[378] Take, for example, the case of Baring of the K. G. L. at Waterloo. In a dispatch, not written immediately after the battle (when accurate information might have been difficult to procure), but two months later, Wellesley says that La Haye Sainte was taken at two o’clock, ‘through the negligence of the officer who commanded the post.’ Yet if anything is certain, it is that Baring held out till six o’clock, that his nine companies of the K. G. L. kept back two whole French divisions, and that when he was driven out, the sole cause was that his ammunition was exhausted, and that no more could be sent him because the enemy had completely surrounded the post. If Wellington had taken any trouble about the ascertaining of the facts, he could not have failed to learn the truth.
[379] See especially his charming letters to his niece, Lady Burghersh, lately published.
[380] His relations with the other sex were numerous and unedifying. From his loveless and unwise marriage, made on a point of duty where affection had long vanished, down to his tedious ‘correspondence with Miss J.,’ there is nothing profitable to be discovered. See Greville’s Diaries [2nd Series], iii. 476.
[381] When we read Wellington’s interminable controversies with the Portuguese Regency and the Spanish Junta, we soon come to understand not merely the way in which they provoked him by their tortuous shuffling and their helpless procrastination, but still more the way in which he irritated them by his unveiled scorn, and his outspoken exposure of all their meannesses. A little more diplomatic language would have secured less friction, and probably better service.
[382] Monro to Beresford, April 15, and MacKinley’s inclosure from Vigo of April 16, 1809.
[383] Excluding troops that arrived at Lisbon just after Wellesley’s arrival.
[384] The 3rd Dragoon Guards, 4th Dragoons, 14th and 16th Light Dragoons, with one squadron of the 3rd Light Dragoons of the K. G. L., and two of the 20th Light Dragoons.
[385] The 2/9th, 1/45th, 29th, 5/60th and 97th.
[386] Of Wellesley’s twenty-one British battalions, ten were 2nd battalions, [of the 7th, 9th, 24th, 30th, 31st, 48th, 53rd, 66th, 83rd, 87th], two were single-battalion regiments [the 29th and 97th], three first battalions [of the 3rd, 45th and 88th], two Guards’ battalions [1st Coldstreams and 1st Scots Fusiliers], two ‘battalions of detachments,’ one a 3rd battalion (27th), one a 5th battalion [60th].
[387] These regiments were the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 15th, 16th, 19th, raised respectively at Lisbon (1st, 4th, 10th, 16th), Estremoz (3rd), Setubal (7th), Peniche (13th), Villa Viciosa (15th), Cascaes (19th), Campomayor (20th), the 1st, 4th and 5th Cazadores, and 1st, 4th and 7th Cavalry.