Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters (41 page)

104 ‘An eerie sound penetrated the early-morning fog’: Harry Smith described it.

– ‘Wellington issued orders for a large-scale attack’: the orders, written up by his Quarter Master General, are reproduced in Vol. IV of the 1852
Wellington’s Dispatches
.

– ‘soon enough, they were wading up to their waists’: according to Simmons in a letter home. In his journal, oddly, Simmons says the water came up to their armpits.

105 ‘three companies of the 3rd
Cacadores
, generally reckoned the best Portuguese troops’: Verner argues they were not present, but they are referred to in
Wellington’s Dispatches
so I think we must assume they were.

106 ‘short-sighted old ass’: Smith.

– ‘A brigade of dragoons under Sir William Erskine, who were to have covered our right’: Kincaid,
Adventures
.

– ‘the whole of Right Wing formed one long skirmish line’: Simmons.

107 ‘the galling fire of the 95th Rifles at point blank [soon] compelled them to retire’: John Cox MS Journal, also the following quotation.

– ‘Beckwith, finding himself alone and unsupported, in close action, with only hundreds to oppose the enemy’s thousands’: Kincaid,
Random
Shots
.

108 ‘Having come forward in columns, they could not now deploy into firing lines’: Cox and Simmons are quite specific about the French coming forward in columns. The point about not deploying into line derives from study of the ground and of the frontage that would have been required for this.

– ‘Now my lads, we’ll just go back a little if you please’: the Beckwith quotations in this section come from Simmons and Kincaid.

109 ‘Their officers are certainly very prodigal of life, often exposing themselves ridiculously’: Simmons.

– ‘Shoot that fellow, will you?’: these Beckwith quotations are from Smith.

109 ‘The regiments facing the British brigade in this part of the fight had eighteen officers shot’: Martinien and Oman.

110 ‘our loss is much less than one would have supposed possible, scarcely two hundred men’: letter of 4 April 1811 to Beresford, in
Dispatches
.

– ‘Of the five French colonels who led their regiments against the Light Division’: Martinien. The colonels of the
2
ème Léger
and
70
ème
Line both died of wounds received at Sabugal, the
6
ème
and
17
ème
Léger
had their colonels wounded.

– ‘If anything brilliant has been done, it will be to a certain degree mortifying’: Craufurd letter, cited by Spurrier as ‘early April’.

111 ‘I consider the action that was fought by the Light Division’: Wellington’s dispatch to the Earl of Liverpool is dated 9 April 1811, in
Dispatches
.

– ‘it would be stupid to pretend to persuade you that I did not feel any regret that the events’: Craufurd to his wife, 13 April 1811, Spurrier.

– ‘On 11 April, Peter O’Hare was given an in-field promotion, or brevet, to the rank of major’: this data, and much else in the subsequent paragraphs, comes from the Challis Index, a biographical goldmine on Peninsular officers kept at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

113 ‘supposing I got into the most desirable Regt. in the service, I should be happy to leave it the moment I could get a step’: this letter is contained in
The Pakenham Letters 1800 to 1815
, privately printed 1914.

– ‘as to remaining an English full-pay lieutenant for ten or twelve years!’: letter from Charles Napier, quoted by William Napier.

– ‘Layton and Grant argued until, pistols being produced, they determined to fight a duel’: details of this fascinating case emerge from Green and the
Rifle Brigade Chronicle
, 1947.

114 ‘A contest of this kind had caused one officer of the 95th to leave the regiment’: Captain Travers – the case is described in the
Rifle Brigade
Chronicle
, 1895.

– ‘But Layton’s fate was to serve on without the possibility of promotion’: this is evident from the fact that he was never promoted, even though others less senior were, without purchase.

116 ‘I found my Division under arms, and was received with the most hearty appearance of satisfaction’: Craufurd’s letter to his wife dates from 8 May 1811, another one cited by Spurrier.

– ‘they had the sense that Craufurd attended keenly to his duty’: Costello and Harris are examples of this. Interestingly both books were (ghost) written long after the Napoleonic wars and Craufurd’s mention of the three cheers is the only one I can find in any contemporary document. The same applies to more general remarks about his qualities: they do not appear in the contemporary journals or letters of characters like Simmons, Leach and John Cox.

