Although these bonds were tight, it is not to be thought that they never began to fail. However, the distinction must be made between a temporary collapse and a total breakdown; after all, as Wellington said in relation to combat, “He thought nothing of men running, provided they came back again.”15 In a similar fashion, men did fall out and straggle, but, by and large, they came back again and on occasion made immense efforts to do so. If anything, this emphasizes the strengths—moral and physical—of the regimental system. Moral strength because the regiment embodied the group and personal loyalties that helped its men define their place in what must frequently have been a confusing and terrifying world, and physical strength because those bonds could only exist in a body of men that had the organizational framework created through its being part of a larger functioning whole. Edward Coss encapsulates the social benefits of the system by defining the regiment as “a secondary social group, [which] worked to give men a sense of worth and bind them to each other.”16 This emphasis on the group can be extended further to explain how those elements of the British Army that served in subregimental bodies were able to function in a similar fashion; an artillery battery, or train detachment, could replicate, on a smaller scale, the loyalties and identities associated with the infantry battalion or cavalry regiment. Having made his point, however, Coss’s over-prioritization of the physical element at the expense of the moral then leads him to belittle his analysis. His belief that “The value of the regimental system was muted, if not negated, by the inability of the army to look after the basic needs of the men”17 misses the point, because any rank-and-file reaction to those failings, which Coss in any case overstates, took on a far more abstract form, as discussed in chapter 6. In all but the most extreme cases, the regiment represented a group of fellow sufferers, and bonds could even be reinforced by shared hardship.
In meeting the nation’s military manpower needs, Britain’s regimental system in force during the Napoleonic Wars appears outdated and wasteful. Far from following the continental example and mobilizing the nation for war through conscription, recruitment remained decentralized. Although efforts were made to impose greater order, the available manpower remained in 140-odd regimental pools, of varying size, rather than a single central source. Failure to implement conscription, and the attractions of alternative modes of service through the Militia, prevented a steady supply of manpower, and, whilst quotas could be set, this did not guarantee that they would be met.18 Some units struggled to maintain their strengths, whilst others had men to spare. Some units swelled to field three or four battalions, whilst others failed to raise even a second. Whatever the other advantages of the system, efficient it certainly was not.
Thankfully for the British Army, although the manpower numbers demanded by new strategic commitments grew, the manpower requirements to replace strategic consumption fell, at least in relative terms. This decrease was due to the benefits obtained through greater experience of campaigning and thus the development of the skills and hardiness required to survive it. Based on the available data for the Peninsular War, the general trend in sickness and mortality was downward as Wellington’s army grew in experience. This took place both on an individual level, as men became more personally acclimatized to the rigors of active service, and institutionally through the institution of new practices such as McGrigor’s overhaul of the hospital system, and in turn directly links to, and reinforces the value of, the increasing recognition of the importance of logistical factors in analysis of the success of the British Army during the Peninsular War.19 It is not to be suggested that older debates concerning the tactics of line and column, or the particular secrets of Wellington’s undoubted genius as a commander, are invalid, but without the means of keeping the troops in the field, their ability to utilize any particular nuance of minor tactics simply becomes irrelevant. The fact that Britain by the second decade of the nineteenth century was able to maintain armies successfully in the heart of the Iberian Peninsula or the depths of Upper Canada, when only two decades previously it had failed to do so even in Flanders, is concrete proof of the effectiveness of the military reforms instituted after the nadir of the 1790s.20 If the systems of manpower management remained somewhat lacking at times, this should not take anything away from the great advances in staff, logistics, and command during the first years of the nineteenth century. The year 1808 found Britain with a system completing the process of reform; 1815 saw that same system tested to the extreme but still—just—holding together. What was more, these reforms coincided with Britain’s rediscovery, discussed above, of direct continental intervention in conjunction with allies as the only successful strategy by which a decisive settlement could be obtained. Together, this allowed the British Army an operational effectiveness and significance far in excess of its numbers.
