Sickness, Suffering, and the Sword

by Andrew Bamford

  The other area where unit identity has a tangible connection to unit performance is the stimulus it could provide to recruits, in particular volunteers from the Militia. These latter, being more conversant with the military life, were generally well aware of the advantages and disadvantages of particular units, and those regiments with a good reputation were able to recruit extensively from this source. The most extreme example of this is to be seen in the huge influx of militiamen into the 95th Rifles as a result of the greatly enhanced reputation with which it returned from the Corunna campaign, which saw the 3/95th—raised specifically to accommodate the influx—having no less than 1,004 rank and file on the books within a month of the battalion being established.48 The combination of good reputation and the progressive attitude toward the rank and file inherent in their training made the light infantry corps consistently popular—the 52nd, 71st, and 95th seemingly the most so judging by the ease with which they were able to maintain strong battalions in the field—but other factors could of course play a part, and do so in favor of any regiment, line or light.

  Militiamen following a popular officer commissioned into the line, or choosing to transfer to a regular corps that had been serving alongside their Militia unit, are common. The case of the Limerick militiamen who elected to join the regiment of whichever recruiting officer could beat them in a sporting contest is, however, a rather extreme example of the same trend.49 Equally, some men seem to have chosen apparently elite units simply by chance—neither John Cooper of the 7th Fusiliers, nor the anonymous sergeant of the 43rd Light Infantry, make any reference to the particular glamour or attributes of their respective corps on the occasion of their joining, whilst William Wheeler, who ended up in the 51st Light Infantry, simply went with his friends in order to escape a tyrannical Militia officer.50

  On the other hand, the preference of some men for service in highland units may have had far more to do with their ethnic composition than their elite status, although in this sense the two are linked. Highland regiments form a crossover between those units whose reputation arose primarily from assumed superiority manifested in distinctions of dress and designation, and those regiments that were able to cultivate a specifically national or regional identity. In this second category must be placed the majority of those units with either Irish or lowland Scots affiliations, as well as the 23rd as the token Welsh regiment and the handful of English units where the county designation was more than just a name.51 The prime example of the latter would be the 14th Foot, which developed its connections with Buckinghamshire to such a degree that it was able to exchange titles with the 16th and assume the name of that county in lieu of that of Bedfordshire. That this re-titling was possible, however, was in a large part due to the fact that the 14th’s colonel was Sir Harry Calvert, with all the weight of his status as adjutant general behind him, and the case is to some extent the exception to prove the rule so far as English regiments are concerned.52 For Scots and Irish regiments, the ethnic identity of the units was far easier to maintain, not least through deliberately favoring the recruitment of men from the appropriate nationality. This, however, was something of a cyclical process, for as the cultivation of an ethnically specific identity made these units more appealing to men of a specific background, this in turn facilitated their ability to obtain the manpower necessary to maintain that character. Furthermore, whilst it was unlikely that any regiment would turn away a recruit able only to speak Gaelic, in either its Scots or Irish form, such a recruit would be far more likely to enlist in a regiment where his mother tongue was commonly spoken. Gaelic is known to have been spoken in the ranks of the 27th and 88th, to which the 87th with its Gaelic nickname of Faugh a Ballaghs (“Clear the Ways”) might also reasonably be added, and some vestiges of the older tongue may well have survived in the ranks of those highland regiments exempted from the “de-kilting.”53

  Whilst Scots and Irish regiments littered the Army List, only the 23rd Fusiliers bore a distinctly Welsh—or, as the regiment would insist, “Welch”—title. Contrary to modern boundaries, Monmouthshire, the assigned county of the 43rd Light Infantry, was at this time considered part of England. The presence of Welsh speakers—as opposed to Welsh born—in the 23rd is impossible to confirm or deny. The year 1807 saw only 146 out of the 991 NCOs and men of its first battalion as being of Welsh birth, but thereafter a concerted effort was made to cultivate links with the Welsh Militia and thus obtain more recruits from the principality and develop the Welshness of the regiments.54 Even if it were not always possible for practical steps to be taken to retain or increase a regiment’s national character, regiments with pretensions to a regional or national identity took great care to cultivate it, and thus passed it on to those members previously having no connection with the locality with which the regiment was associated. Captain Thomas Browne recorded the celebration of Saint David’s Day by the 23rd in a not dissimilar fashion to Grattan’s account of Saint Patrick’s Day in the Irish-dominated 88th.55 These identities could also be extended onto the battlefield, as when Lt. Colonel Hugh Gough of the 2/87th ordered his bandsmen to strike up the Irish tune “Garryowen” as the battalion went into action at Tarifa.

