In the chapters that dealt with the officers and the men of the Peninsular Army, we have had occasion to speak of the percentage of undesirables that were to be found in every rank, and of their special weaknesses and crimes. It is necessary to explain the way in which the British military code of the day dealt with them.

For the officers there was a long gradation of punishments, ranging down from a simple reprimand to discharge from the service with ignominy. For the non-commissioned officers reduction to the ranks was the most usual chastisement inflicted; but in cases of a particularly disgraceful sort, the lash was not infrequently allotted as an additional penalty. For the rank and file flogging was the universal panacea; the amount of strokes might range up from a minimum twenty-five strokes—which was a mere nothing to the habitual offender, but a serious thing for the good soldier who lost much of his morale when once he had “gone to the halberds,” even for such a light punishment. The maximum, a very unusual one, was 1200 strokes, an amount calculated to kill many men, and to permanently disable many more. But this awful tale of lashes was not very frequently awarded, being reserved for bad cases of desertion to the enemy, robbery with violence, or striking an officer, all of them offences which might have had death as their punishment. As far as I can count, 1200 lashes were only awarded nine or ten times by general court-martial during the whole six years of the war. The hardly less severe sentence of 1000 lashes was given more frequently—over 50 cases may be reckoned up—the offences were the same as those which earned the still heavier maximum amount. During the latter years of the war, from 1811 onward, two additional forms of punishment for very serious crimes were invented. The first, mainly reserved for deserters who had not gone over to the enemy, but had simply left the colours and hidden themselves in the Peninsula, was long service in a colonial corps, such as the African or the New South Wales Regiment. The other, a much more severe sentence, was that of penal servitude, either for a term of years (seven was the usual period), or for life. The penal settlement to which the convict was sent is generally stated, and is almost invariably New South Wales. This sentence was generally awarded for cases of repeated desertion (not to the enemy) and habitual theft without violence. The moment that violence was added to robbery, the offender came within a near distance of the gallows or of the much-dreaded 1000 lashes—which often had the same meaning in the end.

It may be interesting to give some account of the various causes for which an officer might incur the heaviest penalty that could be laid on him—to be cashiered. This sentence was awarded some thirty times during the war. Twice only was it the reward of shirking or cowardice. In three or four cases it was inflicted for swindling merchants; in as many more for embezzling public money or stores. Five or six were instances of insulting or openly disobeying a commanding officer. Three or four cashierings were the direct result of drink—the offender having been found intoxicated and incapable while on duty in a responsible position. The most repulsive case of the whole list was one where drunkenness was the indirect, but not the actual, cause of disgrace. Three young officers, at the break up of a debauch, found the corpse of a priest lying in state in a room in the quarters where two of them were lodged. They mishandled it, and cast it forth, stripping off the vestments, and breaking the candles, etc., with which it was laid out.246 This disgusting freak, apparently caused by drunken resentment at finding a corpse in close proximity to their bedroom, drew down a commentary from Wellington as to the noxious effects of drink—which not only makes men incapable of performing their duty, but renders them “unaware of the nature or effect of their actions.”

The remaining cases of cashiering were for such offences as public and disgraceful brawling, violently resisting arrest, and flagrant immorality.247 There is just one case of dismissal from the service for tyranny—that of a colonel who habitually bullied his officers and inflicted arbitrary and illegal punishments on his men.248 Of this I shall have to say more in its place.

All the thirty cashierings cited above are those of combatant officers. There are about an equal number of cases in which persons employed under the civil departments of the army were dismissed the service—commissaries, purveyors, surgeons, hospital mates, etc. In the commissariat department (as might have been foreseen) embezzlement was the snare to unscrupulous men, often far from the eye of their superior—it was too easy to issue false vouchers as to the number of men or horses rationed, or to make corrupt agreements with contractors or local authorities, certifying that a larger amount of food or forage had been supplied than had really been given in. Selling public mules or horses, and returning them as dead, was another profitable fraud. Two non-combatant employÉs of the army (a paymaster and a conductor of stores) were “broken” for absconding from the army during the battle of Talavera, and spreading false reports of disaster in the rear.

The medical staff, not nearly such frequent offenders as the commissariat staff, are occasionally dismissed the service for brawling and drunkenness, which last inevitably resulted in the neglect of the wounded on the march or in hospital.

