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Leader (1850-1860), 19th December 1857, Edition 2 of 2, Page 17

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      The Campaign Of 1815. Ijfatoire De Ut Ca...

      Bras less so than Ligny . Them , however , we pass by , to dwell for a moment on the extraordinary conduct of Napoleon after the battle he had won . Apathetic as he had been on the morning of the 16 th , he committed a worse fault on the 17 th . Then he gave BLiicher time to concentrate three-fourths of his whole force on the position of battle ; now he lost sight of his enemy altogether . It is the most amazing , the most incredible fact in the whole history of his Belgian campaign , that , although the rear-guard of the Prussians remained on the field until the dawn of the 17 th , Napoleon allowed them to slip away he knew not whither . He took it for granted that the Prussians had retreated upon Namur and Liege . He knew nothing whatever as to their movements . This is inexplicable . One fails to under " stand how a chief so famous for the destructive pursuit of a beaten army could have become so negligent . Nevertheless , it is the fact that it was not until late on the night of the 17 th that Grouchy , sent in pursuit , with instructions not to lose sight of an enemy who had already disappeared

      . discovered that Blucher had retreated to Wavre . Napoleon , who had slept at Fleurus , reviewed his troops on the field of battle . It was not until the middle of the day that he directed Grouchy to follow the Prussians , and took himself the road to Quatre Bras . From this moment it may be said the fate of the campaign was decided . The golden opportunity of victory over both his foes had fallen from his feeble grasp . Yet how dangerous he was , even under these disadvantages , the ' advance on Charleroi , the victory at Ligny , the rapid march on the field of Waterloo , has shown . Wellington , thoroughly roused by the events of the 16 th , was in the field at daylight on the 17 th . Fully aware that , if Blucher had been defeated , his position had become untenable , he caused a reconnoissance to be made on the Namur road . By these means , and by the arrival of an officer from

      the Prussian army , he learnt their defeat , and intended concentration at Wavre , and he informed the Prussian general that he should fall back upon the position of Waterloo , and accept battle there , provided he could count upon the support of two Prussian corps . Wellington forthwith began that ably conducted retrograde movement which , it appears to us , has not been appreciated by Colonel Charras . Napoleon followed . Again he was too late . As he had lost sight of the Prussians , so he had not been able to overtake the Anglo-Dutch army ; and Wellington , thanks to the ability with which Vivian and Uxbrid

      ge covered his rear , arrived almost unmolested in his chosen position . The result of the day ' s operations was , that while the Prussians and English had regained their communications , the French were split into two fragments , separated by many miles and a difficult country , one being in front of Wellington , the other still ignorant of the whereabouts of Blucher , and quite beyond the reach , of Napoleon . Time was pressing . Napoleon ' s only chance , considering the enormous odds arrayed against him , was to deal swift and decisive blows right and left : not to pause one moment in his career : not to slefin unon his success : not to hesitate an instant . Huh m his career ; not to sleep upon his success ; not to hesitate an instant ; but

      to carry out , with resistless speed , his great design . Time fought against him ; and he did not disarm this powerful enemy by unfailing promptitude and foresight . Colonel Charras proves , to demonstration , the almost incredible defects of his proceedings on the 17 th June , defects which Captain Siborne and other writers had indicated with sufficient precision , but not with such abundant proof . Having followed our author to the field of the decisive battle , we must here leave him awhile , and resume our remarks at a convenient season .

      _^O. 404, December 19,1857.] The Leader....

      _^ o . 404 , December 19 , 1857 . ] THE LEADER . 1217

      History At A Glance. The Eighteen Christ...

