CHAPTER I
THE HOME AT CELBRIDGE— FIRST COMMISSION
TEN miles west of Dublin, on the north bank of the
Liffey, stands a village of a single street,"* called
Celbridge. In times so remote that their record only
survives in a name, some Christian hermit built here
himself a cell for house, church, and tomb ; a human
settlement took root around the spot; deer -tracks
widened into pathways ; pathways broadened into roads ;
and at last a 'bridge spanned the neighbouring stream.
The church and the bridge, two prominent land-marks
on the road of civilisation, jointly named the place, and
Kildrohid or " the church by the bridge " became hence-
forth a local habitation and a name, twelve hundred
years later to be anglicised into Celbridge. To this
village of Celbridge in the year 1785 came a family
which had already made some stir in the world, and
was destined to make more.
Colonel the Hon. George Napier and his wife Lady
Sarah Lennox were two remarkable personages. The
one a tall and majestic soldier, probably the finest
specimen of military manhood then in the service of
& B
SIR CHARLES NAPIER
King George the Third ; the other a lady of such beauty,
wit, and grace that her fascination had induced the
same King George to offer her all his heart and half his
throne. Fate and politics marred this proposed romantic
royal union, and the lovely Lady Sarah, after a most
unhappy first marriage, became in 1777 the wife of
Colonel George Napier, and in the following dozen years
the mother of a large family, in whose veins ran the
blood of a list of knights and kings and nobles sufficient
to fill a peerage all to itself; for on one side the
pedigree went back to the best of the old Scottish
cavaliers — to Montrose, and the Napiers of Merchiston,
and the Scotts of Thirlestane; and on the other it
touched Bourbon, Stuart, and Medici, and half a dozen
other famous sources. It would have been strange if
from such parents and with such stock the nest which
was built in Celbridge in 1785 did not send forth far-
flying birds.
The house in which the Napiers took up their resi-
dence in this year stood a short distance from the*
western end of the village. It was a solid, square build-
ing of blue-gray limestone, three-storied and basemented,
with many tall narrow windows in front and rear,
and a hall door that looked north and was approached
by arched steps spanning a wide stone area surround-
ing the basement; green level fields, with fences upon
Avhich grew trees and large bushes, spread around the
house to north and west, and over the tops of oak and
beeches to the south a long line of blue hills lay upon
the horizon. Looking south towards these hills the eye
saw first a terrace and garden, then a roadway partly
screened by trees, and beyond the road the grounds of
COLONEL GEORGE NAPIER
Marley Abbey sloping to the Liffey, holding within
them still the flower-beds and laurel hedges amid which
Vanessa spent the last sorrow -clouded years of her
life. But to the boys up in the third-story nursery,
looking out in the winter evenings to snowy Kippure or
purple Sleve-rhue, the loves and wrongs of poor Vanessa
mattered little. What did matter to them, however —
and mattered so much that through a thousand scenes
of future death and danger they never forgot it — was,
that there stood a certain old larch tree in the corner of
the pleasure-ground where the peacocks fluttered up to
roost as the sun went down beyond the westmost
Wicklow hill-top, and that there was a thick clump of
Portugal laurels and old hollies where stares, or starlings
as they call them in England, came in flocks at nightfall,
and sundry other trees and clumps in which blackbirds
with very yellow winter beaks flew in the dusk, sounding
the weirdest and wildest cries, and cocked their fan-spread
tails when they lighted on the sward where the holly and
arbutus berries lay so thick.
When Colonel Napier settled at Celbridge he
was still in his prime, a man formed both in mind
and body to conquer and direct in camp, court, or
council ; and yet, for all that, a failure as the world
counts its prizes and blanks in the lottery of life. He
had recently returned from the American War, where
he had served with distinction. He had filled important
offices abroad and at home, and by right of intellect and
connection might look forward almost with certainty to
high military command, but he had one fatal bar against
success in the career of arms, as that noble profession
was practised in the reign of George the Third and for
4 SIR CHARLES NAPIER CHAP.
a good many years after — he was in political opinion
intensely liberal and intensely outspoken. The phrase
' c political opinion " is perhaps misleading. Colonel Napier's
liberalism was neither a party cry nor a prejudice. It
sprang from a profound love of justice, an equally fixed
hatred of oppression, and a wide -reaching sympathy
with human suffering that knew no distinction of caste
or creed. The selection of Celbridge as the Napiers'
family residence at this period was chiefly decided by
the proximity of the village to the homes of Lady
Sarah's two sisters — the Duchess of Leinster at Carton,
and Lady Louisa Conolly at Castletown — indeed only
the length of the village street separated the beautiful
park of Castletown from the Napiers' home, and
Castletown woods and waters were as free to the
children's boyish sports and rambles as its saloons were
open to them later on when the quick-running years of
boyhood carried them into larger life. Whatever was
beautiful and brilliant in Irish society — and there was
much of both — then met in the Castletown drawing-
rooms. They were to outward seeming pleasant years,
those seventeen hundred and eighties and early nineties
in Ireland. The society that met at Castletown formed
a brilliant circle of orators, soldiers, wits, and statesmen,
many of whose names still shine brightly through the
intervening century. Grattan, Curran, Flood, Charle-
mont, the Ponsonbys, Parnell, the Matthews, and
younger but not less interesting spirits were in the
group too; the ill-fated Lord Edward Fitzgerald (first
cousin to the Napier boys) ; young Eobert Stewart,
still an advanced Liberal, — not yet seeing that his
road to fortune lay behind instead of before him ;
EARLY YEARS
and there was another frequent guest at Castletown —
a raw-boned, youthful ensign, generally disliked, much
in debt to his Dublin tailor, but nevertheless regarded
by Colonel Napier, at least, as a young man of promise,
who, if fate gave him opportunity, would some day win
fame as a soldier — one Ensign Wellesley, or, as he then
wrote his name, Arthur Wesley.
