CEPHALONIA
The Hundred Days were over. Napoleon had played his last desperate stake
for victory, and had lost. Charles Napier was not at Waterloo. He had
quitted the Military College when the campaign opened, but he arrived
too late for the great battle. He joined the army before Cambray, and
went with it to Paris, but remained there only a few days. His journals
and correspondence for this time are not forthcoming, and consequently
we are without his own account of a most interesting period; but his
brother's reminiscences of the occupation indicate plainly enough that
once the fighting was over, regret for the fall of his idol would have
made residence in Paris after Waterloo anything but pleasant to him. He
went back to the Military College and bit again at his books. By and by
he would make cartridges of them to fire into the rascals who are now
robbing and trampling on England. Through the five years that follow the
fall of Napoleon, he is at a white heat of rage and indignation with the
Government. In 1816 he writes to his mother: "There are two millions of
people in England and Ireland starving to enable Lord Camden to receive
thirty-eight thousand a year, and to expend it on game and other
amusements. It is hard, therefore, to say how long poor rascals who
think their children's lives of as much consequence as partridges' eggs
may choose to be quiet, or how soon, actuated by an '_ignorant
impatience of taxation_,' they may proceed to borrow from Lord Camden."
And in truth there was sufficient at this time to make his blood boil at
what was going on in England. It was the apotheosis of the Tory squire.
The game-laws were worthy of the feudal ages; taxation was terrible; the
representation of the people in Parliament was a farce. When
retrenchment was forced upon the Ministry they began by cutting down the
miserable pensions for wounds and service of soldiers, but they kept
intact their own gigantic sinecures. "If I have not a right to my
pension," writes Napier to his mother in this year 1816, "I have no wish
to keep it; the income must be slender that will not enable me to live
in content. Nevertheless, this shows what our Ministers are, who begin
by retrenching the incomes of those who have nothing else to live on,
and who have fought and worked hard for years on almost nothing to gain
that provision; retrenching these but refusing to curtail the thousands
they enjoy in the shape of sinecures, besides their large salaries and
immense private fortunes; and for those profits doing nothing, unless it
be telling men with starving children that they are 'ignorantly
impatient of taxation' when they demand that their wives and children
may not famish." As the year closes we see the hope of better government
grow stronger in Napier's letters. "The people are in motion," he says;
"reformation advances at the _pas de charge_, and no earthly power can
arrest the progress of freedom." "If reform comes," he says, "the glory
of England will be brighter than the battles of the last twenty years
have made it." Then comes a very remarkable sentence showing how
accurately this fighting student had read the lesson of the time. "The
freedom of England being rendered complete, Louis the Eighteenth and his
brood will be lost, for our example will be followed all over Europe."
Only in context of time did this prophecy err. English reform followed
instead of preceded the hunting away from France of the Bourbons.
France, despite the terrible cloud she lay under in 1816, was still
destined to lead the march of modern progress.
During the two years that he remained at Farnham his letters and
journals show how earnestly he entered into the political strife.
Cobbett and Burdett are his chiefs; emancipation and reform his
watchwords; representation of the people, free food, free press,
abolition of privilege, his aims. He thinks the redress of grievances
must come quickly, and that "a reform will be effected, though to resist
it Castlereagh would risk civil war, I believe; but I do not think he
has the power." Should it be civil war, however, his mother need not
fear, "for with three sons soldiers, one a sailor, and another a lawyer,
it will be hard if you don't swim, for these are the finest trades in
such cases." Of course, holding such opinions, promotion for Charles
Napier was out of the question. In 1819 he addressed the
Commander-in-Chief, again soliciting that he might have his commission
as lieutenant-colonel antedated to the period of Corunna. He quoted the
cases of Sir Hugh Gough and Sir Colin Campbell, both his juniors, who
had received this favour. He mentioned his long and arduous services and
his many wounds, but all to no effect. Clearly the man who held that
rotten boroughs were not the perfection of representative government,
that a Roman Catholic ought to be allowed to make a will and have a
horse worth more than five pounds, was fit only for foreign service or
active warfare, and quite unsuited to hold a military appointment at
home. A foreign post was therefore soon found for him. The Ionian Isles
seemed a safe place, and accordingly he is gazetted as Inspecting Field
Officer of those islands. He sets out in May, 1819, for this new sphere
of action, and passing through France, crosses the Alps and journeys
down the length of Italy, everywhere watching and noting as he goes.
