In the first chapter of this volume I had occasion to remark that Wellington’s army had in its ranks a considerable sprinkling of men of religion, and that three or four of the better Peninsular memoirs were written by them. Some were Methodists, some Churchmen, so that both sides of the great spiritual movement which had started about the middle of the eighteenth century were represented in their diaries. The spiritual side of the soldier’s life during the great war has had so little written about it, that a few illustrative pages on this topic must not be omitted.

We may trace the existence of the admirable class of men who have left us these memoirs to two separate causes. The one, of course, was the way in which the movement started by the Wesleys had influenced all ranks of life, from the lowest upward. Its effects had not been confined to avowed Methodists, but had led to the rise of the Evangelical party within the Church of England, which was developing very rapidly all through the days of the Great War. But I think that even if the Wesleys had never lived, there would yet have been a strong reaction in favour of godly living and the open profession of Christianity, in consequence of the blasphemous antics of the French Revolution. Nothing in that movement so disgusted Englishmen (even those of them who were not much given to practical religion) as the story of the “Goddess of Reason,” enthroned on the high-altar of Notre Dame, at the time when an orgy of bloodshed was making odious the flatulent talk about humanitarianism and liberty which was the staple of Revolutionary oratory. The peculiar combination of insult to Christianity, open evil living, and wholesale judicial murder, which distinguished the time of the Terror, had an effect on observers comparable to nothing else that has been seen in modern times. Even men who had not hitherto taken their religion very seriously, began to think that a hell was logically necessary in the scheme of creation for beings like Chaumette or HÉbert, Fouquier Tinville or Carrier of the Noyades. And, we may add, a personal devil was surely required, to account for the promptings of insane wickedness which led to the actions of such people. A tightening up of religious observances, such as the use of family prayer and regular attendance at Church, was a marked feature of the time. It required some time for the movement to spread, but its effect was soon observable. It naturally took shape in adhesion to Evangelical societies within the Church of England, or Methodist societies without it; since these were the already existing nuclei round which those whose souls had been stirred by the horrors in France and the imminent peril of Great Britain would group themselves.

Very soon the day was over in which “enthusiasm” was the dread of all normal easy-going men. Something more than the eighteenth century religious sentimentalism, and vague spiritual philosophy, was needed for a nation which had to fight for life and empire against the French Republic and all its works. Those methods of thought were sufficiently discredited by the fact that there was a touch of Rousseau in them: it was easy to look over the Channel, and see to what a belief in some nebulous Supreme Being, and in the perfectibility and essential righteousness of mankind at large, might lead. The God of the Old Testament was a much more satisfactory object of worship to the men who had to face the Jacobin, and Calvinism has always proved a good fighting creed. If ever there was a justification for a belief that the enemy were in a condition of complete reprobation, and that to smite them was the duty of every Christian man, it was surely at this time. The conviction of the universality of sin and the natural wickedness of the human heart was the exact opposite and antidote to the optimistic philosophy of the eighteenth century, and to its belief that man is essentially a benevolent being, and that if he sometimes breaks out into deplorable violence “tout comprendre est tout pardonner.” As a working hypothesis for an enemy of the French Revolution the Calvinistic theory had everything in its favour.

The army, like English society in general, contained an appreciable proportion of those whom the stress and terror of the times had made anxious about their souls. Some took their religious experience quietly, and found sufficient edification in accepted forms. Many, however, filled with a fervent belief in original sin and in the blackness of their own hearts, only got comfort by “conversion” in the prevalent form of the day, and in subsequent reliance on complete Justification by Faith.

“Conversion” was frequently a matter of dire spiritual agony and wrestling, often accompanied by fits of horrible depression, which were generally fought down, but sometimes ended in religious mania. Sergeant Donaldson of the 94th, whom I have often had to quote in other chapters, tells a terrible tale from his own regiment of a man whose weak point had been a violent temper, and a tendency to use his fists. Being under strong religious emotion, and having determined never again to offend in this way, he had the misfortune to break out once more in unjustifiable blows, administered to his peasant landlord in the village of Ustaritz. Ashamed of his backsliding he fell into a fit of despair, and brooding over the text “if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off,” he resolved that this was the only cure for his irascibility. Whereupon he went, and without any display of emotion or eccentricity, very quietly borrowed a felling-axe from one of the regimental pioneers, placed his right hand upon a window-sill, and cut it off with a single blow delivered very dexterously with his left. He then went and reported his act and its reason to the regimental surgeon, with great calmness and lucidity.322