After cashiering, the next most serious punishment inflicted on an officer was suspension from pay and rank for a term of months, six and three were the usual periods named. This might be inflicted for any one of a great variety of offences. By far the most frequent fault was neglect of details of duty, such as quitting the regiment or detachment for many hours without leave, allowing a convoy or a draft to straggle, permitting the rank and file to pull down cottages for firewood, or to waste crops, or to fell fruit trees. Sleeping away from the company, in a rather distant house or village, was another frequent misdemeanour. We may place second in the category of offences the one that may be called quarrelling with native authorities. Owing to high-handed action on the one side, and provocative sulkiness on the other, these wrangles were very common. Officers in charge of detachments fell out with a juiz de fora or a corregidor, or the governor of some petty garrison, about billets or payments due, and ended by insulting, occasionally by assaulting, him. This generally cost the offender six months’ suspension, for Wellington was resolved that the officers of his army must not override lawful local authority, and sometimes, in his comments on a court-martial sentence, asks what would be thought of a lieutenant who should treat in such a fashion the mayor of an English borough, or the commandant of an English fort.

The third list of offences which were usually visited with shorter or longer “suspension” may be put together under the general head of relations of officers to each other. This includes equally oppressive or insulting acts of superiors to inferiors, and insubordinate conduct of inferiors to superiors. The latter was far the more common failing, if the statistics of court-martials may be trusted. But no doubt allowance must be made for many cases in which a bullied subaltern preferred to hold his tongue, rather than to appeal against the acts or language of his captain or colonel—the failure of his case would leave him in a very dangerous and unpleasant position for the future. Intemperate language, or “improper” letters from inferiors to superiors, are a not uncommon cause of court-martials. Even colonels occasionally wrote or spoke in insubordinate terms to generals.249 But “answering back” on the part of subalterns to captains or majors was of course far more frequent. Wellington grew, on occasion, exceedingly wrath at reading the reports of court-martials on petty cases of this kind. We may give a typical comment.

“I cannot but consider the transaction which has been the subject of this court-martial as simply a private quarrel, it has as little connection with the public service or the discipline and subordination of the army, as any that has ever come under my notice. It is certainly true that the private quarrels of officers may be proper subjects for the investigation of a court-martial. But the complainant, in order to obtain a decision in his favour, must come with a fair case. He must not himself have been guilty of any breach of the general order of the army, or of discipline. His authority as a superior must not have been exerted over his inferior (of whom he complains) in order to enjoy the advantage of his own improper conduct. Above all, he must have refrained from the use of abusive or improper language and gestures.”250

Another comment is—

“The Commander of the Forces cannot but feel that both his time, and that of the officers composing court-martials, is occupied very little to the advantage of the public service, in considering the unbecoming and ungentlemanlike behaviour of officers to each other.”251

The mildest form of punishment for officers was the reprimand, which varied much in shape. It might amount to no more than the publication of the fact that an officer was reprimanded in the General Orders, without any further publicity. Or, on the other hand, the sentence of the court-martial might be directed to be read out to his regiment, or even to his division, in the most public fashion. And to the sentence there might be added a caustic and scathing postscript by the Commander-in-Chief. Take, for example, “This person may think himself very fortunate that the sentence of the court has been so lenient. A different view of the evidence on the charge would have rendered his dismissal from the service necessary under the Articles of War. The Commander of the Forces hopes that he will take warning by what has occurred, and will in future conduct himself on all occasions as a gentleman should. This reprimand is to be read to him by the commanding officer at the station where he may happen to be, in presence of the officers and troops, paraded for that purpose.”252

Reprimands were generally the punishment for the smaller derelictions of duty, such as failing to report arrival at a station, striking a soldier who was insolent instead of arresting him, brawling with a civilian or a Portuguese militia officer, or boisterous and unseemly conduct in the streets when off duty.

There was no court-martial on an officer for desertion during the whole war, and only one case of the sort in the commissioned ranks. This was that of an Irish lieutenant who passed over to the French outposts while MassÉna’s army was lying behind the lines of Santarem in February, 1811. He was discovered to be insane or suffering from delusions, being captured during MassÉna’s retreat, while wandering in an objectless way in the rear of the enemy’s march: he was sent to a mad-house.253

