Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters

by Mark Urban

  158 ‘There had been around two dozen turncoats serving the French garrison there’: Green puts the figure as high as forty. I’m sceptical that it was that high, given the numbers of men returned in the previous months as having deserted. On the other hand, the 1st/95th returned five deserters in November and December 1811 and with Mills, McInnes, Hogdson and Almond accounted for, that still leaves one rifleman who either died in the siege or successfully escaped.

  159 ‘Murphy of the 95th had been sentenced to six months’: this emerges in General Orders, the court martial having taken place on 5 January 1812. Neither Murphy nor the man he killed seems to have been a 1st Battalion man.

  159 ‘The court having considered the evidence’: General Orders.

  – ‘Miles Hodgson of the 95th was among those saved’: this emerges in Costello, who gives an account of Hodgson’s later wounding in battle. It was Surtees who said McInnes was seduced into desertion.

  – ‘everyone was pretty much agreed that they would get what was due to them’: those who showed no compassion towards the deserters included Green and Simmons.

  – ‘Some held that the deserters had fought twice as well as any Frenchers’: Surtees reports these feelings among the soldiers. To me, the tale of the soldiers taunting their former comrades in English during the storm has the whiff of an urban myth about it. None of the many diarists reported hearing such calls, first person, and the fondness for morbid tales around the camp fire (described by such Light Division types as Kincaid, Cooke and Hennell) probably accounts for these claims.

  160 ‘They soon after appeared, poor wretches, moving towards the square’: Surtees.

  – ‘Oh, Mr Smith, put me out of my misery’: Smith. Given his unpleasant role in these proceedings, Smith’s omission of any mention of his duty as prosecutor in the subsequent trial of Almond is curious.

  161 ‘Joseph Almond had been captured by a patrol of Spanish guerrillas’: Costello, who provides the basis for much of this section.

  162 ‘The Court having duly considered the evidence’: General Orders, 7 March 1812.

  – ‘the execution could not be carried out until these several pounds had been received’: Kincaid.

  SIXTEEN Badajoz

  165 ‘This had the desired effect; and the field pieces were withdrawn into the fort’: Leach, Rough Sketches.

  166 ‘He’d developed a thirst for action that, on that very day, got him promoted to sergeant’: the date of the promotion and the fact of Fairfoot’s volunteering for the Picurina storm emerge from the description book WO25/559; Brotherwood’s volunteering emerges in Harry Smith’s autobiography.

  – ‘Damn your eyes!’: Smith, evidently one of those who heard the story from Brotherwood himself.

  – ‘the Russian army is 400 thousand strong’: Cameron’s friend wrote his letter on 15 May, a little later, but war with Russia was confidently expected by many in the Peninsular army. The letter resides in the Cameron Head Papers at the Highland Region Archive office in Inverness.

  167 ‘Major O’Hare … greeted the returnees, including Sergeant Esau Jackson’: Costello. This is my favourite O’Hare anecdote.

  – ‘Private Thomas Mayberry was one of those readying himself for the moment’: Harris is the source of this story and of the quotation about Mayberry being held in contempt.

  – ‘one of those wild untamable animals that, the moment the place was carried, would run to every species of excess’: Kincaid on Burke, Random Shots. His Kilkenny origins emerge from the muster rolls.

  168 ‘The more the danger, the more the honour’: this phrase was used by Simmons in a letter home late in 1810. He wrote it inside inverted commas, suggesting that it was a common saying in the Army at the time.

  – ‘so great was the rage for passports to eternity in our battalion’: another nice turn of phrase from Kincaid, Adventures.

  – ‘Lieutenant Willie Johnston would not be put off’: Kincaid, Random Shots.

  – ‘He insisted on his right as going as senior lieutenant’: this comment on Harvest comes from Surtees, but Cooke of the 43rd also mentions his conduct.

  169 ‘One subaltern of the 43rd chanced upon Horatio Harvest’: Cooke.

  – ‘Bell … had joined the 1st/95th in February, just after Rodrigo, with two other subalterns’: the arrival of these three officers (Bell, Austen and Foster) is mentioned in the monthly return, 25th February 1812, WO 17/217. The return lists officers in order of seniority within each rank, hence the comment about Bell’s superiority to Kincaid.

  – ‘Lieutenant Bell chose this moment to complain of feeling sick’: Bell’s feigning illness is reported in a letter from James Gairdner, part of the NAM MS, and will be dealt with more fully in the next chapter.

  – ‘O’Hare was ill at ease. Captain Jones, of the 52nd, asked him’: this exchange is quoted by Costello, who couldn’t resist morbid portents of this kind.

  171 ‘A lieutenant colonel or cold meat in a few hours’: O’Hare’s comment is quoted by Simmons and has been seized upon, quite rightly I think, by various historians as an extraordinary expression of the fatalism prevalent among these men.

  – ‘Instantly a volley of grape-shot, canister, and small arms poured in’: Costello.

  – ‘What a sight! The enemy crowding the ramparts’: Cooke of the 43rd.

  172 ‘Lieutenant James Gairdner fell on this slope’: Gairdner MS Journal. – ‘the musket ball hit the peak of his cap, going through it into his left temple’: this is described by Green and the injury appears in WO 25/559.

