The train of Wellington’s army was very heavy. In addition to the long droves of mules and ox-waggons which carried public stores, there was a very large accumulation of private baggage. The field equipment of officers—especially of officers of the higher ranks—strikes the modern student as very heavy, and was much commented on by French observers at the time. “To look at the mass of impedimenta and camp-followers trailing behind the British,” says Foy, “you would think you were beholding the army of Darius. Only when you have met them in the field do you realize that you have to do with the soldiers of Alexander.” The cause of this accumulation was partly a survival of the lax customs of the eighteenth century, but it resulted still more from the character of the country over which Wellington’s host moved. In the interior of Spain or Portugal absolutely nothing was to be procured. The simplest small luxuries, tea, sugar, coffee, were ungettable, save in the largest towns; to renew clothing was equally impossible. He who required anything must carry it with him. It was not like campaigning in France, Belgium, Germany, or Italy. At the commencement of his term of command Wellington laid down the rule270 that no private baggage was to be carried upon carts: “those who have baggage to carry, must be provided with mules and horses.” This order is repeated again and again during later years.271 A regular scale of the amount of horses and mules allowed to officers of different rank was shortly produced. Two subalterns must share one sumpter-beast between them, a captain was allowed a whole mule or horse, and so on, in a mounting scale.272 But as early as September 1, 1809, it would seem that a more liberal allowance was made legal. In a “general order” of that day we get an elaborate table of rations of forage for all ranks, from the commander-in-chief downwards. While subalterns are allowed one ration each, the number rises enormously for the seniors, a captain commanding a company is set down for five rations, a major for seven, a lieutenant-colonel in charge of a battalion for ten, the Adjutant-General for twenty, etc., etc. This was a far too liberal allowance for the senior ranks, and led to an accumulation of beasts, both riding horses and pack-mules, far surpassing what was reasonable. To enable them to equip themselves for field service, all officers (whether staff or regimental) when ordered for the first time to join the army, were allowed to draw 200 days “bÂt, baggage, and forage money.” This presumably would go towards the purchase of their animals. The forage allowed was 14 lbs. of hay or straw of the country, and 12 lbs. of oats, or 10 lbs. of barley or Indian corn. When English hay was procurable (as at Lisbon) only 10 lbs. of it might be issued instead of the 14 lbs. of native stuff. On this system the captain would provide himself with a riding horse, generally a small Portuguese nag, and have a mule for his baggage. The subaltern must walk if he kept a mule: but it seems that very soon the juniors also took to riding. At any rate, lieutenants and other juniors often appear with a riding horse. Nothing is more common in a diary than to find, on his first arrival in Portugal the young officer procuring himself not one but two beasts, generally a nag and a mule. Sometimes he brought out a horse of his own from England.273 More usually he bought—

in the horse-market at Lisbon, of which one who had been through the business writes:—

“The only convenient opportunity to make the purchase was at a sort of fair held every Tuesday in the lower part of the town. There horses, mules, and asses were bought and sold, and (as in all markets) the price chiefly depended on the demand. The Portuguese horse-dealer has all the avidity of the English jockey to pick your pocket, but is not so au fait at the business. At this Fair you buy or sell your animal, the bargain is struck, the money paid, and the contract is indissoluble. English guineas had no attraction: the dollar or the moidore was the medium; but since the guinea has been introduced in the payment of the army (1813) the Portuguese begin to appreciate its value. It was customary for officers who wanted cash to give their draft on some house in London; but it was purchasing money very dearly, giving at the rate of six and sixpence for a dollar that would only bring five shillings, so losing eighteen pence on every crown.”275

Good and large Spanish mules cost as much, or almost as much, as the small horses of the country. Fifty to ninety dollars was an ordinary price. Thirty to forty-five pounds was considered cheap for an English riding horse.276 A Portuguese nag might be bought for fifteen or twenty.

“In consequence of the difficulty of transporting baggage,” writes one of the liveliest commentators on daily life at the front, “a regiment on active service could not keep up a regular mess, as in England. Each officer was obliged to manage for himself: they generally divided themselves into mess-parties by twos and threes. This greatly incommoded the subaltern: allowed only the carriage of half an animal [or at the most of one] it was not possible to admit, for the purpose of having extra eatables, any addition to his share of baggage. The mere ration was all that he got, with a camp-kettle for culinary purposes. Besides we must recollect the difficulty of getting extra food, and also the want of money. So the bit of beef and the ration of biscuit was frequent fare for perhaps two-thirds of the officers—with the allowance of ration-rum or wine (generally execrable stuff). The prime luxuries were a drop of brandy and a segar. With respect to articles of dress, the contents of a small portmanteau being all that could be taken about, if a subaltern wore out or lost his regimental jacket, he had to improvise a substitute, e.g. his great coat. Waistcoats were as fancy directed, black, blue, or green, silk or velvet.”

