The Making Of The British Army (15 page)

It had been thirty years and more since the British had fought in
formed lines against regular troops, and if the general officers were rusty the infantry, as at the desperate fight at Steenkirk, were relearning what the bayonet and resolution could do. But although it was the cavalry that kept the French horse busy, and the bayonet that almost literally steeled the infantry’s resolve, the day was won by dogged volleying, which grew steadier with the practice. According to Lieutenant-Colonel Russell, commanding the 1st Foot Guards,

Towards the middle of the afternoon, seeing they could make no progress, the French began to quit the field, leaving behind 5,000 dead and wounded. Pressed by the allied cavalry, their retreat soon turned into flight, and many
mousquetaires
drowned in the press to get back across the bridge of boats west of Dettingen, especially among the Garde Française, who had attacked first and taken the most casualties, but who by all accounts tried to cross the bridge with indecent haste. It is ever the fate of Guards regiments to incur the scorn of those more workaday regiments of the line if they appear not to live up to their advance billing: so many of the Garde fell into the river that the line dubbed them ‘Les Canards du Main’.

But the allies, who had been under arms since the early hours and were exhausted by the best part of a day’s fighting, failed to follow up and turn defeat into rout. Besides, though Edgehill was a century behind them, the fear of loosing the cavalry and regretting it was still strong. And the French in their Gallic obstinacy might even now turn on them with renewed vigour, for their artillery was still in place and protected by the waters of the Main. Only the most seasoned battlefield commander could have judged it aright – a Marlborough, or later a Wellington. Indeed, at the culmination of Waterloo the ‘Iron Duke’ would throw all caution to the wind and urge the line forward: ‘Go on, go on! They won’t stand!’ But King George, for all his bravery, was no such judge. He flatly refused to pursue at all, even in the days that
followed. And so, while the allied army restocked its canteens and cartridge cases at Hanau, Noailles limped back to France unmolested.

Dettingen, though a worthy feat of arms, was ultimately therefore of no strategic significance. It blooded a good many green men and subalterns, however, and reminded the field officers – if they had ever forgotten it – that in a bruising fight they could prevail by superior musketry. It showed George and his general officers that their military system was lacking; and it would be the last time a British monarch commanded in the field. But Dettingen, for all its insignificance in the strategy of the War of the Austrian Succession, was seen increasingly as a model of British fighting spirit, above all in the infantry. When at the end of the battle the King playfully chided the commanding officer of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, Sir Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw, for letting French cavalry break into his regiment’s square, Agnew replied drily: ‘An it please Your Majesty, but they didna’ gang oot again!’

‘Dettingen’ is a name habitually given to recruit platoons in the Army still; and for as long as anyone can remember there has been a Dettingen Company at Sandhurst, so prized is the occasion as an example to officers. And the battle was something of a watershed in the making of the army, for it had been a close-run thing – perhaps only a matter of ten or twelve minutes, as Colonel Russell of the Foot Guards had reckoned: it would not do in future to pit too many scratch troops against veteran Frenchmen, even Frenchmen without the
élan
of Marlborough’s day. In London the battle was celebrated as a famous victory, Handel promptly writing a Te Deum to mark it. But the red-coated regiments had been lucky: the French had not been on form. How long would it be before they regained it?

WITH SO SMALL AN ARMY, AND THAT OCCUPIED ON THE CONTINENT, THE
threat of invasion was a business for the Royal Navy. Yet twice – during the Monmouth rebellion and the ‘Glorious Revolution’ – the navy had been unable or unwilling to intercept a hostile fleet. Although the House of Hanover had reigned in Britain for thirty years, there was still a ‘King Across the Water’, and now that full-blown war with France was inescapable the spectre of French-backed Jacobitism came back to haunt the Court. Hasty militia reform measures were enacted to provide the belt in case the navy’s braces failed.

The French were quick off the mark, assembling a substantial fleet in February 1745, though February was not a month known for the best of weather in the Channel. In fact, a storm soon scattered their warships and sank some of the transports even as the invasion force of 10,000 was embarking. With that puzzling yet characteristic lack of maritime self-confidence, the French promptly abandoned the venture.

But storms and His Majesty’s ships could do little to prevent ‘invasion’ from within. With the predictability of the cuckoo’s return in spring, war with France heralded another attempt by the Stuart pretender to seize the crown. Indeed, the French invasion plan had been predicated on English Jacobite support. Almost unbelievably, Louis XV’s master of horse had supposedly toured southern England
after Dettingen listening to disaffected Tories’ proposals. As February’s Protestant wind was blowing away the invasion plans, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender’s Italian-born son – ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ – had been in Paris, waiting to cross the Channel to take the crown as regent. All had seemed lost; but he had received word from the Highland Jacobites that if he would land with just 3,000 French troops they would raise the clans to his cause.