      HISTORY AT A GLANCE . The Eighteen Christian Centuries . By the Rev . James White , Author of ' Landmarks of the History of England . ' Blackwood and Sons . Mb . White is a master of popular historical composition . It is charming to read history when he writes it . The study of some books is a duty ; here it is a pleasure . We would not have all histories ¦ w ritten in a similar manner ; we must have Livy and Tacitus , Gibbon and Hume , Prescott and Macaulay * , and the more of them appear , the richer will be the libraries of Europe . No one who has a style could be spared ; if we prize Louis Blanc , it is not that we would obliterate Michelet ; admiring Burke , it is not necessary to disparage Fox—his oratorical contrast ; nor would it be philosophical , because pomp and splendour of idea and diction are fascinating when appropriate , to undervalue the clear , sparkling simplicity of Mr . White . This merit in his book is peculiar , and claims particular notice . Here we have a volume in which the results of extensive and various studies have

      been brought together , but in which the materials , gathered far and wide , have been so perfectly assimilated , that the narrative flows as rapidly and smoothly as a Christmas tale , and might he supposed to be told by an English patriarch to a flock of quiet listeners . At the same time , Mr . White , familiar as he is , understands the art of colouring his outlines , which place the history of the world , since the beginning of the Christian era , in one view , as distinctly as upon a map . This , we think , is not common pi'aise ; but it is due to a work marked by so unusual a combination of modesty with merit . Mi " . White had evidently furnished his memory from a large range of authorities before he commenced this volume , which is not compiled , but written—and that is a virtue rare in epitomes . It is easy to distinguish between fabricated episodes , cmnbrously joined together , and the fullharmonious How of an author who has possessed himself of his subject

      , iu its entirety , instead of investigating as he goes . Half the books published , especially on history , arc produced by persons who first sec their way by means of the lump they are lighting for the public . This is not the case with Mr . White . He leads the way , because he knows it . lie writes with care , because he has read with diligence . His plan is to construct eighteen historical links , connecting the first century with the nineteenth , not ^ oing back so fur as to invade tho territory of pure paganism , or approaching so near our own times as to entangle himself in judgments on living men . The narrative , wo have said , is plain and clear ; but it ia not destitute of ornament ; Mr . White is very happy and ready in the art of literary illustration , so that a sort of logical imagination plays over the pages , bringing the early centuries into the abundant light of our own times . Nor is humour absent .

      All real historians diverge at times into irony ; they know that nothing is so repulsive as the solemn dissection of a fool . But that for which this book is chiefly to be valued is the rapidity with which its readers may recognise any one of the eighteen Christian centuries by its characteristics . Mr . White is no pedant , and does not construct picturesque parallels or dive into profound analogies , yet he paints the portraits of generations , and you recognize them ' by thehv features .. This is a very careful aud effective method of dealing with history ; it accounts for the difference between the works of art and arfcisanship . Indeed , when a manual is distinguished by such qualities , it becomes a book of reference for all classes of readers , instead of being merely a serviceable summary for the indolent or the young . We will make one quotation—it describes Froissart : —¦ .. John Ifroissart , called , by the courtesy- of the time Sir John , in honour of . his being priest and chaplain , devoted a lo > ng life to the collection of the fullest and most trustworthy accounts of all the events and personages characteristic of his time . From 1326 ————^^ -v Mdv

      . , ^ " , — — — ^ — " j —* ^^ — —™ - —— — ' —¦ — - —~ —^^ —»* ^ w ^ *^^^*^ om * r * . ^ w # ** g j ^ ^ i ^^ p ^ 0 ^^ A when his labours commence , to 1400 , when his active pen stood still , nothing happened in any part of Europe that the Paul Pry of the period did not rush off to verify on the spot . If lie heard of an , assemblage of knights going on at th « extremities of France , or in the centre of Germany ; of a tournament at Bordeaux , a court gala in Scotland , or a marriage festival at Milan , his travels began—whether in the humble guise of a solitary horseman , with his portmanteau behind his saddle , and a single greyhound at his heels , as he jogged wearily across the Border , till he finally arrived in Edinburgh ; or in his grandeur style of equipment , gallant steed , with hackney led beside him , and four dogs of high race gambolling round his horse , as he made his dignified journey from Ferrara to Rome . Wherever life-was to be seen and painted , the indefatigable Froissart was to be found . "Whatever he had gathered up on former expeditions , whatever he learned in his present tour , down it went in his own exquisite language , with his own -poetical impression of the pomps and pageantries he beheld ; and when at the end of his journey he reached the court of prince or

