Dragon Rampant
The Royal Welch Fusiliers at War, 1793-1815

Publisher: Frontline/Pen & Sword in the United Kingdom and Robin Brass Studio in Canada

ISBN 978-1-84832-551-7

Details: 302 pages, 6 x 9 inches, more than 70 illustrations, maps and tactical diagrams, source notes, bibliography and index

Published: April 2010

Suggested Retail Price: £25 in the UK, $45 in Canada, $50 in the USA (Price may vary)

"I never saw any regiment in such order," remarked the Duke of Wellington shortly before the battle of Waterloo, "it was the most complete and handsome military body I ever looked at." The object of the duke's admiration was the 23rd Regiment of Foot, the Royal Welch Fusliers and Dragon Rampant is the story of this famous fighting unit during the Great War with France, 1793-1815.

Based on rare and untouched memoirs and correspondence as well as new research, Dragon Rampant offers insights into how the British army, scorned by even its own countrymen, evolved into a professional force that would triumph over some of the greatest generals of the time.

Told largely in the words of the men of the Royal Welch Fusliers, the women who marched with them, and those who fought alongside them, Dragon Rampant is a saga of campaigns, battles and action on three continents, of short rations, shipwreck and disease. The reader will come to know such fighting men as the intrepid Drummer Bentinck, the eccentric Major Jack Hill, the long-serving Lieutenant John Harrison and, above all, the Welch Fusiliers' beloved commanding officer, the eight time wounded Colonel Henry Ellis, who led them in some of the bloodiest actions of the Napoleonic wars, only to fall in the last battle.

Dragon Rampant will appeal to those interested in the Napoleonic period, musket period warfare and the meaning and cost of courage.

Some sample extracts from Dragon Rampant
Note that this information is copyright by Donald E. Graves, 2010, and must not be reproduced without permission

Corunna, 1809

That same day the 3rd Division departed Bembibre for Villa Franca, twenty miles distant. The weather grew worse with heavy snowfalls, intermixed with rain and sleet, and the weak and sick began to fall out by the side of the road. One officer thought this part of the retreat was 'terrible and heartrending' because

He who could go no further, stood still; he who still had something to eat, that ate he in secret, and then continued marching onwards; the misery of the whole thing was appalling -- huge mountains, intense cold, no houses, no shelter or cover of any kind, no inhabitants, no bread. Every minute a horse would collapse beneath its rider, and be shot dead. The road was strewn with dead horses, bloodstained snow, broken carts, scrapped ammunition, boxes, cases, spiked guns, dead mules, donkeys and dogs, starved and frozen soldiers, women and children.

The men and women in the columns, wet, frozen and weary, moved like automatons. While marching at the head of his regimental column Captain Charles Steevens of the 20th Foot fell asleep on his feet, only to wake up at its rear, forcing him to have to run forward to regain his proper position. The seemingly endless marching was all too much for sixteen-year-old Samuel Thorpe, who became so exhausted that he fell out of the ranks and lay down in the snow. As he later wrote:

The idea of becoming a prisoner caused me, however, to make great exertions, but the utmost I could do was to walk on half a mile, when the rattling of wheels announced the approach of our retiring artillery dragging through the snow. I now leant over a league-stone by the road-side, and looked a farewell as the guns passed, as at things I was about to take leave of for ever: the last passed by; several Officers cast a pitying look at me as much as to say, 'Poor fellow! would we could help you!' In the rear rode an Officer: at the first glance I found him to be an old brother collegian [from the Royal Military College at Marlow]: he dismounted and offered me every assistance in his power, and finding I could not proceed on foot, he kindly offered, even at his own personal risk of disobedience to orders, to place me in the forge-cart attached to the brigade. With gratitude I accepted his kindness, and soon found myself seated upon the forge-bellows, and screened from the observation of any general Officer by the low painted canvass tilt; he also, when able to speak to me without being observed, brought me biscuit and a little wine, with which I was so much refreshed, that -- after a march of between twenty and thirty miles, in a conveyance sufficient to dislocate every limb of a man in health -- yet when in the evening I entered the town [Villa Franca] in which my own corps was halted, I was so much recovered that after thanking my kind preserver most cordially I took my leave of him.

