Although the sharp shock of a heavy hand might well be needed when a battalion had grown slack and undisciplined, in other instances the simple provision of new and effective leadership was sufficient to restore a unit to effectiveness. In this manner the 2/89th, after an unfortunate career in Europe, subsequently went on to distinguish itself in North America. Many of the initial problems with this unit stemmed from outside circumstances, for it bore the brunt of the disastrous Fuengirola expedition, where it lost forty dead and over two hundred prisoners.119 However, there are also suggestions that things were by no means in a good order before the battalion went on that service, in part because of the extreme youth of many of its rank and file.120 Thereafter, back in Gibraltar, things were made worse by the dispatch of a number of officers to the first battalion in India, which not only removed the remaining company-level officers but also cost the services of Lt. Colonel William Sewell, who had already begun to restore some order to it; his replacement was Major Miller Clifford, newly “promoted from the 28th Regiment.”121 Whilst Major General Sir Montague Burgoyne felt that the battalion was unfit for any duty at this time, his superior, Lt. General Colin Campbell, begged “leave to differ in opinion as to the unfittedness of the battalion for Service. For their numbers they are extremely good, and at least three hundred [of 478 total] are fit for any Service whatever. The men generally are stout and young, and the Boys will improve with care and attention.”122
Clifford, a veteran notwithstanding his lack of seniority, at least had some good material to work with, but was still handicapped by lack of officers.123 When Burgoyne next inspected the 2/89th, he again felt obliged to report that it was in a bad way, albeit this time rather more circumspectly in light of Campbell’s correction of his previous findings. Nevertheless, he still affirmed that Clifford himself was “a steady zealous officer [who] has paid great attention to his Battn.”124 In the spring of 1812, the battalion finally received a new permanent commanding officer in the shape of Lt. Colonel Joseph Morrison, and was transferred away from Gibraltar, eventually, after a spell in Britain, being redeployed to Canada. Morrison, a commander both liked and respected by all ranks, completed the work begun by Clifford by restoring the battalion to a high standard of both training and morale, as evidenced in particular by its impressive performance at the Battle of Crysler’s Farm, where Morrison, commanding the British forces, and Clifford, commanding the 2/89th in his absence, both distinguished themselves.125 By 1814, when the battalion was distinguished again at Lundy’s Lane, its reputation was such that it was described by its surgeon as composed of “wild tremendous Irishmen”126—a far cry from the leaderless collection of youths that had dismayed Burgoyne three years previously. Whilst an influx of recruits had obviously helped restore the battalion, it is also evident that good leadership had played a part, not only from Sewell, Clifford, and Morrison, but also from the company officers once sufficient of these were provided. By 1814, the latter had an average of twelve years’ service for the captains and six for the lieutenants, and were clearly well set up to use that experience to good effect.127
As concepts of regimental tradition and identity grew and changed throughout this period, the exploits and characters of unit commanders became intertwined with that sense of identity, and further fostered its growth. Yet although, for the infantry, these commanders were operating at the battalion level, there does not seem to have been any great development of discrete battalion identities; rather, all exploits were absorbed into a regimental whole. Expressions of sorrow at transferring from one battalion to another are encountered in the body of memoir literature, but these generally represent officers, such as Grattan or Sherer, being unhappy at leaving an active unit with a chance for distinction for a battalion serving at home or in the colonies. Conversely, from the rank-and-file perspective, John Cooper was certainly not pleased that his status as a lance corporal was insufficient to prevent his transfer to the 1/7th in 1811, rather than going home with his friends in the rump of the second battalion, but this would seem to have been due to “the mortification . . . of seeing my old comrades march merrily from the camp for old England.”128 Clearly, and self-evidently, the desirability of active service had much to do with what one stood to gain or lose through participation in it.