As to the punishments of the soldier, the heaviest was death, either by the bullets of a firing party, or by the Provost Marshal’s gallows. Shooting was almost exclusively reserved for the military offence of desertion to the enemy; but it was two or three times awarded for mutiny and striking an officer or sergeant, and once only (as far as I can make out) to a non-commissioned officer for robbing valuable stores which he had been set to guard.254 It would have been more usual to hang for the latter offence, and I do not know why this particular case was punished with shooting. There seem to have been 78 men shot in all during the war, of whom 52 were British, and 26 foreigners. The disproportion, of course, is enormous, as there were some fifty or sixty British battalions in the army, and only ten foreign battalions.255 Among the last the main body of deserters were supplied by two battalions only, the Chasseurs Britanniques and Brunswick Oels JÄgers, both of which corps were largely recruited, as has been already explained, from Germans, Italians, Poles, and other aliens from prison camps at home. They had volunteered into the British service in order to get the chance of escape, and took it at the first opportunity. The deserters from the King’s German Legion were in proportion very few. During the last two years of the war many of these foreign deserters were not shot, but given life service in a colonial corps, in places such as New South Wales, from which they could not desert again. Some others got off with a heavy sentence of flogging.

Hanging was the penalty for practically all capital offences except desertion to the enemy. It was not so frequent as shooting. The records of the General Court-Martials show a total of about forty executions, and a few more were apparently carried out by the Provost Marshal on criminals caught flagrante delicto murdering or wounding peasants.

The punishment of hanging covered many offences. It is rather surprising to find that two men who killed their officers (one in the Buffs, one in the 42nd) were hanged rather than shot—but apparently each case was ruled to be one of private spite, and not of mutiny, and was treated as simple murder. There were six or eight instances of men who slew a comrade in the ranks, by deliberate assassination, not in a quarrel, and were hanged for it. It may be noted, however, that one private who stabbed an unfaithful wife, at the moment of detection, was found guilty of manslaughter and given one year’s imprisonment only. Far the most frequent cause for the use of the gallows, however, was the killing or wounding of peasants who attempted to defend their houses or cattle from plunder. This was a crime for which Wellington seldom if ever gave pardon; he was as inflexible on the point in the hostile land of France as in the friendly Spain and Portugal. It did not matter whether the peasants were killed or not—the use of musket or bayonet against them in pursuit of plunder was the thing that mattered. There are certainly some most atrocious cases in the list, where a whole family had been murdered or left for dead. But in others, where the violence had been no more than a blow with a butt-end, or a bayonet prod in the shoulder, the offenders seem to have been unlucky in not getting off with a sound flogging. But in Wellington’s code petty stealing without violence was punished with the lash, but armed robbery with death.

In an age when in England theft to the value of over forty shillings was still punishable in theory with death, (though the penalty was more often evaded than not), it is not surprising to find that some of the cases of hanging in Wellington’s army were for mere stealing. But it was always for stealing on a large scale, or under aggravated circumstances. Mere petty larceny led to the lash only. The most notable achievement in this line was that of two foreigners who succeeded in breaking open the commissary-general’s chest and stole no less than £2000 from it; others were those of a soldier-servant who absconded with his master’s mule, baggage, and purse; of a sentry over the tent of a brigadier, who took the opportunity of making off with the general’s silver camp-equipage and plate; and of a man who being on treasure-escort, succeeded in opening a barrel and stealing some hundreds of dollars from it. In two or three instances large sums of £40 or £60, burglariously stolen from the house or tent of an officer, a commissary, or a sutler, brought men to the gallows. Finally, there was one case of hanging for the crime of sodomy—which was still a capital offence in English law for more than thirty years after the Peninsular War ended.

There are one or two instances on record of rather surprising leniency in the sentences inflicted by court-martial for crimes which in most other cases entailed the death-penalty—e.g. plundering and wounding a peasant was on two occasions in 1814 punished with 900 and 1000 lashes only, and three artillerymen, who stole the watch, purse, and papers of the Spanish General Giron, got off with transportation to New South Wales, instead of suffering the hanging that was usual for such a serious offence. A dragoon convicted of rape in 1814 was lucky also in receiving no more than a heavy flogging. No doubt there was in such light sentences some consideration of previous good conduct and steady service on the part of the offenders.

We have already spoken of the penalties which came next after death in the list—the terrible 1200 and 1000 lash awards, and of the crimes which usually earned them. Much more frequent were the 700, 500, and 300 lash sentences, which are to be numbered by the hundred, and were awarded, as a rule, for casual theft without violence, making away with necessaries (e.g. selling blankets or ball-cartridge to peasants), or “embargoing” carts and oxen, i.e. pressing transport from the countryside without leave, to carry baggage or knapsacks when a small party, without an officer in charge, was on the move. Purloining shoes or food from a convoy was another frequent offence, worth about 500 lashes to the detected culprit. The bee-hive stealers of the retreat from Talavera got 700 lashes each—a heavy sentence for such a crime. The tale concerning them is too good to be omitted.

