Edward Bird, The Old Soldier’s Story, 1808 (Wolverhampton Art Gallery)
My research on Shadrack Byfield – an English War of 1812 veteran who buried his own severed arm, designed a custom prosthesis, and went on to write multiple memoirs – has recently been published in the Journal of British Studies. The article, “From Amputee to Author”, is freely available on the JBS website. This publication marks the culmination of a decade of intermittent detective work into the colourful life of a remarkable and very strong-willed man, and uses Byfield’s experiences as a means of thinking more broadly about the history of disability, veterans, and military autobiography.
It has been gratifying to see Byfield’s story resonate beyond academic circles. The University of Cambridge, where I was based when I completed the article, shared a news bulletin summarizing my findings. In the days leading up to the article’s release, my research was featured in Popular Science, Ars Technica, and the French-language publication Sciences et Avenir, as well as in several national and regional newspapers in Britain.
Article abstract The memoir of Shadrack Byfield, an English weaver and war amputee, occupies a privileged place in the historiography and public memory of the Anglo‑American War of 1812. Yet relatively little is known about the author of this rare rank-and-file account. Drawing on extensive archival research and a newly discovered second autobiography, this article challenges the familiar image of Byfield as a plainspoken exemplar of military stoicism. It reveals how war in North America transformed the former private soldier both physically and psychologically. Examining Byfield’s return to civilian life, the article highlights his tenacious pursuit of veterans’ benefits, his cultivation of influential patrons, and his invention of a prosthetic device to enable a resumption of weaving work. It also traces the ex‑serviceman’s path to publication and explores his shifting self‑presentation in print—first as a dutiful soldier and later as a redeemed sinner. Integrating scholarship on disability, memoirs, military welfare, and the history of emotions, the article argues that Byfield’s exceptionally well‑documented life offers a window into the wider experiences of Britain’s homecoming soldiers after the Napoleonic Wars.
Plate from Percy Groves, History of the 91st Princess Louise’s Argyllshire Highlanders (1894)
The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars exacted an awful human toll. As one British publication asserted thirteen years after Waterloo: ‘There are few families in the land who have not one or more relatives sleeping in a soldier’s grave’.
While the letters of officers and their families provide voluminous documentation of the pain of separation and bereavement, accessing the experiences of rank-and-file soldiers and their kin is altogether more difficult. The autobiography of John MacKinnon, a clerk and weaver who grew up in wartime Glasgow, provides a moving description of the last time he saw his uncle, James Moodie, an unmarried grenadier in the 91st Highland Regiment, in 1806 or 1807. Moodie had enlisted in the army, much to the disappointment of his mother, after an unsatisfactory stint as an apprentice stocking weaver. Continuing to make hose as a regimental tradesman, he survived the gruelling retreat to Corunna in 1809 but died of illness during the disastrous Walcheren expedition later that year.
MacKinnon’s account underscores the length of time servicemen spent apart from their families, but also hints at the importance of the exchange of letters for maintaining connections with home. Moodie’s attempt to test whether his sister, John MacKinnon’s mother, would recognize him after a dozen years’ separation echoes similar tricks recounted by veteran soldiers in their memoirs. It is also fascinating to learn that the soldier’s arrears of pay were later used to purchase a mourning ring. Born in 1802, MacKinnon would have been very young at the time of Moodie’s furlough; his recollections likely reflect family stories repeated after the grenadier’s death as much as the first-hand memories of a four or five-year-old boy.
[A]n uncle of mine, James Moodie, a soldier in the Grenadier Company of the 91st Regiment, got a furlough, and came to see us. My parents had not mentioned the change of residence in their letters, and he came to the house in Cheapside [Street, Glasgow]; one of the neighbours called me from among the children, and told me to take the soldier home to my father’s. The 91st at that time wore the kilt, and my uncle was a tall good looking man, but I did not at the time know that he was any relation to me; he took me by the hand, and I led him away round to the house. He thought that my mother would not know him, as she had not seen him for twelve years, and he meant to pass himself off for an acquaintance of her brother from the regiment; but as soon as he entered, and took off his bonnet, she knew him, and seized him by the hand. He had been seen by Young’s people going up the street leading me by the hand, and he being tall, his bonnet and feathers were seen over the kirkyard wall going down towards the house. James Young’s father immediately came round to see who it was, and during the time that his furlough lasted, they made his stay as pleasant as possible.
