Page 51 - Ranger Demo

wither away after the Napoleonic Wars. The clash between the Ordnance and the C-in-C’s departments, which led to the building of a new staff organisation at home and major developments in military education brought the preparation of maps into new hands. The Napoleonic Wars were thus a watershed in the history of British military cartography, with the engineer dominated surveys of the eighteenth century on one side of the divide, and the increasing participation in surveying by trained regimental officers in the nineteenth century on the other. This, together with the early use of lithography for map printing makes the Peninsular War cartographically unique, even if an engineer, writing in the War Office in the 1870s, referred to some maps as ‘the old smudges you will find upstairs here, on which the Duke of Wellington based some of his most important movements in the Peninsular War.’
Select bibliography
a) Manuscript sources
The National Archives
WO 55/960 Dawson’s surveying instructions, 1803
WO 33/38
WO 1/835
WO 26/38
WO 37/9-11 Scovell Papers, 1809-1813
Col. Lefroy on military education, 1857 Jarry’s coastal survey, 1802
Warrant for the Royal Staff Corps, 1800
Ministry of Defence Library (Central and Army)
His R H The Commander in Chief’s Official Correspondence, QMG’s Department, 1803-13
National Library of Scotland
Murray Papers
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst Library
Le Marchant Papers
British Library Map Library
Lieut.-Col. Charles Vallancey: An Essay on Military Surveys accompanied by Military Itineraries, 1779 b) Printed sources
R. Glover, Peninsular preparations, the reform of the British army 1795-1809. Cambridge University Press, 1963
S.G.P. Ward, Wellington’s headquarters. A study in the administrative problems in the Peninsula 1809-1814. Oxford University Press, 1957
J. Wyld, Maps & Plans showing the principal movements, battles & sieges ... in the Peninsula and the south of France. London, 1841
Special instructions for the Officers of the Quarter Master General’s Dept. London 1854
United Service Journal & Naval and Military Magazine. Pt II, 1829; Pt I, 1830
Professional Papers of the Royal Engineers. New Series, vols 15, 16 (1866-68); XXII (1874)
49