lAe collection IvEiii-rj k,*vo| I ARBOR | Presented to the LIBRARY of the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO by HARRY SUTHERLAND 5 s SIR WILLIAM MAYNARD GOMM LONDON : PRINTED BY gpQTTlS WOODS AND CO., KKW-8TUKKT SQCARB AND PABLIAMKNT S'l'BEKT W - I of the, Cotctefrvasn, Guards. 84. LONDON, JOHH MUKR.AY, 1881 LETTERS AND JOUBNALS OF FIELD-MARSHAL. SIR WILLIAM MAYNAED GOMM, G.O.R COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF INDIA, CONSTABLE OP THE TOWER OF LONDON &C. &C, FROM -1199 TO WATERLOO, 1$15 EDITED Bv FEANCIS CULLING CARE-GOMM H.M.'S MADRAS CIVIL SERVICE ' How youngly he began to serve his country. How long continued' CORIOLANUS LONDON JOHN MUERAY, ALBEMAKLE STREET 1881 All rights rettrved TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS GEOEGE, DUKE OF CAMBEIDGE, KG. &c. Field-Marshal Commanding -in- Chief Her Majesty's Army ftfyu grief gtaorxsl OP A FELLOW-SOLDIER WHOSE HONEST WORTH AND LOYAL SERVICES WERE VALUED AND ACKNOWLEDGED BY FOUR GENERATIONS OF THE ROYAL FAMILY IS, BY HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS'S GRACIOUS PERMISSION PREFACE. THE PAPERS of Field-Marshal Sir William Gomm were in some measure arranged by himself; but Lady Gomm, during her brief widowhood, set herself most religiously to collect them, and in some way prepare them for publication. Her will bequeathed all the manuscripts to General Lord Mark Kerr, the Hon. Edward Douglas, and Miss Augusta Howard Vyse, to be retained or published as they should think fit. They confided the papers to my care, and requested me to examine and edit them. I have at present only been able to take the earlier portion of these letters ; but they to a great extent form so independent and complete a chapter not only of his life, but of public history that it has been decided to publish them separately, leaving to some future opportunity the project of preparing for the public the later voluminous and more general papers. Although these letters relate to days long gone by, yet even now such a genuine, truthful, and intelligent record as they present of the desperate struggle with which the nine- teenth century opened in Europe, has both its value and interest, not only for the sons and grandsons of those who took part in it, but for all lovers of their country. Every page displays the well-read scholar and man of refined feelings and high character. No one can peruse without emotion the simple and unpretending account of the soldier-boy's first coming Preface. under fire, a few weeks atler joining his regiment, in the bloody Lament with the French among the sand dunes of Hollanu. ThVsame coolness and courage carried Urn through .every campaign, almost every battle of the war, from the Helder, Wacheren, and Corunna, to Torres Vedras Bayonne and Waterloo, all of winch are more or less fully descnbed m these pages. My own part in this compilation as editor has been small. My chief difficulty has been selection. I have intro- duced words of my own only when I feared the continuity of the narrative might be spoilt without a few connecting links. The history of the great war is so well written by historians, and so intimately known to every intelligent Englishman, and especially to every soldier, that little more than a few touches seem necessary to recall the whole subject to the reader,^ so as to obviate the necessity of refreshing the memory by taking down the history from the shelf. I am indebted for these letters, and the excellent preser- vation in which I find them, to two loving women who took complete charge of them at the earlier and later part of the honoured writer's life. First to her to whom most of them were originally addressed, and who preserved, copied, and docketed them with all a sister's pride and love ; and secondly to her to whom those old yellow bundles, well known and often talked about during forty-five years of wedded life, seemed the most sacred and precious of manuscripts, since they told how he had won his spurs in the years before they met. From her they have now passed to other hands, in which they are esteemed a sacred trust, and are valued for their own intrinsic merit. I hope and believe they will be similarly valued by the public. F. C. CARK-GOMM. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY * *> 4, * CHAPTER II. 1794-1799. PARENTAGE FIRST COMMISSION WOOLWICH JOINS 9TH REGIMENT EXPEDITION TO THE HELDER BATTLE OF BERGEN . . 23 CHAPTER III. 1800-1805. COAST OF PORTUGAL VIGO BAY GIBRALTAR LISBON RETURN HOME AIDE-DE-CAMP TO GENERAL COMMANDING N.W. DISTRICT IRELAND-- JOINS STAFF COLLEGE, HIGH WYCOMBE COMES OF AGE CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS AUNT 45 CHAPTER IV. 1805-1808. EXPEDITION TO BREMEN RETURNS TO STAFF COLLEGE PASSES EXAMINATION EXPEDITION TO STRALSUND BOMBARDMENT OF COPENHAGEN ARMY RECEIVES THANKS OF PARLIAMENT . . 6 CHAPTER V. 1808. IRELAND ALMOST JOINS SIR JOHN MOORE'S EXPEDITION TO SWEDEN ASSISTANT QUARTERMASTER-GENERAL EXPEDITION TO SPAIN UNDER SIR A. WELLESLEY LANDS AT MONDEGO BAY BATTLE OF RoLiA BATTLE OF VIMIERA CONVENTION OF CINTRA LISBON. , . . . . . . . . . . , . . . . . 93 a [10] Contents. CHAPTER VI. 1808-1809. UNDER SIR JOHN MOORE SENT ON TO EXAMINE ROADS INTO SPAIN ADVANCE No LETTERS ESTREAT TO CORUNNA DEATH OP SIR JOHN MOORE DANGEROUS VOYAGE HOME CANTERBURY COACH ACCIDENT 109 CHAPTER VII. 1809. WALCHEREN EXPEDITION 122 CHAPTER VIII. 1810. PENINSULAR WAR LISBON CONVENT OP BATALHA THE PORTU- GUESE ARMY THOMAR 140 CHAPTER IX. 1810. SENT TO PORTUGAL TO COLLECT INFORMATION CONTRAST BETWEEN SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE ON THE FRONTIER ALBUQUERQUE BADAJOS THE MARQUIS OF ROMANA ELVAS ALCANTARA FORCED MARCH BATTLE OF BUSACO RETREAT THROUGH COIMBRA PURSUED BY MASSENA THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS SOBRAL DESCRIPTION OF MERIDA CAyERES THE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA MAFRA CARACOLA, THE LADY OFFICER PUR- SUIT OF MASSENA DEATH OF PRINCESS AMELIA. . . . 168 CHAPTER X. 1811. TORRES VEDRAS MASSENA DRIVEN BACK VANDALISM OF FRENCH HORRORS OF THE RETREAT COMBATS OF POMBAL, REDINHA, CABAL NOVA JEALOUSY OF PORTUGUESE AND SPANIARDS BATTLE OP FUENTES D'ONOR ALBUERA CHARLES COMTE D'ESPAGNA A BEAUTIFUL ENCAMPMENT .... 201 CHAPTER XI. 1811-1812. THE PASS OP PERALES GRAND SCENERY STORMS GUARD A PRO- MOTION TO MAJORITY ASSISTANT QUARTERMASTER-GENERAL STORMING OF CIUDAD RODRIGO CAPTURE ADVANCE UPON BADAJOS ,231 Contents. [n] CHAPTER XII. 1812. SIEGE STORMING AND CAPTOEE OF BADAJOS MOIMENTA DA BEIRA SENT TO EXPLORE BEYOND DOMO BEAUTY OP SCENERY IN TRAS-OS-MONTES SALAMONDE, ETC. ADVANCE DRIVING MAR- MONT OVER THE TORMES SIEGE OF SALAMANCA CAPTURE BATTLE OF SALAMANCA GENERAL LEITH 255 CHAPTER XIII. 1812. ENTRY INTO MADRID ENTHUSIASTIC RECEPTION LIEUTENANT- COLONEL FOR SALAMANCA BURGOS UNSUCCESSFUL SIEGE TERRIBLE RETREAT NEARLY DROWNED DEATH OF HIS GRANDFATHER LAMEGO SURVEYING IN TRAS-OS-MONTES ADVANCE OF THE ARMY OVER DOURO TO VITTORIA . k . 281 CHAPTER XIV. 1813. BATTLE OF VITTORIA BEFORE SAN SEBASTIAN FAILURE OF ASSAULT WANT OF ENGINEERING CARE THE DESPATCH OF VITTORIA BROTHER (LIEUTENANT-COLONEL HENRY GOMM) SEVERELY WOUNDED IN BATTLE OF PYRENEES CAPTURE OF SAN SEBASTIAN TOWN BURNT 304 CHAPTER XV. 1813-1814. DRIVING THE FRENCH OVER THE FRONTIER DEATH OF MOREAU NEARLY TAKEN PRISONER WHILE OUT FOR A RECONNAISSANCE AT BIARRITZ WOUNDED SEVERE FIGHTING, NIVE, NIVELLE, AND ST. PIERRE ALLIES NEARING PARIS INVESTMENT OF BA- YONNE LAST SORTIE RAISING OF THE BOURBON WHITE FLAG HOSTILITIES SUSPENDED NAPOLEON BANISHED TO ELBA TROOPS EMBARK FOR AMERICA ON LEAVE TO PARIS LIEU- TENANT-COLONEL COLDSTREAM GUARDS 323 v ,-*^ CHAPTER XVI. 1815. KNIGHT COMMANDER OF THE BATH NAPOLEON'S ESCAPE FROM ELBA BRUSSELS APPOINTED TO STAFF QUARTERMASTER- GENERAL OF STH PICTON'S DIVISION QUATRE BRAS WATERLOO DIARY OF THE CAMPAIGN AND MARCH TO PARIS NOTE ON THE DIARY WRITTEN FIFTY YEARS AFTERWARDS WATERLOO JOT- TINGS ON CLAIMS OF 52ND REGIMENT TO HAVE REPULSED THE IMPERIAL GUARD DEATH OF HIS BROTHER AND SISTER FINIS 346 _ 2 < 4> jTg '" ^Ud& ^ r-irt tc6 g ~^ s ^4 a ..IlilPfll LETTERS AND JOUKNALS OF SIR WILLIAM MAYNARD GOMM. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. THE LIFE of Sir William Gomm covered ninety years ; his public and active life commenced at an age when most boys are leaving a private and entering a public school, and that life continued to be not only active but public for three quarters of a century. It may be divided into four distinct periods, each of about twenty years : I. From 1799 to 1816, a purely active military life in the great war against France in Holland, Portugal, Spain, and Belgium ; of which period I will speak more in detail here- after. II. From 1817 to 1839, home military life-, when he advanced from the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Coldstream Guards to that of major-general. It was during this period that he married first, Sophia Penn, the granddaughter of William Penn, of Pennsylvania, who died in 1827 ; and, secondly, Elizabeth Kerr, the eldest daughter of Lord Robert Kerr, who, after forty-five years of wedded life, during which husband and wife were hardly for a day separated, survived him only two years. He had no issue by either of these marriages. 