men, complete in every branch, with a magnificent pontoon train, exclusive of the other pontoon trains, attached to the other divisions of the mighty army of that vast empire. Every military man knows that the transport of an army, with its immense quantity of artillery and baggage, across the rivers which intersect its line of march, is one of the most difficult as well as the most important operations in military tactics, especially in India, where the camp followers are so numerous. History, both modern and ancient, teaches us that the success of a campaign often depends on the rapid conveyance of troops across the rivers that intersect their march. As far back as the days of Darius a floating bridge was thrown across the Bosphorus, and afterwards across the Danube, while Xerxes threw one over the Hellespont at the time of his ill-starred expedition to Europe. The most celebrated pontoon of modern times, was that constructed by the engineers of the British army across the Adour, in the south of France, in 1814, the river being 110 feet across. During the retreat of Napoleon from Moscow, the whole of his immense army must have been captured or destroyed on the banks of the Beresina, had it not been for the extraordinary care and vigilant forethought of the principal French engineer, in preserving the materials required in the formation of a pontoon. A pontoon train, such as the Duke of Wellington employed in India, in 1803, composed of forty boats, would require forty carts and 160 to 170 bullocks. The Duke, in his Despatches,[22] states that for some streams he had basket boats ten feet in diameter and three feet deep, and covered with double leather.