Sickness, Suffering, and the Sword

by Andrew Bamford

  In any case, Dalrymple’s initial backward-looking arrangement was short-lived, as a General Order of September 5, 1808, created a new organization of six divisions: First through Fourth and Reserve, each having two brigades of line infantry, and an Advance Corps similar to, but smaller than, the Reserve envisaged by York. As in the previous scheme, Burrard remained as second-in-command with no direct troop command.18 This reorganization stripped considerable authority from Moore and Wellesley, who went from being commanders of quasi corps to leading divisions of six and a half and six battalions respectively; both, the latter in particular, had incurred Dalrymple’s displeasure.19 Again, the full implementation of this organization was overtaken by events: first the departure of disgruntled senior officers, and then the recall of its instigator. With two abortive schemes to his name, one can readily understand why Oman castigated Dalrymple for “spending a great deal of time over the redistribution into brigades and divisions of his army.”20 That said, the same criticism could also be made of Moore, whose forces underwent a tortuous series of reorganizations before assuming, after being joined by the reinforcing corps sent out under Lt. General Sir David Baird, a final organization of four infantry divisions, two independent “flank brigades” of light infantry, and one division of cavalry. Five of Moore’s light infantry battalions were posted to these flank brigades, and two more formed part of Major General Edward Paget’s Reserve Division, along with three picked line battalions; only one light battalion—the 2/43rd—formed part of a line infantry division.21 Mention of Baird also brings up two precedents set by that officer. The first of these was his decision to implement a temporary divisional organization as he moved to his rendezvous with Moore, lack of senior officers notwithstanding, although in numbers he had fewer troops than Wellesley had fielded at Roliça. The second was his preference, once his forces were united with the main body, for a role as senior divisional commander that left him with a direct troop command, rather than the nebulous role of second-in-command of the whole.22 Baird’s preference for a direct command was typical of this crusty fighting soldier, but in any case made far better use of his talents.

  As can be seen from the various organizational schemes outlined above, by 1809 a fairly good idea existed within the British Army as to how a large force could be organized into multiple divisions. Whilst the system would ultimately be taken further by Wellington, it is instructive to look how far it had already evolved prior to the development of the peninsular divisional system, as exemplified by the organization of Chatham’s army sent to the Scheldt in July 1809. The Walcheren expedition represents the single largest British contingent of troops dispatched as an entity during the entire Napoleonic Wars. As such, unlike the peninsular army, the Walcheren expeditionary force clearly demonstrates how Horse Guards then thought it best to organize a large army. Chatham’s army had five numbered divisions of line infantry, each of two brigades; a “Reserve of the Army” under Hope with three brigades, one of which was composed of Foot Guards; and a Light Division under Lt. General the Earl of Rosslyn with two brigades of light infantry and one of cavalry. The similarity between this latter formation and the Advance Corps envisaged by York and Dalrymple is marked; Rosslyn’s Light Division certainly has more in common with them than it does with that formed in the Peninsula army. There are, however, other areas where a greater commonality with later peninsular practice is evident, in particular the assignment of divisional artillery and the attachment of independent rifle companies to larger formations. The junior line division—Lt. General Lord Paget’s Fifth—also contained a larger-than-normal concentration of light troops, much as would the junior Seventh Division in Wellington’s peninsular organization.23 However, Paget’s command was soon broken up when the forces on Walcheren Island were redistributed into a new organization under Chatham’s second-in-command, Lt. General Sir Eyre Coote.24 This apparent lack of preference for a divisional organization is reinforced by the fact that the force left on Walcheren under Lt. General George Don after the departure of the main body reverted to a brigade-level organization, although with 15,566 men in six brigades there were troops enough for a more sophisticated command system.25 However, Don’s command was now a garrison force, whose main enemy was fever, and the imperatives for a combat divisional system were no longer present.

