the sailors; that the sailors should not be suffered to converse in Irish, and that the officers should be on the alert. He hanged the detected mutineers without delay. Forgiveness was out of the question. To Captain Pellew, who had interceded in favour of a mutineer, whose conduct had previously been irreproachable, he replied, "We have, we think, punished only the worthless. It is time, that our men should learn, that no past conduct can redeem an act of treason." Nothing could be more rational, or even more necessary, than this determination; for treason is the most comprehensive of all crimes. The mere robber, or murderer, commits his single act of guilt-but the guilt of the traitor may cost the lives of thousands. The traitor is never to be regarded as a solitary criminal, and this maxim was never more necessary than at this moment. If laws are to be turned into sentimentality, and conspiracy is to be dealt with like the tricks of children, there must be an end of all security to honest men. If the villains who have been lately inflaming the Irish mind into madness, had been hanged by the sentence of the drum-head, within half an hour after their seizure, there would have been no necessity, at this moment, for keeping up a garrison of 45,000 men in Ireland. Martial law is the only law fit for the ruffians of the torch and pike, and the gibbet is the only moral which they will ever comprehend. To suppose that the Irish conspirators had even entertained the expectation of forming an established government, or of being suffered by England to raise a republic-or that any man out of Bedlam could have dreamt of the possibility of waging a successful war against England, while her fleets might starve Ireland in a week, and nothing but English alms even now enables her to live-would be absolute folly. The true object of Irish conspiracy was, and is, and will always be, robbery and revenge; a short burst of rapine and blood, followed by again running away, again begging pardon, again living on alms, and again laughing at the weak indulgence and insulted clemency of England. Jervis, instead of listening to the cant of men of blood whining about their wives and children, hanged them; and, by thus ridding his fleet of a nest of villains, saved it from destruction, and perhaps, with it, saved not merely the lives of thousands of brave men, whom their impunity might have debauched into conspiracy, but saved the honour of our naval name, and restored the enfeebled hopes of his country. We here quote with pleasure from the Frenchman :-"Jervis, in the face of those symptoms, which threatened the British navy with disaffection, sternly devoted himself to the establishment of implicit obedience. The efficient organisation of the fleet was the labour of his life, and occupied his latest thoughts. Never rash himself, he nevertheless opened the way for the most daring deeds. Nelson rushed into the arena, and, with the rapidity of lightning, showed the latent results of the change. The governing principle witnessed, rather than decreed the change. Its source, in fact, was not in the Admiralty, but in those floating camps, wherein the triumphs which astonish us are gradually elaborated. Official power is but the inert crucible which transmutes the subsidies of Parliament into ships. But a quickening principle is wanting to those immense fleets, and the admirals supply it. Jervis and Nelson rapidly transmitted the creative spark, and bequeathed a certain sort of sovereignty under the distrustful eye of the English Admiralty-a kind of dynasty arosethe mayors of the palace took the sceptre from the do-nothing kings.'" All this is comparatively just. But the Frenchman peeps out under the panegyrist, after all. Can it be conceived that any other human being, at the end of nearly half a century, would quote, with the slightest degree of approval, the report of Decrès, the French minister of the marine to Napoleon, in 1805, after all Nelson's victories, and just preceding the most illustrious of them all-Trafalgar? "The boasting of Nelson," writes Decrès, "equals his silliness, (ineptie) I use the proper word. But he has one eminent quality-namely, that of aiming among his captains only at a character for bravery and good fortune. This makes him acces sible to counsel, and consequently, in difficult circumstances, if he commands nominally, others direct really." We have no doubt that, after scribbling this supreme ineptie, Decrès considered himself to have settled the whole question, and to have convicted Nelson of being simply a bold blockhead-Nelson, the man of the hundred fights-the prince of tacticians the admiral who had never been beaten, and from whom, at the battle of Aboukir, Decrès himself was rejoiced to make his escape, after having seen the ruin of the French fleet. We find a good deal of the same sort of petulant perversion, in the narrative of Nelson's conduct at Naples. M. Gravière suddenly becomes moral, and tells us the tentimes-told story of Lady Hamilton. But what is all this to the naval war? Englishmen are not bound to defend the character of Lady Hamilton; and if