Soldiers as containing the details of important Political and Military operations of many years duration.' Further publications The Dispatches were from the beginning a great success not just with those in politics and the military but also with general readers. There were however complaints that, at a guinea (£1 1s) for each unbound volume, they were too expensive. There was also some feeling that the work was too long. Gurwood therefore set out immediately to produce a one volume Selections which was published in April 1841. A French translation was published in Brussels in 1843. Gurwood was never one of the Duke's secretaries, but he did undertake some private work for him in 1841 and 1842 on problems that had arisen with the estates given to the Duke by the Spanish Government, and with the annual subvention that the Portuguese Government had granted in lieu of an estate. Gurwood was also busy in the summer of 1842 helping Lord Francis Egerton with an article for the Quarterly Review. This was ostensibly a review of a life of Marshall Blucher but the larger part was concerned with criticisms of the Duke's disposition of the Allied troops at Waterloo made in Sir Archibald Alison's History of Europe. On reading a draft of the article the Duke, who had for many years resisted pressure to write his own account, sat down immediately and wrote a short memorandum with the aim of making Alison out to be 'a damned rascally Frenchman.' In September 1842 after reading a translation of Clausewitz'a Campaign of 1815 he wrote a second, longer Memorandum. He sent it to Gurwood saying that it needed revision and Gurwood made a number of editorial suggestions. However the Duke made it very clear that it was not to be published. A second edition of the Dispatches was planned. The aim at first to reduce the length but new papers were continuing to come in and there was every prospect that it would be enlarged rather than abridged. The Duke's approval at every stage was still required and progress was slowed following his two strokes in November 1839 and February 1840. Gurwood undertook his usual careful and precise work on the publication with a toll on his own health. The second edition ran to eight volumes, the first three on India coming out in 1844 and the next four in late 1844 and 1845.