After describing the disappearance of his Artillerymen, and the straits to which he was consequently reduced, he proceeds in this letter to say: “It would not do to reward a corps under such circumstances.” If he were correctly informed as to these circumstances, there would not have been a single individual in the whole of his army who would have differed from him as to his conclusion. But, unfortunately for him, he endeavoured to prove too much. Not content with giving, as a reason for withholding rewards, an assertion which, if accurate, would have more than justified him, he must needs strengthen an already overwhelming case by a mysterious insinuation in the postscript of the letter, respecting some other unexpressed ground of his displeasure, with which the field officers must be familiar as a cause for his refusing to recommend them for reward. Was there not, in this piling of Pelion upon Ossa, some consciousness of the necessity of self-justification?

But these are merely striking self-contradictions and inconsistencies in style. It is when the truth of the statements made by the Duke in this letter is inquired into, that one stands astounded at the inaccuracy of his informants, and the hasty assumptions of the writer himself. The letter is so involved,—so confusing in its mixed references to the Artillery and to the army generally,—so laden with marvellous didactic sentences as to the propriety of writing a history of the battle of Waterloo,—that it is not always easy to ascertain the connection between argument and conclusion. So slovenly, indeed, is the style at the end of the letter, that it reads as if the whole army ran away! Let two sentences be reproduced: “The fact is, that the army that gained the battle of Waterloo was an entirely new one, with the exception of some of the old Spanish troops. Their inexperience occasioned the mistakes they committed, the rumours they circulated that all was destroyed, because they themselves ran away, and the mischiefs which ensued; but they behaved gallantly.” ... One rises from a perusal of these words with a bewildered feeling that gallant behaviour among troops is identical with running away;—and that the whole army, with the exception of some of the old Spanish troops, exhibited their gallantry in this singular manner. But, as the statement, that the army was entirely a new one, is used apparently in the first instance to account for the Artillery running off the field, it may be interesting to glance at the troops and brigades, whose inexperience seemed—in the Duke’s mind as he wrote—to have made their flight almost natural.

Of the eight troops of Horse Artillery present at the battle of Waterloo, five were the old tried troops of the Peninsula, whose gallant services had been recorded year after year by the Duke’s own hand: Sir Hew Ross’s, Sir Robert Gardiner’s, Colonel Webber Smith’s, Major Beane’s, and Major Bull’s. A sixth, Captain Whinyates’s, was the famous Rocket Troop of Leipsic; and of the other two, one had fought at Buenos Ayres, and the other in Walcheren. It was to one of these latter and more inexperienced troops, Captain Mercer’s, that the victory at one period of the day Battalion Records of the Royal Artillery. was due. With regard to the field brigades of this new army, it would seem that Major Rogers’s company had been engaged for two years past in the operations in Holland, and had been in the Walcheren Expedition previously; that Captain Sinclair’s brigade had been at Copenhagen, Corunna, and Walcheren; Captain Sandham’s at Copenhagen and Walcheren; Major Lloyd’s at Walcheren; and that Captain Bolton’s, the only brigade without war service, happened to be the one whose effect in breaking the head of the columns of the Imperial Guard has become historical,—and whose inexperience would therefore hardly appear to have been very detrimental. From this statement it is evident that the Artillery element in the Duke’s army at Waterloo was veteran, rather than new;—for, if the troops and brigades possessed such records as are given above, much more did the majority of the field and staff officers present deserve the title of veterans.

But the next inaccuracy is more unpardonable; and the informants of the Duke on the subject were guilty of errors for which there was no excuse. “In point of fact,” wrote the Duke, “I should have had no Artillery during the whole of the latter part of the action, if I had not kept a reserve at the commencement.” Fortunately for the exposure of this grave inaccuracy, there is no point on which there is more full and official information both in Sir George Wood’s and other despatches, and more detailed notice in private correspondence, than on the subject of the Artillery reserves at Waterloo. As stated in the last chapter of this volume, it was composed of Sir Hew Ross’s and Major Beane’s troops of Horse Artillery, and Captain Sinclair’s Field Brigade. So far was this force from being kept in reserve, and being brought forward providentially at the end of the action to replace the runaways, that it was actually in action—every gun—almost at the commencement of the day, and suffered the heaviest losses before half-past one. By a happy coincidence, the Artillery, which must have been represented to the Duke as his reserve, is mentioned by Frazer’s Letters, p. 559. Sir Augustus Frazer: “Some time before this—i.e., the massing of the second line during the cavalry attacks—the Duke ordered me to bring up all the reserve Horse Artillery, which at that moment were Mercer’s and Bull’s troops.” But, instead of these troops being a reserve kept, as the Duke’s letter says, “from the commencement,”—they also had both been in action from the beginning of the day, and Bull’s troop had actually been sent to the Ibid. p. 557. centre of the second line “to refit and repair disabled carriages!”

