He appeared, according to the record of the debate, to have thought only of the senior officers. "Have no rewards been bestowed upon these officers?" he asked. "New modes were discovered and adopted of distinguishing and rewarding the officers." Medals had been struck and distributed to 1,300 officers, special brevets were issued, and 7 officers raised to the peerage, as the Duke of Wellington pointed out; but he had no word of remembrance, no word of support for the thousands of officers and men whose only rewards had been hardship and scars. No word of commendation for the men who kept "grim Busaco's bloody ridge," and ultimately hurled the veterans of Marengo and Austerlitz into the ravine below; or for those who added laurels to Britain's fame at Fuentes d'Onor (Fountain of Honour); the Fusiliers and their brave companions in arms who fought so splendidly and so fiercely on the heights of Albuera, where the 57th--the first battalion of the Middlesex Regiment--gained their coveted _nom de guerre_, "Die Hards," for, as Napier states, "nothing could stop that astonishing infantry," which turned the day in the bloodiest battle of the war. It was indeed a soldiers' battle, but the senior officers, as usual, received the gold medal. What a case the Duke of Richmond had if only by stating the result of this one battle, after which "1,800 unwounded men, the remnant of 6,000 unconquerable British soldiers, stood triumphant on the fatal hill." The Iron Duke must have forgotten the gallant storming of the breaches at Ciudad Rodrigo, the success of which gained for him his viscountcy; the storming of Badajoz, which caused him to weep at the cost of the victory, and Orthes, where Picton's men climbed the rough, rocky bank, and Colborne's 52nd undauntedly pressed forward knee-deep in the marshy swamp and up the hill to the victory which practically determined the Peninsular campaign.