Traditionally, Britain had compensated for its manpower shortfalls by hiring foreign auxiliaries. Indirectly, through subsidies, this practice continued during the Napoleonic era and made a strong contribution to allied victory.21 But the direct use of foreign manpower was harder to justify, and if foreigners were to serve in nominally British units it would be harder still to assuage the fears of those who associated foreign troops with repression. Line units in which significant enlistment of foreigners took place—the 60th, 97th, and 102nd—were never long in Britain, with the exception of the 97th after 1811 by which time it had had its foreigners diluted with a large influx of Irishmen.22 The all-Canadian 104th spent its entire service on the other side of the Atlantic.23 Equally, Wellington’s Spanish recruits, and the Germans enlisted in 1813 and 1814, remained overseas where their presence could be quietly ignored. Potentially more damaging was the active employment of some of the more dubious foreigners, with American propaganda justifiably making much of the excesses committed by the Independent Foreigners during the attack on Hampton.24 Part of the problem, as Wellington indicated, was that Britain provided no incentives for Frenchmen, or troops of Napoleon’s vassal states, to desert to the British.25 The bulk of those who deserted to the British acquired a one-way ticket to the fever islands, with the result that the only men available were such desperate characters as those who found their way into the Independent Foreigners and 7/60th. This lack of a sustained or effective policy meant that the better foreign units in British service, from the KGL on down, deteriorated due to lack of suitable manpower. As a result, such collections of bad characters as the Independent Foreigners had to be employed in combat rather than their envisaged penal garrison role, to the detriment of the efficiency, and reputation, of the commands to which they were assigned.
Yet the very fact that domestic recruits were not a finite resource, and that foreign recruits were a supplement rather than an alternative, meant that the system had to allow for flexibility if it were to function. The outwardly rigid two-battalion regimental system for the infantry was rarely followed to the letter, not least because the number of battalions per regiment was never standardized. This flexibility allowed junior battalions to provide vital services. Deploying second battalions certainly caused problems—either through the low strength of the units concerned, the diversion of manpower away from the first battalions, or both—but without this measure the British forces in the first half of the Peninsular War would have been slim indeed. For the cavalry, the existence of four or more squadrons within the regiment allowed for greater flexibility, particularly since the composite troops could be shuffled about in a way that infantry companies could not. It was also possible to shuffle the regiments and battalions themselves in order to place units in the station most suited to their state of readiness. However, such measures could only be used to good effect when there was a sufficient supply of campaign-ready units. Once all the effective battalions were on active service, nothing further could be gained by moving units around.
Even then, however, benefits could still be obtained by employing an element of care in the assignment of units to higher formations. The divisional s
ystem as refined under Wellington was geared to creating a balanced and homogenous army, and by 1813 this had been achieved for the forces in the peninsula. This system attempted to ensure that units of poor or uncertain quality were supported by more seasoned troops, but could also be manipulated to facilitate the management of manpower. At the simplest level, the ways in which Wellington’s system simplified manpower management can be seen in the tendency to place battalions of the same regiment in the same division or brigade, to allow easy amalgamation if necessary. At a more sophisticated level, formations could be created outside of the norm either to concentrate specialist troops for a particular purpose, as with the Light Division, or to create second-line formations through which new or poor quality units could be eased into active service. Lastly, on those occasions where a balanced divisional system had not yet been fully established, divisions of different capabilities could be assigned tasks appropriate to their state of readiness, as with the second-line roles assigned to the Seventh Division in 1811 or the Fourth Division in 1815.26 This divisional imbalance could even be deliberately maintained, as in 1812 when the First Cavalry Division got the pick of Wellington’s mounted troops whilst the Second, in the quieter southern theater, contained many of the less effective regiments.27 Only in North America did space and a lack of manpower prevent the evolution of such a sophisticated system of field command; elsewhere, as at the regimental echelon, the key to successful manpower management at a higher level was flexibility.
The injection of flexibility at various hierarchical levels enabled the regimental system to function notwithstanding its drawbacks, but the basic concept of the two-battalion infantry regiment was by no means a bad one in the first place. It could certainly have been better had the time existed to implement a uniform system of multi-battalion regiments; such units could then have absorbed some of the home service duties of the Militia, as Sir Harry Calvert proposed at the time.28 As it was, an initial lack of strategic direction meant that the British Army was condemned to manage with the best of a bad lot and try and make the most of a system that was never complete but by no means irredeemably flawed. It is telling, too, that when Wellington was asked to advise on the best methods by which the regimental systems of the Spanish and Portuguese armies under his command might be managed, his response in both cases was a two-battalion model not far removed from that employed by Britain. In his proposals, both battalions would serve together if possible, but if numbers fell off the second battalion would revert to a noncombat depot role to support the first battalion and keep it in the field.29 Similar levels of flexibility already existed in those elements of the British infantry that existed outside of the regular line. The Foot Guards, KGL infantry, and 95th Rifles were all able to use more sophisticated systems, prioritizing subunits above and below battalion level to maximize the effective use of available manpower. One might ask why such systems were not extended to the line, but with the level of hostilities that Britain faced during the period it was never possible to countenance such a degree of upset. When the British Army finally did go over to a universal system of paired battalions, it was decades later and, crucially, in the middle of a long European peace.30