2 The Earlier Letters and Journals of Darino- this period he lost the protectors of his youth viz. Ins cousin, the Rev. W. Gomm, of Bramdean, and his aunt, Miss Gomm, who had supplied to him the place of the parents that he had lost in infancy. Owing to the death of his brother and sister, he succeeded to all his aunt's property upon her death in 1822, and became lord of the Manor of Kother- hithe, inheriting a property which had come through the Goldsworthys, with whom the earlier part of his life was so intimately associated. During this period of his life he travelled in different parts of Europe, devoting a considerable portion of his spare time to literature. III. From 1839 to 1856, colonial administrative life. From 1839 to 1842 he held the chief command and was Member of Council at Jamaica, during the Administration of Sir Charles Metcalfe. During the short time he filled that post, by his urgent representations to the Colonial Office he succeeded in establishing the mountain barrack of Newcastle ; which, from the salubrity of its situation, led to a wonderful improvement in the health of the European troops. For nearly a quarter of a century a succession of British regiments enjoyed there an absolute immunity from yellow fever. Sub- sequently the charm seemed broken, and the troops at Newcastle became as liable to the scourge as if they had been dwelling in the plains ; a calamity which was brought about solely by a cruel neglect of most obvious sanitary precautions. On his return in the spring of 1842 he was gazetted to the command of the Northern District ; but in November of the same year he was appointed Governor and Commander-in- Chief in Mauritius, in the place of Sir Lionel Smith, Bart., which appointment he held till 1849. The seven years of his administration of the island were chiefly marked by great financial difficulties, caused by the utter destitution of the labour market and a most unsound system of banking. In dealing with these difficulties the Governor was well sup- ported by the loyal co-operation of the servants of the Crown ; but he was much opposed by the unofficial members of the Council. When he resigned office the verdict of the Lords of Sir William Maynard Gomm. 3 the Treasury at home was, that { he had deserved credit for his proceedings in carrying into effect the instructions he had received for disengaging the Mauritius Government from the transactions and responsibilities of the banks in which the Colonial Treasury and Funds had been implicated by his pre- decessors in the administration of the Government.' He pro- ceeded from Mauritius to Calcutta, having received from the Horse Guards the intimation that her Majesty had been pleased to appoint him Commander-in-Chief in India. On arrival at Calcutta on June 2, he found that owing to the panic at home, which resulted from the second Sikh War and the battles of Chillianwallah and Goojerat, and to the jealousy of the Court of Directors of the direct patronage by the Crown his appointment from the Horse Guards had been superseded, and that Sir Charles Napier had just arrived in Calcutta before him as Commander-in-Chief, and had at once proceeded to the Punjab. Sir William found at Calcutta ample explanations from the Duke of Wellington and Lord Fitzroy Somerset. 1 His disappointment was heightened by 1 Such a bitter disappointment can have rarely befallen any man. He left Mauritius with her Majesty's orders in his hands, appointing him to the highest military command out of England, and his journal on the long sea voyage shows with what delight he looked forward to such a congenial sphere. He had no idea of his supersession until the vessel was in the Hooghly. How he met the blow may be seen from a memorandum found in his handwriting, dated Calcutta, July 1849. ' Others may have had, and I doubt not had, better reasons than myself for regarding this matter chiefly in its private bearings, and as it affected them- selves. I have the satisfaction of recording that from the first the public considera* tion was not only uppermost but paramount and all-controlling with me. J saw myself, the youngest Lieutenant-G-eneral in the army, advanced impromptu and most unexpectedly by myself since two geperal officers, my seniors, and consider- ably so, were already holding stations in India to the highest military trust which it is in the power of the sovereign to confer. But an emergency had sud- denly arisen, or was believed to have arisen, in which if the services of distin- guished military prowess already given proof of could be at once obtained, the ministry would be unpardonable, I thought, which should hesitate for a moment to apply them, to the quashing of all other dispositions on foot, and the more inexcusable in proportion to the magnitude of the successes already obtained through the exercise of such powers, and the firmness of hold thus fastened upon public opinion. Such an opportunity presented itself most prominently in the person of Sir Charles Napier, and India had been the very scene of his successes. B2 4 The Earlier Letters and Journals of the serious illness of Lady Gomm, contracted it was supposed .vhile nursing a sick friend. It was not till September that they were able to leave Calcutta; they remained for two months the guests of Lord and LaJy Torrington m Ceylon, and arrived in England in January 1850. In the following August he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Bombay ; button the eve of starting was appointed to the chief command, owing to Sir Charles Napier suddenly resigning his command, in consequence of differences between himself and Lord Dalhousie. On December 6, he landed in Calcutta, and was sworn in as Member of Council and Commander-in-Chief. The five years of his military command in India were comparatively uneventful, a calm occurring between the Sikh War and the great Mutiny of 1857 ; and that calm was hardly ruffled by the distant storm which was raging during two of those years on the shores of the Baltic and Black Seas: a suggestive thought for us who have seen in our own day how even a Could I have descended to the private consideration, even in the first moments of my acquaintance with my disappointment, I might have found consolation in the fact of my supersessor being considerably my senior in the army, and as such entitled to the preference in limine, although this would afford, of course, no adequate satisfaction for the cancelling, under ordinary circumstances, of my appointment once conferred. Au reste, it was notorious that Napier's quarrel with the Court of Directors had been the only bar to his appointment, in the ordinary course, in succession to Lord Gough, an obstruction which the panic of the hour at once swept away. (Signed) ' W. M. G-OMM.' Here, if anywhere, is a proof that the metal tried in this fire was gold. This was genuine loyalty, a rarer virtue than is sometimes thought. It was at one time asserted that it was the Duke himself who had sent out Napier. ' If you do not go, sir, / must,' was said to have been the sententious compliment by which the Prince of Waterloo overpersuaded the reluctant Napier to go. This now is ac- knowledged to be pure fiction. The Duke was not frightened by Chillianwallah ; he himself publicly declared that he was frightened neither for India nor for India's heroic army, for its safety or its laurels ; and that he never doubted the next intelligence would bring tidings of brilliant triumph and glorious success. The Duke of Wellington believed Sir William Gomm quite fit for the exigency, competent to deal with its complications and to terminate its crisis. Had he been left to himself he would not have superseded Sir William Gomm in the command to which he had been named, but he was overruled. JEquam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem is an old piece of advice, but it is few who can follow it. The Duke did when the news of Chillianwallah staggered England. Sir William Gomm did when the news of his supersession was his welcome to Calcutta. Sir William Maynard Go mm. 5 threatened rupture with Russia will now throw our Indian borders into disorder. The cordial relations which existed between the civil and military authorities of that period were due as much to the wise kiridheartedness of the Commander- in- Chief