Rifles - Mark Urban [111]
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 two 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