Chapter 2

on the populace. "The multitude, my lords, is a many-headed monster, it is a Cerberus that must have a sop; it is a wild beast, so ravenous that nothing but blood will appease its appetite; it is a whale, that must have a barrel for its amusement; it is a demon, to which we must offer human sacrifice.... Bihn-Goh must be the victim--happy if the sacrifice of his single life can appease the commotions of his country." Foksi-Roku's advice is taken, and Bihn-Goh (Byng) "is crucified for cowardice."]

[***][Horace, _Odes_, II. xiii. 34: "Bellua centiceps."]

[§§§] "By this query it is not meant that our foolish generals should have been shot, but that Byng [Admiral John Byng, born 1704, was executed March 14, 1757] might have been spared; though the one suffered and the others escaped, probably for Candide's reason 'pour encourager les autres.'"[*]--[MS.]

[*]["Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres."--_Candide_, xxii.]

[51] {39} [On August 21, 1808, Sir Harry Burrard (1755-1813) superseded in command Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had, on the same day, repulsed Junot at Vimiera. No sooner had he assumed his position as commander-in-chief, than he countermanded Wellesley's order to give pursuit and make good the victory. The next day (August 22) Sir Hew Dalrymple in turn superseded Burrard, and on the 23rd, General Kellerman approached the English with certain proposals from Junot, which a week later were formulated by the so-called Convention of Cintra, to which Kellerman and Wellesley affixed their names. When the news reached England that Napoleon's forces had been repulsed with loss, and yet the French had been granted a safe exit from Portugal, the generals were assailed with loud and indiscriminate censure. Burrard's interference with Wellesley's plans was no doubt ill-judged and ill-timed; but the opportunity of pursuit having been let slip, the acceptance of Junot's terms was at once politic and inevitable. A court of inquiry, which was held in London in January, 1809, upheld both the armistice of August 22 and the Convention; but neither Dalrymple nor Burrard ever obtained a second command, and it was not until Talavera (July 28, 1809) had effaced the memories of Cintra that Wellesley was reinstated in popular favour.]

[bj] {41} ----_at the mention sweat_.--[MS. D.]

[bk] {42} _More restless than the falcon as he flies_.--[MS. erased.]

[52] [With reference to this passage, while yet in MS., an early reader (?Dallas) inquires, "What does this mean?" And a second (?Hobhouse) rejoins, "What does the question mean? It is one of the finest stanzas I ever read."]

[53] [Byron and Hobhouse sailed from Falmouth, July 2, 1809; reached Lisbon on the 6th or 7th; and on the 17th started from Aldea Galbega ("the first stage from Lisbon, which is only accessible by water") on horseback for Seville. "The horses are excellent--we rode seventy miles a day" (see letters of August 6 to F. Hodgson, and August 11, 1809, to Mrs. Byron; _Letters_, 1898, i. 234, 236).]

[bl] ----_long foreign to his soul_.--[MS. erased.]

[bm] ----_the strumpet and the bowl_.--[MS. D]

[bn] {43} _And countries more remote his hopes engage_.--[MS. erased.]

[bo] _Where dwelt of yore the Lusians' crazy queen_,--[MS.] _Where dwelt of yore Lusania's_----.--[D.]

[54] [Her luckless Majesty went subsequently mad; and Dr. Willis, who so dexterously cudgelled kingly pericraniums, could make nothing of hers. (For the Rev. Francis Willis, see _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 416.)

Maria I. (b. 1734), who married her uncle, Pedro III., reigned with him 1777-86, and, as sole monarch, from 1786 to 1816. The death of her husband, of her favourite confessor, Ignatio de San Caetano, who had been raised by Pombal from the humblest rank to the position of archbishop _in partibus_, and of her son, turned her brain, and she became melancholy mad. She was only queen in name after 1791, and in 1799 her son, Maria José Luis, was appointed regent. Beckford saw her in 1787, and was impressed by her dignified bearing. "Justice and clemency," he writes, "the motto so glaringly misapplied on the banner of the abhorred Inquisition, might be transferred, with the strictest truth, to this good princess" (_Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal_, 1834, p. 256). Ten years later, Southey, in his _Letters from Spain_, 1797, p. 541, ascribes the "gloom" of the court of Lisbon to "the dreadful malady of the queen." When the Portuguese royal family were about to embark for Brazil in November, 1807, the queen was once more seen in public after an interval of sixteen years. "She had to wait some while upon the quay for the chair in which she was to be carried to the boat, and her countenance, in which the insensibility of madness was only disturbed by wonder, formed a striking contrast to the grief which appeared in every other face" (Southey's _History of the Peninsular War_, i. 110).]

