[261] His elder brother, Sir Charles Craufurd, was Deputy-Adjutant-General, and M.P. for Retford. Windham, the Secretary for War, was his devoted friend.
[262] Though senior in the date of his first commission to nearly all the officers of the Peninsular army, Craufurd was six years junior to Picton, and one year junior to Hope. Graham, much his senior in age, had only entered the army in 1793.
[263] Such as Shaw-Kennedy, William Campbell, Kincaid, and Lord Seaton.
[264] For Craufurd’s life and personality see his biography by his grandson the Rev. Alex. Craufurd, London, 1890. The most vivid picture of him is in Rifleman Harris’s chronicle of the Corunna retreat, a wonderful piece of narrative by a writer from the ranks, who admired his general despite of all his severity, and acknowledges that his methods were necessary. Though Napier as a historian is on the whole fairly just to his old commander, whose achievements were bound up indissolubly with the glories of the Light Division, as a man he disliked Craufurd: in one of his hooks which I possess (Delagrave’s Campagne de Portugal) he has written in the margin several bitter personal remarks about him, very unlike the language employed in his history. The unpublished Journal of Colonel McLeod of the 43rd is (as Mr. Alex. Craufurd informs me) written in the same spirit. So is Charles Napier’s Diary.
[265] As an Appendix to Lord F. Fitz-Clarence’s Manual of Outpost Duties.
[266] One of the most curious points in Shaw-Kennedy’s Diary [p. 218] is that from the reports of deserters Craufurd succeeded in reconstructing the exact composition of Ney’s corps, in brigades and battalions, with a final error of only one battalion and 2,000 men too few.
[267] Shaw-Kennedy, Diary, pp. 142 and 147.
[268] Herrasti’s report gives 1st of Majorca 706 officers and men, Avila and Segovia militia 857 and 317 respectively, three battalions of volunteers of Ciudad Rodrigo 2,242, Urban guard 750, artillery 375, sappers 60; total, with some details added, 5,510, not including Sanchez’s Partida. See Belmas, iii. 314.
[269] See Sprünglin’s Journal, p. 417.
[270] May 2, to Craufurd.