More paternal commanders, such as Hill or Cole, were able to make a similar, if less dramatic, mark on their commands, whilst James Leith summed up his record in command of the Fifth Division as having been a “good manager.”90 Nevertheless, it was still possible for such an officer to acquire his detractors just as Picton and Craufurd did. We have already seen, with reference to the story of the 2nd Foot, how Henry Clinton used his position as commander of the Sixth Division in order to intervene in the internal arrangements of the battalions under his command. In that instance, the interference was to the good, but, on the other hand, Lt. Colonel George Bingham strongly resented Clinton’s interference in his command of the 2/53rd, and was pleased when the battalion was transferred elsewhere.91 Whereas Bingham could only seethe about Clinton in his letters home, William Stewart’s brief command of the First Division saw him offend the sensibilities of the Guards, and the matter ended up being referred all the way back to the commander in chief. As colonel of the 1st Foot Guards, York swiftly came to the defense of “his” regiment and the prerogatives of its officers, something that may have hastened Wellington’s decision to shift Stewart from the First Division to the Second.92
Having enough authority and permanence to make his presence felt, the divisional commander could, for officers, be the immediate manifestation of all that was irksome about a military career. Lt. Charles Crowe of the 3/27th found himself deprived of a chance to become acting brigade major as the result of an argument between Major General William Anson, commanding the brigade in question, and the divisional commander, Cole. It took some effort on the part of Crowe’s commanding officer to persuade him that the appointment was not worth the risk of further confrontation.93 On the other hand, for the rank and file, the person of the divisional commander gave higher authority a recognized human face and thus gained credit when the system was working as it should, something most memorably voiced by the men of the Light Division’s Caçadore battalions who cheered for “General Crauford [sic], who takes care of our bellies!”94
Full bellies aside, there is no denying that the primary reason that Craufurd, and Picton like him, were able to stamp their divisions with their character is because they themselves possessed character in abundance. Nor was it the case that these men were simply respected, but it is evident that each was held in some affection by many of the troops he commanded. Picton arrived in the peninsula with the unfair stigma of a colonial scandal attached to his reputation, and the officers and men of his new command met him with considerable trepidation. Some, like Grattan, never entirely got over the initial bad press surrounding Picton, but others came to have a strong regard for their general. Joseph Donaldson’s first encounter with Picton was hardly auspicious, since it came when the general delivered a “sermon” to the erring 94th on the perils of plundering, but soon came to realize that “in other respects he was indulgent; and, although no man could blame with more severity when occasion required, he was no niggard of his praise when it was deserved. Nothing could surpass his calm intrepidity and bravery in danger; and his presence in battle had the effect of a talisman, so much has his skill and valour gained the confidence of those under his command.”95 In many ways, these qualities are very much akin to those picked out as representative of the most successful battalion commanders, and reinforce the appreciation and respect that was earned by officers at any level who, however firm their discipline, were fair toward their men and willing to share their dangers. Having expected to find a tyrant in Picton, Donaldson instead found himself, as a member of Picton’s division, identifying with his commander’s fight to clear his name. Donaldson’s memoirs, written nine years after Picton’s death at Waterloo, pay tribute to his former chief’s eventual success in that struggle.