The retreat continued. The 3rd Division marched from Villa Franca on 3 January for Lugo, sixty miles distant where, it was rumoured, not only were there large stocks of food but that the army would stand and fight. Immediately out of Villa Franca the road began a continuous back and forth ascent for about fifteen miles as it crossed the seven-mile wide Monte del Cebrero. It was bitterly cold and strong winds swept a heavy fall of snow into the faces of the marchers. As they neared the top of the height, some looked back to see 'the rear of the army winding along the narrow road' with 'the whole tract marked out by our own wretched people, who lay on all sides expiring from fatigue and the severity of the cold -- while their uniforms reddened in spots the white surface of the ground.'

It was now that most of the remaining women and children began to die. Before ordering the retreat Moore had tried to send the army's women to Portugal but, 'after being absent a few days, they again made their appearance' in the ranks. Their fate now, one officer thought, 'was dreadful to behold' as some

were taken in labour on the road, and amid the storms of sleet and snow, gave birth to infants, which, with their mothers perished as soon as they had seen the light. ...... Others in the unconquerable energy of maternal love, would toil on with one or two children on their backs; till on looking round, they perceived that the hapless objects of their attachment were frozen to death. But more frightful than this, was the depth of moral degradation to which these wretched followers of the camp were frequently reduced. Nothing could be more appalling to the heart, than to hear the dreadful curses and imprecations which burst from the livid lips of intoxicated and despairing women, as they laid them[selves] down to die.

Robert Ker Porter, a civilian artist travelling with the army, 'saw the body of a woman lying in a situation, that for misery ... must have been unequalled' as 'two little babes, to whom she had just given birth, lay struggling in the snow.' Ker Porter was happy when the newborn were 'given in charge to a woman who came up in one of the bullock carts.'

After spending a cold, hungry and miserable night in a small and barren mountain hamlet, the Welch Fusiliers marched into Lugo on the afternoon of 4 January to find a scene of the 'most dreadful confusion.' Thorpe remembered that the townspeople were 'praying, swearing, and screaming, and carrying out their beds, furniture, and valuables to the country, alarmed by the firing and near approach of the enemy' and the streets were 'filled with stragglers, Spaniards as well as English; the dead horses and mules blocking up the streets; pistols and carbines going off at intervals as the dragoons shot their horses ... when by fatigue and weakness they could urge them no further.' The battalion did not pause long, however, as Major General Alexander Mackenzie-Fraser received orders to march his division to Vigo for embarkation and it took the road to that port. Moore, however, wisely deciding his exhausted men needed a rest, sent orders to Fraser to return but, unfortunately, the dragoon rider entrusted with this message got drunk on the way and Fraser did not learn of the change of plan until his division was nearly a full day's march in the direction of Vigo. When the order caught up with him on the evening of 5 January, Fraser's weary men turned about and marched back to Lugo, where they arrived two days later, leaving behind a great number of stragglers.

Badajoz, 1812

In contrast to the previous sieges, Wellington and his chief engineer, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Fletcher, decided to mount their main effort not on the north side of the city but against its southeastern quarter. This would necessitate first taking an outwork, Fort Picarina, which would constitute a good position for the batteries of heavy guns that would create breaches in the main walls. The work of digging the first parallel -- a trench whose axis was similar to that of the main wall of the city -- was commenced and completed by a working party of no less than eighteen hundred men on the night of 17 March. That done, saps, or trenches dug toward the object of the attack, were started and these were constructed in a zig-zag fashion to prevent the French from firing down their length. Phillipon did everything in his power to hamper this work, sending out sorties at night to destroy the trenches, deploying small field guns outside the walls to provide enfilade fire down the line of trenches, and keeping the British working parties under constant fire with as many of the 140 guns mounted on the defences as he could bring to bear.

For the Fusilier Brigade which took a turn in the trenches approximately every third day, it was a miserable and dangerous period. It rained on seven of the first nine days of the siege and the parallels and saps became, at first, knee-deep and then waist-deep in water, and some collapsed. The French gunners were alert and their fire was dangerously accurate. Von Wachholtz saw

with my own eyes a couple of heads sent to the Devil. The damned little 4-pdr. guns fired so sharp, that one scarcely saw the smoke, when the shot with a whining sound was over head. With the more respectable 12 or 24-pdrs. one had more time to get one's head under cover. The worst, however, were the shells as from them there was no place to hide.

