The mysterious "Mr Anderson": a hilarious (but questionable) account of the 1809 Walcheren Campaign

by Jacqueline Reiter

A few months ago I was in Belfast, working through the papers of early 19th century British politician Lord Castlereagh at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. I wanted particularly to see his papers on the infamous Walcheren expedition of 1809, which he helped plan in his capacity as War Minister.

Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) (Wikimedia Commons)

Just before I had to leave to catch my plane I found a long 30-page document among Castlereagh's official correspondence. On closer inspection it appeared to be a first-hand account of the Walcheren campaign. I wasn't sure how useful it would be, but it looked like it could be interesting, so I arranged to have it copied and carried it away with me unread.

I consulted my copies on the plane that night, fully expecting them to be yawn-worthy and utterly useless. By the end of the second page I was having trouble suppressing snorts of laughter. After about the fifth, I was actually laughing out loud. (I apologise to those sitting next to me on the plane, but I couldn't help it.)

What I think I had found was an account by one of the Kent coast smugglers who were employed by the planners of the Walcheren Expedition to assist with intelligence and information gathering. Smugglers were employed because they were reasonably familiar with the difficult navigation of the Walcheren islands, and often also had useful contacts in every port, particularly enemy ones. The most famous smuggler employed at Walcheren was Captain Thomas Johnson (or Johnstone), who had helped the British during the bombardment of Boulogne in 1805 and had previously been imprisoned in Flushing.[1]

Captain Thomas Johnson in the 1830s (Wikimedia Commons)

This account was probably the one referred to by Sir John Fortescue in his account of Walcheren in his History of the British Army.[2] Fortescue described “an anonymous paper in the Londonderry [Castlereagh] MSS, described in the index of the MSS as by Anderson, a captious amateur soldier so far as I can gather from his writings”.

The document is not attributed to anyone in the index any longer, but it matches Fortescue's description in a number of respects. The author's bombastic and self-aggrandizing account, however, casts doubt over the validity of what he says. He appears to have been everywhere, and the purpose of the document seems to be to inform Castlereagh that he is due more money because he single-handedly stopped the campaign spilling into disaster long before it actually did.

And so I doubt much of what he writes actually occurred, at least in the way he writes about it. Yet this man was clearly on the spot, and familiar with the upper echelons of command. I've also managed to find confirmation of at least one of the events he describes. During the protracted siege of Flushing, “Anderson” talks of an attempt by Captain Johnson the smuggler to blow up the harbour with the aid of “a certain floating Machine back'd on the land side by 500 or 600 Men”. 

The Siege of Flushing, 1809 (BL Flickr Open Source collection)

Anderson goes on to explain how Johnson “embark'd with the Machine at Midnight towing it by himself in to the Harbour … swimming & conducting the Machine” in himself. This is seconded by the Morning Chronicle, which gives an account on 22 August 1809 of how Johnson swam “up to the very ramparts of Flushing” to tie the machine to the harbour pier. Johnson was a personal friend of Robert Fulton, whose torpedoes very much interested the British government at the turn of the 19th century. “The use of certain machines invented by Mr Fulton” was explicitly permitted by Castlereagh for use during the expedition: and so the pieces of the puzzle match up.[3] Unfortunately, Fulton's torpedo did not go off.

Robert Fulton (Wikimedia Commons)

Some examples of what made me laugh? I'll give some of the most snort-worthy below. Should anyone wish to read the whole MSS for themselves, it can be found in Belfast at PRONI in the Castlereagh MSS, D3030/3260.

• “Anderson” teaches the Commander in Chief his job:

“On the 30th July as we landed I took the liberty to caution the Commander in Chief to keep the Army sober, to be on his guard against French intrigue … & as a matter of great importance to stop the passage of Brascons [Breskens, the channel between Flushing on Walcheren and the mainland]”.

I imagine Lord Chatham loved that lecture!

• “Anderson” carries news of the surrender of Walcheren's capital, Middelburg, to Sir Eyre Coote, the second in command of the army:

“Being oblig'd to pass the Quarters of Sir Eyre Coote [I] found him before a large Fire wrapped in Blankets fast asleep. Judging from my own feelings that the Deputies [surrendering Middelburg] would be most welcomed by him, in my zeal I rous'd him with 3 Cheers. When acquainted with the occasion of disturbing his repose he surlily remarked 'Let them stop till day light'. This happened about 1 or two O'clock in the morning”.

