At the
end of his noble history of the Peninsular War he lets the curtain fall
upon the scene with solemn brevity in a single sentence, thus:--
"The British infantry embarked at Bordeaux, some for America, some
for England: the cavalry, marching through France, took shipping
at Boulogne. Thus the war terminated, and with it all remembrance
of the Veterans' services.
"Yet those Veterans had won nineteen pitched battles, and
innumerable combats; had made or sustained ten sieges and taken
four great fortresses; had twice expelled the French from
Portugal, once from Spain; had penetrated France, and killed,
wounded, or captured two hundred thousand enemies--leaving of
their own number, forty thousand dead, whose bones, whiten the
plains and mountains of the Peninsula."
Science and the base malignity of our latest adversaries have debased
modern warfare, as waged by them, from its ancient dignity and
honour; and they have conducted it so as to make it difficult to believe
that from the Kaiser down to the subaltern on land and the petty officer
at sea that nation can produce a single gentleman.
Your loving old
G.P.
22
MY DEAR ANTONY,
This letter, like the last one, is concerned with war. War brings to every
man not incapacitated by age or physical defects the call of his country
to fight, and if need be to die, for it.
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