[593] To go into details, the 1st Division not only gave over Howard’s brigade (50th, 71st, 92nd) to Hill, but sent home the 7th Line battalion of the K.G.L., whose rank and file were drafted into the three senior Line battalions of that corps. From the 2nd Division the 2/28th, 29th, 2/39th, 2/48th went home, and the 1/48th was transferred to the 4th Division: but the 1/28th and 1/39th came out to Portugal and joined. The 3rd Division got one new battalion (77th) in July. In the 4th Division the 1/7th and 2/7th were amalgamated, but the number of battalions was kept as before by the transference of the 1/48th from the 2nd Division. The 6th Division got one new unit, the 2/32nd. The 7th Division took over Alten’s K.G.L. light battalions, and received the 68th, but sent home the 85th, after it had been only seven months in the Peninsula. Wellington refused to keep this regiment, which on its return to England went through a series of court-martials, testifying to grave internal faults.
[594] This was done by an Imperial decree issued on December 13th through Berthier.
[595] Silveira had only one infantry regiment of regulars (no. 24) and two squadrons of regular dragoons, as also two batteries of old artillery. Wilson had one squadron of regular dragoons.
[596] See especially Berthier to Bessières, of May 19, from Rambouillet.
[597] See especially Wellington to General Walker (British attaché with the Army of Galicia), Dispatches, vii. p. 648, where the siege of Astorga and the troubling of Bonnet in Asturias are the operations recommended. Castaños was still titular Captain-General in Galicia as well as in Estremadura.
[598] The 113th were a new Tuscan regiment, raised in 1809, which had been practically destroyed in Catalonia, and sent home to recruit. The 32nd Léger was Genoese.
[599] For details of its movements see Napoleon’s Correspondance, 17,784, June 8th, 1811.
[600] This was a newly created regiment, formed out of a number of provisional battalions, which had been doing garrison duty in Biscay for the last year.
[601] Bessières grossly underrated his own force in a letter to Berthier of June 6th, in which he stated the whole at only 44,000 men.