Journal of the Waterloo Campaign

‘Canonnier anglais’: a Royal Horse Artillery man with his pipe. One in a series of watercolours by David-Noël-Dieudonné Finart, depicting the uniforms of British, Allied, and French troops in 1815. By courtesy of the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library.

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

Pen & Sword Military

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Copyright © editorial text Andrew Uffindell 2012

9781781599907

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Publishing History

Acknowledgements

Introduction

General Mercer

Mercer’s Troop

Preface by Mercer’s Son

Part I - Storm-clouds

Chapter 1 - To War

Chapter 2 - Ostend

Chapter 3 - Bruges

Chapter 4 - Ghent

Chapter 5 - Dendermonde

Chapter 6 - Arrival at Strytem

Chapter 7 - Country Pursuits

Chapter 8 - Ninove and Gaasbeek

Chapter 9 - Hal and Brussels

Chapter 10 - Cavalry Review

Part II - Waterloo

Chapter 11 - The Campaign Opens

Chapter 12 - Retreat

Chapter 13 - Battle of Waterloo

Part III - Advance on Paris

Chapter 14 - Entering France

Chapter 15 - Marches and Bivouacs

Chapter 16 - Beauty and Devastation

Chapter 17 - First Glimpse of Paris

Part IV - Occupation of Paris

Chapter 18 - Colombes

Chapter 19 - Paris and Versailles

Chapter 20 - Transfer to Stains

Chapter 21 - Boulevards and Restaurants

Chapter 22 - Markets and Street-scenes

Chapter 23 - A Spell of Leave

Chapter 24 - Return Home

Appendices

References

Bibliography

Index

Publishing History

Mercer’s Journal of the Waterloo campaign kept throughout the campaign of 1815 was published in two volumes by William Blackwood and Sons in 1870. It was reissued as a single volume in 1927, and on numerous subsequent occasions. A French translation was first published in 1933. The Journal is now presented as a completely new edition. This is the first time it has been illustrated and properly edited. A general introduction has been included, along with references, sidebars, and appendices to explore specific aspects in more detail. Mercer’s text has been organised into four parts, and the chapter titles have been added.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my family and friends, and the team at Pen and Sword Books for their help and advice with editing this book. I particularly wish to thank Rupert Harding for his guidance throughout the project, and indeed for our initial discussions which generated the idea for this book, and also my editor, Sarah Cook.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the research was visiting the Royal Artillery Library at Woolwich to read the Mercer papers. I am grateful to the Librarian, Paul Evans, and his assistants for their helpfulness, and to the Royal Artillery Historical Trust for courteously allowing me to use these papers. I am also indebted to the superb staff of the National Archives, the British Library, Hertfordshire Libraries, the Bibliothèque nationale de France at Paris, the Service historique de la défense at Vincennes, and the town hall at Stains.

I am most grateful to the Anne S.K. Brown Collection, Brown University Library, and to its Curator, Peter Harrington, for kindly supplying two of the illustrations and granting permission to reproduce them. In addition, I want to thank the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland for giving permission to include six of the drawings that Mercer made during the Waterloo campaign, and which are held in their collections. For her assistance in obtaining copies of these drawings, I am much obliged to Alison Metcalfe of the Manuscript and Map Collections.

I also wish to acknowledge the work done by previous authors in this field, particularly Gareth Glover, and the light they have shed on Mercer’s Journal. The first volume of Mr Glover’s The Waterloo archive, published by Frontline Books in 2010, features the National Library of Scotland’s full set of twenty-one drawings made by Mercer during the Waterloo campaign. Full details of the uniforms, ordnance, and equipment of the Royal Artillery can be found in Carl Franklin’s authoritative and superbly-illustrated British Napoleonic field artillery: the first complete illustrated guide to equipment and uniforms (2006).

Note: The National Library of Scotland is the proprietor of the copyright in the six drawings made by Mercer (NLS Ref: MS 4849). Any form of reproduction, transmission, performance, display, rental, lending or storage of the images in any retrieval system is prohibited without the consent of the copyright holder.

Introduction

Mercer’s Journal of the Waterloo campaign is not simply the most outstanding eyewitness account of 1815, but also one of the finest to emerge from any campaign. Blessed with a remarkable gift for observation, Mercer managed to bring events alive in a way unrivalled by less talented writers, and captured a myriad of colourful details precious to military and social historians alike – details that, were it not for him, would have been lost to posterity.

Mercer explained that he wrote not history, nor self-serving memoirs, but for his own private amusement. His Journal, he added, ‘though trifling to others, is to me worth its weight in gold – at least will be so years hence’. In writing it, he confined himself to what he personally saw, heard, or experienced, and candidly admitted his own mistakes and moments of foolishness, a rare and refreshing trait among memoir-writers. Even if sometimes deluded as to the importance of his personal contribution to winning Waterloo, Mercer was honest. He described events in a straightforward, soldierly manner, yet with the vividness and understanding of a cultured, educated man, and it is this blend of simplicity and charm that has made his account so captivating.

Surprisingly, Mercer’s Journal has never been properly edited. When it was first published in 1870, a reviewer noted what he called ‘a general imperfection of the work’. Mercer, he pointed out, had not explained ‘the many allusions to persons and things connected with the time or with his own profession which must otherwise remain obscure to the general reader’.¹ It is a deficiency that has grown as Mercer’s era has receded further back in time. Who today is familiar, for example, with the various types of horse-drawn carriage he mentioned? Hence the need for this new edition – the first to be properly edited, and supported with a wealth of maps and illustrations that present Mercer’s experiences in all their richness.

