A WARRIOR TAKING HIS REST
THE rapid fall of darkness made it difficult to pursue the enemy, who
at every point had been worsted. General Hope, knowing that large
reinforcements might be expected to arrive soon in the French camp,
decided to carry out Sir John Moore's plan of immediate embarkation.
At ten o'clock that night the march began, brigade after brigade
leaving the field of battle, and silently going on board one transport
after another. So complete had been all previous arrangements, that, by
morning light, almost the whole British Army was on board.
Meanwhile, anxious consultation had taken place as to what should
be done with the beloved remains of the Commander. Colonel Anderson
settled the question by stating that Moore had often told him his
wish—"if he ever fell in battle, to be buried where he had fallen." It
was decided that a grave should be dug on the rampart of the Coruña
citadel.
At midnight the body was reverently borne into the citadel, by Colonel
Graham, Major Colbourne, and the aides-de-camp. For a few hours it lay
in Colonel Graham's room.
In the early morning firing was heard. It was then determined not
to put off the funeral any longer, lest a fresh attack should be
impending, and the officers should be compelled to hasten away before
paying the last honours to their Chief.
Jack's friend, George Napier, had arrived upon the sad scene of the
night before, just when all was over—too late for any of those last
words, which would have been to him a lifelong treasure. After Anderson
and Francois, probably none present grieved more bitterly than George
Napier. But when he found Roy sobbing hopelessly in the corner of the
room, he took him away, and let him stay in his own quarters. And
when the funeral took place Roy was allowed to be one of the party in
attendance.
Not at dead of night, but at eight o'clock in the chill morning of a
January day, and in the grave prepared by his own men, Sir John Moore
was laid. No coffin could be procured. The body had not been undressed.
He wore still the General's uniform in which he had fought his last
battle, and—
"He lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him."
That same cloak, in which but a few days earlier, he had visited Roy in
the little hut at Lugo—had laid his kind hand upon the boy's arm—had
spoken never to be forgotten words of praise—had smiled upon him—
Roy dared not let himself think of all this. Burning, blinding tears
forced their way to his eyes—and not to his only,—as he gazed his last
upon that perfect face, in its pale, sublime repose.
Moore was carried by the "Officers of the Family," who would allow no
other hands to do for him these last sad services. The Burial Service
was read by the Chaplain. And what was in the hearts of them all has
been told, in words that cannot be improved upon, by that noble Elegy
which is Moore's best monument:—
"We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow."
"Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him—
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him."
"Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory,
We carved not a line and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory." ¹
Every man in the Army had lost a friend that day; and many a one
besides Roy felt with passionate grief that the world, without John
Moore in it, would be for him a changed place thenceforward.
Hard things were spoken of him after he was gone; and upbraidings
indeed were uttered—not by the brave foe, who honoured Moore, and
wished to raise a stone to his memory, but by an ungrateful section of
his own countrymen, because, forsooth, with an army of twenty-three
thousand men, he had not met and crushed two hundred thousand. We know
better now. In the cold clear light of history such fogs are driven
away.
Yet, even in these later days, have we made enough of the name of John
Moore?
¹ By the Rev. C. Wolfe, about 1817.
Have we thought enough of the man, of whom Napoleon in the zenith
of his fame could declare that he was the only General left, fit to
contend with himself?—and against whose twenty-three thousand men he
counted it needful to bring in a fierce rush over eighty thousand,
failing even then in his purpose? Have we thought enough of the
man, under whom the future Wellington wished nothing better than to
serve?—and about whose "towering fame" the sober historian of the
Peninsular War wrote in terms of unstinted praise? Have we thought
enough of the man who, while the bravest of the brave, was also the
most blameless and the most beloved of men; against whom Detraction had
no word to utter, save that he stood up almost too strenuously for his
Country's honour, and that he did not accomplish impossibilities?
If not, it is surely time that his countrymen should begin to "do him
justice!"
But for that fatal cannon-ball—who can say?—would Wellington have
become the foremost man in Europe, or would he have been second to
Moore? It might have been Moore, not Wellington, who turned the tide
of Napoleon's success? ¹ It was Moore who stemmed that tide, with his
spirited counter-march and splendid retreat, drawing the enemy after
him, until he stood at bay upon the coast, and hurled back the onset of
the flower of Napoleon's army.
¹ These sentences were written before Lord Wolseley's speech at
Dumfries, in 1898, in which he was reported as having said—"There could
be little doubt in the minds of most soldiers who knew what Moore
did, that, had he not been killed at the Battle of Coruña, he would
have been the great Commander who led the Peninsular War; and it was
quite possible that that great man, whom they all worshipped, the Duke
of Wellington, would not have been heard of. He did not say that to
depreciate the services of the Duke of Wellington, who had been a rock
of strength to this country. But, possibly, had Sir John Moore lived,
his name would have been blazoned on the scroll of fame as the man who
won the great battle which crushed Napoleon's power at Waterloo."
Of Moore's personal valour, of his indomitable courage, of his intense
patriotism, no voice was ever heard in question. To his consummate
generalship, his mingled audacity and calculation, this marvellous
Retreat bore ample witness. But for many years it was not understood by
the mass of the English people. Napoleon, Soult, and Ney gauged him far
more truly than did the average Englishman of his day.