After the general order against plundering from the peasantry was issued at Jaraicejo to the half-starved army, Sir Arthur Wellesley, in a cross-country ride, saw a man of the Connaught Rangers posting along as fast as his legs could carry him, with his great coat wrapped around his head, and a bee-hive balanced upon it, with a swarm of furious bees buzzing around. Furious at such a flagrant breach of orders issued only on the previous day, the Commander-in-Chief called out to him, “Hullo, sir, where did you get that bee-hive?” Pat could not see his interlocutor, having completely shrouded his face to keep off stings: he did not pay sufficient heed to the tone of the question, which should have warned him, and answered in a fine Milesian brogue, “Just over the hill there, and, by Jasus, if ye don’t make haste they’ll be all gone.”256 The blind good-nature of the reply stayed the General’s anger; he let Pat pass, and told the story at dinner with a laugh. But the order was no joke to the men of the 53rd caught at the same game a few days after.257 They got the nickname of the “honeysuckers” along with their flogging.

There is another tale of “embargoing” belonging to the regimental history of the Connaught Rangers, which may serve as a pendant to that about the bee-hives.

Early in 1812 a commissary had pressed country carts to go to the Douro, to bring back pipes of wine for the troops. On such occasions, with a hilly country and very tedious work, the men would often contrive, in spite of the vigilance of the subaltern in charge of the convoy, to let the driver escape with his bullocks for a pecuniary consideration. Other carts were then illegally pressed as substitutes. On one of these occasions a detachment of the 88th regiment was sent to St. JoÃo da Pesqueira for some wine. On their return, the commissary observed that the two fine white bullocks, which he had sent with one cart, had been exchanged for two very inferior blacks. He made his regular complaint, and the two men in charge, a corporal and private, were brought to a court-martial. On the trial everything was proved, save the act of receiving money from the driver to allow the white bullocks to escape; and the president, on summing up the evidence of the commissary, said to the prisoners, “It is quite useless denying the fact; it is conclusive. You started from hence with a pair of fine white bullocks, and you brought back a pair of lean blacks. What can you have to say to that?” Private Charles Reilly, noways abashed at this, which every one thought a poser, and ready with any excuse to save himself from punishment, immediately exclaimed, “Och! plaise your honour, and wasn’t the white beasts lazy, and didn’t we bate them until they were black?” The court was not quite satisfied of the truth of this wonderful metamorphosis, and they were condemned to be punished (see General Order, Freneda, January 22, 1812)—the corporal to be broke and get 700 lashes, Reilly to get 500. But in consideration of the great gallantry displayed by the 88th at the storm of Ciudad Rodrigo a few days before, the culprits were in the end pardoned.

All these cases quoted are from records of general court-martials. But of course the huge majority of floggings were inflicted by regimental courts, which had jurisdiction over all minor offences, such as drunkenness, disobedience, and petty breaches of discipline inside the regiment, but could not give the heavier sentences such as death or transportation, or the 1000 lashes.

A glance through the records of court-martials shows that some battalions gave much more than their proper percentage of criminals, some much less. Two main causes governed the divergence: the first was that some corps got more than their share of bad recruits—wild Irish or town scum; but I fancy that the character of the commanding officer was even more important than the precise proportion of undesirables drafted into the ranks. A colonel who could make himself loved as well as feared could reclaim even very unpromising recruits: a tyrant or an incapable could turn even well-disposed men into bad soldiers. It is clear that an excessively easy-going and slack commanding officer, who winked at irregularities, and discouraged zeal among his officers, ruined a battalion as surely as the most inhuman martinet. Among the court-martials of the Peninsular Army there are very few on colonels—not half a dozen. But one chances to be on a tyrant, and the other on a fainÉant, and the evidence seems to show that the latter got his corps into quite as wretched condition as the former. Though he received over the regiment, as every one allowed, in excellent order, in a few months of slack administration and relaxed discipline, it became not only drunken and slovenly, but so slow on the march, and at the rendezvous, that the other units in the brigade had always to be waiting for it, and the brigadier complained that he could not trust it at the outposts. The officers, gradually coming to despise their colonel, treated him with contempt, and finally sent in a round-robin to the Horse Guards, accusing him not only of incapacity but of cowardice, which last, in the court-martial which followed, was held to be an unfounded charge.258 The colonel, as a result of the investigation, was reprimanded, and put on half-pay; his subordinates, for grave breach of discipline, were all drafted into other regiments, and a new body of picked officers was brought together, to reorganize a corps which was evidently in a thoroughly demoralized condition; the new-comers got the nickname of the “Elegant Extracts.”