The importance of the linking of the divisional commander with the divisional identity is highlighted by the case of the Waterloo campaign. The six numbered divisions in existence in June 1815 were mostly commanded by peninsular veterans, but with numerical designations that failed to correspond to the formations these men had led in Portugal and Spain. As we have seen, Lowry Cole asked for, and got, command of a division containing a large portion of his former peninsular command, and he went on to request that this new formation be renumbered as the Fourth Division to match his old peninsular command.96 It seems that others raised the issue as well, since when Wellington wrote to Sir Henry Clinton on June 15 to canvas his views on a proposed renumbering of divisions across the whole army he informed Clinton that “Some of the General officers would wish very much to have the divisions numbered over again, and have their old numbers, which appears to be a very natural wish: and I should be very much obliged to you if you would let me know as soon as you can if you participate in it.”97 This organization left the First Division as it stood, but would have given Clinton, Cole, and Picton their old peninsular numbers whilst making Alten’s new command the Fifth Division and Colville’s the Second. As is apparent from the dating of the letter, events soon overtook this scheme, but it is significant on multiple counts. Firstly, Wellington’s reference to general officers in the plural would indicate Picton as well as Cole as being behind the suggestion; Alten may be discounted, since his peninsula command had been the unnumbered Light Division, whilst Clinton, the only other officer who had held a permanent divisional command in the peninsula, was self-evidently not behind the proposal since it was his views on it that Wellington was soliciting. Secondly, Wellington was clearly in favor of the idea, suggesting an intention to foster emulation of the peninsular esprit de corps within his new army. Indeed, Wellington told Cole that he believed renumbering the divisions would generate “a symptom of the old spirit we had amongst us, than which we cannot have a better.”98 This belief was notwithstanding the fact that, outside of Cole’s command, the only unit thus acquiring continuity with its peninsular assignment would have been the 2/30th in what would have become the Fifth Division. Conversely, the 2/44th and 1/71st had numerical, though not commander, continuity under the original numbering, which would have been lost in the re-designation. This would suggest a greater desire to emulate the reputation of the formation, as linked with its commander, than to tie in with a regimental reputation containing a link to a particular division.
But if identity with a division, and its commander, allowed for the development of esprit de corps beyond the regimental level, it could also lead to direct rivalry between men from different formations. This rivalry was particularly keen between the Third and Light Divisions, and became particularly pronounced during the siege operations, where the assignment of different divisions to different avenues of assault set up a situation where they were effectively racing to obtain a single prize. This rivalry could, in itself, be beneficial, as with this episode described by Harry Smith in his relation of the preliminaries to the storming of Badajoz. Smith was then a captain in the 1/95th, supervising men of the Light Division who had been detailed as a working party to aid the Third Division in its assault on the La Picurina outworks: “The Light Division, the working party, consequently were sent to the Engineer Park for the ladders. When they arrived, General Kempt ordered them to be planted. The boys of the 3rd Division said to our fellows, ‘Come, stand out of the way;’ to which our fellows replied, ‘D[amn] your eyes, do you think we Light Division fetch ladders for such chaps as you to climb up? Follow us’—springing on the ladders, and many of them were knocked over.”99 Thus, men of neither division were prepared to concede that the other division was the more deserving, even if doing so caused increased danger for those who elected to uphold the reputation of their formation. Later in the same siege, the Third Division as a whole would incur heavy losses storming the castle whilst the Light Division, alongside the Fourth, struggled in the breaches and took even heavier casualties. On this occasion, the losses on all sides were so severe as to render success hollow, and even the strongly partisan Grattan could only mourn the losses of all three divisions—although this did not prevent him f
rom belittling the achievements of Leith’s Fifth Division, which, having escaladed the walls elsewhere, had arguably beaten them all to the prize.100
Yet whilst such rivalry could produce laudable feats of emulation, it has also been put forward as a contributing factor to one of the least savory episodes of the history of the peninsular army, namely the sack of San Sebastián in 1813. The reduction of this fortress was initially assigned to Graham’s Left Wing, composed of the First and Fifth Divisions plus attached brigades. The Fifth Division, which took responsibility for the actual siege operations, was under Major General John Oswald in the absence of its regular commander, Leith, who only rejoined it on the day of the second, successful, attack. The first attack was repulsed with loss, and accordingly a second assault was planned for August 31. At this juncture Wellington asked for volunteers from other divisions to form storming parties to lead the assault, the main burden of which would fall again on the men of the Fifth, which is the point at which an element of controversy is introduced.101 The historian Bruce Allen Watson argues that this implied snub to the men of the Fifth was responsible for their role in the subsequent sack of the town, forming a means in which they could vent their anger. Specifically, Watson suggests that this action represented a transferal of anger from Wellington, whom they could not revenge themselves upon directly and who was in any case idolized, to the unfortunate Spanish inhabitants.102
This neat psychological and sociological analysis is, however, largely a flawed one. Whilst Watson himself addresses many of the limitations of his case, his argument misses one significant point. Although Wellington did issue the request for volunteers, he was not responsible for the idea that the men of the Fifth Division had failed in their first attack through lack of courage; rather, this notion was largely spread by camp gossip and subsequently repeated in diaries, journals, and later memoirs.103 Far from seeking to slight the Fifth Division, Wellington in fact praised the Fifth Division’s conduct during the first attack, and was only driven to call for volunteers because of the despondency of its senior officers.104 Wellington did make explicit the hope that the volunteers “would be enough to show the way to the breach,” thereby implying a hope that the Fifth, or its commanders, might be shamed into action, but this was in private correspondence with Graham and not for public consumption.105 Such an argument also fails to account for the fact that there was no remarked difference during the sack between the behavior of the Fifth Division men on the one hand and the surviving volunteers on the other.