Mercer was a talented amateur artist, and that skill clearly influenced his writing style. He had a knack of capturing the essence of a scene, and of spotting picturesque details. He was fortunate enough to meet a host of remarkable people, and provided fascinating vignettes of them, including both Wellington and even – at long range – Napoleon himself. Like any good artist, Mercer also had an eye for a vivid, arresting contrast. In his account of Waterloo, for example, he admitted to a searing sense of guilt when one of his gunners was seriously wounded, and then, immediately afterwards, described his amusement at the sight of a terrified doctor scrambling away from French cannonshots like a great baboon. When the battle was over, he was sickened by the sights in the gutted farm buildings of Hougoumont, but then soothed by the peacefulness of the adjacent garden. This was a common theme, with war and peace repeatedly intruding upon one another in quick succession. During the advance on Paris, one day found Mercer bivouacked in a churchyard, using a grave as a table, whereas on another he enjoyed a magnificent dinner given by the commander of the cavalry brigade to which he was attached.

Did Mercer’s artistic background undermine the reliability of his Journal? Artists strive to create a visual impact as much as to convey an impression of reality. A careful choice of perspective, the adroit grouping of characters in the foreground, and a skilful combination of opposite colours provide the dramatic effect that elevates an ordinary painting to the level of a masterpiece. Was this also true of the Journal? Did Mercer subtly arrange his experiences into a colourful, entertaining composition? When he was transferred to command D Troop a month after Waterloo, did he exaggerate its indiscipline, in order to emphasise his disappointment in leaving the magnificent G Troop and its pleasant quarters outside Paris? I have added references and sidebars throughout the Journal to explore precisely these sorts of questions, to clarify key points, and to add interesting information of which Mercer would have been unaware. Mercer’s description of the Battle of Waterloo itself, with the inevitable confusion and controversies caused by an imperfect memory, deserves deeper consideration, and I have therefore addressed those particular issues in Appendix A.

Most importantly of all, I have placed the Journal in its proper context by examining two aspects that Mercer left largely unaddressed in his pages. The first is an account of his own life and career, using his unpublished archive notes, which shed a startling new light on some of the most puzzling aspects of the Journal. Until now, the man who wrote it has been left in the shadows, and readers have known little more about his character and background than what they learned incidentally from his own pages and from the mere outline of his career in a preface written by his son. This gap has now been filled, and Mercer emerges as a more complete and human figure, a man touched by tragedy, frustration, and inevitably some bitterness, but one whose long life was also rich in experiences and friendships.

I have supplemented this biographical portrait with a fresh look at G Troop Royal Horse Artillery, the unit that Mercer commanded at Waterloo. It would have been impossible to cover every aspect of the Troop and its equipment, so I have chosen to focus on its personnel, by using the records held in the National Archives to examine the backgrounds of the men who were under Mercer’s command – who they were, where they came from, how old they were, and how long they had served. The results constitute a remarkable profile of the Troop as a whole, and provide a fascinating backdrop to Mercer’s unique and unforgettable account.

Royal Artillery on the march.

General Mercer

General Alexander Cavalié Mercer – soldier, writer, artist – came from a family with a prestigious ancestry, and counted some truly remarkable characters among his forebears.¹ His surname is an ancient one. A mercer was originally a merchant who dealt in silks, and the Latin form of the word, Mercator, became prominent in Flanders, the birthplace of the famous sixteenth-century mathematician and cartographer, Gerard Mercator. Various branches of the Mercer family existed in Great Britain, but the name was found more commonly north of the border than in England.² From Scotland it spread to northern Ireland, and across the Atlantic. Among those who brought the name to the United States was Brigadier-General Hugh Mercer, one of the heroes of the US War of Independence: he had emigrated from Scotland after taking part in Bonnie Prince Charlie’s failed rebellion of 1745, and was mortally wounded at Princeton in 1777.

Heroic ancestors

Mercer took a keen interest in his family history. In 1856, he had a letter published in a periodical called the Athenæum, in which he objected to the description of a ‘fierce Scotch pirate, Mercier’. Pointing out that the man’s name was Mercer, not Mercier, he proudly added that, although labelled a pirate, he was ‘in reality a gallant and patriotic subject of Scotland’s King’. The man in question was Sir Andrew Mercer, and he became famous for his raid on the English fleet at Scarborough in 1377. It was an act of revenge for the recent imprisonment of his father, John Mercer, in Scarborough Castle after he had been shipwrecked.

This and similar exploits posed such a threat to English commerce that an alderman of London called John Philpot actually equipped a naval squadron at his own expense in order to stop them. He managed to capture Sir Andrew, but antagonised the English authorities with his interference – Philpot was, after all, merely a private citizen – and consequently the captive was released in 1378.³ The story had a fascinating sequel, as Mercer explained:

Somewhere about the beginning of the nineteenth century, a cousin of mine (Lieut.-Colonel Mercer,⁴ of the Life Guards, and of Queen Anne Street, West), passing though St Paul’s Churchyard, was surprised at seeing a handsome piece of plate in a shop-window bearing his own family arms. Naturally enough, he went in to inquire whence it came, and was informed that it was one of numerous articles, which, from time to time, had been brought for sale by an old woman, who lived somewhere in the neighbourhood – that some only of these bore the arms of Mercer, the greater part being totally different. My cousin purchased the cup (for such it was), and, having ascertained the whereabouts of the person who had sold it, went in search of, and, after some trouble, found her in a miserable garret, in a lane near St. Paul’s. The creature was on her death-bed, and he only succeeded in eliciting from her, that, to the best of her knowledge, she was the last of the Philpots of Upton Court, East Kent – from a series of misfortunes the family had been reduced to poverty, – and that she had for some time subsisted on the sale of what remained of the family plate, among which was much that had been taken on board the ship of the Scotch pirate, Mercer, by her great ancestor the Alderman, Sir John Philpots. It were needless to add, that Colonel Mercer did what he could to alleviate the misery of this last remnant of an ancient family, but in vain, she expired almost immediately afterwards.⁵

