Rifles - Mark Urban [9]
Craufurd’s character was sufficiently well known even in 1806 for him to have been described by one newspaper as ‘an opinionated, an ungracious and even ill tempered man’. And that was before the disgrace.
During the 1806–7 expedition to the River Plate in South America, one in which both Captain O’Hare and Private Almond had served, Craufurd had been obliged to surrender his brigade. Surrounded by enemy troops in the streets of Buenos Aires, Craufurd’s force had made its stand in a convent before, under a heavy fire of sharpshooters, its commander was forced to capitulate.
A court martial had exonerated Craufurd for the failure, blaming the expedition’s overall commander instead. But the distinction of having surrendered a British brigade in action was an odious one, and he knew it would always cling to him. Even as this new campaign continued, he would find himself again and again coming back to the memory of Buenos Aires, writing home to his wife, ‘In that very town, the capture of which would have raised me to the height of military glory if I had been left to myself, I, two days afterwards, found myself in the humiliating situation of a prisoner.’
Whatever his temperament, those who ran the Army, at Horse Guards in London, knew Craufurd as an officer of unusual education and vision. He had attended reviews of the Prussian Army and served as a British representative in the field with Archduke Charles of Austria. His German and French were fluent and he had the self-confidence necessary to discuss military theory with any of the great captains of the day. After Buenos Aires, Craufurd was saved from obscurity by the court-martial verdict, political connections, and a reputation for being a scientific soldier.
Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Wellesley, who would shortly become known as Lord Wellington, commanding the British forces in the Iberian Peninsula, knew that these qualifications made Craufurd a very rare creature indeed among a pedestrian corps of generals. What better man to entrust with the outposts at the front of his army?
For those marching in Craufurd’s brigade, this grasp of military theory counted for little, of course. Old soldiers chatting around the campfire could piece together certain chapters in the brigadier’s turbulent career. Captain O’Hare and a few of the others had been in Buenos Aires, where they too had been subjected to the ignominy of surrender and a few months’ captivity before returning home. William Brotherwood had been with the 2nd Battalion of Rifles in Craufurd’s brigade during the campaign of that previous winter. The wholesale reorganisation of the 95th had brought Brotherwood, his captain Jonathan Leach and many others into the 1st Battalion for this new campaign. Brotherwood could tell the others some stories: he was among the riflemen who’d seen Craufurd beat his men and order floggings for the most frivolous of disciplinary offences. During that long retreat to Corunna seven months before, the lads called him Black Bob.
Craufurd’s strictness arose from a conviction that he must rule the brigade entrusted to him with the greatest zeal. He did so because it was the vehicle for the resurrection of his reputation. Its every movement and evolution must be calculated to excite the admiration of Sir Arthur Wellesley and the envy of his peers. Its marches must be regulated with the precision and predictability of a fine timepiece.
To this end, Craufurd issued a series of Standing Orders on the morning of 10 July, as the brigade had a day of rest in Abrantes. Less than a week into the campaign proper, this set of instructions confirmed his reputation for strictness in the eyes of the 95th’s officers and established the commander as their enemy. Captain Jonathan Leach, commander of 2nd Company, wrote in his diary: ‘Brigadier General Robert Craufurd (damn him) issued this day to the Light Division an immensity of the most tyrannical and oppressive standing orders that were ever compiled by a British officer [emphasis