That night Sir Harry’s place was vacant at dinner, and he was seen no more till the following morning. The following epitaph on his horse in Sir Harry’s handwriting is still preserved:—
“Near this Stone is buried Sir Harry Smith’s celebrated
Arab charger of the Purest Blood,
‘Aliwal.’
Sir Harry rode him in the battles of Maharajpore, Moodkee, Ferozeshahur, Aliwal, and Sobraon. He was the only horse of the General Staff that was not killed or wounded. He came from Arabia to Calcutta, thence to Lahore; he has marched nearly all over India; came by ship to England, thence to the Cape of Good Hope and back to England. He was twenty-two years old; never was sick during the eighteen years in Sir Harry’s possession. As a charger, he was incomparable, gallant, and docile; as a friend, he was affectionate and faithful.”
On leaving Manchester Sir Harry and Lady Smith visited Sir John Bell at 55, Cadogan Place, London, and took a house for themselves a few doors off (No. 15), which they entered at the end of November.
The letters of General Charles Beckwith show him to have been vexing himself for years with the question, “How is England to defend herself against invasion?” Although Harry Smith’s letters to him are not in my hands, I do not doubt that he had also deeply pondered the same momentous problem. Neither of the friends forgot the famous letter which Wellington, in their eyes the wisest of all Englishmen, had addressed in 1847 to Sir John Burgoyne, and in which, after saying that he had studied our Southern Coast piece by piece and did not doubt that a foreign army could be landed at many points, he added—
“I know no mode of resistance excepting by an army in the field capable of meeting and contending with its formidable enemy, aided by all the means of fortification which experience in war can suggest.
“I shall be deemed foolhardy in engaging for the defence of the empire with an army composed of ... a force of militia. I may be so, I confess it. I should infinitely prefer an army of regular troops. But I know that I shall not have these. I may have others.
“I am bordering upon seventy-seven years of age passed in honour. I hope that the Almighty may protect me from being the witness of the tragedy which I cannot persuade my contemporaries to take measures to avert.”[234]
These solemn words of warning were present to the minds of Beckwith and Harry Smith when, in 1859, they saw the public mind seriously alarmed by the fear of invasion, and an army of citizen soldiers springing up in its defence. They would have been untrue to their master if they had not gladly hailed the Volunteer Movement, and seized the opportunity of aiding their country to put its defences in order. Harry Smith, as we have seen, had told the Guernseymen of the immense value of a citizen army. On 17th May, 1859, he wrote at Manchester the following memorandum:—