We never saw him again. He had enlisted in the Argyleshire Regiment [later renumbered as the 91st] in 1794, and was through all the campaigns till 1809. He got his furlough in 1807. He was with the army during the retreat to Corunna, and wrote an account of the retreat in a series of letters after the regiment returned to Britain. His regiment was sent out to Walcheren in Holland in 1809; he was attacked with fever & ague, but got better, he went to his duty too soon, had a relapse and died there; a great portion of the Army died in that unwholesome place. There was a guinea of arrears due to him when he died, and it was sent home. Half a guinea was sent to my aunt in Lanark, and my father put as much to the other half guinea, as bought a fine gold ring to [sic] my mother, with my uncle’s name engraved on it.
MacKinnon provides further information on Moodie’s visit in another handwritten account, entitled ‘My Schools and School Masters: or The Story of My Education’. This version contains a fuller description of the soldier’s warm welcome in Glasgow, his emotional final parting with MacKinnon’s mother, and a less enjoyable sojourn with his other sister in Lanark.
Towards the end of that year [1806], we had a visit from my uncle James Moodie. The 91st Regiment had returned to Britain, and when furloughs were being granted to the men, it came to his turn, and he thought he would go north, and see how his sisters were. [Moodie’s parents had both died by this time.]
He knew that my mother was married, and he had heard of my father from some of the Fencible men who had entered the 91st Regiment after the Fencibles were broke [i.e. disbanded]. My parents had not mentioned to my uncle their removal from Cheapside to Piccadilly Street [in Glasgow], lest he might think the one place distant from the other, whereas they were next streets to each other, and the post man knew our new residence and brought the letters quite regularly. When my uncle came to Cheapside Street… he was informed that my parents had removed to the next street, but as I happened at the time to be in Cheapside Street engaged with my former play fellows, I was called forward, and told to take the soldier round to my father’s. I got hold of the soldier’s hand, and took him round to my father’s. He wanted to pass himself off as a soldier of the regiment who had called at her brother’s request, but he had not spoken many words when my mother recognised him, and seized his hand, exclaiming “You are Jamie Moodie my brother.” They had not seen each other for twelve years. My father was sent for, and he gave him a hearty welcome, and we were all delighted that Uncle James had come. When it became known that a brother of my mother’s had come home on furlough from the army, the neighbours and our acquaintances were all anxious to see him and hear of his adventures during the twelve years that he had been a soldier. My uncle was treated with the greatest kindness during the time that he stopt with us, not only by ourselves, but by our acquaintances. He was shewn [sic] every place about the town that was thought worth seeing, and on all these occasions he was not allowed to be at any expense, so as that he might reserve the pay that he had to carry him back to the regiment. My uncle was well liked in the regiment, for he was of an open, frank disposition.
He passed the most time of his furlough with us, and as the town of Lanark lay between Glasgow and the place where the regiment lay, he went to pass the remainder of the time with my aunt, as he would be so far on the way. Before leaving he made one request of my mother, and that was that if she had another son, she would call him by his name; this was promised at once.
When he went away, my parents accompanied him to the end of Glasgow Green, and they bade each other farewell. He had only gone a few steps, when he came back, and took mother’s hand, and kissed her, saying perhaps they might never again see each other, and then parted.
They never met again; he died of fever and ague at Walcheren in Holland.
During his stay in Lanark, my aunt’s husband John Watson died, and she was left a widow with one son about my own age. He had not the same pleasure in Lanark as he had with us: my aunt’s disagreeable temper caused words between them, and my uncle wrote to us after he had rejoined the regiment, regretting that he had left us to go to Lanark.
