Sir Charles Napier

During the two years that he remained at Farnham his letters and journals show how earnestly he entered into the political strife. Cobbett and Burdett are his chiefs; emancipation and reform his watchwords; representation of the people, free food, free press, abolition of privilege, his aims. He thinks the redress of grievances must come quickly, and that "a reform will be effected, though to resist it Castlereagh would risk civil war, I believe; but I do not think he has the power." Should it be civil war, however, his mother need not fear, "for with three sons soldiers, one a sailor, and another a lawyer, it will be hard if you don't swim, for these are the finest trades in such cases." Of course, holding such opinions, promotion for Charles Napier was out of the question. In 1819 he addressed the Commander-in-Chief, again soliciting that he might have his commission as lieutenant-colonel antedated to the period of Corunna. He quoted the cases of Sir Hugh Gough and Sir Colin Campbell, both his juniors, who had received this favour. He mentioned his long and arduous services and his many wounds, but all to no effect. Clearly the man who held that rotten boroughs were not the perfection of representative government, that a Roman Catholic ought to be allowed to make a will and have a horse worth more than five pounds, was fit only for foreign service or active warfare, and quite unsuited to hold a military appointment at home. A foreign post was therefore soon found for him. The Ionian Isles seemed a safe place, and accordingly he is gazetted as Inspecting Field Officer of those islands. He sets out in May, 1819, for this new sphere of action, and passing through France, crosses the Alps and journeys down the length of Italy, everywhere watching and noting as he goes.

In July he reaches Corfu. As Inspecting Field Officer he has nothing to do, but the governor, Maitland, quickly finding out that he has no ordinary officer to deal with, sends him on a mission to Ali Pacha at Yannina, who has already sounded the keynote of rebellion against the Porte, so soon to be followed by the general rising of Greece. In reading the notes and reports made by Napier on this mission one is struck by the rapidity with which he grasps the heart of a very complicated question – a question which is still a vital one to Europe. He sees that the keynote of resistance to Russian dominion on the Mediterranean must lie in fostering the rise and growth of a strong Greek kingdom, and he urges this view upon Maitland as early as 1820, summing up his advice in very remarkable words, which later events fully justified. "The Greeks look to England for their emancipation; but if ever England engages in war with Russia to support the Turks, the Greeks will consider her as trying to rivet their chains, and will support the Russians." Again, in 1821, Napier went to Greece and travelled extensively through the country. As he wanders by the battle-fields whose names will never die he is busy fighting them again with modern armies. On the plain of Chæronea he thinks the marsh in front impassable for guns, and sees how Pindus and Parnassus secure a flank; and at Thermopylæ he notes how the sea has receded from the mountain, but thinks three thousand men instead of three hundred might still hold the position against an army. He visits Corinth, Athens, Argos, sees Thebes, Platea, and Delphos, and on March 20th, 1821, reaches the coast at Lepanto. For two months he has been feeding upon the memories of bygone battle and dreaming dreams of fights to come. A few days after he leaves Greece the insurrection breaks out. Then he gets a short leave of absence to England, and returning to Corfu early in 1822 is appointed Military President in Cephalonia – an island where it is hoped that "the impetuosity and violence of Colonel Napier's character and politics" might find room for action without danger to the State. The island of Cephalonia was at this period a terrible puzzle to the orthodox British official. Violence and robbery reigned unchecked; factions, when not preying upon each other, spoiled the neutral husbandman. Everything was neglected. There were no roads through the island, and the steep mountain ranges cut off the inhabitants of one portion from the other. It was an earthly paradise turned by misgovernment into a hell. How Napier took to the work of regenerating this garden of Eden run to weeds can best be told in his own words. "Do not," he writes to his mother, "expect long letters from one who has scarcely time to eat or take exercise. My predecessor is going home, half dead from the labour, but to me it is health, spirit, everything. I live for some use now."

Here then he sets to work in March, 1822, in his kingdom of sixty thousand souls. He sits in court for six hours daily hearing law-cases, for the ordinary courts of justice have long been closed and martial law reigns; he reforms the prisons, he builds quays and a lazaretto, he drains the marshes, and he lays out two great main roads which are to zig-zag up the mountains and bring the ends of his island together. June comes, but he thrives more and more on this variety of labour. "Health besets me," he writes; "up early and writing till eight, then feed and work in office till twelve – sometimes till three o'clock, – swim, dine, and then on horseback visiting the roads. I take no rest myself and give nobody else any; they were all getting too fat." No wonder under such a governor the island begins to bloom. But he is clearing away the weeds too fast, so at least thinks the new Lord High Commissioner and Governor-General of all the Islands, one Adam by name, who grows jealous of this Cephalonian success. He cannot well attack such palpable improvements as drainage of marshes and road-making, but he has seen that Napier wears mustachios, and he will have them off at any rate, so the order comes to shave – "obeyed to a hair" is the response. Whenever dull and pompous authority attacks this keen Damascus-blade bit of humanity called Napier, authority gets a retort that sends it back laughed at, but brooding over some fresh plan of revenge. Adam with dull persistent enmity nursed his dislike for later time. Men like Napier, prodigal of blow in battle, are ever ready to forget the feud when the fight is over, but the ordinary sons of Adam are not thus generously gifted, and this particular Adam had a long memory for revenge.

