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VEHICLE DYNAMICS AND CONTROL
VEHICLE DYNAMICS AND CONTROL
Advanced Methodologies

SHAHRAM AZADI
Associate Professor, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering,
K.N. Toosi University of Technology, and Vehicle Advanced
Technologies Deputy Manager, Automotive Industries
Research and Innovation Center, Tehran, Iran

REZA KAZEMI
Professor, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, K.N. Toosi
University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

HAMIDREZA REZAEI NEDAMANI

Active Safety System Engineer and ADAS (Advanced
Driver Assistance System) Project Manager, Automotive
Industries Research and Innovation Center, Tehran, Iran
Elsevier
Radarweg 29, PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, United Kingdom
50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further
information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations
such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our
website: www.elsevier.com/permissions.
This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the
Publisher (other than as may be noted herein).

Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience
broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical
treatment may become necessary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating
and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such
information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including
parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.
To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume
any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability,
negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or
ideas contained in the material herein.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-323-85659-1

For information on all Elsevier publications

visit our website at https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals

Publisher: Matthew Deans

Acquisitions Editor: Carrie Bolger
Editorial Project Manager: Chiara Giglio
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Cover Designer: Christian Bilbow
Typeset by SPi Global, India
Dedication

I dedicate this book to my dear wife, Vida, who has always encouraged me in
this way.

Shahram Azadi
This book is dedicated to my dearest wife, Atousa, and my two children,
Kimia and Kiana, who have all been the source of my perseverance.

Reza Kazemi

In honor of my dear wife, Behnaz.

This book is due to her patience and support.
Hamidreza Rezaei Nedamani
Acknowledgments

Writing a book is more problematic than we thought and more rewarding

than we could have ever imagined. In this regard, we owe several people.
We thank those who have personally helped us develop the main content,
and we thank them for their inspiration and help with this project. Without
their continuous assistance during this project, we could not have prepared
this book for publication. The names mentioned below have helped us
in one or more chapters. We would like to thank Dr. Majid Shabani,
Dr. Masoud Vaziri, Dr. Abbas Soltani, Dr. Hadi Sazgar, Dr. Ali Ghasemi
Goorji, Dr. Masoud Samadian Zakaria, Dr. Mohammad Amin Saeedi,
Dr. Hamed Tabatabaei Oreh, Dr. Saeed Shojaei, and Mohsen Gholipoor.
A significant part of our technical and academic experiences results from
research and industrial projects at K.N. Toosi University of Technology and
Automotive Industries Research and Innovation Center (AIRIC) of
SAIPA. It is necessary to give special thanks to them because the opportunity
to write this book would not have been possible without their support and
cooperation. Finally, we thank Professor Reza N. Jazar and Dr. Sina A.
Milani for their sincere support.

xi
Foreword

I have had the honor to be a friend, classmate, and colleague of Professor

Shahram Azadi since 1995. Shahram was a great classmate who studied every
subject far more than what was required and far deeper than normal texts
provided. That gave Shahram an excellent capability to be a teacher and
researcher later when he became an academic. As a colleague, I enjoyed
working with Shahram on some projects on vehicle vibrations, vehicle
dynamics, vehicle stability, vehicle chassis systems, and vehicle control. In
all of them, Shahram has been the supervisor manager of scientific aspects.
Shahram has devoted his career to vehicle control, and he is one of the best in
the world at it.
I have personally learned very much from Shahram, who always had a
clear and correct feeling on engineering aspects of vehicles. Such a vision
is crucial when your limited time needs a hint to move in the right research
directions.
Professor Azadi is a great teacher who explains everything in the simplest
way to his class. Shahram’s students and colleagues always appreciate the
simplicity of his explanations. Such an ability is the thing that makes a gifted
instructor a teacher. Readers of this book will quickly realize how compli-
cated concepts are simply and logically explained.
Shahram is a warm, welcoming, and kind person with a positive outlook
on life and a fundamental faith in engineering. He could always put his stu-
dents at ease with his stories on applied engineering projects. Some of those
stories I have heard several times, but I never tire of hearing them again.
Shahram’s rich analytic and experimental knowledge and experience on
applied vehicle projects make him the best person to write this book.
Researchers, instructors, and students will learn from this book to the edge
of knowledge in vehicle dynamics and control. The information in the book
is excellent for a researcher interested in mathematical modeling of vehicles
and those looking for the future of transportation such as control of auton-
omous vehicles.
This book covers the material straightforwardly and directly to create a
shortcut in reviewing the concepts and techniques to prepare readers for
their future research. The aim is to provide readers with recent novel control
methods and the biggest challenges facing researchers. The authors distribute
that knowledge by taking the readers through important aspects of the

xiii
xiv Foreword

advanced approach of vehicle dynamics and control. The contents of the

book have been organized into 10 chapters, as follows:
Chapter 1. This chapter reviews the advantages of the simplified vehicle
model and shows its shortcoming due to ignoring some variables. In this
chapter, an advanced control strategy called “the optimal adaptive self-
tuning control” has been used for vehicle dynamic control. The simplified
vehicle model is a two-track model for which we will be using an advanced
control strategy to compensate for the inaccuracies in the model.
Chapter 2. Modern software tools have enhanced modeling, analysis, and
simulation capabilities regarding the control of dynamic systems. In this
chapter, a full vehicle model is designed with a flexible body that is exposed
to MSC ADAMS and MSC NASTRAN. A vehicle dynamic control sys-
tem has been implemented to improve the vehicle lateral and yaw motions
in critical maneuvers. The readers will appreciate the differences between
models’ control efforts due to the differences in dynamic behaviors of rigid
and flexible vehicle dynamic models.
Chapter 3. During extreme maneuvers, the probability of vehicle roll-
over increases, and the stability of lateral and yaw motions deteriorates
because of the saturation of tire forces. This chapter presents an integrated
control of yaw, roll, and vertical dynamics based on a semiactive suspension
and electronic stability control with an active differential braking system.
Chapter 4. The purpose of this chapter is to develop an advanced driver
assistance system for integrated longitudinal and lateral guidance of vehicles
in high-speed lane-change maneuvers. As the first step, several feasible and
collision-free trajectories are generated at different accelerations by consid-
ering the position of a target vehicle, the road’s speed limit, and the host
vehicle’s available longitudinal acceleration range.
Chapter 5. In this chapter, the problem of controlling a string of vehicles
moving in one dimension is considered. A hierarchical platoon controller
design framework is established. The stability criterion is examined using a
partial differential equation approximation for a limited number of vehicles
subjected to unequal asymmetry in position and velocity feedback. For dis-
turbance attenuation, string stability analysis is examined.
Chapter 6. In terms of articulated vehicles and fluid carriers, the direc-
tional response and roll stability characteristics of a partly filled tractor semi-
trailer vehicle with a cylindrical tank shape are investigated in various
maneuvers. In this chapter, the liquid’s dynamic interaction with the trac-
tor semitrailer vehicle is evaluated by integrating liquid sloshing dynamics
in a partly filled tank with a tractor semitrailer’s multibody dynamics.
 Foreword xv

Chapter 7. This chapter is dedicated to improving maneuverability and

preventing jackknifing as well as the rollover stability of an articulated vehi-
cle carrying liquid. A new active roll control system and an active steering
control system are designed to control such vehicles.
Chapter 8. In this chapter, the desired articulation angle is considered for
directional control of the articulated vehicles. The significant effect on
improving the articulated vehicle’s directional stability behavior is proven
through high-speed lane change maneuver simulations on slippery roads.
Chapter 9. This chapter reviews the problem that articulated vehicle
parking is much more complicated than a passenger car. In other words,
due to many factors such as control theory, vehicle and environmental
nonholonomic constraint, nonlinearities, and time-varying kinematic
equations of motion, the articulated vehicle requires a sophisticated control
method. In this chapter, the autonomous parking of articulated vehicles is
presented using a supervised training technique.
Chapter 10. This chapter’s main goal is to extract an algorithm for truck-
semitrailer lane change maneuver decision-making in a real dynamic envi-
ronment. The chosen feasible trajectory is collision-free. It will be shown
that because trajectory planning is carried out algebraically, its computa-
tional cost will be low, which is very valuable in the experimental
implementation.
Reza N. Jazar
Preface

