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motion was still certain from the humblest station to the highest grades in the army. In the former, again, a line in practice almost impassable, separated the private soldier from the officer; they were drawn from different classes in society, accustomed to different habits, instructed by a different education, actuated by different desires. To the French conscript, glory, promotion, the prospect of ultimate greatness, were the chief stimulants to exertion; in the English army, though the influence of such desires was strongly felt by the officers, yet the efforts of the common men were principally excited by a different set of motives. A sense of military duty, the wish to win the respect of their comrades, an instinctive principle of courage, an anxious desire to uphold the renown of their regiment, a firm determination to defend the cause of Old England, and an undoubting faith in the superiority of its arms, constituted the real springs of military exertion.

LIII.

1808.

soldiers were

lot.

The great majority of the English soldiers felt no 26. desire to be made officers. To become sergeants and The English corporals was, indeed, a very general and deserved object contented of ambition to the meritorious privates, because that with their elevated them in, without taking them out of, their own sphere in life; but they felt that they would be uncomfortable in the daily society of the commissioned officers, their superiors in birth, habits, and acquirements. And though many, in the course of the war, from the force of extraordinary merit, broke through these restraints, and some discharged in the most exemplary manner the duties 1 Duke of of the most elevated ranks, who had originally borne a Wellingmusket on their shoulders, yet in general the situation of on Military privates who had risen to the officers' mess was not so ment. Parl. comfortable as to render the change an object of general 1836. desire.1

It may appear paradoxical to assert, but it is nevertheless strictly true, that this feeling of the propriety of each class striving to become respectable in itself, without

ton's Evid.

Punish

Pro., June

LIII.

CHAP. seeking to overstep its limits, is the natural effect of long-established freedom and order; and is much more 1808. nearly allied to the genuine spirit of liberty than the feverish desire of individual elevation, which, throughout self-respect all its phases, was the mainspring of the French Revoluof all classes. tion. Where each class is respectable and protected in

27.

Which arose

from the

1 Foy, i. 226, 227.

28.

cipline. Corporal punish

ments which still subsisted.

itself, it feels its own importance, and often disdains to
seek admission into that next in succession. The uni-
versal passion for individual exaltation is the offspring of
a state of society where the rights and immunities of the
humbler ranks have been habitually, by all persons in
power, trampled under foot. The clearest proof of this
is to be found in daily experience. The men who
throughout so many ages have maintained the liberties
of England, are not those who were striving perpetually
to elevate themselves by a sudden start above their
neighbours, but those who, by a life of unobtrusive
honest industry, have risen to comfort or opulence in
their own sphere, without any desire to leave it.
the strength of the State at present is not to be found in
the anxious aspirants after aristocratic favour, or the
giddy candidates for fashionable distinction, but in the
unheeded efforts of that more numerous but unobserved
class, which is too proud of its own rank to aspire to any
above it.1

And

An iron discipline had given the military force, thus Severe dis- constituted, a degree of firmness and regularity unknown to any other service in Europe. The use of the lashthat terrible remnant of savage rule-was still painfully frequent; and instances were not uncommon of soldiers, for inconsiderable offences, receiving five hundred, eight hundred, and even one thousand stripes-an amount of torture equal perhaps to any ever inflicted by the Inquisition. But though the friends of humanity beheld with horror this barbarous infliction, so foreign to the spirit of the English constitution, and one disused in the French and several other Continental armies, yet the experienced

LIII.

1808.

observers, who considered the character of the class from CHAP. which the English recruits were almost exclusively drawn, and the impossibility of giving them the prospect of promotion which operated so strongly on French conscripts, still hesitated as to the practicability of abolishing this painful and terrible correction, though they strenuously contended for the limitation of its frightful barbarity. They regarded its disgrace as the price paid by the nation for the democratic economy, which denied to the soldiers such a pay as would secure for the ranks of its army a class with whom such inflictions might be unnecessary, or render expulsion from these ranks a sufficient object of dread; and that constitution which, by confining commissions in the military service to men of family and property, possessed of a permanent interest in the commonwealth, had obtained the best possible Duke of security against its force being applied to the destruction ut supra. of the public liberties.1

1

Wellington

comforts of

Better fed, clothed, lodged, and paid than any other in 29. Europe, the English soldier had an attention devoted to Physical his wants, both in health and sickness, and experienced the British an integrity in the administration of every department of soldiers. the army, which could be attained only in a country where habits of freedom have long coexisted with those of order, and experience had pointed out the mode of effectually checking the abuses which invariably have a tendency to grow up in every branch of the public administration. Pensions, varying according to the period or the amount of service, secured for the veteran, the maimed, or the wounded, an adequate maintenance for the remainder of life. True, he fought-in the language of Colonel Napier in the cold shade of aristocracy; true, he could not boast that the rays of imperial favour would be attracted by the helmet of the cuirassier, or the bayonet of the grenadier; but he was sure, from good conduct, of obtaining that respect in his own sphere, and those substantial advantages which were adapted to his

1808.

