[83] The most distinguished of these was the 13th Cuirassiers, a regiment of new formation, which served throughout the war in Aragon and Catalonia, and was by far the best of Suchet’s mounted corps. For its achievements the reader may be referred to the interesting Mémoires of Colonel de Gonneville.
[84] In Masséna’s army of 1810 the largest cavalry regiment (25th Dragoons) had 650 men. In Suchet’s army in the same year there was one exceptionally strong regiment (4th Hussars) with 759 sabres.
[85] The 2nd Provisional Dragoons of Moncey’s corps had no less than 872 men in June, 1808.
[86] In this case the low proportion was due to want of horses, not to bad roads. Even the forty-two guns were only produced when Bessières had lent Masséna many teams.
[87] I take these figures respectively from Thiébault, Fririon, Lapène, Le Clerc, and Rousset.
[88] Diary of Foy, in Girod de l’Ain’s Vie Militaire du Général Foy, p. 98.
[89] The reader who wishes to see a logical explanation of the phenomenon may find it in the remarks of the Spanish Colonel Moscoso (1812) in Arteche, ii. 394. He explains that the skirmishing line of his compatriots was always too thin to keep back the tirailleurs. The latter invariably pushed their way close up to the Spanish main body, and while presenting in their scattered formation no definite mark for volleys, were yet numerous enough to shoot down so many of their opponents as to shake the Spanish formation before the columns in the rear came up.
[90] e.g. Brunswick-Oels and the Chasseurs Britanniques.
[91] See Blakeney, A Boy in the Peninsular War, edited by Sturges (1899), pp. 189, 190, for an account of this bloody episode.
[92] The reader who is curious as to details of actual bayonet-fighting may consult Grattan for the 88th, and the anonymous ‘T.S.’ of the 71st for Fuentes d’Oñoro, and Steevens of the 20th for Roncesvalles. The charge of Tovey’s company of the latter corps, on the last-mentioned occasion, much resembled one of the incidents of Inkerman.