Legacies
The British military system was placed under many of the same pressures as those of other European powers, but different strategic choices meant that the British Army was able to respond in ways that were unique to it. The continuation of the regimental system facilitated what must be seen as the primary advantage enjoyed by the British Army over its adversaries and its allies: that is, a strong and successfully maintained sense of unit identity. Peter Dietz rightly terms the period from 1793 to circa 1840 the “golden age of the regiments,”31 for not only did the majority of regiments enter it already possessed of strong traditions, but their wartime service enhanced this. From new nicknames won through hard service, such as the 50th’s appellation as the “Dirty Half-Hundred” after Vimeiro, or new distinctions to be treasured such as the collar flash adopted, defended, and finally permitted to the 23rd Fusiliers, campaigning between 1808 and 1815 added much to regimental traditions.32 Older traditions could also be reaffirmed and reinforced; staying with the 23rd, there is little difference between the Saint David’s Day celebration described by Browne in 1808 and accounts of the same festivities a quarter of a century before.33 Apart from the increased number of nicknames and traditions apparent by 1815, Sylvia Frey’s argument in favor of regimental identity during the American War of Independence can readily be applied to the Napoleonic era British Army.34
This self-identity found reflection in the great crop of regimental histories published throughout the nineteenth century, the majority of which seem not to have let fact get in the way of preserving regimental conceits that were still of practical use.35 It is unlikely in the extreme that Wellington at Waterloo really called for the absent 43rd to reinforce his line, but a hundred years later the fact that the story was “current at the time and never called into question” was sufficient evidence to ensure its inclusion in the history of that regiment’s successor unit, and the assumed indication of “the perfection of the regiment’s work [and] confidence of their chief” to be presented as a strong focus for pride.36 Such was the importance of the Napoleonic period in terms of regimental identity that reraised units having only a tangential connection with the regiments of 1815 sought to appropriate their histories. As late as the Second World War, the new 23rd Hussars promptly laid claim to the somewhat dubious laurels of Wellington’s erstwhile 23rd Light Dragoons and thereby sought to ground its new identity within old traditions.37
Just as regimental conceits, traditions, and identity remained strong after 1815, so too was much retained of the newer identities created through the divisional system. Not only did this organization become the norm in all the major campaigns of the nineteenth century from the Crimea onward, but a deliberate attempt to secure a continuity can be seen in the way in which these divisional identities have been perpetuated and appropriated down the years. The Army of the East during the Crimean War had its Light Division in emulation of Craufurd’s command, even though by then nearly the whole of the British Army was equipped with rifles, whilst the First Division of the same force was again composed of the “Gentlemen’s Sons” with its brigade of Foot Guards. One new feature in that war, however, was that the Highland Brigade ultimately became the Highland Division, extending the idea of massing the army’s self-identified elites.38 This practice of giving divisions a title as well as a number would develop further in the wars of the twentieth century, with the creation of numbered divisions that also had territorial or status affiliations: Highland, Light, North Midland, London, and so forth.39 The attempt to seek continuity with historical namesake formations has continued from the peninsula to the present day, with the monument of the Second Division at York Minster listing battle honors from Talavera and Vitoria through the Alma and Sevastopol to Kohima and Imphal, even though the only constant feature over a century and a half was the formation’s number.
Lastly, in terms of identity, chapter 5 suggested that the pattern of regimental and divisional identification could be extended upward to postulate identification with the force as a whole, at least for men serving in the peninsula. This sense of theater-army identity may be directly compared with that generated in North America between 1754 and 1763, and again between 1775 and 1783, identified in the works of Brumwell, Urban, and Frey.40 The specific nature of such identities, along with the added complication that that of the peninsular army was built on a partnership between British and Portuguese regiments,41 makes further extension of the concept problematic. Linda Colley postulates military service as leading to an increased sense of national identity, but the bulk of her evidence relates to the Volunteers and Militia, making only some dubious and assertive links to the regular army.42 What Colley identifies is not the extension of soldiers’ identities through the regiment and the British Army to the nation as a whole, but rather
the appropriation of military identities by outside individuals or groups. This is particularly evident in the use of Wellington as a patriotic and uniting figure, but the erecting of monuments to the Duke, for all manner of motives, implies only that the British nation had recognized “Wellington’s Army,” and not that its rank and file necessarily saw themselves as part of a united Britain.43 This is all well and good, but not very helpful in getting into the heads of the men in the ranks, where British identity existed largely by default, in terms of self-definition against enemies and allies.44 Within a regimental “family” whose typical demographic had more than its share of Irish Catholics, the Francophobic Protestant Britain postulated by Colley could only have been an alien concept.45 On the other hand, acceptance of English, Scots, and Irish comrades as part of the same social group, as vocalized in the lyrics of “The British Bayoneteers,” suggests an acceptance of Union and unity, supporting Colley’s contention that war served as a motor for unity by breaking down parochial attitudes.46
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