"Well, then, when your good fortune leads you to Rome, let your first look be given to the noblest work of the pencil, and of Michael Angelo: glance at the bottom of his immortal picture, and you will see precisely the same wild activity, and the same strange and startling animation. The difference only is, that the actors here are men—there, fiends; here the scene is the field of future battle—there, the region of final torment. I am not sure that the difference is great, after all."
At daybreak, the British line was under arms. I feel all words fail, under the effort to convey the truth of that most magnificent display; not that a simple detail may not be adequate to describe the movements of a gallant army; but what can give the impression of the time, the form and pressure of collisions on which depended the broadest and deepest interests of the earth. Our war was then, what no war was since the old invasions under the Edwards and Henrys—national; it was as romantic as the crusades. England was fighting for none of the objects which, during the last three hundred years, had sent armies into the field—not for territory, not for glory, not for European supremacy, not even for self-defence. She was fighting for a Cause; but that was the cause of society, of human freedom, of European advance, of every faculty, feeling, and possession by which man is sustained in his rank above the beasts that perish. The very language of the great dramatist came to my recollection, at the moment when I heard the first signal-gun for our being put in motion.
"Now all the youth of England are on fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.
Now thrive the armourers; and honour's thought
Reigns solely in the breast of every man.
They sell the pasture now to buy the horse,
Following the mirror of all Christian kings
With winged heels, as English Mercuries."
Our troops, too, had all the ardour which is added even to the boldest by the assurance of victory. They had never come into contact with the enemy but to defeat them, and the conviction of their invincibility was so powerful, that it required the utmost efforts of their officers to prevent their rushing into profitless peril. The past and the present were triumphant; while, to many a mind of the higher cast, the future was, perhaps, more glittering than either. In the same imperishable eloquence of poetry—
"For now sits expectation in the air,
And hides a sword, from hilt unto the point,
With crowns imperial, crowns and coronets,
Promised to Harry and his followers."
The ambition of the English soldier may be of a more modified order than that of the foreigner; but the dream of poetry was soon realized in the crush of the Republicans, who had trampled alike the crown and the coronet in the blood of their owners. Twenty-seven thousand men were appointed for the attack of the French lines; and on the first tap of the drum, a general shout of exultation was given from all the columns. The cavalry galloped through the intervals to the front, and parks of the light guns were sent forward to take up positions on the few eminences which commanded the plain; but the day had scarcely broke, when one of those dense fogs, the customary evil of the country, fell suddenly upon the whole horizon, and rendered action almost impossible. Nothing could exceed the vexation of the army at this impediment; and if our soldiers had ever heard of Homer, there would have been many a repetition of his warrior's prayer, that "live or die, it might be in the light of day."
But in the interval, important changes were made in the formation of the columns. The French lines had been found of unexpected strength, and the Guards were pushed forward to head a grand division placed under command of General Ferrari. The British were, of course, under the immediate orders of an officer of their own, and a more gallant one never led troops under fire. I now, for the first time, saw the general who was afterwards destined to sweep the French out of Egypt, and inflict the first real blow on the military supremacy of France under Napoleon. General Abercromby was then in the full vigour of life; a strongly formed, manly figure, a quiet but keen eye, and a countenance of remarkable steadiness and thought, all gave the indications of a mind firm in all the contingencies of war. Exactly at noon, the fog drew up as suddenly as it had descended, and we had a full view of the enemy's army. No foreign force ever exhibits so showy and soldierly an appearance as the British. The blue of the French and Prussians looks black, and the white of the Austrian looks faded and feeble, compared with the scarlet. As I cast my glance along our lines, they looked like trails of flame. The French were drawn up in columns in front of their camp, which, by the most extraordinary exertion, they had covered during the night with numerous batteries, and fortified with a circle of powerful redoubts; the guns of the fortress defended their flank and rear, and their position was evidently of the most formidable kind. But all view was lost, from the moment when the head of our brigade advanced. Every gun that could be brought to bear upon us opened at once, and all was enveloped in smoke. For a full hour we could see nothing but the effect of the grape-shot on our own ranks as we poured on, and hear nothing but the roar of the batteries. But at length shouts began to arise in distant parts of the field, and we felt that the division which had been appointed to assault the rear of the camp was making progress. Walmoden, commanding a brigade under Ferrari, now galloped up, to ascertain whether our men were ready to assault the intrenchments. "The British troops are always ready," was Abercromby's expressive, and somewhat indignant, answer. In the instant of our rushing forward, an aide-de-camp rode up, to acquaint the general that the column under the Duke of York had already stormed three redoubts. "Gentlemen," said Abercromby, turning to the colonels round him, "we must try to save our friends further trouble—forward!" Within a quarter of an hour we were within the enemy's lines, every battery was stormed or turned, and the French were in confusion. Some hurried towards the fortress, which now began to fire; a large body fled into the open country, and fell into the hands of his royal highness; and some, seizing the boats on the river, dropped down with the stream. All was victory: yet this was to be my day of ill luck. In pursuing the enemy towards the fortress, a battalion, which had attempted to cover the retreat, broke at the moment when my company were on the point of charging them. This was too tempting a chance to be resisted; we rushed on, taking prisoners at every step, until we actually came within sight of the gate by which the fugitives were making their escape into the town. But we were in a trap, and soon felt that we were discovered, by a heavy discharge of musketry from the rampart. We had now only to return on our steps, and I had just given the word, when the firing was renewed on a bastion, round which we were hurrying in the twilight. I felt a sudden shock, like that of electricity, which struck me down; I made a struggle to rise on my feet, but my strength wholly failed me, and I lost all recollection.