It is hoped that this book will provide a unified and balanced treatment and a
useful perspective on the enterprise of an advanced approach to vehicle
dynamics and control as well as emphasize the common links and connec-
tions that exist between layers of vehicle dynamics and control problems.
The first five chapters are related to passenger car topics, and the other
chapters deal with articulated vehicles.
The main contents are excerpts from many postgraduate theses, books,
and articles that have been compiled from various sources; at the end of each
chapter, a list of references is provided to inform and refer the readers. We
hope the reader enjoys this book and, more importantly, finds this work
educational.
We hope that the sincere efforts of all those involved in preparing this
book will be noticed. Because there is no perfect work, we ask all experts
to help us with their feedback to correct any defects and improve the book’s
quality in future editions. Please feel free to inform us if you spot a typo or
other error. Our email addresses are listed below:

Shahram Azadi azadi@kntu.ac.ir

Reza Kazemi kazemi@kntu.ac.ir
Hamidreza Rezaei Nedamani rezaei.h@airic-ir.com

xvii
CHAPTER 1

Integrated vehicle dynamics

and suspension control

1.1 Introduction
Modern vehicles include several control systems responsible for a wide
variety of control tasks. A review of past control systems reveals that the
controller was individually designed and implemented on the vehicle. How-
ever, with modern advancements in electronic systems, remarkable progress
has been made in analyzing, transferring, and transmitting data in the digital
field. Therefore, this industry is witnessing the emergence of novel tech-
niques and ideas in integrating control systems to improve the overall vehicle
performance and optimize costs. Currently, vehicles are equipped with
many control systems, which increases their complexity.
The most commonly presented solution is the use of hierarchical con-
trol structures, in the sense that all control commands are computed using
a single central algorithm, and the key to control integration is the coor-
dination of subsystem performance. According to the definition presented
in [1], the integrated vehicle dynamics control can be considered respon-
sible for combining and coordinating all the control subsystems affecting
the vehicle’s dynamics behavior to improve performance, safety, and com-
fort while reducing costs.
Chassis control systems follow two main objectives: handling and ride
comfort. These systems are divided into active and passive classes. Seat belts
and airbags are common passive systems. Passive systems usually reduce the
damage from accidents, whereas active systems prevent the occurrence of
accidents. On the other hand, active systems primarily avoid some of the
vehicle’s unwanted events, such as wheel locking, traction dissipation, or
excessive changes in the roll and yaw angles, which can result in the loss
of vehicle control by the driver. In other words, in the case of incorrect vehi-
cle behavior, these systems either fully take control of the vehicle or partic-
ipate with the driver in the vehicle’s control until the vehicle behavior is
corrected [2].

Vehicle Dynamics and Control Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd.

https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-85659-1.00007-0 All rights reserved. 1
2 Vehicle dynamics and control

In summary, the reasons for the tendency toward integration are the
following:
▪ Diversity of control systems
▪ Diversity in the technology and requirements of each system
▪ Independent performance of these systems
▪ Undesired effects of these systems on each other.
Handling and ride comfort have an inverse relationship, such that an
improvement in one leads to a loss in the other. For example, to improve
vehicle handling, it is preferable to increase the damping ratio and stiffness
of the dampers, which decreases the ride comfort [3]. According to these
discussions and the fact that control systems usually improve only one of
these two parameters, a significant role integration can combine the systems
related to these parameters. Several techniques have been developed to reach
integrated control of the chassis. These techniques can be divided into the
following two groups:
▪ Multivariable control
▪ Hierarchical control.
In this chapter, we used a hierarchical control system. The advantages of
hierarchical control include the following:
▪ Facilitation of designing control subsystems
▪ Control of the complexities by taking them into account in the lower
control layers
▪ Preference for more tasks and workload.

1.2 Control system design

Fig. 1.1 shows an integrated control system with a hierarchical strategy that
has combined ABS (antilock braking system) and ASS (active suspension
system). The lower controller layer consists of the individual ABS and
ASS, whereas the upper layer contains an algorithm for combining the
two systems. Indeed, such a process is more straightforward and more
understandable than a complicated model with a single control layer for
reaching the desired state [4].
One of the most important factors in achieving the main objectives is a
suitable integration algorithm. This is the most important goal in the current
chapter. In the algorithm used during the vehicle maneuver, contact
between the tire and the road may be eliminated due to the existing
 Integrated vehicle dynamics and suspension control 3

Fig. 1.1 Sample of an integrated control system with a hierarchical strategy.

conditions, especially road input. It is worth mentioning that the ride com-
fort is important under normal conditions, and the system must act in such a
way that the passenger does not become tired under normal driving
conditions.
In this chapter, self-tuning regulator (STR) adaptive optimal control is
selected to explain the control structure by introducing the optimal control
strategy and the recursive least squares (RLS) error estimator. The self-
tuning regulator adaptive control strategy is used to design the ESP (elec-
tronic stability program). The algorithm used to design the ABS is simple
and consists of several logical conditions. Moreover, an optimal control
strategy has been used to design the ASS. Finally, the integration algorithm
utilized will be introduced.
Adaptive control is defined as a control scheme with adjustable param-
eters and a mechanism for adapting the parameters. The reasons for using this
strategy include the following:
▪ Changes in the process dynamics
▪ Changes in the properties of the system disturbance
▪ Engineering efficiency and simplicity of use
▪ Various adaptive control ideas
▪ Gain scheduling.
In the STR structure, the controller is updated by estimating the parameters.
The self-tuning in this controller means that the controller parameters are
tuned automatically to attain the desired state; see Fig. 1.2 [5].
In the STR method, we update the structure of the controller, but we
also update the desired state in the design of the ESP. The STR method will
4 Vehicle dynamics and control

Fig. 1.2 STR schematic.

assist the optimal control method in the proposed algorithm. The RLS
method has been employed to estimate the system parameters. The combi-
nation of these two methods will provide us with a self-tuning adaptive
controller that updates in each step with changes in the system parameters.
As will be discussed, significant and wide changes in the lateral stiffness
of the tires make it impossible to obtain the desired results using only
optimal control. Because changes in the parameters affecting the system
vibrations are slight, the LQR control strategy is used alone in the design
of the ASS.

1.2.1 Design of the ESP

1.2.1.1 Lateral force estimator
The self-tuning adaptive control strategy has been employed to design the
ESP. For this purpose, an estimator suitable for this system must be devel-
oped first. It is worth mentioning that the parameters with the most changes
in the ESP control system’s design are the lateral stiffness of the front and rear
wheels. The variation ranges of these parameters change with a change in the
road surface material or even in the tire load. The estimator is responsible for
determining the values of these two parameters at each instant. In this sec-
tion, we use the equations of the bicycle model, as shown in Fig. 1.3. These
equations are presented in Eqs. (1.1)–(1.3);
X_ ¼ AX + BUc + EU (1.1)


v
X ¼ y ,Uc ¼ Mz , U ¼ δ (1.2)
r
 Integrated vehicle dynamics and suspension control 5

Fig. 1.3 Vehicle bicycle model.

2 3 2 C 3

Cαr + Cαf Cαr lr + Cαf lf
 v " # αf
6 x7 0
A¼6
m v m v 7 1 ,E ¼ 4 t 7
6 m
4 Cαr lr + Cαf lf Cαr lr 2 + Cαf lf 2 5, B ¼ Cαf lf 5 (1.3)
t x t x

Izz
Izz vx Izz vx Izz
where Cαf and Cαr are the turning constants of the front and rear tires,
respectively. To this end, we use the bicycle model in the form of Eq. (1.4);
8 1 
>
< ay ¼ m Fyf + Fyr
>
t
(1.4)
>
> 1  
: r_ ¼ Fy lf  Fyr lr + Mz
Izz f
In Eq. (1.4), the values of ay and r_ are readily determined using the exist-
ing sensors. Moreover, Mz is the output of this system. As mentioned before,
Fyf and Fyr are the parameters that must be estimated. The last equation can
be written in the form of Eqs. (1.5) and (1.6) to use the RLS method.
2 3
ay
yðtÞ ¼ 4 Mz 5 (1.5)
r_ 
Izz
 
