Rifles - Mark Urban [0]
Six Years with Wellington’s Legendary Sharpshooters
MARK URBAN
for my beloved Sol
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
List Of Illustrations
Preface
Chapter One: Departures
Chapter Two: Talavera
Chapter Three: Guadiana
Chapter Four: Barba Del Puerco
Chapter Five: The Coa
Chapter Six: Wounded
Chapter Seven: Busaco
Chapter Eight: The Corporal’s Stripes
Chapter Nine: Pombal
Chapter Ten: Sabugal
Chapter Eleven: Fuentes d’Onoro
Chapter Twelve: The Gentleman Volunteer
Chapter Thirteen: Deserters
Chapter Fourteen: The Storm Of Ciudad Rodrigo
Chapter Fifteen: The Reckoning
Chapter Sixteen: Badajoz
Chapter Seventeen: The Disgrace
Chapter Eighteen: The Salamanca Campaign
Chapter Nineteen: The Regimental Mess
Chapter Twenty: Vitoria
Chapter Twenty-One: The Nivelle
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Nive
Chapter Twenty-Three: Tarbes
Chapter Twenty-Four: Castel Sarrazin
Chapter Twenty-Five: Quatre Bras
Chapter Twenty-Six: Waterloo
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Legend Is Born
Inserts
Notes On Sources
Bibliography
Index
Praise
By the Same Author
About the Author
Copyright
List of Illustrations
The different firing positions used by riflemen; the Baker rifle. The reproduction Baker rifle clearly demonstrates the later rounded plate patch box and a swan neck cock. The Baker lock illustrated represents the later-style Tower assembled lock with a flat plate and ring neck cock.
Illustration from Ezekiel Baker’s 33 Years Practice and Observation with Rifle Guns.
A target used in the trials that selected the Baker rifle.
Detail of a map of the northern Portuguese-Spanish frontier, scene of the Light Division’s exploits from 1809 to 1812.
Sidney Beckwith the 1st Battalion’s Commanding Officer during the campaigns of 1809–11; Andrew Barnard, commander of the 3rd Battalion of Rifles in Spain and later of the 1st; Robert Craufurd in the uniform of the 5th Battalion, 60th Foot; Alexander Cameron, commander of the 1st/95th between Beckwith and Barnard.
Ned Costello after leaving the 95th and his service in the Spanish Carlist (civil) War; Jonathan Leach, commander of the 2nd Company for almost all of the Peninsular Wars; Harry Smith, a 95th officer who rose to become a successful general.
The Combat of the Coa.
Busaco; Foz d’Arouce, the most successful of the Light Division’s combats against Ney’s rearguard.
Sabugal.
Watercolour of Ciudad Rodrigo by Lieutenant Thomas Mitchell of the 95th; the Great Breach at Badajoz, painted by Atkinson.
Mitchell’s view of Fuentes d’Onoro
Vitoria.
Wellington breaches the French Pyrenean defensive line at Nivelle.
The 95th fighting in the Pyrenees; the Battle of the Nive.
Morning at Waterloo by Aylward; fighting in La Haye Sainte.
The illustrations are reproduced by kind permission of: The National Army Museum (1a, 10b, 14a); the Trustees of the Royal Green Jackets Museum (2, 3, 5a, 5b, 5c, 5d, 6c, 15a); AKG London (15b); Mike Fitzgerald and Sue Law (1b, 1c – originally displayed at http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~slaw/SuesPage/baker.htm).
Preface
The 95th Rifles became the British Army’s best-known regiment at a time of some very potent national myths. Wellington’s riflemen have found a niche in the military historical pantheon alongside Cromwell’s Ironsides or the Desert Rats.
In modern times they have been lionised by popular culture in novels as well as television drama. C. S. Forester featured riflemen in his books, and Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series has brought tales of the Green Jackets’ derring-do to millions.
It is apparent then that their exploits have been recounted in more or less embroidered forms quite a few times before. Surprisingly, though, nobody has ever written a proper history of the regiment, and in particular of its 1st Battalion through the period of maximum drama – 1809–15. A colonel in the Rifle Brigade, Willoughby Verner, attempted to tell the full story of all three battalions of his regiment, but never completed his narrative, which ends abruptly two years before the campaigns do.
What’s more,