Iberia Won 27

Iberia Won 27

HISTORICAL AND ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES TO CANTO IV.

 

 

The gathering under the oak of Guernica, the onset of the French

light horse, and the resistance of the peasantry, described in this

Canto, are incidents which, although imagined, are characteristic

of this heroic struggle at various periods. The part here played

by Blanca was not uncommon during the Peninsular War, enthusiast

emissaries having made their appearance in various quarters,

preaching the crusade against the French. They literally preached,

or harangued the people in public places. I met an Englishman

in the Peninsula who had figured in that capacity. Women, too,

undertook the same service, which amongst an excitable Southern

people was found to be most potential. The appearance of the fair

sex in this character was chiefly after the siege of Zaragoza,

when the renown won by Manuela Sanchez caused heroines to spring

up in several places, who wore for the most part a half-military

attire. Blanca’s use of the guitar is strictly in character, for

the talent of the _improvvisatore_ is pretty general in Spain,

the language readily adapting itself to extemporaneous recitation

in verse, and the ardent temperament of the nation favouring a

rapid exercise of the imagination. The Basque drum or _pandero_,

and the _gaita_ or bagpipe, belong to this district. The Oak of

Guernica, beneath which I make Blanca rhapsodize, was one of the

most venerable natural monuments in Spain. Here the Biscayan

legislators, hidalgos and peasants, periodically assembled, and

here Ferdinand and Isabella in 1476 swore to maintain the _fueros_,

or ancient rights and privileges of the people. Wordsworth has a

sonnet on the subject; but unhappily his “tree of holier power” was

cut down by the French. An oak sapling was, however, planted under

the protection of the English army to replace it.

 

The idea of the night-sortie in this canto is taken from the

following passage in Napier:--“In the night of the 27th, about 3

o’clock, the French sallied against the new battery on the isthmus;

but as Col. Cameron of the ninth regiment met them on the very

edge of the trenches with the bayonet, the attempt failed, yet it

delayed the arming of the battery.” (_Hist. War in the Penins._

xxii. 1.) I have made honourable mention of Cameron’s achievement

in my first canto, but without specifying that the sortie took

place by night. The attack in the real incident was so speedily

repelled that it afforded no room for poetical description. I have

therefore worked up separately here the idea of a sortie with the

numerous picturesque additions incident to its occurrence by night,

and have taken some of these incidents from the sortie which took

place from Bayonne, then invested by Sir John Hope, on the night of

the 13th April 1814--three days after the Battle of Toulouse--being

therefore the last event of the Peninsular War, in which Sir John

Hope was made prisoner, and great loss of life occurred owing

to the French governor’s incredulity as to the abdication of

Napoléon. It is described in Napier’s last chapter but one, and

still more minutely in Capt. Batty’s _Campaign of the Left Wing

of the Allied Army_, &c. Though Sir Thomas Graham was intrusted

with the conduct of the siege of San Sebastian, and though at the

period of the assault Wellington was engaged with the allies, as

described in a succeeding canto, at some distance from the town, I

am warranted in making him superintend the defence of this sortie,

he having visited the works frequently during their progress, and

having actually visited them on the day (the 28th August) on which

this sortie took place. The present is almost the only instance

throughout the poem, where there is exaggeration of the actual

amount of fighting and its consequences.

 

The French in desolating the fields of Spain, and sweeping off

their sheep and cattle by thousands, professed that they did it

for the people’s good, treating them, doubtless, as Sir Thomas

More makes the Utopians treat their useless members in his Happy

Republic: “Wrought on by these persuasions, they do either starve

themselves of their own accord, or they take opium, and so they

die without pain.” (_Utopia_, book ii.) According to Hobbes’s

philosophy, this could be doing them no injury, “for he who

consents to any thing, cannot consider himself injured.” (_De

Cive._ 1. i. c. iii.) This voluntarily inflicted suicide Bishop

Burnet in his preface more justly characterises as “a rough

and fierce philosophy.” Still fiercer was the “philosophy” of

Republican France.

 

 

V. “What were thy mural crowns, bellipotent Rome?”

 

The _corona muralis_ was a crown of gold, bearing some resemblance

to an ancient wall with turrets, given to him who first scaled

the walls of a city in an assault. The _corona castrensis_ sive

_vallaris_ was a crown given to the soldier who first mounted a

rampart, or invaded the enemy’s camp. The _corona obsidionalis_

(Livy) was a crown composed of the grass which grew in a besieged

place, and presented to the general who raised a siege. This was

deemed one of the highest military honours. Thomasius says that it

was likewise given “to a captain that razed a fort.” The _corona

triumphalis_, originally of laurel and in after ages of gold, was

worn by those generals who had received the honour of a triumph.