Source: Glasgow City Archives, TD743, John MacKinnon papers, autobiography, pp. 10-11, 26, and ‘My Schools and School Masters: or The Story of My Education’, pp. 8-10, 27-30.
An article of mine, entitled ‘British Military Music and the Legacy of the Napoleonic Wars’, has just been published in The Historical Journal. Drawing on newspapers, memoirs, and regimental records, it examines the implications of wartime military mobilization for British and Irish musical life in the decades after 1815. One part of the article discusses the origins of brass bands, revealing that the first such ensembles in Britain were organised by military regiments after the Napoleonic Wars.
The implications of my research for brass band history received extensive media coverage in Britain earlier this week, including an excellent BBC News feature and articles in newspapers such as The Times. ITV News dreamt up an unbeatable strapline: ‘”War – what is it good for?” – brass bands, according to a Cambridge historian.’ The University’s press team, spearheaded by Tom Almeroth-Williams and Jonny Settle, also crafted an engaging web story (‘Bold as Brass’) and a short film summarising some of my key findings. I am grateful to the Harrogate Band, featured in the video below, for allowing us to record them playing several pieces of music relevant to the research.
Abstract Historians have increasingly stressed the impact of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars on Britain and Ireland. Less attention, however, has been paid to the legacies of martial mobilization after 1815. Drawing on hitherto unused press and archival sources, this article assesses the implications of wartime military expansion for the music profession, and musical culture more generally, in the decades after Waterloo. It demonstrates that men and boys who honed their instrumental skills in uniform embarked on a variety of civilian musical careers, becoming instructors, wind performers, composers, and even opera singers. The article traces the post-war circulation of regimental instruments and reveals that a multitude of militia and volunteer bands remained active long after demobilization. The wartime proliferation of military bands, moreover, encouraged the subsequent spread of quasi-martial wind ensembles in wider society. Finally, the article proves that brass bands were first introduced to Britain and Ireland in a regimental guise. The influence of the military on musical culture after 1815, in short, was palpable and often profound, and manifested itself in numerous ways and settings.
The brass band of the Worcestershire Yeomanry performs at an 1838 review. ‘The Review of the Queen’s Own Regiment of Yeomanry Cavalry, on Kempsey Ham’, engraving by H. Papprill after W. J. Pringle, 1839. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
View of the Taking of Quebec, 13 September 1759 (National Army Museum, 1971-02-33-314-1)
This week I gave a speech in London at a dinner commemorating the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. I have decided to share an edited version of my remarks, which were delivered in my capacity as a National Army Museum research fellow, to mark the 265th anniversary of the battle. I have also included a brief list of books at the end of the post for readers wishing to learn more. – Eamonn O’Keeffe
The 1759 siege of Quebec, of course, enjoys particular prominence as a turning point in Canada’s past. But it also remains a storied episode in military history on both sides of the Atlantic. This should come as no surprise, for quite apart from its profound repercussions, as C.P. Stacey observed long ago, the truth of the campaign’s climax seems almost stranger than fiction. There’s the hushed, suspenseful transit across the St Lawrence River; the nocturnal clambering up the cliffs; and the mortal injury of both commanders in a brisk showdown before the city walls. It all feels like a scriptwriter’s flight of fancy – the somewhat rushed wrapping up of a television series.
And the news certainly felt incredible to observers at the time, not least because tidings of victory arrived in England hot on the heels of an earlier, despairing despatch from Major-General James Wolfe, which seemed to foreshadow a humiliating withdrawal.
