by Roger Knight
In 1813, therefore, Britain’s ability to fight both the Continental and American wars was dangerously hindered by shortages of men. Naval manpower peaked in that year at 147,087 seamen borne.14 From North American waters Admiral Warren pleaded for reinforcements.15 Although ships and men deployed there had trebled by early 1813, they were too few, according to Warren, to blockade the immense eastern coastline of the United States.* From the Mediterranean, Admiral Sir Edward Pellew was also requesting more ships of the line to reinforce his fleet, which was blockading Toulon. Already reduced to twenty-six ships, it was potentially outnumbered by the French ships in Toulon, and the small British squadron watching Venice was similarly outnumbered. Pellew was told bluntly that he could have no reinforcements, because ‘the exigencies of the public service at this time are so great.’16 By autumn 1813 the situation had worsened. As the first lord of the Admiralty complained, ships were available but there were no crews for them.
The army, however, faced even greater problems. It required far more men than the navy, and, because recruiting was controlled and run by regiments, it was thus subject to the arbitrary nature of regimental repute. This was dependent upon many factors, including the battle record of the regiment and the character and standing of its colonel. Some regiments could put three or more battalions in the field, while others struggled to raise a single one.17 As a result the duke of York as commander-in-chief lacked the ability to manage and to distribute manpower effectively. The remarkable fact is that throughout the twelve years of the Napoleonic War, with the exception of one year, 1807, when the army was least active, the regular army had never managed to recruit as many soldiers as it had lost through death, discharge or desertion and relied upon transfers from the militia to increase the establishment. An important factor in the manpower struggle was the improvement in army and naval medicine. The sacking of senior army surgeons after Walcheren and new regulations in February 1810 improved qualifications and numbers of army surgeons. Higher standards and amputations quickly performed pushed up recovery rates.* Nevertheless, in 1810, for instance, the traditional recruiting deficit was nearly 14,000; for the following three years it averaged 10,000.18 It was therefore an endless struggle to attract sufficient army recruits in the face of better-paid employment, a problem that worsened in periods of economic prosperity when industrial or merchant seamen’s wages were forced upwards by demand. In 1806 the duke of York had briefed the newly appointed secretary of state for war, William Windham:
On the Continent where there is comparatively speaking little or no trade or manufactures and consequently little means for the Employment of the Population otherwise than in agriculture, the Pay and advantages of a soldier are equal if not superior to that of the Handicraftsman and therefore is a sufficient inducement … But in this Country where all Labor is so exceedingly high and where such inducements are held out to the Lower Class of the People either to engage in manufactures or to be employed at Sea … the continual drain which is unavoidably occasioned by the common casualties of the Army, particularly in our Colonial Possessions, causes such an Annual Deficiency, as has as yet at least never been supplied by ordinary recruiting …19
It was as well that the population of Great Britain and Ireland continued to expand: from the first census in 1801 (see Chapter 2) it was to grow by about 15 per cent a decade.†
The position in France was very different. The French government demanded that all single men between twenty and twenty-five served, with the requirement of unlimited service. French peasant society resisted this and offered protection to several hundred thousand young men on the run who disobeyed the conscription laws or deserted.20 Yet every year between 1808 and 1812 the French Army had available between 181,000 and 217,000 new conscripts.21 Comparing British and French military manpower requirements is simplistic, as the French, potentially and then actually in 1813–14, faced the combined Russian, Austrian and Prussian armies, as well as those of Portugal and Spain; they, too, had allies, such as the Saxons. But Napoleon was beginning to suffer losses that were unsustainable. Between 1802 and 1815 the French officer-training schools turned out about 4,000 officers a year, but such numbers in any one year were not enough to replace the losses at the battles of Wagram and Borodino, and during the retreat from Moscow.22
Britain during this period, unlike Napoleonic France, never adopted conscription. In the last years of the war, the main method by which men were raised for the regular army was by attracting soldiers from the militia, by ballot and through bounties of increasing value that had been set by the nine Militia Acts between 1807 and 1814. The duke of Beaufort, colonel of the Royal Monmouth and Brecon Militia Regiment, reminded his troops in 1807 ‘that those Soldiers who are willing to Volunteer for Life are to receive fourteen Guineas, but those who enter for only seven Years ten guineas’.23 Whereas in the French Revolutionary War 36,000 British militiamen had transferred to line regiments, in the Napoleonic War the figure was 110,000.24 No other statistics better illustrate the great difference in scale between the two wars, nor how much the country had to dig into its resources to survive Napoleon.
