Sickness, Suffering, and the Sword

by Andrew Bamford

  Because there were clashes of priorities, and because the overall shortage of manpower meant that not every demand could be met, the events of 1809–10 and, in particular, of 1813–14, force questions to be asked as to where the real power lay within this web of relationships. During Dundas’s tenure as commander in chief, Horse Guards can be seen as essentially subordinate to political control, willing to readily acquiesce to measures that deviated from the established system in order to generate the manpower required for the government’s schemes. Yet these measures were generally still built on existing regimental identities and made the most of the fact that administration of manpower was most effectively carried out at regimental level, something that is reinforced by the effective performance of the battalions of detachments. With the return of York as commander in chief and the appointment of Bathurst as secretary of state, the situation should have equalized, with less scope for a single dominant individual, but the increase in Wellington’s powers as commander in the peninsula now complicated matters. Delays in communication meant that ostensibly temporary solutions could in practice continue as semipermanent for months if not years, with the commander in chief having little practical recourse unless he were to give a direct order overturning that of the man on the spot. Quite rightly, Wellington’s primary focus was always set on winning the Peninsular War, but, equally rightly, that of Horse Guards was set on winning the Napoleonic Wars as a whole—a point that is often discounted by those who defend Wellington’s stance.134 In this context, the provisional battalions, although undoubtedly effective in the field, can only be seen as counterproductive so far as the struggle as a whole is concerned. Had all eight units involved in the scheme been returned to Britain during 1813, they could have been rebuilt as were the 2/30th and 2/44th, perhaps in time to provide an effective nucleus for the Netherlands expedition. For all that he pleaded shortage of manpower, Wellington in 1813 and 1814 frequently made major detachments from his main army, which rather negates his plea that he needed every experienced man he could muster and suggests that the outcome of the Peninsular War would not have been radically altered by the replacement of the provisional battalions with less seasoned units.

  Toward the end of 1813, a clear strategic shift can be seen toward a favoring of political priorities over military concerns, and this in turn gave greater weight to Bathurst as secretary of state.135 Whatever his many good qualities as a man and as a politician, there were undoubtedly occasions when he displayed an unfortunate grasp of military realities, which in turn led to his presenting or supporting rash and impractical schemes.136 Bathurst’s responses to the manpower shortfall certainly tends to confirm this assessment, and the volte-face inherent in his involvement in the Netherlands expedition is remarkable. From meddling in military matters to the degree of outlining Graham’s brigade organization, Bathurst was soon reduced to effectively begging Horse Guards to find him some effective replacements post haste. Under these circumstances, with conflicting demands coming in from all sides, it is hard to fault York’s clinging to the established system as the best means of fending off these pressures. It is, however, equally to his credit that he was able to recognize by spring 1814 that this approach had been pushed as far as it could go, and to produce a feasible and well-reasoned alternative. Even in the desperate days of March 1814 the best elements of the regimental system were largely maintained in York’s Detachment Battalions of the Line, along with precedents drawn from five years’ experience of coping with that system’s flaws. Far from indicating inflexibility, the events of 1813 and 1814 in fact show a commander in chief and staff fully capable not only of absorbing the lessons of previous expedients but also of applying that experience to the new crisis at hand.

  CHAPTER 5

  Beyond the Regiment

  In May 1815, Lt. General Sir Lowry Cole received news that he had been offered a divisional command in the army then being assembled in Flanders to deal once and for all with the resurgent Napoleonic threat. Whilst his impending marriage meant that Cole would be delayed in taking up his new command, he was keen to ensure that he had first choice of the two vacant appointments, requesting of Wellington that he

  be appointed to the 6th division in preference to the 5th, as I cannot help feeling a very strong partiality for those regiments which composed the 4th in Spain; and I understand that General [John] Lambert’s brigade, of which the 27th and 40th form a part, are already attached to the division, and that the brigade daily expected from America, among which are the 7th Fusiliers, are likewise to be attached to the 6th division; and if, without inconvenience to the service, the 23rd Fusiliers, which have been some time in Flanders, could be added to it, I should have four of my old regiments with me, a circumstance by which I should feel much gratified and obliged.1

  Cole was in part motivated by a desire to build on established command relationships, noting that he was convinced that he was “more likely to meet your future approbation with officers who are well acquainted with me, and whose merits I can appreciate.” However, his letter also indicates the existence of a close connection between the identity of a regiment and the identity of the division to which it was assigned, something that was in turn closely wrapped up in the function of the divisional commander as a duplication, on a larger scale, of the role played at a regimental level by the unit commander.

