Rifles - Mark Urban [188]
– ‘Lieutenant Gore and Lord Charles Spencer who are both good looking’: Leach MS Journal. This is also the source of the following quotation about Wellington crying out ‘Bravo!’.
202 ‘He is equally delightful at the festive board as at the head of his Division’: Leach MS Journal.
203 ‘Alten’s attempts to assert his authority were rather weak’: Gairdner MS Journal.
204 ‘If there is one school worse than another for a youngster’: Leach, Rough Sketches.
– ‘Cameron tried to obtain the recall of Second Lieutenant Thomas Mitchell’: this saga comes from the Mitchell Papers cited in his biography above. Cameron’s angry letter, dated 12 November 1812, was addressed to the Adjutant General. The reply from Colonel Gordon, the QMG, was fired back the following day. Gordon was replaced a few weeks later by George Murray, an officer who had previously held the same position and was much more to Wellington’s liking.
205 ‘I ought to have had you tried by General Court Martial’: this Cameron quotation comes from Costello’s account. Costello states that he can only think of six men of his battalion flogged during the Peninsular War. This is nonsense: my own researches would suggest there were dozens of such punishments, particularly during Craufurd’s command of the Light Division. Evidently Costello’s memory of this had been dimmed by the passing years. The Costello quotation, along with various statements by Moore, Manningham and Stewart about their dislike of corporal punishment, have sustained something of a myth that the Rifles were rarely flogged.
206 ‘Only one is a native of Great Britain’: monthly return WO 17/217.
– ‘A few dozen men in the 95th took Spanish or Portuguese wives’: the real measure of this was in the desertions at the end of the Peninsular War, when some of the soldiers disappeared rather than forsake their Iberian sweethearts.
207 ‘We have acted some plays … with various success’: this letter was written by Captain Charles Beckwith, 95th, to his friend William Napier of the 43rd who was on leave at the time. It is reproduced in Verner.
207 ‘Barnard took the setback philosophically, and began plotting’: Barnard’s thoughts emerge in letters home in ‘Letters of a Peninsular War Commanding Officer’, ed. M. C. Spurrier, Journal for the Society of Army Historical Research, Vol. xliv, pp63–76.
– ‘We had a brigade field day this day on the plain between’: Gairdner MS Journal. Leach MS Journal suggests Kempt was rather impressed with his new brigade. Perhaps on first seeing it, he was just underestimating its potential (for evidence of how impressed he was later, see the following chapter).
208 ‘Officers would offer up the latest theory with an “on dit”’: Leach MS Journal.
– ‘Rumour says that we are about to retrace our steps’: this comes from the Beckwith letter of 1 May 1813. It is worth pointing out that Beckwith was on the staff and therefore might reasonably have been supposed to be a little more in the know than the average regimental officer. Evidently this was some years before the Army had a department called the Directorate of Corporate Communications.
– ‘We now only require that the canteens of each Company’s mess should be well supplied’: Leach MS Journal.
209 ‘Such a review in England would have been attended by crowds’: Hennell.
TWENTY Vitoria
210 ‘We encamped today in a most heavenly May morning’: Leach MS Journal.
– ‘Well, here we go again. We shall go so far and then have our arses kicked and come back again’: he said it to Jock Molloy and it is contained in the memoir of that officer written by Du Cane.
212 ‘it had three battalions of 95th, three