Two days ago, you may recall, one of those rabbit hole segues occurred on Napoleonic Twitter, where @latelordchatham, @ZwhiteHistory and @aquestingvole started everyone discussing, with various levels of seriousness, Wellington & a chicken leg at Salamanca #WellingtonWednesday

This sparked a serious thought about where the heck this incident where prior to the battle of Salamanca wellington was eating a drumstick and seeing an opportunity to attack threw the bone away and rode to give his orders shouting out ‘By God that’ll do!’ And ‘Marmont est Perdu’

So of course I went and tracked it down as far back as my sources would allow and here my dear readers are my findings. As @RoryMuir3 says the story of Wellington’s lightning response to the overextension of the French left was current in 1812.

It appears as an anecdote in letters sent home but it isn’t clear how the writers heard about what happened. Armies it should be remembered are gossip mills and variations of what was served at HQ at breakfast (or rather lunch) would be devoured by battalion messes for dinner.

The story gained a certain popularity as memoirs and histories published in later years. In 1828 and 1829 respectively two almost identical accounts were published giving the bones of the story but a different anatomy and indeed a different meat!

In late May 1831, J.W. Croker journaled that he was at the Duke’s residence at Walmer Castle alongside Wellington’s eldest son Lord Douro and his father’s good friend General Miguel de Alava. At breakfast on 24 May, General Alava told a story about the Battle of Salamanca:

By 1837 a basic structure was forming through second hand listeners from excellent sources who were actually in the farmyard or very close, yet it would be unwise to claim with certainty that it is know what Wellington said, except ‘By God!’

In the first days of the New Year 1838, Charles Greville was at Burghley with the Duke and many others and got the story from Wellington himself, which Greville wrote down that very evening.
So all the main elements seem to have some truth to them.

Another, albeit periphery, witness who at least clears up how the food got there and the time and place etc was the Duke’s Cook, James Thornton speaking in 1852-53:

By 1840 Basil Jackson’s ‘Military Life’ of the Duke of Wellington had amended Wellington’s words somewhat and introduced his declaration to General Alava, which I have yet to find an earlier occurrence of.

Unsurprisingly, Wellington’s own dispatches mention no details except to hint broadly that it was from the Arapiles that Wellington saw his chance. [Dispatches http://v.VI  p301-302]

So there you have it. At 2pm on 22 July, Wellington possibly dismounted, possibly eating a ‘fowl’ in a farmyard at Los Arapiles, left said compound upon advertisement of a French misstep and rode up the nearest Arapile to then dispense his orders. Certainly saying ‘By God!’

[As to what started this. Which shoulder did wellington throw his food over? From portraits he was right handed, & from equestrian ones we can deduce he would have used his left hand to hold his reins if the other was occupied. I would guess his right.]

As an addendum. In November 1838, Greville heard a version of the story from Fitzroy Somerset which is yet another fusion of some of the other more legitimate eyewitness accounts. But supporting the basic thread of memory.

The German Dragoon in question, being another part of the cast, is probably the Corporal Baekefeld mentioned in Beamish’s History of the King’s German Legion.