Rifles - Mark Urban [179]
91 ‘The early part of their evenings was generally spent in witticisms and tales’: Kincaid, Random Shots.
92 ‘Had sentence of death been pronounced, it could not have sounded more harsh’: the tales of Plunket’s grog and the still, Costello.
– ‘If a man in England … fancies that he really knows the comfort of tobacco’: Leach, Rough Sketches.
– ‘Books were in short supply’: the Gairdner diary (NAM MSS) makes clear that he was one of the French speakers who read Nouvelle Héloïse. As to Don Quixote, Costello uses the term ‘Dulcinea’ and Leach refers to his ‘Rosinante’. There are numerous references to Gil Blas in Peninsular writings, including a couple by Wellington himself. In Page’s ‘Intelligence Officer in the Peninsula’, there is a list of reading matter in the possession of Captain Edward Cocks. It includes Spenser’s Faerie Queen, Warton’s History of English Poetry, Milford’s Grecian History and a number of titles of professional military interest. Cocks, however, was an officer of unusual education and wealth.
93 ‘He wrote to them of his “miserable position”’: letter from Craufurd to his wife, 5 September 1810, cited by Spurrier.
– ‘I would beg you to reflect whether, considering the situation in which you stand in the Army’: Wellington to Craufurd, 9 December 1810, in Wellington’s Dispatches.
– ‘without reducing me to the painful alternative which I have at present to contemplate’: Craufurd’s reply to Wellington, 17 December 1810, cited by Spurrier.
94 ‘Brigadier General Craufurd has sailed for England’: Leach MS Journal, entry for 3 February.
NINE Pombal
95 ‘constant reports brought in that they cannot remain much longer in their present positions as the soldiery are suffering sad privations’: Simmons, as is the following quotation.
96 ‘looked like a city of the plague, represented by empty dogs and empty houses’: a characteristically elegant turn of phrase from Kincaid, Adventures.
– ‘sixty-five thousand when it entered Portugal, to just over forty thousand as it left’: Oman’s figures, based on careful analysis of French returns.
– ‘The Peninsular Army had become chronically short of cash during the winter’: there are various letters in Wellington’s Dispatches averting to the shortage of specie or ready money at this time. The regimental muster rolls show the 95th’s periods without pay.
97 ‘Go kill a Frenchman for yourself!’: Costello.
– ‘It was a sunshiny morning, and the red coats and pipeclayed belts and glittering of men’s arms in the sun looked beautiful’: Simmons.
– ‘The files (a pair of men in each case) would then move apart – anything from two to six paces between them’: this section is based on Rottemburg’s regulations plus some other texts of the kind.
98 ‘most of the Light Division adopted skirmishing tactics too’: the MS version of Simmons’s diary was edited by Verner and his starting copy remains in the RGJ Archive. He says of the advance ‘the remaining part of the Division [i.e. not the 95th] were nearly all advancing in skirmishing order’.
99 ‘but was refused because he had gone out of action with the wounded’: Allen’s story is told in Costello.
100 ‘He is very blind, which is against him at the head of the cavalry’: one of my favourite Iron Duke quotations, because it is so utterly dry and mordant. It comes from his letter to Beresford, 24 April 1811, in Dispatches.
– ‘checked with ninety-four casualties, including two officers and three soldiers of the 95th killed’: the officers of the 95th were Major Stewart and Lieutenant Strode. Technically they both ‘died of wounds’ rather than being killed in action.
– ‘they soon began referring to him as “Ass-skin”’: Verner is the source of this gem. Smith, rather knowingly, calls Erskine an ‘ass’ at one point in his narrative.
101 ‘pressing us harder than usual’: Marcel.
101 ‘From 5 to 15 March, that is to say in eleven days, [the corps] sped across thirty-three leagues’: Fririon.
102 ‘If you ask me whether we might not have done more than we have,