The reverse-picture, of a regiment ruined by arbitrary strictness and inhuman exaggeration of punishments, may be studied in the records of a court-martial held in the spring of 1813.259 In this case a commanding officer was found guilty not only of “violent conduct” and “using intemperate and improper language to his officers, being in breach of good discipline, and unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman,” but of inflicting corporal punishment at large without any form of trial, when there were sufficient officers present to form a proper regimental court-martial; of disobeying the direction of the Commander-in-Chief by piling up sentences of flogging passed on men on different occasions, so as to inflict several separate punishments at the same time, and of releasing men sentenced to punishment in order to send them into action, and then returning them to arrest after the battle in order to receive their lashes. This last was specially in conflict with Wellington’s orders, for he held that good conduct in action ought to work out a sentence, pronounced but not inflicted, and that no man convicted of a disgraceful offence ought to be put into line till he had expiated it by undergoing his punishment. This officer was dismissed the service, but, in consideration of a good fighting record in the past, was allowed the value of his commission as major.

One diary from the ranks, that of Donaldson of the 94th, gives a very interesting and complete picture of the fate of a battalion which, by the invaliding of its colonel, had fallen into the hands of a major who had the soul of a tyrant. This was a case of an old ranker who knew too much of soldiers’ tricks, and had a sort of system of espionage through men who were prepared to act as his toadies and secret informers. “By this eaves-dropping he knew all the little circumstances which another commanding officer would have disdained to listen to, and always made a bad use of his knowledge. When he got command of the regiment he introduced flogging for every trivial offence, and in addition invented disgraceful and torturing modes of inflicting the lash. But this was not enough—he ordered that all defaulters should have a patch of black and yellow cloth sewed on to the sleeve of their jacket, and a hole cut in it for every time they were punished. The effect was soon visible: as good men were liable to be punished for the slightest fault, the barrier between them and hardened ill-doers was broken down, and those who had lost respect in their own eyes became broken-hearted and inefficient soldiers, or else grew reckless and launched out into real crime. Those who were hardened and unprincipled before, being brought by the prevalence of punishments nearer to a level with the better men, seemed to glory in misconduct. In short, all idea of honour and character was lost, and listless apathy and bad conduct became the prevailing features of the corps. Reckless punishment changed the individual’s conduct in two ways—he either became broken-hearted and useless, or else shameless and hardened.... The real method of accomplishing the desired end of keeping good discipline, is for the officers to make themselves acquainted with the personal character and disposition of each man under their command. A commanding officer has as good a right to make himself acquainted with the disposition of his men, as the medical officer with their constitutions.”260 When the colonel came back from sick leave he was shocked to find the men he had been so proud of treated in this manner. His first act was to cut off the yellow badge; his second to do away with the frequent punishments. But though the regiment was again on a fair footing, it was long before the effect of a few months’ ill-usage disappeared.

What certain misguided officers tried to maintain by a reign of terror, was sought in other ways by wiser men. It is to the Peninsular War period that we owe the first of our “Long Service and Good Conduct” medals—all at first regimental, and not given by the State. Honorary distinctions for the well-conducted man are both a more humane and a more rational form of differentiation between good and bad than the black and yellow badge for every man punished for any cause, which the detestable major quoted above tried to introduce.261 In addition some regiments instituted a division of the men into classes, of which the best behaved had graduated privileges and benefits. Any man after a certain period of certified good conduct could be moved up into a higher class, and the emulation not to be left among the recognized black-sheep had a very good effect.262 But even without “classes” or good-conduct medals, the best could be got out of any regiment by wise and considerate conduct on the part of the officers. There were corps where the lash was practically unknown,263 and others where it had only been felt by a very small minority of hopeless irreclaimables.

