The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 | Page 2

a quarter of a century of rapine and conquest had produced in the
arrangements of general society, ceased, as if by magic, to be felt, or at
least to be acknowledged. It seemed, indeed, as if all which had been
passing during the last twenty or thirty years, had passed not in reality,
but in a dream; so perfectly unlooked for were the issues of a struggle,
to which, whatever light we may regard it, the history of the whole
world presents no parallel.
At the period above alluded to, it was the writer's fortune to form one
of a body of persons in whom the unexpected cessation of hostilities
may be supposed to have excited sensations more powerful and more
mixed than those to which the common occurrences of life are
accustomed to give birth. He was then attached to that portion of the
Peninsular army to which the siege of Bayonne had been intrusted; and
on the 28th of April beheld, in common with his comrades, the
tri-coloured flag, which, for upwards of two months, had waved
defiance from the battlements, give place to the ancient drapeau blanc
of the Bourbons. That such a spectacle could be regarded by any British
soldier without stirring up in him strong feelings of national pride and
exultation, is not to be imagined. I believe, indeed, that there was not a
man in our ranks, however humble his station, to whose bosom these
feelings were a stranger. But the excitation of the moment having
passed away, other and no less powerful feelings succeeded; and they
were painful, or the reverse, according as they ran in one or other of the
channels into which the situations and prospects of individuals not

unnaturally guided them. By such as had been long absent from their
homes, the idea of enjoying once more the society of friends and
relatives, was hailed with a degree of delight too engrossing to afford
room for the occurrence of any other anticipations; to those who had
either no homes to look to, or had quitted them only a short time ago,
the thoughts of revisiting England came mixed with other thoughts,
little gratifying, because at variance with all their dreams of
advancement and renown. For my own part I candidly confess, that
though I had just cause to look forward to a return to the bosom of my
family with as much satisfaction as most men, the restoration of peace
excited in me sensations of a very equivocal nature. At the age of
eighteen, and still enthusiastically attached to my profession, neither
the prospect of a reduction to half-pay, nor the expectation of a long
continuance in a subaltern situation, were to me productive of any
pleasurable emotions; and hence, though I entered heartily into all the
arrangements by which those about me strove to evince their
gratification at the glorious termination of the war, it must be
acknowledged that I did so, without experiencing much of the
satisfaction with the semblance of which my outward behaviour might
be marked.
EXPECTED EMBARKATION FOR AMERICA.
Such being my own feelings, and the feelings of the great majority of
those immediately around me, it was but natural that we should turn
our views to the only remaining quarter of the globe in which the flame
of war still continued to burn. Though at peace with France, England,
we remembered; was not yet at peace with the United States; and
reasoning, not as statesmen but as soldiers, we concluded that she was
not now likely to make peace with that nation till she should be able to
do so upon her own terms. Having such an army on foot, what line of
policy could appear so natural or so judicious as that she should employ,
if not the whole, at all events a large proportion of it, in chastising an
enemy, than whom none had ever proved more vindictive or more
ungenerous? Our view of the matter accordingly was, that some fifteen
or twenty thousand men would be forthwith embarked on board of ship
and transported to the other side of the Atlantic; that the war would

there be carried on with a vigour conformable to the dignity and
resources of the country which waged it; and that no mention of peace
would be made till our general should be in a situation to dictate its
conditions in the enemy's capital.
Whether any design of the kind was ever seriously entertained, or
whether men merely asserted as a truth what they earnestly desired to
be such, I know not; but the white flag had hardly been hoisted on the
citadel of Bayonne, when a rumour became prevalent that an extensive
encampment of troops, destined for the American war, was actually
forming in the vicinity of