Another measure that the army took to make up the shortfall was recruiting foreigners. From the first years of the Revolutionary War regiments such as the King’s German Legion had fought for Britain. In the Peninsula the integration of the Portuguese Army under Wellington’s command and military cooperation with Spanish troops, difficult though that was, were other methods by which British forces were bolstered.25 Germans and Dutchmen were recruited into British regiments under Graham’s command in Holland. In December 1813 Castlereagh proposed to the recently installed British ambassador to Holland that up to 1,500 Dutchmen could be found to ‘make the British force more respectable’, although nothing came of it.26 Parliament took a great detail of interest in the issue of foreigners serving in the army, and Lord Palmerston, secretary at war, had to reassure the Commons regularly. He said in 1812:
If any man would look at the map of Europe, and see what a proportion of its population the enemy had forced into hostility against this country, if he were also to consider the limited population of these two islands, and the extensive colonies we had to defend, and the navy we had to support, it appeared to him hardly possible that such a man could now adhere to the idea of not employing foreigners in our service.27
From 1808 until the end of the war, the army raised nearly 120,000 men by ordinary enlistment, and nearly 100,000 through the militia.* Yet by 1810 this system had run out of steam; in the adjutant-general’s words: ‘In the old militia the original institution is completely worn out by the introduction of a general substitution.’28 By 1812 so many men had transferred to the regular army that the deficiency of the militia establishment was as high as 30 per cent.29 In August 1813 Colonel Bunbury wrote to Bathurst: ‘The volunteering of the militia into the Regular regiments has become extremely slack … At the same time it is believed that a great Enthusiasm exists in the country … and that the old militia would freely extend their service if they were employed with their own officers and to retain their peculiar advantages.’30 By 1813 Britain was operating very close to the limits of its manpower with what was effectively a volunteer army.31
A final push was needed, and the government brought forward a ‘New Military System’, which became law in November 1813. The aim was to transfer 26,000 men to the regular army, encouraged by several new measures. Militia officers were to be offered regular commissions; militiamen could volunteer as whole companies and be formed into provisional battalions under the command of militia officers for service in Europe; while up to three quarters of a militia regiment could be offered as a complete and separate unit. The ‘peculiar advantages’ to which Bunbury was referring were the family allowances that the militia enjoyed, but the regular army did not, and that were now to be retained by militiamen who transferred to the regular army. To add force to these measures, the government was given greater powers to call out the local milit
ia and send it outside its own county for home defence reasons.32 In January 1814 the regular army reached its peak at 233,837, by which time the militia had been reduced to 70,000.33
Success in these wars was not only dependent on the numbers of soldiers, but also on their experience and qualities of discipline. A benefit of the militia-transfer system was that it effectively resulted in a longer period of training, when perhaps a third of the army in the later years of the war had served previously in the auxiliaries.34 This was significant. A transferred militia man could have spent two years in a second battalion at home before being despatched overseas to Spain. No inexperienced or old, worn-out soldiers were sent out to Wellington, which accounts for the exceptional endurance of his army (and contrasts with the soldiers being raised by conscription in France in 1813 and 1814). This regime was achieved by the efforts of the commander-in-chief, the duke of York, and General Calvert, the adjutant-general, who had become more influential in Whitehall.35 The danger of the lack of trained manpower was starkly illustrated by the poor-quality troops commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Graham in Holland. On 8 March 1814 Graham attempted a surprise attack on the French garrison in Bergen-op-Zoom. At first all went well, but in confused fighting the British troops lost momentum and were driven out of the town or taken prisoner. Graham had never wanted this command and was mortified at this failure, but neither the minister nor the army blamed him.36
The militia, however, was not an infinite resource to be plundered for men for transfer to the regular army, for it fulfilled many important tasks. The Luddite disturbances in the West Midlands which broke out in late 1811 and spread to Yorkshire in 1812 and Lancashire in 1813 led to the redeployment there of militia regiments.* In case the regiments raised in these areas had sympathies with the rioters, the government wisely took precautions by ordering the local militia regiments to Ireland, their place taken by other regiments which were on shore-defence duties. They, in turn, were replaced by Irish militia regiments, manned by many Catholics, a move made possible by the Interchange Act (which allowed Irish militia to serve on English soil, and which had received the assent from the prince regent on 1 July 1811).37 Latent suspicions of Irish Catholics were swiftly eclipsed by the need to provide manpower. George III, who would almost certainly have blocked the measure, was by now a sick and uncomprehending old man.