Nevertheless, though the officer, or at least the junior officer, thought himself much stinted in baggage, the private mules of the regiment, and in particular those of the senior officers, made up quite a drove—at least some thirty or forty. In addition there were the public mules of the corps, some thirteen in number—one for each company’s camp kettles, one for entrenching tools, one for the paymaster’s books, one for the surgeon’s medical paniers. If we add to these the private riding horses of the senior officers and such of the juniors as could afford them, there was quite a cavalcade—enough to block a road or to encumber a ford. And unfortunately the mules and horses presupposed drivers and attendants. Wellington set his face against the withdrawal from the ranks of soldier-servants to act as muleteers.277 Each officer, of course, had one; but they were supposed to be available for service, and could only look to their master’s business in the halts and encampments. Hence native servants had to be hired—even the poorest pair of ensigns wanted a Portuguese boy to look after their single mule. The colonel had probably three or four followers. Thus to take charge of its baggage, private and public, each battalion had a following of twenty or thirty such attendants, a few English, the large majority Spanish or Portuguese.

It cannot be denied that these fellows had a villainous reputation, and largely deserved it. Though many decent peasant lads were picked up in the countryside by the earlier comers, and made trustworthy and loyal servants, the majority were not satisfactory. The sort of followers whom the officers of a newly-landed regiment engaged at short notice upon the quays of Lisbon, when only two or three days were given them for selection, were mostly “undesirables.” If there were a few among them who were merely “broken men,”—ruined peasants seeking bread at any hand that would give it,—the majority were the scum of a great harbour city, ruffians of the lowest sort. The best of the Portuguese were with the army: the net of the conscription was making wide sweeps, and few young men of the decent class escaped the line or the militia. Personal service under an English officer, who was certainly an incomprehensible foreigner, and might well be a hard and unreasonable master, was not so attractive as to draw the pick of the Portuguese working classes. It did, on the other hand, appeal to needy rascals who wanted the chance of cheating an employer who knew nothing of the country, its customs, and its prices. There was splendid opportunity for embezzlement. Moreover, many looked for more lucrative, if more dangerous gains. The diaries show that a very considerable proportion of the hastily-hired muleteers and servants absconded, after a few days, with their master’s mule and portmanteau, and were never seen again. Those who did not, were looking after the plunder of the battlefield, the camp, and the wayside. It was they who robbed drunken soldiers, ill-guarded commissary stores, or lonely villages. They slunk out at night to make privy plunder in the lines of the regiments in which they were not employed. On the battlefield they were ruthless strippers of the wounded—English and Portuguese no less than French—as well as of the dead. Unless report much mistreats them, they habitually knocked a wounded Frenchman on the head, if they were out of sight of the red-coats.278 Considering the atrocities of which the French had been guilty in Portugal, this might pass for not unnatural retaliation; but it is certain that the British wounded were also frequently plundered, and there is more than a suspicion that they were sometimes murdered. The Spanish camp-followers passed as being even more blood-thirsty than the Portuguese. Of course it was not the officers’ private employÉs alone who were guilty of these misdemeanours; the public muleteers of the commissariat staff, and other hangers-on of the army, had an equally bad reputation. The most daring theft of the whole war, as has been already mentioned, was done by two “authorized followers,” who burglariously entered the house of the Commissary-General in 1814, and got off with no less than £2000 in gold. They were detected, and naturally suffered the extreme punishment of the law. By their names one would seem to have been French, the other a Spaniard. There is an awful story, told in two diaries, of a camp follower who in a time of starvation sold to British soldiers as pork slices cut off a French corpse.279 He got away before he could be caught and shot. But enough of these ghouls!

The followers of a British army were by no means exclusively foreign. One of the worst impediments to the free movement of the host came from the unhappy practice that then prevailed of allowing corps on foreign service to take with them a proportion of soldiers’ wives—four or six per company. Forty or sixty of these women, mostly mounted on donkeys, formed the most unmanageable portion of every regimental train. They were always straggling or being left behind, because they could not keep up with the long marches that the army had often to take. Wayside tragedies of this sort are to be found recorded in almost every Peninsular memoir—often of the most harrowing sort. In especial we may mention the number of these poor women who dropped in the Corunna retreat, and died in the snow, or fell into the hands of the French. The interesting little book of a married sergeant of the 42nd, who took his wife about with him during the last three years of the war, is full of curious little shifts and anxieties that they went through.280 The best description of this curious stratum of the Peninsular Army that I know is in the autobiography of Bell of the 34th.281

