Part 394

QUARTER, in war, signifies the sparing of men’s lives, and giving good treatment to a vanquished enemy. Hence, to give quarter, to take quarter, &c. donner quartier, Fr. prendre quartier, Fr.

To QUARTER UPON. To oblige persons to receive soldiers, &c. into their dwelling houses, and to provide for them.

QUARTERS. Military stations are so called; as head quarters, home quarters, regimental quarters, &c.

QUARTERS, at a siege, the encampment upon one of the most principal passages round a place besieged, to prevent relief and convoys.

Head QUARTERS of an army, the place where the commander in chief has his quarters. The quarters of generals of horse are, if possible, in villages behind the right and left wings; and the generals of foot are often in the same place: but the commander in chief should be near the centre of the army.

QUARTERS of refreshment, the place or places where troops that have been much harrassed are put to recover themselves, during some part of the campaign.

QUARTER of assembly, the place where the troops meet to march from in a body, and is the same as the place of rendezvous.

Intrenched QUARTERS, a place fortified with a ditch and parapet to secure a body of troops.

Winter QUARTERS, sometimes means the space of time included between leaving the camp and taking the field; but more properly the places where the troops are quartered during the winter.

The first business, after the army is in winter quarters, is to form the chain of troops to cover the quarters well: which is done either behind a river, under cover of a range of strong posts, or under the protection of fortified towns. Hussars are very useful on this service.

It should be observed, as an invariable maxim, in winter quarters, that your regiments be disposed in brigades, to be always under the eye of a general officer; and, if possible, let the regiments be so distributed, as to be each under the command of its own chief.

In QUARTERS. Within the limits prescribed.

Out of QUARTERS. Beyond the limits prescribed. Officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers who sleep out of quarters, without leave, are liable to be tried by a general or regimental court martial, according to the rank they severally hold.

QUARTER-master, is an officer, whose principal business is to look after the quarters of the soldiers, their clothing, bread, ammunition, firing, &c. Every regiment of foot, and artillery, has a quarter-master, and every troop of horse one.

QUARTER-master-general, is a considerable officer in the British army, and should be a man of great judgment and experience, and well skilled in geography: his duty is to mark the marches, and encampments of an army: he should know the country perfectly well, with its rivers, plains, marshes, woods, mountains, defiles, passages, &c. even to the smallest brook. Prior to a march he receives the orders and route from the commanding general, and appoints a place for the quarter-masters of the army to meet him next morning, with whom he marches to the next camp, where after having viewed the ground, he marks out to the regimental quarter-masters the space allowed each regiment for their camp: he chuses the head quarters, and appoints the villages for the generals of the army’s quarters: he appoints a proper place for the encampment of the train of artillery: he conducts foraging parties, as likewise the troops to cover them against assaults, and has a share in regulating the winter quarters and cantonments.

QUARTER staff, an old military weapon, made of strong even wood, bigger and heavier than a pike: it is 6¹⁄₂ feet long between the ferrules that keep fast the two pikes of iron stuck into the ends of the staff.

QUARTER, in the manége, as to work from quarter to quarter, is to ride a horse three times in upon the first of the four lines of a square; then, changing your hand, to ride him three times upon the second; and so to the third and fourth; always changing hands, and observing the same order.

QUARTER-facing, is in the new discipline substituted for the old aukward oblique marching; it is also called the line of science; in ranks every man turns to the right or left as ordered, and if ordered to march, the lines or ranks thus keep parallel to their former front, but march on a line oblique to it.

QUARTER-Wheeling, in the old discipline, was the motion by which the front of a body of men was turned round to where the flank stood, by taking a quarter of a circle; but in the new discipline which reduces all principles to the strictest simplicity, the wheelings take all their proportions from half a circle; and for obvious causes, since the wheeling of any number of men on a whole circle, would be only moving them to bring them into the place in which they stood before they were wheeled or moved; now the purpose of wheeling is to change from one position to some other required position, and hence quarter wheeling means a quarter wheel of half a circle; thus wheeling about, is changing the front to the rear; and this wheeling is simply half the half circle, or placing the ranks on the same line from which they were moved; the quarter wheel is a movement of ¹⁄₄ of the half circle, or in a line oblique to the line from which they were moved; a regiment quarter wheeled by companies display the regiment in echellon.

QUARTERING troops, is to provide them with quarters.

QUARTERON, one, Fr. A quarteron; one born of a white man and a mulatto woman, or of a mulatto man and a white woman.

QUARTIER, Fr. For its general acceptation see QUARTERS.

QUARTIER d’un Siége, Fr. A station taken, or an encampment made in one of the leading avenues to a besieging town or place. When the Quartier d’un Siége was commanded by a general officer, during the French monarchy, it was called Quartier du Roi. The king’s quarters.

QUARTIER des Vivres, Fr. The park of stores, provisions, &c.

QUARTIER d’Hiver, Fr. Winter quarters. Count de Turpin has written largely upon this subject. See Essai sur l’Art de la Guerre; likewise, Suite de la Science de la Guerre, tom. iv. p. 170.

QUARTIER de Rafraîchissemens, Fr. Those places are so called in which troops are permitted to halt and take up their quarters for any period, during a campaign.

QUARTIER de Fourrage, Fr. Foraging quarters. When the active operations of a campaign are necessarily interrupted by the inclemency of the season, means are adopted to lessen the heavy expences of winter quarters, by remaining a certain time in foraging quarters. A wise general will take care to live as long as he can upon his enemy’s country, in order to draw as little as possible from his own.

QUARTIER du Roi, ou du Général, Fr. Head quarters, or the spot where the king or the commander in chief resides. When an army takes up its ground in low marshy places, &c. the royal or head quarters are marked out in the most advantageous manner, so as to have the king’s or general’s person secure. When an army went into action or stood in battle array, it was customary, among the French, to say, Le Quartier du Roi est partout. The king’s station is every where. Nevertheless, it was always judged prudent, not to expose the royal person or the commander in chief too much. On this principle, head quarters were always established in a place which was surrounded by the best troops, and was supported by epaulements on the right and left, with the addition of a rear guard. Since the revolution, these arrangements have been much changed. It cannot, however, be uninteresting to give a general outline of what was practised during the monarchy. The Quartier du Roi or head quarters, when a town was besieged, were always fixed out of the reach of ordnance, and in a village that was well secured by entrenchments. Before the cannonade commenced, it was usual for the besieged to ascertain the exact station of head quarters, that their fire might not be directed towards them; nor did the real assault of the town take place from that direction. Wherever the king, or, in his absence, the commander in chief took up his quarters, the camp assumed its name from that particular spot or village.