At the time of Sherbrooke’s November 1810 inspection, Ramsay was back in command but soon left for good, and Iremonger was again commanding the battalion when it sailed for Portugal, where it conspicuously failed to distinguish itself. Events reached a nadir when the 2nd, and its commanding officer, were implicated in the failure to prevent the escape of the French garrison of Almeida and were widely criticized as a result.98 By this stage, Iremonger had already made arrangements to sell his commission and retire; indeed, a buyer had already been found by the time of the Almeida fiasco, although news of this had not yet reached the peninsula.99 Unfortunately for the 2nd, the new commander was an officer equally unfit for the role, as Major General Henry Clinton made plain when he inspected the battalion a year later:
This regiment has, during the last 7 or 8 months been commanded by Lt. Colonel Lord Robert Manners. From the present state of the Regiment his Lordship does not appear to have been very well qualified for the command of it, as he is however endowed with a very sufficient capacity, I hope by his further exertions the Regiment will recover, what, if it has of last year been in tolerable order, it has undoubtedly lost. The commanding officer has been accorded that assistance from the field officers which field officers ought to afford, and which should be the least dispensed with in this case as Lord Robert Manners succeeded to the command of it without having previously served in any corps of infantry.100
Unfortunately, the aid of his officers was likely to have availed Lord Robert little, since Clinton went on to state of the second-in-command Major John Kingsbury that “the length of his service constitutes his principal if not his only professional merit.”101 The junior officers also incurred his displeasure, albeit in part because of the faults of their seniors: “After such a report of the commanding and field officers it is not to be expected that the necessary attention has been paid to the junior officers as to qualify them for the useful discharge of their duty. [This] makes one fear that it will be some time before they acquire those correct military habits necessary to constitute good regimental officers.”102 As a result of these failings, the rank and file, though “a very serviceable body of men in . . . age and size,” were “far from being well-drilled.”103
This, then, was the official record so far as Clinton’s opinion of the battalion was concerned. However, the general also wrote directly to his erring subordinate, emphasizing his displeasure and highlighting further problems. The letter makes clear that this was not the first time that Manners had been taken to task, and that the problems causing Clinton’s concern had evidently been going on for some time.
Having been called upon to make a Confidential Report to the Commander of the Forces of the Brigade of which the Regiment under your command forms a part I am much concerned to say that the Report which I have felt it my duty to make of your regiment, is of a very unfavourable nature; I have so frequently spoken to your Lordship upon the subject of the serious irregularities which I have remarked in the conduct of the Regt. that even if I had not made the Inspection of it yesterday morning, you would not have been ignorant of the points of discipline to which your attention is most immediately called. For these points I must refer you to the several orders which I have found it necessary to issue particularly those of the 24th of February the 13th and 23rd of March and the 21st of April.
In addition to the irregularities which you use to these orders I have now to remark the [illegible] inattention of the greater part of the officers who commanded Companies yesterday morning to the state of these Companies, several were totally unable to account for the men altho’ furnished with states signed by themselves, without consulting with the Sergeants and a great degree of negligence evident from the State of their Accoutrements and Ammunition. It is owing to [illegible] negligence in Commanding Officers that Accoutrements are suffered to become and remain unserviceable and that ammunition is damaged and lost by which not only a heavy expense is occasioned to the public but great difficulty is found in supplying a sufficient supply of ammunition.
There then follows a lengthy diatribe about the commander’s responsibility to see to it that subordinate officers, both field and company, are fit for their duties before Clinton moves on to a second issue which is not explicitly addressed in his official report.
There is only one other subject upon which I think it necessary to say a word, and that is respecting the mode of punishment which appears generally to have been used in your Regt. Considering all things, I do not think the number of Court Martials great, but I observe that Corporal Punishment, when any has been judged necessary, has uniformly been resorted to; upon any account this ought if possible to be avoided, it should be inflicted only in very aggravated cases, and when an Instance of great Severity is loudly called for, more as an example by which to deter others from the Commission of Crimes, than as an ordinary mode of Punishment. The contrary system once established, which is unfortunately too much the case in our Service, it is more difficult to abstain from such instances of severity, but this most desirable object, be assured of it, from perseverance, and by a judicious dispensation of the power with which a Commanding Officer is by our Martial Law invested, is by degrees to be attained, and as nothing will contribute more to the well-being of yours and every other regiment than such a system of discipline, I earnestly recommend it to your serious and constant attention.104
Although Clinton was opposed to corporal punishment generally, as well as its use in the 2nd in particular, this is nevertheless pretty strong stuff and can lead only to the conclusion that, as Iremonger seems to have done before him, Manners was turning to the lash to make up for a lack of leadership.
