Mitchiner Memorial Lecture Wellington, Napoleon and the Medical Services

J R Army Med Corps: first published as 10.1136/jramc-131-01-02 on 1 January 1985. Downloaded from J R Anny Med Corps 1985; 131: '1-15 MITCHINER MEMORIAL LECTURE agree with what we thought was best for us, our unit and our men. When the suspicion steals into the mind that WELLINGTON, NAPOLEON AND 'The Army' may not be the most generous and THE MEDICAL SERVICES warmhearted of employers, what then keeps us going? Maj Gen F M Richardson, It is our love for the British Soldier - the Jock, the Jawan CB, 050, OBE, MD, URAMC - when we were so blessed as to have our great Indian Army - That's what keeps us going; and I do not think The first time I sounded off in this lecture theatre was that a man can be a really good military leader who does on the Great Highland Bagpipe, when I played 'The not feel this deep affection. Lament for the Children' to the Scottish naturalist Seton How do the two great generals of whom I am going to Gordon, but have no fear - I'm past all that now - speak, measure up to this criterion? Well, an opinion accordingly, at my age, I felt particularly flattered by the poll in this country would probably illustrate a curious honour of being invited to give this Memorial Lecture. I national trait satirised by W S Gilbert, when he put upon know that I am not qualified, like my predecessors, to Ko-Ko's 'little list': speak of Phi lip Mitchiner's place as a surgeon, a teacher and administrator, but I soon overcame the feeling of The idiot who praises with extravagant tone unworthiness when I reflected that I am one of the few All centuries but this and every country but his own. who can remember our famous Territorial medical Napoleon, we are accustomed to being told, loved his Major General as a mere Lieutenant Colonel, men and made proper provision for those who were sick commanding the London University OTC. * When we and wounded. Wellington, cold and haughty, called hisby guest. Protected copyright. camped alongside them in 1923 the Edinburgh Medical men 'the scum of the earth, enlisted for drink', which far Unit had just been put into the kilt - an obviously too many of them were, and did not support his doctors inappropriate garb for stretcher drill-involving as it did, in their efforts to do what they could for the casualties. what Queen Victoria might have called "fleeting These two pictures are diametrically opposite to the glimpses of Highland scenery" - but it certainly truth - damned lies which I shall now nail to the wall, in smartened us up, the kilt-wearer must at least keep his the hope that none of you will ever allow them to go knees straight. The London cadets reacted to our uncontradicted. Scottish smartness by deliberately making a fool of their To start with Napoleon and first a few, perhaps less drill; for example, on the command 'Stand Easy' they all important, misconceptions. dipped their knees in the maner of a stage policeman - He was not a very small man, 5ft 6 inches and 22/45ths irresistably comic, but it did not amuse 'Mitch' - who 2 of an inch accurately measured at the post mortem ; harangued them, saying that he would not have his unit which was one inch taller than the average Frenchman of outshone in drill or anything by "a bunch of bare his day, one and a half inches shorter than the average bottomed barbarians from the North". Well, for this Englishman3 and only three inches shorter than barbarian 61 years later, apart from one close personal Wellington. The misconception arose from mis friend, my abiding memory is of that memorable figure, translation of the pied de rai into the pied anglais. spectacles glinting and a bristly convict crop seeming to He did not hate the English so much as admire them, http://militaryhealth.bmj.com/ emphasise the roundness of a rather small head. It has "If I had had an English army I would have conquered been said that an outstanding appearance is an asset to a the Universe" he said. He saw our soldiers as 'lions led military leader and we all know that Philip Mitchiner by donkeys'. He probably esteemed the Scots more became just that. In 'Who's Who' his only recreations highly than the English, but I won't skate on that rather were given as "University Training Corps and the TA". thin ice today. Whatever all those ridiculous Last year Professor Cecil Gray spoke of "this devotion advertisements would have us believe, Napoleon very to things military in one who himself was so seldom drank brandy, an occasional medicinal sip from unmilitary".1 Today I want to suggest that perhaps a silver flask carried by his Mameluke Roustam Raza. Mitch's 'devotion' was really