Well, wouldn't you be “surly” if someone shouted “HUZZA! HUZZA! HUZZA!” in your ear at about half past one in the morning?

• “Anderson” does the job of Chatham's aides-de-camp for him, and they get their revenge:

“I provided a Waggon for his Lordship's baggage, & advis'd an immediate approach to Middleburgh [sic] in order to secure the Troops, Treasure &c … I was overruled by my Lord's Aide de Camps, particularly by Coll. Carey [in fact Chatham's Military Secretary], & was order'd a triangular instead of a direct road which occasion'd a serious dispute between Captain Gardner Aid du Camp & Myself”.

"Anderson" has several run-ins with Chatham's secretary and aides throughout the document, ending with Colonel Carey completely losing his temper (see below).

• “Anderson” dismisses the abilities of the commanding Admiral, Sir Richard Strachan, and Captain of the Fleet Sir Home Popham:

“The Fleet was inactive & allowed the passage to remain free between Flushing & Brascons [Breskens] … [but] Sir Richard Strachan … with Sir Home Popham were cruising Arm in Arm on shore enjoying Grape Shot at a Tavern”.

Very possibly my favourite line of the whole piece.

•  “Anderson” declares that Walcheren failed because Colonel Carey blocked his letters to Lord Chatham:

“I have every reason to believe that the Commander in Chief's advisers particularly his Secretary Colonel Carey conceal'd the true state of things from him, & that several Letters never reach'd him. It is well known & acknowledged by several respectable Officers & experienced Soldiers that had my plans been attended to the course of the Expedition wou'd have accomplish'd even more than the Country expected”.

•  Anderson chastises the Adjutant General of the Army for drunkenness:

“We were follow'd from Traguse [Goes, on South Beveland island] by several Spies, one especially … I therefore took him Prisoner & waited on Col. Long [the Adjutant General] who was busy at his Wine. All he said that I could understand was that he could not attend to it. … finding the Prisoner's case less attracting than the Wine. I told him I would call again”.

• Wherein Colonel Carey finally loses patience with “Anderson” and threatens him with the nearest blunt instrument to hand:

“I … requested Colonel Carey to grant me a Warrant [to pay the men he had employed to help him] … Colonel Carey flying into a passion desir'd me to withdraw & threaten'd to knock me down with a Chair; not accustomed to threats of this Kind I told him I should resist any violence, with such weapons & call'd him a Coward”.

Yeah, I'm sure that helped.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

References

[1] Roy and Lesley Adkins, The War for All the Oceans (NY, 2006) p 138

[2] SIr John Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol VII (London, 1912), p 69

[3] Huge thanks to Lisa Chaplin for her help in identifying Fulton's “machine” referred to here. Castlereagh to Chatham, 12 July 1809, National Archives War Office MSS WO 6/143; Morning Chronicle, 22 August 1809

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jacqueline Reiter has a Phd in 18th century political history. She is currently working on the first ever biography of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, due to be released by Pen & Sword Books in September 2016. When she finds time she blogs about her historical discoveries at http://alwayswantedtobeareiter.wordpress.com/, and can be found on Twitter as https://twitter.com/latelordchatham.

The Siege of Flushing, August 1809

by Jacqueline Reiter

At 1 PM on the 13^th of August 1809, about fifty British cannons and mortars of different sizes opened at once on the French territory of Flushing (Vlissingen) from five batteries. Several gunboats bombarded the town simultaneously from the Scheldt river. Early in the morning of the 14^th a sixth battery opened fire, joined a little later by the deafening roar of six warships of the line giving their all. William Congreve's rockets added to the terror the town must have experienced, setting it on fire in several different places.

The Bombardment of Flushing (Wikimedia Commons)

A brief cease-fire between 4 pm and 9:30 pm on the 14^th was all the respite the townspeople of Flushing received. When the bombardment resumed, it continued throughout the night until the French general in command of Flushing's garrison, Monnet, surrendered at 2:30 am on 15 August.

The siege of Flushing provided the main action of the Walcheren campaign of 1809, intended to provide a distraction for Britain's ally, Austria, which had been at war with France since April. (More about the background to the expedition can be found in a previous EHFA post on thesubject). The British were to capture the French harbour of Flushing on the island of Walcheren, destroy the French and Dutch fleet at Antwerp, and ruin the navigation of the Scheldt River. To achieve this 40,000 soldiers and more than 600 ships sailed on 28 July – even though Austria had been defeated at Wagram at the beginning of the month.

