HISTORICAL AND ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES TO CANTO VI.
The incidents of the first part of this Canto are derived in common from Napier, Jones, and Gleig. The tearing down of the Tricolor, which I have assigned to Nial, must be historically attributed to the real performer of this bold exploit.
“The French colours on the cavalier were torn away by Lieutenant Gethin of the eleventh regiment.”—Napier, Hist. book xxii. chap. 2.
The magnificent achievement of maintaining for a considerable period a fire from our whole artillery, against the curtain wall, over the heads of the storming party, is thus coldly, but (on the whole) accurately, described by General Jones:—“From the superior height of the curtain, the artillery in the batteries on the right of the Urumea, were able to keep up a fire on that part during the assault, without injury to the troops at the foot of the breach, and being extremely well served, it occasioned a severe loss to the enemy, and probably caused the explosion which led to the final success of the assault.” The General’s coldness is owing to the departure from the rules of art, and to the contempt of the maxims of “Marshal Vauban, who had served and directed at fifty sieges,” as he triumphantly describes him. Vauban’s maxim was certainly not British: “At a siege never attempt any thing by open force, which can be obtained by labour and art.” Gen. Jones is incorrect in stating that the fire on the curtain was “without injury to the troops.” Napier says: “A sergeant of the ninth regiment was killed by the batteries close to his commanding officer, and it is probable that other casualties also had place.” Hist. book xxii. chap. 2.
The impassable chasm beyond the breach is thus described by Jones: “At the back of the whole of the rest of the breach was a perpendicular wall, from fifteen to twenty-five feet in depth.” (Journals of Sieges, Sup. Chap.) He thus describes the advance of the Portuguese column: “Five hundred Portuguese, in two detachments, forded the river Urumea near its mouth, in a very handsome style, under a heavy fire of grape and musketry.” (Jones, Journals of Sieges, Sup. Chap.) This does not quite do justice to the gallantry of the party. “When the soldiers reached the middle of the stream,” says Napier, “a heavy gun struck on the head of the column with a shower of grape; the havoc was fearful, but the survivors closed and moved on. A second discharge from the same piece tore the ranks from front to rear, still the regiment moved on.”—Hist. book xxii. c. 2.
The following account is from Gleig’s Subaltern:—
“Things had continued in this state for nearly a quarter of an hour, when Major Snodgrass, at the head of the thirteenth Portuguese regiment, dashed across the river by his own ford, and assaulted the lesser breach. This attack was made in the most cool and determined manner, but here, too, the obstacles were almost insurmountable; nor is it probable that the place would have been carried at all but for a measure adopted by General Graham, such as has never perhaps been adopted before. Perceiving that matters were almost desperate, he had recourse to a desperate remedy, and ordered our own artillery to fire upon the breach. Nothing could be more exact or beautiful than this practice. Though our men stood only about two feet below the breach, scarcely a single ball from the guns of our batteries struck amongst them, whilst all told with fearful exactness among the enemy. The fire had been kept up only a few minutes, when all at once an explosion took place such as drowned every other noise, and apparently confounded, for an instant, the combatants on both sides. A shell from one of our mortars had exploded near the train which communicated with a quantity of gunpowder placed under the breach. This mine the French had intended to spring as soon as our troops should have made good their footing or established themselves on the summit, but the fortunate accident just mentioned anticipated them. It exploded whilst 300 grenadiers, the élite of the garrison, stood over it; and instead of sweeping the storming party into eternity, it only cleared a way for their advance. It was a spectacle as appalling and grand as the imagination can conceive, the sight of that explosion. The noise was more awful than any which I have ever heard before or since, whilst a bright flash, instantly succeeded by a smoke so dense as to obscure all vision, produced an effect upon those who witnessed it such as no powers of language are adequate to describe. Such, indeed, was the effect of the whole occurrence, that for perhaps half a minute after not a shot was fired on either side. Both parties stood still to gaze upon the havoc which had been produced! insomuch, that a whisper might have caught your ear for a distance of several yards. The state of stupefaction into which they were at first thrown did not, however, last long with the British troops. As the smoke and dust of the ruins cleared away, they beheld before them a space empty of defenders, and they instantly rushed forward to occupy it. Uttering an appalling shout, the troops sprang over the dilapidated parapet, and the rampart was their own. Now then began all those maddening scenes which are witnessed only in a storm, of flight and slaughter, and parties rallying only to be broken and dispersed, till finally, having cleared the works to the right and left, the soldiers poured down into the town.”