as to his intimate personal friendship with Lord Dalhousie. Commenting upon this in a review of his life, one of the leading London journals in 1875 wrote: 'Sir William Gomm's work was always thoroughly and smoothly done, and he had no enemies. The great proof of a person's real worth is to be found in the attachment of those brought O into private intercourse with him. Now, all Sir William's associates, especially those who at various times constituted his military family, loved and respected him. In India, where he succeeded the eccentric, impetuous, and prejudiced genius, Sir Charles Napier who held that every one who was not his partisan was either a fool or a knave, preferably the latter, and most probably both Sir William was extremely popular, arid his popularity was much promoted by his wife, who pre- sided over society with much grace and perfect success. None save those who have been in India can realise the fact that the purity and refinement of Anglo-Indian society depend greatly on the qualities of the lady who is at the head of it. At Simla, especially, personal influence and example work wonders ; and never was the society of the Capua of India in so healthy a state as when it was presided over by Lady Gomm. Her social, moral, and mental qualities admirably fitted her for the position which she assumed when her friend Lady Dalhousie, after a short stay in India, returned home- wards, only to die on the passage ; and many an old Indian looks back with affectionate recollection to the time when Lady Gomm was the centre and queen of the society in the beautiful British settlement in the Himalayas.' IV. From 1856 to 1875. Dignified and honoured old age. During this period he resided either at his cottage in Bram- dean, Hampshire, or at Brunswick Terrace, Brighton, or at his house at Spring Gardens, looking into St. James's Park. In 1863 he succeeded Lord Clyde as Colonel of the Cold- 6 The Earlier Letters and Journals of stream Guards, the regiment to which he had been transferred from the 9th half a century before for distinguished service through the Peninsular war. On January 1, 1868, he received his baton as Field-Marshal, and on the death of Sir John Burgoyne in 1871 he was appointed Constable of the Tower. He quietly rested from his long and arduous services on March 15, 1875, in the ninety-first year of his age, after eighty years passed in the service of his country. Of the public estimation in which he was held, no further comment would seem necessary than the above enumeration of the distinguished positions for which he was selected, and m all of which he achieved a success which, being quiet rather than brilliant, was the more concordant with his simple but manly character. One or two incidents, however, may here be added. In notifying to Sir William his appointment, with the sanction of her Majesty, as Constable of the Tower, Mr. Gladstone writes that ' his motive in making this proposal is to secure for a post of honour the name best qualified by service and distinction to adorn it.' The following memorandum, in Lady Gomm's handwriting, is the record of a distinguished compliment paid to him on the occasion of the Emperor of Russia's visit in 1874 : * Sir Charles Ellice sat next me at dinner yesterday. I was pleased at the way he described to me the scene at the Duke of Cambridge's table last May, of which, oddly enough, I had not heard any account, except from Sir William and Prince Teck ; although the Duke of Cambridge told me how gratifying it was to him that it had happened at his table. It seems there are never any speeches on these occasions. The Duke gave the Emperor of Russia's health standing. The Emperor gave the Queen's. He then stood up and proposed The Peninsular.hero present, the Field-Marshal." All seem to have been taken by surprise, no one more so than Sir Wil- liam himself, who was seated between Prince Teck and Sir Charles Ellice. He did the right thing; in the most digni- and simple manner, he got up and bowed most gratefully the Czar, and then to the Duke of Cambridge. Sir Charles Sir William Maynard Gomm. 7 Ellice spoke of it quite with emotion, and considered that every one present felt gratified by the compliment to the oldest soldier in the army. The Emperor of Russia afterwards sent Sir William the Order of St. Vladimir, which, however, the rule of our service does not permit him to wear. He has the Order of St. Ann (also Russian), and Lord Derby offered to exchange, through the two Governments, the Vladimir for the highest order or class (Grand Cross) of St. Ann's, but Sir William said he would prefer to retain in its present form the St. Ann, which he received at Waterloo under peculiar cir- cumstances, with a little band who are now no more, and to retain the Vladimir, though not permitted to wear it, as a personal compliment from the present Czar.' Thus, having attained the highest honours possible in the army, esteemed and beloved by all who knew him, from the chief over whose military education he had been once selected to preside, to the private of the Coldstreams, who was glad to salute as his colonel the veteran whose breast was covered with medals of the battles most famous in his country's history, and from the monarch, whose privileged and trusted servant he had been throughout her long reign, to his humblest tenant at Rotherhithe, where his charities and good deeds were broadcast, he ended in perfect peace a life whose boyhood and early man- hood had been passed in such Titanic war. To quote again from the essayist mentioned above, who evidently knew him intimately : f In appearance Sir William Gomm was short and slight, but though slight he was wiry, and preserved his bodily and mental activity almost to the last. When nearly ninety he worked as briskly as many men of threescore, while the clearness of his intellect seemed to be unaffected by the lapse of years. The chief sign of age was his deafness, which prevented him taking so active a part in conversation as both he and his friends would have liked. Sir William, though he never appeared before the public as an author, was from his earliest youth up fond of literature ; wrote several pieces of poetry of more than average merit, and possessed a most cultivated and refined mind. His passion for 8 The Earlier Letters and Journals of music was extreme, and he may indeed be described as a thoroughly accomplished English gentleman. In disposition he wasgenial, polished, andkindhearted, arid his circle of friends comprised every one who had known the good old man. It would be an exaggeration to pretend that he was an eminent general, or that his abilities were of the highest class. In no one office that he held did he leave the mark of genius ; but geniuses frequently do less good work than a conscientious modest man of experience, common-sense, good abilities, and diligence. Such a man was Sir William Gomm.' His love of reading was great, and his note-books abound in abstracts and in criticisms on the books which he read. These books were generally the best, and were carefully studied ; for instance, during the course of the summer of 1855, at Simla, he read Grote's ( History of Greece,' and his elaborate resume and intelligent criticism of the whole show that it was made a real study. Nor were lighter books dis- regarded. His love of Homer was lifelong; the follow- ing note was found in his handwriting, dated 1871 : ( Early in 1794, the undersigned, then ten years of age, was first down in the breakfast- room one morning, and spying his father's favourite volume of Pope's " Homer " high up on the mantelpiece above him, he drew a chair and climbing up reached it, and drank in for the first time the story of the death of Hector before interruption arrived, and never left his hold of the Iliad from that day to this, consigning over " Sand- ford and Merton," then just out, for the scrutiny of other tastes.' This love of Homer was all-pervading, and creeps out in his early letters from the battle-fields of Spain, and in his writings and diaries all through his life. As stated above, his love of music was intense. His diaries are full of musical notes, and it was fortunate that the deafness, which alone marked the decay of his physical powers, did not, up to the last, affect his musical enjoyment. In his diary, at the end of 1855, when, after his five years' command in India, he was looking forward to what he called his ( Ticket of Leave,' he writes : ' Dear England, shall I again hear the Sir William Maynard Gomm. 9 revel of thy woodlands ? Alas ! my poor ears are growing very unworthy of it all ; but not of the harmonies and thunder- music of thy great Concert Halls ; the temples of Handel and Mendelssohn ; nor of the great choirs that might well call down