Sir Charles Napier

Before the year '48 closed, great changes and events had taken place over Europe. France had shaken off her old man of the mountain, Italy was giving many premonitory signs of getting rid of the Austrian, that sinister settlement called the Congress of Vienna was everywhere being undone. Even in Ireland the ferment of revolution was causing a spasmodic twitching in that all but lifeless frame, and desperate men, forgetful of the utter ruin which must await their efforts at revolt, were about to add the final misery of war to the already deeply-tasted evils of famine and pestilence.

And now came an episode of the Irish rising which was closely connected with Charles Napier. In September the leaders of the movement were brought to trial in Clonmel. Sir William Napier, who for the past six years had devoted himself to the task of vindicating his brother's character and actions from the aspersions and assaults of his numerous enemies, had in 1832 been the recipient of a letter, written by the private secretary of a Cabinet Minister, of a very strange nature. No other interpretation could have been justly placed upon this communication except that it was an attempt to sound the then Colonel Napier upon the likelihood of his consenting to lead an armed movement of men from Birmingham to London. Wild though such a project may now appear, there can be no doubt that at the time of the great Reform Bill it was by no means looked upon as lying outside the pale of probability. The news that the Duke of Wellington was about to form an anti-reform administration was received by the people of England with a deep feeling of execration, and resistance was openly proposed and advocated. "To run upon the banks for gold, and to pay no taxes to the State, until reform was granted," were only the preliminary steps which the Whig leaders advised the people to adopt; and it was an open secret that Lord John Russell was prepared to go much further in his scheme of resistance to law in the struggle which the violent opposition of the Lords was forcing upon the nation. It was therefore no stretch of Colonel Napier's imagination to see in the strange letter which he received from the Whig Minister's private secretary a scarcely veiled invitation to draw his sword against what was the existing law of the land. Bad though that law most certainly was, and vehemently though he had opposed it by voice and pen and labour of mind and body, William Napier was still the last man in England to pass the boundary which separates moral from physical antagonism. It is alike the misfortune of thrones and of peoples that around the former there will ever crowd those selfish and self-seeking men whose loyalty is only a cover to hide their own greed of power or possession. These people are the real enemies of kings, for they doubly darken the view which the monarch gets of his people and that which the people get of their king. The Napiers had both been near enough to the Throne to know that it lay a long way beyond the self-seeking crowd which surrounded it, and their hatred of that crowd and of its politics did not go an inch beyond the surrounding circle. To draw his sword against the faction which then stood between the people and their right of reform must be to advance against the Crown, which this faction had cunningly contrived to hang as a breastplate upon their bodies. That fact was sufficient for William Napier, and he not only repudiated the suggestion with all the strength of his nature, but he warned his correspondent that if ever the then leaders of reform should become the dominant faction in the State, and should attempt to play upon the people the same selfish game of obstruction or to prosecute others for resorting to similar methods of force, he, William Napier, would not hesitate to publish to the world the unscrupulous lengths to which those leaders were now prepared to carry their efforts. The trial of the leaders of the Irish physical-force party at Clonmel on a charge of high treason seemed to Sir William to be just the occasion he had threatened his correspondent with. That he held the letter we have described had long been an open secret, and it was therefore no wonder that he was summoned by the counsel conducting the prisoners' defence. Early in October, 1848, the appearance of this majestic veteran as a witness at the trial of Mr. Smith O'Brien fluttered the Whig dovecots from one end of the kingdom to the other. Of course there was the usual howl of execration from the whole tribe of self-styled loyalists, office-holders, highly-paid idlers, and others; but nevertheless William Napier was perfectly true to all the noble traditions of his race and his life in this action of his in behalf of a man who, though terribly mistaken in the line he had adopted, had been given only too much excuse for despairing of remedying the wrongs and miseries of his countrymen by any method of constitutional action.

