Galloping at Everything - The British Cavalry In The Peninsular War At Waterloo, 1808-15

Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2001. First Printing . Hard Back. Fine/Fine. 6 1/4" X 9 1/2. 301 Pages Indexed. Blue boards with gold impressed lettering on the spine. Book and Jacket protected with a Demco Polyfit vinyl covering jacket and book since day of purchase. It was the poor discipline demonstrated by the British cavalry commanded by General Slade at Maguilla in 1812 that prompted the Duke of Wellington's famous remark that it was "occasioned entirely by the trick our officers of cavalry have acquired of galloping at everything." The fact that they did have a tendency to gallop rashly into enemy lines in pursuit of beaten infantry colored not only Sir Charles Oman's attitude toward the cavalry in his History of the Peninsular War but also that of succeeding generations of historians. Sir John Fortescue's History of the British Army provides the only fair assessment of the cavalry's performance - until now. In Galloping at Everything, author Ian Fletcher contends that the British cavalry proved more adept at piquet work, at the gathering and transmission of intelligence, and on forage and escort duties. On the field of battle they frequently forced their much-vaunted and supposedly superior opponents to run on dozens of occasions between 1808 and 1815. The performance of the cavalry, as compared to the British infantry, suffered as a result of their very low numbers, the incompatibility of the terrain for cavalry campaigning, and the lack of a consistent cavalry commander. In fact, the majority of the cavalry's success was achieved when Wellington himself was not present - a fact that raises questions about his abilities as a controller of cavalry and his reliance on the ever-dependable British and Portuguese infantry.