      potentate , no higher treat could be offered to the ' noble lords and ladies bright' than to form a glittering circle round the enchanting chronicler , aud listen to what lie had written . From palace to palace , from castle to castle , the unwearied ' picker-up of unconsidered trifles' ( which , however , were neither trifles nor unconsidered , when their ttue value became known , as giving life and reality to the annals of a whole period ) , pursued his happy way , certain of a friendly reception , when he arrived , and certain of not losing his time by negligence or "blindness on the road . If he overtakes a stately cavalier , attended by squires and men-at-arms , he enters into conversation , drawing out the experiences of the venerable warrior "by relating to Mm all he knew

      of things and persons in which he took an interest . And when they put up at some hostelry on the road , and while the gallant , knight was sound asleep on his strawstuffed couch , and his followers were wallowing amid the rushes on the parlour floor ,. Froissart was busy with pen and note-book , scoring down all the old gentleman had told him , all the fights he had been present at , and the secret history ( if any ) of the councils of priests and kings . In this way knights in distant parts of the world became known to each , other . Without acquiescing in all Mr . " White ' s opinions , we can cordially praise this book , as delightful to read , and most creditable to its author .

      Essays On The French Revolution. Essays ...

      ESSAYS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION . Essays on the Early Period of the French Revolution . By the late John Wilson Croker . Reprinted from the Quarterly Review , with Additions and Corrections . Murray . These essays cannot be properly described as historical or critical . They are invectives on historical subjects in a critical form . The malignant violence of Mr . Croker ' s style was effective at a time when 'the late Mr . Burke ' was an authority on the events of the French Revolution , and it

      may have been serviceable -when a false or vicious writer was to be nailed to a pillory ; but Mr . Croker did not use his knife in the interests of literature ; he was a political partisan , so furious in his antipathies , so inveterate in his egotism , and so reckless in his statements , that whenever lie set himself to vituperate or scandalize an author , he was certain to fall into several errors at least as unpardonable as those which he thought he was stamping out of existence . The motto of this volume might have been taken fro in Christopher North : " Let them come on ; one by one they die wriggling on the point of my pen . " Wilson always fancied himself to be writing with a dagger in one hand and a thistle in the other ; but Wilson Croker , according to nis own belief , was a whirlpool drawing into his vortex volumes of all sizes , and hurling them out wrecked , empty , and in ruins . The first article in the collection begins : " We believe we shall be able to demolish utterly and irretrievably M . Thiers ' s credit as an historian . " No doubt Mr . Croker did tear up several chapters of Thiers ' s history , exactly as he left Sir Archibald Alison in rags ; bu . t he was the last man to complain with justice of

      factious sympathies , seeing that he himself allowed nothing but his personal animosities to stand in the way of his political prejudices . In the first place , he never was capable of understanding the French Revolution ; he was a mere anti-Jacobin , a man sworn to vilify the destroyers of the Bourbon throne , and ho was more partial and threw more rancour into his partiality than any one of the authors whom he so bitterly assailed . If Thiers be a fraudulent writer , mean in motive , a liar by habit , and an impostor by nature—if , indeed , Mr . Croker had a right to say so much of rniy contemporary—the essay which prefers the charge should at all events be free from gross discolorations of facts , and effusions of the narrowest political sectarianism . The writer professed to have scrutinized in close detail tho literature of the French Revolution , and assumed to set right all his French contemporaries ; but ho was either ignorant of a large maas of

      the most valuable evidence , or ho wilfully suppressed a number ol important elucidations , bearing strongly on the points at issue . Mr . Croker , however , was so unmercifully vituperative , whenever , in a book on his favourite subject , he found a piece of gossip mistaken for an authentic testimony , that we should have a right to be surprised when we find him continually wandering into the most vulgar fallacies , were it not that he never had impressed us with an idea of his critical penetrution . The task he assumed wus that of stubbing , not correcting . When , however , he came to deal with Marie Antoinette , how did he picture her ? As a stainless queen , as a woman against whom the French people never had cause of onencc . We do not refer to the imputations of licentiousness—these have been in great part exploded , and whatever the residue , it ia too late to disturb her dust on the score of her

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 19, 1857, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_19121857/page/17/