Graham’s last campaign was marred by this check. But, in the general distribution of rewards at the peace of 1814, he was given a peerage, by the title of Lord Lynedoch, and shared in the other honours of the Peninsular Army. Though sixty-six years old when the war ended, he survived till 1843, when he had reached the patriarchal age of ninety-six. He did a good service to his old comrades by founding the United Service Club, which he originally designed as a place of rendezvous for old Peninsular officers, of whom he had noticed that many were lonely men without family ties, like himself, while others, stranded in London for a few days, had no central spot where they could count on meeting old friends.[106] His portrait hangs, as is right, in the most prominent place in the largest room of the institution which he founded.
Graham and his Admirers
I have never found one unkindly word about General Graham, in the numerous diaries and autobiographies of the officers and men who served under him. All comment on his stately presence, his thoughtful courtesy, and his unfailing justice and benevolence. “I may truly say he lives in their affections; they not only looked up to him with confidence as their commander, but they esteemed and respected him as their firm friend and protector, which, indeed, he always showed himself to be.”[107] “What could not Britons do, when led by such a chief?” asks another.[108] I might make a considerable list of the names of British officers who relate their personal obligation to his kindness;[109] but perhaps the most convincing evidence of all is that of the French Colonel Vigo-Roussillon, one of the enemies whom he captured at Barrosa, who has no words strong enough to express the delicate generosity with which he was treated while a wounded prisoner at Cadiz. Graham came to visit him on his sick bed, sent his own physician to attend him, and made copious provision for his food and lodging. For a conscientious hatred for French influence, whether that of the red Jacobin republic, or that of the Napoleonic despotism, did not prevent him from showing his benevolence to individual Frenchmen thrown upon his mercy.[110]
CHAPTER VII
WELLINGTON’S LIEUTENANTS—PICTON, CRAUFURD, AND OTHERS
If Graham had no enemies, and was loved by every one with whom he came in contact, the same cannot be said of the two distinguished officers with whom I have next to deal, General Robert Craufurd and Sir Thomas Picton. They were both men of mark, Craufurd even more so than Picton; they both fell in action at the moment of victory; they were both employed by Wellington for the most responsible services, and he owed much to their admirable executive powers; but both of them were occasionally out of his good graces. Each of them had many admiring friends and many bitter enemies, whose reasons for liking and disliking them it is not hard to discover. Both of them were to a certain extent embittered and disappointed men, who thought that their work had never received adequate recognition, a view for which there was considerable justification. In other respects they were wholly unlike; their characters differed fundamentally, so much so that when they met it was not unfrequently to clash and quarrel.
Picton, a Welsh country gentleman by birth, was a typical eighteenth century soldier, who had (after the old fashion) entered the army at thirteen years of age, and had gone on foreign service at fifteen. His manners, we gather, were those of the barrack-room; he was a hard drinking, hard swearing, rough-and-ready customer. Wellington, who was not squeamish, called him “a rough, foul-mouthed devil as ever lived,[111] but he always behaved extremely well on service.” The notorious Duke of Queensberry, “Old Q,” was his friend and admirer, and left him a good legacy of £5000 in his will. Old Q’s model heroes were not of the Wesleyan Methodist type. One of the strongest impressions left on one’s mind by the diaries of those who served under him is that of his astounding power of malediction. Kincaid’s account of the sack of Ciudad Rodrigo is dominated by “the voice of Sir Thomas Picton, with the power of twenty trumpets proclaiming damnation to all and sundry.”[112] But if he was destitute of all the graces and some of the virtues, Picton was a very fine soldier, with a quick eye, unlimited self-confidence, and the courage of ten bulldogs. He had, when once the Revolutionary War commenced, made his way to the front with great rapidity. A captain in 1794, he had become a brigadier-general by 1799, and his promotion had been won by undeniable good service. For his ultimate misfortune, he was made in 1797 governor of the newly conquered Spanish island of Trinidad in the West Indies, while still only a colonel. This was the beginning of his troubles; the post was lucrative, dangerous, and difficult. The garrison was insufficient, and the island was swarming with disbanded Spanish soldiers, runaway negro slaves, French adventurers, and privateers and pirates of all nations from the Spanish Main. Picton had to create order from chaos, and then to keep it up; his methods were drastic: the lash and the pillory, the branding-irons, and, where necessary, military execution. It does not appear on impartial examination that he ever showed himself self-seeking, partial, or corrupt in his administration; he merely tried, in his own rough way, to dragoon into order a very unruly and lawless community. The majority of the better classes approved his rule, which, as one of them said, “was of the sort required by the colony” where a governor “had to make himself feared as well as beloved.” Naturally he made many enemies, white, black, and brown, English and Spanish, adventurers and officials. They kept up a rain of petitions against him at the Colonial Office, in which he was represented as a sort of Nero. The most acrid and ingenious of them, a Colonel Fullarton, succeeded in finding a method of attack which was certain to have a great vogue when tried in England. The old Spanish law still ran in Trinidad, and under it various forms of durance and torture were permitted against suspected persons under arrest. A case had happened in which a mulatto girl, who had been concerned in stealing 2000 dollars from a Spanish tobacco merchant, was put to the barbarous punishment of picketing (standing with the heels on a stake) by the local magistrates, to make her confess who had taken the money, and where it was hidden. After a few minutes she admitted that her lover had stolen it, with her aid and consent; and this was proved to be the fact. Thus under Picton’s rule, and (as it turned out) with his knowledge, a woman had been put to the torture, though the torture was slight and the woman guilty.
Picton in Trinidad
Picton, on returning to England, was therefore accused by Colonel Fullarton of many tyrannical acts, but, above all, of having put a woman to the torture in order to extract a confession, a thing abhorrent alike to the laws of England and to the common sentiments of humanity. There followed a long political trial, (for it became a matter of Whig and Tory partizanship), in which the Government finally dropped the prosecution, because it was amply proved that Spanish, not English, law was running in Trinidad in 1801, since the island had not been annexed till the peace of Amiens in the following year, and that the governor had simply allowed the local magistrates to act according to their usual practice. The other charges all fell through.
Nevertheless, the mud stuck, as Fullarton had intended, and Picton was generally remembered as the man who had permitted a woman to be tortured. The trial had dragged over several years, and had been most costly to the accused. Since there had been no verdict, owing to the prosecution having simply been dropped, he had not even the satisfaction of being able to say that he had been acquitted by a jury of his countrymen. There was a sort of slur, however unjust, upon his name.