On the other hand, there is a record or two of punishments in a unit, inflicted by officers who do not seem to have been regarded by public opinion as specially tyrannical or heartless, which fills the reader with astonishment. I have analysed the list of men noted for chastisement in one battery of artillery, where on an effective of 4 sergeants and 136 rank and file, three of the former had been “broken,” and 57 of the latter had received punishments varying downwards from 500 lashes, in the space of twelve months (July, 1812, to July, 1813), over which the record extends. Though some of the offences were serious enough, there were others for which the use of the cat appears altogether misplaced and irrational. As an observer in another corps wrote “the frequency of flogging at one time had the effect of blinding the judgment of officers who possessed both feeling and discrimination. I have known one who shed tears when his favourite horse was injured, and next day exulted in seeing a poor wretch flogged whose offence was being late in delivering an order.”

Floggings were inflicted by the drummers of the regiment, under the superintendence of the drum-major and the adjutant. The culprit was bound by his extended arms to two of three sergeants’ halberds, planted in the ground in a triangle, and lashed together at the top. The strokes were inflicted at the tap of a drum beaten in slow time. Each of the wielders of the cat retired after having given twenty-five lashes. The surgeon was always present, to certify that the man’s life was not in danger by the further continuance of the punishment, and the prisoner was taken down the moment that the medical man declared that he could stand no more. Often this interference saved a culprit from the end of his punishment, as if the tale was fairly complete he might never be called upon to undergo the balance. But in grave cases the prisoner was merely sent into hospital till he was sufficiently convalescent to endure the payment of the remainder of his account. Inhuman commanding officers sometimes refused to allow of any abatement, even when the crime had not been a very serious one, and insisted that the whole sentence should be executed, even if the culprit had to go twice into hospital before it was completed.

The autobiographical record of a flogging is rather rare—the diarist in the ranks was generally a steady sort of fellow, who did not get into the worst trouble. The following may serve as an example, however. It is that of William Lawrence of the 1/40th, who in 1809 was a private, though he won his sergeant’s stripes in 1813.

“I absented myself without leave from guard for twenty-four hours, and when I returned I found I was in a fine scrape, for I was immediately put in the guard-room. It was my first offence, but that did not screen me much, and I was sentenced to 400 lashes. I found the regiment assembled all ready to witness my punishment: the place chosen for it was the square of a convent. As soon as I had been brought up by the guard, the sentence of the court-martial was read over to me by the colonel, and I was told to strip, which I did firmly, and without using the help that was offered me, as I had by that time got hardened to my lot. I was then lashed to the halberds, and the colonel gave the order for the drummers to commence, each one having to give me twenty-five lashes in turn. I bore it very well until I had received 175, when I got so enraged with the pain that I began pushing the halberds, which did not stand at all firm (being planted on stones), right across the square, amid the laughter of the regiment. The colonel, I suppose thinking then that I had had sufficient, ‘ordered the sulky rascal down’ in those very words. Perhaps a more true word could not have been spoken, for indeed I was sulky. I did not give vent to a sound the whole time, though the blood ran down my trousers from top to bottom. I was unbound, and a corporal hove my shirt and jacket over my shoulder, and convoyed me to hospital, presenting as miserable a picture as I possibly could.

“Perhaps it was as good a thing for me as could then have happened, as it prevented me from committing greater crimes, which might at last have brought me to my ruin. But I think a good deal of that punishment might have been abandoned, with more credit to those who then ruled the army.”264 Yet to be absent twenty-four hours when on guard was certainly a serious crime. Lawrence got off with 175 lashes out of 400 ordered, but was in hospital nearly three weeks. But 300 or 400 lashes were often inflicted at a time, and there were men who could take them without a groan.

“Corporal punishment was going on all the year round,” writes a veteran officer of the 34th,265 “men were flogged for the small offences, and for the graver ones often flogged to death—the thousand lashes were often awarded by court-martial. I have seen men suffer 500 and even 700 before being ‘taken down,’ the blood running down into their shoes, and their backs flayed like raw red-chopped sausages. Some of them bore this awful punishment without flinching for 200 or 300 lashes, chewing a musket ball or a bit of leather to prevent or stifle the cry of agony: after that they did not seem to feel the same torture. Sometimes the head drooped over to one side, but the lashing still went on, the surgeon in attendance examining the patient from time to time to see what more he could bear. I did see, with horror, one prisoner receive the 700 before he was taken down. This was the sentence of a court-martial, carried into effect in the presence of the whole brigade, for an example.266 We certainly had very bad characters sent out to fill the gaps in our ranks, sweepings of prisons in England and Ireland: but such punishments were inhuman, and I made up my mind that, if ever I had the chance of commanding a regiment, I would act on another principle. That time did come. I did command a gallant corps for eleven years, and I abolished the lash.”

But enough of such horrors. The memory of them is a nightmare.