the seraphim to listen.' His love of music was strong to the very end. A week or two before his death, his niece (now Mrs. Carr-Gomm) mentioned that she was going to hear the ' Messiah.' He at once brightened up at the name of the oratorio, sent for the book, sat up in bed, and, turning over its pages, hummed over with strong voice many of his favourite airs, and spoke with delight of the beauties of different pas- sages. Many will recollect seeing at the Exeter Hall Sacred Harmonic reunions the handsome and happy face of the gallant veteran who for years was their constant attendant. No notice of either Sir William or of Lady Gomm would be complete which did not mention their great love of animals. To their last days every anecdote of wonderful animal sagacity or instinct was eagerly treasured up. From his early years, when first a mounted officer in the Peninsular war, to his latest days, his attachment to his horses was heart- felt. With no ordinary love does he speak of his little f Phan- tom,' who carried him like lightning over the field of Vittoria ; of 4 George,' who carried him at Quatrebras and Waterloo, and spent a green old age in Stoke Park, where he was buried with honour at the ripe age of thirty-two ; and of all the horses which formed an integral part of his family wherever he was. The following extract from his diary in 1856, when leaving India, speaks for itself. He is writing of the sorrow of say- ing farewell to all his old servants. ' And then our horses oh ! our horses ; dear " Fatty," my favourite bearer of more than twelve years, and friend for more than fourteen, too old to risk his taking home, though hale and hearty, with much of the colt about him still, made over to General Jolmstone, worthily bestowed in every sense ; his title is to be raised in importance to that of " The Chief." Honest and showy little " Kosy," George Berkeley's present to Elizabeth on leaving India, IO The Earlier Letters and Journals of made over also into good hands. Gholdb Sing," the prince of ponies, and Burmese " Wooiighee " happily provided for too; but all how reluctantly parted from ! And would we could close the catalogue of regretted ones here ! Our four horses that we intended taking home, the three pet Arabs, " Simkin," " Pekin," and "Bedouin," and "Momus" (dear Momus ! ), were led dqprn this morning to the Raj Ghat for passing on board the steam vessel that was to take us. Before we arrived some grievous mis- management occurred. The Arabs passed each in turn over the too negligently provided causeway of loose planks extended between shore and boat, with their wonted docility. But not so our precious " Momus." The unsteady motion of the planks beneath him, the vibration, increased, perhaps, by his heavier weight, alarmed him ; he hesitated in mid-passage, and would have turned back. His hind-quarters dropped instantly over the plank edge, and he was precipitated, disappearing for moments in the depth of water running along the low sand cliff bordering the river, his head presently raised by the Syce who kept hold of the halter, and the noble creature was hauled to land in sore amazement, incapable of standing, and too surely suffering though no outward wound was visible. . Jones, our butler, galloped back to meet us as we were coming on ele- phants, and apprised us of what had happened. His announce- ment will long ring heavily in my ears ; brief, and like that of Antilochus in import. On my arrival there lay outstretched broadside, along the strand of the Chenab " Like the tall bark whose lofty prow shall never stem the billows more " the ruined frame of one of the noblest horses that ever trod the soil of India or any other. Hopes were tried to be entertained for a time of eventual revival ; the eye was still bright as when careering in his pride, and the pulse healthy, but the spasmodic tremor of the limbs betrayed too surely to the prac- tised eye how all was faring with him and with me. The spine had been irremediably ruptured by the fall ; he could never rise again ; and although we still hoped that there was no acute pain (though there was, indeed, so much of heroic in his nature that he may very possibly have been sufterino- in- Sir William Maynard Gomm. 1 1 tensely while " looking tranquillity," and responding by his sidelong gaze to all the terms of endearment I was lavishing upon him), the symptoms of fatal injury became gradually more palpable. Too well convinced of this, I made prepara- tions for departure, leaving it to our good friend Mr. Allgood to see the stern necessity properly carried into effect, antici- pating a lingering suffering, by some worthy hands of the Irregular Cavalry. And may few part with as heavy hearts from this shore through coming time as we have borne away with us this day. * Of the twelve years of our Mauritian and Indian lives, and the brief period intervening, that horse has been a principal delight. Wherever I presented myself, " Grey Momus," the pride of every field, sure victor in the race on the " Champ de Mars " of Port Louis, and where he was not " crying Ha ! ha ! among the trumpets," looking it to the life wherever there have been musterings of troops and rustlings of arms for my inspections throughout India. Even fuller of years, perhaps, than his worthy compeer " Fatty " both having accompanied us from the Cape in 1842 he also bore them, like the oak of ages bears his leaves, greenly still ; and while at a loss to find hands into which I might safely confide him, if left behind, I trusted that he might be spared to me for years of further enjoyment of vigorous life, the " observed of all ob- servers " at home : sed dis aliter visum. 6 1 have since received assurance that all was most humanely carried through. Intense suffering was coming on shortly after I left him ; but the sun went down upon the calm repose and deep-delved and well-protected grave of a hero. For of such material was not the noble creature's nature full ? ' While speaking of their love of animals, no one who re- members Sir William and Lady Gomm during the years 1840 to 1851 would willingly pass unnoticed the splendid mastiff, Coonah, who during those twelve years was by sea and land their constant companion. Lady Gomm writes about him : 4 Coonah was given to me when a puppy in Jamaica in 1840. He was, I believe, a Cuban mastiff; a fine dark brmdle colour, 12 The Earlier Letters and Journals of with white breast and forepaws. He stood about thirty inches high, broad chest, with the appearance of great strength and power. His heavy silver collar measures seven inches in diameter ; his face was full of intelligence, and I named him on the spot after the range of mountains where he was born. It is natural to suppose that a dog, living so much in the society of human creatures, would become attached and domestic ; but Coonah seemed from the first to know that he had been given to me for my special solace and amusement. At first, considering him too large for a lapdog, I merely used to have him for my out-of-door companion, and he slept in the stables ; but I gave him his food myself every day. The first instance I remember of his particular attachment to myself was, when he was still a very young dog, on the occasion of Sir William being suddenly called on military business from the mountain cottage where we lived to town, and my remaining alone at Prospect. Our servants (even my own maid) slept in neighbouring huts, and the Staff had accompanied Sir William ; probably, therefore, I sat on the terrace rather later than usual with Coonah. At all events, at bedtime he refused to leave me ; and the more I told him to go and the servant called him, the more he crouched at my feet, looking up into my face most imploringly. The result was that when the servants left me and shut up the house, I turned the key on myself and Coonah as sole occupants ; and I thought the dog seemed to know the comfort he would be to me in my novel situation. From this time to the end of our stay in Jamaica he slept at the door of our room. His bound of delight at seeing me after every separation, however slight, was once very nearly the cause of serious accident to him. It was on the beach near the Hotel Pharoux at Rio, in early morning. I went out, and desired the servant to unfasten him and let him follow me. The dog when loosed, seeing me at some distance, made straight for me, and with such force leapt upon me that it nearly threw me down. This being observed by the boatmen, they rushed up with oars, paddles, and boathooks to destroy him; and I had some difficulty, by Sir William Maynard Gomm. 13 clasping him round the neck, to show that we were friends not strangers to each other. This probably saved his life. .