Note 401 — SECTION XXXIII: CHAPTER III

The best source of information about these subsidized corps is the life of Sir Samford Whittingham, who raised and disciplined one of them in Majorca, on the skeletons of the old regiments of Cordova, Burgos, and 5th Granaderos Provinciales. He had only 1,500 men on January 1, 1812, and 2,200 on February 21, but had worked them up to over 3,000 by April. Roche, who had to work on the cadres of Canarias, Alicante, Chinchilla, Voluntarios de Aragon, 2nd of Murcia, and Corona, had 5,500 men ready on March 1, and more by May. Whittingham maintains that his battalions always did their duty far better than other divisions, commanded by officers with unhappy traditions of defeat, and attributes the previous miserable history of the Murcian army to incapacity and poor spirit in high places.