Yet again, at the request of the Duke of Wellington, the following officers obtained permission to accept from the Emperor of Russia the Order of St. Anne, “in testimony of His Majesty’s approbation of their services and conduct, particularly in the late battles fought in the Netherlands:”

It is unnecessary to add that the boon service granted for the battle of Waterloo, and the Waterloo medals, were given to the Artillery present, without exception. It would, therefore, appear that for a corps which did not deserve to be rewarded, it did not fare badly; and that its merits were only called in question when pensions based on an unpopular precedent were asked for. It is also impossible that the Duke could have been so generous in his original recommendations, had he known of his own personal observation, that which he stated in his letter of the 21st December, and which must now receive grave consideration; the asserted flight from the field of battle of many of the Artillerymen with their limbers, &c.

In ascertaining the unmistakable inaccuracy of this cruel and hasty assertion, which must have been made by the Duke of Wellington on the most worthless evidence, the advantage of the late publication of the letter has become apparent. Much of the evidence, which will be adduced to rebut it, was not written with the view of meeting such an accusation, but is merely extracted from the simple narrative of a battle, in which the facts are stated without any idea of their being questioned. Had the Duke’s letter been published while the writers of many of the letters to be quoted were alive, their answers would not have had half the historical value they now possess, for they would have been regarded as the pleadings of interested defendants. The statements of disinterested historians will conclude this brief argument.

When the celebrated charges of the French cavalry at Waterloo took place, the English guns lined the crest of the position, and the Infantry was formed in squares in their rear. The order given by the Duke was that the Artillerymen should stand to their guns as long as possible, and then take refuge in the Infantry squares; and that the limbers should be sent behind the squares. This order was carried to the various batteries by Sir John Bloomfield, and was obeyed to the letter. “The idea of six limbers,” writes Colonel Gardiner, “with six horses in each limber, going into a Communicated by Sir J. Bloomfield. suare of Infantry, was of course an impossibility, and never contemplated.” The gunners had cartouche-bags slung round them, containing ammunition, and invariably, with the exception of those of Captain Mercer’s troop, took refuge in the adjacent squares, or under the bayonets of the kneeling ranks. When the cavalry retired, on each occasion the gunners ran out, and, as a rule, the guns were in action against the retreating cavalry before they had gone sixty yards. The delay of a few moments occurred once or twice, while shot were being brought from the limbers; and Sir John Bloomfield remembers an expression of impatience escaping the Duke on one of these occasions. Nor was it unnatural. “To lose,” writes Colonel Gardiner, “an opportunity of inflicting destruction on the French cavalry, directly they turned their backs, and before they could get out of the range of canister, must have been very tantalizing.” But that the delay ever exceeded a few moments, or that a single limber ever left the ground, Sir John Bloomfield is confident is an utter delusion. Such an occurrence as is described in the Duke’s letter could not have happened without being well known. The Duke himself said, “It is known to many;” and yet Sir John lived for three years with the headquarter staff in Paris, and never heard even an insinuation on the subject. Another Waterloo survivor writes on this point: General B. Cuppage, R.A., to the Author. “I never did hear, nor any one else, of the artillery misbehaving at Waterloo. Sir Alexander Dickson took me with him into Brussels after the battle. We saw every officer who came in, and the action was in every part the constant theme of conversation, both in our private, as well as more general moments. Had anything bearing such a term taken place, it would certainly have been canvassed. I was in daily conversation with our wounded in the town. Surely I may say, but that the Duke of Wellington says it, it is as cruel as it is unjust.”

If known to many, it could hardly have escaped the commanding officer of the corps most interested. The fact that Sir George Wood did not write his despatches to the Ordnance until the 24th June,—that during the six days’ interval since the battle he had been constantly with the Duke,—and yet that he could write as follows, proves most clearly that the Duke himself cannot have been aware of what he afterwards wrote to Lord Mulgrave, and that his letter must have been based on subsequent malicious and worthless testimony. The wording of Sir George Wood’s letters have an almost providential bearing on the point at issue; and could not have been used, had there been even a doubt as to the conduct of the Corps.