to that best of all patients, the British Soldier. He was not a great lover (and I believe, never a father) plagued as he was by impotence, infantile external Are any of us really devoted to 'The Army'?, I have genital organs and an androgynous body, finally on September 29, 2021 often put that question to military audiences. Of course becoming embarrassingly less andro- and more-gynous. we love our Corps, our Regiment, our comrades; but (After the publication of my first book4 an old friend, ex 'The Army' embraces so much else. For example The Grenadier Guards, wrote to tell me that, as a director of War Office (as we used to call it in the gays when we Christies, he had sold Napoleon's private parts for were allowed to think of more than rrtere defence), £18,000 (catalogue of the sale on 29 x 69). Later the them, in fact they, whose ideas so often did not seem to English novelist Cecil Roberts, gave me the address of a * Three old friends in our Corps marched in Mitchiner's museum in Rome where Napoleon's foreskin is to be Army - Robert Spicer, Philip Wood and John Watts. seen in a glass case. I would refer you to my latest book J R Army Med Corps: first published as 10.1136/jramc-131-01-02 on 1 January 1985. Downloaded from 10 Mitchiner Memorial Lecture , for the whole astounding story5. It is all true! and one's Wellington was right, and it is sad that many of his disgust at such desecration of the Imperial.corpse can utterances had to be of 'The Commander-in-Chief notes only be intensified by thoughts of the cupidity which led with regret' variety. One of these did him immeasurable to the sale of the loot in two lots). harm with his army, and in England when it was 'leaked Finally, a stupid belief which I have met among quite to the Press' as we say today. This was the severe intelligent p~ople, is that he rose from the ranks, having memorandum to commanding officers after the been, like Hitler, a corporal. Of course his nickname disastrous and mismanaged retreat from Burgos. 'The Little Corporal' was, like Marlborough's 'Corporal The two men were of course utterly different in John', a mark of the affection of their soldiers, which background, character - everything. Wellington, a born Marlborough richly deserved; whilst Napoleon did not, aristocrat, took absolutely no interest in his own as I shall show. Such a nickname would have been advancement. When. he was made a viscount after unthinkable for Wellington, 'Old Nosey' - 'The Peer', Talavera, he left the choice of the title by which he was he had their complete trust if not, one has to believe, to become known to the World to a younger brother, their love. William; and after Salamanca he exclaimed "What's the (The soldiers gave their affection to the quiet, use of making me a marquess?" He would have undemonstrative Scotsman, John Moore and the kindly preferred money to pay his troops, or siege equipment prematurely bald 'Daddy' Hill, but no soldier could which would have helped him to be more sparing of their compete with the emotional lovable Horatio Nelson.) lives. Reading of Nelson's death for the umpteenth time, I Bonaparte - Buonaparte - a member of the minor once had to hide my tears from my family on a holiday Corsican nobility, more Italian than French and hatingby guest. Protected copyright. beach; but I have often said, and will repeat, that if to be reminded of it, exorcised a feeling of social Nelson had had the misfortune to survive Trafalgar and inferiority by making himself an emperor and creating a Wellington the luck to fall at Waterloo, it would be our hereditary nobility from his family and supporters. "We ,Army's hero who would be standing up there among the nobles", he loved to say; and, a crowning impertinence, pigeons in Waterloo Square. People knelt in the shingle called the murdered Louis XVI "My poor uncle". Apart to touch Nelson's clothing as he left the shores of from relatives, only Marshals Lannes and Duroc could England for the last time. He loved it, Wellington would tutoyer the Emperor; but with his junior officers and have hated it. When the Prince Regent tried to praise soldiers he was Democracy personified. Poor trusting him at his own dinner table, Wellington rose abruptly victims, no one:had told them that he had said "Soldiers and called for coffee. are made to be killed"; and, even more chilling, "I can Napoleon, to whom his soldiers were merely the tools afford to expend a hundred thousand men a year", a of his megalo-maniac ambition, could make them truly foul saying not to be paralleled until Mussolini told believe that he loved them and knew each man.

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