The War of Wars (84 page)

The British army, on the eve of its first great continental commitment since Marlborough (although the forces sent to begin with were, as usual, inadequate) had very little reputation to speak of.

If this sounds harsh, it is accurate. The greatest military achievement of the mid-eighteenth century had been the conquest of India by Robert Clive who, ironically, was not a regular officer at all. Even in the Seven Years War the British had been badly outmanoeuvred by their French and Indian adversaries in North America, although they had won Canada largely through overwhelming strength and a few brilliant tactical coups, like Wolfe’s storming of the heights at Quebec.

During the American War of Independence, a rabble of tenacious but ill-armed militiamen had held their own against the disciplined ranks of British soldiers; eventually Britain tired of the struggle in which they usually won the pitched battles without ever eliminating their enemy. The British army relied far too heavily on German mercenaries, and its British recruits were drawn primarily from the lowest ranks in society – Irish, Scottish and Welsh peasants, English criminals and drunks. Its officer class was very largely drawn from the young scions of the aristocracy or the landed gentry, with commissions purchased instead of promotions being made on merit.

Discipline was almost inhumanely stern, except under the more enlightened officers. So savage were the beatings that Americans protested at the treatment inflicted by the British on their own men in the American war. The war office stipulated that a maximum of 300 lashes could be inflicted on any one soldier – which was horrific
enough. However, one soldier received 500 lashes for conduct unbecoming a soldier; another, on an equally vague charge, received 600 lashes.

Responding to a parliamentary report, Mr Bennett the MP who had raised the matter, is reported as follows:

There was one particular circumstance which had always operated most powerfully on his mind with respect to these punishments, namely, the utter and entire failure of their object: they appeared to have no effect whatever, and he was fully persuaded that crimes were rather increased than diminished by the severity of those punishments.

He called on every military man to say whether he had ever known a regiment or a man reformed by such severe inflictions? On the contrary, he was perfectly convinced that every evil propensity was increased, since the miserable victim found himself degraded in his own eyes, and fallen in the estimation of his officers. The best and most intelligent men had repeatedly contended that corporal punishments produced no reform whatever. These punishments, indeed, were the more odious and intolerable in the eyes of Englishmen, since every foreign nation had abandoned them; they formed no portion of a system in any other nation than this. In the early period of the French Revolution, the Count de St Germain wished to introduce it into the army, but they would not submit to it. These punishments were not known in Austria, and scarcely ever inflicted in Russia, where they had been accustomed to the lash. Surely, then, no one would venture to say that an English soldier did not feel the same degree of honour which other nations possessed.

Last year he had made a very extensive tour in France, and he could assure the house, that while the people spoke of the English soldiers as their benefactors, they expressed the utmost horror at the corporal punishments which they were doomed to suffer: ‘You have been kind to us,’ they said, ‘but your ferocity to your own countrymen is horrible.’ These were the sentiments of the inhabitants of Brussels, who complained that their ears were stunned with the cries and groans of brave warriors, smarting under the lash. What could
be more disgusting and revolting to the souls of men? What could be more tyrannical and abominable?

One of the peculiar characters of this mode of punishment was – that it was inflicted, not in open places, and under the public eye, but in barrack rooms, and other obscure situations. What could the generous spirit of an Englishman think of this? There was no man at Charing-Cross who would dare to treat an animal as we treated those unfortunate persons who had braved death in the field of battle [
hear hear
]. What, then, must be the feelings of such men?

The limit in the navy at the time was around seven dozen lashes, except in the rare case of a flogging round the fleet. Many of the offences involved no more than drunken or rowdy behaviour, although the system was a little more defensible in seeking to prevent excesses against the civilian population which, to their great credit, British officers unlike French ones, tried manfully to restrain.