The importance of this inaccuracy in the letter cannot be overrated. If the Artillery, which the Duke admits having had at the end of the day, was not the reserve, which he had kept in hand,—and it certainly was not,—what was it? The asserted flight of the gunners with their limbers and ammunition hangs upon the truth, or otherwise, of there having been reserves in hand to replace them. But the fact of these reserves having been in action from the beginning of the day is incontestable; and is proved by the correspondence of Sir Hew Ross, who commanded one of the reserve troops, as well as by the official and semi-official correspondence of others. It is possible that the arrival of Sir Robert Gardiner’s troop, with Vivian’s and Vandeleur’s brigades, from the left of the line, at the end of the day, may have deceived the Duke’s informant, and led him to imagine that it was fresh Artillery from the reserve. That it was not so, however, but merely moved with the division to which it was attached, is a matter of fact; and at no time in the day was this troop ever in reserve. Therefore, in a vital point, the Duke’s letter is unquestionably inaccurate.

The next statement in the letter, which demands scrutiny is the following: “The Artillery was placed with orders not to engage with artillery, but to fire only when bodies of troops came under their fire. It was very difficult to get them to obey this order.” Sir John Bloomfield, who was on Sir George Wood’s staff, carried this order to all the troops and brigades, and is confident that, with one exception, it was rigidly obeyed. He remembers that the Duke saw a French gun struck by a shot from one of the English batteries,—and, under the impression that it came from Captain Sandham’s brigade, he sent orders to have that officer placed in arrest. This was not done, some satisfactory explanation having been given,—relieving Captain Sandham of the disobedience. Singularly enough, the offender was never discovered, until, in 1870, with the publication of General Mercer’s Diary, came the confession of the crime. ‘Mercer’s Diary,’ vol. i. p. 301. “About this time, being impatient of standing idle, and annoyed by the batteries on the Nivelle road, I ventured to commit a folly, for which I should have paid dearly had our Duke chanced to be in our part of the field. I ventured to disobey orders, and open a slow, deliberate fire at the battery, thinking, with my 9-pounders, soon to silence his 4-pounders.” As Captain Mercer’s troop was placed near Sandham’s brigade at this time, it is evident that this occurrence, and that mentioned by Sir John Bloomfield, are identical. Sir John, whose duties carried him to all parts of the field, and whose recollection of the day is as clear as possible, asserts positively, that in no other instance was the order disobeyed; and it will be seen from accounts, both French and English, to be quoted hereafter, that the order to fire upon bodies of troops approaching was literally obeyed with the most marked results. Was it, then, quite worthy of the Duke of Wellington to reason from the particular to the general, and to visit the disobedience of one officer Colonel Gardiner, R.H.A. upon a whole corps? As has been well said by the son of one of the bravest Artillery officers on the field, Sir Robert Gardiner: “If a Regiment of Infantry had run away, and all the others had behaved splendidly,—would the whole arm have been similarly condemned? Would it not have been more just to reward those who deserved it?”

The mention of reward suggests the next amazing inconsistency in the Duke’s letter,—and makes it almost certain that it was written on receiving some subsequent information from another source,—not from his personal observation. In this letter, dated six months after the battle, he wrote: “It would not do to reward a corps under such circumstances;” and again: “The field officers know the reason I have not to recommend them for a favour.” How are these sentences to be reconciled with the following extract from the ‘London Gazette,’ which immediately followed the battle, and was issued while all its details must have been fresh in the Duke’s recollection?

Dated Whitehall, 22 June, 1815.

“His Royal Highness the Prince Regent has further been pleased to nominate and appoint the undermentioned officers to be Companions of the said most Honourable Military Order of the Bath, upon the recommendation of Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington, for their services in the battles fought upon the 16th and 18th of June last:”

Lieut.-Colonel S. G. Adye,Royal Artillery.
Lieut.-Colonel R. Bull,”
Lieut.-Colonel C. Gold,”
Lieut.-Colonel A. Macdonald,”
Lieut.-Colonel J. Parker,”
Major T. Rogers,”
Lieut.-Colonel J. W. Smith,”
Lieut.-Colonel J. S. Williamson,”
Colonel Sir G. A. Wood, Kt.,”