The Making Of The British Army (86 page)

⁵³
Menou’s change of faith was apparently no more sincere than his erstwhile leader’s conversion, in which Bonaparte took the name Ali. Egypt was evidently worth a mosque.

⁵⁴
And, indeed, the distinction was taken into the new regiment of which the Glosters became a part in 2007, The Rifles.

⁵⁵
The Peace of Amiens, described by the playwright and politician Sheridan as ‘a peace which all men are glad of, but which no man can be proud of.

⁵⁶
The taking of Seringapatam formed the background to Britain’s first detective novel, Wilkie Collins’s
The Moonstone
(1868).

⁵⁷
A trial had been held at Woolwich by the Board of Ordnance in 1800 to select a standard rifle pattern. The rifle designed by Ezekiel Baker was chosen (see ‘Notes and Further Reading’).

⁵⁸
There was an earlier example of British musketry – at Maida on 27 June 1806, when a British force of 5,000 men commanded by Major-General John Stuart, which had sailed from Sicily and landed in the Gulf of Sant’Eufemia in the Kingdom of Naples, defeated a French force of 6,000 after fifteen minutes’ volleying – but Stuart’s subsequent generalcy proved not to be the equal of his infantry’s firepower (see ‘Notes and Further Reading’).

⁵⁹
The nickname they would acquire at the battle of Salamanca when the dye of their distinctive black facings stained their faces, it being a sweltering hot day, and the sleeve a useful sweat wipe.

⁶⁰
Part of his force had actually reached the Escorial, only 20 miles or so short of Madrid, before turning back north-west to rendezvous with the others.

⁶¹
The Legion grew to around 14,000; it was disbanded in 1816.

⁶²
When the miller’s party visit the cavalry camp on the downs, ‘They passed on to the tents of the German Legion, a well-grown and rather dandy set of men, with a poetical look about their faces which rendered them interesting to feminine eyes’.

⁶³
Canning to Lord Bathurst, 9 January 1809.

⁶⁴
He had fought an active defence astride the border throughout the spring and summer in concert with the Spanish fortresses, delaying the French invasion longer than he had expected.

⁶⁵
HMS
Victory
, launched in 1765, had cost £63,000 – in excess of £104 million at today’s prices.

⁶⁶
When the author was senior subaltern of his infantry battalion in Germany in the mid-70s, the new commanding officer, a seasoned soldier who had been a master of Cumbrian foxhounds, exhorted him to get the rest of the subalterns out hunting to improve their eye for ground. And this was the nuclear age!

⁶⁷
After the battle of Albuera (May 1811) Beresford wrote: ‘Every individual nobly did his duty; and it is observed that our dead … were lying, as they fought, in ranks, and every wound was in the front.’

⁶⁸
After the school’s move from Salisbury Plain to the Brecon Beacons, it was thought appropriate to update the exercise name – but only as far as 1942. It is now called ‘Sittang Bridge’ after the battle in Burma (at which, coincidentally, the 2nd Battalion of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment played a prominent part).

⁶⁹
Sir John Kincaid, a faithful chronicler of the war, wrote two volumes of reminiscences,
Adventures in the Rifle Brigade
and
Random Shots from a Rifleman.

⁷⁰
They became the 5th (Northumberland Fusiliers) Regiment of Foot in 1836. The ‘Fighting Fifth’ were the regiment in which John McManners, whose thoughts on war conclude the introduction to this book, served during the Second World War. They were long known as one of the toughest in the army.

⁷¹
Wellington had countermanded the old rule of sieges that gave ‘no quarter’ when the defenders had held out after a breach had been made in a fortress wall. This had led to a more protracted defence of Ciudad Rodrigo, and Wellington’s men resented the order, but at Badajoz they followed it almost to the letter as far as the French were concerned. He had issued no specific instructions about the Spanish (and it is suggested that some commanders such as General Sir Thomas Picton actually encouraged the bloodlust), for manifestly they were allies. Badajoz is a case where commanders perhaps understood the uncertainty of the extent of their disciplinary grip, and thought it best not to test it.

⁷²
In Bevan’s case, however, it was more on account of tardiness in carrying out orders to move rather than dereliction of disciplinary duty, and there was widespread sympathy for him. There is a fine account of the affair in
Wellington’s Scapegoat
by Archie Hunter (2003).

⁷³
Sandhurst’s Academy Serjeant-Major ranks above every serjeant-major in the army. As a warrant officer, the appointment of ‘Conductor’ in the Royal Logistic Corps ranks above the Academy Serjeant-Major; but a conductor is not a serjeant-major.

⁷⁴
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s poem about an attack on the Western Front, ‘The Guards Came Through’, captures the frisson perfectly (see ‘Notes and Further Reading’).

⁷⁵
For the most part Wellington did not have his old Peninsula battalions: a good many of his veteran troops had been sent to North America for the ‘War of 1812’, an eruption of festering sores, a mixture of US grievances and unfinished business. Its outbreak defies all good sense, and its conduct is unworthy of study. It was poor, nasty, brutish and, mercifully, short.

⁷⁶
After Corunna, Sir Stapleton Cotton had replaced Uxbridge in command of the cavalry. Uxbridge had earlier run off with Wellington’s sister-in-law, and the Horse Guards thought it best to keep the two men apart. By 1815, however, the hatchet had been buried sufficiently deeply to allow his return.

⁷⁷
Established definitively by recent topographical survey: see Andrew Roberts,
Waterloo, Napoleon’s Last Gamble.

