Wellington called his army “the scum of the earth”. And that is how they were treated. They either died in battle or returned home to poverty and died in obscurity. This is the story of one soldier in Wellington’s army who avoided all three fates. It was the equivalent of winning the lottery three times.
On the 18th June 1815 Charles Ewart was sitting on his horse on a ridge in Belgium, alongside his fellow dragoons of the Scot’s Greys, about to take part in the battle of Waterloo. Soon after they charged towards the French infantry Ewart spotted a rare and valuable prize – one of Napoleon’s standards which had been specially made with a solid gold eagle’s head on the top. Ewart killed three standard bearers to capture it. He was about to rejoin the battle when he had his first stroke of luck. One of his generals ordered him to take the prize back to the ridge. From there he watched as the charge faltered and many of his brigade lost their lives.
It took several weeks before the army returned home. In that time, through newspaper coverage, Ewart became famous. And so came about his second piece of luck. The army returned to a country in recession and a government who thanked its army by cutting their numbers hugely. Many soldiers, with no jobs to return to, became destitute and took to begging in the streets. Ewart, however, as he sat on the dock at Calais, was spotted and recognised by a friend of the Duke of York. He asked Ewart what he most wanted in life. Ewart replied that if he could become an Ensign in a veteran battalion he could retire on an officer’s pension. On the spot he was given a letter of recommendation which granted Ewart his wishes.
Ewart died in 1846 and was buried in Manchester. Twice in his life he had escaped oblivion. He managed it again even in death. The church where he was buried fell into disuse and the graveyard covered over. He remained without a memorial for 80 years. Then, in the 1920s a historian of the Scot’s Greys spent 12 years trying to find his grave. When he did, he arranged for his remains to be buried at the ancestral home of the Greys – Edinburgh castle. As you walk on the Esplanade towards the castle, high on a ridge above the town, there is now a large memorial to his name. Fitting. From a ridge in Belgium to a ridge in Scotland. Ensign Ewart, the man who cheated fate three times.