F
θðt Þ ¼ yf (1.6)
Fyr
After determining the lateral forces and obtaining the slip angle values
from the above relationships, the lateral stiffness values can be determined.
Another random document with
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and gallantly waved his hat. They reached the bottom of the slope,
and as they stood side by side on the bank, the great brown hunter,
extending its neck, snuffed the coolth off the water. Only the
brimming stream and bright garden lay between them and us.
‘Mr. Braithwaite,’ Hartover called, ‘shall I be forced to run away
with her? Time and place favour it; and, Gad! sir, my horse has
plenty left in him yet.’
He slipped his arm round the girl’s waist and made a feint of
tossing her on to the saddle.
‘Confound the fellow’s impudence!’ Braithwaite growled, as he
moved back into the house.
But his eyes were wet. He was beaten. Youth and love had won
the day, and he knew it.
Thus came the end, or rather the beginning. For the end—as I
look across the valley this morning at royal Hover, wrapped in that
glittering mantle of new-fallen snow—is not, please God, for a long
time yet.
Still, in point of fact, Nellie Braithwaite never became Lady
Hartover. For Braithwaite exacted an interval of six months before
the wedding; and before those same six months were out the poor
creaking gate, away at Bath, had creaked itself finally out of earthly
existence, and into—let us charitably hope—a more profitable
heavenly one; while—such after all is the smooth working of our
aristocratic and hereditary system, with its le roi est mort, vive le roi
—over his great possessions his son, my always very dear, and
sometime very naughty, pupil, reigned in his stead.
As to myself, Cambridge and Hover, Hover and Cambridge, till, the
home living falling vacant, I removed myself and my books here to
this pleasant parsonage, where learned and unlearned, gentle and
simple, young and old, are good enough to come and visit me, and
confide to me their hopes, and joys, disappointments, sorrows, and
sometimes—poor souls—their sins.
THE END.
 THE TERCENTENARY OF RICHARD
HAKLUYT.
November 23, 1616.
These is nothing more essentially English than the passion for
adventure and exploration, for seeing and colonising the world. It is
a strange passion: it leads men to leave the fair and comfortable
villages, the meadow-lands and sheltering woods to which they were
born, for desolation and strange seas, to exchange the temperate
airs of England for the rigours of Arctic nights and the burning of
tropic mornings, to give up security and good living for starvation
and hardship, for death by thirst or famine, or the cruelties of
‘salvages.’ Yet to this call of the blood few Englishmen turn an utterly
deaf ear—for century after century, and generation after generation,
they have followed the call and strewed their bones about the world,
while those who came home again simply inflamed others to follow
their adventuring footsteps.
We look upon the Elizabethan age as our perfect flowering time in
poetry and drama and the courtly arts. We know, moreover, how in
that reign our seamen first fully realised themselves, and one of the
greatest among them accomplished his fruitful circumnavigation of
the globe. It is singularly fitting, therefore, that such a time should
have produced the man who realised the epic quality of the
voyagings and travels done in his day and in times past, and who
dedicated his life to setting down some worthy record of those
things. That man was Richard Hakluyt—or Hacklewit, as his name
was commonly pronounced and often spelt by his contemporaries,
and that spelling gives it a native English look more in keeping with
his nature than the accepted form. Three hundred years ago, in
November 1616, the same year as Shakespeare, he died,
bequeathing to posterity the work of his life in that noble book called
by him ‘The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and
Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or Overland to the
Remote and furthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at any time within
the Compasse of these 1600 Yeares.’
Such a work grew from no common inspiration; it was not
compiled, as many later ‘monumental’ works have been, from other
men’s researches: it was part of the very fabric of his life. He spent
laborious days and nights, he gave long patient years to his self-
imposed task, he studied and he travelled, he talked with living men
and inquired of the works of dead ones; all knowledge was his
province, so that it bore on his great subject. It is doubtful if the
annals of literature can show a more passionate and more persistent
devotion. As Hakluyt himself said to ‘The Reader’ in the second
edition of his ‘Voyages’:

‘For the bringing of which into this homely and rough-

hewen shape, which here thou seest; what restlesse nights,
what painefull dayes, what heat, what cold I have endured;
how many long and chargeable journeys I have travelled;
how many famous libraries I have searched into; what
varieties of ancient and moderne writers I have perused;
what a number of old records, patents, privileges, letters,
etc., I have redeemed from obscuritie and perishing; into how
manifold acquaintance I have entered; what expenses I have
not spared; and yet what opportunities of private gaine,
preferment, and ease I have neglected; albeit thyselfe canst
hardly imagine, yet I by daily experience do finde and feele;
and some of my entier friends can sufficiently testifie.
Howbeit (as I told thee at the first) the honour and benefits
of this Common weale wherein I live and breathe hath made
all difficulties seeme easie, all paines and industrie pleasant,
and all expenses of light value and moment unto me.’

The records of his life are scanty: that autobiographical passage,

and one other, are almost all he tells us about himself. He was
content with personal obscurity so long as his work was
accomplished. It is significant that, although buried in Westminster
Abbey, the place of his grave is not known, nor is any portrait of him
believed to be in existence. He called himself simply Richard Hakluyt,
Preacher, and though he meant that in the clerical sense which was
his profession, we may give it another meaning as well, for he was
Preacher of Empire to England, and of the splendid words of
Ecclesiasticus, ‘Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that
begat us.’
His life story is singularly complete and quite undeviating in aim.
The great object for which he was to work was revealed to him
early, and cannot be better told than in the grave simplicity of his
own words, in his ‘Epistle Dedicatorie’ to Sir Francis Walsingham:

‘I do remember that being a youth, and one of Her

Majestie’s scholars at Westminster that fruitfull nurserie, it
was my happe to visit the chamber of Mr. Richard Hakluyt my
cosin, a Gentleman of the Middle Temple, well knowen unto
you, at a time when I found lying open upon his boord
certeine bookes of Cosmographie, with an universall Mappe:
he seeing me somewhat curious in the view thereof, began to
instruct my ignorance, by shewing me the division of the
Earth into three parts after the olde account, and then
according to the latter, and better distribution, into more: he
pointed with his wand to all the knowen Seas, Gulfs, Bayes,
Straights, Capes, Rivers, Empires, Kingdomes, Dukedomes,
and Territories of each part, with declaration also of their
speciall commodities, and particular wants, which by the
benefit of traffike, and entercourse of merchants, are
plentifully supplied. From the Mappe he brought me to the
Bible, and turning to the 107 Psalme, directed me to the 23
and 24 verses, where I read, that they which go downe to the
sea in ships, and occupy by the great waters, they see the
works of the Lord, and his woonders in the deepe, etc. which
words of the Prophet together with my cousins discourse
 (things of high and rare delight to my young nature) tooke in
me so deepe an impression, that I constantly resolved, if ever
I were preferred to the University, where better time, and
more convenient place might be ministered for these studies,
I would by God’s assistance prosecute that knowledge and
kinde of literature, the doores whereof (after a sort) were so
happily opened before me.’

It was a true vocation the young Hakluyt had found, and he

faithfully followed it all the days of his life. He took his degree as
Master of Arts at Oxford in 1577, having learned five languages for
the sake of his maritime inquiries; and then lectured ‘in the common
schools,’ demonstrating the advances of geography—in his own
attractive words, he ‘had waded on still farther and farther in the
sweet studie of the historie of Cosmographie.’ His first book
appeared in 1582, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, and called ‘Divers
voyages touching the discoverie of America and the Ilands adjacent
unto the same, made first of all by our Englishmen.’
Hakluyt was convinced, as he set forth in his book, that for the
future development of exploration and ‘plantation’ (as colonisation
was called in those days) by the English, our principal necessity was
a good system of education in nautical affairs. This need he
continued to urge upon men of influence throughout his life; to Lord
Howard of Effingham, the year after the Armada, he wrote (‘as being
the father and principall favourer of the English Navigation’),
pointing out—

‘the meanes of breeding up of skilfull sea-men and mariners

in this Realme. Sithence your Lordship is not ignorant,’ he
continued, ‘that ships are to little purpose without skilfull sea-
men; and since sea-men are not bred up to perfection of skill
in much less time (as it is said) than in the time of two
prentiships; and since no kinde of men of any profession in
the common wealth passe their yeres in so great and
continuall hazard of life; and since of so many, so few grow to
 gray heires: how needfull it is, that by way of Lectures and
such like instructions, these ought to have a better education,
than hitherto they have had: all wise men may easily judge.
When I call to minde, how many noble ships have bene lost,
how many worthy persons have bene drenched in the sea,
and how greatly this Realme hath bene impoverished by losse
of great Ordinance and other rich Commodities through the
ignorance of Our Sea-men, I have greatly wished there were
a Lecture of Navigation read in this Citie, for the banishing of
our former grosse ignorance in Marine Causes, and for the
increase and generall multiplying of the sea-knowledge in this
age, wherein God has raised so generall a desire in the youth
of this Realme to discover all parts of the face of the earth, to
this Realme in former ages not knowen.’

