The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 48, October, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 48, October, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The English army experienced whatever of pleasure there may be in a
panic, or rather in a pair of panics, at the grand Battle of Fontenoy,
(May 11, 1745,) on which field they were so unutterably thrashed by the
French and the Irish. In the first part of the action, the Allies were
successful, when suddenly the Dutch troops fell into a panic, and fled
as fast as it is ever given to Dutchmen to fly. There is nothing so
contagious as panic terror, and the rest of the army, exposed as it was
to a tremendous fire, soon caught the disease, and was giving way under
it, when their commander, the Duke of Cumberland, who was well seconded
by his officers, succeeded in rallying them. They renewed the combat,
and their enemy became so alarmed in their turn that even the French
King, and his son the Dauphin, were in danger of being swept away in the
rout. Again there came a turn in the battle, and, mostly because of the
daring and dash of the famous Irish Brigade, the Allies were beaten and
forced to retreat. It is stated that the whole body of heroic British
Grenadiers who were engaged at Fontenoy gave a strong proof of the
effect of the panic upon their minds--and bodies; thus establishing the
fact that they had stomachs for something besides the fight. "Not to put
too fine a point upon it," they, with a unity of place and time that
speaks well for their discipline, did that which was done by the valiant
General Sterling Price at the Battle of Boonville, and which has caused
them to leave a deep impression on the historic page, though nothing can
be said in support of the attractiveness of the illustration which those
gallant men contributed to that page.
There was a partial exhibition of panic terror made by the English
troops at the Battle of Bunker's Hill. They were twice made to run on
that Seventeenth of June of which something has been said during the
last six-and-eighty years; and they were brought up to the point
of making a third attack only by the greatest exertions of their
commanders, and after having been considerably reinforced. This third
attack would have been as promptly repulsed as its predecessors had
been, but that the American troops had used up all their powder, and few
of them had bayonets. The firmness, and skill as marksmen, of a body of
militia had caused a larger body of British veterans twice to retreat
in great disorder, and under circumstances much resembling those that
characterize what is known as a panic. Had a third repulse of the
assailants occurred, nothing could have prevented their flight to their
boats. But it was written that the Americans should retreat; and it is
safe to say that they showed much more steadiness in the retreat than
the enemy did alacrity in the pursuit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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