Loudoun, however, had already authorised the raising of what was the first regular light infantry regiment in the British Army, the 80th under Thomas Gage. A list of items supplied for equipping this new unit specifies a cost for ‘cutting and finishing’ the 540 firelocks supplied – that is, shortening them and possibly blacking the barrels as well. In addition 540 shot bags and powder horns were supplied.33
In May 1758 Major General Jeffrey Amherst arrived in North America at Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he was making preparations for his assault on the French fortress of Louisbourg. He ordered the formation of light infantry from amongst the regular battalions, which were placed under the command of Major Scott. The men drafted from ‘the regiments, that have been any time in America, are to furnish such as have been most accustomed to the woods, and are good marksmen; and those from Europe are to furnish active marchers, and men that are expert at firing ball’.34
Amherst subsequently ordered that this light infantry were to exchange their long and heavy Long Land Pattern firelocks for the lighter, shorter firelocks carried by the artillery.35 In his instructions for how they were to fight, the influence of Rogers was clear: they were to ‘generally fight in a single rank’ and avoid huddling together, thus presenting their enemy with a target. They were apparently expected to load their muskets from powder horns, rather than just priming, as they were instructed to be careful not to overload their guns and to have tow or paper ready cut to serve as wadding in the place of the paper of a cartridge.36
Early in 1759 Amherst – by then the fourth commander-in-chief in North America in as many years, following Braddock, Loudoun and Abercromby – issued further directions for the equipment of the light infantry. In particular he stated that they were not to carry bayonets, instead they had a ‘tomahock’.37 Wolfe, however, once at Quebec, ordered the light infantry to carry them again, ‘as the want of ammunition may sometimes be supplied with that weapon’, adding that lack of ammunition was no excuse for a man to leave his post and that at night the bayonet was preferable to fire.38
Steps were also taken to train the regular battalions so that, if not as specialised as the light infantry, they could at least hold their own against the Indians and French-Canadian irregulars. The Duke of Cumberland had insisted to Lord Loudoun that all American recruits to the army should be taught according to regulations.39 Wolfe had commented: ‘My Lord Loudoun . . . did adhere so literally and strictly to the one – two and the firings by the impracticable chequer, &c., that these regiments must necessarily be cut off one after another unless they fall into some method more suited to the country and the kind of enemy they have to deal with.’40 This is somewhat harsh on Wolfe’s part and it must be remembered that he was writing to Lord Sackville, a man of considerable influence and was promoting himself. In fact Loudoun did take measures to suitably train his infantry for bush fighting. In respect of the newly formed Royal American Regiment he wrote to the commanding officers of its three battalions in December 1756 insisting that the soldiers were trained to fire at marks and to learn to load and fire kneeling and lying on the ground.41
One of Loudoun’s brigadiers, John Forbes, wrote of the necessity for training troops in the specialist nature of bush warfare. He believed that, when attacked, untrained troops would be killed or flee, whereas a trained and experienced bush fighter would take cover ‘behind some tree stumps or stone, where he becomes his own Commanding Officer, acting to the best of his judgement for his own defence and General Good of the whole’, thus squarely placing the emphasis on the individual soldier rather than a unit.42 In a letter to Bouquet he recognised the need to adapt to the local form of warfare: ‘And I must confess in this country, we must comply and learn the Art of War from Enemy Indians or anything else who have seen the Country and Warr carried on in it.’43 It was possibly Forbes who introduced the order ‘tree all’ into the regulars’ repertoire. If ambushed or otherwise surprised this order resulted in the men immediately seeking cover individually behind trees or rocks. From there they could return fire, again individually.44
In 1758 Forbes led an expedition to capture Fort DuQuesne, which was abandoned by the French in the face of his advance and renamed Fort Pitt by Forbes, who died soon after taking possession of it. Prior to the expedition setting out, Forbes had spent considerable time and trouble training his command. A letter to him from Bouquet speaks of the need to buy two or three hundred barrels of gunpowder in order to train provincial recruits and ‘to drill our troops in forest warfare’. The same letter also spoke of the need to provide the provincials with lead in bars. This was because some of them were armed with rifles, weapons that were not of a military calibre, and it was thus necessary for the provincials to cast their own balls for these.45 The rifle was a more accurate weapon than the issue musket, but the necessity for the balls to be a tight fit, in order to grip the rifling that imparted spin to the ball, thus improving accuracy, meant that they were slower to load. A few were issued to marksmen amongst the regulars, but they were most commonly found in the hands of Indians and irregulars. The rifle seems to have had little impact on the warfare of the day and was not seen in any number in the British Army until the formation of the 95th Rifles during the Napoleonic wars. It did not reach the hands of the ordinary redcoat until the mid-nineteenth century when the development of the Minie ball overcame the loading problem.
