Rifles - Mark Urban [175]
51 ‘Our swords were soon fixed and giving the war cheer’: John Cox MS Journal.
– ‘Ferey’s dispatch reported the losses: twelve dead and thirteen wounded’: actually Loison’s dispatch alluded to earlier, but it was the custom simply to incorporate the details sent up by your subordinates in their own accounts.
52 ‘Had the drunken carousing of the 95th’s officers alienated the locals’: both Molloy and Leach speculated along these lines. The quotation about them being ‘blind drunk’ comes from Leach’s Rough Sketches.
– ‘we … looked upon it as no inconsiderable addition to our regimental feather’: Kincaid, Random Shots.
– ‘The action reflects honour on Lieutenant Colonel Beckwith’: Craufurd’s order has been reproduced in many places, including Simmons.
54 ‘Eventually, though, the brigadier set off regardless’: Wellington told his brother-in-law in a letter of 31 July 1810 (in Dispatches) that ‘I knew nothing before it happened’.
– ‘Craufurd cruelly tried to cut up a handful of brave men, and they thrashed him’: Charles Napier.
FIVE The Coa
55 ‘Craufurd had posted his division’: this has been pieced together from various accounts, including Leach’s MS Journal and Simmons.
56 ‘Some riflemen came around with dry cartridges’: according to Green. This looks like interesting evidence that, even this early in their campaign, the riflemen had abandoned the pre-war style of loading. Instead of a loose ball, powder poured from the horn that symbolised their corps and a leather patch to give the bullet a snug fit, they were using paper cartridges with ball and powder wrapped up in them. This made for faster shooting.
– ‘As the morning fog cleared away we observed the extensive plains’: John Cox, MS Journal.
57 ‘If the enemy was enterprising we should be cut to pieces’: these quotations from the journal come from Sir William Napier’s life of his brother.
– ‘Wellington himself had echoed these views’: apologists for Craufurd, notably Alexander Craufurd in General Craufurd and his Light Division, London, 1891, suggest there was some ambiguity in Wellington’s orders. I can’t see that Wellington’s missives of June and July 1810, culminating with one two days before the battle stating, ‘I am not desirous of engaging in an affair beyond the Coa’ (these can all be found in the volumes of Wellington’s Dispatches), leave any room for doubt about his intentions.
– ‘He sent his aide-de-camp, Major Napier, around the battalion commanders, telling them’: Napier, life of Charles Napier.
58 ‘He ordered half his company, Lieutenant Coane’s platoon (under Simmons now)’: Simmons.
– ‘The French cavalry are upon us!’: Costello.
59 ‘Captain Vogt, one of their squadron commanders, fell dead’: Capitaine R. Dupuy, Historique du 3e Régiment de Hussards de 1764 à 1887, Paris 1887.
– ‘One of the Portuguese battalions started to disintegrate’: Wellington’s letter of 29 July 1810 to William Beresford (the British officer seconded to command the Portuguese army) reveals the flight of about half of the 1st Cacadores. An inquiry into their conduct was subsequently ordered by Beresford, which concluded, rather feebly, that those who fled across the bridge had been left without orders.
– ‘They sent their light infantry in abundance like swarms of bees’: Jonathan Leach MS, from the letter account of the Coa sent home to an (unknown) friend and later copied by Willoughby Verner while researching his history.
60 ‘Beckwith saw Major Napier nearby, and ordered him to get through to the 52nd’: this is evident from Napier’s journal and Harry Smith’s comments.
– ‘they had run out of ammunition’: Leach MS Journal.
61 ‘Captain Alexander Cameron’s men of the 7th or Highland Company’: Cameron’s positions vis-à-vis the 43rd were discussed in a letter to him from Christopher Patrickson, late 43rd, written in 1844, RGJ Archive, Box 1A, Item 40.
– ‘This is an officer of ours, and we must see him in safety before we leave