When the Napier coach drove into Celbridge with
the newly-arriving family in 1785, there was in it a very
small boy, Charles by name, the eldest son of the hand-
some colonel and his beautiful wife — a small, delicate-
looking child, who had been born at the Eichmond
residence in Whitehall just three years earlier. Two
other children younger than Charles made up, with the
due complement of nurses and boxes, an imposing caval-
cade, and for days after the arrival baggage and books —
these last not the least important items in the family
future — continued to trundle through the village.
Twelve years go by ; 1797 has come. Long ago —
what an age in childhood seem these few flying years ! —
little Charles has made himself at home in a circle ever
widening around the Celbridge nest. He has a fishing-
rod, and the river east and west has been explored each
year a longer distance. He has a pony, and the
mountains to the south have given up their wonders to
himself and his four-footed friend. And finally, grandest
step of all in the boy's ladder, he has a gun, and the
wood-pigeons of Castletown and the rabbits out in big
fences to the west know him as one more enemy added
to the long list of their foes.
And how about the more generally recognised factors
of boy- training — school and schoolmaster 1 Well, in these
6 SI/? CHARLES NAPIER CHAP.
matters we get a curious picture of army-training in that
good old time when George the Third was King. At
the age of twelve little Charlie Napier had been nomi-
nated to a pair of colours in His Majesty's Thirty-Third
Regiment of Foot. War had broken out with France. Mr.
Pitt was borrowing some fifty millions every year, and
commissions in Horse, Foot, and Dragoons, in Hessian
and Hanoverian Corps, in Scotch Fencibles and Irish
Yeomanry and English Militia, were plentiful as black-
berries in the Celbridge fields. But though Charles had
on many occasions shown himself a little lad of big heart
and steady courage in sundry encounters with fish, flesh,
and fowl, he was still too young to fight a Frenchman ;
and besides, it was even then a canon of war that before
you are fit to kill an enemy in the field you must be
able to write a nice letter to him, and perchance to talk
to him in his own language, and to draw little lines and
tracings of the various emplacements and scarps and
counter-scarps by which you propose to knock his cities
about his ears, and otherwise blow him and his off the
face of the earth. So, instead of proceeding with the
Duke of York's army to Flanders, Charles was sent to
Mr. Bagnel's school in Celbridge village. A ver}7 humble
and unpretending scholastic institution was Mr. Bagnel's
academy, — not much further removed from the hedge-
school of the time than the single street of Celbridge
was distant from the green hedges around it ; and of a
very mixed description were the numerous boys who
gathered there to receive from Mr. Bagnel's mind, and
frequently also from his hand, the instruction mental
and physical which he deemed essential for their future
guidance. The boys were chiefly the sons of Dublin
MR. BAGNEVS SCHOOL
merchants or local better-class farmers, and were, with
the exception of the Napiers, all Eoman Catholics. That
Charles and his brothers George and William should soon
become the leaders of the school, and the child-champions
of its youthful democracy, was not to be wondered at.
They represented to the other boys the three most taking
and entrancing things of boy life — genius, courage, and
strength. All three boys were plucky as eagles, but Charles
was captain by reason of his superior intelligence ; George
was lieutenant on account of reckless daring ; William was
ensign because of immense strength ; and all were beloved
because they, the grandsons of a duke, were ever ready
to uphold with the weapons of boyhood the rights
and freedom of their Catholic comrades against the over-
bearing usurpations and tyrannies of a large neighbouring
seminary, where the more favoured sons of Protestant
ascendancy were being booked and birched.
At ten o'clock every morning the Napier boys pro-
ceeded up the village to school, and at three they came
down the single street for home. Great was the com-
motion when this hour of breaking-up arrived ; it was
the event of the day for the villagers, and no wonder,
for then a strange sight was often to be seen. There
were pigs in Celbridge in these days, tall gaunt animals
with wide flapping ears that hung over their eyes, and
long legs that could gallop over the ground ; and it is
said that, mounted on the backs of those lean and agile
hogs, the Napier boys were wont to career homeward
with scholars and pig-owners following in wild pursuit.
