[204] For a good example, see Dickson Papers, pp. 622, 623, where the good Dickson gets one officer to own that he was “betrayed in a moment of intoxication” into insulting words, and the other to say that the counter-charge with which he replied was made “in a moment of great irritation and passion.” The apologies were both passed as satisfactory.
[205] A series of court-martials in one Peninsular battalion shows us such a picture, with the colonel on one side and the two majors on the other. The former prosecuted the senior major for embezzlement, while at the same moment a subaltern was “broke” for alleging that the junior major had shown cowardice in the field. The Horse Guards finally dispersed all the officers into different corps, as the only way of ending the feud.
[206] See pp. 121–2 of vol. ii. of Robinson’s Life of Picton.
[207] Letter printed in Vie Militaire, ed. Girod de l’Ain, p. 98.
[208] See the heading “Lisbon” in the collected volume of General Orders, pp. 206, 207.
[209] General Orders, Freneda, December 4, 1811. For anecdotes about this officer’s shirking propensities, see pp. 27–36 of the second series of Grattan’s Adventures with the Connaught Rangers. He was ultimately cashiered.
[210] Gleig’s Reminiscences of Wellington, p. 303.
[211] Conversations with Duke of Wellington, pp. 13 and 18.
[212] See, for an instance, pp. [249–50].
[213] When the 90th was raised in 1794, out of the 746 men 165 were English and 56 Irish—not much less than a third of the whole. Cf. Delavoye’s History of the 90th, p. 3. In the Waterloo campaign the 71st had 83 English and 56 Irish in its ranks.