The Press. — London, England, 1857-02-07 00:00:00

FEBRUARY 7, 1857. ittraturt. The Life and Opinions of General Sir Charles James Napier,G.C.B. By Lieutenant-General Sir W. Napier, K.C.B. Four Vols. Vols. I. and 11. London : Murray. WITH all respect for Sir William Napier, we are sorry that the task of preparing these memoirs did not fall into other hands. Sir William is too prejudiced to supply us with an impartial narrative of his brother's career ; and his impetuosity of mind hurries him into the most reckless assertion. The Napier habit of selt•assertion continually bursts forth. According to his narrative, no treatment was good enough for the Napiers, while they met only with neglect or tyranny. Whenever Sir Charles Napier was engaged in controversy, his opponents are painted in the blackest colours, though from his hasty temper it was, at least, as likely that he was right as wrong. The opening sentence of the work is a key to its whole character both in style and spirit:— This shall be the story of a man who never tarnished his reputation by a shameful deed : of one who subdued distant nations by his valour, and then governed them so wisely, that English rule was reverenced and loved where before it had been feared and execrated. For thus nobly acting, the virulence of interested faction was loosed to do him wrong ; honours were withheld, and efforts made to depreciate his fame by successive Governments ; never theless, his fame has been accepted by the British people as belonging to the glory of the nation. This notion of the enmity of successive Govern ments is a proof of the vivacity and jealousy of the Napier imagination always active in both brothers to discover wrongs to justify a display of indignation. In the second paragraph of the narrative we find an example of Sir William's carelessness of statement. Lady Sarah Lennox —so ar dently admired by George 111. previous to his marriage—was born, says Sir William, in 1746 : And when scarcely eighteen, George the Third offered her his hand ; she refused, he persisted, and was finally accepted, partly because of his apparently sincere passion, partly from the influence of her brother•in law, the first Lord Holland ; but then politicians worked on royal pride, hurt by the first refusal, and the monarch fell back. If Lady Sarah was born in 1746, and was offered marriage by the King when she was eighteen, the offer would have been made in 1764. The fact is, that the King was married in the summer of 1761, three years previously. Probably Sir William has mistaken the date of Lady Sarah's birth. We notice the error only as an instance of the carelessness with which his statements are made. In the accounts of Charles's childhood, there is that silly desire to seek for evidences of dawning genius which so frequently makes both hero and biographer appear contemptible. As an instance of the extreme susceptibility of young Napier's nature, we are told : When he could but just speak, hearing for the first time the caw of a single crow, probably a melancholy one which infancy could detect, he stretched forth his little hands, and exclaimed with broken infantine accents :—Whal walla, poor bird ? IVhat matte And only by repeated assurances that the bird was not unhappy could he be pacified. How about his teething ? The facts we suppose are forgotten, as nothing is said on the subject. But we are informed that read ing in Plutarch how Philip, Sertorius, and Hannibal were one-eyed, ho desired to lose one eye as the token of a great general. From young Napier's own revelations a better idea may be gained of his early character than from such apocryphal anecdotes. His im petuosity seems occasionally to have bordered on frenzy. We meet with numerous such pas sages as these in the first specimens given of his correspondence I am a determined rake, in love with four misses at once. I read at least twenty books, and write three or four letters in five minutes ; that is, the books are opened and then shut, and the letters begun and then burned. ] begin to have a sane idea that I am mad. Last night I ant up till two o'clock, writing on the old subject of grievances, and lashing myself into a fury with everything. Abusing the army, pulling off my breeches, cursing creditors, and putting out the candle, all in a minute, I jumped into bed, and lay there blaspheming, praying, and perspiring for two hours, when bleep came. 6 1 THE PRESS. He was in his twenty-second year when the last sentence was written, and could certainly have had no just cause of complaint, as he writes on the next page : Green has offered me a thousand guineas and his com• pany in the 67th, for mine in the staff corps. He professed dislike for the army, though it must be evident to every one that it was the profession for which his temperament and talents peculiarly fitted him. At all times he was a consistent, angry, and desperate grumbler ; and he seems to have professed extreme Radical opinions for no better reason than that he might abuse everything and everybody, particularly the Government under which he served. Sir William absurdly sup poses that the Napiers were regarded with dislike by the Ring on account of the refusal Lady Sarah, their mother, had at first given to his suit. The Napiers were of a good stock. They traced their lineage on the father's side, writes Sir William, " to the great Montrose, and the " still greater Napier, of Merchiston, inventor "of logarithms " Why greater ? Would Sir William hold that Professor Wheatstone is more illustrious than his hero, Sir Charles ? Lord Napier, grandson to the mathematician, lost his lands fighting for Charles 1., and never had them restored. The father of our Napiers—the fighting brothers—the Hon. George Napier, was a distinguished officer, of whose care they were early deprived. By their mother, the Napiers were nearly allied to the Holland connection. But after her husband's death she seems to have lived in straitened circumstances. Charles obtained a commission in the Duke of Wellington's regi ment, the 33rd, in 1794, and as he was born in 1782, he could at the time have been but twelve years old. He was not, however, en gaged in active service till fifteen years later, when, being major of the 50th, the command devolved on him, through the absence of Colonel Walker. This regiment was incor porated by Sir John Moore into his army for the invasion of Spain, and Napier bore his part worthily in the advance and memorable retreat of that expedition. At Corunna he gallantly led his regiment into action, was severely wounded, and taken prisoner. Napier's narrative of his part in the battle is one of the most interesting portions of the book. We are not sure that Napier showed as much skill as courage in his advance. When he asked Moore to be allowed permission to advance, the general replied, " No, they will " fire on our own pickets in the village." Ulti• mately, Napier moved his regiment forward without express orders, and unfortunately got exposed to the fire of some of our own troops. The young major writes : Three or four men were killed at my side, for the breast work was but a slender protection, and two were killed by the fire of our own men from the village behind. The poor fellows kept crying out as they died—" Oh, God ! Major, our own men are killing us! Oh, Christ God! I am shot in the back of the head." The last man was so, for he fell against me, and the ball had entered just above the poll. Remembering then that my father hau told me he saved a man's life at the siege of Charleston by pulling a ball out with his finger before inflammation swelled the parts, I thought to do the same, but could not find it, and feared to do harm by putting my finger far in. It made me feel sick, and the poor fellow being laid down, con tinued crying out that our men had killed him, and there he soon died. The whole narrative is wonderfully graphic and thrilling. On regaining his liberty Napier joined Lord Wellington's army, and was disposed to severely criticise his general's proceedings. Under date of 15th June, 1810, we read : Waited yesterday on Lord Wellington, who was very civil, and signed my certificate of exchange. Dined with him. He told me the French made the most regular retreat he ever saw at Rorica and Talavera. Query, did he follow their example? People say his march from Tala vera to Alemtejo was very bad ; but those who criticise generals do not always know their motives of action, and often have motives of their own for criticising ; never theless, we must think; and I think Lord Wellington committed a great error in that campaign by trusting to the Spaniards after what Moore experienced ; and another in advancing too far when his retreat might be cut off. He was wrong, also, I think, in fighting when victory did him no good, and defeat must have destroyed him : his information was bad, and he trusted it too im plicitly. - - - There spoke out the' presumptuous Napier spirit. He continues : 135 Again : why did he stay in the destructive marshal of the Alemtejo until nearly the whole of his army fell from sickness? It is not easy to comprehend all this, and I have heard no good answer to it. Every officer I have seen and spoken to about the matter has told me the same story, viz., that the battle of Talavera was lost if the French had made one more attack ; and that the whole army expected to be beaten next day. Now, Lord Wel lington might have had ter, battalions more in the fight, viz., Lightbourne's and the two Cranford's brigades. Why were they in the rear? The thing is not easily explained to his advantage • he did not expect a battle, and yet had the French delayed a few days he must have laid down his arms or been cut to pieces. Altogether his general opera tions are difficult to be defended. At a subsequent date it is added, with scarcely less presumption, of Lord Wellington : He is a much better general than I suspected him to be that is, he has profited from his former errors : that be; has made them no one can doubt who hears the conversa tion of the army. He is not popular, less so even than was supposed. However, he will not commit himself again, and that is comfort for those in England. Elsewhere are vehement denunciations of all the generals engaged in the Peninsular war, and the remark : The French are our masters in war as to all but courags and bodily strength. With such disposition to grumble, it is on the whole rather matter for wonder that Napier ad vanced so well as ho did, than that his promotion was not more rapid ; but Sir William writes in grandiloquently radical phrase : As Courts are proverbially fur more vengeful than grateful, it was not surprising that a man whose very existence had been an offence to royal pride [an allusion to George IlFs. courtship of Lady Sarah], a man of whose near kindred one had severely checked royal indiscipline in the navy, a second had endangered royal life in a duel [Colonel Lennox], a third had died an unsuccessful insurgent [Lord Edward Fitzgerald], a fourth had been the most impassioned orator of his age in opposition to royal encroachments [Charles Fox] ; it was not surprising that such a man should meet with disfavcur,—enmity it could scarcely be called. There is but one comment to be passed on such passages. They are rank nonsense. The Napiers, with great merits, lacked one — modesty; and hence in their Insufferable pride, and their exaggerated opinion of their own superiority, they were led to suppose themselves ill-treated, and to set themselves up in opposition to authority above them. Against the assertion of the Court disfavour to the Napiers may be set the fact that on the death of their father, Mr. Pitt conferred pen sions on his widow (Lady Sarah), and on his daughters—a gracious act, which Sir William is compelled to acknowledge was a great relief to her loving sons. Fortunately the Napiers could fight as well as grumble. Besides Charles, there were in Wellington's army his brothers, George and. William,—and all were courageous as steel, and nobly emulated each other in pursuit of honour, fearless of danger. At Busaco, Charles had his jaw shattered by a bullet. Before his wound had healed he was again on duty, marching with Wellington's army. Sir William relates : Thus, advancing on the 14th of March, Pill, he met a litter of branches, borne by soldiers, and covered with a blanket. What wounded officer is that? Captain Napier, of the s'2nd, a broken limb, it was thought so then. Another litter followed. Who is that? Captain then. Napier, 43rd, mortally wounded, it was thought so Charles Napier looked on them, and passed on to the fight in front. The statement is dramatic, but scarcely borne out by the entries we find in Napier's own journal : 11th March LlBll]—A. sharp affair between the light division and the enemy's rearguard, this day. We lost four hundred killed and wounded here and at Redinha. My two brothers commanded the companies chiefly en gaged, and are both severely wounded. He adds, of course : The ignorance and imprudence of Sir Wm. Erskine said to have been conspicuous—and Colonel Drummond. is not extolled for military qualities. A little further on we read : Our generals, or whoever is in fault, ought to be shot; the whole army is disgraced England will begin to see that our generals are--- The significant blank is left by Sir Wil liam for the imagination to supply. Charles was made a lieutenant-colonel in his 29th year, but there was infinite grumbling on his part that the promotion was so long delayed, and his biographer naturally backs up all his complaints. Charles then served against the United States in 1813, after the establishment of peace studied in the military college at