[bp] {44} _Childe Burun_----.--[MS.]

[bq] _Less swoln with culture soon the vales extend_ _And long horizon-bounded realms appear_.--[MS. erased.]

[br] {45} _Say Muse what bounds_----.--[MS. D.]

[55] The Pyrenees.--[MS.]

[56] [If, as stanza xliii. of this canto (added in 1811) intimates, Byron passed through "Albuera's plain" on his way from Lisbon to Seville, he must have crossed the frontier at a point between Elvas and Badajoz. In that case the "silver streamlet" may be identified as the Caia. Beckford remarks on "the rivulet which separates the two kingdoms" (_Italy, etc_., 1834, p. 291).]

[bs] {46} _But eer the bounds of Spain have far been passed_.--[MS. D.]

[bt] _For ever famed--in many a native song_.--[MS. erased.] ----_a noted song_.--[MS. D.]

[57] [Compare Virgil, _Æneid_, i. 100--

"Ubi tot Simois correpta sub undis Scuta virûm galeasque et fortia corpora volvit."]

[58] [The standard, a cross made of Asturian oak (_La Cruz de la Victoria_), which was said to have fallen from heaven before Pelayo gained the victory over the Moors at Cangas, in A.D. 718, is preserved at Oviedo. Compare Southey's _Roderick_, XXV.: _Poetical Works_, 1838, ix. 241, and note, pp. 370, 371.]

[bu] --_which Pelagius bore_.--[MS. D.]

[59] {47} [The Moors were finally expelled from Granada in 1492, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.]

[bv] ----_waxed the Crescent pale_.--[MS. erased.]

[60] [The reference is to the Romanceros and Caballerías of the sixteenth century.]

[bw] ----_thy little date_.--[MS. erased.]

[bx] ----_from rock to rock_ _Blue columns soaring loft in sulphury wreath_ _Fragments on fragments in contention knock_.--[MS. erased, D.]

[61] "The Siroc is the violent hot wind that for weeks together blows down the Mediterranean from the Archipelago. Its effects are well known to all who have passed the Straits of Gibraltar."--[MS. D.]

[62] {49} [The battle of Talavera began July 27, 1809, and lasted two days. As Byron must have reached Seville by the 21st or 22nd of the month, he was not, as might be inferred, a spectator of any part of the engagement. Writing to his mother, August 11, he says, "You have heard of the battle near Madrid, and in England they would call it a victory--a pretty victory! Two hundred officers and five thousand men killed, all English, and the French in as great force as ever. I should have joined the army, but we have no time to lose before we get up the Mediterranean."--_Letters_, i. 241.]

[by] _Their rival scarfs that shine so gloriously_.--[MS. erased.] _Their rural scarfs_----.--[MS. D.]

[63] [Compare Campbell's "Hohenlinden"--"Few, few shall part where many meet."]

[64] {50} [Compare _Macbeth_, act i. sc. 2, line 51--"Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky."]

[65] [In a letter to Colonel Malcolm, December 3, 1809, the Duke admits that the spoils of conquest were of a moral rather than of a material kind. "The battle of Talavera was certainly the hardest fought of modern days.... It is lamentable that, owing to the miserable inefficiency of the Spaniards, ... the glory of the action is the only benefit which we have derived from it.... I have in hand a most difficult task.... In such circumstances one may fail, but it would be dishonourable to shrink from the task."--_Wellington Dispatches_, 1844, iii. 621.]

[bz] _There shall they rot--while rhymers tell the fools_ _How honour decks the turf that wraps their clay!_ _Liars avaunt!_----.--[MS.]