-" . . On our two voyages to India Coonah was our com- panion, and always accompanied us on our Indian journeys. He travelled either in a palkee-gharri or marched with the horses. I had a dhooly for him on the Hills and two bearers, of which mode of conveyance he highly approved. But he did not long survive our second journey to India, nor did he die of old age. Poor Coonah was taken ill at Barnes Court, Simla, on Saturday, May 10, 1851 ; one day of severe illness, when hot baths and everything that could be thought of were tried to give him ease, but without effect. He died the same evening ; and Sir William buried him in the garden, under a sweetbriar, the next morning. From that day we called the place Coonah's Terrace. For twelve years he had been my faithful and affectionate companion.' It may seem to some trivial in so slight a sketch of a long- continued and eventful life to dwell so long upon horses and dogs ; but such anecdotes are really more indicative of the character than many more weighty matters would be, and both with husband and wife love of and kindness to all animals was almost a religious feeling. Nothing more quickly roused the anger of this man, whose youth had been spent among the most terrible scenes of bloodshed, than to see the slightest cruelty to any animal ; for the suffering of dumb creatures he had more than a woman's tenderness. His was the true love of animals which not merely extending to a few favoured pets, resents all unnecessary severity to the animals which are especially the servants of man, and does not take delight in the needless death of any. Sir William kept a regular diary during the latter half of his life, and an irregular one the greater part of it. At the more interesting part of his life as while he was in Jamaica and India and whenever he travelled on the Continent, the diary expanded into a full narrative ; whereas in flutter times it fell off into an occasional note or memorandum, entered at varying intervals. He wrote much in verse, and on many 14 The Earlier Letters and Journals of important public questions corresponded with those who had made such subjects their specialty. He wrote valuable com- ments on many books, and maintained interesting correspond- ence with many authors and poets. He carefully preserved all papers which he thought of special interest, and of much of his official correspondence he kept a private copy. From the above it may readily be inferred, considering the length of his life and the number of important offices which he held, that his papers are exceedingly voluminous. The present papers consist almost entirely of (1st) Notes of his family and early recollections, put together by Sir William himself; and (2ndly) letters written to his sister and aunt, principally the former, during his absence on the different campaigns. They extend from 1 799- he was born in 1784 to 1816. During this period he was employed first under the command of the Duke of York and Sir Ralph Abercromby, in the unprofitable campaign to the Helder against the French under General Vandamme. Next his regiment went in 1800 on a somewhat purposeless cruise along the Portuguese coast, and then to Gibraltar and Lisbon ; but there was not much fighting to be done, and the regiment came home at the end of the year, being nearly lost at sea. In the following year (1801) he was aide-de-camp to the General commanding the Northern Division; and in 1803 he got his captaincy, at the age of eighteen, and did duty with his regiment in Ireland. In 1805 he studied at the Royal Military College at High Wycombe, where he was under the instruction of Sir Howard Douglas, who from that time was his attached friend. In 1806 he again joined his regiment, when it went over to Hanover in another somewhat futile ex- pedition; and in the following year (1807) was employed under Lord Cathcart in an exploit which reflects no credit upon our country's arms or honourviz, the destruction of Copenhagen. He was then upon the Quartermaster-General's ff, on which, with some interruptions, he remained until the termination of the Waterloo campaign. In 1808 he went Sir A. Wellesley to Portugal, and was enga-ed in the Sir William Maynard Gomm. 15 battles of Ro^a and Vimiera. In October, 1808, he advanced with Sir John Moore into Spain, and with him made his masterly but disastrous retreat to Corunna. He was almost the last man of the force to embark, and having done so was nearly lost on his way to England. His ill-fortune seemed still to continue, for in the summer of 1809 we find him told off to accompany the melancholy Walcheren expedition under the great Minister's brother. Here he contracted in the trenches of Flushing a malarious fever, of which he could not shake himself clear for four years ; but, considering the number of men left behind in those dismal swamps, he may be reckoned fortunate to have come away even though in evil plight. Here the tide of his fortunes may be said to have turned, for in these first ten years his most glorious achievement was sharing in an arduous retreat under the illustrious Moore ; while the only success of our arms was at Copenhagen, and was the most inglorious act of his long career. The next year (18 10) he was again with the army in Spain, having through his absence at Walcheren missed sharing the glories of Talavera almost the only great Peninsular battle at which he was not present. From that day forward till the close of the great war he found himself under his former chief, and his friend for the next forty years, the great Duke ; and though opposed to the mightiest of those famous mili- tary leaders Massena, Ney, Marmont, Soult, and finally Napoleon himself he was thenceforward on the winning side, unless we should except the unsuccessful siege of Burgos, and the disastrous though well-managed retreat therefrom. His battle-roll thenceforward is an epitome of the Peninsular war. He was in the rapid advance to and battle of Busaco, followed by the quick but orderly retreat over the Mondego, through Coimbra, Leyria, and Santarem, drawing Massena on till he found himself confronted by the impassable and hitherto un- suspected lines of Torres Yedras, behind which from the heights of Sobral the English in comparative comfort dur- ing the winter months watched Massena and the French 1 6 The Earlier Letters and Journals of becoming gradually reduced, till they in their turn had to re- treat in the spring from point to point, fighting continually till they were completely routed at Fuentes d'Onor. He bore his part in the terrible sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, and in the battle of Salamanca, for his conduct in which battle the Duke specially recommended him for promotion, and he be- came a lieutenant-colonel before he was twenty-eight years of age. Thence followed the bright advance into the capital of Spain, driving Joseph from his ill-fitting throne ; and the march through Valladolid to Burgos, where for once Wel- lington had to own himself foiled after many brave assaults, and the siege had to be raised, while another odious retreat had to be conducted and the army placed in safety on the other side of the Agueda. Perhaps this was one of the most arduous and trying manoeuvres in which Gomm ever bore a part. It was a retreat after a failure, in the face of an over- powering foe led by a general more skilful than he who allowed himself to be defeated at Salamanca (for Soult never allowed his hand to be forced like Marmont) ; the army was disorganised and almost mutinous, and throughout disheartened; the weather was most unfavourable ; the Ministry very tardy in their support ; while the newspapers and the public at home were then, as ever, loud in their denunciation of those who are not ostensibly and continuously successful, and utterly in- appreciative of able generalship under difficulties. It was in these circumstances that Gomm most truly appreciated the force of his leader's character. This is fully seen in his letter of November 22, 1812, written ere the sad march was con- cluded. That young Gomm's letters were not the usual military comments of the day is most noticeable if reference be made to the English journals of that time, and notice be taken of the carping ignorance with which the conduct of Wellington was therein condemned upon the authority of officers who were indeed with the army, but to whom the complicated and skilfully prudent movements of the General were quite un- intelligible. It is easy to be wise after the event, and nothing is more remarkable in these letters than the correctness of Sir William Maynard Gomm. i 7 Gomm's judgment of the great deeds which were enacted be- fore him. During the winter, while the army rested in North Portugal, Gomm's time was busily employed in surveying the roads and passes over the Douro