Guides

( guides, Fr. ) are generally the country people in the neighborhood where an army encamps: they are to give you intelligence concerning the country, the roads by which you are to march, and the route by which the enemy may approach you. Guides should be faithful, because, in giving you false intelligence, or guiding you wrong, they may greatly endanger the army. Several guides are requisite, as every corps that marches by night should have one at least. There is sometimes a captain, or chief of the guides, who should be a man of intelligence, active, and attentive to the diligence and fidelity of his people. He should always have a sufficient number with him, and who are well acquainted with the country. In time of war, particularly in the seat of it, the guides invariably accompany head-quarters, and a certain number is allotted not only to general officers, but to all detachments made from the main body, either for the purpose of combating the advanced posts of an enemy, of protecting escorts, or securing convoys. Guides, in an army, may be justly called its principal outsets. They are to a body of men what the eyes are to the human frame. They cannot, however, be too jealously watched.