The Making Of The British Army (19 page)

The French commander, Contades, decided to break the ‘siege’ by taking the village of Todtenhausen 4 miles north of the city – on which the allied left rested and where Brunswick had garrisoned some 10,000 men, a quarter of his force – believing it too isolated for the rest of the allied line to support. Just to make sure of this, however, he also decided to mount a simultaneous ‘fixing’ attack on the allied centre so that Brunswick could not switch troops to his left.

Just after dark on 31 July, therefore, Contades led his troops out of
Minden so as to be ready to attack at first light. Brunswick learned of this move, however, and at daybreak the allied army was advancing in good order to meet the French – through open country and covered by a mist on the water meadows. Whether reminded of England by the wild roses in the hedgerows, or perhaps just seized with perverse humour, the British infantrymen plucked the flowers as they marched and put them in their hats, like so many regiments of morris men.

Not long after dawn the French frontal attack on Todtenhausen was seen off with predictable dispatch and appalling casualties. The duc de Broglie, commanding the French right wing, at once realized the village was too strongly defended and sent for reinforcements, but the main body was still on the move, and Contades could not oblige him. For an hour or so the battle lapsed into desultory artillery fire, and cavalry skirmishing on the opposite bank of the Weser. But as the sun began burning off the mist Contades saw the allied line deploying steadily in column, and at once turned his guns on them, opening up an especially galling fire on Lord George Sackville’s three brigades on the allied right. And soon Contades’ cavalry were moving to charge them.

Sackville’s regiments did not form square, as they might have done to receive cavalry, but instead deployed into line so as to bring the greatest number of muskets to bear – a highly risky tactic, but potentially devastating to tight-packed horse. And with their hallmark deadly volleying and the brisk support of two agile twelve-pounder batteries, devastate is what they did, repeatedly throwing the French back.

Meanwhile the British cavalry sat motionless. For despite the protests of their commander, the marquess of Granby, Lord George Sackville flatly refused to unleash them for the counter-charge. Why has never been truly established. But the infantry, though badly mauled and doubtless cursing the inactivity of their own cavalry, now decided not to wait for support, and began advancing in line against the French horse.

With the whole of the right flank – three British brigades and one Hanoverian – now in motion, the marquess of Granby could sit still no longer, and ordered his dragoons and dragoon guards (as the former regiments of horse had been renamed) to advance. But even now Sackville halted him, though the duke of Brunswick, himself heavily engaged in the centre, sent galloper after galloper begging him to strike. The infantry therefore continued to advance unsupported. And astonishingly, contrary to all experience and the ‘normal usages’, the
Minden infantry put the French cavalry to flight. At once Contades’ left was thrown into confusion, which soon spread to the centre, so that by ten o’clock the entire French line was in full retreat – leaving 10,000 casualties on the field.

Sackville, as if suddenly awakened from a deep sleep, now rode up to Brunswick and asked that he explain his orders to advance. Perhaps he had been genuinely puzzled, but whatever it was that had moved Sackville, Brunswick was dismissive: ‘My lord, the opportunity is now passed.’

The British infantry now thought themselves, with some justification, unbeatable. The Royal Artillery, too, had proved themselves agile in action, and their gunnery skilled. The cavalry, on the other hand, had shown themselves not worth their rations; their presence was not, it seemed, necessary for success. Fortunately for the honour of the marquess of Granby and his frustrated troopers, they would soon have the opportunity to prove otherwise.

Six weeks after Minden, following a protracted and debilitating siege, Major-General James Wolfe landed undetected at night with 5,000 infantry and two guns on the north shore of the St Lawrence River below Quebec’s ‘Heights of Abraham’. Having scaled the precipitous cliffs and overpowered the outposts, his men formed up for battle – inside the French defensive perimeter, if outside the actual walls of the city.

The Royal Navy had taken Wolfe there brilliantly, slipping past the sentries in the dark and finding a narrow strand of shingle on which to disembark the small-boats. ‘The heights near by were cleft by a great ravine choked with forest trees,’ wrote the American historian Francis Parkman a century later,

Masters for the time being, at least. In the first dim light of dawn they
had seen the French picket tents and rushed them. The officer had made off, until a musket ball in the heel brought him to a halt, and the picket had soon surrendered. But a handful had managed to get away and raise the alarm.

Major-General James Wolfe: one of the few enduring names of the wars with France in the middle of the eighteenth century. Had he lived to command in America, the outcome of the Revolutionary War might have been different. There is a magnificent statue of him outside the Royal Observatory at Greenwich (presented by the people of Canada), unveiled in June 1930 by the Marquis de Montcalm.

