[152] The biography of General Dilkes seems to explain this matter. Duncan, the artillery commander, thought that he would be going into action without any infantry supports, and rode to the nearest brigadier—this was Dilkes—to ask him to lend a few companies to cover the guns. Dilkes assented, and told the Coldstream companies in the middle of his column to fall out and follow the guns. But Graham had already set aside the two companies of the 47th, from Barnard’s battalion, for the same purpose. When Duncan found them waiting for him in the edge of the wood, he told the officer commanding the Coldstreamers that he was not wanted, and these two companies marched off and fell into line in a gap in the front of Wheatley’s brigade.
[153] Blakeney, p. 195.
[154] For further details see the letters of General Dilkes, Colonels Norcott, Stanhope, and Onslow, and Major Acheson, in Wellington’s Supplementary Dispatches, vii. pp. 127-31.
[155] Vigo-Roussillon says that he personally captured Colonel Bushe, who was riding away slowly from the front, disabled by a wound. This seems contradicted by the very circumstantial evidence of Bunbury, adjutant of the 20th Portuguese, who says that Bushe had his horse shot under him, and was mortally wounded, that he declined being sent to the rear, and was propped up and left behind by his own orders. French soldiers were seen rifling him as he lay.
[156] Surtees, Twenty Years in the Rifle Brigade, p. 119.
[157] See letter in Rait’s Life of Lord Gough, vol. i. p. 53.
[158] A hereditary name of glory in the 87th. The present representative of the family won his Victoria Cross at Ladysmith in 1900.
[159] These two companies, whose losses, as it is seen here, were heavy, must have been engaged with part of the left battalion of the French 54th.
[160] Wellington to Graham, from Santa Marinha, March 25th. (Dispatches, vii, 396.)
[161] See the figures of losses in [Appendix No. V].