Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters

by Mark Urban

  – ‘The largest portion of the original group, 421, were those who had died in Iberia’: research conducted by Eileen Hathaway and myself from pay lists and casualty returns.

  257 ‘Here we enjoyed the luxuries of London life for a short time, having three years’ pay to receive’: William Cox MS Journal.

  258 ‘there was a strong desire to resume some sort of quiet domesticity’: this becomes apparent from the case of the married Corporal Pitt, which will be described in the following chapter.

  – ‘Fairfoot married Catherine Campbell, a slip of a girl of sixteen, on 2 October 1814’: this comes from the description book cited earlier. My speculation about it being a happy union arises from the five children it produced.

  TWENTY-FIVE Quatre Bras

  260 ‘about one soldier in four was new to the battalion’: this is my own analysis of the muster rolls.

  – ‘Simmons’s brother Joseph had been left behind’: the process of senior men taking priority, etc. is described in one of Simmons’s letters.

  – ‘the old sweats were calling them “recruits”’: Costello.

  261 ‘This cursed war has knocked all my plans in the head’: Gairdner MS letter, dated 23 April 1815, with various postscripts.

  – ‘my wife was separated from me when I went to the Peninsular War’: the story of Pitt and many other fascinating details and quotations in this chapter come from a long memorandum on the Waterloo campaign written by Simmons for Sir William Cope when he was writing his early history of the Rifle Brigade. Simmons’s document, which runs to many pages, can be found in Cope’s letter book, National Army Museum MSS 6804-2, Vol. I. Although written decades after the event (dated 15 August 1855) Simmons’s statement is consistent in every detail with his letters and journal and amplifies many points. I shall refer to material from this statement as Cope MS. After writing this passage, I came across the following in Field Marshal Lord Carver’s memoirs, Out of Step, a description of what happened when his regiment returned to Britain in 1944 after several years’ fighting in North Africa: ‘several senior non-commissioned officers who had splendid records of gallantry and devotion to duty as tank commanders, applied to transfer to units less likely to be in the front line again. They were undoubtedly influenced by their wives, from whom they had been separated for several years and who resented their husbands going into the heat of battle again.’ The similarities with Pitt and Underwood are interesting, I think.

  – ‘disliked flogging as much as any man’: Cope MS.

  – ‘my legs will never carry me through a long campaign’: Simmons’s letter home of 19 May 1815, as is the quotation about entering Brussels.

  262 ‘some riflemen were even attacked by the locals’: this incident is described both in the Gairdner MS Journal and Cope MS.

  262 ‘for we were all aware that Napoleon was about to make a dash’: Kincaid, Adventures.

  – ‘in consequence of the difficulty of assembling the division’: Gairdner MS Journal.

  263 ‘Barnard, these fellows are coming on; you must stop them by throwing yourselves into that wood’: FitzMaurice.

  – ‘Ah! My boys, you are opening the ball in good style!’: Cope MS.

  – ‘Why man! You are like a fine lady!’ Cope MS, as is the following quotation of Simmons about pushing Underwood through the hedge.

  – ‘We were saluted by a fusillade of extreme violence’: Colonel Trefcon, Carnet de Campagne du Colonel Trefcon, Paris, 1914.

  264 ‘Look at that glorious fellow, our comrade and brother soldier’: Cope MS.

  265 ‘Oh Mr Simmons, the game is up with me, for this campaign anyhow’: Cope MS.

  – ‘the news of this disastrous defeat of our allies was calculated to throw a damp on the prospects’: Leach, Rough Sketches.

  TWENTY-SIX Waterloo

  267 ‘camp kettles were boiling away outside Barnard’s billet’: Kincaid, Adventures.

  – ‘It was here that Captain Leach was initially posted with two companies’: dispositions pieced together from Leach, Rough Sketches, Simmons and the Cope MS.

  268 ‘we perceived our adversaries bringing into position, on the heights opposite’: Leach, Rough Sketches.

  – ‘the very first shot from the grand battery taking off a rifleman’s head’: this is described by Kincaid and Simmons in the Cope MS.

  – ‘This rush and enthusiasm were becoming disastrous’: Capitaine Duthilt, Memoires du Capitaine Duthilt, Lille, 1909.

  269 ‘French cuirassiers cantering up to a Hanoverian militia battalion’: Leach and Simmons.

  – ‘many of the riflemen panicked’: this story emerges from Barnard’s letter quoted later in this chapter.

  271 ‘Oh lift me up, I am suffocating!’: Cope MS which also says Fairfoot was crying. Simmons’s published letter says only that the sergeant became highly agitated.

  272 ‘I regret to say that a great number of our men went to the rear without cause’: this letter, of 23 June 1815 addressed to Cameron, is deeply compromising in a way memoirs almost never were. It survives in copy form in the RGJ Archive, Box 1A, item 35. The copy, evidently made by Verner, was of an original in the Cameron family papers.

  273 ‘all soldiers ran away sometimes’: Wellington’s remark was quoted by Croker in recounting dinner on 27 April 1828. ‘[Wellington was] very frank and amusing. He said all troops ran away – that he never minded; all he cared about was whether they would come back again, and he added that he always had a succession of lines for the purpose of rallying fugitives.’ It is contained in his two-volume set of reminiscences of the Duke.

  275 ‘George Baller was another veteran of O’Hare’s company’: details from Rifle Brigade Chronicle, 1930.

  TWENTY-SEVEN The Legend is Born

  279 ‘The bayonet may, in truth, be termed the grand mystifier of modern tactics’: this phrase was used by Mitchell in the United Services Journal and his book Thoughts on Tactics and Military Organisation, London, 1838. The quotations here come from the book.

  280 ‘It is discipline, which is nothing but each man, shoulder-to-shoulder’: this letter by W.D.B. is in the United Service Journal, 1838, Part 3.

  – ‘Our corps gained the reputation … not by aping the drill of grenadiers’: Leach, Rough Sketches.

  281 ‘Kincaid for example arguing that skirmishing soldiers needed to be kept moving’: he did this in Random Shots, not the United Services Journal. The book was published in 1835 and the USJ bayonet debate took place in 1838–40.

  284 ‘there, perhaps, never was, nor ever again will be, such a war brigade’: Kincaid, Adventures.

  286 ‘the most celebrated old fighting corps in the Army or perhaps the world’: Major General G. Bell, Rough Notes by an Old Soldier, London, 1867.

  – ‘A remarkable revival of curiosity in the events of the time of Napoleon has lately arisen’: Du Cane in his article on Molloy.

  288 ‘new fangled school mastering’: Wellington made this remark in a letter to his friend Rev. Gleig.

  Bibliography

  In several cases the dates given are those of the edition used in the compilation of this book rather than of the first edition.

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  Index

  Abrantes 1, 2

  Agueda river 1, 2, 3

  Albuera 1, 2

  Aldea Velha 1

  Alemada 1, 2, 3

  Alemtejo province 1, 2

  Allen, Private Humphrey 1

  Almaraz 1, 2

  Almeida fortress 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  Almond, Private Joseph 1

  fights against the Spaniards in South

  America 1

  loses corporal’s stripes 1, 2, 3

  field days at Campo Maior 1

  unable to regain his stripes 1

  worn out 1

  considers desertion 1

  deserts 1

  inducted into the French Army 1

  Ciudad Rodrigo 1