[6] Governor of Almeida.
[7] Dupont’s proceedings at Cordoba, as related in my first volume, have been commented upon in a recent publication, entitled “Annals of the Peninsular Campaigns.”
Upon the authority of general Foy, the author asserts that Cordoba was sacked, calls it “a gratuitous atrocity,” and “an inhuman butchery” and no doubt, taking for fiction the stories of Agathocles, Marius, Sylla, and a thousand others, gravely affirms, that, capacity and cruelty are rarely united; that Dupont was a fool, and that Napoleon did not poison him in a dungeon, but that he must have “dragged on a miserable existence exposed to universal scorn and hatred.”
Unfortunately for the application of this nursery philosophy, Dupont, although a bad officer, was a man of acknowledged talents, and became minister of war at the restoration of the Bourbons, a period fixed by the author of “the Annals,” as the era of good government in France. But I rejected Foy’s authority, 1st, because his work, unfinished and posthumous, discovered more of the orator than the impartial historian, and he was politically opposed to Dupont. Secondly, because he was not an eye witness, and his relation at variance with the “official journal of Dupont’s operations” was also contradicted by the testimony of a British general of known talents and accuracy, who obtained his information on the spot a few months subsequent to the event.
“Some time after the victory, order was restored, pillage was forbidden under pain of death, and the chosen companies maintained the police.”—Journal of Operations.
Cordoba was not pillaged, being one of the few places where the French were well received.—Letters from a British general to colonel Napier.
On this point, therefore, I am clear; but the author of the “Annals,” after contrasting my account with Foy’s, thus proceeds, “It is only necessary to add, that the preceding statement is given by colonel Napier without any quotation of authority.”
A less concise writer might have thought it right to add that, six months previous to the publication of the Annals, colonel Napier, hearing that some of his statements appeared inconclusive to the author of that work, because there was no quotation of authority, transmitted through a mutual friend, an assurance that he had authority for every statement, and that he would willingly furnish the author with any or all of them: no notice was taken of this offer!
[8] An interesting account of this noble-minded woman, is to be found in a small volume, entitled, “Sketches of a Soldier’s Life, in Ireland,” by the author of “The Eventful Life of a Soldier.” This last work was erroneously designated, in my first volume, as “The Life of a Sergeant.”
[9] [Note in Napoleon’s own hand.] On ne doit pas oublier qu’en approchant de France tout favourise la desertion.