Ah! Je les tiens donc, ces Anglais!—Napoleon. Never since the days of Oliver Cromwell had any name caused so much fear in England as did that of Napoleon Bonaparte. From 1802 until his first downfall, in 1814, a spirit of alarm and uneasiness pervaded all classes in Great Britain, from the King and his Ministers down to the most illiterate peasant. Those who were witnesses of, and participators in, this panic have now passed away, but the national pride which our victory over Napoleon at Waterloo excited in every Briton’s breast is as strong as ever, and will last till the crack of doom. In July, 1803, a little pamphlet, entitled Important Considerations for the People of this Kingdom, was published in London, and “sent to the officiating minister of every parish in England.” This pamphlet, which bears the Royal Arms of England, was an appeal from the Government to the Nation, and a diatribe against Napoleon. Mark the closing lines of this appeal: “Shall we, who are abundantly supplied with iron and steel, powder and lead—shall we, who have a fleet superior to the maritime force of all the world, and who are able to bring two millions of fighting men into the field—shall we yield up this dear and happy land, together with all the liberties and honours, to preserve which our fathers so often dyed the land and the sea with their blood?... No, we are not so miserably fallen; we cannot, in so short a space of time, have become so detestably degenerate; we have the strength and the will to repel the hostility, to chastise the insolence of the foe. Mighty, indeed, “For the French are on the sea, Says the Shan Van Vaugh, And Ireland will soon be free, Says the Shan Van Vaugh.” And yet nothing had come of all this talk! But when the nation at large had fully grasped the possibility of a Napoleonic invasion, Pitt had no difficulty in raising the sinews of war. No fewer than 300,000 men enrolled themselves in volunteer corps and defence associations. The army and navy were increased, and everything was done that was possible to counteract the power of that wonderful man, who, in the short space of a few years, had, speaking metaphorically, built a Great Wall of China round the British Isles, shutting the English out of the commerce of Europe. Our preparations were none too soon. In 1805 the battle of Austerlitz established the supremacy of Napoleon over Austria and Russia. Fortunately for England, Nelson’s crowning victory at Trafalgar indefinitely postponed Napoleon’s invasion scheme; but we were still engaged in a gigantic war, single-handed, with half of Europe our declared, and the other half our enforced, enemies. Nelson was dead; Pitt was dying from the weight of anxieties which pressed upon him in this tremendous crisis; Hanover had been taken from us. The outlook was very gloomy, and affairs became more complicated in 1807, when the military expeditions, arranged by Lord Grenville’s ministry, against Constantinople and Egypt, had turned out failures, and resulted in the Turks declaring war against us and confiscating all British property. And yet in 1807 Napoleon had not yet reached the zenith of his power. For the next The Hanoverian levies did well also, excepting one regiment, which refused to charge the French when commanded so to do. And this was doubtless owing to the lÂchetÉ of their colonel, who, when ordered to lead his regiment to the charge, declined to do so, saying he had no confidence in his men. It is related that Captain Horace Seymour, who had brought this officer Lord Uxbridge’s orders, addressed “a few words of plain Saxon” to him, “which no gentleman ought to have listened to unmoved,” but the only effect they had on the Hanoverian was to hasten his departure to the rear. The Brunswick Contingent fought at a disadvantage at Waterloo, having lost their brave leader (the Duke of Brunswick) at Quatre Bras. Of the Nassau, Dutch, and Belgian troops it is only fair to say that they were, mostly, utterly useless at Waterloo. The glamour of Napoleon was upon them. They had lately been in his service, and had a settled conviction that Wellington would be defeated and his army cut to pieces. “Come over to us, brave Belgians!” shouted a French regiment at Waterloo to their Belgian opponents in the battle. But the “brave Belgians” preferred making “a retrograde movement for strategical reasons,” and retired from the field, carrying news of Wellington’s defeat to Brussels. Now for Napoleon’s army: This consisted on the 15th of June of about 128,000 men A.Lord Wolseley, in his Decline and Fall of Napoleon, says the French army consisted of about 123,000 men of all arms and 344 guns.—Ed. In offering this, the first annotated Waterloo Army List, to the British public, I must ask their indulgence for any omissions and errors it may contain. Although I have spared no trouble in the matter, there must be, I well know, a few names of British Waterloo officers who have escaped my notice. But when the following list is compared with the very defective lists given by Siborne and George Jones (the foundation of all other lists), I think the following Roll Call will be found infinitely more trustworthy. I have also added the regimental and army commissions of the Waterloo officers up to the date of the battle, and the honours and promotions bestowed after Waterloo. The war services of many of these same officers now appear in print for the first time, and are not to be found in the Military Calendar of field officers which was published in 1820, nor in Hart’s Army Lists, which date from 1840, and are such valuable works of reference. Of course, a large proportion of the names I have annotated, genealogically, are names of well-known families of the present time, but there are also many names in the following Roll Call which belong to families that are now extinct or lost sight of. I have endeavoured to rescue as many names from oblivion as time would allow, but there are a certain number of whom I can give no information beyond their obituary notices: “Here lies Pat Steele. That’s very true. Who was he? What was he? What’s that to you?” As regards the orthography of the names in the regimental lists, I am not responsible, as they are copied from the “official” I am indebted to Colonel F.A. Whinyates, late R.H.A., for some interesting information regarding artillery officers, and to George Tancred, Esq., late captain Scots Greys, for the Waterloo muster-roll and some memoranda relating to the Scots Greys. Charles Dalton. 32 West Cromwell Road, London, S.W. June 1, 1890. B.“I should not do justice to my feelings, or to Marshal BlÜcher and the Prussian Army, if I did not attribute the success of this arduous day to the cordial and timely assistance I received from them.”—Wellington’s despatch to Earl Bathurst. |