Urban - Rifles: six years with Wellingtons legendary sharpshooters

The 95th Rifles became the British Armys best-known regiment at a time of some very potent national myths. Wellingtons riflemen have found a niche in the military historical pantheon alongside Cromwells Ironsides or the Desert Rats.

In modern times they have been lionised by popular culture in novels as well as television drama. C. S. Forester featured riflemen in his books, and Bernard Cornwells Sharpe series has brought tales of the Green Jackets derring-do to millions.

It is apparent then that their exploits have been recounted in more or less embroidered forms quite a few times before. Surprisingly, though, nobody has ever written a proper history of the regiment, and in particular of its 1st Battalion through the period of maximum drama 180915. A colonel in the Rifle Brigade, Willoughby Verner, attempted to tell the full story of all three battalions of his regiment, but never completed his narrative, which ends abruptly two years before the campaigns do.

Whats more, although Verners efforts were deeply impressive for their time, he began publishing his history in 1912. It was a very different age and he wrote for the glory of his regiment. Although he was prepared to confront a few difficult issues, Verner self-censored in a way that would be unacceptable to most readers today.

I knew that if I was to push this narrative well beyond Verner or any other previous account, I would have to exploit many new sources of information, as well as looking again at the old ones. My starting point was the existing published memoirs of several soldiers of the 95th, as well as Verners account.

Then I was able to get to most of Verners working papers, which allowed me to revisit his research, including some vital primary sources that had for many years been unavailable to other writers. After that I dug out some other primary material such as letters or journals that he did not have access to and which has never been used in published form before. Then the various claims of authors or diarists had to be checked against official records, such as the Muster Lists or Casualty Returns at the Public Record Office in Kew. Having performed all of these tasks, I had to search for the French Army version of various key engagements, in order to try to gauge the real effectiveness of the Rifles.

After going through all of these different sources, I needed to find a coherent way of telling the 95ths story. I chose to write it as the saga of the men who embarked at Dover on 25 May 1809. This really gets to the core of Rifles mythology and to all of the legendary regimental characters. There were various compromises inherent in this decision not least that some epic moments in the year prior to this, as well as the stories of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, could not be told in great detail. Be that as it may, the 1st Battalion in May 1809 was a substantially different unit to the one that had fought a few months earlier and it is the interaction between veterans and newcomers that forms a vital subtext to the early part of the book. Also, I have mentioned the 2nd and 3rd Battalions most celebrated exploits in the campaign.

Many soldiers stories are told in this book, but six individuals are flagged up at the start. This book is not the story of these six men perse, but their fate provides a useful reference point as the narrative unfolds.

In recounting the six-year journey to Waterloo with them it is also my aim to give the lay reader a great deal of information about the realities of life in Wellingtons Army and to establish the 95ths pivotal role in creating what we might now recognise as a modern British soldier . It is not a general history of the Iron Dukes campaigns nor of soldiering in the Napoleonic era, so the wider themes are always tackled through the experience of soldiers of the 95th Rifles. I make no apology for dispatching the Battle of Salamanca, perhaps Wellingtons greatest battle, in a few short sentences, since the 1st/95th played almost no part in it.

The result is, I hope, an account of these campaigns that shears away the distortions or recycling of other authors, providing a vivid, truthful account of how these extraordinarily tough men lived, fought and died. It is inevitable, I think, when going back to so many primary sources, that much of the new material that comes to light concerns issues that later authors wanted to screen out such as cowardice, theft or bungling. Because of this, some who rush to judgement may see my book as a debunking or knocking job on the 95th. It is certainly not intended as such, and I hope that my admiration for the courage, stoicism and thoughtfulness of many of its officers and men is clear throughout.