In general, scouts determine the current disposition and movement of enemy troops, spies infiltrate enemy lines and use every possible means to gather useful information.
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serving as spies and scouts
Some spies were women, who were not readily seen as being involved in the war.
During the US Civil War, espionage was a factor in gaining information about both the North & South. The South had spies in Washington DC and the North had spies in Richmond, Virginia.
The quote may be from Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which King Claudius says, "When sorrows come, they come not single spies / But in battalions." It means that sorrows don't come one by one, like "spies" [advance scouts for an army], but all at once, battalions of an army.
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