The military commander of the expedition was John Pitt, 2^nd Earl of Chatham, the notoriously lazy elder brother of former prime minister William Pitt. The naval command was entrusted to Sir Richard Strachan, a brave but hot-blooded admiral who had contributed to the Trafalgar campaign. Neither was ideal for the task, but intelligence had been gathered for months that the French, distracted by war with Austria, had stripped the area around Antwerp of troops. Lord Castlereagh, the Secretary of State for War, described the campaign as a “coup de main”, a lightning action designed to take the French unawares before they had time to strengthen their defences.

Walcheren (1660) (Wikimedia Commons)

The expedition, divided into four parts, would secure the island of Walcheren by investing Flushing and disabling the French batteries on the opposite coast at Cadsand, allowing the fleet access to the West Scheldt. Another division would land on the adjacent island of South Beveland and secure the approach to Antwerp. Once this was done, the main part of the army would land opposite Batz at the southernmost tip of South Beveland and march for fifteen miles to Antwerp. What would happen when they got to Antwerp remained something of a mystery, but ministers were confident that the town hadn't been strengthened in, oh, ages, or at least since the last source with which they provided Lord Chatham had been published (about 1794).

Unfortunately for the British politicians, things began to go wrong for the expedition before it even sailed. First came the news of Wagram, then adverse winds delayed the expedition's start. The newspapers had been gossiping loosely about the “grand expedition” for months, as a result of which the French, who could read just as well as the British, knew nearly as much about the expedition as the government did. Persistent adverse winds drove the fleet off course almost immediately, and the ships were nearly all forced to take shelter in a natural basin called the Roompot – which was, unfortunately, on the wrong side of Walcheren. Sir John Hope and his reserve force went through South Beveland like a knife through butter, but the Cadsand landing failed because of bad weather and poor communication.

The loss of Cadsand meant that the fleet could not get up the West Scheldt with the main force for Antwerp until Flushing fell. Flushing's commander, Monnet, apparently only had between two and three thousand motley troops of various nations and states of discipline, so taking Flushing should have been simplicity itself. Once again, however, the British were hampered by disastrous weather. Instead of landing somewhere sensible near Flushing, the soldiers landed at the opposite end of the island. Marching troops across land was bad enough, but dragging the ordnance and siege supplies across boggy land was an entirely different proposition.

More seriously, because Cadsand had not been taken, the French garrison there was able to throw as many reinforcements into Flushing as it liked. Obviously the British navy tried to stop them, but the weather pinned the British fleet too high or too low every time they tried to establish a blockade. The British could only watch as boat after boat of French soldiers crossed the Scheldt. By the time the fleet finally managed to complete the investment on the 7^th of August, Flushing's garrison had nearly tripled, and Lord Chatham was forced to disembark one of the brigades intended for Antwerp to reinforce the besiegers at Flushing.

Chatham had hoped to get to Antwerp while Flushing was investing, but he now had too few men to proceed. Nor could the navy bring the siege equipment for Antwerp round South Beveland until Flushing fell. Strachan could not understand why Chatham did not want to embrace the “simple” solution of marching across South Beveland to get to Antwerp, disembarking, re-embarking, and re-disembarking thousands of troops and cavalry. Chatham, for his part, could not understand why Strachan wasn't able to sail up to Batz with the siege supplies, or – for that matter – stop the French getting over from Cadsand to Flushing. Meanwhile, Sir Eyre Coote, Chatham's second-in-command in charge of the Flushing operations, was convinced his superior was staying on Walcheren deliberately to spite him.

Once the siege artillery arrived at Flushing, tugged laboriously across the entire breadth of Walcheren, the batteries took days to construct. The army blamed the engineers, and the engineers blamed the weather, which was about as unfavourable as it was possible to get, with torrential all-night-long downpours that flooded the trenches and stopped work. Chatham was comfortably ensconced in a “palace” in Middelburg, with as much turtle soup as he could eat, but his men, up to their ankles, then knees, then hips in water – Monnet had cut the dykes in an attempt to flood out the besiegers – weren't happy.

