Page 152 - Wish Stream Year of 2018

First, if you are an officer cadet, be proud of your Academy. Remember these actual words of our Commandant: “If you find defects in it, keep all criticism inside the Academy. To the outside public show a united front. Crack up your Acad- emy; never run it down.”
Next, be loyal to the high discipline of your Acad- emy and help to maintain it. A military academy without a high discipline is like an undisciplined mob – inefficient and so ineffective. Officer cadets who conscientiously obey the Academy rules and regulations help to keep it together as an efficient officer producing machine.
The proper working of Academy societies and the hearty playing of games help greatly to keep up Academy esprit de corps. They train officer cadets in co-operation, and make the Academy more conscious of itself. Play your games, not
only because they give you pleasure but also for the honour of your Academy.
But, of course, the Academy exists for educa- tion and training also. You join it not primarily to play hockey and soccer but to study, train and gain knowledge. If you love your Academy and are proud of it, you will be anxious to become efficient officers, so that all may know that your Academy is indeed a home of training and learning.
It is, however, in the moral sphere that the great- est work of this establishment should be done. This Academy is a preparation for life; and its chief end is to make officers, good officers of character and loyalty. It is for us to maintain, in our own character and conduct, the high stand- ard which esprit de corps fosters.
The Art of Defence and Attack: A
Conserved Collection of Cadet Drawings
from the RMA Woolwich, 1791
Sebastian Puncher MA AMA
The course work of Gentleman Cadet Robert Lawson from the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, gives a unique insight into the pre-commissioning military education in the late eighteenth century. It is a rare survival, in that it is the only bound work within the Sandhurst Collection. Many drawings by other Cadets of a similar date do exist, but this bound version gives us a complete course arranged in a logi- cal manner and with a handwritten index. It was recently transferred from the library and has been conserved by Sussex Conservation Consortium.
The book is in two parts, the greater is dedicated to fortification – consisting of beautiful hand- drawn ink and brush illustrations. These consist predominantly of ‘traces’, or plans, of the several ‘bastion system’ types developed by notable con- tinental fortress engineers. The most important of these was Marshal of France, Sébastien Le Pres- tre de Vauban. Arguably the most influential mili-
tary engineer of all time, his key achievement was transforming existing siege methods into a sys- tem; with the construction of trenches, saps and batteries, a fortress’s subjugation was assured by his method. After Vauban’s death in 1707, military engineers thought they could discern three ‘sys- tems’ from the fortresses he built. Both Vauban’s method of siege warfare and his systems were studied by the Cadets at Woolwich. Vauban’s rival Baron Menno van Coehoorn, and successor, Louis de Cormontaigne were also studied under a Frenchman, Isaac Landmann, who was professor of both fortification and artillery.
The fortification traces exhibit a concern with exacting geometrical precision. The focus was to produce defences which prevented an attacker from occupying blind-spots on them. Whilst important, it seems today as almost obsessive or pedantic to follow such geometrical rules so slav- ishly. On the other hand, if officers were to create
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