The Sun.
London, England, 1837-07-11 00:00:00

LI fERATUIIE.

PERSONAL MEMOIRS AND CORRESPOND-
ENCE OF COLONEL CHARLES SHAW,
K.C. F.S. and C. In ± Vols.
London, Henry Colburn, 1837.
The time selected for the publication of these very
amusing and interesting personal reminiscences of an
officer as brave, generous, and high spirited as any
that unsheathed a sword in defence of Constitutional
liberty in Portugal and Spain, is remarkably well
chosen. The French Press teems with publications
recording the gallant exploits of the French Foreign
Legion in the Peninsula ; and, by way of set-off, we
presume, unscrupulously denouncing such of our gal-
lant countrymen as took up arms against the Spanish
and Portuguese Usurpers as little better than unprin-
cipled mercenaries, influenced chiefly by the certainty
of pay and the hope of plunder. The Tory Press of
England, ever ready to sacrifice truth and its own
convictions to advance the cause of tyranny, repeats
with avidity the foul slanders of the Anti-Liberal and
Anti-English Galilean prints, feigning to regard their
testimony, in the absence of any less equivocal, as
quite impartial. Everything is deemed important
which can in any way influence the approaching Ge-
neral Election, and the end is invoked to sanctify the
means. Now the appearance of Brigadier-General
Shaw's Memoirs at such a moment is an event doubly
interesting from these circumstances ; his evidence
will set at rest the conflicting testimony of anonymous
writers ; and as first impressions, if allowed to take
root in the mind, are never wholly eradicated, his ac-
count of the conduct, feelings, and treatment of the
British Auxiliary Legion in Portugal and Spain—ap-
pearing contemporaneously with those of the traducers
of that gallant body—will serve to correct those mis-
statements now in the course of publication, which
otherwise would doubtless be received as incontrover-
tible facts. But independently of these circumstances
—of any considerations apart from the pleasure which
the least reflecting may anticipate from the peruial of
these portly volumes—we regard their publication with
delight. They abound in incidents, adventures, and
anecdotes, related in the frank, jocund, and off-hand
style of a kind-hearted, high-spirited soldier. There
is no smoothing down of rough edges—no rounding
off of the dove-tailed points and angles of character—
no process of elegant dilution to please the palates of
the morbidly sensitive so much as attempted in Shaw's
Narrative. First impressions—always the truest and
best--are conveyed in the language that first suggested
itself to a mind busier with deeds than with modes of
giving elegant expression to them.
Brigadier-General Shaw is by birth a Scotchman ;
and was early destined for the Scotch bar. After
going through the usual routine of school discipline,
he was sent to St. Andrew's to study Latin and
Greek ; but his progress in the latter language would
have anything but qualified him for a Greek profes-
sorship. Tired with hunting out words in his Lexi-
con, he took it into his head that it would be a relief
to hunt the French, then kicking up a deuce of a
dust in the Peninsula. But before deciding upon this
step, he remembered that there was a witch's pond in
the neighbourhood, the virtue of whose waters he de-
termined to test upon this occasion. He had heard
that in the reign of James VI. of Scotland the witches
caught in the vicinity of St. Andrew's were all plunged
headlong into this pond—the humane sentence of their
judges being, that if they swam they were to be
burned, and if they sunk they were to be allowed to
remain at the bottom. Shaw, in his double capacity
of angler and subject of augury, altered the terms of
trial to suit more conveniently his peculiar case. lie
plunged into the pond unseen, having reso:ved with
himself that; if he sunk his friends migEt make a lawyer
of him; but if he reached the shore by swimming he
was to assume the profession of arms. The experi-
ment decided his fate. He swain out a soldier ! In
1813 he was gazetted an Ensign, and ordered to Hol-
land, where he soon distinguished himself. In at-
tacking the village of Mexem, near Antwerp, he had
the honour of a first interview with his late Majesty
William IV., which took place under circumstances
highly creditable to the Prince's personal courage
The 52d were now ordered into the village to relieve the
Rifles and 78th, and, as they were entering with their great
coats on, a Prussian regiment met them. Each took the
other for an enemy ; but Colonel Gibbs, who was an excel-
lent German scholar, prevented a collision which might under
other circumstances have taken place. I think it was on this
occasion that I had a conversation with his present Majesty.
