We have left our eighteenth-century novelists—Fielding, Richardson, and
Smollett—safely behind us, with all their solidity and their audacity,
their sincerity, and their coarseness of fibre. They have brought us,
as you perceive, to the end of the shelf. What, not wearied? Ready for
yet another? Let us run down this next row, then, and I will tell you a
few things which may be of interest, though they will be dull enough if
you have not been born with that love of books in your heart which is
among the choicest gifts of the gods. If that is wanting, then one
might as well play music to the deaf, or walk round the Academy with
the colour-blind, as appeal to the book-sense of an unfortunate who has
it not.
There is this old brown volume in the corner. How it got there I cannot
imagine, for it is one of those which I bought for threepence out of
the remnant box in Edinburgh, and its weather-beaten comrades are up
yonder in the back gallery, while this one has elbowed its way among
the quality in the stalls. But it is worth a word or two. Take it out
and handle it! See how swarthy it is, how squat, with how bullet-proof
a cover of scaling leather. Now open the fly-leaf “_Ex libris_
Guilielmi Whyte. 1672” in faded yellow ink. I wonder who William Whyte
may have been, and what he did upon earth in the reign of the merry
monarch. A pragmatical seventeenth-century lawyer, I should judge, by
that hard, angular writing. The date of issue is 1642, so it was
printed just about the time when the Pilgrim Fathers were settling down
into their new American home, and the first Charles’s head was still
firm upon his shoulders, though a little puzzled, no doubt, at what was
going on around it. The book is in Latin—though Cicero might not have
admitted it—and it treats of the laws of warfare.
I picture some pedantic Dugald Dalgetty bearing it about under his buff
coat, or down in his holster, and turning up the reference for every
fresh emergency which occurred. “Hullo! here’s a well!” says he. “I
wonder if I may poison it?” Out comes the book, and he runs a dirty
forefinger down the index. “_Ob fas est aquam hostis venere_,” etc.
“Tut, tut, it’s not allowed. But here are some of the enemy in a barn?
What about that?” “_Ob fas est hostem incendio_,” etc. “Yes; he says we
may. Quick, Ambrose, up with the straw and the tinder box.” Warfare was
no child’s play about the time when Tilly sacked Magdeburg, and
Cromwell turned his hand from the mash tub to the sword. It might not
be much better now in a long campaign, when men were hardened and
embittered. Many of these laws are unrepealed, and it is less than a
century since highly disciplined British troops claimed their dreadful
rights at Badajos and Rodrigo. Recent European wars have been so short
that discipline and humanity have not had time to go to pieces, but a
long war would show that man is ever the same, and that civilization is
the thinnest of veneers.
Now you see that whole row of books which takes you at one sweep nearly
across the shelf? I am rather proud of those, for they are my
collection of Napoleonic military memoirs. There is a story told of an
illiterate millionaire who gave a wholesale dealer an order for a copy
of all books in any language treating of any aspect of Napoleon’s
career. He thought it would fill a case in his library. He was somewhat
taken aback, however, when in a few weeks he received a message from
the dealer that he had got 40,000 volumes, and awaited instructions as
to whether he should send them on as an instalment, or wait for a
complete set. The figures may not be exact, but at least they bring
home the impossibility of exhausting the subject, and the danger of
losing one’s self for years in a huge labyrinth of reading, which may
end by leaving no very definite impression upon your mind. But one
might, perhaps, take a corner of it, as I have done here in the
military memoirs, and there one might hope to get some finality.
Here is Marbot at this end—the first of all soldier books in the world.
This is the complete three-volume French edition, with red and gold
cover, smart and _débonnaire_ like its author. Here he is in one
frontispiece with his pleasant, round, boyish face, as a Captain of his
beloved Chasseurs. And here in the other is the grizzled old bull-dog
as a full general, looking as full of fight as ever. It was a real blow
to me when some one began to throw doubts upon the authenticity of
Marbot’s memoirs. Homer may be dissolved into a crowd of skin-clad
bards. Even Shakespeare may be jostled in his throne of honour by
plausible Baconians; but the human, the gallant, the inimitable Marbot!
