Iberia Won 2

Iberia Won 2

Quis feræ

Bellum curet Iberiæ?”

 

or be indifferent to the exploits of Englishmen in a country,

with whose people the same Horace coupled a most flattering

epithet--“_peritus Iber_.” The splendour and the decadence, the

glory and misfortunes, the ancient grandeur and the existing

distresses of Spain, the great historic parts which we have played

either in unison or in rivalry,--above all, the terrible struggle

which we maintained together against a Power with which it was at

first despair to cope, and yet brought to a triumphant issue, make

it impossible that any record of that struggle can be received with

indifference; and the customary fate of rashness and incompetency

is the only one that I have to apprehend.

 

That these great and glorious exploits should not have hitherto

formed the subject of any extended poem may at first appear

surprising. But the reason is obvious--the time had not yet

arrived. The glare of contemporary fame is unfavourable to

poetic celebration, except in the form of Pindar’s Olympionics,

in dithyrambic odes imbued with the intoxication of victory,

or otherwise in such short reflective sonnets as embodied a

Wordsworth’s calm and philosophic spirit. The mists of time must

be interposed before the hero rises to the Demigod, an entirely new

generation must have succeeded, and the poet must himself belong

to that generation. The halo of Imagination must invest what was

before Reality, the subject must have attained the dignity of the

_myth_, or heroic legend, and Ideal Art must be unencumbered by the

pressure of the Actual. That time appears to have arrived. Forty

years have elapsed since the commencement of this mighty struggle;

those of our Peninsular heroes whom the shock of battle spared,

have nearly all been gathered to their fathers, and those who

remain are like late surviving Nestors whose heads are crowned with

the snowy tonsure of Time.

 

Into the construction of this poem it is unfit that I should enter

further than to state, that the action, which is in some degree

formed on the purest ancient model, comprises a period of about

two months, commencing a month before and ending a month after

the taking of San Sebastian by storm. The besieged city forms the

central point, and the events there, with superadded imaginative

incidents, are combined with the fighting round San Sebastian, of

which the object was on one side to relieve, and on the other to

prevent the relief of that fortress. These are what are usually

known by the name of the Battles of the Pyrenees, and commenced

with the first battle of Sauroren, which was fought on the 28th

July, 1813; the storming of San Sebastian occurred on the 31st of

August; and the action of the poem concludes with the passage of

the Bidassoa, and the advance of the Allied Army to the Greater

Rhune, by which the Spanish soil was freed from the presence of

the Invader--events which occurred on the 7th and 8th of October.

The second siege of San Sebastian commenced contemporaneously

with the first battle of Sauroren, on the 28th July.[A] The actual

time therefore employed in the action is precisely two months and

twelve days. The battles of the Pyrenees introduced are essentially

interwoven with the main subject, which is the capture of the

great fortress of San Sebastian, the principal event of the latter

part of the War while it was confined to the Spanish soil. All

the characters are grouped by the story round the central figure

of the besieged city, the incidents of the _peripeteia_ or plot

are interwoven with that event and with each other, and--if it be

not presumption to use such a word--the _Epos_ is complete. The

critics, I have no doubt, will find abundant faults; and the rest I

commit to their tender mercies.

 

Though the time, as essential to such compositions, is in

comparison with the duration of the War extremely limited, all

its leading incidents are introduced in the permitted shapes of

narrative, episode, allusion, and apostrophe. The historical

part of the work invites the closest examination, as well as

the local colouring, to which a six years’ constant residence

in the Peninsula has enabled me, I trust, to impart some truth

and vivacity. I have lived in the midst of revolts, revolutions,

and military movements; my experience almost equals that of an

actual campaigner; and I have witnessed even portions of three

sieges--those of Seville and Barcelona in 1843, and that of Almeida

in Portugal in 1844. Copious historical and explanatory notes are

annexed to each canto, and the description of the battle grounds is

made accurate by personal observation of many of them, which I have

embodied in the notes. The theatre of that portion of the War which

enters into the action of the poem itself presents very felicitous

subjects for description, the ground being the gigantic Pyrenees,

and the combats there sustained being more like those of Titans

than of men. In addition to much oral testimony, the authorities

I have consulted are very numerous, and as fidelity has been my

constant aim their language will be found frequently cited in the

notes. The principal of these are Napier’s _History of the War in

the Peninsula_, Southey’s _History of the Peninsular War_, Foy’s

_Histoire de la Guerre de la Péninsule_, Gurwood’s _Despatches of

the Duke of Wellington_, Jones’s _Journals of the Sieges in Spain_,

Belmas’s _Journals of Sieges_, compiled from official documents by

order of the French government, Captain Cooke’s _Memoirs_, Captain

Pringle’s _Ditto_, Captain Batty’s _Campaign of the left Wing of

the Allied Army in the Western Pyrenees_, Gleig’s _Subaltern,

Annals of the Peninsular War_, De la Pène’s _Campagnes de 1813 et

1814_, and Pellot’s _Mémoires des Campagnes des Pyrénées_.