The regiment had removed to the left, and I was with the
rear company, when a gentleman dressed in a blue coat with
white lining came up. From his dress I thought he was one
of the Commissariat, but remarking two musket-shots through
his coat, I thought him a rather rash Commissary. I felt
inclined to be offended, when, addressing me in a loud com-
manding tone, he asked, " What regiment is that ? Who
commands it ?"
" That gentlemon," said I. pointing to Capt. Diggle.
" Is he the Commanding Officer ?"
" Not Colonel Gibbs commands."
It was odd that the men should have had the same idea of
the mysterious stranger as I had myself. They, too, suppesCd
he must be a Commissary, and began muttering something
about " Bread Bags better in the rear," when my friend
Capt. Anderson, of the Artillery, suddenly rode up. What
was my astonishment on seeing him salute the supposed Mr.
Commissary Bread Bags in the most respectful fashion, ut-
tering at the same time the following words :—" It. your
Royal Highness moves a little more to the left you can have a
little better view of the enemy. Sir Thomas Graham is in
the steeple of the church." I, in a whisper, asked Anderson,
What Royal Highness is this ?" when he informed me it
was the Duke of Clarence who had landed from England the
day before. The Duke's courage continued to be the talk of
the army for some days ; but I said little, thinking I had got-
ten into a scrape for having mistaken his Royal Highness for
a Commissary.
The restoration of the Bourbons sent Shaw, like
hundreds of his companions in arms, to vegetate on
half-pay in his native country. But he remained not
long die,' Having completed a ,ramblingt9ur through
France And 'a part of Germany, he entered tbe service
of Danna Maria as a volunteer in 1831, and only re-
turned from Portugal in 1835 to join the British
Auxiliary Legion under General Evans. His account
of the war in Portugal abounds in interesting anecdote.
Indeed nothing can exceed the vividness of his descrip-
tions of the perilous services in which he was engaged.
And yet _among passages overflowing with a sort of
reckless gaiety, the result of an exuberance of fine
animal spirits, we frequently find our attention arrested
by such passages as the following :
How little do young men know of war, and all its miseries !
I do not wish to disgust young fellows with the military
profession, as, with all its drawbacks, I prefer it to any other;
but how apt a young man is to be led away when he sees an
officer at home without his arm, to say to himself, How I
should wish to look like that officer.' lie forgets the starva-
tion endured before going into action, the cold and bitter
nights spent in drenched clothes, in wet fields in bivouac ; the
momeldntary forgetfulness of all misery in action, until the
shouer-bone, by a shot, is splintered into bits; then the little
yinpathy felt, every one being for himself; then the excruciat-
ing pain endured by the shaking of the bullock-waggon, or
the want of care in carrying him away, the little bones coming
through the skin, making shriek with agony ' • then the time he
is allowed to lie on the cold floor of a church, until the surgeon
comes to dress him in turn ; then the pain of amputation, and
when that is over, the necessi:y of shutting his ears to the
screams of the dying, and his eyes to the corpses of those car-
past him, who, a few minutes before, had suffered an ope-
ration similar to his own. This appears to him very shocking,
but this is nothing compared to the disgust which he expe-
riences in the dressings, washings, splinterings, bandages, and
cuttings out,which are the daily, nay hourly, detail of military sur-
gery. Of the foul air causedby so many confined in the same spot,
and suffering the same incovenience, some idea may be formed,
but no description can be given. Worst of all, too, the pa-
tient is obliged to witness the deaths of many around him, who,
almost before the breath is out of their bodies, are robbed,
and have their effects distributed among the attendants, roost
of whom volunteer this service, to have an opportunity of plun-
dering the dead and dying.
Often when a patient is thirsty, these attendants are either
too hardened or too drunk to be able to give him drink, and
very possibly offer him the nearest liquid to them, probably
something which was intended for a wash. Or, while the ex-
piring man is saying his prayers, a wretch is holding up his
head with the one hand, while he is stealing the dollars of the
dying man with the other. This was the daily scene for many
days in the hospitals at Oporto, after the 29th, until they were
to certain degree emptied by death.
To the gallantry, the forbearance, the patient en-
durance, and the general good conduct of the British
Auxiliary Legion in Spain, Brigadier-General Shaw