Anecdotes: Saint-Chamans meets Napoleon

Well, you know how little I care about military stuff 😁. But even I could not avoid noticing how much the numbers of soldiers and casualties vary, depending on who (and which side) you ask... As to bulletins, they are political writings, I think. It's what I meant above: every author writes for a certain readership, and this readership will influence both the tone and the content. Some post on this forum recently made me look up the battle of Albuera, and according to the Wikipedia article, Wellington had Beresford rewrite the battle report because the first version "would drive the people in England mad. Write me down a victory." - That's precisely what I mean. Nobody cares what actually happened. Important is only how people will react to it.

(By the way, is it normal for Wellington to write "England" here instead of "Britain"? I always thought that was a typical mistake made by us people from the continent?)

As I have just started to look up a certain general Loison (again), there is a nice scene in Zschocke's autobiography, when he claims Loison ordered a completely useless attack on an enemy outpost for the sole reason of mentioning one of his friends in the report he would write to his superiors, and to maybe get him a promotion. Everything for the battle report, those things are important!

England and Britain was used pretty interchangeably (At least by Englishmen!) until relatively recently. It’s only really since devolution that the cross of St George has risen to prominence again. It’s more the Scots and Welsh that get touchy, and rightly do. Most English people have no idea when St George’s Day is (April 23rd BTW) and it’s not a public holiday.

When it comes to numbers, you would have thought that a simple question for a General would be “How many soldiers do you have?” In Sarajevo in 1995 that was a daily task for me to collate. In an era of individual service numbers, computerised records, dog tags, radios and telephones I’d deliver the ‘Persrep’ everyday with a straight face. With people rotating on leave, going sick etc, I knew though that it was highly unlikely to be 100% accurate. In the age of the quill pen and communication at best at the speed of a horse, the problems would be larger. Soldiers reporting sick, detailed to baggage guards and other detached duties etc made keeping across the numbers difficult. On the march, stragglers and the just plain lost more so. When it came to battle casualties, it is even more problematic. Evacuation systems were in their infancy. Wounded going to the rear (including those assisting/carrying), those falling unseen, being captured but unnoticed or even just run away, all contribute to the ‘missing’ column of the returns. That’s in ideal conditions, before adjutants or SNCOs are themselves killed or injured or units having to retreat in darkness, pursued by cavalry etc. Even victories can be problematic. There are numerous anecdotes of wounded British soldiers from Waterloo rejoining their units in Paris, to be greeted with “We thought you were dead!” So the numbers confidently quoted by reports, much less diarists or years later memorialists should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt. As to estimating an enemies strengths, you might have a reasonable handle on the prisoners you have taken. However, as you wouldn’t know their starting numbers, any approximation you have as to their parade states varies from wishful thinking to an absolute guess. This ‘fog of war’ is before we get into any politics or what today we would call ‘spin doctoring’. Someone like Napoleon, with shall we say a highly developed sense of self justification, are not exactly impartial judges. But Napoleon was also known to cynically lie to his own men, in real time. “Voila Grouchy!” When he knew full well they were Prussians. His St Helena accounts are riddled with accusations of betrayal or incompetence. So at best they might be simply ‘mistaken’, if not a perjurer. A historian should regard all battlefield testimony as if it came from a hostile witness!