On its being sent to the general, it insured him the triumph on

his return, and he immediately obtained the title _imperator_,

which he retained till his triumphal entry. The _corona ovalis_

sive _myrtea_ (Aulus Gellius) was given to a general for a victory

without slaughter of men. The _corona civica_, the highest of all

these rewards, was composed of oaken boughs, and given to him who

had saved the life of a Roman citizen.

 

 

VI. “Not Spain, not Spain doth tamely bear the yoke.”

 

Levanta, España! tu famosa diestra

Desde el Frances Pirene al Moro Atlante,

Y al ronco son de trompas belicosas,

Haz embuelta en durisimo diamante

De tus valientes hijos feroz muestra,

Debaxo de tus señas vitoriosas.

Luis de Gongora.

 

 

XI. “Sagunthus and Numance and Bilbil here.”

 

The cities of Saguntum and Numantia have been heretofore

specified. Bilbilis is the modern Bilbao, capital of the province

of Biscay. For a sketch of the ancient heroism of Cantabria,

corresponding with the modern Vascongadas or Basque Provinces, see

the Introduction. For an account of the exploits of Viriatus and

Sertorius see Livy and Ferguson’s _Roman Republic_.

 

“Now when babes untimely perish

Like old Basques strew pure white roses.”

 

This ancient custom has been made by Wordsworth the subject of two

sonnets, in the second of which occur the following fine lines:--

 

A garland fashioned of the pure white rose

Becomes not one whose father is a slave!

 

 

XVIII. “A troop from fair Guernica marched ere night.”

 

Tambem movem da guerra as negras furias

A gente Biscainha, que carece

De polidas razoens, e que as injurias

Muito mal dos estranhos compadece.

A terra de Guipuscoa, e das Asturias, &c.

Camóens, _Lus._ iv. 11.

 

 

XXIV. “Sent our bold columns rapid to the fight.

Morton with joy, and Nial with delight

The summons heard.”

 

Ἐν γὰρ χερσὶ τέλος πολέμου, ἐπέων δ’ ἐνὶ βουλῇ·

Τῷ, οὔτι χρὴ μῦθον ὀφέλλειν, ἀλλὰ μάχεσθαι.

Hom. _Il._ xvi. 630.

 

“For the end of war is in hands, but of words in council;

wherefore, let us not multiply words, but fight!” The dog who barks

loudest is least inclined to bite, or, as the German proverb has

it: “Die grossen marterhausen sind nicht die besten kriegsleut.” I

may add here Suidas’s excellent derivation of Arês Ἄρης, the Greek

name of Mars--from α, _non_, and ῥέειν, _dicere_, because in war

not words but blows are needed.

 

 

XXV. “--Save when the cannon flashed

To send grim death rimbombing from its womb.”

 

The word _rimbombar_, signifying “to resound terrifically,”

especially as applied to thunder and discharges of artillery, is

a very forcible specimen of onomatopœia, and is common to the

Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese; I have therefore ventured to

adopt it into the English language. Tasso uses the word with fine

effect in one of his most celebrated passages:--

 

Treman le spaziose atre caverne,

E l’aer cieco a quel romor rimbomba.

_Ger. Lib._ iv. 3.

 

 

XXVII. “Threw clustering sparkles swift as Brontes poured

’Gainst Steropes whilst Ætna’s forges roared.”

 

Antra Ætnæa tonant, validique incudibus ictus....

Ferrum exercebant vasto Cyclopes in antro,

Brontesque, Steropesque, et nudus membra Pyracmon.

Virg. _Æn._ viii. 419.

 

Virgil’s treatment of his subject, the forging of the armour of

Æneas, presents a curious contrast to Homer’s treatment of the

forging of the armour of Achilles. Vulcan is the agent in both

cases, but in the simple patriarchal era of Homer he is made to

do it all himself, with the assistance only of “twenty pairs of

bellows:”--

 

Φῦσαι δ’ ἐν χοάνοισιν ἐείκοσι πᾶσαι ἐφύσων.

 

The more refined contemporary of Augustus makes the Cyclops perform

the porters’ work, and Vulcan merely look on.

 

 

XXXIV. “The rampant lions spurning Gallic chain!”

 

“Publica” respondit, “cura est pro mœnibus istis”

Juppiter: et pœnas Gallia victa dabit.

Ovid. _Fast._ vi. 377.