GEORGE BURDETT L’ESTRANGE AND THE PENINSULAR WAR

George Burdett L’Estrange, 1797 - 1878, was the second son of Henry Peisley L’Estrange II of Moystown.  Sometime between 1875 and 1880 he published ‘The Recollections of Sir George L’Estrange’ in which he gives and account of his service in the Peninsular war.  The following is an outline of George’s story.

At the age of 15 he was appointed an ensign in his father’s militia regiment in Ireland.  When, as was the case in the Peninsula, a war became prolonged over a number of years, re-enforcement’s were necessary and many militiamen volunteered to serve with the armies overseas.

Colonel L’Estrange’s Kings County Militia volunteered for such service and accordingly the colonel, his officers and men sailed from Ireland to England.  They landed at Plymouth after a stormy passage of three weeks.  From Plymouth they marched to Hythe and then to Portsmouth.  One hundred volunteered for service with the 31^st Regiment.  Having been given a good horse by his father, the young George rode off at their head for preliminary training at Ashford in Kent, keeping this set of wild Irishmen happy by playing Irish airs on his flute.

On the 1^st November, 1812, these men sailed from Spithead to Lisbon in a fleet of upwards of 300 sail of transports. On the first night this fleet was scattered by a storm but reached the Tagus one by one in about a fortnight’s time.  George bought himself a pony and a mule bearing panniers to carry his baggage, and set off up the valley of the Tagus to find his regiment.  After various adventures he found General Byng’s brigade, of which the 31^st Regiment formed a part.  The brigade itself formed part of General Hill’s division.  At this stage George’s uncle Guy had ceased to be in command of the regiment and the officer in command was Lt. Colonel Leith, a Scotsman whom, according to George, ‘we all adored’.  George, as an ensign, was assigned to the regiment’s light company under a Captain Girdlestone, whom we shall meet again in this narrative.

On the 15^th May, 1813, the whole army was ordered to advance.  It did so and on the 21^st June, 1813, fought the battle of Vitoria.  It was here that George received what he called ‘Le bapteme du feu’.   This battle was the last to be fought in Spain before the final battles in the mountains of the Pyrenees.  Vitoria stands in a plain with an arc of surrounding hills at a distance of about three miles on the north, west and south.  The allies descended onto Vitoria  from these hills, Sir Rowland Hill’s corps, in which George was serving, being on the extreme right.  George says that he knew nothing about the over-all strategy of the battle and consequently he confines himself to an account of what befell him and his company in midst of the movement, the smoke, the din and the carnage.  His company was ordered to advance through a field of corn standing four or five feet high to clear a wood from which French sharpshooters were firing.  He gives the following description of an on-coming cannon-ball.  This is of great interest because it is the kind of detail which one cannot obtain from a history book.

As we advanced through it (a field of corn), besides the bullets coming from the wood, an occasional cannon-ball bowled along through it, its curse being easily seen by the lowering of  the ears of corn as if reaped. As they rolled through it, I felt as if I could have stopped some of these balls, they appeared to roll so slowly.  Fortunately for me I did not try the experiment, as loss of a leg would have ensued.
The fire from the wood slackened, but as the troops emerged at the opposite side of the wood they were again met by a hailstorm of bullets. The company commander, Girdlestone, was wounded leaving George, as the company commander.  Then came for George the climax of the battle: I began to feel that, at the age of sixteen, I was placed in a very responsible position, and determined to keep myself as cool and steady as was possible. I had hardly time to make this determination when I heard a tremendous rush on our left; the ground seemed actually to quake under me, and looking in the direction of the sound, I saw the whole British host - artillery, cavalry and infantry - throwing themselves on the line of the French army.

The French gave way, and the battle of Vitoria was won.  But it was not easily won; the main thrust at Vitoria was from the British centre left.  As George himself says, he was ignorant of almost every detail of the action until he read the English papers some time afterwards.

In their retreat the French left behind a vast amount of equipment, including 150 guns, and more picturesquely, Joseph Bonaparte’s carriage with its silver and Sever china.  Some of the silver, including a chamber pot, now used as a drinking vessel, forms part of the regimental silver of those regiments which are the successors of the units which won the battle.  After much indiscriminate looting, the pursuit of the French was undertaken.  At this stage George gives another graphic account of a cannon-ball:

Almost the last shot that was fired - for it was now near evening - I heard whistling along exactly in my direction.  The usual feeling is to dip the head, and thus make a low bow to these dangerous missiles, as they generally fly overhead.  This ball was, however, flying low, and, as it rushed up to me, an involuntary impulse caused me to jump as high as I could; and, at the moment, I thought it was a fortunate jump for me, as the cannon-ball seemed to strike exactly on the spot I had been standing upon, and passed to the rear, leaving me uninjured.