In July he reaches Corfu. As Inspecting Field Officer he has nothing to
do, but the governor, Maitland, quickly finding out that he has no
ordinary officer to deal with, sends him on a mission to Ali Pacha at
Yannina, who has already sounded the keynote of rebellion against the
Porte, so soon to be followed by the general rising of Greece. In
reading the notes and reports made by Napier on this mission one is
struck by the rapidity with which he grasps the heart of a very
complicated question--a question which is still a vital one to Europe.
He sees that the keynote of resistance to Russian dominion on the
Mediterranean must lie in fostering the rise and growth of a strong
Greek kingdom, and he urges this view upon Maitland as early as 1820,
summing up his advice in very remarkable words, which later events fully
justified. "The Greeks look to England for their emancipation; but if
ever England engages in war with Russia to support the Turks, the Greeks
will consider her as trying to rivet their chains, and will support the
Russians." Again, in 1821, Napier went to Greece and travelled
extensively through the country. As he wanders by the battle-fields
whose names will never die he is busy fighting them again with modern
armies. On the plain of Chæronea he thinks the marsh in front impassable
for guns, and sees how Pindus and Parnassus secure a flank; and at
Thermopylæ he notes how the sea has receded from the mountain, but
thinks three thousand men instead of three hundred might still hold the
position against an army. He visits Corinth, Athens, Argos, sees Thebes,
Platea, and Delphos, and on March 20th, 1821, reaches the coast at
Lepanto. For two months he has been feeding upon the memories of bygone
battle and dreaming dreams of fights to come. A few days after he leaves
Greece the insurrection breaks out. Then he gets a short leave of
absence to England, and returning to Corfu early in 1822 is appointed
Military President in Cephalonia--an island where it is hoped that "the
impetuosity and violence of Colonel Napier's character and politics"
might find room for action without danger to the State. The island of
Cephalonia was at this period a terrible puzzle to the orthodox British
official. Violence and robbery reigned unchecked; factions, when not
preying upon each other, spoiled the neutral husbandman. Everything was
neglected. There were no roads through the island, and the steep
mountain ranges cut off the inhabitants of one portion from the other.
It was an earthly paradise turned by misgovernment into a hell. How
Napier took to the work of regenerating this garden of Eden run to weeds
can best be told in his own words. "Do not," he writes to his mother,
"expect long letters from one who has scarcely time to eat or take
exercise. My predecessor is going home, half dead from the labour, but
to me it is health, spirit, everything. I live for some use now."
Here then he sets to work in March, 1822, in his kingdom of sixty
thousand souls. He sits in court for six hours daily hearing law-cases,
for the ordinary courts of justice have long been closed and martial law
reigns; he reforms the prisons, he builds quays and a lazaretto, he
drains the marshes, and he lays out two great main roads which are to
zig-zag up the mountains and bring the ends of his island together. June
comes, but he thrives more and more on this variety of labour. "Health
besets me," he writes; "up early and writing till eight, then feed and
work in office till twelve--sometimes till three o'clock,--swim, dine,
and then on horseback visiting the roads. I take no rest myself and give
nobody else any; they were all getting too fat." No wonder under such a
governor the island begins to bloom. But he is clearing away the weeds
too fast, so at least thinks the new Lord High Commissioner and
Governor-General of all the Islands, one Adam by name, who grows jealous
of this Cephalonian success. He cannot well attack such palpable
improvements as drainage of marshes and road-making, but he has seen
that Napier wears mustachios, and he will have them off at any rate, so
the order comes to shave--"obeyed to a hair" is the response. Whenever
dull and pompous authority attacks this keen Damascus-blade bit of
humanity called Napier, authority gets a retort that sends it back
laughed at, but brooding over some fresh plan of revenge. Adam with dull
persistent enmity nursed his dislike for later time. Men like Napier,
prodigal of blow in battle, are ever ready to forget the feud when the
fight is over, but the ordinary sons of Adam are not thus generously
gifted, and this particular Adam had a long memory for revenge.
As the Greek insurrection develops, the Ionian Islands become a centre
of interest. Napier, whose recent travels had made him acquainted with
both the people and the theatre of operations, keenly watched the
struggle. In August, 1823, Lord Byron arrived at the island on his way
to Greece. The intercourse between him and Napier became very intimate.
