Note 15 — BOOK THE FIRST 1807-1810

[Sir William Napier states that Moore obtained the command owing to the goodwill of the King, and that a few months before the Ministers had attempted to drive him into private life. Their hostility was fostered by Canning, whose friend Drummond, the British envoy at Palermo, Moore had thwarted when in command of the troops in Sicily. Sir John Moore wrote at this period in his Diary, edited by Major-General Sir J. F. Maurice (vol. ii. p. 250): “I understand that several of the Cabinet have taken a personal dislike to me, though I have seldom seen them, and they can know nothing of me. They wish to hold up Sir Arthur Wellesley.... Though they were forced to approve what I had done in Sweden, yet it was against the grain, for I took no trouble to conceal the ignorance which had sent us there, when they should have known from the character of the King and the weakness of his force that it was impossible for anything to be done.”]