Mercer was also related, through his mother, to another extraordinary man, Jean Cavalier, the popular hero of the Camisard revolt. This uprising began in 1702, as Protestants in the Cévennes region of southern France took up arms in defence of their religious freedom in the Catholic kingdom. The Camisards inflicted several defeats on the French royal forces, and were remembered in an idealised light as sincere and courageous men engaging in a successful struggle against persecution. Cavalier, the chief of this band of irregulars, was by origin a shepherd boy and baker’s apprentice from an ordinary farming family. Yet despite these humble roots, he was far from being the unblemished figure of the legend, and in his memoirs glossed over unpalatable aspects of the revolt, such as the massacres committed by his Camisards. In reality, he was an unscrupulous adventurer, and was actually outwitted when the royal commander, Maréchal Claude de Villars, negotiated an end to the revolt. In 1704, Cavalier was enticed into abandoning the struggle, partly as he hoped to receive a regular officer’s commission from King Louis XIV. Then, to counter criticism of what might be seen as his betrayal of the cause, he brazenly claimed that he had been tricked by the French court. He emigrated and became a mercenary, first serving the Duchy of Savoy, and then fighting under the British flag. Badly wounded at Almanza in Spain in 1707, he later rose to become a general officer in the British army, and was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the island of Jersey, where he lived in splendour with as many as fourteen domestic servants. Heavily in debt, he died at London in 1740.⁶ Cavalier, in short, was a complex and deeply flawed man, adept at reinventing himself and at putting a spin on his actions, but this was not obvious at the time, least of all to his descendants. Mercer’s own second name was Cavalié (the alternative spelling of Cavalier), and it was the first name he gave his surviving son.

Martial family

The head of Mercer’s immediate family – his father, General Alexander Mercer – enjoyed a distinguished career in the Corps of Royal Engineers. In 1761, two years after being commissioned as an ensign, he took part in an expedition to capture the French island of Belleisle, off the coast of Brittany, and a decade later, during the US War of Independence, he served on the staff of one of the leading British commanders, Sir Henry Clinton. In the 1780s, after a period based in England, he served as the Commanding Engineer at Jamaica. In 1789, he was sent to the island of Guernsey for four years, and then spent the rest of his career stationed at Plymouth, the headquarters of the Western District of England. Popularly known as ‘Vinegar Mercer’, he was appointed a colonel-commandant in 1805, and died aged seventy-seven in November 1816. He is buried in Exeter cathedral, where his memorial can be seen in the north transept.⁷

Mercer himself was born on 28 March 1783, and baptised in the village church of Cottingham in Yorkshire (now in Humberside). At the time, his father was stationed at Hull, 4 miles to the south-east, as the Commanding Engineer of the District.

Mercer was a second son. His elder brother, George Collins Mercer, born on 15 December 1777, was commissioned in the Royal Artillery in 1794. But he drowned five years later, as a twenty-two-year-old first lieutenant, when he was shipwrecked on Sable Island while returning to Halifax in Nova Scotia after being on leave.⁸

Mercer had another brother, Augustus Cavalié, who was two years younger than him. Born on 26 April 1785, Augustus was commissioned as an ensign in the 9th (or the East Norfolk) Regiment of Foot at the age of eighteen, and as a captain served in the Peninsula between 1808 and 1811. He married at Lisbon in 1809, transferred from the 9th Regiment to command a garrison company at the Cape of Good Hope in 1814, and was placed on half-pay two years later. He died in 1825.⁹

An even younger brother, Cavalié Shorthose Mercer, was born on 4 April 1789, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in 1804. After two years at Gibraltar, he served under Wellington in Portugal in 1808, before returning at the end of that year to England, where he became ADC to his father. From 1812 to 1816, he was stationed in Ireland, and was promoted captain in 1813. In 1818, he was sent to Bermuda, and died there in August 1819.¹⁰

A further brother died in November 1820, as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy.¹¹ Mercer also had a sister, Theodosia, who was born on 5 May 1784. She married Hector Frederick McNeill, and lived in Linlithgow in Scotland. Unlike so many of her brothers, she survived to a grand old age, and died at Exeter in December 1881, aged ninety-seven.¹²

Haphazard education

One of Mercer’s earliest memories was of the grand illuminations in London in 1789 for King George III’s recovery from apparent madness. He initially attended a day school on the island of Guernsey, where his father was stationed at the time, but had a disjointed education and was repeatedly moved to different institutions. In 1791, at the age of eight, he was taken by his parents to become a boarder at the Prebendal School at Chichester on the south coast of England. After remaining for three days, his parents left him at the school and set off on their return to Guernsey. It was a traumatic parting:

The Grief of my Mother was great when taking leave of me in the little wainscoated Parlour, she said she should never see me again, and the Words were prophetic, for she died in Childbirth soon after arriving in Guernsey. The Surgeons – I have since heard – offered to save the Child by the Cæsarian Operation, but my Father would not permit it.¹³

Mercer was stunned at the loss of his mother, and unable to come to terms with it. ‘The News of this Event caused me a sort of feeling I have never known since’, he wrote. ‘I grieved for her loss, and yet was puzzled, and could not realize it.’¹⁴ Few boys, he added, had known more misery than befell him during that winter. He was left alone at the school, for the Master and his assistants were absent, and all the servants went away except for two sisters – the housekeeper and one of the maids:

These Brutes made me their Servant & treated me worse than a Dog on all & every occasion – My Evenings were often passed in the Washhouse shivering and stowed away amongst a heap of Faggot[s] – Bad living & bad treatment brought on a violent Diarrhea, and as I got flogged if they were disturbed by my passing from my dismal Garret to the Yard, most part of my Nights were passed there – Wonder it did not kill me.¹⁵

But his life improved, and in Spring 1792 he was joined at Chichester by his younger brother Augustus. He also made friends with a son of Rear-Admiral John Brisbane, became a favourite of the parents, and spent some delightful days with them.¹⁶

In Autumn 1794, the two Mercer brothers transferred to another school, under a Dr Wilcocks. Mercer enjoyed it there, for he was happy, well-fed, well-lodged, and learned as much as could be expected. But in 1796 he and Augustus were moved again, this time to the Reverend Russell’s establishment at Dartmouth, 24 miles east of Plymouth. Here, he recalled, the boys were most comfortable, since each had a little room of his own, and the freedom to ramble where he pleased. But they learned nothing, and Mercer almost died whilst out swimming: in launching himself from a mud bank into the water, he managed to slide over the jagged bottom of a broken glass bottle, and ripped open his chest and belly, leaving him with scars still visible half-a-century later.

