Читать книгу The Story of a Peninsular Veteran. Sergeant in the Forty-Third Light Infantry, during the Peninsular War онлайн

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Whatever may be the opinion respecting the justice or policy of the expedition to Copenhagen, there can be but one relative to the mode in which Lord Cathcart conducted it. While he did all that his duty as an officer required, he was throughout the whole of the operations attentive to the suffering Danes: he levied no contributions; not the slightest military excess was committed; and had it not been that the British army was engaged in bombarding their capital, the Danes might have taken them for friends and allies, instead of hostile troops. Even after the surrender of Copenhagen, we were not quartered in it for some days, the Danish troops remaining in possession of all the gates but that which was connected with the citadel. No interference took place with respect to the police or any other internal regulation of the city, and everything was done to tranquillise the public mind; but all was in vain to reconcile the Danish government or people to the bombardment of the capital and the seizure of their fleet in time of peace. As might have been foreseen, the outrage was deemed intolerable: it is true they were plundered with comparative politeness,—nobody hurt them when their treasures were given up; still that did not alter the character of the transaction: it conferred honour upon the agencies employed, who might, without any special departure from the laws of war, have added fierceness to bravery, and wasted what they did not want. But the national spirit of the Danes was roused to unquenchable indignation; they considered themselves the victims of lawless freebooters, superior to themselves only in brute force, and infinitely inferior in everything else. Under feelings excited by these galling considerations war was proclaimed between Denmark and Great Britain.