Sir Charles Napier

In January, 1810, one year after Corunna, Charles Napier rejoined the Fiftieth Regiment, again in the south of England. Meanwhile another expedition had gone to Portugal, and great events had taken place in the Peninsula. Sir Arthur Wellesley, having driven Soult from Oporto, urged by the Ministry at home and by their representatives in the Peninsula to repeat the movement into Spain which had so nearly ended in the destruction of Sir John Moore's army, advanced along the Tagus, joined Cuesta, fought the French at Talavera de la Reyna, held his position during the battle but fell back from it two days later, leaving his wounded to be captured by the enemy, and narrowly escaping by a forced march Soult's advancing army, retreated back to Portugal with the loss in killed, wounded, prisoners, and by death from disease of fully one-third of his entire army. The British Government, now feeling certain that the last hour of Napoleon had arrived, all at once resorted to the old idea of foreign expeditions; and two of the largest expeditions that had ever left the British Islands had been despatched to the Continent, one to Italy, the other to Holland. In all the long history of abortive military enterprise there is nothing so sad as this Walcheren expedition. It numbered in its naval and military total eighty thousand fighting men. Its fate has been told with vehement truth by Charles Napier's brother. "Delivered over," writes William Napier, "to the leading of a man whose military incapacity has caused the glorious title of Chatham to be scorned, this ill-fated army, with spirit and strength and zeal to have spread the fame of England to the extremities of the earth, perished without a blow in the pestilent marshes of Walcheren." Thus this year 1809, which had opened upon Charles Napier in the gloom of the retreat to Corunna, ran its course of conflict to find him at its close an impatient spectator of these three mighty efforts in Spain, southern Italy, and on the Scheldt, which, though not unattended by brilliant feats of arms in at least one theatre of hostility, had all, so far as their ultimate object was concerned, left matters precisely where they had found them. For it was not at the extremities of his vast empire that the power of Napoleon was to be successfully encountered. When on the first day of the new year he turned back from the distant Galician frontier to take up the burthen of continental war which Austria, subsidised by England, had so suddenly cast upon him, he realised that in the heart of Europe lay the life or death of his power. The march in the summer of 1809 to Vienna is all old history. Despite the duplicity of Austria, which had succeeded in springing upon him a mine while he was yet unconscious of the impending danger, Napoleon's presence on the Danube was sufficient in a few hours to retrieve the errors of his lieutenants, and to neutralise all the advantages which the selection of their time and attack had already given his enemies. In all the brilliant passages of the History of the Peninsular War none record great results in fewer or firmer words than this campaign of 1809 on the Danube. "Then indeed," writes the historian, "was seen the supernatural force of Napoleon's genius. In a few hours he changed the aspect of affairs. In a few days, despite their immense number, his enemies, baffled and flying in all directions, proclaimed his mastery in an art which up to that moment was imperfect; for never since troops first trod a field of battle was such a display of military skill made by man."

Wagram was the result of these brilliant combinations. Once again, as at Austerlitz and Friedland, the decisive blow struck in the centre paralysed all minor successes gained at the extremities; and before the year which had opened with such vast preparation and such glowing anticipation closed, the army of Walcheren had perished, that of Italy had retreated to Sicily, and that of the Peninsula, despite its brilliant achievement on the Douro and its valour at Talavera, had fallen back into the pestilent marshes of the Guadiana, where a third of its force was destroyed by fever.