and through Tras-os-Montes : in the spring the knowledge thus acquired was able to be turned to good effect, and it was owing to this knowledge that much to the astonishment of Jourdain Graham's wing of the army at the battle of Vittoria had the support of artil- lery. Then followed the long siege of San Sebastian, and the driving of the French out of Spain a feat the accomplish- ment of which the home-croakers had all along declared to be beyond the power of our general and our army. Our passage of the French frontier was warmly opposed ; and almost daily battles were fought on the banks of the Bidassoa, the Nivelle, the Nive, and the Adour, where Gomm says that he had never been exposed to so many risks as during those few days. In 1814, while investing Bayonne, be was encamped at Biarritz, a village then so insignificant as not to be marked in the maps, and there was received in April the news of the restoration of the Bourbons and Napoleon's retreat into Elba. Peace being restored, he travelled through France, and reached home in the autumn. He then reaped the reward of his good service, being transferred to the Coldstream Guard3 and made a K.C.B, The following year (1815) saw him once more beside his old chief, once more in his old Staff appointment, as the Quartermaster-General of Picton's division (the Fighting Fifth), and once more opposed to the French this time under the great commander himself. Both at Quatre Bras and Waterloo he was, as he says, ' in the hottest of all this glorious business.' Then he followed up the French to Paris itself, where he saw the King's return. It will thus be seen that in all the great events of that great time he bore his part a part quite as great as was con- ceivable for a man of his age, if not born in the purple. Through all these murderous battles he had seemed, as he says, to bear a charmed life ; it may almost be said that he escaped 1 8 The Earlier Letters and Journals of unhurt through them all, for the slight wound he received in the leg at the Nivelle was not enough to incapacitate him for work,and the touch he had at Bergen, when only fourteen years of age, was to his sorrow only a scratch, and too rapidly imperceptible. In fact, he personally suffered less in a score of hard and bloody and long-contested battles than many a lad does in a single footoall match. It is, of course, impossible to say how many hairbreadth escapes he had, many of them, curiously enough, from drowning, both in sea and in flood. He frequently had to lament that the beloved horses which he was riding did not escape equally well with himself. At Busaco, at Vittoria, at the Nive, and at Quatre Bras, his horses were shot under him. The narrowness of his own escape at Vittoria was little short of miraculous. His brother Henry, of whom so frequent mention is made in these letters, was only eighteen months his junior. He does not seem to have shared either his brother's good luck or brightness of temper; nor, to judge from his letters, was he a man of the same rare culture as William Gomm. He was in the 6th Regiment and was wounded in the battle of the Pyrenees on July 24, 1813. The wound was not at first considered dangerous, but it refused to close, and his health was soon undermined, although he returned to England and received all the care that a tender sister's nursing could supply. In the hopes of restoring him to health, Sir William Gomm, after the conclusion of the war, and as soon as he could get leave, took him abroad in 1816, intending to let him have the benefit of the winter in Northern Italy. They only got, however, as far as near Geneva, when Henry Gomm suddenly grew worse, and died in a wayside inn. His brother, terribly broken-hearted, buried him in the cemetery at Geneva, and returned alone. In the following year (1817) a still greater trial awaited him : his only sister Sophia, to whom nearly all the following letters are addressed, faded away, and before the close of the yoar left him to mourn his sadly desolate condition. Some- thing may be known of the love between this brother and Sir William Maynard Gomm. 19 sister from the letters ; but to the close of his life, though he survived her by nearly sixty years, he could hardly speak of her without his eyes filling with tears. The tone of his letters, the care with which he preserved to his old age her latest letters to him as some of his most valued treasures, the way in which he always spoke of her as he looked at her miniature, showed the singular love which he bore to her ; and it is through her appreciation of him, and the careful way that she preserved and arranged, and partly copied out, all his letters to her, now three-quarters of a century ago, that we are to-day enabled to read this simple, manly narrative of the events of those days, written at the time with all the personality and brightness of the actor, and yet with all the reverence due to her gentler nature, avoiding both the indelicate and self-conceited detail of * our own special 'that hideous emanation of our day and the cold balancing of the historian who writes, years after, of past events when all the freshness has faded out of them. One or two things are chiefly noteworthy as we read these letters; one is, how excellently just a view the writer took of the affairs which were unfolding themselves before him, although he was an actor, and they were affairs 'big with destinies of realms,' and it is not always easy even with our modern appliances of telegrams and summaries rightly to estimate the significance of our present position. Another point is, how singularly modest the writer was ; he was but a youth, writing to a sister who worshipped him ; he was an actor in all the great doings of the time, yet not even in the earliest letters is there the faintest word of ' brag ' or e tall writing ' ; he writes of what he saw, rarely of what he did. As an instance of this, I may mention that, speaking to me of these early letters, an officer who has himself borne high command said, ' Do you find any notice of those two guns Gomm brought up at a critical point in one of the early Peninsular battles ? ' On my telling him I found no mention of the circumstance, he said, ' That is singular, for I always heard that that was what first brought him to the Duke's notice, and the Duke was so pleased c 2 2O The Earlier Letters and Journals of with him for this that he never lost sight of him from that day.' He had genuine loyalty in his disposition, and it is apparent in all his correspondence a loyalty which means not a mere acknowledgment of and attachment to the sovereign, for this is the natural inheritance of every respectable member of the community, but in its higher and fuller sense a constant and faithful disposition to uphold constituted authority. Dis- loyalty was not unknown among our officers in the Peninsular war, who questioned and set at nought in estimation, if not in practice, all the plans of their leaders; and such disloyalty spreads now, like a noxious weed, through every rank and every profession in our country. In schools and in the church, among country yokels, and even in the Houses of Parliament, as well as in the services, authority is now contemned, and has difficulty to uphold its very existence. 1 From the time when Gomm was a subaltern in camp he was always prompt to render a willing and cheerful obedience to the powers that be, and was always truly and faithfully loyal. Further, note what a cultivated mind he had, so full of classical allusions, so appreciative of the highest forms of architecture and music and poetry, so well-informed on all points, so good a linguist and yet his schooling was in days we are apt to consider the dark ages of education, and he left school before he was fifteen years old, and was from that day in camp and on duty. It is true, and this perhaps is the secret, that though an orphan, he was lovingly and tenderly brought up ; he never lost any opportunity, whether in home canton- ment or on foreign and active service, of trying to improve himself; he read the best books, and made careful criticisms on them; he associated with and always seems to have been a favourite in the best society, wherever he was. Add to this that he was a singularly pure-minded and religious man, and we have a picture of what from his earliest days, as far as we can judge from his writings, Sir William Gomm 1 Disloyal persons were thus described many centuries ago by a sacred writer : They despise government; presumptuous are they, self-willed; they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.' Sir William Maynard Gomm. 21 seems to have been, and of what we certainly know him to have been in later years a perfect English gentleman. And it was to an officer's feeling as a gentleman first, and as a soldier afterwards, that Sir William Gomm, when he him- self came to power, used always to appeal whenever he had to reprimand ; and this is in entire accordance with the anecdote told of the Duke of Wellington at page 373. We have a good specimen of this style of dealing on an occasion when, as Com- mander-in-Chief in India, he had to prohibit the practice of anonymous newspaper correspondence. The following is from a circular letter addressed to commanding officers from the Adjutant-General's Office in Simla, 1853 : * The Commander-in-Chief in India noticed some time ago in the " Lahore Chronicle " a very unbecoming anonymous letter, apparently emanating from a Queen's regiment, and full of murmurs at the prospect of a move. ( 2. Distressed as his Excellency was to suppose that any officer of that corps could so far have forgotten what is due to his service, his regiment, and himself, as to have written this letter, the Commander-in-Chief abstained from inquiry ; but a few weeks later another letter appeared in the " Delhi Gazette," written in the name of another regiment, and also anonymous. This second letter was still more improper and unsoldierlike than the first, and personally insulting to the Commander-in-Chief. 