[WHITTINGHAM, Samuel Ford.]

System of cavalry manoeuvres in line.

London, printed for T. Egerton, 1815. 8vo (225 x 145 mm), pp. v, [iii], 72, with 27 folding plates;contemporary red straight-grain morocco, gilt; joints at head and foot of spine slightly rubbed with a small ink stain; edges gilt. First edition, presentation copy, the front fly-leaf inscribed ‘From the author’. We assume the recipient was Major-General Benjamin Bloomfield, private secretary to the Prince-Regent from 1817 to 1822 and later commander of the garrison at Woolwich, as it has the Bloomfield bookplate. This system of cavalry manoeuvres was developed by a British officer whilst in command of a Spanish cavalry division during the Peninsular War. ‘None of the regiments of cavalry, placed under my command, had ever previously manoeuvred in line, even in their regimental movements they differed very much one from another; yet, in the course of a few months, they executed, with great precision and speed, all the manoeuvres in one and two lines, which form a part of this little treatise, and were considered to be in a perfectly fit state of organization for taking the field’ (p. iv).Whittingham, who in 1835 challenged Sir William Napier to a duel for the slur which he considered Napier had cast on the Spanish troops in his History of the war in the Peninsula, served in the Spanish army throughout the conflict. From 1808 to 1809 he served under Don Xavier Castaños, fighting with distinction at the battles of Bailén and Medellín, and reported back to the British minister in Spain, John Hookham Frere, on the state and operations of the Spanish army. Shortly before Wellesley’s advance into Spain, Whittingham joined British headquarters to act as liaison officer with the Spanish General Cuesta. After being injured at Talavera, he spent some time convalescing in the British minister Lord Wellesley’s house were he translated Dundas’s Cavalry movements into Spanish and became determined to lead a division of Spanish cavalry, with whom he aimed to prove that under British leadership Spaniards would make wonderful soldiers. In January 1810 he was given command of the Spanish cavalry based at Cadiz but after La Peña’s attempt to raise the siege of that city failed, Whittingham was transferred to command the ‘división de Mallorca’ with whom he effected a number of skirmishes in eastern Spain and fought gallantly at the battle of Castalla. His training of the Spanish cavalry was considered a success. After the war he remained in Spain until 1819 when he was offered a diplomatic post in India.

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