Dartmouth lasted less than a year, for the Reverend Russell gave up his school after inheriting a fortune. Mercer then attended a day school, where he was again left largely to his own devices. That was followed, in 1797, by a new school at Ivybridge, 9.5 miles east of Plymouth, where it was much the same story. The Master, he recalled, was a Mr Halloran, who wrote political pamphlets, and articles for some periodical, and who regarded teaching as an irksome task, endured only in order to earn some money. This, in fact, was only half the story. Laurence Hynes Halloran had actually been acquitted of murder after killing a midshipman whilst serving in the Royal Navy. In 1784, he had become a schoolmaster at Exeter, but by 1796 was seriously in debt and had to leave. Pretending to be a clergyman, he briefly found employment at Ivybridge using forged documents, before returning to the Royal Navy as a chaplain (he even managed to be present at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805). In 1819, he would be transported to Australia after being convicted of forgery, only to resume his teaching career in Sydney.¹⁷

Mercer, therefore, had a decidedly patchy education, but found that this brought its compensations. ‘That which made Ivy Bridge delightful to us’, he explained, ‘was the liberty of roving thro’ the Woods & over the Moors, without any restraint so long as we were back at the regular Hours – We became Banditti – plundered Orchards: and the Woods being full of Pigs running nearly wild, we had capital Wild Boar Hunts!’¹⁸ The overall impression of Mercer’s childhood is of a dreamy, sensitive boy, deprived of a mother’s love and adequate supervision. The reasons now become clear for some of the traits in his personality that are evident in his Journal – a certain solitude and bookishness, combined with a lifelong love of the countryside.

Woolwich

Britain at this time was a nation at war with Revolutionary France, a fact that impinged even on Mercer’s little world. In 1794, he had witnessed the ecstatic aftermath of the ‘Glorious First of June’, the battle fought by Vice-Admiral Richard, First Earl Howe. ‘Portsmouth was in a perfect Uproar,’ he wrote. ‘The Fleet has just come to Spithead after the Victory of the 1st. I saw Lord Howe pass, in a kind of Triumph along the high Street – The sailors were like Madmen: carriages full of them and their Sacks, drunk and decorated with ribands, were driving furiously in all directions. I saw the dismasted and crippled Ships at Spithead, English and French: and I remember well seeing from the Platform a launch, taking a boat riddled with shot up to the Dockyard.’¹⁹

The question of Mercer’s future was discussed in the winter of 1797 – 1798. He came from a martial family, and his father, a Royal Engineer, was intent on sending him to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, 8 miles east of central London, to receive the professional education that was needed for a career in either the artillery or the engineers. In February 1798, Mercer duly sat the entrance examination, only to fail in Vulgar Fractions. ‘How could it be otherwise’, he later complained, ‘shifted about as I had been from one school to another, and no one ever having taken the trouble to ascertain what I knew.’²⁰ The solution was a crammer school at nearby Deptford, where boys were prepared specifically for the Academy. He ruefully noted that he learned more in that fortnight than he had done in the years he had wasted at various schools, and he passed easily when he sat the examination again later in February.

The Royal Military Academy had existed for just half-a-century, having been established by King George II in 1741. The number of cadets was only 100, even after an increase in June 1798, and two-fifths of them were destined for the East India Company’s service. Since cadets’ progress through the Academy was governed by performance in examinations, there was no fixed duration for the course, and it was reduced by the insatiable wartime demand for more artillery officers. In fact, many cadets left Woolwich knowing no more than the basic elements of the course. Discipline had been tightened in the 1760s, following an initial period when drunkenness, bullying, and idleness had been rife, but standards now slipped again as cadets sensed that they were bound to obtain a commission however they behaved. ²¹ Mercer himself was a cadet for under two years. The syllabus was a mixture of theory and practice, and included chemistry, mathematics, and fortification, besides drawing, dancing, and fencing, and both Latin and French.

Powdered heads

As a gentleman cadet, Mercer had to wear a queue, or pigtail, which was the military fashion of the time. His hair was rubbed backwards with pomatum, a kind of grease, to make it grow in the right direction, and gathered to form a queue behind the neck. Since cadets found it difficult to tie their own queue, they used to help each other, but the best opportunity of getting an excellent queue was when a couple of barbers visited once a fortnight. Sometimes, they drew the hair back so tightly that the cadets found it hard to shut their eyes, yet many retained their queue for a whole week, or even until the barbers next returned. Another drawback of the queues became obvious during church services, which produced an unforgettable stench from so many filthy heads crowded together in a hot and constricted space.

Mercer added that whenever a new cadet first joined Woolwich, he received a visit from a young barber, who informed him that his hair had to be put in order so he was properly dressed at the next morning’s parade. The loquacious barber then clipped away unmercifully, plastered his head with pomatum, and brutally pulled what was left into a queue, before demanding half-a-crown for his trouble. Once the cadet had paid, he sometimes heard a burst of laughter, but generally it was only on seeing the real barber appear the next morning that he realised he had been duped. He then found that his hair had been treated not with pomatum, but with an abominable mixture of soot, ashes, grease, and other dirt.