⁷⁸
Hanover was only lately delivered from occupation by the French for the better part of fifteen years. The electorate’s troops (sometimes known as Brunswickers) were to Wellington’s mind untried, although their allegiance was not as suspect as that of the Dutch and Belgians. The KGL were Hanoverians, too, of course, but they had been British to all intents and purposes for a decade and more.

⁷⁹
‘Corn 6 feet high’ is sometimes disputed, but selective cultivation has reduced the height of wheat by almost a half since Waterloo.

⁸⁰
FitzRoy Somerset was to become Lord Raglan and begin a fashion for shoulderless coats – the ‘Raglan sleeve’.

⁸¹
The numbers taking part in the attack, and their precise formation, have never been firmly established. By this time the smoke on the battlefield was thick and widespread, and there is even some doubt as to whether all the attacking troops were from the Garde. Some of the battalions advanced in column, and some appear to have done so in square.

⁸²
Regimental pride is usually thought of as a later, Victorian development – the officers at Waterloo owning more to individual honour than to the corporate, and the soldier having no especial sense of pride in the number he bore on his shako and large pack. But when, for example, Uxbridge sent one of his ADCs to try to stop the Cumberland Hussars (Brunswickers) from leaving the field, the officer appealed to their commanding officer to ‘consider the regiment’s good name’. And when Sir John Colborne saw how some of his men ducked as cannon shot came over he cried ‘For shame! That must be the second battalion!’ (who were recruits).

⁸³
The Minié was a French design which allowed much quicker muzzle-loading. It was the slow rate of reloading that had formerly stood in the way of the rifle’s introduction throughout the infantry. The Minié was a percussion lock, like the muskets it replaced, the army having belatedly modified its ancient flintlocks in the 1830s to take the percussion cap with its filling of explosive fulminate of mercury.

⁸⁴
From
The Light Cavalry Brigade in the Crimea: Extracts from the Letters and Journal of General Lord George Paget
(1881).

⁸⁵
Lucan had, however, been an observer in the Russo-Turkish War in 1828, though little good it appears to have done him.

⁸⁶
At the time Britain had sent a force the size of a small division to Portugal to stabilize the country as it slid into civil war, but this placed such a strain on the army that Wellington, as soon as he became prime minister, recalled it.

⁸⁷
Of the 103 infantry regiments of the line that remained on the establishment, as many as 80 would be abroad or in transit. The Guards did not serve overseas, nor the bulk of the cavalry. Artillery and engineers were penny-packeted to the colonies as the need arose.

⁸⁸
Dr Johnson would probably not have been surprised to learn that when during the 1970s and 1980s the demand for prison beds exceeded supply, as frequently it seemed to do, and temporary penal accommodation was sought, Rollestone (training) Camp on Salisbury Plain would regularly be requisitioned. The Home Office would have to install ‘facilities’ and comforts for the prospective inmates, which would then be taken out again before the camp was handed back to the MoD.

⁸⁹
Correlli Barnett, as ever caustic in
Britain and Her Army
(1970).

⁹⁰
The Afghans had required Elphinstone himself as a hostage.

⁹¹
His fluency in French and his tact had, indeed, been the reasons for his appointment, as well as his seniority.

⁹²
To the
series
of Raglan’s orders, indeed. The one preceding the order which precipitated the charge read: ‘Cavalry to advance and take advantage of any opportunity to recover the Heights. They will be supported by the infantry which have been ordered. Advance on two fronts.’ Now although this was not a model of clarity, it showed very well to what purpose the cavalry was to act – recovery of the Heights. Lucan’s inability to grasp this stands as the main charge against him. And indeed against the whole command and staff system.

⁹³
Brigadiers have one star, major-generals two, and (full) generals four. A field marshal has five.

⁹⁴
The Piedmont-Sardinian expeditionary force of 15,000 (which arrived in the Crimea in 1855) was, as observers remarked, astonishingly well set up logistically. It also fought well, its Bersaglieri (light infantry) in particular being very fleet in the attack. Russell considered their artillery to be the best in the Crimea.

⁹⁵
Several regiments were recruited by the Company in India from European ‘settlers’. These were taken on to the British army’s establishment after the mutiny and given numbers in the line, and later British territorial designations – so that, for example, two regiments of Bengal Europeans became the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers) and 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers), and were later linked with the Militia of Munster (Ireland) to become the Royal Munster Fusiliers (see the Cardwell-Childers reforms later in the chapter).

⁹⁶
‘Sir Crawling Camel’ was one of his nicknames, more alliterative than fair.

⁹⁷
Silladar cavalry was not unlike British yeomanry, providing their own horses (and weapons), but in regular service.

⁹⁸
The stories are legion of the present Queen’s consciousness, in her role as commander-in-chief, of the observance of the proprieties in an otherwise busy age; and also at times of an almost Wellingtonian good sense in ‘minor matters of great importance’. A report is sent to her twice yearly by the army on its operations and aspirations.

⁹⁹
An increase in the army estimates was materially helped by
The Battle of Dorking
, an 1871 novel of the ‘invasion literature’ genre. It was written by Colonel (later General) George Tomkyns Chesney, and probably influenced the now much better-known
The War of the Worlds
, by H. G. Wells. Written just after the Prussian victory in the Franco-Prussian War, it describes a successful military invasion of Britain by a foreign power which the preface makes clear is Germany.