TOULOUSE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 21 January 1925, Page 8

TOULOUSE.

A J.ITTI.F, history

(Contributed)

The name of the beautiful city on the river Garonne, where our football warriors met the elect of France, calls to! mind the desperate struggle that took place outside its walls on the 12th of April, 1814, between Marshal Soult and Lord Wellington. The able and resolute Soult so skilfully handled the French forces that after a prolonged and costly series of attacks, Wellington withdrew* the British army a. league to the south to reform his battered battalions. At the same time Soult, also smarting from his wounds, fell hack into the city of Toulouse. The Duke, apprised of this movement of the. French commander, immediately advanced io his original position, and thus claimed the victory, which many Freiichmeh still dispute. Out losses were far in excess of those: orl the enemy, and in that respect flic action was as costly as a defeat. This battle practically terminated the centuries-old struggle between the two great countries concerned, and their recent companionship in a common cause lias cemented the. union of which the dying Mirabeau dreamed, hot to live to see. It is curious that Ihe two. old warrior opponents. Wellington and Soult, born in the same year (1769) died within. a few months of each other, each carrying to extreme and honoured old age tlie physical burden of their battleseasoned frames. Both, moreover, were men of high character, and Napier relates of Soult that he. stayed the pursuit of Sir John Moore for three days to. enable his troops to build shelters for the starving British camp-followers —a magnanimous action worthy of the man who later erected a monument to his opponent at Corunna. Of the Duke of Wellington, his biographer, Gleig, says: “He was the grandest, because the noblest, man. that modern times have produced ; he was the wisest and most loyal subject who ever served or supported the British throne.” In Toulouse and other battles of tlie Peninsula War cavalry played a considerable part in the struggle. The writer’s grandfather, a colour-sergeant of dragoons, six feet four inches in height, and the best swordsman m Ins regiment (perhaps only in his own estimation) was present in this affair. Hie clash of steel on steel would seem to be preferable (if there is any choice in a. bad business) to choking by poisotngas dr hogging in swinish misery in the trenches. A feiv days after the battle of Toulouse the Emperor Napoleon abdicated, and an armistice was declared between the belligerents, to lie broken ai few months later by the escape of Napoleon from the island of Elba, where he had been interned. Followed his marvellous exhibition of strategy in the Hundred'Days’ War, to be turned to naught by the valour of our infantry at Waterloo.