  172 ‘No going to the rear for me’: Harris.

  173 ‘Another man of ours (resolved to win or die)’: Kincaid, Random Shots.

  – ‘French troops were standing upon the walls taunting and inviting our men to come up and try again’: Cooke.

  – ‘Why don’t you come into Badajoz?’: William Napier’s History.

  174 ‘In the awful charnel pit we were then traversing’: Kincaid, Random Shots.

  – ‘The men were not so eager to go up the ladders as I expected them to be’: Hennell in a letter home dated 5 April 1812, but with postscripts describing that awful night. Hennell had been sent to the 94th as a volunteer and, for his heroic conduct at Badajoz, was commissioned as an ensign in the 43rd.

  SEVENTEEN The Disgrace

  176 ‘Major Cameron walked slowly and deliberately up and down the ranks of riflemen’: this scene is described by Kincaid, Random Shots.

  177 ‘who by this time were tolerably drunk’: Costello.

  – ‘I hear our soldiers in some instances behaved very ill’: Hennell’s comments were made in letters – the best kind of record. I’ve used the volume edited by Michael Glover throughout.

  178 ‘Every atom of furniture was broken and mattresses ripped open in search of treasure’: Cooke.

  179 ‘O’Hare’s property at home was more substantial’: PROB 6/189 Acts of Administrations. The £20 figure comes from the register of Officers’ Effects.

  180 ‘in place of the usual tattoo report of all present, it was all absent’: Kincaid, Random Shots.

  181 ‘The defences on the tops of the breaches ought to have been cleared’: Kincaid, Random Shots.

  – ‘They blamed Wellington and his engineers’: Verner discovered some interesting, if unsourced, evidence of this, an angry comment about Wellington, clearly from a Light Division veteran, scribbled in the margins of a Rifles memoir.

  – ‘I was before this last action sixth from the top of the Second Lieutenants’: Gairdner MS letter, 25 April 1812.

  – ‘This regimental havoc will give me promotion’: this was Lieutenant Robert Fernyhough quoted in Thomas Fernyhough, Military Memoirs of Four Brothers, London, 1829. Although Fernyhough served in the 95th, this is the only quotation of his I have used in this book. His record of service was in fact a series of missed opportunities and illnesses that resulted in him missing every significant moment of the regiment’s campaigns.

  EIGHTEEN The Salamanca
Campaign

  183 ‘He and Captain McDearmid were the only two of the thirteen senior officers … left fit to march’: my own research with the monthly returns, WO 17/217, and the Challis Index. The figures for men fit to march and invalided home also come from the monthly returns.

  184 ‘a subtle and unmistakable change in the conduct of quite a few old sweats in the battalion’: this is such a sensitive subject, being connected with powerful concepts of courage and honour, that it is hard to find direct evidence for it. Kincaid, in comments made about Vitoria (see Chapter 20) is one of the few to tackle it explicitly, stating that a man who survives a great battle wants to be able to tell the tale. Leach and Cooke (of the 43rd) both, for example, measured subsequent battles in comparison to Badajoz and one only has to look at the pattern of volunteering for the Salamanca forts and San Sebastian to see that most of those who came forward at Rodrigo or Badajoz did not go on these later storming parties.

  – ‘a couple of men committed suicide and quite a few fell into deep depression’: according to Surtees.

  – ‘Cameron was born and grew up in Lochaber’: an article on Cameron’s background and career appeared in the Rifle Brigade Chronicle, 1931.

  – ‘His relatives had kept too tight a grip on the family funds’: this detail about Cameron emerges from Charles Napier’s journal in Napier’s History.

  185 ‘perhaps from being less spoiled and more hardy than British soldiers’: Cumloden Papers.

  – ‘As a friend, his heart was in the right place’: Kincaid, Adventures.

  186 ‘Now Smith dined alone as acting commander of 3rd Company’: good detail of the reorganisation emerges from Gairdner’s MS Journal.

  – ‘was in his choice of his profession’: Kincaid, Random Shots. Sarsfield’s departure is noted in the monthly return.

  – ‘not suited to our specie of troop’: Beckwith’s letter to Cameron, 10 October 1813, referring to Sarsfield’s later transfer out of the 95th. The letter resides in the Cameron Head Papers.

  187 ‘The march was commenced with precisely the same regularity’: Leach, Recollections and Reflections.

  189 ‘A trooper of the 14th Light Dragoons captured a French cavalier’: Costello.

  190 ‘Our division, very much to our annoyance’: Kincaid, Adventures.

  – ‘The public buildings are really splendid’: Simmons.

  – ‘It is here the stranger may examine, with advantage, the costume, style and gait’: Cooke.

  – ‘A fine meal could be had in Madrid, but it would cost you six shillings’: Hennell.

  191 ‘I have been very unwell, add to that I never had money’: Gairdner MS Journal, entry for 20 October 1812.

  – ‘I sold some silver spoons and a watch’: Leach, Rough Sketches.

  – ‘Lieutenant Samuel Hobkirk of the 43rd … was rumoured to spend £1,000 a year on his uniforms’: Cooke and Hennell are among those who were transfixed by Hobkirk’s wealth.