His book is that which gives us the best picture by far of the
Napoleonic soldiers, and to me they are even more interesting than
their great leader, though his must ever be the most singular figure in
history. But those soldiers, with their huge shakoes, their hairy
knapsacks, and their hearts of steel—what men they were! And what a
latent power there must be in this French nation which could go on
pouring out the blood of its sons for twenty-three years with hardly a
pause!
It took all that time to work off the hot ferment which the Revolution
had left in men’s veins. And they were not exhausted, for the very last
fight which the French fought was the finest of all. Proud as we are of
our infantry at Waterloo, it was really with the French cavalry that
the greenest laurels of that great epic rested. They got the better of
our own cavalry, they took our guns again and again, they swept a large
portion of our allies from the field, and finally they rode off
unbroken, and as full of fight as ever. Read Gronow’s “Memoirs,” that
chatty little yellow volume yonder which brings all that age back to us
more vividly than any more pretentious work, and you will find the
chivalrous admiration which our officers expressed at the fine
performance of the French horsemen.
It must be admitted that, looking back upon history, we have not always
been good allies, nor yet generous co-partners in the battlefield. The
first is the fault of our politics, where one party rejoices to break
what the other has bound. The makers of the Treaty are staunch enough,
as the Tories were under Pitt and Castlereagh, or the Whigs at the time
of Queen Anne, but sooner or later the others must come in. At the end
of the Marlborough wars we suddenly vamped up a peace and, left our
allies in the lurch, on account of a change in domestic politics. We
did the same with Frederick the Great, and would have done it in the
Napoleonic days if Fox could have controlled the country. And as to our
partners of the battlefield, how little we have ever said that is
hearty as to the splendid staunchness of the Prussians at Waterloo. You
have to read the Frenchman, Houssaye, to get a central view and to
understand the part they played. Think of old Blucher, seventy years
old, and ridden over by a regiment of charging cavalry the day before,
yet swearing that he would come to Wellington if he had to be strapped
to his horse. He nobly redeemed his promise.
The loss of the Prussians at Waterloo was not far short of our own. You
would not know it, to read our historians. And then the abuse of our
Belgian allies has been overdone. Some of them fought splendidly, and
one brigade of infantry had a share in the critical instant when the
battle was turned. This also you would not learn from British sources.
Look at our Portuguese allies also! They trained into magnificent
troops, and one of Wellington’s earnest desires was to have ten
thousand of them for his Waterloo campaign. It was a Portuguese who
first topped the rampart of Badajos. They have never had their due
credit, nor have the Spaniards either, for, though often defeated, it
was their unconquerable pertinacity which played a great part in the
struggle. No; I do not think that we are very amiable partners, but I
suppose that all national history may be open to a similar charge.
It must be confessed that Marbot’s details are occasionally a little
hard to believe. Never in the pages of Lever has there been such a
series of hairbreadth escapes and dare-devil exploits. Surely he
stretched it a little sometimes. You may remember his adventure at
Eylau—I think it was Eylau—how a cannon-ball, striking the top of his
helmet, paralyzed him by the concussion of his spine; and how, on a
Russian officer running forward to cut him down, his horse bit the
man’s face nearly off. This was the famous charger which savaged
everything until Marbot, having bought it for next to nothing, cured it
by thrusting a boiling leg of mutton into its mouth when it tried to
bite him. It certainly does need a robust faith to get over these
incidents. And yet, when one reflects upon the hundreds of battles and
skirmishes which a Napoleonic officer must have endured—how they must
have been the uninterrupted routine of his life from the first dark
hair upon his lip to the first grey one upon his head, it is
presumptuous to say what may or may not have been possible in such
unparalleled careers. At any rate, be it fact or fiction—fact it is, in
my opinion, with some artistic touching up of the high lights—there are
few books which I could not spare from my shelves better than the
memoirs of the gallant Marbot.
I dwell upon this particular book because it is the best; but take the
whole line, and there is not one which is not full of interest. Marbot
gives you the point of view of the officer. So does De Segur and De
Fezensac and Colonel Gonville, each in some different branch of the
service. But some are from the pens of the men in the ranks, and they
are even more graphic than the others. Here, for example, are the
papers of good old Cogniet, who was a grenadier of the Guard, and could
neither read nor write until after the great wars were over. A tougher
soldier never went into battle. Here is Sergeant Bourgogne, also with
his dreadful account of that nightmare campaign in Russia, and the
gallant Chevillet, trumpeter of Chasseurs, with his matter-of-fact
account of all that he saw, where the daily “combat” is sandwiched in
betwixt the real business of the day, which was foraging for his frugal
breakfast and supper. There is no better writing, and no easier
reading, than the records of these men of action.
