Monthly Lecture: Mounting Wellington's Cavalry
Wednesday 15th June 2022
Dr Andrew Bamford spoke to the Society about the horses of Wellington's cavalry on 15 June 2022.
A recording of the talk is now available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2ezZ0IzDxnE.
Synopsis
Horses were essential to armies until well into the last century, and Wellington's Peninsular army was no exception. By the end of the war there were nearly 14,000 horses on the army's strength, but nearly 19,000 had died during the course of the previous five years. This is without considering the animals used for private purposes, by locally-sourced transport, and by the Portuguese contingent under Wellington's command. There was thus a continuous demand for replacement horses to keep the cavalry and artillery units mounted and effective, which posed increasing challenges to the regiments concerned. At the same time, it was clear that some regiments were far better at maintaining a healthy mounted strength than others; traditionally, we are told that the cavalry of the King's German Legion were horse-masters par excellence and the British ignorant and even neglectful. Comparison between regiments, however, indicates a much more complex picture, which then begs the question of how the idea of KGL superiority in this regard has come to take root in the historiography.
Speaker biography
Dr Andrew Bamford obtained his PhD from the University of Leeds for a thesis on manpower management and the regimental system during the Napoleonic Wars. This was published by the University of Oklahoma Press as Sickness, Suffering, and the Sword. He has subsequently written extensively on campaigns of the Napoleonic era and of the 1740s, and edits the ‘From Reason to Revolution 1721-1815’ series for Helion and Co. He has served on the SAHR Council since 2015 and became its Honorary Secretary in April 2022.