Rifles - Mark Urban [177]
71 ‘On 23 October, Headquarters issued a General Order’: in Wellington’s Dispatches. The narrative does not proceed in strict chronological order here, for I consider this General Order from late October, then Simmons, writing early in September, before moving on in the next chapter to Busaco in late September.
– ‘Private Billy McNabb of the 95th was one such’: his basic story is told by Costello. However, various details gleaned from regimental muster rolls have been added.
SEVEN Busaco
74 ‘the voltigeurs of the 69ème Régiment’: Campagnes du Capitaine Marcel, ed. Le Commandant Var, Paris, 1913, is the source of informtion on Marcel and his battle.
– ‘Their generals could observe all our movements and even count the number of files’: François-Nicholas Fririon, Journal Historique de la Campagne de Portugal, Paris, 1841.
75 ‘There had been a heated discussion the night before’: various French sources give different versions of this, including Fririon and J. Marbot, Mémoires du General Baron Marbot, Paris, 1892.
76 ‘preceded by its skirmishers. Arriving on the mountain’s crest it will form in [battle] line’: Masséna’s orders are reproduced in Vol. III of Oman’s History.
– ‘No cartridges, go in with the bayonet!’: Marcel.
78 ‘Simon’s six battalions, marching behind in tight, long columns little more than thirty or forty men across the front’: Leach in his MS letter home mentions the French battalions coming up in ‘column of sections’, which would mean half a company’s width, the French companies being somewhat under strength.
– ‘We must give the French their due and say that no men could come up in a more resolute manner’: Leach MS letter.
– ‘Simon had got his guns’: the British sources say little about this, but since Fririon, Marbot and other French ones are adamant, I believe that they fell briefly into the power of the French.
78 ‘I turned about to the 43rd and 52nd Regiments and ordered them to charge’: Craufurd’s account of the battle, in a letter to his wife, undated, cited by Spurrier.
– ‘An officer of the 52nd recounted’: George Napier, another of the military brothers – his account is contained in Passages in the Early Military Life, ed. Gen. W. Napier, London, 1884.
79 ‘they loosed off a ragged volley at the chargers’: George Napier.
– ‘We kept firing and bayoneting till we reached the bottom’: George Napier.
80 ‘it is clear that the six battalions taken forward by Simon suffered terrible casualties among their officers’: details from A. Martinien, Tableaux par Corps et par Batailles des officiers tués et blessés pendant les guerres de l’Empire, Paris, 1899, a monumental standard work and the starting point for much analysis of Napoleonic battles.
– ‘Colonel Bechaud of the 66ème, for example, having recovered from his chest wound in July at the Coa’: Fririon.
– ‘the English were the only troops who were perfectly practised in the use of small arms’: Marbot, a man generally regarded as something of a romancer with regard to his own exploits, but quite right in this context, even if this reflection may have been made some years later.
81 ‘The French did not want to issue rifles to their men’: Neuf Mois de Campagnes à la Suite du Maréchal Soult, by Lt Col J. B. Dumas, Paris, c. 1900. Although a history of the later (1813–14) campaign, the introductory chapter contains one of the most impressive and detailed analyses, from a French perspective, of the French Army’s failure to match British firepower.
– ‘The French also considered the rifle a very suspect thing if it just caused the soldier to sit, trying to pick off his enemy at long range’: Duhesme.
– ‘It was an unsuitable weapon for the French soldier, and would only have suited phlegmatic, patient, assassins’: Comte Jean-Jacques Gassendi, Aide-Mémoire des Officiers d’Artillerie de France, Paris, 1809. Gassendi reminds us of the deep influence of such notions of national character in this epoch.
– ‘The consumption of this munition is quite incredible’: this comment