It is nearly incredible, and certainly not very creditable, that General Jones in his detailed account of the siege and storming of San Sebastian, says not one word of the horrible excesses which our soldiers there committed. Some men’s notions of history do not differ very widely from the concoction of a political pamphlet. Napier’s history abounds with frank admission and reprobation of these horrors. I find a distinct allusion to them almost at its very commencement: “No wild horde of Tartars ever fell with more license upon their rich effeminate neighbours, than did the English troops upon the Spanish towns taken by storm.”—Hist. War Penins. i. 5.
The part which the Portuguese took in this assault was sufficiently creditable to make quite unnecessary the boasting spirit which disfigures their national literature. It abounds in the great work of their greatest poet. Thus, for instance:—
Que os muitos por ser poucos não temamos;
O que despois mil vezes amostramos.
Camóens, Lus. viii. 36.
“We don’t fear many because we are few, which we have shown a thousand times!” And in the previous stanza he relates that “seventeen Lusitanians, being attacked by 400 Castilians (desasete Lusitanos subidos de quatro centos Castelhanos), not only defended themselves, but offended their adversaries!!”
Que não só se defendem, mas offendem!
This ridiculous boasting and inane swagger, which was a vice in the Portuguese blood in the days of Camóens, exists unchanged to the present hour, and has been disgustingly manifested in a piece called “Magriço” lately selected for the opening of the National Theatre at Lisbon, in which Spaniards and Englishmen are alike insulted. “We are not accustomed to count numbers!” was a sentiment vehemently applauded in this piece. Let the Portuguese not deceive themselves by an imagined resemblance to their forefathers; and if their historical recollections are glorious, let them endeavour practically to revive them. They should remember that it is little more than a century since their entire army ran away from the Spaniards and French at Almanza, and left their English, Dutch, and German auxiliaries in the lurch.
I. “Upon the Chofre stood the dauntless Graham,
And marked the slaughter with determined eye.”
Mas luego que los fija en el cercano
Altisimo torreon, bramando en ira
Jura rendir el enemigo muro
En general asalto y choque duro.
Campo-redondo, Las Armas de Aragon en Oriente.
“Full fifty cannon streaming death on high.”
——Le macchine ...
A cui non abbia la città riparo.
Tasso, Ger. Lib. iii. 74.
IV. “What were thy triumphs, Greece, on Elis’ plain?”
Sunt quibus Elææ concurrit palma quadrigæ.
Propert. l. iii. Eleg. 9.
ἐμὲ δ’ ἐπὶ ταχυτά-
των πόρευσον ἁρμάτων
ἐς Ἆλιν, κράτει δὲ πέλασον.
Pind. Olymp. i.
“Carry me on swiftest chariots to Elis, and bear me to Victory!”
“Olympian dust Alpheus’ margin strewing.”
μηκέθ’ ἁλίου σκόπει
ἄλλο θαλπνότερον
ἐν ἁμέρᾳ φαεινὸν ἄστρον
μήδ’ Ὀλυμπίας ἀγῶνα
φέρτερον αὐδάσομεν:
Pind. Olymp. i.
“Deem no shining star greater than the Sun, nor contest more excellent than the Olympian games.”
“Of statues for the Altis sculptors hewing.”
Διὸς ἄλκιμος
υἱὸς, σταθμᾶτο ζάθεον ἄλσος
πατρὶ μεγίστω· περὶ δὲ πάξας,
Ἄλτιν μὲν ὅγ’ ἐν καθαρῷ
διέκρινε.
Pind. Olymp. x.
“The stalwart son of Jove measured out a grove divine to the mightiest Father, and hedged it round, and the Altis he set apart in that sacred place.” Pindar thus attributes the foundation of the Olympic games to Hercules, who was more popular than Jupiter himself amongst his Heraclidan audience; and a few lines before he alludes to his conquest of Elis, on whose plain these games were subsequently celebrated, “μυχοῖς ἅμμενον Ἄλιδος;” Hercules having led thither an army from Tiryns, the first walled city upon record. The sacred grove to which Pindar above refers contained the temple of Olympian Jove, and the statues erected to the conquerors in the games. The τρισολυμπιονῖκαι, or those who had been thrice victorious, had their εἰκόνες in marble thus set, and copied exactly from their members, which were thus in some degree deified. (Plin. lib. 34, cap. 3.) And Aristotle, in his Ethics, lib. 7, c. 6, says that the Olympian conquerors were called “ἀνθρώπους” κατ’ ἐξοχὴν, as if they alone were worthy of the name!
X. “And sulphurous fires the bastioned bulwarks tear
Like rags asunder!”
—Καὶ στεφάνωμα πύργων
Πευκάενθ’ Ἥφαιστον ἑλεῖν.
Τοῖος ἀμφὶ νῶτ’ ἐτάθη
Πάταγος Ἄρεος.
