Note 49 — SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER II

Howard Douglas’s proposal to get up big guns at once on September 20 is detailed at length in his biography, pp. 210-11. Napier has a good deal to say on it. Jones and Burgoyne tell nothing about it, but they were evidently nettled at the idea that Douglas, who had no official position in the army, should have raised a proposal and got Wellington to listen to it. I fancy that Douglas is one of the officers alluded to by Burgoyne (Correspondence, i. p. 234) as unauthorized persons, who volunteered useless advice. Gomm, p. 287, says, ‘we have set to work idly without having the means we might have commanded.’