  Thus, although many important precedents had been set, and ideas tested, by mid-1809 the British Army still had no accepted norms for divisional organization. On the other hand, organization of the component brigades had settled into a standard form that would be retained for the remainder of the conflict, even if there was still no clear policy on how these brigades should be grouped to form higher organizations. As had been the case back in the previous century, brigade composition had again begun to take on a semipermanent nature that even lasted through multiple campaigns; the 1/4th and 1/28th, for example, remained together through a variety of organizations from Moore’s Baltic expedition right through until the final reorganization before the retreat to Corunna, and although separated for a time were then reunited for the Walcheren expedition. The Foot Guards and KGL naturally retained their standing brigade structures throughout, but it also became increasingly the case that other battalions having an obvious affinity to each other were brigaded together. In the case of light infantry, this made sense for operational reasons, as such troops were generally concentrated within the army’s order of battle. However, both Moore in the Baltic and Wellesley in his original command as formed in Ireland kept their highlanders together to form distinct brigades, and York sought to retain this in his unenacted proposal for Dalrymple’s order of battle.26 These organizational methods would continue in later years, and would form a key way of reinforcing and manipulating regimental identity; Wellington would later extend them by brigading together his three fusilier battalions, reinforcing their self-identified elite status.

  Irrespective of composition, however, infantry brigades by 1809 had settled quite firmly into an established structure, with—on average—three battalions serving side by side under a permanent commander no junior than a colonel and no more senior than a major general. On occasion, in smaller forces or when individual battalion strengths were very high, brigades of only two battalions continued to be seen; conversely, when unit strengths fell toward the end of the period, brigades of four or even five battalions are encountered. Cavalry brigades, in similar fashion, rarely contained more than three regiments. Irrespective of the size of his command however, the officer commanding a brigade had, to assist him, only a single aide-de-camp and his brigade-major; the latter officer, title notwithstanding, was usually, in fact, of captain’s rank, seconded from regimental duty to act as a junior staff officer.27 For a sustained campaign, it was therefore quite evident that something more substantial and permanent was required.

  The Divisional System under Wellington

  It should not be thought that Wellesley arrived at Lisbon in 1809 with an organizational blueprint tucked into his pocket. Rather, the first eighteen months of his peninsular command would see the steady evolution of a divisional system that did not acquire all the identifying features associated with it until mid-1810. The fact that Wellesley took his army into the Oporto and Talavera campaigns almost immediately after his arrival meant that any desire to make sweeping organizational changes had to be subordinated to the practicalities of organizing troops for active operations. Thus, the first months of Wellesley’s command would see a steady progress toward an organizational ideal, with ideas being tested and either incorporated or discarded depending on how well they stood the test of service.

  When Wellesley reassumed the peninsular command, he found an army with no formation above that of the brigade, although Sir John Cradock, his predecessor, had promulgated a new organizational scheme during March that placed his eight weak line brigades in pairs under the senior brigadiers.28 However, it is unclear to what extent this scheme was implemented, and it certainly had little bearing on Well
esley’s subsequent plans. One thing that had prevented Cradock from producing a more sophisticated command system was a lack of senior officers, which was also initially a problem for Wellesley; other than the second-in-command, Lt. General Sir John Sherbrooke, the peninsular army was initially lacking senior officers with experience of commanding larger formations. Lt. General William Payne soon arrived to command the cavalry, but the initial retention of half the available horsemen around Lisbon precluded the operation of the mounted troops as a division in any practical sense. However, when the newly promoted Lt. General Sir Edward Paget joined the force, it was possible to assign that officer and Sherbrooke command of an infantry wing apiece—these formations in effect representing two large divisions of four brigades each.29 This arrangement was short lived, and for the final advance on Oporto, Major General Rowland Hill also stepped up to divisional command, as reported by Wellesley in his victory dispatch: “The infantry of the army was formed into 3 divisions for this expedition . . . one, composed of Major Gen. Hill’s and Brig. Gen. Cameron’s brigades of infantry, and a brigade of 6 pounders, under the command of Major Gen. Hill.”30 This was Wellesley’s first employment of the term “division,” although the use of “for this expedition” suggests a temporary measure. Within these nominally British formations, five Portuguese battalions served within regular British brigades; this experiment, though not markedly unsuccessful, was not repeated.31 Each of the three divisions had its own artillery assets attached, as did the division-sized flanking column under Beresford and the covering forces left along the line of the Tagus under Major General John Randoll Mackenzie; this arrangement would become an important feature of the permanent divisions.

