Daniel Nicol's Memoirs
with First Battalion
of Detachments

The Invalid Detachment

by Daniel Nicol

From mountain side to rocky glen,
They hear, they answer Huntly's call,
The gallant Gordons well beloved,
Prepared to fight or fall.

--Regimental Song of the Gordons.

IT was in 1808 that Napoleon, roused to frenzy by the news of the advance of Sir John Moore, declared that he would chase the British armies from the Peninsula. At that moment he commanded two hundred thousand veteran troops, while Moore could only gather from his scattered garrisons a fighting force of twenty-three thousand men.

With these he struck vigorously at the armies commanded by Soult and Ney (at right). In consequence Napoleon changed his plans, and when his generals reported to him that the passes were blocked with snow, he answered that if the British troops could face the rigours of the winter march in the mountains, the men under his command must do likewise, and so, with the loss of many men and animals, the passes were traversed.

Meanwhile the Spanish armies, upon whose support General Moore had relied, rapidly dwindled away, and Moore having by his attack upon Bonaparte's communications succeeded for the time in saving southern Spain, recalled his advance guard and prepared to retreat. The story of what followed is too well known to need repetition here. In the trying marches and continuous fighting of the next four weeks the newly raised regiment--the 92nd or Gordon Highlanders bore their part nobly, and in the battle of Corunna held the post of honour on the left wing. Their losses on that occasion were heavy and included their leader the popular Colonel Napier of Blackstone, an excellent officer.

Previous to the attack of Moore on Napoleon's communications, the British army had been quartered in all the principal towns in the south and west of Spain and of Portugal and in Lisbon large numbers of invalids and convalescents had been assembled. When the news of Napoleon's advance reached Lisbon, these parties and detachments were formed into two battalions of about eleven hundred men each; one company of the first battalion was composed solely of men from the 92nd regiment, the other companies were made up of men belonging to the 42nd, 79fh, and 91st Highlanders, besides some Rifles.

Colonel Greenhill-Gardyne the latest historian of the Gordons, in his most interesting and elaborate work, completed in 1903, has omitted to refer to this company, although in a footnote he mentions the fact that some of the invalids of the regiment had joined what were called the 'Corps of detachments.' The work done by the detached company has however, fortunately.been preserved for us in the hitherto unpublished journal of an ex-sergeant of the regiment, who was with it during the time it formed part of the army commanded by Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had just landed at Mondego Bay.

The crisis in the history of Europe at that moment was intense, for the Germans and Austrians had risen in arms against their French conquerors; and if the British Government had only sent an adequate force into Spain to support the rising of their Spanish and Portuguese allies, there is little doubt that five years fighting in the Peninsula would have been prevented. Instead however, of providing an adequate force, the Ministers resolved to subdivide their magnificent army of ninety thousand men.

This force the Duke of York had collected so that it might be immediately available to strike at whichever point should prove to be the most vulnerable in the armour of the French Colossus, but the Government dispatched a portion of it on the hapless expedition to Walcheren and Antwerp, and sent a second corps to Sicily. Wellesley was thus compelled to accept the command of a force of only twenty thousand men, with which to secure the liberties of twelve millions of Spaniards and to overcome the combined armies of France, at that moment ten times more numerous than his own.

Nicol entered upon his experiences in the Peninsula, which are detailed with so much graphic power in his very interesting manuscript, shortly after the Ignominious convention of Cintra, which for a time liberated Portugal. Incidentally it also saved the French armies at a moment when they might have fallen an easy prey as prisoners into the hands of the newly arrived and highly organised British forces.

While in Lisbon he saw the departure of the Russian fleet, consisting of seven large vessels of the line and a frigate, which had been blockaded in the river by the British fleet, under Sir Charles Cotton, and which in terms of the Convention were allowed to set sail with the Russian colours flying; all to the intense indignation of the soldiers and sailors, who regarded the fleet as a lawful prize stolen fiom them in the moment of victory.

From August till October 1808, the regiment lay in the neighbourhood of Lisbon; and it was on the 1st October, that while on picquet-duty in a ploughed field, Nicol was forced to remain all night exposed to the rain and wind, which produced a fever and invalided him for two months. Meantime the regiment marched into Spain and in the following month began the retreat to Corunna. From the regiment Nicol received the letter of an old comrade telling of his arrival at the Escurial near Madrid, and reporting the approach of the French, who were now advancing under Napoleon, by way of Valladolid. 'We will defeat them,' said the letter-writer, 'with the help of the Spanish army, and return to England by way of France. This prophetic utterance, which was realised in 1814, was the last communication that Nicol had with his regiment for many years.

E. B. L.

More Spanish Adventures

Part 1: Sgt. Robertson's Memoirs of the Corunna Campaign

Part 2: Daniel Nicol's Memoirs with First Battalion of Detachments

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