Sickness, Suffering, and the Sword

by Andrew Bamford

  Also sent to Germany was a detachment of the KGL, including the 3rd KGL Hussars and two horse artillery troops, to which was attached part of the 2nd RHA Rocket Troop. Like the 2/73rd, these troops served in the multi-national corps commanded by Lt. General Ludwig, Graf von Wallmoden-Gimborn, although the rocket-artillery was later detached to the Army of the North and fought with it at Leipzig.75 The remaining KGL units, and the 2nd Rocket Troop, eventually joined Graham’s forces in the Netherlands just as hostilities came to a close.76 Along with these formed units, substantial drafts were also sent to Germany from the KGL depot at Bexhill, eventually amounting to 550 rank and file, plus officers and NCOs. However, most of the latter, and some of the former, were promptly reassigned to help train and lead the new levies of the reraised Hanoverian army. The remaining 400 or so men formed a provisional half-battalion of four companies. Commanded by Captain Phillip Holtzermann, this largely functioned as a headquarters guard but was in the thick of the action at Sehestedt on December 10 where Holtzermann was taken prisoner by the Danes; shortly thereafter, the unit was broken up.77 Because these detachments had primarily a training role, it would be unreasonable to consider Holtzermann’s half-battalion as a provisional unit in the same manner as those created by Wellington. Nevertheless, even the creation of this relatively small formation was not without its wider impact, since the redirection of drafts from Bexhill—the bulk of which came from the 1st, 2nd, and 5th Line and 1st and 2nd Light Battalions—diverted men who would otherwise have joined their parent units with Wellington. Each measure that made men available for one theater took men away from another, as would become increasingly apparent in the months to come.

  For the moment, however, the established system was coping with the new demands. Nevertheless, the supply of battalions fit even for second-line duties was running out, and the lack of unit cadres coming back from the peninsula to be rebuilt began to be felt. Under these circumstances, York’s first response was, on the face of it, entirely logical. If Wellington was retaining existing battalions in the peninsula, York would simply raise new ones. Although new infantry battalions had been created in large numbers during the early years of the Napoleonic Wars, the practice had tailed off, and between 1808 to 1812 only five new battalions were added to existing British regiments.78 Now, in the twelve months leading up to the first abdication of Napoleon, York raised as many again. Thus, during the second half of 1813, York authorized a second battalion for the 37th Foot, and third battalions for the 14th and 56th. This was followed in early 1814 by the raising of second battalions for the 22nd and 86th. In all of these cases, the existing battalions of these regiments were overseas—mostly in the East Indies although the 2/14th and 1/37th were at Gibraltar—and manpower for the new battalion was provided by redirecting drafts that would otherwise have gone overseas and taking recruits from the regimental depots. There was certainly no intention of creating new second battalions wholesale, and the expedient was preferred of giving a third battalion to a regiment already having two, but with good prospects for recruiting, to that of giving a single-battalion regiment a second battalion unless the latter had the manpower to justify it.

  York’s 1814 proposals indicate how he identified regiments suitable for augmentation, and of how regimental establishments could be juggled to help create new battalions. Explaining his choices to Bathurst, York first noted that both the 22nd and 86th Regiments had enjoyed particular success both in ordinary recruiting and in attracting volunteers from the Militia, and then went on to detail the particular circumstances of the two units. The 22nd had 752 men on “Isle de France” and 105 on passage to join, giving 857 total, but there were an additional 373 rank and file at the regimental depot and a further 100 recruits on their way there. York therefore proposed that the establishment of what would become the 1/22nd be reduced to 1,000, removing any need to send further reinforcements to that battalion, and “that the numbers within this country, which appear by the statement in the margin to consist of 473 Rank and File, shall be formed into six companies in the first instance with two field officers, and to be augmented in the usual progression until they shall arrive at the Establishment of 1,000 Rank and File.” In similar fashion, York noted that the 86th had 604 rank and file in India, 117 on passage and 194 “on march to embark” totaling 915, whilst the depot had 275 men with a further 51 more on the way to join. York on this occasion proposed four companies and one field officer for the new 2/86th, but again expected an increment to 1,000 in due course.79

