Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters

by Mark Urban

  Later, during 1804–6, the 95th’s officers looked more to Ireland for fresh men. Stewart believed they made excellent private soldiers, ‘perhaps from being less spoiled and more hardy than British soldiers, better calculated for active light troops’. This generation of Hibernian recruits had, in their turn, been overtaken early in 1809 by a large number (like Fairfoot and Brotherwood) from English militia regiments. But the legacy of building the 95th on a bedrock of Scots remained: they were heavily represented among the more senior ranks, both commissioned and non-commissioned.

  The Highland or 7th Company had survived Stewart’s passing, and indeed the vicissitudes of the Peninsular campaign. It was still strong enough to take part in the coming march into Spain that everyone expected as they waited at Ituero. Now Cameron enlisted the help of his fellow Scot John Kincaid as adjutant, the lieutenant having served as acting commander of the Highland Company for several months before. The new adjutant was certainly grateful for this prestigious post, and there was evidently a high regard between the two men, for he later wrote of Cameron: ‘As a friend, his heart was in the right place, and, as a soldier, his right place was at the head of a regiment in the face of the enemy. I never saw an officer feel more at home in such a situation, nor do I know any one who could fill it better.’

  Cameron resolved that the battalion would have to dissolve two of its companies in order to keep the six that would remain in the field up to reasonable numbers. The axe would fall on the 3rd and 4th. Without doubt the 3rd, previously O’Hare’s and Uniacke’s, had been among the hardest fighting if not the toughest in the regiment. It had been at the centre of the Barba del Puerco action and in every important fight since. At Ciudad Rodrigo, four officers had messed together: Uniacke, Tom Smith (Harry’s brother), FitzMaurice and Gairdner. Now Smith dined alone as acting commander of 3rd Company, Uniacke being dead and the other two subalterns casualties of Badajoz. One officer simply could not perform the duties previously given to four. The company’s men would now be scattered about the remains of the battalion.

  James Gairdner, newly promoted lieutenant, would go to the 2nd Company once he recovered his health, under that wild sportsman Jonathan Leach; Sergeant Fairfoot, rejoining after he recuperated from his head wound, to the 8th Company. Ned Costello, another 3rd Company veteran, also went to Leach’s 2nd Company, where fellow stormer and regimental character Corporal William Brotherwood was also serving. Costello rejoined in mid-June, by which time the battalion was in motion again. Having taken Rodrigo and Badajoz, Wellington was striking into Spain, seeking to take the fight to the French.

  McDearmid, the commander of the 4th Company, was sent home, in theory to recruit, as was Second Lieutenant Tommy Sarsfield. The onetime volunteer had not disgraced himself like Thomas Bell, but Cameron and Kincaid wanted rid of him in any case. The 95th had been so short of subalterns that it had commissioned Sarsfield – but everyone wanted rid of him. Kincaid damned him, saying his only mistake ‘was in his choice of profession’. Colonel Beckwith wrote to Cameron that Sarsfield was ‘not suited to our specie of troop’.

  It was a matter of recruiting at home ‘in theory’, because the 9th and 10th Company cadres, posted back more than a year before, had performed poorly in providing the battalion with fresh drafts. Some eighty-eight men sent out from England during 1812 were to be the only replacements of this type during several years of campaigning. Bereft of a man of Stewart or Beckwith’s rank and force of character directing matters in England, the junior officers presiding over the regimental depot achieved little. What’s more, the effective collapse of four companies into a single depot one would help frustrate officers like George Simmons who had believed that the terrible risks they took would be rewarded by ‘a company in five years’. The battalion’s casualties meant three fewer captains’ posts to aspire to.

