sword away from him. This account was expanded in a life of Wellington by W.H. Maxwell. HIs friend Mackie was dead, he wrote, but he could not permit the honour 'indubitably achieved by his lamented friend to be assumed by another, no matter how deserving or distinguished,' A review of the book in The Times on 11 July 1842 wrote of the laurels being unfairly placed on the brows of Colonel Gurwood, and Gurwood was deeply hurt at being held up to the world as 'a cheat and impostor'. Gurwood then spent a great deal of time obtaining statements in support of his own account from comrades who had been present at the siege, and in May 1844 he managed to track down M. Bonfilh, the French officer who had taken his party to the Citadel. Bonfilh wrote that he remembered the events clearly and Gurwood's part in them. Napier remained unconvinced, and Gurwood collected together all the material relating to their argument about the siege and also about the capture of the howitzer and published it in book form. He distributed it to friends in June 1845 and deposited a copy in the British Library. His half brother, Charles Okey, said after Gurwood's death that his head wound had caused occasional fainting fits and that some eminent army surgeons had expressed the opinion that 'although he thought little of it, it might one day prove fatal to him.' Gurwood's friends attributed his ill health to over-work. Fanny Gurwood described how her husband had customarily started work at daybreak and been constantly occupied with his papers. In December 1838 Lord Hertford was 'convinced that your indisposition was caused by over mental fatigue' and urged his friend to come abroad and resume his old and pleasant life. Gurwood's final illness in the late autumn of 1845 manifested itself in chronic insomnia. On 28 November he wrote to a friend that the 'last volume and Index have upset me and I have been confined to my room with insomnia for ten days - not a wink of sleep!' On 15 December he said that the insomnia continued undiminished accompanied by fever and added that Fanny was almost as unwell as he from the constant attendance upon him. He was invited down to Brighton to stay with his old friend Sir Henry Webster and, when the family joined him, they moved into lodgings.