 

A difficulty inseparable from this subject is its great historical

and political interest, which although in one respect an advantage

in another is a considerable drawback. With events so well known

and comparatively so recent it is impossible to take liberties;

invention is restrained, and the imagination is confined within

limits more strict than the poetical faculty might desire for its

operations. If this objection has been felt with regard to Tasso’s

_Gerusalemme_, the personages of which were French and Italian

counts and princes familiar to the reader of general history,

and whose acts and characters were well known though they lived

four centuries before he wrote, it is clearly far more applicable

in the present instance. The answer at once is that an entirely

different treatment must be resorted to, that celestial machinery,

witchcraft, and all analogous means must be excluded, and that

actual truth must be made the basis of the whole composition.

To truth I have accordingly adhered, and invite the strictest

historical criticism, consistent with poetical diction and imagery,

of my account of these campaigns. The events were fortunately of

that brilliant description, and their theatre, the Pyrenees, so

essentially romantic, that the true and the marvellous are here one

and the same. Historical accuracy is here an element of beauty;

and my minor plot is alone invented, yet is meant to be strictly

probable.

 

Nearly the entire of our modern military system dates from the

commencement of the Peninsular War. The cumbrous old system which

fought a whole campaign for a comfortable place for winter quarters

(a great aim with Turenne) was broken up rapidly by the vigour of

Napoléon, and our first débût under the Duke of York had taught

us that we must change our plan. In 1808, the very year of our

first victories in the Peninsula (Roriça and Vimieiro) the use of

hair-powder was for the first time discontinued in the British

army. Rifle corps were then first formed--in the first instance

as rather a hopeless experiment, our soldiers having been deemed

too slow and heavy for this practice; but, as the result proved,

with perfect success. From the Polish lancers whom we first saw

at Albuera we borrowed the idea of our corps of lancers, as we

afterwards took from the French cuirassiers the modern equipment

of our lifeguards. The brilliant appearance of our light dragoons

astonished the French on their first appearance in the Peninsula.

“Nos soldats, frappés de l’élégance de l’habit des dragons légers,

de leurs casques brillants, de la tournure svelte des hommes et

des chevaux, leur avaient donné le nom de _lindors_.”--Foy, _Hist.

Guerre Pénins._ liv. 2. For this rather theatrical display we

substituted with better taste in 1813 an uniform similar to that

worn by the German light cavalry. The Shrapnell shell, or spherical

case shot, (the invention of an English Colonel of that name) was

used for the first time during the Peninsular War with great effect.

 

Amongst the many great services performed by the Peninsular War

was raising the character of the British soldier from a very low

to a very high standard in the national estimation. The plays

of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Mrs. Centlivre, the tales

of Fielding, Smollett, and Defoe, and the graver essays of Dr.

Johnson, sufficiently demonstrate that in the time of those writers

military men were held in the lowest esteem. The conquerors of

Blenheim and of the Heights of Abraham were currently regarded as

debauchees, cutthroats, and dishonest adventurers, and where a

more gentlemanly exterior was exhibited, it was commonly united to

the silliest foppery. Such from the Restoration to the end of the

last century was the common character even of the officers of our

army, and the ruffianly brutality of _Ensign Northerton_ towards

_Tom Jones_ was perfectly characteristic in an age when undoubtedly

it was too true that pimping too often obtained commissions, and

it was an accurate general description to say of any chance-met

couple of officers that “one had been bred under an attorney, and

the other was son to the wife of a nobleman’s butler.” (_History

of a Foundling_, book vii. c. 12). Though there were undoubtedly

many officers then of a far superior class, still the high tone

of chivalrous honour in our army, and the general refinement

and accomplishment of character, belong to the present century.

It is the great praise of the British private soldier that his

stubborn will and indomitable energy, his cheerful discipline and

unflinching valour, carry him through the most brilliant exploits

to a success almost miraculously uniform, without any of those

tangible hopes of promotion which inspire the continental soldier.

Such noble and manful discharge of duty appears to merit some more

adequate reward than the possible working of a miracle which may

raise him from the ranks.

 

Wellington, in his admirable _Despatches_, says of the army

with which he won these Pyrenean victories: “I think I could do

any thing with them.” The resemblance of many portions of these

remarkable compositions to those of Cæsar has been more than once

pointed out; but the striking coincidence in the present instance

has never, I believe, before been noticed: “Non animadvertebatis,”

says Cæsar, likewise speaking of the exploits of his Peninsular