1. For making a false report in stating that his horse had died on the road on the 30th Sept.
2. For cutting and ill-using his horse with his sword on the same day.64
Again, the date places us in the Burgos retreat and the resulting collapse in order within even some of the best regiments.
Whilst a slightly higher incidence exists of theft and/or cruelty in British regiments, this is by no means as marked as might be expected from the traditional understanding of things. More telling, however, is the differing response to such cases. In contrast to their reception in the slackly run 9th Light Dragoons, outbreaks of theft in the KGL regiments resulted in draconian punishments—five hundred lashes per man in the 1st KGL Dragoons, as compared with only seven hundred ordered for desertion. Furthermore, whilst the deserter received only 515 lashes, the remainder being remitted, corn thieves received the full 500 awarded.65 Theft of forage fell off considerably in the latter half of the year, both in general terms but particularly in the KGL heavy brigade, where it was evidently deemed not worth the risk after the punishments of the spring. No doubt this general decline in theft was in part due to the fact that the army was active and the contacts required to sell stolen fodder were not available. There may also be an additional issue here, relating to horse care more generally, in that the trooper on campaign had to take better care of his mount lest he risk death or capture as a result, hence fewer cases of stealing forage. This suggestion is borne out by the second half-yearly inspection of the 3rd Dragoons in which Brigadier General William Ponsonby attributed the unequal condition of the troop horses to the fact that men had every interest in looking after their own mounts, on which their safety depended, but none in caring for surplus horses belonging to the sick.66
Even from this later part of the war, there are a small number of accounts by memoirists whose views support Schaumann’s assertion of the KGL’s superiority in horse care. John Fox Burgoyne, then a lt. colonel with the Royal Engineers, noted the closer attachment of German troopers to their mounts, and consequent greater care paid to them, whilst George Gleig also made a direct comparison between British and German cavalry and came out in favor of the latter. What is particularly interesting with regard to Gleig is that his experience was later in the war, and was with the dragoons of the Legion rather than the usually cited hussars.67 Yet even if one concedes a small element of superiority for the German cavalry when taken in comparison with the British, it still remains the case that the bulk of the support for the former as horse soldiers par excellence comes from the period in 1810 when the single regiment then in the peninsula formed the army’s outposts along the Côa. During this time, the 1st KGL Hussars provided an extremely effective outpost service and, what is more, did so with the loss of extremely few horses. There are periods elsewhere in the course of the war where equine mortality figures drop to these levels, but these coincide with periods of inactivity, such as the time within the Lines of Torres Vedras or the lull in operations prior to Vitoria campaign, and not to active service. In other words, the superiority of this regiment’s reputation, whilst owing something to its general achievements, has been inflated by an anomalously short period of operations during which the unit was operating with distinction, and unusually low equine mortality, before the eyes of some of the war’s best-known future eyewitnesses. Had these eyewitnesses had experience of the cavalry as a whole, they might also have noted that all six regiments experienced a low equine mortality rate in these months.68
In this context, the comments of Troop Sergeant Major William Dawes of the 15th Hussars, writing with reference to the later years in the peninsula, become significant as an aid to reconciling matters. Whilst noting a degree of envy with regard to the sleek and well-fed appearance of both men and horses of the 1st KGL Hussars, Dawes makes it clear that he did not accept the arguments of those who credited them with “such a vast super-excellence over the English dragoon.”69 He believed that the KGL troopers were permitted considerably more freedom in how they obtained their forage, with no questions asked. Whilst Dawes attributed this to indiscipline, it is more likely that the officers and men of the 1st Hussars, with several years’ experience of campaign service, had simply picked up far more tricks of the trade than might be expected to be known by the newly arrived 15th. In other words, the enviable condition of the 1st Hussars was not due to its being a KGL regiment, but to its being an experienced regiment.