“I beg leave,” he wrote, “to call the attention of His Lordship the Master-General to the skill and intrepidity so eminently displayed by the British and German Artillery. The accompanying return of their loss will show how much they participated in the action, and I can assure His Lordship the Master-General, that, notwithstanding their being outnumbered by the Artillery of the enemy, their merits never shone more conspicuous than on this occasion. It now remains for me to express with much pleasure and satisfaction that every officer and man in the field of battle did their duty.”

With his despatch, Sir George wrote a private letter to General Macleod, in which the following passage occurs: Ibid. “I do assure you, I have not words to express the extreme good conduct of the Corps. All exerted themselves, both officers and men, and such a conflict of guns never was in the memory of man.”

But there are recorded, also, the opinions of the Generals of other arms, under whose immediate command various troops and brigades served: and who would have known had any misconduct occurred among them, better than the Duke himself, on account of the more limited field of their observation. General Colquhoun Grant’s complimentary Vide p. 436. order with reference to Colonel Webber Smith’s Troop has already been quoted. The following order was issued by Dated Nivelle, 20 June, 1815. Lord Hill: “The highly distinguished conduct of the 2nd Division, and Colonel Mitchell’s Brigade of the 4th Division, who had the good fortune to be employed in the memorable action, merit His Lordship’s highest approbation; and he begs that ... Colonel Gold, commanding Royal Artillery of the 2nd Corps, ... Major Sympher, commanding a troop of Horse Artillery, King’s German Legion, Captain Napier (to whose lot it fell to command the 9-pounder Brigade, 2nd Division, on the death of Captain Bolton), will accept his best thanks for their exemplary conduct, and will be pleased to convey his sentiments to the officers, non-commissioned officers, and men under their command.”

The following extract from the 5th Division orders, by Sir James Kempt, speaks equally favourably of another Dated 19 June, 1815. brigade: “The British Brigade of Artillery commanded by Major Rogers, and the Hanoverian Brigade commanded by Major Heisse, were most nobly served, and judiciously placed; and these officers and men will be pleased to accept of his—i.e. the Major-General’s—particular thanks for their service.”

References to the services of other brigades, and of the Horse Artillery, by the officers of the Corps under whom they served, have already been quoted; and in every case commendation of the warmest description was passed upon them. The following quotation from Sir Augustus Frazer’s correspondence is interesting here, as asserting what was denied by the Duke in his letter to Lord Mulgrave, that the Frazer’s Letters, p. 559. men took shelter in the squares. “The repeated charges of the enemy’s noble cavalry were similar to the first: each was fruitless. Not an infantry soldier moved; and, on each charge, abandoning their guns, our men sheltered themselves between the flanks of the squares. Twice, however, the enemy tried to charge in front; these attempts were entirely frustrated by the fire of the guns, wisely reserved till the hostile squadrons were within twenty yards of the muzzles. In this, the cool and quiet steadiness of the troops of Horse Artillery was very creditable.” This was written two days after the battle; and no man had better opportunity of seeing the conduct of his Corps than the writer. Every historian of the battle endorses this version: and the testimony of an impartial historian always represents the carefully sifted testimony of many. Sir Edward Cust, the laborious military annalist, writes thus: “Suddenly some bugles were heard to sound, and all the Artillerymen, abandoning their guns and tumbrils, ran back into the infantry squares.... In a moment, the Artillery gunners quitted the protection of the squares, and running up to their guns, which were most of them ready loaded, opened heavily with grape and with every species of projectile.... The cavaliers again mounted the plateau; again the gunners abandoned their guns, and took refuge within the squares.” Creasy writes: “As the French receded from each attack, the British Artillerymen rushed forward from the centre of the squares, where they had taken refuge, and plied their guns on the retiring horsemen.” The same is the account given by every historian of the battle. Were they all dreaming? or were they in some conspiracy to conceal the truth? And if so, did the Duke himself join it? In the thirty-seven years of his life after Waterloo, he never contradicted the numerous accounts of the battle, all of which agreed in their statement of the eminent services of the Artillery. Was it consistent in one, who professed belief in an occurrence “known to many,” and who gave that belief as a ground for the refusal of favours,—to allow such passages as the following to be published without contradiction, unless indeed he had subsequently ascertained the worthlessness of his information?50 “There,” wrote ‘Battle of Waterloo,’ by G. R. Gleig, Chaplain-General. Gleig, “every arm did its duty; the Artillery from the beginning to the close of the day.” Again: “In the course of the day every battery was brought into action; and not even the records of that noble Corps can point to Ibid. an occasion in which they better did their work.” Sir James Shaw Kennedy, in summing up his description of the Sir J. S. Kennedy’s ‘Waterloo,’ p. 179. battle, says: “Full scope was thus given for the British Cavalry and Artillery to display their surpassing gallantry and excellence; and they did not fail to display these qualities in an eminent degree.”