Louis XV must have seen the venture as a diversion, now, with only the faintest possibility of success, for he gave Prince Charles Edward every encouragement but no troops. Eventually, by private enterprise – indeed, by the promise of privateering
³⁸
– Charles Edward found a ship of the line, the
Elisabeth
, and a frigate, and with 700 volunteers from the Irish brigade in French service he sailed in July for Scotland. Intercepted by the wonderfully aptly named HMS
Lion
, the
Elisabeth
turned back for France; nevertheless Charles Edward, blithe as ever, was able to land in the Hebrides, though with only seven men.

The Hebridean clan chiefs were not impressed. ‘Go home!’ said Macdonald of Boisdale when Charles presented himself.

‘I am
come
home,’ replied Charles in his Italian-accented English.

Macdonald of Sleat and Macleod of Macleod refused point blank to raise their clans, thinking the venture a romantic folly.

Undaunted, Charles rowed to the mainland and in the middle of August raised his standard at Glenfinnan, at the head of remote Loch Shiel west of Fort William, to which other Macdonalds, and Camerons and Macdonnels – about 1,200 men in all – rallied.

The Forty-five was under way.

But if it is occasionally portrayed as a willing, spontaneous rising to defend the Highland way of life, the picture is false. The Highlanders followed their clan chiefs out of feudal duty or through the habit of decades of inter-clan brigandage. Some chiefs, like George Mackenzie, third earl of Cromartie, resorted to the simple threat of killing the menfolk of any village that refused to assist him and burning their houses. It was a fearsome enough Highland host that marched towards Perth – as legend has it, in colourful plaid and carrying the famed broadsword (though at this stage most were carrying sickle and pitchfork) – but it
was no embryonic Scots Nationalist army. To deal with them were about 3,000 untried government troops scattered about the various ‘Wade garrisons’, the bulk of them south of Perth. Lieutenant-General Sir John Cope, Wade’s successor, who had commanded the cavalry with some distinction at Dettingen, gathered up as many as he could, raised fresh recruits, and marched north to intercept the Highland army. Hearing reports of greater numbers than expected, however, he made for haven in Fort George at Inverness, and with no formed bodies of government troops before him, Charles and his army were able to slip out of the Great Glen and have a free run to Perth and beyond – ironically via Wade’s own roads. On 15 September they brushed aside two regiments of dragoons in the outskirts of Edinburgh and the following day entered the city, where for the second time his father
in absentia
was proclaimed James III and VIII.

Cope, who had by now learned of the evasion, marched the 100 miles from Inverness to Aberdeen to embark his troops for Dunbar, intending to retake Edinburgh from the south or to fall back on the border fortress of Berwick as the situation dictated. Marching on the capital, his force was surprised and given a terrible drubbing at Prestonpans. Having not put up much of a fight his troops ran away, the gallant Colonel Gardiner of the 13th Dragoons (a regiment raised in the Fifteen and blooded at Preston) being pulled from his horse and hacked to death while trying to rally the infantry – an episode with which Scott makes full play in the first of his historical novels,
Waverley.
In that story, the eponymous Captain Edward Waverley, recently commissioned into Gardiner’s regiment, but having joined the Jacobite cause in confused circumstances,

Cope was court-martialled but eventually exonerated. And since history and Scottish literature have generally given Cope a bad press, it is worth noting what American professor Martin Margulies has written of the court-martial proceedings:

The Highland army now stood at 6,000, tempting a march on London, for Charles was ever hopeful of a French landing and English Jacobite support. But at first he delayed, enjoying the pleasure of his Holyrood court but also having difficulty persuading his council of war that the English as well as the Scots crown was theirs for the taking. For the Scots had not rallied to his standard in the numbers expected. Many who in principle held Jacobite sympathies refused to throw in their lot with so unreliable a man as James Edward or his untried son – and certainly not at the risk of forfeiting their estates. Many more, largely Presbyterian, simply loathed the Stuart religion. Charles only carried the vote to march over the border by falsely declaring that he had Tory assurances of a rising in England.

Having resolved to march south, the Highland army waited until November before striking out. It was hardly the best month to begin a campaign, and the delay allowed London to withdraw more troops from Flanders (including Hanoverians, and Dutch and Hessian mercenaries), sending them to Newcastle under the veteran 67-year-old Lieutenant-General Henry Hawley, rumoured to be a bastard son of George I. By November Hawley had assembled 18,000 men.