Charles Napier

“ When Napier returned to India as commander-in-chief in 1849, McMurdo went with him as aide-de-camp. He acted as assistant adjutant-general from November 1849 till November 1851, and took part in the operations against the Afridis, including the forcing of the Kohat pass, for which he received the medal and clasp. In 1850 he published a pamphlet, 'Sir Charles Napier's Indian Baggage Corps,' in reply to Colonel Burlton's comments on Napier's letter to Sir John Hobhouse. ”

“ The picture of his arrival at the scene of action has been given us by Charles Napier, and there are few more striking bits of battle-painting. Napier is standing in front of his line, his pickets are falling back from Elvina before the advancing French skirmishers; behind the enemy's light troops Mermet's heavy column of infantry is coming on rapidly to the attack, their shouts of En avant! rising above the crack of musketry or the boom of the battery whose shot is tearing fast through the line. ”

“ There we have the whole story of Napier and his antagonists. There we have the explanation of what Balzac meant when he wrote, "There is nothing so terrible as the vengeance of the shop-keeper." Throughout more than forty years of his fighting life, Charles Napier was exposed to that hatred and that vengeance. It could not have been otherwise. To be hated is often the price the hero must pay in life for the love his name is to gather round it after death.
One little gleam of soldier service came to brighten these last months of so-called command in India. ”

“ This is the true key to solve the now perplexing question of the antagonism encountered by Charles Napier from the moment of his success at Meanee to the end of his life. The pride of aristocratic privilege in high place is a dangerous thing to touch; but the pride of the plutocratic Solomon in his right to reap the labour of those who toil and spin is a thousand times a more venturesome thing to trench upon. ”

“ Leave was granted, and on March 9th they came out and laid their swords at Napier's feet. With all their love of plunder they were very splendid warriors, these Doomkee, Bhoogtee, and Jackranee chiefs and clansmen, holding notions of the honour of arms which more civilised soldiers would do well to follow. Here is one such notion. When Charles Napier stood before the southern cleft or pass which gave entrance to Truckee, another column under Beatson blocked the northern gate of the stronghold. ”

“ No other word can so fitly express the mental calibre of the men whose censure drove Charles Napier from the Indian command, and it is here used in a sense quite different from the usual caste acceptation of the term. The soldier and the shop-keeper must ever remain at opposite poles of thought. At their best, one goes out to fight for his country, and if necessary to die for it; the other remains at home to live, and to live well by it. At their worst, one acquires by force from the enemy, the other absorbs by fraud from his friends. ”

“ I noticed some fine rifle battalions at a review of the Portuguese troops, and I had a very amusing talk with the celebrated admiral, Sir Charles Napier, who was present on horseback, in a British post-captain's uniform, but with a little hat, a la Napoleon, with a Portuguese cockade, his trousers all worked up, huge spurs on his feet, and an enormous cudgel in his grasp.
Finally, the King took us on a sporting expedition to Mafra, among the mountains which stretch towards Torres Vedras. They are not high, but steep, and covered with stunted vegetation. ”

“ Now, Charles Napier, be calm! give your enemies no advantage over you by loss of self-control; do nothing that they want, and everything to annoy them; keep your post like a rock, till you are ready to go on board for England; and then with your pen, and your pistols too, if necessary, harass them." Here was his plan of campaign, sketched out clearly enough, plenty of fire and steel in it, no [Pg 178] concealment. "The Gauls march openly to battle," had written a Roman historian eighteen hundred years earlier. ”

“ Instead of class feeling and narrow interests the boys developed early a great sympathy for the poor, and a capacity for judging people independently of rank. Charles Napier himself, born in Whitehall, was three years old when they moved to Ireland. ”