Tactics were Prussian – with the emphasis on drill, smart appearance, clean uniforms and powdered hair. The British marched in column and fought in line, just like the Austrians and the Prussians. This had rendered them highly vulnerable to the tactics of the American irregulars, particularly when the Americans had been supported by disciplined French soldiers who, however, had absorbed the lessons of American-style fighting by employing irregular skirmishers and light divisions to fight alongside the main forces. They possessed one great advantage: as a volunteer army, unlike their French counterparts and the many subject nationalities conscripted by the Austrians, they seemed to show much greater bravery and eagerness to fight.

However, they were plagued by the lack of imagination of their commanders. Mediocre generals such as Burgoyne and Clinton were excelled by the merely competent Howe and Cornwallis. Occasional British commanders had shown modest flair: Sir Ralph Abercromby in the West Indies, where, however, he was facing an inferior force and presided over the decimation of his forces through disease; Sir David Baird, a dour and competent lieutenant-general who had served with distinction in India; and Sir John Stuart, who boldly supported the Calabrian insurgency.

These, however, were not Nelsons or Cochranes, nor even Howes or St Vincents. They were not the stuff of skilful victories. Britain was desperately short of army heroes for the first few years of the war. Then it appeared to find a real hero at last, a man of the hour: John Moore. Of Nelson’s and Napoleon’s generation, Moore had been born in November 1761, of humbler origins even than the former, the son of a doctor from Glasgow. He seemed, in Pitt the Elder’s famous phrase about Clive of India, to be a heaven-born general.

He was skilled, fearless and ambitious and rose quickly by merit alone, serving in America, Corsica, the West Indies, Holland and Egypt, where he had performed heroically. He was a brigadier at thirty-four, major-general at thirty-six and lieutenant-general at forty-three. Although of modest means he was generous and made a point of sharing in the privations of his men, for example sleeping on straw during the siege of San Fiorenzo. ‘Everyone admires and loves him,’ commented the Duke of York’s aide. Strong, tall, and handsome, he was every schoolboy’s idea of a romantic soldier, every woman’s of a dashing young officer. Sir John Moore seemed to be Britain’s answer to Napoleon.

Nor was he an empty-headed man of courage. He quickly realized that British army tactics were in radical need of revision to meet the challenge posed by the new French ones. Securing the support of the Duke of York, he started training British units to become light infantry and reconnaissance forces. An experimental Rifle Corps was set up at Horsham, recruiting men from fifteen regiments. They were trained in Windsor Forest to use the new Baker rifle in place of the clumsier smooth-bore musket by two gifted commanders, Colonel Coote Manningham and Lieutenant-Colonel William Stewart, and were then placed under Moore’s command at Sharncliffe Camp looking across the Channel at France.

Moore was a brilliantly innovative soldier for the period. His reforms were designed first to motivate the soldiers and improve their morale; secondly to introduce greater mobility – a speciality of his which was the basis of his decision to take soldiers off the parade ground and train his men in the field and bivouac them outside towns and villages; and thirdly to improve tactics. Moore abandoned the rigid discipline
enforced through the hanging and flogging of his predecessors. Instead he believed in the ‘thinking fighting man’ and he put these ideas into practice with a thoroughly modern approach. Officers, who in the past had been discouraged from fraternizing with their men, were encouraged to get to know them and observe their strengths and weaknesses. Soldiers, who previously had been discouraged from independent action or thought, for fear of encouraging indiscipline or even insubordination, and were often judged as too stupid, were taught to use their initiative and encourage regimental pride, Napoleonic-style. Moore’s objective was:

that each individual soldier knows what he has to do. Discipline is carried on without severity, the officers are attached to the men and the men to the officers . . . The discipline of modern times, which consists of parades, firelock exercise, etc is easy to the officer, as it takes up but an hour or two in the day. The discipline of the ancients consisted in bodily exercise, running, marching, etc terminated by bathing. The military character of sobriety and patience would completely answer in this country; but officers and men in following them would be completely occupied with their profession and could pursue no other object.

Despising parade-ground exercises, Moore instructed his light infantry in the new art of marching – an easy rhythm for general marching without the discomfort of the old Prussian-style stiff marching. He also taught his soldiers to have their wits about them at all times, to be aware of all that went on around them, to reconnoitre and to observe. This was a radical change for soldiers accustomed to marching, wheeling about and manoeuvring with parade-ground stiffness and firing as separate manoeuvres.

