Waterloo remembered at York's Army Museum

THERE'S a red army jacket from the Napoleonic wars in a glass cabinet at the York Army Museum in Tower Street.

The right sleeve is torn open from the wrist to above the elbow, and the red felt of the jacket is stained with something darker: blood.

This is the uniform that was worn by Captain William Browne of the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons when he led his men on a charge against a French infantry column at the Battle of Waterloo, 200 years ago today.

Captain Browne was injured seven times that day - and the tear in the sleeve of his jacket is where surgeons ripped it open to apply a field dressing.

The museum has a letter written by Capt Browne's brother-in-law, Sir H Hamilton, who attended the injured captain in a field hospital in the village of Waterloo after the battle. It provides a riveting account of how the dragoon officer was injured.

"He (Browne) had got a wound with a ball (bullet) which was in his foot when his horse, going at a quick pace, was shot," the letter reads.

"This of course brought Browne to the ground. He staggered on on foot and defended himself the best way he could. In this state he received three sword wounds when he sat himself on the ground and was at length supported out of the field and put upon a horse and with a person on each side came to this place, a distance of 12 miles. After all, he is doing well and I have little or no doubt of his recovery..."

Capt Browne did indeed recover - and went on to return home and collect his Waterloo medal.

He was lucky: casualties among the Inniskillings were heavy that day.

The regiment - made up of almost 400 cavalrymen - made up a unit known as the Union Brigade with the Royal Dragoons and the Scots Greys. In the early afternoon of June 18, 1815, the brigade launched a devastating attack on columns of disorganised French infantry who had already been brought to a halt by withering fire as they tried to reach the top of a ridge. They "smashed into the ranks of the terrified Frenchmen, who surrendered in their thousands," as one account of the battle puts it.

Unfortunately, the cavalrymen didn't stop there, says Graeme Green, a retired army Major and the regimental secretary of the Royal Dragoon Guards, whose archives are held at the army museum. "Wellington says about the cavalrymen that they were brilliant, but he didn't know how to stop them!" he admits.

Ignoring the sound of the recall, the Union Brigade charged on into the teeth of Napoleon's cannon. They killed some of the gunners and spiked some guns, but following a counter-attack by French cavalry were driven back, and suffered heavy losses. Something like 193 of the 400 cavalrymen of the Inniskillings were died or wounded that day, Maj. Green says.

A Napoleonic war infantryman's uniform at the York Army Museum

The Inniskillings were a cavalry regiment that hailed mainly from Ireland. But they were later to merge with the 4/7th Royal Dragoon Guards to form today's Royal Dragoon Guards, whose records - together with a collection of regimental artefacts - are now held at the museum.

Because of the Inniskillings' service at Waterloo, they help bring to startling life a long-ago battle on which the future of Europe hung.

Among other items the museum holds are the uniform and weapons worn by Capt Browne's commanding officer at Waterloo, Lt Col Fiennes Sanderson Miller. In a separate room, again behind a display case, are Col. Miller's uniform jacket, his cocked hat, his sword, his saddle blanket and his cartridge case. Col Miller was wounded three times at Waterloo. But he, too, survived - and years later he wrote a series of letters describing the initial charge on the columns of French infantrymen. They bring home the chaotic, haphazard nature of war.

"When we advanced ...the men began to fall from the fire of the (French) artillery," Col Miller wrote. "We dismounted and marched up the hill on foot, and on reaching the top, we mounted, and I then perceived the enemy's close columns advancing near the hedge.

"On seeing us they hesitated. A person in plain clothes, standing near the hedge close to the left of my Squadron, cried out: 'Now's your time', so over the hedge I went, and waited a moment or two for the men to collect, and then we were into the Column in a second. There it was I received my bayonet wounds, and lost my horse...

"From our scattered state in getting over the hedge, I do not conceive we should have made any impression on our opposing column had they not been inclined to retire...

"They ... fired at us very irregularly... but they seemed altogether taken by surprise, and did not offer the resistance they ought to have done."

It is a very frank account of the muddle and chaos of a battlefield. An eyewitness who was at Waterloo described it as a 'spectacle of disorganisation and bad discipline', Major Green says. Nevertheless, by the day's end - and partly thanks to the late intervention of a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher - Napoleon was defeated.

