Portrait Miniature of the Captain Jeremiah Crampton, 95th Rifles late Ancient Irish Fencibles (1799), 1860

Captain Jeremiah Crampton (1775-1812) was the third son of the Rev Cecil Crampton of Headfort, Co Galway. He is recorded as serving in one of the Fencible regiments raised during French Revolutionary Wars. Jeremiah is probably ‘Josiah’, the sole Crampton to appear in the War Office List of Fencible Regiments for 1801.  J. Crampton is listed as a captain in the Ancient Irish Regiment of Fencible Infantry, with his commission dated to the day the regiment was raised in Dublin, 5 June 1799. Uniquely among the many Fencible regiments the Ancient Irish was the only one to serve in battle overseas. It was sent to Minorca for an attack on Cadiz, but was diverted to Egypt where it took part in operations at Alexandria in August 1801. The Ancient Irish returned home via Malta and were disbanded in 1802, around the time of the temporary peace with France. As with most of the Ancient Irish for whom records exist, Jeremiah Crampton entered the regular army and transferred on half-pay into Colonel Coote Manningham’s experimental Rifle Corps with the rank of Lieutenant. After Manningham’s Rifles were brought into the British Line as the 95th Regiment of Foot in 1802, a second battalion was raised at Canterbury in 1805, and in which Crampton was promoted Captain on 20 June. 

He landed at Mondego Bay, Portugal with the 2nd/95th on 1 August 1808, and was present when the battalion and 5th/60th Royal Americans engaged the rearguard of the French occupation forces at Obidos north of Lisbon on the 14th. Lt-Gen Arthur Wellesley arrived two days later and was determined to make his mark before being superseded by the arrival of more senior officers. Crampton was thus present at the battle of Rolica on the 16th in what was to be Wellington’s first major Peninsular victory.

By late December 1808 Crampton’s battalion was brigaded with 1st/43rd Foot and 1st/52nd Foot to form the 1st Flank Brigade under ‘Black Bob’ Craufurd, in the army now under Sir John Moore. Fearing Marshal Soult and the advance of Napoleon from Madrid, Moore ordered the infamous retreat to Corunna, in which Craufurd’s Light Brigade fought repeated rearguard actions in freezing winter conditions. On 31st the Light Brigade was ordered to deviate from the Corunna road and make for the Atlantic seaport of Vigo, whence Crampton joined the evacuation to England.

Crampton returned to the Peninsula with the 1st Battalion 95th in July 1809 participated in the Rifles’ epic adventures until his death in September 1812. As part of Craufurd’s Light Division, Crampton was subsequently present at the battle of Busaco (27 September 1810) and the actions of the 1811 campaign fought between the Light Division and Michel Ney's rearguard during Marshal Masséna's retreat from the Lines of Torres Vedras. 

These included the actions at Pombal, Redinha, Casal Novo and Foz de Arouce. During this period Craufurd was in England and the Light Division was led in a series of disasters by Sir William Erskine. At Casal Novo his carelessness cost 155 killed and wounded, while his bungling at the Battle of Sabugal (3 April 1811), where Crampton was next present, led to an isolated French corps escaping Wellington’s trap. Erskine was later declared insane and took his own life in Lisbon in 1813 by jumping out of a window, reportedly with the last words, "Now why did I do that?”

On the evening of 4 May 1811, Robert Craufurd arrived back from England and resumed command of the Light Division during the battle of Fuentes d’Onoro (3-5 May 1811). Here Crampton was present during the division’s disciplined display of fire and manoeuvre while retreating three miles across an open plain while threatened by French cavalry and guns. Crampton’s brother officer Kincaid reported ‘The execution of our movement presented a magnificent military spectacle, as the plain, between us and the right of the army, was by this time in the possession of the French cavalry, and, while we were retiring through it with the order and precision of a common field-day, they kept dancing around us, and every instant threatening a charge, without daring to execute it.’

The opening the 1812 campaign found Crampton at the siege of Cuidad Rodrigo, where on the night of 8 January on Craufurd’s signal he led 8th Company, 1/95th Rifles in the vanguard of the successful night attack on the San Francisco redoubt sited on the Greater Teson, a hill overlooking town. Under heavy fire from the town walls, work was started immediately on the first siege-trench. Construction of a second siege-trench leading on to the Lesser Teson began on the night of the 13-14 January. By 19 January two breaches had been made. The town was stormed that night but, at the lesser breach where Light Division broke through, Crauford was mortally wounded. 

Lord Wellington next re-assembled his forces for the investment of the more southerly border fortress of Badajoz. After a week long bombardment two breaches in the walls of Badajoz were deemed practical for assault. On the night of 6 April 1812, 100 volunteers from the Light Division seeking death or glory put themselves forward to form the ‘Forlorn Hope’ and be first into the Santa Maria breach. The Forlorn Hope was commanded Major Peter O’Hare with Jeremiah Crampton as his second in command. O’Hare was the grizzled veteran who had risen by his own merit from the lowly position of a surgeon’s mate in the 69th Foot to become the regimental hero of the 95th. He is widely regarded as the model for Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe. At the appointed hour and under the covering fire of the left wing of the Rifles, Lieutenant Johnston led six volunteers into the mined breach to strip out the ‘chevaux-de-frise’ before the desperate charge of the Forlorn Hope. Johnston was severely wounded, whilst others were blown to bits by exploding mines. O’Hare was shot dead in the breach and Crampton was fatally wounded adding to the Light Division’s casualty list for the night of twenty three officers and 292 NCOs and riflemen. Crampton’s mortally wounded body was evacuated from the bastion next day. He lingered for six months until dying of his wounds back at Ciudad Rodrigo on 18 September 1812. An auction of his effects was held a few weeks later. Lieutenant James Gairdner, 95th Rifles, who hailed from Charleston, South Carolina, bought his ‘gun and several other things’.

Sources: 

War-Office (1801) ‘A List of All The Officers of the Fencible Cavalry and Infantry the Militia the Gentlemen and Yeomanry Cavalry the Volunteer Infantry and the Cavalry and Infantry Associations, With an Index’.

Claywell, C. ‘The Ancient Irish Regiment of Fencible Infantry’

Cope, W.H., (1877)  ‘History of the Rifle Brigade’, Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly.

Glover, G. (2016) ‘The Adventures of an American Officer of the 95th Rifles in the Peninsular & Waterloo Campaigns’, Pen & Sword. 

Kincaid, Sir J. (1830), ‘Adventures in the Rifle Brigade’, London.

Urban, M. (2004) ‘Rifles: Six Years with Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters’, London.