  What York was seeking to do was not to abandon the regimental system but to force it to work in his favor, by creating additional battalions at home in order to make effective use of existing manpower from the depots. This was partially reminiscent of Dundas’s creation of the Corps of Embodied Detachments, in that York, by plundering regimental depots, was taking manpower that would otherwise have largely been destined for the colonies. Like Dundas in 1809, York was leaving the Indies to look after themselves for a year with the manpower already deployed there. Unlike Dundas, he was taking a far smaller risk in doing so since, the usual rumblings in India excepted, colonial hostilities were effectively over, and, again unlike Dundas, he was using the manpower made available within the existing system rather than in a provisional unit. York’s scheme mirrored the raising of the two battalions embodied in 1808, the 2/73rd and 2/84th, both of which were created to meet the demands of the first manpower shortfall by converting the recruiting company of a regiment whose existing battalion was in India. But whereas the 1808 battalions had been used to bolster the home station, thus releasing more seasoned units to go overseas, those of the 1813–14 creation would be deployed almost immediately—ironically, near simultaneously with the first deployments of the 1808 battalions. Because of the demand for manpower in the field, time was too pressing for the new battalions to reach anything like full strength or to come together as cohesive units. Indeed, by the time York penned his proposals for the 1814 battalions, two of those from the 1813 augmentation were already on active service, and in light of this one cannot help but identify an element of naïveté in York’s expectation that the 2/22nd and 2/86th would have time to recruit up to 1,000 men apiece. That these battalions went overseas so soon was due to the need to find troops for Graham in the Netherlands; this demand, along with those of the existing theaters of war, saw the first steps toward the temporary abandonment of many of the basic tenets of the regimental system.

  1814: Breaking with the System

  The decision to send a force to the Netherlands was made in November 1813, with the first wave of troops sailing during December. The struggles to assemble and maintain this force make it abundantly clear how limited Britain’s remaining manpower reserves were at this stage in the war, highlighting in turn the damage done by the failure to agree on a manpower policy during 1813. Because York had failed to obtain the return of unit cadres from the peninsula, and was unable to create replacement units quickly enough from troops on the home station, the last five months of hostilities before Napoleon’s abdication in April 1814 would see the employment of increasingly dubious and desperate measures to keep up with the manpower demands of what was now a three-front war.

  In the case of the Netherlands campaign, however, matters were made worse by the political significance of this theater, which led to Bathurst taking a close interest in the composition of the force being sent there. On December 4, Bathurst sent a series of instructions to Graham, outlining the scope of his command and the objectives he was expected to pursue.80 Included was a memorandum outlining the composition of his forces, decided upon two weeks previously, and by the time Graham received his orders steps were already under way to get the first two of Graham’s four infantry brigades on their way to Holland. One of these brigades would be formed of the best four of Gibbs’s six battalions from the Baltic; another, which would form the vanguard of the expedition under the command of Major General George Cooke, was drawn from the second battalions of
the Foot Guards—the same standing Third Guards Brigade that had provided men to serve under Graham at Cadiz three and a half years previously. Apparently drawing on the 1810 organization, Bathurst envisaged the Guards providing two battalions totaling 1,600 men. In this conception, 2/1st Foot Guards would go out as a strong battalion of 800 rank and file, but 2/Coldstream and 2/3rd Foot Guards would contribute only half that number, combined to form a single provisional battalion.81 However, the numbers did not work out as Bathurst had hoped; 2/1st Foot Guards had insufficient men, but the other two battalions met and surpassed their smaller quotas. Accordingly, all three regiments were able on this occasion to put small but workable battalions, of six or seven companies each, into the field. All three subsequently had additional companies sent out to bring them up to establishment before Waterloo.82

  Meanwhile, with Gibbs and his men on the way back from the Baltic and the Foot Guards rushing to complete their preparations, Bathurst was scouring the country in search of other units available for deployment, ultimately producing nine additional battalions to send to Holland, which, in his proposed organization would, between them, form two further brigades. Graham would wisely break up this organization as soon as he had the chance, mixing these battalions in with Gibbs’s more seasoned troops from the Baltic, but could do nothing about the remarkably poor quality of many of the battalions sent. Indeed, the state of some of these battalions was so poor as to place a question mark over the level of awareness that the secretary of state for war and the colonies actually possessed with regard to the practicalities of mounting a campaign.