" What a terrible training ! " I think I hear some
worthy parent or pedagogue exclaim, reading this deplor-
able incident. And yet it is not all so clear this matter
8 SIX CHAXLES NAPIER CHAP.
of boy-training. Would not the guiding lights of
Eton and Harrow and Rugby stand aghast at such
companionship, such a scene as this hog-race down the
village '\ Still, somehow or other, when I walk round
Trafalgar Square or down Waterloo Place, I seem to
miss these great centres of training in the statues of
Nelson, Havelock, Franklin, Clyde, Gordon, Lawrence,
Napier ; and I see beyond the bronze or the marble
the boy -hero at his village school — one at Foyle,
another at Taunton, a third at Celbridge, a fourth at
St. Ives, a fifth at Swanscombe — until I come to think
it is not quite so certain that we know all about the
matter. So too, when my mind turns to the subject of
military teaching, and I compare the course of school-train-
ing Charles and William Napier received at the hands of
Mr. Bagnel with our modern system of competitive cram-
ming, I am forced to the conclusion that both these brilliant
soldiers would have been ignominiously " plucked " for
entrance to Sandhurst or Woolwich ; nor does the outside
and casual training which these boys underwent show with
less disadvantage beside our modern system. How a
professor of military history, for instance, would have
scorned the tuition in the practice of war conveyed to
Ensign Charles Napier by old Molly Dunne as she sat in
her cottage porch of a summer evening telling the listen-
ing boys about her battles and sieges. She was the
Celbridge carpenter's great -grandmother, and of pro-
digious age. She could tell her listeners how she had
seen the last real lord of Celbridge ride forth to fight for
his king, their own great-great-great-granduncle, at the
Boyne, just one hundred years earlier, and how she had
seen his body brought back to be laid in the old grave-
THE BEST SCHOOL-MASTER
yard of Kildrohid, close to their own gateway. That was
a long look back, but Molly's memory went further off
still, for she could tell of wilder times of war and havoc ;
of how as a little child she had heard people speak
of the red days at Drogheda and Wexford, when Crom-
well imagined that he had found a final method of dealing
with the Irish question. This wonderful old woman, who
had seen more of actual war than had many of the
generals by whose military knowledge and experience
Mr. Pitt just at this moment fondly hoped he was going
to stop the French Eevolution, was said to be about one
hundred and thirty years of age.
But Charles Napier and his brothers had the benefit
of one outside teacher, the value of whose teaching to
them it would not be easy to exaggerate ; out of doors
and indoors, on the river and the mountain, their father
was their best school-master. From him Charles Napier
learned a thousand lessons of truth and justice, of
honour in arms, of simplicity in life, of steady purpose,
of hatred for pomp and show and empty-headed pride,
of pity for the poor, of sympathy with the oppressed, of
fearless independence of character, which those who care
to follow us through these pages will find growing in
profusion along the pathway of his life, plants none of
which ever withered from the moment they were planted
in these youthful days, but many of which were only
to blossom into full luxuriance in the autumn of existence.
When full fifty years have passed by we shall find the
lessons sown along the Liffey, and amid the Wicklow
hills, bearing their rich harvest in distant scenes by the
shores of mighty Eastern rivers and under the shadows
of Himalayan mountains. It has been said that the
io S/A' CHARLES NAPIER CHAP.
house at Celbridge held large store of books, and it may
be that in the library a copy of old Massinger was to be
found, wherein, if the boys were not allowed promiscu-
ously to read, they had read to them that wonderful
picture of the real soldier which the dramatist drew so
uselessly for the Cavaliers of his time, so terribly useful
for their Roundhead enemies.
If e'er my son
Follow the war, tell him it is a school
Where all the principles tending to honour
Are taught, if truly follow'd ; but for such
As repair thither as a place in which
They do presume they may with license practise
Their lusts and riots, they shall never merit
The noble name of soldiers. To dare boldly
In a fair cause, and for their country's safety
To run upon the cannon's mouth undaunted ;
To obey their leaders, and shun mutinies ;
To bear with patience the winter's cold
And summer's scorching heat, and not to faint,
When plenty of provision fails, with hunger,
Are the essential parts make up a soldier —
Not swearing, dice, or drinking.
At last the time came for Charles to quit home
and go out by himself into the world. He had been
an officer on that wonderful institution called the
Irish Establishment since he was twelve years old,
and now he must join the army ; so, in the last year of
the century, he takes his first flight on the Limerick
coach, and arriving in that old city is installed as
extra aide-de-camp to the general officer there command-
ing. He remains at Limerick for a year, where the usual
subaltern officer's drill is duly passed through. He is
very often in love ; he rides, shoots, breaks his leg
i ENSIGN CHARLES NAPIER n
jumping a ditch, and altogether feels quite sure that he
has thoroughly mastered the military art. Still among
these inevitable incidents of a young soldier's existence
we get a glimpse of the nature of the future man coming
out clear and distinct. He and his brother George are
out shooting ; a snipe gets up, Charles fires and the bird
drops, but a deep wide ditch intervenes, and in springing
across this obstacle the boy falls and breaks his leg. It
is a very bad fracture, and the bone is sticking out
above the boot. His gun (a gift from his father) has
fallen one way, he is lying another. First he draws
himself near enough to recover the weapon, then he
crawls on to where the snipe is lying, and then when his
brother George has come up and is looking deadly pale
at the protruding bone, the fallen sportsman cries
cheerily out, "Yes, George, I've broken my leg, but I've
got the snipe." They carry him home on a door, and
for two months he is laid up with this shattered leg ;