But it has been admitted that Captain Mercer’s troop was an exception to the others; that his men did not take Mercer’s ‘Diary,’ p. 312. shelter within the Infantry squares. Let him tell his own story. “Sir Augustus, pointing out our position between two squares of Brunswick Infantry, left us with injunctions to remember the Duke’s orders (to retire within the squares) and to economise our ammunition. The Brunswickers were falling fast ... these were the very boys whom I had but yesterday seen throwing away their arms and fleeing, panic-stricken, from the very sound of our horses’ feet.... Every moment I feared they would again throw down their arms and flee.... To have sought refuge amongst men in such a state were madness; the very moment our men ran from their guns, I was convinced, would be the signal for their disbanding. We had better, then, fall at our posts than in such a situation.” He accordingly made his men stand to the guns, until the cavalry were within a few feet of them; and on each occasion the havoc he wrought among them—as he drove them back—was frightful. The immense heap of dead, lying in front of Mercer’s guns, was such that Sir Augustus Frazer said that, Ibid. p. 343. in riding over the field next day, he “could plainly distinguish the position of C Troop from the opposite height by the dark mass, which, even from that distance, formed a remarkable feature in the field.”

Captain Mercer’s men, therefore, were those who did not obey the Duke’s order. It was a fortunate act of disobedience, Ibid. p. 313. and it saved the Brunswickers; but Captain Mercer was severely punished for it. He was not recommended for brevet rank; and, on his appointment by Lord Mulgrave to a vacant Troop, he was deprived of it by the Duke of Wellington, who got it summarily reduced in 1816. Did, however, the limbers of Captain Mercer’s battery ever leave the ground? That they did not, can be shown most clearly. In his diary, he describes the state of his Troop after a heavy fire, to which it was exposed after the charges of the French Ibid. p. 326. cavalry. In the description, he says: “The guns came together in a confused heap, the trails crossing each other, and the whole dangerously near the limbers and ammunition waggons.” The same description also proves that the frightful losses suffered by the troop took place during the very time when, according to the Duke’s letter, the men and limbers would have been off the field. In going to take up the position, they moved at a gallop, and in so compact a body, that the Duke cried out: “Ah! that’s the way I like to see Horse Artillery move!” In a short time, such was the havoc committed among men and horses, that Captain Mercer wrote: “I sighed for my poor troop; it was already a wreck.”

With regard to the insinuation as to the lack of artillery at the end of the battle, it is shown clearly by Siborne, in his model of the battle as it was at a quarter before 8 P.M., that thirteen Troops and Brigades of the Royal Artillery were in action, when the final attack took place; this being the entire number with the army. Of these, some were so crippled by losses—as Mercer’s was—that they were unable to join in the pursuit; and possibly some recollection of this fact may have been in the Duke’s mind when he wrote. That the artillery fire, however, at the end of the day was slack from the cause stated in the Duke’s letter is an utter mistake; nor do the French seem to have found it very slack, as will be seen presently.