It happened that in the same month which witnessed these proceedings in Clonmel a large public banquet was given to Charles Napier by the citizens of Dublin, and it was of course impossible that the action taken by one brother in opposition to the Whig Government should not have been made an occasion for trying to injure, if not prevent, the compliment about to be paid to the other brother in Dublin. Nothing could have been meaner and more ignoble than this attempt to step between the citizens of Dublin and the old soldier whom they wished to honour. The attempt failed, as it deserved to fail. The banquet was a splendid ovation. It was followed by another dinner at Limerick, where the entire people united to honour the guest of the citizens. During his stay in the Irish capital Napier visited the Theatre-Royal, and the whole house rose and gave him an enthusiastic welcome when he appeared at the front of the box. The heart of the man seemed deeply touched by these evidences of affection from the Irish people. "If I loved Ireland before, gratitude makes me love her more now," he writes. "My father and mother seemed to rise before my eyes to witness the feelings of Dublin towards me." This was indeed fame. Exactly fifty years earlier he had left the old city of Limerick to ride off to his life of war and wounds and wanderings, and through all the long intervening years he had never forgotten the land or the people of his boyhood. Now he was repaid. These ringing cheers and looks of welcome were the fittest answer to the impotent spleen of men in power who had denied him the just recognition of his labours and his victories. They had showered peerages and baronetcies upon the heads of the leaders of the incomplete Punjaub campaign. On the victor of Scinde only the most trifling rewards had been bestowed, and now the people, always just in their final verdict, had reversed the award.

Napier went for the last time to Celbridge. How strange it seems to him! How dwarfed it all is by the mighty battles through which the path of life has led him! The old scenes are there – the river, with its overhanging trees; the green fields, the fences, the terrace; the house where every window and door and wall holds some separate memory; the blue hill-tops along the southern horizon that used to be leagues distant, but now look close at hand, as though they had one and all shrunken in size. And so they have; because in after-life we look at each scene across many mounds, and a hundred beloved figures and faces of childhood rise up from the grave to dim our sight with tears.

Back to Cheltenham again to the war against Directors and their confederates, and to other work too. There are many veterans "wearing out the thread" in the town, and they love to come to the old hero and retail their woes to him. No sending out of a shilling to the door by footman or valet, but a talk over old times, and kind words as well as money to these old, worn-out stop-bullets. "Poor old fellows," he writes, "it vexes me to see them so hard run for small comforts, and I am glad I came here, if it were only for the chats with them of old fights and hardships. They like this, but complain bitterly that old officers take no notice of them. When I see these shrivelled old men with age ploughed deep in their wrinkled old faces like my own, and remember the deeds they did with the bayonet, I sigh for ancient days when our bodies were fit for war. I remember these men powerful and daring in battle, for they are mostly my own soldiers." With Napier there was no such thing as a "common soldier"; the man who went out and fought and marched and toiled was a hero – a private soldier hero if you will, but a hero all the same. The whole gorge of the man rose at the thought that the men who had bled for England should die in an English poorhouse; that there were thousands and tens of thousands who rolled in carriages, and drew dividends, and made long speeches in Parliament, and ate truffles and turtle, because these wizened old scarecrows had in days gone by charged home, or stood like stone walls under murderous storms of grape and musketry, or climbed some slippery breach amid the mangled bodies of their comrades.

