Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/115

 Tin: KXDING OF Till': ]]I.A<K SKA I'l-KKT. &J ill the iiiiiids of men, wiih the piitU; they take in CHAP. "" IV. their regiment, Le hastens to tear (jft" the mark ' whicii makes the corps difler from others ; and when there is a regiment which glories in its ancient name, connecting it vaguely with great traditions, and founding upon the cherished syl- lables that consciousness of power which is a main condition of ascendancy in Mar, then the army clerk suffers siicli pain from the want of tiiat sequence which he has long observed in an orderly series of numerals running on like ' one,' ' two,' and ' three,' that he takes from the regiment its proud historic name, and orders that for the future it shall be called by a number, in the way tliat is used with convicts* Ikit of all the clerks who thus laboured at the business of making armies by extinguishing men, none had been more ruthless than the one who toiled at St Petersburg; for, devoting himself to the merely military as distinguished from warlike pursuits, and being to which an array aJniiinstiation may be carried by its love of uniformity was not fetched from St Petersburg, but from our own Horse Guards, though not, I believe I may say, from the Jlorse Guards as at present administered. The Russian regi- ments are officially called by names or descrijjtions not founded on numerals ; but many a one has been subjected to the jirac- tice of taking away the old name of the regiment, in order to designate it as the possession of some mere jaince. Thus, for instance, the ' Borodino ' regunent had a name which the Rus- sians have ever held to be one of great glory to their nation ; but it got instead a word}', cumbrous designation, describing the regiment as the property of one of the Emperor's sons, and sounding more like a tiresome extract from a court almanac than the honest name of a rofdment.
 * This piuticular illustration of the silly ami uoxiuus lengths