A Briton cannot help asking himself, as he realizes what men these
were, what would have happened if 150,000 Cogniets and Bourgognes, with
Marbots to lead them, and the great captain of all time in the prime of
his vigour at their head, had made their landing in Kent? For months it
was touch-and-go. A single naval slip which left the Channel clear
would have been followed by an embarkation from Boulogne, which had
been brought by constant practice to so incredibly fine a point that
the last horse was aboard within two hours of the start. Any evening
might have seen the whole host upon the Pevensey Flats. What then? We
know what Humbert did with a handful of men in Ireland, and the story
is not reassuring. Conquest, of course, is unthinkable. The world in
arms could not do that. But Napoleon never thought of the conquest of
Britain. He has expressly disclaimed it. What he did contemplate was a
gigantic raid in which he would do so much damage that for years to
come England would be occupied at home in picking up the pieces,
instead of having energy to spend abroad in thwarting his Continental
plans.
Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Sheerness in flames, with London either
levelled to the ground or ransomed at his own figure—that was a more
feasible programme. Then, with the united fleets of conquered Europe at
his back, enormous armies and an inexhaustible treasury, swollen with
the ransom of Britain, he could turn to that conquest of America which
would win back the old colonies of France and leave him master of the
world. If the worst happened and he had met his Waterloo upon the South
Downs, he would have done again what he did in Egypt and once more in
Russia: hurried back to France in a swift vessel, and still had force
enough to hold his own upon the Continent. It would, no doubt, have
been a big stake to lay upon the table—150,000 of his best—but he could
play again if he lost; while, if he won, he cleared the board. A fine
game—if little Nelson had not stopped it, and with one blow fixed the
edge of salt water as the limit of Napoleon’s power.
There’s the cast of a medal on the top of that cabinet which will bring
it all close home to you. It is taken from the die of the medal which
Napoleon had arranged to issue on the day that he reached London. It
serves, at any rate, to show that his great muster was not a bluff, but
that he really did mean serious business. On one side is his head. On
the other France is engaged in strangling and throwing to earth a
curious fish-tailed creature, which stands for perfidious Albion.
“Frappe a Londres” is printed on one part of it, and “La Descente dans
Angleterre” upon another. Struck to commemorate a conquest, it remains
now as a souvenir of a fiasco. But it was a close call.
By the way, talking of Napoleon’s flight from Egypt, did you ever see a
curious little book called, if I remember right, “Intercepted Letters”?
No; I have no copy upon this shelf, but a friend is more fortunate. It
shows the almost incredible hatred which existed at the end of the
eighteenth century between the two nations, descending even to the most
petty personal annoyance. On this occasion the British Government
intercepted a mail-bag of letters coming from French officers in Egypt
to their friends at home, and they either published them, or at least
allowed them to be published, in the hope, no doubt, of causing
domestic complications. Was ever a more despicable action? But who
knows what other injuries had been inflicted to draw forth such a
retaliation? I have myself seen a burned and mutilated British mail
lying where De Wet had left it; but suppose the refinement of his
vengeance had gone so far as to publish it, what a thunder-bolt it
might have been!
