Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/185

SHEIL of his eloquent confederate could supply,—I can not help thinking that he ought to have recollected the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. "The battles, sieges, fortunes that he has passed," ought to have come back upon him. He ought to have remembered that, from the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern warfare, down to that last and surpassing combat which has made his name imperishable—from Assaye to Waterloo—the Irish soldiers, with whom your armies are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned.

Whose were the arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiéra through the phalanxes that never reeled in the shock of war before? What desperate valor climbed the steeps and filled the moats at Badajos? All his victories should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory—Vimiéra, Badajos, Salamanca, Albuéra, Toulouse, and, last of all, the greatest—. Tell me—for you were there—I appeal to the gallant soldier before me [Sir Henry Harding], from whose opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast;—tell me—for you must needs remember—on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance, while death fell in showers, when the artillery of France was leveled with a precision of the most deadly science, when her legions, 175