On the evening of August 16, 1812, the publisher Charles Knight
was at his desk
attempting to write a “death-song” for a Spanish
guerilla when he heard the 29th regiment leave its barracks in
Windsor. With band playing, the soldiers marched into central
London, and Knight joined the cheering crowd that surrounded
them.
“I followed the measured tramp of the soldiery, in common
with the great mass of our population, unknowing what was to be
done, and yet filled with the passionate desire of the hundreds
around me to give expression to the belief that the tide had
turned—that England might shout for a mighty victory by land, as
she had shouted for the Nile and Trafalgar.”

It was the
night that news reached London of the victory at Salamanca. In
the days that followed, bells were rung across the land, a prayer
of thanks was read in every church in England and Ireland, and
Lord Liverpool’s weak government called a snap election to take
advantage of its new popularity.
Salamanca was Wellington’s finest victory, but, if it is
remembered today at all, it is always overshadowed by Waterloo, a
battle that the French lost far more than the British won.

In 1812, Wellington had already been at war in the Peninsula for four
years. That May, he invaded Castile to attack the French “Army
of Portugal” under Marshal Marmont. The youngest of Napoleon’s
marshals, Marmont was a skillful but unlucky
commander. (Known by his title Duc