A great victory over his numerous and powerful enemies at home was now in store for Charles Napier. Suddenly, while they were in the midst of their cabals and intrigues – pulling the thousand strings of mendacity which gold has ever at its disposal – the crash of disaster to our arms in India struck panic into the Directors and the Government. The Khalsa leader, Sheere Singh, had declared war in the northern Punjaub, and the Dhurum-Kha-Klosa, or religious war-drum of the Sikhs, was beating from Peshawur to the Chenaub. The Indian Government affected to treat this new Punjaub war as a trifling revolt. The price paid in life and treasure for the war that had ended not three years earlier had been so heavy, and the rewards given to the victors were so great, that this striking proof of incompleteness had to be minimised as much as possible. It was really nothing. Nobody need be alarmed. The Commander-in-Chief in India, Lord Gough, had ample force at his command to crush this partial uprising of the remnant of the Khalsa army. So said and wrote the Directors, and so said and wrote the many echoing speakers and scribes who enjoyed their patronage. All this went on during the early winter of 1848. Lord Gough, a brave and distinguished veteran of that type of soldier whose straight and simple code of honour made him unfitted to deal with the inherent mendacity of the Directorate, felt himself obliged to act up to the picture so plausibly painted by his civil superiors. They said he had sufficient force, and that the enemy was to be despised. In honour bound he must prove these statements to be true. The old fire-eater forgot that he was risking his army and his reputation for men who would be false to him at the slightest breath of adversity, and would unhesitatingly cast him overboard if by doing so they could prolong for even an hour their own truculent power. Gough advanced from an ill-stored base upon the enemy. After a most unfortunate encounter between our advanced troops and the Sikhs at Ramnugger, the English general crossed the Chenaub, and engaged the whole Khalsa army at Chillianwallah, on January 13th, 1849. In this memorable encounter disaster followed upon error, until night stopped the fighting. Infantry were moved up in close formation to masked batteries, no reconnaissance had been carried out, the positions of the Sikh army had to be found by the lines advancing to storm them, and the troops were formed up to fight their enemy after a long and fatiguing day's march when they should have been lying asleep in camp. When daylight dawned upon this scene of the confused fight of the previous evening, it was found that the Sikhs had fallen back, but we had lost above two thousand men, half of whom were Europeans; four guns and six standards had also been taken from us. British soldiers will fight their leaders through many scrapes and mistakes, but Chillianwallah had been too prolific in error to be saved even by heroism. When the news of this battle reached England, the entire nation cried out with one voice for Charles Napier at the helm of India, and of all the bitter draughts ever swallowed by any Honourable Company of Traders assuredly the bitterest was this forced acceptance as their Commander-in-Chief of the man whom now for six years they had been assailing in public and in private throughout the entire English empire. All honest England laughed loud at their discomfiture. Every real man welcomed with joy the triumph of the old hero over his treacherous and powerful foes. But a week before the news of this disaster Napier had been holding his own with difficulty against the enmity of Ministers, Directors, and the leading organs of the Press. The most persistent efforts had been made to confiscate his prize-money and to destroy his military reputation. Only a month earlier he had written to his brother, "I have always an idea of what you expect, viz. the Directors trumping up some accusation against me, but they can do nothing, because I have done nothing wrong." With all his knowledge of character he was still ignorant of the limits to which the hatred of a corporate body can extend. When Charles Napier was sent for by the Duke of Wellington, and offered, by order of the Queen, the command in India, that laconic but celebrated conversation took place. "If you don't go, I must," had said the Duke. There could only be one answer to this, and when next day the Press announced that Napier was to proceed at once to India as Commander-in-Chief, the whole voice of England ratified the appointment.

But the most striking moment of triumph had still to come. It was usual for the Directors of the Company to give a banquet to the man who was about to leave England to command the royal and the native armies. Napier accepted the invitation. The hatchet was to be buried. Salt was to be eaten. The old Duke was present. Some of the Ministers were there, but others were noticeable by their absence. It was a moment when a smaller mind than Napier's might easily have allowed itself the exultation of victory, but the old soldier spoke without trace of triumph. "I go to India," he said, "at the command of Her Majesty, by the recommendation of the Duke of Wellington, and I believe I go also with the approbation of my countrymen;" and then, without deigning to speak of the past and its contrast with the moment, he quietly observed, "Least said is soonest mended," thanked his hosts for their hospitality, and sat down.

Then there came a short and busy interval, in which what is called "the world" ran mad after the hero, not, indeed, because any more of a hero than he had been a month or a year or twenty years before, but simply because "the world" thought he could do it a good turn in the matter of its brothers and sons and nephews. The redoubtable "Dowb" had to be "taken care of" all along the line, and who can take care of him better than a Commander-in-Chief in India? One little item from that time should not be forgotten by those who want to know what manner of man this Charles Napier was. Just before starting for the East a sudden command reached him summoning him to dine at Osborne. He has no Court dress. There is a yellow or drab waistcoat, however, of old-world fashion and finery upon which he has set store for years. What could be nicer than this garment? They tell him that it is somewhat out of date – that it is too high in the collar or too long in the body; in fact, that it won't do. What is to be done? Only this. He has a valet – Nicholas by name, Frenchman and dandy – and this valet has a very fine waistcoat. So the waistcoat of Nicholas is produced, and off to the Isle of Wight goes the Commander-in-Chief to kiss the hand of the sovereign he has served so well. No man is a hero to his valet, says the proverb. We cannot say what Nicholas thought of his master; but this we can say, that among many soldier hearts throbbing for their Queen, Her Majesty had none more truly heroic than the old one that beat that day beneath the valet's waistcoat.