The withdrawal of the pension disconcerted me much; for fully relying on the royal grant being as permanent as the injury for which it was made, I had married a Venetian lady of the famous family of Balbi. The pension I had looked upon as some remuneration for my long and arduous services.
Besides what I considered the injustice shown towards me throughout, there were other considerations which powerfully wrought on my feelings and rendered my position extremely irksome. I mounted the castle guard in Dublin as lieutenant in 1805; and now in 1828, after three and twenty years, I mounted the same guard as captain only. This was known and remarked by many friends and acquaintances; it was known too that in the brilliant campaigns which took place in the interim I had been present and serving in two distinguished corps; and I discovered, or fancied I discovered, something bordering on doubt as to my military character in the countenances of all who regarded me. To account for my non-advancement, or remove the doubts consequently entertained, was out of my power. Decorum prevented my entering into detail of my own services. To speak frankly, I was ashamed of my slender rank after such a length of service; yet in conscience I could not accuse myself as the cause.
But my severest ordeal was yet to come; and to support this all my philosophy and long-tried patience were insufficient. After remaining some time in Dublin the regiment was ordered to Mullingar; and here, as it would appear, my second childhood commenced. I was compelled to fall in with a squad composed of young officers, who for the most part entered the Service many years after H.R.H. the Commander-in-chief had noted my name for a majority, and with soldiers who knew not yet how to shoulder their firelocks. In this respectable company I was condemned to be taught how to march--a branch of military tuition from which I had considered myself emancipated at least twenty years before. In this ordeal I was chased through the barrack square by an ignorant disciple of Euclid, commonly called a dress sergeant, armed with a colossal pair of widely yawning compasses. This scrutiny of my steps after I had carried a musket-ball in my leg for fourteen years; after I had marched as a boy in one of the most distinguished regiments in the Service from Lisbon to Corunna, under the best drill and strictest disciplinarian in the army, Sir John Moore; after I had crossed and re-crossed Spain and Portugal in different directions without the mathematical precision of my paces having ever been found fault with;--after all this, and after twenty-four years’ service, to be brought up by a pair of compasses in the barrack square of Mullingar was an indignity which I imagine that human nature in its most subservient state could not, nay, should not willingly submit to. Disgusted by this Mullingar ordeal, which might be repeated again and again _for the good of the Service_, I formed the determination of immediately retiring from that Service. Add to this contemptuous treatment of old officers the suppression of the old-established institutions of the corps; the celebration of such martial _fêtes_ as the anniversary of the battles of Salamanca, Nivelle and Toulouse. Those were days upon which it was the custom of the regiment that all the men should wear the laurel, all the officers, whether married or single, should dine at the mess-table and guests be invited, thus giving an opportunity for those tales of war which transmit a noble martial feeling into the glowing breast of the aspiring young warrior who burns to prove the temper of his steel. Sentiments such as these glowed in the breasts of the young boys who joined the 28th Regiment in 1803, 1804, and 1805, while with suppressed breathing we rapturously listened to the old officers who lately returned from Egypt told of the gallant feats of arms they witnessed and shared, and so inspired us that our heated imaginations pictured soldiers in fight as of more than mortal size, and we longed “to follow to the field some warlike chief” to lead the way to glory.