but at eighteen a broken heart or leg is soon set right,
and early in 1800 we find him impatient to be off to
wider scenes of soldiering. He has been run very low
by this accident, and his general — fearful for his aide-
de-camp's life — has written to Colonel Napier, advising
leave of absence and rest for the boy. Charles hears of
this letter shortly after, and is highly indignant at his
general's action. "I am sure," he writes to his father,
" you will never consent to do anything of the sort " (to
apply to the Commander-in-Chief for leave of absence),
"which you must think, and which you may be certain I
think, would be disgraceful and unbecoming the character
of a British soldier. The general would not have done
such a thing for himself, and could not have considered
12 SIR CHARLES NAPIER CHAP.
much when he proposed it for me." Just fifty years later
we shall see the war-worn old veteran taking leave of
the officers of India in words of advice and farewell
couched in the same lofty spirit of military duty which
is expressed in this boy's letter. And now the scene
changes.
Early in 1801 Charles Napier mounts his little Irish
cob and rides away from Limerick to begin the career
which was to be carried through such stirring and varied
scenes. He rode in a single day from Limerick to
Celbridge, more than one hundred miles, on the same
horse. We know nothing of that long day's ride, save
the bare fact of its accomplishment ; but it requires no
effort of imagination to picture this ardent, impetuous
boy pushing forward mile by mile, intent upon proving
by the distance he would cover that despite what
generals might write or doctors might say, he was fit for
any fatigue or duty ; and as the Irish hill-tops rose before
him in fresh horizons we can fancy the horseman's mind
cast far ahead of the most remote distance, fixed upon
some scene of European or Egyptian battle, where the
great deeds of war then startling all men by their
splendid novelty were being enacted before a wondering
world. For only a few months prior to the date of this
long ride a great battle had been fought at Marengo in
Italy, and the air was still ringing with its echoes ; then
had come the news of Hohenlinden, that terrible midnight
struggle in the snow of the Black Forest. Never had
the world witnessed such desperate valour; never had
such marches been made, such daring combinations
conceived, such colossal results achieved. A new world
seemed to be opening before the soldier; and France,
I A GOOD TIME FOR A SOLDIER 13
victorious for a second time over the vast forces of the
European coalition, appeared to have given birth to
conquerors before whose genius all bygone glory grew
pale and doubtful.
And already, amid the constellation of command
which the seven years' aggression of Europe against
France had called forth from the great Eevolution, one
name shone with surpassing lustre. Beyond the Alps,
amid scenes whose names seemed to concentrate and
combine the traditions of Eoman dominion with the
• most desperate struggles of medieval history, there had
arisen a leader in the first flush of youthful manhood,
before whom courage had been unavailing, discipline
had become a reed, numbers had been brought to ruin,
combination had been scattered, the strength of fortress
had been pulled down, until the great empire whose
name had been accepted as the symbol of military power
in Europe, and whose history went back through one
thousand years of martial glory, lay prostrate and
vanquished at his feet.
CHAPTER II
EARLY SERVICE — THE PENINSULA
POOR, proud, and panting for opportunity of action,
Napier began his military career at this wonderful epoch,
only to find his aspirations for fame doomed to disap-
pointment. Marengo came to scatter the slowly built
combinations of Europe. The victor held out the olive
branch to his enemies; his offer of peace, which had
been so insultingly refused one year earlier, was now
accepted, and the Treaty of Amiens put an end to
hostilities which had lasted for nearly ten years. All
Charles Napier's hopes of service were destroyed. For
six years he was to wander aimlessly about the south
of England in that most soul-rusting of all idlenesses —
garrison life at home. "What can one do ?" he wrote to
his mother upon hearing of the peace. " My plan is to
wait for a few months and then get into some foreign
service. Sometimes my thought is to sell my commission
and purchase one in Germany or elsewhere ; but then my
secret wish could not be fulfilled, which is to have high
command with British soldiers — rather let me command
Esquimaux than be a subaltern of Rifles forty years old."
Meanwhile he set vigorously to work at his books and
studies. Already at Celbridge he had read every hero-
CHAP, ii DULL PROSPECTS 15
book or war-history he could lay his hands on ; now he
applies himself incessantly to study. "I quit the mess,"
he writes in November, 1801, "at five o'clock, and from
that to ten o'clock gives me five hours more reading.
There is a billiard-table ; but feeling a growing fondness
for it, and fearing to be drawn into play for money, I
have not touched a cue lately." Yet with all this longing
for fame, the heart of the boy is full of his home memories.
" Nobody but myself," he writes to his sister, " had ever
such a longing for home. I shall go mad if you don't
come to England or I go to Ireland ; my heart jumps
when thinking of you all merry in the old way. This
wishing for home makes me gad about in a wild way ; for
melancholy seizes me when alone in a cold barrack-room,
and I cannot read with thoughts busy in Kildare Street.
I should like to go to London and stay with Emily
[another sister], but I am too poor. I have no coloured
clothes, and they are expensive to buy. My horse also is
costly and must be sold ; very sorry, for he is the dearest
little wicked black devil you ever saw, and so pretty."