To the advancing of navigation, which he justly called ‘the very

walls of this our Island,’ he was most anxious that a lectureship
should be established ‘in London or about Ratcliffe.’ Sir Francis Drake
shared this wish, and offered twenty pounds a year towards its
support, but as another twenty was needed and no one offered it,
Hakluyt’s dream of the training of the complete navigator came to
naught. Perhaps it was not so much needed as he thought in his
anxious care, for during the whole of Elizabeth’s reign only one
dockyard-built ship, the small Lion’s Whelp, was lost by stress of
weather or grounding, while English ships weathered gales in which
whole Spanish fleets foundered at sea. But Hakluyt’s desire was
fundamentally a sound one, for in those early days when science
was in its infancy, and tradition and rule-of-thumb the only guide, his
mind reached forward to the value of technical training. Another
matter in which he was in advance of his time was his concern in the
‘curing of hot diseases,’ wherein he had a far-off vision of our
modern schools of Tropical Medicine. Hakluyt’s ‘industry,’ which
indeed was on a colossal scale, was much commended by his
contemporaries, but while doing full homage to that unflagging zeal,
we perceive other qualities which engage our affection as industry
alone could not do. No one can read his beautiful dedications and
prefaces without being touched by his ardour, the freshness of his
enthusiasm for all that pertains to the sea-greatness of England,
which he both recorded and foresaw. The splendid fervour of
Elizabethan poetry is in them. He gives to his great book all the
riches of his mind, and regards the achievements it chronicles with a
most passionate pride. He tells the reader that ‘it remaineth that
thou take the profits and pleasure of the worke: which I wish to bee
as great to thee, as my paines and labour have bene in bringing
these raw fruits unto this ripeness, and in reducing these loose
papers into this order.’ To him ‘Geographie and Chronologie’ are ‘the
Sunne and the Moone, the right eye and the left of all history,’ and
all history is but the ‘prologue to the omen coming on’ of English
greatness at sea. He sees the unknown regions of the globe as the
scene, past and to come, of that great drama of exploration where
our seamen by their ‘high heart and manly resolution’ were to win
new lands for England by ‘their high courage and singular activity.’ In
seas uncharted, in a world imperfectly known and full of fantastic
terrors, he yet believed that

‘Where the dishevelled ghastly sea-nymph sings,

Our well-rigged ships shall stretch their swelling wings,’

and he desired, as might be expected from his thoroughness, not

only to write of those things, but to experience them. He planned to
accompany Drake’s West Indies voyage of 1585, and Sir Humphrey
Gilbert’s fatal one in 1583, but happily some unknown cause
prevented his embarking with Gilbert. England could ill have spared
him with his great task unaccomplished.
In 1589, the year after the defeat of the Armada, the fruit of his
labours appeared in the first edition in one folio volume of ‘The
Principal Navigations.’ After another ten years of labour the second
and final edition in three folio volumes was published in 1598-1600.
When that work appeared he might justly have said with Drake, ‘I
am the man I have promised to be.’ He had accomplished the toil he
had set himself, and doing so produced a work which is nearer being
the epic of the English people than any other book we have. Every
activity of his busy life was made to serve that central purpose. He
went abroad, he lived for five years in France as chaplain to Queen
Elizabeth’s Ambassador; he gained ecclesiastical preferment,
becoming prebendary of Bristol, rector of Wetheringsett in Suffolk,
archdeacon of Westminster, and Chaplain of the Savoy. He married,
he had a son—but all these things are shadowy to us: Hakluyt is the
chronicler of the ‘Voyages,’ the mouthpiece of Elizabethan England at
sea, and as such he would wish that we remembered him. Drayton
showed the responsiveness of his contemporaries when he sang:

‘Thy voyages attend

Industrious Hackluit,
Whose reading shall inflame
Men to seek fame
And much commend
To after times thy wit.’

We do not feel that Hakluyt cared greatly about commending to

after times his wit, but that his book should inflame ‘men to seek
fame’ was its very object and purpose. He lived in the age of
exploration and great attempts; Englishmen were just fully
awakening to their heritage, and determined no longer to be
forestalled by the Spaniards and Portuguese in the adventure of the
globe. The regions left them to explore were more dangerous and
difficult than what Hakluyt calls ‘the mild, lightsome, temperate, and
warm Atlantic Ocean, over which the Spaniards and Portugals have
made so many pleasant, prosperous and golden voyages.’ But from
the rigours of harsh latitudes they won their fame and their
hardihood. We love Hakluyt’s gorgeous Elizabethan pride when he
speaks favourably of the Northern voyages of the Dutch, but ‘with
this proviso; that our English nation led them the dance, brake the
yce before them, and gave them good leave to light their candle at
our torch.’
 What a father he was to his seamen, how he rejoiced in their
triumphs, sympathised in their affections, and understood their ‘sea-
sorrows’! Many and bitter are those sorrows, as recorded in his
‘Voyages,’ and the men of that day, many of whom had known the
savageries of Spain, and all of whom had lived through the coming
of the ‘Invincible Armada,’ would thrill to the grand Biblical opening
of that poignant narrative of John Hartop, ‘Man being born of a
Woman, living a short time is replenished with many miseries, which
some know by reading of histories, many by the view of others’
calamities, and I by experience.’
‘I by experience’—that is the very voice of Hakluyt’s ‘Voyages,’ its
unique and authentic value, the quality which makes it no book but
a living document of the English people. In his labour to make it that
Hakluyt drew to himself all he needed, from the humble and from
the great. He tells us how many ‘virtuous gentlemen’ helped him,
and gives us a galaxy of great Elizabethan names—Sir John Hawkins
(who knew something of ‘sea-sorrows,’ for when he returned from
his West Indies voyage he said to Walsingham, ‘If I should write of
all our calamities I am sure a volume as great as the Bible will scarce
suffice’), Sir Walter Ralegh, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Francis Walsingham,
Lord Howard of Effingham, the Lord Treasurer Burghley, Sir Robert
Cecil, foreign cosmographers and scholars like Mercator, Ortelius,
and Thevet, were his friends and correspondents. He valued them
all, and not less did he value each humble sailor he came across,
such as Mr. Jennings and Mr. Smith, ‘the master and master’s mate
of the ship called the Toby, belonging to Bristol,’ or a nameless
seaman, ‘One of mine acquaintance of Ratcliffe.’ He travelled two
hundred miles on horseback to speak with one Thomas Buts, the
sole survivor of a Labrador voyage. From the lips of all he learned,
and nothing was insignificant to him if it bore upon the sea or far
countries or the restless adventures and heroisms of the men of his
race. It is the story of the travels of individual men, he truly says,
which brings us to a full knowledge of the world, ‘not those weary
volumes bearing the titles of Universal Cosmography, which some
men that I could name have published as their own.’ It came too late
for inclusion in his book; but how he would appreciate the saying of
Sir Henry Middleton when the Red Sea was ‘discovered’ (a hundred
years after the Portuguese discovered it), and the Turks claimed it as
a close sea. ‘To come into this sea,’ Middleton answered splendidly, ‘I
needed no leave but God’s and my King’s,’ and followed up his
answer with cannon shot. Hakluyt, like most passionate pioneers of
Empire, lacked the humour that was Shakespeare’s: ‘Master,’ says
one of the fishermen in Pericles, ‘I marvel how the fishes live in the
sea,’ and was answered: ‘Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat
up the little ones.’ The gravity of a great purpose is seldom seasoned
with humour, and more to Hakluyt’s liking than Shakespeare’s jest
would have been the thought of Samuel Daniel:

‘And who, in time, knows whither we may vent

The treasure of our tongue? to what strange shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent
To enrich unknowing nations with our stores?’