Schaumann highlights the 14th and 16th Light Dragoons as deserving exemption from his criticisms of the British cavalry, but these were the two longest-serving British light cavalry regiments, with records almost as noteworthy as that of the 1st Hussars. It is therefore unsurprising that these two regiments have equine survival rates superior to most other British light cavalry regiments; nor is it to be wondered that the 3rd Dragoon Guards, one of the longest-serving regiments of heavies, has the best average of all for the main sample. Inevitably, it took time to pick up the experience necessary to ensure such a good performance, so wastage was higher until this process was complete. Alone of the peninsular cavalry regiments, the 1st KGL Hussars came to the theater with considerable prior experience of active service.70 British regiments, by contrast, had to learn on the job, and, by and large, did so. As time went on, the numbers of horses lost by long-serving British regiments such as the 14th and 16th Light Dragoons, 1st and 4th Dragoons, and 3rd Dragoon Guards began to drop. Troopers gained more experience in caring for their mounts; officers and commissaries became more aware of the best ways of obtaining forage and of supervising its issue. At the same time, as the initial veteran strength of the 1st KGL Hussars became diluted, its equine mortality rates rose to meet those of the British regiments.
The suggestion, then, is that British regiments were largely able, over time, to acquire many of the same skills that the KGL cavalry of 1809 and 1810 already possessed, leading, over time, to an equalization of performance as judged by equine mortality, and, indeed by other factors such as performance of outpost duty.71 There is ample evidence that late-arriving British cavalry units went through a similar learning curve to those joining earlier in the period, even if it was still incomplete at the war’s end. When the Household Brigade joined Wellington prior to the Vitoria campaign, its regiments discarded combs and brushes, as representing unnecessary equipment now that they were no longer required for ceremonial duties. The result was that the coats of their horses rapidly became matted and clogged, blocking pores and leading to sickness. Combing and brushing were swiftly recognized as having more than just an aesthetic benefit, and accordingly were reinstated.72 The learning curve extended to the new arrivals of the Hussar Brigade as well, with Lt. George Woodberry of the 18th Hussars remarking on the great amount of unnecessary impedimenta brought on campaign by the officers of both formations.73 The same officer was also initially concerned that “We are actually oblig’d to send near two leagues for green forage. The whole produce of the fields near have already been consumed by the 15th and us; those very fields of corn, barley &c was [the locals’] principal support for the summer.”74 After a year’s active service, however, the men of the18th had adapted to the more practical elements of supplying themselves and their mounts on campaign, with Captain Arthur Kennedy referring to his men, with affection, as “Drogheda’s Cossacks” for their prowess in obtaining food and clothing from the surrounding countryside as they advanced toward Toulouse.75 The hussars had thus begun to acquire the same skills and experience that Dawes had identified in the KGL cavalry, but had evidently picked up the bad habits along with the good; as we have already seen with regard to the survival strategies of the men themselves, experience by no means equated to perfection.
Conclusion
A SYSTEM REASSESSED
There is a tendency amongst the historiography of the Napoleonic Wars to treat the British Army as unique, and to see the British military experience of the Napoleonic Wars as something apart from the norms on the continent. Yet the similar
ities are more marked than is often allowed, in particular when comparison is made with those powers that were able to resist Napoleonic France without ever being entirely overrun or subjugated. Britain, like Austria and Russia, entered the conflict with an established system that was refined throughout the conflict without ever being the subject of revolutionary change. Differing geographical circumstances naturally dictated differences in scale and priority, but the similarities remain marked. Even the upsurge of nationalism seen amongst the continental allies is mirrored in Britain’s volunteer movement,1 and the abortive deployment of Militia on active service in 1814 adds an additional level of commonality with the continental powers.