During the winter of 1809-10 great efforts were made to reinforce the army under Wellington, and in May, 1810, Charles Napier found himself once more in the Peninsula. The campaign in north-eastern Portugal had begun. Ney and Massena, advancing from Leon, took Ciudad Rodrigo and forced Wellington back upon middle Portugal. The marches were long and arduous, the fighting frequent and fierce. The famous Light Division, with its still more famous first brigade, covered the retirement. In this brigade the three brothers came again together. In July Crawford fought his ill-judged action on the Coa, and the Napiers were all in the thick of that hard-contested fray. It was Charles who carried the order to his brother George's regiment, the Fifty-Second, to fall back across the bridge when the French cavalry were swarming through the Val de Mula. William Napier's company of the Forty-Third was the last to pass the river, and it was here that he was wounded. This fight at the Coa was the first battle fought by this famous brigade, Moore's chosen corps. Four years earlier he had shaped them into soldier form at Shorncliffe Camp, for his quick perception had early caught the fact that it was only by a most thorough system of field-drill the power of the French arms could be successfully resisted; and truly did William Napier realise on the Coa the debt his brigade owed to Sir John Moore. "The fight on the Coa," he writes, "was a fierce and obstinate combat for existence with the Light Division, and only Moore's regiments could, with so little experience, have extricated themselves from the danger into which they were so recklessly cast, for Crawford's demon of folly was strong that day. Their matchless discipline was their protection; a phantom hero from Corunna saved them!"

In the heat of this action Charles Napier performed a very gallant action which finds only briefest record in his journal, while whole pages are given to noting "for my own teaching" the errors of the general officer commanding the division. Napier had ridden back to the Forty-Third Regiment – still fighting on the enemy's side of the bridge – after delivering an order upon another part of the field. He finds Captain Campbell wounded. He at once gives the wounded man his horse, and then fights on foot with the Forty-Third through the vineyards to the bridge. Still falling back towards Lisbon, Wellington halted at Busaco and gave battle to Massena. This time only two of the three brothers were in the field, for William was down with the wound received at the Coa. Charles is riding as orderly officer to Lord Wellington. He is in red, the only mounted officer in that colour, as the staff are of course in blue. When Regnier's corps reached the crest of the position a furious fire was opened upon the British line. The staff dismounts. Napier remains on horseback. "If he will not dismount, won't he at least put a cloak over his flaring scarlet uniform?" – "No, he won't. It is the dress of his regiment, the Fiftieth, and he will show it or fall in it." Then a bullet hits him full in the face, passing from the right of his nose to his left ear, and shattering all before it, and he is down at last. They carry him away, but as he passes Wellington he has strength to wave his hat to his chief; and when they lay him in a cell in the convent behind the ridge of Busaco he is more concerned at hearing the voices of officers who are eating in an adjoining room, and who should be on the ridge under fire, than he is with the torment of his own wound. On the morning of the battle he had received a letter from his mother announcing the death of his sister, and now, while lying wounded in the convent, they come to tell him his brother George has been struck down while leading on his men to charge the French assaulting column.

He was carried away over the rough roads of Portugal, and at length reached rest at Lisbon; for the army on the second day following Busaco resumed its retreat, and Massena was again in full pursuit. The confusion was very great, and the wounded had a dreadful time of it. Wellington was laying waste the country as he retreated, and the army was falling back upon the Lines of Torres Vedras amid a scene of destruction almost unparalleled in the horrors of war. Nevertheless neither the severity of his wound nor the exigencies of the retreat prevented Charles Napier from writing to his mother to assure her of his safety, and to make light of his wounds for her sake. There is something inexpressibly touching in the constant solicitude of this danger-loving soldier towards the poor old mother at home. "I am wounded, dear mother," he writes four days after the battle, and while the confusion of the retreat is at its height; "you never saw so ugly a thief as I am, but melancholy subjects must be avoided, the wound is not dangerous." At last he reaches Lisbon and has more time for writing, and the letters become long and constant.

Never (he writes) had I a petty dispute with you or heard others have one without thanking God for giving me a mother and not a tyrant. Such as your children are, they are your work. The Almighty has taken much from you, but has left much. Would that our profession allowed us to be more with you. Yet even that may happen, for peace, blessed peace, may be given to the world sooner than we think. It is war now, and you must have fortitude in common with thirty thousand English mothers, whose anxious hearts are fixed on Portugal, and who have not the pride of saying their three sons had been wounded and were all alive! How this would have repaid my father for all anxieties!.. The scars on my face will be as good as medals – better, for they were not gained by simply being a lieutenant-colonel and hiding behind a wall.

