he message sent to Sir John Moore was that Lord Castlereagh, Secretary of State, desired to see him on the next day at 3 P.M., and that he would be required to leave town quickly afterwards. This was all, no hint of further particulars being given.
Prompt as ever, Moore made his arrangements, and ordered that a chaise should be in waiting one hour later to carry him—anywhere.
At three he appeared before Castlereagh, and was enlightened as to those arrangements which, a day or two later, Jack Keene indignantly related to the Bryce circle.
Sir John, with all his sweetness of disposition, had a fiery temper. And though he habitually held in that temper with so firm a curb that he could be described as “the most amiable man in the British Army,” yet there were times when it got the better of him. Those hazel eyes could flash with a scathing light, and those lips could pour forth vehement utterances. He was not to be lightly roused; but perhaps that which he could least patiently endure was the sense of being unjustly treated.
It may well be, too, that at this moment he was physically suffering from the severe strain of those most trying expeditions to Sicily and Sweden. He may have been still under something of reaction from that hard fight in the south of Italy, when his own “feelings” had had to be sternly repressed, for the sake of the young girl whom he loved. In a short letter written three or four days later from Portsmouth to his mother, a note of weariness may be detected, unwonted in Moore. But Rest lay ahead—not far off—though a fierce experience lay between.
One way or another, he did wax wrathful in this interview with Castlereagh; and his answer came promptly—
“My lord, a post-chaise is at my door, and upon leaving this I shall proceed to Portsmouth to join the troops. It may perhaps be my lot never to see your lordship again. I therefore think it right to express to you my feelings of the unhandsome treatment I have received.”
“I am not sensible of what treatment you allude to,” interrupted the Secretary.
Sir John had no difficulty in explaining what he meant. Had he been an Ensign, he said, he could hardly have been treated with less ceremony. He had not even been told, till the last moment, how he was to be employed. Coming as he did from a chief command, if he were now to be placed in an inferior post, some explanation certainly was his due. Lord Castlereagh had told him that his conduct in the Swedish affair was approved of, but this did not look like approval.
“His Majesty’s Ministers have a right to employ what officers they please,” Sir John went on, working off his warmth. “And had they on this occasion given the command to the youngest general in the Army, I should neither have felt nor expressed that the least injury was done to me. But I have a right, in common with all officers who have served zealously, to expect to be treated with attention, and when employment is offered, that some regard should be paid to my former services.”