It was also customary to dust the hair with powder. Each cadet received a monthly allowance of 1½ lb of powder, which came in paper bags. After it had been issued, there was usually a mock battle as the cadets pelted each other with these bags, as if with snowballs. It was, Mercer recalled, a delightful amusement, for nothing was funnier than to burst such a projectile against someone’s face, and the clouds produced by the numerous explosions so resembled the smoke of a real action. Long afterwards, the whitened tree trunks and the great blotches on the dingy, red brick façade of the barracks bore witness to the intensity of the fight.²²

Amid such amusements, Mercer progressed through Woolwich, and in 1799 passed an examination to enter the Upper Academy, after extensive cramming in quadratic equations. At the end of his final term, he found that there were four or six commissions available in the Royal Artillery. He had the option of taking one of them, or of remaining at the Academy until a vacancy arose in the tiny Corps of Royal Engineers. ‘Prefered a Bird in the hand and took the Arty Commission’, he wrote, ‘moreover I hardly looked upon Engineers as Soldiers: and I wanted to be a Soldier.’²³

Hideous hat

Mercer’s commission as a second lieutenant was dated from 20 December 1799. ²⁴ Years later, he remembered how, in kitting himself out as an officer, he simply ordered a regulation cocked hat from a shop in London. Still only sixteen years old, he was unaware of the finer points of military fashion, and found himself the laughing-stock of all his companions when he attended his first guard-mounting parade. His hat was large, ungainly, adorned with a hideous plume, and its sides curled upwards, whereas just then the droop was beginning to be all the rage.

Despite this unpromising debut, Mercer soon became a dandy. ‘What a conceited young puppy I was,’ he later recalled. He was particularly conceited about his luxuriant, curly brown hair. It was fashionable for boys to affect an elegant, feminine appearance, yet in looking back on his life, Mercer thought that in reality they had actually been more manly than the boys of later generations. Moreover, the fashions proved fickle, as Mercer found to his cost. In 1807, when he set off on the South American expedition, he took a complete outfit of everything, including three new jackets, with short waists, for he expected to be abroad for a long time. As it turned out, he had the opportunity to wear them barely half-a-dozen times, so they were still practically new on his return to Woolwich the following year, and he was horrified to discover that the fashion had changed, with jackets now extending below the hips.²⁵

Mercer’s first unit was Major James Miller’s Company of the 5th Battalion, Royal Artillery. A battalion was an administrative formation, and its ten component companies were distributed between various stations, or else detached to overseas garrisons or campaign theatres. (A company consisted of personnel, but when equipped with guns was referred to as an artillery brigade.) Miller’s Company had been at Plymouth ever since being formed in 1794, but Mercer did not immediately join it there, instead remaining for half-a-year at Woolwich. This was, in fact, customary, so that newly commissioned officers could acquire specific knowledge of their profession, for the Academy had prepared them more generally for service in either the artillery or the engineers.²⁶ In practice, the instruction of these young officers was often poorly organised, and in any case Mercer fell seriously ill, spent nearly three months in bed, and was lucky to survive.

Two privates of the Royal Artillery. The gun carriage is designed for use in a garrison rather than in the field.

By the beginning of July 1800, Mercer had recovered and had arrived at Plymouth.²⁷ His first service of note was keeping the peace locally when riots broke out in March 1801, at a time of high food prices. The most serious disturbance flared up on the 31st, at the town of Plymouth Dock (now known as Devonport). It was market day, and a mob attacked bakers’ shops, breaking the windows and stealing the bread. When the magistrates asked for military assistance, detachments from two militia regiments and a squadron of regular cavalry were sent into the town. The tumult subsided after the reading of the riot act and the arrest of an apparent ringleader, but then resumed towards 4.00 pm as the dockyard men left work and joined the demonstrators. The mob now made its way towards the guardhouse to liberate rioters who had been arrested earlier in the day.

Mercer had two light 6-pounders in front of the guardhouse, pointed down Fore Street, which was crammed with rioters armed with guns, axes, and all sorts of other weapons. The cavalry and militia were drawn up in front of the guns, but were then withdrawn, and Mercer received instructions to fire. He was actually ordering the discharge of the first gun when he heard a cry to stop him. His father, who was stationed at Plymouth, had learned that the artillery was about to open fire, and came to address the mob, which he did so effectively that he managed to make it cheer and disperse.

At least, that was how Mercer remembered events, but the local newspaper reported a less heroic outcome. On coming face to face with the troops, the mob refused to disperse, and actually caused the magistrates to back down and release all the prisoners. ‘The infatuated people concerned in this disgraceful riot, little appreciated the danger they were in’, added the report in Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post. ‘Several field pieces loaded with grape and cannister were brought, unknown to them, to bear upon them, and in a few minutes would have been sufficient to have sent hundreds of them in an instant before that God whose religion proscribes tumult, and enjoins obedience to the laws.’²⁸ It is difficult to reconcile these conflicting accounts, but clearly a bloodbath was only narrowly averted. Within three weeks, Mercer was bound for an even more challenging, and altogether grimmer, posting.

Spiked heads

On 18 April 1801, Major Miller’s Company embarked at Plymouth, in order to sail to Ireland.²⁹ Less than three years had elapsed since the bloody events of 1798, when the Society of United Irishmen had led a rebellion intent on securing independence. Despite the arrival of over 1,000 French troops in August, the uprising was suppressed, and was followed by the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland, creating the United Kingdom with effect from 1 January 1801.

Atrocities had been committed on both sides, and a bitter legacy remained, so it was small wonder that Mercer expected to come under attack from rebels at every yard. He was surprised to find everything seemingly peaceful, but the apparent calm was deceptive, for at Cork on the southern coast he saw three human heads stuck on spikes above a gateway, with their hair blowing in the breeze, and their faces turned completely black.

From May, Mercer was stationed at Clonmel (46 miles north-east of Cork), where Miller was in command of the District.³⁰ Ireland had yet to be completely pacified. Reports continually arrived of murders and outrages, and also of intended assemblies, which were usually in some secluded mountain valley. Scarcely an evening or night passed without a detachment being sent out, but by the time it arrived, it generally found that the assembly had already dispersed. These counter-insurgency operations were harassing for the troops, and shots were frequently fired at sentries, or at dragoons escorting mail coaches. Prisoners were continually being brought in, and were often executed. Mercer recalled seeing several vehicles full of them being taken to the place where a crime had been committed, in order to be hanged on the spot.

