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A Royal Engineer in the Low Countries

A Cavalry Surgeon at Waterloo

With the Third Guards during the Peninsular War

The First and Last Campaigns of the Great War

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Vincent O'Sullivan

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The Peninsular War with the Coldstream Guards

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The Peninsular War with the Coldstream Guards
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Author(s): John Cowell Stepney
Date Published: 2010/02
Page Count: 220
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-925-1
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-84677-926-8

At war with a 'Gentleman's Son'

This is another Leonaur published source work which will provide one more vital piece in the historical record of the war in Portugal and Spain against Napoleon's French Army. Cowell-Stepney was a Coldstreamer—an officer of one of Wellington's elite regiments. We join him in 1810 as he journeys to the Peninsula and follow his experiences through 1811 and the entry into Spain. This volume includes a well documented account of Albuera and much essential material of life on campaign. It concludes with the storming of Badajos. This rare account is available in soft cover and hard back with dust jacket. Leonaur hard backs are cloth bound and feature head and tail bands and gold foil embossed spines—a credit to your bookshelf. This volume is one of over a hundred books concerning the history of the Napoleonic Wars published by Leonaur.

About this time Lord Wellington rode up; and seeing that the fire of the enemy’s round shot, shells, and sharpshooters was beginning to tell on the front line of the division, he ordered us to lie down. There was an animated and cheery look about him as he gave the order, which announced his certainty of success, and strengthened our intention to carry it into effect. Our further orders were to remain on the ground until the enemy approached in columns to within some thirty yards, then to rise, fire a volley, and charge bayonets: but their masses of infantry never advanced.<br>
A piquet of the Guards, skirmishing with the enemy, was attacked by cavalry, but resisted them with success. They were suddenly charged a second’ time from behind a rising ground, under cover of which the cavalry had approached unperceived. The horsemen dashed at once on them while in extended order, and took them in flank and rear, cut down the men in detail, and carried off many prisoners.<br>
Out of a hundred rank and file and five officers, only thirty of the former and one of the latter escaped unwounded; one of the remaining three being killed and two taken. At this moment part of Lawson’s guns under Lane opened with grape on the French cavalry and mowed them down, destroying, at the same time, many of our infantry, mixed up as they were in this mêlée with the French cavalry. Their reception from our guns being more warm than pleasant, the enemy precipitately vanished. Many of the remainder of this piquet came in wounded; and Captain Hervey of the Coldstream, after resisting bravely, was cut down and ridden over, but escaped and rejoined his ranks.<br>
The second officer who escaped was Captain Home of the Third Guards. He had a rencontre with three of the enemy’s horsemen; in trying to take him one of them seized the string of a bottle hanging by his side, which broke, and the cavalry man carried it off as a prize; another grasped his epaulette, which was torn from his shoulder; and the third, finding he would not surrender, attempted to cut him down.<br>
Home was a powerful man, and, although on foot, lunged with his sword and then closed with the trooper, seized him by the neck and attempted to drag him to the earth: the struggle was a fierce one, but the Frenchman, finding he was likely to be worsted, turned his horse sharp round and galloped off, leaving in the hand of his enemy his cross of the Legion of Honour, which Home brought back triumphantly to his corps. From Home’s muscular appearance and well-known courage and determination he was very likely to have brought in both man and horse, had not the trooper made a timely escape.<br>
The 42nd Highlanders, under Lord Blantyre, were also at the same time charged by cavalry, but gave the enemy no encouragement to make a second attempt on them. Here an anecdote was current of Captain Mellish, of sporting and Newmarket fame, and at the time in the adjutant-general’s department. He came into the field that morning mounted on a very woebegone and sorry hack, a regular Rosinante, looking as if it had lived much too long on air and exercise.<br>
Some ridicule was elicited by this turf hero and great judge of horseflesh possessing so curiously infra dig. a specimen of cattle: one said that Lord Wellington had sent for a pack of hounds, and advised him by no means to ride near the kennel; another suggested that it was unfortunate no knacker was to be heard of in the neighbourhood; a third offered him five shillings for his charger. Mellish took all in good humour, and said he would bet any man £10 that before the day was out he would get £25 for him. After some jeering the bet was taken.<br>
The firing in the village of Fuentes being heavy, he availed himself of the first opportunity to convey an order there, and rode right into the thick of the musketry: his horse was shot under him: he claimed, as losing a second charger, value £25, and thus he won his bet. A severe struggle was now enacting at the foot and key of our position in the village of Fuentes. Here, among others, three battalions of our division were carrying on an intense combat with the enemy for its possession.<br>
The 79th, or Cameronians, commanded by poor Cameron (who fell on this occasion), instead of covering themselves by the walls and houses, chose to stand on the top of the former, and were consequently knocked down very rapidly by the enemy. Cameron and other officers did their best to stop this most inartistical mode of carrying on such a warfare, but with little effect; as the Highlandmen exclaimed, “that they would rather stand at the top of a wall, and be shot like men, than hide behind it, and be killed like dogs.”<br>
The 24th and 79th, in contest with an enemy, were practising light infantry movements for the first time in their lives.
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