The use of tents, like many another classic incumbrance, has been swept away from campaigning by our modern tactics, which originated at the commencement of the Peninsular War, and, arrived at the bivouac, the “lodging is on the cold ground” and sub Jove frigido. “L’usage des tentes préservait les troupes des maladies pernicieuses. Tout cela est vrai, et cependant on ne reviendra ni aux petites armées, ni aux sièges de convention ni aux maisons de toile.” (Foy, Hist. Guerre Pénins. liv. i.) The commander who makes a campaign with tents is fettered with embarrassments as to means of transport, which must always place him in a state of inferiority to an adversary not thus encumbered. This is one of the great changes wrought by the wonderful genius of Napoléon, which even amidst the new hardships which he imposed, secured almost the adoration of his soldiers. “Ils frémissent encore d’alégresse en exprimant le transport dont on fut saisi, quand l’empereur, qu’on croyait bien loin, apparut tout-à-coup devant le front des grenadiers, monté sur son cheval blanc et suivi de son mamelouck.” (Foy, Hist. Guerre Pénins. liv. ii.) At the close of the War, the person of Wellington commanded almost equal admiration.
I am a great admirer of General Napier, whom I regard as the counterpart of Thucydides, the soldier-historian of Athens, and to whom may be not infelicitously applied the character assigned to Xenophon (another Athenian narrator of military exploits in which he himself participated) by our earliest Latin lexicographer, Thomas Thomas, the contemporary of Shakspeare: “Xenophon was a noble and wyse captaine, and of a delectable style in wrytynge.” Napier’s style is enchanting and stirs like the sound of a trumpet. My obligations to him are unbounded. But Heaven forbid that his enthusiasm for War should become general, for it is of a truly rabid character:—“War is the condition of this world. From man to the smallest insect all are at strife!” (Hist. War in the Penins., book xxiv. chap. 6.) This is a mere reproduction of Hobbes: “The state of nature is a state of war.” I trust that peace will ere long be the enduring condition of this world; and there are happily indications of that approaching consummation. If I sing the glories of the Peninsular War, it is because it was of a defensive character and we struck for Freedom. We may surely now repose on our laurels (as it is phrased), and never hereafter engage in a war which shall not be in the strictest sense inevitable.
I am happy to record upon this subject the enlightened sentiments of a French General: “L’esprit de liberté tuera l’esprit militaire. Il ne sera plus permis aux princes de faire entr’égorger les peuples pour des intérêts de dynastie, ou pour des lubies d’ambition. Les gouvernants, quels que soient leur titre et l’origine de leur pouvoir, ne pourront subsister qu’en s’effaçant personnellement devant la volonté générale. Les nations, comparant les désastres de la bataille au mince profit de la victoire, ne pousseront plus le cri de guerre, hormis dans les circonstances très rares où il s’agira de vivre libre ou mourir.” (Foy, Hist. Guerre Pénins. liv. i.) Elsewhere he makes this acute criticism on the audacious designs of Napoléon. “Le despotisme avait été organisé pour faire la guerre; on continua la guerre pour conserver le despotisme. Le sort en était jeté; la France devait conquérir l’Europe, ou l’Europe subjuguer la France. * * La nature a marqué un terme au-delà duquel les enterprises folles ne peuvent pas être conduites avec sagesse. Ce terme l’empereur l’atteignit en Espagne, et le dépassa en Russie. S’il eût échappé alors à sa ruine, son inflexible outrecuidance (presumption) lui eût fait trouver ailleurs Baylen et Moscou.” Such is the impartial testimony of one of his own generals.
The French “playing at soldiers” is an old vice, older than the days of Sir Thomas More, who thus pleasantly hits it off: “In France there is yet a more pestiferous sort of people, for the whole country is full of soldiers, that are still kept up in time of peace, if such a state of a nation can be called a peace: and these are kept in pay upon the same account, it being a maxim of those pretended statesmen, that it is necessary for the public safety, to have a good body of veteran soldiers ever in readiness. But France has learned to its cost, how dangerous it is to feed such beasts.” Louis XIV. kept up a standing army of 440,000 men, and Napoléon had frequently more.
The Gauls in modern times seem to have very much changed their nature, for so far from invading other countries, their reputation amongst the ancients was for remaining to fight at home, according to the obvious interpretation of a line in Pindar:
ἐνδομάχας ἅτ’ ἀλέκτωρ.—Olymp. xii.
“domi pugnans ceu Gallus.” To be sure, it is just possible that the learned Theban may have meant that humble domestic fowl, a cock. Erasmus reads “domi abditus.” There can be no doubt that a cock was meant, and unquestionably it is a bellicose bird. The passage from Pindar might be fairly rendered by the Latin adage: “Gallus in suo sterquilinio,” which it is needless to turn into the vernacular. There are symptoms of the French reforming this national vice, and I therefore shall not dwell upon a somewhat disagreeable subject.
I am happy to be the first to record the true orthography of one of our two first and not least important battles in the Peninsula, Roriça and Vimieiro. They used to be invariably written Roleia and “Vimeira.” Napier has considerably improved upon this, making the latter “Vimiero.” But still he is wrong. The correct word is “Vimieiro.” Even had I made no other discovery, my four years’ residence in Portugal would not have been useless. True, it may be said that the General has only “knocked an i out of it” in military fashion. But, though the error be confined to a single letter, it would be only the change of a letter to call Waterloo “Waterlog,” and who could excuse such a travesty of our glorious victory? These mistakes in the orthography of the names of Peninsular localities are common to all English writers, and excellent a scholar as Southey was, they disfigure his History as well as that of Napier. I find the names of these two battles misdescribed as “Roleia” and “Vimieira” in the memoir by Sir B. D’Urban lately reproduced at the elevation of Sir H. Hardinge to the Peerage—should I not rather say the elevation of the Peerage by the accession to it of that gallant and chivalrous Peninsular veteran?
The French, too, write the names of these battles as erroneously. They call them uniformly “Roliça” and “Vimeiro,” vide “Histoire de la Guerre de la Péninsule, par le Général Foy,” “Mémoires par Pellot, Campagnes par De la Pène,” and “Mémoires de M. la Duchesse d’Abrantès” passim. Napier in the twenty-fourth book of his History takes leave of the comparative approach to accuracy in his earlier books, and speaks of these battles every where as “Roliça” and “Vimiera.” Specks in the sun!