117 ‘formed column at quarter distance, ready to form square at any moment if charged by cavalry’: Simmons. This account of the Light Division’s battle differs somewhat from that of Oman, the great authority, and indeed from my own Oman-influenced version in
The Man Who
Broke Napoleon’s Codes
, Faber, 2001. The changes reflect careful study of Light Division accounts.

118 ‘While we were retiring with the order and precision of a common field day’: Kincaid,
Adventures
.

– ‘One of these riflemen, named Flynn, was a good specimen of the hard-fighting Irish’: both tales of Flynn come from an officer called John FitzMaurice, who joined the 95th in 1811 and whose son privately published a volume of reminiscences called
Biographical Sketch of Major
General John FitzMaurice
in Italy in 1908.

119 ‘this was the first charge of cavalry most of us had seen’: Costello.

– ‘a company of the Guards, who did not get out of the wood’: Simmons.

– ‘Lieutenant Colonel Hill’s men were unable to form square’: Oman quotes Hall of the Guards at length on this incident.

120 ‘The town presented a shocking sight’: William Grattan of the 88th, ‘Adventures with the Connaught Rangers, 1809–1814’, London, 1902.

– ‘Such was the fury of the 79th’: FitzRoy Somerset writing to his brother, the Duke of Beaufort on 8 May 1811, unpublished, residing in the family archive at Badminton House, Beaufort Papers FmM 4/1/6.

121 ‘Most of the Peninsular veteran regiments … had adopted the movement and firing tactics of the Light Brigade’: Major General John Colville, commanding the British brigade most heavily engaged at El Bodon in September 1811, for example, wrote home that the drills his battalions used to form square during that battle were, ‘the Light Infantry or Sir John Moore’s’, i.e. not the old regulations. Colville’s letter, retained in family papers, is reproduced in
The Portrait of a
General
, by John Colville, Salisbury, 1980 – a very useful volume. As for the regiments adopting Light Division firing practice, this is evident in Simmons’s comments about the losses to the 79th.

– ‘firing volleys in sections according to the old drill’: this point is made by Simmons.

– ‘a ball had passed through the back part of the head’: Kincaid,
Adventures
.

– ‘endless euphemisms were coined to provide a little conversational variety’: Kincaid’s
Random Shots
is the best single source of these, but they appear in many different places.

123 ‘to be in the Light Division is sufficient to stamp a man as a good soldier’: Wyndham Madden, an officer of the 43rd, writing home to his mother on 5 August 1811, RGJ archive box 1A /455.

– ‘Lord Wellington conceives there he might be treated to more shots than his friends would wish’: letter from FitzRoy Somerset, 23 May 1811, Beaufort Papers FmM 4/1/6, as is the recommendation of the Fusiliers. In his next letter, Somerset changed this to the Guards (‘as I am persuaded it is the only part of the Army where there is now good society’). The identity of the young aristocrat receiving this advice via the Duke of Beaufort is not entirely clear from the letters.

124 ‘the last named officer, I beg leave in a particular manner to recommend to Lord Wellington’s notice’: Beckwith’s letter to Somerset, 3 July 1811, in WO31/327.

125 ‘I hope to see a great number of volunteers come out soon’: Simmons.

– ‘your memorialist, a native of Scotland, aged 19, is a son of respectable parentage’: Mitchell’s notes survives in the Mitchell Papers, cited by William C. Foster in his
Sir Thomas Mitchell and His World
1792–1855, published by the New South Wales Institution of Surveyors.

126 ‘A volunteer – be it known to all who know it not’: Kincaid,
Random
Shots
. Kincaid calls Sarsfield ‘Dangerfield’ in his book, presumably to safeguard against the threat of litigation or a challenge to a duel.

– ‘John FitzMaurice … had come out a few months before his countryman Sarsfield’: his recommendation was from Judge Day. The story of FitzMaurice’s arrival in his regiment was told by his son, cited above.

127 ‘While they are treated as gentlemen out of the field’: Kincaid,
Random
Shots
.

– ‘That young devil FitzMaurice is covered with blood from head to foot’: FitzMaurice
fils
.

128 ‘Sarsfield’s brother had been killed at Albuera’: this detail emerges from Beckwith’s letter to Somerset of 4 July 1811 in WO31/327.