One word before appealing to a few other historians. If such conduct had taken place, as is described in the letter under consideration, it would have been bruited over the whole army. Concealment, or collusion, would have been impossible; enquiries would have been officially instituted. To believe that such an occurrence could have been kept quiet, requires a considerably greater stretch of credulity, than to believe that the Duke of Wellington was misinformed. In fact, that such unanimity of testimony to one version, and such a general agreement to be silent to another, should be possible, unless the former were true, and the latter imaginary, would be nothing short of a miracle. One or two miracles of this description would demolish all belief in history.

In the earliest and most detailed account of the Battle of Waterloo, the tenth edition of which was published in 1817, and which is called ‘The Battle of Waterloo, also of Ligny, and Quatre Bras, described by the series of accounts published by authority, by a near observer;’ edited by Captain G. Jones, the following passage occurs: “No account yet published of the battle, seen by the Editor, has mentioned in adequate terms the effect of our artillery at Waterloo—no English account at least. The enemy felt it, and in their manner of expressing themselves have passed the greatest compliments. A French account, given in our preceding pages, says: ‘The English artillery made dreadful havoc in our ranks.’... ‘The Imperial Guard made several charges, but was constantly repulsed, crushed by a terrible artillery, that each minute seemed to multiply.’51 These invincible grenadiers beheld the grape-shot make day through their ranks; they closed promptly and coolly their shattered ranks.”... “In proportion as they ranged up the eminence, and darted forward on the squares, which occupied its summit, the Artillery vomited death upon them, and killed them in masses.... In an account given by an officer of the ‘Northumberland,’ of Napoleon’s conversation on board that ship, he says: ‘Bonaparte gives great credit to our Infantry and Artillery.’” Again: “The artillery on both sides was well served, but Bonaparte had upwards of 250 pieces in the field. Notwithstanding our inferiority in this arm, which was still more apparent from the size of the enemy’s guns (being 12-pounders, ours only 9 and 6), than from their numbers, ours were so well fought, that I believe it is allowed by all they did equal execution.... See also the account of Captain Bolton and Napier’s Brigade of Foot Artillery, from which it appears the Artillery had turned the enemy, previous to the advance of the Guards. The French displayed the greatest rage and fury; they cursed the English while they were fighting, and cursed the precision with which the English grape-shot was fired, which ‘was neither too high nor too low, but struck right in the middle.’”

From the many writers who have done credit to the exertions and courage of the Artillery at Waterloo, three more extracts will be made.

In proof of the activity of the Corps at the end of the day, the following quotation, from an author already mentioned, Gleig. is given. In describing the reception given to the French Imperial Guard, he says: “The English gunners once more plied their trade. It was positively frightful to witness Kennedy, p. 142. the havoc that was occasioned in that mass.” Sir James Shaw Kennedy also describes the strength of the British artillery fire at the end of the day.

In a Paper on ‘The Campaign of Waterloo,’ which appeared in the ‘United Service Journal,’ in 1834, the following passage occurs: “If we admit that, during this arduous and terrible day, the British Infantry acted up to the right standard of soldiership, which their long career of victory had established, it must be added that the Artillery actually surpassed all expectation, high as, from their previous conduct, that expectation naturally was. In point of zeal and courage, the officers and men of the three arms were of course fully upon a par; but the circumstances of the battle were favourable to the Artillery; and certainly the skill, spirit, gallantry, and indefatigable exertion which they displayed, almost surpasses belief.”

Only one more witness will be called from the ranks of historians. Hooper, in his work on Waterloo, to which he devoted eight years, and in the compilation of which he used every known authority on both sides, made use of words which appropriately close this argument: “The Artillery, so devoted and effective, gathered another branch from the tree of honour.”

APPENDIX B.
The Royal Artillery and the Magnetic Survey of the Globe.

After the peace of 1815 officers of Royal Artillery had little opportunity for active employment or staff duty. Among other officers who turned their attention to employments out of the ordinary routine were General Sir Edward Sabine and the late Colonel Colquhoun. The latter officer made a voyage to the Arctic Seas as an amateur whaler, took employment in connection with a South American Mining Company, and, before his appointment to the Carriage Department, in which he did most excellent service for many years—till nearly the date of the Crimean war—commanded the Artillery of Sir de Lacy Evans’s Spanish Legion, and was employed with the naval expeditions sent to Spain and to the coast of Syria.

