Inaccuracies of Memoir-writers

These volumes of personal adventures differ greatly in value: some were written up conscientiously from contemporary diaries: others contain only fragments, the most striking or the most typical incidents of campaigns whose less interesting every-day work had been forgotten, or at least had grown dim. Unfortunately in old age the memory often finds it hard to distinguish between things seen and things heard. It is not uncommon to find a writer who represents himself as having been present at scenes where he cannot have been assisting, and still more frequent to detect him applying to one date perfectly genuine anecdotes which belong to another. One or two of the most readable narratives frankly mix up the sequence of events, with a note that the exact dating can not be reconstructed. This is notoriously the case with the most vivid of all the books of reminiscences from the ranks—the little volume of “Rifleman Harris,” whose tales about General Robert Craufurd and the Light Division flow on in a string, in which chronology has to take its chance, and often fails to find it.

Another source of blurred or falsified reminiscences is that an author, writing many years after the events which he has to record, has generally read printed books about them, and mixes up this secondary knowledge with the first-hand tale of his adventures. Napier’s Peninsular War came out so comparatively early, and was so universally read, that screeds from it have crept into a very great number of the books written after 1830. Indeed, some simple veterans betray the source of their tales, concerning events which they cannot possibly have witnessed themselves, by repeating phrases or epigrams of Napier’s which are unmistakeable. Some even fill up a blank patch in their own memory by a précis of a page or a chapter from the great history. It is always necessary to take care that we are not accepting as a corroboration of some tale, that which is really only a repetition of it. The diary of a sergeant of the 43rd mentioned above,[24] contains an intolerable amount of boiled-down Napier. It is far more curious to find traces of him in the famous Marbot, who had clearly read Mathieu Dumas’ translation when it came out in French.

The books of personal adventure, as we may call the whole class, may roughly be divided into three sections, of decreasing value in the way of authority. The first and most important consists of works written upon the base of an old diary or journal, where the memory is kept straight as to the sequence of events by the contemporary record, and the author is amplifying and writing up real first-hand material. Favourable examples of this are Leach’s Rough Sketches of the Life of an Old Soldier,[25] Leslie of Balquhain’s Military Journal,[26] which in spite of its title is not in journal shape, but reads as a continuous narrative, and Sir George Bell’s Rough Notes of Fifty Years’ Service,[27] all of which are definitely stated by the authors to have been founded on their note-books of the war time, and therefore can as a rule be treated as first-hand evidence. They can generally be trusted as authorities against any divergent tales based on the narratives of writers who wrote their reminiscences without any such foundation, and where they get off the lines of contemporary evidence they usually give the reader warning. For example, Leach gives valuable material to show the inaccuracy of Napier’s exaggerated estimate of the length and pace of the Light Division’s march to Talavera, whose erroneous figures have been repeated in so many subsequent books. And yet Leach was not conscious of the fact that the data which he gives were incompatible with Napier’s story, and repeats it in a general way—because he published his book several years after the appearance of Napier’s second volume, and had (like many other members of the Light Division) absorbed the legend as a matter of faith on Napier’s authority. It was reserved for Sir John Bell,[28] who had served under Craufurd but joined too late for Talavera, to explode the story. But his demonstration of its inaccuracy has not travelled far, while the original legend has gone all round the world, and is still reproduced, as an example of unparalleled rapidity of movement, in serious military works.

Gleig, Blakeney, Hennegan

Infinitely less valuable than the books founded on private diaries or letters of contemporary date, are those which were written down long after the war, from unaided memory only. They are, of course, progressively less valuable for evidence according as the date at which they were indited recedes from the period with which they deal. Gleig’s charming The Subaltern, printed as early as 1825, may be better trusted for matters of detail than Blakeney’s equally vivid narrative written in the remote island of Paxos about 1835, and Blakeney is more valuable than Hennegan’s highly romantic Seven Years of Campaigning, published only in 1847, when thirty winters had blurred reminiscence, and allowed of the accretion of much second-hand and doubtful material round the original story. The strength of men’s memories differs, so does their appreciation of the relative value of a dramatic narrative as compared with a photographic record of personal experiences. But in a general way we must allow that every year that elapses between the event and the setting down of its narrative on paper decreases progressively the value of the record. As an example of the way in which the failing powers of old age can confuse even a powerful memory, we may mention the curious fact that Wellington himself, twenty years after his last campaign, seems to have told two auditors that he had visited Blücher’s camp on the very eve of Waterloo, the night between the 17th and 18th of June, 1815, a statement quite incredible.[29] It was apparently a blurred memory of his real visit to the Prussian headquarters on the early afternoon of the 16th, of which ample details are known.