[66] Two lines of Collins' _Ode_, "How sleep the brave," etc., have been compressed into one--

"There Honour comes a pilgrim grey, To bless the turf that wraps their clay."

[ca] _But Reason's elf in these beholds_----.--[D.]

[cb] {51} ----_a fancied throne_ _As if they compassed half that hails their sway_.--[MS. erased.]

[cc] ----_glorious sound of grief_.--[D.]

[67] [The battle of Albuera (May 16, 1811), at which the English, under Lord Beresford, repulsed Soult, was somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory. "Another such a battle," wrote the Duke, "would ruin us. I am working hard to put all right again." The French are said to have lost between 8000 and 9000 men, the English 4158, the Spaniards 1365.]

[cd] _A scene for mingling foes to boast and bleed_.--[D.]

[ce] _Yet peace be with the perished_---.--[D. erased.]

[cf] _And tears and triumph make their memory long_.--[D. erased.]

[cg] ----there sink with other woes_.--[D. erased.]

[68] [Albuera was celebrated by Scott, in his _Vision of Don Roderick_. _The Battle of Albuera_, a Poem (anon.), was published in October, 1811.]

[ch] {52} _Who sink in darkness_----.--[MS. erased.]

[ci] ----_swift Rapines path pursued_.--[MS. D.]

[cj] _To Harold turn we as_----.--[MS. erased.]

[69] [In this "particular" Childe Harold did not resemble his _alter ego_. Hobhouse and "part of the servants" (Joe Murray, Fletcher, a German, and the "page" Robert Rushton, constituted his "whole suite"), accompanied Byron in his ride across Spain from Lisbon to Gibraltar. (See _Letters_, 1898, i. 224, 236.)]

[ck] _Where proud Sevilha_----.--[MS. D.]

[70] {53} [Byron, _en route_ for Gibraltar, passed three days at Seville at the end of July or the beginning of August, 1809. By the end of January, 1810, the French had appeared in force before Seville. Unlike Zaragoza and Gerona, the pleasure-loving city, "after some negotiations, surrendered, with all its stores, foundries, and arsenal complete, and on the 1st of February the king [Joseph] entered in triumph" (Napier's _History of the War in the Peninsula_, ii. 295).]

[71] [A kind of fiddle with only two strings, played on by a bow, said to have been brought by the Moors into Spain.]

[cl] _Not here the Trumpet, but the rebeck sounds_.--[MS. erased.]

[cm] _And dark-eyed Lewdness_----.--[MS. erased.]

[72] [See _The Waltz: Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 492, note 1.]

[cn] {54} _Not in the toils of Glory would ye sweat._--[MS. erased, D.]

[73] [The scene is laid on the heights of the Sierra Morena. The travellers are looking across the "long level plain" of the Guadalquivir to the mountains of Ronda and Granada, with their "hill-forts ...perched everywhere like eagles' nests" (Ford's _Handbook for Spain_, i. 252). The French, under Dupont, entered the Morena, June 2, 1808. They stormed the bridge at Alcolea, June 7, and occupied Cordoba, but were defeated at Bailen, July 19, and forced to capitulate. Hence the traces of war. The "Dragon's nest" (line 7) is the ancient city of Jaen, which guards the skirts of the Sierras "like a watchful Cerberus." It was taken by the French, but recaptured by the Spanish, early in July, 1808 (_History of the War in the Peninsula_, i. 71-80).]

[74] {55} [The Sierra Morena gets its name from the classical _Montes Mariani_, not, as Byron seems to imply, from its dark and dusky aspect.]

[co] {56} ----_the never-changing watch_.--[MS. D.]

[cp] _The South must own_----.--[MS. D.]

[cq] _When soars Gaul's eagle_----.--[MS. D.]

[75] [As time went on, Byron's sentiments with regard to Napoleon underwent a change, and he hesitates between sympathetic admiration and reluctant disapproval. At the moment his enthusiasm was roused by Spain's heroic resistance to the new Alaric, "the scourger of the world," and he expresses himself like Southey "or another" (_vide post_,