History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 6 — John Shaqi
History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 6Napier, William Francis Patrick
History
History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 6
Napier, William Francis Patrick
Peninsular War, 1807-1814
There, my lord, you see that generals as well as doctors differ. Sir
W. Lumley, twenty-three years after the event, recollects seeing the
fuzileers and Harvey’s brigade at such a distance, and so obliquely,
that he could not speak to their actual distance from one another.
General Harvey writing the day after the event, says, sir William
Lumley had his cavalry in half squadrons close in rear of these
very brigades, and was moving with them! This should convince your
lordship that it is not wise to cry out and cavil at every step in
the detail of a battle.
As to the term _gap_, I used the word without the mark of quotation,
because it was my own and it expressed mine and your meaning very
well. You feared that the cavalry of the French would overpower ours,
and break in on your rear and flank when the support of the fuzileers
was taken away. I told you that general Cole had placed Harvey’s
brigade in the _gap_, that is, in such a situation that the French
could not break in. I knew very well that Harvey’s brigade followed
in support of the attack of the fuzileers because he says so in his
journal; but he also says, that both ours and the enemy’s cavalry
made a corresponding movement. Thus the fear of the latter breaking
in was chimerical, especially as during the march Harvey halted,
formed, received and beat off a charge of the French horsemen.
But I have not yet done with sir W. Lumley’s numbers. How curious it
is that brigade-major Holmes’s verbal report on the field of battle,
as recollected by sir William, should give the third dragoon guards
and the fourth dragoons, forming the heavy brigade, the exact number
of five hundred and sixty men, when the same brigade-major Holmes
in his written morning state of the 8th of May, one week before the
battle, gives to those regiments seven hundred and fifty-two troopers
present under arms, and one hundred and eighty-three on command.
What became of the others in the interval? Again, on the 29th of
May, thirteen days after the battle, he writes down these regiments
six hundred and ninety-five troopers present under arms, one hundred
and eighty-two on command, and thirty-two prisoners of war. In both
cases also the sergeants, trumpeters, &c. are to be added; and I
mark this circumstance, because in the French returns all persons
from the highest officer to the conductors of carriages are included
in the strength of men. I imagine neither of the distinguished
regiments alluded to will be willing to admit that their ranks were
full before and after, but empty on the day of battle. It is contrary
to the English custom. Your lordship, also, in a parenthesis (page
125) says that the thirteenth dragoons had not three hundred men
at this time to produce; but this perverse brigade-major Holmes
writes that regiment down also on the 8th of May, at three hundred
and fifty-seven troopers present under arms, and sixty-three on
command; and on the 29th of May, three hundred and forty-one present
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