The winter of 1810-11 passed away, and in the spring of 1811 Massena retreated from Torres Vedras, first to Santerem, and later to the frontiers of Portugal. Hard marching, harder fighting, and hardest living became the order of the day; for middle Portugal had now been made a desert, and provisions of the rudest description were at famine prices. When the spring campaign opened, Charles, though still suffering from his wound, was off to join the army. In a single twenty-four hours he covers ninety miles on horseback on his little Arab horse Blanco, for news of battle is coming back along the line of communications, spurring him on through night and day over the rough roads that lie between the head waters of the Mondego and the Coa. On the morning of March 14th he is close to the front. Suddenly an ambulance-litter borne by soldiers is seen ahead. "Who is it?" he asks. "Captain Napier, Fifty-Second Regiment, arm broken." Another litter follows. "Who is that?" "Captain Napier, Forty-Third, severely wounded." They halt under the shade of a tree. Charles says a word to each, and then mounts his tired horse and presses on to the front. A few weeks later came the action at Fuentes d'Onoro, and all the desultory fighting until Brennier broke out of Almeida, having first blown it up. Amid these scenes of war Charles maintains the same light-hearted gaiety, and his letters and journals are full of details of action mixed with jokes and funny stories; and yet through all this rugged service he is suffering much from the effects of his wound at Busaco; but his sufferings and privations are a constant source of joking with him, and the hardships of the campaign are borne in the same light-hearted spirit. So hard up are they for food that he envies his wounded brothers over at the depôt of Coimbra, who "are living well," he writes, "while we are on biscuits full of maggots – and though not a bad soldier, hang me if I relish maggots; the hard biscuit bothers my wounded jaw when there is not time to soak it." A month after joining the army he thus describes the daily routine of work: "Up at three A.M., marching at four, and halting at seven o'clock at night, when we eat whatever we can get, from shoe-soles to bread and butter." But physical annoyances are not the only ones he suffers from at this time. Ever since Corunna he has had a grievance with the Horse Guards. Neither with the Duke of York nor with his temporary successor, old Sir David Dundas, is he a favourite; and promotion, although given to every other officer in command of a battalion on the day of Corunna, has been persistently denied to him. His letters and journals contain many allusions to this unmerited treatment, and "old Pivot," as Dundas was named in the army, gets small quarter at his hands. In 1811 the Duke of York again became Commander-in-Chief. Napier is delighted, although he sees little reason to hope for better luck. "The Duke of York's advent will do Napiers no good," he writes, "but indeed old Davy going to pot is luck enough for ten years." At last the tide turns; these Napiers, whose names were in every gazette in the list of wounded, could not well be denied the promotion given freely to men who were idling at home in London, and in the middle of 1811 Charles is nominated to the command of the Hundred-and-Second Regiment – a corps then just returned from Botany Bay, where it had been guilty of grave acts of mutiny and insubordination. It was indeed a change for this ardent soldier to quit the stirring scenes of Peninsular strife and take up the thread of military work in an English station, restoring discipline to a regiment demoralised by a long sojourn in a convict settlement at the very end of the globe. At first he hopes that his new corps will be sent to the Peninsula where the storm of war thickens, as once again the great Emperor is engaged with Russia, and all Europe watches with bated breath the gigantic struggle; but he is to see no more of the Peninsula and its war. After a short stay in the island of Guernsey he sails with his regiment to Bermuda in July 1812, turning away from the great field of European conflict and all those stupendous events which marked the campaign of Moscow. His letters at this period are a curious indication of his inexhaustible energy. Despite the contrast between the real warfare he has just quitted and the dull life on this prison rock of Bermuda, he still sets to work to drill his regiment, to improve its discipline, and to check drunkenness among his troops, as energetically as though barrack-square and orderly-room service had always been his aim. He detests the islands and their people; he cannot make friends with the governor, a pompous old fogey, who has the natural dislike which the official owl has ever entertained towards genius in a subordinate; he is still suffering from his fevers and wounds, but all the same he works away at his regiment, sees that the men get all the ration of bread they are entitled to (although it is usual in this island to dock 25 per cent of the flour for some mysterious fund), and drills officers and men into soldiers. In the midst of all this humdrum work comes the news of the battle of Salamanca, to make the contrast of life still more painful. "These glorious deeds in Spain," he writes, "make me turn with disgust to the dullness of drill, and it is hard to rouse myself to work —yet duty must be done." And all through this Bermudian prison period we find the same devotion to his mother shown in a hundred letters – a devotion which even makes that other love of his life, military glory, lose its fascination for him. On New Year's Day, 1813, he thus writes: "A happy New Year to you, most precious mother, and, old as you are, a great many of them. Oh, may I have the delight of being within reach of you next New Year's Day. I would take another shot through the head to be as near you as I was in Lisbon last year. My broken jaw did not give me half the pain the life we lead here does, and being so far from you." When his brother George marries at this time, he writes: "Blessed mother, George's marriage delights me; you may now in time have a dear animal of some kind with you instead of being left in your old age by a pack of vagabond itinerant sons, getting wounded abroad while you are grinding at home. The interest you have had about us has never been of much pleasure, and the little links of a chain to tie you to life may come – your lost great ones can only thus be supplied."