Private Richard Roberts of the 1/23rd remembered when a whistling shell landed near his working party:

I called to the men to lie down, and we all threw ourselves on the ground in a heap. Many were above me. The moment it touched the ground, the shell burst. The groans of my wounded comrades still ring in my ears! One poor fellow had the crown of his head taken clean off; another was literally [dis-]embowelled; and others had their limbs shattered and lopped off.

Undertaking backbreaking labour in conditions not dissimilar to those their descendants would experience nearly a century later on the Western Front, the Welch Fusiliers lost one officer and thirteen men killed, and fifty wounded between 17 March and 5 April 1812. The officer killed was Brevet Major William Potter. Among the wounded was Lieutenant-Colonel Ellis, who was hit in the forehead by a musket ball, a wound which put him out of action for nearly two months. As they worked, the fusiliers' appearance became somewhat ragged, particularly as they had not received their annual clothing issue for the year. 'We had to work very hard and the weather was so much against us as it was continually wet and the winds very stiff,' Bentinck commented. The fusiliers' shoes

were worn off our feet and all our clothes turned to rags with the work and the weather. Some of the men had to whip [take] their blankets that they had to lap [sew] them in to make trousers of. I myself was not as bad as a great many of them. I was not with shoes to my feet and my trousers were not so bad. I went many a time and waited until the butchers had killed the cattle and brought the hides for the men to make shoes of as we had no supply from England.

Despite the weather and other problems, the siege work went forward with mathematical precision as parallels, saps and then breaching batteries were constructed each day, closer to the city. On 25 March 1812, Fort Picarina was taken by assault and quickly converted into a battery for the heavy guns that would breach the main walls and five days later, fifty-two heavy guns or howitzers were firing against the Trinidad and Santa Maria bastions, the intended breaching sites. By 6 April, the hardworking gunners had cut three breaches in the main wall: that at the Trinidad bastion being nearly 150 feet wide, that at the Santa Maria bastion about 90 feet wide while a smaller rupture had been created between the two. Wellington decided to attack that night and his plan called for five separate but linked operations. The 4th and Light Divisions would take the Trinidad and Santa Maria bastions respectively by direct assault through the breaches. To distract the defenders, the 3rd Division would feint an attack on the castle located at the northeast extremity of the city walls near the junction of the Rivillas stream and the Guadiana, while the 5th Division would feint against the San Vincente bastion in the southwest angle of the walls. These two diversions would be 'escalades' -- that is, the troops would rush the walls with scaling ladders and try to gain entrance. Finally, a small detachment of 150 men drawn from the trench guard of the 4th Division on duty that day would attack the lunette of San Roque, an outerwork northeast of the main breaches, located near the dam that bottled up the Rivillas stream. The attacks were scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. but were delayed for three hours because of the need to allot more time for the assembly of the assault forces.

This delay proved fatal as it gave Phillipon time to carry out extensive additional defence work. When darkness fell and the British artillery stopped firing at about 7 p.m., the French constructed retrenchments or temporary breastworks behind the breaches and anchored solid wooden beams, a foot square and bristling with sword blades, across their top, and strewed nail-studded planks in front of them. The breaches had earlier been mined with shells and explosive charges that could be detonated by fuzes and the defenders, nearly half the garrison, were supplied with at least three loaded muskets each and also furnished with plentiful supplies of grenades, shells, explosive charges, baulks of timber, and even large rocks, to be thrown at the attackers. These last-minute preparations were concealed from the attackers by mist, which rose from the flooded Rivillas.

On the other hand, the mist also shrouded the approach of the Light and 4th Divisions to their assembly areas for the assault, located between the lines southeast of the breaches. At about 9 p.m., Corporal Cooper of the 7th Foot remembered orders being given to 'Pile knapsacks by companies ... fall in ... and move off silently.' Von Wachholtz's rifle company was in the Fusilier Brigade's advance party and the German nearly got into a fight before the shooting even started when he 'had an argument with the captain of the 60th as to who should go first, as I had more seniority in grade, but his regiment was more senior.' Major General Bowes decided against von Wachholtz and so he 'went to the artillery and took a cup of rum, with it the business seemed more dignified.' Gleefully, he later added, Major General Colville noticed that the obstinate 60th officer was 'unfit for any military business' as 'he had clearly drunk too much,' and the man was sent to the rear in disgrace.