Nelson was actually culpable in their intercourse, (a matter which actually has never yet been proved,) Englishmen, who have some morality, -not Frenchmen, who make a point of laughing at all morality-may upbraid his conduct. But a French stoic is simply ridiculous. There are perhaps not fifty men in all France, who would not have done, and are not doing every day, where they have the opportunity, all that this moralist charges Nelson with having done. Even if he were criminal in his private life, so much the worse for himself in that solemn account which all must render; but he was not the less the conqueror of Copenhagen, Aboukir, and Trafalgar. The hanging of Caraccioli also figures among the charges. We regret that this traitor was not left to die of remorse, or by the course of nature, at the age of eighty. We regret, too, that he could allege even the shadow of a capitulation for his security. We equally regret the execution of Ney under a similar shadow. But Caraccioli had been an admiral in the Neapolitan service, had joined the rebellion by which rapine and slaughter overspread the country, and had driven the King into exile. No man more deserved to be hanged, by the order of his insulted, and apparently ruined King ;-he was hanged, and all rebels ought thus to suffer. They are made for the scaffold. The men who plunge a kingdom in blood, whose success must be purchased by havoc, and whose triumph makes the misery of thousands or millions, ought to make the small expiation which can be made by their public punishment; and no country can be safe in which it is not the custom to hang traitors. Still, those acts, even if they were of an order which might shock the sensibility of a Frenchman to breach of treaty, or the sight of blood, have no reference to the talents and the triumphs of Nelson. But these volumes suddenly deviate from the history of the great admiral, into remarks on the great living soldier of England. There, too, we must follow them; and our task is no reluctant one; for it enables us at once to enlighten intelligent inquiry, and to offer our tribute to pre-eminent fame. But, in this instance, we argue with our accomplished neighbours on different principles. The Frenchman loves glory-the Englishman its fruits. The Frenchman loves the excitement of war; the Englishman hates it, as mischievous and miserable, and to be palliated only by the stern necessity of self-defence. He honours intrepidity, but it only when displayed in a cause worthy of human feeling. No man more exults in the talent of the field; but it is only when it brings back security to the fireside. The noblest trophy of Wellington, in the eyes of his country, is the thirty years of peace won by his sword! It has become the fashion of the French to speak of this illustrious personage with something of a sucer at what they pronounce his "want of enterprise." enterprise." Every thing that he has done is by "phlegm!"" Phlegm must be a most valuable quality, in that case, for it enabled him to defeat every officer to whom he had been opposed; and there was scarcely any man of repute in the French army to whom he had not been opposed. It is in no spirit of national taunt, or of that hostility which, we will hope, has died away between England and France, that we give the list of the 602 But have the British military authors ever doubted the talent, or disparaged the gallantry, of those distinguished soldiers? Certainly not; they have given them every acknowledgment which ability and bravery could demand. Let the French nation read the eloquent pages of Alison, and see the character given by the historian to the leaders in the Italian, German, and Spanish campaigns. Let them read the spirited pages of Napier, and see them decorated almost with the colours of romance. Does either of these popular and powerful authors stigmatise the French generals with "ineptie," or characterise their victories, as the mere results of inability either to attack or to run away? Let them be the example of the future French military writers, and let those writers learn that there is a European tribunal, as well as a Parisian one. But the French altogether mistake the question. Men like Wellington are not the growth of any military school, of any especial army, or of any peculiar nation. Without offering this great soldier any personal panegyric, he was a military genius. Since Marlborough, England had produced no such commander of an army, and may not produce another such for a Nelson was simicentury to come. larly a genius: he sprang at once to the first rank of sea-officers; and England, fertile as she is in first-rate sailors and brave men, may never produce another Nelson. Napoleon was a genius, and almost as palpably superior to the crowd of brave and intelligent generals round him, as if he had been of another species. The conduct of men of this exclusive capacity is no more a rule for other men, than their successes are to be depreciated to the common scale of military good fortune. The campaigns of Napoleon in Italy; the sea campaign in which Nelson pursued the French fleet halfround the globe, to