  In trying to make up its losses, the Army resorted at last to a desperate expedient that had been contemplated for some time: it recruited Spaniards from the border country. Initially there had been hopes of finding twelve men per company. The experiment was racked with difficulty from the start, only being attempted in some battalions (including the 95th) and then bedevilled with problems. Since many of the men whom the local authorities clapped hold of were more or less pressed into service against their will, and since local Spanish commanders claimed many of the choice specimens for their own regiments, a great many of these new recruits deserted the British service as soon as they could. It might also be surmised that it was a rare kind of campesino who could adapt to the brutal codes – both official and those self-imposed strictures of the soldiers’ messes – that governed Wellington’s Army. Lazarro Blanco, though, was to prove one of the survivors. He found himself in Leach’s 2nd Company and soon impressed Costello both with his courage in the field and his facility for foul Spanish oaths. Blanco joined the others in the trials of the late summer of 1812.

  That June and July was a period of intense marching for the Light Division. They struck out hundreds of miles into the open country of Castile and Leon, marching up through Salamanca, north-east to the River Duero. Having gone all the way there, they doubled back down towards Salamanca as Wellington sought to fight the French on the most advantageous terms, but failed to find them. This slogging was conducted across parched plains in baking midsummer heat. In order to achieve as much as possible before the sun was at its zenith, reveille was sounded earlier and earlier, with many ‘nights’ ending rudely with a blaring of bugles at 1 a.m. Throughout these movements the Light Division’s prowess in marching and manoeuvre was noted by other regiments. An account of their routine by one of the 95th’s company commanders is worth quoting at length both for its detail and its colour:

  The march was commenced with precisely the same regularity as would be observed by a regiment or regiments moving into or out of a garrison town; the bands playing, the light infantry with arms sloped, and those of the riflemen slung over the shoulder, the exact wheeling distances of the sections preserved and perfect silence observed. After having proceeded a short distance in this manner, the word of command, ‘March at Ease’ was given by the general at the head of the leading battalion, and this was passed, quickly on to the rear from company to company … the soldiers now carried their arms in the manner most convenient, – some slung them over their shoulders (most of them, indeed preferred this mode as the least fatiguing), others sloped them, and many trailed them, and they constantly changed from the right hand or right shoulder to the left. Whilst some lighted their black pipes, others sung or amused their comrades with stories and jests, as is usual on those occasions. Although allowed to prosecute their march in this easy and unrestrained manner, a heavy penalty, nevertheless, awaited the man who quitted the ranks without permission.

  At the end of the march, the battalion would arrive in its bivoauc for the night:

  The alarm post or place of general assembly having been pointed out to every one, the men were dismissed; the arms were piled, the cooking immediately commenced, and all further parades dispensed with for the day, except a rollcall about sunset.

  During all of this wearing out of shoe leather, Wellington had been trying to bring his enemy, Marshal Auguste Marmont, to battle; he, meanwhile, wanted to turn the tables by exploiting the French Army’s skill at manoeuvre. On 18 July, there was a sharp little skirmish at a place called Castrillo. This engagement did not figure greatly in the story of 1812, nor indeed did the 95th have much to do in it, but it is worth mentioning as it showed the vicissitudes of life on campaign.

  The two armies had been marching in parallel across the open country when one of the French divisions turned onto the British line of march and attacked. The British had fallen back for miles across the countryside before Wellington prepared a stand and checked them. During this rush, Lieutenant George Simmons had been obliged to abandon a pack mule. He had begun his campaigns three years earlier on foot, largely to save money, but by July 1812 he had acquired both a ridi
ng animal and one for his baggage. The second had received a kick from a stallion, keeled over and died, and Simmons’s servant had not had time to take off all its saddles. Simmons was only grateful that he had not been carrying the company pay-chest on his person, for he was liable for any losses under such circumstances. He had, in any case, lost skins containing a hundred pints of the local wine, sundry other baggage and the mule itself, all to the value of around a hundred dollars. This was pretty much exactly the sum – £20 in English money – that he had been hoping to remit to his father as one of his twice-yearly contributions to his siblings’ education.

  ‘All these misfortunes coming at once played the devil with me,’ Simmons wrote home; but with the calm of a man who had come unscathed through Badajoz, ‘I took up my pipe and thought to myself that things might have been worse … the life of a soldier is well calculated to make a man bear up against misfortunes.’

