led were too many, and he was divinely enjoined to bid every fearful soul in their ranks return, and depart early from Mount Gilead. Twenty-two thousand took the hint, and hied them away. Ten thousand remained. These were yet too many. their leader was instructed; and a sifting process was set in action, which was to reduce the grand total by nine thousand seven hundred more. Three hundred alone lapped of the water, putting the hand to the mouth, and these alone were the elect of war; the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water, and were rejected, disallowed, dismissed. "And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand; and let all the other people go every man unto his place."

There is no king, or kingdom, saved by the multitude of a host. Long before Gideon's time, the officers of the host had been enjoined to make the same appeal that he made, to fainthearted and therefore unserviceable warriors, who were better away from the ranks they but helped to dishearten-"What man is there that is fearful and faint-hearted? let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart."

Wishes Westmoreland, in the French wars and on the day of Agincourt, more men from England? Not so the King.

66

-No, my fair cousin ;

If we are marked to die, we are enough

To do our country loss; and if to live,

The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
* * * O, do not wish one more :
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, thro' my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,*
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.

* Alexander, on entering Hyrcania with a detachment of his host, told such as desired to depart to do so, with his consent,—but at the same time

FORCE OF A FAITHFUL FEW.

109

Bar-cochab is said to have had two hundred thousand men, who, to prove their boldness and courage, had cut off, each man, one of his fingers. "But how," was the query of one oracular in speech and in authority, "how will you try the prowess of these mutilated men? He who cannot ride full speed and pluck up, as he passes, a cedar of Lebanon by the roots, let him be discharged."

When the Carthaginians, under the command of Hasdrubal and Hamilcar, marched at furious speed against the Corinthians, intent on driving the Greeks entirely out of Sicily, the Syracusans were, by Plutarch's account, struck with such terror at their prodigious armament, that scarce three thousand, out of ten times that number, took up arms and ventured to follow Timoleon. The mercenaries were in number four thousand, and of them about a thousand gave way to their fears when upon the march, and turned back, crying out that Timoleon must be mad or in his dotage, to go against an army of seventy

he called the gods to witness that they deserted their king when he was conquering the world for the Macedonians, and left him to the kinder loyalty of the few friends that would still follow his fortune. Eumenes, again, retiring to the fortress of Nora, with only a few hundred men left, gave free leave to all such as listed to depart, and dismissed them with marks of good-will. So, again, Cæsar, on undertaking the defence of the Gauls against the Germans, called together the young nobles who cared more for free living than hard fighting, and told them before all the army, they were at liberty to retire, and needed not to hazard their persons against their will. For his part, he would march with the tenth legion only against these barbarians, etc. See Plutarch, Lives of Alexander, Eumenes, and Cæsar.

Of Leonidas at Thermopyla it has been said, that he was contented to possess the monopoly of glory and of death. The laws of the Spartans forbade them to fly from the enemy, however numerous. So Leonidas and his countrymen determined to keep the field; the Thespians alone voluntarily remaining to share his fate. If he detained also the suspected Thebans, it was rather as a hostage than as auxiliaries; and the rest of the confederates precipitately departed across the mountains to their native cities.

Myronides, resolved on confronting the Boeotians at Enophyta with his comparatively small force, refused to delay his march until the arrival of reinforcements that were significantly slack to join him. In their delay he read an omen of the desire of the loiterers to avoid the enemy. And this general faith, as also his practice, was, "Better rely upon a few faithful, than on many disaffected.'

thousand men with such a mere handful of braves.

"Timo. leon considered it as an advantage that these cowards dis covered themselves before the engagement; and having en couraged the rest, he led them on" to battle, and to victory. The answer of Pelopidas, when told that Alexander of Phere was advancing against him with an overwhelming army, was, "So much the better, for we few shall beat so many the more." It became him to adopt the spirit as well as the style of the hero in Xenophon, who said that each and all must so exert themselves that each might consider himself the chief agent in victory : Οὕτω χρὴ ποεῖν, ὅπως ἔκαστος τις ἑαυτῷ ξυνείσεται τῆς νίκης αἰτιώτατος ὤν.

Bahram, hailed by popular prediction as the deliverer of Persia, when he found (A.D. 590) that no more than twelve thousand soldiers would follow him against the enemy, prudently declared, that to this fatal number Heaven had reserved the honours of the triumph. Alp Arslan, at the critical period of his struggle against the Emperor Romanus Diogenes (A.D. 1071), after a devout prayer, and tears freely shed at the loss of so many faithful Moslems, proclaimed a free permission to all who were desirous of retiring from the field.

