Chalmette

Dear Sirs,

May I throw a few rocks at your "Corrections to 'Disaster at Chalmette'?"

It was a deceptively simple battle and so has picked up an overload of fable. If you can lay your hands on a copy of my 'Amateurs to Arms!' (Algonguin Books of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1991), it would be helpful in reconstructing the action.

The real major 'what if' was Cochrane's over confidence and hurry. Had he used more small craft in the initial landing, getting some 3,000 to 3,500 men ashore on 23 December, instead of 2,000, Keane might have been able to overwhelm Jackson immediately.

The idea that the Americans were firing blind over the top of their breastwork won't wash. There was nothing effective to make them keep their heads down! Why the 95th wasn't deployed along the port for that mission puzzles me. Packenham had made plans to use 'firing parties' for that purpose during his aborted 1 January attack, but this was left out on the 8th. Americans could take deliberate aim practically without risk.

Your theory that American artillery was the major killer is undoubtedly right. Most of the Americans, contrary to cherished legend, were armed with muskets. Cottee's veteran riflemen were on the American left flank and so had mostly the light infantry and West Indians to take care of. But the destruction of that gallant handful of the 21st Foot that tried to scale the breastwork would have had to be by small arms fire.

The ditch in front of the 21st, 44th, was (as measured afterwards by a British officer) approximately 4 feet deep and 10 feet wide and full of 'brambles'. To add to the difficulties, rains had left the face of the breastwork slippery. Nothing like that could be carried in a rush, if the defenders were serious about holding it.

The American line was 'entered' (excepting the right flank redoubt) by only one or two officers - I have seen possibly two accounts by men who claimed to have done so and found the Americans 'running away' or meekly surrendering. Obviously a case of 'remember with advantages what flats he did that day!' One, seen years ago and undoubtedly thereafter lost, had the officer demanding instant surrender, and being quietly (?) told to look behind him.

Another story I haven't checked out fully is that Jackson ordered his two left flank batteries to cease fire because their smoke made it too difficult for Cottee's and Carroll's men to take aim. Prior to that of course, their guns had been raking the length of the British column.

The American reportedly used standard drill - three ranks, firing and passing to the rear to reload. By December 1814, a good part, possibly a majority of the Tennessee and Kentucky militia had seen service, at least against Indians, some against the British. Also, it was American custom - militia, volunteers, regulars and marines - to take individual aim, which showed up in the number of British casualties, won in fiascos like Bladensburg.

Renny's capture of Jackson's right flank was a fine piece of work that also underscores another bit of Packenham's bad luck - the fog breaking up, except along the river where Renny went in, just as the attack was launched. And that delay was caused by waiting for Thornton, who had been delayed by many things - most of them stemming from Cochrane's impatience (to get at the New Orleans prize money?). I never saw any indication that Renny died 'atop the earthwork.' He was admired by Americans; had he finished so dramatically, they would have noted it.

Packenham's big m1stake was pulling the 93rd off to try to get Gibb's attack moving again - which should have been an obvious lost cause. Had it gone in behind Renny, there was a chance, though they would have hit most of Jackson's 'hard core', the 7th Infantry and Marines.

Your account of the west bank fighting is, to honour a phrase from Field Marshal Montgomery, a 'dog's breakfast.' Thornton got across, much delayed and further downstream than he wished, with all his force except the comparatively worthless West Indians, his guns, and some sailors. The defenders were a mixed lot, poorly armed and worse commanded. Thorton turned them out of two successive (and incomplete) lines, but they put up a fair fight. Thornton and the senior navy officer were both badly wounded. The sailors scattered to loot. Lambert sent Col. Alexander Dickson, RA, to look over the situation, then decided to withdraw the troops to reinforce his battered main army (nothing unauthorized about that!) and there would have been some delay in turning the captured guns on Jackson's flank. They had been carefully spiked by the withdrawing American sailors. Any 'what if there would have involved a major gamble since the 'victorious British' on the west bank could have been reinforced/resupplied only with great difficulty and at grave risk to the defeated British on the east bank.