The British in Middelburg, 1809 (Dutch print)

On the 7^th there was a brief, confused sortie by the French, which resulted in the British gaining more ground towards the town, but the batteries were taking so long even Chatham was getting twitchy. He badgered Strachan about getting the ships to participate in the bombardment, but Strachan still hadn't managed to get the ships round yet. He finally did so on 11^th August, but the batteries still weren't ready for another two days. When they did open, the ships of the line weren't able to get underway for a further twenty-four hours, again due to the weather.

By the time Flushing capitulated on the 15^th, the campaign was effectively over. Reducing Flushing was meant to have made the march on Antwerp possible, but in fact it delayed further operations. Far from being Castlereagh's coup de main, more than two weeks had elapsed since the British sailed. The Flushing garrison did not march out till 18 August, and it took a further week for the fleet, beset by bad weather and navigational problems, to get the troops and siege supplies to Batz.

Chatham, meanwhile, was also inching towards Batz. He seems to have given up on Antwerp the moment he set foot on South Beveland. He went through the motions of preparing to continue, but intelligence put enemy forces around Antwerp at 35,000 men, the town's defences had been strengthened, and the French fleet was well out of reach.

Most seriously of all, however, was the mysterious fever sweeping through the troops. “Zealand fever”, or “Walcheren fever” as it became known, was probably a toxic combination of malaria, dysentery, typhoid, and typhus. It started virtually overnight in mid-August and raced through the army at a terrifying rate. Chatham's lieutenant-generals advised him to call off the campaign, and at the beginning of September the British fell back on Walcheren. In mid-September Chatham sailed with the bulk of his army, including thousands of sick, leaving Sir Eyre Coote with a holding garrison of sixteen thousand men. Within days even this was two-thirds out of action.

Cruikshank on "The Grand Expedition" (Wikimedia Commons)

The recriminations at home were terrible. Chatham and Strachan blamed each other for the disaster, and many doubted whether the expedition should ever have been sent in the first place. There was a lengthy parliamentary enquiry which cleared the government of incapacity, but Chatham was forced to resign his cabinet post as Master-General of the Ordnance. Neither he nor Strachan were ever employed again.

The real victims, however, were the thousands of soldiers crippled or killed by “Walcheren fever”, and the civilians of Flushing, ruthlessly bombarded in an attempt to cut short a siege and win an unwinnable campaign.

References

There are three major studies of the Walcheren campaign:
Gordon Bond, The Grand Expedition (Athens, GA, 1979)
Martin A. Howard, Walcheren 1809: the scandalous destruction of a British army (Barnsley, 2011)Carl A. Christie, “The Walcheren Expedition of 1809” (University of Dundee PhD thesis, 1975)
Sir John Fortescue also devotes fifty pages or so to it in his History of the British Army (volume 7). There is also a short treatment of the campaign from a Dutch perspective, particularly dwelling on the serious damage done to the town of Flushing: Tobias Gent, De Engelse invasie van Walcheren in 1809 (Nijmegen, 2009)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jacqueline Reiter has a Phd in 18th century political history. She is currently working on the first ever biography of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, due to be released by Pen & Sword Books in September 2016. When she finds time she blogs about her historical discoveries at http://alwayswantedtobeareiter.wordpress.com/, and can be found on Twitter as https://twitter.com/latelordchatham.

Regency Redundancy: The Walcheren Expedition

by Regina Jeffers

In engineering terms, "redundancy" refers to the duplication of critical components of functions of a system with the intention of increasing reliability of the system, usually in the case of a backup or fail safe. In linguistics, "redundancy" refers to the construction of a phrase that presents some idea using more information, often via multiple means, than is necessary for one to be able to understand the idea. In military operations, "redundancy" could easily refer to the British expedition known as the Walcheren Expedition.

During the War of the Fifth Coalition (fought between Britain and the Austrian Empire and France and Bavaria in 1809), Britain sent an expedition, consisting of 40,000 soldiers, 15,000 horses, two siege trains, and field artillery, across the North Sea to open another front in support of Austria's struggle against France. The campaign was meant to destroy the French fleet thought to be in Flushing, whilst providing a diversion for the hard-pressed Austrians. Unfortunately, it was an effort in futility. Napoleon had already defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Wagram only a month prior, on the 5th and 6th of July.

Viscount Castlereagh had first proposed the scheme to take the island of Walcheren to Prime Minister William Pitt in 1797. Castlereagh saw the island as the key to controlling the Scheldt and the port of Flushing, a potential launching point for an attack on England. He reopened discussions on the scheme when he joined the British cabinet in April 1807 as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies.