It could well have gone the other way: in which case who knows what kind of world we would have been living in today?

As it was, the legacy of Waterloo was 100 years of relative peace in Europe, says Maj Green: a century during which Britain stamped its authority on the world as the great industrial and military power of the age.

But you only need to look at Capt Browne's torn and bloodied tunic in the army museum to realise just how close it was...

BLOB The York Army museum's Waterloo Exhibition opens today. The museum will also be running fun Waterloo family activity sessions today and on Saturday, at which there will be the opportunity to handle artefacts from the collection, find out what Waterloo soldiers carried in their packs, and make your own miniature drum!

The first event in the museum's Waterloo lecture series will be by Emma Butcher of the University of Hull on Friday July 10 at 6.30pm. Her talk will be entitled The Brontës’ Military Heroes: Wellington and Napoleon.

Other who fought at Waterloo who are remembered at the York Army Museum

Lt Col Francis Skelly Tidy of the 14th Foot (which later became the West Yorkshire Regiment and later still the Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire, whose records are held at the museum).

Col Tidy was in command of the 14th Foot at Waterloo. The men under his command were mostly young and green. Nevertheless the 14th Foot, an infantry battalion, seem to have acquitted themselves well. "The very young battalion of the 14th...displayed a gallantry and steadiness becoming veteran troops", as a general put it.

Lt Col Francis Skelly Tidy of the 14th Foot

Col Tidy himself seems to have remained remarkably cool under fire. According to Bruce Dickins' account of his life, the 14th Foot weren't involved in heavy fighting at Waterloo, but did suffer casualties from cannon fire. One of the first casualties was a colour sergeant who had been warning young ensigns how dangerous looking after the battalion's colours (flags) was. "Serves him right for talking such nonsense to the boys" was Tidy's pithy comment on hearing he'd been hit, according to Dickins.

The museum has a portrait of Tidy, which shows a man with a lean, aristocratic face, prominent nose, and alert eyes. He survived Waterloo and lived until 1835.

Troop Sergeant Major Mathew Marshall of the Inniskilling Dragoons

TSM Marshall was apparently thrown off his horse after a lance thrust caught him in the thigh. "Whilst falling, he was hit by a musket ball, which broke his right thigh," an account says. "He lay on the ground dazed, only to be revived by horses trampling over his body.

"He crawled towards a loose horse and was about to mount it when a French trooper galloped up and cut him down, inflicting severe wounds.

"He fell to the ground unconscious, and came to to find a French gunner using his body as a foot rest whilst loading his cannon. Marshall lay on the field with 17 lance and sword wounds for two days and three nights before being rescued."

Amazingly he survived, recovered, was discharged with a pension, and retired to Belfast, where he died ten years later.

How significant was the battle of Waterloo? Kate Ferguson looks at five ways in which it may (or may not) have changed Europe...

1. The Battle of Waterloo was a decisive victory over Napoleon, finally bringing years of war to an end and establishing a century of relative peace in Europe.

2. Would all of Europe be speaking French today if Napoleon had won? Some have speculated the French Emperor would have continued to march through Europe, conquering countries and imposing his brand of Republican liberalism across the continent. But most historians think that even if he had won, he would soon have been defeated by the 500,000-strong army of Allied troops mobilising against him.

3. The defeat of Napoleon brought to an end France's domination of Europe and has been said to mark the beginning of Britain's supremacy on the world stage. Britain's industrial might and vast empire came to dominate the 19th Century.

4. The Duke of Wellington emerged from the battle a hero and came to dominate politics. Nicknamed the Iron Duke he became Prime Minister in 1828, but he was a better military commander than politician and was forced to resign because of his opposition to electoral reform.

5. The defeat of Napoleon resulted in the unification of Germany and Italy - and hence potentially paved the way for the terrible wars of the 20th century which tore Europe and the world apart.

After Napoleon's rise to power the French conquered Italy but after his defeat the patchwork of independent governments were reverted to and divvied up among the Allied victors. But the seeds of nationalism had been sown resulting in Italy's eventual unification. Napoleon had also controlled many of the Germanic states, grouping them into the Confederation of the Rhine. After his defeat they fell under the leadership of the Austrian Empire. But calls for German unification continued to grow and were eventually realised under the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck in 1871.