Such incidents as this were rare among those who were undergoing the process of Conversion, but it was generally accompanied by long spasms of conviction of sin, when, as one memoir-writer records, “all the crimes of his life passed before him in black array, when he felt that if he could but bury himself in a cave or den of the earth, and forego all intercourse with mankind, it would be to purchase pardon and peace easily and cheaply.... Life was but the dreadful expectation of that fatal hour when the fiend would be commissioned to seize and carry off the guilty soul to its abode of everlasting misery.”323 Another diarist records that, as he went down toward the great breach of Badajoz, he was repeating to himself very forcibly, “You will be in hell before daylight” all the time, till he received a disabling wound. This rifleman, when he experienced conversion, received therewith an unexpected gift of metrical exposition. His autobiography is curiously sprinkled with his impromptu verses such as—

And again—

This ecstatic confidence of the converted man is very clearly expressed in many a little book. A Guards’ sergeant, whose memoirs I have had occasion to quote in earlier chapters, mentions that, all through the hard experience of his brigade at Talavera, he was comforted by the thought that, however disastrous the day was looking, “the Lord can save us now.”

“Standing between the enemy and my own men, with the shot ploughing up the ground all about me, the Lord kept me from all fear, and I got back to my place in the line without injury and without agitation. Indeed, who should be so firm as the Christian soldier, who has the assurance in his breast that to depart and to be with Christ is far better than to continue toiling here below?”325 On another occasion this diarist, in a long waiting spell before a dangerous disembarkation, found Wesley’s two hundred and twenty-seventh hymn running in his mind all the morning, to the inexpressible comfort of his soul during an anxious time.

This kind of comfortable ecstasy did not by any means preclude a ready and competent employment of musket and bayonet. One or two of the notable personal exploits of the Peninsular War were done by “saints.” There is a special mention in several diaries, regimental and general, of John Rae, of the 71st, a well-known Methodist, who at the combat of Sobral (October 14, 1810), being the last man of the skirmishers of his battalion to retire, was beset by three French tirailleurs, on whom he turned, and shot one and bayoneted the other two in the twinkling of an eye. He received a medal for his conduct from his brigadier, who had been an eye-witness of the affair.326

The attitude of Wellington toward religion at large, and religious soldiers in particular, was very much what one might have expected from his peculiar blend of personal characteristics. He was a sincere believer in Christianity as presented by the Church of England, but he had not been in the least affected by recent evangelical developments, and his belief was of a rather dry and official sort; an officer who took to public preaching and the forming of religious societies was only two or three degrees less distasteful to him than an officer who was foul-mouthed in his language and openly contemned holy things. I fancy that the Duke would have been inclined to regard both as “ungentlemanly.” Religion with him was the due recognition of the fact that man has a Creator, who has imposed upon him a code of laws and a system of morality which it is man’s duty to remember, and so far as he may, to observe. He was quite ready to acknowledge that he had his own failings, but trusted that they were not unpardonable ones. The two or three Evangelical enthusiasts who had the courage to tackle him in his later days on the subject of his soul, got small profit thereby.327

It is highly to his credit that he made from 1810 onward a serious attempt to organize a system of brigade chaplaincies for his army, and to see that the men should not lack the possibility of public worship. Down to that year the chaplains’ department had been much neglected: large expeditions had gone out without a single clergyman attached, and in the first Peninsular Army of 1808 there had been very few—though two of them, Ormsby and Bradford, happen to have left interesting books behind them, the latter’s beautifully illustrated by sketches. Wellington complained that the provision that he found in 1809 was wholly inadequate, asked for and obtained an additional establishment, and made arrangements for regular Sunday services in each brigade.

The letter of February 6, 1811, in which he explains his views to the Adjutant General at the Horse Guards is a very characteristic document. “The army should have the advantage of religious instruction, from a knowledge that it is the greatest support and aid to military discipline and order.” But there are not enough chaplains, and those that exist are not always “respectable.” The prospects of a military chaplain are not attractive enough; on retirement he is much worse off than he would have been “if he had followed any other line of the clerical profession besides the army.” Hence few good men are obtained. For want of sufficiently numerous and influential official teachers, spontaneous religious life has broken out in the army. There are three Methodist meetings in the 1st Division alone. In the 9th regiment two officers are preaching, in despite of their colonels’ dissuasions.