extinguish it at Trafalgar; the seven years' continued campaign of Wellington in the Peninsula, finished by the most splendid march in European history, from the frontier of Portugal into the heart of France, have had no example in the past, and can be no example to the future. The principle, the power, and the success, lie equally beyond the limits of ordinary calculation. The evident fact is, that there is an occasional rank of faculty, which puts all calculation out of sight, which is found to produce effects of a new magnitude, and which overpasses all difficulties, by the use of an intellectual element, but occasionally, and but for especial purpose, communicated to man. We have no doubt whatever of the truth of this solution, and are consequently convinced, that it would have been much wiser in M. Gravière to have attempted to describe the career of Wellington, than to pronounce on the principles of his science; and, above all, than to account for his victories by the very last means of victory-the mere brutishness of standing still, the simple immobility of passive force, the mere unintelligent and insensate working of a machine. "What a contrast," exclaims the Frenchman," between these passionate traits (of Nelson) and the impassive bearing of Wellington, that cool and methodical leader, who maintained his ground in the Peninsula by the sheer force of order and prudence! Do they belong to the same nation? Did they command the same men? The admiral, full of enthusiasm, and devoured by the love of distinction, and the general, so phlegmatic and immovable, who, intrenched behind his lines at Torres Vedras, or re-forming, without emotion, his broken squares on the field of Waterloo-(where not a single British square was broken)-seems rather to aim at wearying out his enemy than at conquering him, and triumphs only by his patient and unconquerable firmness." Must it not be asked, Why did the French suffer him to exhibit this firmness? why did they not beat him at once? Do generals win battles merely by waiting, until their antagonists are tired of crushing them? But the Frenchman still has a resource-he accounts for it all by the design of a higher power! "It was thus, nevertheless, that the designs of Providence were to be accomplished. It gave to the general, destined to meet incontestably superior troops (!!), whose first efforts were irresistible, that systematic and temporising cha racter, which was to wear out the ardour of our soldiers." Having thus accounted for the French perpetuity of defeat on land, by a man of stupidity and stone; he accounts, with equal satisfaction, for the perpetuity of defeat at sea by a man of activity and animation. "To the admiral who was to meet squadrons fresh out of harbour, and easily disconcerted by a sudden attack, Providence gave that fiery courage and audacity which alone could bring about those great disasters, that would not have been inflicted under the rules of the old school of tactics." The Frenchman, in his eagerness to disparage Wellington as dull, and Nelson as rash, forgets that he forces his reader to the conclusion, that tardiness and precipitancy are equally fit to beat the French. Or if they are incontestably superior troops, and their first onset is irresistible, how is it that they are beaten at the last, or are ever beaten at all? We also find the curious and rather unexpected acknowledgment, that Providence was always against them, and that it had determined on their defeat, whether their enemy were swift or slow. We are afraid that we have been premature in giving M. de la Gravière credit for getting rid of his prejudices. But we shall set him a better example. We shall not deny that the French make excellent soldiers; that they have even a sort of national fitness for soldiership; that they form active, bold, and highly effective troops though, for them, as sailors, we certainly cannot say as much. Henry IV. remarked "that he never knew a French king lucky at sea;" and Henry spoke the truth. And the wisest thing which France could do, would be to give up all attempts to be a "naval power," which she never has been, and never can be-and expend her money and her time on the comforts, the condition, and the spirit of her people, both citizens and soldiery. But, we must assist the French judgment on the character of Wellington: and a slight detail will prove him to be the most enterprising leader of troops in the history of modern Europe. Let us first settle the meaning of the word enterprise. It is not a foolish restlessness, a giddy fondness for the flourish of Bulletins, or a precipitate habit of rushing into projects unconsidered and ineffective. It is activity, guided by intelligence; a daring effort to attain a probable success. The French generals, in the commencement of the revolutionary war, dashed at every thing, and yet were not entitled to the praise of enterprise. fought under the consciousness that, unless they attracted Parisian notice by their battles, they must pay the penalty with their heads. Thus nearly all the principal generals of the early Republic were guillotined. The levéeen-masse