  That such connections could exist by 1815 was a clear indication of how far the divisional system had become an accepted part of the British Army’s organization and psyche, having become more and more widespread during the period covered by this work. Eighteen months previously, Graham had reorganized his forces in the Netherlands into two small divisions, telling Colonel Bunbury at Horse Guards that such an organization was “so much more convenient than any other,” and doing so in conscious imitation of the system with which he had worked in the peninsula.2 It would be wrong to imply that Wellington introduced the British Army to the divisional system, but it is certainly the case that his five years of peninsular command saw existing systems of organization developed to a far more sophisticated level than hitherto. By delegating both command and staff functions to an intermediate level of command, theater commanders were left with far more time to deal with their wider responsibilities. But there was more to it than this. Careful choice of divisional assignments, in order to position battalions most effectively within the army’s order of battle, allowed for the effective functioning of the policies of manpower rotation outlined in chapter 3, but the concept could be extended still further by ensuring that the battalions with a brigade, or the brigades within a division, were composed of troops of varied levels of experience in order to homogenize the performance of the force as a whole. Alternatively, specialist troops could if necessary be concentrated together, and Wellington in the peninsula long maintained the Light Division in this way as something apart from his numbered divisions of the line. Naturally, if they were in existence for any length of time, such formations developed a sense of individual identity and esprit de corps as self-defined elites; so too, however, did the peninsular line divisions, with a form of rivalry developing that was very similar to that seen at the regimental level.

  It is, therefore, all the more surprising to find that permanently organized divisions were a comparatively new innovation so far as the British Army was concerned. Until Wellington began to reorganize his forces during 1809 and 1810, field command arrangements above the brigade level had generally been short-lived and their autonomy limited. Nevertheless, many of the concepts that reached fruition during Wellington’s tenure in the peninsula had their roots in earlier campaigns, and their development is therefore best understood by first considering the precedents from which they stemmed.

  Higher Organization before 1809

  At least as far back as the War of the Austrian Succession in the 1740s, the British Army had gone to war with its organization up to brigade level generally remaining as constant as the circumstances permitted. Brigad
e commanders might come and go, but the same units would frequently serve side by side for the duration of a campaign, and not infrequently for longer than that. At a higher organizational level, however, matters continued to be rather more fluid, with brigades assigned to ad hoc wings, lines, or columns depending on the requirements of the ongoing campaign or anticipated battle.3 This worked for the relatively formalized nature of warfare of the early and mid-eighteenth century, but the more flexible tactics of the American and French Revolutionary Wars indicated the need for a more substantial subordinate organization that could shoulder some of the burden of command and staff duties.

  French commanders and theorists as early as the 1760s had argued for the adoption of a divisional system in which a single senior commander would assume control on a more concrete basis of two to four brigades of infantry, along with supporting artillery and sometimes cavalry. The vastly expanded armies of the Revolutionary Wars saw this theory put into practice, and by the opening of the nineteenth century, France had not only adopted this organization as a matter of course but had taken the concept further by experimenting with the corps d’armée of two or more divisions.4 Other nations followed suit, often in direct response to defeat by the French, but Britain lagged behind. Its own experiences in Germany and America during the second half of the eighteenth century had taught the effectiveness of such methods, at least in a primitive form, but in the new struggle against revolutionary and Napoleonic France, the opportunity to field an army large enough to warrant the implementation of a divisional system did not immediately arise.

  The Duke of York did, it is true, eventually come to command substantial forces in Flanders during 1793–94, but this was a multinational force, and, although its British contingent contained enough troops to form several divisions, higher organization remained within a rigid eighteenth-century structure of Advance Guard, First and Second Lines, and Reserve. When York again commanded British forces in the field, during the Helder campaign of 1799, his troops were organized into three divisions, but this related only to the groupings in which they were shipped to the Netherlands, and once committed to battle this organization was dispensed with and the troops assigned to various ad hoc columns; in size and combat function, these formations equated to divisions, but their impermanent nature meant that staff functions remained at army level.5 A similar organization—or, rather, lack thereof—can be seen in Lt. General Sir Ralph Abercrombie’s army in Egypt in 1801. However, although this force largely fought as independent brigades of three or four battalions, it did include one larger formation, designated the Reserve, in which a subordinate general officer, Brigadier General Hildebrand Oakes, assisted the commander, John Moore, then still a major general. Moore’s Reserve had no internal brigading, and this development cannot truly be seen as influential in the movement toward divisions; nevertheless, as a grouping of picked troops, the concept would recur in subsequent campaigns.6 Lastly, in this survey of precedents from the era of the Revolutionary Wars, it is important to consider the organization of the forces in India during Arthur Wellesley’s service on the subcontinent. Lt. General George Harris’s army during the 1799 campaign against Mysore had a left and right wing of infantry, each having three component brigades, and a two-brigade cavalry command; Harris’s army operated in conjunction with Lt. General James Stuart’s divisional-sized Bombay Army and assorted smaller contingents, including the Hyderabadi Subsidiary Force overseen by Wellesley. Significant in light of subsequent practice was the mixing, by brigades, of regular British Army units with those of the East India Company, which parallels the subsequent incorporation of Portuguese and Hanoverian troops into British divisions during the period of this study. During Wellesley’s later Indian service, when he himself commanded in the field but with smaller forces, this practice of mixing troops was continued at a brigade level.7