As to the French officers, I have read their letters, though even after
a century one had a feeling of guilt when one did so. But, on the
whole, they are a credit to the writers, and give the impression of a
noble and chivalrous set of men. Whether they were all addressed to the
right people is another matter, and therein lay the poisoned sting of
this most un-British affair. As to the monstrous things which were done
upon the other side, remember the arrest of all the poor British
tourists and commercials who chanced to be in France when the war was
renewed in 1803. They had run over in all trust and confidence for a
little outing and change of air. They certainly got it, for Napoleon’s
steel grip fell upon them, and they rejoined their families in 1814. He
must have had a heart of adamant and a will of iron. Look at his
conduct over the naval prisoners. The natural proceeding would have
been to exchange them. For some reason he did not think it good policy
to do so. All representations from the British Government were set
aside, save in the case of the higher officers. Hence the miseries of
the hulks and the dreadful prison barracks in England. Hence also the
unhappy idlers of Verdun. What splendid loyalty there must have been in
those humble Frenchmen which never allowed them for one instant to turn
bitterly upon the author of all their great misfortunes. It is all
brought vividly home by the description of their prisons given by
Borrow in “Lavengro.” This is the passage—
“What a strange appearance had those mighty casernes, with their blank,
blind walls, without windows or grating, and their slanting roofs, out
of which, through orifices where the tiles had been removed, would be
protruded dozens of grim heads, feasting their prison-sick eyes on the
wide expanse of country unfolded from their airy height. Ah! there was
much misery in those casernes; and from those roofs, doubtless, many a
wistful look was turned in the direction of lovely France. Much had the
poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of
England be it said—of England, in general so kind and bountiful.
Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I have seen the very
hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment even for the
most ruffian enemy, when helpless and captive; and such, alas! was the
fare in those casernes. And then, those visits, or rather ruthless
inroads, called in the slang of the place ‘straw-plait hunts,’ when in
pursuit of a contraband article, which the prisoners, in order to
procure themselves a few of the necessaries and comforts of existence,
were in the habit of making, red-coated battalions were marched into
the prisons, who, with the bayonet’s point, carried havoc and ruin into
every poor convenience which ingenious wretchedness had been
endeavouring to raise around it; and then the triumphant exit with the
miserable booty, and worst of all, the accursed bonfire, on the barrack
parade of the plait contraband, beneath the view of glaring eyeballs
from those lofty roofs, amid the hurrahs of the troops frequently
drowned in the curses poured down from above like a tempest-shower, or
in the terrific war-whoop of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’”
There is a little vignette of Napoleon’s men in captivity. Here is
another which is worth preserving of the bearing of his veterans when
wounded on the field of battle. It is from Mercer’s recollections of
the Battle of Waterloo. Mercer had spent the day firing case into the
French cavalry at ranges from fifty to two hundred yards, losing
two-thirds of his own battery in the process. In the evening he had a
look at some of his own grim handiwork.
“I had satisfied my curiosity at Hougoumont, and was retracing my steps
up the hill when my attention was called to a group of wounded
Frenchmen by the calm, dignified, and soldier-like oration addressed by
one of them to the rest. I cannot, like Livy, compose a fine harangue
for my hero, and, of course, I could not retain the precise words, but
the import of them was to exhort them to bear their sufferings with
fortitude; not to repine, like women or children, at what every soldier
should have made up his mind to suffer as the fortune of war, but above
all, to remember that they were surrounded by Englishmen, before whom
they ought to be doubly careful not to disgrace themselves by
displaying such an unsoldier-like want of fortitude.
“The speaker was sitting on the ground with his lance stuck upright
beside him—an old veteran with thick bushy, grizzly beard, countenance
like a lion—a lancer of the old guard, and no doubt had fought in many
a field. One hand was flourished in the air as he spoke, the other,
severed at the wrist, lay on the earth beside him; one ball (case-shot,
probably) had entered his body, another had broken his leg. His
suffering, after a night of exposure so mangled, must have been great;
yet he betrayed it not. His bearing was that of a Roman, or perhaps an
Indian warrior, and I could fancy him concluding appropriately his
speech in the words of the Mexican king, ‘And I too; am I on a bed of
roses?’”
What a load of moral responsibility upon one man! But his mind was
insensible to moral responsibility. Surely if it had not been it must
have been crushed beneath it. Now, if you want to understand the
character of Napoleon—but surely I must take a fresh start before I
launch on so portentous a subject as that.
But before I leave the military men let me, for the credit of my own
country, after that infamous incident of the letters, indicate these
six well-thumbed volumes of “Napier’s History.” This is the story of
the great Peninsular War, by one who fought through it himself, and in
no history has a more chivalrous and manly account been given of one’s
enemy. Indeed, Napier seems to me to push it too far, for his
admiration appears to extend not only to the gallant soldiers who
opposed him, but to the character and to the ultimate aims of their
leader. He was, in fact, a political follower of Charles James Fox, and
his heart seems to have been with the enemy even at the moment when he
led his men most desperately against them. In the verdict of history
the action of those men who, in their honest zeal for freedom, inflamed
somewhat by political strife, turned against their own country, when it
was in truth the Champion of Freedom, and approved of a military despot
of the most uncompromising kind, seems wildly foolish.