  A permanent divisional system was not implemented until after the return of the army from the Oporto campaign, being announced in the General Order of June 18, 1809. Paget had been wounded at Oporto, but Sherbrooke and Hill were confirmed as divisional commanders along with Mackenzie, getting the First, Second, and Third Divisions respectively.32 Whereas Hill took a permanent divisional command as a major general, albeit one for whom Wellesley hoped to secure a local promotion, Mackenzie’s seems to have been considered a temporary appointment.33 Accordingly, Mackenzie retained nominal command of a brigade in his division, and appears to have exercised this directly; no acting brigadier is given in any source, although Lt. Colonel William Guard of the 1/45th had clear seniority over the other battalion commanders. The Fourth Division was also initially under its senor brigadier, Alexander Campbell, until Major General Lowry Cole joined in the autumn; Lt. Colonel Sir William Myers of the 2/7th commanded Campbell’s brigade whilst Campbell had the division.34

  The army was still short of senior general officers, particularly since Paget’s wounding, and Wellesley wrote to Castlereagh bemoaning the fact that Lord Bentinck and Sir Brent Spencer, now both lt. generals, had been unable to join the army as had been envisaged. Bentinck, who had commanded a brigade under Moore, declined the appointment; Spencer was sick, but did return the following year to replace Sherbrooke. Wellesley also requested that Hill and Sir Stapleton Cotton be given local rank as lt. generals, in part because Beresford, their junior, had been accorded that rank. Protest over this issue had already led to the departure of Major General John Murray, who had commanded the KGL infantry for the past year and who seems to have temporarily replaced the wounded Paget in the aftermath of Oporto. Since Murray—the same officer who would later bungle the Tarragona expedition—was a man of no obvious ability, but would, had he remained, have been eligible by seniority for a divisional command and a local lt. generalcy, his departure was perhaps no bad thing.35

  Although the four infantry divisions would remain in existence for the rest of the war, they had not yet acquired the three-brigade structure that would largely become the norm. Instead, Sherbrooke’s First Division had four brigades and the remainder two, with the KGL infantry now forming two distinct brigades. The infantry brigades were henceforth generally referred to by the name of their commander rather than by a numerical designation, thus removing what was rapidly becoming a confusing system of brigade seniority.36 The Portuguese regiments were formed into a corps of observation under Beresford to complete their reorganization, and did not participate in the Talavera campaign. Henceforth, with a handful of exceptions, Portuguese units formed their own brigades, and were integrated into the command structure as such.37 The British cavalry, which gained a third brigade from reinforcements, was finally united into a division under Payne.38 The General Order establishing the permanent divisions assigned to them—or, rather, to their respective commanders—an assistant adjutant general to assist with staff duties and an assistant provost to aid in maintaining discipline. Other orders from the period refer to the existence of medical and commissary officers as part of the divisional staffs, suggesting that these appointments were already in force with the temporary divisions formed during the Oporto campaign. In either case, whether a new innovation or the codification of an existing practice, the permanent divisions would eventually come to have representatives of all the staff branches, responsible to both their divisional and departmental superiors.39

