[264] For Craufurd’s life and personality see his biography by his grandson the Rev. Alex. Craufurd, London, 1890. The most vivid picture of him is in Rifleman Harris’s chronicle of the Corunna retreat, a wonderful piece of narrative by a writer from the ranks, who admired his general despite of all his severity, and acknowledges that his methods were necessary. Though Napier as a historian is on the whole fairly just to his old commander, whose achievements were bound up indissolubly with the glories of the Light Division, as a man he disliked Craufurd: in one of his hooks which I possess (Delagrave’s _Campagne de Portugal_) he has written in the margin several bitter personal remarks about him, very unlike the language employed in his history. The unpublished Journal of Colonel McLeod of the 43rd is (as Mr. Alex. Craufurd informs me) written in the same spirit. So is Charles Napier’s _Diary_. From March to July 1810 Craufurd, in charge of the whole outpost system of Wellington’s army, accomplished the extraordinary feat of guarding a front of forty miles against an active enemy of sixfold force, without suffering his line to be pierced, or allowing the French to gain any information whatever of the dispositions of the host in his rear. He was in constant and daily touch with Ney’s corps, yet was never surprised, and never thrust back save by absolutely overwhelming strength; he never lost a detachment, never failed to detect every move of the enemy, and never sent his commander false intelligence. This was the result of system and science, not merely of vigilance and activity. The journal of his aide de camp Shaw-Kennedy, giving the daily work of the Light Division during the critical months of 1810, might serve as an illustrative manual of outpost duty, and was indeed printed for that purpose in 1851[265]. [265] As an Appendix to Lord F. Fitz-Clarence’s _Manual of Outpost Duties_.