He was filled with a spacious philanthropy to the unknown world,

and would bestow on it the benefits of our tongue and our laws. His
gentleness and wisdom did not fail him even on the thorny question
of the propagation of the Christian religion among the ‘salvages’ of
the Indies:

‘The means,’ he says, ‘to send such as shall labour

effectually in this business is, by planting one or two colonies
of our nation upon that firm [mainland] where they may
remain in safety and first learn the language of the people
near adjoining (the gift of tongues being now taken away)
and by little and little acquaint themselves with their
manners, and so with discretion and mildness distill into their
purged minds the sweet and lively liquor of the gospel.’

His sagacity and good judgment is shown by the way in which he

dealt with and arranged the enormous mass of material he
accumulated. The wild and fantastic methods of some Elizabethan
historians were not to his mind: he launched not out into a Universal
History of the World on Ralegh’s plan, and by his very restraint and
the value of his material produced a book which will live as long as
the English language, while Ralegh’s ambitious effort has gone to
dust, which weighs light in the balance compared with the jewelled
lines of his lyric, ‘If all the world and love were young.’ Hakluyt shirks
none of the pedestrian necessities of his task: he carefully records
the name of the historian of each voyage, as well as the name of the
voyager, so that every man may ‘answer for himself, justify his
reports, and stand accountable for his own doings.’ Moreover, he
exercises a stern supervision over the superfluous—a necessity if he
was to get as many voyages and as much information as possible
into the compass of his volumes, for as Professor Walter Raleigh
says in his inspiring Introductory Essay to Maclehose’s edition of
Hakluyt, ‘It was the habit of his age to begin even a nautical diary
with a few remarks on the origin of the world, the history of man,
and the opinions of Plato.’ Delightful though such remarks would
now be to the student of Elizabethan literature, Hakluyt had little use
for them. He had a stern, a great, and a practical intent in compiling
his ‘Principal Navigations,’ and a far better thing to him than literary
graces would be the knowledge that the profits of the East India
Company were increased by £20,000 through the study of his book.
He classified and arranged his voyages in three series: first the
voyages to the South and South-East; then the North-Eastern
voyages; and last the voyages to the West, ‘those rare, delightfull
and profitable histories,’ and ‘the beginnings and proceeding of the
two English Colonies planted in Virginia,’ of which Ralegh said, ‘I
shall yet live to see it an English nation.’
Such, in rough outline, is that great work of his, which perhaps
might justly represent us to the world, with the Plays of
Shakespeare, in the two aspects of which we are most proud, our
seamanship and our poetry, were two books only to be taken from
our literature. Shakespeare and Hakluyt, who by a singular
coincidence both died in the same year, make together an epitome
of the English people. In a large number of cases they share the fate
of classics, especially classics on the great scale, and are ‘taken as
read.’ But no matter: their thought and their passion, different
though they are in degree, have permeated the very marrow of our
minds, we absorb them unconsciously simply because we are
English. The most unlettered seaman is a ‘pilgrim’ of Hakluyt’s and
an embodiment of his hopes; the most casual or most glorious
Englishman is a type of Shakespeare’s, and to be found in that
‘universal gallery’ of his plays. In Hakluyt we enjoy the English
combination of the poetic and the practical, and delight in his
shrewdness and his pure enthusiasm.
He set out to prove, in a partially discovered world, that in the
splendid saying of an earlier Englishman, Robert Thorne, ‘There is no
land unhabitable, nor sea innavigable.’ That might be the motto of
his book; while as to him and all the seamen he fathered and gloried
in we may take the delightful words of Fuller and see them as
‘bound for no other harbour but the Port of Honour, though touching
at the Port of Profit in passage thereunto.’
E. Hallam Moorhouse.
 THE OLD CONTEMPTIBLES:
FIGHTING STRENGTH.
by boyd cable.