gave them immense multitudes, who must fight, or starve. The Republic had fourteen armies at once in the field, who must be fed; commissioners from Paris were in the camps; and the general who declined to fight on all occasions, was stripped of his epaulets, and sent to the "Place de Grève." They But enterprise, in the style which distinguishes a master of strategy, is among the rarest military qualities. Marlborough was almost the only officer, in the last century, remarkable for enterprise, and its chief example was his march from Flanders to attack the French and Bavarian army, which he routed in the magnificent triumph of Blenheim. Wolfe's attack on the heights of Abraham was a capital instance of enterprise, for it showed at once sagacity and daring, and both in pursuit of a probable object, the surprise of the enemy, and the power of bringing him to an engagement on fair ground. But enterprise has been the chief characteristic of the whole military career of Wellington. His first great Indian victory, Assaye, (23d September 1802,) was an "enterprise," by which, in defiance of all difficulties, and with but 604 5000 men, he beat the army of Scindiah and the rajah of Berar, consisting of 50,000, of which 30,000 were cavalry. There, instead of phlegm, he was accused of rashness; but his answer was, the necessity of stopping the enemy's march; and, more emphatic still, a most consummate victory. On his landing in Portugal, at the head of only 10,000 men, (August 5, 1808,) this man of phlegm instantly broke up the whole plan of Junot. He first dashed at Laborde, commanding a division of 6000 men, as the advanced guard of the main army; drove him from the mountain position of Roliça; marched instantly to meet Junot, whom he defeated at Vimeira; and, on the 15th of September, the British troops were in possession of Lisbon. The French soon embarked by a convention, and Portugal was free! This was the work of a sixweeks' campaign by this passive soldier. The convention of Cintra excited displeasure in England, as the capture of the whole army had been expected, from the high public opinion of the British commander; and the opinion would not have been disappointed, if he had continued in the command. The testimony of Colonel Torrens, (afterwards military secretary to the Duke of York,) on the court of inquiry, was, "That, on the defeat of the French at Vimeira, Sir Arthur rode up to Sir Harry Burrard and said-" Now, Sir Harry, is your time to advance upon the enemy; they are completely broken, and we may be in Lisbon in three days.' Sir Harry's that he thought a The great deal had been done.'" army was halted, and the French, who felt that their cause was hopeless, sent to propose the convention. answer was, On the 22d of April 1809, Sir Arthur again landed in Portugal, to take the command of the army, consisting of but 16,000 men, with 24 guns. His plan was to drive Soult out of Oporto, fight the French, wherever he found them; and then return and attack Victor on the Tagus. Such was the project of the man of phlegm! He made a forced march of 80 miles, in three days and a-half, from Coimbra, crossed the Douro, drove Soult out of Oporto, ate the dinner which had been prepared for the Frenchman, bon! Sir Arthur's next enterprise was an The kingdom advance into Spain. was held by a French force of upwards of 200,000 men, with all the principal fortresses in their possession, the Pyrenees open, and the whole force of France ready to repair their losses. The Spanish armies were ill commanded, ill provided, and in all pitched battles regularly beaten. The French force sent to stop him at Talavera, on his road to Madrid, amounted to 60,000 men, under Jourdan, Vietor, and Sebastiani, with King Joseph at the head of the whole. The battle began on the 27th of July, and, after a desperate struggle of two days, with a force of nearly three times the number of the British, ended by the rapid retreat of the French in the night, with the loss of 20 pieces of cannon and four standards. The Spanish army under Cuesta did good service on this occasion, but it was chiefly by guarding a flank. Their position was strong, and they were but little assailed. The British lost a fourth of their number in killed and wounded; the French, 10,000 men. The purpose of these pages is, not to give a history of the illustrious Duke's exploits, but to show the utter absurdity of the French notion, that he gained all his battles by standing still, until the enemy grew tired of beating him. There is scarcely an instance in all his battles, in which he did not seek the enemy, and there is no instance in which he did not beat them! This is a sufficient answer to the French theory. The ruin of the Spanish armies, and the immense numerical superiority of the French, commanded by Massena, compelled the British general, in 1810, to limit himself to the defence of PorThe Britugal. Massena followed him at the head of nearly 90,000 men. tish general might have marched, without a contest, to the lines of Torres Vedras; but the man of phlegm resolved to fight by the way. He fought at Busaco, (September 27.) |