  For a start, of the nine battalions one was a single-battalion regiment, five were second battalions, two were third battalions, and the last was a veteran battalion. Two of these battalions had been raised as part of York’s creation of new units discussed above. Bathurst’s November memorandum envisaged these battalions providing 3,950 men, but, although Bathurst had evidently made use of the appropriate monthly returns in compiling his memorandum, he was either unaware of, or chose to ignore, the distinctions between total and effective manpower. Admittedly, in all but one case—that of the 2/35th, where it fell short by forty-three men—Bathurst’s figure was within the total strength of the unit in question, but by no means all of these men were effective due to sickness or absence. Furthermore, comparison with the figures for men considered by their units to be “fit for immediate service”—that is, also discounting boys and recruits at drill—produces an even wider discrepancy. The 2/37th was now left 176 men short of Bathurst’s 500-man target, whilst the 2/52nd, down to provide 300, reported nobody fit for service as the bulk of its 219 effectives were boys.83

  Irrespective of the palpable unfitness of the majority of these battalions, all nine were sent out in December 1813, mostly grossly understrength. Neither of York’s two new battalions could yet muster a full complement of companies, with the 2/37th having six and the 3/56th, only embodied as a unit a month before sailing, five.84 A manpower shortage in the five companies of the 3/95th Rifles then in Britain, serving as depot for the active companies in Spain, also meant that to meet Bathurst’s quota of 250 riflemen it was necessary to take men from the depot of the regiment as a whole to form a provisional battalion with companies from all three battalions of the 95th—one each from the first and second and two from the third, under Brevet Lt. Colonel Alexander Cameron.85

  With so many units falling short of Bathurst’s targets, the nature of these discrepancies are made most readily apparent when presented in table 6. Whereas the regular battalions all provided as part of their monthly returns a figure detailing the number of men fit for immediate service, no such distinction exists in the return for the 1st Royal Veteran Battalion; no doubt this was because under normal circumstances the unit would never have been earmarked for service in an active capacity. Nevertheless, since this unit would, by virtue of its role, contain neither boys nor new recruits, it has been given the benefit of the doubt and the assumption has been made that the full effective strength would be available. When inspected, the 1st Royal Veterans were found to contain many “fine men [who] would be found fit for active service, & certainly many more, tho’ not fit for very active service, would be able to under go fatigues in our foreign garrisons.”86 From the evidence available, this would suggest that they were probably of more use than some of the regular battalions.

  Table 6. Battalions Sent from Britain to the Netherlands, December 1813

  Source: October strengths from Battalion Returns, TNA, WO17/262–263, 267–268; December strengths from Monthly Return, TNA, WO17/1773. October data for the 3/56th refer to the regimental depot out of which that unit was formed; those for the Rifle Battalion relate to the home companies of all three battalions of the 95th. “Fit Strength” refers to men listed as fit for immediate service.

  The number of fit men available fell short of Bathurst’s expectations by nearly one-third, and the total deployed—which, by default, must therefore have included men deemed unfit by their units—still fell short by nearly a quarter. What was more, over and above the units’ being understrength, the state of these battalions was frequently poor, with many lacking much of a cadre of old soldiers, and many having particularly young NCOs. In the case of the 52nd and 95th, the units in question were configured for the depot role, with the 2/52nd sending off all fit men to the first battalion as soon as they were ready for service.87 Despite this, the light infantry units performed well on service, and the 2/35th and 2/69th also stood out as being better than the remaining line battalions with Lt. General Doyle finding the 2/35th composed of “a good body of men very fit for service, with a healthy and cleanly appearance,” whilst those of the 2/69th were seen to be “in general fit for service, but very young” when inspected by Major General Hawker.88 Even the better units, however, were numerically weak and were further reduced because Graham detached the unfit men to garrison duty for the sake of their health. Since his force lacked such necessities as camp kettles, blankets, and shoes, sending unseasoned and unfit men into the field in the middle of winter would have been, in Graham’s opinion, tantamount to a death sentence.89