The similarities should not be overstressed. The British Army never underwent such a large-scale process of overhaul as the forces of Prussia; nor did its manpower difficulties reach the sort of levels faced by France after 1812. Britain’s avoidance of full-fledged conscription also distinguishes the British and continental experiences of warfare. Geographical isolation kept the home islands largely remote from the horrors of war but necessitated different strategic imperatives as reflected in the priority accorded the Royal Navy and the preference for paying subsidies rather than committing troops to the continent. However, the French Revolutionary Wars had indicated the drawbacks of British policy, and by the period of this study the relative lack of support for the British Army had begun to represent a definite strategic handicap.2 The Royal Navy remained essential, but the concentration of so much military manpower into the Militia and Volunteers now represented a diversion of resources away from the real struggle. The British Army, which after 1808 became the arm that bore the brunt of active service, was left with too much competition for finite resources.3 Conversely, the distribution of resources between its army, navy, and subsidies gave Britain a wider range of strategic options than was available to many continental powers. When the right balance was struck between the three, as with the Peninsular War, the result was success, but the extent of Britain’s commitments between 1808 and 1815 meant that there were also times when the British Army was left with an unequal share of the burden.
Two things enabled the British Army to maintain itself in the field long enough for the war to be won: the flexibility of the regimental system and the esprit de corps that it helped foster. When the British Army is compared with its foreign counterparts, the advantages inherent here become apparent, and this helps explain how an army that was ostensibly out of step with the times could in fact sustain itself in the field. This sets up a series of further comparisons, for there is no denying that continental armies could cultivate esprit de corps that was just as strong as in British regiments, nor that manpower organization in many of these large conscript armies led to far greater efficiency than that of the British system. Somehow, however, and against all reasonable expectations, that system continued to function and enabled the British Army, by the skin of its teeth, to meet the nation’s strategic demands. If the recipe for military success entails a successful balancing act between identity on the one hand and efficiency on the other, this then begs the question of what factors enabled Britain to continue to maintain that balance.
Manpower and Identity
For the bulk of the Napoleonic Wars, the small size of the British Army enabled it to field a far more cohesive force than the bulk of the continental powers. Even when units were sent on service a brigade at a time, the units forming these brigades had no permanent organizational or command connection, and so could easily be transferred as necessary. Furthermore, as we have seen, newly arrived brigades could be fitted into the divisional system in order that any lingering imbalance could be absorbed at that level. Were a typical continental army to receive a similar reinforcement, this would in likelihood be composed of multi-battalion regiments, which could not easily be broken up and redistributed without creating problems of command and control. More likely still would be the dispatch of a whole new division or even army corps to a theater, leading to marked disparity in troop quality at a very high organizational echelon. The strength returns for Masséna’s Armée de Portugal indicate a marked distinction between the effectiveness ratio of VIII Corps, comprising inexperienced troops including many provisional units, and the more seasoned troops of II and VI Corps. Even within VI Corps, the survival rate is better for the two veteran divisions that had served as such since 1805 than the corps’s third division, created out of odds and ends and only sent to the front in 1810.4 In the British service, fewer units, and no fixed requirement to keep battalions in any particular command grouping, made manpower management at a lower level far more practical. This represents a key strength of the British system.