6 3. His Excellency, not as General Sir William Gomm, but as Commander-in-Chief in India, responsible for the discipline and character of her Majesty's service in this country, felt that he could no longer be passive, and directed inquiry to be made. '4. The result is that a captain in the service, with be- coming contrition, at once confessed himself to be the author of the letter. ( 5. In consequence of this candid and prompt avowal, the Commander-in-Chief has overlooked the particular offence, but his Excellency feels it his duty to put the officers of the Queen's service upon their guard. 22 The Earlier Letters and Journals of ' 6. From the un military practice of anonymous writing in the newspapers, and the still more bl am able practice of anonymous complaints, her Majesty's service has hitherto been supposed to be free. ' 7. It is hardly necessary to dwell upon the pernicious example which an officer who is inconsiderately drawn into a compliance with such practices thus sets to his own subordi- nates. No reflecting member of the profession can deny that such example tends to sap the foundation of all discipline. ' 8. You are requested, therefore, to read this communica- tion to the assembled officers of the regiment under your com- mand, and repeat to them an aphorism of the great Duke of Wellington, which was quoted by Sir William Gomm as his only reprimand to the author of the second letter herein mentioned: ' " To write an anonymous letter is the meanest action of which any man can be guilty." ' Sir William Maynard Gomm. 23 CHAPTER II. 1794-1799. PARENTAGE FIRST COMMISSION WOOLWICH JOINS 9TH REGIMENT EXPEDITION TO THE HELDER BATTLE OF BERGEN. FROM a manuscript memoir of his family drawn out by Sir William Gomm in 1834, it appears that the Gomms were an Oxfordshire family, and that his great-grandfather, William Gomm, who died at Nethercote in 1780, had considerable estates there. His second son (Sir William's grandfather), William, resided in Russia, marrying a Russian lady of good family ; he embarked in very large commercial enterprises, constructing the port of Onega in the White Sea, and opening an extensive commerce and navigation in a previously obscure and unproductive corner of the Russian empire. The contracts made by the Czar Peter were, however, perfidiously broken by his successor, and Mr. Gomm's enterprise was ruined. He was then appointed secretary to the embassy, first at the court of St. Petersburg, and then at the Hague, by his friend Sir James Harris, afterwards Lord Malmesbury. His eldest son, William (Sir William Gomm's father), entered the army, and served with distinction through the American and West Indian wars from 1776 to 1794. While in the West Indies, he married, in 1782, Mary Alleyne Maynard, whose family resided in Barbadoes and had large estates there. He was an officer of great merit and distinction, and was frequently mentioned in the despatches of the time. He was wounded at the battle of St. Lucie in 1779, and the following interesting mention of the circumstance is found among his son's papers : 24 The Earlier Letters and Journals of [1794. < I remember, while aide-de-camp at Liverpool to one of my father's truest and worthiest friends, General Benson, in the year 1801, entering the reading-room of the Athenaeum, and carelessly taking up a volume of the Gentleman's Magazine of the year 1793, and running my eye for a few moments over its pages without any definite object, my attention being on a sudden fixed by the following anecdote. It will be found at page 880 of that year: ' " . . . . While I extol the bravery of the Guards, let the Line have the merit due to them, which, at least, I will say nothing can exceed. As a single instance I must just mention a spirited reply of an officer, in the West Indies last war, to Sir William Medows. Captain G , of the 55th Regiment, being wounded in the eye at the taking of St. Lucia, Sir William, passing by in the heat of action, just stopped to regret his misfortune. ' Do not mind me, sir,' says he. ' I have one eye left, with which I hope to see you beat the French army.' Such a speech, made by one in ex- cruciating pain, deserves to be recorded." 4 The blank following the initial to the name I was happily at no loss to fill up, and busied myself, con amore, in copying off the passage. The pleasurable feeling of a youth of sixteen, excited by accidentally stumbling upon such a memento, will be easily understood.' The esteem in which he was held by his superiors may be appreciated from the following letter from Sir Charles Grey to Lord Amherst : Sir Charles Grey to Lord Amherst. ' Fort Bourbon : March 25, 1794. * SIR, I have another recommendation to offer, to which I solicit your Lordship's attention most earnestly, being the par- ticular situation of Major William Gomm, of the 55th Eegiment, who was put in orders at Barbadoes by the Honourable^Major- General Bruce on June 20, 1793, as lieutenant-colonel com- mandant of a corps of French emigrants, and did duty as such, but has never been confirmed at home. -EX. o.] Sir William Maynard Gomm. 2$ ( I can assure your lordship that he is an officer of infinite merit, being also deputy-adjutant-general to the forces in the West Indies, and six years in the rank of major. At the time of my embarking on this expedition, I found the situation in which I was to leave Barbadoes required an officer of great experience, activity, and ability, as well as of local knowledge of this service ; and knowing Major Gomm to answer this description, I appointed him to the command at Barbadoes, although he wished to have come on this expedition, in which difficult situation he has acquitted himself most admirably, and fully answered my expectation, having had near 1,200 sick, with all the women and children, under his management, besides the care of forwarding the recovered men, all kinds of stores, etc., to the army. I then promised him that I would represent his claims and merit to your lordship, for his Majesty's considera- tion, to obtain for him the brevet rank of lieutenant-colonel from June 20, 1793, when he was promoted by the Honour- able Major-General Bruce ; and it will be a high gratification to me if his Majesty should be pleased to confer the favour of lieutenant-colonel's rank on him from the date above- mentioned. (Signed) 'Cn. GREY.' He was lieutenant-colonel in the 55th Regiment, when he was killed Avhile still serving under Sir Charles Grey at the storming of Point-a-Petre in the island of Guadeloupe on July 2, 1794. At the time of his death his wife and four children were in England, and Sir William Gomm records that it is stated in his father's last letter that : ' Through Sir Charles Grey's regard for him, and under a lively sense of obligation personal obligation to him, he, unsolicited, availed himself of his privilege of presenting my father with an ensign's commission for myself. Through Colonel Fisher's zealous intervention, although not improbably in equal measure from his own kind impulse, he appointed Henry to an ensigncy in the 6th Regiment shortly after my father's demise. 