The training of Forbes’s men included ‘running & firing in the Indian Manner’.46 The Reverend Thomas Barton who accompanied the expedition has also left a description of how this firing was organised. For battle the men formed in a single rank and were divided into platoons of twenty. There was no attempt to coordinate the fire of the different platoons, but within each platoon the men fired individually, starting with the right-hand man, followed by the left-hand man and then alternating right and left until the fire reached the centre of the platoon. Before the fire reached the centre the first men to fire were reloaded and ready to fire again. By this means a continuous fire was maintained across the front of each platoon in the same manner as it was by companies in battalions using the alternate-fire system.47 Bouquet’s order book for the same expedition adds the detail that each platoon was to be commanded by an officer or a sergeant.48
Also in the summer of 1758 Amherst was leading his army against the important fortress and port of Louisbourg. It is clear that Amherst had little respect for the Indians and their way of war, calling them cowards and barbarians and expressing astonishment that they had managed to beat Braddock. However, he clearly understood how they fought and how to beat them.
Their whole dependence is upon a tree, or a bush, you have nothing to do, but to advance & they will fly, they never stand an open fire or an attack. Our irregulars and light Infantry are certainly of great use & should always accompany an Army in this Country, as these troops drive them out of their shelter, harass them continually & beat them in their own way.49
Amherst’s orders to his regulars for a field day dealt with an advance by four battalions led by an advance guard of two platoons. If attacked the left hand of these two platoons was to fire ‘singly’, that is each man individually. This was to be followed by the right-hand platoon firing ‘the whole together’, after which the left-hand platoon was to begin firing again as before. It is difficult to see what Amherst thought this mix of firing styles might achieve. It is possible that he thought the individual firing would protect the platoon firing a single volley from the attentions of irregulars who fought as individuals whilst the sheer power of a platoon volley might overwhelm or, at least intimidate, an enemy and prevent them from advancing while the following battalions deployed. These four battalions were to form two lines, with the flank subdivisions wheeled outwards to protect the flanks. After the two leading battalions had fired the second line was to pass through and fire in turn.50 To pass through each other would require the battalions to be in a very loose order and possibly in a single rank. This is very much like Rogers’s fire-a
nd-movement tactic, but on a much larger scale.
In early December 1758 Forbes left Fort Pitt to return to Philadelphia where he died the following March. In his absence Bouquet gave instructions to Colonel Hugh Mercer who was charged with the defence of the fort. In these he wrote: ‘Your best marksmen only should fire from the Fort, The other to load for them; Each man having two muskets.’51 In this order there is an echo of Field Marshal Saxe. In his Reveries he had advised that the most effective fire could be achieved in a similar method with one man firing while four loaded for him.52 In both cases the result was to make the most effective use of the best individual marksman available.
By June 1759 Amherst had replaced Abercromby as the commander-in-chief in North America and was assembling his army at Fort Edward. There, both newly arrived provincial troops and the regulars were kept busy, firing at marks and practicing ‘forming and dispersing in the woods, and in other exercises adapted to the peculiar method of carrying on war in close-covered countries’.53 However, this was the year in which the outcome of the war was decided and that happened in open and relatively conventional battle against the French.
