by Peter Snow
‘The brave men who have survived’: Llewellyn, p. 67, Ney
‘bareheaded, his face blackened’: Houssaye, p. 236
‘We were both on horseback’: Stanhope, p. 245
‘By God, Sir, I have lost my leg’: Anglesey, p. 149
‘Nothing except a battle lost’: Shelley, vol. 1, p. 102
‘looking piteously for relief’: Morris, Sergeant Morris, p. 181
He offered his help: Tomkinson, p. 315
‘whether it is the dead body’: Farmer, p. 149
‘The bones were sticking up’: Gronow, Reminiscences and Recollections, vol. 1, p. 193
‘Let’s have dinner directly’: Thornton, pp. 101–2
‘If it is to be taken off’: Anglesey, p. 150 (quoting Uxbridge’s ADC, Captain Wildman)
‘I thought, as he had only lost a leg’: Kaye, vol. 2, p. 121
‘extreme grief: WD, vol. 12, p. 488, W letter to Aberdeen 19/6/1815
‘without betraying the slightest emotion’: Costello, p. 217
‘I thought all was over’: Shulbrede archive, Ponsonby’s red notebook
‘In my agony of woe’: Smith, pp. 286–8 (quoting his wife’s account)
Chapter Twenty: See the Conquering Hero Comes
‘the successful result’: WD, vol. 12, p. 484, Waterloo despatch
‘the greatest satisfaction’: ibid., p. 483
‘with the greatest gravity’: Creevey, pp. 236–7
‘It was the most desperate business’: Raglan papers, W letter to W. Wellesley-Pole 19/6/1815
he later remarked that it was strange: Longford, Pillar of State, p. 267
‘Oh yes, plenty of that!’: Fraser, p. 73
‘The lance pierced the lungs’: Bessborough, p. 244, Lady Caroline Lamb letter to Lord Duncannon 7/7/1815
He was delighted to discover: Gronow, Reminiscences and Recollections, vol. 1, p. 205
‘riddled body held together’: Kincaid, p. 285
‘Ere many years’: Leach, p. 246
‘like an old warhorse’: Morris, Sergeant Morris, p. 232
‘If England should ever require’: Wheeler, p. 196
‘Yes, I should have’: Montgomery, p. 23
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* A penny was not to be sniffed at in those days. According to the Bank of England’s online inflation calculator goods costing one pound in 1809 would have cost around sixty pounds in 2009. See www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/inflation. But historical comparisons of inflation can be notoriously misleading. A better guide is purchasing power: in Britain a penny in 1809 would buy you a half-pint of beer and three pence some bread and cheese. In the Peninsula prices varied greatly – depending on supply. George Simmons (pp. 183–4) complains at one stage, ‘Every article of food is enormously dear: bread is 1 shilling [12 pence] a pound, butter 4 shillings a pound …’
* This was almost certainly true of Vitoria in 1813 – see p. 196.
* Grapeshot differed from the more widely used canister. A handful of iron balls were assembled and packed in a canvas bag secured with string, looking rather like a bunch of grapes. When fired from the gun, they splayed out very rapidly and were effective only at very short range.
* Cotton was always immaculately dressed in the rich uniform of a general of hussars: it earned him the nickname ‘Lion d’Or’ (Golden Lion). He always felt that the cavalry were undervalued in the Peninsula.
* Wellington and a number of his men spelled Napoleon’s surname Buonaparte, as a mark of contempt, to emphasise his Corsican origins.
* To find the graveyard today, you go to Bonnut near Orthez and ask for the cimetière des Anglais.
* Wellington later admitted that at the time of Napoleon’s abdication ‘the British army could not have reached the scene of operations for two months’ (Greville, vol. 1, p. 74).