The journal of an Army surgeon during the Peninsular War / [by Charles Boutflower].

  • Boutflower, Charles, 1782-1844.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The journal of an Army surgeon during the Peninsular War / [by Charles Boutflower]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    140/192 (page 136)
    [1812] [May] [June] shall march immediately Southward, while others conceive we shall in the first instance make a dash at Salamanca, & then proceed South by the way of Placentia. June 3d. We still remain at Pesqueira; English Papers to the nth Ulto. have been received, which do not furnish anything very interesting, but a private letter from London of the 12th mentions the assassination of Mr. Percival in the Lobby of the House of Commons the preceding Evening. There is something so truly dreadful in this proceeding, that the reflection on it I find attended with an horror I never before experienced. Independent of the great loss I conceive the Nation to have sustained by their deprivation of Mr. P.’s talents & integrity, I fear this diabolical act is the precursor of much woe & bloodshed to England : the Country appears ripe for mischief, & I have a melancholy presage that she is about to bleed at every pore. It is impossible not to consider this most foul murder as a visitation from Heaven on a guilty land ; England, blessed beyond other Nations by her insular situa- tion, and consequently a stranger to the horrors of war, is at length I fear about to become a prey to all the accumulated woes of internal discord. The long-suffering of the Almighty, so visibly displayed in her exemption from those miseries, that for so many years have afflicted Continental Europe, has never been remembered by her with a gratitude proportionate to mercies so distinguished ; on the contrary these blessings of Heaven have been received with the same unthankfulness as they were by the Israelites of old, and to us may justly be applied the passage of the Prophet, “ Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord, and shall not my soul be avenged on such a Nation as this ? ” That England, is about to suffer for her manifold iniquities, I can have no doubt, but I indulge the hope that the Mercy of Heaven may be yet extended to her, from the consolatory reflection that she still retains within her Bosom her “ Seven thousand, who have not yet bowed the Knee to Baal.”