Soldiers were instructed to shoot to kill, and fire independently as well as in a volley, which was more possible with rifles that had a 300-yard range (500 for sharpshooters). They were also taught to reload and fire quickly – five rounds per minute. The British tactic of repeated, disciplined volleys was in fact a refinement of Prussian tactics, and could be effective. However, the most effective tactic of all, which was now
introduced, was of withholding fire until the last moment: this of course required discipline and courage among the men.

Modern research suggests that victory was often achieved by a single volley at close range followed by a bayonet charge. ‘The British soldiers rejoice in the bayonet,’ remarked a contemporary officer. Brent Nosworthy has observed: ‘The overall psychological and physical dynamics underlying the British infantry tactic were pre-eminently simple: wait until the distance separating the two forces has been reduced to where, when the fire was finally delivered, it could not help but be effective, if not overpowering. Then, while the enemy is still recoiling from the shock caused by the devastating volley, rush in with lowered bayonets. The enemy staggering from their casualties and totally overawed by a ferocious charge delivered in a moment of vulnerability, almost inevitably turns and flees.’

Their coolness under fire was carefully inculcated under psychological pressure, with officers exhorting their men to be ‘steady lads steady’ in contrast to the equally deliberate French technique of advancing to drums and shouts, to give the men courage. George Gleig, a British officer, observed:

They come on, for a while, slowly, and in silence; til, having reached within a hundred yards or two of the point to be assailed, they raised a loud but discordant yell, and rush forward . . . The ardour of the French is, however, admirably opposed by the coolness and undaunted deportment of Britons. On the present occasion, for instance, our people met their assailants exactly as if the whole affair had been a piece of acting, no man quitting his ground, but each deliberately waiting till the word of command was given, and then discharging his piece.

The British did however, frequently resort to three cheers to give them heart when attacking. According to Nosworthy: ‘The cheers before the charge in part served as a signal that the attack was to enter the next and final phase. It also helped the men make the transition from struggling to maintain complete control to rushing in on the enemy with unbridled passion. By retaining a reservoir of emotion and unleashing
this in the final moments long after the enemy’s emotional outlets had crested, the British had almost guaranteed the success of their attack or defence. The charge, when it finally came, completely transformed the infantrymen from inconsequent cogs in a large formation passively following orders, to a collectivity of furious warriors monomaniacally trying to kill the enemy in front of them.’

A contemporary officer wrote: ‘No movement in the field is made with greater confidence of success than that of the charge; it affords little time for thinking, while it creates a fearless excitement, and tends to give a fresh impulse to the blood of the advancing soldier, rouses his courage, strengthens every nerve, and drowns every fear of danger or of death; thus emboldened amidst shouts that anticipate victory, he rushes on and mingles with the fleeing foe.’ Fear of this steely British discipline – withholding from attacking until the last moment, then charging an enemy whose own fire had already become disordered and which had lost its initial impetus – meant that traditional British linear tactics worked against the French columns and squares, as they did not for the Austrians and Russians, which relied on a disciplined line firing volleys into the middle distance. Provided the British irregulars and skirmishers could protect the line’s flanks, the British saw no reason to counter the French advance in column, as the Austrians did.

The British commanders also considered that their smaller guns were more manoeuvrable and accurate than the French artillery. They were equipped with far more 3- and 6- pound guns than the French, who instead had far more 8- and 12-pound ones which had a longer range and much greater ability to inflict damage.

Moore’s revolution in British tactics and morale can hardly be overstated. The British army had grown in strength from around 100,000 regulars in 1803 to double that in 1807. Although Castlereagh failed in his attempt to introduce conscription into this martially averse nation, a huge quantity of recruits were attracted by the need to fight for King and country against the barbarous Napoleon: this army was a professional force, no longer merely a refuge for undesirables.