By degrees new men, imbued with much the same high qualities, replaced the veterans of Spain and Waterloo; but till more than half the century was ended it was the generals who had been trained to war under Wellington who chiefly led the troops to victory and maintained British prestige. Charles Napier in Scinde, Hugh Gough in the Punjaub, Fitzroy-Somerset (Lord Raglan) in the Crimea, Colin Campbell, afterwards Lord Clyde, in China, the Crimea, and India, had all learnt and practised their profession in the early wars. They were all, however, men advanced in years before they came to a supreme command in the field. The long peace after Waterloo, lasting some thirty years, denied soldiers all chance of active service, and it was not till Sir Charles Napier was sixty years of age that he found himself winning battles on his own account. Sir Hugh Gough was older by five years when he led an army against the Sikhs, and began the difficult conquest of the Punjaub. Lord Raglan was also an aged man when he was selected to command our armies in the Russian war of 1854–5. Both Napier and Gough had won early laurels in Spain, and both as majors, temporarily in command of their regiments, had helped to win great battles, and paid in their persons for their valour. Napier was with Sir John Moore at Corunna, and at the head of the 50th (the gallant “Half-hundred”) had repulsed the French attack at one important point. Then when--to quote another Napier, his brother, and the famous historian of the war--“he was encompassed by enemies and denied quarter, he received five wounds. But he still fought and struggled for life till a French drummer, with a generous heart and indignation forcibly rescued him from his barbarous assailants.” The wounds he received were terrible: he had his leg broken by a bullet, a sabre-cut laid open his head, and he had had a bayonet stab in his back. It was at this battle of Corunna, when the young major (he was only twenty-six at the time) took command, that he found his men of the line wavering under the fierce fire. In order to steady them, he put them through several movements of the manual exercise, ordering them to “Slope arms!” “Carry arms!” and so on, until they recognised his voice and hardened under his hand. Hugh Gough like Charles Napier, owed to the chance absence of his colonel the opportunity of winning early distinction. As a major, of barely thirty, he was in command of his regiment--the gallant 87th, long famous as the Irish Fusiliers--at the battle of Talavera, where he was severely wounded, but so distinguished himself as to earn promotion; he was at the head of the 87th when they made their famous charge at Barrosa, which decided the fate of that hard-fought day; and he was so foremost in the repulse of the French from Tarifa that he received the sword of the French leader when he failed in his assault upon the town. [Illustration: MARSHAL SOULT. (_From the Portrait by Rouillard._)]