xiv PREFACE

incompetent to understand ; a stroke of war for which I have claimed that, as a recent American historian has said of it, "It is a brilliant page of English history, perhaps the finest record in its entire course of glory.'' If so, it was worth the while of Mr. Oman, the man to whom we ought rather than to any other to have looked to bring out the glories of English history, instead of following past mistakes and adding some of his own, to have allowed me to supply him with materials I should have gladly put at his disposal. Partly from want of them, partly from mistaking the duties and functions of a General commanding an army in the field, the effect of his work is to rob us of the glorious example of not only one of the grandest pages in our history, but, as I have shown, of the " boldest, the most successful, the most brilliant stroke of war of all time." Those who, when they have examined my facts, can take up my challenge and supply us from their knowledge of history with the example that compares with the blow which Moore struck at Napoleon, may still be content with the fancy portraits of the man. With what recklessness these have been put together will perhaps best be illustrated by the example of Sir Herbert Maxwell's repeating Mr. Stapleton's ridiculous report of Canning's conversation, a blunder from which a careful study of the Wellington despatches—not, one would have thought, too much to ask of Wellington's biographer —would have saved him. It almost looks as if Sir Herbert had here copied at second-hand from Sir Bartle Frere, who could not be supposed to know the despatches with the accuracy we might have expected from Sir Herbert. The case is fully dealt with in the chapter on Moore's quarrel with Ministers.