  192 ‘In Madrid, they were able to find a proper theatre’: Cooke.

  – ‘I was truly glad to get away from this unfortunate place’: Simmons.

  – ‘The conversation among the men is interspersed with the most horrid oaths’: Hennell.

  194 ‘The road was covered with carcasses of all descriptions’: Simmons.

  – ‘It is impossible to conceive of anything more regular’: Leach MS Journal.

  – ‘which was fun for them but death to us’: Simmons.

  – ‘Cameron sent the Highland and 1st Companies out to the water’s edge as skirmishers’: Gairdner and Leach provide good accounts of this fight in their MS journals. Gairdner notes the four supporting companies of the 95th were ‘formed in line’.

  196 ‘Charles Spencer, distraught at the prospect, burst into tears’: Costello.

  – ‘sentries with fixed bayonets placed around the piles’: Leach MS Journal.

  NINETEEN The Regimental Mess

  197 ‘Fire places of no small dimensions were made by our soldiers’: Leach MS Journal.

  – ‘Having ransacked the canteens of each company for knives, forks, spoons, &c.’: Leach, Rough Sketches.

  198 ‘after a great deal of needless and ungentlemanly blustering’: Gairdner MS Journal, as is the quotation of Cameron.

  199 ‘Between field sports by day and harmony and conviviality at night’: Leach MS Journal.

  – ‘Up to this period Lord Wellington had been adored by the army’, Kincaid, Adventures.

  200 ‘the most ultra of all ultra-Tories’: Kincaid’s (anonymous) sketch of Johnston in the United Services Journal, 1837, Part I.

  – ‘he was the type who might easily have called out some Scot’: FitzMaurice, in the work about his father, also the source of the above quotation, describes him as a man who could never be shaken from his conviction that duelling was an honourable way to settle matters of honour, saying he was raised in the tradition of the ‘duello’.

  201 ‘take advantage of his superior rank, not only to decline giving me that satisfaction’: this passage is by William Surtees about an officer in another Rifles battalion who tormented him. I have included it because

  it is an unusually candid consideration of some of the factors weighed up before calling someone out.

  201 ‘the conduct of our Commandant and a few of his adherents is tending to establish parties’: this passage was written in a common or simple cipher in Gairdner’s MS Journal and is dated 25 March 1813. A Newsnight colleague, Meirion Jones, and I broke the code in about twenty-five minutes during a quiet afternoon in the office. In The Man Who Broke Napoleon’s Codes, Faber, 2001, I wrote about the techniques used to break these types of cipher so quickly.

  – ‘Lieutenant Gore and Lord Charles Spencer who are both good looking’: Leach MS Journal. This is also the source of the following quotation about Wellington crying out ‘Bravo!’.

  202 ‘He is equally delightful at the festive board as at the head of his Division’: Leach MS Journal.

  203 ‘Alten’s attempts to assert his authority were rather weak’: Gairdner MS Journal.

  204 ‘If there is one school worse than another for a youngster’: Leach, Rough Sketches.

  – ‘Cameron tried to obtain the recall of Second Lieutenant Thomas Mitchell’: this saga comes from the Mitchell Papers cited in his biography above. Cameron’s angry letter, dated 12 November 1812, was addressed to the Adjutant General. The reply from Colonel Gordon, the QMG, was fired back the following day. Gordon was replaced a few weeks later by George Murray, an officer who had previously held the same position and was much more to Wellington’s liking.

  205 ‘I ought to have had you tried by General Court Martial’: this Cameron quotation comes from Costello’s account. Costello states that he can only think of six men of his battalion flogged during the Peninsular War. This is nonsense: my own researches would suggest there were dozens of such punishments, particularly during Craufurd’s command of the Light Division. Evidently Costello’s memory of this had been dimmed by the passing years. The Costello quotation, along with various statements by Moore, Manningham and Stewart about their dislike of corporal punishment, have sustained something of a myth that the Rifles were rarely flogged.

  206 ‘Only one is a native of Great Britain’: monthly return WO 17/217.

  – ‘A few dozen men in the 95th took Spanish or Portuguese wives’: the real measure of this was in the desertions at the end of the Peninsular War, when some of the soldiers disappeared rather than forsake their Iberian sweethearts.

  207 ‘We have acted some plays … with various success’: this letter was written by Captain Charles Beckwith, 95th, to his friend William Napier of the 43rd who was on leave at the time. It is reproduced in Verner.

  207 ‘Barnard took the setback philosophically, and began plotting’: Barnard’s thoughts emerge in letters home in ‘Letters of a Peninsular War Commanding Officer’, ed. M. C. Spurrier, Journal for the Society of Army Historical Research, Vol. xliv, pp63–76.


  – ‘We had a brigade field day this day on the plain between’: Gairdner MS Journal. Leach MS Journal suggests Kempt was rather impressed with his new brigade. Perhaps on first seeing it, he was just underestimating its potential (for evidence of how impressed he was later, see the following chapter).

  208 ‘Officers would offer up the latest theory with an “on dit”’: Leach MS Journal.