Soph. Antig. 122.
“And pitchy Vulcan seized our loftiest towers; dire was the din of Mars that rose from behind.”
“And rush the stormers in with lustiest British cheers.”
“In the Peninsula, the sudden deafening shout, rolling over a field of battle, more full and terrible than that of any other nation, and followed by the strong unwavering charge, often startled and appalled a French column, before whose fierce and vehement assault any other troops would have given way.”—Napier, Hist. War in the Penins. book xxiv. c. 6.
XIV. “Oh, Rank and Dignity! I saw two flies.”
“They wonder how any man should be so much taken with the glaring, doubtful lustre of a jewel or stone, that can look up to a star, or to the sun itself; or how any should value himself because his cloth is made of a finer thread; for, how fine soever that thread may be, it was once no better than the fleece of a sheep, and that sheep was a sheep still for all its wearing it. They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be every where so much esteemed that even man, for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is; so that a man of lead, who has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is foolish, should have many wise and good men serving him, only because he has a great heap of that metal; and if it should so happen that by some accident, or trick of law, which does sometimes produce as great changes as chance itself, all this wealth should pass from the master to the meanest varlet of his whole family, he himself would very soon become one of his servants, as if he were a thing that belonged to his wealth, and so were bound to follow its fortune. But they do much more admire and detest their folly who, when they see a rich man, though they neither owe him anything, nor are in any sort obnoxious to him, yet merely because he is rich, they give him little less than divine honours; even though they know him to be so covetous and base-minded that, notwithstanding all his wealth, he will not part with one farthing of it to them as long as he lives.”—Sir Thomas More, Utopia, book ii. Bishop Burnet’s Translation.
XVII. “Thus to Achilles’ arms the maid restored.”
Untouched “quoad Agamemnona.” The epithet of Homer is ἀπροτίμαστος. Il. xix.
XVIII. “Afonso, Avíz, Nun’ Alvares, &c.”
The exploits of all these worthies will be found recorded in my “Ocean Flower.”
XIX. “Not thy Fidalgos—withered boughs, I ween.”
Mina never would suffer an Hidalgo to join his band—himself a peasant by birth, and thoroughly despising the “higher orders.” From this general censure of the Fidalgo class, the Conde de Amarante, the Marquis de Saldanha, the present Conde de Villareal and Duke of Terceira, who served with distinction in the Peninsular War, are exceptions. The defence of the bridge of Amarante, from which the first-named Conde received his title, was a most brilliant exploit.
XXI. “No, not more vain Antæus’ self to pierce.”
See Pindar’s first Nemeonic, and Lucan, lib. iv.
“Whose hissing heads struck off, still heads more grim, &c.”
Non Hydra secto corpore firmior
Vinci dolentem crevit in Herculem.
Horat. Carm. iv. 4.
XXV. “Oh, sacred source of sympathetic tears!”
The “δακρυων πηγαι,” the “sacri fontes lachrymarum,” which even amongst enlightened Heathens seem to have been more regarded than by many modern Christians.
XXVI. “The Imperial Boar.”
Diocletian.
XXIX. “By that majestic Faith, &c.”
Such is the force of the Saint’s name, Σεβαστὸς.
XXXII. “Her heart transpierces, falls, and dies upon his corse.”
—Καλὸν μοὶ τοῦτο ποιούσῃ θανεῖν.
Φίλη μετ’ αὐτοῦ κείσομαι, φίλου μέτα.
Soph. Antig. 72.
“It will be my glory thus to die. Loving I will lie by the side of my beloved!”
XL. “Dissolved the bands of discipline, the mould
Of duty broke, restored barbarian life.”
Ναυτικὸν στράτευμ’, ἄναρχον, κᾴπὶ τοῖς κακοῖς θρασὺ,
Χρήσιμον δ’ ὅταν θέλωσιν.
Eurip. Iphig. in Aul. 914.
“An army come in ships, anarchical, and ferocious for evil deeds, but useful when it pleases.” A very close description of our San Sebastian heroes—written more than two thousand years since! I stood in September last upon the Chofre hills, on the very spot whence Graham directed the fearful cannonade, and subsequently beneath the branch where our gallant fellows entered, and in the recollection of their bravery could readily forget the tales of horror which I heard from Spaniards, who retain a more vivid memory of misdeeds, than of the most magnificent services.
I saw with little admiration the mediocre picture of San Sebastian over the high altar in the cathedral, and when I subsequently beheld the glorious picture of the same saint by Guido in the museum at Madrid, I sincerely regretted that the latter is not substituted for the former—a measure which would be well worthy an enlightened government.
IBERIA WON.