Napoleonic Anecdotes
The Duke of Wellington's Mother on 'Young Arthur'
from Trevor at Waterloo Battlefield Tours
The Duke of Wellington's mother had a very low regard for her
son's capabilities. She thought him "fit for powder and nothing else".
At 18 he was gazetted as an Ensign to the 73rd Highlanders. Here is what his
mother, clearly a poor judge of military matters, said :-
"Arthur has put on his red coat for the first time today. Anyone can see he
does not have the cut of a soldier."
The Duke of Wellington on his General Officers
When I reflect upon the characters and attainments of some of the general officers of this army, and consider that these are the persons on whom I am to rely to lead columns against the French, I tremble; and as Lord Chesterfield said of the generals of his day, "I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of names, he trembles as I do."
Sgt. Andrew Pearson, 61st Foot
from Trevor at Waterloo Battlefield Tours
An amusing description of General Cuesta's Spanish army, 32,000 strong sent to assist the Duke of Wellington in driving the French out of Spain, as related by Sgt. Andrew Pearson, 61st Foot.
"The General determined he would pay us a compliment by making his troops pass there and then in review before us............ Exhausted as everyone of us was, we were heartily amused with his army. Falstaff's ragged regiment would have done honour to any force compared with the men before us; they were undisciplined, badly armed, and hundreds of them almost naked. I can assure the reader that it was the greatest difficulty we could avoid laughing right out in their faces, when officers out at elbows and knees, stalked past carrying rusty old swords not worth lifting off the road. Hundreds of men with the most haughty countenances sported coats of many colours, while their trousers bore the unmistakable testimony to the difficulty experienced by the wearers in keeping the rags pinned about their legs."
Ned Costello, 95th Rifles
from Trevor at Waterloo Battlefield Tours
Ned Costello of the 95th Rifles was a battle hardened soldier,
veteran of the Peninsular War, several times wounded and survivor of not one but
two forlorn hopes, the suicide party of men first into the breach when a
fortified town was stormed. Here is his account of an amusing little incident
which occurred during the battle of Quatre Bras on June 16th, 1815.
"We remained very quietly where we were until the French brought up some
artillery, and began riddling the house with round shot. Feeling rather thirsty,
I asked a young woman in the place for a little water. She was handing it to me,
when a cannon ball passed through the building, knocking the dust about our
ears. Strange to say, the girl appeared less alarmed than myself."
Captain Alexander Cavalie Mercer, Royal Horse Artillery
from Trevor at Waterloo Battlefield Tours
Captain Alexander Cavalie Mercer of the Royal Horse Artillery,
who wrote a fantastic account of the part his battery played in the Battle of
Waterloo, describes a rather laid back Guards officer he encounters on the road
to Quatre Bras.
"Just at this moment a cabriolet, driving at a smart pace, passed us. In it
was seated an officer of the Guards, coat open and snuff box in hand. I could
not but admire the perfect nonchalance with which my man was thus hurrying
forward to join in a bloody combat - much, perhaps, in the same manner, though
certainly not in the same costume, as he might drive to Epsom or Ascot
Heath".
Captain John Kincaid, 95th Rifles, on Cats
from Trevor at Waterloo Battlefield Tours
Captain Kincaid relates a hilarious story about a young officer
of the Rifles with a reputation for wild, uproarious behaviour. He and two
others went to dine with a local clergyman....
" On their arrival, the ceremony of introduction had just been gone
through, and their host seated at an open window, when a favourite cat of his
went purring about the young gentleman's boots, who, catching it by the tail,
and giving it two or three preparatory swings round his head, sent it flying out
at the open window where the parson was sitting, who only escaped it by suddenly
stooping. The only apology the youngster made for his conduct was "Egad, I
think I astonished that fellow!" but whether it was the cat or the parson
he meant I never could learn."