It has already been shown above that early in 1755 Braddock had ordered his troops to make use of the alternate system of delivering a battalion’s fire and that at the same time Wolfe had been introducing alternate fire to his battalion in England. This was clearly contradictory to the regulations then in force, which, for the delivery of fire, were the regulations authorised by the Duke of Cumberland in 1748. Prior to becoming colonel of the 14th Foot in 1753 and a major general in 1754, Braddock’s entire career had been in the Coldstream Guards and thus very much under the eye of the Duke of Cumberland, who seems to have been instrumental in getting Braddock his North American command.54 Whilst the influence of the Duke of Richmond on the young Lieutenant Colonel Wolfe has been considered, a different explanation offers itself for Braddock’s innovation. During the War of the Austrian Succession Frederick the Great had acquired a considerable reputation for his successes against the Austrians, much of which was due to his infantry. In 1754 a translation of the Prussian infantry manual was published in London that contained detailed instructions on how the Prussians executed alternate fire, using eight fire units in a battalion.55 The two battalions with Braddock had come from the Irish Establishment and were thus well below full strength.56 They had been brought up to strength by drafts from other battalions and recruiting in America. It would seem probable that Braddock, recognising that these battalions lacked cohesion and training, tried to keep things simple by introducing the far less complex Prussian alternate fire instead of Cumberland’s complex system of 1748.
Braddock’s replacement, Loudoun, has already been noted as adhering strictly to regulations, but it has to be borne in mind that the 1756 platoon exercise had just been issued and that Loudoun had been given very specific instructions about adhering to them. Loudoun’s successor, Major General Abercromby, had gone out to America with Loudoun and so was operating under the same understanding. When Abercromby replaced Loudoun as commander-in-chief in early 1758 he also received assistance in the form of the arrival of new senior officers. To lead the attack against Louisbourg was Major General Amherst, assisted by Brigadier James Wolfe; Brigadier Lord Howe was to assist Abercromby in his attack on Fort Carillon.
In July Abercromby launched his attempt against Fort Carillon. It ended in disaster. Lord Howe was killed in an opening skirmish and Abercromby hurled his regulars forward in a frontal assault, without artillery support, against French fieldworks protected by an abatis of felled trees. The regulars were shot down without reaching the French and Abercromby was forced to retreat. Abercromby was recalled and command passed to Amherst in September 1758.
Although Amherst formed light infantry and took measures to adapt his regulars to irregular warfare he appears to have taken no steps to alter the drill that the regulars would use against the French regulars they would meet at Louisbourg, other than to order that they should load their muskets with two balls.57 The assault on Louisbourg was preceded by an amphibious landing under fire in which Wolfe played a conspicuous role in achieving a successful landing. The assault on Louisbourg itself was an almost European siege and Louisbourg surrendered on 26 July 1758.
Amherst had served on the Duke of Cumberland’s staff, but he was quick to put aside the 1748 firings and introduce alternate fire to the army now under his command.58 In April 1759 he had ordered each battalion to form a light infantry company, but in May he withdrew those and the grenadier companies of each battalion in his command, then in Albany, to form composite light and grenadier battalions. The remaining eight companies were:
at all times to be told off in four grand divisions, eight subdivisions, and sixteen platoons; and this must be done without breaking the companies, if the numbers be nearly equal, except in[to] the platoons, that each company must be subdivided to form two platoons. The Officers will be posted, as much as the service will permit, to the companies they belong to.59
By specifying that the companies, so long as they were all roughly the same size, should form the basic fire unit and only be divided to form two platoons, all with their own officers, Amherst was placing considerable emphasis on the benefits of the natural cohesion to be found in companies where the men lived together and were commanded by officers they knew.