But though this poor hard-up subaltern cannot afford to
purchase plain clothes, and has to sell his dearly prized
horse, he can find money to do a kind act to a friend.
He is writing to his mother, that ever-ready listener to
all his troubles and his joys.
January 1st, 1801. — Happy New Year and many of them
to my dearest mother. Now to ask a favour not to be told
to dad unless you think there will be no inconvenience to
him. Cameron [a brother officer] has been in a very dis-
tagreeable situation for some time about family affairs.
Several things have happened to put him to enormous ex-
pense, and he intends borrowing money from the Jews, which
must do him much mischief in the end, though he will have
1 6 SIR CHARLES NAPIER CHAP.
a very good property when of age. Now if my father has
not drawn the <£100 of forage money belonging to me which
Armitt has had these eight months, to repay the money you
advanced, can he spare it for Cameron ? You know the
Comptroller [his father] as well as I do, and if you showed
him the letter at once he would do the thing to oblige me,
when perhaps it was troublesome. Cameron has not the
least idea of this matter.
A very beautiful letter for all concerned — father,
mother, son, and friend — and worth many long pages of
description. Then he falls in love, is very miserable, goes
to London, sees several of his rich relations, finds out he
cannot afford fine life, and comes back again to his books
and his dreams. The regiment is now at Shorncliffe. The
colonel, a type of warrior at that time and for years
later peculiar to our service, lived much at Carlton
House and seldom saw his soldiers, who, groaning under
a well-nigh intolerable discipline, were left to the mercy
of the second in command. The picture we get of the
result is a curious one. "Shorndi/e, December, 1802. —
We are going on here as badly as need be. Two or
three men desert every night, and not recruits either.
The hospital is full of rheumatic patients and men with
colds and coughs, caught from standing long on damp
ground and being kept in mizzling rains for hours
without moving."
Enough to damp a less ardent spirit must have been
this barrack- room warfare, so delightful to so many
excellent persons who imagine that a uniform coat makes
a soldier. At last a slight change for the better came
to Napier. A relation, General Fox, was made Com-
mander-in-Chief in Ireland, and to Dublin went Charles
as aide-de-camp. Through this move we get an inven-
IT A POOR STAFF- KIT 17
tory of his kit, which is suggestive of many things. He is
writing to his mother: "You talk of magazines of
clothes," he says; "why, I have no clothes but those on
my back. I have indeed too many books — above thirty
volumes ; but books and clothes all go into two trunks."
How the modern staff-man would shudder at the list of
uniform which follows. "Nothing of mine, except
linen, will do for an aide-de-camp. My pantaloons
are green, and I have only one pair ; my jacket, twice
turned ; a green waistcoat, useless ; one pair of boots,
without soles or heels ; a green feather ; and a helmet
not worth sixpence." A meagre outfit, certainly, to
cover the little fever-worn frame ; for the mizzling rains
and the damp ground and the wretched inaction
already spoken of have brought on sickness, and he is
now thinner and paler than ever. The service on the
staff in Ireland was short. The Commander -in -Chief
had that sense of humanity without which a soldier is
only a butcher, and, like Moore and Abercromby, he
quarrelled with the Irish Executive of the day, whose
idea of government was the scaffold and the triangles.
It was the period following the wild revolt of Emmett.
The hangman was busy at his work. " We passed the
gibbet in Thomas Street," wrote the Commander-in-
Chief's wife in her diary, "which is now fixed there
with a rope suspended, and two sentries to guard it, for
so many of the rebels are now executed it is in daily
use. What a horrible state for a country to be in ! "
This was in the year 1803, and in 1804 Charles
Napier is back in England again. A great sorrow
has fallen upon him. His father has just died.
" Sarah, take my watch, I have done with time," Colonel
C
1 8 SIR CHARLES NAPIER CHAP.
Napier said to the beautiful woman who had loved him
so well, handing his watch to her as she stood beside
his death-bed. Yet Time had not done with him, and
no man who reads of George Napier's sons can ever
forget the father to whom they owed so much of their
glory.
The short peace is over. War with France has been
declared. Pitt is again in Downing Street, busy at fresh
coalitions, borrowing his half hundred millions a year and
scattering them broadcast over Europe, chafing and raging
when he looks at the Horse Guards close by, and long-
ing to be able to infuse something of his own spirit into
that establishment, yet all the while obliged to put a
good face on it and pretend that he thinks the King's
generals are as good as any in Europe. When he gets
back to his house at Putney he half forgets his worries,
and can even laugh at the feeble tools he has to work
with. Here is a little glimpse given us by William
Napier in this year, 1804, into Pitt's personal experience
of some of the commanding officers who at this time
were holding the south coast of England in hourly anti-
cipation of a French descent from Boulogne, where
Bonaparte and his Grand Army were encamped almost
within sight of the Kentish shore. Pitt has come home
to Putney, as usual very fagged and tired after the day's
work in Downing Street. He drinks half a dozen
glasses of port quickly one after the other, his strength
and spirits revive with the stimulant, and then he relates
the exciting events of the day. A Cabinet Council
is going on. At any moment news may come that
the enemy is in Kent or Sussex. Anxiety is strained
to fever pitch. Suddenly a dragoon is heard thunder-
ii GREA T GENERALS 19
ing up the narrow street; it is a despatch from the
south. The man has ridden in hot haste. The packet
is addressed to the Prime Minister. Amid breath-
less expectation Pitt opens the despatch. A night-
cap tumbles out ! Is it some stupid hoax 1 Not at all.