Watson makes a fair point when he suggests that Wellington’s neglect of operations on the San Sebastián front during the ongoing fighting in the Pyrenees may have highlighted a sense of neglect and added to confusion and demoralization amongst those who had survived the first assault, and repeats the view that siege work was in itself unpopular and demoralizing.106 However, by treating the events at San Sebastián in isolation, Watson fails to pick up on the similarities between it and the sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, and Burgos, all of which prefigured periods of mass disorder amongst the troops. The sack of San Sebastián, exaggerated by accounts of those who were not present, was no more horrific—and certainly less drawn-out—than the events seen at Badajoz. Its roots lay in the deeper problems of collective indiscipline experienced by the peninsular army after all its sieges, potentially exacerbated on this occasion by a temporary breakdown of command caused by the unusually high officer casualties in the storm.107 Even if the men of the Fifth Division were aware, via camp gossip, of the slight on their reputation implied by the call for volunteers, it is inconceivable that this was enough to tip men over the brink into anarchy; if the perceived insult had any effect at all, it seems more likely that it spurred them on to greater endeavors in the attack. If a perceived snub to divisional honor could be so deeply felt at this stage in the war, then it is if anything a positive argument for the development of formation identity, with the causes of the sack of San Sebastián ultimately lying elsewhere.
Such negative constructions of divisional identity can therefore safely be discounted, leaving the conclusion that it remained an important and positive aspect of the self-identity evolved within the British Army on campaign. Regimental identity remained the mainstay of morale and self-image, but a secondary association with the division served to reinforce this rather than supplant it. It was possible to identify oneself with more than one level of the military hierarchy, and the impression one gets from the bulk of memoirs is that the writer’s regiment was the best in its division, and that division the best in the army. This distinction was made explicit by Lt. Colonel James Campbell, in his 1840 work, A British Army, As It Was, Is, and Ought To Be, in which he praises the Third Division as a whole for its conduct at Fuentes de Oñoro but maintains a distinction between his own 1/45th—naturally in his eyes superior—and the remainder of Picton’s battalions. Campbell’s analysis does blur things a little through his acceptance of the 1/88th as a sister unit worthy of comparison with his own, but his work is, in fairness, a plea for reform rather than a personal memoir. Campbell may have been able to take a slightly broader view than most regimental officers, inasmuch as he had served for part of the time as a brigade major, and was in fact seeking to use the example of the peninsular divisional system to make a wider point regarding the utility of permanently embodied divisions, exactly because they generated cooperation and emulation between battalions enjoying prolonged association.108
Largely as a result of Wellington’s successful peninsular application of divisional organization, the British Army of 1815 had developed a sophisticated and flexible system that facilitated the integration of units of varying capabilities into a functioning whole. This system of command made best use of a body of general officers who were, at least initially, lacking in the experience necessary for more independent commands, and fostered the creation of sense of a self-identity that supplemented, without supplanting, preexisting regimental loyalties. Wellington did not introduce the combat division to the British Army; the doctrinal inheritance from the years before 1809 is clear, and is also in evidence in the smaller parallel organizations implemented on Walcheren, in the colonies, and on the East Coast of Spain. Unlike his contemporaries, Wellington took that doctrine and built on it, expanding the role of the division and the divisional commander and turning the formation into a key building block of his command. Whilst Wellington’s divisional system in its final form was a great improvement on what had gone before, it must therefore be seen as evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and as building on existing practice rather than beginning anew. Nevertheless, Wellington’s need to maintain an army for a sustained campaign meant that far more care needed to be taken as to the composition and leadership of the various elements comprising his army and it is here, rather than in the organizational framework itself, that the true significance of the peninsular system lies. By delegating responsibility and creating additional staff posts at divisional level, this organization allowed a large army to function effectively, and in turn facilitated the most effective distribution and employment of manpower.