War between the United States and England had now been declared, and Napier quitted Bermuda in May, 1813, with joy to take his part in a desultory campaign on the American coast. This campaign ended in nothing, and it was little wonder it should have proved abortive. It was three parts naval, two parts military; the men were made up of many nations. There were three commanders, and, as Charles Napier remarks in his journal, "It was a Council of War, and what Council of War ever achieved a great exploit?" Several landings were attempted on the American coast; the town of Little Hampton was taken and sacked, and terrible atrocities committed by the foreign scum of which the expedition was largely composed. The regular troops under Napier and the Marines were guiltless of these atrocities – the Marine Artillery being conspicuous by their discipline. "Never in my life," writes Napier, "have I met soldiers like the Marine Artillery; they had it in their power to join in the sack and refused. Should my life extend to antediluvian years, their conduct will never be forgotten by me."

These fruitless operations on the shores of Chesapeake Bay continued for five months. As usual we find Napier ever busy with his note-book setting down his reflections, tracing from the rocks and shoals of the wrecked expedition valuable charts of guidance for his own future. There are bits scattered through these reflections which should be in the text-books of every soldier. Here is one true to the letter to-day as when it was written seventy years ago.

Our good admirals are such bad generals that there is little hope of doing more than being made prisoners on the best terms. We shall form three plans, or as many as there are admirals, and to these mine will be added. From all – perhaps all bad – a worse will be concocted, and of course will fail. We failed at Craney Island because two admirals and a general commanded; and a republic of commanders means defeat. I have seen enough to refuse a joint command if it is offered to me; it is certain disgrace and failure from the nature of things; the two services are incompatible. A navy officer steps on shore and his zeal, his courage, and his ignorance of troops make him think you are timid. A general in a blue coat, or an admiral in a red one is mischief. Cockburn thinks himself a Wellington, and Beckwith is sure the navy never produced such an admiral as himself – between them we got beaten at Craney.