The British gained the heights of the Pyrenees and were able to look down on what is called ‘la belle France’, but the French re-inforced their army and the British were driven back from the mountain passes.  George and his light company held a rocky hill while the brigade of which the 31^st Regiment was a part, retired before the superior French forces.  The hill was held until French sharpshooters drove the company from it.  Wellington, however, succeeded in stemming the tide.  It was now the turn of the British to re-occupy the passes and wait for their army to be in a fit state of readiness to descent into France and engage Marshal Soult’s army.  George with his light company spent an uncomfortable time on the heights of the snow.

There followed in November and December the battles of the Nivelle and the Nive which amounted to hotly contested river crossings in the neighbourhood of Bayonne, a fortress held by the French.  At the Nivelle George was in General Stewart’s division.  We have net the hot-headed Stewart before in the chapter on the battle of Albuera.  He has been described as a valiant busybody who preferred to do anything rather than obey the orders given to him.  True to form, and fearful that the battle might be gained without his assistance, Stewart gave orders to attack the French, who were well protected by a deep trench and a bank, and advance through a formidable obstacle of cut down trees about a hundred yards to their front.  George’s company were shot down almost as soon as they emerged singly from this barrier.  This time George’s captain, Girdlestone, already wounded twice previously, had his arm shot off.  In ten to fifteen minutes the ground was covered by killed and wounded as cannon-balls passed overhead from both sides.  George in the ‘Recollections’ says that he did not know how he reached the ditch and got over it.  On the other side the French were retreating, so George advanced trusting to being followed by his own commanding officer.  A French soldier turned and fired his musket at him, hitting him in the upper part of the leg.  This was the occasion, referred to before, when Edmund L’Estrange rode up and killed the Frenchman.

Next George was involved in a short and sanguinary encounter which, though not a general action, has the name of the battle of Garris.  George had been considered too young to continue in command of a light company with the result that the wounded Girdlestone was replaced by Captain Knox.  At a hill which the British were attempting to capture, Knox was so severely injured through the shoulder-blade that his arm had to be taken out of the socket.  Thereafter George remained in command of the company until the end of the war.  Stepney St George succeeded in riding his horse up the hill but at once received a musket ball in his arm.  As he fell from his horse his head came into contact with the point of the bayonet of one of his own men.  He later recovered and after the war married George’s youngest sister, Frances.

The battle of Orthes was fought on the 27^th February, 1814. When George’s company (in  Sir Rowland Hill’s Corps) came in sight of it the battle had been virtually won.  George saw the French army in full retreat, throwing down knapsack’s and muskets and anything that could impede their flight.  Unfortunately no cavalry was available to carry out one of the cavalry’s principal roles in destroying troops in headlong retreat.

There remained one last battle of the campaign, namely Toulouse, fought on the 10^th April, 1814,.  Wellington described it afterwards as ‘a very severe affair’.  The casualties were particularly heavy - 8000 counting both sides - of which the allied casualties were the heavier.  Ironically the battle need never have been fought for Napoleon had abdicated a day or two before.  On the morning of the battle George’s light company was in the immediate vicinity of the town and as usual it was at the head of the brigade.  His brigade commander, Sir John Byng, required him to cross a suburban street to find out whether any of the enemy were in occupation of the housed on the other sides.  Followed by his men in twos and threes; he was in the act of crossing when he was potted at by the French behind a barricade.  He says that he did not think it dignified to accelerate his pace, but arrived at the opposite side uninjured.  There were no French in the houses.  From the house which he temporarily occupied George had a view of the town and of the heights beyond occupied by the French.  He wrote: ‘our brave men suffered severely, and for a long time I was in despair as to the result’.  He continued:

Thus terminated this great and glorious war, and I found that we had accomplished, what in my early start I had contemplated, the driving of the French army out of the Peninsula and across the Pyrenees, and began to be proud of myself in having taken a part, though a very humble one, in these triumphant events.

In Toulouse the peace was celebrated with balls, concerts and dinner parties.  Sir John Byng  appointed George his aide-de-camp and together they rode off for Bordeaux.  The general rode on to Paris while George, awaiting transport by sea to England, spent a week with the mayor - Lynch, of Irish extraction - in the house where Edmund had hidden in the course of his escape. Then to England and home to Ireland.