him if escaping or escaped.' To his mind simplicity was the first condition of sound strategy, more especially in operations against the armed mobs of the Indian Mutiny. Complex combinations were rejected by him because he found, as others found, that they were unsuitable to this peculiar warfare.
His whole career exemplified the truth of Napoleon's favourite maxim — that a General is the head and soul of his army. It was Caesar, not the Roman legion, who conquered Gaul. It was Hannibal, not the Carthaginians, who carried terror to the gates of Rome. It was Alexander, not the Macedonian phalanx, who found a way to the Indus. It was Turenne, and not the French, who reached the Weser and the Inn. It was Frederick the Great, not the Prussian army, who defended Prussia during seven years against the three chief Powers of Europe. In all that Sir Hugh Rose did, in or out of the field in India, he inspired officers and men under him to be like himself. Every man of his force was a hero; and his troops in Central India fought their way to victory with a courage and devotion that threw many other operations of the Mutiny comparatively into the shade. And like Outram and Nicholson, Sir Hugh Rose showed that military talent may, after all, be sometimes preserved under the black coat of the diplomatist, and that peaceful avocations do not necessarily rust the faculties of a true soldier[1].
- ↑ Speaking of Sir Hugh Rose two years afterwards, in the House of Lords, the Duke of Cambridge, who accorded him a generous