  The identity of a unit, or the way in which it was presented to outsiders, was also a factor in recruiting more generally, and both old fame and recent exploits were trotted out as part of the recruiting sergeant’s patter. In like fashion, distinctions of dress always helped set a unit apart, be that seen in the green of the rifles, the busbies and pelisses of those light dragoon regiments that chose to restyle themselves as hussars, or the countless smaller conceits of lacing, braid, and badges that set the regiments of the line apart from each other. That said, for a regiment with little to boast about, and still more so if the active element of that regiment was away in the distant colonies, picking up recruits was inevitably far harder. This book is focused on active service, not recruiting, but, since responsibility for obtaining fresh manpower was delegated to the regimental level, unit reputation and unit manpower became linked in such a way that it is impossible to ignore the issue completely. So far as keeping up the numbers was concerned, success bred success for the lucky few regiments, whilst the bulk made the best of what was available and an unfortunate few fared decidedly badly. Not only did this in turn impact on how these units performed in the field—or, indeed, whether or not they ever got the chance to do so—but the decentralized nature of the recruiting and manpower system would prove to be the Achilles’ heel of the whole regimental system when the demands of war placed it under the greatest strain, and would make responding to the resulting demands all the more complicated.

  The Role of Leadership

  Writing in response to Wellington’s critical memorandum issued in the aftermath of the retreat from Burgos, in which the peninsular army as a whole was castigated for its disorders and what Wellington saw as unnecessary losses, Moyle Sherer not only used his memoirs to refute the most sweeping of his former commander’s criticisms but also identified the reason that had contributed to some units having performed every bit as badly as Wellington’s words had implied. Sherer’s conclusions have a wider significance since, in seeking to disprove Wellington’s implication that the whole army was equally guilty, he identified the key factor that explained why there could be such substantial differences between the campaign performance of units that, on the face of it, had much in common: “[T]here were corps, and many corps, who maintained their discipline, and whose casualties were comparatively trifling, and most satisfactorily accounted for. I believe the interior economy of British regiments, and the discipline of a British company, in a regiment well commanded, to be superior to that of any army in the world.”56

  The role of leadership was therefore just as significant as unit identity and esprit de corps, so far as the functioning of the regimental system is concerned. Whilst, as Sherer emphasized, leadership in this context extends down to the company or troop level to encompass the example set by NCOs a
nd junior officers, the issue is primarily concerned with the role of the unit commander. After all, in a battalion with a good commander, the captain who neglected his men would find himself sharply reminded of his duty, but in a badly led unit even a paragon amongst captains could have little influence beyond the confines of his company. Recognizing the importance of this one individual, the General Regulations covering half-yearly inspections stressed that the “Commander-in-Chief should have, as far as possible, a personal Knowledge of the Merit and Capacity of Officers in the Command of Regiments, with the view to their being called forth on future occasions to Situations of more extensive Service.”57 The unit commander, in conjunction with the field officers in general, was not only responsible for the interior economy and field exercise of his command but was also tasked with ensuring that junior officers received sufficient instruction for them to be able to perform their duties. Accordingly, further provision was made for the inspecting officer to submit an additional special report on any officer who was unfit or incompetent to serve.58