On my restoration to my senses, in a few hours after, I found that I had been carried into the town, and placed in the military hospital. My first impulse was, to examine whether any of my brave fellows had shared my misfortune; but all round me were French, wounded in the engagement of the day. My next source of congratulation was, that I had no limb broken. The shot had struck me in the temple, and glanced off without entering; but I had lost much blood, had been trampled, and felt a degree of exhaustion, which gave me the nearest conception to actual death.
Of the transactions of the field I knew nothing beyond my own share of the day; but I had seen the enemy in full flight, and that was sufficient. Within a day or two, the roaring of cannon, the increased bustle of the attendants, and the tidings that a black flag had been erected on the hospital, told me that the siege had begun. I shall pass over its horrors. Yet, what is all war but a succession of horrors? The sights which I saw, the sounds which I heard from hour to hour, were enough to sicken me of human nature. In the gloom and pain of my sleepless nights, I literally began to think it possible that a fiendish nature might supplant the human condition, and that the work before my eyes was merely an anticipation of those terrors, which to name startles the imagination and wrings the heart. Surrounded with agonies, the involuntary remark always came to my mind with renewed freshness, in the common occurrences of the hospital day. But, besides the sufferings of the wounded, a new species of suffering, scarcely less painful, and still more humiliating, began to be prominent. The provisions of the people, insufficiently laid in at the approach of the besiegers, rapidly failed, and the hospital itself was soon surrounded by supplicants for food. The distress, at last, became so excessive, that it amounted to agony. Emaciated figures of both sexes stole or forced their way into the building, to beg our rations, or snatch them from our feeble hands; and I often divided my scanty meal with individuals who had once been in opulent trade, or been ranked among the semi-noblesse of the surrounding country. Sometimes I missed faces to which I had been accustomed among those unfortunate beings, and I heard a still more unhappy tale—shall I call it more unhappy? They had perished by the cannon-shot, which now poured into the city day and night, or had been buried in the ruins of some of the buildings, which were now constantly falling under the heaviest bombardment in the annals of war. Of those scenes I say no more. If the siege of a great fortress is the most trying of all hazards to the soldier without, what must it be to the wretches within? Valenciennes was once the centre of the lace manufactories of France. The war had destroyed them at once. The proprietors had fled, the thousands of young and old employed in those delicate and beautiful productions, had fled too, or remained only to perish of famine. A city of twenty thousand of the most ingenious artists was turning day by day into a vast cemetery. As I tossed on my mattress hour after hour, and heard the roar of the successive batteries, shuddered at the fall of the shells, and was tortured by the cries of the crowd flying from the explosions all night long—I gave the deepest curses of my spirit to the passion for glory. It is true, that nations must defend themselves; the soldier is a protector to the industry, the wealth, and the happiness of the country. I am no disciple of the theory, which, disclaiming the first instinct of nature, self-preservation, invites injury by weakness, and creates war by impunity; but the human race ought to outlaw the man who dares to dream of conquest, and builds his name in the blood of man.
On my capture, one of my first wishes had been to acquaint my regiment with the circumstances of my misfortune, and to relieve my friends of their anxiety for the fate of a brother officer. But this object, which, in the older days of continental campaigning, would have been acceded to with a bow and a compliment by Monsiegneur le Comte, or Son Altesse Royale, the governor, was sturdily refused by the colonel in charge of the hospital—a firm Republican, and the son of a cobbler, who, swearing by the Goddess of Reason, threatened to hang over the gate the first man who dared to bring him another such proposal. I next sent my application to the commandant, a brave old soldier, who had served in the royal armies, and had the feelings of better times; but it was probably intercepted, for no answer came. This added deeply to my chagrin. My absence must give rise to conjecture; my fall had been unseen even by my men; and while I believed that my character was above the scandal of either pusillanimity or desertion, it still remained at the mercy of all.