The Waterloo Roll Call: With Biographical Notes and AnecdotesDalton, Charles
History
The Waterloo Roll Call: With Biographical Notes and Anecdotes
Dalton, Charles
Great Britain. Army -- Registers; Waterloo, Battle of, Waterloo, Belgium, 1815
the head of a French column to be hammering away at. In half an hour
or so he heard the distant sound of action, and it approached nearer
and nearer, until he heard it close beside him; and he wondered rather
that he was not invited to take a share in it, when, pat to his
thought, up came an aide-de-camp at full speed, telling him that Gen.
Somebody ordered him to bring up his guns. The officer asked, ‘Did not
the order come from Lord Wellington?’ The aide-de-camp said ‘No,’ but
from the gen., whoever he was. The officer explained that he was
placed there by Lord Wellington, under command not to move unless by
an order from himself. The aide-de-camp stated that the general’s
entire brigade was being driven in, and must be annihilated without
the aid of the guns, and asked, ‘Would he let a whole brigade be
slaughtered?’ in a tone which wounded the young soldier’s pride,
savouring, as he thought it did, of an imputation on his courage. He
immediately ordered his guns to move, and joined battle with the
general; but while he was away an aide-de-camp from Lord Wellington
rode up to where the guns had been posted, and, of course, no gun was
to be had for the service which Lord Wellington required. Well, the
French were repulsed, as it happened; but the want of those six guns
seriously marred a pre-concerted movement of the Duke’s, and the
officer in command of them was immediately put in arrest. Almost every
general officer in the army endeavoured to get this sentence revoked,
lamenting the fate of a gallant fellow being sent away for a slight
error in judgment while the army was in full action; but Lord
Wellington was inexorable, saying he must make an example to secure
himself in the perfect obedience of officers to their orders, and it
had the effect.”—Mr. Lover’s _Handy Andy_. To a man of Norman Ramsay’s
highly honourable and sensitive nature the circumstances of his
arrest, coupled with the omission of his name from the Vittoria
despatches, and the loss of a brevet he had well earned, may be said
to have inflicted a wound which neither time nor subsequent honours
could heal. Three weeks after his arrest he was restored to the
command of his battery, to the great joy of the whole army in Spain,
and after the battle of the Bidassoa he was promoted bt. maj. At
Waterloo he commanded the H Troop R.H.A., and his forward gallantry in
that battle attracted the fatal bullet which put an end to his noble
life. He was buried on the field by his great friend Sir Augustus
Frazer, during a momentary lull in the battle, but three weeks later
was disinterred and his body sent to Edinburgh, as the only
consolation to his aged father, half-demented with grief, who was
fated to lose his three gallant sons in the short space of eight
months. Norman Ramsay m., 14th June, 1808, Mary Emilia, eldest dau. of
Lt.-Gen. MacLeod, of Macleod. Sir Augustus Frazer erected a monument
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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