In June of 1759, Wolfe had cruised down the St Lawrence aboard a flotilla of forty-nine warships and one hundred and nineteen transport and supply vessels. Aged thirty-two and entrusted with his first independent command, the general arrived with great hopes of success. But the end of August found Wolfe no closer to conquest, his many plans frustrated by the forbidding geography of the capital of New France and the resolve of its garrison. The defenders – comprised of French soldiers, indigenous warriors, and Canadian militia, headed by the Marquis de Montcalm – outnumbered his own army. They were well-entrenched on the Beauport shore downstream from the city: an attempt to land grenadiers and storm Montcalm’s lines at Montmorency on the 31st of July proved a bloody fiasco. Wolfe was reduced to launching desultory raids, bombarding the city, and laying waste to farms and villages in an impotent attempt to draw Montcalm out into open battle.
Time was running out, for the fleet would soon need to sail away to avoid being trapped by winter ice. Wolfe had already resolved to leave the army after this campaign; now he reckoned with the likelihood of defeat and disgrace. Only two years earlier, the Royal Navy had executed an admiral for failing to do his utmost – this was an age when performance reviews had teeth.
Wolfe was ill and often bed-ridden, plagued by dysentery, bladder stones, and fever. His relationship with the brigadiers, his senior subordinates, was just as dire. As one of them complained: ‘General Wolf[e]’s health is but very bad. His generalship…is not a bit better.’
But by early September, Wolfe had regained his nerve. He took the brigadiers’ advice to bypass the strong downriver defences and strike upstream of the city instead, in the hope of severing Montcalm’s supply lines. Yet almost at the last moment, Wolfe modified the plan. Rather than disembarking troops more than twelve miles upriver, he would target the Foulon cove, a place he had identified as a landing site of last resort weeks before. Though at the base of a fifty-three-metre escarpment, the cove was within two miles of the city and appeared, at least from a distance, to be lightly defended. Wolfe insisted on the change over the objections of his brigadiers and even the naval officer overseeing the amphibious operation. The gambit was a daring one, but it worked. Just after four in the morning on the 13th of September, Wolfe’s army began splashing ashore. They made their way up the slope and formed on the Plains of Abraham in the morning light.
It’s been said that celebrities who die young are given the benefit of many doubts, but historians – ever a disputatious bunch – are not so magnanimous.[1] Once lionised as a military genius, Wolfe has more recently been cast as a commander who was out of his depth and owed his victory more to luck than skill. He has been robustly criticised for his months of apparent indecision, his choice of terrain on which to fight, and his preference for the Foulon cove over supposedly less risky options farther upstream. Some scholars have even claimed that Wolfe had a death wish, and did not really expect the landings to succeed at all.
The debate has been lively and stimulating, but I think that many – though not all – of these arguments are overdrawn. As one of Wolfe’s more sympathetic biographers has trenchantly remarked, few generals have endured so much criticism for actually winning a battle.
Wolfe himself observed that ‘in war something must be allowed to chance and fortune’, and luck certainly played an important role in the campaign’s outcome. The French placed too much faith in the natural impregnability of the cove, neglecting to defend it sufficiently and failing to respond rapidly to the British incursion. Wolfe’s fortunes were also aided by the fact that sentries ashore initially mistook the landing craft for a friendly supply convoy they had been expecting – a misapprehension which was reinforced by the fluent French of a quick-thinking Scotsman in the British boats.
But to focus unduly on chance, and the mistakes of an opponent, risks obscuring the real achievements and professionalism of the armed services which made success possible two hundred and sixty-five years ago.
The British Army, which had so often come to grief in the early years of the Seven Years War, demonstrated its ability to improve and adapt. The redcoats became more inured to skirmishing in the North American wilderness, forming skilled marksmen into specially equipped light infantry corps. It was the light infantry which led the landings at the Foulon cove, dashed up the heights to overwhelm the French picket, and helped cover the army’s flanks during the ensuing battle. The redcoats had also learned to deliver disciplined firepower in the linear warfare which ultimately decided the day. They adopted the simplified firing protocol favoured by Wolfe and honed their aim through regular target practice. On the plains, British soldiers loaded two balls in their muskets and delivered devastating short-range volleys, routing Montcalm’s impetuous and ill-coordinated attack in a matter of minutes. Finally, lessons learned the hard way early in the war resulted in major improvements to amphibious operations. Sailors rowed soldiers ashore in flat-bottom boats purpose-built for use in shallow water; while shoals and strong currents still posed dangers, assiduous training and the use of signals and staging areas mitigated the risk of confusion and calamity. The Foulon landings, carried out in silence and under the cover of darkness, are rightly remembered as an exemplar of combined operations.