“ Here is a little glimpse of the interior economy of a regiment quartered in the healthiest part of England in the year 1807. Charles Napier is now in the Fiftieth Regiment, quartered at Ashford in Kent. "Our men," he writes, "have got the ophthalmia very badly, and are dying fast also from inflammation of the lungs caused by the coldness of the weather and bad barracks; in some cases typhus supervenes, but is not contagious. There is no raging fever, cold alone is the cause, yet the men die three or four a day. No officer suffers; they are warmer." This was in the month of March. ”

“ Between them stood Napier, determined upon using to the utmost the immense power which the Viceroy had placed in his hands, and seeing far beyond the present dispute a time when this valley of the Indus must all become British territory; seeing it in imagination, too, a happy valley waving with grain, peopled by a peaceful and contented population free from the exactions of semi barbarian chiefs, and enjoying the blessings of a government which would rule them with patriarchal justice—a picture the reality of which no human eye has ever looked on. ”

“ On hearing of these movements, Bonaparte exclaimed energetically to Soult, who related it to Major Charles Napier of the 43rd—
"Moore is the only general now fit to contend with me; I shall advance against him in person."
Marching to his left, Moore crossed the Douro at Toro, to form a junction with Sir David Baird on the 21st December at Vallada. ”

“ That Charles Napier resented with exceeding warmth these insults upon his honour and attacks upon his fortune is not matter of surprise, at least to those who have watched his career through all its varying vicissitudes, nor were the times such as would have tended to [Pg 176] soothe into quieter temper a mind easily set aflame by the sight of suffering and oppression. This summer of 1848 was indeed a painful period. The shadow of an appalling famine was still passing over Ireland ”

“ The Queen follows Lord Stanley's recommendation to confer the G.C.B. on Sir Charles Napier with great pleasure, from her high opinion of his late achievements, and she thinks it might be advisable that some of the officers who most contributed to the victories of Meeanee and Hyderabad46 should receive lower grades of the Bath. The Queen is much impressed with the propriety of a medal being given to the troops who fought under Sir Charles Napier, as the armies under Nott, Pollock, and Sale received such distinctions for actions hardly equal to those in Scinde. ”

“ Early in 1801 Charles Napier mounts his little Irish cob and rides away from Limerick to begin the career which was to be carried through such stirring and varied scenes. He rode in a single day from Limerick to Celbridge, more than one hundred miles, on the same horse. We know nothing of that long day's ride, save the bare fact of its accomplishment ”

“ As the world translates the phrase, Napier was perhaps not a successful man. Yet he lived to see the principles he had struggled for through life, and suffered for in his struggles, everywhere triumphant. The great circle of human sympathy growing wider with every hour, and some new tribe among the toiling outcasts of men taken within its long-closed limits. ”

“ Knowledge, Valour, Foresight, Authoritie, and Fortune. He that is not endowed for all or for most of these virtues is not to be reputed fit for his charge. Nor can this glory be purchased but by practice and proof; for the greatest fencer is not always the best fighter, nor the fairest tilter the ablest soldier, nor the primest favourite in court the fittest commander in camp." How aptly this description of a leader fits Charles Napier the reader can best judge. Knowledge, Valour, and Foresight he possessed to an extraordinary degree. ”

“ From him Charles Napier learned a thousand lessons of truth and justice, of honour in arms, of simplicity in life, of steady purpose, of hatred for pomp and show and empty-headed pride, of pity for the poor, of sympathy with the oppressed, of fearless independence of character, which those who care to follow us through these pages will find growing in profusion along the pathway of his life, plants none of which ever withered from the moment they were planted in these youthful days, but many of which were only to blossom into full luxuriance in the autumn of existence. ”

“ The effect of the defeat was electrical; the whole nation was in revolt. Joseph Bonaparte quitted Madrid, and the French withdrew behind the Ebro. The moment was deemed auspicious by the British Government for trying once more the fortunes of a continental war, and in the middle of the year a large English army was despatched to the Peninsula. In the second division of that army Charles Napier sailed for Lisbon to begin his long-wished-for life of active service ”