In January 1802, Mercer transferred to Captain Lucius O’Brien’s Company of the 7th Battalion, after having been promoted to first lieutenant.³¹ The Battalion, which had existed for less than a year, had been formed from elements of the disbanded Royal Irish Artillery. Mercer remained at Clonmel until May, and was then based at Cork. Following O’Brien’s retirement, the Company was commanded by Captain Alexander Duncan, and then, from September 1803, by Captain Frederick Walker.³²

Royal Horse Artillery

Mercer now made a crucial career move: he was persuaded to apply for the Royal Horse Artillery (RHA). The RHA – a component part of the Royal Regiment of Artillery – had existed for barely a decade, having been formed only in 1793. The French Revolutionary wars had provided an added impetus for the introduction of horse artillery across Europe, following the creation of the first regular unit by Frederick the Great of Prussia during the Seven Years’ War (1756 – 1763). Chief of its assets was mobility: all the men in the gun detachments were mounted on horses or limbers, instead of having to march on foot. Horse artillery could act with the advanced or rear guard, keep up with cavalry and provide fire support, rapidly cross difficult terrain, outflank an enemy, or arrive suddenly at a designated point and instantly open fire. Its value was immediately clear to Colonel John Moore (the future hero of the Battle of Coruña) when he encountered one of the RHA’s batteries, A Troop, in Suffolk in 1797. ‘This was the first mounted artillery I had seen,’ he recorded in admiration. ‘I can conceive of nothing in higher order than this troop. It is a great improvement, and great advantage may be derived from the celerity with which they move.’³³

The RHA was an élite, for it required – and attracted – a superior sort of man. Its recruits had to be keen, intelligent, quick-moving, and self-reliant. It was also a small formation, for the extra horses and furnishings required to make it fully mobile made it more expensive than the Foot Artillery, and its higher standards resulted in greater difficulties in obtaining suitable men and horses. The RHA’s first two Troops, designated A and B, were authorised in January 1793, but it reached maturity only after twelve years of gradual increases. A third and fourth Troop (C and D) were raised in November 1793. Two more were created the next year, followed by the seventh, G Troop, in 1801. By April 1815, the RHA consisted of as many as fourteen Troops (two of which were Rocket Troops), and had a total effective strength of 1,871 men of all ranks, and 1,280 horses.³⁴

The RHA was often exposed to danger, because of the very nature of its role. A Troop was surprised by French cavalry at Egmont-op-Zee in 1799, during the Helder expedition, while in the Peninsular war D Troop was repeatedly ridden through at Albuera in 1811, and part of E Troop temporarily fell into French hands the following year as it accompanied the advanced guard. Most famously of all, two guns of I Troop under Second Captain Norman Ramsay had to gallop to safety at Fuentes de Oñoro in 1811 to avoid capture, although this dramatic incident was later inflated by the purple prose of the historian William Napier.

Despite these inevitable mishaps, the RHA proved stunningly effective. ‘The victory was complete’, exulted one of its officers after Vitoria in 1813. ‘The Horse Artillery did its duty, and was of undoubted use; no other artillery could get up when the rout began.’³⁵ A month earlier, D Troop had pursued the French rearguard near the city of Salamanca for 5 miles, making the most of its mobility to fire a few rounds before limbering up and galloping on to the next position, often in advance of the cavalry. The RHA was also indispensable in the rugged terrain of the Pyrenees, which restricted the movements of ordinary artillery units. More than thirty years later, in a speech in 1845, a Member of Parliament, Sir Howard Douglas, referred to A Troop’s role at the Battle of the Nivelle in 1813, in providing crucial fire support for the attack on a French redoubt. Douglas used it as an example to try to ensure that adequate resources were allocated to the RHA. ‘Sir’, he proclaimed, ‘that operation was worth all the money the Horse Artillery ever cost the country.’³⁶

Twists of fate

Mercer’s application to be admitted to this élite branch was successful, and in January 1804 he joined F Troop, which was stationed at Fermoy, 18 miles north-east of Cork. Its captain was Alexander Duncan, one of his former commanders in the 7th Battalion.³⁷ As an RHA officer, Mercer had a certain prestige, and would enjoy some enviable adventures, whereas the Company in which he had previously been serving would remain in Ireland until 1810, before spending a further nine years stationed in the West Indies.

In the Summer of 1804, F Troop moved from Fermoy to Dublin, but had to endure an outbreak of ophthalmia, or inflammation of the eyes. The cause appears to have been an infection contracted earlier, when the Troop had sailed to Ireland in transports that had previously carried British soldiers back from the Egyptian expedition of 1801, where eye problems had been common. Mercer himself was afflicted by it for six weeks, and his groom was even less fortunate, losing the sight in one eye, and being left with impaired vision in the other. That same year, Mercer fell from his horse when it ran away with him down a hill, and he either broke or dislocated his wrist. After a week of being tortured by a Dublin surgeon trying to force the bone back into its place, he revolted and abandoned the treatment.

Mercer remembered Dublin being illuminated to celebrate Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar in October 1805. Soon afterwards, F Troop was ordered to hold itself in readiness to embark for England, its ultimate destination being to join an expedition to Hanover. But bad weather and a shortage of transports caused delays. It was 17 December before Mercer finally sailed, and after reaching Woolwich the following month he found that the expedition had been abandoned following Napoleon’s crushing defeat of the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz.

St Stephen’s Green, a fashionable park in Dublin.

Mercer was promoted to second captain in December 1806, but it was only by a narrow twist of fate that he now joined G Troop, the unit with which he would win fame.³⁸ On the 19th of the month, he was ordered to Gibraltar, and actually sold his horses and furnishings as he prepared to depart.³⁹ But, just before setting off, he was stopped by the arrival of an orderly from Woolwich, with news that he had been given a new appointment, in G Troop, where he replaced Second Captain Nathaniel Oliver, who had transferred to M Troop.

