Soldiers by Richard Holmes

Author:Richard Holmes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2011-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

group of finer officers, about twenty, I never saw. They were attired in handsome uniform, and appeared quite unfatigued. At first the extreme exhaustion of my bodily powers led me to suppose my mind was disordered, and that this was a mere fantasy … My companions were all French … our bugle sounded, which gave me strength to jump up. I rushed to the tree from whence I had proceeded … [and] met my sergeant, of whom I immediately learnt that these were the Chasseurs Britanniques …13

The regiment’s soldiers were a mixed bag. In its earliest days a majority of French, Germans, and Swiss served in its ranks. After Maida, Poles became the largest single nationality, and they were joined by other Eastern Europeans, notably Hungarians and Austrians, many of whom had served in the French army. There were always several Russians, rather more Italians, and even the occasional American. Amongst the casualties at Fuentes were the Polish Private Nicolas Yetchinchen, ‘supposed dead’, the German Private Conrad Shybell, who had a leg amputated, and Private Casimir Seresniack, another Pole, who was left wounded in the field and escaped from French captivity to turn up of his own free will at the Foreign Depot at Lymington over a year later. The authorities evidently believed him, for he received his arrears of pay.14 Even the regiment’s warmest advocate, however, cannot deny that its men deserted on an almost migratory scale, with 224 making off in 1813 alone. Wellington attributed the ‘disposition of all foreign recruits to desert from our armies to the regularity of system and to the strictness of discipline which exist, and which must be upheld, in order to keep a British army in the field in a state of efficiency for any length of time’.15 Yet despite the fact that so many soldiers had already deserted from other armies, throughout the regiment’s history only two faced general courts martial for crimes other than desertion. In 1809 Private Bernard Durcurzel was sentenced to death for theft from an officer and desertion ‘towards the enemy’. He was reprieved and sent off to serve in the Royal African Corps. In 1813 Corporal Francis Oddo was tried for stealing two mules from officers and selling them to Spanish civilians. He was acquitted on one count but found guilty on the other, and was sentenced to lose his two stripes and get 500 of another sort.

Most of the Chasseurs disappear from history after their discharge from the regiment, but Lewis Foghell, a musician born in Palermo, immediately enlisted into the 40th Foot and fought at Waterloo. After a stint in the 66th Foot he slipped into that green-coated refuge of foreigners, the 60th Rifles, being promoted sergeant in 1835 and taking his discharge in 1842 – far from the Piazza Pretoria. His long service in the British army underlines an important point. At a time when notions of nationality were less rigid than they became as the nineteenth century wore on, there were many soldiers who served their paymaster loyally, whoever he happened to be.

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