When to this divided command it is added that the plan of operations had been in a great measure conceived by the sapient wisdom of Mr. John Wilson Croker, the Secretary of the Admiralty, and embraced a proposal from that authority to send a frigate to act on the Canadian lakes above the Falls of Niagara, any surprise at ultimate failure will be lessened. From the Chesapeake Napier moved in September, 1813, to Halifax, and shortly after he arranged an exchange into his old regiment, the Fiftieth, then engaged in the Pyrenees. He had now been on active service for nearly five years. He had seen war in almost every phase. Though a young man he was an old soldier; several times wounded, once a prisoner, struck at by disease, weakened by the fevers of the Guadiana, he was here in his thirty-second year as keen for active service as when, fifteen years earlier, he had set out from Celbridge to begin a soldier's career. It is curious to note in his writings how little the nature of the man had changed through all this rough lesson of life. The kings of his childhood still wear their crowns; the love of mother and home are still fresh and bright in his heart; his hatred of tyranny, and contempt of fools are as strong as ever; the thirst for military glory is unquenched; but one feeling has steadily grown and increased during all these years of toil and war and travel – it is his admiration for the man he was fighting against. "From first to last," says William Napier, "the great Napoleon was a wonder to him. Early in life, deceived by the systematic vilification of that astounding genius, he felt personal hatred … but his sagacity soon pierced through prejudice, and the Emperor's capacity created astonishment, which increased when his own experience as a commander and ruler enabled him to estimate the difficulties besetting those stations, and then also he could better appreciate the frantic vituperation of enemies." We find this feeling of admiration increasing with him as time goes on, and through all his writings we see it constantly breaking out. In 1809 we find him entering in his journal a note on the necessity of making war with energy, ending thus: "If war is to be made, make it with energy. Cato the elder said war should nourish war. Cato was a wise and energetic man. Cæsar agreed with him and Cæsar was a cleverer man than Cato. Bonaparte, greater than either, does the same." Napier was no taciturn holder of opinion; on the contrary, he was ever ready to speak the thought that was in his mind, and to back it up too with the sword that was at his side. Holding such opinions at such a time, it is not difficult for us to conjecture what their effect must have been on the circle of his friends and associates, or how powerfully their expression must have fostered or kept alive the prejudices of power and authority against him. That such prejudice existed against him is very clear. For years he seemed to accept it as the inevitable accompaniment of his liberal opinions, his relationship with Mr. Fox, and his thorough independence of character. He seemed ready to win his grade twice over, to pay double rates of blood and toil for the recognition of reward; but as the years go on we find a change coming over him in this respect, and though to the end of his life he never ceases to laugh at the frowns of favour in high place, the laugh gets harder as age increases, and the almost boisterous ridicule of imbecility in power deepens into cynical contempt. Despite all his anxiety to gain once more the field of European warfare, he was doomed to disappointment. When he reached England from Nova Scotia the long war against Napoleon was over, the Emperor was in Elba, the allies were busy at Vienna, and mediocrity was everywhere in the ascendant. In December, 1814, Charles, finding himself on half-pay, entered the Military College at Farnham; not that it had much to teach which he did not already know, for war is the only school in which war can be learned, but his passion for reading could be better indulged at the college than in any other sphere of existence, and as the making of new history seemed stopped to him by the fall of Napoleon, the next best thing was the reading of old history. Here, then, we find him setting to work in 1814 at the study of history, politics, the principles of civil government, questions of political economy, commerce, poor-law, civil engineering, and international law. He seemed to realise that a time was approaching when the minds of Englishmen, so long diverted from their own affairs by the red herring of foreign politics so adroitly drawn across the trail, would again be bent upon reforming the terrible abuses which had grown up in almost every department of the nation, and that the will of the people and not the opinion of a faction would once more be made the helm of the vessel of state. All at once, in the middle of these studies, the news of "the most astounding exploit that ever established one man's mastery over the rest of his species shook the world" – Napoleon had left Elba and was again in France. As a house built of cards goes down before a breath, so the political edifice which Metternich and Castlereagh and their kind were laboriously building at Vienna fell to pieces at the news. The poor parrot who had been placed in the Tuilleries, caged by foreign bayonets, fled as the eagle winged its nearer flight to Notre Dame, and France prepared once more to shed her blood against the men who sought to force upon her a race of monarchs she despised.