Sir Edward Sabine began a long scientific career by accompanying the late Sir Edward Parry to the North Polar Seas in 1819-20, as the scientific observer of his expedition. His interest in scientific pursuits, and especially in the determination of the figure of the Earth and in the science of terrestrial magnetism, has continued to the present date. He filled the office of Secretary of the Royal Society from 1828 to 1829, that of Foreign Secretary from 1845 to 1850, and that of Treasurer from 1850 to 1861; and he was President from 1861 to 1871, when he retired from office. In 1839, the Royal Society and British Association procured the sanction of the Government for a naval expedition to the Antarctic Seas, and for the establishment of four fixed magnetic and meteorological observatories at four stations widely apart, namely, Hobarton, in Van Diemen’s Land, Cape Town, St. Helena, and Toronto. The station at Hobarton was undertaken by the Admiralty, and given to officers of the late Sir James Ross’s Antarctic expedition. The establishment of the other observatories was, under the authority of the Master-General and Board of Ordnance, entrusted to Royal Artillery officers, with non-commissioned officers as assistants, who were employed under the orders of the Deputy Adjutant-General and of Sir Edward (then Major) Sabine, as an ordinary staff duty. The officers successively employed were Lieutenants (now Major-Generals) F. Eardley-Wilmot, W. J. Smythe, J. H. Lefroy, C. J. B. Riddell, and H. Clerk; Lieutenant (now Colonel) Younghusband and the late Colonel H. J. Strange.

The magnetic instruments employed, of singular elegance and precision, were designed by the Rev. Humphrey Lloyd (now Provost) of Trinity College, Dublin, by whom the officers were instructed in their manipulation at the Magnetic Observatory in the College grounds, the only one then existing in the United Kingdom. The discovery which had been made of the simultaneous manifestation of magnetical disturbance over a wide extent of the globe rendered it desirable that the observations at all the stations should be taken at the same moment of absolute time; and, in compliment to Professor Gauss, to whom magnetic science was so deeply indebted, Goettingen time was universally adopted. Observations of the three elements—Declination, Horizontal Force, and Vertical Force—were made every two hours, day and night, and with such strictness that, if by any accident the right moment was lost, the observation was entered in red ink, with a note of the number of seconds elapsed. Once a month, on what was called “Term Day,” the observations were prosecuted at intervals of a few minutes for twenty-four hours uninterruptedly, and a similar course was adopted whenever a magnetic storm declared itself, and persevered in until the storm passed away, a period, occasionally, of as much as thirty hours.

The observatories were established originally for three years, but were continued, in the case of the Cape and St. Helena, for a second term of the same length, and in that of Toronto for three terms. At the conclusion of these terms the St. Helena observatory was discontinued, and the remaining observatories were taken over by the local governments.

Lieutenant Clerk commenced his magnetic employment by a cruise in the Antarctic Seas for a magnetic survey. Lieutenant Lefroy carried out a magnetic survey of a considerable portion of the Hudson’s Bay territories, and Lieutenant Eardley-Wilmot a survey of the Cape Colony.

The observations made at the Ordnance and Naval Observatories have been published under the direction of Sir Edward Sabine, who has had an office for the purpose at In November, 1871. Woolwich, which has been subsequently removed to the Kew Observatory.

The brief summary given above of the operations which earned for so many Artillery officers the blue riband of Science,—Fellowship of the Royal Society,—would establish to a great extent that which its most distinguished officers have always sought to secure for the Regiment,—a scientific reputation. But in the career of Sir Edward Sabine, so briefly alluded to, there has been one continued proof of the possibility of a soldier attaining the highest eminence in the world of science. Although personally unknown to many of his brother officers, his fame has been the pride of all; and has been felt to reflect a lustre, unprecedented in the profession, upon the Corps of which he is a member. Many readers of these pages will remember the reception given to him when, with the other Colonels-Commandant, he was persuaded during the present year to revisit the head-quarters of the Regiment. In the enthusiasm with which he was greeted by old and young, there was an unmistakable evidence of an esprit de corps, which, while admitting the claims of the scientific world at large upon their distinguished comrade, yet determined that it should be known to him that his honours were doubly dear to them because he was one of themselves.