The fighting strength of the three batteries of a Brigade of Field

Artillery, at the time of the First Expeditionaries, totalled 18 guns, 18
officers, and about 650 non-commissioned officers and men. You
might remember those figures, or when you have finished the
reading of this tale just refer back to them.
The Brigade was posted before the action opened in a cornfield
which lay on the banks of a canal, and the guns were ‘concealed’
behind some of the innocent-looking stooks of cut corn which were
ranged in rows along the field. It was the Brigade’s first action, and
every officer and man waited with expectant eagerness for the
appearance of the enemy. On the other side of the canal there was a
wide stretch of open ground, but to the gunners it appeared too
good to be true that the enemy would advance across that open and
give the guns a chance of sweeping them off the earth with
shrapnel. At some points tongues and spurs of thick wood ran out
towards the canal, and it was rather through and under cover of the
trees that the artillerymen expected the enemy to try to press in on
the front which ran roughly along the line of the canal. Such an
advance would not give the guns so visible and open a target for so
long a time; but, on the other hand, there was still an open space
between the nearest parts of the woods and the canal bank, and if
the attack were confined to the approaches through the woods it
meant that the guns could concentrate on a much narrower front,
and there was never a gunner of them there but believed his own
battery alone, much less the whole Brigade, capable of smashing up
any attempt to debouch from the woods and of obliterating any
force that tried it. Nevertheless, all their training and teaching and
manœuvres and field-days of peace times indicated the woods as
the likeliest points of attack, because it had been an accepted rule
laid down in peace—and there were plenty of men in the batteries
who remembered the same and very much sterner rule laid down in
the South African War—that infantry could not, across the open,
attack entrenched positions held by infantry and covered by artillery.
On the whole, the Brigade were very well satisfied with the look of
things, and having taken careful ranges to the different points of the
probable targets, with special attention to the wood edges,
uncapped a goodly number of fuzes, given a last look to the
mechanism of guns and gear, put some finishing touches to the
cunning arrangement of corn stooks, they lit pipes and cigarettes
and settled down comfortably to wait developments.
The developments came rapidly, but being at first more or less
after the expected routine as laid down in their teaching, the Brigade
were not unduly disturbed. The first fire of the enemy artillery was,
as far as the Brigade could see, not particularly well aimed, and
although it made a great deal of noise and smoke appeared to be
doing little harm to the infantry trenches, and none to the artillery
behind them. Presently the men watched with great interest, but
little realisation of its significance, a grey dove-winged shape that
droned up out of the distance across the line, swung round and
began a careful patrol along its length. But after that the shells
commenced to find the infantry trenches with great accuracy, and to
pour a tremendous fire upon them. The Brigade listened and
watched frowningly at first, and with growing anger and fidgetings,
the screaming and crashing of the German shells, the black and
white clouds of smoke that sprang so quickly up and down the
infantry lines before them. They were at last given orders to fire,
and although at first they were firing at an invisible target, the
gunners brisked up and went about their business with great
cheerfulness. All along the line the other British batteries were
opening with a most heartening uproar that for the time filled the
ear and gave the impression that our guns were dominating the
situation. That, unfortunately, did not last long. The German rate
and weight of fire increased rapidly, until it reached the most awe-
inspiring proportions, and it began to look as if the British infantry
were to be smothered by shell-fire, were to be blown piecemeal out
of their scanty trenches, without being given a chance to hit back.
The Artillery Brigade whose particular fortunes we are following
had, up to now, escaped quite lightly with nothing more than a few
slight casualties from chance splinters of high-explosive shells that
had burst some distance from them.
But suddenly the gunners were aware of a strange and terrifying
sound rising above the thunder-claps of their own guns, the
diminishing whinny of their own departing shells, the long roll of
gun-fire on their flanks, the sharp tearing crashes of the enemy
shell-bursts—a sound that grew louder and louder, rose from the
hissing rush of a fast-running river to a fiercer, harsher note, a
screaming vibrating roar that seemed to fill the earth and air and
sky, that drowned the senses and held the men staring in
amazement and anticipation of they knew not what. Then when the
wild whirlwind of sound had reached a pitch beyond which it seemed
impossible for it to rise, it broke in a terrific rolling c-r-r-r-ash that
set the solid earth rocking. One battery was hidden from the other
two by a writhing pall of thick black smoke, out of which whirled
clods of earth, stones, and a flying cloud of yellow straw. When the
smoke dissolved, and the dust and straw and chaff had settled, the
other two batteries could see a gun of the third overturned, the
gunners rolling or limping or lying still about it, an odd man here and
there staggering from the other guns—but all the rest of the
gunners in their proper and appointed places, the five remaining
guns firing one by one in turn as regularly as if on a peace practice.
The Brigade had been introduced to something quite new to it, and
that it certainly never expected to meet in open field of battle—a
high-explosive shell from one of the heaviest German pieces. But
unexpected as it was, more terrible than the gunners had ever
imagined, there was no time now to think about such things. The
German infantry attack was advancing under cover of their artillery,
a crackling roll of rifle fire was breaking out from the infantry
trenches, sharp orders were shouting along the lines of guns. There
was a pause while fuses were set to new times, while fresh aim was
taken and new ranges adjusted.
‘Target, infantry advancin’—open sights...!’ said one of the gun-
layers in repetition of his orders. ‘But where’s the bloomin’ infantry
to get my open sights on?’
‘Where?’ shouted his Number One, and pointed over the layer’s
shoulder as he stood up to look over the gun shield for a wider view.
‘Can’t you see ’em there? ’Ave you gone blind?’
‘That?’ said the layer, staring hard. ‘Is that infantry?’ He had been
looking for the scattered dots of advancing men that were all his
experience had told him to see of an advancing line. He was quite
unprepared for the solid grey mass that he actually did see.
‘That’s infantry,’ snapped his sergeant. ‘Did you think it was
airyplanes? Get to it now.’
The layer got to it, and in a few seconds the whole of the Brigade
was pouring shells on the advancing mass as fast as the guns could
be served. The Battery commanders had a vague idea that the
enemy infantry had made some terrible mistake, had in error
exposed themselves in mass in the open. When the guns had
brought swift retribution for the mistake the mass would vanish; but
meantime here was the guns’ opportunity—opportunity such as no
gunner there had ever hoped to have. But when the mass persisted
and pushed on in the teeth of the fire that every one knew must be
murderous beyond words, the rate of gun-fire was slowed down,
and the batteries set themselves deliberately to wipe this audacious
infantry out of existence.
But then suddenly it began to look as if it were to be the Brigade
that would be wiped out. A number of German guns turned on it,
battered it with heavy high-explosive, lashed it with shrapnel, rent
and tore and disrupted it with a torrent of light and heavy shells, a
scorching whirlwind of fire, with blasts of leaping flame, with storms
of splinters and bullets. One after another guns of the Brigade were
put out of action, with guns destroyed or overthrown, with
ammunition waggons blown up, with gun detachments killed or
wounded. Gun by gun the fighting strength of the Brigade waned;
but as each gun went the others increased their rate of fire, strove
to maintain the weight of shells that a Brigade should throw. The
guns that were destroying them were themselves invisible. To the
Brigade there was no movement of men, no tell-tale groups, no
betraying flash even, to show where their destroyers were in action.
It is true that the Brigade spent no time looking for them, would not
have spent a round on them if it had seen them. Its particular job
had been plainly indicated to it—to stop the advancing infantry—and
it had no time or shells to spare for anything else.
But grimly and stoically though they took their punishment,
gamely and desperately though they strove to fulfil their task, it was
beyond them. The grey mass was checked and even stopped at
times, but it came on again, and at the guns the ranges shortened
and shortened, to a thousand yards, to eight, seven, six hundred.
After that it was a hopeless fight, so far as this Brigade was
concerned. Most of their guns were out of action, their ammunition
was nearly all expended, they were under a rifle fire that scourged
the guns with whips of steel and lead, that cut down any man who
moved from the shelter of his gun’s shield. Such guns as were left,
such men as could move, continued to fire as best they might at
ranges that kept getting still shorter and shorter. No teams could
bring up ammunition waggons, so the rounds were carried up by
hand across the bullet-swept field, until there were no more rounds
to bring.
Since they were useless there, an attempt was made to bring the
guns out of action and back under cover. It failed when after a
minute or two half the remaining men had been cut down by bullets,
and the commanders saw that nothing could move and live in the
open. Then the order was passed to leave the guns and retire the
men as best they could. That was at high noon, and for the next two
or three hours the gunners tried in ones and twos to run the
gauntlet of the fire and get back to cover. Some tried to crawl or to
lie prone and wriggle out on their bellies; others stripped off
bandoliers and haversacks and water-bottles, some even their
jackets and boots to ‘get set’ like runners in a hundred-yard dash,
crouching in the shelter of the gun shield, leaping out and away in a
desperate rush. But crawl or wriggle or run made little odds. Some
men went half the distance to safety, a few went three-quarters, one
or two to within bare places of cover; but none escaped, and most
went down before they were well clear of the gun. The few that
from the first refused sullenly to abandon their guns, that swore
amongst themselves to stick it out till dark if necessary and then
drag the crippled guns away, came off best in the end because they
lay and crouched under the scanty cover the guns gave, and
watched the others go out to their deaths. They lay there through
the long dragging hours of the afternoon with the bullets hissing and
whistling over and past them, with the shells still crumping and
crashing down at intervals, with the gun shields and wheels and
steel waggon covers ringing and smacking to the impact of bullet
and splinter, with one man here and another there jerking
convulsively to a fresh wound—his first or his twenty-first as the
case might be—groaning or cursing through set teeth, writhing in
pain, or lying silent and still with all pain past.
Late in the afternoon there came a lull in the firing and a lessening
of the bullet storm, and the order—a very imperative order—was
passed for every man who could move to retire from the guns. So
the few whole men came away, helping the wounded out as best
they could; and even then they would not come empty-handed, and
since they could not bring their guns, and they knew it was a
retirement from the position, they stayed to collect the gun fittings,
crawling about amongst the disabled pieces and shattered carriages,
with the bullets still hissing and snapping about their ears, throwing
dust spurts amongst their feet, whisking and swishing through the
scattered corn stooks. They brought away the sights and breech
mechanisms and sight- and field-clinometers, and every other
fitment they could carry and thought worth having (and in that they
were even wiser than they knew, for in those days such things as
dial-sights were precious beyond words, and once lost could scarcely
be replaced). And laden down under the weight and unhandiness of
these things—the breech fittings alone weigh some forty pounds,
and make a most unpleasantly awkward thing to carry—the handful
of men left in each battery doubled laboriously out across the field
and into comparative safety. At the cost of persistent attempts and
some more men a gun was also manhandled out.
The battery that had salvaged its gun brought it safely through
the Retreat which followed the action. The other batteries had to be
content to keep their pitifully scant ranks together and stagger
wearily over the long miles of the great Retreat lugging their
cumbersome breech-blocks and dial-sights and gun gear with them.
They clung at least to these as the outward and visible sign of being
Gunners and the remains of Batteries, and they marched and hung
together, waiting eagerly and hopefully for the day that would bring
new guns to them and reserves to ‘make up the strength.’
An unknown General passed them one day where they were
halted by the roadside for what one of the gunners facetiously called
‘inspection of gun-park an’ stores.’ And ‘just see all the batteries’
guns is in line an’ properly dressed by the right,’ he added, with a
glance at the one gun left to them.
‘What—er—lot is this?’ asked the General of the officer who was
‘inspecting.’
‘The Umpty-Noughth Brigade, Field Artillery, sir,’ said the officer;
‘Umptieth, Oughtieth, and Iddyieth Batteries.’ (It may have sounded