By 1809, the Scheldt estuary had become the second largest French naval arsenal after Toulon. Castlereagh had the right of it: Napoleon meant to Antwerp into an arsenal, opposite the Thames estuary. Two squadrons were kept off the coast of the Netherlands. One was to prevent a surprise attack, while the second was to keep new ships passing to other ports. From as early as 1808, Napoleon had spent a small fortune fortifying the port of Antwerp.

In early 1809, spies informed the British that there were 10 French ships in the port of Flushing and 9 ships of line under construction in Antwerp. Originally Sir David Dundas, newly appointed chief of the British army, was summoned to appear before Castlereagh on 9 March 1809, but Dundas pleaded he could not muster the required army because of the recent retreat from Corunna in Spain.

Dundas was summoned again in May, but the military consultants dampened Castlereagh's plans with reports of the difficulty of the operation, saying speed of execution would determine success or failure. Finally, the news of Austrian success at Aspern-Essling eliminated any governmental doubts. Spies also reported that the garrison at Flushing was poorly manned by untested Dutch, German, Irish, and Spanish soldiers. It was estimated at the time that only about 8,500 French troops remained in the area. On 22 June, Castlereagh received permission from George III for the expedition.

From the beginning, the expedition was doomed. The senior military and naval staff were less than effective. The Commander in Chief of the operations was General Lord Chatham (John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, the eldest son of William Pitt the Elder and an elder brother of William Pitt the Younger), who was nicknamed "the late earl" because of his love of sleeping in, and while more competent than Chatham, Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Strachan knew little success in the shallow waters of the Scheldt.

Chatham had served in both the American War of Independence and the Russian/British expedition to the Helder in 1799, but he was very much a "desk jockey," having spent the previous 7 years in such a position. In 1794, the Younger Pitt had removed his elder brother from his position as First Lord of the Admiralty because of complaints regarding his laziness.

From Napoleon.org, we find:   "On the same day [22 June 1809], Dundas communicated the total numbers of troops ready for embarkation - 35,000 infantrymen and 1,900 cavalry. As for the direction of the naval side of the affair, this had been given to Rear Adm. Sir Richard Strachan. He was appointed on 9 June, and he was the exact opposite in temperament to Chatham, 'an irregular and impetuous fellow, possessing [...] an uncommon share of sagacity and strong sense.' Strachan was also affectionately known to his men as 'Mad Dick' because he would occasionally lose his temper and swear fiercely. And so these two completely incompatible leaders were to lead the largest ever British expeditionary force to leave the British isles, numbering 618 vessels in total, comprising 352 transports and 266 ships of war."

Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte commanded the French forces. Bernadotte had been stripped of his command for disobeying orders at the Battle of Wagram. He had returned to Paris in shame after being dismissed from Napoleon's Grande Armée, but was sent to defend the Netherlands by the Council of Ministers. Bernadotte lost Flushing to the British, but he competently ordered the French fleet to Antwerp and heavily fortified the city, leaving the British's main objective out of reach.

Even if Chatham and Strachan had had been more strategically minded, their eventual downfall had nothing to do with the French forces and everything to do with the onset of malaria. Over 4,000 British troops perished between 30 July and 9 December 1809, but only 106 died in combat.

Initially, success was known. The British army met little French resistance and quickly set up encampments on the neighboring islands of Walcheren and South Beveland, both in present-day the Netherlands. The British had stifled the attempts of the French to flood the islands by breaching the dykes, but by late August (according to several accounts of the soldiers involved) an epidemic had overtaken the encampments.

From the National Center for Biotechnology Information website, we find the following descriptions of Walcheren: "When the troops first landed, they saw a 'flat fen turned into a garden.' William Keep of the 77th Regiment wrote home, 'The more I see of this country the better I am pleased with it.... Here we frequently spread our table under the shade of luxuriant fruit trees, and enjoy all the pleasures of rustic life.' Another officer thought the capital, Middleburg, one of the most delightful towns he had ever seen. However, a British expedition to the region in 1747 had been largely destroyed by an illness well described by the respected military surgeon John Pringle."

Early August had reports of 700 men suffering from what was termed "Walcheren Fever." By 3 September, 8000 were hospitalized. Even those who were evacuated to England could find little relief. The English hospitals were unable to handle the large influx of patients. Even six months after the campaign ended in February 1810, 11,513 officers and men remained upon the sick lists. Less than two years later, many of these troops were still so weakened by the disease, Wellington requested that no unit which had served in the Walcheren Campaign be sent to him.

