Note 584 — SECTION XXXVI: CHAPTER VIII

It will be noticed that I put La Hermandad as the village where the heavy fighting took place, and which Vandeleur’s brigade stormed. All historians up to now have followed Napier in making Margarita the important place. A glance at the map will show that the latter village is too far forward to have been held for any time, after Leval had evacuated his original position on the great knoll facing Tres Puentes and Villodas.

I have to point out that neither Wellington nor Lord Dalhousie in the two contemporary dispatches (Dispatches, x. p. 451, and Supplementary Dispatches, viii. pp. 4-6) mention either place by name—only speaking of ‘a village.’ D’Erlon’s staff-officer in the report of the Army of the Centre says that Margarita was held for some time but was rendered untenable by Leval’s retreat—so that Darmagnac had to go back to the heights behind. Gazan’s report says that the British were masters of Margarita before he took up his position on the heights above Ariñez, and that the heights behind Margarita were the fighting position of D’Erlon. Of the diarists or chroniclers who issued their books before the fifth volume of Napier came out, and who were present on this part of the field, Green (68th), Wheeler (51st), Captain Wood (82nd), mention no village names, nor do Lord Gough’s and Captain Cairnes’s contemporary letters, nor Geo. Simmons’ contemporary diary. Nor does Sir Harry Smith’s amusing account of his dealings with Lord Dalhousie before ‘the village’ which Vandeleur took (Autobiography, i. pp. 97-8) quoted in the preceding note.

After Napier’s book stated that the Light Division battalions took Margarita, and Gough with the 2/87th La Hermandad (a reversal of the real time and facts as I think), most later writers accepted these statements as gospel. But the report of Kruse, commanding the Nassau regiment, absolutely proves that Napier is wrong. Moreover, the rough map, annexed to D’Erlon’s original report of the battle in the French Archives, gives Hermandad as the position of Darmagnac, with his march thither from Gomecha and to Zuazo indicated by arrows. Kruse’s report may be found at length in the Nassau volume of Saussez’s Les Allemands sous les Aigles, pp. 340-1.