A Family’s Tragic Battle with Napoleon: The Letters and Journals of the Frasers of Ballindoun and Unetts of Woodlands
Published By Pen & Sword July 2025 ISBN 9781399031714
‘You have I suppose by this time received the account of another glorious event, but which like all the others has plunged many families into affliction’[1]
The Napoleonic Wars lasted twenty-three years from 1793-1815 – or more correctly the Revolutionary Wars lasted from 1793-1802 and after the brief Peace of Amiens, the Napoleonic Wars continued from 1803-1815. These wars were global, encompassing not only all of Europe, but also North and South America, North and South Africa, the West Indies and East Indies, indeed few places in the world escaped its ravages completely and there is a very good case for calling it a World War. Indeed, this war was known to most Victorians as ‘The Great War’, a title it only shed with the ending of World War One.
The financial cost to Britain was truly enormous, as it not only had to fund its own extensive war effort; but also played banker to most of the other countries of Europe fighting France. This excessive financial burden has been estimated to have reached £1.65 Billion by 1815; in today’s terms that would equate to approximately £100 Billion. More remarkably, only one quarter of this huge financial cost was met by government loans, the rest being raised by taxation, much of it via the detested Income Tax that was introduced in 1798 for the duration of the war, but somehow has remained with us ever since. These seemingly ruinous levels of taxation were largely successful on the back of the Industrial Revolution, in which Britain was leading the way, with the huge markets opened up for British manufactured goods across the world, only made possible by the Royal Navy’s dominance of the seas.
A war on such a scale obviously needed a huge increase in the manpower for the armed forces; over the duration of the war, the Royal Navy increased its manpower from its peacetime level by a factor of eight, rising from 16,000 men to 140,000; whilst the Army, including home defence forces increased six-fold from less than a hundred thousand to over half a million.
Fighting enemy forces caused a significant number of deaths and mutilations, but of the most recent estimate of just under 320,000 British dead and wounded (of which 210,000 were deaths), far more than half (possibly as much as 75%) of the deaths were caused by disease and infection, contemporary medical knowledge having little answer or understanding of malaria, yellow fever or even how to avoid sepsis and gangrene. In a direct comparison to World War One – although that war was fought over four years, rather than the twenty-three of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars – given that the population of Britain in 1911 (the latest Census before the War) was some 2.5 times larger than in 1811, the loss of life in World War One (from those purely from the British Isles), standing at 540,000 is remarkably similar to the 210,000 lost in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Although the rate of deaths was undoubtedly significantly higher in 1914-18 and far more shocking due to its much shorter duration; the loss to individual families within a whole generation was of a very similar magnitude.[2]
Today, we are only too aware of the terrible losses inflicted on individual families in the First World War. The record for family losses – an accolade no family would ever wish for – is shared by the Badcock-Apps family from Hurst Green who lost 5 out of 6 sons; only to be matched by the Shaw family of Rotherhithe who also lost 5 sons during the war (3 of which had previously emigrated and served in the Australian forces); the Beecheys of Barnard Castle also lost 5 of 8 sons and the Souls of Great Rissington in Gloucestershire tragically lost all 5 sons. The record number of siblings sent to the war is held by the Giles family who saw 10 brothers go, but six luckily came home.
Such macabre records were not created for the Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars and there has been lamentably little research into the impact on family life in these wars. It was traditional amongst the gentry that sons beyond the first born (who had to be protected as the sole heir to the estate) were divided throughout the three Great Institutions – The Clergy, the Navy and the Army, although the Nouveau Riche of the commercial classes could also accept sons going into the Law, Trade or Medicine, but a significant number of their offspring still found themselves joining one of the armed services.
The Ramsay family of Balmain lost in all four sons, John in 1807 and all three other sons in 1815, Alexander at the Battle of New Orleans, Norman at the Battle of Waterloo and their younger brother David died at Jamaica just after the wars ended in the July. The Fernyhough’s of Lichfield (a Staffordshire family) had four sons serving in the wars[3] Thomas with the Staffordshire Militia and 60th Foot, John and Henry both in the Royal Marines, and Robert in the Royal Navy then the 95th Rifles; John and Henry did not survive the wars. The Duke of Richmond, himself a General, also had four sons serving, Henry had joined the Royal Navy and died in 1812, Charles served with the 52nd Foot, George was an aide de camp to the Duke of Wellington and William was an aide de camp to General Maitland; Lieutenant Charles Fitzroy and General Peregrine Maitland were also son-in-laws; whilst Thomas Bathurst of the Guards was a nephew. Five other officers were related via his aunt. The Hill’s had four sons in the Army, all fought at Waterloo and survived; three Dawson brothers; three Wildman brothers (who also had the two Hardinge brothers as uncles), three Smith brothers and the two Keppell brothers and their two second cousins all served in the Waterloo campaign[4]. The Bowlby’s had no less than six sons in the forces, Edward, Peter & Joseph in the infantry, Thomas in the Royal Artillery, George in the Royal Navy and Anthony in the Royal Marines. The list is endless, but the point is made.
This work follows the fascinating experiences of the Unett family of Woodlands in Staffordshire and the Frasers of Ballindoun who married into the family during the Napoleonic wars. It provides an intimate family story and their experiences of war.
[1] Letter from Alexander Fraser dated 15 September 1813.
[2] This analysis follows the work of Professor Greenwood published as British Loss of Life in the Wars of 1794-1815 and in 1914-1918 in Volume 105 No.1 (1942) of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society pp 1-16.
[3] Military Memoirs of Four Brothers by Thomas Fernyhough (one of the four) first published in 1829.
[4] Then Came a Voice He Knew; An Account of the Extraordinary Number of Related British Officers Engaged in the Waterloo Campaign of June 1815, by Andrew Prince, published by Ken Trotman Publishing 2007.