"This disease comes on with a cold shivering, so great that the patient feels no benefit from the clothes piled upon him in bed, but continues to shiver still, as if enclosed in ice, the teeth chattering and cheeks blanched. This lasts some time, and is followed by the opposite extremes of heat, so that the pulse rises to 100 in a small space. The face is then flushed and eyes dilated, but with little thirst. It subsides, and then is succeeded by another paroxysm, and so on until the patient's strength is quite reduced, and he sinks into the arms of death."

Obviously, malaria was one of the sources of "Walcheren Fever," as the soldiers described the large number of mosquitoes upon the island and the numerous bites they suffered. Dysentery was also a likely culprit.

Needless to say, this debacle received little attention, with British historians focusing more on the successes of Wellington's armies in the Peninsular Wars and at the Battle of Waterloo. However, in early 1810, Charles Philip Yorke insisted on the exclusion of strangers from the House of Commons during the debates on the Walcheren expedition. That debate resulted in the arrest of the radical orator, John Gale Jones, which resulted in the arrest of Sir Franis Burdett, 5th Baronet, who questioned the House of Commons' authority to arrest Jones. Burdett issued a revised edition of his plea to have Jones. William Cobbett in the Weekly Register published Burdett's speech, which caused the House to vote this action a breach of privileges and to issue a warrant for Burdett's arrest. (Oh, what a tangled web we weave...).

The Times called the expedition a national disaster and blamed Chatham's incompetence for the debacle. Caricatures and lampoons peppered the press, with the most popular one being a caricature published in the Ghent Journal du commerce, which showed Chatham driving a chariot pulled by two turtles and six snails and shouting "Not so fast!"

The medical board and the Cabinet also heard the "voices" of dissent. At the time, Foreign Secretary George Canning had been maneuvering for Castlereagh's removal from the Cabinet. In the midst the chaos surrounding the debate and Portland's  paralytic stroke on 11 August and his resignation on 6 September, Canning (who reportedly wanted Chatham as prime minister and Wellesley to replace Castlereagh) resigned on 7 September, with Castlereagh following on 8 September.

"The famous duel between the two men [Canning and Castlereagh] took place on 19 September, during which Canning was wounded in the thigh. The new administration led by [Spencer] Perceval, but which included Wellington's arrogant elder brother, the Marquess of Wellesley, was to be forced to face an inquiry into the failure of the Walcheren Expedition after a close vote in the House of Commons (195 against 186)."

During the February-March 1810 enquiry, Castlereagh defended the plan's necessity and disclaimed all responsibility for Chatham's incompetence. Chatham was found to have breached constitutional convention by submitting his report on Walcheren directly to the King. Chatham was forced by the Marquess of Wellesley to resign. Castlereagh was no longer a member of the government but was taking his seat on the back benches and therefore received no further censure. Parliament did not find any of those involved in the fiasco as responsible for the failure.

In response, The Times said, "If the Walcheren expedition is to pass unmarked by the general censure, then can no calamity happen on which the British nation will deserve to be heard?"

Again according to the NCBI:  "Remarkably, the army medical department had not been informed of the expedition's destination before its departure.... The medical arrangements were complacent. There were too few doctors, inadequate hospital provision, not enough transport for the sick, and a shortage of vital drugs and supplies. Peruvian bark, one of the few drugs with real efficacy, had to be commandeered from a passing American vessel. The physician general, Sir Lucas Pepys, seemed as much a caricature as his military peers. When asked why he had not attended the sick in Walcheren, he arrogantly replied that he had no personal experience of military medicine. The surgeon general, Thomas Keate, was quick to point out that he was not the appropriate person to visit Walcheren as the matter was 'entirely medical.' The old army medical board had proved itself incompetent, divided, and overly preoccupied with private practice. Its demise and replacement by an improved 'new medical board' was predictable after the disaster of Walcheren...."

The British did destroy the port of Flushing, costing 50 million francs in damage, but it spent some 8 million pounds to know defeat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Regina Jeffers loves all things Austen and is the author of several novels, including Darcy’s Temptation, Captain Wentworth’s Persuasion, The Disappearance of Georgiana Darcy and Second Chances: The Courtship Wars .
Her website is: www.rjeffers.com