  As the same engagement came to an end, the British cavalry charged some Frenchmen, driving them off. A trooper of the 14th Light Dragoons captured a French cavalier on his mount in this fight and, seeing the 95th, rode over, wishing to cash in his prize forthwith. He chanced upon Private Costello, his countryman from Queen’s County, and greeted him cordially. Lieutenant Gairdner was standing nearby and was soon drawn into the conversation, as he was able to translate the Frenchman’s plaintive cries. The French dragoon insisted that he would never have been captured if he’d been as well mounted as his Hibernian captor. The trooper turned to Gairdner and said, ‘Than by Jasus Sir, tell him if he had the best horse in France, I would bring him prisoner if he stood to fight me.’ The riflemen all had a good laugh at this Irish bravado. Then it was down to business. What would your Honour give me for his horse? Gairdner, knowing the trooper’s time was short and the Army was going through one of its periods of short pay, struck an excellent bargain, buying the beast for five dollars, or little more than one pound. Pocketing his cash, the trooper started rooting through the Frenchman’s valise, eventually drawing out a pair of cavalryman’s strong trousers, which he threw to Costello, gratis. It was only fair to share one’s good fortune. Gairdner had picked up a cheap packhorse and the Irish trooper galloped off with enough for several bottles of wine.

  Simmons’s loss, or indeed that of the French dragoon, happened in the same affair as Gairdner’s or Costello’s gain. It was all as arbitrary as the flight of bullets, or so it often seemed to them – this sense was summed up in the much-used phrase, ‘the fortunes of war’. It was the way that soldiers rationalised the inexplicable workings of fate and their own powerlessness in the face of them.

  The fortunes of war also decreed that the 1st/95th played almost no part in the events of 22 July 1812. Posted on Wellington’s left flank, they observed a little light skirmishing around the middle of the day and were formed up to pursue the flying French as light faltered towards the end of it. In the intervening hours, the fate of Spain had been decided by Wellington’s crushing defeat of Marmont on the battlefield of Salamanca. It was later celebrated as the defeat of forty thousand men in forty minutes, and while not exactly conforming to this propagandistic hyperbole, Wellington’s battle marked his emergence as an offensive commander and one of the great captains of the age. ‘Our division, very much to our annoyance, came in for a very slender portion of this day’s glory,’ wrote a grumpy Kincaid.

  With this French defeat, the wrecks of Marmont’s army streamed away from the frontier, pursued by the British, uncovering Madrid. After a march of a couple of hundred miles, Wellington’s Army entered the Spanish capital on 12 August to scenes of hysterical rejoicing. When the British commander left at the end of the month to continue his pursuit of the French Army, the Light Division was among those that remained behind to guard Madrid.

  Once in Madrid, the men of the 95th felt they had reached civilisation again. ‘The public buildings are really splendid,’ one Rifles officer wrote in his journal, ‘no abominable dunghills in every direction, like Lisbon.’ More importantly for most of them, there were the women: this interlude was first and foremost a chance to gaze upon well-dressed, cultured, beautiful women. At dances in Gallegos and Ituera a man made do with what was available. For those long starved of female company, the frumpy maidens, occasionally mustachioed, of the Spanish peasantry had sufficed and even proven the stuff of many a romantic fantasy, for a soldier quickly learns to make do under such circumstances. In Madrid, it was a different story entirely.

  The guapas were best observed at about 7 p.m. strolling on the Calle Mayor or in the pleasure gardens near the Retiro:

  It is here the stranger may examine, with advantage, the costume, style and gait of the Spanish ladies. Their dress is composed of a mantilla or veil, gracefully thrown back over the head; a long-waisted satin body; black silk petticoats fringed from the knee downwards; white silk stockings with open clocks; and kid shoes of white or black.