Manners left the battalion in August 1812, having obtained a lt. colonelcy in a cavalry regiment; doubtless this had been his true goal all along. He subsequently transferred again, back into his old regiment the 10th Hussars with which he was wounded at Waterloo. Influential friends—he was brother to the Duke of Rutland and part of the Prince Regent’s social circle—doubtless did much to ensure his steady rise through the ranks, which would eventually take him to major general, but it was nevertheless the misfortune of the 2nd Foot that its one and only battalion temporarily became a pawn in the promotions game that helped get him there.105 Manners’s replacement in the 2nd was another ex-cavalryman, Godfrey Mundy from the 3rd Dragoons, who transferred because his health no longer permitted him to serve in the mounted arm.106 However, it transpired that his health was also not up to the rigors of infantry service either, and Mundy remained on leave in Britain. This left the 2nd under the unfortunate Kingsbury, whose effectiveness was further constrained by severe wounds sustained at Salamanca, the effects of which would eventually bring about his early death in August 1813.107 Taking all this into account, it is not surprising that by the end of 1812 the 2nd was so shrunken as to be counted amongst those battalions that were reduced to four active companies and combined into part of a provisional battalion; nor is it surprising to see that the battalion thereby created was placed under the command of the staff of the 2/53rd, the unit contributing the other four companies. That this was more than just an arbitrary decision is made clear by the fact that Wellington enforced it notwithstanding the protests of Lt. Colonel George Bingham of the 2/53rd, who had wished to return home due to wounds sustained at Salamanca but instead found himself retained in the peninsula to command the combined battalion.108
Two inadequate commanders in succession can therefore be seen to have contributed to the failure to turn the 2nd into an effective battalion during the period 1808 to 1813, since neither Iremonger nor Manners seems to have had the ability or the inclination to lead the unit by example. Ramsay, in whom Doyle had identified “zeal and attention,”109 commanded only at irregular intervals and made little mark on the battalion. The one common character throughout the story is Kingsbury, who remains somewhat elusive so far as the official record is concerned. It may well be that he, as the long-serving second-in-command, bears more responsibili
ty than anyone for the poor state of the battalion, particularly with a commander like Manners who seems to have been so disinterested in his duties, but we have no way of knowing. In any case, even if Kingsbury were in any way at fault, the ultimate responsibility for the unit still remained with its commanding officer. In all fairness, the situation of the 2nd had not been aided by the circumstances of the regiment having only one battalion, and of its having become sickly through hard service during 1808 and 1809, which meant that effective strength rapidly deteriorated on active service. All this would have been bad enough, had the regiment not also managed to lose so many of its recruits during its home service; whilst the exact circumstances of the desertions remarked upon by Sherbrooke are unclear, they are a damning indictment of the internal economy of the battalion. Finally, once the battalion was again fit, Iremonger’s incompetence, and Manners’s inexperience, contributed to a decidedly undistinguished battlefield career—with a further negative impact on morale—and helped ensure the eventual disappearance of the battalion as an independent entity within the peninsular army.
The case of Lord Robert Manners attaining command of the 2nd with no prior experience as an infantry officer also highlights a significant flaw of the regimental system so far as command and leadership is concerned, in that regimental seniority alone was responsible for who succeeded to command a particular unit on service. Judging by his performance at Waterloo, Manners was at least a reasonably competent cavalry officer, yet in command of an infantry battalion he was a disaster. With regard to the selection of men for higher posts, York could use his knowledge of the British Army’s lt. colonels, obtained through inspection reports, in order to select appropriate candidates. At the unit level, however, he had no choice, short of removing an unsuitable incumbent from the service, but to accept those battalion and regimental commanders elevated by the system to positions of authority. Whilst Manners’s case is a little different and he himself should take an element of responsibility through having purchased into an arm of service with which he was professionally unacquainted, there were other occasions where the dictates of seniority placed officers in positions for which their character, inclination, and prior experience simply did not fit them. Perhaps the worst of these men was Lt. Colonel Sir Nathaniel Peacocke, who succeeded to command of the 1/71st after Henry Cadogan’s death at Vitoria, and who was one of three peninsular battalion commanders removed during the winter of 1813–14. Of the three, Peacocke was the only one cashiered, and in light of his offense—desertion of his command during the Battle of Saint Pierre, he being subsequently found some distance in the rear affecting to be encouraging Portuguese ammunition carriers—his removal seems entirely fitting.110 Yet the most shocking aspect of this situation is not that Peacocke was so flawed a character but that a man of his obvious limitations could obtain command of a frontline infantry battalion at all.