In Ireland itself, however, tensions between the populace and troops were still apparent. When the Royal Monmouth and Brecon Militia Regiment was quartered in Tullamore, though officers were made welcome by the local gentry, the soldiers were subject to ‘frequent insults’. Regimental orders were promulgated in August 1813: ‘If any person or persons approach at Night to ask Questions, the reply must be, “Stand Off I am loaded.”’ The colonel was ‘confident of the very extreme caution they will Preserve whilst loaded in a Town, and he makes himself certain they will not fire unless compelled to do so in their own Personal Defence or to protect Property which may be intrusted to their charge’.38
The domestic peacekeeping tasks of the militia continued to be difficult and varied until the end of the war. Militia units played an important part in guarding prisoners of war while in transit, or when confined in depots or prison hulks. Many nations were represented: French, Italian, German, Dutch, American, Greek, Croat, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Polish prisoners.39 Among the skilled men denied to the French war effort, for instance, were nearly 12,000 seamen from French privateers, some of whom had been incarcerated from the start of the war in 1803.40 In Britain as a whole, prisoners of war totalled 52,649 by 1812, and 1813 saw a further swelling of the numbers as a result of British military success.41 As Wellington advanced northwards in the Peninsula he sent 20,000 prisoners to England between 1811 and 1812.42 More were to come in 1813 and 1814: at Plymouth in late 1813, 600 Frenchmen were housed on board Vanguard, Nelson’s flagship at the Nile, and 700 in the Temeraire, the ship that had gone to the rescue of the Victory at Trafalgar. These prisoners had been captured at Bayonne and Pamplona, and did not have long to wait until the general repatriation in May 1814.43 In the year of 1812, when war with the Americans was joined, few prisoners were captured, but in the following two years, when fighting took place in Canada, 14,500 American prisoners were sent to England, housed primarily in Stapleton near Bristol or on Dartmoor.44 Relations between French and American prisoners could be marked by friction and violence.