  It soon became apparent that Bathurst’s original scheme had failed to provide the manpower needed to meet Britain’s aspirations for the Netherlands, leading to the dispatch of the 2/30th and 2/81st from Jersey and of the 2/21st and 2/78th from Leith.90 These battalions were, if somewhat weak, in good order and possessed of good officers and NCOs, and the 2/30th had the benefit of a veteran commanding officer in the shape of Lt. Colonel Alexander Hamilton.91 The last two battalions from the Baltic were also marched overland to join Graham, although neither was much of an addition in terms of quality. In the meantime, original battalions were left dispersed and shrunken. By March 1814, the 2/37th was down to 144 rank and file, of whom only 61 were actually effective, and several others were in nearly as bad a condition.92 Accordingly, Graham resorted to Wellington’s peninsular expedient and formed his two weakest units, the 2/21st and 2/37th, into a provisional battalion, in part because the 2/21st had lost its field officers at Bergen op Zoom.93 What was more, the quality of replacement manpower was even worse with many drafts composed of boys completely unfit for active service; in the 33rd, a virtue was made of necessity and the bulk of the unfit youths reassigned as officers’ servants.94

  Sending Graham more battalions helped matters in the short term, but it further reduced the pool of units available in Britain and did nothing to inject extra manpower into the system. Recruiting had not noticeably tailed off, but nor had the supply of recruits increased in proportion to the growing need for active manpower. Accordingly, thought had to be given to greater employment of foreigners—not just in specifically foreign units but also to fill the ranks of the British line. Generally, foreign manpower was actively employed to a far greater degree in the last year of the war, but this was achieved largely by switching existing units of foreigners in British pay to active duty from garrisons. This shift in p
olicy is reflected in the deployment of the Regiments de Meuron and de Watteville to North America, and in the large number of foreign units assigned to the forces on the East Coast of Spain. There was also an increment to those nominally British regiments that were, in fact, largely foreign: most obviously the 60th, which gained two extra battalions during the last twelve months of the war—a seventh raised on Guernsey largely from ex–prisoners of war, and an eighth at Cadiz through the re-designation of a battalion of foreign deserters originally formed in 1811. In October 1813, York proposed that since this body was 700 strong it should be taken into the line, and this was done the following January, although with only 590 rank and file, which suggests that York had again been rather optimistic.95 The new 8/60th, being the older unit notwithstanding its junior status in the line, had a better class of deserter in its ranks; Graham, when forming the unit, had sought to ensure that no French were enlisted, preferring Poles, Germans, and Italians.96 Conversely, the 7/60th contained a large number of Frenchmen and Italians who were the cause of considerable trouble. Around half of the surnames of those appearing in the abstract of Regimental Courts Martial are French, and the nature of the trials suggest that little discrimination was made respecting the character of the men enlisted. One such, Philippe Le Brun, was broken from sergeant after an outbreak of violence and subsequently, as a private, received 250 lashes for “Biting Pr. Darsen [and] threatening the lives of his officers and comrades.”97 So bad was Le Brun’s conduct that he was the only man to be singled out by name when Horse Guards instructed that the battalion’s worst characters be discharged to the Foreign Depot, prior to the unit embarking for North America.98 There were also difficulties with training, on account of the fact that “the greater part [of the men] have been drilled in the French manner & it is difficult to break them of habits that they have contracted in that service.”99 No doubt as a result of the turbulent mixture of men assigned to these battalions, care would seem to have been taken to place them under steady commanding officers, and the conduct of both Lt. Colonel Henry John of the 7/60th and Major John Fitzgerald of the 8/60th was favorably reported on, with John’s absence on sick leave during late 1814 considered a particular blow for his battalion.100