Indeed, the system of officer appointments was so rigid that just as there were no checks to prevent the likes of Peacocke being able to obtain a position of authority, so too did the lack of flexibility in the system prevent such an individual being shifted to a position where such talents as he might possess could be put to use. Even Wellington, whilst full of anger over Peacocke’s conduct at Saint Pierre, recommended only that he, and Lt. Colonel Duncan Macdonald of the 1/57th, “be removed from the command of their Regiments to some other situation in which their want of fitness will not be so detrimental to the service,” it being York who instead ordered Peacocke’s cashiering. The third officer to go was Lt. Colonel William Bunbury of the 1/3rd, who preempted matters by resigning his commission before he could be stripped of it.111 Ironically, many regiments unofficially took steps to ensure that more junior officers who could not cope with the stress of combat were placed in positions where they could still serve usefully—the baggage guard, for example—but there was no like provision for the more senior grades, unlike the contemporary French army where they could more easily be shuffled into depot commands.112
Whilst Peacocke had not been long enough in the peninsula for his failings to become apparent, the same cannot be said of Duncan Macdonald, who had already been the subject of adverse reports. Several months prior to Macdonald’s removal, Brigadier General John Byng had concluded his summary of the 1/57th by stating, “From the foregoing report, it must be clear that I am not satisfied with the attention of the Commanding Officer. It is a delicate and unpleasant duty to report anything to the prejudice of so old an Officer as Colonel Macdonald but I must be neglectful of what is demanded from me, if I do otherwise. He means well, but he is easy and wants sufficient energy to command such a battalion.”113 Byng’s reference to Macdonald being well-meaning related to his unwillingness to flog soldiers even when such punishment was merited, a tendency that may be the reason that Byng noted “some irregularities in the proceedings” of Regimental Courts Martial held under Macdonald’s command. Whilst Macdonald obviously had his men’s interests at heart, the stark contrast between his methods and those of his predecessor, William Inglis, led to the perception of him as “easy,” and, since his removal was ultimately due to looting by his battalion during the advance into France, his men evidently took advantage of his good nature. Whilst the methods of Macdonald’s leadership came from the highest motives, it was clear that neither Byng nor Wellington felt him suited to the command of a battalion on active service under their command. However, although unofficial pressure could be applied, and was in this case, there was nothing that could be done within regulations to forcibly remove Macdonald or any other officer found to be unsuited to the role in which they were serving.
An obvious parallel can also be drawn between Macdonald and the case of Mainwaring of the 51st, who also incurred Wellington’s displeasure and left the peninsula after perceived misconduct in action, having lost his head under pressure at Fuentes de Oñoro where he ordered his battalion’s Colours to be burned rather than risk their loss.114 Yet both Mainwaring and Macdonald, unlike Peacocke, were popular commanders and effective trainers and leaders of men, and ideal candidates for a training or administrative post. Tragically in the case of Macdonald, whose care for his men and abhorrence of corporal punishment were both to his credit but made him an unfortunate successor to the command of the “Steelback” 1/57th, the circumstances of his removal, with its implication that his failings were on a par with those of the notorious Peacocke, led him to take his own life.115
But if a bad commanding officer had the potential to affect the performance of a unit adversely, so too could an underperforming unit be brought back to order through the provision of competent leadership. To complete the story of the 1/71st, having gone from the heights of Cadogan’s leadership to the depths of Peacocke’s, the battalion next passed to Lt. Colonel George Napier, who was able to get it back into order though only through resorting, against his inclination, to heavy corporal punishment.116 Similar treatment was needed to restore the 2/73rd in the aftermath of Major Kelly’s unfortunate stint in command. By the time the battalion was inspected again in the autumn of 1814, Lt. Colonel Harris was back in command, and the consequences of his return had already become apparent. The privates were now “well drilled, attentive and well behaved,” but this had been achieved at a price, as the inspecting officer, Major General Kenneth Mackenzie, “had occasion to remark on the punishments of this battalion and . . . issued an order on the subject.”117 Although the rest accorded by six months of peacetime service must have helped, Harris had quite literally whipped his battalion back into shape, with a series of heavy sentences being carried out in full with no remittance. The cases of the 1/71st and 2/73rd both emphasize that there were occasions when leadership had to take a heavy-handed form, to ensure that men who had been allowed to grow slack received a reminder of just where the ultimate authority lay. However, the circumstances in each of these instances were unusual in that a poor commander had allowed a good unit to decline and, as Napier noted in the case of the 1/71st, “Had
I been the cleverest commanding officer in the army it would have been impossible for me in so short a period, and under the circumstances of the time, to have made the progress I did had it not been for the former system established by Pack and Cadogan, which I found was still in the regiment, but, from the conduct of [Peacocke], had been totally neglected and almost forgotten; and I soon saw that I had only to be firm, and strict in enforcing my orders but with calmness and temper, and that I should in a short time bring all back to its former splendour.”118 Such methods, therefore, could only ever be effective if applied fairly and when used to restore, rather than enforce, discipline.
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