  At public dances twice a week in the assembly rooms of the Calle de Baños and El Principe, they could actually hold hands with these beauties and quadrille or waltz with them. The officers’ pleasure at taking in these sights and sounds was soon tempered by a sense of their own poverty. A fine meal could be had in Madrid, but it would cost you six shillings. The Army was desperately short of coin again and pay was six months in arrears.

  The mortification of one well trained in dancing, like James Gairdner, can easily be imagined. He wrote in his journal, ‘I have been very unwell, add to that I never had money for the army has never been worse paid than since we have been here, so that I have not had much pleasure to boast of having enjoyed the capital of Spain.’ He sent to his family for some cash to rectify matters. Those who could not fall back on family help were reduced to all kinds of expedients. One captain of the 95th recorded, ‘I sold some silver spoons and a watch to raise the wind.’

  George Simmons, serious-minded and dedicated to his family as ever, managed in the few months after his losses of July to scrape together £22 6s 7d to send home. The money was first sent to a banking house in Lisbon who produced a bill which came back to Simmons. He then posted it home, his family cashing it with an English money dealer who, along with the issuing house in Lisbon, skimmed off his cut. Simmons, always ready to stand in loco parentis, had decided that his brother Joseph was at risk. Having come to the Peninsula as a volunteer in Maud’s regiment, the 34th, Joseph had been commissioned into the 23rd Fusiliers, a fashionable corps in which a young boy from Beverley could fall in with all sorts of moneyed blades with extravagant habits. To add to George’s concerns, Joseph had fallen ill and been placed in hospital in Salamanca.

  Knowing that this would be the best way for Joseph to avoid mounting debts or the kind of disaster that had befallen Tommy Sarsfield, George Simmons arranged to have his younger brother transferred to the 95th. There he could instruct him, protect him from muttering his youthful opinions aloud, and indeed from that type of older officer who delighted in torturing young subalterns with their tricks. The mentor principle had worked very well for all brothers in the regiment: the Smiths, Coxes, Coanes and Travers among them.

  Many officers also found themselves enjoying the largesse of those who could afford to give generous hospitality, like Lieutenant Samuel Hobkirk of the 43rd. He had an allowance of £700 a year but was rumoured to spend £1,000 on his uniforms and campaign comforts. Hobkirk threw a party in Madrid which provided many a comrade with a night’s lavish entertainment. The 95th did not have a figure to compare with Hobkirk, in terms of spreading money about, but its most recently joined subaltern, Lord Charles Spencer, a callow youth of eighteen, was at least able to subsidise his mess.

  The officers in Madrid also took to organising their own entertainments so that they might extend some hospitality to the youth and beauty of the city. Light Division theatricals had begun in the Torres Vedras winter of 1810. There had been further performances during the winter quarters of 1811–12. In Madrid, they were able to find a proper theatre to put on t
wo plays: The Revenge and The Mayor of Garrett. These performances were acted by young, high-spirited officers such as Freer, Havelock, Hennell and Hobkirk of the 43rd (the last bankrolling the production, as might be expected) and the newly arrived Spencer and Gairdner of the 95th. Their Madrid efforts were a great success, netting such a large profit from the curious, paying Spanish public that the officers were able to donate $250 to the city’s poor.

  This happy interlude was destined to be short-lived. Wellington’s push to the north-east had been checked at the fortress of Burgos. He had known that the Light and 4th Divisions could not be asked to storm again, after the recent horrors of Badajoz, and had therefore left them near Madrid. However, his attempts to take the citadel with other troops resulted in a number of costly rebuffs and he realised he would have to march all the way back to the Portuguese frontier in order to avoid defeat at the hands of the French armies now massing against him.

  The British Army quit Madrid on 31 October, their departure arousing the ire and contempt of the Madrileños. Being left to their fate among the French dashed the hopes of many Spanish. Men shouted insults at the marching redcoats and the young women, so delightful at weekly dances, hissed accusations of cowardice and effeminacy. ‘I was truly glad to get away from this unfortunate place,’ one officer wrote in his journal. ‘We could not do the people any good and pity is at best (under the circumstances) a sorry way of showing good wishes.’