But if Napier’s politics may seem strange, his soldiering was splendid,
and his prose among the very best that I know. There are passages in
that work—the one which describes the breach of Badajos, that of the
charge of the Fusiliers at Albuera, and that of the French advance at
Fuentes d’Onoro—which once read haunt the mind for ever. The book is a
worthy monument of a great national epic. Alas! for the pregnant
sentence with which it closes, “So ended the great war, and with it all
memory of the services of the veterans.” Was there ever a British war
of which the same might not have been written?
The quotation which I have given from Mercer’s book turns my thoughts
in the direction of the British military reminiscences of that period,
less numerous, less varied, and less central than the French, but full
of character and interest all the same. I have found that if I am
turned loose in a large library, after hesitating over covers for half
an hour or so, it is usually a book of soldier memoirs which I take
down. Man is never so interesting as when he is thoroughly in earnest,
and no one is so earnest as he whose life is at stake upon the event.
But of all types of soldier the best is the man who is keen upon his
work, and yet has general culture which enables him to see that work in
its due perspective, and to sympathize with the gentler aspirations of
mankind. Such a man is Mercer, an ice-cool fighter, with a sense of
discipline and decorum which prevented him from moving when a bombshell
was fizzing between his feet, and yet a man of thoughtful and
philosophic temperament, with a weakness for solitary musings, for
children, and for flowers. He has written for all time the classic
account of a great battle, seen from the point of view of a battery
commander. Many others of Wellington’s soldiers wrote their personal
reminiscences. You can get them, as I have them there, in the pleasant
abridgement of “Wellington’s Men” (admirably edited by Dr.
Fitchett)—Anton the Highlander, Harris the rifleman, and Kincaid of the
same corps. It is a most singular fate which has made an Australian
nonconformist clergyman the most sympathetic and eloquent reconstructor
of those old heroes, but it is a noble example of that unity of the
British race, which in fifty scattered lands still mourns or rejoices
over the same historic record.
And just one word, before I close down this over-long and too
discursive chatter, on the subject of yonder twin red volumes which
flank the shelf. They are Maxwell’s “History of Wellington,” and I do
not think you will find a better or more readable one. The reader must
ever feel towards the great soldier what his own immediate followers
felt, respect rather than affection. One’s failure to attain a more
affectionate emotion is alleviated by the knowledge that it was the
last thing which he invited or desired. “Don’t be a damned fool, sir!”
was his exhortation to the good citizen who had paid him a compliment.
It was a curious, callous nature, brusque and limited. The hardest
huntsman learns to love his hounds, but he showed no affection and a
good deal of contempt for the men who had been his instruments. “They
are the scum of the earth,” said he. “All English soldiers are fellows
who have enlisted for drink. That is the plain fact—they have all
enlisted for drink.” His general orders were full of undeserved
reproaches at a time when the most lavish praise could hardly have met
the real deserts of his army. When the wars were done he saw little,
save in his official capacity, of his old comrades-in-arms. And yet,
from major-general to drummer-boy, he was the man whom they would all
have elected to serve under, had the work to be done once more. As one
of them said, “The sight of his long nose was worth ten thousand men on
a field of battle.” They were themselves a leathery breed, and cared
little for the gentler amenities so long as the French were well
drubbed.
His mind, which was comprehensive and alert in warfare, was singularly
limited in civil affairs. As a statesman he was so constant an example
of devotion to duty, self-sacrifice, and high disinterested character,
that the country was the better for his presence. But he fiercely
opposed Catholic Emancipation, the Reform Bill, and everything upon
which our modern life is founded. He could never be brought to see that
a pyramid should stand on its base and not on its apex, and that the
larger the pyramid, the broader should be the base. Even in military
affairs he was averse from every change, and I know of no improvements
which came from his initiative during all those years when his
authority was supreme. The floggings which broke a man’s spirit and
self-respect, the leathern stock which hampered his movements, all the
old traditional regime found a champion in him. On the other hand, he
strongly opposed the introduction of the percussion cap as opposed to
the flint and steel in the musket. Neither in war nor in politics did
he rightly judge the future.
