A Bloody Day. Dan Harvey
and admirers, ‘the Slashers’ ought not in fact to have been marching down along Dublin’s quayside that May morning, as they had previously sailed from Cork on a transatlantic journey some four months previously. Unfavourable winds, however, made them return to the port of ‘Cove’ (Cobh or, Queenstown) and kept them ashore until mid-March. With the clearing of the adverse weather, they set sail once more, their second attempt no more successful than their first, a storm making them seek safe refuge back in harbour the same night. With the war against the ‘Yankees’ ending, their presence in North America was deemed redundant and they were sent to the north of Ireland, only then to learn the dramatic news of Napoleon’s escape from Elba and his bold bid for Empire once more. The 28th Foot were one of twelve veteran Peninsular War infantry battalions to now be heading for Belgium, this time embarked from Dublin.
Belgium, as we know it today, was then in fact part of the new part-French, part-Dutch Kingdom of the Netherlands, lying to the north of France. British regiments were making for it in haste from America, Ireland, England, and elsewhere. Not all would make it on time. Wellington would dearly have loved to have with him, as the core of his army, the bulk of those troops who had served with him in the Peninsula. In the event, he had to do with only part of that army. Apart from the King’s German Legion (KGL) and a few other exceptions, Wellington did not hold the remainder of his allies, Dutch and Belgians mostly, in terribly high regard due to their uncertain quality and lack of experience, many young and untried. This is what he meant when he spoke of his Waterloo army as being ‘infamous’. This Anglo-Dutch or, Anglo-Allied Army was to link with the Prussians and together advance from Belgium (The Netherlands) and fight Napoleon on French soil. This army was forming up, and converging on Belgium were British regiments at different stages of preparedness, the 28th Foot amongst them. Among the ranks of the 28th were the newcomers, freshly recruited in Ireland, along with the more seasoned experienced Peninsular War veterans and the old campaigners.
Among the officers of the 28th were a number from Ireland, including their second-in-command, Major Robert Nixon of Mullynesker, son of Alexander Nixon, the High Sheriff of Fermanagh. He had seen previous service in Egypt and the Peninsula and was to assume command of the 28th on the wounding of its commander. Also there was Captain Richard Kelly from Galway, who likewise took command after the wounding of Major Nixon, until he too was wounded. He had a brother, Major T.E. Kelly, who fought at Waterloo with the 95th Rifles. There was a Captain Thomas English from Armagh, who had prior service in the Peninsula and was to be wounded at Waterloo. There was also a Captain Charles Peter Teulon from Bandon, County Cork. Lieutenant John Wellington Shelton, heir of John Shelton of Rossmore House, Limerick, had also served in the Peninsula and was to be four times wounded at Waterloo. Lieutenant Robert Prescott Eason, from a well to do family in Cork City, had served in the Peninsular War and had distinguished himself at the Passage of the Douro. He had received a number of wounds in the course of the war and was again wounded at Waterloo. One of these wounds was to the head, and in the 1830s as an in-mate of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin, symptoms were to resurface and cause him difficulties.
The Duke of Wellington (The National Gallery of Ireland).
With the rest of the 28th Foot they all began boarding the transport ships from the stonewalled quays of the River Liffey next to Dublin’s Carlisle (now O’Connell) Bridge. From the bridge’s parapet, the onlookers had a perfect view of the scene, a ‘live’ embarkation in progress, a regiment going to war. With a sense of horror they witnessed an older soldier who was stumbling along a gangplank fall into the murky, cold waters of the Liffey. His body would not surface until much later; the first casualty of the hundred days’ conflict that would follow had been recorded.
Inescapably Irish
Wellington, whether he did or did not like being referred to as an Irishman, was inescapably Irish. Born in Dublin in 1769, Arthur was the third (surviving) son of Garret Wesely, first Earl of Mornington, Trim, County Meath. In 1798, subject to the provision of receipt of an inheritance, the family changed the spelling to Wellesly, an earlier form. His father was a prominent Anglo-Irish peer, fathering five sons and one daughter. Wellington’s family heritage was Irish for some six centuries. Descended from an Anglo-Norman family that had settled in Ireland in the 12th century, his ancestors had abandoned Catholicism for the Anglican religion in order to regain their sequestered lands. Few Ascendancy families were totally isolated, and many had a mixture of Gaelic, Norman, and English descent. He spent his early years in Ireland between two houses, Dangan Castle, three miles north of Summerhill on the Trim road in County Meath, and one on Merrion Street, Dublin. He was educated both in Trim and in Dublin. A downturn in the family’s finances, his father having overspent on lavish parties and continual ornamental improvements to his estate, required a move to Chelsea in London where the living conditions were cheaper. After his father’s sudden death, the eldest son, Richard, took matters in hand and began to attempt to restore an order to their affairs, whereupon Arthur, a quiet, lonely boy, spent two unhappy years in Eaton before the family relocated in Brussels. Now 16, he was regarded by his somewhat despairing mother as ungainly and uncomfortable in company, with little evident academic leanings, and she decided to send her ‘ugly boy Arthur’ to a military academy at Angers in France to learn a useful trade. Arthur acquired French with a good accent along with a new-found interest and a self-confidence. Commissioned first into a Highland Regiment, his brother Richard then secured an appointment for him as aide-de-camp to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and so Arthur returned to Ireland and soon also became a sitting MP for Trim in the Irish Parliament.
The so-called Ascendancy contained elements of all ethnic groups, and it is not possible to isolate a distinct ‘Anglo-Irish’ class. The Ascendancy was simply the class that owned the land and ran the country by a mixture of means, regardless of the ethnic or religious mix in their make-up and background, though the majority were Anglican Protestant. As opposed to how nationality is understood more strictly now, those of that class could then consider themselves, and did, to be both Irish and British at the one time. The often quoted remark of Wellington disowning his Irishness – that ‘just because you were born in a stable does not necessarily make you a horse’– is neither definitively attributable to him to nor is the context in which it was supposedly said understood. The words may have been uttered by him in a discussion in which someone made a remark about a particular Irish unit having a reputation for heavy drinking, when he wished to distance himself from this, meaning that because he too was Irish did not necessarily make him a heavy drinker. He was equally attributed with the remark that ‘the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eaton’, a school and a time of his life of which he did not have happy memories. There is little likelihood that Wellington ever uttered either remark, and every likelihood that he uttered neither.
Wellington’s Irishness is not in question. It could not have been then, as it cannot be now. He would have known this at the time, and he would not have seen his Irishness as mutually exclusive to his Englishness. He would have regarded himself as both, something that was commonly understood by the Ascendancy class of the time. To a large extent the Anglo-Irish officer class regarded themselves, and in turn were regarded, as Irish, British, or English simultaneously. They were not obliged to choose between identities. If they chose to ignore any aspect of their simultaneous identities, it is doubtful that they could have actually achieved that, as this is simply how they were regarded. Wellington had an inescapable identity, and this inherited identity was inescapably Irish.
‘Clockwork Musketry’
Fire-power was the most decisive factor on the battlefield, and whoever brought the most of it to bear invariably won. More precisely, it was the effect that massed, well-packed lines of infantry produced by steadily delivering a constant out-pouring of volley fire that mattered. In short, it was its ‘stopping power’ that was important. The Battle of Waterloo was a specific instance of this. Napoleon wanted to destroy Wellington’s army, which, to survive, had to stand its ground unflinchingly. Waterloo was where Wellington’s cautious but courageous defensive posture was to be pitted against Napoleon’s offensive manoeuvring élan and verve.
Fighting formation brought fire-power to bear. The singular soldier, a trained man with his muzzle-loaded,