To the Peninsula

Abstract

In the spring of 1808, Private William Lawrence of the 40th Regiment was stationed in the south of Ireland. He was one of 9,000 British soldiers assembling in Cork, earmarked for an expedition to the Spanish Americas under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley.¹ Undeterred by the disastrous British military expeditions to the River Plate in 1806–1807, the British government was determined to strike another blow against the Spanish Empire. Indeed, many of the British soldiers gathering in Cork in 1808 had been part of those earlier expeditions to Argentina, Lawrence included. Born into a relatively humble background — the son of a Dorset farmer, reduced to labouring — Lawrence had enlisted in the 40th in 1806 at only 15 years of age, having absconded from a builder’s apprenticeship. In October 1806, he departed Portsmouth with 3,000 other soldiers under the command of Sir Samuel Auchmuty, bound for the River Plate. Lawrence was to spend nine months in Argentina, fighting the Spanish at the Battles of Montevideo and Buenos Aires, before departing for home in September 1807, arriving in the Cove of Cork in time for Christmas.²