Sir Charles Napier

by Sir William Francis Butler

And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,

arose before his fading vision, for with a great effort he appealed from those "posthumous calumniators" to "the people," suddenly exclaiming, "I hope the people of England will be satisfied. I hope my country will do me justice." That dying hope has been realised. Few names stand in purer lustre than that of Sir John Moore. Fortunately immortality is not always measured by success. The chiefs and people of England, who know so little of real war themselves, are perhaps the hardest censors upon military misfortune. Moore's memory was vehemently assailed by the Ministers and Government officials of the day, who tried to screen their own flagrant shortcomings by calumniating the name of the heroic soldier who was no longer there to answer them, and all the paid scribblers and talkers of the time were busy at their truculent work. But justice came at last, earlier and more conspicuously from the enemies who had fought against Moore than from the nation for whose honour and in whose service he had died. Soult and Ney raised a monument to his memory at Corunna almost at the time when Southey, finding out what the world had long known, viz. that although the King might make him a laureate, nature had not made him a poet, began to attempt to write history and to criticise military genius. But a greater soldier than Soult or Ney had still earlier placed the military fame of Moore beyond the reach of little minds. When Napoleon heard of Moore's march from Salamanca to Sahagun, in December, 1808, he exclaimed, "I shall advance against Sir John Moore in person. He is now the only general fit to contend with me." "Where shall we find such a king?" asks William Napier in a letter written from the battle-fields of Portugal two years after Corunna. Fifteen years later the first volume of the Peninsular War appeared, and if the spirits of the illustrious dead can read the books that record their actions on earth, that of Moore might well exclaim, "Where has king found such a chronicler?"

We must go back to Charles Napier, fighting fiercely in the enclosures between Elvina and the great battery, and raging because the supports which might have turned his withered effort into success were denied him. We have seen the reason of this denial. The fall of Moore paralysed the thinking power of those who succeeded to the command. Instead of supporting the attack of the Fiftieth, orders were sent to recall that regiment, and Napier and the few men who were still with him were left alone in the extreme front. This withdrawal from Elvina allowed the French light troops to surround Napier's party. Finding himself thus enclosed in a net, he gathered the few survivors around him and made a dash to cut his way through to the English line, but it was too late. He was surrounded and made prisoner. Both sides would appear to have exhausted their ammunition at this point, and the fight was now entirely of cold steel. It is so full of graphic detail, and gives so many glimpses of national characteristics under stress of battle, that it had best be told in Napier's own words.

I said to the four soldiers [Irish privates of the Fiftieth and Forty-Second] "Follow me and we will cut through them." Then with a shout I rushed forward. The Frenchmen had halted, but now ran on to us, and just as my spring was made the wounded leg failed, and I felt a stab in the back; it gave me no pain, but felt cold, and threw me on my face. Turning to rise, I saw the man who had stabbed me making a second thrust. Whereupon, letting go my sabre, I caught his bayonet by the socket, turned the thrust, and raising myself by the exertion, grasped his firelock with both hands, thus in mortal struggle regaining my feet. His companions had now come up, and I heard the dying cries of the four men with me, who were all instantly bayoneted. We had been attacked from behind by men not before seen, as we stood with our backs to a doorway, out of which must have rushed several men, for we were all stabbed in an instant, before the two parties coming up the road reached us. They did so, however, just as my struggle with the man who had wounded me was begun. That was a contest for life, and being the strongest I forced him between myself and his comrades, who appeared to be the men whose lives I had saved when they pretended to be dead on our advance through the village. They struck me with their muskets, clubbed and bruised me much, whereupon, seeing no help near, and being overpowered by numbers and in great pain from my wounded leg, I called out Je me rend, remembering the expression correctly from an old story of a fat officer whose name being James called out Jemmy round. Finding they had no disposition to spare me, I kept hold of the musket, vigorously defending myself with the body of the little Italian who had first wounded me; but I soon grew faint, or rather tired. At that moment a tall dark man came up, seized the end of the musket with his left hand, whirled his brass-hilted sabre round, and struck me a powerful blow on the head, which was bare, for my cocked hat had fallen off. Expecting the blow would finish me, I had stooped my head in hopes it might fall on my back, or at least on the thickest part of the head, and not on the left temple. So far I succeeded, for it fell exactly on the top, cutting me to the bone but not through it. Fire sparkled from my eyes. I fell on my knees, blinded but not quite losing my senses, and holding still on to the musket. Recovering in a moment I saw a florid, handsome young French drummer holding the arm of the dark Italian, who was in the act of repeating the blow. Quarter was then given; but they tore my pantaloons in tearing my watch and purse from my pocket and a little locket of hair which hung round my neck. But while this went on two of them were wounded, and the drummer, Guibert, ordered the dark man who had sabred me to take me to the rear. When we began to move, I resting on him because hardly able to walk, I saw him look back over his shoulder to see if Guibert was gone; and so did I, for his rascally face made me suspect him. Guibert's back was towards us; he was walking off, and the Italian again drew his sword, which he had before sheathed. I called out to the drummer, "This rascal is going to kill me; brave Frenchmen don't kill prisoners." Guibert ran back, swore furiously at the Italian, shoved him away, almost down, and putting his arms round my waist supported me himself. Thus this generous Frenchman saved me twice, for the Italian was bent upon slaying.