“The meeting of soldiers in their cantonments to sing psalms, or to hear a sermon read by one of their comrades is, in the abstract, perfectly innocent; it is a better way of spending their time than many others to which they are addicted. But it may become otherwise, and yet, till the abuse has made some progress, their commanding officer would have no knowledge of it, nor could he interfere.”

Official religious instruction is the proper remedy. A “respectable clergyman” is wanted, who “by his personal influence and advice, and by that of true religion, would moderate the zeal and enthusiasm of those people, and prevent meetings from becoming mischievous, even if he could not prevail upon them to discontinue them entirely.” Wherefore the Adjutant General must provide for a larger establishment of “respectable and efficient clergymen.”

The Horse Guards complied at once: chaplains, it was replied, should be sent out “selected with the utmost care and circumspection by the first prelates of the country.” Their pay was raised, and they were directed to conclude every service with a short practical sermon, suited to the habits and understanding of soldiers. “Good preaching,” adds the Adjutant General, “is more than ever required at a time peculiarly marked by the exertions and interference of sectaries of various denominations.”328

The chaplains duly appeared. There were good men among them, but they were not, taken as a whole, a complete success. Perhaps the idea, equally nourished by Wellington and by the Horse Guards, that “respectable” clergymen rather than enthusiasts should be drafted out, was the cardinal mistake; the sort of men that were really wanted at the front were precisely the enthusiasts, like that Rev. T. Owen (afterwards secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society), of whom we are told that he was in days of action so far forward in the field that officers warned him that he would infallibly be killed. His reply was that his primary duty was “to be of service to those now departing this life.”329 This sort of laudable energy, I am bound to say, does not seem to have been the most common characteristic of the chaplains, if we may trust the diaries of the time.

A good many of them were sent straight out from a country curacy to the front, had no special knowledge of soldiers and their ways, and were appalled at having to face the great facts of life and death in their crudest form day after day. There is one distressing picture of a young clergyman suddenly confronted in the guard-tent with five deserters who were to be shot that afternoon. They were all criminals who had been actually taken in the French ranks, fighting against their old comrades, at the storm of Ciudad Rodrigo. The chaplain helplessly read prayers at them, felt that he could do no more with callous ruffians who had met the death-sentence with an oath, and followed them to the execution-place looking very uncomfortable, quite useless, and much ashamed of himself.

It was almost as trying, if not so horrible, to be tackled by a Calvinist in the throes of conversion, who gave glowing pictures of hell-fire, and asked for the means of avoiding it, refusing to take as an answer any dole of chapters from the New Testament or petitions from the Prayer Book. Here is a picture of the situation from the point of view of the penitent, Quartermaster Surtees, whom I have already had occasion to quote.

“From the clergyman, though a kind and sympathizing man, I, alas! derived but little benefit. He did not direct me to the only source of a sin-sick being’s hopes—the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world. He tried to make my hopes centre more on good resolutions, and after-doings. How thankfully would I have accepted the true method of salvation pointed out in the gospel; but already I was but too much (as the natural man always is) inclined to expect pardon from the acts of penitence which, if God spared me, I intended to perform. The kind gentleman wrote me out prayers, and seemed much interested in my welfare. But reading and praying seemed more like an irksome task than an exercise which brought spiritual profit.... Indeed the Scriptures were still at this time a ‘sealed book’ to me; until the grace of God has dispelled our darkness there is no light in anything.”330

Clearly the Quartermaster had come upon one of those sensible and commonplace clergy whom Wellington had requisitioned from the Chaplain-general’s department, when he wanted an Evangelist who would have preached to him Justification by Faith in its simplest form.

