Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Military General Service 1793-1814, 3 clasps, Vittoria, Pyrenees, Toulouse (M. Smith, Lieut. 40th Foot) light edge bruising, otherwise good very fine £2500-3000

Michael Smith was appointed Ensign in the 44th Foot, without purchase, on 29 August 1811. He removed to the 40th Foot as Ensign on 12 December of the same year and was promoted to Lieutenant on 23 August 1813. He served with the 40th Foot in the Peninsula from February 1813 to April 1814, being present at the battles of Vittoria, the Pyrenees and Toulouse. He was severely wounded at Pampeluna, in the Pyrenees, on 28 July 1813, and again severely wounded at Toulouse on 10 April 1814. Lieutenant Michael Smith was granted a pension of £50 for the wounds he received at Pampeluna, commencing 28 July 1814, and was placed on half-pay on 20 April 1817.

The following description of the 40th’s fine action at Pampeluna was submitted by Colonel Sempronius Stretton, C.B., and published in the United Services Journal in February 1840:

‘Sir. — When the 4th division, under Sir Lowry Cole, on the evening of the 27th July, 1813, occupied the heights in front of
Pampeluna, with a very superior force, under Marshal Soult, in position in its front, the 40th Regiment, at that time under my command, which, from previous losses, was reduced to one captain, nine subalterns, and less than four hundred men, was directed by the Duke of Wellington, in person, to occupy the summit of a rocky hill, which was believed to be the key of the British position. Two Spanish regiments and the 40th formed the entire force placed there, with which I was directed to keep the hill to the last. We passed the night under the continued fire of four small guns, without material loss. On the morning of the 28th, about 10 o'clock, the enemy made their attack with a powerful force (consisting, I was afterwards informed, of several thousand men). Our line was formed across the hill, with a space of about eighty yards in our front, and the Spanish regiments on our flanks. No sooner did the enemy's fire reach us than the Spaniards retired in the utmost confusion, and scattering themselves over the face of the mountain in our rear (on the summit of which the duke and his staff were posted) were seen no more, leaving the 40th totally unsupported. As soon as the head of the attacking French column had reached the brow of the hill and formed, a volley was fired by the 40th, and a charge of bayonets made, which drove them down again in the utmost confusion. Four times the enemy
renewed the attack, and each time they were driven back at the point of the bayonet, leaving the 40th in final possession of the hill which they had so resolutely defended, not, however, without their having sustained considerable loss. His Serene Highness, the Prince of Orange, who conveyed to the regiment after the second charge the thanks of the Duke of Wellington, narrowly escaped, and the brigade-majors of Sir Lowry Cole and Sir William Anson, Koverea and Aveman, who came down shortly afterwards, were killed near me in the struggle which took place. The day after, a French officer of rank came to me with a request that he might have his wounded carried off, and after speaking in the highest terms of the gallantry displayed on the 26th in the defence of the hill, he assured me that several hundred of his men were placed hors de combat on that occasion. Severe as this loss appears, I cannot, when I consider the position of the enemy, crowded as they were on the brow of the hill, without the power of immediately retiring when the several charges were made, for a moment suppose that this statement, from such an
authority, was an exaggerated one, more particularly as I was an eye witness of the severe loss sustained by the enemy on that occasion from the bayonets alone, to which we considered ourselves fully indebted, placed as they were in the hands of brave men, for the successful defence of the position entrusted to us.

(Signed) S. Stretton’

Lieutenant Michael Smith was granted a pension of £50 for the wounds he received at Pampeluna, commencing 28 July 1814, and was placed on half-pay on 20 April 1817.