3-046-941 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Autumn Campaign, 1872. Mock battles by the British Army in Wiltshire. 'sham fight on the banks of the river Wiley; Battle of Wishford; Turning southern flank, Wiley; Armstrong battery going past the mysterious fragments of Stonehenge...thousands of people assembled to enjoy the sight...The troops, numbering altogether 30,000 men, had been encamped on Durrington Downs...The Northern Army, that of Sir Robert Walpole, appears, holding the hills in the background, on the opposite side of the valley, above the villages of Codford St. Peter and Codford St. Mary, which are seen to the left hand. Its batteries are farther to the right, above the woods that clothe the lower part of the hill. The Army of the South is advancing to attack this position, a battery of horse artillery crossing the middle ground. In another sketch [is] the fording of the river Wiley by the West York Militia, when the bridges were supposed to be blown up...the Royal Welsh Fusiliers are seen crossing by a pontoon bridge...The battle of Wishford supplies more than one subject for our Artist. On the Monday, again, when the flank of the Southern Army was turned, and at the final engagement, on the Tuesday, between Amesbury and the Avon, his pencil was not unemployed'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.