In short, the regimental system during the period from 1808 to 1814 was responsible for a strong, and growing, sense of identity that, when fostered and developed through good leadership, created an extremely solid and durable esprit de corps. That this contributed a great deal toward the effective performance of the British Army cannot be denied, but due to the organizational deficiencies of the system it became necessary to rely on the moral over the physical to a great—at times a too great—degree. The most telling of these deficiencies was that the regiment remained the focus for manpower organization for both officers and rank and file, and, if in the former case the opportunity existed to transfer or purchase into a different unit, this did not prevent the inexorable rise, through seniority, of some individuals who were not fit for command. For the system to work, roles that required leadership needed to be filled by men capable of leading, and yet the same system was unable to ensure that this was the case. Organizationally, a proliferation of small regiments, each responsible for its own recruiting, rendered the effective distribution of manpower to meet global commitments increasingly problematic, and also limited the effectiveness of some of these units on active service. Of course, much of the problem was due to the established system addressing Britain’s usual policy of small expeditions of short duration and limited objectives, rather than the prolonged and global conflict in which the nation and its army found themselves by 1808. Accordingly, whilst the regimental system had a largely positive impact in creating the British Army’s sense of identity, it was also necessary, as we shall see in chapters three and four, to institute increasingly creative policies of unit rotation and manpower management in order to maintain the force as a functioning whole.
CHAPTER 3
The Regimental System in Practice
By 1808, the 20th Regiment of Foot was one of the most experienced units of the British Army, yet, when Major General Coote Manningham inspected the regiment’s single battalion that May, he found deep cause for concern. There was certainly no problem with regard to leadership. Lt. Colonel Robert Ross, the future victor of Bladensburg, had been commanding since 1803 with good effect, and Manningham spoke highly of the seasoned officers and NCOs. However, many of the men in the ranks of the 20th had joined in 1799 as part of the great augmentation through which the regular army had been rebuilt by volunteers from the Militia after years of attrition on colonial expeditions. Back then, there had been men enough to form two strong battalions, but after Holland, Egypt, and Maida, only a few hundred were still fit for service, and the second battalion was long gone. In his 1808 report, Manningham therefore went on to suggest that, “[I]f H.R.H. the Commander in Chief would allow them to get 300, or 400, men from one of the militia Regiments, that have still men to give, they would undoubtedly become one of the finest Corps in the British service—but from not possessing the advantage of a second Battalion, they have no means beyond the common mode of recruiting, in which they have hitherto been very unsuccessful, of getting men.”1 Sadly for the 20th, there was no opportunity for this advice to be acted upon before the unit was again sent on active service, and it was not until after returning from Corunna that the battalion received any augmentation in its strength. Thereafter, the rigors of Walcheren served to render the battalion unfit until 1812 when it rejoined the peninsular army a little under 700 strong. With no further replacements available, rank-and-file strength had dropped to 561 at Toulouse, and, of these, only 288 were still listed as effective. Another campaign would surely have finished the 20th as a battalion fit for service, and the unit was in no state to accompany its old commanding officer to North America, nor to serve in the Waterloo campaign.2
The case of the 20th makes it
abundantly clear that although there were many positive attributes to the regimental system, in terms of its fostering identity and esprit de corps, there were also obvious drawbacks so far as manpower management was concerned. With no opportunity to redistribute resources at an army level, some units languished understrength whilst others had more men than they required. The formalization of the regimental system, in particular with regard to the duties expected of first and second battalions, can now be seen as placing unnecessary limitations on the effective employment of manpower. This view has frequently been espoused by historians, to the extent that the impression that one gets from Oman and those who follow him is that organizational practices were inflexibly set in stone.3 In reality, however, no hard and fast ruling was ever laid down, and the system was always manipulated to a certain degree in order to maximize its efficiency.