At this period the great poet was almost as unpopular with his
countrymen as Napier was with their rulers. Byron's quick wit was not
slow to see a leader of men in the Resident. "He is our man," he writes
to the Greek Committee in London; "he is our man to lead a regular force
or to organise a national one for the Greeks; ask the army, ask anybody;
in short, a braver or a better man could not easily be found." Napier
was at this time very anxious to get command of a legion to aid the
Greeks, but he had been told that if he accepted this position he would
probably forfeit his commission in the army, and it was hoped that
through the action of the Greek Committee in London his retention in the
service might be found compatible with command in Greece. This hope was
not to be realised. Napier went to London early in 1824 and had many
interviews with the Greek Committee collectively and individually, nor
was he much impressed by their wisdom. One member asks him to "make out
a list of a proper battering-train to be sent out to reduce Patras." He
endorses the request thus: "Square the list of guns and stores needed
for a siege with my opinion of spending money so foolishly; men are
prone to buy fiddles before they know music." Now all at once he has to
answer a serious charge made in high quarters. Mr. Canning, the Prime
Minister, has been listening to the stories of German adventurers from
the Levant--he has heard that Napier had used his official position in
Cephalonia to negotiate with the Greek chiefs. The story was absolutely
false, and in straightforward and manly words he told the Prime Minister
that it was so. Indeed one can read between the lines of this reply that
he was not sorry to have an opportunity of letting Mr. Canning see his
sentiments. "For my part," he writes to Lord Bathurst, "I scorn to
deprecate the wrath of any man who suspects my integrity. If, however,
your lordship's colleagues either doubt my conduct, or wish for my place
to give to a better man, in God's name let them use their acknowledged
power to employ men they think best calculated for the King's service."
These were strong and daring words to come from a lieutenant-colonel now
in his forty-second year, and with nothing but his commission to give
him bread, to a Cabinet Minister--the eye of the head of the Government;
and what a glimpse they give us of the foundation upon which all this
energy and resource and genius for action rested.
In the winter of 1825 he returns again to Cephalonia, this time
travelling by Inspruck and the Tyrol to Venice. Blood will tell; he
cannot make friends with the Germans. "As to the people of every part of
Germany," he writes, "honour to Cæsar for killing so many of them;
stupid, slow, hard animals, they have not even so much tact as to cheat
well. We always detected their awkward attempts. Out of these regions we
descended into Italy, where we found civilised beings, warm weather, and
the human face instead of the German visage." This is of course three
parts chaff, but it serves to show how the nature of the man blows. And
how could it blow otherwise? A soldier who had in his veins the blood of
the victor of Ivry, of Mary Stuart, of Scottish chief and Norman noble,
and whose whole nature had imbibed in Ireland, in childhood, boyhood,
and youth, that "Celtic spell" to whose potent influence our most
unemotional historian has borne witness, could no more make friends of
the Teutonic type of humanity than an Arab horse in the deserts of the
Nile could gambol with a rhinoceros lying on a mud-bank in mid river.
He reaches Corfu in February, after a terrible passage of twenty days
from Venice, and here there occurs an entry in the journal which is of
interest: "_March 24th._--Sir Hudson Lowe's colonel, Gorrequer, is here.
He called on me, but got not his visit returned. It is not my intent to
consort with gaolers, though I have brought out the model of a gaol."
Then he goes on to his island kingdom and sets to work at his roads,
harbours, and buildings. He is delighted to get back to his Greeks
again, and they are equally glad to have their king once more among
them. "Now," he writes on arrival, "I am once more amongst my merry
Greeks, who are worth all other nations put together. I like to see, to
hear them. I like their fun, their good humour, their Paddy ways, for
they are very like Irishmen." His intense love of animals is constantly
coming out in letter and diary. Blanco, the charger of Peninsula days,
he will never abandon. He has brought this old friend out from England,
despite his years, paying high for the passage. "My bill for him and
baggage is _only_ one hundred pounds. How _honest_ John Bull in the city
touches one's pocket. Thirty of this is for Blanco, twenty for King,
seven for insurance, the rest is cheat and devilment. However, anything
is better than cutting Blanco's throat after sixteen years' comradeship.
I may go to perdition, but not for Blanco anyways. My poor, good old
beast!" Again, as he draws near Cephalonia, he pictures to himself his
first visit to his two famous roads, and wishes that, in case of death,
he may be buried in the old chapel on the summit of St. Liberale's
Mountain, so as to "lie on the top of the road. Many a poor mule's soul
will say a good word for me at the last day, when they remember the old
road."
