Rifles - Mark Urban [189]
213 ‘Wellington, wrote one company commander, “suddenly appeared amongst us …”’: Leach MS Journal.
– ‘The 1st Batt 95th extended over their flanks within pistol shot of them’: John Cox MS Journal.
– ‘Lord Wellington ordered four of the companies of our first battalion to attack’: Leach MS Journal.
– ‘A few hundred skirmishers were not meant to be able to drive off a similar number of men in a formed line’: the formation of this French line is noted by Leach, Cox and Simmons. The last says the Riflemen got ‘several discharges from a well formed line’. San Millan was one of several incidents during 1813–14 when the Light Division achieved such skill that they inverted the usual ‘rules’ of warfare.
214 ‘Our men became outrageous’: a nice comment in one of Hennell’s letters.
– ‘They were purchased by some of the officers either as momentos’: Leach MS Journal.
215 ‘I do not like the idea of forcing the bridge’: quoted by Hennell.
– ‘Others thought the Rifles would soon be able to pick off the French gunners’: Cooke.
– ‘More jokes pass then than at a halt on a wet day’: Hennell.
216 ‘Yes my Lord, I see smoke and dust in that direction’: Du Cane quoting Molloy.
– ‘This little path, clinging to the craggy rock face, led them around the right-angled bend’: this detail comes from one of Hennell’s letters which contains full details and a sketch map. If only we could find accounts of other Napoleonic battles made at the time and in such detail!
– ‘The 3rd Division, at a run, crossed the bridge of Trespuentes’: Cooke.
217 ‘two of our companies lost two officers and thirty men, chiefly from the fire of artillery’: Kincaid, Adventures. He uses ‘lost’ to mean both killed and wounded. A careful analysis of casualties and accounts allowed me to pinpoint those as the 2nd and 6th Companies.
218 ‘FitzMaurice was running at a cracking pace’: these details come from his son’s narrative – presumably they had heard it enough times around the dinner table to know it by heart. John Cox, MS Journal, also has some details on this memorable feat.
219 ‘It was impossible to deny ourselves the satisfaction of cursing them’: Kincaid, Adventures.
– ‘One other rifleman was rumoured to have taken £3,000 in coin’: Du Cane.
220 ‘Do any of you know where Jack Connor is?’: this passage comes from Costello. Eileen Hathaway did some reasearch into the names mentioned for her edition of his memoirs. The quotations and casualty records did not match up in all cases. I have included it nevertheless as one of the longest passages of authentic riflemen’s dialogue included in any of the memoirs. It always moves me, despite having read it dozens of times.
221 ‘After surviving a great day, I always felt I had a right to live’: Kincaid, Adventures.
– ‘This renewed report of disorder committed by soldiers’: Adjudant General’s letter to Alten, 29 June 1813, in Wellington’s Dispatches.
221 ‘You sweep everything before you’: Simmons.
– ‘By God I never saw fellows march so well’: Leach MS Journal.
TWENTY-ONE The Nivelle
223 ‘By throwing up redoubts on the heights one regiment may hold up’: Hennell, letter of 16 July 1813.
224 ‘Marshal Soult predicted that his enemy would suffer 25,000 casualties’: this emerges in a letter of Soult’s quoted in Campagne du Maréchal Soult dans Les Pyrénées Occidentales 1813–1814, Le Commandant Clerc, Paris, 1894.
– ‘Our cavalry therefore and I understand a considerable part of our artillery’: Leach MS Journal.
225 ‘an enthusiastic apostle of light troops and the rifle’: one example of Barnard’s zeal in this respect is the story told by Harry Smith of how the colonel took Wellington to see the aftermath of the Combat of Tarbes, a tale which will be told in Chapter