LORD NAPIER OF MAGDALA.
being an Engineer, and had he, as was intended, commanded a great expedition against Russia in 1878, not a voice would have been raised against the selection. Still, the popular regard never quite fixed upon him as it has often done upon other men. He had no self-advertising qualities, he made no popular speeches, and his feats usually either lacked some dramatic quality, or were so perfectly per- formed that they averted the bloodshed needful to grave them into Teutonic memories. Although constantly en- gaged in great operations, in the second conquest of the Punjab, for example, and in the war of 1860 with China, and always promoted for his services, he was never fairly visible to the people, even when, as in 1858, he per- formed deeds which with any other race would have made him a popular hero. In that year, amidst one of the most dangerous crises of the Indian Mutiny, when it seemed that on the top of the Sepoy rebellion we should have to face a universal insurrection of the Mahrattas, Major-General Napier with a minute brigade flung himself straight across the path of the Mahratta favourite Tantia Topee—the only revolutionary leader in history, we imagine, who ever announced himself in his General Orders as a coward—defeated an army fifteen times his own in strength, and stopped the spread of the war into the Bombay Presidency. We have always believed that on that occasion he spared England the necessity of sending reinforcements of twenty thousand men, for had the Mahrattas "gone," nothing could have held in the Mahommedans of the Nizam's Dominion. It was a magnificent feat of arms, a repetition of Assaye, and with his subsequent service in China in 1860, it procured him the great Bombay com- mand; but it was a deed the greatness of which was clear only to his superiors. The people missed it somehow, and forgot it so completely, that when in 1867, nine years after, the General, then a man of fifty-seven, was selected to com- mand in the Abyssinian war, civilians, though not cavilling at an appointment entirely warranted by precedent and by its receiver's Army rank, asked in perplexity which General Napier this one was. Then at last, however, the obscurity for a moment cleared away, for Sir Robert Napier carried the most romantic expedition recorded in British annals to a result which was almost ideally triumphant.
So great have been subsequent events, and so little do Englishmen dwell on the incidents of their own history, that the Abyssinian War has already almost sunk into oblivion. It was, however, a marvellous business, the sort of expedition which, had any other nation performed it, would have been the theme of endless histories for the people. The country had decided, very sulkily and un- willingly, that it must send an expedition to rescue two or three Englishmen and a Syrian in British service treacherously detained by the Emperor of Abyssinia, a Prince who, to most of the instincts of a savage, added all the pride of a legitimate Sovereign and all the qualities of a successful barbarian soldier. He claimed descent from the Queen of Sheba, he was acknow- ledged as ruler by all the warrior-clans of Abyssinia, and he was believed quite accurately to dispose of twenty thousand soldiers, all accustomed to battle, and sprung from tribes which even the early Khalifs, in the highest flush of Arab enthusiasm, entirely failed to subdue. Moreover, to reach this army and its Emperor, it was necessary to land an expedition on an African coast, to march it, with all its food, baggage, and artillery, over four hundred miles of frightful country, believed to be water- less for long stretches, and known to be crossed by ranges eight thousand feet high, and then to capture Magdala, a fortified hill two thousand feet higher yet, with a reputa- tion, entirely correct, of being the most impregnable natural fortress in the world. No army on earth could have taken Magdala had it been properly defended. Con- tinental critics declared the expedition madness, and even at home the experts, whether in war or in African travel, were all in the gloomiest of moods, predicting either total disaster, or a long and wearisome war, perpetually swelling in expense. Fortunately, however, the troops being Indian, the general management of the expedition devolved on Sir Stafford Northcote ; and with two treasuries to draw on, he left the arrangements absolutely to Sir Robert Napier, who was "an expensive General," but who foresaw everything, even a necessity for elephants, provided everything, even a substitute for artesian wells, and finally landed early in 1868 with twelve thousand men. After a marvellous march, in which, as Mr. Disraeli, in his most artificial way, subsequently said, Sir Robert "planted the standard of St. George upon the mountains of Rasselas," the foot of the hill on which Magdala stands was reached, and the Emperor's troops attacked the little force, reduced to 3,500 men by the necessity of guarding communications, in the full