Josh Hetherington, 95th Rifles
from Trevor at Waterloo Battlefield Tours
In the ranks of the 95th of Wellington's Peninsular army served
a Cockney rifleman called Josh Hetherington. His specialty was ventriloquism. He
and Ned Costello suspected that their landlady of their billet wanted to steal
their meat rations, so they hid in a kitchen cupboard while the meat was
cooking. Here is Costello's account of how Josh terrified the landlady.
"In came the lady of the house..........She was just about to purloin the
meat, when a voice, apparently from the pot, told her, in Portuguese to "wait
a little". The old woman frisked up. Looking doubtful, she crossed
herself, and with the courage which this afforded, again attacked the pots, but
the same words, quick now, and smart as a rifle shot, sent her reeling and
screeching to the corner of the kitchen. "Oh Santa Maria! Oh Jesu!"
she cried, and thinking the devil was in the pot, she went off in a Portuguese
fit. Josh and I.....joined the crowd which her screams were collecting about the
doorway. In a twinkling, she was off to the priest .........and never returned
till we marched out of the place."
Sir George Murray
from Trevor at Waterloo Battlefield Tours
Dr Butter describes a dinner which he attended at Hythe in
honour of Peninsular War veteran, Sir George Murray in the 1820s.
"The dinner commenced at six o'clock in the evening and did not terminate
until seven o'clock the following morning. Drunkenness prevailed, many dropped
off their seats, while others fell while trying to get out of the room without
assistance. The Tipperary boys were full of obscene and indecent toasts, while
the General himself thrice appeared to fall asleep...... He attempted to rise
from his chair and said, "Mr. President, I rise" but, instead of
rising, fell to his knees........A few remnants of this extraordinary banquet
remained until breakfast time when the General washed himself, had his boots
cleaned and, apparently sober, appeared on parade, when as a joke he put an
officer under arrest for being drunk."
Sir William Congreve, Inventor of the 'Congreve Rocket'
from Trevor at Waterloo Battlefield Tours
Wellington disliked the Congreve rocket due to its eccentric and
highly unpredictable performance. Captain Mercer describes the firing of rockets
by Major Whinyates's Troop at Quatre Bras 1815.
".......our rocketeers kept shooting off rockets, none of which ever
followed the course of the first; most of them, on arriving about the middle of
the ascent, took a vertical direction, whilst some actually turned back upon
ourselves - and one of these, following me like a squib until its shell
exploded, actually put me in more danger than all the fire of the enemy throughout the day."
At Waterloo Whinyates loosed off some 52 rockets. There were no recorded
casualties amongst the French.
Mr. Larpent of the Commissariat also had the "privilege" of witnessing
a rocketry demonstration.
"The rockets did not seem to answer very well. They certainly made a most
tremendous noise, and were formidable spitfires - no cavalry could stand if they
came near them, but there seemed the difficulty, none went within half a mile of
the intended object, and the direction seemed excessively uncertain. The ground
was very bad, and on a flat, or along a road, where they would ricochet or bound along straight they might do very
well, but in our case they went bang into the ground.....some pieces of the
shell came back even amongst us spectators."
A Congreve Rocket
Good Manners at Hougoumont
from Trevor at Waterloo Battlefield Tours
Even in the midst of a bloody conflict with death and destruction all around them, some Englishmen never forget their good manners. One such gentleman was Lieut. Colonel Dan MacKinnon of the Coldstream Guards. Whilst involved in desperate hand to hand fighting outside the gates of Hougoumont during the Battle of Waterloo, MacKinnon was wounded by a musket ball which passed through his knee and killed the horse he was riding. As he fell off his horse, he lost his sword and landed on a French officer. He excused himself politely and explained to the startled Frenchman that he would have to borrow his sword. The Frenchman was so taken aback by McKinnon's request that he gave up his sword without question.
