Part 4 — CHAPTER XXXII.

MOORE’S LAST VICTORY.

In an instant Sir John Moore half raised himself, gazing still with concentrated earnestness, as if nothing had happened, towards the Highland regiment now hotly engaged. Not a sigh was heard. Not a muscle in his face quivered.

Hardinge had sprung down, and Moore’s right hand grasped his firmly. When Hardinge, seeing his anxiety as to the 42nd, exclaimed, “They are advancing!” a flash of joy lighted up Moore’s features.

Then Colonel Graham hurried to the spot. So placid and unchanged was the General’s look that for a moment he hoped it might be no more than an accidental fall from the horse. The next moment he saw—and he rode off at full speed for a surgeon.

It was an awful wound. Almost the whole left shoulder was carried away; the arm was all but separated from the body; the ribs over that intrepid heart were broken; the flesh and muscles were fearfully torn and mangled. Hardinge made an attempt with his sash to check the rush of blood; but with so extensive an injury little could be done.

Sir John was then gently lifted upon a blanket, and all the while he still intently watched the struggle, as if his own state were a matter of very secondary importance.

For a moment his attention was recalled from the front. His sword became entangled, as the soldiers moved him, and the hilt went into the wound. Captain Hardinge began to unbuckle it, but he was at once checked, Moore saying in his usual voice, with calm distinctness—

“It is as well as it is. I had rather it should go out of the field with me.”

So extraordinary was his composure that Hardinge began to hope, even against hope, that the wound might after all prove not to be mortal, that the General might even yet be spared to his country. He faltered something of the kind, and Moore turned from gazing at the battle, to inspect gravely his own injuries.

“No, Hardinge, I feel that to be impossible,” he replied. “You need not go with me. Report to General Hope that I am wounded and carried to the rear.”

He was slowly borne towards Coruña, a sergeant and ten soldiers of the Guards and the 42nd being told off for this service. Hardinge’s sash was arranged so as to give him support.

Two surgeons came hastening to meet him. They had been engaged with the arm of his next in command, Sir David Baird, which was badly shattered, but on hearing what had happened to his Chief, Baird hurried them off, and they left his arm half-dressed. Moore, who was losing blood rapidly, observed—

“You can be of no service to me. Go to the wounded soldiers. You may be of use to them.” But this unselfish order could not be obeyed.

Again and again in their sad progress he desired a halt, that he might watch what was going on, and might listen to the fainter sound of the enemy’s musketry, as the French were driven back.

Presently they were overtaken by a spring waggon containing a wounded officer, Colonel Wynch, who asked, “Who was in the blanket?” On hearing that it was General Moore, he suggested his removal to the waggon. Moore did not refuse, but he looked at one of the Highlanders and asked his opinion—would the waggon or the blanket be best? The man advised the latter.

“It will not shake you so much, sir,” he said; “and we can keep step, and carry you more easy.”

“I think so, too,” Sir John quietly said, and they went on their way as before. By this time the hardy Highlanders and Guardsmen who carried him were one and all in tears.

It was nearly dark when they reached his lodgings in Coruña. Colonel Anderson, his devoted friend and comrade during twenty-one years past, met the mournful cavalcade, and was speechless with distress. This was the third time that he had seen Moore carried wounded from a field of battle; and it was the last.

Moore pressed his hand tightly.

“Anderson, don’t leave me!” he murmured.

Then, as his faithful French servant, François, appeared, in blank horror, with falling tears, he smiled.

“Mon ami, this is nothing,” he said.

The surgeons examined the wound, only to find that no hope of recovery existed. By this time the agony had become so overwhelming that Moore could hardly speak, and his face was deathly pale. Yet, after a while, he so far mastered the torture as to utter one sentence and then another at intervals.

“Anderson, you know that I have always wished to die in this way,” came first. And, as the officers of his staff appeared, one by one, he put the same question to each—“Are the French beaten?”

Next, with unconscious pathos, read now in the light of after-misrepresentations—

“I hope the people of England will be satisfied. I hope my country will do me justice!”

Now there was the thought of his own relatives.

“Anderson—you will see my friends as soon as you can. Tell them—everything. Say to my mother——”

For the first time self-control failed. His voice broke, and his features were strongly agitated. The love between that son and that mother had been of no common kind. He was utterly unable to speak what he wished, and he turned to another subject.

“Hope—Hope—I have much to say to him—but—cannot get it out? Are Colonel Graham[2] and all my Aides-de-camp safe?”

Anderson hastily signed to others not to tell him that one of the latter had been dangerously wounded, knowing well the strong affection which existed between Moore and his whole staff. The question was evaded.

He then mentioned that he had made his will, and had in it remembered his servants. “Colbourne has my will—and all my papers,” he said. And when Major Colbourne[3] came in, Moore greeted him with exceeding kindness, turning then to Sir John Hope, to say with difficulty, “Hope, go to the Duke of York, and say he ought to give Colbourne a regiment.” Upon Anderson too he urged the same.

He asked again, “Were the French beaten?” In every direction, he was told. “It’s a great satisfaction for me to know we have beaten the French,” he remarked. “Is Paget in the room?” Colonel Anderson, who throughout remained close by his side, supporting him as he lay, replied in the negative. “Remember me to him. It is General Paget I mean. He is a fine fellow.”

A little later came the words, “I feel myself so strong—I fear I shall be long dying. It is great uneasiness—it is great pain.”

This was the only approach to a complaint which passed those patient lips. But the strength of which he spoke was that of the indomitable will, not of the shattered body, for already life was ebbing fast, and the shadows were closing around him.

Yet, surely for him, beyond the shadows, waited a Light Divine.

He met the last enemy as he had met his earthly foes, as indeed he had ofttimes faced the former, with unshaken composure and without dread, no more startled by the summons than if he had been called upon to cross the English Channel. And, as always, his thoughts were for others, not for himself.

“Everything François says—is right,” he told them. “I have the greatest confidence in him.”

Some grateful words were addressed to the surgeons, thanking them for their efforts to give him ease. He spoke kindly to two more of his Aides-de-camp who came in. One of these was Captain James Stanhope, brother to Charles Stanhope, killed that day, and to Lady Hester Stanhope, Moore’s friend. Stanhope’s eyes met those of the dying soldier, and Moore said distinctly—

“Stanhope—remember me to your sister.”

This was his last utterance. He sank into silence, pressing the hand of Anderson closely to his side. A few minutes later, calmly and without a struggle, the grand spirit triumphed over death, and passed away.

And in that still chamber might be heard the sound of smothered convulsive sobbing. The younger officers present broke utterly down, while the elder men looked on with bowed heads, scarcely better able to restrain their anguish. Colonel Anderson still knelt, supporting the lifeless head, gazing, with blanched and parted lips, into the quiet face, which for twenty-one years had been the centre and the illumination of his being, his look of woe being beyond the power of words to describe. On the other side of the mattress, one in sorrow with all these mourning Englishmen, was the faithful and devoted François. French by birth, he cared for little in the world besides this idolised master, over whom he despairingly hung, his hands wrung together, his face matching in pallor those placid features.

For one of the noblest of men was gone from their midst that hour; and a heavy shadow fell upon the victorious British Army.

Upon this sad scene came another Aide-de-camp, George Napier, too late for any of those last words which would have been to him a lifelong treasure. Twenty years afterwards, when describing what he had seen as he entered, he wrote in still unconquered pain—

“That eye which was wont to penetrate the inmost soul was glazed in death. That manly graceful form, the admiration of the Army, lay stretched, a lifeless corpse. The great spirit had quitted its earthly habitation. All around was sad and gloomy. Moore was dead!”

(To be continued.)