To extend the comparison at a regimental level, multi-battalion regiments on the continental model also meant that, in the French service at least, new manpower tended to be formed into new battalions and sent to the front as such.5 Many French regiments condensed their original three battalions into two after Masséna’s 1811 retreat from Portugal, sending home the third battalion cadre, but received in its stead a new fourth battalion composed of conscripts.6 A French regiment was that army’s primary organization for combat as well as administrative purposes, which presented tactical problems for a French colonel that his British counterpart never experienced. Whereas the former, serving under Masséna in 1811, was left with three battalions of uneven quality, for the latter even a large draft could be broken down and distributed amongst ten companies, facilitating easy integration and substantially increasing total manpower without unduly affecting unit quality. Other continental armies formed replacement battalions or battalions de marche, which could be broken up once they reached the front and manpower allocated where needed; this enabled manpower to be distributed to create numerically balanced units, but frequently meant men being assigned to a regiment with which they had no prior connection. Not only would the unit contributing men to a replacement or marche battalion frequently skimp on what it supplied to the men so assigned, but such a reassignment also destroyed any feelings of unit identity or esprit de corps that the recruits in question might have gained through their training.7 In contrast, the British Army had learned of the iniquities of drafting men off to other regiments, and thus recruits going overseas could be assured that they would ultimately find themselves in a battalion of their own regiment. Only when the army was being rapidly—and prematurely—reduced during late 1814, and many second battalions broken up, were men from disbanding units reassigned to other regiments.8
Regimental tradition, in established units or those with a good record of recent service, was a strong unifying factor, and may explain why units with such strong traditions were able to survive spells of service under the command of less-than-stellar officers. The legacy of a good commander could help a unit survive service under a bad one; a series of bad commanders led to disaster, as with the case of the 2nd. As formations higher up the organizational chain also began to develop identities of their own, those that flourished to the greatest degree were those where effective and/or charismatic leadership was involved. This can be particularly seen in the peninsular Third Division under Picton, the Light Division under Craufurd, and, to some extent, the whole peninsular army under Wellington.
Yet whilst the importance of leadership remained constant during the period, shifts can be identified in its nature. Early models of charismatic personality-based leadership give way to a quieter, more professional, style. Men like Inglis, Gough, and Cadogan serve to blur the boundary, as do the likes of Harry Smith and Kincaid at a lower level, and old-school models of leadership were still apparent to 1815. York was keen to instill a professional ethos in his officers, and so too was Wellington, whose stinging rebukes were at times required to remind erring individuals of their duties.9 At a unit level this dedication to duty can also be linked to the fact that many of the officers who were commanding battalions and regiments by the end of the period were those for whom the British Army represented a career f
or life, in which advancement could not be obtained through interest but only as a result of diligent service. If such an officer possessed charismatic skills of personal leadership, then so much the better, but professional competence ensured that such men were respected. The backgrounds and motives of such men are apparent from Graves’s biography of Thomas Pearson of the 23rd, or Urban’s life of George Scovell,10 but similar cases can be identified amongst the officers encountered during the course of this study, such as Hamilton of the 30th, Harris of the 73rd, and Morrison of the 89th. That many such officers, like Pearson or Hamilton, served for years in the same regiment, rather than jumping from corps to corps as they purchased their way up the ladder, helped tie them to their units. Donald Graves speculates that Pearson’s greatest ambition—eventually achieved—was command of the 23rd, a hypothesis that fits with the more regimentally focused career ambitions encountered later in the nineteenth century.11
Of whatever nature, effective leadership was not only militarily valuable but also appreciated by those being led. Strong evidence of the latter can be seen in the number of occasions when a poor combat performance was directly linked by those involved to the absence of an established leader. Perhaps the simplest and most evocative example comes from Cooper’s account of Albuera: “Had he come sooner we should have had more confidence of victory. This may appear from the brief dialogue which took place between Horsefall and myself, when marching to attack the dark columns on the hill. Turning to me, Horsefall dryly said, ‘Whore’s ar Arthur?’ meaning Wellington. I said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t see him.’ He rejoined, ‘Aw wish he wore here.’ So did I.”12 At the divisional level, the absence of Leith at Villamuriel during the retreat from Burgos was partly to blame for the disorder of the Fifth Division,13 whilst the Light Division did not take kindly to the disastrous Erskine temporarily replacing Craufurd when the latter went on leave in early 1811.14 We have already encountered instances where the absence of a regimental or battalion commander led to problems, but it is particularly telling in terms of unit cohesion that the most serious problems arose when command passed to officers little-known to their men, as with erstwhile staff officer Major Kelly’s unfortunate stint in command of the 2/73rd. Bonds of shared experience not only bound units together at the lowest level but also facilitated effective command relationships extending to the regimental level and beyond.
Sickness, Suffering, and the Sword Page 34