here the link to listen
Again very worthwhile to listen. I wonder how soldiers could survive such harsh treatment of punishment - like 1500 lashes, even when split into several series and why the officers in general found it quite convenient to do so, to keep it as tool for keeping up the discipline in the Army.
In case I understood correctly sadistic inclined officers could initiate flogging within his company. Did the regimental commander stood aloof?
There must be quite some unjustified floggings as well, which would brake the morale of the affected soldiers.
While beating a soldier - was not uncommon in other armies as well, I cannot find such excessive numbers.
You're really suggesting that Picton was worse than Napoleon? Oh, for heavens' sake.
If he was a flawed human being, he was also a brave and extremely competent soldier - and one of the few men to have probably suffered a mortal wound in two separate battles a couple of days apart (I forget who it was now, but a prominent modern surgeon has examined all the records of his Quatre Bras wound and suggested that internal bleeding and other injuries would have killed him within the week, anyway).
Sorry, but as a former lawyer I'm not a fan of condemning people for living by the standards of their own time, rather than ours - whether Picton or Napoleon, There is a reason that no CIVILISED legal system allows retrospective conviction for acts that were not crimes at the time they were performed.