Although it was also necessary to ensure that these movements were in accord with the desires of Horse Guards and the government, Wellington left it to the man on the spot to decide which units were fit for active service.86 Thus, after the siege was finally lifted when the French withdrew from Andalusia in the aftermath of Salamanca, Wellington ordered Cooke to send a body of reinforcements to join the main army, to be marched overland as a column under Colonel John Skerrett. Whilst sending Cooke a detailed listing of those troops that he definitely wanted sending, Wellington nevertheless left his subordinate a certain freedom of judgment as to how best to dispose of his remaining forces: “In case the 2nd battn. 59th regt. should have arrived at Cadiz before you shall receive this order you will send either that battn. or the 2nd battn. 47th regt. with Colonel Skerrett’s Detachment according to your judgement which of the two is best fit for service in the field. . . . Whenever the 2nd battn. 59th regt. shall arrive after you have carried these orders into execution you will send to Lisbon whichever of that battalion or the 2nd battn. 47th regt. is most fit for service, retaining at Cadiz one British battalion.”87 This instruction not only provides yet further evidence of Wellington’s preparedness to place considerable trust on selected subordinates, at least regarding administrative decisions, but also emphasizes that battalions could not be judged simply in terms of strength alone and that distinctions in the quality of manpower and leadership had to be taken into account.
Self-evidently, the garrisons at Gibraltar and Cadiz did not exist purely as locations where units could recover themselves before joining the peninsular field army. Nevertheless, the value of such detached service was as pronounced, if not more so, than a similar detachment to Lisbon. Take the case of one of the longest-serving constituent members of the Cadiz force, the 2/87th. Although ultimately one of the most effective units in that command and distinguished at Barrosa and Tarifa, it was initially in a very poor state when first assigned there after hard service during the Oporto and Talavera campaigns.88 Indeed, Wellington went so far as to say that the battalion should not be returned to the field army if Cadiz had to be evacuated, and should instead be sent to Gibraltar to continue its recuperation.89 Happily, however, service at Cadiz soon enabled the unit to recover its levels of efficiency, as shown in figure 6. Although frequent the detachments during late 1811 and mid-1812 render the tracking of effective strength somewhat difficult, the general upward trend is still discernable. Whilst the numbers of sick in the ranks had already begun to drop after the battalion was detached from the field army in autumn 1809, the ratio continued to improve during the Cadiz posting, averaging just over 10 percent during the period as a whole. Although sickness levels rose again when the 2/87th returned to active service, this was in part because the battalion found itself faced with some hard marching in the closing months of 1812, and if the numbers of sick increased then they at least did so from a base rate that was a good two hundred men higher than when the battalion was detached two and half years previously.
Just as the case of the 2/87th demonstrates the utility of such detached garrison service in allowing a run-down unit to recover itself, so too does the wider body of statistical evidence confirm the value of service at Cadiz as part of an acclimatization process. The 2/47th and 2/59th, which both joined the field army from Cadiz in time for the 1813 campaign, subsequently went on to serve in good order for the remainder of the war; with 302 and 395 effectives respectively when hostilities ended in April 1814, both were still viable units even after a year’s hard service.90 However, a more direct comparison can be made with respect to the 1st Foot Guards, the third battalion of which joined Wellington’s field army from Cadiz in October 1812, where it was reunited with the regiment’s first battalion to reconstitute the First Guards Brigade. In early 1813, the brigade fell victim to a serious fever epidemic that removed it from active service for some eight months and that cost the lives of nearly eight hundred men. The whole outbreak created something of a mystery, with Captain the Hon. James Stanhope, deputy assistant quarter master general on the staff of the First Division, puzzling over the fact that “1,100 had come from England fine healthy young men from the militia and 1,000 from Cadiz where they had been gradually accustomed to the climate & who were steady soldiers; therefore it was impossible to account for it by any general rule, as the persons who suffered were so different.”91
Figure 6. Campaign Manpower in the 2/87th. Data from Monthly Returns, TNA, WO17/2464, 2465, 1486, 1487, 2470–2476.
Insofar as the causes of the epidemic in the 1st Foot Guards are concerned, the mystery is as great today, but Stanhope had in fact hit upon, and yet discounted, an important point of distinction between the two battalions. He clearly expected the third battalion, having become acclimatized through service at Cadiz, to be better able to resist the epidemic, and was left at a loss when this seemed not to be the case. In fact, however, there was a considerable imbalance in the ratio of sicknesses and deaths between the two units, although with so many deaths in the brigade this was clearly not so obvious to Stanhope at the time. During the six-month period beginning in December 1812, when the illness was at its worst, 1/1st Foot Guards lost 534 men dead, as opposed to “only” 230 in 3/1st Foot Guards. Even allowing for the fact that the first battalion was 225 men stronger than the third at the outset, the imbalance is still clear, and is further highlighted by the ratios of sick within the two units. Taken as a monthly average across the six-month period, these ratios amounted to 184 men, or 26 percent of the total strength, sick in the third battalion, but no less than 410 men, or 40 percent, in the first.92 The time spent at Cadiz by the third battalion, being the only aspect of their service in which the two units differed, clearly assisted in acclimatizing the battalion to peninsular service and ensuring that its members were better prepared for the rigors of such an epidemic than their comrades freshly arrived from Britain.
