Rifles - Mark Urban [120]
Stratton’s desertion was almost a singular event that winter. The Spanish drafted in to the 95th earlier that year, on the other hand, proved rather more prone to it. The Spanish experiment was tried in several of Wellington’s regiments, the 1st/95th’s quota being forty-six men. Most of these deserted during the last few months of 1812, the battalion’s monthly return for 25th November containing a rather tart annotation next to the figure of nine for soldiers who deserted: ‘Only one is a native of Great Britain.’
For the most part, it was not a winter to rival the previous one for privations. The men had been given arrears of pay shortly after going into winter quarters, enabling them to buy drink, tobacco and some other comforts. There was a better supply system in place too, bringing up each man’s daily pound of beef with biscuit and rum to boot.
Wellington was keen for his Army to be re-equipped during this winter, for its clothes had fallen apart during 1812’s tough fights and marches. The 95th’s quartermaster was able to buy some dark-green cloth in Lisbon, which tailors ran up into new trousers and jackets for those needing them. ‘Green having become the least conspicuous colour in the regiment,’ wrote Costello, ‘it was amusing to see our fellows strutting about as proud as peacocks among the Spanish peasant girls.’
The soldiers also had their dances and assemblies. This was their fourth winter away from home, and during the long stay in Alemada some became smitten with local girls. Many might have thought it wiser not to have a woman trailing around with the regimental baggage, but they had been through such horrors in their campaigns that they wanted to live for the moment. A few dozen men in the 95th took Spanish or Portuguese wives, although these unions were rarely consecrated in church, for the men were mostly heretics in local eyes. But enough impoverished families were sufficiently content to see their daughters fall in with a British soldier, who would take some sort of financial care of them, that these arrangements did not cause scandal. Some of these women would march with the regiment, playing the sort of roles – washing, mending and peddling drink or smoking fodder – that regimental wives embarked on service might have done, before Beckwith banned them in May 1809.
In all the boozing, smoking and easy living of those months, the Light Division lost some of its fighting edge. One officer of the 95th wrote to a friend in London, ‘We have acted some plays … with various success, we have got drunk with constant success.’
Early in 1813, with the prospect of a further campaign against the French in the offing, General Alten began a programme of marches, firing practice and field days designed to bring his division back up to scratch. Matters were made more difficult for him by the replacement of Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Barnard in command of the 1st Brigade by Major General James Kempt. The 2nd Brigade remained for the time being under General John Vandeleur, who had proven a tough and effective officer, earning the affectionate nickname Old Vans from his men.
Barnard had enjoyed nearly a year in acting command of the 1st Brigade (and indeed of the whole Light Division at Badajoz), a mark of the faith Lord Wellington placed in him. Eventually, though, those who ran the Army at Horse Guards insisted on a general holding substantive rank taking over the command. Barnard took the setback philosophically, and began plotting how he might make his promotion to full colonel permanent. He devoured political news and pleaded in his letters home for more papers and caricatures to help pass the hours in his billets. In the meantime, he knew he was about to return to regimental soldiering, taking over command of the 1st Battalion of Rifles just before the start of the new campaign. Cameron would be pushed aside as acting commanding officer, just as Barnard himself had been displaced from the next rung up the military ladder by Kempt’s arrival.
Barnard had not yet taken over when the long winter lay-off and changes