As the Greek insurrection develops, the Ionian Islands become a centre of interest. Napier, whose recent travels had made him acquainted with both the people and the theatre of operations, keenly watched the struggle. In August, 1823, Lord Byron arrived at the island on his way to Greece. The intercourse between him and Napier became very intimate. At this period the great poet was almost as unpopular with his countrymen as Napier was with their rulers. Byron's quick wit was not slow to see a leader of men in the Resident. "He is our man," he writes to the Greek Committee in London; "he is our man to lead a regular force or to organise a national one for the Greeks; ask the army, ask anybody; in short, a braver or a better man could not easily be found." Napier was at this time very anxious to get command of a legion to aid the Greeks, but he had been told that if he accepted this position he would probably forfeit his commission in the army, and it was hoped that through the action of the Greek Committee in London his retention in the service might be found compatible with command in Greece. This hope was not to be realised. Napier went to London early in 1824 and had many interviews with the Greek Committee collectively and individually, nor was he much impressed by their wisdom. One member asks him to "make out a list of a proper battering-train to be sent out to reduce Patras." He endorses the request thus: "Square the list of guns and stores needed for a siege with my opinion of spending money so foolishly; men are prone to buy fiddles before they know music." Now all at once he has to answer a serious charge made in high quarters. Mr. Canning, the Prime Minister, has been listening to the stories of German adventurers from the Levant – he has heard that Napier had used his official position in Cephalonia to negotiate with the Greek chiefs. The story was absolutely false, and in straightforward and manly words he told the Prime Minister that it was so. Indeed one can read between the lines of this reply that he was not sorry to have an opportunity of letting Mr. Canning see his sentiments. "For my part," he writes to Lord Bathurst, "I scorn to deprecate the wrath of any man who suspects my integrity. If, however, your lordship's colleagues either doubt my conduct, or wish for my place to give to a better man, in God's name let them use their acknowledged power to employ men they think best calculated for the King's service." These were strong and daring words to come from a lieutenant-colonel now in his forty-second year, and with nothing but his commission to give him bread, to a Cabinet Minister – the eye of the head of the Government; and what a glimpse they give us of the foundation upon which all this energy and resource and genius for action rested.

In the winter of 1825 he returns again to Cephalonia, this time travelling by Inspruck and the Tyrol to Venice. Blood will tell; he cannot make friends with the Germans. "As to the people of every part of Germany," he writes, "honour to Cæsar for killing so many of them; stupid, slow, hard animals, they have not even so much tact as to cheat well. We always detected their awkward attempts. Out of these regions we descended into Italy, where we found civilised beings, warm weather, and the human face instead of the German visage." This is of course three parts chaff, but it serves to show how the nature of the man blows. And how could it blow otherwise? A soldier who had in his veins the blood of the victor of Ivry, of Mary Stuart, of Scottish chief and Norman noble, and whose whole nature had imbibed in Ireland, in childhood, boyhood, and youth, that "Celtic spell" to whose potent influence our most unemotional historian has borne witness, could no more make friends of the Teutonic type of humanity than an Arab horse in the deserts of the Nile could gambol with a rhinoceros lying on a mud-bank in mid river.

He reaches Corfu in February, after a terrible passage of twenty days from Venice, and here there occurs an entry in the journal which is of interest: "March 24th.– Sir Hudson Lowe's colonel, Gorrequer, is here. He called on me, but got not his visit returned. It is not my intent to consort with gaolers, though I have brought out the model of a gaol." Then he goes on to his island kingdom and sets to work at his roads, harbours, and buildings. He is delighted to get back to his Greeks again, and they are equally glad to have their king once more among them. "Now," he writes on arrival, "I am once more amongst my merry Greeks, who are worth all other nations put together. I like to see, to hear them. I like their fun, their good humour, their Paddy ways, for they are very like Irishmen." His intense love of animals is constantly coming out in letter and diary. Blanco, the charger of Peninsula days, he will never abandon. He has brought this old friend out from England, despite his years, paying high for the passage. "My bill for him and baggage is only one hundred pounds. How honest John Bull in the city touches one's pocket. Thirty of this is for Blanco, twenty for King, seven for insurance, the rest is cheat and devilment. However, anything is better than cutting Blanco's throat after sixteen years' comradeship. I may go to perdition, but not for Blanco anyways. My poor, good old beast!" Again, as he draws near Cephalonia, he pictures to himself his first visit to his two famous roads, and wishes that, in case of death, he may be buried in the old chapel on the summit of St. Liberale's Mountain, so as to "lie on the top of the road. Many a poor mule's soul will say a good word for me at the last day, when they remember the old road."

