Note 34 — BATTLE OF CORUNNA. 16th. January, 1809.

Major (afterwards Sir Charles) Napier received five terrible wounds at Corunna, and but for the aid of a generous French drummer, would there have been killed; he was made a prisoner, and his fate being long unknown, he was mourned for as dead by his family. In the battle of Busaco, a bullet struck his face, and lodged behind the ear, splintering the articulation of the jawbone; yet with this dreadful hurt, he made his way, under a fierce sun, to Lisbon, more than one hundred miles! Returning from France, after the battle of Waterloo, the ship sunk off Flushing, and he only saved himself by swimming to a pile, on which he clung until a boat carried him off, half drowned, for the pile was too large to climb up; he had caught it during the recession of a wave, and was overwhelmed by each recurring surge. He escaped Cholera, and a second shipwreck off the Indus, and marvellously recovering from the stroke of a rocket at Kurrachee, was again firm on horseback, and conducted a dangerous war to a glorious termination. On the 13th. of December, 1842, whilst in Scinde, he was observing the practice of a rocket-train, when one of the fiery missiles burst, rocket and shell together, and tore the calf of his right leg open to the bone; but neither the bone itself nor the great artery were injured, and the wound was instantly stitched. His decease did not occur until some years afterwards.