Model of a flat-bottomed landing craft, circa 1758 (National Army Museum, 1961-07-180-1)
As the importance of amphibious capabilities suggests, it was the support of the fleet, under the competent command of Vice-Admiral Charles Saunders, which enabled Wolfe to strike at the heart of New France in the first place. Navigators such as James Cook, the future explorer, took soundings and drafted the charts necessary to allow the navy to ascend the hazardous St. Lawrence. Besides providing vital strategic mobility, sailors also helped distract from the Foulon operation by rowing noisily about in the darkness to deceive the French into thinking that the main British blow would land elsewhere. And, in the days after the battle, naval crews hauled over one hundred mortars and cannon up the heights to help besiege Quebec. Saunders even managed to raise more than £3,000 from his own officers as a loan to the army, which after accepting the city’s surrender found itself embarrassingly short of funds. This was a sterling example of interservice cooperation – I just hope the naval officers were paid back.
And more generally, it was the navy’s hard-won supremacy at sea which ensured that the conquest would stick. By the spring of 1760 the tables had turned: now a French force from Montreal was besieging the half-starved and sickly remnants of Wolfe’s army inside Quebec. Both sides turned their eyes to the river, knowing that success would come to whichever received fresh supplies and reinforcements. British ships began to arrive in May, and the Royal Navy destroyed an enemy convoy soon after, shattering hopes of a French recovery. Had the first vessels sighted borne Bourbon colours, Wolfe’s victory might well have been reduced to a historical footnote.
But as it turned out, the Quebec campaign marked a momentous milestone in Britain’s emergence as a global and imperial power. French Canadians are proud of the resilience and vibrancy of their Francophone culture, but the events of 1759 meant that English would become North America’s most spoken tongue. They also paved the way for the creation of the United States. With the Atlantic colonies no longer fearful of French neighbours, independence became a more feasible prospect; British efforts to reform, tax, and garrison their dramatically expanded domains gave rise to disagreements that sparked revolution.
Anniversaries offer us opportunities to reflect and remember – Je me souviens, to use the Québécois phrase. To remember James Wolfe certainly, but also Saunders and his sailors and marines. To think of the French soldiers fighting for their country; the Canadians and indigenous warriors who were defending their land and homes; and the inhabitants who suffered grievously during the siege. Nor should we forget the officers and men of the British army: the Highlanders of the 78th Foot, who charged with their broadswords at the end of the battle, scarcely a generation after their kinsmen had rallied to the Jacobite cause; the North American subjects of the Crown, who comprised fully one-third of Wolfe’s besieging army; and private soldiers such as John Bell, a weaver from Antrim, and Thomas Clyma, a Cornish tinner, who fought and died outside Quebec’s walls. We are still living in a world they helped forge.
The Death of General Wolfe by Edward Penny c.1763–1764 (Fort Ligonier via Wikimedia)
Further Reading: Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (2001) Stephen Brumwell, Redcoats: The British Soldier and War in the Americas, 1755-1763 (2002) Stephen Brumwell, Paths of Glory: The Life and Death of General James Wolfe (2006) Phillip Buckner and John G. Reid, Revisiting 1759: The Conquest of Canada in Historical Perspective (2012), including Stephen Brumwell’s chapter on Wolfe’s generalship at Quebec D. Peter MacLeod, Northern Armageddon: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham (2008) C.P. Stacey, Quebec, 1759: The Siege and the Battle (1959 and subsequent edns) – a classic account
[1] Ian K. Steele, review of Paths of Glory: The Life and Death of General James Wolfe by Stephen Brumwell in The International History Review, vol. 30, no. 1 (March 2008), pp. 127-129.