confidence of victory. His soldiers, however, never reached the British at all, but were driven back by the leaden spray from the Sniders so utterly demoralised that, as subsequently appeared, they became incapable of fighting. Sir Robert Napier had won more completely than he knew, though for one half-hour his heart had nearly failed him. Just before the battle, Theodore had sent him a message that if attacked he would instantly execute the prisoners, an event which, as the General well knew, would be held in England to prove that the war was something of a romantic absurdity. It was galling to lose at the last moment the very object of the expedition, and his heart, he said himself, "almost stopped ;" but after a few minutes his duty became clear to his conscience, there was no more reason why imprisoned officers should not die than why officers at liberty should not die, and he ordered the attack. The Abyssinians beaten, the British troops advanced up the narrow path into the air to Magdala ; the Abyssinian soldiers, utterly cowed by the white men's weapons, refused to fight ; and the Emperor, mad with rage, humiliation, and the knowledge that his defeat would cost him his throne, executed himself with his own pistol. He had not, in spite of his threats, murdered his prisoners ; and the conqueror, with his task performed, without even an attempt to establish authority in Abyssinia, moved back his army to the coast, and embarked it for its usual cantonments. The news was received in England with a momentary transport of ad- miration, Sir Robert Napier, much to his disgust, was forced by the opinion of his own scientific corps to accept a peerage, and then he glided again into obscurity so great, as far as the public was concerned, that it heard after his death with a sort of surprise, that had war with Russia broken out in 1878, he would have been Com- mander-in-Chief in the field. The Government and the profession, indeed, never for a moment forgot Lord Napier's merits ; he received every lucrative appointment it was in their power to bestow, and he was to the last honoured by the State and the profession as one of the greatest of England's living captains. It was only in the eyes of the people that his figure grew dim, as it had grown dim between 1858 and 1867, and will grow dim again now that he has passed away in the fullness of years. He was a great man, lacking only some magnetic quality to rivet the attention of his country which, while half-forgetting the details of his achievements, still knew always that he deserved to be remembered. Let us hope that there are, as there may be, many soldiers like him, many who, with capacity for the highest posts, and courage for any enter- prise, are content to take their work as it comes, to do their duty from youth to age, recognised only by their own chiefs, and to await the chance of displaying their full powers, which in too many cases Fate through life refuses. We do not know that the sort of obscurity which shrouds all the best working men of all the English services—more especially the Navy—is altogether an evil. It certainly does not weaken their energies, for, as a rule—not quite an unbroken rule, for there was no one to succeed Lord Raglan —in the emergency the man turns up, not only ready for the work, but competent to do it ; but we pay a certain price for our practice, as, we may remark, do also the Germans. We recognise men so late, that we have rarely a General, a statesman, or an administrator from whom we can hope for long service in a first-class position, and are often compelled to trust the very old, a fact which, but that our best men are apt to be picked lives, might involve serious disasters. Moreover—and as we become more democratic, this will be found more and more important— the public and the professional chiefs are rarely equally informed as to personal qualities, rarely hit on the same man for the emergent need, and are condemned to lose time and energy in coming to a working understanding. That did not matter a straw fifty years ago, when all that any man, whether soldier or civilian, really required was support from his responsible chiefs ; but it does matter now, when the first source of strength in any great undertaking is the confidence of the whole community. We dread the tendency which we see to be visible to postpone the best choice to the choice which will be most generally approved, and thus to pass over the men who, like Havelock, Napier, and many others, are known to be the most competent, but who, whether from circum- stances or temperament, remain habitually in the shade. We must take the bad with the good of our institutions, and we do not know that there is any remedy for this par- ticular evil ; but we feel sure that it is an evil, and that those who can minimise it by making all good service accurately known, known as good work in Parliament is known, are benefiting the State. Lord Napier, if discovered at forty, would have had forty years of effective work to give.