From Blanchefort camp we proceeded to Pauilhac, from whence, in a few days, we embarked in small vessels, which took us down to the Corduan light-house where we put on board the San Domingo, 74 gun ship, and after a pleasant passage arrived at the Cove of Cork, where we disembarked.
Our regiment was nearly nine hundred strong when we first went out to the Peninsula. During the time we remained there, we received at various times recruits to the amount of four hundred, and when we left the country, our strength was about two hundred and fifty, out of which number not more than one hundred and fifty remained who went out with the regiment.
CONCLUSION.
I have thus endeavoured, as far as my recollection served me, to give a simple and faithful description of those scenes in which I was myself an actor, without partiality to any class. If occasionally I have drawn an unseemly picture, the fault was in the original, for I have no personal enmity to any individual in the service; and I beg it may be distinctly understood, that many of the abuses which I have narrated are only spoken of as things that have existed, rather than as a picture of the present state of the army. Thanks to his Royal Highness the commander-in-chief, little is now left the soldier to complain of.
When we look back twenty or thirty years, and consider what the army was then, and what it is now, the wonder will be, not that it is not in a better state, but that so much has been done to ameliorate the condition of the soldier. Then he was one of the veriest slaves existing, obliged to rise two or three hours before day to commence his cleaning operations. His hair required to be soaped, floured, and frizzed, or tortured into some uncouth shape which gave him acute pain, and robbed him of all power of moving his head unless he brought his body round with it. He had his musket to burnish, his cap and cartridge-box to polish with heel-ball, and his white breeches to pipe-clay, so that it generally required three or four hours hard labour to prepare him for parade; and when he turned out, he was like something made of glass, which the slightest accident might derange or break to pieces. He was then subjected to a rigid inspection, in which, if a single hair stood out of its place, extra guard, drill, or some other punishment, awaited him. When to this was added the supercilious, tyrannical demeanour of his superiors, who seemed to look upon him as a brute animal who had neither soul nor feeling, and who caned or flogged him without mercy for the slightest offence, we cannot wonder that he became the debased being, in body and mind, which they already considered him, or that he possessed the common vices of a slave—fawning servility, duplicity, and want of all self-respect; to add to this, what was his reward when worn out and unfit for farther service?—a pittance insufficient to support nature, or a pass to beg.
When we consider that, in the face of long-established usages, and coadjutors of unbending and contracted views of human nature, the commander-in-chief by his persevering exertions has almost entirely abolished those numerous vexations—when we see gentlemanly feeling and attention to the soldier’s best interests encouraged among the officers of the army, and the change wrought in the moral and military character of the soldier by these means,—is it to be wondered at that every individual in the service is attached to the Duke of York, and looks up to him in the light of a father and a friend. Few generals of whom I have ever either heard or read, enjoyed the esteem and affection of the troops under their command, more than His Royal Highness.
The failings alleged against him by his enemies were severely visited upon him by many, who, had they examined their own conscience, could not have said they were innocent of similar errors, and who could not plead a kindly unsuspecting nature as an excuse. The country has long consigned to oblivion all remembrance of them; but they have lately been sacrilegiously drawn forth by men, whom every well-regulated mind must blush to call countrymen—men who have not only made a jest of his sufferings and probable death, but grinned with fiend-like exultation at the prospect of a war which was to exterminate, and render miserable thousands of their fellow-creatures.[13]
I hate that canting species of liberality which means free exercise of opinion only to those of the same mode of thinking, and that deals out unsparing censure on all those who (no matter how conscientiously) differ from them; such, however, is the conduct of some of our special pleaders for religious toleration. In his opposition to the Catholic claims, who will say that His Royal Highness did not act conscientiously? And if this is granted, however firmly he may be attached to his principles, it is evident he does not adhere to them with half the violence and pertinacity of those on the opposite side who raise the cry against him.
His character, however, can never be affected by vapouring declamation—the remembrance of his kindness, benevolence, and accessibility, (if I may use the term,) will outlive party feeling and animosity—all classes and sects will yet join in doing justice to the character of a prince, who, if he possess failings, they are those common to humanity, while his virtues raise him much above its ordinary level.