“The multitude of soldiers’ wives stuck to the army like bricks: averse to all military discipline, they impeded our progress at times very much, particularly in retreats. They became the subject of a General Order, for their own special guidance. They were under no control, and were always first mounted up and away, blocking up narrow passes and checking the advance of the army with their donkeys, after repeated orders to follow in rear of their respective corps, or their donkeys would be shot. On the retreat from Burgos I remember Mrs. Biddy Flyn remarking, ‘I would like to see the man that wud shoot my donkey: faith, I’ll be too early away for any of ’em to catch me. Will you come wid me, girls?’ ‘Aye, indeed, every one of us.’ And away they started at early dawn, cracking their jokes about divisional orders, Wellington, commanding officers, and their next bivouac. Alas! the Provost Marshal was in advance—a man in authority, and a terror to evil doers: he was waiting a mile or two on, in a narrow turn of the road, for the ladies, with a party all loaded. He gave orders to shoot the first two donkeys pour exemple. There was a wild, fierce and furious yell struck up, with more weeping and lamentation than one usually hears at an Irish funeral, with sundry prayers for the vagabone that had murdered the lives of the poor darling innocent crathers. ‘Bad luck to the ugly face of the Provost, the spy of the camp, may he niver see home till the vultures have picked his eyes out, the born varmint,’ and so on. The victims picked up what they could carry, and marched along with the regiment, crying and lamenting their bitter fate. It was wonderful what they endured—but in spite of this warning they were foremost on the line of march next morning again. As Mrs. Skiddy, their leader, said, ‘We must risk something to be in before the men, to have the fire and a dhrop of tay ready for them after their load and their labour: and sure if we went in the rare the French, bad luck to them, would pick me up, me and my donkey, and then Dan Skiddy would be lost entirely without me.’”

The soldiers’ wives were indeed an extraordinary community—as hard as nails, expert plunderers, furious partisans of the supreme excellence of their own battalion, much given to fighting. Many of them were widows twice and even thrice over—for when a married man was shot, and his wife was a capable and desirable person, she would receive half a dozen proposals before her husband was forty-eight hours in his grave. And since the alternative was a hazardous voyage back to relatives in England or Ireland, who had probably broken off with the “girl who ran away with a soldier,” most of the widows concluded to stop with the battalion, with a new spouse and a new name. As the war dragged on many of the men picked up Portuguese and Spanish helpmates, who joined the regimental drove, and made it strangely polyglot. At the end of the struggle in 1814 there was a most harrowing scene at Bordeaux, when the general order was issued that all these foreigners who could not prove that they had been legitimately married to soldiers, with the colonel’s leave, were to be refused transport to the British Isles.282 There were hundreds of them, and only in a few cases could the men find money to get them taken home in private merchantmen. The bulk marched back to the Peninsula in charge of a brigade of homeward bound Portuguese—a most melancholy and distressful assembly.283

It is extraordinary to find that a sprinkling of the officers of the Peninsular Army were unwise enough to take their wives with them to the front—thereby securing a life of wearing anxiety for both, and of dire hardship for the poor ladies. One of the best known cases was that of Hill’s senior aide-de-camp, Captain Currie, whose wife I have found mentioned half a dozen times as making tea for the second division staff, and holding a little reception whenever the division was settled down for a few days. Another was Mrs. Dalbiac, wife of the colonel of the 4th Dragoons, whose adventures on the field of Salamanca are mentioned by Napier.284 But the best chronicle of the ups and downs of a young married couple may be found in the breezy autobiography of Sir Harry Smith, then a subaltern in the 95th Rifles. His tale is well known—he rescued a young Spanish lady among the horrors of the sack of Badajoz, married her two days later, and had her with him for the remaining three years of the war. The story of their Odyssey, as related by him, is one of the most touching narratives of loyal love, and hardship cheerfully borne, that any man can read. They lived together for forty years in storm and sunshine, and she survived to christen the town of Ladysmith by her name, while her husband was commanding the forces in South Africa. He gave his name to the sister town of Harrismith, less well remembered now than the long-besieged place with which the memory of Juana Smith is linked.

There is a sketch in Paris by the well-known artist, Colonel Lejeune, who, when a prisoner at Elvas, made a drawing of an English military family which passed him. As he describes it in his diary, “The captain rode first on a very fine horse, warding off the sun with a parasol: then came his wife very prettily dressed, with a small straw hat, riding on a mule and carrying not only a parasol, but a little black and tan dog on her knee, while she led by a cord a she-goat, to supply her with milk. Beside madame walked her Irish nurse, carrying in a green silk wrapper a baby, the hope of the family. A grenadier, the captain’s servant, came behind and occasionally poked up the long-eared steed of his mistress with a staff. Last in the procession came a donkey loaded with much miscellaneous baggage, which included a tea-kettle and a cage of canaries; it was guarded by an English servant in livery, mounted on a sturdy cob and carrying a long posting-whip, with which he occasionally made the donkey mend its pace.”285 If this picture is not exaggerated, it certainly helps us to understand the strong objection which Wellington had for ladies at the front, and all forms of impedimenta.