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Text originally published in 1897 under the same title.
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GENERAL SIR WM. GABRIEL DAVY, K.C.H., C.B.
CELER ET AUDAX
A SKETCH OF THE SERVICES
OF THE
FIFTH BATTALION SIXTIETH REGIMENT (RIFLES)
DURING THE TWENTY YEARS OF THEIR EXISTENCE
BY
MAJOR-GENERAL GIBBES RIGAUD
L ATE L IEUT .-C OLONEL TH R OYAL R IFLES
What beauties doth Lisboa first unfold!
Her im a ge floating on that noble tide,
Which poets vainly pave with sands of gold,
But now whereon a thousand keels did ride
Of mighty strength, since Albion was allied,
And to the Lusians did her aid afford:
A nation swoln with ignorance and pride,
Who lick yet loathe the hand that waves the sword
To s a ve them from the wrath of Gauls unsparing lord.
Childe Harold, C ant o i . Stanza xvi.
DEDICATI O N
RESPICEADSPICEPROSPICE.
I DEDICATE these pages to the Riflemen of Hereafter, trusting- I may in some measure lead them to emulate the actions of their predecessors;
To the Riflemen of the Present, now serving, or with whom I served for thirty-two years, trusting they will do all they can to gather materials for a complete Record of the Services of the Sixtieth;
And to the memory of the Riflemen of the Past who fought and won for us, their successors, the honours of which we are so justly proud.
The knights bones are dust,
Their good swords rust,
Their souls are with the saints, I trust.
GIBBES RIGAUD.
, Long Wall, Oxford,
December, 1879.
PREFACE.
The history of the 60th regiment covers a period of one hundred and twenty years. It is seventy years, a long life, since the battle of Talavera was fought; but there are fifty years before thatviz. from 1757 to 1809during all of which the first four battalions of the 60th were at work making history, but no one has attempted to write it.
It was not until Captain Wallace of the 1st battalion 60th Rifles set to work, that even the statistics of the corps, (dull to many readers but most valuable in themselves) were, with great labour by him, collected and published under the title of A Regimental Chronicle.
At the end of his preface Captain Wallace earnestly asked all who were interested in the subject to help him ... to make as complete as possible the volume which he hopes to publish at some future time, containing the historical records of the 60th Kings Royal Rifles.
Berne; one of those who take great interest in the subject, and feeling that he alone, who had gleaned the matter for the history of the earlier battalions could arrange it properly, I turned my thoughts to the 5th battalion.
The 5th battalion existed for twenty years, during which time it went through the whole of the Peninsular War from Roleia to Toulouse, and gained those honours of which the corps is so justly proud. The narrative of its services is therefore a complete episode in the regimental history, and with its disintegration ends what may be called the existence of the old sixtieth, and that of the 1st and 2nd battalions Kings Royal Rifles commences.
I had been entrusted by the Rev. Charles Raikes Davy with all the papers which his father had left, who as Major Davy took the 5th battalion 60th out to Portugal in 1808, and died in command of the 1st battalion 60th Royal Rifles as a General in the Army. These letters and papers gave an interesting connection with the battalion up to 1810-11, and I asked Captain Wallace to send me what he might have got together regarding the 5th 60th, saying I would try and help him with his coming records.
He sent me accordingly all his gleanings, arranged from year to year in a way which greatly assisted the task I had set myself to perform. And there was also, with his memoranda, much which had been kindly given to him by Captain Boyle of the Rifle Brigade, who also made me acquainted with two books of reference (previously unknown to me, but of which I was fortunately able to obtain copies), namely, the Royal Military Chronicles and the Royal Military Calendar.
To trace the history of the 60th in Spain was very difficult, detached as they were from first to last, and this has forced perhaps more of the Peninsular History to be compiled than if I had had to follow an unbroken battalion with its brigade.
I may well use the word compiled, for if plagiarism be a sin, then am I in a state of condemnation. I could not write a new history, so I have taken all that I thought useful to my purpose from others, and have freely copied whole passages from Napier and Gleig, the Wellington Despatches and Sir E. Custs Annals, the Annual Register, or Robinsons Life of Picton. Nor are these all the books I have drawn upon. Little beyond the arrangement can be called original, and it is because the whole is so woven from the threads of others that I found it impossible to be always using inverted commas, or give more than general references at the foot of the pages as to my sources of information.
I often found however that the clearest and best accounts of any action are those written by the Duke himself, and freely have I copied his clear and nervous English.
I knew not till now how difficult it was to write even such a narrative as this, or the care and labour that must be bestowed at times on clearing up a small point; and, if so with me, how much more must it have been the case in a great work like Napiers?
Is it strange that he should sometimes be in error? It would be far stranger if he were always right.
That a Napier should make a wilful misstatement I hold to be impossible, but that the great Sir William at times fell into error, and at times was prejudiced, I cannot doubt, and, rash as it may seem, I have more than once ventured to impugn his accuracy, as in the instance of his stating that the 5th battalion 60th was principally composed of Frenchmen, and that Picton refused to give assistance on the Coa, and in the details of what the third division did at Busaco.
Napiers prejudice against Picton is much to be lamented, because it is very hard to remove a reproach which has been once made and accepted, and even now the memory of Picton suffers from the unjust aspersions which a sentence of Napiers can cast upon it, accepted as his words are by myriads of readers who never perhaps see the defence or contradiction.
Whilst these pages have been in preparation, a most excellent book has been given to the public in Clintons War in the Peninsula, &c., printed for the Chandos Library; yet here again the charge against Picton at the Coa is made and dwelt upon; and again (at p. 387) Wellington is said on the field of Quatre Bras to have ordered Picton, with whom at the time he was barely on speaking terms, to throw forward his line.