In the sketch of the Magnetic Survey of the Globe given above, there would be a great omission if it were not stated how much the employment of Artillery officers in these operations was due to the previous labours and successes of Sir Edward Sabine. It was in 1817, two years after the conclusion of the war, that the first Polar Expedition was prepared. The Admiralty, to whom the preparations were entrusted, applied to the President and Council of the Royal Society to recommend a person who should be competent to conduct the researches in Physics and Natural History. General Mudge—already mentioned in this work—was then at the head of the British Trigonometrical Survey, and was a member of the Council of the Royal Society. It may be here mentioned, in passing, that in those days the Artillery and Engineers had the alternate direction of the Trigonometrical Survey, now apparently vested exclusively in the latter. Sir Edward Sabine was already favourably known, not merely to General Mudge, but also to other leading members of the Council of the Royal Society, such as Young, Kater, Wollaston, and Davy,—on account of some works which he had written, one being on the Birds of North America, in which country he had served during the war of 1812-14. After passing a severe examination, with great credit, Sir Edward Sabine’s appointment to the Polar Expedition was sanctioned by Lord Mulgrave, then Master-General of the Ordnance: and early in 1818 he sailed in the ‘Isabella,’ making his first Pendulum station at Hare Island, in Baffin’s Bay, in the spring of 1818. The results of his experiments, then and subsequently, appeared in the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ and in a work entitled ‘Pendulum and other Experiments,’ published in 1825, at the cost of Government, on the recommendation of the Duke of Wellington, who had succeeded Lord Mulgrave as Master-General of the Ordnance.

It was Sir Edward’s hope—in which, however, he was disappointed—that a series of Pendulum experiments on the continental surface comprised between the high Canadian latitudes and the shores of the Mexican Sea, should also be undertaken. He has lived, however, to see the same object admirably accomplished on the continent of British India between Cape Comorin and the Higher Himalaya, under the able direction of Colonel Walker of the Royal (Indian) Engineers,—and to take himself a final part in the completion of the series, at the Kew Physical Observatory, by Captain Heaviside, R.E., and the men of the Indian Engineers, employed on that service by Colonel Walker. It may be said without exaggeration that the support given by Sir Edward—as President of the Royal Society—to Colonel Walker’s propositions, and the earlier experiments made by himself in the same field, have been among the highest services rendered by any man to science. Among the many Artillery officers who, since the peace of 1815, have sought to make a return to their country by their devotion to physical science, Sir Edward Sabine stands facile princeps:—and he has had the satisfaction of living to see, not merely his experiments carried to maturity, but also the inferences, which he did not hesitate to draw with confidence from his own earlier experiments, confirmed by the results of the labours of others. The results of his experiments, which claimed to be sufficiently extensive to justify the conclusion which they Transactions of Royal Astronomical Society. were held to establish of the measure of the ellipticity in the northern portion of the globe, have received an increased value since the published results of a similar series in the southern hemisphere by Captain Henry Foster, from the fact of their mutual agreement.

These earlier services of Sir Edward Sabine supplied the ground on which the then Master-General (Lord Vivian) justified,—and on which Sir Robert Peel, as head of the Government, approved,—his nomination to the superintendence of the Magnetic Observatories in 1839, fourteen years after the publication by him of the work mentioned above, ‘Pendulum and other Experiments.’ It was while he held this appointment, that he directed the Magnetic Survey of the Globe, in which so many Artillery officers had the good fortune to take a leading part. -

APPENDIX C.

Tabular Statement showing the Date of Formation, and former Designation, of every Battery of the Regiment now in the service.

N.B.—The reader should look at the explanatory notes before using the Tables.

NOTES TO APPENDIX C.