[18] The writer of Marshal Soult’s campaigns loses no opportunity of displaying this temper. According to him (p. 290) Marshal Ney concealed the fact of his defeat at S. Payo, and assured Soult that he found the position of the enemy too strong to think of attempting it. He has so represented this as to conceal the fact himself, his book not giving the slightest intimation of an action that effected the deliverance of Galicia.
[19] What he saw erected was a wooden model of what was afterwards to be executed in marble, with this inscription:
A la Gloria
DEL
Ex^{mo}. S^{r}. D. Juan Moore, Gen^{l}. del Ex^{to}. Ingles,
Y a la de sus valientes compatriotas
LA
Espana agradecida.
On the other side:
Batalla de Coruña a 18 de Enero,
Ano 1809.
Marshal Soult also ordered the following inscription to be engraved upon a rock near the spot where Sir John Moore fell:
Hic cecidit Johannes Moore, Dux Exercitus,
In pugna Januarii xvi. 1809,
Contra Gallos a Duce Dalmatiæ ductos.
[20] M. St. Cyr (p. 118) represents Reding as seeking this action by General Doyle’s advice; but it is certain that his intention was not to risk one. The French Commander renders justice to this brave and unfortunate General in all respects, except that he always imputes to him a presumptuous confidence, which Reding never felt. The constitution of his mind disposed him to the very opposite error. This is not asserted speculatively, but upon his own statements and other equally incontestable documents. M. St. Cyr says that Reding escaped in the ensuing action from the hands of a young officer only because that officer had the generosity not to kill him, as he might easily have done, when a pistol shot put an end to his own life. The condition in which Reding escaped does not seem to show that there was much desire of sparing him.
[21] It is said by M. St. Cyr that they acted by Reding’s advice, and that by so advising them he saved the city from inevitable destruction. But this does not accord with Reding’s own language, for in a part of his dispatch to the Central Junta which was not published, he mentions this conduct of the Cabildo with indignation.
[22] Marshal St. Cyr speaks of this as un petit événement heureux. (165.) Comparatively small as the numbers were on either side, and uninfluential as it was upon the issue of the war, it was a well-fought battle, in which the French, under one of their ablest generals, were fairly defeated.