Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters by Mark Urban Read Free Book Online Page B

light cart every moment with its contents in the best possible order. When I related the sad catastrophe he became nearly furious, and directed me to march up the prisoners to their various regiments, to obtain drummers, and in front of each regiment to flog the culprits – in fact, to become a provost marshal for the occasion.
     
    The young subaltern, the most junior officer in the 95th, found himself the instrument of his brigadier’s fury. ‘I was highly indignant at such usage,’ Simmons wrote in his journal, ‘having exerted myself zealously to serve him.’ Noting that Black Bob ‘never forgave me’, Simmons resolved not to obey his brigadier’s order. Instead he went off to locate his own commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Sidney Beckwith.
    In Beckwith, Craufurd found his match and the 95th its idol. As someone opposed to flogging on principle, Beckwith simply went outside and verbally admonished the men under arrest, soldiers who had been caught by Craufurd straggling behind the line of march. The colonel then told Simmons to go to his company and that he would be answerable to Craufurd.
    Once the brigade had arrived in Campo Maior, a battle of wills between Craufurd and Beckwith made itself apparent almost every day. Both men were determined to train their soldiers to a peak of professional efficiency and both were apostles of a new creed, one in which light infantry should become the pattern for the whole Army. Everything else about them, however, contrasted: Beckwith was a model of self-control, whereas Craufurd often became apoplectic with rage; Beckwith only raised his voice when it was necessary to make himself heard above gunfire, then it was described as being ‘like thunder’, whereas Craufurd did so frequently and squeakily; being more than six foot tall, Beckwith towered over his diminutive brigadier; Beckwith believed soldiers were best motivated either by positive encouragement or by shaming them in the eyes of their messmates, Craufurd believed in coercion.
    Beckwith took a dim view of Craufurd, but he was sufficiently sensitive to the needs of military subordination to express his true feelings only to his equals. One evening the commanding officer of the 95th was standing in the Campo Maior camp talking to Lieutenant Colonel Barclay of the 52nd Light Infantry, another of Craufurd’s battalions, when a gift arrived from the brigadier. He had sent Barclay a bottle of cherry brandy, and the colonel wasted no time easing its cork and pouring himself a glass.
    Not a little disgusted, Beckwith asked him, ‘What, Barclay, do you drink anything from such a fellow as that?’ Barclay emptied the glass and replied, ‘Don’t I, indeed? Here’s damnation to him!’ There was a roar of complicit laughter.
    At the age of thirty-seven, Beckwith was reaching the peak of his powers. He was a veteran of half a dozen campaigns and had been on intimate terms both with the founders of his regiment and with Sir John Moore, the general who had commanded the Light Brigade several years before in Shorncliffe, making it the crack corps it was. Moore, who had been killed at Corunna early in 1809, was a keen advocate both of new tactics and of a more humane attitude towards the rank and file.
    Not only was Beckwith a natural leader, he also understood soldiers’ mentality perfectly. All commanders were concerned, for example, by men falling out of the line of march. They would say they were going to answer nature’s call, shake a stone out of their shoe or whatever else, but sometimes they were going to rob civilians. This problem drove Wellesley to distraction during the 1809 campaign, because hundreds of soldiers were doing it and he feared violent reactions from the populace.
    While Craufurd frequently applied the lash to stragglers, the 95th had developed its own approach. As they fell out, riflemen were told to hand their weapon and haversack to their marching comrades. One 95th officer described why it