In fact, it is readily apparent that both Horse Guards and local theater commanders knew exactly how to work with the system, making use of its strengths and finding ways around its weaknesses even if this meant that the organizational ideal based on a two-battalion infantry regiment could not be followed. New organizational practices were developed and became close to doctrinal norms, but these methods evolved over time and represented a desire to work with the regimental system rather than being inherent in the system as such. Such methods, however, could only achieve so much, and the alternative solution was to implement measures that retained the spirit of the concept behind the formal regimental system but dispensed with those elements that could not be practically applied. In particular, this led to rotation of battalions between active, semi-active, and inactive commands in order to prolong the amount of time that they were able to remain effective. As opposed to working with the system, innovations of this sort can be seen as a means of making the system work.
Working with the System
In the earliest years of the Napoleonic Wars, the theoretical system of battalion deployments largely worked, with overseas duty being shouldered either by the first battalions of multi-battalion regiments, or else by the single battalion of those regiments that did not yet possess a second. Very few second battalions were therefore required to serve overseas; there were only eight instances between 1803 and 1807, and only four such units actually saw action.4 In three of these early deployments, those of the 2/18th, 2/56th, and 2/62nd, the second battalion was sent to the station where the first battalion was already serving. This, then, was the two-battalion regimental system working largely as envisaged. However, from 1808 it became necessary to send second battalions overseas in growing numbers. Initially, this measure was resorted to in order to fill out the last batch of reinforcements for the peninsula, but whilst these deployments may well have been intended as a one-off measure to achieve a rapid resolution of affairs in that theater, it subsequently became necessary for second battalions to continue to serve in numbers as a result of so many first battalions being rendered temporarily hors de combat as a result of their experiences at Corunna and Walcheren.
In all, of the sixty-six regiments of the line that achieved the organizational ideal of two battalions, forty-six of them—just over two-thirds—deployed both battalions overseas during this period. In addition, the 4/1st, 3/14th, 3/27th, 3/56th, and 3/95th all also went on active service as the junior battalion of their respective regiments. Although many junior battalions went to garrison postings to render larger or more effective units available for campaign service, a significant number were sent to active theaters of war. Generally, deployments by second and third battalions were of short duration due to the difficulties inherent in a single regimental depot having to maintain two or more battalions overseas. There were occasions when junior battalions chalked up long periods of active service, as with the 3/27th and 2/83rd in the peninsula, but it was more typical for such a unit to last for a campaign or two and then be either shifted into a garrison role or else sent home. Alternatively, if more than one battalion of a regiment were serving in the same theater, the junior unit could draft its effective manpower into the senior, and go home to be built back up to strength. In an extreme example, the 2/52nd was deployed on no less than four separate occasions—the peninsula in 1808, Walcheren in 1809, the peninsula again in 1811, and Holland in 1813—totaling thirty-three months of active service in all. The battalion returned home intact in the first two instances, and on subsequent occasions as a cadre having given over its effectives to the 1/52nd.5
Irrespective of whether they represented the first, second, or only battalion of their regiment, all battalions would in any case leave a cadre behind to accommodate any officers and men unfit or unable to accompany the unit, and if all the active battalions of a regiment were overseas, then provision would also be made for the formation of a recruiting company or companies to take over the depot role. Thus, the 1/43rd embarked for the peninsula in 1808 leaving behind at Colchester two recruiting companies each composed of two sergeants, one drummer, and ten rank and file, and an additional depot detachment comprising six sergeants, one drummer, twenty effective rank and file, and ninety-four assorted sick. The depot detachment was in this instance commanded by a captain, assisted by two ensigns.6 On this occasion, the sick could not be drafted into the second battalion, as would ordinarily have been the case, since the regiment was strong enough to deploy both of its battalions and, unusually, the second battalion had in fact gone overseas before the first.
