... close to each corner (of the granite wall) rises from the earth the breach of an immense brass cannon, intended to keep the wall compact and close. These outer erections are, however, not the work of the French, but of the English Government.”[181]
The Gardens of San Carlos are a favourite resort of the Coruña townspeople. The photographer whom I commissioned the following day to take a photograph of the tomb informed me that the gardens stood on the most ancient bit of Coruña, and that all the new part of the town was built upon land that had been retrieved from the sea in comparatively recent times. “Yes, there lies the hero almost within sight of the glorious hill where he turned upon his pursuers like a lion at bay. Many acquire immortality without seeking it, and die before its first ray has gilded their name: of these was Moore. The harassed general, flying through Castile with his dispirited troops before a fierce and terrible enemy, little dreamed that he was on the point of obtaining that for which many a better and greater, though certainly not braver, man had sighed in vain. His very misfortunes were the means which secured him immortal fame: his disastrous rout, his bloody death, and, finally, his tomb on a foreign strand, far from kin and friends. There is scarcely a Spaniard but has heard of his tomb, and speaks of it with a strange kind of awe. Immense treasures are said to have been buried with the heretic general, though for what purpose no one pretends to guess. Yes, even in Spain immortality has already crowned the head of Moore—Spain, the land of oblivion, where the Guadalete flows.”[182]
“Never,” writes Maxwell,[183] “was the ordeal to which an unfortunate commander was subjected so gently exercised—no man obtained a larger share of sympathy from his countrymen, and none deserved it better. Misfortunes and mistakes were half forgotten—and the failure of Moore’s campaign was attributed to that evil influence exercised by individuals at home and on the Peninsula by whom he was misguided in the commencement and abandoned in the end. On the living, popular disapprobation descended with unsparing severity, while the faults of the departed soldier seemed buried in his warrior grave.... To claim equality as a commander for Moore with Wellington, Napoleon, and Soult” (it was in defending himself against Soult that Moore fell) “no circumstances will warrant. Sir John was a first-rate officer—but he never could have been a great commander. He was an able tactician—understood thoroughly the economy of an army—handled troops well—had a sound discretion and a clear head—but a constitutional defect in some degree neutralised these admirable qualities. Moore lacked confidence in himself—he was haunted by a fear of responsibility—and a constant dread of doing that which was wrong, of running himself and his troops into difficulties from which they might not be able to extricate themselves.... Sir John Moore had earned the highest reputation as a general of division; he was aware of
A NATIVE CART