I have taken my English viewpoint mostly from Sir John Burgogne and J.H. Leslies (ed.) 'Artillery Services in North America in 1814 and 1815', with a careful small infusion of Gleig and Ellis's 'H1story of the 1st West Indians.'

After years of reading and research, I've come to believe that American service in 1812-15 hit the English rather as Korea hit veteran US outfits. It was hard to understand what was happening, and there was a search for excuses. With us, one was those North Korean and Chicom 'hordes' - redefined after we had gotten a handle on the situation, as 'one or more North Joes or Chicoms'. With the British it was usually bad luck, usually in the form of someone ordering a withdrawal just when the Americans were only anxiously seeking to surrender. It was told about Sackets Harbour in 1813, Hattsburg in 1814 and New Orleans in 1815.

Thank you for letting me blow off steam, and congratulations on your magazine.

Col. John R. Elting

British & French Cavalry

Dear Sirs,

With reference to Philip Wright's most interesting study of British & French Cavalry, 1808-14 which appeared in The Age of Napoleon No. 11, the comments below may be of interest to your readers.

In footnote 24, Philip makes a number of comments on the German States and Prussia in this period. British scholars normally have a good grasp of the English language, can manage a bit of schoolboy French but are lost when it comes to understanding the German language. This is apparent in Philip's remarks where he repeats a number of those boring old myths about army and society in 18th and 19th century Germany. If it were not late on a Friday night after a week's hard work, the writer of this letter would produce a list of reading on the subject, refer in detail to his sources, and quote chapter and verse. However, as the many books and numerous articles he has written on this subject over the last fifteen years have already done so, the writer of this letter would merely request the author of the article in question here to read one or two of these.

To deal with the essential points briefly as this is, after all merely a letter to a magazine and not a lecture or essay for academics, may I make the following observations:

1) The reforms of Prussian society, the state and the army were NOT something that occurred from '1807-13' as Philip still seems to think. The initiator of the reform process that continued throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Prussia was actually Frederick the Great. During the period 1972 to 181, it was the same group of people that were involved in reforming the Prussian state and army. To mention a few names: Stein, Hardenberg, Blucher, Yorck, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau. All of these people played an important role in Prussia prior to 1806 as well as after.

2) Philip is quite wrong to say'. . . it was many decades (after 1807­13) before Prussia admitted non-nobles to the officer corps.' Scharnhorst (no, he was NOT named after a battleship) was definitely of non-noble origins, Gneisenau (neither was he) and Yorck (no, that is the RIGHT way of spelling his name, and he was NOT English) were most probably not of noble origins, etc. etc. English speaking h1storians who invented this myth were, as mentioned above, of limited linguistic abilities, established this 'fact' by going through army l1sts, counting the number of officers with a 'von' before their names, one of the few words of German they think they understand, comparing this with the number without a 'von' and coming to the brilliant conclusion that 98% of the Prussian officer corps were aristocrats, ergo the officer corps was dominated by the nobility and nonnobles had restricted access. The only conclusion that anybody who has more than a little knowledge of this subject can reasonably come to is how terribly ignorant and arrogant English speaking h1storians are. The facts are that nobody has done the necessary research to come to such a conclusion, that the necessary records to do this research no longer ex1st and that all such statements are mere conjecture. What is fact is that Scharnhorst received his patent of nobility as part of the 'package' he got when he joined the Prussian Army, that Yorck, Gneisenau and Clausewitz probably added a 'von' to their names as a way of 'getting on' in their careers and that even blue-blooded Prussian 'aristocrats' of the likes of Blucher were in terms of wealth and refinement way behind their 'class brothers' in countries like Britain, France or the USA. The three latter countries were wealthy thanks to the exploitation of their colonies and the slave trade. Liberal Prussia's economy relied on its agrarian base. As Prussia's geographical location was largely on the sandy and relatively infertile North German Plain, that economic base was not exactly one where one could become a rich man. To compare the likes of Wellington with Blucher in the same breath, describing both as 'nobles' or 'aristocrats' is quite wrong. Wellington was a large estate owner. Blucher was a pig farmer.

