Transcriber’sNote
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W Napier
Lieut.-General Sir W. Napier. Pinxt. W.H. Egleton, sculpt.
ENGLISH
BATTLES AND SIEGES
IN THE
PENINSULA.
EXTRACTED FROM HIS ‘PENINSULA WAR.’
BY
LIEUT.-GEN. SIR WILLIAM NAPIER, K.C.B.,
&c. &c.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1855.
LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
AND CHARING CROSS.
iii
NOTICE.
In this publication, the combats of Roriça, Vimiero, andCoruña, and the character of Sir John Moore, have beenentirely recomposed. The other battles and sieges are,with more or less compression of details, transcripts fromthe History of the Peninsula War. Thus arranged they willperhaps most effectually exhibit the constant energy of theBritish soldier, and draw attention in their neighbourhoodsto the veterans who still survive. Few of those brave menhave more than a scanty provision, many have none; andnearly all, oppressed with wounds, disease, and poverty,sure attendants on an old soldier’s services, feel life a burthen,so heavy as to make them envy the lot of comrades whothrew it off early on the field of battle.
For the authenticity of the events the reader has thisguarantee. The author was either an eye-witness of whathe relates, or acquired his knowledge from those who were.Persons of no mean authority. Commanders-in-chief,generals, and other officers on both sides; private officialcorrespondence of the English envoys; military journalsand reports of the French leaders; the correspondence ofthe intrusive King Joseph, and his ministers, and the privatemilitary notes and instructions of the Emperor Napoleon,have all contributed to establish the truth of the facts andmotives of action.
For the great Captain who led the British troops soivtriumphantly, this record gives no measure of ability. Towin victories was the least of his labours. Those who desireto know what an enormous political, financial, and militarypressure he sustained, what wiles he circumvented, whatopposing skill he baffled, what a powerful enemy he dealtwith and overcame, must seek the story in the original Historyfrom which this work has been extracted. For thesoldiers it is no measure of their fortitude and endurance:it records only their active courage. But what they were,their successors now are—witness the wreck of the Birkenhead,where four hundred men, at the call of their heroicofficers, Captain Wright and Lieutenant Girardot, calmlyand without a murmur, accepted death in a horrible formrather than endanger the women and children already savedin the boats. The records of the world furnish no parallelto this self-devotion!