Following the eviction of French forces from southern Spain, the composition of the now much-reduced Cadiz garrison became far more static. The forces at Gibraltar were also left alone to a far greater extent than in the early years of the war, and the quality of troops in both stations seems to have tailed off as efficient manpower was reallocated to meet the growing demand for troops in the field.93 Indeed, at Gibraltar it became necessary for the commander in chief there, Lt. General Sir Colin Campbell, to submit repeated reports to Horse Guards highlighting the increasingly poor state of the 4th and 7th Royal Veteran Battalions; this correspondence went on for several months before the units were eventually returned to Britain.94 However, lack of active employment did permit the collection of understrength second battalions forming the remainder of the Gibraltar garrison to revert to the role assigned to them by the dictates of the regimental system. Thus, in the second half of 1811, the 2/11th at Gibraltar obtained a total of 124 new recruits from home, and was accordingly able to draft off 150 seasoned men to the regiment’s first battalion with Wellington.95 Similarly, when the 2/9th was finally recalled to Britain in April 1813 due to its shrunken state, 233 out of 431 rank and file, along with five sergeants and a drummer, were drafted off to the active first battalion with Wellington, leaving only a cadre to go home.96 Although the battalions of the 9th and 11th were not themselves being rotated, the manpower within them was. The utilization of second battalions in this manner yet again demonstrates the amount of flexibility that could be worked into the system. The second battalions of both regiments were carrying out their theoretical role perfectly, but they were doing so in a location that made far more effective use of their manpower than if they had been retained at home.
It was quite possible, then, for the regimental system to be rendered far more flexible than a strict interpretation would imply. What was being done for the bulk of the period, both by the authorities at home and by commanders in the field, was to make use of its best features and find solutions to work around its shortcomings. After 1809, the assumption that second battalions would not
serve actively overseas had to be dispensed with, yet at the same time the role of these units in respect to their senior counterparts was not forgotten, and this is evidenced in the deliberate policy of keeping first and second battalions together, or at least in close proximity, wherever possible in order to facilitate manpower exchange. Growing strategic commitments made it clear that the war could not be fought without making full use of all available units, leading to increasingly sophisticated measures to ensure that each unit was employed in a position best suited to its state of fitness and readiness, and to enable units to be moved around as these changed over time.
In short, with an element of judicious tweaking, the regimental system with which Britain entered the Napoleonic Wars served to meet the British Army’s manpower needs for the greater part of the conflict. Even when strategic overstretch in 1809 and 1813–14 created pressures that meant that it did become necessary to deviate from the norms, care was still taken to ensure that as much of the established order was retained as was possible. How this was done forms the subject of the next chapter, but that it was done at all is, in itself, proof that the value of the system was recognized.
CHAPTER 4
The Limits of the System
On March 14, 1814, Field Marshal Frederick, Duke of York, commander in chief of the British Army, composed a brief memorandum for the attention of Lord Bathurst, secretary of state for war and the colonies.1 In less than two hundred words, York seemingly conceded defeat in the struggle that had gone on for the previous eighteen months between himself, Bathurst, and Wellington regarding the best solution to Britain’s growing military manpower problems. In its acceptance of elements of militiamen serving overseas alongside regular troops, and of forming detachment battalions from troops on the home station, York’s proposals indicated a marked break from the tenets of the regimental system, to which he had previously clung. But rather than being a concession of defeat, York’s proposals in fact represented an attempt to regain control of a situation that had become increasingly confused through lack of a single clear policy. Hamstrung by Wellington’s attempts to retain every fit man in the peninsula, the British Army had struggled to meet the demand for troops for North America and northern Europe. Political pressures led to ill-judged and ineffective responses, which if anything served only to worsen the looming manpower crisis.
The events of 1813–14 represent the closest that the regimental system came to collapse during the Napoleonic Wars. However, the system had also been placed under extreme pressure during 1809, when so much was staked on the Walcheren expedition, and into 1810 when the bulk of its survivors were unfit for further service. Because the personalities involved were different, with Dundas as commander in chief, and first Castlereagh and then Liverpool filling the post of secretary of state, there was little or no direct continuation of policy between the responses to the 1809–10 manpower shortfall and that of 1813–14. Nevertheless, the experience gained, and the precedents set, can readily be identified as recurring in the policies espoused by York, Bathurst, and Wellington four years later.