Failing memory, the love of a well-rounded tale, a spice of autolatry, and an appreciation of the picturesque, have impaired the value of many a veteran’s reminiscences. Especially if he is a well-known raconteur, and has repeated his narrative many times before he sets it down on paper, does it tend to assume a romantic form. The classical example, of course, is Marbot, whose memoirs contain many things demonstrably false, e.g. that he brought the news of the Dos Mayo insurrection at Madrid to Napoleon, or that in 1812 he took his regiment from Moscow to the neighbourhood of Poltava, and brought it back (400 miles!) in less than a fortnight with a convoy of provisions, or that he saw 6000 men drowned on the broken ice of the lake of Satschan at the end of the battle of Austerlitz.[30] Marbot is, of course, an extreme example of amusing egotism, but parallels on a minor scale could be quoted from many of his contemporaries, who wrote their tale too late. We may mention Thiébault’s account of the combat of Aldea da Ponte, when he declares that he fought 17,000 Anglo-Portuguese and produced 500 casualties in their ranks, when he was really opposed by one British brigade and two Portuguese battalions, who lost precisely 100 men between them. Yet the account is so lengthy and detailed, that if we had not the British sources before us, we should be inclined to think that we were reading an accurate narrative of a real fight, instead of a romantic invention reconstructed from a blurred memory. It was the only Peninsular fight in which Thiébault exercised an independent command—and every year added to its beauties as the general grew old.

While, therefore, we read the later-written Peninsular narratives with interest, and often with profit, as reflections of the spirit of the time and the army, we must always be cautious in accepting their evidence. And we must begin by trying to obtain a judgment on the “personal equation”—was the author a hard-headed observer, or a lover of romantic anecdotes? What proportion, if any, of the facts which he gives can be proved incompatible with contemporary records? Or again, what proportion (though not demonstrably false) seem unlikely, in face of other authorities? Had he been reading other men’s books on a large scale? Of this the usual proof is elaborate narrative concerning events at which he cannot possibly have been present, with or without citation of the source from which he has obtained the information. It is only when the author has passed his examination with credit on these points, that we can begin to treat him as a serious authority, and to trust him as evidence for scenes at which we know that he was actually present. Many a writer of personal adventures may finally be given his certificate as good authority for the annals of his own battalion, but for nothing more. It is even possible that we may have to make the further restriction that he may be trusted on the lucky days, but not on the less happy ones, in the history of his own beloved corps. Reticence as to “untoward incidents” is not uncommon. As to things outside the regiment, there was often a good deal of untrustworthy gossip abroad, which stuck in the memory even after long years had passed.

Books of Regimental Adventure

Among all the books of regimental adventure, I should give the first place for interest and good writing to Lieut. Grattan’s With the Connaught Rangers. It is not too much to say that if the author had taken to formal history, his style, which is vivid without exaggeration, and often dignified without pomposity, would have made him a worthy rival of Napier as an English classic. His descriptions of the aspect and psychology of the stormers marching down to the advanced trenches at Ciudad Rodrigo, and of the crisis of the battle of Salamanca, are as good as anything that Napier ever wrote. A reader presented with many of his paragraphs would say without hesitation that they were excerpts from the great historian. Unfortunately Grattan suffered from one of the faults which I have named above—he will give untrustworthy information about episodes at which he was not present—it is at best superfluous and sometimes misleading. But for what the 88th did at Bussaco and Fuentes, at Badajoz and Salamanca, he is very good authority. And he is always a pleasure to read. Two good books—Gleig’s The Subaltern, and Moyle Sherer’s Recollections of the Peninsula—have a share of the literary merit of Grattan’s work, but lack his power. They give respectively the day-by-day camp life of the 85th in 1813–14, and of the 48th in 1811–13, in a pleasant and life-like fashion, and since both were published within ten years of the end of the war—Gleig’s in 1825, Sherer’s in 1824—the writers’ memories were still strong, and their statements of fact may be relied upon. Both have the merit of sticking closely to personal experience, and of avoiding second-hand stories.