“ Again, in 1821, Napier went to Greece and travelled extensively through the country. As he wanders by the battle-fields whose names will never die he is busy fighting them again with modern armies. On the plain of Chæronea he thinks the marsh in front impassable for guns, and sees how Pindus and Parnassus secure a flank; and at Thermopylæ he notes how the sea has receded from the mountain, but thinks three thousand men instead of three hundred might still hold the position against an army. ”

“ The Emir Bechir is marching in his rear, and I have two battalions ready to cross Dog River higher up to support him, so that if he advances as he writes me he is doing, we shall probably destroy Ibrahim. But I wish you to understand, that it is likely that Souliman Pacha will send more troops up here, and you have taken away from my right the marines and a Turkish battalion; they ought to be sent back, and the steam-boats, if you can spare them, should be kept in the bay, for if we defeat this army, we ought to fall instantly on Souliman ”

“ I proposed that he should do so, thinking it much better for the peace and happiness of the country, that they should proceed by sea to Alexandria in preference to marching through a country where the inhabitants would be exposed to all the devastations of a retiring army. I never 102contemplated that his army should be destroyed after signing a Convention; quite the contrary. The moment the Convention was signed, Mehemet Ali could only be considered the Sultan’s servant, and the Egyptian troops the Sultan’s army, and not a hair of their heads ought to have been touched ”

“ Neither ship lost a man on board: our bowsprit wounded in three places is the only material injury we have suffered.
(Signed) ⁠“Charles Napier.”
“H.M.S. Milford, Palermo Bay, May 27. 1812. “Sir,– In acknowledging the receipt of your letter of the 14th inst., relative to the capture of the 28 vessels at Sapri, I have much pleasure in conveying my sentiments of the zeal hy which yourself and Captain Nicolas have been actuated, as well as the officers and men belonging to the Thames and Pilot. I am, &c.
(Signed) ⁠“T. F. Freemantle.” “To Captain Napier, H.M.S. Thames.” ”

“ There is nothing in the whole world that I would not do to please you, or forward the service, but I do not see how I can, with any propriety, put myself under a junior officer, where we shall have 500 English marines and 500 Turks. You must know that as yet I have had all the fag, and surely I ought to reap the advantage of it. Captain Stewart went away without any force, therefore Captain Berkeley cannot complain of me, his senior officer, with a broad pennant flying, commanding an important expedition. God knows I should be sorry to rob any man of his share of service ”

“ Bad though that law most certainly was, and vehemently though he had opposed it by voice and pen and labour of mind and body, William Napier was still the last man in England to pass the boundary which separates moral from physical antagonism. It is alike the misfortune of thrones and of peoples that around the former there will ever crowd those selfish and self-seeking men whose loyalty is only a cover to hide their own greed of power or possession. ”

“ On his arrival at Beyrout he made strong and repeated representations to Selim Pacha, and entreated him to assist in putting down the civil war, but in vain. The fact is, Selim Pacha was acting under the orders of the Porte, who only wanted a good excuse to put an end to the government of the ruling Prince.
Shortly after this the Porte threw off the mask; the Grand Prince was arrested and sent to Constantinople, and Omar Pacha, a German who had entered into the Turkish service, and served under my orders in Syria, was appointed by the Porte Governor of Lebanon. He may be a good man enough ”

“ When Colonel Napier settled at Celbridge he was still in his prime, a man formed both in mind and body to conquer and direct in camp, court, or council; and yet, for all that, a failure as the world counts its prizes and blanks in the lottery of life. ”

“ The weather is still fine; but if a movement does not take place at once, it will be too late, and the troops must remain in garrison all the winter. Ibrahim will probably establish his head-quarters at Balbeck, if he intends remaining in Syria; but as he has given up the north, and lost Acre, I do not see what he is to gain by remaining in this country.
“We hear the French fleet are gone to Toulon; I fear they are up to some mischief. If this is true, we ought to be at Malta; but we never can, with our present force, watch both the French and Egyptians. ”