NOTICE.
This volume was nearly printed when my attention was called to a passage in an article upon the duke of Wellington’s despatches, published in the last number of the “British and Foreign Quarterly Review.”
After describing colonel Gurwood’s proceedings to procure the publication of the despatches the reviewer says,
“We here distinctly state, that no other person ever had access to any documents of the duke, by his grace’s permission, for any historical or other purpose, and that all inferential pretensions to such privilege are not founded in fact.”
This assertion, which if not wholly directed against my history certainly includes it with others, I distinctly state to be untrue.
For firstly, the duke of Wellington gave me access to the original morning states of his army for the use of my history; he permitted me to take them into my possession, and I still have possession of them.
Secondly. The duke of Wellington voluntarily directed me to apply to sir George Murray for the “orders of movements.” That is to say the orders of battle issued by him to the different generals previous to every great action. Sir George Murray thought proper, as the reader will see in the justificatory pieces of this volume, to deny all knowledge of these “orders of movements.” I have since obtained some of them from others, but the permission to get them all was given to me at Strathfieldsaye, in the presence of lord Fitzroy Somerset, who was at the same time directed to give me the morning states and he did do so. These were documents of no ordinary importance for a history of the war.
Thirdly. Lord Fitzroy Somerset, with the consent of the duke of Wellington, put into my hands king Joseph’s portfolio, taken at Vittoria and containing that monarch’s correspondence with the emperor, with the French minister of war, and with the marshals and generals who at different periods were employed in the Peninsula. These also were documents of no slight importance for a history of the war, and they are still in my possession.
When I first resolved to write this History, I applied verbally to the duke of Wellington to give me papers in aid of my undertaking. His answer in substance was, that he had arranged all his own papers with a view to publication himself—that he had not decided in what form they should be given to the world, or when, probably not during his lifetime, but he thought his plan would be to “write a plain didactic history” to be published after his death—that he was resolved never to publish anything unless he could tell the whole truth, but at that time he could not tell the whole truth without wounding the feelings of many worthy men, without doing mischief: adding in a laughing way “I should do as much mischief as Buonaparte.” Then expatiating upon the subject he related to me many anecdotes illustrative of this observation, shewing errors committed by generals and others acting with him, or under him, especially at Waterloo; errors so materially affecting his operations that he could not do justice to himself if he suppressed them, and yet by giving them publicity he would ungraciously affect the fame of many worthy men whose only fault was dulness.
For these reasons he would not, he said, give me his own private papers, but he gave me the documents I have already noticed, and told me he would then, and always, answer any questions as to facts which I might in the course of my work think necessary to put. And he has fulfilled that promise rigidly, for I did then put many questions to him verbally and took notes of his answers, and many of the facts in my History which have been most cavilled at and denied by my critics have been related by me solely upon his authority. Moreover I have since at various times sent to the duke a number of questions in writing, and always they have been fully and carefully answered without delay, though often put when his mind must have been harassed and his attention deeply occupied by momentous affairs.
But though the duke of Wellington denied me access to his own peculiar documents, the greatest part of those documents existed in duplicate; they were in other persons’ hands, and in two instances were voluntarily transferred with other interesting papers to mine. Of this truth the reader may easily satisfy himself by referring to my five first volumes, some of which were published years before colonel Gurwood’s compilation appeared. He will find in those volumes frequent allusions to the substance of the duke’s private communications with the governments he served; and in the Appendix a number of his letters, printed precisely as they have since been given by colonel Gurwood. I could have greatly augmented the number if I had been disposed so to swell my work. Another proof will be found in the Justificatory Pieces of this volume, where I have restored the whole reading of a remarkable letter of the duke’s which has been garbled in colonel Gurwood’s compilation, and this not from any unworthy desire to promulgate what the duke of Wellington desired to suppress, but that having long before attributed, on the strength of that passage, certain strong opinions to his grace, I was bound in defence of my own probity as an historian to reproduce my authority.
W. F. P. NAPIER.
March 28th, 1840.