Note 115 — Chapter XIII · THE PENINSULAR WAR

The author’s eldest brother; he was said to be slain. When the French renewed the attack on Elvina, he was somewhat in advance of that village, and alone, for the troops were scattered by the nature of the ground. Being hurt in the leg, he endeavoured to retire, but was overtaken, and thrown to the ground with five wounds; a French drummer rescued him, and when a soldier with whom he had been struggling made a second attempt to kill him, the drummer once more interfered. The morning after the battle Marshal Soult sent his own surgeon to Major Napier, and, with a kindness and consideration very uncommon, wrote to Napoleon, desiring that his prisoner might not be sent to France, which from the system of refusing exchanges would have ruined his professional prospect; the drummer also received the cross of the Legion of Honour. When the 2nd corps quitted Corunna, Marshal Soult recommended his prisoner to the attention of Marshal Ney. The latter, treating him rather with the kindness of a friend than the civility of an enemy, lodged him with the French consul, supplied him with money, gave him a general invitation to his house, and not only refrained from sending him to France, but when by a flag of truce he knew that Major Napier’s mother was mourning for him as dead, he permitted him, and with him the few soldiers taken in the action, to go at once to England, merely exacting a promise that none should serve until exchanged. I would have not touched at all upon these private adventures, were it not that gratitude demands a public acknowledgment of such generosity, and that demand is rendered more imperative by the after misfortunes of Marshal Ney. That brave and noble-minded man’s fate is but too well known. He who had fought five hundred battles for France, not one against her, was shot as a traitor! Could the bitterest enemy of the Bourbons have more strongly marked the difference between their interests and those of the nation?