1808–1812: Crisis Postponed
Dundas in 1809 found himself in a rather different position with regard to military manpower than York would in 1813. On the one hand, the British Army was less heavily committed, but, on the other, political initiatives led rapidly shifting strategic priorities that required maximum numbers of troops in the short term without considering what would happen if the war was not brought to a rapid conclusion. Unlike York, Dundas seems not to have involved himself in matters of strategy, and was willing to acquiesce, albeit sometimes under protest, with the schemes put forward by the Cabinet and to do his best to find the troops to support them. It is also telling that the secretary of state for war and the colonies during the first months of Dundas’s tenure was Lord Castlereagh, whose involvement alongside York in the reforms of the previous few years meant that he was well placed to understand the nuances of the regimental system and how far it could be pushed. Until forced to leave his post in September 1809 through the intrigues of George Canning, Castlereagh was able to force his opinions through without undue debate, although he would be out of office before the nature of the resulting manpower shortfall became apparent.2 Later, as foreign secretary, Castlereagh would become embroiled in the fringes of some of the same problems during 1813 and 1814.
For the campaigning season of 1809, the British Army had two manpower priorities. One was to rebuild the disposable force that had come back from Corunna and turn it into the nucleus of the Grand Expedition to Walcheren; the other was to build up Cradock’s forces in Portugal, which would eventually take to the field under Wellesley in the spring. Although the latter was the secondary priority, it was the first area to see the adoption of ad hoc measures in the shape of the two battalions of detachments formed from the debris of the force that had taken part in the Corunna campaign.
Many of the regiments that had marched with Moore had left sizeable numbers of sick behind at Lisbon. These men had begun to return to fitness in the early months of 1809, by which time scores of stragglers who had been cut off or left behind on the retreat began to turn up at British outposts in the north of Portugal. Collectively, this amounted to a sizeable body of men, and since their units had returned to Britain there was no obvious organizational home for them in the peninsula. The forming of these men into temporary battalions was initially not so much to meet a manpower shortfall as a way to keep closer control over men who were isolated from their regiments and from all the support and sense of place thereby implied. Brigadier General Alan Cameron, commanding at Oporto in early 1809, found these detachments “scattered in all directions, without necessaries” and was particularly keen to prevent “some of them committing every possible excess that could render the name of a British soldier odious to the nation.”3 A formal battalion organization, however temporary, would expedite the issue of rations, clothing, and accoutrements, although with the limited resources that were available this was often done on only the most basic level. Only later, once the decision was taken to resume active operations, did it become obvious that these battalions could also serve as a means of eking out the meager force initially available in Portugal, and the battalions were accordingly retained until the end of the Talavera campaign.
Sufficient men were available from many regiments to form a provisional company within one of the two battalions of detachments, thus helping bring cohesion to the new units by ensuring that men remained largely with comrades and officers with whom they were at least loosely acquainted.4 The First Battalion of Detachments contained companies from the 43rd and 52nd Light Infantry and 95th Rifles, adding to the combat utility of the unit since these men formed a useful addition to Wellesley’s then extremely limited light infantry contingent. Practical considerations, and recognition of the importance of regimental “familial” ties in terms of motivation, clearly justified this form of organization, although the lack of a rifle officer to command the 95th’s company meant that Lt. Thomas Munro of the 1/42nd Highlanders became its temporary—and somewhat conspicuous—commander.5
The successful conversion of stragglers and convalescents into combat manpower was exemplified during the campaigns of Oporto and Talavera, where both battalions performed creditably. The light infantry and riflemen serving in the First Battalion of Detachments won particular praise, being mentioned no less than three times in the Oporto victory dispatch.6 Nevertheless, this positive view was not universally held, and Charles Stewart, now back in the peninsula as Wellesley’s adjutant general, expressed a contrary view at least so far as the performance of the battalions’ day-to-day duties were concerned: “I am sure that they are the cause of great disorder—no esprit de corps for their interior economy among them, though they will fight. They are careless of all else, and their officers do not look to their temporary field officers and superiors under whom they are placed, as in an established regiment.”7 This assessment may be taken as being indi
cative only of a period of adjustment rather than as an out-and-out denunciation of the battalions, particularly since it dates from a time when the whole army was in something of a state of disorganization during the rapid marches that took place before and after the Second Battle of Oporto.
The two battalions of detachments were never intended to be a permanent feature, and after the Talavera campaign they were broken up and the men shipped home; the exception was of men from regiments that again had a battalion in the peninsula, in which case the men were drafted to those units.8 Wellington’s comment on the departure of the two battalions expresses both his gratitude for their services, and a note of admonition for the army as a whole:
Sickness, Suffering, and the Sword Page 16