Note 668 — SECTION XVI: CHAPTER VII
Reading edition
In most modern English narratives of Talavera it is stated that the 1/48th supported the Guards. This must be a mistake, caused by a misreading of Wellesley’s dispatch. It is certain that the Guards fell back on Mackenzie’s brigade. Contemporary accounts by officers of the 2/24th speak of the Coldstreams passing through them to re-form: the Scots Fusiliers therefore must have had the 2/31st and 1/45th behind them. Donnellan and the 1/48th really supported Langwerth’s German battalions, as Lord Londonderry (the only historian who has got the facts right) clearly shows (i. p. 410). It is curious that the historians of the battle have not seen that the Germans, in their dreadfully mauled condition, could not have been rallied without external aid: this aid was given by Donnellan, while Mackenzie was saving the Guards.