The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. In Three Volumes.Wordsworth, William
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The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. In Three Volumes.
Wordsworth, William
English literature -- 19th century
The third charge relates to the same Province: it is a complaint that
'the people run away; the villages are deserted;' and again, in his last
letter,--'They abandoned their dwellings at our approach; drove away
their carts, oxen, and every thing which could be of the smallest aid to
the army.' To this charge, in so far as it may be thought to criminate
the Spaniards, a full answer is furnished by their accuser himself in
the following memorable sentence in another part of the very same
letter:--'I am sorry to say that the army, whose conduct I had such
reason to extol in its march through Portugal and on its arrival in
Spain, has totally changed its character since it began to retreat.'
What do we collect from this passage? Assuredly that the army
ill-treated the Gallicians; for there is no other way in which an army,
as a body, can offend--excepting by an indisposition to fight; and that
interpretation (besides that we are all sure that no English army could
_so_ offend) Sir J. Moore expressly guards against in the next sentence.
The English army then treated its Ally as an enemy: and,--though there
are alleviations of its conduct in its great sufferings,--yet it must be
remembered that these sufferings were due--not to the Gallicians--but to
circumstances over which they had no controul--to the precipitancy of
the retreat, the inclemency of the weather, and the poverty of the
country; and that (knowing this) they must have had a double sense of
injustice in any outrages of an English army, from, contrasting them
with the professed objects of that army in entering Spain.--It is to be
observed that the answer to the second charge would singly have been
some answer to this; and, reciprocally, that the answer to this is a
full answer to the second.
Having thus shewn that, in Sir J. Moore's very inaccurate statements of
facts, we have some further reasons for a previous distrust of any
opinion which is supported by those statements,--it is now time to make
the reader acquainted with the real terms and extent of that opinion.
For it is far less to be feared that, from his just respect for him who
gave it, he should allow it an undue weight in his judgment--than that,
reposing on the faithfulness of the abstracts and reports of these
letters, he should really be still ignorant of its exact tenor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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