Free Rifles: Six Years With Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters by Mark Urban Page B

Wellington’s manners were of the eighteenth-century school, and his politics distinctly conservative, he was all for developing the use of light troops. He rejected, for example, the old system of forming ad hoc battalions from the light companies of several line regiments, favouring instead the deployment of specially trained corps of these men like those under Craufurd’s command. Wellington soon realised that these regiments – the 43rd, 52nd and 95th – were among the very best troops he had. He also rejected the doctrine of many conservative generals that riflemen, owing to their slower rate of fire and skirmishers’ vulnerability to cavalry, could only ever be deployed in penny packets, supporting regular infantry. Craufurd, although a conservative in many matters, accepted that the 95th could be used as a regiment rather than being broadcast about like the riflemen of the 60th were. Wellington and the commander of the Light Division between them came to the conclusion that the way to nullify clouds of French light infantry on the battlefield was to use their own Green Jackets or red-coated light infantry in large numbers too.
    In the early part of 1810, though, they were not contemplating a general action; rather, they needed to frustrate the various French probing movements on the upland frontier. The Rifles were posted in villages about the uplands with savage-sounding names like Mata de Lobos (Death of Wolves), eventually taking up their position in Barba del Puerco (Pig’s Beard) towards the end of February. This followed two months in which they had been marching hither and thither almost constantly, time which had afforded Second Lieutenant Simmons a chance to see the less likeable side of Captain Peter O’Hare, his company commander.
    O’Hare was a rough diamond typical of the Irish adventurers who made up much of the 95th’s officer cadre. If he was harsh with the young officers, that was because this was the Rifles system and because he had never gained anything easily in his military career. O’Hare had joined the Rifles when they formed and served under Beckwith’s predecessor, a man who believed in tough superintendence of his officers, one of them commenting, ‘With him the field officers must first be steady, and then he goes downwards: hence the privates say, we had better look sharp if he is so strict with the officers.’

    For someone who had experienced O’Hare’s slow rise through the ranks, beasting some young puppy of a subaltern came all too easily. Simmons noticed that each time they were quartered in a Portuguese household during their march up from Campo Maior, O’Hare would take the best sleeping quarters and give the next best to his company’s two lieutenants. ‘Being the junior officer,’ Simmons noted, ‘I consequently got the last choice of quarters, which too frequently was a dirty floor with my blanket only. Captain O’Hare did not show me much kindness.’
    The captain’s rough speech and slow advancement marked him out to officers and men alike as someone bereft of even the smallest quantum of patronage. O’Hare’s soldiers believed him to be such a rough one that he must have started his career in the ranks. This was not quite true, for he had begun his military career as a surgeon’s mate in the 69th Foot. This post was a sort of halfway house between the rank and file and an officer’s commission. However, O’Hare’s men were right in one essential: a surgeon’s mate could be flogged for his misdemeanours, something quite out of the question for an officer.
    He was not long in that lowly station: having been commissioned in the 69th, O’Hare had taken the opportunity offered by the creation of the Rifle Corps to transfer out of his original regiment and reinvent himself. His officers in this new corps appreciated his diligence and bravery, providing him at last with patrons to fight for his advancement. O’Hare had served as adjutant, a sign of his