A Strange Tale
from David at Waterloo Veterans Index & Information
Whilst looking at the December 2001 edition (Journal of the Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies), my attention was drawn to the "Facts Stranger Than Fiction" article, to the part headed "At Bodmin Market" where a man was reported to have sold his wife to a discharged soldier for sixpence. Apart from family history, my specialist area of research is into the rank and file soldiers who fought at the Battle of Waterloo on 18th June 1815 and I maintain a computer database of the names and details of something in excess of 38,000 such soldiers. Out of interest, I ran the ex-soldier's name of SOBEY through the search sequence:-
A Mystery
from Trevor at Waterloo Battlefield Tours
One of the most remarkable tales to come out of the Battle of Waterloo concerns a discovery made by two British officers on the day after the battle. It was the body of a "strikingly beautiful" woman dressed in the uniform of a cuirassier officer. The location of her body confirmed that she must have charged with the French cavalry, but who she was and why she was there remains a mystery to this day.
The Strongest Man in the British Army
This extract is taken from Mark Adkin's indispensable book 'The Waterloo Companion'.
One of the Earl of Uxbridge's ADCs, Captain H. B. Seymour, had the reputation of being the largest and strongest man in the army. He was said to have killed more Frenchmen at Waterloo than any other individual. Allegedly, he was repeatedly insulted in a Paris restaurant a few weeks after the battle by a French officer who did not realise his immense physique. Seymour rose up from his seat, towering like an enormous gorilla over the now seriously alarmed Frenchman, siezed his nose with one hand and his lower jaw with the other. With one quick wrench he opened the officer's mouth - and spat down his throat. The humiliated man stumbled away with a broken jaw. Seymour's later military career was limited, and he went on half pay in 1819. Both his father and his son were admirals. Seymour, however, contented himself with becoming the MP for Lisburn.
A Valuable Donkey
Henry Francis Mellish (a captain of the 10th Hussars) was ADC to Sir Ronald Ferguson, one of Wellington's generals. It was reported one day that Mellish had been taken prisoner but when Wellington heard of it he said, "They'll not keep him long." Sure enough, the next day he was seen riding into the British camp on a donkey. Everyone laughed at his mount and said it was not worth £5. He retorted, "I'll soon make it £35." He then rode it towards the enemy lines, had it shot from under him, and returned to claim £35 from the government for the loss of his mount in battle.
A Certain 'Je ne sais quois.'
Apparently, one of the elite French Cuirassier regiments had a rather novel selection test for aspiring officers. Candidates were provided with three women, three bottles of champagne and three horses. They were then given three hours in which to complete the following; drink all the champagne, bed all three women and ride a cross-country course of twenty miles. These activities could be completed in any order the candidate wished.
The Dog-Eating Brunswickers
In the Peninsular War the Brunswick-Oels troops were sharpshooters wearing green uniforms instead of black. Initially they had excellent German officers with rank and file volunteers, and so established a good reputation for themselves. However, when this source dried up many replacements came from British prisoner-of-war camps. A motley assortment of German, Polish, Danish, Swiss, Dutch and Croatian turncoats were recruited and desertion levels climbed. Sergeant Edward Costello of the 95th Rifles, who had his trigger finger torn off by a musket ball at Quatre-Bras and thus missed Waterloo, has described how relationships plummeted between the 95th and the Brunswickers due to their propensity for eating dogs. He tells how they were 'gifted with a canine appetite that induced them to kill and eat all the dogs they could get hold of....'. The 95th had a pet dog called 'Rifle' that accompanied them into action and dashed about barking as though it was all a great game. However, he survived the bullets only to be, 'devoured by the insatiable jaws of the Brunswickers'.
The Winter of 1812
In the baltic town of Vilnius, through which Napoleon’s troops marched to their doom in the summer of 1812, there stands today a simple monument bearing two plaques. Together they tell the whole story. On the side with its back to Moscow is written:
‘Napoleon
Bonaparte passed this way in 1812 with 400,000 men.’
On the other side are the words:
‘Napoleon
Bonaparte passed this way in 1812 with 9,000 men.’