There are a good many humorous anecdotes concerning the race of Chaplains preserved in the Peninsular diaries, not for the most part imputing to them any serious moral failing—though several are accused of having become “Belemites,”331 and of shirking the front—but tending to prove that they often failed to rise to the occasion in their difficult calling. This was indeed to be expected when most of them had not the least knowledge of military life and customs, and were wandering about for many months in a world quite new to them. Clearly only men of experience should have been sent—but (as Wellington remarks in one of his letters) the pay offered was so small that only enthusiasts or very poor men could be expected to take it—and enthusiasts, for other reasons, the commander-in-chief did not like. The soldier seems often to have been struck by the helplessness of the chaplain—he let himself be robbed by his servants, wandered outside the picquets and got captured by the French, or was deceived by obvious hypocrites. There is one ridiculous story of a young clergyman who, when first brought forward to take a brigade Sunday service, and placed behind the big-drum, which was to serve him as a sort of central mark, mistook its function for that of a pulpit, and endeavoured to mount upon it, with disastrous results, and to the infinite laughter of the congregation.

Not unfrequently the chaplains fell out with the Methodists among their flocks. They had been specially imported by Wellington in order that they might discourage the prayer meetings—“getting up little conventicles” as one of them called these assemblies. “The Church service is sufficient for the instruction of mankind,” said another, and “the zeal for preaching” tended to self-sufficiency and incipient pharisaism. On the whole, however, there was no regular or normal opposition between Church of England and Methodist soldiers; they were in such a minority among the godless that it would have been absurd for them to have quarrelled. The Methodists regularly received the sacrament from the chaplains along with the churchmen, and the latter were frequently to be found at the prayer meetings of the former.

Sergeant Stevenson’s memoir, a mine of useful information in this respect, informs us that the regular organized prayer meeting of the Wesleyans in the 1st Division was begun in a gravel-pit just outside the walls of Badajoz, in September, 1809, and never ceased from that time forward. During the long sojourn behind the Lines of Torres Vedras it was held for many weeks in a large wine-press, holding more than a hundred men, behind the village of Cartaxo, quite close to Wellington’s headquarters, where indeed the hymns sung could be clearly heard. There were similar associations in other divisions, some mainly Church of England, some (as in the 79th regiment) Presbyterian. Stevenson says that he never heard of any opposition on the part of commanding officers, save in the case of one captain, whose preaching was finally ended by a course of persecution on the part of his colonel. But of course the “saints” had to endure a good deal of ridicule from their comrades, more especially those of them who took occasion to testify against drunkenness or blasphemy. Stevenson gives a verse of his own, which he says that he pasted up in the sergeants’ room of the 3rd Guards, to discourage profane swearing at large.

We may observe a certain canny appeal to the self-respect of the non-commissioned officer, in the insinuation that by blasphemy he lowers himself to the ranks, and is guilty of vulgarity and want of politeness. It is to be feared that these couplets might have been not inappropriately hung up in the mess rooms of certain regiments whose colonels were by no means choice in their language.

Among the senior officers of the Peninsular Army there were a good number who were not merely like Wellington, conformists of an official sort, but zealous Christians, such were Hill, Le Marchant,332 Colborne, and John Beckwith—the Light Division colonel, who devoted his later years to taking care of the Waldenses of Piedmont, among whom he settled down in the evening of his life. Quite a sprinkling of the younger officers took orders when the war was over, after the great disbandment of 1816–17, when all the second battalions were disembodied. Such were three men who have left us excellent Peninsular diaries, Gleig of the 85th, the author of “The Subaltern,” and other works, afterwards Chaplain-General to the forces; Dallas, who made a great name as an evangelist at Burford, was another soldier-parson; Boothby, who wrote a good journal concerning Maida, Corunna, and Talavera, was a third. The type generally ran to strong Evangelicalism, as was natural, considering that this was the really live and vigorous element in the Church of that day.

It is clear that the religious condition of regiments varied extremely—that in some the influence of serious and devout officers and men was large, in others practically invisible. The character of the colonel made some difference for good or bad, but I imagine that more depended on the existence or non-existence of some small knot of officers or sergeants who did not fear to let their views be known, and formed a nucleus around which steady men gathered. Their names are mostly forgotten, the record of their witnessing has perished, or emerges only in some obscure corner of a little-read biography or an old religious magazine. I could wish that some sympathetic hand could devote a whole book to collecting and recording that which I have only been able to touch upon in this short chapter. It is a side of the life of the Peninsular Army which well deserves recording, since without some notice of it the picture of military society during the great war is wholly incomplete.