  In exercising command, it was imperative that even the best commander had the support and cooperation of his junior officers. To some extent, this did depend on the quality or otherwise of those juniors—particularly the other field officers—hence the requirement for an inspecting officer to report on them too, but it was for the unit commander to ensure that harmony reigned as much as was feasible within the officers’ mess. Such harmony was one of the marks of a good regiment, with William Hay noting of his first twelve months in the peninsula, as a young ensign with the crack 1/52nd, that the time had been spent “as a child in a happy and well conducted family, for, at the time I write of, nothing could exceed the mutual kindliness of feeling which existed in that most estimable corps. Such a feeling as selfishness did not exist, and probably accounted for this excellent state of things; a stranger, entering with a different disposition, soon found himself so much out of place, that he did not remain long in the regiment.”59 Hay was also lucky enough to find a similar state of contentment prevailing when he was promoted into the 12th Light Dragoons under the command of the “active and intelligent” Lt. Colonel the Hon. Frederick Ponsonby, so that he later turned down a captaincy in another regiment in order to remain a lieutenant of the 12th.60

  On the other hand, commanders who either provoked dispute themselves, or allowed it amongst their officers, were censured. In 1812, Major General Sir George Anson noted of the 11th Light Dragoons that there existed a long-standing “difference of opinion” between Colonel Henry Cumming, commanding, and the second-in-command, Lt. Colonel James Sleigh. Since Anson added, “I am inclined to report, that Colonel Cumming is not easily pleased,” it is evident where he elected to place the responsibility.61 More serious in this regard were two cases where the impossibility of good relations between commander and officers led to wholesale replacements of those concerned. In the first instance, that of the 85th upon returning from its first short and undistinguished spell of peninsular service, both Lt. Colonel Henry Cuyler, commanding, and almost all the officers were removed, being considered equally bad. Only a single captain absent at the Royal Staff College was exempted from this transfer, which saw an influx of picked officers under whose leadership the battalion was soon restored to order and able to return to service.62 However, whilst it was the Prince Regent’s intervention that removed the officers of the 85th, it was also through the prince’s friendship that Lt. Colonel George Quentin of the 10th Hussars was able to retain command of his regiment notwithstanding a breakdown of order almost on a par with that in the 85th. His officers, who had not only complained about his misconduct but accused him of cowardice, were all replaced en masse, even though—or, more likely, because—a court-martial had found Quentin guilty of one of the several charges they had brought against him.63

  So far as this era is concerned, effective leadership seems primarily to have consisted of paternalism cut through with a streak of the benevolent despot.64 Some feeling of this can be obtained from the memoir literature, which contains a variety of individuals who all justified, for a variety of reasons, the admiration and affection bestowed upon them by the men under their command. That said, quite how one defines a “good” commander depends to a considerable extent on who is doing the defining, and whilst the ideal commander might well tick both boxes it does not necessarily follow that a popular commanding officer would also be an effective one, nor, indeed, that an effective one would be popular. Lt. Colonel John Montague Mainwaring of the 51st received a decidedly mixed reception from his seniors at the time so far as his military judgment was concerned, and has continued to do so from historians, but was quite obviously held in high regard by the men he led.65 On the other hand, there were martinets like William Inglis who were certainly competent, and may have won the grudging respect of their men, but were by no stretch of the imagination popular.

  So far as we are concerned, then, a “good” commander may be considered as being one who was not only capable of competently commanding his unit in the field, but who was also able to maintain its effectiveness in all regards whilst on active service. Thus, the ideal officer would maintain discipline without being harsh or unfair, and oversee an efficiently run unit so as to keep it at an appropriate level of training and readiness for service. The methods by which these goals were achieved, however, differ as widely as the characters of the officers concerned. One can find little in common between the hard-boiled professionalism of William Inglis of the 1/57th, the charismatic eccentricity of Charles Donellan, killed leading the 1/48th at Talavera, and the paternalism evident in Henry Cadogan of the 1/71st or Sidney Beckwith of the 1/95th; each in his way nevertheless ensured that he led a first-class battalion.66

