Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
everywhere redundant, because so many of the employers of labour had gone away. The grand object for all real lovers of their country now, should be to induce government or the counties to provide means for the emigration, on a large scale, of destitute labourers, chained by their poverty to the soil. About 150,000 persons have annually emigrated from Ireland for the last three years, carrying with them above half its agricultural capital; and the consequence is, that in many districts the land is uncultivated, and the banknotes in circulation, which, in 1846, were £7,500,000, have sunk in August 1849 to £3,833,000!15 The small cultivators, the employers of the poor, have disappeared, and with them their capital – leaving only to the owners of land a crowd of starving, unemployed labourers, to consume their rents. A million of such starving labourers now oppress the industry of Ireland. Such is the result of agitation at home, and free trade in emigration abroad. The American papers tell us, that each of these starving Irishmen, if strong and healthy, is worth 1000 dollars to the United States. Free-trade emigration can never send them out – it can transport only those who can pay. A large increase of penal emigration, coupled with such a proportionate influx, at the public expense, of free settlers, as would prevent it from becoming an evil, at once solves the transportation question, and is the first step in the right direction in that of Emigration.
MY PENINSULAR MEDAL
PART I. – CHAPTER I
On the evening of the 13th of February last, I was sitting in my library, at my residence in – Square, when a double knock at the door announced the postman. Betty presently entered, bringing, not as I anticipated, a letter or two, but a small packet, which evidently excited her curiosity, as it did mine.
The first thing upon the said packet that caught my eye was a large seal of red wax – the royal arms! – then, above the direction, "On Her Majesty's service!" – just beneath, the word, "Medal!" Yes, the medal that I had earned five-and-thirty years before, in the hard-fought fight on the hill of Toulouse – long expected, it was come at last! And, let me tell you, a very handsome medal, too; well designed, well executed; and accompanied with a very civil letter, from that old soldier, and true soldier's friend, Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the military secretary. This letter being, no doubt, precisely the same as hundreds of "Old Peninsulars" have by this time received, I presume I am guilty of no breach of confidence in here transcribing it for the benefit of my readers: —
"Horse-Guards, 31st January 1849.
"Sir, – I am directed by the Commander-in-Chief to transmit to you the Medal and Clasps graciously awarded to you by her Majesty under the general order of the first of June 1847. I have the honour to be, &c.
As I never attempt to describe my own feelings, except such as are describable, I shall not relate what I now felt on the receipt of this much desired, anxiously expected medal. But this I will say; – long live the Queen! long live Queen Victoria! God bless her! Oh, it was a kind thought: it was a gracious act. It comes to cheer the heart of many an old soldier, and of many a middle-aged gentleman like myself, who got nothing but honour and aching bones for his share in the Peninsular glories; and now has something that he can add to the archives of his family, and leave to those who come after him. "Graciously awarded to you by her Majesty: " Yes; and I feel it as much so, as if her Majesty's own gracious hands had placed it in mine. And, if ever she wants defenders, so long as this arm can wield – but enough: romance would be out of place.
After the delivery of the medals had been proceeding for some time, I was coming, one morning, out of the Horse-Guards, when I met old Major Snaffle, who had just got his. The major belongs to that class who are known in the army by the name of "grumblers;" and, having been knocked down by the wind of a shot at the Trocadero, having been brought away in the last boat but nineteen from Corunna, having seen the battle of Salamanca from the top of a tree, having been seized with the ague but an hour before the storming of Badajoz, having again been very ill in the south of France from eating unripe grapes, having regularly drawn his pay and allowances, and never having been absent from his regiment on sick leave when he could not get it, now justly deems himself a very ill-used man, because more has not been done for him. "Well, major," said I, "I wish you joy. So you have got your medal at last." "Yes," growled the major, or rather grunted, "at last I have got it. Long time, though, six-and-thirty years – long time to wait for half-a-crown."
My own profession, at present, is very different from that of arms. Nor can I presume, having been in but one general action, to rank with those brave old fire-eaters of the Peninsular army, whose medals with many clasps – bar above bar – tell of six, seven, eight, critical combats or more, in which they took a part under the illustrious Wellington, in Portugal, in Spain, in the south of France. By the bye, how I should like to see the Duke's own medal! What a lot of bars HE must have! – what a glorious ladder, step rising above step in regular succession, when he sits down to soup in his field-marshal's coat! But I was going to say – to return from great things to small – so far from being able to claim high military honours for myself, though serving under his Grace's orders in the Peninsular war, I was not there at all in a strictly military capacity. Yet as, from this very circumstance, I had opportunities of seeing scenes, characters, and incidents, connected with the British army, of a different kind from those described by other writers on the subject, I am induced, by the arrival of my medal, to place on record a short narrative of my personal adventures in the Peninsula and south of France.
Yet, ere I commence the yarn, a word, one word, for the honoured dead. Many, who came home safe from the Peninsula, fell at Waterloo. Others were borne from the western ports of Europe across the Atlantic, to be marks for Kentucky riflemen and New England bushfighters. Of the survivors, multitudes upon multitudes have gradually dropped off; and those who now remain, of the legions that conquered at Vimeira, at Vittoria, and at Orthes, to receive her Majesty's gracious gift, are probably fewer in number than those who are gone. One "Old Peninsular" I have heard of, in whose own family and connexions, had all lived, there would have been fourteen or fifteen claimants of the medal. He is now, if he still survives, the only one left. In my own connexions we should have made seven; and now, besides myself, there remains only one venerable uncle, who is comfortably located in a snug berth in Canada. There was my honoured father, who received the thanks of parliament for his services at Corunna, and pounded the French batteries at Cadiz. There was my cousin, Tom Impett, of the 53d, whom I found with a musket-ball in his leg two days after the battle of Toulouse, in a house full of wounded men and officers. He died in Canada. There was another venerable uncle, as kind an uncle as ever breathed, and as honest a man as ever lived. He died, to his honour, far from rich, after having been personally responsible for millions upon millions of public money, the sinews of war, all paid away in hard cash for our Peninsular expenses. He was generally known at headquarters by a comical modification of his two Christian names. There was Captain, afterwards Colonel B – , of the Royal Engineers, a quiet, mild-tempered man, with military ardour glowing in his breast – the man of education and the gentleman. We met near the platform of St Cyprien; and he had the kindness to entertain me with a calm disquisition on the fight, while we were both in the thick of it. He had his share of professional employment in the Peninsular sieges, and got a bad wound or two; but lived to fortify Spike Island, and was at length lost at sea. And then there was colonel H – , who commanded a Portuguese brigade with the rank of brigadier-general – an extraordinary composition of waggery, shrewdness, chivalry, and professional talent. He came down to Lisbon while I was there, on his way to England, quite worn out with hard service and the effect of his wounds, or, as he told us himself, "unripped at every seam." He died not many days after, on his passage to England.
Now for myself. I commenced keeping my terms at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the year 1809, the seventeenth of my age. A college life was not altogether my own choice; for nearly all the males of my family, for three generations, had served or were serving their country either in the army, navy, or marines, to the number of some ten or twelve; and I myself had always looked forward to wearing the king's uniform. Moreover, as the Peninsular war had already commenced when I went to college, and I had learned at school the use of the broadsword and small sword, had been drilled, and could handle a musket, my thoughts often turned to
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