  During the early Napoleonic Wars, a steady development of a divisional organization is evident in the organization of those expeditions embarked for the continent, but the short duration of these expeditions limited the progress that could be made so far as doctrinal developments were concerned. The force sent to North Germany in 1805 and 1806 went out by divisions, but these were largely administrative and transportation groupings only, much as has been the case for the Helder expedition.8 Brigade organization remained fixed during these campaigns, but higher organization was still fluid. Much the same can be said of the Copenhagen expedition under Lt. General the Earl of Cathcart two years later, which nominally had a Left Division, a Right Division, and a Reserve, the former two being divided into two and three brigades respectively but the latter having all four battalions directly under its commander, Wellesley, who was assisted by Colonel Richard Stewart as “acting Brigadier General.” As had been the case when Abercrombie designated a Reserve in the Egyptian campaign, this formation contained the army’s light troops. Troops from the KGL formed an additional division of their own, outside of the British structure. However, when Cathcart detached troops from his main force for field operations, the resulting organization was fragmentary and did not even preserve the original brigading, let along divisional assignments.9

  The remaining campaigns prior to 1808 were so small as to render any large-scale organization unnecessary; the expeditions sent from Sicily to Calabria in 1806 and Alexandria in 1807 were made up of small brigades formed from troops already serving in the Mediterranean, whilst that to South Africa was assembled at home and shipped out with a brigade organization already implemented.10 The same can be said of the successive expeditions fitted out for South America to reinforce the initial unauthorized foray.11 In none of these cases did the forces warrant a divisional organization; only Moore’s Baltic expedition of 1808, which ultimately formed part of the first peninsular army, had a divisional system, but the three such formations created were numerically very weak.12 In the majority of these organizational schemes, light troops if present in any numbers, were generally concentrated into a single command—usually under the designation of the Reserve—and a senior officer appointed as second-in-command of the whole force. Both these precedents can be seen again in the early organization of Britain’s forces in the peninsula: the former to good effect, the latter less so.

  It was with these rather hazy precedents in mind that Horse Guards was forced to consider how best to organize the substantial field army that would take the field in 1808 upon the union of the smaller contingents sent out under Wellesley, Spencer, and Moore. From the outset, York envisaged a divisional organization for this force, but circumstances meant that it was never implemented. Instead, the continual changes of commander from Wellesley, to Burrard, to Dalrymple, and finally, after Cintra, to Moore, meant that each man—with the exception of Burrard whose tenure was temporary and brief—implemented the organization that he thought best. None of these much resembled that initially planned by York, but the various schemes do give a good overview of this transitional stage in organizational doctrine, which provided a basis for further refinement.

  Wellesley’s initial organization, after he and Spencer disembarked, created a traditional organization with Spencer as second-in-command and the infantry distributed into six brigades, one of which contained all the army’s light infantry. This was just about workable at Roliça, but a little unwieldy by the time of Vimeiro where the number of brigades had risen to eight.13 In the aftermath of the fighting, the troops and commanders now arrived such that, had he chosen to do so, Dalrymple could have implemented the original organizational plan set out by York. This had envisaged a final organization of four line divisions, each having two brigades, and a three-brigade Reserve under Moore comprising the light infantry and cavalry.14 The KGL line infantry, organized as a small division in Moore’s corps, was now to become a large brigade, but in effect it retained its old organization; until after Oporto, the four battalions were intermittently treated as either a large brigade or a small division in successive organizations without, in reality, alteri
ng their initial organization.15 However, for Dalrymple as newly arrived theater commander, York’s scheme was less than ideal. Not least of its failings was its accordance of a junior command, the Fourth Division of seven battalions, to Wellesley who, whilst indisputably the junior of the seven lt. generals present, was nevertheless not only the recent victor of Vimeiro but also a member of the government.16 Not wishing to implement a wholesale reorganization, or to risk snubbing the influential hero of the hour, Dalrymple came up with own alternative organization; this can now be found in a beautifully watercolored chart, detailed even to the point of showing facing colors, filed with the monthly returns of Dalrymple’s forces.17 This organization split the army into two unequal corps, but these, confusingly, were denominated by Dalrymple as divisions. The larger, under Moore, comprised that officer’s original command from the Baltic, retaining its original divisional organization, plus a new division formed by combining Acland’s and Anstruther’s brigades, which had joined Wellesley’s force prior to Vimeiro. These two brigades were to come under the command of Lt. General Mackenzie Fraser, who had previously commanded the First Division of Moore’s Baltic corps; Fraser was in turn replaced by Lt. General Sir John Hope, previously Moore’s second-in-command. The smaller “division,” having six brigades and no intermediate organization, was Wellesley’s command largely as it stood at Roliça, with Spencer as second-in-command. Both Moore and Wellesley would also control cavalry and artillery assets. Judging by the layout of the diagram outlining the organization, the intention was that Moore’s “division” would form the army’s first line and Wellesley’s its second—if this formalized, Frederician deployment represented Dalrymple’s conception of tactical organization, it is perhaps as well that he never had chance to implement it in the field.