"And give them leave to fly that will not stay,
And call them pillars, that will stand to us,'

is the counsel of Shakspeare's Clarence, on the battle-field of Towton; all in the spirit of the Fifth Harry, exultant in being "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers ;" and by his enthusiasm winning over wistful Westmoreland to wish no longer another man from England :—

"West.

Perish the man whose mind is backward now!

K. Hen. Thou dost not wish more men from England, cousin?
West.
God's will, my liege, 'would you and I alone,
Without more help, might fight this battle out!

K. Hen. Why now thou hast unwish'd five thousand men ;
Which likes me better, than to wish us one."

Changarnier, at Mansourah, with his battalion reduced to three hundred men,-Gideon's number,-formed them into a

ELIGIBLE ELIMINATION.

IIT

square, in front of the foe, and said, "Come, my lads, let us look those fellows in the face; they are six thousand, we are three hundred, so the game is equal." And he made his game accordingly, and won as he meant, though a ball reached him in the middle of his square.

"What if our numbers barely could defy

The arithmetic of babes,

Vields everything to discipline of swords?

Is man as good as man, none low, none high ?"

Only by Hibernian computation is one man as good as another, and better too.

Pizarro, refusing to obey the order of the new governor of Panama to return from his daring enterprise, drew a line on the sand with his sword, and desired such of his men as chose to remain with him to cross to his side; thirteen only of his hardy veterans had the courage to do so. But his was the sort of optimism that inspired D'Artagnan to prefer ten men to the twenty, and the thirty, and the forty, and upwards, he had previously reckoned upon associating with himself in a service of special hazard: "I reduce myself, then, to ten men; in this way I shall act simply and with unity; I shall be forced to be prudent, which is half success in an affair of the kind I am now undertaking: a greater number might, perhaps, have drawn me into some folly." "Monseigneur le Maréchal," was Conde's smiling reply to De Grammont's plaintive enumeration of their scanty disposable forces, "it is with small armies that great battles are won." Wordsworth's Norton is strong in faith that his very weakness shall be strong in the field:

"How oft has strength, the strength of heaven,

To few triumphantly been given !"

The dismayed query of Telemachus, can he and his sire alone in furious battle stand against that numerous and determined band? is answered off-hand by Odysseus: "What need of aids, if favoured by the skies ?"

Froissart says of the Black Prince in his Spanish campaign, that he "might have had foreign men-at-arms, such as

Flemings, Germans, and Brabanters, if he had chosen it; but he sent away numbers, choosing to depend more on his own subjects and vassals than on strangers." When William of Normandy was pushing his way over the "backbone of England," through pathless moors and bogs, down towards the plains of Lancashire and Cheshire, his soldiers from the champaigns of sunny France, could not, in Canon Kingsley's words, "face the cold, the rain, the bogs, the hideous gorges, the valiant peasants. They prayed to be dismissed, to go home.-'Cowards might go back,' said William; 'he should go on.' If he could not ride, he would walk. Whoever lagged, he would be foremost."* "Let them go all," exclaims Oroonoko in the play,

"We were too few before for victory,

We're still enow to die."

The Earl of Leicester is favourably described by the historian of the United Netherlands, as taking a manful and sagacious course at starting, in his enterprise of 1585. Those who had no stomach for the fight he ordered to depart. Those who had the wish or the means to buy themselves out of the adventure he allowed to do so; "for the Earl was much disgusted with the raw material out of which he was expected to manufacture serviceable troops." Much winnowed, the small force might in time become effective. A later page in that history relates how the heart of the Dutch admiral, Jacob Heemskerk, danced for joy at sight of the Spanish fleet, so far superior to his own in size of vessels, weight of metal, and number of combatants. "The more he was over-matched, the greater would be the honour of victory." How then could he wish for one man more?

*

Compare the style of the so-called Last of the English. Hereward harangues his followers :-"He that will depart in peace, let him depart, before the Frenchmen close in on us on every side and swallow us up at one mouthful." Not a man answers. "I say it again: He that will depart, let him depart." They stand thoughtful. Winter speaks at last for himself and Ramsay: "If all go, there are two men here who stay, and fight by Hereward's side as long as there is a Frenchman left on English soil," etc.-Hereward, chap. xxiii.