Topic: Discipline
Craufurd's Discipline and Influence
The British Soldier; His Daily Life from Tudor to Modern Times, Colonel H. de Watteville, C.B.E., M.A. (OXON), P.S.C., 1954
The army of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, moreover, contained ruffians whose excesses in the field could best be repressed by the lash, if only to save them from the gallows; accordingly the cat was accepted by the troops almost as a necessary part of the hardships of war. So there comes to mind a vision of Robert Craufurd when, on the awful retreat to Corunna, three men were sentenced to be flogged. One was flogged by torchlight and the column moved on: there was no time to halt longer. Next morning it was believed the other two would be forgotten. Not so Craufurd! Through that fearful night he had trudged at the head of his starving, fainting, footsore Light Division. At dawn, haggard, and with hair, eyebrows, beard, all caked with ice, his first order was that the two remaining sentences were to be carried out—even though he finally remitted one. Truly a picture almost majestic by reason of its very grimness! It depicts the astonishing Craufurd to the life! And what a hold he exerted over his men's minds! It is told that his Light Division, marching back from his funeral near Badajoz in 1810, was faced by a stretch of flood water risen across their road. The leading men hesitated, looking for a way round. Then of a sudden they remembered their lost commander who had always insisted on his troops keeping straight ahead regardless of obstacles. As though paying homage to his memory the whole column without a word went straight through the water and the mud. They forgave all the iron discipline—all that rigid severity!
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