Wellington to sir H. Wellesley, 1810.
‘Mendizabal, &c. &c., have sent us so many false reports that I cannot make out what the French are doing.’
‘This is a part of the system on which all the Spanish authorities have been acting, to induce us to take a part in the desultory operations which they are carrying on. False reports and deceptions of every description are tried, and then popular insults, to show us what the general opinion is of our conduct.’
‘The Spaniards take such bad care of their posts, and have so little intelligence, that it is difficult to say by what troops the blow has been struck.’
‘It is strange that the governor of Ciudad Rodrigo should have no intelligence of the enemy’s movements near his garrison, of which we have received so many accounts.’
‘We hear also a great deal of Blake’s army in the Alpujarras, and of a corps from Valencia operating upon the enemy’s communications with Madrid; but I conclude that there is as little foundation for this intelligence as for that relating to the insurrection of Ronda.’
‘I enclose a letter from General Carrera, in which I have requested him to communicate with you. I beg you to observe, however, that very little reliance can be placed on the report made to you by any Spanish general at the head of a body of troops. They generally exaggerate on one side or the other; and make no scruple of communicating supposed intelligence, in order to induce those to whom they communicate it to adopt a certain line of conduct.’
The reader must be now somewhat tired of quotations; let us therefore turn for relaxation to the reviewer’s observations about light troops,—of which he seems indeed to know as much as the wise gentleman of the Admiralty did about the facility of sailing up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario; but though that wise gentleman did not know much about sailing-craft, the reviewer knows something of another kind of craft, namely misrepresentation. Thus he quotes a passage from captain Kincaid’s amusing and clever work as if it told in his favour; whereas it in no manner supports his foolish insinuation—namely, that the 43d and 52d regiments of the light division were not light troops, never acted as such, and never skirmished! Were he to say as much to the lowest bugler of these corps, he would give him the fittest answer for his folly—that is to say, laugh in his face.
‘There are but two kinds of soldiers in the world’ said Napoleon, ‘the good and the bad.’
Now, the light division were not only good but, I will say it fearlessly, the best soldiers in the world. The three British regiments composing it had been formed by sir John Moore precisely upon the same system. There was no difference save in the colour of the riflemen’s jackets and the weapons which they carried. Captain Kincaid’s observation, quoted by the reviewer, merely says, what is quite true, that the riflemen fought in skirmishing order more frequently than the 43d and 52d did. Certainly they did, and for this very sufficient reason—their arms, the rifle and sword, did not suit any other formation; it is a defect in the weapon, which is inferior to the musket and bayonet, fitted alike for close or open order. Napoleon knew this so well that he had no riflemen in his army, strange as it may appear to those persons who have read so much about French riflemen. The riflemen of the light division could form line, columns, and squares—could move as a heavy body—could do, and did do everything that the best soldiers in the world ought to do; and in like manner the 52d and 43d regiments skirmished and performed all the duties of light troops with the same facility as the riflemen; but the difference of the weapon made it advisable to use the latter nearly always in open order: I do not, indeed, remember ever to have seen them act against the enemy either in line or square. Captain Kincaid is too sensible and too good a soldier, and far too honest a man, to serve the purpose of this snarling blockhead, who dogmatizes in defiance of facts and with a plenitude of pompous absurdity that would raise the bile of an alderman. Thus, after quoting from my work the numbers of the French army, he thus proceeds:—