4 But these appointments, to be confirmed, needed a higher 36 The Earlier Letters and Journals of [1794. sanction from home, and not only their confirmation was needed, but a steady protection from the highest quarter from assaults not unreasonably urged from time to time against the retainers of appointments, the active duties of which they were incapacitated as yet, through extreme youth, from fulfilling. Indeed, we both engaged in these as early as most youths have done, similarly circumstanced ; but, as I have already said, our position in the interim required a warm and earnest pro- tection ; and we found it all in the full heart and paternal consideration of the good Duke of York ; and not only so, but in grateful memory of our father's services, he scrupled not to confer a like mark of favour upon little Richard several years before he died.' The military careers of the three little brother ensigns, so uniformly begun, were eventually as diverse as is possible. Richard died in 1801, aged fourteen years, almost before he could have begun to learn his drill. Henry rose in the 6th Regiment, and served in Canada and through the greater part of the Peninsular campaign with his regiment; in July 1813 he had for a time temporary command of his regiment in the Pyrenees, and, as his brother's diary says, ( he proved his title to it in every way. I received many letters from his friends when I was before Sebastian, informing me of all that had taken place ; all giving me the best consolation a soldier ought, perhaps, to require on such an occasion. He was wounded, and fell at the head of his regiment encouraging his men.' That division of the army under Sir Rowland Hill, being hard pressed by the French, were retreating, and Henry Gomm insisted on being brought away with the retreating army, although General Hill had left with him a recommenda- tion to the French general as honourable to himself as to Henry Gomm. In spite of his wounds, as soon as he heard the army was about again to advance, he left Bilbao and rejoined his regiment, although the weather was then most inclement in the Pyrenees ; but his exhausted condition did not permit him to remain there long, and he was compelled to J2i. 9.] Sir William Maynard Gomm. 27 forego the chances of distinction and promotion which then appeared just within his reach. For three long years he re- mained alive in great suffering and in enfeebled health, latterly travelling in the south of Europe, accompanied by his brother William. At last, on their way to Geneva, he died at Pont de Beauvoisin, on December 5, 1816, aged thirty. His brother removed the body to Geneva, and buried him in the cemetery of Plein Palais, where a marble monument still marks the spot. William was the eldest of the three brothers, and his name remained on the Army List till 1875. What a singular con- trast to the fate of his two brother ensigns, one of whom did not live beyond boyhood, the other who died in his early man- hood ! whereas William attained every distinction that the army had to offer, occupying the highest commands, and died full of age and honour, in full possession of all his facul- ties to the last eighty-one years after he had, with his little brothers, received his first commission in the army. Some of the newspapers which, on his installation as Con- stable of the Tower of London in 1872, gave a brief summary of his career, were quite incredulous when recording from the Army List the date of his commission, and Sir William himself wrote in the margin that it was accounted for by the incidents narrated in the despatch of Sir Charles Grey from Berville Camp recording the death of his father Colonel Gomm at the battle of Point-a-Petre, in consequence of which a benign Government had given commissions to the three orphaned sons of an officer of high rank who fell in battle. After their mother's death in 1796 the children were under the care of their father's sister, Miss Jane Gomm. This lady, and her most intimate friend, Miss Martha Caroline Golds- worthy, the sister of General Goldsworthy, aide-de-camp to His Majesty George III., were associated as sub-governesses to the princesses the daughters of George III. and Queen Charlotte. The care and education of the three younger children, viz. the Princesses Mary, Sophia, and Amelia, fell almost entirely to the lot of Miss Gomm, who, until her 2 8 The Earlier Letters and Journals of [179. death in 1822, retained the affection and esteem, not of her pupils only, but of all the Royal Family. After the death of her sister-in-law, Mrs. William Gomm, in 1796, she assumed the charge of the orphan children, and filled for them a mother's part. She was a lady of exalted piety, and possessed a powerful mind, richly stored with sound learning. It is doubtless to her estimable training that William Gomm owed that good education and genuine piety which were so marked in the boy officer, whose schooling lasted only till his fifteenth year. The kindly feeling exhibited by the Royal Family to Miss Gomm and her nephews is shown by the fact that William Gomm received his first sword from the hands of H.R.H. the Princess Mary, while many pieces of plate,' still retained in the family, were gifts lo Miss Gomm from different members of the Royal Family. William Maynard Gomm, then not quite ten years of age, was in 1794 gazetted ensign in the 9th Regiment, and in 1795 a lieutenant ; he, however, remained at Woolwich prosecuting his studies for some years, but in the summer of 1799 the British Ministry came to a resolution to send an army into Holland, in order to drive out the French and to overturn the Republican Government which the French had set up, and to bring the country once more under the dominion of the House of Orange. An arrangement for this purpose was made with the Emperor Paul I. of Russia, who, in consideration of a large subsidy from England, furnished some 18,000 men, while the English were to supply a con- tingent about half that number, and to support the com- bined forces with their fleet. The 9th was one of the regi- ments selected to go, and William Gomm, who heard of this while working in the Military Academy, became most anxious that the leave which enabled him to be absent from the regi- ment and to attend the Academy should not, as his friends proposed, be extended, but that he should be allowed to go with his regiment on service. His letter to his aunt, Miss Gomm, on the subject is full of youthful enthusiasm. JET. 14.] Sir William Maynard Gomm. 29 To Miss Gomm, Queen s Lodge, Windsor. Woolwich : July 8, 1 799. ' DEAR AUNT, I have heard that the 9th Regiment is ordered to go upon the expedition, and is now at Southampton. I am very much afraid Colonel Fisher 1 will find means to get me further leave of absence, therefore I cannot help troubling you with another letter to beg you when you write to him to say that he will make me the happiest being alive by letting me go with it. If he does not grant me this request, I assure you it will quite dishearten me, and render me totally indifferent whether I join it soon or late. I know your kind- ness, and am afraid you are averse to my going ; but if my happiness is in the least to be regarded, pray gratify me in this one desire, and I shall look upon it as the greatest kind- ness you can do me. I shall never have the least inclination to go on with my studies here, not through obstinacy (for I hope I shall never be so ungrateful as to forget that my friends' kindness is the sole motive of their endeavouring to get me leave of absence), but through disappointment ; for I have fixed my mind upon joining my regiment when this last leave is expired, and I am still more desirous now of going as the regiment is appointed for the expedition : not that I think I shall be of any service, for that is out of the question ; but that I may learn to be of service, if possible, some future day. But if my friends insist upon my remaining at Woolwich, and succeed in endeavouring to get me further leave, I shall of course be obliged to comply. I shall thank them sincerely for their attention to me, but I shall be unhappy. The 55th Regiment 2 is also going on the expedition. I was very agree- ably surprised yesterday by a visit from Mr. Philpot. He took me out to dinner with him. I told him that the 9th was ordered on the expedition, and that I intended writing to you. 1 In his mother's will Colonel Fisher is named as one of the executors and guardians of the children, with Miss Jane Gomm and the Kev. William Gomm. 2 This was his father's old regiment. It, however, did not go on this occasion to Holland. 30 The Earlier Letters and Journals of [1799 He begged ine to let him know how it was to be settled as Boon as I could. I suppose you know that my aunt and Miss Philpot are at Southampton. I beg you will excuse me sending you this second letter, but I am quite upon the fidgets to know whether you and Colonel Fisher and some other good folks will be so merciful as to grant my request. I hope you and Sophia continue in good health. Pray let me know as soon as you can whether you are merciful. With love to Sophia, I remain, dear Aunt, 6 Your dutiful and affectionate Nephew, (Signed)