Part 6 — CHAPTER XXXIII.
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A WARRIOR TAKING HIS REST.
The rapid fall of darkness made it difficult to pursue the enemy, who at every point had been worsted. General Hope, knowing that large reinforcements might be expected to arrive soon in the French camp, decided to carry out Sir John Moore’s plan of immediate embarkation.
At ten o’clock that night the march began, brigade after brigade leaving the field of battle and silently going on board one transport after another. So complete had been all previous arrangements that, by morning light, almost the whole British Army was on board.
Meanwhile, anxious consultation had taken place as to what should be done with the beloved remains of the Commander. Colonel Anderson settled the question by stating that Moore had often told him his wish—“if he ever fell in battle, to be buried where he had fallen.” It was decided that a grave should be dug on the rampart of the Coruña citadel.
At midnight the body was reverently borne into the citadel by Colonel Graham, Major Colbourne and the Aides-de-camp. For a few hours it lay in Colonel Graham’s room.
In the early morning firing was heard. It was then determined not to put off the funeral any longer, lest a fresh attack should be impending and the officers be compelled to hasten away before paying the last honours to their Chief.
Somewhat strangely, it fell to Roy Baron to be present at this mournful ceremony.
It so happened that, in the early morning, Roy was sent by the Colonel of his Regiment with a message to one of the Aides-de-camp; and as he arrived on the spot just when the funeral was about to begin, he was allowed to be one of the party in attendance.
Not at dead of night, but at eight o’clock in the chill morning of a January day, and in the grave prepared by his own men, Sir John Moore was laid. No coffin could be procured. The body had not been undressed. He wore still the General’s uniform in which he had fought his last battle, and—
“He lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.”
That same cloak, in which but a few days earlier he had visited Roy in the little hut,—had laid his kind hand upon the boy’s arm,—had spoken never-to-be-forgotten words of praise,—had smiled upon him——
Roy dared not let himself think of all this. Burning blinding tears forced their way to his eyes—and not to his only—as he gazed his last upon that perfect face in its pale sublime repose.
Moore was carried by the “Officers of the Family,” who would allow no other hands to do for him these last sad services. The Burial Service was read by the Chaplain. And what was in the hearts of them all has been told, in words that cannot be improved upon, by that noble elegy, which is Moore’s best monument.
“Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow, But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow. We thought as we hollowed his narrow bed, And smoothed down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head, And we far away on the billow. Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone, And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him; But little he’ll reck, if they’ll let him sleep on, In the grave where a Briton has laid him. But half of our heavy task was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring, And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory, We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone, But we left him alone with his glory.”[1]
For every man in the Army had lost a friend that day; and many a one felt with passionate grief that the world, without John Moore in it, would be for him a changed world thenceforward.
Hard things were spoken of him after he was gone, and upbraidings, indeed, were uttered—not by his brave foe, who honoured Moore, and wished to raise a stone to his memory—but by an ungrateful section of his own countrymen, because, forsooth, with an Army of only twenty-three thousand men he had not met and crushed two hundred thousand. We know better now! In the cold clear light of history, such fogs are driven away.
Yet, even in these later days, have we made enough of the name of John Moore? Have we thought enough of the man of whom Napoleon in the zenith of his fame could declare that he was the only General left fit to contend with himself, and against whose twenty-three thousand men he counted it needful to bring in a fierce rush over eighty thousand, failing even then in his purpose? Have we thought enough of the man under whom the future Wellington wished nothing better than to serve?—and about whose “towering fame” the sober historian of the Peninsular War wrote in terms of unstinted praise? Have we thought enough of the man who, while the bravest of the brave, was also the most blameless and the most beloved of men, against whom Detraction had no word to utter, save that he stood up almost too strenuously for his country’s honour, and that he did not accomplish impossibilities?
If not, it is surely time that his countrymen should begin to “do him justice!”
But for that fatal cannon-ball—who can say?—would Wellington have become the foremost man in Europe, or would he have been second to Moore? It might have been Moore, not Wellington, who turned the tide of Napoleon’s success.[2] It was Moore who stemmed that tide, with his spirited countermarch and splendid retreat, drawing the Enemy after him, until he stood at bay upon the coast, and hurled back the onset of the flower of Buonaparte’s Army.
Of Moore’s personal valour, of his indomitable courage, of his desperate enthusiasm, no voice was ever heard in question. To his consummate generalship, his mingled audacity and calculation, this marvellous Retreat bore ample witness, but for many years it was not rightly understood by the mass of his own countrymen. Napoleon, Soult and Ney gauged him far more truly than did the average Englishman of his day. Not even against the future Wellington would Napoleon have poured such an overwhelming force as he launched against Moore.
(To be continued.)