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powerful opponent, than as one expiating his offences by a just punishment. At the same time, and as a natural consequence of such a state of society, the commerce of the Islands was much depressed. The communications with the interior were mere mule-tracks-in many places not even mule-tracks existed; the harbours were impracticable; the islanders suffered under grievous taxation, enforced on an unjust basis, and were compelled to give up time and labour for the construction of public works, though the public works never were made available, and money for their completion could not be procured. With characteristic energy, Napier applied himself to the reform of some of those evils and abuses in his Island of Cephalonia, and for a time he was eminently successful. Sir Thomas Maitland, the then Lord High Commissioner, in his system of government, made each Resident almost despotic in his own island. Colonel Napier wielded the power thus committed to him with a sagacity which well repaid the confidence reposed in him. The burden of taxation was more equally distributed; the system of the corvée, or forced labour, was put on a more equitable and less onerous footing; justice was equally distributed between man and man-between the state and her subjects. The following anecdote illustrates the change worked by him in the administration of justice, at least of the changed feeling of the people with regard to it. A poor man was carrying home some fish, when the servant of a Greek, high in station, insisted on his selling them, and by threats of his master's vengeance, had almost terrified him into compliance. Another man of the lower class coming up, said “ Fear him not; do you not know that it is now the Laws, and not the SIGNORI, which rule us ?” Such a remark shows what, at least, was the opinion of the populace; they were gaining confidence in the laws-the first step towards having them obeyed.

The physical features of Cephalonia opposed great difficulties to the open.ng of communications between the opposite sides of the island. Sheer up through its centre rises an almost perpendicular chain of mountains. One of the most available passes has a rise of 1,500 feet in so short a space, that a man standing at the spot where it begins to ascend from the level, can converse with one at the top of the pass; yet even through this and similar regions did Napier cause roads practicable for traffic to be opened, without imposing additional expense on the island. By the erection of lighthouses, he facilitated trade. He took steps to imbue the people with agricultural knowledge-in short, adopting that vigorous and decided line which the circumstances of the country rendered necessary, he was a wise and beneficent ruler, a worthy successor of the Homeric sovereign-μεγαθύμων Κεφαλλήνων.

But unfortunately Sir Thomas Maitland's successor in office was in almost everything the reverse of that strong-minded governor. He insisted upon interfering with the detail duty of all his subordinates. Fond of display, he expended the revenues of the island in unmeaning pomps; and distrustful of his Residents, he curbed their power, and strove to govern the island through the feudal chiefs (whose baleful influence had been almost destroyed by the vigorous administrations of Sir Thomas Maitland's Residents), and by pursuing the hateful maxim, divide et impera. A misunderstanding between him and a man of Napier's vigor of mind, was inevitable. He thwarted the plans which were rapidly bringing Cephalonia out of barbarism, and crowned a series of persecutions by driving Colonel Napier from his government. But the hostility manifested by his opponent gave Napier a very singular triumph-a triumph of all others most grateful to a man of his warm feelings and anxiety to benefit all men. Before leaving Cephalonia, he had purchased a small plot of ground, about three-quarters of an acre, near Argostoli, the chief town. On his depar ture, occupied with more important matters, he took small heed of this patch. It was neglected, and trespassers invaded it; but when the people found that their Resident was not to return-that his career of utility to them was finished, a number of them took it under their protection, cultivated it, disposed of the proceeds, and deposited the entire amount with a friend of his, to be remitted to him; and this they did year after year, without even letting their names be known, without hope of profit or reward, as a mark of love and respect for their old governor. What, then, did he care for the hostility of the lord high commissioner? He felt that his people loved him; that his rule, though stern, had won for him the hearts of the keen-seeing Greeks.

Shortly after his return from Cephalonia, he thought it right to defend himself from the attacks of his persecutor, by the publication of "The Colonies and the Ionian Islands," a book replete with information on those interesting dependencies, drawing a masterly parallel between the governments of Maitland and his successor-blowing to the winds the calumnies which had been woven against him, and lashing, with the most caustic humour, the then Commissioner. This book was rapidly bought up, and is now out of print.

The vigorous and wise policy of Colonel Napier, especially when made known to the world by his publication, procured him many admirers; and in 1835, the Commissioners for the Colonisation of South Australia, obtained for him the offer of the governorship of that colony. His appointment was almost definitively concluded, when he discovered that it was the intention of the government to place the colony in the desert, without soldiers to defend it or to preserve order, and without a reserve fund of money or credit, to enable it to pass through the trying ordeal of the first few years of the settlement, in case of any untoward accident, such as drought, failure of crops, or devastation by the natives. In his letter to Lord Glenelg, the then Secretary for the Colonies, he asked for only two hundred men, and says, with respect to the money-"I really do not think we should have occasion to call for this money, but I am sure that if it was required, and could not be had, the result would be fearful." These requests, reasonable as they seem, were refused by the mistaken economy of the then government, and Colonel Napier felt it his duty to decline accepting the charge. He was reserved for greater things-the talents destined to save the British empire in India were not to be hidden in a remote corner of the world, though the sagacity which restored peace, trade, and prosperity to Scinde, would most probably have speedily caused the colony to flourish.

