The high reputation of the British soldier rests far more upon his arms than upon his legs; in other words, he is a fighting rather than a marching man. Slowness of movement, in the field as on the route, is the fault that has most frequently been imputed to him. One thing is pretty generally admitted; that, to work well, he must be well fed. And even then he will hardly get over the ground as rapidly, or endure fatigue as long, as the lean lathy Frenchman, who has never known the liberal rations and fat diet the other is accustomed to. When a certain period of active service and long marches has given the English soldier his campaigning legs, he must still have his regular grog, or he soon flags, if he does not grumble and become insubordinate. Rations were bad, and hard to be got, on the retreat from Burgos. Then, Mr Grattan tells us, the superior marching qualities of the Irish were manifest. There had been very little beef-steak and bacon expended in their bringing up; scanty fare was nothing new to them, and by no means affected their gaiety and good-humour. And when shoes were scarce, what cared they? The stones in Connaught are not a bit softer than those in Spain; and nine-tenths of the boys had trotted about, from infancy upwards, with "divel a brogue, save the one on their tongues." Some of the English regiments—the Forty-fifth for instance, chiefly composed of Nottingham weavers—would, under ordinary circumstances, march as well as any Irishman of them all: "But if it came to a hard tug, and that we had neither rations nor shoes, then, indeed, the Connaught Rangers would be in their element, and out-march almost any battalion in the service." On the retreat from Burgos to Portugal, they gave proof of their toughness and endurance; for whilst other regiments were decimated by fatigue and sickness, the Eighty-eighth scarcely lost a man, except by the enemy's fire. It was a time when the good qualities of all were severely tested. The movement began in a most unfavourable season. The roads were nearly impassable from heavy rains, and for days together there was not a dry jacket in the army. At night they lay in the open country, often in a swamp, without a tent to shelter them; the baggage was detached, and they never saw it till they reached Ciudad Rodrigo. It was share and share alike amongst men and officers, and many of the latter were mere striplings, who had but lately left the comforts of their English homes. When they halted from their weary day's march, the ill-conditioned beasts collected for rations had to be slaughtered; sometimes they came too late to be of any use, or the camp-kettles did not arrive in time to cook them; and the famished soldiers had to set out again, with a few pieces of dry biscuit rattling in their neglected stomachs, and driven to satisfy the cravings of hunger with the acorns that strewed the forests. There was little money afloat, for pay was four months in arrear, but millions would have been useless where there was nothing to buy. The country was deserted; every where the inhabitants fled on the approach of the two armies. Disease was the natural consequence of so many privations; ague and dysentery undermined the men's strength, and many poor fellows, unable to proceed, were left upon the road. Horses died by hundreds, and those which held out were for the most part sore-backed, one of the greatest calamities that can happen to cavalry and artillery on the march. Fortunately Soult, who, with ninety thousand men, followed the harassed army, had some experience of British troops. And what he had seen of them, especially at Albuera and on the Corunna retreat, had inspired him with a salutary respect for their prowess. They might retreat, but he knew what they could and would do when driven to stand at bay. And therefore, although Wellington was by no means averse to fight, and actually offered his antagonist battle on the very ground where, four months previously, that of Salamanca had occurred, the wary Duke of Dalmatia declined the contest. He played a safe game: without risking a defeat by a general action, or attempting to drive the British before him with the bayonet, he hovered about their rear, disquieted them by a flank movement of part of his force, and had the satisfaction of knowing that their loss by the casualties and fatigues of the march and inclemency of the weather, was as great as it would probably have been had he engaged them. For, besides those who perished on the road, when the army got into winter quarters, a vast number of men and officers went into hospital, and months elapsed before the troops were fully reorganised and fit for the field. At a day's march from Ciudad Rodrigo, Wellington's rear-guard had a smart skirmish, and then Soult desisted from his pursuit, and the Anglo-Portuguese were allowed to proceed without further molestation. Although disastrous, and in some respects ill managed, the retreat was in no way disgraceful. The French, very superior in numbers, had, whenever they pressed forward, been bravely met, and invariably repulsed.
With this retreat, Mr Grattan's Peninsular campaigns closed. He returned to Ireland, and in the summer of 1814, embarked for Canada. He rather refers to, than records the service he saw there; taking occasion, however, for a strong censure on Sir George Prevost, who, after forcing our ill-appointed fleet on Lake Champlain into action, refused to allow Brisbane and his brigade of "Peninsulars" to take the fort of Platsburgh, an enterprise easy of achievement, and which would have placed the captured ships, and the victorious but disabled American flotilla, at the mercy of the British. But we have not space to follow the Ranger across the Atlantic, nor is it essential so to do; for, although he gives some amusing sketches of Canada and the Canadians, the earlier portion of his book is by far the most interesting, and certainly the most carefully written. We could almost quarrel with him for defacing his second volume with perpetual and not very successful attempts at wit. We have rarely met with more outrageous specimens of punning run mad, than are to be found in its pages. Barring that fault, we have nothing but what is favourable to say of the book. Its tone is manly, and soldier-like, and it is creditable both to the writer and to the service, by which, during the last thirty years, our stores of military and historical literature have been so largely and agreeably increased.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Adventures of the Connaught Rangers, from 1808 to 1814. By W. Grattan, Esq. London. 1847.
LORD SIDMOUTH'S LIFE AND TIME.[4]
To read a memoir of the late Lord Sidmouth, is like taking a walk through Westminster Abbey. All the literature, is inscriptions; all the figures are monumental; and all the names are those of men whose characters and distinctions have been echoing in our ears since we had the power to understand national renown. The period between 1798, when the subject of this memoir made his first step in parliamentary life as Speaker, and 1815, when the close of the war so triumphantly finished the long struggle between liberty and jacobinism, was beyond all comparison the most memorable portion of British history.
In this estimate, we fully acknowledge the imperishable fame of Marlborough in the field, and the high ability of Bolingbroke in the senate. The gallantry of Wolfe still throws its lustre over the concluding years of the second George; and the brilliant declamation of Chatham will exact the tribute due to daring thought, and classic language, so long as oratory is honoured among men. But the age which followed was an age of realities, stern, stirring, and fearful. There was scarcely a trial of national fortitude, or national Vigour, through which the sinews of England were not then forced to give proof of their highest power of endurance. All was a struggle of the elements; in which every shroud and tackle of the royal ship of England was strained; and the tempest lasted through nearly a quarter of a century. England, the defender of all, was the sufferer for all. Every principle of her financial prosperity, every material of her military prowess, every branch of her constitutional system, every capacity of her political existence, her Church, her State, and her Legislature, were successively compelled into the most perilous yet most powerful display; and the close of the most furious hostility which Europe had ever seen, only exhibited in a loftier point of view the victorious strength which principle confers upon a people.
Compared with this tremendous scene, the political conflicts of the preceding age were a battle on the stage, compared with the terrors of the field. The spectators came to enjoy a Spectacle, and sit tranquilly admiring the brilliancy of the caparisons and the dexterity of the charge; but perfectly convinced that all would end without harm to the champions, and that the fall of the curtain would extinguish the war. But, in the trials of the later time, there were moments when we seemed to be throwing our last stake; when the trumpets of Europe, leagued against us, seemed to be less challenging us to the field, than preceding us to the tomb; and when the last hope of the wise and good might be, to give the last manifestation of a life of patriotic virtue.