Having re-equipped himself with the help of £200 from his father, Mercer joined his new Troop at Christchurch on the southern coast of Hampshire at the beginning of 1807.⁴⁰ He found it a novel experience because of the character of his superior, Captain Augustus Frazer. ‘Found myself very ignorant of all Duties & Exercises’, Mercer admitted. ‘Our way of doing business in F Troop had been very loose – under Fraser soon improved – He led me into all sorts of situations likewise to try my Nerves’ .⁴¹ On one such occasion, they swam their horses from Christchurch Haven, round a headland called Hengistbury Head, and then westwards along the coast into Poole Bay, where they alarmed some men who were loading seaweed. This area of the coast is now occupied by the urban sprawl of Bournemouth, but at the time was a vast heath. On another day, Frazer took the entire Troop, including its ammunition waggons, up the clay cliffs from a beach, an operation that took four hours.

South American blunder

Mercer had yet to do any actual war-fighting, as opposed to counter-insurgency and controlling civil unrest. But in 1807, G Troop joined an expedition to South America. At this stage, before the start of the Peninsular war, Spain was still France’s ally, and therefore Britain’s foe. The lucrative Spanish colonies in South America had proved an irresistible target for an independent-minded British naval officer, Commodore Sir Home Popham. In 1806, after obtaining a small force from the British garrison of the Cape of Good Hope by sheer force of character, Popham made an unauthorised attack on Buenos Ayres. The city was occupied in June, only to fall two months later to a Spanish counter-attack. By the time the news of this reverse reached London, the British government had already decided to despatch reinforcements to South America. Lieutenant-General John Whitelocke was now sent to take command, with a further contingent of 1,800 men, including G Troop.

In February 1807, Frazer was ordered to hold the Troop in readiness to embark, and sent Mercer to Portsmouth to supervise the embarkation of its guns and stores. No horses would be taken – the voyage was so long that it made more sense to procure them locally on arrival. ‘The Troop is in all respects ready’, Frazer wrote on the 24th. ‘As no Horses are to be taken, we have of course given up all wish to take any; – my Officers are all poor, and have no Valuable Horses; We are consequently not individually interested on this point; – Our only anxiety is to do well, and to command the esteem of the Generals under whom we shall serve.’⁴² Mercer embarked with the bulk of the Troop on the Princess Royal, a spacious transport ship of 400 tons. ‘The Transports are very fine’, wrote Frazer. ‘Nothing can be more comfortable than our arrangements, nor more flattering than our prospects.’⁴³

By late June, Whitelocke had reached Montevideo, and had over 10,000 British troops in hand, ready for a bid to retake Buenos Ayres. Landing 25 miles south-east of the city on 28 June, he began his approach march through difficult, marshy terrain. A series of blunders followed. On 2 July, a Spanish counter-attack was defeated outside Buenos Ayres, but Whitelocke failed to exploit this success by immediately entering the city. By the time he finally launched a set-piece assault on the 5th, the defenders had prepared barricades and other defences, and the attack degenerated into chaos. Street-fighting nullified the British advantages of discipline and training, and hampered attempts at command and control. Flat roofs enabled the defenders to fire down into the streets from behind cover. The British columns were unable to support each other, and some were overwhelmed and forced to surrender. G Troop took part in the attack, although its gun detachments were unmounted, since only a few horses could be obtained. ‘The conduct of the officers and men was admirable’, reported Captain Augustus Frazer, ‘… their gallantry and intelligence have ensured the respect of the whole army.’⁴⁴

Lieutenant-General John Whitelocke, at his court-martial.

A ceasefire next day was followed by a treaty under which Whitelocke agreed to evacuate Buenos Ayres and then Montevideo, in return for an exchange of prisoners. It was an inglorious end to a mismanaged and over-ambitious campaign, and Whitelocke was court-martialled and dismissed from the army.

Woodbridge

G Troop sailed home, arriving in Cork that December, before returning to Woolwich in February 1808.⁴⁵ A year later, in January 1809, the Troop moved to a new station, Woodbridge in Suffolk (7 miles north-east of Ipswich), where it would remain for over five years, by far the longest period it had ever spent at a single garrison. Lying on the Deben river, the town had formerly been an important port and ship-building site. Barracks, built there in 1803 at the time of the French invasion threat, could accommodate as many as 5,000 troops. Mercer did not appreciate the change from Christchurch. ‘Took a great dislike to the Place and Country at first sight’, he recorded in his diary.⁴⁶

While stationed at Woodbridge, Mercer took part in manoeuvres, expeditions in pursuit of deserters, and training such as firing practice and the construction of fixed battery positions. One mock fight in 1812 nearly ended seriously, for while he was defending a bridge, the men on both sides became so irate that they began to attack each other in earnest. Fortunately, Frazer appeared and stopped it before anyone suffered more than a few scratches.

That Mercer had little experience of campaigning was not for want of trying. When an expedition captured the town of Flushing on the Dutch island of Walcheren in July 1809, he even went to Harwich and tried to obtain a passage to join in the action, only to find everything under embargo. The Peninsular war offered further tantalising opportunities. ‘If any Second Captain should accompany the Detachment destined for the Troops in Portugal, I beg to offer myself for that Service’, he wrote in December 1810 to the Deputy Adjutant-General of the Royal Artillery.⁴⁷ But the reply could hardly have boosted his spirits. ‘I am apprehensive that your request will militate against general rules’, it read, ‘and that the number of requests to serve in Portugal, which the Master General has refused to Officers whose Companies are at Home, will also be against you.’⁴⁸

Indeed, Mercer was just one of numerous artillery officers seeking active employment, and the tone of their applications sometimes verged on the desperate. First Lieutenant William Ingilby had returned to England in January 1813 after two-and-a-half years in the Peninsula, and by April was already seeking to go back. ‘I lose no time in requesting respectfully to offer my services for any vacancy there may be at present’, he wrote, ‘or for the first that may occur from any casualty whatever, and in case my wishes cannot be soon or at all complied with in that quarter, should an opportunity offer where I might be employed with any of the Corps on the Continent, it would give me equal happiness, indeed the acceptance of my services in either or any case will be most gratefully felt, my situation here under all circumstances being particularly irksome.’⁴⁹

Mercer nearly made it to the Peninsula in May 1811, having persuaded Major-General Victor, Baron Alten, one of the friends he had made at the Woodbridge garrison, to take him there as an extra ADC. He was actually making his preparations to go, only to receive a letter from Alten explaining that the Master-General of the Ordnance (the head of the Board responsible for superintending the artillery and engineers) had refused permission. Posterity is the poorer for this refusal, for Mercer would surely have recorded a wealth of fascinating detail about the Peninsular war. Two years later, in June 1813, his expectations of going to Germany, where Napoleon was fighting the Russian and Prussian armies, were dashed by an armistice in that theatre, which lasted into August.

