The Subaltern's story is a plain relation of so much of a soldier's active career as was passed in the army under your Grace's command. The narrator's rank and position were not such as to afford him an insight into the plans of those campaigns in which it was his fortune to take an humble part; neither has he made any attempt to describe events to which he was not an eyewitness, or to offer opinions upon subjects concerning which he neither is nor was a competent judge. But it is a matter of high gratification to him to be aware, that his sketches have received the sanction of your Grace's approval; and that you have pronounced them to be correct pictures of the scenes which they seek to represent.
It is scarcely necessary to add, that the space of time spent where your Grace won glory for yourself, and incalculable benefits for the whole of Europe, was the happiest in his life; and that it adds not a little to the satisfaction arising from a glance back into the stirring scenes which marked it, that he is enabled, thus publicly, to subscribe himself, with sincere admiration and respect,—My Lord Duke, your Grace's most obedient servant, and follower in a few bloody fields,
The Subaltern.
March 1845.
"The Subaltern" has run a long course, and kept its ground in a manner which I could not have anticipated. It was one of the first works of the kind which appeared, and to this circumstance, perhaps, may in some measure be attributed the general approbation with which all classes of readers received it. But I am not the less forward, on that account, to express my sense of the obligation under which the public laid me; for I am largely its debtor in reference not to this volume alone but to others.
I have used no freedoms with the present edition, further than to correct here and there a little inaccuracy of language, and to do more justice than my ignorance of the facts enabled me on other occasions to do, to a gallant officer, long ago deceased, whom I numbered among my personal friends. Sir William Herries, then Captain Herries, was on the Adjutant-General's staff of the left column of the British army, and attached, as such, to the family of Lieutenant-General Sir John Hope. He was close to that noble soldier when, during the sortie from Bayonne, the latter was wounded, and his horse shot under him; and though repeatedly urged by the wounded man to leave him, Captain Herries refused to do so. Indeed he dismounted, and was endeavouring to extricate the General from the dead horse under which he lay, when a body of French troops advanced along the lane, and fired a volley. From the effect of that discharge Captain Herries never recovered. He, too, was severely wounded, and carried into Bayonne, where, the next day, it was found necessary to amputate his leg.
My friend Captain Grey, as in another publication I have stated at length, was killed at New Orleans, during the night action that occurred soon after the landing of the advanced-guard of the British army. My dog long survived her active services in the field; and continued to the last the faithful and sagacious companion that I had ever found her. She was well advanced in years, but still able to attend her master in his quiet walks through his quiet parish, when an adder bit her, and she died. She was buried in the middle of the little lawn, on which the windows of the drawing-room in the vicarage at Ash next Sandwich look out; and an acacia-tree, planted at her head, marks the spot where she lies.
So much for the circumstances which led to the first publication of the following pages, and to the issues of the experiment which was then tried; and should it seem to the reader that, in detailing them, too much of the humour of the gossip has been indulged, he and I shall enter into no controversy; for I am content to acknowledge the fault, and to pray him to pardon it.
G.R. GLEIG.
London, 1872.