Iberia Won 16
See from Sauróren in the vale beneath
Where darts that column to the mountain-shrine,
Nor fires a shot, but silent o’er the heath
Strains to the rugged summit, while their line
Is swept by fiery tempest. Bright doth shine
French valour there. Though ranks be swept away,
Unchecked their ardour. For the crest they pine,
And win it. Lusia’s rifles swell the fray,
And France upon this point an instant gains the day.
XLII.
But Ross his bold brigade of Britain’s sons
Hath close at hand; and Nial, Morton there
With martial ardour each impetuous runs,
Heading their veterans in the fray to share.
With lusty shouts against the French they bear,
And strongly charge and down the mountain dash.
Yet undismayed again the foemen dare
The dire ascent--again their firelocks flash.
Again o’erturned they fall, and vain their valour rash.
XLIII.
Through sulphurous shroud new skirmishers ascend,
And mount the crest new columns of attack;
Ev’n gallant Ross an instant forced to bend
Before that fiery crowd recedeth back,
But to return next instant with no lack
Of desperate courage. Up the crest once more
Our heroes charge, nor Gallic fire doth slack.
Charge upon charge succeeding o’er and o’er,
Each gains and yields by turns--the sod is dyed with gore.
XLIV.
But Britain must the foemen hold at bay,
Whom Creçy, Poictiers, Azincour beheld,
Whom Blenheim, Ramilies, and Malplaquet,
And Oudenarde saw by Britain’s yeomen felled--
The foe on every field in Spain she quelled!
Brief, potent words did Nial, Morton then,
While proud effusion from their bosoms welled,
Address with voice inspiring to their men,
And lead with flashing swords the charge again, again!
XLV.
Oh, solid Infantry! oh granite breasts!
Like Rome’s Triarians there they stand or fall.
Each flashing death-tube not an instant rests,
Save where the bayonet-flash may more appal.
By France outnumbered, yet till slaughtered all
The ground they’d hold. Their wounded and their dead
Are laid in one terrific line, a wall
Of dauntless valour: by Leucadia’s head,
So stood Leonides with Persia’s life-blood red!
XLVI.
A rampart of the brave--of dead and dying!
Thy column, Gaul, advances to the line,
And halts where stern that gory bulwark’s lying,
While Britain’s heroes all their fire combine.
Nor ’mid tremendous showers of death repine
Their wounded comrades smote, since death may bring
The foeman under. Gaul, as drunk with wine,
Reels from excess of slaughter. Forward spring
Our bayonets to the charge. The foe is on the wing!
XLVII.
Then rose the shout that told of England’s power
Triumphant on that new Thermopylæ,
And gallant hands were clasped in glory’s hour,
And beamed Hesperia’s eye more bright to see
That now in spite of Hell she will be free!
And Nial, Morton folded heart to heart:
“Joy! joy! This day shall long remembered be,
“For France hath vainly tried her utmost art.”
And tears of joy were seen from many an eye to start.
XLVIII.
Oh glow of Victory! oh, thrilling pride
Of triumph in the strife of mind or hand!
More dear to mortal breasts than all beside,
In mart or senate as in warlike band,
In court or cell--where’er by conquest fanned
The swelling temples wear thy plume, Success!
How pure thy throb when Freedom lights a land,
When pen, tongue, sword a cause sublime confess,
Well worthy to aspire, befitting Heaven to bless!
XLIX.
Lo, where the giant form of Liberty
Arises grand yet shadowy dim o’er Spain.
With smiles her champion, Arthur, she doth see,
And frowns terrific with august disdain
Upon the Invaders, trampling on the chain!
A fiery sword that as a comet blazed
On high she brandished, like the angel-train
O’er Paradise. The tyrant-host amazed
Saw their expulsion doomed, and trembled as they gazed.
HISTORICAL AND ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES TO CANTO II.
For the incidents from ancient Spanish history with which this
Canto opens, the reader is referred to Livy (lib. xxi. et Epit.) or
to Ferguson’s _Roman Republic_, where a full account will be found
of the ever-memorable Sieges of Saguntum and Numantia. The ruins
of Saguntum (Liv. loc. cit.) or Sagunthus (Sil. Ital. lib. i.) are
still visible on the sea coast, a little to the north of Valencia.
The site of Numantia, having a much more central position, a few
miles north of Soria, capital of the small province of that name
in the eastern part of Old Castile, is more conjectural than
that of Sagunthus. The name of Numantia is erroneously spelled
“Numantium” in Mr. Lockhart’s _Ancient Spanish Ballads_, a work
of extraordinary merit, notwithstanding a few inaccuracies. The
particulars of the siege of Numantia are to be found in the 57th
_Epitome_ of Livy’s lost books. The Moorish invasion under Tarik,
the fall of Roderick, and the struggles of Pelayo, are described
or alluded to by Byron, Scott, and Southey. The scene in the
Vale of Covadonga is one of the finest passages in the latter’s
poem of _Roderick_, where huge masses of rock are hurled down on
the advancing Moorish host at the signal of the following words
pronounced by the heroine:
--“IN THE NAME
OF GOD! FOR SPAIN AND VENGEANCE!”
Southey, _Roderick_. book xxiii.
The fight at Roncesvalles is the most memorable in the entire
range of Romantic History, and has been alluded to, amongst other
poets, by Pulci, Ariosto, Milton, Scott, and Lockhart. The siege of
Zaragoza will be found described in detail in a succeeding canto.
The ferocity displayed by the Moors in their invasion appears to
have been not at all exaggerated by the Spanish chroniclers, and it
is curious that this fierceness of aspect should have been noticed
many centuries before by Horace:
Acer et Mauri peditis cruentum
Vultus in hostem.
_Carm._ i. 2.
The modern representations of Abd-el-Kader’s warriors by French
artists square with the ancient notions of the Moorish ferocity of
aspect. I myself have seen at Tangier and Gibraltar for the most
part fine-looking men, but certainly with a tinge of ferocity, and
here and therewith an __EXPRESSION__ worthy the “truculentus Maurorum
vultus.” The introduction of Mohammedanism seems to have altered
nothing in this respect, for in the days of Julius Cæsar, as Horace
here attests, the same physiognomy was apparent; and Suetonius,
speaking of the war between Cæsar and Juba, king of Mauritania,
represents even the Roman legions as affrighted: “Famâ hostilium
copiarum perterritos ... expectatio adventûs Jubæ terribilis.”
_cap. 66._
The part which I assign to the Basque boat-girls, and the
strain of sentiment which pervades their oar-song, although not
consonant with a peaceful state of cultivated society, is quite
characteristic of Spain during the Peninsular War. The creed of
Hippolytus was not very favourable to those literate pretensions
which Molière has so pleasantly satirized in his “_Précieuses
Ridicules_,” and the Basque barqueras would be quite to his taste.
The persecuted of Phædra, whose uncompromising chastity caused his
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