The present tale is founded more largely on testimony--oral and
written--than any other in this series. The external incidents which
direct its course are mostly an unexaggerated reproduction of the
recollections of old persons well known to the author in childhood, but
now long dead, who were eye-witnesses of those scenes. If wholly
transcribed their recollections would have filled a volume thrice the
length of 'The Trumpet-Major.'
Down to the middle of this century, and later, there were not wanting, in
the neighbourhood of the places more or less clearly indicated herein,
casual relics of the circumstances amid which the action moves--our
preparations for defence against the threatened invasion of England by
Buonaparte. An outhouse door riddled with bullet-holes, which had been
extemporized by a solitary man as a target for firelock practice when the
landing was hourly expected, a heap of bricks and clods on a beacon-hill,
which had formed the chimney and walls of the hut occupied by the beacon-
keeper, worm-eaten shafts and iron heads of pikes for the use of those
who had no better weapons, ridges on the down thrown up during the
encampment, fragments of volunteer uniform, and other such lingering
remains, brought to my imagination in early childhood the state of
affairs at the date of the war more vividly than volumes of history could
have done.
Those who have attempted to construct a coherent narrative of past times
from the fragmentary information furnished by survivors, are aware of the
difficulty of ascertaining the true sequence of events indiscriminately
recalled. For this purpose the newspapers of the date were
indispensable. Of other documents consulted I may mention, for the
satisfaction of those who love a true story, that the 'Address to all
Ranks and Descriptions of Englishmen' was transcribed from an original
copy in a local museum; that the hieroglyphic portrait of Napoleon
existed as a print down to the present day in an old woman's cottage near
'Overcombe;' that the particulars of the King's doings at his favourite
watering-place were augmented by details from records of the time. The
drilling scene of the local militia received some additions from an
account given in so grave a work as Gifford's 'History of the Wars of the
French Revolution' (London, 1817). But on reference to the History I
find I was mistaken in supposing the account to be advanced as authentic,
or to refer to rural England. However, it does in a large degree accord
with the local traditions of such scenes that I have heard recounted,
times without number, and the system of drill was tested by reference to
the Army Regulations of 1801, and other military handbooks. Almost the
whole narrative of the supposed landing of the French in the Bay is from
oral relation as aforesaid. Other proofs of the veracity of this
chronicle have escaped my recollection.