The Battle of York is among the best-studied episodes in Toronto’s early history. Two centuries on, new information about this dramatic and traumatic event continues to emerge.
Drum Major of a Regiment of the Line &c. Courtesy R. Chartrand
In a recent article for The Napoleon Series entitled Fops under Fire, I explored the experiences of British drum-majors in action during the early nineteenth century. These princes of pomp and circumstance were often ridiculed for their battlefield truancy, and indeed drum-majors were not expected to risk their skins by actively participating in combat. Rather than leading the band in stirring renditions of patriotic music under fire, most drum-majors occupied themselves with unglamorous yet essential tasks behind the lines, from aiding the wounded to haranguing would-be shirkers. However, a handful of brave (or reckless) drum-majors refused to confine themselves to such unadventurous auxiliary roles and were instead celebrated for their valour under fire.
One newly-discovered instance of drum-majorly daring took place at the Battle of York during the War of 1812. Having failed to check the invading American army on the beach or in the clearing at Fort Rouillé on 27 April 1813, the British fell back to the Western Battery near the site of the modern-day Princes’ Gate at Toronto’s Exhibition Place. Supported here by three artillery pieces, the defenders hoped to make a stand against the advancing enemy column. However, the accidental explosion of a portable powder magazine within the battery caused mayhem, dismounting all but one of the British cannons and killing or maiming dozens of men. The guns were abandoned as the enemy drew near, but according to an anonymous eyewitness account, in the form of an 1833 letter to the editor in the U.S. Military and Naval Magazine, the “gallant Drum Major of the 8th or King’s Regiment” returned in “full costume” to the stricken battery. At the very moment of “raising the linstock” to fire a parting shot from the remaining 18-pounder into the advancing American column, this “brave soldier” was brought down by a skilled rifle shot from Second Lieutenant David Riddle of the 15th U.S. Infantry. The drum-major was captured but was treated with “marked attention” in hospital on account of his courage and happily made a full recovery.
Princes’ Gate, Exhibition Place, Toronto
Yet regimental pay lists prove that the drum-major in question was not William Ankers of the 8th King’s, who was also present at the battle, but Thomas Kelly of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. The American confusion is, however, understandable given that the two corps, both royal regiments with blue facings, sported near-identical uniforms. Kelly, born at St. John’s in Newfoundland and approximately twenty-five years of age at the Battle of York, first joined the army in 1798 and had served for a dozen years as a drummer before his appointment as the regiment’s drum-major. Described as having grey eyes, brown hair, and a fair complexion, he was wounded and taken prisoner at the Battle of York but was soon released in a prisoner exchange. Kelly served as drum major until the Royal Newfoundland Regiment was disbanded in 1816.
Drum Major Thomas Nicholson, 6th (Warwickshire) Regiment
Although the American correspondent claimed that “no one who witnessed the occurrence will forget” the sight of Drum Major Kelly’s fall, no other accounts of his battlefield bravery have been found to date. Even if Kelly had managed to fire a parting shot from the Western Battery, it probably would not have wrought much damage as the artillery piece was aimed too high to inflict serious injury on the advancing enemy column. Indeed, another American eyewitness recalled that the round shot fired from this gun failed to do more than clip the tops of their pikes and bayonets.
Nonetheless, the heretofore unsung bravery of Drum-Major Kelly during the Battle of York is worthy of our belated recognition. Although some drum-majors may have made themselves scarce under fire, as the sneers of contemporary memoirists suggest, Kelly proved himself worthy of his office and regalia on the battlefield as well as on the parade square.
Researched and written by Eamonn O’Keeffe
“Thomas Kelly: A Drum-Major at the Battle of York” was first published in the Fort York Fife and Drum in September 2016
1812 and all that 