  Whether a commander was liked as well as respected depended to some extent on whether he favored the carrot or the stick when it came to motivating his command, but might also have much to do with the manner in which he treated his men on a daily basis. The bantering manner of address adopted at times by some of the commanders who emerge from the memoirs as being particularly popular with the rank and file stands somewhat in contrast to the more reserved conduct of men like Inglis and Donellan. It is certainly hard to envisage either of these gentlemen addressing their men as “my young tinkers” as Francis Tidy of the 3/14th did at Waterloo.67 Command also had to be tailored to the men being commanded, and the methods that worked for Beckwith with well-motivated riflemen in the peninsula led to severe indiscipline when he attempted to apply them to the ragtag force making up the 1814 expedition to Hampton Roads.68

  Some commanders won respect through their willingness to defend their commands against higher authority and take the side of their men when the circumstances dictated it. Both Sidney Beckwith and Hamlet Wade, respectively commanding the first and second battalions of the 95th, attempted to intervene when the conflict between Robert Craufurd’s high personal standards and the different ethos of the rifles led to clashes over punishments. Craufurd being Craufurd, these interventions did not always have much effect, but the attempt was noted and appreciated.69 In a similar case, Alexander Wallace attempted to protect his battalion from what was perceived by its members as the prejudice of their divisional commander Thomas Picton, although since the 1/88th was undoubtedly a turbulent unit, these interventions do seem somewhat less valid. Justified or not, they did Wallace’s standing in the battalion no harm at all.70

  If the above gives only a general concept of the ideals of good leadership, it is rather easier to identify those occasions where such leadership was lacking. In particular, a fine line existed between the “frequent, but not severe” disciplinary practices espoused by Inglis and overuse of the lash to make up for a deficiency in actual leadership.71 Whilst the most serious crimes, including those carrying the death penalty, were restricted to General Courts Martial, most offenses were sufficiently minor to be tried at a regimental level, where the range of punishments, though less severe, was still extensive. Provis
ion was also made for on the spot “drum head” courts-martial to try offenses rapidly under particular circumstances, but these were covered by limitations of usage.72 However, whilst it was in the commanding officer’s interests to maintain discipline, it was also in his interest to keep every available man fit for active service, and a soldier absent in hospital after a heavy flogging was one man less to carry a musket in the line. Thus, one finds that in well-run units many sentences were either commuted completely, or else carried out only in part. Repeated instances of corporal punishment being carried out in full with no remission generally indicate that something was wrong with the unit in question. Thus, William Lawrence of the 1/40th was sentenced to 400 lashes in 1809 having absented himself for twenty-four hours, but had received only 175 of these before Colonel James Kemmis ordered “the sulky rascal [cut] down,” and the punishment stopped. There is a tendency in modern accounts to accept at face value Lawrence’s suggestion that this was a minor infraction and a first offense, and the punishment still too harsh. Yet considering that Lawrence had absconded whilst on active service, he was lucky not to have found himself charged with the capital crime of desertion.

  Unsurprisingly, considering his personal experience, Lawrence was one of several from the rank and file—Donaldson, as we have seen, was another—to use his memoirs to speak out against the practice of flogging. However, such methods of punishment were an inescapable part of life in early nineteenth-century Britain, and it is important not to let modern sensibilities obscure our understanding of disciplinary methods that, when enacted fairly, were no better or worse than what would have been encountered in British civilian life or in most other European armies of the era. The French, it is true, had abolished flogging, but since a Frenchman would have been shot for offenses that would have seen a Briton flogged, the value of this more enlightened approach is questionable when viewed from the ranks.73 Even Lawrence was prepared to concede that hefty punishment of a first offense “prevented me from committing any greater crimes which might have gained me other severer punishments and at last brought me to my ruin.”74 Since he ended his service as a sergeant, Lawrence may well have had a point, and his case certainly counteracts the assertion that a flogging invariably turned a man bad for good. Nor was Lawrence the only man from the ranks to accept the necessity of the lash. Benjamin Harris—who was, however, never flogged himself—went so far as to profess it a good thing and the only means by which Craufurd’s column was kept in order on the road to Vigo in the winter of 1808.75