One of the ministers has been spending a day or two at
the military headquarters on the south coast; he has
forgotten his night-cap, and the general, with a keen
eye to the importance of ministerial interest, has sent
a mounted express bearing the lost head-gear to its
owner ! Another evening the Prime Minister tells them
that he had that day received a despatch announcing
the landing of French troops from two ships at
three different parts of the coast ! As may be sup-
posed, from these and other instances of military
sagacity, the Napier estimate of our generals was at this
period not a high one. "It is d — d easy to be a
general," we find William writing in 1807 ; and three
years earlier Charles tells us that " most of our generals
are more obliged to the Duke of York than to the Deity
for their military talents." But perhaps the most absurd
instance of the state of military command in England at
that time is to be found in a letter written by a general
officer very high in command to a notorious lady of the
period,1 in which, describing his inspection of the army
cantoned between Dover and Hastings, he tells his
correspondent that " from Folkestone he had had a good
view of the enemy's works at Boulogne " — an instance of
far-sighted reconnaissance not easily to be paralleled in
the annals of war. It is really difficult to read with
patience in the diaries and letters of the subordinate
1 Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke.
20
SfR CHARLES NAPIER CHAP.
officers the state of military mismanagement that existed
at this time. "We have heard a good deal in recent
years of the evil done by letting the light of public opinion
into military administration ; but if men care to know
what happened to our army when the Press was gagged,
when authority strutted its way from blunder to blunder
unchecked by the fear of public censure, they should
study the military history of the early years of the cen-
tury from the rupture of the Peace of Amiens to the
campaign of Corunna. Here is a little glimpse of the in-
terior economy of a regiment quartered in the healthiest
part of England in the year 1807. Charles Napier is
now in the Fiftieth Regiment, quartered at Ashford in
Kent. " Our men," he writes, "have got the ophthalmia
very badly, and are dying fast also from inflammation of
the lungs caused by the coldness of the weather and bad
barracks ; in some cases typhus supervenes, but is not
contagious. There is no raging fever, cold alone is the
cause, yet the men die three or four a day. No officer
suffers ; they are warmer." This was in the month of
March. But two months later, in May, the story is not
better. " The soldiers have got pneumonia at Hythe,"
he writes, " and are dying as fast as we folks at Ashford.
Only think of a surgeon taking in one day one hundred
and sixty ounces of blood, and the man is recovering !
They say bleeding to death is the best way of recovering
them ! " And all this time a very savage and inhuman
discipline was going on. Nine hundred lashes was a
common punishment for a trifling offence. Both William
Napier and Charles Napier have left us many terrible
pictures of " the ferocity of a discipline which was a dis-
grace to civilisation." Writing of the campaign of 1793-
ii SOLDIERING IN 1805 21
94 in Flanders Sir Robert Wilson is still more emphatic.
It was a common sight, he tells us, to see a court-martial
sitting in the morning the members of which were not
yet sober after the debauch of the previous night, but
still sentencing unfortunate private soldiers to nine hun-
dred lashes for the crime of drunkenness, the punish-
ment being inflicted summarily in presence of the still .
inebriated dispensers of justice !
In the autumn of 1805 the most pressing danger of
French invasion passed away. Pitt had raised another
vast coalition against France. The Austrians and the
Russians were again moving towards the Rhine. Then
from the cliffs of Boulogne the great captain, now Em-
peror, turned off to begin that famous march across
Europe which in sixty consecutive days carried him to
Vienna, taking by the way sixty thousand prisoners, two
hundred cannon, ninety standards, great stores of the
material of war, and doing this prodigious damage to
his enemy with trifling loss to himself, and as a prelude
only to the vaster victory he had yet to gain over his
combined antagonists on the field of Austerlitz. Still
the same dreary round of garrison routine life went on
in England. From his monotonous billet in Bognor,
Hythe, or Shorncliffe, Napier watched with anxious
and yearning eye the great deeds of war which were
being enacted at Jena, Auerstadt, and Eylau. It is
evident from his journal that at this time he had
learned to read with accuracy between the lines of
the Government despatches from the seat of war, and
the "crushing defeats of Bonaparte" by the Prussian
or Russian armies, which so frequently appeared in the
London Gazette, were read by him with considerable
22 SIR CHARLES NAPIER CHAP.
reservation. On February 6th, 1807, we find him dis-
counting the "victory at Pultusk" with these words:
" Bonaparte's defeat at Pultusk is dwindling to a kind
of drawn battle, which is probably drawing and quartering
for the poor Russians."
After the victory of Friedland in June 1807,
Napoleon stood at the very summit of his glory.
