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Anonymous
Sergeant in the Forty-Third Light Infantry, during the Peninsular War
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The retrospect of these vengeful days, while it serves to fix my faith in true religion, as contrasted with that which is false, calls forth unfeigned gratitude to God for His protecting mercy. Exposed as my mother and family were to the pelting of the pitiless hurricane, none of us sustained material personal injury. I have before stated that my mother was conscientiously attached to the tenets, such as they are, of the Church of Rome. I never observed anything reprehensible in her conduct, though no one was more constant than she at the confessional; neither know I to which of the saints she was disposed, on emergency, to turn. That she loved the Saviour, and was willing to wash the feet of the servants of her Lord, I can safely affirm. I can vouch for the constancy and zeal of her private prayers and intercessions: I know that the practices of her life agreed with the engagements of her lips: and I cannot help thinking that she was a noble proof that God is no respecter of persons; that holiness of heart may subsist in the most defective dispensation; and that whoever seeks the face of God, through the merits of His Son, in the path of penitence and faith, even though cumbered with mistaken doctrinal views, shall not be cast away. The time, the extent, and the unwitting nature of her ignorance God winked at: he saw that she erred through ignorance. The eye of His omniscience pierced through the veil of her mental delusion to the uprightness of intention that dwelt within; and I believe, through Divine mercy, she went down to her grave justified by grace, ‘hallowed and made meet for heaven.’
Agreeably with the religious views which my mother had entertained, she endeavoured to teach me the principles of Papacy. I was, moreover, frequently taken to mass: but, being young and heedless, one system of religion was to me as good as another; in other words, I was careless respecting them all. Indeed, I have reason to believe that my indifference in this respect was to my mother a source of great grief. Meantime I had arrived at the fourteenth year of my age; a period, generally speaking, of no small vanity and self-complacency, and in which many men think themselves qualified, by the dignity of their teens, to shake off the trammels of parental guidance. Among others, I determined to walk alone; but unfortunately I cannot, on reflection, boast of my first step. Among the youths with whom I contracted some acquaintance, was a dissolute lad about my own age; by whose enticement, when only just turned fifteen, I enlisted in the Queen’s County militia. Not that my conduct, like his, had been openly immoral; yet he had gained over me an ascendancy I could not resist. Evil communications corrupt good manners; and perhaps the apparent freedom, the frankness and gaiety of an open-hearted soldier’s holiday life, had an influence which, though not acknowledged, was really felt. But, O, my mother! for when I became a soldier she was still living. I had in this deed of hardihood well-nigh forgotten her.
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