CHAP. situation and his wishes. Experience has abundantly LIII. proved that the concentration of government support on those whose only title to power is military distinction, is a sure prelude to unbridled administration; and that, if the soldier no longer fought in the cold shade of aristocracy, the citizen would pine in the hopeless frost of military despotism.*

General

Foy's graphic contrast of the

English and soldiers and

French

officers.

1 Foy,

231, 233.

Nor was the inequality of force with which this great struggle was to be conducted so great in its progress as

* General Foy has left a graphic picture of the different habits of the English and French soldiers during a campaign in the Peninsular war, of the truth of which every one must, to a certain degree, be convinced. Behold," says he, "the French battalions, when they arrive at their bivouacs after a long and painful march. No sooner have the drums ceased to beat, than the havresacks of the soldiers, disposed round the piles of arms, mark out the ground where they are to pass the night. They put off their coats: clothed only in their greatcoats, they run to collect provisions, water, and straw. The fires are lighted; the soup is soon prepared; trees brought from the adjoining wood are rudely carved into supports or beams for the huts. Quickly the simple barracks are raised; the air resounds with the sounds of the hatchet; while the soup is preparing, the young men, impatient of their idleness, clean their arms, arrange their knapsacks, clean their gaiters. The soup is soon ready; if wine is wanting, the conversation soon flags, and the noisy multitude is speedily buried in sleep. If, on the other hand, the generous fluid circulates, joyous looks follow the barrels as they are brought on men's backs into the centres of the rings; the veterans recount to the young conscripts the battles in which their regiment has acquired so much renown, and the universal transport when the Emperor, mounted on his white charger and followed by his Mameluke, suddenly appeared among them.

"Turn now to the English camp. You see the soldiers exhausted and motionless, reclining on the ground: are they waiting like the Spahis in the Turkish camp till the slaves prepare their victuals? No! they have made at leisure a very moderate march, and have reached at two in the afternoon the ground they are to occupy for the night. Bread and meat are brought; the sergeant makes the distribution; he tells them where they will find water and straw, and where the trees which are to be felled will be found When the logs arrive, he shows where each is to be placed; he reprimands the unskilful, and stimulates the lazy. Where is the industrious enterprising spirit of that nation which has outstripped all others in vigour and intelligence? Out of their own routine the soldiers can do nothing: if once the restraints of discipline are broken, excesses of every kind are indulged in, and intemperance prevails to a degree which would astonish the Cossacks themselves. Nevertheless, do not hazard an attack unless you are well assured of success: the English soldier is not brave at times merely; he is so whenever he has eat well, drunk well, and slept well. Yet their courage, rather instinctive than acquired, has need of solid nutriment; and no thoughts of glory will ever make them forget that they are hungry, or that their shoes are worn out.1

"Nor is the difference less remarkable in the superior officers. While a French general of division is occupied during the leisure moments of a cam

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1808.

30.

of keeping

it appeared in the outset. Napoleon, indeed, commenced CHAP. the contest with a hundred and fifteen thousand infantry, and sixteen thousand horse, in the Peninsula,* and the possession of all the most important strongholds which it Difficulty contained; and the French force permanently maintained any consiover its surface, after the British troops landed, exceeded together in two hundred and fifty, and rose at times as high as three of the Penhundred and fifty thousand men ; while there never were insula. so many as fifty thousand British soldiers in the Penin

paign in studying the topography of the country, or the disposition of its inhabitants; in attending to the nourishment, drilling, or haranguing of his troops; in endeavouring to persuade the Spanish people to adopt the system of administration, or yield to the political conduct of his country-the English general opposed to him spends his time between the chase, riding on horseback, and the pleasures of the table. The first, alternately governor, engineer, commissary, has his mind continually on the stretch; his daily occupations lead to an enlargement of his intellect, and a continual extension of his sphere of activity. The other, as indifferent to the localities of the country in which he makes war, as to the language, disposition, or prejudices of its inhabitants, applies to the commissary to supply provisions; to the quarter-mastergeneral for information concerning the country in which he has to act, and the marches he has to perform; to the adjutant-general for any other supplies of which he may stand in need. Unless when employed in a separate command, he seeks to narrow the sphere of his exertions and responsibility. He leads on his troops in battle with the most admirable courage; but in cantonments his habitual exertions are limited to superintending the police of his troops, seeing

1

derable forco

the interior

that their exercises are daily performed, and transmitting reports to his 1 Foy, i. superiors." Notwithstanding his admirable general candour, the French 231, 257. general appears, in this graphic description, to have been somewhat influenced by the prejudices of his country, though the outline of the sketch is undoubtedly correct. But the military is essentially a practical art; and notwithstanding all their riding and hunting, experience soon made the English generals as expert at all the really useful parts of their profession as the more inquisitive and instructed Frenchmen; and they are not the worst soldiers who, without disquieting themselves with the duties or designs of their superiors, are at all times ready with undaunted courage to carry them into effect.

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Besides 44,374 infantry, and 4,685 cavalry, who arrived on the Ebro by the 1st August 1808.—For, iv., Table 1, Appendix.

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