But whilst much of what Wellington did organizationally was based on a solid doctrinal inheritance, what was essentially new, and only made possible through the continuity of the system over a period of five years, was the creation of a strong sense of divisional identity based largely around the personality of the divisional commander. Although this sense of identity was achieved by accident rather than design, it is clear that once the beneficial effects of this tendency had become apparent they were deliberately fostered, both in the peninsula where incumbent divisional commanders unable to exercise their duties through sickness or wounds were only temporarily replaced, thus permitting their ultimate return to the same job, and more explicitly in 1815. This policy can be seen in Cole’s assignment to a formation having considerable unit continuity with his former command, and, on a broader level, in the proposed divisional renumbering in line with peninsular command ass
ignments. Such overt attempts to re-create a field army based on the peninsular organizational model indicate recognition of the importance of the divisional system and its establishment as a means of campaign organization. But just as important in 1815 was the need to use the divisional system as a means of re-creating the ethos and self-image of the old peninsular army. In this way, what began as a purely organizational and administrative measure also ultimately, if not intentionally, became one of the key motivational ties that helped give the men of the British Army their sense of identity.
CHAPTER 6
Strategic Consumption
When Moyle Sherer identified “sickness, suffering, and the sword” as the factors that had reduced his battalion’s strength over the course of its five years in the peninsula, it is unlikely that his order of priorities was a coincidence. Unless the victim of a catastrophic tactical error, no unit was likely to be rendered unfit for service by battlefield casualties alone; indeed, only the 23rd Light Dragoons after Talavera and the 29th Foot after Albuera were sent home for this reason, although the aftermath of the latter battle also saw the amalgamation of several other badly reduced infantry battalions. To be sure, battlefield losses could be severe, even in successful actions, but most units were engaged in pitched battle on only a handful of occasions during the period, whereas sickness and suffering between these events exerted a constant daily toll on their strength.
It is easy to dismiss such losses as “wastage,” but this is a deceptive term that implies the squandering of resources. A better understanding is gained if the concept of “strategic consumption” is applied instead, with manpower one of many finite resources being expended as a means toward achieving strategic goals. All deployments entailed a level of strategic consumption, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the station and the role of the unit in question. Obvious causes of manpower consumption, most notably the loss of men in the fever-ridden West Indies, could be minimized by preventative measures or the use of alternative manpower from sources that were better acclimatized, deemed expendable, or both, but for any unit on active campaign overseas a minimum level of loss had to be accepted. The role of the commander in this context could only be, as Wellington realized, to ensure that losses—from any cause—be kept at a minimum. Just as it was necessary to hazard lives in combat in pursuit of larger goals, so too was it sometimes necessary to expose troops to greater hardships than would normally be warranted. The periodic need to force-march troops, as in the arduous operations during and between the Oporto and Talavera campaigns, or during one of the great retreats, is a key example of this. Likewise, it was occasionally necessary to station troops in unhealthy areas that had to be held for political or strategic reasons, as with Walcheren Island or the Guadiana valley.
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