Note 447 — SECTION VII: CHAPTER III

It is necessary to protest against the groundless libel upon this corps in which Napier indulges (i. 257) when he says: ‘It has been said that Romana’s soldiers died Spartan-like, to a man, in their ranks; yet in 1812 Captain Hill of the Royal Navy, being at Cronstadt to receive Spaniards taken by the Russians during Napoleon’s retreat, found the greater portion were Romana’s men captured at Espinosa; they had served Napoleon for four years, passed the ordeal of the Moscow retreat, and were still 4,000 strong.’ This is ludicrous: the eight battalions of the Baltic division landed in Spain 5,294 strong; a month after Espinosa they still figured for 3,953 in the muster-rolls of the army of Galicia (see the morning state in Arteche, iv. 532). Only 1,300 were missing, so Victor, clearly, cannot have taken 4,000 prisoners. Captain Hill’s (or Napier’s) mistake lies in not seeing that the Russian prisoners of 1812 belonged to the 5,000 men of La Romana’s army (regiments of Guadalajara, Asturias, and the Infante) which did not succeed in escaping from Denmark in 1808, and remained perforce in Napoleon’s ranks.