More typically, when a second battalion was called upon to serve, the first would already be overseas, and on these occasions the junior unit would be forced to leave in Britain not only its own ineffectives but any that might previously have been drafted into it from the first battalion as well. Inasmuch as most junior battalions were on lower establishment strengths in the first instance—although this might be raised once the unit was slated for active service—the result was that they would generally be committed to service as relatively weak units. For example, of the seven second battalions sent out to the peninsula in 1809 only the 2/34th, with 996 rank and file, was comparable in strength to a typical first battalion; the remaining six units had an average strength of 622, with the strongest having only 664 men and the weakest 535.7 For a typical single-battalion regiment, having only one set of ineffectives to leave behind, the situation was somewhat more tolerable, but, as we have already seen with the 20th, many of these small regiments experienced considerable difficulties in recruiting, and few were able to keep up to strength over prolonged foreign service.
Whilst the bulk of regiments either had to deploy their second battalion, or were never able to raise one, there were some twenty regiments that did function exactly as per the theoretical system, with a second battalion that never left the home station and served only as a depot-cum-feeder unit for the active first battalion. The bulk of these regiments are found amongst those whose first battalions formed the original disposable force of 1808 and went out to the peninsula with Wellesley or Moore. For the most part, the first battalions then either remained in the peninsula through to Toulouse, or, as was the case for most, went through Corunna and Walcheren before rejoining Wellington between 1810 and 1813. Hard service by the senior battalions meant that in the bulk of these cases all available manpower was directed there, maintaining the first battalions at a good strength but firmly confining the second battalion to the home station. Even amongst those regiments that missed Corunna and Walcheren, other misadventures created manpower problems in the first battalions, as with the heavy exposure to sickness suffered by the 1/40th early in its peninsular career, or the massive Albuera casualties of the 1/3rd and 1/57th. Therefore, far from representing the triumph of the system as designed, these twenty regiments are in fact somewhat atypical, and the fact that their second battalions were never actively deployed is indicative more of the poor relative effectiveness of their first battalions than of a desire to deploy units in accordance with any particular theoretical scheme.
Indeed, although working in this wa
y ensured that the first battalions involved could remain in the field until 1814, and still be in a fit state for further service in North America and/or at Waterloo, two obvious drawbacks ensued. Firstly, this situation was only achieved by permanently tying the second battalions to a home depot role, thus removing them from the pool of battalions potentially available for overseas service. Secondly, the poor state of a significant proportion of the manpower serving in the first battalions meant that these units had a very high proportion of noneffective manpower, so that although they remained numerically strong in absolute terms their potential battlefield strength was far lower. The experiences of the 40th Foot exemplify this point. In August 1808, the 1/40th, having returned somewhat ignominiously from the failed South American expedition, was part of the force assembled at Cork under Wellesley with a respectable strength of 926 men.8 After Roliça and Vimeiro, October 1808 found the 1/40th still with 908 rank and file on strength, but of these no less than 241 were sick. This sickness rate amounted to 26.5 percent of the battalion’s strength, as opposed to an average of only 10.4 percent in the force as a whole; no battalion had a greater actual number of sick, and only the battle-scarred 29th and raw 2/43rd were worse off in relative terms.9 Lawrence was only exaggerating slightly when he asserted that the whole battalion “fell ill and was obliged to be returned unfit for service, which state of things lasted about two months.”10
There was certainly no hope of the 1/40th being made fit in time to go into Spain with Moore, but it was ultimately detached, between February and May 1809, to help garrison Seville.11 This respite allowed the battalion to recover its effective strength by the time it rejoined the main army for the Talavera campaign, but the 1/40th was nevertheless distinguished throughout its peninsular service for being an unusually sickly unit, and this largely accounts for the constant need for manpower from the 2/40th, which was received in the form of two major transfers in March 1810 and July 1811 as well as numerous smaller drafts. It may also be noted, in the context of the 2/40th’s role as a source for manpower preventing it from going overseas, that the junior battalion had one of the worst desertion records to be seen amongst units stationed in the British Isles.12 This naturally limited the availability of manpower to be drafted into the first battalion, and shows how problems with internal economy within one battalion could have an impact on the regiment as a whole even when encountered in those elements not on active service.
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