Meanwhile the Greek insurrection had run its course of blood and
devastation, and as yet out of its four years' chaos of desolation
victory had not dawned upon either combatants. Ibrahim, the son of
Mehemet Ali, had now carried an army of Egyptian and Nubian soldiers
into the Morea, and men, women, and children were being slaughtered by
this clever but cruel master of war. Till this time Napier had longed to
throw his sword into the scale with the struggling Greeks, but his
desire was tempered with a just determination that no premature or
foolhardy action should give his enemies the opportunity he knew so well
they longed for. He feared to find himself suddenly struck out of the
army list, and his service of thirty years with all its toils and wounds
thrown away. "When I saw Greece about to rise in strength and glory my
resolve was to join her," he says, "if it could be done with advantage
to her just cause and honour to myself. The talent of the people, and
their warlike qualities, excited my admiration, for a Greek seems a born
soldier, and has no thought but war. Their vanity and love of glory
equal those feelings with the French, but the Greeks are more like the
Irish than any other people; so like even to the oppression they suffer
that, as I could not do good to Ireland, the next pleasure was to serve
men groaning under similar tyranny."
In the autumn of 1825 the negotiations between him and the Greeks, which
had previously fallen through owing to difficulties about his commission
in the British army, were again resumed, and matters were all but
concluded when a proclamation forbidding officers to serve the Greek
cause was published in England. Still Napier was prepared to sever his
connection with the army and throw in his lot with the Greeks, provided
certain guarantees were given for the equipment and payment of a small
regular force, and for the value of his own commission which would be
sacrificed by the step. The Greeks in Greece were ready to assent to
these propositions, and to any others which Napier might desire to
stipulate, so anxious were they now in this dark hour of their fortune
to secure his service as Commander-in-Chief; but the bond-holders in
London, these curses of all good causes, had their own views as to what
should be done, and they were more desirous of spending their money in
sending out a useless fleet than in equipping the nucleus of a regular
force, which under such a leader as Napier would have been of
incalculable benefit to Greece. Thus the whole project fell to the
ground, and Napier had to remain in Cephalonia for four years more, and
to content himself with his roads and bridges, his purer administration
of justice, his efforts to improve the lot of the husbandman, to lessen
the unjust privileges of the nobles, to increase the produce of the
island, and, harder than any of these things, to battle against
ignorance in high places, against the sting of censure from stupidity
and intolerance combined in command.[3] Yet in spite of factious
opposition and ignorant enmity it is probable that the nine years which
Napier spent in the Ionian Isles were the happiest of his life. Who can
ever measure the enjoyment of these rides over the mountains and through
the valleys of that beautiful island? For, with all the practical energy
that marked his character, there was a deep poetic instinct in him that
made him keenly sensible of the beauty of nature; while his love of
reading, continued since boyhood, had stored his retentive memory with
the historic traditions of the past. In a memoir on the Roads of
Cephalonia, which he published in 1825, there is a description of the
valley of Heraclia, lying on the eastern side of the island, which shows
how thoroughly he appreciated beauty of scenery, and how well attuned
was his mental ear to catch the music of those wondrous memories which
float for ever around the isles and shores and seas of Greece.
But if Cephalonia held for Charles Napier some of the pleasantest
memories of life, so did his period of residence in the island mark his
final separation from many loved companions of youth. In 1826 his
mother died, and the long and most affectionate correspondence which had
lasted from the early Celbridge days came to an end. Never indeed was
her image to fade from his memory. To the last it was to remain with
him, undimmed by distance or by time, coming to him in weary hours of
trouble and disappointment, of glory and success; and as at his side in
battle he always wore his father's sword, so in his heart he carried the
memory of his mother, whose "beauteous face seemed to smile upon me," he
tells us, in the most anxious moments of his Scindian warfare.
In 1830 Napier's Ionian service came to an end. He was recalled. It was
the old story. Multiplied mediocrity had beaten individual genius. It is
not only inevitable, it is even right that it should be so; for by such
heating and blowing in the forge of life is the real steel fashioned
which has flash and smite in it sufficient to reach us even through the
tomb.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] The gratitude of men for toil and service given to them is not so
fleeting as people suppose. "They still speak of Napier in Cephalonia as
of a god," said a Greek lady to the writer in this year, 1890.