Meanwhile the Greek insurrection had run its course of blood and devastation, and as yet out of its four years' chaos of desolation victory had not dawned upon either combatants. Ibrahim, the son of Mehemet Ali, had now carried an army of Egyptian and Nubian soldiers into the Morea, and men, women, and children were being slaughtered by this clever but cruel master of war. Till this time Napier had longed to throw his sword into the scale with the struggling Greeks, but his desire was tempered with a just determination that no premature or foolhardy action should give his enemies the opportunity he knew so well they longed for. He feared to find himself suddenly struck out of the army list, and his service of thirty years with all its toils and wounds thrown away. "When I saw Greece about to rise in strength and glory my resolve was to join her," he says, "if it could be done with advantage to her just cause and honour to myself. The talent of the people, and their warlike qualities, excited my admiration, for a Greek seems a born soldier, and has no thought but war. Their vanity and love of glory equal those feelings with the French, but the Greeks are more like the Irish than any other people; so like even to the oppression they suffer that, as I could not do good to Ireland, the next pleasure was to serve men groaning under similar tyranny."

In the autumn of 1825 the negotiations between him and the Greeks, which had previously fallen through owing to difficulties about his commission in the British army, were again resumed, and matters were all but concluded when a proclamation forbidding officers to serve the Greek cause was published in England. Still Napier was prepared to sever his connection with the army and throw in his lot with the Greeks, provided certain guarantees were given for the equipment and payment of a small regular force, and for the value of his own commission which would be sacrificed by the step. The Greeks in Greece were ready to assent to these propositions, and to any others which Napier might desire to stipulate, so anxious were they now in this dark hour of their fortune to secure his service as Commander-in-Chief; but the bond-holders in London, these curses of all good causes, had their own views as to what should be done, and they were more desirous of spending their money in sending out a useless fleet than in equipping the nucleus of a regular force, which under such a leader as Napier would have been of incalculable benefit to Greece. Thus the whole project fell to the ground, and Napier had to remain in Cephalonia for four years more, and to content himself with his roads and bridges, his purer administration of justice, his efforts to improve the lot of the husbandman, to lessen the unjust privileges of the nobles, to increase the produce of the island, and, harder than any of these things, to battle against ignorance in high places, against the sting of censure from stupidity and intolerance combined in command.3 Yet in spite of factious opposition and ignorant enmity it is probable that the nine years which Napier spent in the Ionian Isles were the happiest of his life. Who can ever measure the enjoyment of these rides over the mountains and through the valleys of that beautiful island? For, with all the practical energy that marked his character, there was a deep poetic instinct in him that made him keenly sensible of the beauty of nature; while his love of reading, continued since boyhood, had stored his retentive memory with the historic traditions of the past. In a memoir on the Roads of Cephalonia, which he published in 1825, there is a description of the valley of Heraclia, lying on the eastern side of the island, which shows how thoroughly he appreciated beauty of scenery, and how well attuned was his mental ear to catch the music of those wondrous memories which float for ever around the isles and shores and seas of Greece.

But if Cephalonia held for Charles Napier some of the pleasantest memories of life, so did his period of residence in the island mark his final separation from many loved companions of youth. In 1826 his mother died, and the long and most affectionate correspondence which had lasted from the early Celbridge days came to an end. Never indeed was her image to fade from his memory. To the last it was to remain with him, undimmed by distance or by time, coming to him in weary hours of trouble and disappointment, of glory and success; and as at his side in battle he always wore his father's sword, so in his heart he carried the memory of his mother, whose "beauteous face seemed to smile upon me," he tells us, in the most anxious moments of his Scindian warfare.

In 1830 Napier's Ionian service came to an end. He was recalled. It was the old story. Multiplied mediocrity had beaten individual genius. It is not only inevitable, it is even right that it should be so; for by such heating and blowing in the forge of life is the real steel fashioned which has flash and smite in it sufficient to reach us even through the tomb.