Foreword

It is well over one hundred years since Major General Whitworth Porter included an account of the Peninsular War when writing Volume One of the History of the Corps of Royal Engineers. This book now draws on much new material, not previously available, to tell the story from the perspective of engineer officers and explains how they supported the victories of the Duke of Wellington in the Iberian Peninsula. These officers from the Royal Engineers, never more than fifty at any one time, played a highly significant, but mainly invisible role in supporting Wellington’s army and the operations in Spain and Portugal. They were present at almost every major engagement, but their roles as staff officer, liaison officer, bridge and road builder, and fortifications engineer are not well recognised. A number of them lived to enjoy rank and high reputation, while others died in the breach of a stormed city, leading the infantry into the gap in the enemy’s defences as Sapper officers should. It is now time that all their various contributions are better understood.

Further into the nineteenth century some of these same officers continued their careers in both military and civil roles, to high acclaim. Field Marshal Sir John Burgoyne (the first Royal Engineer to achieve that rank), who served on both Sir John Moore’s and the Duke of Wellington’s staffs, would forty years later advise Lord Raglan in the Crimean War. Another, General Sir Charles Pasley, had been at the Battle of Corunna and would pioneer much-needed improvements in the training of engineer officers before going on to establish at Chatham what is now known as the Royal School of Military Engineering. Others were called upon to oversee a variety of famous civil endeavours. For example, Lieutenant Colonel John By played a major role in the early development of Canada, including the building of the Rideau Canal between Montreal and Kingston in the 1820s – now a World Heritage Site. Indeed, Ottawa, the capital of Canada, was originally called Bytown. Sir Joshua Jebb played a leading role in prison reform and would later become the first Surveyor General of Prisons in 1844. Sir William Reid, who was a Lieutenant at the time of the Peninsular War, became chairman of the committee for the planning of the Great Exhibition in 1851. Others continued the work of their forebears in the Ordnance Survey by conducting survey operations across the British Empire, and many made names for themselves as directors of railway companies and as colonial governors in the West Indies and Australia.

The bi-centenary of the Peninsular War has created renewed interest in the period and I am delighted that we have a new evaluation of the role of Royal Engineer officers, who did much to lay the foundations for the many military and civil engineering feats that were accomplished in the Victorian era. Their legacy to our nation’s history deserves greater recognition.

Lieutenant General Sir Mark Mans KCB CBE DL

Chief Royal Engineer