The armies of Austria, Prussia, and Russia had been
vanquished in three colossal combats. This Corsi-
can captain had utterly upset all existing theories,
contradicted all previous facts, refuted all accepted
certainties. He had made a winter campaign in the
northern provinces of Prussian and Russian Poland, seven
hundred leagues from Paris, and had vanquished his com-
bined enemies at their own doors. It seemed as though
destiny had determined to erase for ever from Europe
the feudal tradition and the hereditary principle, and to
write across the Continent the names of one man and
one nation — Napoleon and France. From the raft at
Tilsit Bonaparte went back to France to begin these
great legislative, industrial, and commercial works which
still remain prouder memorials of his greatness than
even his most brilliant victories. It was in the midst
of these peaceful but ceaseless labours that the little
cloud arose beyond the Pyrenean frontier of France
which was destined to exert so deep an influence upon
his fortunes. Although there existed many and power-
ful reasons to justify the intervention of France in the
affairs of Spain in 1808, it is certain that the course
followed by Napoleon on this occasion was neither in
keeping with his true interests nor with the policy which
had hitherto guided his actions. The state of Spain
ii THE WAR IN SPAIN 23
was notoriously wretched : the treachery of the king
and his minister towards Napoleon had been clearly
established during the critical period preceding the
battle of Jena ; but nevertheless, admitting all these facts
as politically justifying the French invasion of the
Peninsula, there were still stronger and better reasons in
favour of non-intervention. Spain was the land of con-
tradictions; the country was the best in Europe for
irregular warfare, and the worst for the operations of
regular armies. Long before this time it had been well
denned as a land where a small army might be defeated,
and where a large one would be sure to starve. But
beyond all these reasons for non-intervention was the
great fact that in invading Spain Napoleon was depart-
ing from the rule which hitherto had regulated his
action. He was the first to draw the sword. Early in
the year 1808 the people of the Peninsula rose in arms
against the French. On the field of Baylen a French
division was overpowered. The effect of the defeat was
electrical ; the whole nation was in revolt. Joseph
Bonaparte quitted Madrid, and the French withdrew
behind the Ebro. The moment was deemed auspicious
by the British Government for trying once more the
fortunes of a continental war, and in the middle of the
year a large English army was despatched to the Penin-
sula. In the second division of that army Charles
Napier sailed for Lisbon to begin his long-wished-for
life of active service ; he was then twenty-seven years
of age. When this second division reached its destina-
tion the first phase of the war was over. Vimeira had
been fought, the Convention of Cintra signed, and the
three generals, Wellesley, Burrard, and Dalrymple, had
24 SIR CHARLES NAPIER CHAP.
gone home to appear before a court of inquiry to
answer for the abortive result of the campaign. By
this strange incident Sir John Moore became Commander-
in-Chief of the English forces in Spain, in spite of the
elaborate manoeuvres of those members of the British
Cabinet who had so laboriously planned to keep him out
of that position, and in the autumn of the year the
march from Lisbon, which was to end at Corunna,
began.
In this long and eventful march the three brothers
Napier, Charles, George, and William, all young soldiers
thirsting for military distinction, came together for the
first time since they had quitted the Eagle's Nest at
Celbridge. We must glance for a moment at the field
of combat which was now opening before these young
soldiers. In the month of October, 1808, when Moore
began his march from Lisbon, the Spanish armies, some
seven in number, formed a great curved line of which the
Somo Sierra between Madrid and the Pyrenees was the
centre, while the flanks touched the Mediterranean on one
side and the Bay of Biscay on the other. Within this
curve, with its back to the Pyrenees and its face to the
Ebro, lay the French army. Napoleon was still engaged
far away in France with his harbours, canals, roads, and
codes of law ; but his soldiers were already moving from
the Rhine to the Pyrenees, and a storm little dreamt of
by either the English or the Spaniards was about to
burst from the defiles of these snow-capped mountains.
The objective of Sir John Moore's march was the north
of Spain. So vague was the knowledge possessed by
the British Government of the actual condition of affairs
in the Peninsula and of the power of the French Emperor
ii MOORE ENTERS SPAIN 25
that the wildest anticipations of speedy success were
indulged in by the English Government at this time,
and it was confidently expected that Moore's junction
with the Spanish armies would be the prelude to the
passage of the Pyrenees by the combined forces and
the conquest of France. We have already indicated the
position of these Spanish armies in this month of October,
1808. At the close of the month Moore was well on his
march into Spain. Napoleon was still in Paris ; but all
was now ready for the swoop. Early in November he
passed the Pyrenees, struck right and left with resistless
force upon the Spanish armies on his flanks — first annihi-
lating Blake and Romana at Gamoual and Espinosa, then
destroying Palaf ox and Castanos at Tudela ; and finally,
breaking with his cavalry the Spanish centre, he forced
the gorges of the Somo Sierra, and appeared before the
gates of Madrid before the English army had time to
concentrate at Salamanca. Never was victory so com-
plete. To fall back upon Lisbon was now the duty and'
the desire of Sir John Moore, but he was not permitted
to follow this course which was so clearly the right one.
