A description and picture appear in The Random House Book of Old Roses, (New York, 1998), a pamphlet by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix., on page 75.

Phillips and Rix suggest the parents might be "a climbing Damask x Rosa arvensis'". If it was imported from the Far East, it can hardly be a hybrid of either R. arvensis or R. setigira.

There is an old gallica-looking rose in my garden that came in under six different “study names”, three from Western Australia and three from South Australia. It has generated just about the same number of questions in my mind. The rose has many other names as well and which are:

Old Spanish Rose. The name hints at it being found, or bred in SPAIN. I have not been able to find anything on this name.

Souvenir de la Bataille de Marengo. Was a rose growing in the plains where a tumultuous battle took place in northern ITALY in 1800 when Napoleon defeated the Austrians. A silly mind can picture an officer picking, not a sprig of Rosemary, but a sprig of this rose to take to a new widow.

Scarlet Grevillea. ‘Russelliana’ is certainly not scarlet, so I feel that this name was a simple comparison between our darker rose and the lighter R. multifora platyphylla (syn: Grevillea).

Russelliana. It has been put forward by Charles Quest-Ritson that it may have been named after a Lewisham nurseryman called John Russell (1731-1794). His nursery was once the largest in the London area.
Or that it was named after John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford (1766-1839), amateur botanist and collector of plants. Helpmefind.com are mentioning an 1831 reference that it was Lady Georgiana Russell’s rose.
So – was it bred in ENGLAND.

Cottage Rose (or Russell’s Cottage Rose). Heaven knows. Both the above Russell’s probably lived in rather more than a cottage. A date of 1840 has been connected with this name.

So there are the names this old rose carries. They hint at it coming from Spain, Italy, or England.

Looking at the dates quoted for this rose - and mentally setting aside that 1800 Italian battle for the moment. Charles Quest-Ritson postulate that John Russell’s nursery in the UK may have had the rose in 1810, but due to a death, it had not been not released. By 1826, published literature say it was introduced by Cormack and Sinclair. Brent Dickerson was using pre-1844 and had probably picked this up from Robert Buist’s 1844 book The Rose Manual. His later 2007 book Old Roses: The Master List, page 582 is showing a date of pre-1836. Helpmefind is showing a date of 1840 for ‘Cottage Rose’.

I don’t understand the 1831 reference which says “Lady Georgiana Russell’s, Britain”.
As far as I can see, Russelliana may have been named after John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford 1766 -1839. He married Georgiana Bing in 1786 who died in 1801. He later remarried in 1803 to Georgina Gordon 1782-1853 and one of their children was named Georgiana. (born ? – died 1867)
I don’t think the 1831 reference refers to the first Lady Georgiana Russell because the rose was possibly not around when she died in 1801. It had to refer to the daughter, Georgiana Russell, who married Charles Romilly. But would she have been Lady Georgiana? There is such a tiny difference, an ‘a’, between the name of the second wife Georgina and the daughter Georgiana. Is there any more information to be had from the 1831 reference?

Sir Charles Greville was instrumental in getting docks built and a Royal Dockyard at Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire was built during the Napoleonic wars. The rose ‘Souvenir de la Bataille de Marengo’ commemorated the 1800 battle when Napoleon defeated the Austrians. Charles Quest-Ritson [Historic Rose Journal No. 28, p26, 2004] has said that John Russell’s nursery possibly had ‘Russelliana’ by 1810 but he infers that the rose was bred in England and was not a renaming.

There have been other hints of renamed roses in the plot. Look at the 1994 Scanniello reference for ‘Pallagi panache’. Ah, the more I stir the pages, the more the plot thickens.