pathetically ridiculous, but it was no more or less than the bare
truth; for it was as units and batteries that these remnants had
marched and hung close together, and, given new guns and fresh
drafts, they would be batteries and units again. After all, it is the
spirit of and as a unit that counts.)
The General looked at the drawn-up ranks of the batteries, the
gun detachments represented by two or three men, or by one man,
or by an empty gap in the line; he saw the men grey with dust, with
torn clothing, with handkerchiefs knotted at the corners replacing
lost caps, with puttees and rags wound round blistered feet—but
with shoulders set back, with heads held up and steady eyes looking
unwinking to their front. He looked, too, at the one gun, scarred and
dented and pitted and pocked with splinter marks and bullet holes,
at each little pile of breech-blocks and sights and fittings that lay
spread out on handkerchiefs and haversacks and rags in the place of
the other guns; and he noticed that dirty and dusty and dishevelled
as the men might be, the gun parts were speckless and dustless,
clean and shining with oil.
The General spoke a few curt but very kindly words to the officer
quite loud enough for ‘the Brigade’ to hear, saying he remembered
hearing some word of their cutting up and the fine finish they had
made to their fight, congratulating them on the spirit that had held
them together, wishing them luck, and hoping they would have their
new guns before the time came to turn and hit back and begin the
advance.
‘I hope so, sir,’ said the officer simply; ‘and thank you.’
The General saluted gravely and turned to go, but halted a
moment to ask a last question. ‘How many of you—how many of the
Brigade came out of that show?’ he said.
‘Only what you see here, sir—one gun, one officer, and fifty-three
men,’ said the officer.
You may remember what was the full fighting strength of a Field
Artillery Brigade; but you must also remember that there is another
sort of ‘fighting strength,’ greater far than mere numbers, the sort of
strength that this poor shattered remnant of a Brigade still held
undiminished and unabated—the stoutness of heart, the courage,
the spirit that made the old ‘Contemptible Little Army’ what it was.
Press Bureau: Passed for Publication.
 SQUIRES AND TRADE IN OLDEN
TIMES.
When did the idea that trade was derogatory to men of good
birth, otherwise the Continental point of view based on a different
social structure, creep into England? No writer, so far as I know, has
ever attempted an explanation of what suggests a paradox. That it is
an alien importation and in conflict with the facts of English life up to
a certain period seems indisputable, and all evidence would point to
the Hanoverian succession as roughly marking this mysterious
change of attitude. Eliminating, and for obvious reasons, the greater
and more powerful Houses, the record of most old English families is
a contradiction in terms of the rigid but quite logical observance of a
Continental noblesse. There is about an even chance that sooner or
later you tap the root of the family and its fortunes in a woolstapler,
a goldsmith, a vintner, an iron-forger, a flockmaster, a haberdasher,
or a grocer, and last, but assuredly not least, in a successful lawyer.
What is more, we find these worthies seated upon their newly
acquired acres with a coat of arms, inherited or acquired, without
any apparent consciousness of being upstarts or parvenus. In the
modern sense they were probably not so regarded by their longer-
seated country neighbours. As the latter’s near relations, to say
nothing of their collaterals, were themselves largely engaged in
trade of some sort or in various avocations assuredly not more
aristocratic, such an attitude would be inconceivable!
We all know the modern ideas about such things, and need not
waste words over them. Nor is it of any consequence how much
they may have modified in the last fifty years. For our point lies in
the fact that they could not well have existed at a period to which a
popular superstition attributes a rigid and long-lost exclusiveness.
The ‘very respectable family’ of Blankshire in Jane Austen’s time
undoubtedly looked askance at trade. Yet it seems probable that
their own great-great-grandfathers would not even have understood
what such an attitude meant. It does seem rather whimsical that the
Continental point of view should have established itself in theory, if
not altogether in practice, in a country whose landed gentry had not
merely intermarried freely with commerce, but in such innumerable
instances were themselves the product of it. Nor is this all. For in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries their progeny and collaterals
were of necessity much engaged in trade, and indeed not seldom in
occupations that in these presumably democratic days would be
rejected offhand by anyone with the least pretension to gentility. The
more decorative alternatives to a livelihood, as we should now
regard them, either did not exist much before the Georges and the
rapid economic developments of the eighteenth century, or were
utterly inadequate to the demands of the younger son, when, with
smaller properties and larger families, his name was legion.
Scotland and Wales do not come within the scope of these
inquiries, for, I trust, obvious reasons. Some Scottish writers,
however, have dealt rather frankly with these things and incidentally
disclosed to their countrymen the perhaps not always palatable fact
that shopkeeping in Edinburgh was once a recognised occupation for
persons of family, while as for that quite other Scotland, the
Highlands, tavern-keeping (and what taverns!) was quite usual
among men of birth.[1] But the complexities of English social life
since the Feudal period are infinitely greater. Probably not half the
families seated upon the land to-day go back beyond George III.
Estimates of certain districts occasionally published give something
like this result. Of several counties I can of my own knowledge arrive
at something like an approximate conclusion, and it agrees with
these others. But counties and districts in this respect differ vastly.
The Home Counties, for instance, have virtually broken with their
past. They are full of aliens. Landed property of every kind is mainly
in the hands of a more or less new element from all parts of Britain
and the Empire, which derives most of its income from outside
sources. Half a dozen counties are in a social sense little more than
glorified suburbs. The landscape may remain in part rural, though
thickly sprinkled with exotic marks. Sport and agriculture may be
active. Ingenuous novelists and essayists in London or the suburbs
may write of these regions as representing normal English rural life
and society. The visiting American may imagine he is looking upon a
typical English country-side. But all this is, of course, an utter fallacy.
The influence of London even in old times covered a considerable
radius. Fifty miles in nearly every direction would be no overestimate
of its range to-day.
But it has been given me during the last quarter of a century to
make a tolerably intimate acquaintance almost parish by parish with
a good many other English counties more typical for the purpose in
hand, to trace back the fortunes of families and estates, and, not
least, to appraise their domestic history as it is written on tomb and
tablet in hundreds of parish churches. Genealogies, county histories,
family documents are eloquent enough of the various careers
followed by men of gentle birth and of the enterprises which brought
so many landed families into being and continued to engage the
energies of younger sons regardless of lineage. Most of us have
heard, from the lips, probably, of old ladies of a past generation, that
the Army and Navy, Church and Bar, were the only callings for a
gentleman. Anglo-Irish squireens, of Cromwellian or Williamite
origin, with the thickest of brogues, still very likely give utterance to
what half a century ago was accepted as a sort of good old English
tradition. It occurred to no one, apparently, that in old England, say
pre-Georgian England, there was no Army to speak of and no Navy
(as a career for a gentleman); that the Church meant anything or
nothing; while the Bar, aristocratic no doubt, was a little too much
so, or at least too expensive, for most younger sons of average
country squires. But it is on the chancel walls of parish churches that
the Tudor or Jacobean novus homo proclaims most convincingly the
current absence of any commercial shamefacedness. To-day the
merchant squire who starts the family tomb with the family acres is
almost always writ down thereon as a territorial magnate pure and
simple. All allusion to the shop is suppressed.
 The alderman squire of the seventeenth century, on the other
hand, looks down on us from beneath his inherited or acquired
armorial bearings quite unabashed in the character of a prosperous
mercer or woolstapler. With the ladies, too, who so frequently
brought the profits of commerce to improve the fortunes of a
distinguished line, the parental haberdasher or clothier who provided
their dower is frankly recognised in their own or their husband’s
mortuary inscription. And this, I have little doubt, for the simple
reason that there was no incentive to the curious make-believe that
has since been fostered by a healthy but utterly confused social
system. Human nature assuredly has not changed. Quite possibly
there was friction on other accounts between the Londoner and his
country neighbours. But as the sons and uncles and cousins of the
latter were deep in trade, local or otherwise, the candour of the
sculptured tomb in the parish church seems merely natural.
The Londoner, too, may have been of that wealthy city connection
who lived gorgeously, and, as we know, not merely entertained the
higher nobility and men of wit and fashion, but were often welcomed
guests at the tables of the great. Such a man’s outlook on life and
knowledge of the world must have been in inverse ratio to that of
most country squires of that day. He probably spoke the Court
English, the sound and quality of which one would give much to
hear, whereas the other’s speech is shrouded in no such mystery, for
it was unquestionably in most cases the dialect of his county, more
or less modified. But provincial towns as well as London produced
citizen squires. Some, no doubt, had an inherited right to armorial
bearings, having regard to the number of cadets of landed families
who went into trade. But if not they assumed arms, often indeed
while still burghers, and heraldic experts tell us that this procedure
was regarded as a perfectly legitimate one, so long as they did not
annex some already in use; nor was any suggestion of misplaced
vanity thereby involved.
That there were diverse kinds of country squires in those times
goes without saying. A lord, too, was then a lord indeed! We have
ample evidence that there are certain conspicuous but untitled
families, both of Tudor and Norman origin, of wider culture, a Court
connection, and in closer touch with the outside world. We may
never know how these diverse elements regarded one another.
Probably there is not much to know. Rural Society had not yet
acquired a big S in the modern sense. The forms and ritual which
gave the ladies of a later day opportunities for snubbing one another
were not yet. They were all much occupied in domestic cares, and
furthermore there were no roads as we understand the word. When
they migrated to their town houses or lodgings in Exeter,
Shrewsbury, or Worcester for a short winter season, as was the
custom of many, the burgesses, as such, could hardly have been
excluded from their company, for so many of them were relations. It
is curious to note, too, how during Marlborough’s wars a professional
army began to introduce a new social element, though a very small
one, into provincial centres. In this connection The Recruiting Officer
is distinctly illuminating. For Farquhar writes from his own
experience as an officer quartered in Shrewsbury, to whose
inhabitants, or rather ‘To all friends round the Wrekin,’ he dedicates
the play.
For it was not merely the English democracy that so hated the
notion of a standing army, but the country squires were among its
stoutest opponents, since, as officers of the militia, it reduced them
at once to an inferior military position. The young officer of Queen
Anne’s time appears in the provinces as a gentleman from whom the
superior airs and graces of a man of the world, familiar even with
Continental usages, are to be looked for, and no doubt resented by
the country bucks. Brawls on this account with civilians were fairly
frequent. The hospitable squire himself seems to accept with
equanimity a slightly patronising attitude from his military guest. For
the virtue of his daughters he lives in a constant state of alarm while
the terrible captains, lieutenants, and ensigns, with their fine
uniforms and insinuating worldly ways, are in the neighbourhood. It
must be admitted that the ladies themselves give some cause for
this anxiety.
 But to return to our muttons. Several of the older families of
Wiltshire spring from the cloth manufacture which flourished so early
in that great wool-producing country. Others arose from like sources
and died out after a few generations of squiredom, leaving no
memory but that emblazoned upon the walls of their parish church,
and maybe some gem of a small Tudor or Jacobean manor-house
now occupied by a big sheep-farmer of more sumptuous life and
habit than the builder. Wilts, Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, and
Salop, in whole or part, I may say at once, are more particularly in
my mind in these pages, for the excellent reason that I know them
more intimately than any of those other portions of England which
could be taken as typical for the purpose in hand. But I feel tolerably
confident that what can be said of Worcester or Wilts will apply to
Yorkshire or Norfolk. The extremities of the country, on the other
hand, may be not inaptly illustrated by the ancient tag, or one may
fairly say ‘brag,’ of the always rather money-worshipping and
comfort-loving Englishman:

