Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/271

 English brigades, the fusilier brigade consisting of the two battalions of the 7th and the 23rd fusiliers, and the other of the 27th, 40th, and 48th, with General Harvey's Portuguese brigade. This was the famous 4th division, which was always coupled with the 3rd and the light divisions by Wellington as his three best divisions, and to the absence of which he attributed his repulse at Burgos. Cole had every qualification for a good general of division, and if he had not the same genius for war as Picton and Craufurd, he had the advantage of being more obedient to the commander-in-chief than they always were. At the battle of Busaco the 4th division was stationed on the extreme left of the position, and did not come into action at all, but in the following year it was to show its strength at Albuera. After Massena had been driven out of Portugal the 2nd and 4th divisions were detached to the south of the Tagus under Marshal Beresford to make an attack on Badajoz, and on the way Cole was left to reduce the small fortress of Olivenca, which surrendered to him on 15 April 1811. He then assisted at the first siege of Badajoz, and when Beresford advanced to form a junction with Blake's Spanish army and prepared to fight Soult, who was coming up from Andalusia to relieve Badajoz, Cole was left behind to cover the advance and destroy the siege material. The story of the battle of Albuera need not be told here [see ], but the part Cole played is too important to be passed over. It is known that the 2nd division had got into confusion, and that Soult had won a commanding position on Beresford's right flank, and it is generally asserted, by Napier as well as other historians, on the authority of Lord Hardinge, that it was owing to Hardinge's orders and advice that Cole ordered the advance of his fusilier brigade, which saved the day. Cole, however, afterwards declared, and he was not contradicted (see his Letter to the United Service Magazine, January 1821), that he sent his aide-de-camp, Captain de Roverea, to Beresford, suggesting that he should advance, but that the captain was mortally wounded and did not return, and that when Colonel Rooke and Colonel Hardinge advised him to move, he had already made up his mind to do so. There can be no doubt that the advance of the fusiliers saved the day, but at a fearful loss ; one of the three colonels of the brigade, who was acting as brigadier-general, Sir W. Myers, was killed ; the other two, Blakeney and Ellis, and Cole himself were all wounded. Cole, however, rejoined his division in July 1811, but left it again the following December to take his seat in the House of Commons, to which he had been elected in 1803 as M.P. for Fermanagh county. He thus missed the sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, where Sir Charles Colville commanded the 4th division, but rejoined the army in June 1812 in time to be present at the great battle of Salamanca in the following month. In that battle Cole's division was posted on the extreme left of the position opposite to the French hill of the two known as the Arapiles, and for a moment the defeat of his Portuguese brigade under Pack made the day doubtful until the hill was carried by the 6th division under Major-general Henry Clinton, and in the attack Cole was shot through the body. He, however, soon rejoined his division at Madrid, and when the repulse before Burgos made it necessary for General Hill to evacuate Madrid, it was Cole who covered the retreat. In winter quarters he made himself very popular, and the excellence of his dinners is testified to by a remark of Lord Wellington's to a newcomer in the camp, 'Cole gives the best dinners, Hill the next best, mine are no great things, and Beresford's and Picton's are very bad indeed.' One festivity deserves special mention, when on 5 March 1813 Lord Wellington invested Cole with the order of the Bath at Ciudad Rodrigo. At the battle of Vittoria the 4th division acted on the right centre, and did not bear any special part, though Cole was mentioned in despatches, but in the series of battles known as the battles of the Pyrenees the 4th division played a very great part indeed, especially in the combat at Roncesvalles, when its hard fighting gave time for Lord Wellington to concentrate on Sorauren. At the battle of the Nivelle the 4th division, under Cole, together with the 7th, carried the Sarre redoubt, at the Nive it was in reserve, at Orthes it carried the village of St. Boe's, the key of the enemy's position, and at Toulouse it was the 4th and 6th divisions, under the command of Beresford, which carried the height of Calvinet and repaired the mischief done by the flight of the Spaniards. On the conclusion of peace Cole received no reward but the order of the Tower and Sword of Portugal and a gold cross with four clasps, and being transferred to the colonelcy of the 70th regiment from that of the 103rd, for he had been promoted lieutenant-general on 4 June 1813. This neglect, when so many peers and baronets were being made, as naturally and as justly irritated the friends of Cole as similar neglect did those of Sir Thomas Picton. When Napoleon escaped from Elba, the Duke of Wellington at once asked for Cole as one of his generals of division in Belgium, and the