Donald E. Graves - Dragon Rampant

Frontispiece:Wellington Memorial

A sergeant of the 23rd Foot, Royal Welch Fusiliers, stands guard over the statue of the Duke of Wellington, his former commander-in-chief, near Apsley House in London. (Photograph by Michael J. Ellis)

Also by Donald E. Graves

Fix Bayonets! Being the Life and Times of Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Pearson, 17811847 (Montreal, 2006)

Century of Service: The History of the South Alberta Light Horse (Toronto, 2005)

More Fighting for Canada: Five Battles, 17601944 (Toronto, 2004)

Another Place, Another Time: A U-boat Officers Wartime Album (Toronto, 2004)

In Peril on the Sea: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Battle of the Atlantic (Toronto, 2003)

Quebec 1759: The Siege and the Battle by C. P. Stacey & D. E. Graves (Toronto, 2002)

Guns Across the River: The Battle of the Windmill, 1838 (Toronto, 2001)

Fighting for Canada: Seven Battles, 17581945 (Toronto, 2000)

Field of Glory: The Battle of Cryslers Farm, 1813 (Toronto, 1999)

The Incredible War of 1812 by J.M. Hitsman & D.E. Graves (Toronto, 1999)

South Albertas: A Canadian Regiment at War (Toronto, 1998)

Where Right and Glory Lead! The Battle of Lundys Lane (Toronto, 1997)

Soldiers of 1814: American Enlisted Mens Memoirs of the Niagara Campaign (Youngstown, 1996)

Red Coats and Grey Jackets: The Battle of Chippawa, 1814 (Toronto, 1994)

Merry Hearts Make Light Days: The War of 1812 Journal of John Le Co uteur (Ottawa, 1993)

Normandy 1994: The Canadian Summer with W.J. McAndrew and M.J. Whitby (Montreal, 1993)

This book is dedicated to

and, in particular, to

Dragon Rampant: The Royal Welch Fusiliers at War, 17931815

This edition published in 2010 by Frontline Books,
an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
47 Church Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS
www.frontline-books.com, info@frontline-books.com

Published in Canada 2010 by Robin Brass Studio Inc.
www.rbstudiobooks.com

Copyright Donald E. Graves, 2010

The right of Donald E Graves to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN: 978-1-84832-551-7

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP data record for this title is available from the British Library

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Graves, Donald E. (Donald Edward), 1949
Dragon Rampant: the Royal Welch Fusiliers at War/Donald E. Graves.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84832-551-7

1. Great Britain. Army. Royal Welch Fusiliers-History. 2. Napoleonic
Wars, 18001815-Participation, British. 3. Waterloo, Battle of, Waterloo,
Belgium, 1815. I. Title.

UA652.R9G73 2010 356.1130941 C2010-900010-2

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Printed in the UK by MPG Books Limited

Maps and Diagrams

Illustrations in text

Plates

BECAUSE OF THE SCALE OF THE TWO GREAT WARS of the twentieth century, the long stand-off with Communism that followed, and the turmoil since the fall of the Iron Curtain, we tend to forget the length and depth of the titanic struggle with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France that so consumed the world from 1792 to 1815. Consume the world it did for the war was fought in a thousand places: from the wilds of North America, to the Caribbean, to Spain and the Mediterranean, to Central Europe and Russia, to India and the South China Seas. Such is the gulf of time that lies between now and then it is hard to remember that this was a life-or-death struggle, a contest from which only one set of beliefs would emerge intact. The sacrifices of those who fought in it are no less, therefore, than the sacrifices made by those who fought in any of our more recent wars.

This book is essentially the story of some of those who made those sacrifices sometimes to the ultimate degree. Some have become iconic figures of folklore like the camp-follower and army wife Jenny Jones, or the fictional Thomas Atkins, or the now-neglected poetess Felicia Hemans, or the battle-scarred commanding officers like Henry Ellis and Thomas Pearson. Others just did what they had to do and, as Holy Scripture puts it, have become as though they had never been born. We are very fortunate in the archives of the Royal Welch Fusiliers to have such a wealth of historical material of this great conflict from both the famous and the obscure. The Royal Welch Fusiliers were present at almost every major engagement fought by the British army in the European theatres of war between 1798 and 1815; it is this which makes the book possible, just as the Regiments service in the American Revolutionary War made Mark Urbans Fusiliers possible. We are fortunate too in having been able to persuade Donald E. Graves to undertake it. With his depth of knowledge of nineteenth-century warfare and his understanding of the Regiment through his biography of the redoubtable Thomas Pearson, there is no one better able to tell the tale.

During his researches, Donald Graves has shed new light on many old problems and increased our knowledge of many things. Not least of these is the degree to which the Royal Welch Fusiliers really became a Welsh regiment during the early nineteenth century, something that had previously been thought had not happened until after 1914. We now know more, too, about the battle of Albuera one of the bloodiest days of the British army; and about Waterloo. Not one of the greatest battles of the period Austerlitz, Borodino, Bautzen, Leipzig were all bigger Waterloo was by far the biggest battle experienced by the British. Because of this, and because it was decisive in that it marked the end of one period of history and the beginning of another, it left a folk memory in Britain that did not fade for a hundred years.

So whether you are a serious follower of regimental history, or a general reader of Napoleonic War history, or a scholarly researcher, or just a military buff there is something in this book for you. I thank Donald E. Graves for his wonderful work, I also thank his wife, Dianne, for being so understanding while he wrote it, and I commend Dragon Rampant with the very greatest pleasure.

Jonathon Riley

Master of the Armouries

HM Tower of London

THE EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON opposite Apsley House in London is a well-known landmark. The work of Sir Joseph Boehm, it portrays the duke guarded by four colossal bronze figures each representing a soldier of one of the peoples that constitute the British nation: an English guardsman, an Irish dragoon, a Scots highlander and a sergeant of the 23rd Foot, Royal Welch Fusiliers. It is this latter figure, resplendent in bearskin and armed with sword and pike that concerns us here, as the pages that follow are the story of the Welch Fusiliers during the long war that was waged in Europe between 1793 and 1815. In the pages that follow I have often chosen to call that conflict the Great War with France the name by which it was popularly known in Britain, at least up to 1914.