The troops embarked during the night. The 1st Battalion of the 95th was the last corps that entered the gates of Corunna, having acted as the rear-guard; and scarcely had it reached its ship, when the enemy made his appearance, with several guns, on the heights commanding the bay, from which he fired on all the vessels within range. The fleet, however, was soon under sail, and arrived at Spithead on the 21st. The Battalion was landed and marched to Hythe.
I have reserved till now the details of its losses during that memorable retreat.
At Cacabelos, on January 3, 2 sergeants and 17 rank and file were killed; and Captain Bennett, who died of his wounds on the 11th, and Lieutenant Eeles were wounded; and on that occasion 4 sergeants and 44 rank and file were taken prisoners. In the skirmish on the 5th, 1 man was killed and 1 man also on the 10th. One sergeant, 1 bugler, and 13 rank and file died of want, sickness, or fatigue during the retreat; and 31 men, wounded or exhausted, fell into the enemy’s hands. In the final fight before Corunna on the 16th, Lieutenant Charles Noble, 1 sergeant, and 10 rank and file were killed, and 8 rank and file were taken prisoners. Thus the total loss of the Battalion in twenty days was 2 officers, 8 sergeants, 1 bugler, and 125 rank and file dead, or prisoners in the hands of the enemy. Lieutenant Eeles, 1 sergeant, and 33 rank and file wounded disembarked in England.
But the condition of the survivors and unwounded was deplorable. The appearance of the Battalion was squalid and miserable. Most of the men had lost some of their appointments; many were without shoes; and their clothing was not only tattered and in rags, but in such a state of filth and so infested with vermin, that on new clothing being served out it was burnt at the back of Hythe barracks.
Among the losses of the Regiment consequent on the retreat to Corunna, not the least conspicuous was that of their first Colonel, Major-General Coote Manningham, who died at Maidstone on August 26, 1809, in his forty-fourth year. A short sketch of the life of one who may be called the originator of the Regiment, may well be given in this place. He was the second son of Charles Manningham,[63] Esq., of Thorp, in Surrey, who was Governor of Bengal in 1758, by the daughter of Colonel Charles Hutchinson, Governor of St. Helena, through whom he was nearly related to two distinguished Generals, Sir Robert Boyd and Sir Eyre Coote, who had married her sisters. Under the former, and in his Regiment, the 39th, his services commenced at the siege of Gibraltar. On the breaking out of the war of 1793, Manningham, then a Major in the 45th, was appointed to a light infantry battalion, formed in the West India Islands, in order to join Sir Charles Grey, on his coming out to attack the French West India possessions. With it he took part in the reduction of Martinique, St. Lucia, and Guadaloupe. He soon after became Lieutenant-Colonel of the 41st, and in 1795 was appointed Adjutant-General to the force under General Forbes at St. Domingo. While on this service he was severely wounded by an ambuscade of the enemy. On or soon after his return to England he was, in 1798, appointed Aide-de-Camp to King George III., with the rank of Colonel, and soon after one of His Majesty’s Equerries. He was promoted a Major-General in 1805; and after serving some time on the home staff, he was appointed to command a brigade in the division which went out with Sir David Baird in 1808. On the junction of this force with that under Sir John Moore, he had a brigade under Moore, and took part in the retreat; and, as we have seen, held the position of Elvina in the final action at Corunna. The fatigues and sufferings he had undergone during this campaign, acting on a constitution impaired by service and by wounds in the West Indies, brought on, soon after his return to England, an illness from which he never rallied. He is buried at Little Bookham,[64] in Surrey, where this inscription to his memory remains:
In this vault are deposited the remains of
Major-General Coote Manningham, equerry to the king
and colonel of the 95th or rifle regiment of foot;
This corps he originally raised and formed, and by his
unvaried zeal and exertion, as well as excellent discipline
and good example, brought to the highest state of
military reputation and distinction.
He died at Maidstone, on the 26th day of August 1809
in the 44th year of his age.
An early victim to the fatigues of the campaign in Spain
operating on a constitution already enfeebled
by long service in the West Indies
and honourable wounds received in that climate.
A monument to his memory was also erected in the North Transept of Westminster Abbey, by his friend Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Hislop, in 1813; which records that ‘In him the man and the Christian tempered the warrior;’ and that ‘He was the model of a British soldier.’