erased.] Their rural scarfs——.—[MS. D.]
63 [Compare Campbell's "Hohenlinden"—"Few, few shall part where many meet."]
64 [Compare Macbeth, act i. sc. 2, line 51—"Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky."]
65 [In a letter to Colonel Malcolm, December 3, 1809, the Duke admits that the spoils of conquest were of a moral rather than of a material kind. "The battle of Talavera was certainly the hardest fought of modern days.... It is lamentable that, owing to the miserable inefficiency of the Spaniards, ... the glory of the action is the only benefit which we have derived from it.... I have in hand a most difficult task.... In such circumstances one may fail, but it would be dishonourable to shrink from the task."—Wellington Dispatches, 1844, iii. 621.]
bz There shall they rot—while rhymers tell the fools How honour decks the turf that wraps their clay! Liars avaunt!——.—[MS.]
66 Two lines of Collins' Ode, "How sleep the brave," etc., have been compressed into one—
"There Honour comes a pilgrim grey,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay."
ca But Reason's elf in these beholds——.—[D.]
cb ——a fancied throne As if they compassed half that hails their sway.—[MS. erased.]
cc ——glorious sound of grief.—[D.]
67 [The battle of Albuera (May 16, 1811), at which the English, under Lord Beresford, repulsed Soult, was somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory. "Another such a battle," wrote the Duke, "would ruin us. I am working hard to put all right again." The French are said to have lost between 8000 and 9000 men, the English 4158, the Spaniards 1365.]
cd A scene for mingling foes to boast and bleed.—[D.]
ce Yet peace be with the perished—-.—[D. erased.]
cf And tears and triumph make their memory long.—[D. erased.]
cg ——there sink with other woes.—[D. erased.]
68 [Albuera was celebrated by Scott, in his Vision of Don Roderick. The Battle of Albuera, a Poem (anon.), was published in October, 1811.]
ch Who sink in darkness——.—[MS. erased.]
ci ——swift Rapines path pursued.—[MS. D.]
cj To Harold turn we as——.—[MS. erased.]
69 [In this "particular" Childe Harold did not resemble his alter ego. Hobhouse and "part of the servants" (Joe Murray, Fletcher, a German, and the "page" Robert Rushton, constituted his "whole suite"), accompanied Byron in his ride across Spain from Lisbon to Gibraltar. (See Letters, 1898, i. 224, 236.)]
ck Where proud Sevilha——.—[MS. D.]
70 [Byron, en route for Gibraltar, passed three days at Seville at the end of July or the beginning of August, 1809. By the end of January, 1810, the French had appeared in force before Seville. Unlike Zaragoza and Gerona, the pleasure-loving city, "after some negotiations, surrendered, with all its stores, foundries, and arsenal complete, and on the 1st of February the king [Joseph] entered in triumph" (Napier's History of the War in the Peninsula, ii. 295).]
71 [A kind of fiddle with only two strings, played on by a bow, said to have been brought by the Moors into Spain.]
cl Not here the Trumpet, but the rebeck sounds.—[MS. erased.]
cm And dark-eyed Lewdness——.—[MS. erased.]
72 [See The Waltz: Poetical Works, 1898, i. 492, note 1.]
cn Not in the toils of Glory would ye sweat.—[MS. erased, D.]
73 [The scene is laid on the heights of the Sierra Morena. The travellers are looking across the "long level plain" of the Guadalquivir to the mountains of Ronda and Granada, with their "hill-forts ...perched everywhere like eagles' nests" (Ford's Handbook for Spain, i. 252). The French, under Dupont, entered the Morena, June 2, 1808. They stormed the bridge at Alcolea, June 7, and occupied Cordoba, but were defeated at Bailen, July 19, and forced to capitulate. Hence the traces of war. The "Dragon's nest" (line 7) is the ancient city of Jaen, which guards the skirts of the Sierras "like a watchful Cerberus." It was taken by the French, but recaptured by the Spanish, early in July, 1808 (History of the War in the Peninsula, i. 71-80).]
74 [The Sierra Morena gets its name from the classical Montes Mariani, not, as Byron seems to imply, from its dark and dusky aspect.]
co ——the never-changing watch.—[MS. D.]
cp The South must own——.—[MS. D.]
cq When soars Gaul's eagle——.—[MS. D.]
75 [As time went on, Byron's sentiments with regard to Napoleon underwent a change, and he hesitates between sympathetic admiration and reluctant disapproval. At the moment his enthusiasm was roused by Spain's heroic resistance to the new Alaric, "the scourger of the world," and he expresses himself like Southey "or another" (vide post, Canto III., pp. 238, 239).]
76 ["A short two-edged knife or dagger ... formerly worn at the girdle" (N. Eng. Dict., art. "Anlace").