At this time he published "Colonisation, with Remarks upon Small Farms and Over Population," in which he eloquently advocates the rights of native tribes, and denounces the atrocities too frequently perpetrated by our lawless settlers against races less barbarous than themselves, if the true test of barbarity be disregard for human suffering. While unemployed, his regard for this unhappy country induced him to fix his residence for some time in Dublin, and whilst amongst us, in the year 1838, he directed his attention to Ireland's practical wants. His pamphlet, published about this period, most ably treats of our neglected waste lands, and our defective agriculture. The alacrity with which he has lately accorded his approval to Lord Clarendon's efforts on the latter subject, and his munificent donation to the agricultural fund, attest his earnestness on this point.

By the brevet of 1837, he obtained the rank of major-general, and soon afterwards published his "Remarks on Military Law, and the Punishment of Flogging"-a work valuable in many respects, but especially in pointing out the anomalous position of a soldier in these countries, subject to two incon sistent and occasionally adverse codes, and in the strong reasoning by which he demonstrates the impropriety of flogging soldiers in time of peace-an opinion now almost universal. This book also contains many valuable suggestions for the amelioration of the condition and habits of the soldier, of which some have been already adopted; others seem likely soon to be. The anecdote with which it teems, its ready humour and fervent humanity of tone, all most characteristic of the author, make it interesting even to the least military readers. About the same time he edited De Vigny's "Lights and Shadows of Military Life."

In March, 1839, he was appointed to the command of the Northern District of England. It will be recollected that at that time the manufacturing districts were convulsed by the effects of an unchecked political agi tation, exciting the minds of the operatives, who were then suffering se verely from the depression of trade and the high prices of produce. The Chartist conspiracy had almost reached a crisis, and scenes of unbridled sedition, like those which, from similar causes, have been of late so frequent, were of constant occurrence. The aspect of affairs, especially in the northern district, was very alarming. The populace was armed, and an outbreak might have at any moment occurred. Sir Charles Napier did all that in him lay to prevent any such lamentable event, and very much owing to his endeavours the

He took every oppor

country was saved from the horrors of an insurrection. tunity of issuing and making known general orders, inspiriting the troops to do their duty firmly, and expressing his confidence in them. He made frequent occasions for military display, to shew the number, discipline, and organization of his forces; and at last, on the very eve of the threatened movement at Nottingham, he brought the Chartist leaders to witness a review, and pointed out to them the fearful inferiority of their half-armed, undisciplined masses to his soldiers to the infantry, with their steady fire, and sweeping bayonet-charge to the whirlwind of his cavalry movements, and to the rapid and destructive discharges of his field-batteries. It is said that this wise and humane course produced the desired effect, and that the Nottingham review in particular determined the Chartist leaders to adjourn the revolution, sine die.

In 1841, Sir Charles Napier was appointed to the command of the troops in the Bombay Presidency. The incapacity of the generals who had conducted the recent military operations in the East, had tarnished the lustre of the British arms, and had weakened that prestige on which, more than on our actual force, our Indian empire depended. The retreat from Cabool, with its fearful massacre, had excited the hopes of those ill-disposed to our government, and little was required to rouse the Mussulman population to a holy war against the Christian sway. Our rulers felt that a change of men was required, and, fortunately for India, Sir Charles Napier was selected. His indefatigable exertions brought up the Bombay army to a magnificent state of discipline. He taught the soldiers that the Affghan successes were not owing to any superiority of men or of equipment-that the matchlock was inferior to the musket-the undisciplined man of the hills to the well-drilled sepoy.