129 ‘the usual sinister cast of the eye worn by common Irish country countenances’: Kincaid,
Random Shots
.

– ‘His original good natured simplicity gave way to experience’: Costello, who calls Sarsfield ‘Searchfied’ in his book.

130 ‘General Murray who commands the garrison … is very fond of shew and parade’: Gairdner’s letter to his father 26 May 1811. The other quotation comes from a letter of 10 September 1810. Both are contained, along with Gairdner’s journal, in the archives of the National Army Museum MSS 7011-21. Gairdner’s impressions form a vital and hardly ever used primary source on the 95th.

130 ‘the laughing stock of the whole army, and particularly of the Light Division’: Charles Napier, in William Napier’s book of his life.

– ‘Ensign William Hay joined the 52nd only to witness the following’: Captain William Hay,
Reminiscences, 1809–1815, Under Wellington
, London, 1901.

131 ‘Order upon orders of the most damnable nature were issued’: Leach MS Journal.

– ‘I am glad to see you safe, Craufurd’: this is one of the better-known Craufurd anecdotes, first described by F. Larpent,
Private Journal of F.
Seymour Larpent, Judge Advocate General
, London, 1853.

134 ‘A Spanish peasant girl has an address about her’: Kincaid,
Adventures
.

135 ‘characters like Leach or Johnston strolling down the lanes with a pet wolf’: Leach,
Rough Sketches
and ‘Anecdotes in the Life of the Late Major Johnstone, of the Rifle Brigade’, by a Brother Officer [in fact Kincaid],
United Service Journal
, 1837, Part 1.

– ‘21 August, when half of the 3rd Battalion – four companies comprising its Right Wing’: Leach MS Journal.

136 ‘One evening, returning from an inspection of the outposts, General Craufurd rode straight into a scene of near riot’: Costello is the source of this entire anecdote.

– ‘The corporal was broken to the ranks and awarded 150 lashes’: Costello says the man was called Corporal Miles, a name that does not appear in the 1st Battalion lists. It is possible he was in another battalion of the 95th. He is also unclear about when exactly the incident happened, but Leach in his MS Journal makes reference to the flogging of two men on 11 October 1811.

137 ‘I am labouring under a fit of the blue devils’: Craufurd to his wife, 3 December 1811, cited by Spurrier.

– ‘Headquarters was putting the squeeze on skulkers in the hospitals again’: with a General Order of 15 November 1811, in
Dispatches
.

138 ‘Three men had absconded from the 1st/95th within a year of its landing’: they were Neil MacLean and Ronald MacDonald, 7th Company, and Allan Cumming, 3rd Company, according to returns. Cumming returned later, as we shall see. Kincaid, in
Adventures
, reports the death in battle of another 95th deserter, which circumstantial evidence suggests may have been MacDonald.

– ‘A private of the 43rd had tried desertion back in the summer of 1810’: these examples come from the court-martial records in
General Orders,
Spain and Portugal
, London, 1811–14.

– ‘Well, Rifles, you will remember the 24th of July’: the source of this fascinating anecdote and the quotation at the end of this passage is Green.

138 ‘The case of Allan Cummings may have also persuaded them’: Cummings’ desertion and pardon is described by Harris in his recollections. WO 25/2139, Casualty Returns, lists him as a deserter, as do the muster rolls, which show him having gone on 27 October 1810. WO 25/2139 is also the source of the information on MacFarlane and other deserters, including for example Almond’s debts when he deserted.

139 ‘On 17 November, Almond decided to take his chance’: the dates of the desertions come from subsequent proceedings in the volumes of General Orders and from WO 25/2139.

140 ‘one of his mad freaks’: Harry Smith, who, like Wellington, was evidently unable to accept the genuine privations described by Costello and others.

– ‘The Commander of the Forces is much concerned to learn from your letter’: this letter and the Adjuntant General’s of 21 December are in
Wellington’s Dispatches
.

– ‘Craufurd, you are late’: these quotations are from Smith.

141 ‘I cannot say that Lord Wellington and I are quite so cordial’: this comes from the Rev. A. Craufurd’s book.

142 ‘I expect in a few months, very few, to be with you’: this was Craufurd’s last letter to his wife, dated 8 January 1812, cited by Spurrier.