From Corunna to Waterloo: With the Hussars 1808 to 1815 by John Mollo

Author:John Mollo [Mollo, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War I, Napoleonic Wars, Weapons
ISBN: 9781473831520
Google: YLLNDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-11-14T03:38:33+00:00

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At the beginning of May the Brigade left Tomar and, moving now by regiments, marched northwards towards the valley of the Mondego, and the rest of the British army, some five days march away. On the 1st the 15th arrived at Cabacos, after a march of five hours on the very worst road & in the midst of a torrent of rain’, only to be put into miserable quarters, as the town and the adjacent villages had been ‘dreadfully romped’. The 10th Hussars expected to leave on the 5th, by which time the weather had turned ‘quite fine again’. They had been turning out at two in the morning for the previous two days, in order to march in the cool part of the day, and from now on they were expecting to bivouac each night, as Tomar was, Fitzgerald wrote, ‘the last town in our Rout capable of holding more than two troops’. It was, moreover, a ‘good place for grub’, and he had managed to get ‘a nice buttock of beef for dinner’. Worcester was apparently still with the regiment and Lord Edward had great hopes that his ‘last business at Lisbon’ would not turn out as serious as they had feared. Mrs Archdeacon’s ‘character & conduct previous to her connection with Worcester was so notorious’ that the husband was unlikely ‘to have recourse to a legal process’ and he trusted the affair would end without any further notoriety. ‘It is to be hoped,’ he concluded, ‘the operations of the campaign will direct his mind from this new object, and that as he grows older, he will grow wiser.’

By the 6th the 15th Hussars had swung to the north-east and were at Galices, in ‘wild but romantic country under the sierra’. Much of the luxuriant valley of the Mondego had been destroyed, Jones noted, the Portuguese, ‘a good sort of dirty people’ having been ‘shamefully used by the British as well as the French & all their property destroy’d.’ The next day they reached Cea [Seia] where they halted for one day as the weather had turned bad again. The 18th Hussars, meanwhile, were having problems; ‘nothing but mistakes,’ Woodberry wrote in disgust on the 9th; ‘My God! what an unfit person Colonel Murray is to command the regiment.’ They had just settled down for a day’s rest when they were ordered to turn out again and march for Cea. The Brigadier was at Maceira, waiting to see them pass, but unfortunately the ‘unsoldierlike state’ of their march, ‘owing to the short notice, caused him to make some very severe remarks on Colonel Murray’s conduct,’ which the latter made worse by mistaking his orders and halting the regiment there, instead of marching them on to Cea. Colonel Grant had waited there to inspect them on their arrival, but they did not get in until midnight, having ridden sixty miles all through the ‘apathy of Col. Murray’.

Schaumann’s description of Colonel Grant portrays an arrogance only to be

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