The marquis de Montcalm moved swiftly – probably too swiftly, for the troops at hand were not his best. Even so, the rest of Wolfe’s men, their general with them, had come up by the time the French were approaching, and there on the ‘Plains of Abraham’ Wolfe’s men waited in line, silent, their muskets double-shotted,
⁴²
as the French came on in column.

And Wolfe let them come on – until, at 30 yards, his centre battalions, the 43rd and the 47th Foot, ‘gave them, with great calmness, as remarkable a close and heavy discharge as I ever saw’, as one of the 43rd’s officers wrote.

The French, stunned, seemed to hesitate, and returned fire only raggedly. Wolfe’s line advanced ten paces and fired a second volley.

It was all over. ‘They run! See how they run!’ shouted one soldier.

But Wolfe had been hit twice, and lay mortally wounded. ‘Who run?’ he demanded, opening his eyes suddenly like a man aroused from sleep.

‘The enemy, sire,’ one of his staff assured him. ‘They give way everywhere.’

‘Then’, gasped the dying general, ‘tell Colonel Burton to cut off their retreat from the bridge.’ And he turned on his side and said simply, ‘Now, God be praised, I will die in peace.’

Quebec had fallen (to be followed in short order by the rest of French Canada) in even less time than it had taken to put the French to flight at Minden, and both battles had been won by the resolution and disciplined musketry of the infantry. A century and a half later Sir John Fortescue, the first historian of the army, wrote of Quebec: ‘With one deafening crash, the most perfect volley ever fired on a battlefield burst forth as from a single monstrous weapon.’

And from then on, until the invention of rapid-fire rifles, it would be the perfection of the infantry’s volleying that would carry the day on the battlefield – so long, that is, as the enemy were obliging enough to fight in regimented ranks.

QUEBEC HAD VINDICATED GEORGE II’S HIGH OPINION OF WOLFE, JUST AS
Minden had proved his low opinion of others. ‘Mad, is he? Then I hope he will bite some of my other generals!’ had been the King’s famous reply to a courtier who ventured an unfavourable estimate of the young major-general. Whether or not he would have touched Marlborough’s sphere had he lived longer is debatable, but Wolfe had been capable of boldness and tactical ‘grip’ at a time when British generalship was otherwise not at its best. For generals were having to learn their trade on the job: without a large army in peacetime there was little opportunity to practise except in the service of a foreign prince.

As for Lord George Sackville, his court martial after Minden was unanimous in its verdict: he was ‘unfit to serve His Majesty in any military capacity whatever’. He was replaced by his thrusting second-in-command, the marquess of Granby, whose cavalry he had expressly held back at Minden.

Granby’s German command would have a stronger British contingent, too, for such was the optimism after the
annus mirabilis
of 1759 that London sent more regiments to the Continent in what became known as ‘the glorious reinforcement’. And Granby was in no doubt that after Minden the cavalry had a debt to settle.

Despite the wonders of 1759, however, in the early months of 1760
the war did not go well. The Prussians had suffered sharp defeats at the hands of the Austrians and the Russians, and the French had pushed the British – Hanoverian – Hessian army back north once more. By July they were threatening Kassel on the River Fulda, only 100 miles south of Minden. Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, still in command of the allied army, strengthened the garrison at Kassel, his main base, but withdrew the bulk of his force north of the city to allow himself more freedom of manœuvre. A deal of skirmishing for the crossings of the various smaller rivers followed towards the end of the month, while Brunswick’s co-commander Karl Wilhelm, the
Erbprinz
(heir apparent) of Hesse-Kassel, occupied nearby Köbecke, intending to attack the main French positions on the ridge north-west of Warburg.

The French here numbered about 20,000 – thirty-one squadrons of cavalry, twenty-eight infantry battalions and twenty-four guns. The
Erbprinz’s
force was slightly inferior in cavalry and infantry – twenty- two squadrons, including two British regiments of dragoons (the 1st, or ‘Royals’, and the 7th), and twenty-three battalions of infantry, including two British battalions of the 1st Foot Guards, and the 87th and 88th Highlanders – but equal in artillery. In terms of the usual ratio for successful attack, however – three to one – the
Erbprinz
was severely under strength. At last light on 30 July, therefore, having sent a column to take the Desenberg, the hill north-east of Warburg, to distract the French, Brunswick marched west to reinforce him.

By dawn the two generals had met and Brunswick’s troops were not far behind, but there was a distance still to march to the Warburg ridge. The mist was in their favour, however, so they decided to attack as planned, with the
Erbprinz
making a concealed, right-flanking approach. The French commander, the chevalier du Muy, unaware of what was unfolding on both his front and left, mustered his troops without particular urgency along the ridge behind which they had bivouacked.