Meanwhile, at Louisbourg, Wolfe was preparing his army for the attempt on Quebec. Captain John Knox of the 43rd recorded the preparations. It would appear that there was some concern amongst battalion commanders about ‘a new system of discipline’. This could have been a reference to either the introduction of alternate fire by Amherst or the new 1757 regulations or, indeed, both. When this issue was raised with Wolfe he is reported to have responded with: ‘Pho, pho! – new exercise – new fiddlesticks; if they are otherwise well disciplined and will fight, that’s all I shall require of them.’60
One of the battalions not familiar with the new exercise would appear to have been Knox’s. Prior to setting out to join Wolfe’s army in May 1759 they had spent twenty-two months manning various garrisons in Nova Scotia.61 Whilst in garrison they had done what they could to maintain military efficiency, but it is no surprise that such things as the 1757 regulations and the new fashion for alternate fire had passed them by. However, prior to leaving their garrisons to join the main army Knox recorded: ‘The 43d regiment are at exercise every morning, and discharge ammunition cartridges; in the afternoon the men are employed in firing at targets, in which they are encouraged by presents from their Officers, according to their several performances.’62 The practice of individual marksmanship is a constantly recurring activity amongst all troops throughout the war in North America.
Once with Wolfe’s army, the 43rd appear to have been quickly introduced to the new method of delivering a battalion’s fire. Knox described firing alternately from right and left to the centre by platoons, sixteen in all, and then by subdivisions, each platoon or subdivision under the command of its own officers. Whilst this was another description of the conduct of alternate fire, Knox added two interesting observations. First he described its effectiveness. The exercise was carried out in a field of wheat and he wrote: ‘I never saw grain closer cut down by the reap-hook, or scithe, than this was.’ Knox also recorded that ‘the method we were ordered to observe did not admit of any confusion, though we fired remarkably quick.’63 This was the unbiased view of a professional officer that alternate fire was accurate, effective and could be delivered quickly and without confusion, confirmation of its superiority to Cumberland’s 1748 firings.
Nor was the use of the bayonet neglected: in a passage redolent with the contempt of a seasoned professional, Knox described a demonstration by a sergeant from another regiment of what he called ‘a new method of pushing bayonets’, which caused considerable mirth amongst the men. It may have been new to Knox, but this new drill was nothing less than the old style of charging a musket and bayonet like a pik
e. It would appear that the 43rd had long since given that up, presumably in preference for the new style of holding the musket and bayonet levelled at waist height. Knox described how the sergeant held the firelock ‘which he poked out before him, in like-manner as an indolent hay-maker turns hay with a forked pole’. His verdict was ‘I thought it ludicrous’.64
In July 1759 Amherst gave orders that his infantry were to form and fight in just two ranks ‘as the enemy have very few regular troops to oppose us, and no yelling of Indians, or fire of Canadians, can possibly withstand two ranks.’65 This development appears to have been general throughout North America as Wolfe’s army used it at Quebec and the following year Amherst recorded exercising infantry in both three- and two-deep lines.66
The analysis of the effectiveness of the new bush-fighting techniques for regulars, light infantry and rangers reveals that success against the French and Indian irregulars did not come quickly and that there were many other factors involved besides actual combat techniques. However, British infantry at least began to be able to hold their own against irregulars so that they could engage the French regular forces in the engagements that would decide the outcome of the war. Accounts of Wolfe’s campaign against Quebec are full of accounts of the continuous low-intensity warfare that epitomised irregular combat. One account confirms the individual nature of both the firing and the close-quarter combat. A soldier of the 35th described a skirmish where he saw an Indian aim at him, but miss; he then aimed at the Indian and missed in turn, whereupon the Indian threw his tomahawk at him, but missed, and the soldier threw it back and missed. The soldier was then attacked from behind and hit in the back with a tomahawk, but escaped.67
Destructive and Formidable: British Infantry Firepower 1642-1756 Page 19