‘A squire of Wales, a Knight of Cales,

And a laird of the North Countree:
A yeoman of Kent, with his yearly rent,
Could buy them out all three.’

Here again is the whimsical lament of a Cromwellian sequestrator

on the Welsh border:

‘Radnorsheer, poor Radnorsheer!

Never a park and never a deer,
Never a squire of £500 a year
But Richard Fowler of Abbey cwm-hir.’

The figure here mentioned would represent a fairly well-endowed

squire of that period in a normal county.
To illustrate the intimate association of trade and land in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by a stray example or two may
seem beside the mark. But here at any rate, culled almost at random
from one of my notebooks, is John Groves, the first of his name to
be squire of Mickleton in Gloucestershire. He was a Yorkshireman
who had made money by trade in London. He died in 1616 in his
103rd year, just after his portrait had been taken, a work of art
which makes him look extremely wide awake! His son remained as a
haberdasher in London and married a squire’s daughter. Their son
became squire of Mickleton as well as a prominent Bencher of the
Temple, and incidentally the father of nineteen children, the eldest of
whom married a grocer, obviously with the family blessing; the
second daughter, a judge’s son; while the eldest son succeeded to
Mickleton. The pedigree of the Sandys family, founded by a North-
country lad who became an archbishop, for long one of the most
prominent in Worcestershire and afterwards ennobled, reveals a
grocer and a haberdasher at the very zenith of its fame. Bishop
Percy, of ballad renown, was a recognised cadet of the great
Northumbrian House. His father was a grocer in Worcester, and the
beautiful half-timbered house he occupied in Bridgnorth still stands.
And what, again, of these swarms of younger sons and their
careers? In Elizabeth’s time the land produced less than a third of
the grain per acre that it does to-day, when, some urban critics of
British agriculture may be surprised to hear, our figures lead the
world. There could have been no princely portion for the younger
sons from an estate of, say, 2000 acres. What did they do? There
was no Army or Navy, nor often, for the poor man, any Bar. The
Church, for a clever youth, held great opportunities, but in the
seventeenth century could hardly have commended itself as the
snug and gentlemanly provision it became later. Nor am I forgetting
that many squires’ sons became a sort of upper servants in the
households of great nobles. But the custom died out, I think, during
the Tudor period. Nor again must the small expeditionary forces
from time to time dispatched by the Crown or led by adventurers to
the Continent be overlooked. But the supply of commissions must
have been limited, and in any case the job was but a temporary one.
Unlike the Scotch and Irish, each stimulated by quite different but
equally cogent reasons, the Englishman does not figure much as a
soldier of fortune in foreign armies, while of the Colonies a word or
so later. But in the meantime we may well ask ourselves, why this
search after showy and romantic careers for the younger son of
olden days? He had plenty of ordinary prosaic openings at home,
and took them as a matter of course. It is quite certain that his
sisters and his cousins and his aunts did not hold up their hands at
the notion of trade, for half of them were allied, or prospectively
allied, to it. It was deemed a fortunate thing if, through kinship or
interest, an apprenticeship offered in the house of a big tradesman
in London. Not a few, indeed, of the famous London apprentices we
hear so much about were country gentlemen’s sons. More found
occupations in their own district, in such lines, for instance, as the
great Severn trade, with its boat-loads of caps and crockery, butter
and cheese, iron and Virginia tobacco, passing back and forth
between Bridgnorth, Bewdley, Worcester, Gloucester, and Bristol, and
the squire himself very often took a share in such ventures. Others
became millers, maltsters, tanners, glovers, or even shopkeepers in
the country towns. Some rented farms, which meant a very different
existence for them and their wives from that which would be
entailed by a similar proceeding in the same class of life to-day. Most
of my own generation, I fancy, grew up with a hazy notion that
Cromwell was a plebeian because he was a country brewer or the
like. There are, perhaps, plenty of well-informed adults even now
who do not realise that he was not merely of a landed family but of
a wealthy and powerful one which had sumptuously entertained King
James at Hinchingbrooke, though originally sprung from plain
Glamorgan squires. For the son of a younger son, Cromwell, alias
Williams, seems to have been exceptionally well endowed. Attorneys
and surgeons too occur fairly often in family records, or as marrying
squires’ daughters, and parsons of course are well in evidence.
Simple arithmetic precludes the possibility of more than one eldest
son in the matrimonial market for each family of girls. Some of their
marriages would, I feel sure, surprise those who vaguely imagine
that things in this particular were not merely as now, or as yesterday
if you like, but ‘more so.’
 In the maritime counties, particularly the western ones, the sea no
doubt attracted many a younger son. The Newfoundland fisheries,
long before our North American Colonies were founded and for over
a century afterwards, were of enormous importance to Devonshire,
for this was a Mediterranean as well as a home trade. It is said that
a third of the eligible manhood of the county disappeared thence in
April to return in November, while squires with loose cash became
part owners in ships, and their sons frequently sailed in them. The
constant wars in Ireland during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, with their chances of loot and land, must also have
attracted a good many young gentlemen. But of the hundred and
odd English purchasers of estates in the six Plantation counties of
Ulster the outlay was too large for the ordinary younger son, so far
as one can judge from the list of planters, the particulars concerning
them and the prices paid, as given in the Government survey of the
day.[2]
The American Colonies and the West Indies, particularly the
former, figure as the favourite dumping-ground of the seventeenth-
century younger son with the historian, when skimming briefly over
these social trifles. The Americans themselves too, with a natural
and venial yearning for decorative ancestors, work the younger-son
tradition for all it is worth, and paint him when they get him as a
much more important person than he really was. The New
Englanders may be excepted, for they are a precise people and have
worked out their genealogies carefully to the original Pilgrim father
(using that term in a general sense) with more regard for him as a
sturdy pioneer than as a possible armiger. He was generally, in fact,
of respectable middle-class family. The theocratic atmosphere of
New England was not calculated to attract the offspring of squires or
the like. The southern colonies are, of course, their traditional goal.
Captain John Smith, virtual founder of Virginia, took out seventy
such with gent marked against each of their ill-fated names on his
invaluable chronicle. They died to a man, poor fellows, and the only
gleam in their brief and melancholy story is when the indomitable
captain led out batches of them to fell trees and they swore so