Infinite Wisdom

"History knows many more armies ruined by want and disorder than by the effects of their enemies."

--

Richelieu

La Triviata

• The average age on first enlistment of a soldier in the “Indian Fighting Army” (1865-1890), was 23, and 32 for re-ups.


• The winter campaign in the Carpathians in 1914-1915 seems to have cost the Austro-Hungarian Army c. 6,600 casualties a day for nearly 100 days, mostly from illness, notably cholera and frostbite.


• In 1808 French Army Maj. Nicholas L’Homond proposed invading Britain by means of a fleet of 100 hot air balloons, each 100 meters in diameter and capable of carrying a thousand infantrymen, two cannon with their caissons, and 25 horses, plus supplies for ten days.


• In 1942 a scrap drive in Nebraska yielded 135 million tons of metal, about 103 pounds for every man, woman, and child in the state.


• During the Napoleonic Wars only 17.7-percent of the officers in British infantry regiments had secured their commissions through purchase, in contrast to 45.1-percent in the cavalry, which may help explain why Wellington found his footsloggers more reliable than his horse soldiers.


• In 1370 the mercenary Giovanni Acuto – Sir John Hawkwood – encountering two of his soldiers quarreling over who had the right to ravish a young nun whom they had taken prisoner, resolved the problem by thrusting a dagger into her heart.


• During the Crimean War the British estimated that they might recruit some 30,000 volunteers from the United States, but in fact only managed to secure about 150.


• The Roman Emperor Valentinian I (361-375) once executed an armorer because he had made a mistake in the weight of a breastplate.

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