saw this letter; had he done so, even his cautious mind would have admitted the sufficiency of the evidence on which the impugned statement was made.]

To the Editor of the Naval and Military Gazette.

SIR,-In your recent number of the 'Naval and Military Gazette' is one of those generous defences so frequently made by you against slanderous assaults on myself and my brother, the late Sir Charles Napier.

My present assailant in the Edinburgh Review' is probably he who criticised the Life of Sir Charles Napier,' and but for your observations should not have been noticed by me; for truly the criticism on the 'Life' was not of a nature to make any man of sense uneasy, and the present attack seems even more unworthy of notice. On your head, therefore, be this letter; for it is your notice that has set my pen in motion, or rather set my tongue going, being still incapable of moving my limbs.

You quote the Reviewer as saying, "General Napier states that Marshal Beresford had prevailed upon the Portuguese Regency to send 15,000 men of the old Portuguese troops, completely equipped, to the Duke of Wellington, before the battle of Waterloo; that the only real business which Mr. Canning had to transact in his embassy was to procure the execution of the agreement; and, although nothing but an order for embarkation was needed, he frustrated the whole affair by making it the subject of diplomacy.-(Hist. of Penins. War, vol. iv. p. 140.) As General Napier quotes no authority for this statement, his habit of decrying all civil and of extolling all military officers leaves us in uncertainty as to its credibility."

Now, judging from the time when the writer must have composed his attack, I think, with you, that he anticipated no answer"dead men tell no tales ;" and I was then so near that security for him as to have my duration of life calculated on hours, not days, by my medical friend Mr. Edward Tayloe, whose skill, nevertheless, baffled his apprehensions. Wherefore I say, that being also of a very mature age (74), it might have been hard for me to seek for and quote from original documents returned many years ago to their owners-most of those owners also being now no more. Happily, this attack is easily disposed of, both by inference and reference.

It is well known that I have had many controversies in defence of my work on the Peninsular War, and I have never failed to pro

duce authority, of more or less weight, in support of disputed facts. This gives me a title to credence where I have not quoted authority, unless good authority be adduced in contradiction. Now, my present assailant offers no authority, not even his own name; he, an anonymous writer, not pretending to any personal knowledge of the fact in dispute, requires the public to disbelieve my assertions (put forth in an elaborate work), which have for twenty-four years been allowed publicity without contradiction.

In my main work, and in my long and bitter controversy with Marshal Beresford, I gave him sore displeasure. Can the Reviewer think that the Marshal, being so offended, and who wrote, or caused to be written, several pamphlets against me, would have failed to contradict my statement at once, on a point like the one now in dispute, when his simple assertion would have been both damnatory and decisive?

Here let me do justice to Marshal Beresford, and this opportunity of doing so gives me great pleasure. Knowledge obtained from a common friend empowers me to say that Marshal Beresford, when in declining health, often conversed about his own career in arms— certainly a remarkable one, whatever military faults he may be charged with-and frequently referred to my work as authority on facts. I do not mean that he admitted the justice of my censures on himself; but, notwithstanding his natural anger, he would not refrain from praise where he thought it merited. This is also his own eulogium, and for that reason it is mentioned.

So much for inference-now for reference.

My authority was the personal assurance of the late Lord Stuart de Rothesay, who was officially mixed up with the matter-an assurance which a careful examination of the original documents in his ambassadorial archives confirmed. Those, and his private papers, were placed by him in my hands without restriction, and can therefore be honourably referred to now, though I did not name my authority then, to avoid involving him uneasily with a family into which his daughter was at the time about to enter by marriage. Moreover, knowing how true the facts were, it seemed unnecessary to support them until assailed.

Indeed, after their publication, Lord Stuart de Rothesay told me that the late Lady Canning, with a natural and even praiseworthy anger-seeing she knew not the truth-was only prevented from commencing legal proceedings against me by his assuring her that what I had said was true. Lord Stuart's frank, manly character is well known, and hence the Edinburgh' gentleman's anonymous doubts as to my veracity are not of much weight. Wherefore, 2 c

VOL. II.

again I say, on your head be it that my present tediousness is bestowed on the public.

Now allow me two "last words!"

The anonymous gentleman who has such serious doubts of my accuracy does not, I see by your quotation, hesitate to call the Spanish peasantry stupid. The Spanish peasants, men and women alike, and most especially those of Old Castile, are unsurpassed even by the Irish in quickness and subtle wit, gaiety and exuberance of imagination, and are also unapproachable in dignity and refinement of manners-no small proof of their intelligence. Call Cervantes a dullard!

My real last words must now touch a subject unconnected with the Reviewer, but injuriously affecting the character of a great

man.

You have given a long extract from a paper called the 'Telegraph,' in which, among many other doltish and offensive absurdities, and injurious aspersions on the character of the old Peninsular troops, the editor of the 'Telegraph,' having for authority a work called 'Paris Revisited,' written by one Scott, asserts that the Duke of Wellington had the women of his army flogged in support of discipline!!

The Duke of Wellington would have given his own body to the scourge sooner than have thus outraged all the manly feelings of his brave soldiers, for he was essentially a gentleman. Let shame, therefore, attend this brutal slander for the duration of its evil literary existence.

February 14, 1859.

WILLIAM NAPIER, Lieutenant-General.

THE END.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,

AND CHARING CROSS,