Thus was Napier taken prisoner. From this narrative we get many side-lights upon many subjects. Firstly, the composite character of Napoleon's army in Spain, and the fact that the Frank fights with the chivalry of the true soldier; it is the Italian who is all for murder. Secondly, we find all through this narrative of Napier's that our own soldiers were almost wholly Irish. This Fiftieth Regiment which he commands is called the West Kent, but its soldiers are almost to a man Irish.[2] The Forty-Second man who appears on the scene, although nominally a Highlander, is in reality an Irishman. Now, as we proceed further in the narrative, we come to one of the most singular pictures of a Celtic soldier ever put upon paper.

We had not proceeded far up the lane (continues Napier), when we met a soldier of the Fiftieth walking at a rapid pace. He instantly halted, recovered his arms, and cocked his piece, looking fiercely at us to make out how it was. My recollection is that he levelled at Guibert, and that I threw up his musket, calling out, "For God's sake, don't fire. I am a prisoner, badly wounded, and can't help you; surrender."—"For why would I surrender?" he cried aloud, with the deepest of Irish brogues. "Because there are at least twenty men upon you."—"Well, if I must surrender—there," said he, dashing down his firelock across their legs and making them jump, "there's my firelock for yez." Then coming close up he threw his arm round me, and giving Guibert a push that sent him and one or two more reeling against a wall, he shouted out, "Stand back, ye bloody spalpeens, I'll carry him myself; bad luck to the whole of yez." My expectation was to see them fall upon him, but John Hennessey was a strong and fierce man, and he now looked bigger than he was, for he stood upon higher ground. Apparently they thought him an awkward fellow to deal with. He seemed willing to go with me, and they let him have his own way.

They are soon delivered over to a responsible officer. Napier is kindly treated by all the officers he meets; but the exigencies of war call them away, and he remains for two nights and a day exposed to cold and misery on the hill where the English magazine had been exploded a couple of days before the action. On the second day after the battle he is brought into Corunna and made comfortable in Marshal Soult's quarters. Hennessey had disappeared. It was only long months afterwards that Napier knew what had become of this extraordinary soldier; and his ultimate fate and that of the generous drummer Guibert deserve to be recorded.