In 1842, Sir Charles was sent to Scinde, to take the command of an army of reserve stationed there to preserve the communication with the columns penetrating Affghanistan under Generals Nott, English, and Pollock. It is not our intention here to enter upon the much-discussed question of the propriety of the diplomatic proceedings which ultimately led to the war in Scinde. Those who require information on the point can obtain it in the first part of General William Napier's "Conquest of Scinde ;" and it would ill suit the limits of this memoir to attempt to unravel the tangled web of the Ameer's diplomacy, with its Asiatic aids of falsehood, forgery, and perjury. The short case is this: the Ameers, the sovereigns of the conquering Belooch race, and cruel oppressors of the native Scindians, by repeated breaches of former compacts, had placed themselves in a position of hostility to the British government. The Cabool disaster had given them hopes of success, and they were inclined to drive our force out of Scinde, though placed there on the faith of solemn treaties. Lord Ellenborough felt that any further retreat would still more weaken our moral force, and endanger our Indian empire. He determined, therefore, for the punishment of our faithless allies, and for our own security, to enter into a new compact with them (the old having been forfeited by their misconduct), which would take from them much of their power to injure us, and prevent a repetition of the Affghan tragedy. He charged Napier with the duty of effecting this new treaty, investing him with supreme political, as well as military, command on that frontier. The Ameers, with their usual duplicity, determined on resistance, still made a show of submission, and contrived completely to deceive Major Outram, Sir Charles's subordinate political agent. Their intention was, to protract the negotiations till the hot weather, when they hoped to find the English army incapable of action, and then to fall on and massacre the Faringhee, to Cabool them, as they significantly said. One alone of the Ameers remained faithful, Ali Moorad, who had recently obtained the supremacy of Scinde, by the surrender to him of the turban of chief sway by Roostum, the former rais. This was most fortunate. The general knew that the other Ameers were determined on war; he knew that their plan of operations contemplated a retreat upon Emaum Ghur, a fortress supposed to be impregnable, and situated in the midst of the desert; but which, by the constitution of Scinde, belonged to Ali Moorad, as Rais of Upper Scinde. As Ali Moorad consented to our occupation of this fortress, Sir Charles Napier was enabled to take possession of it, and thus disconcert the Ameers' scheme of campaign, without being guilty of an aggression, or giving up negotiations, which he was most unwilling to do as long any hope remained of arranging matters without bloodshed. The

great difficulty of his position was the impossibility of fixing responsibility on any one-the Ameers invariably, in words, repudiating the numerous acts of hostility which their troops were in the hourly habit of committing. These troops infested the desert in which lay Emaum Ghur, garrisoned by men whose obedience to Ali Moorad was very doubtful. But Sir Charles Napier, seeing the necessity of the case, determined to attempt an enterprise, only rivalled in military history by Marius' capture of Capsa. The distance of Emaum Ghur from the fertile land (eight days' march), and the scarcity of water, made it impossible to proceed against it with his whole force; he therefore selected two hundred irregular cavalry, and three hundred and fifty of the 22nd, whom he mounted on camels, loaded ten camels with provisions, and eighty with water, and with this small force set forward. Even from this handful of men he was obliged to send back one hundred and fifty of his cavalry, forage failing, and water becoming scanty on the second day's march. In eight days they reached the fortress, when they found that the garrison, though six times as numerous as his force, and well provided with food and ammunition, had fled, leaving their stores behind. Sir Charles Napier prevailed on Ali Moorad to consent to its demolition, which was accordingly accomplished by mines. The dash into the desert, and the destruction of this fortress, as a military operation, called forth the unqualified praise of the Duke of Wellington, who described it as the most extraordinary feat of arms he had ever known or read of. It took away from the hostile Ameers the refuge on which they had calculated, and had much effect in shortening the subsequent war, which had for some time appeared inevitable, though Sir Charles hoped even against hope, that the Ameers would at length listen to reason, and abstain from hostility, especially as Major Outram, in whom he then placed much reliance, pertinaciously assured him that they would come to terms.

At last, on the 15th February, 1843, the long-gathering storm burst with fury. The Beloochees treacherously attacked Major Outram in his Residency, where, with a garrison of one hundred men in a stonehouse, covered by two steamers in the river, he resisted for four hours the attack of eight thousand men with six guns, and eventually effected his retreat to the steamers. In the meantime, the Belooch force had taken up a position at Mecanee, where Sir Charles marched to meet them, the war having at length undeniably commenced. Additional forces were hastening to join the Belooch army, which would have doubled its numbers had three or four days longer elapsed; but fortunately a Mussulman festival had retarded their concentration. The Ameers, by all their arts of deception, endeavoured to delay the collision, but Napier's sagacity was not to be so duped; and fortunately neither their promises, nor Outram's repre sentations, could longer delay his advance when he detected their design. We shall, however, let Napier speak for himself here, having been so fortunate as to obtain amongst other documents the following letter,* written by him to a friend in Ireland, on the evening of this day, the 15th:

"MY DEAR

"Hala, February 15th, 1843.