What Reviewers say about Dragon Rampant

This study of the 23rd Foot arose from Donald E. Graves’ biography of Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Pearson entitled Fix Bayonets! Being the Life and Times of Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Pearson, 1781-1847 that was published in 2006 and after reading [Dragon Rampant] I will certainly search this [earlier book] out. …… [Dragon Rampant] is based on a rich regimental archive of correspondence, memoirs and other documentation which have been used by a writer with an expert eye and the ability to tell a coherent story within the larger political and social background of the period. This is often missing in other regimental accounts. …… [Dragon Rampant] stands out from most books published over the last 20 years or so. It is well researched and has a light conversational tone without the clutter of endless footnotes where interesting facts are hidden by less able writers. It does not glorify war but informs the reader of the actions of the 23rd Foot but the context to which they fought and died during the Napoleonic Wars. The [soldier’s] whole life is explored and not just the battles. Being a soldier was more about being transported by ship, in garrison and the unimaginable hardship of campaign. …… Each chapter is prefaced by the lyrics of contemporary soldier songs which is a lovely addition with the statue of the 23rd Foot as a watermark. Below is a summary of the chapters that shows the breadth of the book and the story of this fine old regiment. …… There are fine maps show[ing] clearly the campaigns and it is good that they are close to where the text discusses them. …… The excellent contemporary drawings in with the text are a very pleasing addition to the 16 pages of black and white plates in the centre of the book. Most of the characters that colour the book with the extracts from their diaries and memoirs are shown. .…This research is based firmly on diaries and period documents but they improve rather than distract from the strong narrative line. The easy-to-read and entertaining style is hard to put down makes this an accessible introduction to this fine regiment but the Peninsular War for the re-enactor and amateur historian alike.
Stephen Summerfield, The Napoleon Series, November 2010

No doubt, the world is filled with books on the battles of the Napoleonic Wars, [but] Donald Graves' latest really stands out. Focusing on the history of the famous 23rd Regiment of foot, Royal Welch Fusiliers, Graves introduces you to the officers and men of the unit and invites you to accompany them aboard ship, in garrison, through unimaginable hardship and as they attain astonishing victories over a 22 year period. Based firmly on diaries and period documents, it is written in such an easy-to-read and entertaining style that one has a hard time putting the book down. Thus, it is a must have for not only the armchair warrior, but the reenactor and historian alike. Amazon 5*****star rating.
Erik Goldstein, Curator of Mechanical Arts & Numismatics, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Donald Graves, a prolific and respected author on military history, here recounts the story of the Fusiliers during the wars with France from 1793 to the battle of Waterloo … a saga of soldiering on three continents, from the West Indies to Walcheren, Albuera, Badajoz and Waterloo the Fusiliers were in the thick of action, suffering heavy losses and gaining much glory. …… The story Graves tells draws on the words of the soldiers, of the women who marched beside them and those who fought alongside them. He has derived the material from hitherto unused memoirs and correspondence … [and] adds his narrative in a characteristic easy style. The book is provided with maps, many figures in the text and some excellent photographs ……This is a lively account which deservedly holds the attention of the reader and which is well worth £25 a bargain price in these days.
Gordon Batho, The Historical Association Website, 1 September 2010

The well written text is supported by a good use of quotes from letters and books written by members of the regiment, along with some useful maps and illustrations and a decent section of higher quality plates. As a result the Fusiliers come alive in a way that is not always the case in regimental histories, making this a very readable account of their actions. The main focus is on the regiment's battles, but we also get a good view of the daily life of the soldiers and their wives and children.
This is a high quality piece of work, and of great value as a regimental history, for students of the British army and for anyone interested in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
History of War Book Page

Amazon.UK 5-star review . . . Donald Graves' book is conversational in tone and very easy to read but backed by a great depth of research. Rightly he highlights the family nature of this famous regiment, one that in his own words, has a greater depth of literary resource than almost any other. Well worth purchasing.
Michael Burkham, Amazon Reviews

THE Royal Welch Fusiliers, the 23rd Regiment of Foot, have a long and splendid history dating back to 1689. Generations of the same family have worn the cap badge with pride. This book brings together 22 years of the regiment's history - the story of the titanic struggle with Napoleonic France, which ended with the battle of Waterloo in 1815. War is described largely in the words of the men fighting the battles. Donald Graves has an entertaining and engaging style of writing and has penned a diligently researched title that will be of interest to the military historian and those who served in the regiment.
Lt Col (Retd) Dawson Pratt, R Signals, Soldier Magazine, August 2010