On the night following the battle Hennessey disappeared. Before going he had unbuckled Napier's silver spurs, whispering at the same time that it was a measure of safety, as "the spalpeens" would be likely to murder the owner for the sake of the metal. Next morning he was marched off to the Pyrenees, but at Pampeluna he got away from his captors and made back across the whole breadth of the Peninsula for Oporto. On the road he sold one of the spurs, which he had managed to conceal all that weary way by hiding them under his arm. When Soult took Oporto three months after Corunna, Hennessey was again taken prisoner; but when the English crossed the Douro he again escaped by rushing at the sentry upon the prison and killing him with his own musket. When the first British battalion entered Oporto he joined them, marched with them to Talavera, and fought in that battle, where a cannon-ball carried off his cap. Hearing that George Napier was with the army, Hennessey found him out and told him the whole story of his brother's capture, and produced the remaining spur, which he still held on to. Then he returned to England to rejoin the Fiftieth—the regiment was at Hastings at the time. Garrison life did not suit Corporal Hennessey—as he had now become—so, remembering that he had a wife and child in Cork, he obtained a furlough to visit them, and walking across England, appeared in his native town in due time. Napier had meanwhile set out again for the Peninsula. On reaching Cork Hennessey heard this, and at once exclaiming, "Is it gone back and the regiment not with him? Thin, be my sowl, I'll niver stop behind, but it's off I'll be too!" he started back without waiting to see wife or child. On his first arrival in England from the Peninsula he walked to York, where Miss Napier was then living. Charles Napier had charged him on the night of Corunna to give the spurs to her if he succeeded in escaping. Hennessey never forgot the injunction; and at York, more than a year after the battle, he delivered the remaining spur to Miss Napier. They had been originally her gift to her brother when he obtained the rank of major before going to Spain in 1808.

Hennessey went back to the Peninsula and began again the old life of reckless daring, mixed with insubordination, drunkenness, and robbery. At last, in one of the battles of the Pyrenees, a cannon-ball carried off his head—a relief alike to his friends and foes, for the former were ever in fear that death at the hands of the provost-marshal would be his fate. The end of the brave Guibert is not less sad. Napoleon, upon hearing of his humane and gallant conduct, bestowed the Cross of the Legion upon him. Some man with better interest disputed the drummer's right to the distinction, and obtained the cherished decoration for himself. Guibert, enraged at his well-earned honour being robbed from him, forgot his higher honour, tried to desert, was taken and shot. What strange episodes of individual heroism dashed with human nature's weakest traits does war hold in its vast tragedy! What extremes of pathos and absurdity jostle each other daily along the road of conflict! In the fight at Elvina Napier's bosom friend and comrade, Charles Stanhope, was shot dead while leading on his men to support his senior officer then under the French guns. The two men thus fighting so valiantly had each a brother on Moore's staff—George Napier and Edward Stanhope. Both these aides-de-camp long searched for their brothers amid the dead and wounded. Stanhope's body alone was found, for Napier's capture was not known for months after the battle, and he was reckoned among the missing dead. The body of Stanhope was brought back to the bivouac and buried there. His surviving brother was passionately attached to him, and when the moment came to fill in the hastily-made grave he leant over it to take a last look at the dead man's face. At that moment a ball from the enemy struck him, but the thick folds of his cloak, which was worn rolled across his chest, stopped the bullet, and prevented Death from joining together in the same grave the brothers he had shortly before separated.

The army of Corunna reached England in a terrible condition. The men had embarked on the night of the 16th in great confusion, portions of regiments and corps getting on board any vessel they could reach in the darkness, without regard to order or number. No account of killed or wounded was ever obtained; but the total loss from the time the army quitted Portugal in October, 1808, until it arrived in England in the end of January, 1809, was not short of twelve thousand men and five thousand horses, and all its material had also been lost. A wild and impossible enterprise, pushed on against the advice of all trained and capable military opinion by the ignorance of the English Cabinet and its representative Mr. Frere. These people spoke of the genius of Napoleon and his generals as a gigantic bubble which had only to be pricked to vanish. The defeat of a brave but indifferent leader like the Duke of Abrantes at Vimieiro, where all the odds of numbers and surroundings were against him, made them believe that they had only to throw another army into the Peninsula and that it would at once combine with the Spaniards and march to Paris. They mistook Junot, in fact, for that extraordinary combination of Jupiter and Mars whom men called Napoleon Bonaparte, and Moore and his gallant troops paid the penalty of the mistake. Nor did the misfortunes of the soldiers end with the campaign. For months after their arrival in England the hospitals were filled with the fever-stricken victims; and many a soldier who had escaped the horrors of the retreat and the battle of Corunna laid his bones in the military graveyards of the south of England. But the authors of the misfortune did not suffer. Secure in a majority returned by a flagrant system of corruption, they laughed at the Opposition; and society, finding a great military scandal soon to divert it, quickly forgot all about the suffering, the misfortunes, and the glory of the campaign of Corunna.