3) Philip clearly does not understand the social position of the army officer in Prussian society. Frederick William I, the father of Frederick the Great and known by his contemporaries as the 'barbarian of the north', founded the standing army in Prussia. He encouraged the 'Junker' (squirearchy) to enl1st as officers. That way, he gained the loyalty of the land owning classes in Prussia to his government. Instead of having to try to scratch a living out of their 'sand pit', landowners in Prussia, by swearing an oath to their monarch, could draw a steady income from the state. That was a mutually agreeable arrangement. Being a society based on an agrarian economy, the land owners were the strata of the society that had the 'say'. Binding them to their king by oath (and money!) did much to ensure their loyalty and the status quo. In return, Frederick William I and later his son Frederick II (the Great) demanded a high level of professionalism from what were, in effect, by now, civil servants. For Philip to claim that '. . . the German states pre-date Prussia as the first primitive professional armies' merely underlines my point about certain English speaking h1storians.

In conclusion, may I suggest that these English speaking historians learn a bit of German, read a book or two, and stop playing this worn­out 78 rpm record they seem to love. The writer of this letter, after years of trying to put the record straight, does realise that he is probably demanding too much.

Peter Hoffchroer

Jena-Auerstadt

Dear Sirs,

As an early Napoleonic enthusiast I was pleased to see the Jena-Auerstadt order of battle in AoN 11, although I feel bound to point out that Prinz Ludwig Ferdinand von Preussen (Louis Ferdinand to you and I) had been killed in action at Saalefeld (10/10/1806), and with the best will in the world, could not have been at Jena. This did not detract in any way from an excellent journal, I particularly enjoyed the article on Peninsular cavalry. Keep it up!

Magnus Guild

Knapsack

Dear Sirs,

After reading Stuart Reid's excellent article on the knapsack, it brought to mind my experiences on 'campaign' recently, in the harsh terrain of the Southern Crimea. As any re-enactor will be able to tell any historian more accustomed to the armchair than the road, the recommended list of equipages; to be carried by a late-eighteenth century soldier through to 1815 using the Trotter pack resembles attempts to set records on how many bodies you can get in a mini-car or telephone box. When you do manage to cram inside, lash to, or otherwise dangle, all the relevant kit and provisions in the pack, you then find it is almost impossible to support.

In a similar vein, discarding the blanket (you will if you have to carry a greatcoat in addition to it!) and settling down at night, with your legs through the sleeves of your greatcoat - this is not as simple as it sounds! - and if you need to get up quickly in the night it affords your comrades some amusement as you struggle with taking boots off, putting boots on, disentangling one leg from t'other. The greatcoat only buttons up mid-chest too - I carried a scrap of waste 'Spanish' cloth to drape around my neck and shoulders, to keep out the draught. Spare worsted socks make a good pair of mittens on a cool night too! A rag to tie around your ears and nose helps too.

On the march, you quickly realise that you have some items that you could easily do without, for the sake of a few ounces less weight. All my brushes went west" the blackball, some linen (the smell you get used to anyway!), my liquor flask and tinware, to be replaced with a 'Spanish' leather bota (farewell hot drinks - hello alcoholism!), and various other 'adjustments.

The first night it rains will quickly make you appreciate the need to look after your tinderbox with great care. Wood is no problem to an experienced campaigner, but making fire is a lifesaver in the mountains. A stub of candle is worth the extra weight to carry - it also has many other useful attributes. Tallow is best - in a pinch, eat it! Prolonged bad weather to a period soldier makes life a bugbear. It also brings home the old adage that only one soldier in twenty succumbed to death by enemy action in the Peninsular War - disease and exposure killed far more than bullets.

Can you fold your greatcoat and tie it to your pack to acheive the neat look shown in most period sketches and modem illustrations?

Of the two things I classed as luxuries, I reclassified them as ,necessities' after a particularly gruelling trip into the hills. One was the liquor flask, and the other tobacco.

Richard Moore, Ninety-Fifth Regiment (Rifles) N.A.