Rifles - Mark Urban [174]
– ‘He rejected, for example, the old system of forming ad hoc battalions’: this emerges from a letter to General William Stewart of 27 March 1810, in the Cumloden Papers, Edinburgh, 1871.
– ‘Wellington soon realised that these regiments – the 43rd, 52nd and 95th – were among the very best troops’: Charles Napier, in a letter home of 21 March 1811, describes the Light Division as ‘great favourites’ of Wellington’s.
– ‘He also rejected the doctrine of many conservative generals that riflemen, by virtue of their slower rate of fire and skirmishers’ vulnerability to cavalry, could only ever be deployed in penny packets, supporting regular infantry’: in a letter of 11 July 1803, General Clinton (Military Secretary at Horse Guards) wrote, ‘I cannot help thinking that a corps armed with rifles, unless it is supported, would be exposed in a very short time to be cut to pieces.’ He is cited by Gates.
– ‘with him the field officers must first be steady’: these comments about William Stewart’s time as commanding officer were made by Charles Napier (then an officer in the 95th) in his journal and reproduced in The Life and Opinions of General Sir Charles James Napier, by Lieutenant General Sir W. Napier, 4 vols., London, 1857.
44 ‘he had begun his military career as a surgeon’s mate’: see WO 12/7695, muster roll of 69th Foot.
– ‘He had been promoted to captain in 1803’: Sir William Stewart’s letter to the Commander in Chief, see WO 31/143.
45 ‘His brother officers were ignorant of the wife, Mary, and daughter, Marianne’: their ignorance is shown by the Register of Officers’ Effects, WO 25/2964 where it says it is ‘not known’ whether he is married. Mary’s existence emerges from PROB 6/189 Acts of Administrations (these are probate records), and Marianne’s from WO 25/3080 which are Abstracts of Compassionate Allowance Claims for 1814.
45 ‘O’Hare had spent some time pursuing a young lady in Hythe’: Costello, who also provides the quotations about flogging the next man who makes an attempt, and about O’Hare’s extremely ugly countenance.
– ‘having enjoyed the wine very much’: this quotation and the saga of the stolen boots come from Simmons.
46 ‘Whereas, for example, Lieutenant Harry Smith, a dashing young English subaltern’: these forms of address come from Smith’s memoirs. Costello says O’Hare’s men usually called him Peter.
– ‘We had but a slender sprinkling of the aristocracy among us’: John Kincaid, Random Shots From a Rifleman, first published London, 1835.
– ‘They soon took over the small cantinas, inviting local girls to join them in nightly drinking, dancing and song’: tales of their carousing emerge from Leach, Rough Sketches, and The Peninsula and Waterloo, Memories of an Old Rifleman, a memoir of John Molloy, of the 95th, by Edmund F. Du Cane, published in Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 76, December 1897.
– ‘Various amusements were exhibited this morning in our village’: Leach, MS Journal, entry for 4 February.
– ‘that to divert and to amuse his men and to allow them every possible indulgence’: Leach, Rough Sketches, where the rifleman also cheerfully admits to stealing honey and poaching pigeons.
48 ‘There was great uncertainty in the French command about whether Craufurd’s line of outposts was at all supported’: that Ferey’s raid was some sort of reconnaissance in force emerges from General Loison, his divisional commander’s report of the event. This is found in the general’s letterbook in French Army archives at Vincennes, dated 21 March 1810, letter 344.
– ‘Early in the evening of 19 March’: this account of Barba del Puerco relies on Simmons, Costello, Green, John Cox’s MS Journal (RGJ Archives, Box 1, Item 34) and the official French report of the action above.
– ‘O’Hare, who had “been taken unwell”’: these are Simmons’s words. My own suspicion, given some of the other material in this chapter, is that O’Hare was drunk. I have no direct proof, so I have refrained from making such an emotive allegation in the text itself. Clearly, whatever was wrong with him, it was not a serious