I have not written to you for some time, because I could tell you nothing that you could make head or tail of, unless I gave you a volume, which I had no time to do. But suffice it, that after every attempt that I could make to prevent war, the Ameers have at length brought it about by their folly; and tomorrow I march to Muttaree, a village about ten miles from Meeanee, where they are encamped with, as report says, 30,000 men. The Ameers have not the pluck to put themselves at the head; but these tribes of Beloochee robbers, inspired by a feeling of enthusiasm against us and our protection of the Scinde people (the Beloochees are all Greek Arnauts, our old friends), have all sworn on the Khoran to destroy the English general and his army. I, being ready for the trial, march at midnight, and shall be within ten miles of them by six in the morning. Perhaps I may make a forced march, and begin the battle sooner than they expect: various matters will decide this between now and morning. I can bring into action 2,800

*We quite feel that in using, without the sanction of Sir Charles Napier, a private correspondence of his which has fallen into our hands, an apology is due to him. We can only assure him that his permission would have been sought, had we not deemed it possible that that sense of modesty which invariably accompanies true worth, might have dictated a refusal.

men, and twelve guns. They, I believe, have about an equal number of guns; but their cavalry 20,000, and in a vast plain of smooth, hard, clayey sand. I have been marching above one month incessantly, and, except sand-hills in the desert, I have not had an ascent of six inches in a mile. The whole of Scinde is a billiard-table. My cavalry is about eight hundred. These are long odds, ten to one. However, to-morrow, or the day after, we will know each other's value. I have one British regiment, the 22nd. Magnificent Tipperary !—I would not give the 'specimens' for a good deal just now; all ready to eat the Beloochees without salt. Well, in this state I have no time to write to any but my beloved friend. To-morrow, and ere many hours, in a job like this (if these chaps have the pluck they boast) my letter-writing may, with my luck, be altogether interrupted. Yours,

"C. J. NAPIER."

On the morning of the 17th of February, he came in sight of the Belooch force, amounting to about thirty-five thousand men, strongly posted, to meet whom he had less than two thousand four hundred men, British and native, including officers. The enormous baggage of an Indian army required a strong guard, so that the number of men actually engaged, including officers, did not amount to two thousand-about one to seventeen. But the genius of the general found a useful employment for even the baggage; and following the old Scythian strategy, he formed the camels and their bales into a circular fortress, capable of offering considerable resistance to an attack. The Beloochees were posted chiefly in and behind the deep bed of the Fulaillee, a dry water-course, in his front; and in an enclosed park or shikargah, on their left, from which six thousand were to have poured forth on the flank and rear of the British line through a rather narrow gap in the enclosing high wall. Sir Charles Napier perceived that the Beloochees had neither loop-hooled nor banquetted this wall, and immediately ordered the grenadiers of the 22nd into the opening, with instructions to defend it to the last. They did so, held the Beloochees out of this point; and thus eighty men kept in check six thousand. The British line advanced in échelon, the 22nd being the first regiment engaged; and for three hours and a-half a terrific hand-to-hand combat was maintained; the two lines never more than three yards apart, sometimes even intermixed. Each rank of the Beloochees, as they ascended the steep banks of the river, was swept away by the murderous fire of the English line, and their fall encumbered and delayed those behind till the muskets were again prepared. The bayonet accounted for those who survived the volley.

Meanwhile the British line had suffered severely; the commanders of most of the regiments had fallen dead or severely wounded; and the sepoys, who had lost almost all their European officers, began to give ground. But Napier was always at their head when they suffered most, and then they pressed for. ward, and again bore back the Beloochees. One chief marked the general for his victim, and moved forward to attack him during the hottest of the conflicthis shield raised, his scowling eyes alone visible over it. The smoke and confusion prevented the troops from seeing the danger of their leader; and he, with his right hand disabled by an accident which had recently ruptured a sinew, and gave him intense pain, was ill-fitted to contend in personal strife with the athletic barbarian. He, however, shifted the reins to his wounded hand, drew his sword, and prepared to receive the Belooch's sweeping blow on his horse's neck, and to reply by a thrust at the chief's eyes, the only visible or assailable point, when Lieutenant Marston, of the 25th Native Infantry, interposed, and caught the blow destined for his general. A struggle between the officer and the barbarian ensued; the prize-the life of the British leader. The Belooch's arm was raised to give a decisive blow, when a bayonet, slowly emerging from the cloud of smoke, was driven up to its hilt in his exposed side, and as slowly withdrawn. Who the soldier was who thus opportunely come to his general's aid, Sir Charles could never discover. At last, when his men were almost exhausted by the frightful struggle, an opportunity of charging the Ameer's right with the whole body of his cavalry occurred, and was immediately seized. This decided the day; the Beloochees began to waver, the British line rushed into the dry bed of the Fulaillee, and drove them out at the point of the bayonet, and the field was won. Slowly, however, did the fierce barbarians retreat, with their usual heavy, rolling stride, which even the terrible pursuing fire of the British could not quicken; and so stern was still their aspect, that the gene

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