As depots and hulks became more crowded, conditions deteriorated and tempers frayed. The worst incident took place at Dartmoor in April 1815. Somersetshire militiamen panicked and fired when confronted by a crowd of protesting American prisoners waiting to be repatriated. Sixty-three prisoners were wounded, of whom seven died.45 The militia were needed to keep the peace between American and French prisoners and, on occasion, towards the end of the war, between those Frenchmen who retained their loyalty to Napoleon and those who supported the Bourbons: in December 1813 almost 600 prisoners on board the Sampson at Chatham came to blows over rival loyalties in France, and a Bourbon peace commissioner visiting a hulk in Portsmouth in April 1814 ‘had a large basket of filth thrown over him’. The prisoners involved in this second incident were the last to be repatriated. In Scotland in the same month at the Perth depot, as the local newspaper reported, ‘six prisoners in the south prison of the Depot hoisted a white [Bourbon] flag, when almost the whole of their fellow captives clambered over the walls from the other prisons and threatened them with the most violent treatment. By the interference of the guard, they were saved from actual injury, and for their greater security were removed to the hospital.’46
To meet the increase of prisoners, the Transport Board and the navy adapted a dozen more old warships as prison ships, until by the end of the war thirty-four were in use. These overcrowded and unhealthy hulks were easier to guard than land-based depots, as they could only be reached by the oared launches or long-boats which took provisions aboard, or lighter gigs used for personnel. The government had, however, always been extremely worried about large concentrations of prisoners and the danger of mass escapes, and now the problem was growing. The mere presence of large prisons or depots could incite the local populace to unrest, particularly during periods of high food prices, when the consumption of food by so many prisoners was seen to be contributing to shortages. In 1814, for instance, 21,000 prisoners around Portsmouth consumed a hundred head of cattle a week.47 Riots took place in Tavistock in Devon in 1812 over high bread prices, the crowd angered by the sight of great quantities of corn being sent to the prisoners at Plymouth and Dartmoor.
It is very difficult to calculate how many prisoners of war were confined in England, Wales and Scotland at the time of the greatest manpower shortages in late 1813. The five great land depots at Portchester, Stapleton, Norman Cross, Perth and the prison at Dartmoor held at least 40,000, and there were at least 20,000 confined in hulks at Portsmouth, Plymouth and Chatham. Several other establishments, such as Forton in Gosport or Millbay at Plymouth, took the best part of 40,000, and a significant proportion was always in transit from depots to hulks, escorted by the militia, or to the hospital ship in port. There were also a limited number of cartels, exchanging civilians captured aboard enemy ships. An approximate estimate of 100,000 prisoners of war in 1813 is conservative and there could have been many more.* Whatever the total, the significant fact is that tens of thousands of skilled French seamen and experienced soldiers were denied to Napoleon just at the time when he was most in need of them.
French prisoners of war did escape, even when they were hundreds of miles from the Channel. Between 1803 and 1814, 1,105 French officer prisoners of war who were allowed a degree of freedom by giving their word not to escape, broke their parole and at least 600 reached France over the Channel, assisted by smugglers.48 French records show that between January and November 1811, 141 French officers made their escape, usually crossing from Deal and landing in Dunkirk, Boulogne and Calais, although some were taken further west from Dorset and
Devon to Cherbourg. For the smugglers it was a risky though lucrative business, for up to 300 guineas could be charged. Thomas Moore was the most celebrated of these smugglers.49 General Armand Philippon, the governor of Badajoz, had been captured in April 1812 after the siege of the city, and was taken to England, where he was paroled in Oswestry on the Welsh border. He successfully escaped in June, via Rye in Sussex.†
By 1813 even more prisoners were on the move, mostly northwards. In the previous year the government received information of a plot by French officers on parole to organize a mass break-out. It was rumoured that they would march on the large depots, release prisoners and occupy a port to give a French invading force a bridgehead.50 The Transport Board took immediate action. Paroled officers were moved out of twenty-three towns in Hampshire and Devon, away from the major ports, so that places such as Alresford and Bishop’s Waltham, or North Tawton and Crediton, no longer had paroled prisoner-of-war officers living in the community. They were sent long distances, to towns in Wales such as Abergavenny or Welshpool. In addition, thousands of confined prisoners were moved away from the south of England to new camps and depots in Scotland, mainly from hulks on the south coast.* In 1811 only 500 or 600 prisoners were held in Scotland, but by January 1813 that figure had increased to between 12,000 and 13,000, held in depots near Edinburgh such as Valleyfield or Esk Mills. The largest was the stone depot at Perth, built in less than a year and completed by July 1812, and which was immediately full to its capacity of 7,000 prisoners.51 Many were taken by one of the Transport Board’s merchant ships from the southern English ports to Kirkcaldy or Dundee before a short march to Perth.