  After the strategic failure of the Talavera campaign, with more British regiments joining the field army and with the Portuguese now fit to take their place in the line, the course of 1810 saw a steady reorganization, which, through a shuffling of existing brigades and the addition of new ones, would create the nine infantry divisions—First through Seventh, Light, and Portuguese—that would endure until the end of the war. As of February 22, 1810, Craufurd’s Light Brigade was removed from the Third Division, of which Craufurd had held temporary command since Mackenzie’s death at Talavera, in order to become the nucleus for the new Light Division. Completed by the assignment of two Portuguese Caçadore battalions, Craufurd’s command was much smaller than the others, but it concentrated the light infantry and rifles into an elite formation. Its initial role was that of watching the frontier whilst the rest of the army completed its reorganization for the defense of Portugal.40 Later, somewhat enlarged but still smaller than the line divisions, the Light Division became the army’s shock troops, but, particularly after Craufurd was killed at Ciudad Rodrigo in January 1812, something of their original excellence was lost although the division continued to do good service under the Hanoverian Karl von Alten.41 However, the Light Division not only held itself in considerable esteem but also contained an unusually large number of officers and men who would later write about their experiences, thus reinforcing that elite status as part of the popular image of the peninsular army.

  Since the removal of Craufurd and his brigade took the Third Division down to only two and a half battalions, Lightburne’s Brigade was moved across from the Fourth Division, and both the Third and Fourth Divisions then each received a brigade of Portuguese infantry to maintain them at a strength equivalent to the First and Second Divisions, which remained all-British. Major General Thomas Picton, a veteran of much controversial colonial service and more recently a brigadier in the Walcheren expedition, assumed command of the Third Division.42 April 1810 saw the arrival of the first brigade formed out of battalions recovered from the rigors of Walcheren, and this formed the nucleus of Major General James Leith’s Fifth Division along with two Portuguese brigades.43 Two more Portuguese brigades went to form the Portuguese Division, which operated with Hill’s Second Division in what was in effect a provisional corps, and the remaining Portuguese field forces formed four independent brigades, although one of these was for a time joined with a militia brigade to form a provisional division under the Portuguese Coronel Carlos Lecor. Other than Lecor, only two other Portuguese officers, Coronel José Champalimaud and Brigadeiro A. L. da Fonseca, held senior commands after the 1810 reorganization, and both were placed directly under British officers. This unwillingness to entrust senior commands to Portuguese officers would continue throughout the war. Only Lecor and Francisco Silveira, Conde de Amarante, would obtain divisi
onal commands in the field army, and only the former would command British troops. This was in 1813, when Lecor, by now a marechal de campo or major general, was the senior officer remaining when the Seventh Division’s permanent commander went on leave, but his tenure as such was brief and he was soon shifted to replace Silveira, who had fallen from Wellington’s favor, at the head of the Portuguese Division.44

  This reorganization set the pattern for the organization of all seven numbered divisions of line infantry, although it would take another year before all seven could be brought to this standard. Being the basic building blocks of the army as a whole, the line divisions were each based on the model of two brigades of British troops and one of Portuguese. There were exceptions to this system. The First Division was all British—or, rather, British and KGL—as was the Second Division until 1811. During 1810 the First Division temporarily had an extra British brigade, and in 1812 the Second Division acquired a Portuguese brigade in addition to its three British, remaining as a four-brigade anomaly until the end of the war. The Sixth and Seventh Divisions both initially had only two brigades, and for a time in 1813 the First Division dropped to only two active brigades due to the detachment of the two battalions of the 1st Foot Guards that had been hit by an epidemic. Some Portuguese brigades remained independent throughout the war, albeit in reduced numbers after 1810 as some were absorbed into the expanding divisional system, but it was unusual for any British brigade to exist outside of the divisional structure. Alten’s Brigade of KGL light infantry was only briefly independent in 1811 before joining the Seventh Division, whilst the brigade brought up from Cadiz by Colonel John Skerrett in 1812 was a march formation, and the Brigade of Provisional Militia in 1814 was likewise a second-line outfit. A more significant anomaly exists in the shape of Aylmer’s Brigade, which always operated with the First Division but which was never formally attached to it, but this was essentially due to the formation’s specialist “nursery” role for newly arrived battalions, outlined in chapter 3.