When Napoleon finally abdicated in April 1814, following the occupation of Paris by Britain’s allies, Mercer was still at Woodbridge. Unfortunately for him, the small size of the RHA had restricted the available opportunities: by the end of 1812, over a quarter of its officers were serving abroad, yet this seemingly impressive proportion amounted to just nineteen of them.⁵⁰ Even so, Mercer had not remained completely shielded from danger in England, and in fact had cheated death several times. In 1807, he nearly drowned when his boat capsized whilst out duck-shooting on the Avon river, and he had another narrow escape in December 1810, when a 24-pounder exploded just as he was standing at the muzzle with a quadrant to give the elevation.

In October 1814, G Troop left Woodbridge, and moved to Colchester, 24 miles to the south-west, but seemed more likely to fire at rioters than any foreign enemy, for in the Spring of 1815, England was divided by the enactment of the Corn Laws – protective tariffs restricting the import of cheap corn from abroad. Introduced to protect the interests of landowners, the Laws sparked unrest among the urban working class, which faced deprivation as a result of artificially high bread prices. Two RHA Troops, A and I, were sent on 9 March to Birmingham and Nottingham as a precautionary measure, and G Troop was held in readiness to march into Norfolk, where disorder was expected.⁵¹

It was against this background that news arrived of Napoleon’s bold escape from exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba. Marching on Paris, he regained power from the recently restored Bourbon monarch Louis XVIII, who abandoned his throne and crossed the border into the United Netherlands (an amalgamated Holland and Belgium under the House of Orange). This is the event, in March 1815, that marks the beginning of Mercer’s Journal of the Waterloo campaign.

Important day

Mercer had been on leave since the previous summer, and was searching for a suitable house where his wife and infant son could set up home.⁵² He had been married for less than a year-and-a-half, to a cousin called Frasquita Rice (also known as Frances, or Fanny). Back in the Spring of 1808, when Fanny was fifteen (she was born on 9 September 1792), he had called on her and her aunt in London, at his father’s request, and had agreed to correspond with them. The relationship developed slowly and fitfully. ‘Fanny caused a sensation among our people’, Mercer noted after she visited Woolwich, yet he then failed to write to her for five months, until Christmas Eve 1808.⁵³ At the beginning of 1811, Mercer thought that she received him rather coldly when he visited, and in April he took offence and temporarily broke off corresponding with her. Yet a year later, early in 1812, he paid her a visit at her family’s home in Faringdon, Berkshire. ‘F. met me at the door when I went over’, he recorded, ‘and in that Meeting our Fate was sealed.’⁵⁴ On 8 February, he added an even more momentous note:

Important Day! Last Night made an assignation with F. for this Morng. Met in the Drawing Room before Breakfast, and settled upon becoming Man & Wife – After Breakfast I walked out leaving F to announce matters to her Aunt – On returning found that the old Lady had wept much, but approved.⁵⁵

Yet the couple would need financial help if they were to set up home, and by the Spring of 1813 this seemed increasingly unlikely to be forthcoming from Fanny’s family. It was at this same time that Mercer’s hopes of going on active service in Germany were dashed, and his frustration is clear in his unpublished notes. ‘About to volunteer for Persia, and break off’, he recorded in June.⁵⁶

This bleak mood passed, and within weeks Mercer was making arrangements for a November wedding. Their financial worries still had to be resolved. One of Fanny’s relatives denied having previously made lavish promises of help, and now declared that she would give Fanny only her trousseau (a collection of clothes and other essential items for married life). As for Fanny’s parents, they said they could give her nothing for the time being. Her father, the Reverend Richard Rice, explained that when he died, the Living of Eaton-Hastings, of which he was the Rector, would be inherited by his son, while his other property would be divided among his daughters, including Fanny, the eldest. Until then, the young couple could count on only £100 a year from Mercer’s father, yet they were determined to go ahead – so much so that Fanny was even prepared to live in a barracks.

They married on 10 November 1813, at Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire, 23 miles north-west of Oxford. Ten months later, on 10 September 1814, Fanny gave birth to a son, but not all was well, for the young couple seem to have been continually embroiled in disputes with their families. Mercer was repeatedly quarrelling with his aunt, and complained that he had been her favourite until he married, whereupon he shared the fate of his other relatives when they did the same.

This friction continued throughout the 1815 campaign, but went unrecorded in the published Journal. Nor did Mercer mention Fanny’s reaction to the news of victory at Waterloo. Learning that he was safe, she dressed their son’s hat with laurel, and sent Mercer’s letter to his father, who in turn forwarded it in delight to Henry, First Earl of Mulgrave, the Master-General of the Ordnance. Meanwhile, Mercer marched on Paris with Wellington’s army to complete Napoleon’s overthrow.

Fanny was pregnant again, and expected to give birth in October 1815. But she felt lonely, for Mercer was still in France on active service, and her family was either too busy or too alienated to spend time with her.⁵⁷ At the end of July, just over a month after Waterloo, Mercer wrote to promise that he would come and collect her from England, and take her back to France with him. By this stage, he was occupying the village of Stains outside Paris, and had spared the life of a cow – which the commissariat had issued to him by way of rations – so that it could provide milk when Fanny arrived.

Royal Foot Artillery in