Having thus disposed of the Quarterly Review I request the reader’s attention to the following corrections of errors, as to facts, which having lately reached me, are inserted here in preference to waiting for a new edition of the volumes to which they refer.
1º. The storming of Badajos.
“General Viellande, and Phillipon who was wounded, seeing all ruined, passed the bridge with a few hundred soldiers, and entered San Cristoval, where they all surrendered the next morning to lord Fitzroy Somerset.”
Correction by colonel Warre, assented to by lord Fitzroy Somerset.
“Lieut.-colonel Warre was the senior officer present at the surrender, having joined lord Fitzroy Somerset (who was in search of the governor and the missing part of the garrison) just as he was collecting a few men wherewith to summon in his capacity of aide-de-camp to the commander-in-chief, the tête-du-pont of San Christoval.”
2º. Assault of Tarifa. “The Spaniards and the forty-seventh British regiment guarded the breach.”
Correction by sir Hugh Gough.
“The only part of the forty-seventh engaged during the assault were two companies under captain Livelesly, stationed on the east bastion one hundred and fifty paces from the breach, and the Spaniards were no where to be seen, except behind a pallisade in the street, a considerable way from the breach. The eighty-seventh, and the eighty-seventh alone, defended the breach. The two companies of the forty-seventh, I before mentioned, and the two companies of the rifles, which latter were stationed on my left but all under my orders, did all that disciplined and brave troops could do in support, and the two six-pounders, under lieut.-colonel Mitchel of the artillery, most effectively did their duty while their fire could tell, the immediate front of the breach from the great dip of the ground not being under their range.”
This correction renders it proper that I should give my authority for saying the Spaniards were at the breach.
Extract from a letter of sir Charles Smith, the engineer who defended Tarifa, to colonel Napier.