Yielding to the importunities of Mr. Frere, the English
minister to the Junta, Moore abandoned his communica-
tions with Lisbon, and directed his march to the north
with the intention of attacking the right of the French
army now in Leon. It was Christmas when Napoleon
heard in Madrid of this unexpected movement of the
English army almost across his front. Divining at once
the object of the English general, he quitted Madrid,
crossed with his guard and a chosen corps the snow-
choked passes of the Guadarrama, and, descending into
Leon, was in the rear of the English army before Moore
26 SIR CHARLES NAPIER CHAP, n
had even heard of the movement. It was no wonder that
Napoleon should have been almost the bearer of the
tidings of his own march ; for in ten days, in the depth
of winter and in a season of terrific snow and storm, he
had marched two hundred miles, through some of the
worst mountain roads in Spain. The bird that would
forestall the eagle in his flight must be quick of wing.
Then began the race from Sahagun, first to Benevente and
then to the sea at Corunna. No space now to dwell upon
that terrible march — more terrible in its loss of discipline
and failure of the subordinate officers to hold their men
in command than in stress of fatigue or severity of
weather. What would have been its fate if Napoleon
had continued to direct the pursuit can scarcely admit of
sober doubt; but other and more pressing needs than
the pursuit of the English army had called him away to
distant and vaster fields of war.
CHAPTER III
CORUNNA
WHEN Sir John Moore, on January 10th, 1809, reached
the summit of the last hill that overlooked the city
and harbour of Corunna, he beheld a roadstead desti-
tute of shipping. " I have often heard it said that I
was unlucky," he remarked to his aide-de-camp, George
Napier, as they climbed the land side of this eminence ;
" if the ships are not in the harbour, I shall believe in
my evil fortune." There were no ships in sight, and the
heart of the gallant soldier must have known a pang
such as can come to few men in life. Yet fate, though
seemingly so cruel at this moment, was, as she often is,
kind and merciful even when striking hardest. Had the
winds blown that would have permitted the fleet to
move from Vigo to Corunna, the whole English army
would have embarked on January llth and 12th
before Soult had concentrated his pursuing columns;
there would have been no battle of Corunna, and the
memory of Moore would not have been a deathless pride
to his countrymen. When the ships hove in sight on
the evening of the 14th the French divisions were lining
the heights in front of the British position ; and on the
morning of January 16th the British army, now reduced
28 SIR CHARLES NAPIER CHAP.
to fifteen thousand men, drew up in line of battle on
the crest of the sloping ridge which covered Corunna
to the south. The sick and wounded had been already
embarked, the magazines blown up, the cavalry and
artillery horses killed, and nothing remained but to
strike with the infantry a last blow for honour. Three
weeks earlier, when the first retrograde movement from
Sahagun to Benevente had become imperative, Moore
issued an order to his army which contained words of
very significant import. The disorder of the troops
had already commenced, and the officers, some of them
of high rank but completely ignorant of the real state
of affairs, had begun those murmurs and criticisms to
which more than to any other cause the disasters of the
retreat were to be traced. After telling his soldiers that
they must obey and not expect him to tell them the
reason of the orders he gave them, the General went on :
" When it is proper to fight a battle he will do it, and he
will choose the time and place he thinks most fit ; in the
meantime, he begs the officers and soldiers of the army
to attend diligently, to discharge their parts, and to
leave to him and to the general officers the decision of
measures which belong to them alone." Now the time
and place had come. Nothing but Moore's knowledge of
the situation had saved his army from falling at Benevente
into the grasp of the giant who had seemingly anni-
hilated time, space, and mountains in order to crush him j
but matters were now different. Napoleon was already
in Paris, and not more than twenty thousand tired
Frenchmen stood over yonder on the parallel heights be-
yond Elvina, with scant supply of food and ammunition ;
while he was here at Corunna, with well-stocked maga-
in PREPARING FOR BATTLE 29
zines, his soldiers recruited by a three days' rest, new
muskets in their hands replacing the battered and broken
weapons of the retreat, and the morale and discipline of
his army restored by the magic touch of battle.
The forenoon of the 16th passed without any hostile
movement. Both armies faced each other on the opposing
ridges — so near, indeed, that the unassisted eye could
trace the slightest stir on either side across the inter-
vening valley. Such things are not possible now. The
zone of fight has been pushed back by modern weapons
to distance that has taken from war all the pomp and
pageantry that used to attend rival armies drawn up
for battle. The narrow valley that lay between the armies
was dotted with villages set amid vineyards. Three of
these villages were held by the English pickets, and the
right village of the three, Elvina, marked the front of that
part of the British line where it curved back towards
Corunna, forming a kind of salient to the more extended
French line of battle which overlapped our right flank.
At this critical point in the English position stood
the brigade to which Napier's regiment, the Fiftieth,
belonged, the Fourth and the Forty-Second being the
other battalions completing this brigade. Opposite, on
the French side, Mermet's division was drawn up ; but
more formidable still were the muzzles of eleven guns —
eight and twelve-pounders — which from a commanding
height, and only six hundred yards from the village of
Elvina, threatened to obliquely rake the English line.
As the morning wore on without hostile movement
on the part of the French, Moore, believing that his
enemy did not intend to accept the battle he had offered
since the preceding day, made preparations to embark
