Draft:George Milne (physician)

Dr George Milne, born in 1794, was educated at Gram’s School & Marischal College, University of Aberdeen. He studied medicine at Aberdeen & London, then joined the army in 1815 as Assistant Surgeon and was appointed to the army staff in Brussels. Present at the Battle of Waterloo, he dressed the leg of Earl of Uxbridge/Marquess of Anglesey, Henry Paget, after amputation.

With peace at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, seeing there was no propsects of promotion and more pay, he along with about ninety others sailed for Caracas in South American on the promise of commissions in the army of independence under Bolivar.

He died at St Thomas, US Virgin Islands in West Indies about 1817/18. He was an uncle of John Corts of Ashley.

Notes There were around 50 hospital staff in Brussels before Waterloo, some of whom had recently been on campaign elsewhere in the Low Countries. Other regimental doctors came over with their battalions, as did other hospital staff members (physicians, apothecaries, purveyors, and dispensers). Six hospitals were opened for casualties in Brussels, and others in Ghent and Antwerp.

Many regimental surgeons and some assistant surgeons and staff surgeons collected at Mont-St-Jean Farm, about 400 metres behind Wellington’s line. This was the 1st Corps hospital, under the command of Dr John Gunning. Here wounds were redressed and cleaned, fractures were ‘reset’, and amputations and trepanning (skull surgery) performed.

There was a new Waterloo medal and two years added pension allowance for all combatants. Prize money, collected by public subscription and levies on the French Government, was issued – £61,000 for the Duke of Wellington, £90 7s 4d for a surgeon, and £2 11s 4d for a private soldier, drummer, or corporal. Pensions for the injured were awarded by the Royal College of Surgeons of London.

Bolívar arrived in Kingston, Jamaica, on 14 May 1815 and, as in his earlier exile on Curaçao, ruminated on the fall of the Venezuelan and New Granadan republics. He wrote extensively, requesting assistance from Britain and corresponding with merchants based in the Caribbean.

The British Legion were foreign volunteer units that fought under Simón Bolívar against Spain for the independence of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and José de San Martín for the independence of Peru in the Spanish American wars of independence. Venezuelans generally called them the Albion Legion. They were composed of over seven thousand volunteers, mainly Napoleonic War veterans from Great Britain and Ireland, as well as some German veterans and some locals recruited after arriving in South America. Volunteers in the British Legion were motivated by a combination of both genuine political conviction and mercenary motives. Their greatest achievements were at the Boyacá (1819), Carabobo (1821), Pichincha (1822) and Battle of Ayacucho (1824) which secure

From May 1817, the British volunteers were mainly recruited in London by Bolivar's agent, Luis Lopez Mendez with the probable approval of the Duke of Wellington. The recruits were encouraged by promises of pay equivalent to the British army and by promotion to one rank above that which they had held in the army. Pay was to commence upon arrival in Venezuela and when the call was heard on the streets of London thousands began to volunteer for the expedition and soon the first five detachments were formed.