SIR WILLIAM NAPIER

[William Francis Patrick Napier, the historian of the Peninsular War, was born at Celbridge, Kildare, Ireland, on the 17th December 1785. He was the third son and fourth child of the Hon. George Napier, a son of Lord Napier and of his wife Lady Sarah Lennox, sixth daughter of the second Duke of Richmond. He entered the Royal Irish Artillery in 1800, was transferred by the favour of the Duke of Richmond, his grandfather, to the Blues in a few months, and soon afterwards passed, at the invitation of Sir John Moore, to the 43rd infantry. In this regiment, or in the 52nd, he served in the expedition to Denmark, and in many of the most important passages of the Peninsular War. Having applied to enter the Royal Military College he missed the battle of Waterloo, but he served with his regiment in the army of occupation, mostly at Bapaume. In 1819, on the return of the army of occupation, he went on half pay, and next year began literary work by a review of "Jomini," written for the Edinburgh. A wound which he had received at Cazal Nova, during Massina's retreat from Portugal, left him with a bullet pressing against his spine, and latterly incapacitated him for active service. He rose on the retired list to the rank of General, was Governor of Guernsey from 1842 to 1847, and was successively, Colonel of the 27th and 22nd Regiments, in which latter post he succeeded his famous brother, Sir Charles Napier, the Conqueror of Scinde. His History of the War in the Peninsula was undertaken, 1823, at the suggestion of Lord Langdale, and as an answer to Southey. It occupied him for sixteen years, and was published between 1835 and 1840. A revised edition appeared in 1850-51, and he made a selection of the battles and sieges in 1855 in one volume. His other works were The Conquest of Scinde, 1845, and The Administration of Scinde, 1851, in one volume each, written to defend his brother Sir C. Napier; and a Life of Sir Charles Napier, in four volumes, 1857. Sir W. Napier was a vehement radical of somewhat confused sentimental ideas, and a man of a passionate, indeed almost hysterically emotional nature. He died at Clapham Park, on the 10th February 1860.]

THE defects of Sir W. Napier's literary work can all be easily traced to the influence of his character and his beliefs. His biographer, an anonymous Guernsey friend, whose ill-arranged work was edited by Mr. H. A. Bruce, Lord Aberdare (1864), allows that when he was moved by the sight of what he thought wrong,

he did not measure the terms of his accusations of the wrongdoer, and was apt to fall into excess. A less friendly critic might put it that when his emotions were excited, he was not particular to take care that he told the truth. This would be unjust, but it must be allowed that, when his personal likings or dislikings, his hatred of what he called the aristocratic principle of government, his adoration of Napoleon as the soldier of democracy, and his professional pride as an officer of the British army were touched, he was unmeasured and uncritical. To this must be attributed his sophistical excuses for the French invasion of Spain, and his gross unfairness to the Spaniards, whom he detested, partly because their claims seemed to diminish the share of glory justly due to his own service, and partly because they refused to accept a liberal constitution at the hands of the Corsican "soldier of democracy," and persisted in fighting for a despotic king and a bigoted church. Something too must be allowed for his not unnatural impatience with the ineptitude of Spanish generals and juntas. But those defects are counterbalanced by extraordinary merits which have made his "Peninsular War" perhaps the greatest specimen of military history in any language, and have left it not only without equal, but without second in our own. His personal experience, though a great advantage, was the least of his qualifications. He could when the dry light of his intellect was not damped by passion, reason closely, and expound with admirable lucidity. When the principles of war, or the military causes of success and failure were the matter in hand, he gave his reason fair play. In this respect, however, he has been equalled by other military writers. Where he stands, it may be confidently affirmed, alone, is in this, that he brought to the history of war the imagination of a great romantic writer, and a poet's command of "simple, sensuous, and passionate images." His style is perfectly adapted to his subject-simple, swift, direct at times, and then under the stimulus of some heroic action, or heroic suffering, rising to a sonorous vehemence full of telling images, often conveyed by the power of a single word put in its place. He goes intrepidly to the very border of the turgid, but never over it. His qualities as a writer fully atone for his patent errors as a judge.

DAVID HANNAY.

PASSAGE OF THE DOURO

COLONEL WATERS, a quick daring man, discovered a poor barber who had come over the river with a small skiff the previous night; and these two being joined by the Prior of Aramante, who gallantly offered his services, crossed the water unperceived and returned in half an hour with three large barges. Meanwhile eighteen guns were placed in battery on the convent height, and General John Murray was sent with the German brigade, the 14th dragoons and two guns, three miles up the stream, to the Barca de Avintas, with orders to seek for boats and pass there if possible. When Waters came back with the barges, some English troops followed Murray in support, and others cautiously approached the river close under the Serra rock. It was then ten o'clock, the French were tranquil and unsuspicious, the British wondering and expectant, and Sir Arthur was told that one boat had reached the point of passage. "Well, let the men cross," was the reply, and on this simple order an officer with twentyfive men were in a quarter of an hour silently placed in the midst of the French army. The Seminary was thus gained, yet the French remained quiet in Oporto. A second boat crossed, no hostile movement followed, no sound was heard, and a third boat passed higher up the river; but then tumultuous noise rolled through Oporto, the drums beat to arms, shouts arose in all parts, and the people were seen vehemently gesticulating and making signals from their houses, while confused masses of troops, rushing out of the city by the higher streets, and throwing out swarms of skirmishers, came furiously down against the Seminary. The British soldiers instantly crowded the river bank, Paget's and Hill's divisions at the point of passage, Sherbrooke's where the boatbridge had been cut away; but Paget himself who had passed in the third boat and mounted the roof of the Seminary, fell there deeply wounded, whereupon Hill took his place. The musketry,

sharp and voluble, augmented as the forces accumulated, and the French attack was eager and constant, their fire increased more rapidly, and their guns opened on the building, while the English guns from the Serra commanded the enclosure and swept the ground on the left so as to confine the assault to the iron gate front; but Murray did not appear, the struggle was violent, the moment critical, and Sir Arthur was only prevented crossing in person by the interference of those about him and the confidence he had in Hill.

In this state of affairs some citizens came over to Villa Nova with several great boats; and Sherbrooke's men were beginning to cross in large bodies, when a loud shout in the town, and the waving of handkerchiefs from the windows, gave notice that the French had abandoned the lower city; at the same time Murray was descried coming down the right bank of the river. Three battalions were now in the Seminary, the attack slackened, and Hill advancing to the enclosure wall poured a destructive fire on the French columns, as they passed in haste and confusion along his front on the Vallonga road; five guns then came galloping out of the town, but, appalled by the terrible line of musketry from the enclosure, the drivers pulled up, and while thus hesitating a volley from behind stretched many artillerymen in the dust, and the rest dispersing, left their guns on the road. This volley came from Sherbrooke's men, who had come through the town, and thus the passage being won, the allies had the right bank of the Douro. Sherbrooke from the city now pressed the French rear, Hill from the Seminary sent a damaging fire on the flank of the retiring masses, and far on the right Murray menaced the line of retreat the rear of the army was still passing the river, but the guns on the Serra rock searched the French columns from rear to front as they hurried onwards.

If Murray had fallen upon the disordered crowds their discomfiture would have been complete; but he suffered column after column to pass without even a cannon shot, and seemed fearful lest they should turn and push him into the river. General Charles Stewart and Major Hervey, impatient of his timidity, charged with two squadrons of dragoons, and riding over the enemy's rear guard, as it was passing through a narrow road to gain an open space beyond, unhorsed Laborde and wounded Foy, yet on the English side Hervey lost an arm, and his gallant horsemen, receiving no support from Murray, had to fight their