And yet in reading his letters and dispatches, one is surprised
sometimes at the incisive thought and its vigorous expression. There is
a passage in which he describes the way in which his soldiers would
occasionally desert into some town which he was besieging. “They knew,”
he writes, “that they must be taken, for when we lay our bloody hands
upon a place we are sure to take it, sooner or later; but they liked
being dry and under cover, and then that extraordinary caprice which
always pervades the English character! Our deserters are very badly
treated by the enemy; those who deserted in France were treated as the
lowest of mortals, slaves and scavengers. Nothing but English caprice
can account for it; just what makes our noblemen associate with
stage-coach drivers, and become stage-coach drivers themselves.” After
reading that passage, how often does the phrase “the extraordinary
caprice which always pervades the English character” come back as one
observes some fresh manifestation of it!
But let not my last note upon the great duke be a carping one. Rather
let my final sentence be one which will remind you of his frugal and
abstemious life, his carpetless floor and little camp bed, his precise
courtesy which left no humblest letter unanswered, his courage which
never flinched, his tenacity which never faltered, his sense of duty
which made his life one long unselfish effort on behalf of what seemed
to him to be the highest interest of the State. Go down and stand by
the huge granite sarcophagus in the dim light of the crypt of St.
Paul’s, and in the hush of that austere spot, cast back your mind to
the days when little England alone stood firm against the greatest
soldier and the greatest army that the world has ever known. Then you
feel what this dead man stood for, and you pray that we may still find
such another amongst us when the clouds gather once again.
You see that the literature of Waterloo is well represented in my small
military library. Of all books dealing with the personal view of the
matter, I think that “Siborne’s Letters,” which is a collection of the
narratives of surviving officers made by Siborne in the year 1827, is
the most interesting. Gronow’s account is also very vivid and
interesting. Of the strategical narratives, Houssaye’s book is my
favourite. Taken from the French point of view, it gets the actions of
the allies in truer perspective than any English or German account can
do; but there is a fascination about that great combat which makes
every narrative that bears upon it of enthralling interest.
Wellington used to say that too much was made of it, and that one would
imagine that the British Army had never fought a battle before. It was
a characteristic speech, but it must be admitted that the British Army
never had, as a matter of fact, for many centuries fought a battle
which was finally decisive of a great European war. There lies the
perennial interest of the incident, that it was the last act of that
long-drawn drama, and that to the very fall of the curtain no man could
tell how the play would end—“the nearest run thing that ever you
saw”—that was the victor’s description. It is a singular thing that
during those twenty-five years of incessant fighting the material and
methods of warfare made so little progress. So far as I know, there was
no great change in either between 1789 and 1805. The breech-loader,
heavy artillery, the ironclad, all great advances in the art of war,
have been invented in time of peace. There are some improvements so
obvious, and at the same time so valuable, that it is extraordinary
that they were not adopted. Signalling, for example, whether by
heliograph or by flag-waving, would have made an immense difference in
the Napoleonic campaigns. The principle of the semaphore was well
known, and Belgium, with its numerous windmills, would seem to be
furnished with natural semaphores. Yet in the four days during which
the campaign of Waterloo was fought, the whole scheme of military
operations on both sides was again and again imperilled, and finally in
the case of the French brought to utter ruin by lack of that
intelligence which could so easily have been conveyed. June 18th was at
intervals a sunshiny day—a four-inch glass mirror would have put
Napoleon in communication with Gruchy, and the whole history of Europe
might have been altered. Wellington himself suffered dreadfully from
defective information which might have been easily supplied. The
unexpected presence of the French army was first discovered at four in
the morning of June 15. It was of enormous importance to get the news
rapidly to Wellington at Brussels that he might instantly concentrate
his scattered forces on the best line of resistance—yet, through the
folly of sending only a single messenger, this vital information did
not reach him until three in the afternoon, the distance being thirty
miles. Again, when Blucher was defeated at Ligny on the 16th, it was of
enormous importance that Wellington should know at once the line of his
retreat so as to prevent the French from driving a wedge between them.
The single Prussian officer who was despatched with this information
was wounded, and never reached his destination, and it was only next
day that Wellington learned the Prussian plans. On what tiny things
does History depend!